Freedom Isn't Free....

While watching President Bush's speech last night, I had to do something to keep myself from hurling my flipflops at the television. So, I counted the number of times President Bush said some of his favorite words. The grand totals:

Freedom: 21
"September the 11th": 5
Liberty: 2
Nuc-u-lar: 2
Justice: 1

Freedom was clearly the evening's big winner!

This reminded me of a lesson that I learned in 6th grade when I asked my mother to proofread one of my essays. My mother, an English teacher, pointed out that when making transitions, I tended to choose "however" as my transitional word of choice. In this particular five page handwritten essay, I had used "however" 11 times. As a 12 year old, I learned that overusing words makes for a repetitive, silly-sounding essay. Perhaps my mother could teach George (or, more likely, his speechwriting team) a bit about writing technique.

A Captive Audience

President Bush gave his official presidential address not from our nation’s capital, nor Iraq’s capital, but from Fort Bragg, NC. Hopefully, I’ll post more substantive thoughts on his address later (when I’m done editing this frickin’ 70 page report), but his choice of audience got me thinking about the state of our military.

I thought that the seven hundred or so troops in the audience behaved appropriately during the speech. Unlike the jubilant atmosphere of the USS Abraham Lincoln, where Bush made his famous declaration of “mission accomplished,” the audience was quiet and attentive. As Bush walked into the room, the troops stood properly at formal attention, and applauded only once during the speech, though NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell reported that this round of applause was “triggered by members of the president's advance team.” Remember, on the USS Lincoln, the troops were jubilant because of a job well done, not because of the political pronouncements of the flight suit-clad Bush – they were applauding their commander-in-chief, not just George W. Bush.

Slate’s Christopher Hitchens recently wrote a worthwhile article about how liberals have become opportunistically concerned for our soldiers in harm’s way, and not always rationally. But Lucian Truscott’s Op-Ed in the New York Times yesterday was a powerful and alarming piece about the US Military Academy (West Point), and one that I hope will not fall on deaf ears. In it, he details exactly how our military’s young elite is being torn apart by the Republican administration. One of the many reasons that our country has trouble soliciting volunteers to defend it is surely the cynical attitude that our leaders have implanted in young Americans. I couldn’t help but think of Karl Rove’s recent comments when I read this article, and wonder how many more young, intelligent Americans decided that sacrificing their lives and futures, for the benefit of cynics like Rove, was not worth it.

Both liberals and conservatives have been fawning over our servicemen lately, and it would seem perfectly fair to me if our servicemen and women have grown more than a little cynical of them all. As Merle Haggard, best known during the Vietnam era for writing “Okie from Muskogee,” wrote in 2003:

“Politicians do all the talking, the soldiers pay the dues,
Suddenly the war is over. That’s the news.”

John Kerry Had a Point

"But let me talk about something that the president just sort of finished up with. Maybe someone would call it a character trait, maybe somebody wouldn't. But this issue of certainty. It's one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and be wrong. It's another to be certain and be right, or to be certain and be moving in the right direction, or be certain about a principle and then learn new facts and take those new facts and put them to use in order to change and get your policy right. What I worry about with the president is that he's not acknowledging what's on the ground, he's not acknowledging the realities of North Korea, he's not acknowledging the truth of the science of stem-cell research or of global warming and other issues. And certainty sometimes can get you in trouble."

-John Kerry, 1st Presidential Debate, 9/30/04 [emphasis mine]

"The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline [in Iraq]. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

-Dick Cheney, 5/31/05

"We also understand that there is reason to be optimist -- optimistic about what's taking place [in Iraq]. The very same commanders that say that these folks are terrible killers are also reminding us that we're making good progress. On the one hand, you just heard the Prime Minister talk about a new democracy. Remember, the killers tried to intimidate everybody so that they wouldn't vote. That was their tactic. If you look back at the history of our involvement in Iraq, there was a lot of bombings and killings prior to the elections. What they were trying to do is say, let's shake the will of not only the Americans, but the Iraqi citizens. And -- but nevertheless, the Iraqi citizens wouldn't have their will shaken. So we're optimistic. We're optimistic that more and more Iraqi troops are becoming better trained to fight the terrorists. We're optimistic about the constitutional process. "

