Leaks v. Releases

I’m not as upset about the allegations that President Bush authorized the release of information that supported his run up to the Iraq War and countered to some degree the argument of Ambassador Joseph Wilson regarding the phony story that Saddam was seeking uranium from Niger. Since I thought the whole run up to the war was phony as hell, why would I be upset about a tempest such as this?

Naturally, almost everybody, including me, expected that a half a dozen canisters of poison gas and two labs with some germs would be found and this would be enough to exonerate Bush on his WMD whopper. Unfortunately for him, the best laid plans of mice and men oft go… It still would have been a rotten war, but at least the proponents would have covered their butts.

With the preventive attack on Iraq I was convinced that we were dealing with a messianic president hell bent on going to war no matter what. To think that administrations and their opponents won’t use every tool, fair or foul, at their disposal to win their points is naive. The only thing the bugs me is the deception of Bush and his crowd that proclaims their goodness, righteousness, and, above all, values at every turn. The only difference between this crowd and every administration that’s gone before is that they’re bigger hypocrites than all of their predecessors put together.

Once you’ve decided to go to war, cherry picking intelligence to support the effort is what governments do, even ours. Really, there are some who think that some of the charges against King George III were stretched a tad; that our sojourn into Mexico in the nineteenth century wasn’t exactly as we’d been led to believe; that McKinley and his Vice President – what was his name? - weren’t beyond hyperbole concerning Spain; that LBJ and his Tonkin incident weren’t totally as stated; and so it went throughout our two hundred years.

In the case of a war you’ve decided is immoral or illegal and that doesn’t have wide or deep support, fruit picking from the other side can be anticipated as well. The Pentagon Papers of the Vietnam come quickly to mind. In this case, Joe Wilson was confident of his opinion on the uranium question and the war as he – and I - saw it was based on at least one false premise, and he wrote his op-ed piece with complete understanding that he was stepping into the line of fire.

That presidential governance in this democracy means you have the power to take executive action without the support of everybody should not surprise us. To martial public opinion almost by definition means that you have to pick and choose which bits of information to emphasize and which to minimize. Wilson and Bush did their things. Naturally, it’s the Scooters of the world who have to fall on their swords. But guys like Cap Weinberger who were a little too aggressive in the past in such capers were taken off the hook by presidents who understood the game. So Scooter will probably not spend too many nights in the gray bar motel.

A separate issue is the outing of Wilson’s wife. So far, no one is alleging that President Bush or Dick Cheney authorized that Ms. Plame be identified as being a covert CIA operative. Naturally, if that were the case, this little embarrassment for the administration would become far more serious and could lead to impeachment. Also, if Mr. Libby is convicted of intentionally releasing Ms. Plame’s name, he will indeed be in serious jeopardy, and he should be.

Many do not realize the seriousness of the outing of Ms. Plame. To us, she was simply a mid to high level bureaucrat working at CIA headquarters when the information was first released in a column by Robert Novak. It is unlikely that such an expose threatens the life of Valerie Plame rather it puts in jeopardy the lives of foreign contacts from whom in the past she extracted information or assistance and, without getting to far off the track, any American agents and other operatives that could somehow be connected with her in her postings.

The Plame affair is a life and death matter and should be pursued to the end by the prosecutor and the Agency.

So until this gets to be more than embarrassment for the president, I’m happy to watch poor Scott McClellan dance and explain again and again the difference between `leaks’ and `releases’.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Incompetence Hell!

Everybody’s jumping on the incompetence of the Bush administration; Iraq, Katrina, Social Security, you name it, they’ve goofed it up. The Democrats are pinning their November hopes on it; the Republicans are saying that President ____ is gone and they’re not responsible for the turds all over the landscape. On and on it goes, and while it’s true that they’re incompetent, it’s not as good as it looks as an issue.

A few days ago, I took Richard Cohen of the Washington Post to task for weaseling his way out the failure in Iraq by blaming the mess on the incompetence thing rather than the hubris that brought us to our present state. Now I see it as a pattern that the Republicans can twist to their elective advantage.

Let’s take a few the issues that have been handled incompetently and see where this can lead. First, Iraq; of course they blew it by failing to send in sufficient troops from the get go. We should have defended the Iraqi antiquities from looters. We should have acknowledged the insurgency sooner. We handled the Baathists badly. On and on, it went; we blew many an issue. But Secretary Rice has found the flaw in the argument and attempted to turn all of these tactical errors – and thousands more - to the advantage of the administration by saying none of these blunders mean anything compared to the strategic home run of dumping Saddam.

Wrong, Condi, wrong! The venture was morally and strategically wrong, a national blunder of the highest order. Our hubris in sending too few troops and all of the other mistakes simply brought the problems to the surface faster. Bottom line; we shouldn’t have attacked. Our outrageous arrogance in this mad adventure is what is killing our troops and draining our treasure; it’s not just the tactical incompetence.

Social Security; the president mocked the third rail of American politics and grasped the hot rod with both hands. He was inflexible and obdurate. Sure, he was incompetent and should have attempted a bi-partisan approach. He listened to no one outside of his inner circle and it shot a lighting bolt through him and his plan.

Katrina; of course Bush’s response was incompetent, but the storm was so devastating that even if he and Brownie had been on the ball, we’d pretty much be facing the situation on the ground as it is today.

And so it is with everything the administration touches, but this administration is already history. The Republicans are shedding ____ and DeLay and all their other sources of embarrassment and are readying to say it was all ____’s fault, but he’s gone and they are still the party of ideas. Right; and I’m running for president on the Republican ticket.

If we let these brown nosers on the Hill who went along with Bush in the roughshod way they’ve run the government for the past five and a half years off by simply shedding the president, we don’t deserve any better. The conservative movement is bankrupt of ideas; the ruling party has become corrupt; they’ve entangled us in the biggest mess to confront the nation in more than a generation. And if we simply go along with this `incompetence thing’, we’re stepping into a mine field.

The Congress must be won be Democrats in ’06, and the Democratic candidate must be a centrist and win in ’08. Certainly, the Democrats remember why they got sent to Limbo and will behave for a little while until we can strive for divided government in ’10. If we can’t punish the bums by throwing them out, how’re they ever going to become competent?

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Gorilla, what Gorilla?

I didn’t see that big silverback in the room before, but by golly he’s here. Does Israel’s lobbying arm in the U.S. wield disproportionate power as compared with other nations? If your answer is yes, do you consider yourself an anti-Semite? If no, are your ready to label those who see it differently as anti-Semitic? Heavy stuff – about eight hundred pounds of gorilla that’s just now being noticed, or at least acknowledged.

Scholars from Harvard and the University of Chicago have written a paper that says that the Israeli lobby is too powerful and damages both the U.S. and Israel. This has led to some but not all leading American Jews to scream anti-Semitism at the authors. One in op-ed in the New York Times quotes others on the sloppy scholarship that went into the effort and the ever reticent and understated Alan Dershowitz asserts that the careers of the alleged scholars were ruined by this baloney.

Are those who criticize Israel and those in America who lobby aggressively on behalf of the state anti-Semites? Obviously, many are, but many more are not. But defenders of the status quo are quick to lash out with the charge. It seems to me that that many of the most aggressive supporters of Israel in this country are not keeping up with events in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where public opinion seems to be shifting in the direction of many of the American critics.

I think we should look beyond the eight hundred pound gorilla to the ten ton T-Rex that looms so large behind it that we cannot see it as anything but a huge gray mass, Evangelical Christianity. While American support of Israel has indeed been great since the state was recognized during the Truman administration and while the Israeli lobby has been extraordinarily effective, a major part of the more aggressive American position in recent decades has not been the sole result of the Israeli foreign office or Washington lobbyists who seek to keep Israel at the fore of American thought but of Evangelical leaders who have an agenda that is far more aggressive than appears to be desired by the government and citizens of Israel.

For years, many political leaders in Israel have recognized that the settlements issue, as constituted, was not in the best interest of the nation, and Ariel Sharon, a leading architect of the program, was in the process of abandoning much of the effort. Demography and the adverse impacts of the occupation were tearing the country apart. The recent national vote appears to support the Sharon initiative.

But among the greatest cheerleaders for the settlements and expanded Israeli boundaries are American Christian fundamentalists who find support for their position in Biblical references and prophesies. Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ spur many American to support aggressive policies for both countries that appear far from the best interest of the parties, at least as seen by those with more secular views.

The Middle East is volatile enough without the constant pressure being applied to the mix by those promoting a religious overlay not sought by the American or Israeli governments or by the vast majority of those living in Israel.

