Obama's war challenges

Shurff Gen. John Craddock: Just shoot them thar drug dealers, boy!

Along with trying to stop the Republicans from continuing to destroy the American and world economies, Obama also has two disastrous wars still in progress to deal with.

This is an important article by Gareth Porter on the generals trying to railroad Obama on the Iraq War: Generals Seek to Reverse Obama Withdrawal Decision Inter Press Service 02/02/09. According to his report, Obama told Petraeus the Great to go back and bring him a plan to get the US combat troops out of Iraq in 16 months. Gareth does an interview with Antiwar[.com] Radio, also dated 02/02/09, talking about this story at more length.

Gareth in the interview talks about his continuing concerns about Robert Gates as Secretary of State.

Russia and Kyrgyzstan are also creating a new challenge for the US war in Afghanistan. Spencer Ackerman reports on it in Afghanistan Supply Base May Defect to Russia Washington Independent 02/03/09. Human rights attorney Scott Horton talks in The Mess at Manas No Comment blog 02/04/09 about how the bull-headed blundering of our glorious generals has made this particular problem more difficult.

Speaking of bull-headed generals, Der Spiegel Online reports in Nato-Oberbefehlshaber manövriert sich ins Aus von Susanne Koelbl, Hans-Jürgen Schlamp und Alexander Szandar 05.02.2009 reports on a pending order by American four-star General Bantz John Craddock, the current NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACUER), that declared any Afghan opium producers or dealers should be treated as military targets and (essentially) shot on sight.


See also Nato-Oberbefehlshaber erteilt rechtswidrigen Tötungsbefehl von Susanne Koelbl Der Spiegel Online 28.01.2009; NATO commander tones down drug lord orders AFP/Yahoo! News 02/04/09.

His idea included targeting buildings where drug processing is thought to be occurring. Both without any reason to believe there is any direct connection between the people being killed and actual insurgents - who are really who NATO is fighting in Afghanistan, not international terrorist groups. Given the fact that opium is easily the most profitable crop available to Afghan farmers, such an order could well turn out to be something like declaring a large portion of Afghan rural areas to be "free fire zones" like the good old days in Vietnam.

I'm calling this a "pending" order here; the AFP article explains that what Craddock put out was a "guidance" about an order he expected to issue. But according to the later Spiegel article, it was not meant to be a discussion paper, and NATO's explanation about it being only a "guidance" was meant to downplay it. The Spiegel reporters quote a recently retired NATO four-star general, Dieter Stöckmann, saying that at that level in the NATO command, a direction from SACEUR isn't normally technically called an order. But as he puts it, "Dies ist keine Empfehlung, sondern klipp und klar eine Anweisung und in der Sache bindend." (This is no recommendation, but rather very clearly an instruction and a binding one.)

Both German Gen. Egon Ramms, who is serving a senior military official at NATO in Brussels, and the American Gen. David McKiernan, commander of the NATO ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) objected to Sheriff Craddock's de facto orders, arguing that they were contrary to international law and the ISAF rules of engagement. Shurff Craddock backed down. And according to the Spiegel report, he may wind up having to resign his post over this.

We have to give Gens. McKiernan and Ramms credit for standing up against an illegal order. It's the duty of every general and every soldier to refuse to carry out an illegal order (or "guidance"). But it's not a small thing to do involving such a high-level military officer as Craddock. So that speaks well of both McKiernan and Ramms.

ISAF Commander Gen. David McKiernen: successfully stood up against an illegal order

I also can't help but notice, though, that this interchange occurred since Obama assumed the Presidency. And its also the case that prosecuting senior Bush administration and military officials that violated the laws against torture and possibly others as well has been a live topic of discussion and is clearly a real possibility. This is exactly why we need to have those crimes prosecuted. Laws are there for a reason. Neither Vice Presidents nor four-star generals should get away with giving illegal orders and no one should get away with carrying them out.

The earlier Spiegel article even says explicitly that after the Generals objected to his pending order Shurff Craddock was seen as a "loyaler Bush-Mann" and "unter dem neuen US-Präsidenten fürchtet, bald abgelöst zu werden" (feared that under the new US President he might be fired right away").

The current ISAF rules of engagement include going after drug dealers militarily if there is evidence they are supporting enemy guerrillas, which many of them do. The "Taliban" (Pashtun fighters) are heavily involved in drug dealing.

The Afghan government itself, as we might imagine, was not thrilled with Shurff Craddock's "guidance". Der Spiegel quotes the Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta saying, "Die Afghanen sind doch keine Hühner, die jeder jagen kann, wie er möchte". (The Afghans are certainly not chickens that anyone can hunt however he wants to.) I'm assuming my English versions is at least two translations away from the original, so I don't know if there was some particular phrase of figure of speech involved with the thing about shooting chickens. But it doesn't sound like the Foreign Minister thought Shurff Craddock showed anything like the proper concern for the lives of his country's citizens.

Tags: afghanistan war, david mckiernan, john craddock

Obama: "Those [Republican] ideas have been tested, and they have failed."

I think we may have a fighter as President and head of the Democratic Party. Obama 02/05/09:



And I'm pretty sure I hear the President in this speech saying that he wants to "end the tyranny of oil in our time" (at around 4:25 in the video). Not just foreign oil, an end to the "tyranny of oil".

Andrew Jackson is resting in his grave a little easier tonight.

Tags: barack obama, republican party, us economy

The slow, agonizing death of the American press

Resistance is futile!

Lately I'm sometimes surprised at the stuff I see that I've written down. Like when I talk about our press commentariat as being Pod People from planet Fomalhaut b. And I wonder if the self-editing world of blogging is making me careless and saying completely silly things without intending to.

