open Democracy News Analysis - 'That Vote' (Then and Now), - Comments

Ttrryosborn on "'That Vote' (Then and Now)"

Ttrryosborn — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 23:16:05 +0000

brolly, Scowly owly is not my mate.

brolly3 on "'That Vote' (Then and Now)"

brolly3 — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 21:10:28 +0000

ttrryosborn, ["brolly, I'm like the Phanton of the Opera? Untrue. I cannot sing and I'm much handsomer".] I'll say one thing about you, you at least have a sense of humour, which is more than one can ever say about your mate, owly. He's too waspish for his own good.

brolly3 on "'That Vote' (Then and Now)"

brolly3 — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 02:04:09 +0000

ronr327, I simply cannot understand why you would want to waste your time on an old spoiler like Owly. He is like Ttrryosborn, a sort of phantom of the opera, who lurks in the bowels of OD with a view to trying to put the boot in on anything that is well written and on anyone who has something to say.

Brendan 2 on "'That Vote' (Then and Now)"

Brendan 2 — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 04:09:51 +0000

Great posts Ron.

ronr327 on "'That Vote' (Then and Now)"

ronr327 — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 14:28:46 +0000

owly This isn't the first time I have been asked to argue the contrary to something I have written here, as opposed to (say) encountering argument on the substance of what was written. Was that you? Ahh Owly! 'rant' OED: 1. A high-flown, extravagant, of bombastic speech or utterance; a piece of turgid declamation, A tirade. 2. A violent scolding. Sorry, I don't recognize that my postings to OpenDemocracy fit the definition of 'rant'. 'Anti-Bush': Oh yes, yes indeed! 'The Contrary' This was not a very good post on which to raise the issue. After all, I freely admit I am hypothesizing a 'bluff' where no one I know has admitted to thinking there was one in the first place. Most of the post is devoted to proposing why one might believe it was, in fact, on peoples' minds, and then explicitly proposing the contrary - why one might suppose there was no bluff. In the process I do, however, let slip a number of anti-Bush statements. What would you have me do? Argue the evidence for WMD's was clear and strong as opposed to weak and equivocal (You might consult David Kay, who was dumbfounded when he got to see what they actually had. He says it brought mind the Peggy Lee hit 'Is that all there is?') Shall I argue there was a substantive working relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda? (The evidence for that has never been found, and the tattered nature of the case made by the Feith coterie was reaffirmed very recently in a DOD inspector general's report.) Should I argue that the logic of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' would control? (I seem to recall you, owly, made that one.) Before I do, I would have you address this proposition: If Osama attacks us with weapons 'we know Saddam has' we would not split hairs, but take out Saddam. All too tempting an outcome for Osama, and all too obvious to Saddam. Not iron clad I admit, but I would be willing to rely on it sufficiently to leave Saddam be in the first quarter of 2003 - searching, instead, for better, wiser choices for countering Islamic radicalism. Should I argue the administration did not employ highly charged language in a campaign to 'market' a war? (We all know about the language, and we have all seen the 'Downing Street Memo'). Should I attempt to present some alternate reality to deny an overwhelming one? Beyond occasional - and well out of the limelight - 'tough slog' nattering, I didn't see it. Did you? As to the 'marketing' I can recommend Frank Rich's wonderful The Greatest Story Ever Sold. Shall I argue bringing a democracy to Iraq was not a difficult proposition? The case that it would be was clear - and so, of course, it has proven to be. Shall I argue "the wisdom to act" was matched by wisdom in the actions they chose? No one even half-way sane could argue that - not even Bush et al's supporters here, who have almost religiously avoided engagement on those grounds. Owly, regardless of what you think, I do take alternate points of view into account, and consider them against what I propose. Then I write. It is one of the reasons I reject the characterization of 'rant'. Of course, it always remains the possibility that, in any given instance, the 'other side' hasn't much of an argument to begin with. Prove me wrong. Get to it! Message was edited by: ronr327 Message was edited by: ronr327

owly on "'That Vote' (Then and Now)"

owly — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 23:05:41 +0000

ronr327, You write these long anti-Bush etc rants. I could not properly answer your 'rant' simply because I do not have enough knowledge of American domestic politics, nor indeed do you have much knowledge of domestic United Kingdom politics were matters reversed. Lets see you reply to your own rant. Lets actually see you make the otherside of the argument. You ought to be able to do this quite easily and surely you ought to be doing this in your own mind to test your 'theories' with which we are bored with vulgar regularity. Lets actually see if there is any substance to all you write. I would be interested in this. Get to it.

ronr327 on "'That Vote' (Then and Now)"

ronr327 — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 19:08:17 +0000

englishman, I thank you for the kind words. I hope so. If I had to bet, I would go that way, but . . . . .

englishman on "'That Vote' (Then and Now)"

englishman — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 23:08:33 +0000

A good article, ronr. I actually don't think we will see a replay. Bush would not have the support this time around although some democrats may cynically like to see him take this step to infamy. This time it is bluff.