So while the gorilla seems to be coming into focus for many Americans, and while name calling seems to be rising exponentially, let’s cool the rhetoric and look to the T-Rex theocrats looming large behind it.

Who knows what names Wild Bill will be called after this one?

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Borderlands

Last Thursday (March 30, 2006) I took Lou Dobbs of CNN to task over the nativism exhibited in his evening telecasts concerning illegal immigrants. One of my major points in a posting titled Good Night Lou was a point obscured by Dobbs’ rants that there could be a qualitative difference in the immigration across the Mexican border among those crossing into the U.S. This posting is easily accessed by clicking on that title to the left of this missive.

Samuel P. Huntington, a professor at Harvard and an experienced government official, penned The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. This book, an expansion of a paper Huntington had written earlier was, in my judgment, looking more to the problems evident between Islam and its many neighboring civilizations, but a chapter was devoted to what he termed `cleft nations’ that I thought was prescient on our Southwest. I cited this in the posting on Dobbs, and I think it is an extremely important point.

Today, the Strategic Forecasting, Inc.’s newsletter, the Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report, makes the same point in a slightly different manner and I’m copying it for you following my sign off. Stratfor labels this difference as `borderlands' and it's a very clear staement of the problem. Unfortunately, it doesn't copy well, but I do recommend that you try to read it. Many readers of this blog subscribe to this free newsletter, and I recommend it to those who don’t. In any event, I found this particular issue extremely interesting and wanted to share it with you.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

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GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT
04.04.2006

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Borderlands and Immigrants

By George Friedman

The United States has returned to its recurring debate over immigration. This edition of the debate, focused intensely on the question of illegal immigration from Mexico, is phrased in a very traditional way. One side argues that illegal migration from Mexico threatens both American economic interests and security. The other side argues that the United States historically has thrived on immigration, and that this wave of migration is no different. As is frequently the case, the policy debate fails to take fundamental geopolitical realities into account.To begin with, it is absolutely true that the United States has always been an immigrant society. Even the first settlers in the United States -- the American Indian tribes -- were migrants. Certainly, since the first settlements were established, successive waves of immigration have both driven the American economy and terrified those who were already living in the country. When the Scots-Irish began arriving in the late 1700s, the English settlers of all social classes thought that their arrival would place enormous pressure on existing economic processes, as well as bring crime and immorality to the United States.The Scots-Irish were dramatically different culturally, and their arrival certainly generated stress. However, they proved crucial for populating the continent west of the Alleghenies. The Scots-Irish solved a demographic problem that was at the core of the United States: Given its population at that time, there simply were not enough Americans to expand settlements west of the mountains -- and this posed a security threat. If the U.S. population remained clustered in a long, thin line along the Atlantic sea board, with poor lines of communication running north-south, the country would be vulnerable to European, and especially British, attack. The United States had to expand westward, and it lacked the population to do so. The Americans needed the Scots-Irish.Successive waves of immigrants came to the United States over the next 200 years. In each case, they came looking for economic opportunity. In each case, there was massive anxiety that the arrival of these migrants would crowd the job market, driving down wages, and that the heterogeneous cultures would create massive social stress. The Irish immigration of the 1840s, the migrations from eastern and southern Europe in the 1880s -- all triggered the same concerns. Nevertheless, without those waves of immigration, the United States would not have been able to populate the continent, to industrialize or to field the mass armies of the 20th century that established the nation as a global power.Population Density and Economic ReturnsLogic would have it that immigration should undermine the economic well-being of those who already live in the United States. But this logic assumes that there is a zero-sum game. That may be true in Europe or Asia. It has not been true in the United States. The key is population density: The density of the United States, excluding Alaska, is 34 people per square kilometer. By comparison, the population density in the United Kingdom is 247 per square kilometer, 231 in Germany and 337 in Japan. The European Union, taken as a whole, has a population density of 115. If the United States were to equal the United Kingdom in terms of density, it would have a population of about 2 billion people. Even accepting the premise that some parts of the United States are uninhabitable and that the United Kingdom is over-inhabited, the point is that the United States' population is still small relative to available land. That means that it has not come even close to diminishing economic returns. To the extent to which the population-to-land ratio determines productivity -- and this, in our view, is the critical variable -- the United States still can utilize population increases. At a time when population growth from native births is quite low, this means that the United States still can metabolize immigrants. It is, therefore, no accident that over the past 40 years, the United States has absorbed a massive influx of Asian immigrants who have been net producers over time. It's a big country, and much of it is barely inhabited.On this level, the immigration issue poses no significant questions. It is a replay of a debate that has been ongoing since the founding of the country. Those who have predicted social and economic disaster as a result of immigration have been consistently wrong. Those who have predicted growing prosperity have been right. Those who have said that the national character of the United States would change dramatically have been somewhat right; core values have remained in place, but the Anglo-Protestant ethnicity represented at the founding has certainly been transformed. How one feels about this transformation depends on ideology and taste. But the simple fact is this: The United States not only would not have become a trans-continental power without immigration; it would not have industrialized. Masses of immigrants formed the armies of workers that drove industrialism and made the United States into a significant world power. No immigration, no United States.Geography: The Difference With MexicoNow, it would seem at first glance that the current surge of Mexican migration should be understood in this context and, as such, simply welcomed. If immigration is good, then why wouldn't immigration from Mexico be good? Certainly, there is no cultural argument against it; if the United States could assimilate Ukrainian Jews, Sicilians and Pakistanis, there is no self-evident reason why it could not absorb Mexicans. The argument against the Mexican migration would seem on its face to be simply a repeat of old, failed arguments against past migrations.But Mexican migration should not be viewed in the same way as other migrations. When a Ukrainian Jew or a Sicilian or an Indian came to the United States, their arrival represented a sharp geographical event; whatever memories they might have of their birthplace, whatever cultural values they might bring with them, the geographical milieu was being abandoned. And with that, so were the geopolitical consequences of their migration. Sicilians might remember Sicily, they might harbor a cultural commitment to its values and they might even have a sense of residual loyalty to Sicily or to Italy -- but Italy was thousands of miles away. The Italian government could neither control nor exploit the migrant's presence in the United States. Simply put, these immigrants did not represent a geopolitical threat; even if they did not assimilate to American culture -- remaining huddled together in their "little Italys" -- they did not threaten the United States in any way. Their strength was in the country they had left, and that country was far away. That is why, in the end, these immigrants assimilated, or their children did. Without assimilation, they were adrift.
The Mexican situation is different. When a Mexican comes to the United States, there is frequently no geographical split. There is geographical continuity. His roots are just across the land border. Therefore, the entire immigration dynamic shifts. An Italian, a Jew, an Indian can return to his home country, but only with great effort and disruption. A Mexican can and does return with considerable ease. He can, if he chooses, live his life in a perpetual ambiguity.The Borderland BattlegroundThis has nothing to do with Mexicans as a people, but rather with a geographical concept called "borderlands." Traveling through Europe, one will find many borderlands. Alsace-Lorraine is a borderland between Germany and France; the inhabitants are both French and German, and in some ways neither. It also is possible to find Hungarians -- living Hungarian lives -- deep inside Slovakia and Romania. Borderlands can be found throughout the world. They are the places where the borders have shifted, leaving members of one nation stranded on the other side of the frontier. In many cases, these people now hold the citizenship of the countries in which they reside (according to recognized borders), but they think and speak in the language on the other side of the border. The border moved, but their homes didn't. There has been no decisive geographical event; they have not left their homeland. Only the legal abstraction of a border, and the non-abstract presence of a conquering army, has changed their reality. Borderlands sometimes are political flashpoints, when the relative power of the two countries is shifting and one is reclaiming its old territory, as Germany did in 1940, or France in 1918. Sometimes the regions are quiet; the borders that have been imposed remain inviolable, due to the continued power of the conqueror. Sometimes, populations move back and forth in the borderland, as politics and economics shift. Borderlands are everywhere. They are the archaeological remains of history, except that these remains have a tendency to come back to life.The U.S.-Mexican frontier is a borderland. The United States, to all intents and purposes, conquered the region in the period between the Texan revolution (1835-36) and the Mexican-American war (1846-48). As a result of the war, the border moved and areas that had been Mexican territory became part of the United States. There was little ethnic cleansing. American citizens settled into the territory in increasing numbers over time, but the extant Mexican culture remained in place. The border was a political dividing line but was never a physical division; the area north of the border retained a certain Mexican presence, while the area south of the border became heavily influenced by American culture. The economic patterns that tied the area north of the Rio Grande to the area south of it did not disappear. At times they atrophied; at times they intensified; but the links were always there, and neither Washington nor Mexico City objected. It was the natural characteristic of the borderland.It was not inevitable that the borderland would be held by the United States. Anyone looking at North America in 1800 might have bet that Mexico, not the United States, would be the dominant power of the continent. Why that didn't turn out to be the case is a long story, but by 1846, the Mexicans had lost direct control of the borderland. They have not regained it since. But that does not mean that the borderland is unambiguously American -- and it does not mean that, over the next couple of hundred years, should Washington's power weaken and Mexico City's increase, the borders might not shift once again. How many times, after all, have the Franco-German borders shifted? For the moment, however, Washington is enormously more powerful than Mexico City, so the borders will stay where they are.The Heart of the MatterWe are in a period, as happens with borderlands, when major population shifts are under way. This should not be understood as immigration. Or more precisely, these shifts should not be understood as immigration in the same sense that we talk about immigration from, say, Brazil, where the geographical relationship between migrant and home country is ruptured. The immigration from Mexico to the United States is a regional migration within a borderland between two powers -- powers that have drawn a border based on military and political history, and in which two very different populations intermingle. Right now, the United States is economically dynamic relative to Mexico. Therefore, Mexicans tend to migrate northward, across the political border, within the geographical definition of the borderland. The map declares a border. Culture and history, however, take a different view.The immigration debate in the U.S. Congress, which conflates Asian immigrations with Mexican immigrations, is mixing apples and oranges. Chinese immigration is part of the process of populating the United States -- a process that has been occurring since the founding of the Republic. Mexican immigration is, to borrow a term from physics, the Brownian motion of the borderland. This process is nearly as old as the Republic, but there is a crucial difference: It is not about populating the continent nearly as much as it is about the dynamics of the borderland.One way to lose control of a borderland is by losing control of its population. In general, most Mexicans cross the border for strictly economic reasons. Some wish to settle in the United States, some wish to assimilate. Others intend to be here temporarily. Some intend to cross the border for economic reasons -- to work -- and remain Mexicans in the full sense of the word. Now, so long as this migration remains economic and cultural, there is little concern for the United States. But when this last class of migrants crosses the border with political aspirations, such as the recovery of lost Mexican territories from the United States, that is the danger point.Americans went to Texas in the 1820s. They entered the borderland. They then decided to make a political claim against Mexico, demanding a redefinition of the formal borders between Mexico and the United States. In other words, they came to make money and stayed to make a revolution. There is little evidence -- flag-waving notwithstanding -- that there is any practical move afoot now to reverse the American conquest of Mexican territories. Nevertheless, that is the danger with all borderlands: that those on the "wrong" side of the border will take action to move the border back. For the United States, this makes the question of Mexican immigration within the borderland different from that of Mexican immigration to places well removed from it. In fact, it makes the issue of Mexican migration different from all other immigrations to the United States. The current congressional debate is about "immigration" as a whole, but that makes little sense. It needs to be about three different questions: 1. Immigration from other parts of the world to the United States2. Immigration from Mexico to areas well removed from the southern border region3. Immigration from Mexico to areas within the borderlands that were created by the U.S. conquests Treating these three issues as if they were the same thing confuses matters. The issue is not immigration in general, nor even Mexican immigration. It is about the borderland and its future. The question of legal and illegal immigration and various solutions to the problems must be addressed in this context.
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Wrong, Richard, Wrong