Then I read something like today's pronouncement from The Dean Of All The Pundits, David Broder, A Cabinet Loss and Gain Washington Post 02/05/09. And I realize that anyone who isn't gobsmacked by the chronic bizarreness of our mainstream pundits must either be not reading or hearing them at all, or else is as clueless about current events as they are. I hate to sound like I'm just cloning Bob "Daily Howler" Somerby's ideas about press problems. But most homo sapiens just don't process the information they receive from the world outside their heads the way our Pod Pundits do.

Whatever talents Dean Broder has - someone remind me again what they once were - helpful political analysis is no longer among them, if it ever was. Apparently, the way terrestrial politics looks to travelers from Fomalhaut b, it's by definition a good thing for a Democratic President to have three Republicans Cabinet members. Saying why those individuals might be good is pretty much irrelevant. Celebrating Sen. Judd Gregg's appointments as Secretary of Commerce, the Dean assures us that "the payoff on Gregg ... will be substantial down the road.".

Grumping that actual news got in the way of the column he was writing to praise Judd to the high heavens, the Dean explains why he so adores this new Republican saint.


Why, he's "one of the smart guys on Capitol Hill," declares the Dean, "especially when it comes to fiscal policy". Why that's going to be a long-term payoff for a Commerce Secretary is not clear. But what has revealed to the Dean's incisive mind Judd's brilliance is this:

Gregg and North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, respectively, have been pushing for the creation of a bipartisan commission that would tackle the looming bankruptcy of the three big entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

I need to brush up on the financing of Medicare and Medicaid, because the Reps, the insurance industry and their marks in the press will be raining down disinformation about them when Obama's main health insurance plan becomes a central issue.

But the notion that Social Security is facing bankruptcy, much less "looming bankruptcy", is so factually false that it's amazing that the Post, which still aspires to be considered part of the quality press, allows even their columnists to make such a claim in their paper.

Whether the Dean's column reads the way it does because he's become a conservative old Republican who wants the world to go back to being the wonderful way he remembers it being when he was a little boy, or because he just drifts with the flow of Beltway conventional wisdom, or because he's just dumb, or some other reason, I don't know.

But he's mad at seeing Daschle, who had indifferent success as leader of the Senate Democrats, go down on the Cabinet post, because "Daschle was the best-credentialed, best-connected Democrat slated for the Cabinet. He was one of the earliest Washington establishment figures to endorse Obama, and he provided from his old staff many of the people who helped Obama rise." (my emphasis) His years an an unofficial lobbyist for the health-care industry made him "a skilled legislative craftsman who made health policy a specialty in recent years".

And the Dean manages to get in a shot at Bill Clinton - they just can't help themselves, it seems - and complain that Daschle's problems were all Obama's fault. "This is a blow to Obama's credibility that will not be easily forgotten," he says, which in PodPunditSpeak means that its now Beltway wisdom that Obama is no longer "credible" - to the Pod Pundits, that is. Gosh, it took five years, massive corruption, torture, and other criminal acts, a needless war of choice in Iraq, the Valerie Plame case, and multiple disastrous failures for the punditocracy to decide that George Bush and Dick Cheney had a credibility gap. I'm just saying.

Broder doesn't seem to give a rip about all this health-care jabber he's hearing from these dang liberal hippies who are all over town now. But he does care a lot about getting rid of those annoying New Deal and Great Society programs that only lazy poor people could possibly care about, i.e., Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The last six paragraphs of his column are devoted to looking forward to the epic fight to send those programs to the dustbin of history. He seems to think Obama is all for that, even though Obama is committed to expanding health care availability, not slashing the current availability. But Obama is going to have to bravely stand up to ... those nasty Democrats, of course:

The problem is likely to be in the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains opposed to the [bipartisan] commission idea and where Republicans are adamantly against considering tax hikes along with benefit reductions in any kind of "grand bargain."

It will be a heavy lift, but there are willing hands.

Since "let's set up a commission" is a time-honored political tactic to kick the can down the road, I'm not necessarily concerned about a bipartisan commission on "entitlements" as such. Unless it's staffed exclusively by conservative think-tanks, it will shoot down for the upteenth time the Social Security "looming bankruptcy" nonsense. And whatever dumb ideas it produces for cutting Medicare and Medicaid, Obama and the Dems can just ignore those.

But the economic emergency is making painfully clear how so much of the Establishment press (hey, if Dean Broder can use "establishment" so can I!) cannot deal realistically with urgent political priorities and the events driving them. The Post could outsource its punditry chores to India and Mexico and get better commentary for a lower price.

Because I'm afraid the opposite is beginning to happen, i.e., that our press standards are beginning to catch on in other countries whose publics would then have to suffer as we do.

Like this Spiegel Online commentary datelined Washington by Gabor Steingart, Krisenrezepte: Was Obama von Deutschland lernen kann 05.02.2009. It's basically a recitation of Christian Democratic Union (CDU) economic platitudes, which are conservative, though "conservative" in Germany doesn't mean what the American Republican predator-state version does. Still, it's phoning-it-in style whining that doesn't amount to much more than: balance the budget, keep savings high, both of which are pretty much absolutely worthless in thinking about how to put the American economy on the road to recovery. Oh, and all this New Deal nonsense from the 1930s is what caused the problem anyway. No, it doesn't get dumber than that. Well, except among our own American Pod Pundits.

Has Steingart been assimilated by the Beltway Borg? Tragic to think about.

