2016 Election – Page 98 – The Wrongologist

Petraeus Wants to Arm al-Qaeda

(This will be the last column until Sept. 8th, as the Wrongologist goes to work preparing the fields of Wrong for fall. Happy Labor Day!)

General David Petraeus, possible VP candidate on the Moar War ticket, wrote an article in which his bright idea is to arm al-Qaeda in Syria in order to fight ISIS. The Daily Beast reports that Petraeus has been quietly urging US officials to consider using so-called “moderate” members of the al-Nusra Front, a spin-off of al-Qaeda, to fight ISIS in Syria.

Sound familiar? Every neocon has preached this idea since 2011.

The idea stems from Petraeus’ experience in Iraq in 2007, when as part of a broader strategy to defeat an Islamist insurgency, the US persuaded Sunni militias to stop fighting with al Qaeda and to work with the American military. That led to the fiction called the surge, which was compounded by the fiction that says the surge “worked”. But as Emptywheel says: (parenthesis and brackets by the Wrongologist)

Al-Qaeda in Iraq was later reborn as ISIS, [which] has become the sworn enemy of its parent organization. Now, Petraeus is returning to his old play, advocating a strategy of co-opting rank-and-file members of al Nusra, (a spin-off of al-Qaeda) particularly those who don’t necessarily share all of core al Qaeda’s Islamist philosophy.

The concept of arming al-Nusra, which purports to be opposed [in some cases] to our latest enemy ISIS, which itself emerged out of a prior enemy (al-Qaeda in Iraq), ensures we will have an environment of continual enemies, and thus, continual warfare. The “arm one of our enemies to fight another of our enemies” is a bad strategy that keeps getting trotted out, usually by neocons, even though it inevitably leads to more enemies to fight down the line.

Perhaps you remember the Taliban? In an article called “McJihad: Islam in the US Global Order”, Timothy Mitchell reports the following: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

On 3 February 1997, a delegation of the Taliban government of Afghanistan visited Washington, D.C. Ten days earlier Taliban forces had won control of the countryside around Kabul, and with the south and east of the country already in their hands they were now making preparations to conquer the north. In Washington the Taliban delegation met with State Department officials and discussed the plans of the California oil company Unocal to build a pipeline from Central Asia through Afghanistan. A senior U.S. diplomat explained his government’s thinking: “The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There will be Aramco, pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that.“

The enemy of my enemy strategy didn’t work then, and it won’t work now. The US has always found radical, conservative Islamism preferable to nationalist or communist currents in the Middle East. It has been in bed with Salafi-Wahhabism since the Saudis founded their theocratic, reactionary state. In fact as Tom Friedman said yesterday, current day Wahhabism cannot be understood outside the dynamics of petroleum-based geo-politics.

Perhaps the headline about Gen. Petraeus’s idea should be:

David Petraeus, after overseeing a series of failed training efforts and covert efforts that led to increased radicalization, wants America to try again.

It is one thing to work clandestinely with a few bad guys, and it’s a completely different thing to do so publicly, as Petraeus would like. The Obama administration’s legal backing for fighting ISIS is based on the 2003 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF) which holds:

[t]hat the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

The Department of Defense’s term of art is usually “Al-Qaeda and associated forces” or “affiliated forces” when it describes those defined in the AUMF. How then can we legally claim to fight ISIS under the AUMF when an ally in that fight is the only enemy cited in the AUMF?

And what would be DC’s plan if al-Qaeda actually won?

When ex-generals need to be consulted about foreign policy, our foreign policy has failed.

Anger is an Energy

We are witnessing the convergence of several trends, which may take politics as we know it and turn it on its head. First, a political trend in which both angry Republicans and angry Democrats now believe that there is zero chance that the government will do anything to improve their lives.

Second, the American Exceptionalism movement is morphing into something that says we must win, and win now. Never mind trying to figure out exactly what “winning” means. We’ve now spawned two generations of Trump wanna-be’s who have no time for losing. They must win, win, win, and they will say or do whatever it takes to win.

Third, people have sorted themselves into groups that are impervious to fact. Presenting people with the best available information doesn’t change many minds. Like a psychic immune response, they reject ideas that they consider harmful. Regardless of whether the subject is climate, vaccines or politics, they prefer and are much more susceptible to, appeals to emotion.