Richard Cohen of the Washington Post is often – no, almost always - on the same beam as me, and I have never challenged any of his assumptions until today. As regular readers of this blog know, Richard’s columns are often cited, always glowingly. But in his column in today’s paper I’m convinced that he has built his argument on a false premise, namely that the United States might have succeeded in Iraq but for the incompetence of the Bush Administration. Richard is big and brave enough to say that he was wrong on buying into the Iraq adventure but, again, for the wrong reason, the incompetence thing. This is not to say that Bush was competent in this social and military experiment, rather that incompetence was but a secondary problem in the sad state in which we find ourselves.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/03/AR2006040301609.html?referrer=emailarticle


While Richard recognizes that the generals who counseled we could not attain our objectives with the number of troops being assembled and that a force of far greater magnitude would be required to occupy and pacify the country after the Saddam regime was toppled were right, it is there that the columnist makes his mistake. It was not the incompetence of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, et al that drove the Hummer off the cliff; instead, it was the hubris of those same people who believed that we could enter into the heart of Islamic civilization, Iraq, and expect to make that the linchpin of our success in the war on terror.

By diverting our attention from Afghanistan where we were engaged in overthrowing the Taliban and hunting down Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, a war in which we were supported by almost the entire civilized world, by cooking the intelligence to the show that Iraq was a threat to us and in cahoots with those who had attacked us on 9/11, and by believing that we could reshape Islam and gain strategic advantage over the Persian Gulf that we went wrong.

The neocons provided the intellectual muscle for this idea, and it was Cheney, Rumsfeld and the Pentagon gurus who believed that our military would show to better advantage in Iraq. Their salesmanship to the true believer, George W. Bush, set the nation into the abyss that Richard describes so well.

Turning Richard’s argument around, it is my view that if we had instituted a draft and enlarged the military beyond the numbers ever dreamed of by the generals and if we had sent a force even greater than that suggested by former Army Chief of Staff Eric K. Shinseki that we would have ultimately wound up pretty much where we are today. Our troops would have to come home someday and spending at a rate double the disabling figure that we expend today would make withdrawal an even greater imperative than we now face. And with withdrawal would come the political situation with all its sectarian and tribal strife similar to that we lament at present.

So instead of fighting al Qaeda and those governments like the Taliban that directly supported it, we went for broke and decided that we could transform the world and enhance our strategic position in the Middle East and the world – and we failed. Not just incompetence, Richard, it was the hubris that did us in.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Shattering the coalition

George W. Bush is spending what remains of his political capital on the issue of illegal immigration. Since his hand was forced some time ago, he has taken the reasonable position that we must seal our borders, legally admit as many of all kinds of workers as our economy requires to keep the engine running at a reasonable speed without hurting American citizens, and providing some sort of a `guest worker’ program for the ten or more million illegal aliens already in the country. To me this is a sensible and good approach to the situation.

Large segments of the Republicans coalition find this position by President ____ to be an anathema. But a smaller number have reached beyond party core and reached out to Democrats and independents in an effort to find an equitable solution. The Senate Judiciary Committee led by Senators Specter, McCain and Kennedy seems to be settling in on an approach similar to the president’s.

Majority Leader, Senator Bill Frist is threatening a showdown on the floor of the Senate in support of far more draconian measures that are in accord with an onerous bill that has already passed the House. Since the Republicans in the House have the votes to block any conference committee result that includes anything that could be interpreted as amnesty, the likely bottom line result is that no immigration legislation will be enacted this election year.

My purpose today is to compare President Bush quite favorably with President Lyndon Johnson whose heroic action on civil rights made America a better place then and that created a legal legacy that makes it better today. Johnson was a master at extruding the legislation that he wanted from the Congress. His hero was Franklin Roosevelt and, like FDR, LBJ forced the action on the Hill. Johnson might have been even better a getting his way than Roosevelt.

As has been described far better by others, Johnson and Martin Luther King did a great dance over civil rights and Johnson ultimately did what he thought was right and supported sweeping changes for the country. Because of this, Blacks – and all others outside the political mainstream because of race, color, religion, ethnicity, sex and any other political disability – were afforded the protections that we now take for granted.

But there was a down side for Johnson. He knew as he moved on civil rights that he was doing what should be done, but he knew too that the great Democratic coalition that had been cobbled together by Roosevelt a generation earlier would be shattered. Johnson knew full well that his aggressive policies would result in the diminution of the Democrat Party for the rest of the twentieth century, especially in the South. As an American, he acted in the best interest of the country, but as a loyal Democrat he was well aware that he was undermining the party that he loved and that had brought him to the pinnacle of political power.

Today, the condition of the ruling Republican coalition is horrible. Power has corrupted it. Incompetence has clogged its arteries. And the segments have taken to fighting among themselves and to undermining President ____ whom they no longer see in the picture.

But Mr. Bush is taking a principled stand on immigration, and his alliance with moderate Republican and Democrats senators on the immigration question will finish off the ruling coalition as we’ve known it for a dozen years and as it has been building since Barry Goldwater ran against Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Regardless of whether the president and the senators are successful in getting an immigration act, the nativist parts of the coalition will forever hate _____ _ ____ and after a generation and half the Democrats, including many in the South will return to power.