My advice to our foreign friends: you've seen Bush and Cheney take down the American finance system and most of the world's along with it. The same thing could happen to your press if you let your pundits and reporters become part of the Fomalhaut b cult!

Tags: establishment press, mainstream media, mainstream press

Amazing

Republican zombies are even scarier than this!

The Republicans really are out to tank the Recovery Bill! Do they really like the disaster they created the last eight years so much they want to make it even worse?

Like most Democrats I assume, I'd love to see Obama chunk this bipartisan kumbaya. But maybe it's just as well that the reality of the Republican Wrecker Party has banged him over the head his first two weeks in office. He seems to learn well from experience.

I'm not panicking on the recovery bill, though. Yes, the Republicans have scrambled the issues via our flat-on-its-face dysfunctional press corps. But what else is new?

But the media mess matters. In both the short run and the long run. The Democrats have to find some ways to shake up the media coverage. And though nobody is talking about a new Fairness Doctrine, even though the loons on the right seems convinced there's a big conspiracy intending to do that, there are some reforms like more stringent limits on who can own news media companies and how they are managed that could increase the ration of journalism to infotainment by at least a bit.


One thing we have to give the Reps credit for, though. They are better at this day-to-day political trench warfare than the Dems are. Imagine how much better off the country might have been had the Democrats been as determined to slow things down on the "USA PATRIOT Act" as the Republicans are to derail the recovery package.

Let the Pod Pundits rattle on about how its always the Dems' responsibility to be bipartisan and how its the main task of the Democratic President to oppose the Democratic Congress and the Democratic base. But Obama and the Congressional Dems need to start making Republican backstabbers and LieberDems pay a real price when they jack the Dems around.

Obama compromised on several of the items that the House Republicans were mindlessly bitching about. And what did they do? They didn't give the recovery plan a single vote. Normally, when you compromise with the other side, they should give you something in return like, say, 15 or 20 Republican votes for the package.

And then theirs the ultimate LieberDem, Holy Joe Lieberman himself. He campaigned for the Republican Presidential candidate. He even endorsed his good buddy McCain during the primaries. He won re-election in 2006 running against the Democratic Senate candidate in Connecticut. And he's welcomed to the new Congress' Democratic caucus as though he had been the most loyal Party stalwart ever. That's just nuts.

Obama is going to have to find ways to go directly to the public to keep a fire under his own Party, too many of whose Congressional office-holders don't seem to much care whether the Party's own priorities and programs get passed. He and the Congressional Party are going to have to make Republicans who deal in bad faith pay some obvious price. And Dems who just want to schmooze with the likes of David Gregory and their Republican buddies should get the [Cheney] out of the way.

And while I'm grousing, Obama's setting up a Presidential Office on Faith? Isn't that what we have churches for? That's another kabuki the Dems need to flush. Conservative fundamentalists aren't going to vote for Democrats because the Dems talk about how much they love Jesus. Ain't gonna happen. Some of those conservative fundamentalists, though, may decide that having a functioning economy and real jobs is an important priority.

I just saw Pat Robertson on TV. Good grief, he looks like a mummy already and sounds like one, too. Keith Richards, the world's most famous zombie, looks to be closer to alive than Brother Pat. He barely seemed to know where he was. Anyone who can take political advice coming from a doddering old reactionary fool like Robertson just ain't gonna vote for the Democrats. They just won't.

Tags: democratic party, republicans, us economy

The Minority Opinion

Like nearly everyone else in the country, my 401k has taken a hit in the last 8 months, and I am concerned about becoming one of those impoverished old bag ladies, picking up cigarette butts off the sidewalks, and scouring the dumpsters for dinner. I've always been careful with money. I've always done what the experts have told me to do. Work hard, invest for the future, don't count on Social Security, invest in the market, and you'll retire in comfort. Today, we are so deep in the shit, that no one is even talking about saving Social Security. The present situation is so dire, that no one is even thinking about the future. And if we are expecting the next generation to support us comfortably in our rocking chairs, in Florida, or some other warm climate, I think we are deluding ourselves. The next generation will be so pissed off at the debt we will leave them, that they will most likely vote to put us all away in a state institution. I mean after all, the next generation waiting in the wings was raised on reality TV shows, where the useless were voted off the island, and the weakest link subjected to serious humiliation. I'm not expecting any kindness from this next generation.


So basically, I'm trying hard to re-build my meager savings by buying stocks that are dirt cheap, and hoping that the Democrats will make things just a little better for us. I mean, they can't do much worse than George Bush. I have been an avid visitor to the CNBC website, I've subscribed to Morningstar, because I think that there is a slim chance that the nation will recover, now that the smart people are in charge. And if the market recovers, I want to be in it, I trust the Last Throes of American Capitalism more than I trust the viewers of Survivor. But looking at market websites makes me a little freaked out when I see a headline like this:

U.S. Debt Default, Dollar Collapse Altogether Likely.

And to be fair, these headlines of gloom and doom are few and far between, most definitely the minority opinion. But if you sided with the majority these last eight years, you will find yourself, with the majority of Americans, but on the wrong side of history, dead wrong. If you had by some slim chance, listened to the few voices that were scorned, the voices of opposition, the voices urging you to think before jumping into war, if you had thought before you bought that house for half a million, you and many other of your fellow citizens would be in a different place today.