So we live in a time of angry rage. We can’t change most of what we see, but we sure can be pissed about it. The angry voter has been blamed for the insurgent candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, and the possible emergence of a third-party presidential run in 2016.

In the midst of this shit storm, political scientists Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster of Emory University last week posted an intriguing analysis at Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball Blog on the role of anger in the 2012 presidential election. They conclude that voters are indeed angry. But their anger is directed mainly at the opposing party, and this anger is increasingly correlated with ideology. In other words, the most liberal and most conservative voters are also the most likely to be angry. Looking forward to 2016, they conclude: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

The most important influence on the 2016 presidential election as well as the House and Senate elections will be the division of the American electorate into two warring partisan camps. In the seven decades since the end of World War II, Democrats and Republicans have never been as divided as they are today.

Earlier this year, Abramowitz and Webster released a paper cataloging the sharp increase in party-line voting in recent decades. Once upon a time, it was not uncommon for Republicans to vote Democratic and vice versa. In 2012, the authors tell us, the US saw:

The highest levels of party loyalty and straight-ticket voting since the American National Election Studies first began measuring party identification in 1952.

What’s the reason for the polarization? Abramowitz and Webster call it “negative partisanship”, the tendency of voters to think of their ballots not as a way to help their party but as a way to hurt the opposition. In other words, it’s not that our side is so great; it’s that the other side is so awful.

How do we know the other side is awful?’

Abramowitz and Webster say that a crucial element in negative partisanship is the assignment of negative characteristics to the other party. From 1972 to 2012, the proportion of voters who believed there are significant differences between the parties rose from 55% percent to well over 80%. We can argue over why, but, as the authors point out, these changes in perception are rational, since the parties themselves have become more ideologically rigid.

A thought experiment: Is there a party where the voter who is for abortion rights, but against same-sex marriage is comfortable? How about the voter who supports the Affordable Care Act, but is a skeptic on climate change? And if you don’t believe such complex voters exist, you are part of the evidence for the authors’ thesis about party rigidity.

All of us have met political partisans who believe that those on the other side are irredeemably stupid or evil. Yet we know that view of superiority is ultimately enforceable only at the point of a gun — just the opposite of what we expect of our democracy.

So, is anger good for our democracy? In a world of twitter and other social media, there are just way more outlets for anonymous anger. And that anger reproduces itself with every re-tweet.

And if there’s one thing anger loves, its attention.

Maybe we can learn something from what Johnny Rotten said in his book, “Anger is an Energy”, (which is a line from his song “Rise”): (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

When I was writing the Public Image Ltd song ‘Rise’, I didn’t quite realize the emotional impact that it would have on me, or anyone who’s ever heard it since. ‘Anger is an energy’ was an open statement, saying, ‘Don’t view anger negatively, don’t deny it – use it to be creative...’

Anger doesn’t necessarily equate directly to violence. Violence very rarely resolves anything. In South Africa, they eventually found a relatively peaceful way out. Using that supposedly negative energy called anger, it can take just one positive move to change things for the better.

Maybe, a third party presidential run in 2016?

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 30, 2015

That light from the city on the hill isn’t a beacon. It’s the flash of gun fire.

The snuff video of two TV journalists this week got everyone talking about gun ownership and gun control for the umpteenth time. Phys.org pointed out that despite the fact the US ranks in the middle among other industrialized countries in virtually every form of crime, and only has 5% of the world’s population, we have had 31% of the mass shootings since 1966.

By cutting off federal funding for research and stymieing data collection and sharing, the NRA has tried to do to the study of gun violence what climate deniers have done to the science of global warming. Mother Jones had a chart for you to consider:

Gun ownership is a part of our culture. We could have a conversation about why Americans need so many guns, but the current level of gun ownership is not going away. And there is a large disconnect between the current gun control proposals and the facts in the Virginia case. The TV killer wouldn’t have failed any test, either now in place, or contemplated under the new proposals.

A simple solution to the problem of gun deaths would be to require gun owners to have liability insurance for any gun that they buy. Mr. Market (beloved by the right) would then come up with solutions to keep that liability insurance costs low enough that people could own their guns, but fewer third-party deaths and injuries would occur, and there would be compensation for victims. You could still carry guns, but you would have to be able to produce proof of insurance. Like driving a car.