As Vietnam destroyed Johnson so the Iraq War has ruined George W. Bush’s presidency, but he can redeem himself partially in history by fighting hard for the immigration policy that he has been championing.

This may well assure the loss of power for his party, but is the right thing. For this, I salute the president.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Good Night, Lou

Lou Dobbs of CNN has shared dinnertime with me – via TV - for several years. I found him fearless in the face of presidential double speak on issues such as free trade, port security, and illegal immigration, but over the past months I’ve found myself disagreeing with him more and more on the question of immigration.

First, he took on the Catholic Church for preaching that Good Samaritans should continue to help the poor and others in need despite their immigration status which is unlawful under the bill that has passed the House of Representatives. And he has twisted Cardinal Mahoney’s (the Archbishop of Los Angeles) statements to the point that the prelate appeared to be advocating open borders with Mexico – something that I have never seen alleged elsewhere.

Now Mr. Dobbs is resurrecting Theodore Roosevelt to admonish all immigrants – past and present - for cultural and political support of their former homelands. The old TR canard of no hyphenated Americans may have had relevance a hundred years ago but it doesn't in today’s situation. For the last sixty years, we have encouraged national origin and ethnic pride without serious damage to our way of life. While I find the student demonstrations in Los Angeles disturbing with the featured waving of Mexican flags, youths must be given some leeway in expression – even if it is damaging to their own cause

While my own ties to Ireland are non-existent, it is with joy that I hoist a beer (or two or three)and shout `Erin go braugh’ on St. Patrick’s Day. My oath of `Ireland Forever’ is heartfelt but carries no intent of support for the Irish nation, government or people. With multi-ethnic friends with equal – or even greater – feelings toward Lithuania, Quebec, Japan, Lebanon, Scotland, Italy, Israel, and dozens of other lands and regions, I found myself forced to turn off the TV in the face of the nativism exhibited by Lou.

This is not to say that I’m comfortable with today’s situation. I’m convinced that we must seal our borders from illegal immigration, open ourselves up to much speedier inflow of legals, and to deal humanely with those illegals here now. I find the proposals by Senators McCain and Kennedy a reasonable starting point. But we must defend the borders more aggressively.

I am also fearful that we are in danger of becoming a `cleft nation’ as defined by Samuel P. Huntington in his book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. If Mr. Dobbs shares this concern that the states that were part of the old Spanish Empire are in danger of reverting in culture and loyalty to Mexico, he should state his fears directly and not lash out at illegal immigrants everywhere with code words.

As I had to admit in the case of President ____, I voted for him the first time and was inspired by his initial responses to 9/11. Only when he shifted his attention from al Qaeda and Afghanistan and shifted his focus to Iraq did I break with him - but I have a great deal more to argue with since the attack on Iraq. So it is with Dobbs, initially I found his evening broadcast to be very refreshing, but his nativistic embrace of the immigration issue has driven me away. Good night, Lou.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

We're On Our Way

Doesn’t it give you a warm fuzzy feeling that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked the Russian Foreign Minister to look into the accusation that the Ruskies had a mole in the U.S. Southern Command who relayed all of our tactics during the Shock and Awe period right into Saddam’s ear? Well that’s the way to the bottom of that nasty little story. And if Russia tattles on itself, good ol’ Vlad Putin will be sorry and ashamed.

It’s nice to know that the administration of President _____ _ ____ that prides itself on defending the nation is outraged by the possibility that Russia has amole in our midst. It would be awful to think that we’d take a penetration of the heart of our war machine lying down. Secretary Rice who’s four heartbeats from the presidency and is oft mentioned as a possible GOP candidate to succeed Mr. ____ certainly has me convinced of her passion to out that damn spot.

And thank goodness that President ____ heard the clamor and shook up the White House. Andy Card walked the plank for the team. He’s truly a decent sort and I wish him well. Sadly, he’s an innocent and thinks he’s going to be ____’s friend now that he’s no longer staff and is blowing bubbles for him. Andy doesn’t realize that just because ____ plays a regular guy on TV that at heart he’s still an elite snob from Connecticut and Yale and really doesn’t want to spend time at the barbie chawin’ dawgs an’ suckin’ Buds with poor boys from Holbrook, MA. He's just a tad more comfortable hangin' with the likes of those boys from Enron.

The big surprise was Andy’s replacement. Josh Bolten while an insider and, as Democrats are already chanting, the author of this year’s $350 billion deficit is apparently qualified for the job. Wild Bill was taking bets on Harriet Miers since she hasn’t been rewarded for playing a constitutional scholar on the long running soap opera, All My Cronies.

Remember, while everybody hates the Congress everyone loves their own rep, so keep in mind that we’re not just firing these Republican ____ brown nosers, we’re starting them on the fast track on K Street where they’ll really be able to feed at the trough.

Gotta go! I’m playing a nurse at home in hopes of getting a spot on the communications staff on `Cronies’. Me an’ Andy, dreamin’ large.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

And the answer is:

Who was George Mason? Nobody knew two weeks ago but now the word has spread across the land. I won’t bore you with stuff about the real guy; nobody cares that without George our constitutional system of government which is the envy of much of the world might be quite different. He’s the fellow who could not in good conscience support the great document because in it’s original state it failed to provide the protections he had championed all his adult life and which he authored as the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Based on his drive and work, the Bill of Rights came into being in the form we know it.

George Mason is now the answer to an even greater trivia question. The question is: what university was represented by the best college basketball team of all time? You scoff? The question wasn’t which was the greatest? Nor was it which had the most talented players? No, George Mason University’s basketball team which is headed for the final four in Indianapolis this week is simply the best team ever, far greater than the sum of its parts. It’s not the tallest or close to the best by position. Each team that it faced in this improbable run through the NCAA tournament had faster, taller, more talented players, but none of them played with the precision team work, dedication, and heart of the Patriots.

Knocking off Michigan State, North Carolina, Wichita State and UConn simply could not have happened, but it did. And now the conquerors of these high powered programs move on with a chance – still outside – of becoming national champions. This is a great tribute to the coach and players on this wonderful team, clearly the little engine that could.

Never heard of George Mason University? You have now and you will again. It’s the largest college in Virginia and it is gearing up to challenge the more senior members of the higher education clique in the Commonwealth. Most of you know of the great reputations of the College of William and Mary, The University of Virginia, and Virginia Tech, academic and research powerhouses all. But Mason that began as simply a branch of The University (of Virginia) didn’t become an independent school until the early 1970s.

Its professors have won two Nobel prizes and it has recruited several other Nobel laureates to the faculty. The president and governing board are committed to making it a major research university on a par with the University of Maryland, Carnegie Mellon, Virginia Tech and other world class institutions, and as with the basketball team, don’t sell this engine's effort short

Disclaimer: in addition to being a neighbor to the school – it’s right up the road from me, I’m the proud Dad of a GMU Ph.D. in economics – one of the truly outstanding programs at the university.

Never heard of George Mason or his University? You won’t be able to say that again.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Hail and Farewell, President ____

I came up for air this morning. My little bit of contractual business on my new novel, Murphy’s War, is finished and my wife, champ that she is, came through her medical ordeal extremely well, if not without great discomfort. Still, I will be unable to write my daily dollop of medicine for the readers of this ethereal rag for another week or so. While I’m a hell of a novelist, I love being a polemicist and can’t wait to get back at this.

Let’s see, when last we passed in the night, the Republican coalition was fraying at the edges as the major member parties were turning on each other. President ____ was the subject of intra-party attacks and the GOP was doing its damnedest to forget ____ and to set itself up once again as the party ready defend us from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

In just those few short weeks much has changed. The knock down drag out fighting among Republicans has spread like a wildfire in a Santa Ana wind. No longer content with blaming the other major members of the cabal and denouncing President____, each segment is now acting like a gut shot hyena and is devouring its own intestines.

A major rift has appeared among the Neoconservatives with Francis Fukuyama – a major player and an initial supporter of the Iraq War – now saying the Neocons didn’t follow their own precepts and is in a war of words with folks like the Kristols and Charles Krauthammer. Goodness gracious, how these intellectual heavyweights can parse; they’re wonders to behold. No wonder that poor ____ bought into their sophistry.

The Christian right is splitting over issues as diverse as the war, global climate change, and immigration and many now find President ____ an untrustworthy person. Can you believe it?

