Note To Cokie

If you don't know what you're talking about, don't open your mouth. Or in your case, don't open your mouth. Because the "don't know what you're talking about" thing is self-evident.

During coverage of the October 2 vice-presidential debate on PBS' Charlie Rose, Rose asked, "Did either of them make any mistakes that you noticed?" National Public Radio senior news analyst Cokie Roberts responded that Sen. Joe Biden "talked about the Bosniaks." Roberts later said: "[I]f [Gov. Sarah Palin] had said 'Bosniak,' everybody would be making a big deal of it, you know." In fact, Biden correctly referred to certain residents of Bosnia and Herzegovina as Bosniaks. According to the U.S. State Department, as of 2002, the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina consisted of the following ethnic groups: "Bosniak 48.3%, Serb 34.0%, Croat 15.4%, others 2.3%."

Way to go, Cokie, putting yourself in the illustrious company of The Corner, RedState and Powerline. Your family must be so proud.

The Blithering Idiocy Of The DC Establishment

The Village, via Cokie Roberts, gives their very serious assessment of Iraq on ABC's This Week:

STEPHANOPOLOUS: But this is going to be a split in the party. You all (at The Nation) are backing a plan that a lot of Congressional challengers are backing (The Responsible Plan) saying, immediate withdrawal, unconditional...

VANDEN HEUVEL: that's right...

(crosstalk)

VANDEN HEUVEL: There are 42 Congressional challengers...

ROBERTS: But no major Presidential candidates are saying that, because they're sitting there saying look, we've been there, we've seen it, we think it's an irresponsible thing to do.

VANDEN HEUVEL: It is not, but you know what, the responsible thing to do is withdraw.

(you hear Cokie odiously chuckling at this point)

VANDEN HEUVEL: If we withdraw responsibly, the region would be more stable in the long term, America will be restored as a responsible global leader, and there are 42 challengers, you are absolutely right Cokie, who have a responsible plan to withdraw.

ROBERTS: Convincing the electorate of that I think would be very difficult, and I also agree that the notion that Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham you heard this morning putting forward, that Americans would prefer to win, is--

VANDEN HEUVEL: But what is winning? This war is unwinnable, there are no military solutions. And Cokie, Americans are already behind this, 2/3 of Americans believe this war was a mistake to fight. And when Dick Cheney said to ABC's Martha Raddatz last week, "I don't care what Americans think." The contempt, the disdain for Americans and for what this war has done to the military, to our economy, and to our future as a nation. If you care about responsible...

Well, Katrina Vanden Heuvel handled that a bit better than I would have, because I don't think I would have been able to hold down the bile after hearing Duchess Cokie of Versailles blather on about what Americans would prefer. Not that she's likely to have talked to anyone who's had to serve in this war or felt the burdens of this war, of course, but she just feels it in her very sensible and responsible gut.

She doesn't have a clue what the hell she's talking about, and if she's being informed about Iraq by "Sunni, Shi'a, po-tay-to po-tah-to" McCain and his man-servant Huckleberry Graham it'd be a wonder if she could pick the country out on a map. We've got an important week coming up with A Man Called Petraeus and Ryan Crocker testifying before Congress, and if this is the sober analysis we can expect out of that, we're all doomed. Because in point of fact, Iraq is at a major crossroads right now. The Basra offensive was a complete failure and large swaths of the Iraqi Army essentially refused to fight. Now Maliki is basically forming his own militia from the pro-Iranian Badr Brigade, and the intra-Shiite warfare is continuing, with US troops dying inside the Green Zone and at forward operating bases in Baghdad. The political situation is stalemated, tensions are rising between practically all groups, and whatever gains have been made by the surge have vanished. We're going to hear a lot of crap in the next week out of the Administration and their spinners, and robots like Cokie are going to lap it up because "Americans would prefer to win." That's just an ignorant and dismissive remark, and it sadly represents the depth of understanding of the tragedy in Iraq. Of course, Cokie's just repeating what "real Americans" think; that it happens to line up with establishment opinion and helps provide cover for their epic mistake of going along with the initial invasion is just a nice perk.