On to cartoons. The gun culture has a new Caliph:

New media and old media loved talking about the killings, live on your TV:

Hillary’s week didn’t improve, so she got help:

I’m you from 2015, Hillary. I’ve come back to help you set up your e-mail.

Biden called in a few favors:

Trump’s week was fine. Republicans? Not so much:

China’s stock market fell:

The Scourge of Anchor Babies

No time for in-depth blogging today, but because Wrongo lived in Southern California for 10 years, he often heard stories about pregnant Chinese women traveling to the US so that their children could be born here. Orange County was often rumored to be the (forgive the pun) hotbed of Chinese births. According to the LA Times, the correct term for this is “maternity tourism.” Whatever.

The LA Times reported:

The website of one birthing center suggested that 4,000 Chinese women had been served since 1999. The crackdown included one birthing center in Irvine. According to an affidavit, more than 400 women associated with the Irvine location have given birth at one Orange County hospital since 2013.

So, we really have no overall handle on the numbers of Chinese tourist births. Of course, these tourist births have the added benefit of making those kids American citizens.

One underreported part of this story is that the one child policy in China may be behind many of these births. An illegal second child would be stateless in China, with little hope of education or good employment, so for wealthy Chinese families in this situation, a few month’s visit to the US on a tourist visa gets the baby citizenship, and a place to go to school when the time comes. Still, aren’t the Chinese exploiting a loophole to get their kids citizenship?

No, it isn’t a loophole. It’s right there in the Constitution.

Tom Toles in the WaPo linked Asian anchor babies to the Panda births in DC:

Monday Wake Up Call – August 24, 2015

There was a curious story in the NYT on Saturday. They quote former Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak in a new biography revealing that Israel came close to striking Iran’s military facilities in 2010, 2011 and 2012. The biographers spoke on Israeli television, saying that despite Barak’s and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s desire to do so, the Israeli military refused.

Recorded interview excerpts between Barak and the biographers were aired by Israel’s Channel 2, which stressed that Mr. Barak had sought to prevent them from being broadcast, but that they had been approved by Israel’s military censor. Mr. Barak later confirmed that the recordings were authentic, but said he had provided the information on background to Ilan Kfir and Danny Dor, whose book, “Barak: The Wars of My Life,” came out this week in Hebrew.

The interviews confirmed a longstanding view that Israel’s security chiefs held back the political leadership, particularly in 2010. In 2012, the timing did not work out because of a joint US-Israel military exercise and visit by Leon Panetta, US defense secretary. Barak said he recalled “demanding” to postpone the joint military exercise. The NYT quotes Barak:

You ask, you demand that America respect your sovereignty to make a decision that you want to do that, even if America is opposed to that and it is against its interests…

The news is that the civilian leadership really wanted to start a war with Iran but first, the military leaders demurred, and then so did the Obama Administration. This confirms that the past 7 years have not been all Israeli bluster intended to play bad cop to our good cop. The bad news is that the administration has known for years that Netanyahu and his administration are off their collective rockers, yet Congress continues to send Israel weapons and billions of dollars every year.

The sad part is that there isn’t anything really new here. It has been well documented previously. Juan Cole reported in 2011 that: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

Netanyahu appears to have forced out Meir Dagan, the head of the Israeli spying agency Mossad… Dagan went on to accuse Netanyahu and his Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, of grossly exaggerating the threat from Iran, calling a [potential] strike on that country “stupid idea that offers no advantage.”

In 2012, apparently Obama stood firm in opposition to an Iran strike, since Israel didn’t have the capability to really damage Iran’s nuclear facilities and needed support from USAF in the form of B-52s and bunker buster bombs. Mr. Obama later compensated Israel for standing down by providing them with the bunker busters.

Here’s a thought worth polishing and spreading: That the unspoken concern of the US and the world is not so much that a nuclear armed Iran might someday attack Israel and further destabilize the ME, but that a nuclear armed Israel is now ready, able, and rehearsing their plans to attack Iran. Imagine for a moment the hysteria in Congress if the headline of this story was reversed: “Khomeini was on the verge of attacking Israel 3 times”.

It’s time to cut Israel loose, to eliminate the undue influence this nation has on American foreign policy.