I wasn't in favor of President Obama's reaching across the aisle to Republicans, if they had not been the majority these last 8 years, we would be in a much different place today. But I'm not opposed to Judd Gregg, with the President in a place where everyone is begging for money that we don't have, you might want to have one or two people who disagree with the majority. We are about to authorize our government to borrow and spend another trillion dollars, the first few trillion didn't do jack for the economy, and we know very little about where the money went. I'm not crazy about borrowing, or printing more money that we don't have. I agree that the money should go to tax-payers, because we will spend it on real things like food and rent, unlike the banks who got the money, and still continue to report loss after billion dollar loss. I'm in favor of having a couple of guys in the Administration who don't agree with Tim Geithner. In fact, I'm thinking that every time Geithner says anything in a Cabinet meeting, you might want to have a few people hanging around with a calculator, just to make sure the math is correct. Are Democrats math deficient? There sure are a lot of them who can't calculate taxes.

I don't know jack about money. And I'm pretty sure our elected officials only know what the experts tell them. And that's why we might need a guy who can use a calculator in the mix. What Democrats should not do, is repeat the mistakes of George Bush. President Obama is doing exactly the right thing by surrounding himself with different opinions, so that hopefully, in some Cabinet meeting, someone in the room will shout out the minority opinion.

We all hope, and I think, expect, that those people in the room have correctly calculated their tax returns .

Obama and the Establishment press, Week 2

David Broder, Dean Of All The Pundits: and the fact that he is that is a real commentary on the state of our American press

No, I'm not planning to do one of these every week. In general, I would prefer to stay away from media criticism as such. But when our national press is so broken down that it not only creates huge problems for Obama getting his programs past but is also in its dysfunctionality a danger to the survival of democracy, it's hard to avoid it sometimes.

First I'll say something nice about our Beltway press: the tax problems of senior nominees is a legitimate story.

Then there's the rest of their stuff. This piece from the New York Times Obama, F.D.R. and Taming the Press by historian Jean Edward Smith recommends that Obama use Franklin Roosevelt's approach to the press as a model. He takes it for granted that Obama's problems with the press are all his own fault. But he makes two deeply erroneous assumptions. And the fact that he can makes such assumptions without being embarrassed says a lot about the state of news media in America today. The two assumptions are:

• That Obama has the option of having a non-adversary relationship with the national press

• That the national press understands their role as practicing journalism (as distinct from infotainment)

To see why both are false, all one needs to do is watch a couple of hours worth of the talking heads on Sunday, or read the Times opinion pages for a few days. (Forget the Washington Post opinion page, which is so neocon-heavy now that it's beginning to look like an AEI bulletin!) And while doing so, just ask whether normal human being typically process information in the way its being done by our Big Pundits.

Then there is Tom Edsall in Where Is The Stimulus Shock And Awe? Huffington Post 02/03/09. A puzzle that has bugged me for years Given his obvious reverence for Republican framing of issues, I've never understood that. It really baffles me. I read his articles to see what the "concern troll" position is on things, i.e., the position that advises Democrats that they have to be like Republicans to prevail on anything they want to accomplish. Although, again, if they have to be like Republicans to accomplish anything, why be Democrats at all? Very mysterious.

In this latest lead balloon of a report, he writes:

During a November 25 press conference, then President-elect Obama promised "a new spirit of ingenuity," declaring that the "old ways of Washington simply can't meet the challenges of today and tomorrow," and that "just because a program, a special interest tax break, or corporate subsidy is hidden in this year's budget does not mean that it will survive the next."

Now, as the centerpiece of the Obama administration's agenda -- the $819 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 -- is before the Senate, there is a growing chorus of economists, policy specialists, and commentators -- men and women across the ideological spectrum -- who suggest that the legislation falls far short of Obama's own standards, that it is rooted in the past, that it lacks ingenuity, that it is not sufficiently geared toward innovation, that it contains a raft of special interest tax breaks and subsidies, that huge chunks of cash will be funneled through old bureaucratic pipelines, and that the measure will plunge the country deeper into debt with little to show for it. [my emphasis]

The only phrase in those two paragraphs that I can see that departs even minutely from the Republican Party line of the moment is the passing mention of "special interest tax breaks", tax breaks being always and everywhere virtuous for the Republicans, especially those aimed at freeing our wealthiest citizens from the horrible burden of paying taxes to support their country.

He follows that with this recital of stock Beltway Press conventional wisdom:

"I just don't understand," said one key Obama transition aide who worked on the economic program, "how a group of A-level people could produce such a B-minus, C-plus product," referring to top economic advisers Larry Summers, Jason Furman, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

A "key Obama transition aide"? Like, the barrista at Starbucks where the transition team went for the occasional coffe break?

He does put on his "liberal" hat in the next paragraphs where he begins quoting economist Joseph Stiglitz. And I can see how he might actually be mistaken by a liberal if you saw the article without its first three pages. Although he tips his hand at one point by quoting Jamie Galbraith strongly endorsing the recovery bill and then following it by quoting someone who, Edsall writes, "a more practical, bread and butter level." As opposed to, you know, wild and crazy hippies like Joe Stiglitz and Jamie Galbraith.

Bottom line: here's a guy who has a fairly long article full of quotes from his interviews with liberal economists. And he opens it by ... citing the Republican Party line on Obama's recovery bill.

Joan Walsh is spot-on in discussing the recovery bill when she writes, "Clearly the best ally the Republicans have is the economic illiteracy of the pundit class in America."

Tags: establishment press, mainstream media, mainstream press

Obama, Bush and the Iraq War

I recently started reading the German-language blog of German journalist Bettina Röhl, which has the catchy name of Sex, Macht und Politik (Sex, Power and Politics) and appears on the Web site of Die Welt Online.