'That Vote' (Then and Now),

ronr327 — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 22:53:49 +0000

The 2008 Presidential season appears to be off and running nearly a year from any vote of actual consequence. A central, even critical, element in this is the vote in the fall of 2002 for the congressional resolution allowing the President to go to war in Iraq. Before proceeding much further we should be clear on just what the situation was in that moment. This extends to the realities, to what were the likely realities, and to how 'the realities' were represented at the time. Those are three different things, and so they remained throughout the debate. None of this is news. We know now that, however real the threat from Islamic Radicalism, Saddam Hussein's Iraq was no part of that threat, there were no WMD's, and the evidence supporting either proposition was vague and equivocal. On the other hand, shading to the side of worst case scenarios, there was sufficient evidence to support a contention there were biological and chemical WMD's in Saddam's possession, although none of it strong enough - or the situation of such urgency - as to persuade traditional American allies (Britain excepted) to join in an invasion of Iraq by spring 2003. All of the vagaries were swept aside by the administration in what we know now was a drive to war. The evidence was 'cherry picked' and worked up with Madison Avenue polish to 'market' a war. Considering any politician's vote on the resolution, all of this must be taken into account - and one other thing as well. Something never clearly brought forward at the time, but, I believe, of considerable moment for those who decided to favor the resolution: they didn't believe Bush really meant it, that he actually would go to war over Iraq. Let us reconstruct the moment. It was the year after 9/11. That attack, on an achingly beautiful September morning, had scarred the American psyche as nothing since Pearl Harbor. My own initial desire was to find somebody to swat. I did not want just anybody, of course; the administration needed to find somebody genuinely culpable, and 'hittable' without any really absorbing commitment. Then we would settle down with allies to forge a genuine long-term strategy for engaging Islamic radicalism. It would be the same kind of broad collegial commitment we made during the Cold War, requiring military, political, diplomatic, and economic components in varying degrees, over an indefinite period of time. Its conclusion would see the defeat of radical appeal within Islam, and the incorporation of a prosperous, peaceful Islamic world, responsive to the will and desires of its people, into the broader developed world. But first, if possible, 'the swat'. Lo and behold Bush and Co. found Afghanistan. Its Taliban rulers had fostered those who struck us on 9/11, and would not yield them up. Within three months of 9/11, the Taliban were dismissed from power, and the outcome in Afghanistan was welcomed as a liberation. 'Swat' mission accomplished. I thought our next two immediate objectives should be getting Afghanistan to be a good, decent and hopeful place for its people to be, and getting the Israeli/Palestinian conflict clearly on the road to an equitable resolution. Instead the administration directed our attentions towards Iraq. It did NOT make much sense. Iraq had not been involved in 9/11, and existed in a condition of mutual loathing with Islamic radicals. The possibility of a nuclear Iraq was understood to be virtually non-existent in any proximate time frame, and the evidence for the existence of biological/chemical WMD's was clearly seen to be equivocal. War with Iraq would be risky and dangerous, with too little likelihood for any constructive result. How could they possibly mean it? It HAD to be a ploy, a political move to strengthen the President and his party for 2002 and 2004. It was against that background that the curtain went up, and 'the play' unfolded. The scenario Bush and Co. began to roll out in the summer of 2002 (even though no one rolls out anything before Labor day), involved a highly selective culling of the evidence, couching it in (focus group) honed phraseology, and dramatizing it against the vividly evoked background of 9/11. The request for a resolution to go to war was presented as giving the President sufficient weight in the diplomatic arena so that he might pursue peace. With permission to go to war, the President could confront Saddam with the necessary clout, and/or the President could face the international community with a strong hand in putting together the kind of alliance his father put together for the first Gulf War. War was the 'last resort'. But, if it should come to pass, we would be in the best possible position to achieve a useful outcome. A vote for the resolution was a 'really' a vote for peace! Any Democrat contemplating a vote against the resolution knew he or she faced being charged not only with being weak on terror, but actually voting against a peaceful outcome of a confrontation with Saddam. Couple this with what seemed (in the fall of 2002) to be the very significant likelihood that Bush was bluffing, and a vote against the President held only one