In the environment of Iraq, leaving 80,000 troops to babysit the Iraqis will do about as much as having 160,000 troops do the same; in other words, nothing at all (Russ Feingold understands this). Until the fundamental question - whether a continued presence in Iraq is making us safer - is answered, we're doing nothing but spinning our wheels. Keeping troops in the region to try and put a lid on violence until George Bush is safely tucked away creates a huge moral hazard where the Iraqis have no responsibility for their actions.

Here, the overriding risk is all-out civil war – whether inter-or-intra ethnic group – or regional war, or both. Our presence mitigates these risks – at least in the short term. Thus, Maliki can take risky actions like raiding Basra or openly turning the army into a wing of Badr, knowing that he and his allies won’t be exposed to the full risk of those actions (civil war) because of the American presence. Similarly, other countries (like Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia) feel less urgency to engage diplomatically (which is itself a “risky” omission) because of the American presence.

If, however, America announced that it would leave Iraq in a year, then the parties involved (both inside and outside Iraq) would suddenly bear more of the consequences of their risky behavior. Accordingly, they would be more motivated to bear down and bang out political deals [...]

This explains why the Kagans’ “Iraq 4-Ever” strategy is actually worse than withdrawal. The Bush/Kagan strategy is simply to keep the maximum number of troops in Iraq as long as possible in the hopes a pony will appear. To maintain political support for the Pony Strategy, they need to peddle worse-case scenarios and paint pictures of genocide and all-out civil war.

I’ll fully concede that such events are possible – anyone who doesn’t is being dishonest. But my point is that our occupation makes them more likely, for the reasons explained above. Specifically, the longer and more indefinitely we stay, the greater the moral hazard we produce. As long as we stay indefinitely, parties will act more recklessly than they otherwise would. These actions, in turn, will have profound, unpredictable, and irreversible consequences.

The plan that Vanden Heuvel was referencing, the Responsible Plan, reflects a significant wing of the Democratic Party that simply is not willing to wait around anymore while the leadership tries to come up with a coherent endgame strategy. Darcy Burner, who was the driving force behind the plan, has actually improved her electoral position as a result. I don't know how that fits in with Duchess Cokie's pronouncements, other than the obvious fact that it doesn't. Well over 50 Congressional challengers have endorsed the plan, understanding that a comprehensive strategy to end the war and repair the broken institutions that enabled this disaster not only makes political sense but is absolutely vital to our national security. Ilan Goldenberg sums up the plan nicely.

For the past two years, Democrats have been offering plan after plan to end the war in Iraq. But this one is different. As opposed to the usual broad language, combined with a laundry list of policy proposals that make up traditional party platforms, the plan has a sharp focus, with a clear strategic logic focused around two fundamental principles. First, the United States must find a way to sensibly end its military mission in Iraq--and use the political, diplomatic, humanitarian, and economic tools at its disposal to mitigate the negative consequences of the war. Second, the Iraq War has done irreparable damage not just to Iraq but to our country, and the time has come to reform our institutions and put the checks and balances in place to ensure that these mistakes are not repeated [...]

Beyond just being good policy, though, the plan exhibits a unique understanding of the legislative branch's role in foreign policy. Too often, candidates running for Congress make very specific proposals about foreign policy that are far outside of their purview. The "Real Security" plan of 2006 was ultimately about the executive branch; it was backed by a 120-page smattering of documents and reports that criticized the Bush Administration and catalogued hundreds of pieces of legislation that would reshape American foreign policy, but were, on the whole, too unwieldy to act as an agenda vehicle.

"A Responsible Plan" would instead serve as the congressional corollary to a Democratic presidency. It doesn't include elements over which Congress has little control, but it does push for 15 pieces of existing legislation, which focus on issues such as improving healthcare for a new generation of veterans and phasing out our reliance on military contractors such as Blackwater. Only the president can end the war in Iraq, but Congress can do its share by focusing on institutional repair and funding the right programs.

This approach is apparent in the most creative part of the document, titled "Preventing Future Iraqs." These policies focus on checking presidential authority and ensuring that Congress can't easily give the president a free hand to go to war. It calls for incorporating war funding into the regular defense budget instead of using "emergency supplementals"; eliminating the president's use of signing statements to alter the substantive meaning of a law passed by Congress; repealing parts of the Military Commissions Act that suspended habeas corpus; and ending the use of wiretapping without a FISA warrant. These are good policies for both Republican and Democratic presidents to abide by.