So, wake up Congress Critters, modeling Netanyahu’s foreign policy behaviors will lead America to failure. To help with the wake-up, here is a photo that shows those in Congress just another example of life in the food chain:

(H/T Naked Capitalism)

Your Monday Hot Links:

This is how Bernie Sanders could win. OK it’s a long shot, but FiveThirtyEight says that if Hillary implodes, Sanders vs. Biden could be highly competitive. Clinton won’t drop out before the primaries and a Biden run could split the establishment vote, giving Sanders an opening.

Billionaires keep flocking to architect Robert A.M. Stern’s newest limestone creation at 220 Central Park South. Next is billionaire hedge funder Ken Griffin, who we mentioned yesterday. Griffin’s new pad could cost him anywhere between $30 million and $160 million, which is really just chump change for the hedge funder who reportedly nets $2.2 million a day, and that’s after taxes!

In a related story in the Onion, a study finds it is easier than ever for American dollars to join the 1%.

First wolf pack found in California in nearly a century. On Aug. 9, the cameras photographed two separate black-furred wolves, believed to be adults. Five black wolf pups were photographed in the same spot. It was clearly a pack.

Doctors may have found a way to override the body’s evolutionary habit of storing fat with a discovery of a master switch for the body’s metabolism. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School discovered a new genetic pathway that controls human metabolism by prompting fat cells to store or burn away fat.

Grading Carly Fiorina’s tenure at HP. By a Silicon Valley journalist.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 23, 2015

Another bad week for many people in the public eye. But let’s start with Malcolm Gladwell’s rant in the NYT about university endowments in which he focused on Yale’s endowment. He says:

Last year, Yale paid about $480 million to private equity fund managers as compensation — about $137 million in annual management fees, and another $343 million in performance fees, also known as carried interest — to manage about $8 billion, one-third of Yale’s endowment.

He tells us that, of the $1 billion the endowment contributed to the university’s operating budget, only $170 million was earmarked for tuition assistance, fellowships and prizes. He reported that private equity fund managers also received more than students at four other endowments; Harvard, the University of Texas, Stanford and Princeton.

He makes another great point, that university endowments are exempt from corporate income tax because universities support the advancement and dissemination of knowledge. The tax advantage also benefits the fund managers whose carried interest is taxed at lower capital gains rates rather than ordinary income rates. It isn’t a coincidence that hedge fund managers return the favor to their large university clients. Kenneth C. Griffin gave Harvard $150 million in 2014. This year, Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chairman of the private equity giant Blackstone, pledged $150 million to Yale toward a new student center. John A. Paulson, another hedge fund manager, topped both when he gave Harvard $400 million in June.

Maybe these university endowments need to do more to support students and faculty, and less to support fund managers, if they are to keep their tax-exempt status.

On to cartoons. With the email server and new polls, Hillary did not have a good week:

Maybe if the Obama years hadn’t decimated the Democratic bench for an entire generation, we wouldn’t have to rely on two senior citizens slugging it out for the chance to call the White House their retirement home.

Another senior, Mr. Biden, awaits the call, if Hillary falters:

Amazon also had a bad week:

Subway & Jared Fogel had bad weeks too:

Wannabe adulterers also had a bad week:

While Jimmy Carter gave us all a nice moment:

The War Party Rides Again

Peter Bienart in the Atlantic:

As George W. Bush’s administration drew to an end, the brand of ambitious, expensive, Manichean, militaristic foreign policy commonly dubbed “neoconservative” seemed on the verge of collapse.

Yet, according to recent polls, GOP voters again see national security as more important than either cultural issues, or the economy. More than 75% of Republicans want American ground troops to fight ISIS in Iraq, and a plurality says that stopping Iran’s nuclear program requires an immediate military strike.

So it is no surprise that GOP presidential candidates have pledged a return of US combat troops in large numbers to the Middle East. Bill Barrow of the AP took a look at the specifics of plans by some of them:

Sen. Lindsay Graham, (R-SC) on “Face the Nation”:

I don’t see anybody on our side coming up with a robust plan that truly would destroy” the Islamic State militants

Graham has called for 20,000 American troops divided between Iraq and Syria. “You can’t do this through the air.”

Donald Trump said he would commit ground troops last Sunday on “Meet the Press”. Trump said that in order to cripple ISIS, he would “take away their wealth” by reclaiming oil fields the group has commandeered. When host Chuck Todd told him that would take ground troops, Trump replied, “That’s OK.”

