Matt Yglesias

Sweet Sovereignty

“Under heavy American pressure, the Iraqi government ordered two Iranians who had been detained in an American military raid to leave the country, Iraqi officials said Friday, ending a bitter, nine-day political standoff,” reports The New York Times. Can you say untenable situation? The Bush administration (like Joe Lieberman) wants backing the Iraqi government to somehow be an anti-Iranian measure.

Losing by Winning

Jon Chait takes on the topic of elections it’s better to lose, noting that liberalism would probably have been in much better shape had Gerald Ford been re-elected in 1976 leaving the GOP, rather than Jimmy Carter, saddled with the essentially unsolvable problems of America in the late 1970s:

And the elections that people think don’t matter often do. Moderates and liberals widely regarded the 2000 presidential campaign as a snoozer. Apathetic liberals held “shadow conventions” that year to highlight the stultifying timidity of the two major parties. The implicit premise of Ralph Nader’s 2000 candidacy was that it was as good a year as any for liberals to make a protest statement and throw the election to a Republican. We now can see that the radicalism of George W. Bush, then half-concealed, along with the rallying effect of Sept. 11 made the 2000 election incredibly consequential.

This consideration of the little-appreciated-at-the-time significance of the 2000 election, however, is the reason why I don’t think it ever makes sense to do anything other than try your best to win. The 2000 election turns out to have been incredibly important primarily because of 9/11. The giant external shock created a public expectation of dramatic policy shifts which, of course, made it much easier than it otherwise would have been to implement such shifts and far harder to obstruct or prevent them. Thus, a kind of latent radicalism inside the Bush administration was unleashed in a way it otherwise wouldn’t have been. Events, in short, are incredibly important and one of the main things presidents do is respond to them. Meanwhile, it’s just not possible to know in advance which four-year periods are the ones that are going to feature dramatic events.

Resolutions

I agree with Nick Kristof — George W. Bush would be a pretty good president if he reversed, um, all of his ideas about public policy and started governing like a liberal Democrat. I’m not sure that really would “rescue” his “legacy” since even the best possible policies simply can’t undue the damage caused by the invasion of Iraq (or, say, having invading Afghanistan and failed to achieve any of our major objectives there) in two years’ time.

2006 on Film

Unlike in the musical arena, my cinematic tastes are pretty wide-ranging and by no means restricted to a single genre. Thus, I count six films as worthy of unambiguous recommendation — The Queen, The Descent, The Departed, Talladega Nights, Tristram Shandy, and Brick. I’m having a great deal of trouble working those into an ordinal ranking. I would say Tristram Shandy and Brick are probably movies for cinephiles, while Descent and Departed have the most mainstream appeal. For whatever reason, a healthy number of people who I would have thought would like Talladega Nights didn’t, in practice, enjoy it. Thus The Queen is probably the best movie of the year in some sense, though I’d say I liked Tristram Shandy the best personally.

That leaves the need for four more movies to fill out a top-ten list and I’m going to go with Half Nelson, V for Vendetta, Little Miss Sunshine, and Casino Royale but the exclusion of Apocalypto, Little Children and The Road from Guantanamo from that list is a bit arbitrary since I liked those three a lot, too. I haven’t re-viewed any of these movies, so it’s possible that my rankings will change over time.

Large, Sustained, and Now With Terrible Senators

In less than one week’s time . . . the social event of the season . . . Iraq: A Turning Point by the American Enterprise Institute:

U.S. senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and U.S. senator Joseph Lieberman (I-D-Conn.) recently returned from a fact-finding mission to Iraq. Both held extensive discussions with U.S. forces and Iraqi government officials. In light of a possible change in course for U.S. strategy in Iraq, their views will be critical in the upcoming Congressional debate.

At this important time, AEI resident scholar Frederick W. Kagan and former acting Army chief of staff General Jack Keane will release the updated and final version of phase one of “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq.” The study calls for a large and sustained surge of U.S. forces to secure and protect critical areas of Baghdad. Mr. Kagan directed the report in consultation with military and regional experts, including General Keane, former Afghanistan coalition commander Lieutenant General David Barno, and other officers involved with the successful operations of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar. An interim version of the report was released on December 14, 2006.

At this event, Mr. Kagan and General Keane will present their final report, which outlines how the United States can win in Iraq and why victory is the only acceptable outcome.

“Sustained surge” is a pretty sweet oxymoron.