Without a robust Congressional counterbalance to executive power, we will not be able to stop more Iraqs. Darcy Burner and the dozens of endorsers are not only running to enter Congress but to restore the institution itself.

This Wednesday I'm helping host a low-dollar fundraising event for Darcy, where she will be flanked by two California candidates who have endorsed the plan, Ron Shepston (CA-42) and Mary Pallant (CA-24). If you want to reward and recognize true leadership and courage, join me in Los Angeles on Wednesday night. All the information is at this ActBlue page, and you can donate at the link as well.

All The King's Horses And All The King's Men

I think the central tension that official Washington is feeling about Iraq, as expressed in this recounting by Atrios, is that they all feel that, in their positions as masters of the universe, that surely SOMETHING can be done with regard to Iraq that will wipe out all of their bad predictions and wrong-headed mistakes and send Iraq on the road to stability. That option simply doesn't exist, and only precious few people are willing to admit that. For all his faults, Chuck Hagel is one of them.

SEN. HAGEL: Well, as I’ve said from the beginning, and I wasn’t the only one to say this, the outcome in Iraq will be determined by the Iraqis. It’s not going to be determined by the United States. We can help, we can support, and we have a role. Obviously we have an interest. We are where we are. We’ve got a mess on our hands in Iraq. We have done so much to undermine our own interests and influence in the Middle East, we’re going to have to find some new high ground here [...]

Well, let’s, let’s be honest here. We have a mess now. I mean, who are we kidding? We’ve got a mess now. You’ve just put up on the screen before we started this conversation what the current casualty number is. We have no good options in Iraq now. There are no good options. That’s just a fact of life. So we deal with the facts as they are.

Hagel had to say it twice for it to sink in. This is the entire problem. You have a bunch of obstinate fools in Washington, and I'm not talking about members of the executive branch but the "serious pundit" class who enable this war's continuation, who can't wrap their heads around the simple fact that there's nothing to win, and that we cannot manage any sort of stability in Iraq. It's bad if we leave and it's bad if we don't and it's bad if we take half the troops out and leave the other half in. That's just reality. We're claiming to be staying there to give breathing space to an Iraqi government that doesn't functionally exist, and that is about to be drummed out of office entirely. We claim to be stopping Al Qaeda's safe harbor, when if we would only leave the Iraqis themselves would eliminate Al Qaeda from their country within a year, and indeed they're already doing it.

This all gets back to American exceptionalism, and the belief that we're the greatest country in the world and so we must be able to fix any global problem. If Iraq hasn't totally discredited that belief, I don't know what will. But the serious pundits still cling to the hope that if we just get the right people, if we just get the right about of soldiers, if we only keep our balance on the tightrope we can traverse the Grand Canyon...

Bullshit. There's nothing good left to do, other than make room for all of the refugees we created. America is not omnipotent and it can't bumble around trying to fix everything, especially when it doesn't want to do any of the hard work of actually understanding the problem. America has a good deal of power but it's not unlimited and it's not perfectly adaptable. There simply isn't just SOMETHING that can be done. We fucked up Iraq and now we have to leave. Our responsibility to the Iraqis is outweighed by the certainty that whatever we do in service of that responsibility will make things worse. Get a boat, fill it with refugees and GO. And David Broder and David Ignatius and every conservative gasbag can whine and claim that it's a betrayal, when the true betrayal was getting us involved in the first place.

Harry Reid is going to be working very hard to get some enforceable votes on Iraq, and the White House is clearly frightened, as they called Robert Gates back from a trip to Latin America to try and manage things on Capitol Hill. Washington is 2 years behind the American people on this, and too contempuous of American citizens to think they could understand when something is unwinnable. The truth of the matter is that Washington is too wedded to old-fashioned elitist ideas of America as a shining city on a hill to comtemplate that we can't do something. That reality is why the country's in a sour mood, Cokie Roberts, because idiots like you who enable a failed war won't come to terms with your own vanity.