realistic downside. In the months to come you would be blamed with a string of hypotheticals. For not giving the President (1) the credibility needed to face Saddam down, (2) the credibility needed to form a sufficiently persuasive international coalition such that, with the coalition standing by, Iraqis themselves might decide to remove Saddam ; and (3) the credibility to form a Gulf War I type coalition to engage war as a 'last resort'. In short, you weakened the President and are weak on the War on Terror. Saddam is still in power, and it's your fault. In the above light, with 9/11 still fresh in memory, a vote for the President would shield Democrats from nasty attacks now, and - of particular note - from similar attacks in 2004. A vote against the President, on the other hand, opened you to all those attacks. And for what? To stop something that most likely wasn't going to happen anyway. In the event, too many Democrats took the 'easy' way out and voted to give the President the power to go to war. Most of them tried to hedge their bets with protestations that they trusted the President to make war truly a last resort, listing all the precautions that needed to be attended to, and all the promises they felt had been given. A political calculation to be sure, but one shrouded in an unstated belief that war with Iraq was most likely a bluff. How reasonable was that? From the hard realities on the ground, it certainly looked reasonable. Kenneth Pollack , who wrote the most influential book arguing for confronting Saddam (The Threatening Storm), thought Iraq was no means at the top of the priority list after 9/11. The factual basis for war was weak if anyone looked carefully, however the administration tried to hype it. Curiously, even the hype itself - and it was pretty clear that's what it was - argued for a bluff. Would they dare use such demonstrably questionable, and transparently slick, stuff, if they really were going to war? They would be 'conning' us into a war that would cost American lives. No one would leave themselves open to that, no one would dare such a thing. Impossible! The administration's political calculation appeared problematical as well. Using 9/11 for political gain was clearly their game plan, but carrying it too far could backfire. So serious and tragic an event was not to be 'played with'. Then, the whole course of our post WWII engagement with the world was grounded in collegiality, working with our allies, not defying them. Even as Bush and Co. moved forward after Labor Day, it was clear major allies in the Cold War, and certainly allies in the Arab/Muslim world, had very serious reservations. Surely they could not be contemplating blowing all that aside. Finally, it was clear once war was begun, and in order to achieve anything substantively useful against the appeal of Al Qaeda, we would have to have a stable, democratic, prosperous and pluralistic Iraq in pretty short order. Anything less (say an Iraq with a government no better or worse than those of our Arab allies in the region, but friendly to American interests) would be a victory for Islamic radicalism. Yet, if we did not go in with a Gulf War (I) level of collegiality, the prospects for that outcome 'we would have to have' plummeted. The case was weak, the dangers high, the prospects for success so slim, the rhetoric so obviously contrived and so easily seen as deceitful - thereby, lying the country into war - they HAD to be bluffing. War with Iraq was insane. And yet, however hard it might be to take seriously, there was substantive evidence it is what they intended.. As far back as Bush 41, a nascent Neocon movement had created a stir with a foreign policy 'Team B' proposal. Team B was a group within the Defense Department focused on providing an alternate analysis of the world we faced, and proposing a strategy forward. Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz were key players in what emerged. Team B proposed that America become the world hegemon, championing and spreading democracy by actively conniving to maintain American dominance though, among other things, compromising any and all rivals - including historical allies. Bush I immediately quashed the Team B report, and had Cheney disavow it. The ideologues who drafted it, however, did not go away. They retreated throughout the Clinton years into a foundation dubbed The Project for a New American Century (PNAC). From that base they formalized their thinking into a signature document with the same name as the foundation, and issued it in the late 90's. Its most novel ideas became the direct progenitors of the Bush Doctrine. Among other things, PNAC calls for a military strong enough to fight "multiple simultaneous large-scale wars". The first announcement relevant to the Iraq War came in the commencement address Bush gave at West Point in June of 2002. In it, a concept clearly drawn from the PNAC afflatus, pre-emptive war, made is first appearance. Then, in September 2002, with the National Security Strategy of 2002, the Bush Doctrine was announced. A basis in formal policy for the Iraq war was put in place just as the game began. Throughout the fall and winter of 2002, the Congress knew, it had to know, that