Ohio Gov. John Kasich blasted ISIS on CNN’s “State of the Union“: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

All the religions of the world ought to stand up [and] say, ‘You blow up innocent men, women and children and you think you’re going to paradise? There’s something wrong with you. You’re nuts.’

Regarding ground troops, Kasich said he would deploy American forces only as part of an international coalition, saying: “I don’t want to go alone.”

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin wouldn’t rule out US boots on the ground in Syria.

Jeb Bush said that ISIS is spreading like a pandemic and that the US may need to send more ground troops into Iraq to defeat it. Jeb maintains that defeating ISIS in Syria will require the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad. Jeb says the way to remove al-Assad was to organize the “moderate” forces and have US troops on the ground in Syria:

Back them up as one force…And we should back that force up all the way through, not just in taking the fight to the enemy, but in helping them to form a stable, moderate government…It’s a tough, complicated diplomatic and military proposition, even more so than the current situation in Iraq. But it can be done.

His ignorance is startling. Something like 90% of rebel territory in Syria is held by the Support Front (Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate), ISIS, and a few smaller groups associated with the Army of Conquest or the Army of Islam. The Army of Conquest recognizes al-Qaeda as part of itself.

That is, there are almost no moderates for Jeb to back in the overthrow of al-Assad. So what he is actually proposing is to turn Damascus over to al-Qaeda. He blames Obama’s reduction of US troops in Iraq for the rise of Islamic State militants. He perpetuates the myth that the surge worked in Iraq.

The problem with the GOP position on more ground troops is that the US had at some points, 160,000 US troops in Iraq, and they could not stop the civil war of 2006, nor could they defeat AQ. So why would 10,000 each for Iraq and Syria be able to pull this off?

Many people have run for President promising peace. This may be the first time that multiple candidates of one party has people running for President, promising war in a time of peace.

Can anybody really take this seriously? In 2003, a Republican president took a backwards, repressive but generally stable country, and turned it into a murderous chaotic nightmare of epic proportions.

And now, the GOP thinks they can take a country which is already a murderous chaotic nightmare, and magically resolve the situation into a peaceful, prosperous United States in Iraq and the Levant? By deploying more boots on the ground?

And the unstated theme of the GOP proposals to send US ground forces back is: Once our guys are there, local populations will shift their support to us, because we’re the good guys.

We tried this. It failed.

See you on Sunday.

The GOP’s Desire to End Birthright Citizenship

Birthright Citizenship, or the common law concept of jus soli, is back in the news. This time, brought back by Donald Trump. One of his proposals is to stop automatically giving citizenship to most people born on US soil unless their parents are US citizens. Denying people Birthright Citizenship rights is something America hasn’t done since the days of slavery. The Republican concern is that too many illegal immigrants have a child in the US who is automatically an American citizen, and therefore, has the right to vote.

Most Republicans think, just like Rep. Steve King (R-IA), that Hispanics perpetrate a scheme to get a foothold in the country by coming here and having a child. King calls them “anchor babies”. In fact, the Republican plan would visit the sins of the parents on the children, assuming the children were born in the US.

And Trump isn’t alone. A large group of GOP candidates believe we should end Birthright Citizenship:

• Scott Walker has the same view
• Ohio Gov. John Kasich, during his run for governor in 2010 said that he supported ending Birthright Citizenship
• KY Sen. Rand Paul has pushed for a Constitutional amendment ending it
• NJ Gov. Chris Christie has said the issue needs to be re-examined
• Former PA Sen. Rick Santorum has also stated his support for altering the 14th Amendment

On Monday night, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal tweeted:

We need to end birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Wrongo’s favorite thing is that Bobby Jindal supports ending Birthright Citizenship, even though neither of his parents were US citizens when he was born.

SC Sen. Lindsey Graham, called for a change in the Constitution, because he believes immigrants will simply “drop and leave” their kids in this country. Just like Steve King!