-George W. Bush, 6/24/05

"The top American commander in the Persian Gulf told Congress on Thursday that the Iraqi insurgency has not grown weaker over the past six months, despite a claim by Vice President Dick Cheney that it was in its 'last throes.' . . . Abizaid told the panel: 'I believe there are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq than there were six months ago.' As to the overall strength of the insurgency, Abizaid said it was 'about the same' as six months ago."

-CNN Report, 6/23/05 (full testimony should be available here, but isn't)

Ohio: Red State in the Red

Thank you to the ever-resourceful Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post for pointing out an amazing article that ran last Sunday in the Toledo Blade. The story highlights two crucial and controversial issues in Ohio that arose, unannounced to the voting public, just prior to the 2004 presidential election. First, credible allegations emerged that Tom Noe, chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Northwest Ohio, may have laundered money in order to increase his personal contributions to the Bush-Cheney campaign. Second, the loss of about $215 million from the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation fund, from investments made under former governor and Bush supporter George Voinovich (R-OH, who is now known for alienating Bush with his lack of support for John Bolton) was hidden until after the election, as well as smaller losses in the compensation fund due to alleged mismanagement by Mr. Noe, who is also a rare-coin dealer.

“In an Oct. 26, 2004, e-mail to [former bureau official and appointee James] Samuel, [bureau manager James] Conrad wrote that the ‘entire value’ of the portfolio that MDL managed was down about $225 million. . . [b]ut the state did not release any information about the [net] $215 million loss until June 7 [2005].”

“Three weeks ago, Mr. Noe's attorneys told law enforcement authorities that $10 million to $12 million of the state's rare-coin assets were ‘unaccounted for’. . . In the year before the election, a number of concerns about the coin fund came to the attention of top state officials, who failed to make them public.”

Would these allegations have been enough to tip Ohio into the blue column? I think that would be a stretch. But I also think that the Blade lays out some fairly compelling evidence that there was an active cover-up on the part of Ohio Republicans to make absolutely sure that no facts were revealed until the elections were over. At the very least, it appears that Noe could be convicted for money laundering (and possibly outright theft) and Ohio Republicans will lose some credibility. More importantly, I think that the story will serve as another cautionary tale about the investment of public retirement funds falling under the control of elected officials. President Bush will certainly have his work cut out for him if he chooses to stop by Toledo to pitch his proposal for private investment accounts for Social Security . . . though he may want to wait until all of the facts about this latest public investment scandal come to light – I’m sure that they haven’t yet.

To Strike or to Sue?

What happens when two liberal raisons-d’etre collide? It’s happening right now, as two of the left’s favorite hobbyhorses, heroic unions and evil tobacco, square off in Detroit.

If you haven’t spent your entire waking hours bopping around in the oblivious bubble of your Ipod, or living alone on a desert island and talking to a volleyball, you may have heard something about US auto manufacturers getting slapped around in the market. One of the major problems faced by US companies is rapidly rising healthcare costs, as well as ridiculously high pension burdens and the fact that they make pretty crappy cars. General motors estimates that about $1,525 of each vehicle it sells goes directly to employee healthcare costs.

So it might not seem unreasonable to ask assembly line workers to not smoke while on the assembly line. U.A.W. president Ron Gettelfinger (a.k.a. "Don Ronnie" or “Bull Dog Ron”) saw this request as unreasonable, noting that chemicals used in the plants to put the cars together should be a much greater concern. My God, chemicals are being used! I’ll get Erin Brokovitch on the case right away. Oddly, liberals are normally the first to jump at banning smoking just about anywhere, and to tell citizens that it's for their own good. Many locales in California have banned smoking outdoors as well. But now, a corporation wants to ban smoking. Let's not forget, corporations are evil 'n stuff – they've often been known to exchange blood for oil, or umm. . . I think that I heard that in a chant.