She has been trying to poke holes in the excessive admiration she finds for President Obama in the German press. In Irak-Wahlen: Später Triumpf des George W. Bush! 02.02.2009, she suggests that Obama should thank our former Dear Leader Bush for the progress in Iraq. She praises the provincial elections that took place on Saturday and suggests that the elections are some kind of real-life rebuke to those in America and Germany - she mentions Obama, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) und former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (Green) - who warned that the Iraq War could become another "Vietnam".

She writes that the removal of Saddam Hussein was "ein Segen für die Menschheit und ein Segen für den Irak und die von ihm ermordeten und geschundenen Menschen" (a blessing for humanity and a blessing for Iraq and the people who were murdered and mistreated by him). She goes on to say that "der Irak ohne Saddam Hussein einen erfreulichen Weg in die Gemeinschaft der zivilisierten Staaten macht" (Iraq without Saddam Hussein is making a joyous [!?!] way into the community of civilized states). She also has the impression that the results of last Saturday's provincial elections in Iraq show that "ein laizistischer Staat seinen Weg macht und islamistische Kräfte nicht mehrheitsfähig sind" (a secular state is making its way and Islamist forces are not able to win a majority).

I made comments there at her blog, which I'll recap here.


The Iraq War had two clear official purposes, specified in the Congressional Resolution of October 2002 authorizing war. (Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002) One was that war was the only remaining method of dealing with Saddam's (nonexistent) "weapons of mass destruction". The other was that the President must show that Saddam's government had a definite link to Osama bin Laden's Al Qa'ida.

Dick Cheney and George Bush made both claims repeatedly and publicly, especially on the "WMDs". Both claims were not only false but falsified.

And for that, we do have George Bush and Dick Cheney to thank.

Even disasters can have some positive consequences. But the purpose of the Iraq War was not to wage a "war of liberation" in Iraq, though Bush and his supporters were happy to call it that. The purpose was to deal with those two threats specified by Congress. Both of which turned out not to exist.

I'm happy about the Iraqi provincial elections this past Saturday. And that is also the case for all war opponents in America as also for the war's fans, I would think.

But I'm not such a great optimist as she about the situation in Iraq.

The elections on Saturday could only take place under the most stringent security measures. All private auto traffic was banned, for instance.

Political violence in Iraq has certainly not ended.

According to the early reports, the electoral participation was around 51%. High by American standards (as a percent of eligible voters). But nevertheless not an unqualified good sign.

There were thousands of eligible voters who say they were not allowed to vote. (Vote suppression isn't the exclusive province of American Republicans!)

The elections show, so it appears, greater voter support for centralist trends. But that also makes the risk even greater for conflicts between Arabs and Kurds.

And later this year comes the vote in Kirkuk over the future status of the province, which carries a big risk for conflict.

Also according to the early reports, the Da'wa Party of Nuri al-Maliki and their coalition partners have won this election. As one of the two large Shi'a parties there, Da'wa is very pro-Iran. That's not necessarily good for the Western democracies. The relative strengthening of Iran was an unavoidable consequence of Cheney's and Bush's Iraq War.

Da'wa is also an Islamist Party. Juan Cole calls it a cult-like organization. More secular parties seemed to have also done well. But it's not a stampede toward a secular state.

The provincial elections were not applause for the Americans. Cole writes, "It is not the US presence in Iraq that Iraqis are celebrating in this election but Washington's imminent departure."

I really do hope that the withdrawal of our troops goes relatively peacefully. And that things go that way in postwar Iraq, as well. But it is also realistic to recognize that new civil wars between Shi'a and Sunnis, Arabs and Kurds, Shi'a and Shi'a could develop. Regional wars with Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iran could also take place. Turkey already has a small war going with the Iraqi Kurds.

The Germans can be very glad that they didn't make Iraq into their problem. It is still very much a catastrophe for Iraq and fur the US.

Juan Cole has provided reporting, commentary and links on the provincial elections at Informed Comment posts of 02/01/09 and 02/02/09.

Bettina - or Frau Röhl, if we observe the formality her commenters did - left a comment responding to me and other commenters. She argued that her main point was not to oppose Bush-bashing or to defend Bush's Iraq policy, but rather to insist on a clear view of Obama and his Presidency. As she puts it, "Was Obama gelingt oder woran er scheitert, das hat Einfluss auf alle Menschen weltweit." (What Obama achieve or on what he fails, that has influence on all people worldwide.) True enough.

But her particular post turned on at least hypothetically accepting a view of the significance of last Saturday's elections in Iraq that is very, very optimistic.

In her post she also argues that Obama's decision to keep Bush's Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on at the Pentagon was an indication of his intention to maintain continuity with Bush's policies in Iraq. Now, I disagreed with Obama's choice of Gates. (As excited as I am about what he done so far, I'm not one of those starry-eyed Obama idolizers about whom Bettina is so concerned.) But my concern about Gates wasn't because I thought Obama intended to follow Bush's policies. I was concerned because Obama intended to pursue very different policies and that Gates might try to undermine them in some way.

As this report (Generals Seek to Reverse Obama Withdrawal Decision Inter Press Service 02/02/09) from historian Gareth Porter points out, the new Commander-in-Chief has different ideas about how to approach things than Bush. He's so far sticking to his plan of withdrawing all combat troops within 16 months.