Meet Team Edwards

Chris Cillizza is doing a potentially valuable continuing feature where he details the “inner circle” of different presidential contenders. Today’s edition looks at Team Edwards which consists overwhelmingly of people I have no real opinion on. Indeed, it’s mostly composed of people I’ve never heard of. I did meet Jennifer Palmieri once, years ago, before she was working for Edwards, and she seemed smart and pleasant. Realistically, the main thing I learned from the exercise is that I know almost nothing about the world of political operatives.

Well Said

Nancy Pelosi: “The execution of Saddam Hussein ends a tragic chapter in the history of Iraq, but it is not a substitute for an effective strategy that will bring peace to the region and allow the responsible redeployment of U.S. forces.”

Saddam Dead

The deed is done. Sad to see even something as justice for a major-league war criminal rendered tawdry by this administration. Here’s a report on the infamous Anfal Campaign that Saddam wasn’t tried for in order to spare Donald Rumsfeld embarrassment.

The Wages of Appeasement

“In the general condemnation of neo-conservatism,” writes Victor Davis Hanson, “we forget, at least as it pertains to foreign policy, it arose from a variety of causes, not the least as the reaction against the moral bankruptcy of both rightist realism and leftist appeasement.” He continues:

We were reminded of those poles these past few days with news that confirmed Arafat’s order to murder American diplomats in Khartoum. That apparently had made no affect on Bill Clinton, at least if it were really true as legend claims that such a terrorist much later was the most frequent overnight foreign guest to the Clinton White House.

Suffice it to say I don’t see things this way. The news was that Arafat ordered the killing of American diplomats back in 1973. But it’s been a long time since Palestinian nationalist groups deliberately targeted Americans. In other words, violent Palestinian nationalism used to be a problem for American security and now it isn’t a problem anymore. Why’s that? Well, appeasement. The process of engagement initiated by Henry Kissinger, significantly advanced during Jimmy Carter’s administration, and pushed further down the road by George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton succeeded in making the problem go away. Along the way, this diplomatic process also managed to significantly enhance Israel security by leading Egypt to drop out of the anti-Israel coalition in the Middle East. What’s more, during the Clinton years the engagement process came close to achieving a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians that would have further enhanced Israeli security and removed a significant diplomatic problem for the United States of America.

At the end of the day and for various reasons, that ultimate goal was not achieved. But the process that came close to success did achieve a great deal. It didn’t do so quickly or easily, but it did achieve a lot. And there’s every reason to believe that an American administration willing to continue down that path would be able to achieve much more. Certainly, the Bush administration’s alternative approach has managed to be enormously more costly while bringing about essentially nothing in the way of positive results.

Blind Spots

Naturally, I agree with Ed Kilgore’s basic sentiments regarding Joe Lieberman’s op-ed today. But as a slightly — but only slightly — pedantic point of clarification, I think we should be clear that Lieberman doesn’t have a blind spot about Iraq, the “blind spot” extends to the question of American foreign policy throughout the region, if not the entire region. What’s more, I don’t really think “blind spot” is the right word for it. Lieberman’s ideas about Iran, Iraq, al-Qaeda, escalation, and how this all relates are crazy, but they’re not idiosyncratic.

You can find the same ideas in The Weekly Standard, at the American Enterprise Institute, and from all sorts of other outfits around town. Lieberman’s not saying anything that dozens of other neoconservative foreign policy analysts are saying. Indeed, this is exactly what Marshall Wittman was saying before he left the DLC to go work for Lieberman, so there’s no real surprise here. But there’s the rub; on the question of national security policy Lieberman’s not just a “moderate” he’s on the other side, following the trajectory of an earlier generation of neoconservatives from relatively hawkish Democrat to total agreements with right-wing Republicans. Maybe he thinks he’ll be John McCain’s running mate in 2008.

Grievance

Robert Farley doubts that “anything that happens in Somalia is going to have a significant impact on foreign opinion outside of, well, Somalia and Ethiopia.” I think there’s a pretty strong case for that. Nevertheless, it’s important to recall that the group of truly threatening anti-American terrorists in the world is really small. One one level, this should give us considerable comfort. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 it appeared plausible that the United States was going to face waves of sustained terror attacks implemented by a reasonably deep pool of people. That turns out not to be the case. On the other hand, it should make us worry. There were very few people interested in mounting large-scale terrorist attacks on the United States and nevertheless that small pool of people was able to pull off a pretty nasty operation.