Here’s yet another example of how unions are killing themselves. All the company is asking employees to do is to not smoke while assembling people’s cars, not to quit altogether or to refrain from smoking on breaks (of which I’m sure there are plenty). What right, I wonder, do these employees have to refuse to give up smoking in a private building that they do not own (around all these dangerous plant chemicals, remember), while also complaining about the plant's environmental conditions? Oddly, unions have the right to form a monopoly against their employer, and use threats of force to keep their priveleges, wages, and benefits artificially higher than they ever would be otherwise, although their emlpoyer is not permitted to use threats or force. The result is that unions are slowly chewing away at the hand that is feeding them. Meanwhile, all of the extra costs that unions demand are absorbed into their respective products, which seem awfully expensive for their quality, at least to people who earn market wages. But until the left can figure out which is a great priority – threatening union employers out of more money or suing tobacco companies for more money – I’m left to wonder how G.M. still gets that new car smell in their vehicles with all of that second smoke in their plants. They must use chemicals. I smell another class action suit.

Mullet Patrol

Is it just me, or is Condoleeza Rice sporting our nation's first officially sanctioned mullet? Here's a snapshot of Condi on her trip to the Middle East, courtesy of today's Washington Post:

"The enemies of freedom have underestimated America's resolve . . . and this mullet."

Mulletude: 7
Agressiveness: 4

PhD in Obviousness

Today in the Washington Post, Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote a column addressing the issue of whether the conflict in Iraq has been worth the price paid so far. Mr. Kagan argues, rightly, that to answer that question, we must ask ourselves how the US would be faring had Saddam been left in power, noting that a “fact not in dispute is that Hussein remained keenly interested in and committed to acquiring weapons of mass destruction.”

I’m not sure why it takes senior associate to make such an amazingly obvious point, but of course that’s the question that Americans are already asking themselves. I think that you would be hard pressed to find many Americans who would have told you that, between the Persian Gulf War and, say, September of 2002, they ever felt that Iraq was a threat to their security. The intelligence on Iraq painted a similar picture – a brutal dictator, but one that was essentially harmless to the United States. That didn’t stop the Bush administration from making the case, and ignoring the worldwide tepid response. Cast your memory back to a Newsweek article dated March 24, 2003:

On the weekend after Sept. 11, Bush convened his national-security team at Camp David. Wolfowitz argued that if military action was to be taken against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which was harboring the leadership of al-Qaeda, it should also be taken against Iraq.

These assertions, of an early fixation on Iraq, have been backed up by Bob Woodward, Richard Clarke, and the Downing Street Memo also seems support the theory that the Bush Administration was determined to invade Iraq. They made the case so publicly (remember Ms. Rice asserting that “we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”) that Americans came to feel threatened by Saddam. The Bush Administration, to this day, is still linking 9/11 and Iraq, despite a lack of evidence of any direct threat to the US. Clearly, we are not learning from past failures. In 1995, when Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during much of the Vietnam War, spoke about his then-recently published book “In Retrospect,” one of the best nonfiction books that I have ever read. During his talk, he related an important lesson that he learned from his Vietnam experience:

[W]e didn't recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are on a mission. To this day we seem to act in the world as though we know what's right for everybody. We think we're on a mission. We aren't. We weren't then and we aren't today. And where our own security is at stake, I'm prepared to say act unilaterally, militarily. Where our security is not at stake, not directly at stake, narrowly defined, then I believe that our judgment of what is in another people's interest, should be put to the test of open discussion, open debate, and international forum. And we shouldn't act unilaterally militarily under any circumstances. And we shouldn't act militarily in conjunction with others until that debate has taken place. We don't have the God-given right to shape every nation to our own image.