More on those Iraqi elections last weekend:

Iraqi Election Success? Not So Fast by Michael Knights Foreign Policy Online

Elections Could be a Telling Signpost by Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service 02/01/09

Tags: bettina röhl, iraq war, obama administration

Absence Makes The Heart Grow Sadder

I miss Molly Ivins just about every day, but I gotta tell ya that I miss her exponentially badly right now today. When I think what she could have done with this little piece from The Dallas Morning News, via Memeorandum, I must gnash my teeth and rend my garments. The article is brief and probably of no importance whatsoever to anyone who can't lay claim toTexas as their native earth, anyone who doesn't automatically think of Rick Perry as "Governor Goodhair" (Molly's sobriquet for Bush' sucessor as governor of the Lone Star State), anyone who was never represented for far too many years by Kay Bailey Hutchison.

But for me, a native Texan and a follower/adoring fan of Molly Ivins for many years before she caught the national spotlight, this conjunction of Rick Perry, Kay Bailey, and Sarah Palin, is a moment of delight and ridicule. Thinking of the columns Molly could have written on the subject of Palin alone could keep me laughing for days. Just imagine, if you will, the fun Molly could have had with my favorite line from the article: "'He walks the walk of a true conservative. And he sticks by his guns – and you know how I feel about guns,' she said." Oh, the waste of great comedic material:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has endorsed Rick Perry for re-election, calling him the "true conservative" in a primary election showdown with fellow Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison. ( Continue article here )

Technorati Tags: Gov Goodhair, Molly Ivins, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, Texas

What, a Democrat goes after the press? Am I dreaming?

I'm pretty sure I'm hallucinating or something. Because in my vision I see this article by Sam Stein, Obama White House Losing Patience On Stimulus Huffington Post 02/02/09. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, he says, was backing off the "bipartisan" talk and saying we need to hurry up and get the recovery bill passed. And he even challenged the press for being so airhead gullibe!

Gibbs stressed on several occasion that the areas of difference between the president and Republicans in Congress were minor, noting that if one accumulated the spending provisions that the GOP objected to you would get $669 million, or "7/100ths of 1 percent of a piece of legislation."

But when pressed later why the debate seemed to be revolving around that 7/100ths of one percent, he said to the inquiring reporter: "They clearly have gotten you to do that."

At another point, when asked whether he thought the Obama White House was losing the debate on the legislation, he called the question/critique "gratuitous."

I like it, I like it. Plus, it sounds like Obama may be ready to make the Grand Old Party pay a price for negotiating in bad faith on the recovery bill. I like that even more.

Tags: obama administration,, establishment+press, mainstream media, mainstream press

Andrew Bacevich: "The bubble of American triumphalism has burst"

Andrew Bacevich writes on what he sees as a necessary and overdue awakening to some of the follies of post-Cold War American military and foreign policy assumptions inAmerican Triumphalism: A Postmortem Commonweal 01/30/09. He cites several egregious examples of overblown triumphalism. My favorite is his recollection of Tom "Suck.On.This." Friedman:

Next came New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, touting the transformative impact of globalization, which on closer examination turned out to be a euphemism for Americanization. The ultimate goal, Friedman wrote in 1999, was “the spread of free-market capitalism to virtually every country in the world”-a process that would put “a Web site in every pot, a Pepsi on every lip, [and] Microsoft Windows in every computer.” Yet none of this was going to occur without the backing of hard power. “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist,” Friedman declared. “And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.”

Friedman’s essay appeared as a cover story in the New York Times Magazine. Accompanying the cover illustration-a clenched fist, vividly painted with the Stars and Stripes-was this text: "For globalism to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is." [my emphasis]

This is Tom Friedman, who is still consider a wise commentator on global affairs. It's because blowhards and fools like him were considered to be sensible and even outstanding experts on foreign policy that we wound up in the Iraq War.

As Bacevich says, "Ideas have consequences. Post-cold war triumphalism produced consequences that are nothing less than disastrous."

Tags: andrew bacevich, thomas friedman, us foreign policy

Is Ollie North suggesting that soldiers not obey legal orders from a Democratic President?

Good golly, it's Ollie!

I mean, maybe ole Ollie learned the hard way about the dangers of carrying out illegal activities. But in this column, Obama Could Have Mentioned Iraqi Elections on Al-Arabiya Human Events 01/30/09 gripes about Obama's interview with an Arab TV station:

... he talked about “communicating a message to the Arab world and the Muslim world, that we are ready to initiate a new partnership based on mutual respect and mutual interest.” He also responded to his interlocutor in ways that denigrated his predecessors with phrases like, his desire “to listen, set aside some of the preconceptions that have existed and have built up over the last several years.”

During the interview Mr. Obama also spoke wistfully of the "respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago," and added, "there's no reason why we can’t restore that." ...

Unfortunately, the Al-Arabiya interview isn’t the only troubling talk coming from the Obama administration that could well leave members of our All Volunteer Force wondering just what is expected of them. In Congressional testimony this week, Defense Secretary Gates said that even though Afghanistan was the new Commander in Chief’s "top priority," we also "ought to keep our objectives realistic and limited in Afghanistan."

I have spent my life in and around our military. Everyone I’ve ever known in our Armed Forces believes in "realistic" missions and goals. But, I’ve yet to meet the man or woman in uniform who is willing to sacrifice all for "respect," a "partnership" or a "limited objective." [my emphasis]

Does that sound like he's encouraging "the troops" (who we all know the Republicans adore above everything else!) to do their duty to the best of their ability? Or to think again before they carry out orders on behalf of missions of which the Republicans don't approve? Just asking.


Christianist zealots like Ollie can't stand the idea of treating Muslim countries with "respect". Although how many times have Republicans told us that countries won't have respect for us, or that we'll lose our credibility, if we don't go along with their favorite military adventure of the moment?