What there is, however, is a much larger pool of people in some sense drawn to Islamist political movements and to various nationalist causes that involve Muslim populations. Under the circumstances, inserting the United States into disputes that involve Islamists fighting non-Muslim invaders is always very dangerous — it risks slippage of people from the big pool into the small pool. After all, the reason why the small pool is so much smaller than the large pool is that despite widespread dislike of the United States relatively few people believe Osama bin Laden’s message that these localized conflicts are all inextricably linked to the need for jihad against the far enemy. Our actions in the Horn of Africa probably won’t have a big impact on people doing there thing in Cairo or Riyadh or Islamabad but it clearly will have an impact on people living in the Horn.

Now that said, sometimes you do have to back the non-Muslim side in a local conflict. Maybe the Islamist side is threatening some crucial American interests. That, however, isn’t the case here. We simply don’t have any interests in that area that are more important than our interest in trying to avoid a situation where young Somali men cut their teeth for a few years in a guerilla war with Ethiopia and then decide to take the fight to the far enemy.

Principles

The Washington Post editorial page is mad at human rights groups for complaining about procedural flaws in Saddam Hussein’s trial since, after all, we all know Saddam is guilty. Martin Peretz is upset that death penalty opponents oppose executing Saddam Hussein since, after all, we all know Saddam’s a really bad guy.

Do these guys not understand the concept of principles? The point of the belief that all people are entitled to fair trials before receiving criminal sentences is that all people are entitled to fair trials. The point of the belief that capital punishment is immoral (not a belief I share, incidentally) is that it’s always immoral. It’s not as if Amnesty International is confused and doesn’t understand that Saddam isn’t a very sympathetic case. Rather, the point is that organizations committed to principles of human rights — fair trials, no executions — need to uphold those principles even when violating them sounds appealing. If they didn’t, the groups wouldn’t be standing for anything.

The Last Honest Escalation

Joe Lieberman goes for this full neocon:

While we are naturally focused on Iraq, a larger war is emerging. On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States. Iraq is the most deadly battlefield on which that conflict is being fought.

And what about al-Qaeda? Lieberman appears to be arguing later in the article that Iran and al-Qaeda are collaborating in Iraq since otherwise it’s hard to make sense of the claim that “If Iraq descends into full-scale civil war, it will be a tremendous battlefield victory for al-Qaeda and Iran. Iraq is the central front in the global and regional war against Islamic extremism.” Needless to say, he’s backing the Bush/McCain escalation plan.

One problem here is that to the extent you see the dark hand of Iran behind all events in Iraq, the situation should logically be viewed as more rather than less hopeless. The reason, of course, is that Iran can escalate every bit as much as we can. Whoever’s equipping, say, the Mahdi Army clearly isn’t equipping them very well — Hezbollah is much better-armed. Suppose we escalate and the Iranians counter-escalate by giving our foes wire-guided anti-tank missiles, katyusha rockets, Iglas and so forth — then you’re talking about a really bad scene. Obviously, though, that’s logic and hawks aren’t into logic.

New Settlements

Showing at least some vague measure of good sense, the Bush administration is officially against Israel’s plans to construct a new settlement in the West Bank, though they don’t seem inclined to actually do anything about it. New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz explains that the new settlement is a good idea because “there needs to be a sliver of land between what will ultimately be a Palestinian state and Jordan.” The benefits of such a policy are clear: “An Israeli buffer between Jordan and nascent Palestine will not only protect Jordan from its mischievous neighbors to the west. It will protect Israel from what would otherwise be a new Jordan. Also called Palestine, and part of it.”

Back in the real world, obviously, if Israel insists on such a policy there’s never going to be peace with the Palestinians, but I assume that’s fine by him.

Escalating Silence

I don’t know when Scott Stanzel started working as a White House spokesman, but his rejoinder to Joe Biden‘s anti-escalation views doesn’t make much sense: “I would hope that Senator Biden would wait to hear what the president has to say before announcing what he’s opposed to.” So while the Decider dithers none of us are allowed to offer our opinions about what he should do? I suppose it would be convenient for the White House message team if things worked that way. I think Gary Schmitt from PNAC is insightful on the psychodynamics here:

“No president wants to be remembered as the guy who lost a war,” he said. “Who knows whether this is a day late and a dollar short, but it is a striking example of presidential will trying to bend the system to what he wants.”