Political WTF Moment: Sean Hannity

It’s getting easier and easier to find WTF moments in TV journalism. Today’s installment is courtesy of Sean Hannity’s interview yesterday with Dick Cheney. Prepare thyself for these questions three:

HANNITY: I read your speech to the U.S. Air Force Academy. And you went into detail talking about the same topic here. And you said, "They hate our country. They oppose everything we stand for in the world. They hold an ideology that demands complete conformity, the crushing of dissent." You talk about subjugating of women, et cetera, and you said, "They have declared their intention to strike America again and kill even greater numbers of our citizens." So we're getting further and further away from 9/11, we forget, don't we?

HANNITY: You keep, in the administration, coming under fire for Iraq. We just had elections in Iraq. The security forces are growing in Iraq.
CHENEY: Right.
HANNITY: There's still an insurgency, but there's a lot of progress. What do you make of how that war has been politicized? Where would we be today if we didn't go to Iraq?

HANNITY: Last question on judges. Two hundred and fourteen years, we've never had a judge that would have otherwise been approved by the Senate filibustered. We had this deal, seven Republicans, seven Democrats, that it might result in, basically, people not getting an up-or-down vote. Is that fair?

Now those are some hard-hitting questions. I think that the real problem here is the conflation of commentary and journalism. It’s not entirely clear in this interview who is trying to make his viewpoint known – Cheney or Hannity. Luckily, it doesn’t seem to matter in this case, since they appear to be identical. That’s the whole problem, as Andrew Sullivan succinctly pointed out. Journalism should be oppositional – it should take any politician’s words to task. Sadly, with the exception of monthly press conferences, neither the President nor Vice president has allowed journalists much opportunity to ask serious questions. No wonder people are confusing commentators with journalists on television – one is practically absent.

Travel to Sunny North Korea!

Oh, but it gets better. A group calling itself the Korean Friendship Association has released a tourist video to encourage visitors to take what is undoubtedly a highly supervised visit to the hermit kingdom. Ok, video is stretching it. It's more of a montage.

And as for the rather undersized web-surfing population of North Korea, remember that Dear Leader himself is known to be quite the devotee of the internets. So the webmaster just might be... Kim Jong Il himself.

So Ronery

Thank you to Slate magazine for posting a link to the new, official website that North Korea projects to the world. I can only assume that North Koreans don’t visit this site, since I’m guessing that there are, umm, relatively few internet cafes in and around Pyongyang. This website provides hours of amusing reading on subjects such as (1) how awesome Kim Jung Il is; (2) How awesome (and not at all starved) North Korea is; and (3) how the North Koreans were victorious in the Korean conflict of the 1950’s. Let’s cut to the money quote:

[T]he [North] Korean people displayed unexcelled [sic] sacrificing spirit and mass-heroism in the decisive battles with the enemy. Along with the Chinese People's Volunteers' [sic] forces they put down the numerical and technological superiority of the US army and achieved a historic victory in the three-year-long war. During the war the ‘UN Forces’ lost over 1,567,100 men, including more than 405,000 American soldiers, and an enormous amount of combat equipment and war supplies including 12,224 aircraft, and 564 warships of different types, 3,255 tanks and armoured vehicles, 7,695 guns of different types and more than 925,100 small arms, and finally had to sign armistice agreement [sic] on July 27,1953.

Ahh, good ‘ol fashioned propaganda. . .With the USSR gone and China acting considerably less repressive, it’s nice to know that we can still turn to a couple of nutty countries for amusement. Looks like Kim Jung Il remembers killing a lot more UN forces than everyone else. Let’s see what about 3 minutes of googling says about this history. OK, so 405 thousand US soldiers killed in Korea would mean the communists killed:

About 0.3% of the entire US population of 1950
About 11% of the entire US armed forces of 1953
About 134% of total US troop deployment in the Korean theater [see right inset]
About 7.5 to 11 times as many troops as reported in any other source

Now that is a lethal army. I can only assume that this remarkable success is due to the people’s everlasting devotion to the supreme leader (be sure to read the awesome biographies while you're there). Happy reading . . . you repressors.