Expecting consistency and clarity from the party headed by Rush "Mr. OxyContin" Limbaugh would just be too much. But, gosh, how can ole Ollie expect us to take stuff like the following seriously coming from him?

Let’s see, thirty years ago -- 1979 -- the year that Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran, the "Islamic Revolution" was proclaimed, the U.S. was first described as "the Great Satan," our embassy in Tehran was sacked and 53 Americans were held hostage for 444 days. That’s probably not the kind of “respect” Mr. Obama had in mind.

I know that Reps think they can reinvent their positions from day and day and even moment to moment. But this is the star of the Iran-Contra scandal saying this. That Islamic Revolutionary government - hey, Ollie, that would be the one you were supplying with weapons. And whose money you were taking to finance your little war in Nicaragua. Supplying them with weapons despite a US embargo on doing so because, uh, we were backing Iraq in the war they were having with Iran! The US even became an active belligerent on Iraq's side against Iran for a time. But Ollie is shocked, shocked that Obama isn't still outraged by the three-decades old revolution in Iran whose government Ollie went to such lengths to help.

These Republicans like Ollie are a strange lot.

Tags: obama administration, oliver north, republican party

The sorrows of Bank of America

Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis

Like most bloggers with "day jobs", I avoid commenting about my own particular work environment and generally have avoided writing about even former employers. But after I read the article about Bank of America in the current Business Week, I decided to make an exception.

I worked for BofA for several years until 2000. I've had no business connection beyond personal checking and savings accounts since then, so don't expect any hot stock tips here. I was part of the previous (original) BofA that was acquired by NationsBank in 1998. The merged bank took the name Bank of America, though the management was very much that of the former NationsBank, then led for CEO Hugh McColl.

Like a lot of the employees of the old BofA, I always had, shall we say, restrained enthusiasm for the new top management. I'm going to refrain from any of my favorite illustrative anecdotes on that point. But NationsBank had been, in my way of thinking, not so much a bank as a bank acquisition company. Whatever his other faults, McColl was spectacularly successful at that.

Acquisitions provide some advantages for a company seeking, as they all do, to put the best face on their operations. As one example, you can set up very conservative reserves against risks in the merger transition. That gives the company the ability to release reserves later when the risks look smaller, which boosts earnings and pleases stock analysts. The Sarbannes-Oxley rules enacted after Enron's implosion reduced the latitude for game-playing with merger accounting. But it still offers advantages.


Another advantage is that mergers mean reorganizing the businesses, which means that senior managers often don't leave a consistent track record. If you move senior managers from division to division, reorganize frequently and do even more mergers, stock and business analysts have a harder time getting a clear idea of which managers, divisions and lines of business are strongest and most profitable. This gives the company enhanced ability to control their messaging. A huge downside is that it can also deprive the company itself of knowing which parts of its business are the most profitable and which managers are the most capable. That in turn puts a premium on "politics" in selecting managers for other senior positions.

The 1998 NationsBank/BofA merger did offer strategic advantages to both companies. No other two banks at the time would have had the combined nationwide reach that the new BofA had. BofA also had strong and profitable international operations. The name "Bank of America" was thought to be a significant brand benefit abroad because it created an impression that the US government stood behind the bank. And, as we've seen in recent months, that perception was not at all entirely wrong.

The old BofA was also developing an investment banking capability that was more extensive that what NationsBank had.

Yet the new BofA under its Charlotte (North Carolina) leadership wasn't especially interested in those two advantages. The one time I heard Hugh McColl live and in person, he was speaking to a group of mostly people from the "old" BofA. Someone asked him a question about international operations and he outright sneered at it. He said we didn't make any money off international operations. Anyone at all familiar with the old BofA's international business was probably at least as shocked as I was to hear him say that. But corporate habits generally discourage anyone from from telling the CEO in a public meeting that he's not only wrong but sounds totally clueless about what he's talking about. And of course, no one did.

Okay, one anecdote. I asked a good friend of mine who had been a senior computer programmer in the international division and who had worked a lot with programmers from Charlotte on the merger how well she thought the Charlotte people were picking up the international business. This was around two years after the merger. She said, "Well, even now when I'm working with programmers from Charlotte, I get questions like, 'Why is there a currency field in this program?'"

But one immense advantage of which the new BofA made good use was the gigantic deposit base the former BofA had built up in California. The original BofA more-or-less invented consumer banking in the early decades of the twentieth century. And the fact that they had and still have a huge customer base with checking accounts at BofA means that they had big cash reserves on which to draw and also that they don't have to borrow as much money from other financial institutions to make loans, because they have so much deposit money to loan out.

Without going too much into how earnings on deposits and favorable credit costs work, let's just say that the deposit base kept the old BofA afloat in the 1980s when they were hammered by bad loans to energy firms, agriculture and underdeveloped countries. And I'm guessing that the deposit base has covered quite a few management "sins" over the last 10 years, as well.

Until now. If the Business Week article is correct, BofA looks like an excellent candidate for full nationalization. The article in question is The Federal Bailout Hasn't Fixed Bank of America by David Henry, Matthew Goldstein and Roben Farzad 01/28/09. It's accompanied by a somewhat mysterious graphic showing a huge spider with the head of ski-masked bandit looming over a little guy with an aerosol spray can.

Knowing from experience what Charlotte's pre-merger "due diligence" can be like, it's not surprising to me to hear that they promiscuous merger activity has finally caught up with them. This past year, they acquired the remains of Countrywide and Merrill Lynch:

History shows that BofA's diligence was less than what was due. [CEO Ken] Lewis' advisers inside and outside the company expressed doubts about the Merrill deal, then valued at $50 billion—far more than its $27 billion market value at the time. But Lewis was ultimately swayed by his director of corporate planning and strategy, Gregory L. Curl, the architect of previous transactions. By the time the deal closed, Merrill's market price was less than $20 billion. A BofA spokesman says the due diligence on the Merrill transaction was adequate, noting that losses grew dramatically in December because of "market phenomena."