But the bottom line is that the Republicans on the Hill must be fired. They bought into the ____ baloney and lashed the wimpy Democrats – at least the wimpiest of them - into going along with this war. I won’t bore you with there were no WMDs found and that Saddam had no connection with al Qaeda. Today’s New York Times (Monday, March 27, 2006) has an article describing a secret British memo detailing the prewar maneuverings of Prime Minister Tony Blair and President ______ ____. Reading it, there can be little doubt that the pre-invasion intelligence was being cooked in a super hot pre-heated oven.

Remember, the Republican coalition was waving the flags and beating the drums for this fiasco and they’ve got to be taken to the wood shed in November and again in 2008.

So just because they’ve forgotten their kow-towing and brown nosing of President ____, it doesn’t mean that we should. Remember, be strong, you’re not bringing your buddy home to Kansas you’re starting him on a new career on K Street.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

See You at the Chapter 11 Hearing

Ciao! I have to take leave. Contractual obligations relating to getting my new novel, Murphy’s War, into print will occupy me for the next few weeks. Shortly after that, non-life threatening medical problems impacting a dear one will place a call on my time and service, and I’m sure that any of you would respond in the same way.

All will be well during this short sabbatical. Since this electronic rag first appeared in August 2004, much has changed in the political landscape that impelled this railing against the present administration and its lackeys in the Republican controlled Congress. While pleased that well over 600 readers check in from time to time, I won’t claim credit for more than a smidgeon of that change. Obviously, most of you are like minded and tune in only as part of choir practice.

The height of my frustration was focused on President Bush’s Second Inaugural Address and the weeks that followed. I was extremely upset that he took his narrow margin of victory in the November 2004 election as a mandate for anything that he’d even mentioned during the campaign – and before. The course in Iraq would not be changed. The people had spoken on the need for a one hundred and eighty degree change in the Social Security system, etcetera, and etcetera. He had political capital and was intent on spending it.

Today, as the president meets daily with his bankruptcy lawyers concerning his Political Chapter 11 filing, and those of us whose hair was on fire in early 2005 relax and observe the leaders of the Executive and Legislative Branches and their ever loyal supporters feed on each others’ entrails, life is better. The Republicans in the House overwhelmingly stuck their tongues out at George over the ports deal while the pres lobbed grenades at those same hyenas on the Hill for failing to fully fund the levees in New Orleans.

My buddy John Merck could barely control his glee at the Dana Milbank article in yesterday’s Washington Post in which a one way food fight between conservatives at the Cato Institute and the absent George W. Bush slobbered on endlessly. Read it for yourselves, but please wear slickers and have many napkins at the ready:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030701403.html?referrer=emailarticle

Let’s get real; George has been telling the American people that he’s the guy defending them against the terrorists all by his lonesome. In the meantime, his sycophantic Republican leaders on the Hill who thought he meant them too when he took his bows on national security found out differently when the ports deal hit the street and the public felt more than a little anxious. The party folks sought a little executive protection, but George responded with the usual, “Trust me; I’ve got it covered.” Not to dwell on his Chapter 11 brief, but for the first time the boys and girls from the red states rejected his credit application.

The president has faced us for last time, but a lot of those folks on the Hill don’t feel fully vested and a few of them are more than a little insecure over their prospects on K Street, especially if the government opens under new management, so they began to munch on George’s intestines and intimated that he’s not really looking out for us.

Back at the five sided funny farm across the river, Don Rumsfeld’s making a strong point on Iraq. The media has blown out of proportion the whole series of incidents since the dome was blown off of the Holy Mosque and things are not nearly as bad as CNN and the liberal press would have you believe. Now Don, the matinee idol of the Shock and Awe period, has suffered some credibility problems of his own since the president declared, “Mission Accomplished,” and this latest assertion puts us between a rock and hard place: who’re we gonna believe: Don or our own lyin’ eyes?

In any event, it’s time for me to sign off for about a month, but there’s more than enough to keep you entertained as the fat cats devour each other in the Washington Coliseum.

“Good night and good luck.”

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Impeach Bush - I think not

Readers of these musings are bombarding me with calls to blog for George Bush’s head. “Impeach Bush,” is becoming louder background noise as his poll numbers head for the range of sub zero frigidity. A number of my independent, moderate and libertarian friends indicate that they are facing this increasing buzz as well.

I hope that I’ve established my anti-Bush bona fides sufficiently that my readers do not think I’m going soft, but the president’s done nothing that I’m aware of to warrant impeachment.

Harold Meyerson took on the subject in a column in today’s Washington Post, and his well stated views go directly to the heart of why we can expect to watch George satirized by comics for another three years. He has committed no high crimes or misdemeanors. Here’s a link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030701200.html?referrer=emailarticle

Failure, stupidity, lack of comity, rigidity, and looking at the world through rose colored glasses are not high crimes. Incompetence in policy execution is may be maladministration but it ain’t a misdemeanor. Looking like a deer in the headlights plays well on late night monologues and may be funny, even hilarious, but it’s constitutional. “No one could have anticipated…” may not be true and might even be a lie, but after a failure to convict his predecessor for telling whoppers while under oath leads me to conclude that there’s nothing there to call upon The Donald to bark, “You’re fired!” at our leader.

Even the disaster in Iraq, while a calamity for the nation, contains no seeds for changing horses in midstream. Favoring big business to the point of being tone deaf to the plight of poor Blacks in New Orleans or the nation’s seniors as they wend their ways through the ridiculously rococo regulations of Medicare, Part D, means nothing when it comes to bringing the president to the well of the House for an accounting.

I hate to say it (no I don’t) but the answer lies in rising up in the next two federal elections and throwing the bums out. Let’s make sure that my preaching – and that of thousands of others - for divided government becomes so ingrained in the electorate that, except in times of extraordinary national emergency like the Great Depression, we never again invest power over both chambers of congress and the White House to the same party at the same time.

The Republicans were corrupted by their power over the past five years just like their Democratic counterparts were in similar circumstances in the past.

There’s but one solution: make your poor congressman rich. Elect somebody else and send your favorite incumbent to riches beyond his dreams of avarice on K Street.

Oh, and a final tip to make you feel better two ways: buy stock in companies producing antacids! Why should your representative be the only one getting rich?

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Never Mind

While it won’t be confirmed until the species is extinct, there is a rampant rumor that Wild Bill, his readers, and all of the other homo-sapiens are going to die. This regrettable, unproven, yet persistent hypothesis has been circulating for some time, but journalists - health journalists - and the biomedical industry are working feverishly to put an end to the canard.

Wild Bill, like many well past the age of Medicare entitlement, has with the passage of time come to consider the possible impact of the axiom, much like the fabled condemned man climbing the gallows steps is thought to be able to focus on his short term prospects. Over the years, Bill, like so many Americans, has obsessed on how to postpone the need for such consideration to a more opportune time.

Bill jogged for years and now walks to the point of breathing like a sex obsessed teenager. He gets seven hours of sleep and stretches his aging connective tissue semi regularly. He supplements a halfway decent diet with multiple vitamins and a heavy dose of vitamin C, and… Well, you get the picture; Bill is doing his damnedest to make a liar of those who insist he’s mortal.

Among the health habits picked up over the years is an inability to ignore all of the health information in every newspaper and magazine that comes to his attention. For instance, each Tuesday, Bill reads the Health Section of the Washington Post line by line and article by article. In recent months, Bill’s natural skepticism of everything except longevity education has crept even into the area of vital statistics.

Can you imagine that low fat foods really don’t do much for your long term prospects? And after eating all that high priced cardboard for decades, can you believe it? Glucosamine, which has been working wonders on the aching joints of Bill’s life partner, turns out to be but a placebo. Running your buns off for twenty miles a week is now shown to be not a lot better for your heart than walking thirty minutes several days a week, and it’s a lot tougher on the knees. And on and on it goes.

But today’s Health Section in the Post put an end to all that obsessing. There is an article – rather a book review or analysis – that shows the way to live to be a hundred years old. It’s not the first such book and article to cover this ground, and there was nothing new in it, but it is the last such piece that will focus the mind of Bill.

The bottom line – really there are fifty bottom lines - for increasing the odds of surviving past the century mark includes: eating your veggies, fruits and nuts, stay away from eating too many cows – especially overweight ones, don’t you dare go back to the fridge for another cold one, and remember what happened to the Marlboro Man. With the exception of resisting return trips to the cooler, so far it’s not too onerous.