The Obligatory Star Wars Post

I saw “Star Wars Episode III” last weekend, once I figured it was safe to go to the theaters without running into some kid dressed as a storm trooper. Two and a half hours later, I left the movie thinking that it was awful. I’ll let some of the script speak for itself:

ANAKIN: You are so beautiful!
PADME: It's only because I'm so in love . . .
ANAKIN: No, it's because I'm so in love with you.
PADME: So love has blinded you?
ANAKIN: Well, that's not exactly what I meant . . .
PADME: But it's probably true!

I believe that the response that you’re looking for is “barf.” There were, in fact, several scenes in which the only appropriate reaction that any mature adult would consider was an embarrassed giggle, or possibly punching the person in the theater who looked the most like George Lucas.

But the movie had redeeming qualities, too. I was surprised to find that, even though I knew exactly what would happen by the end of the movie, I actually cared about the characters during the battle scenes (which were thankfully long enough to minimize plot-related dialogue). The universal themes in the story – jealousy, uncertainty, the corruption of power – came through clearly and emotionally, despite the writing. I actually felt myself feeling genuine pity for Anakin when he’s mortally wounded, and Lucas doesn’t shy away, for once, from showing the suffering. It works. The movie also manages to add another perspective on the Jedi, who for some reason insist on denying their human (or some type of alien) nature, and attempt to remain detached, emotionally and sexually. I can’t help but think of the situation with Catholic priests in the US. Why is it that whenever we try to deny a fundamental need [and here I'm talking about sex, people], or ignore it, all we do is exacerbate the problem?

Hmm. . . I’ve clearly become enough of a dork that I’m going to have to consider beating myself up. Star Wars may not have lived up to the hype, or be worth waiting for hours outside the theater to see, but it is worth watching, and it might make you think. Just be sure to only watch it once, or you might develop some serious social issues.

Political WTF Moment: Fox News Sunday

It’s time now for a new feature on GC&F, where we focus on political discourse in the media. This political WTF moment comes to us from yesterday’s Fox New Sunday. On the show, Fox’s Chris Wallace talked to William Shulz, Amnesty International’s US Executive Director, about Amnesty’s recent report on detainee treatment at Guantanamo Bay. Feel free to read the entire exchange; you may get the distinct impression that Mr. Wallace didn’t care for the report. If you’re short on time, though, just read this particularly amusing question, and Shulz’s thoughtful answer:

WALLACE: Mr. Schulz, if I may ask you, when you accuse the Bush administration of, in using your words, "atrocious human rights violations," where do you fit into that equation the liberation of 50 million people from oppressive regimes?

SCHULZ: These are two entirely different questions. You know, someone can do a good thing one day and a bad thing the other and it doesn't vitiate the bad thing that they have done good things as well. That is not the point. Amnesty tries to hold one plumb-line universal standard to every government: to Chile, to Cuba, to North Korea, to China -- every government. And the United States applauds Amnesty when we criticize Cuba and North Korea and China. Indeed, that's Secretary Rumsfeld, who just called us reprehensible. That is the same person who quoted Amnesty regularly in the run-up to the Iraq war when we reported for 20 years on Saddam Hussein's violations -- years during which Rumsfeld himself was courting Hussein for the U.S. government.

Putting Lipstick on the Pig

Very sharp analysis there, Tri-Cup. But to my mind, another difference between the two conflicts is that in Korea, we already had a substantial pre-existing security commitment in the region, because we were already occupying nearby Japan. (And thus since Korea had been occupied by Japan from 1910 to 1945, we were already occupying Korea when the communists attempted to take over the entire country.) There is no equivalent in the Middle East, even if you count our much, much smaller presence in Saudi Arabia (where we'd clearly overstayed our welcome).

The distinction is even more worth noting because it highlights the fact that we probably didn't have much interest in freeing the Korean people; we had an interest in preventing communist takeover of a country we were already occupying, next door to an even larger country we were already occupying. We had a clear, realpolitik reason to fight.