Now the hastily arranged deal is laying bare a host of problems. Investors are growing impatient: Since October, shares of BofA have fallen by around 70%. And some insiders are losing faith in Lewis and his senior management team. Employees on the trading floor are riffing on Lewis' dictatorial style, referring to the CEO as Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader. On Jan. 28, BofA's directors issued a statement backing Lewis. [my emphasis]

Sloppy due diligence is nothing new, and not unique to BofA. It's notorious that the worst deals that corporations do are often arranged between the CEOs at the country club or somewhere with little real analysis. (You didn't really believe all that stuff about the ruthless rationality of business decision-making imposed by the famous invisible hand of the all-wise "free market", did you? If so, you're going to be very disappointed to hear the truth about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.)

By the way, one of the failings of the business press is that when companies are doing well on the surface, they usually don't publish things like the fact that people are referring to the CEO as "Kim Jong Il" or some other uncomplimentary name. Until things turn bad, they are captains of business with charming personal quirks. This is also not surprising to me. Even people from the old BofA, which was certainly not into some kind of loose hippie management style, were surprised at the degree of deference NationsBank people showed toward their management.

A previous Business Week article from just before BofA released its recent dismal quarterly earnings gave us a glimpse at this side of Lewis, Why Banks Still Won't Lend by Mara Der Hovanesian and Christopher Palmeri 01/07/09. The Bush administration injected billions of in banks on the justification that recapitalizing them would unfreeze credit by allowing banks to resume lending to businesses and consumers. But, being the Cheney-Bush administration, that didn't actually require the banks to do any such thing:

The industry is getting flak for hunkering down. After all, the Treasury has injected $187.5 billion into the nation's largest banks, including Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC), and JPMorgan Chase (JPM). The recipients of taxpayer money, say critics, should be required to open up their coffers. "The bad news [is] Treasury has no way to measure whether taxpayer funds are being used to increase lending," Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in December. "The much worse news [is that Treasury] does not even have the intention of doing so."

Banking chiefs defend their position. They argue that the government funds are designed to shore up capital and support lending, but that they have no obligation to make new loans. "It's not a one-to-one relationship," says BofA CEO Kenneth D. Lewis. "We don't write $15 billion in loans because we got $15 billion from the government." [my emphasis]

It sounded bad enough that Lewis was taking such a dismissive attitude toward legitimate public policy concerns when his bank had gotten only the amount of public money injected up until that point. But he must have known even then that they were going to need more public funds to keep them afloat and to complete their ill-conceived acquisition of Merrill Lynch. You would have thought he might want to sound less arrogant and dismissive. Especially since there would soon be an administration in power not committed to sniveling to every demand of corporate CEOs.

His statement was also strange apart from the apparent arrogance of it. In retrospect, he may have been thinking that saying that was better than saying that his company was tanking and would soon be back in Washington, hat in hand for more public assistance.

But according to the assumptions behind the fall bailout, his statement is downright weird. Assuming everything else in the company isn't getting worse, $15 billion in new capital should have resulted in much more than $15 billion in new lending. If you assume that the bank is holding 20% in reserves against loan risks - a very conservative assumption - having $15 billion in additional capital should have allowed them to make five times that amount in loans, or $75 billion.

Now we know that in reality, they needed that capital and more just to survive. They weren't really in condition to expand lending by any large amount.

The more recent article paints a dire picture of BofA's current state:

With so many dubious assets on the bank's balance sheet, there are growing concerns about whether it is effectively, if not technically, insolvent. At last count, Bank of America's assets exceeded its liabilities by about $210 billion, or roughly 10%. A financial institution is considered insolvent when its assets don't cover its liabilities - and a regulator can take over a bank even before that happens. "We are a very liquid bank," says BofA spokesman Robert Stickler.

But there are questions on both sides of the ledger. A small decline in the price of the company's assets could bust the bank. The liabilities may also be understated: The tally doesn't include BofA's obligations to preferred shareholders, an increasingly large group. Already, Wall Street is questioning whether BofA is actually worth the $210 billion on its books. The stock recently traded at 7.35, which puts the company's value at roughly $47 billion.

Time is running out for BofA. Top talent is fleeing, not only legacy bankers from the commercial bank but also top Merrill brokers. Some employees are even volunteering for layoffs, so skeptical are they of the bank's future. Now, critics inside and outside the company wonder if Lewis' days are numbered. Says FBR's Paul Miller: "If there are any other big surprises - another big loss - I think the wall of protection will crumble around Lewis."

Regardless of Lewis' future, one thing is certain: The government can no longer afford to take half-measures or move slowly to prop up BofA and other banks. [my emphasis]

I'm not a real fan of the idea that's being much discussed of the government setting up a "bad bank" to take over the bad loans that are dragging down lending institutions like BofA. That approach leaves the public with the losses while bailing out stockholders and many of the senior managers who let their institutions get to that point in the first place.

An approach similar to what was used to clean up the last great Republican financial disaster - the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) set up to deal with the savings-and-loan disaster after St. Reagan's and Old Man Bush's deregulation efforts - would be more appropriate.

Nationalize the banks that are "too big to fail" but failing anyway. Clean them up, then re-privatize them as healthy companies.

Tags: bank of america, kenneth lewis, us economy