A Love Letter
A couple highlights from the letter:
In regards to comments made by Dean "Now that we're there in Iraq, we're there and we can't get out.... I hope the President is incredibly successful with his policy now" Kucinich replied:
Perhaps you now believe that an electoral victory for Democrats in 2006 and beyond requires sweeping this war under the rug. If so, you are only the latest in a long line of recent Democratic leaders who chose a strategy of letting "no light show" between Democrats and the President on the war. Emphasize the economy, instead, they advised, in 2002 and again in 2004.
Following this advice has kept us in the minority. During the 2002 election cycle, when Democrats felt they had historical precedent on their side (the President's party always loses seats in the midterm election), the Democratic leadership in Congress cut a deal with the President to bring the war resolution to a vote, and appeared with him in a Rose Garden ceremony. The "no light" strategy yielded a historic result: For the first time since Franklin Roosevelt, a President increased his majorities in both houses of Congress during a recession.
Good call Dennis. Democrats have proven over and over again that if they want to lose elections, all they have to do is imitate George W. Bush. People won't vote for change if there is nothing to change. You might as well keep who you have in office.
I've grown to like Dennis, because even though I don't think he's electable as president, he seems to shoot it straight. He makes some more good points in this paragraph, but unfortunately makes a few comments that make him look foolish. As a member of the minority, it's possible he is obligated to toss in some inaccuracies here and there to toe the party line, but he's never struck me as that sort of guy.
President Bush led the country into war based on false information, falsified threats and a fictitious estimate of the consequences. His war and the continuing occupation transformed Iraq into a training ground for jihadists who want to hunt Americans, and a cause célèbre for stoking resentment in the Muslim world. His war and occupation squandered the abundant good will felt by the world for America after our losses of September 11. He enriched his cronies at Halliburton and other private interests through the occupation. And he diverted our attention and abilities away from apprehending the masterminds of the September 11 attack; instead, we are mired in occupation. The President's war and occupation in Iraq has already cost $125 billion, nearly 1,600 American lives, more than 11,000 American casualties and the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis. The occupation has been more costly in this regard than the war.
No doubt Bush had some bad intel in regards to Iraq. Some of that is his fault, some of it is not. He didn't turn the CIA into the organization it is today Dennis. Your hero's Bill Clinton and the Democratic majority of yesteryear did that. It takes time to get good covert intelligence. Once you pull the pieces out, you can't simply reintegrate them. It doesn't work.
Iraq certainly has more terrorists in country now than it did when Saddam was ruling. It's the only (somewhat) effective way to fight against our military. Yet you complain about terrorism in Iraq, but we didn't see you writing letters to Clinton when Osama was running true terror camps in Afghanistan.
The Arab resentment for America is not greater today than it was prior to the war. An overwhelming majority of Iraqis hated us for either: 1. Not supporting their uprising following the first gulf war or 2. Leading the international efforts to sanction Iraq for it's lack of compliance to weapons inspections. Those people don't hate us anymore, they are happy to be free, electing a government of their choosing, and the lifting of U.N. sanctions. The Saudi Royal family is feeling the pressure to allow regular citizens to run for local political offices. Saudi women are not yet allowed to run for office, but they are being allowed to speak their mind in ways that weren't allowed even a year ago. Syria has ended it's occupation of Lebanon. Who do they have to thank for this? U.S. foreign policy. The writing is on the wall that if you rule a country and aren't allowing basic freedoms, you will have to deal with Bush & Co. eventually. This has been a good change-agent so far, but it doesn't come for free. Soldiers will fight and they will die. As sad as it is, these men and women know the score when they join. Most understand it, and are obviously willing to fight the fight if they joined.
I love the line about Bush's cronies at Halliburton. The President has ties to the company through V.P. Cheney, his time as Governor of Texas, and in private business. I won't deny those ties, but every time someone mentions this, I feel the need to ask "who would you rather have do the job?" Texas companies like Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown & Root are doing the majority of the work in Iraq and Afghanistan because they are they only companies equipped to do the job in deployed areas. I have a suggestion for you, Dennis. Resign from your job and start up your own contracting company. Just be sure it's big enough, has enough employees and equipment to do the job, and then bid on government contracts. Part of the problems involving Halliburton earlier, when they got in trouble was that they were the only company bidding on the work, and they tried to pull a fast one on us and got caught.
The Democratic leadership should be pressing for quick withdrawal of all troops from Iraq.
That's what most Democrats want, too. Your performance in the early stages of the primary, and your recent chairmanship of the party, were made possible by many, many progressive and liberal Democrats. It was their hope and expectation that you would prevent the party from repeating its past drift to the Republican-lite center. They hoped that this time the party would not abandon them or its core beliefs again.
Kucinich actually makes some sense here and we actually agree on something. Dean needs to shepherd the Democratic Party back to the left. If he doesn't get the party's identity back soon, 2006 and 2008 will be a repeat of 2002 and 2004.
Yet you say that you hope the President succeeds. With no pressure exerted from the leadership of the Democratic Party, the past threatens to repeat itself in 2006. We may not leave Iraq or our minority status in Washington for a long time to come.
I think we'll end up leaving Iraq sooner than we left the Balkans. But we shouldn't talk about that, because that was a war largely fought during the Clinton Administration so there is obviously nothing wrong with entering a region and not leaving for 10 years.