But then the going gets tough. Bill must move from one of the world’s nuclear bulls’ eyes, Washington, DC, stop his worrisome and aggravated blogging about the incompetence of George W. Bush, and move to a tranquil non-strategic Greek isle fishing village and take up dancing and martial arts.

Maybe all this all still works for you, but for Bill as Rosanne Rosanna Danna would say, “Never mind.”

Blog on!

Wild Bill

The Die is Cast

As the allies planned the invasion of Europe in the spring of 1944, the most important actor in the preparations was General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in the West. After many discussions, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill agreed that Ike was the man for the job.

The planning for the invasion was done over many months, and as June 1944 approached, preparations neared completion. Everything that could be conceived of by the minds of military strategists and logisticians was built into the process, and, as the days dwindled, Ike was satisfied that all that could be done had been completed.

In the days prior to the ideal tides for a landing in Normandy approached, foul weather intervened and the possibility arose that the entire invasion might have to be postponed for two weeks, a horrible prospect. But the boats and ships were loaded and the guns prepared. Allied soldiers took their places aboard ships in English harbors. Would the signal to attack come?

Eisenhower was the man who would decide. The best weather experts in the allied forces were consulted, and they suggested that it was possible that a minor break in the storm pounding the French coast might occur and that the winds and rain might abate sufficiently for the invasion to take place. The eyes of the staff, all of the subordinate commanders who would lead their units into battle, and all the naval and air support groups were focused on one man, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the most powerful man in the world at that moment.

After much deliberation and soul searching, Ike decided; the invasion of the European Continent would take place on the morning of June 6, 1944. The most crucial decision ever made by a commander in World War II had been made. In that instant, Eisenhower went from being the most powerful man in the world to an anxious bystander. It would be months before he would be called again to make earth shattering decisions.

In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush assumed a similar position in world affairs as that of General Eisenhower in 1944. He ordered that plans for the invasion of Iraq to begin. He sought and received pledges of military aid from a coalition of nations.

The build up to the attack was no secret nor was there a paucity of advice, much of it public. The U.S. Army Chief of Staff testified before Congress that a force of a magnitude larger than being assembled would be required to satisfactorily occupy the country. Leaders of many nations protested the proposed war as morally wrong and legally suspect. A minority of Americans, but still a huge number, opposed the war for a wide variety of reasons. But the president sold most Americans, much of the media, and a majority of both Houses of Congress on the need to topple the Iraqi government.

At the moment of decision to invade Iraq, George W. Bush was the single most important leader in the world and certainly the most powerful person on the planet. While the vast majority of nations in Europe, old Europe, our oldest allies almost begged America not to attack, and while a huge number of Americans – admittedly a minority – pleaded that Iraq did not pose a threat to the United States, the president pondered and made his decision. He unleashed the forces of the coalition into Iraq.

The decision by General Eisenhower was one that had to be made sooner or later if the war was to terminate as the allies had agreed. When he made the determination to invade, he delegated his power and the rest is history.

When President George Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, he delegated his power to an extraordinary military coalition and within weeks, for all the world it looked is if success had been achieved. But it was not to be nearly as easy as it appeared. Everything to win the war had been perfectly planned, but little thought and scant resources had been given to the occupation and the aftermath.

Franklin Roosevelt committed the nation to destroying the Axis powers. A grand coalition was assembled and total war, including asking the citizens of all the nations of the allies for great sacrifice, was prepared for and waged. The war would be fought and the allies would occupy the losing nations for as long as it took to assure a lasting peace. With sound advice, FDR delegated his authority to Eisenhower to make the fateful decision upon which victory hung and the war would be waged to the finish.

Through bad advice, poor intelligence, and poor use of staff, the United States believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that it threatened America and its allies, that it was cooperating against us with those who had attacked us on 9/11, that the Iraqi people would welcome us as liberators, that democracy could be imposed on the three major and many minor tribal and sectarian groups, that we had sufficient forces to occupy the newly freed nation, and that we would be out of there in relatively short order.

Ike’s decision was essential. The nation’s resources – blood and treasure – were cast in Normandy and the rest is history. When I walk in the Roosevelt Memorial and the World War II Memorial and read the words of FDR and Ike, I give thanks for their having been. Plans are under way for a personal memorial to President Eisenhower, and I hope I live long enough to see it completed.

President Bush has not yet won his great wager of soldiers, marines, flyers, their equipment, and the national prestige. I do not think he will. I hope that I am wrong.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

The Golden Rule and Natural Law

Lou Dobbs, CNN’s bad boy on Globalization, the Dubai ports deal, and illegal immigration, often rubs me wrong even though I watch his diatribe most evenings. The issue that is sticking in my craw today is his accusation that the Catholic Church – in the person of Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles – is preaching disobedience to proposed legislation in Washington that is intended to stop the illegal breaching of our borders.

The draft legislation, among its provisions as it wends its way through the Capitol, would make it a crime to assist a known illegal alien in any way. I heard Cardinal Mahoney discourse on the subject and came to an entirely different conclusion from the telecaster’s. Lou is chewing out the Cardinal for opposing illegal immigration. I, on the other hand, heard the Archbishop saying that he could not support legislation that would make it a crime to assist any person in distress regardless of his or her immigration status.

I’ve been watching Dobbs long enough to know when he is demagoging a subject, and he is doing a dance on this one equal to any of his favorites. The Cardinal may or may not oppose closing the border; I haven’t heard his views on the matter. His message to his flock was clear, however; when the sick, hungry, homeless and downtrodden appear at your door, to be a good Catholic, Christian, or human being, you must offer help.

Any law that would prohibit aiding or succoring those in human need can be – even should be – disobeyed. Civil disobedience and natural law trump such draconian nativist provisions under consideration.

That the Congress believes that the borders of the nation should be strengthened gets no objection here. From all that I can see it is possible for terrorists and law breakers of all kinds to have easy access to this country, and we should be checking illegal immigration. Obviously, the cliché of being a nation of immigrants is true, and we should be welcoming as many newcomers as are needed by our great economic engine, keeping in mind the needs of the citizens.

But Cardinal Mahoney is right; anyone must be able to help a person in need who appears before them without regard to citizenship, known or not by the potential Good Samaritan. Anyone acting in imitation of the life of Christ in implementing the Golden Rule has obeyed a higher law. The Congress should take heed of what the good shepherd is preaching. So should Lou Dobbs.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Nativists

Dana Milbank’s column in today’s Washington Post compares the apples and oranges issues being opposed to illegal immigration and the transfer of ports management to a Dubai owned firm and comes up with a whopper; members of congress and citizens for stronger measures on immigration and against the UAE deal are nativists. Having spent my entire adult life on what I consider the side of immigrants and the last several years worrying about port security, I resent being lumped with nativists.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/02/AR2006030201702.html?referrer=emailarticle

While one may be sympathetic to immigrants and in many cases to even employers who hire them, surely one can be for controlling the borders of the country and for severe restrictions on guest worker and amnesty programs without being racist or nativist. Mr. Milbank’s knee jerk liberal thrust to the gut that those in favor of any strengthening of borders and restricting illegal entry are nativists is grossly unfair.

Without regard to the merits of the security issues raised in the Dubai ports deal, many members of congress and thousands of citizens – including me - have been worried sick since 9/11 about the vulnerability of our ports to terrorist attack. Both the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security have commented on such vulnerability and have moved within their limited resources in the area to rectify the situation. Only in the last days have many learned that communist China has a stake in port management on our West Coast. Now we know that transfer of responsibility for ports management from a private British firm to a state owned company from the UAE.

As stated by the administration, the UAE may well be a strong ally on the war on terror and a valued partner in the Middle East, but there are many legitimate questions that have not been aired, and to have Mr. Milbank label anyone who poses them labeled a nativist certainly call for an apology from the columnist.

The UAE does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. The UAE was one of the very few nations that recognized the Taliban in Afghanistan. While this was prior to 9/11, are there still some out there who remember the horrible policies of that regime even before the attack? The UAE recognizes Hamas, an organization labeled by our own government as a terrorist organization. Did not the president himself set the national course with regard to governments with these characteristics? It went something like: you’re with us or against us.