The GOP’s target is the 14th Amendment, which grants everyone born in the US the right of citizenship. The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case declared that blacks, even the daughters and sons of freed slaves, were not US citizens. But, 11 years later, in 1868, the US ratified the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, making Birthright Citizenship a right. The first sentence reads:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

The Court later ruled in 1898, that a child born in the US to non-citizens was a citizen under the law. So the short version of today’s GOP pitch on eliminating birthright citizenship is:

We must enforce the immigration laws by violating the Constitution.

This means that a solid chunk of the Republican presidential field says that, while they revere the Constitution, they have little issue with distorting it, ignoring it, or shredding it in order to fit their political and ideological motives.

Consider the irony: The Republican Party accomplished something hugely enlightened and important with the 14th Amendment. Here is American Civil War historian Eric Foner:

The 14th amendment and birthright citizenship rank among the great and defining accomplishments of the Republican Party, back when it was the Party of Lincoln.

Yet today’s Republican Party wants to purge their historic accomplishment from the Constitution. The problem with this Republican immigration proposal is that it’s at core explicitly nativist, racist, and xenophobic. The Republican’s clear objective is to stave off the growing political power of Latino voters in the service of one particular political party.

Luckily, Constitutional amendments are very difficult to enact, and while this attempt is likely to fail, it could potentially send Latino voting through the roof.

The current crop of Republican presidential candidates show that the Republican Party of today is in no way related to the Republican Party of Lincoln. In fact, it is barely related to the Republican Party of Eisenhower.

If you had any doubt about the current crop of Republicans being a mutant version of the party, consider Ben Carson’s viewpoint on immigration:

Why not land mines? The only piece of common ground the current Republican Party has with the Party of Lincoln or Eisenhower is its name.

In fact, that should change. In 2015, we should call it the “New Republican Party,” since it fails to honor Lincoln’s, or even Eisenhower’s memory.

The Political Stylings of Donald Trump

We see a torrent of Trumpism, and viewed from the sidelines, it is a presidential candidacy based on emotion, while shockingly lacking in policy. It is difficult to see him succeeding, unless Republicans believe that being a vain, obnoxious and unapologetic old uncle is all that it takes to run the world’s largest superpower.

If that’s what they think, they have found their man.

The Donald has co-opted Tea Party rage. But, there’s nothing to grab onto, except the rage itself. He and his supporters hate immigrants. They hate Mr. Obama’s withdrawal from our blundering wars in the ME. They hate the vastly expanded access to healthcare coverage, and apparently, they hate being rescued from a Republican Depression. They do love them some American Exceptionalism, though.

As Bloomberg’s Melinda Henneberger comments about a recent Trump rally in New Hampshire:

Very little of what the conservatives in the hall were going wild over could be characterized as conservative, and most of it wasn’t political at all.

What Trump wants us to believe is; “I’ve got this.” His strategy is to have us believe he is a strongman brimming with rage. His “tell it like it is” approach has a true populist appeal, but his slogan “Make America Great Again” is as vague as it can be. Here are a few NH quotes: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

We will make great trade deals.

We will have Social Security without cuts.

We will come up with health care plans that will be phenomenal, phenomenal, [and] that will be less expensive.

Describing a future-perfect conversation between President Trump and the Ford Motor Co. officials, he’ll change their minds about building cars in Mexico. He says:

This is too easy, too easy! This is a couple of phone calls.

Some Trump supporters will vote for him, some will not, but all like his honesty, his lack of PC, his ability to run without outside money, his success, his independence from America’s political elite.

Krugman says the conservative explanation of the GOP’s onset of Trumpism is that their base voters are victims of celebrity. What they really want is a true conservative, but they’re being hoodwinked by someone who is entertaining on TV.

Krugman thinks the liberal version is that Trump is appealing to resentment that ultimately rests on economic failure: working-class whites have been left behind by growing income inequality, while they mistakenly blame immigrants taking their jobs. But he thinks Trump’s supporters look a lot more like the Tea Party, who are:

For the most part not working-class…They’re relatively affluent, and not especially lacking in college degrees.

Republicans seem to be in a mood to require heavy doses of impatience, resentment and outrage from any successful 2016 presidential candidate. Trump realized that sooner than his competitors, and neatly fills the bill. He is disorienting the Establishment Right. His supporters don’t give his political platform much thought, which works, since thoughtlessness is at the base of most of Trump’s policy cure-alls. He is cleaving the Republican Party into one camp that gawks helplessly at its past and a new camp that is inserting a shiv in the Establishment Right’s tired old body.