As far as the past repeating itself in 2006? I can only hope.
posted by Mark at 3:58 PM
3 Comments:
I've always loved Kucinich. But he is radical, and he's so unelectable that "unelectable" isn't a strong enough word. "Unelectable on wheels?" "Unelectable plus tax?" I dunno. But as far to the left as he is, he's lucky to hold the congressional seat for working-class Cleveland.
But he's cool. I've always been a fan of "speaking the truth to power" kind of people. I actually voted for this guy in the 2004 primary.
Regarding your characterization of the CIA, I think it's unfair to blame Clinton for the condition of our intelligence services when 9/11 rolled around. He's certainly not blameless, but the fault can be spread across every president we've had for the last 50 years.
For generations, the CIA's sole reason for existence was spying on Warsaw Pact countries, particularly the Soviet Union.
The strongest force in the universe is not "magnetism," or "gravity," or even something fuzzy and rose-tinted like "love." The strongest force in the universe is bureaucracy. Anybody who's ever been to the DMV knows this. The CIA was so focused on the Soviets for so long that they weren't able to easily adapt to post-cold war reality.
The military and intelligence communities were prime targets for budget reductions through out the 90s. Dick Cheney, a man so hawkish I'm pretty sure he has feathers sticking out of his bypass scars, presided over these cuts in the early 90s while he was still SecDef. The Clinton administration continued this trend. Both Democrats and Republicans were eager to slice off chunks of the budget for their own priorities.
In a sense, drawing down the military and intelligence communities was the right thing to do. The army was geared toward keeping Soviet Motor Rifle divisions out of Paris. And the CIA was geared toward stealing Moscow's secrets. If these organizations couldn't rapidly adapt to the new reality, then we should have cut their budgets and then built them up as something different.
The problem is, nobody built them up as something different. I can kind of understand this. After all, I half-expected Boris Yeltsin would lead Russia to ruin and leave his people thinking that communism wasn't so bad after all. But of course this never happened, and the CIA never changed. Presidents are to blame for this, from Bush all the way back to Eisenhower.
I also think it's unfair the way you shift blame onto the Democratically controlled congresses that were so dominant during the post-war years. It's true that the Democrats were more powerful in 1964 than they are now, but congress is neutered without a compliant president. Congress writes the laws, but the president always sets the tone.
Think back to the mid-90s. Newt Gingrich and his new Republican majority were immensely powerful. Gingrich was at odds with Clinton on nearly everything. And where are they now? Clinton is still a rock star. Gingrich can't get a table at Denny's.
With regards to your reasons for Arab hatred of the US, I would add one more reason (although you were applying it specifically to Iraq and I'm applying it broadly to everyone). 3. We have a nasty tendency to support regimes that repress their own people.
To use one example, our continued reliance on Saudi oil makes us unfortunate bedfellows with the Saudi royal family. To use another example, our support for Hussein in the 1980s to use as a hedge against Iran caused us to give Hussein the poison gas he used against his own people.
I can understand how ordinary people in the Arab world have a hard time believing us. "We're here to bring freedom. And sorry about your uncle getting gassed. We meant for that to be used against Iran. I guess we're going to have to apologize to them in five or ten years, too."
I believe that all people want to live free. I believe that self-determination is a basic human right. I believe that equality is universal. I believe that the rule of law is the key requirement of a just society. I believe that the United States has a responsibility to advance the causes of freedom and justice everywhere in the world, for no other reason than because we can.
But I also believe that we need to stop being hypocritical about it. Al-Qaeda's bad. But we made bin Laden who he is. Saddam's bad. But we made Iraq what it is. Pinochet in Chile, Musharraf (too lazy to look up the spelling on that one) in Pakistan, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Marcos in the Philippines, Noriega in Panama. All over the world we have a history of supporting or ignoring pretty strongmen who could bring stability at the expense of justice and equality.
If we're going to be serious about promoting freedom, then we need to be even-handed about it.
There's one thing that Kucinich, you, and I all agree on. Democrats can't get elected by being Republican-lite.
Good points, and you took the CIA issue further than I intended to, but what you say is true and I agree. It seems as though my anti-Clinton fingers got ahead of my anti-Clinton brain and I didn't make the necessary changes.
To paraphrase one of your comments, Bush & Co. and Clinton & Co. are just as responsible for CIA shortcomings as any other administation.
You go back as far as Eisenhower, but I think I'd limit it to George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.. all the presidents after the wall was firmly down. And of the three I'd blame W's dad and Clinton more than I would him simply because it's hard to cultivate good espionage and we don't yet know what Bush has done to fix that. His administration is ultra-secretive about such things.
Good points about leaders our country has chosen to support. It'll be interesting to see how history judges us in the future concerning the current leades we endorse. Most of the examples you cited were supposedly anti-communism personalities although that didn't exactly work out (Castro?)
Glad you and I agree on the overall point though, that Republican-Lite isn't better tasting nor less filling.
When I blamed the CIA mess on all presidents back to Eisenhower, I forgot to mention why.
It's very true that Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II are most responsible for today's boondoggle. But I was painting the other seven presidents with the same brush because they're all equally responsible for shaping the CIA bureaucracy into a one-mission agency.
That's the thought I had in mind, but I wasn't clear enough spelling it out. But I'm sure you can understand that. If I threw down every thought in my head, I'd still be typing the first comment.
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