Thus only way that the Iraq casus belli rises to anywhere near the same level as Korea would be if Iraq had attacked us somehow -- which is precisely why the Administration (especially Cheney and Rumsfeld) engaged in a continuous campaign to weave Iraq and 9/11 together in the minds of the American people. When, and only when, such notions were discredited did Bush begin talking talking about democracy and freedom rather than 9/11 and the supposedly imminent threat of Iraqi WMD.

In other words, Iraq didn't start out as a Korea -- but the Administration made it into one. And now we're stuck with the consequences. The only solace is that so many more of our brave soldiers have been lucky enough to survive than did 50 years ago.

Korea, I Just Met a War Named Korea

I’ll add one last thought related to Memorial Day, and that’s to say that things could be a lot worse for the US in Iraq right now. I couldn’t believe how quickly after the US invaded Iraq that the Vietnam comparison started popping up. It only took three weeks for Baghdad to fall, but faster than Grover Cleveland can snarf down a deep-fried bacon chimichanga, liberal commentators were dusting off buzzwords like “quagmire.” Then, before you knew it, the conservatives responded and the same exact arguments, with the word Iraq inserted where Vietnam used to be. The 2004 election was even more explicit, a la Swift Boast Veterans for Truth, medal and ribbon tossing, and National Guard memos. The problem is, though, that most of these Vietnam analogies don’t work, and the dialogues that followed seemed little more than an excuse for a generation to relive it salad days of counter-cultures and Creedence.

But if you want to compare wars, it’s worth taking a look at the Korean War in relation to today. The two conflicts share a surprising amount in common, and not just that lots of people died. Both wars had sham coalitions. The Allies in the Korean War managed to secure a U.N. mandate (the Soviets, in a rare moment of non-Ivan Drago shoe pounding drama, were not participating on the Security Council), while Bush did not. But the military force of either coalition was/is comprised almost completely of Americans, with the obedient British sending the only other troops to speak of, and were/are entirely under the control of US generals. Also, the mission of both operations (neither received a congressional declaration of war) changed, either explicitly or otherwise, during the conflict. First, the UN goal was stop the North Korean invasion, then to unify Korea (with free elections), and then later to just preserve South Korea. Bush’s originally stated goal in Iraq was to “disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger” and/or invoking language of Congressional authorization of force “to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” If you’re as confused as I am, that’s OK, choose whichever one seems appropriate. In the end, the “Free [Iraq’s] people” mission became the only mission that we seem to be pursuing, though the official 9/11 reference was nicely placed too.

Obviously, there are huge differences in the conflicts as well, but let’s just pause a moment and be glad that Iraq has not become a problem of Korean proportions. Let’s look at the numbers where they hurt, American soldiers killed. In Korea, the total tally was 33,629 Americans killed over the 3 years and 1 month of war. In Iraq so far, America has suffered 1,631 soldiers killed over 2 years and 2 months, and that’s with fairly comparable troop levels, though now US levels are about half of what our deployment levels were in Korea.

Perhaps more telling is the trend that we’ve seen in America’s willingness to protect and defend. In 1951, US Eighth Army Commander General Van Fleet noted in response to gripes about the war’s costs that “the US must expend fire and steel, not men” in order to be acceptable to US voters. Today, that tradeoff has reached a level in which almost no casualties are acceptable, though high costs are accepted. I don’t know if this is good or bad. One the one hand, it seems clear that most people don’t think Iraqi democracy (or Korean democracy) is worth American deaths. On the other, I wonder if any principle will rise to that standard again.

The kicker in Korea is that after all the costs were incurred, democracy was hardly preserved. After the war, South Korean President Rhee won a (suspiciously unopposed) fourth term in 1960, only to be toppled in a military coup shortly after, replaced by a South Korean general. By then, the U.S. was distracted enough by Vietnam that nobody really paid attention. Oh, and we still have about 22,000 US troops protecting the South Korean border today – we’ve never left.