I am not an admirer of Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa or of Congressman Duncan Hunter of California who Mr. Milbank singled out for special identification as nativists, far from it. But I think that Mr. Milbank’s next effort should make mention of his intemperate charges.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Medieval Philosphy 101

Goodbye Dubai and farewell Frist. At the end of the 45 day review, cooler heads are likely to prevail and, for the good of all parties, this ports operations deal will sink into the massive national sink hole that is swallowing all things Bush. And by flip flopping on the issue, Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist with a perfect swan dive has sent his presidential aspirations into that same bottomless pit

The actual merits of the ports deal are inconsequential. The Republicans outside the White House moat and away from the Majority Leader’s radioactive cave in the Capitol instantly sensed that ignoring this deal would cede the national security and defense leadership card to the other side. Adept at reading polls even if the White House is totally blind, astute Republicans saw that jettisoning the fast sinking Bush, Cheney, and Frist would serve them better in November than playing along with the charade.

The Republican base is cracking and crumbling faster than an awkward Humpty Dumpty landing, and the long time party enmity for all things Bush is resurfacing. The realpolitik foreign policy types broke with the president when he went into Iraq and only their fear of his clout kept them relatively quiet these past three years. Bret Scowcroft and James Baker did their best to save him, but he was completely in the thrall of the neocons and they were sent on their unhappy ways.

The fiscal conservatives have been grumbling for years as the deficits ballooned, and the Libertarians have been frothing over the NSA spying and The Patriot Act. So George is left with the neocons and the Evangelicals. And deep in their hearts, the Republicans know that they’ve been conned by the neos who are really Democrats dressed up in elephant costumes and by making hay with the Evangelicals who are intent on selling Creationism which looks more like a loser every day.

I’ve enjoyed running errands since the ports deal surfaced. While in college so long ago, I was taken with Medieval history and culture, and now listening to the right wing pundits on talk radio brought me back to the days of: how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? I don’t know how many times I heard that the deal with the UAE company is a direct violation of the Bush Doctrine that states that we will not deal with governments that recognize terrorists, and Dubai supports Hamas and everything else Bush said he stood for.

In the end the deal will be aborted because the Republicans know that even a firecracker going off in a port will spell the end of them forever. They say they’re tough on terrorism but have been gambling by under funding the security of our ports since 9/11. They know they’ve been wounded by this issue and if it goes through they’ll be held responsible for anything that goes wrong now and evermore. So lashing lead weights to Bush, Cheney, and Frist and tossing them over the side is really giving them warm fuzzy feelings

So it’s goodbye Dubai and farewell Frist, the tinniest ear on the Hill. That’s FLIP FLOP Bill. Surely the Democrats will point that out to you in the months ahead.

Oh, Jeb, there's no harm in going ahead with that kitchen makeover in Florida; the flight to Washington's been overbooked.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Where Are The Swift Boats Now?

I supported John Kerry for president in 2004, and, in retrospect, I’m pleased that he did not win. The smearing of Kerry because he would be weak on defense and would precipitously withdraw from Iraq was sad to watch and truly outrageous.

But the calamity that George Bush created in Iraq had to become far more apparent to the American people before we could ever hope to change course. It’s the old adage: things have to get worse before they get better. Had things not become catastrophic under George W. Bush, there would be no hope for release from the war’s deadly embrace. Virtually everything that has come to pass under Mr. Bush would have happened under a Kerry presidency, and the howling from the right wing cheerleaders would have been deafening, and his impeachment would be demanded.

Bush salivating apologists like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Oliver North, and a hundred others would be frothing at the mouth at the stab in the back by Kerry and his liberal ilk. Even now they tell us how well things are going and how rapidly the Islamic world is leaping to join us in a liberal capitalist dream world.

But daily it is blowing up in their faces. Horror stories abound. American enlisted personnel are charged, convicted and jailed for torturing and abusing Iraqi prisoners while their superiors walk away unscathed. One third of returning soldiers and marines are being treated for psychological problems caused by the stress of serving in Iraq. More than a thousand Iraqis were killed this week alone in sectarian violence.

On and on the stories roll over us like surreal revisitations of Vietnam, but each day Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, the talk show claquers, and the neocons tell us that the insurgency is in its last throws. Except for the feeble minded, even those viewing the situation in Iraq on FOX News can see that things are not going as we are told in that sad land.

And all of this would have been Kerry and the Democrats’ fault because they’re weak on national security.

Yet even as the Republicans rail that the Democrats care little for defense, the administration permits operations of our largest and most important ports to pass from one foreign company to another, but this one is not a private company but rather one owned by a national government. The president threatened to veto any law stopping the deal even as it was admitted that he knew next to nothing about the deal.

The Congress has been deceived; it was told that there were no security concerns raised during the review by federal agencies. Yet we find out that the Coast Guard did raise questions. The administration explains that these questions were resolved but won’t share the basis for that stance in open hearings or why they didn’t answer forthrightly.

Now the Republicans on the Hill are turning on their president and their leaders. George W. Bush and his close advisors led us into this mess and they were cheered on by the Republicans in Congress.

It is too late for the Republicans to backtrack. We must fire them all. Vote these slackers out in November; they’ve led us to tragedy.

Thank goodness John Kerry was smeared into defeat!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Murphy's War

Yesterday, I came to an agreement with Publish America to publish my latest novel, Murphy's War. The contract is being finalized and will be signed within two weeks. The book must, by contract, be out within a year but I expect it to be ready within a few months.

I will inform my loyal readers when the book is ready for market, but in the meanwhile, I will do what I can to amuse, enlighten and motivate you to vote for divided government in Washington.

As a polemicist -virtually a poor man's Tom Paine, I take rabid sides on issues. As a novelist, I support only my characters as they face their destinies.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

We're Number Forty-Two

The failed attack on the Saudi Arabian oil facility last week has analysts shouting that we must move quickly to find alternatives to our massive dependence on petroleum. They’re absolutely correct in this, of course, but President Bush’s band aid program looks very piddling.

No longer as important, since we’re stuck with the decision, is the national twenty-twenty hindsight view – although in my own defense I foresaw it and said so to all my family and friends – that we took our eye off the ball of hunting down al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and diverted our military and fiscal resources to Iraq, a nation that had nothing to due with the precipitous cause of our rage, 9/11.

We are now caught in the middle of a family squabble between tribes in Iraq from which it appears we cannot easily or quickly extricate ourselves. Our military deaths in that country are closing in on the number killed in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and our wounded and seriously disabled are in the tens of thousands. Treasure is harder to calculate, but it is likely that Iraq is likely to cost us in excess of a trillion dollars before we can stop the tally.

Let me recapitulate, al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations continue to plot against us and our allies in the Islamic world. Our military is stretched thin in Iraq. Our casualties mount. Our treasure disappears in the desert sand. And our economy is endangered by the terrorists who are training daily to disrupt our oil supplies.

But not to worry, the energy plan on the table will make it possible for us to withstand such a terrorist success in only fifteen years. But, of course, that plan doesn’t even hint at the price spike likely to result – and to persist - from any major failure in the world petroleum market – now or then.

Even Republicans are waking up to the calamitous policies and inept responses of this administration. But, it’s too late for them. We must fire them in the bi-election and then elect a Democrat president in ’08. Sadly, the Dems are likely to read this as a mandate to turn both leftward and inward.

Both members of the Herbert Hoover fan club are ecstatic with their hero’s prospects for moving up to next to last in all time presidential rankings. Thanks, George!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Motivation for Blogging

The Web Watch Column in the Washington Post invited bloggers to tell what motivates them to blog. I sent in the following:

"Dear Web Watch,

I am an old blogger, in my seventies, and believe passionately in moderate and centrist politics and policies, areas often ignored as bloggers dive for the extremes or into their navels.

George Bush and his neoconservative and Evangelical supporters have taken the nation down extreme and even lawless roads. It is my mission to discredit them and to fight for divided government.

With the White House, both chambers of Congress, and, mostly, the federal judiciary in the hands of a single party that has been hijacked by a narrow spectrum of the body politic, it is incumbent on citizens to stand up for what they believe.

By writing on a broad range of subjects with humor, irony, sarcasm, sadness, and, only occasionally, anger, over the course of less than two years, more than 600 regular readers have acquired a taste for my blog. It is gratifying to represent something important and to be joined by people from around the globe who would have never known of my existence or views.

Blogging has liberated individuals everywhere and, in the long term, doomed those who would govern in secret and for the few. My blog, Bill’s Blog on Western Civilization and Other Trivial Matters, can be viewed at www.wildbill944.blogspot.com. I post several times each week.

Blog on!

Wild Bill"

I want to thank so many of you for checking in on a regular basis.