plans for an Iraq War were far, far advanced beyond any simple question of addressing contingencies. The President and his spokesman (including, if I'm not mistaken, in sworn testimony before Congress) used a stock phrase to cover this up: "There are no plans for war on the President's desk." (I longed for some smartass opponent of the war to inquire, after it all became too clear, just where those plans had been: on the coffee table, on the floor, on the couch, on a table in another room? ) While traduced evidence, and Madison Avenue polished formulations might inspire doubt as to ultimate sincerity, they also diminish wiggle room if you want to back away from them. At no time did the administration show any evidence of backing away from them, they only intensified their use. Then, of course there was the 'gossip' that the Neocons had been 'enraged' at the success of achieving the re-entry of inspectors into Iraq, and then the administration proceeded to trash the inspectors' work from (very nearly) day 1. Finally, there was hard evidence in the administration's record. They had blown off Kyoto (bad for our economy), agreements on land mines and protocols on chemical and biological weapons (compromises us), and withdrawn from the ABM treaty (limits America): Hegemonic Neocon drive was propelling American policy. While none of this evidence suggesting it was war, and not a 'bluff', is conclusive, it was consistent with what was increasingly, and then overwhelmingly, obvious as we moved through late January and into February of 2003. War WAS coming. They were risking 'the impossible'. It is in this, not in the original vote, that the real perfidy of the Democrats is to be found. Disavowing 'that vote' became a compelling necessity, as it became clear that Bush was blowing past all the cautions, all the good advice he had promised to observe, traducing the evidence and lying the country forward into a dangerous and risky venture. Simple common sense, quite apart from the obvious moral considerations, argued for vigorous opposition. The war as proposed was stupid. Against the cry that they had gone 'peacenik soft', Democrats should have countered that strength and resolve should be informed by sound judgment. Who would or could respect leadership which did not meet that condition. "The wisdom to act is not wisdom in the actions chosen." And the Democrats? . . . . . . . did nothing! They allowed themselves to be swept along , and so did the rest of the country. A poll that appeared just before the administration began to really beat the drums, showed a residue of good sense still remained with the American people. A plurality still favored going to war only with a UN mandate. Sadly, that was swept aside as the trumpets sounded. Voicing opposition to the war was understood as declining to support troops now being sent into harm's way. Within 10 days of Pearl Harbor Senator Robert Taft (Mr. Republican) gave a speech in which he asserted that, in war, criticism is the highest duty of a patriot. In March of 2003, not only the Democrats failed, the country failed. "We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility" - Lincoln. So Bush and Co. did it. They were so bold - and foolish - to do what we have every reason to believe no American administration would ever do. Our expectations were reasonable; Bush et al were not. After 9/11 we deeply desired, and deeply needed, good, wise, and effective leadership, and have been very reluctant to judge we have not had it. But we have not had it. We are shaking free of our illusions, but, with two more years to go, the administration still appears to be at it. Iran looms. Again launching a war seems so foolish, so improbable that they can't possibly mean it. Again they seek to defray anxiety as to their intended course - and this time without some slick verbal formulation about "no plans for war on the President?s desk". Yet are we seeing a replay? They have not explicitly repudiated the Neocon vision, nor repudiated its spear-point of pre-emptive/preventive war. The 'horror' of an Iran with a nuclear weapon has been a staple talking point for quite some time now. Evidence against Iran, again grounded in slippery sands, is being brought forward with urgent rhetorical polish. If there are no WMD's in the immediate offing to trigger an imminent American move, we appear to be getting into position to provoke a 'Gulf of Tonkin' incident. Ultimately 'that vote' becomes a prism through which to see all of our current dilemma. The refractions through it encompass so many elements: deception (self and otherwise), foolishness, hubristic afflatus, political calculation, 9/11, American (and Iraqi) blood and treasure, destabilization in the region, America's role in the world. The Senators and Representatives who voted had all of these on their minds in 2002, and properly so. The failure on the Republican side was to place party over responsibility, the failure on the Democrats side was to choose political calculation - playing a hunch as to intention - and then refuse to cry foul when Bush gave the lie to their calculation. Do we trust this administration one more time? Can we trust them? Why should we?! Message was edited by: ronr327