Roughly speaking, the fixed point of the president’s thinking is an unwillingness to admit that the venture has failed. For a long time the best way to do that was to simply deny that there was a problem. Political strategy for the midterms, however, dictated that the president had to acknowledge the public’s concerns about the war and concede that things weren’t going well. At that point, simply staying the course doesn’t work anymore. But de-escalating would be an admission of failure, so the only option is to choose escalation. Thus, the idea of an escalation starts getting pushed and we start reading things int he paper like “Top military officials have said that they are open to sending more U.S. troops to Iraq if there is a specific strategic mission for them.” Consider the process here. It’s not that the president has some policy initiative in mind whose operational requirements dictate a surge in force levels. Rather, locked in the prison of his own denial he came to the conclusion that he should back an escalation, prompting the current search for a mission.

Maggette/Artest

As promised previously. I really don’t see why the Clippers would seriously consider doing this. When Sacramento traded for Ron-Ron that was a risk. Trading for him at this point is a long-odds gamble I’d only want to take for a giant upside payoff. Artest, meanwhile, isn’t that much better than Maggette. He’s a worse scorer from either a volume or an efficiency perspective and a worse rebounder. Obviously, he’s a better defender but the point is just that even in the unlikely case that Artest in LA experience did work out it’s still not an unambiguous upgrade. Chris Sheridan says that Maggette “just like every other key player on the Clippers — has had a precipitous drop in production this season while waiting for another deal to go down.” But where’s the precipitous drop? If by “precipitous drop in production” Sheridan means “small reduction in playing time” I’ll agree. Maggette’s points-per-40 are down (22.6 versus 24.1) but his rebounds-per-40 are up (8.5 versus 7.1).

The Clippers’ woes this season have no particular relationship to Maggette. Other West teams have improved (often because of returns of players who were MIA with injury for most of last year), Elton Brand has returned to his previous standard of excellent basketball rather than to the extraordinary heights to which he soared last season, and Sam Cassell has been playing substantially fewer minutes.

Your Liberal Media

Interesting Washington Post op-ed page today. Bob Dole says Gerald Ford was great. David Broder agrees as does George Will. Robert Novak says he wasn’t right-wing enough. It’s a good thing they give this stuff away for free on the internet, because if I’d paid money for a newspaper and then wound up with a subscription to Pravda I’d be pretty upset.

Yes, It’s Policy

Josh Trevino is none too happy with my Ethiopia commentary. Trevino knows a good deal more about Africa than I do and has some experience with recent American policymaking on that continent. Thus, even though I disagree with the general thrust of his commentary, let me recommend his Christmas afternoon post on the war which confirms the basic point that these events are tied to deliberate American policies. He also usefully spells out the basic strategic thinking here. His take on Ethiopia’s July intervention:

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Malnourishment

In an unrelated Ethiopia news story, an interesting New York Times feature looks at the problem of malnourished children, especially in Africa, and especially in Ethiopia where there are some relatively new and pretty promising programs in place to try and deal with the problem. As the article observes:

Yet almost half of Ethiopia’s children are malnourished, and most do not die. Some suffer a different fate. Robbed of vital nutrients as children, they grow up stunted and sickly, weaklings in a land that still runs on manual labor. Some become intellectually stunted adults, shorn of as many as 15 I.Q. points, unable to learn or even to concentrate, inclined to drop out of school early.

The result, obviously, is a kind of trap of impoverishment. Poor, badly governed states have a lot of children who suffer from these problems. The next generation grows up to be relatively lacking in human capital as a consequence of childhood malnourishment. And that, in turn, helps continue the country down a path of being poor and badly governed. Obviously, delivering food to hungry people is something rich countries are pretty well-positioned to do, and rich countries (especially the United States) do, in fact, provide a pretty large amount of food aid. But generous provision can cause problems of its own, distorting and undermining local markets in food production and distribution, when what you’d like to achieve is to put the country on a sustainable path where it no longer needs that kind of aid.

Ad Policy

This probably goes without saying, but now that John Edwards is kicking off his presidential campaign with, among other things, an ad on my sidebar I guess I should say that accepting his ad, or anyone else’s ad, is not an endorsement.

I would like to encourage further advertisements, however, by emphasizing that I only have a little integrity and paying me money will convince me to post your YouTube video (purely as an informational service to my readers, of course). Thus far, the field isn’t really inspiring me to take sides or to feel like I should invest a lot of energy in deciding which side to take. All else being equal, I’d like to avoid the blogosphere being filled with this sort of thing, but I suppose it’s inevitable.