For progressives, what’s not to love? Trump said on Meet The Press: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

And if I’m president, we’re going to have a great country…And then we will really have [it] better than Reagan, better than anybody. We will make America great again. That’s what it’s all about.

Ok, Chuck Todd, you can’t ask: “How?”

Trump is the expression of today’s conservatism: loud, abrasive, and vacuous. Forget data, forget policy. Why search for evidence when you can rely on belief and tradition?

There are two options: Republicans either oust Trump and his Trumpeteers, perhaps forcing them to form a third party. Or, Republicans can accept that Trump is in their mainstream, and run a populist platform, laced with doses of anger and vague policies. If he is the Republican nominee for President, Republicans will then witness the Trumpocalypse, and be picking up the pieces for years.

Those are the choices. Either way, contemporary conservatism will be in ruins.

What’s not to love?

Iran: WMD 2.0?

The Republicans job of whipping up support to override an Obama veto of the bill to kill the Iran deal got tougher since Kerry just secured limited support for the deal from the Gulf States. The NYT reports that Khalid al-Attiyah, the foreign minister of Qatar, who hosted the meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, said:

This was the best option among other options…We are confident that what they undertook makes this region safer and more stable.

With that, most Democrats who are on the fence will likely be convinced to support the deal.

Republicans should be convinced as well, but most won’t be. However, one Republican, Pat Buchanan, thinks they are wrong:

It appears that Hill Republicans will be near unanimous in voting a resolution of rejection of the Iran nuclear deal. They will then vote to override President Obama’s veto of their resolution…

Buchanan goes on to say that, if Republicans override the veto, the US will vote in the UN Security Council to lift sanctions, along with the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China, and:

A…vote to kill the Iran deal would thus leave the US isolated, its government humiliated, unable to comply with the pledges its own secretary of state negotiated. Would Americans cheer the GOP for leaving the United States with egg all over its face?

And if Congress refuses to honor the agreement, but Iran complies with all its terms, who among our friends and allies would stand with an obdurate America then? Israel would applaud, the Saudis perhaps, but who else?

Now, it seems that applause will not include the Gulf States. Here’s Buchanan’s money quote:

And how is Israel, with hundreds of atom bombs, mortally imperiled by a deal that leaves Iran with not a single ounce of bomb-grade uranium?

Word. Another Republican, David Stockman, (former OMB Director for Reagan) had this to say about the deal and its Republican support: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

Indeed, it was the same crowd of Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Feith et.al. [who]…falsified the WMD claims against Saddam Hussein, [and] have been beating the war drums so loudly about the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Stockman concludes: (emphasis by Stockman)

So it needs to be shouted from the rafters at the outset that all the arm-waving and screeching against this deal by the GOP war-mongers and the Israeli lobby is grounded in a Big Lie. The whole Iran-is-after-the-bomb narrative is just WMD 2.0.

Finally, some clear thinking by a few Republicans on Iran.

The Iraq War was one of the most important and damaging episodes in the history of US foreign policy. And everyone remembers that the war was based on a lie, and that the lie was brought to you by Republicans.

Can Republicans explain why their demand for total capitulation by Iran is so well-suited to creating a winning position for the West? How can these Republicans pretend that nothing has happened over the last 15 years that throws their neo-con, chicken-hawk worldview into question?

It’s fair to ask Republicans who championed the Iraq War to explain the differences between the Iraq WMD debacle and the current situation in Iran. If they are compelled to debate why we should bomb or invade, and how that outcome would be any better than it was in Iraq, the debate over the Iran nuclear deal might turn out not to be much of a debate at all.

Sadly, most Republicans are not thinking clearly regarding Israel vs. Iran. In April, the Wrongologist reported on a Bloomberg poll showing that Republicans think that “patriotism” doesn’t mean they must support America’s interests first when it comes to Israel. From Bloomberg:

Republicans by a ratio of more than 2-to-1 say the US should support Israel even when its stance diverges with American interests…Democrats, by roughly the same ratio, say the opposite is true and that the US must pursue its own interests over Israel’s.

American Republicans said that Israel comes first by a 67/30 margin.

Learn from that, and don’t vote for ANY candidate who says that Israel’s needs come first in the debate about the Iran deal.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: 2016 Election