Wild Bill

Crisis in Iraq

President Bush deplored the bombing of the Al-Askariya mosque in Samara as a senseless act. Sadly, the act was far from senseless as the intent of the bombers was almost certainly to foment civil war between Sunni and Shiite Arabs in Iraq. While the jury remains out whether the destruction of the holy site has succeeded in its terrible goal, there can be no doubt that that the issue is in doubt as this is being written.

That the president and his advisors, especially those labeled as neoconservative, were so naïve, gullible and ignorant of human relations and sociology as to believe that we could intervene in another civilization, Islam, and a nation cobbled together by power, Iraq, and impose our will and organization patterns without serious repercussions boggles the mind.

Even had we brought the hundreds of thousands of troops recommended by the army chief of staff as necessary to occupy the country there would be no easy way to disengage our forces and assure the survival of the government that we install. Despite all the trappings of democracy, most of them legitimate, how we could expect those forces opposed to us to accept that government makes us appear to be simpletons.

Islam is at war with itself across the region. Secular and religious forces are at odds in many parts of the civilization. Huge numbers of people with great resources are operating on both sides, and there are few signs that either side is willing to compromise. Yet President Bush was willing to attack a sovereign nation that posed no threat to us or allies, except as imagined by those stirring a witches’ brew of poor and outdated intelligence, to topple its regime and to impose from the outside a system of government unacceptable to major power centers within the country and the civilization.

Even as we appear to make progress in our quest, we create enemies. It is calamitous that both Shiite and Sunni communities point the finger of blame for their problems straight at us and our coalition. And even if this crisis passes, there can be no doubt that others will occur. The government that comes to pass during America’s stay in Iraq will be tested for legitimacy by the various factions far into the future. Whether it will meet these tests cannot now be known, but it has to be seen that the enemies of the state do not ascribe legitimacy to it.

Mr. Bush compares the travails presently being endured by the Iraqis to those which tested the colonists in the late eighteenth century in America. That equation is sheer hog wash. We were testing to determine if men could best live relatively freely as a colony of nation far away or as an independent country. The relative rights, freedom, and obligations of the citizens under either organization were generally agreed upon by both sides.

In Iraq, the citizens do not agree on whether they should be governed by a secular system with agreed upon rights and responsibilities for all citizens or by a theocratic system of government. Whichever form prevails, the proponents of the other will be unlikely to be satisfied and are likely to resist. Throw in the wild card of international terrorists who do not recognize as legitimate many of the governments friendly to us in the region and you have the potential for instability in Islam for decades to come.

Millions of thoughtful people around the globe, including a huge number in the United States, foresaw these problems of the intervention in Iraq. Sadly, they did not have the ear of the one man who counted, George W. Bush.

Even if this crisis passes without failure, it is likely that the new government will have enemies on all sides. Now Mr. Bush deplores what he sees as a new form of isolationism arising in the United States and rails against it. Sadly, it has come about because of his adventurist policies across the globe. Clearly, he is reaping what he sowed. Unfortunately, the nation will be undoing this neoconservative Wilsonian foolishness for many years.

Sad!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

The Olympic Downhill

The Winter Olympics in Turin leave me cold; it appears that the same can be said for other many other Americans and apparently for most Chinese and Australians as well. When I was a kid and went to the movies, figure skating champ Sonja Henie was rewarded for her Olympian accomplishments with leading parts in heavy Hollywood dramas. To see the petite blond compete with fellow Scandinavian vixen Ingrid Bergman for the attention of leading men was well…cool – and her in skates yet. Today TV ratings pale from the days of Torvill and Deane and spunky Dorothy Hamill and her pet camel. Times change, the best Dorothy could do for her supper was push arthritis pain killers.

From Sonja to Dorothy to the attempt to break a knee in Boston and on to the pouting of a pair of Italian ice dancers and further to two American speed skaters glowering at each other for alleged slights; how did the big show get so very low? From the ancient Greeks running naked toward olive crown glory to Baron Pierre de Coubertin’s brilliant recreation, we’ve come on games dominated by over privileged white kids flashing sponsored snow boards for free commercials on NBC.

The winter games are actually better examples of what’s wrong with the movement then their summer counterparts. The summer sports of running faster, jumping higher, and hoisting more clearly involve the world while ice dancing, mogul skiing, snow boarding, and the alpine events reek of money and privilege, not that summer equestrian events don’t. You’re not going to try to tell me that those medal winners in trick skiing could actually hold off kids from the ghetto if they were really given an even chance to compete?

And of course they don’t compete head to head in most sports. “She’s only two hundredths of a second behind at the second check point, but she took on too much air at the fourth rise. I think all is lost.” Deathless prose, eh?

Despite the snarling between speed skaters, nobody’s doing this for God and country anymore. Adolph Hitler made the games a test of Aryan supremacy, and for decades those commie pigs drugged and doped their way to medals while our darling innocent little free market capitalists toiled only for red, white and blue. The Nazis spent a fortune and the commies several of them to show that their bulked up super heroes were more than a match for any decadent Golden boys and girls from California. But we had corporate sponsors just as determined to demonstrate the benefits of money for breakfast. And we won!

George Bush should take it on as personal challenge to turn the Olympics into a contest between freedom lovers and al Qaeda. As Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan et al turned the battle of world hegemony from one of atomic bombs to toe loops, so it is the George to tame Osama and to see if we can handle his troops in Greco-Roman wrestling.

The real problem lies with the Gipper. Reagan is given credit for ending the Cold War by outspending the commies on Ace support bandages. In so doing he undermined the Olympics. It’s up to Bush to restore the games; he’s certainly showed that he can outspend even old Ron. Take it on, Mr. President!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Whig Revival in 2012

The brouhaha over the contract for a United Arab Emirates state owned firm to manage shipping operations in some of the largest and most strategic ports in the United States demonstrates clearly that George W. Bush is a lame duck and that he has been corrupted by his own power. He has handed the Democrats still another golden opportunity to win at least one of the houses of Congress later this year and the presidency in 2008.

The main Republican charge that Democrats are weak on national security issues has blown up in the faces of the president's loyalists on Capitol Hill. The Democrats can stand by innocently as the GOP coalition once again is shown to be torn and tattered. Neoconservatives simply cannot understand what the fuss is about while classic Republicans are going bonkers in public against the president who has led them so disastrously down the path of elective destruction.

The president alleges that the shipping firm should be treated like a company from any allied nation and can’t understand why an outfit from an Arab state is not treated with the same level of trust as one from The United Kingdom. Surely, the man is tone deaf. His own rhetoric about nations that have been associated with international terrorism rises from the background; citizens of the UAE were among those who attacked the U.S. on 9/11.

That he is satisfied that national security will not be jeopardized by the change from a British firm to one from the UAE is not really the question. What is important is that the country is frightened – largely by the overblown rhetoric of the president and Dead Eye Dick Cheney. This pair has scared the bejesus out of the country, implying that Arab terrorists are working everywhere to blow us up. But in the case of old cronies, not to worry, we can be assured that they’ll be perfectly trustworthy and would never blow up a container ship in New York or Miami.

Mr. Bush is killing his supporters on the Hill. Peter King of New York pleaded with the president to stop the fiasco, but Bush told him to go fly a kite. King lamented to CNN that he had supported the president on the Iraq war and the Patriot Act – clearly implying that his heart had never been with either. (This will be seized upon for gain by Democrats later.) The president has not had to work in a hostile political environment in Washington. With control of both Houses of Congress as well as the White House (and, if truth be told, the courts too) Mr. Bush has when the chips were down almost always had his way, particularly with the Republicans in Washington.

His reaction to what he perceived to be simply a little political hay making by GOP members was completely tone deaf. He’s been too used to willing what he wants and flogging the Republicans until they knuckle under to understand that their constituents really believe that this is a major issue for both parties and for residents of more than enough Red and Blue states to assure that it will not go away without tender loving political stroking which he denied them absolutely.

Last night, the president threatened to exercise the first veto of his presidency on this matter, thus painting himself and his party leaders into separate and far distant corners. With both the president and his congressional loyalists threatening to go down and dirty, what’s the opposition to do? This situation is so good that even the Democrats in their limitless incompetence appear unable to self destruct on this gift from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Since no matter what they do from crying crocodile tears to supporting their colleagues in a fit of bipartisan comity to simply pulling out of the limelight as the GOP flames out, the win-win lamp is lit for the Democrats. Of course, we haven’t heard the final position from the liberal wing of the party.

If the Dems can’t pull at least one House and the presidency out of this hat, we ought to be seriously looking to the Whigs to make a comeback in 2012. Can the Democrats self destruct once again? Stay tuned.

Blog on!

Wild Bill