Even as the Middle East destabilizes, even as U.S. casualties increase and the Army resorts to bombing Tikrit, President Bush tells the world that the U.S. is leading a Global Democratic Revolution. Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld announces that the number of U.S. troops in Iraq will be decreased by May.

 

Welcome to "Believe It, or Not." Or is it, "The Twilight Zone"?

 

Today U.S. warplanes bombed targets in Tikrit as a response to the recent downing of a Black Hawk helicopter.

 

The US Army said the airstrikes were a “show of force.” “We want to remind this town that we have teeth and claws and we will use them,” said Lt. Col. Steven Russell of the 4th Infantry Division who led the raid. ...

US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage described Iraq as a “war zone,” but noted that “we have the momentum in this process.” “I’m absolutely convinced we have a very solid plan to go out and get these people who are killing us and killing Iraqis,” he told reporters during a visit to Iraq. [Naseer Al-Nahr, Asharq Al-Awsat, "U.S. Warplanes Bomb Tikrit," Arab News, November 9, 2003] 

The International Red Cross shut its offices in Baghdad and Basra today over concerns for staff safety. Also, up to 60 people were killed and 200 wounded by explosions in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, attributed to terrorists. Even after I began composing this essay, news came in of a car bombing in Riyadh, also. This suggests the Middle East is destabilizing, although no one in the U.S. government will admit it.

The Bush Administration has been desperately seeking additional troops for Iraq from other countries. It is doubtful more will be forthcoming. Today Turkey added itself to a list of refuseniks, following in the footsteps of Pakistan and India. Iraqi security forces are being trained, but so far their impact is limited. Many charge there are not enough U.S. soldiers in Iraq to maintain security.

Naturally, on Thursday the Department of Defense announced it had a grand plan to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. No, really; I am not making this up. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld unveiled a rotation plan that would lower the number of U.S. troops in Iraq from 130,000 to 105,000 by May.

Rummy plans to replace U.S. troops with the aforementioned Iraqi security forces, still in training. The rotation plan also calls for a greater reliance on reserves. Already National Guard and Reserve units are being called up to relieve regular troops. Plus, deployments for reservists already in Iraq are being extended.

The Pentagon also announced that the cuts in U.S. forces would mainly be in support personnel rather than combat troops. So long, supply and logistics. We hardly knew ye.

Even as the situation in the Middle East gets more and more alarming, so does President Bush. Last Thursday, speaking to the National Endowment for Democracy, Bush linked his own speech to Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points" speech in 1918, Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" in 1941, and Ronald Reagan's 1982 Westminster address. He's ready to have himself carved into Mount Rushmore. But does Bush understand the difference between talk and action?

The lingering question, as it is so often with Mr. Bush, is how quickly and fully the rhetoric will translate into action. The president's "Marshall Plan" for Afghanistan never materialized; his ambitious "road map" for an Israeli-Palestinian peace didn't get past the first stop sign. A policy to promote democracy in the Middle East, even if defined as the work of decades, will require not just soaring speeches but far-reaching changes in U.S. practices and substantial costs. Though the administration has already been talking about the new strategy for many months, there has been no substantial follow-up so far -- other than a start on a new democratic political system for Iraq. ["A Democracy Policy," The Washington Post, November 9, 2003]

Unfortunately, the Washington Post continues, failure in Iraq would "encourage an explosion of anti-Western extremism." No kidding.

Now, here's my question. If success in Iraq is so vital to the interests of America and the world, why are we still so determined to achieve victory on the cheap? Why aren't we bringing every resource we have to bear -- including additional troops -- to establish security in Iraq? And then the Red Cross might come back, not to mention the UN, and other countries might be more inclined to send a few troops. But noooooooo ...

And why not? Here's a clue: The most recent CNN/USAToday/Gallup poll of adults nationwide says that 54 percent disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the war. So even while Shrub struts around making Big Speeches about Global Democratic Revolution, he fears the political consequences of increasing the number of troops. There is no other logical explanation.

And Bush is still telling us how we're all supposed to sacrifice.

"This is a massive and difficult undertaking," he continued. "It is worth our effort, it is worth our sacrifice, because we know the stakes. The failure of Iraqi democracy would embolden terrorists around the world, increase dangers to the American people, and extinguish the hopes of millions in the region." ["Bush Calls Democracy U.S. Mission," Commercial Appeal, November 7, 2003]

You should have thought about the consequences of failure before you ordered that precipitous attack last March, Mr. "President."

Unfortunately, because our government is headed by a pack of personality-disordered idiots, matters will have to get worse before they can get better. And if history is our guide, there is a good chance that will happen.

I don't really believe we'll see a replay of the Tet Offensive in Iraq, but I don't see any way the situation won't continue to deteriorate over the next several months. What's stopping it? Not us, certainly.

What else can we expect over the next few months? Watch the Pentagon play cute games with troop numbers to keep the press and public confused about the numbers of troops rotating in and out of Iraq. And there will be more bombing, because without sufficient troops on the ground there's not much else the military can do. And because Rummy loves his special ops guys, we know there are covert actions already underway, which may do some good, or may not. But we won't learn the details until after Bush is out of office.

Which, let us hope, won't be much longer.

The embattled U.S. effort to bring democracy and stability to Iraq is equal in importance to the early battles of the Cold War such as the Berlin Airlift and the Greek civil war, President George W. Bush said yesterday.

In a speech bristling with militant neoconservative rhetoric, Bush declared the struggle to transform Iraq and other Middle Eastern nations "a watershed event in the global democratic revolution." He also issued veiled warnings to Syria and Iran that they will face increased hostility from Washington unless they move in a democratic direction. [Ken Fireman, "Bush Casts War in Historic Terms," New York Newsday, November 7, 2003]

One Arab diplomat, who asked not to be named, was more direct: ``His treatment of the various governments reflects their policy towards the United States. The more you applaud him, the more democratic you are. It's transparent and it's ridiculous.''

On Iran, for example, the president said: ``The regime in Teheran must heed the democratic demands of the Iranian people or lose its last claim to legitimacy.''

But Mr Bush had warm words for long-time ally Saudi Arabia, which falls way behind Iran on representative government, saying the Saudi government was taking its first steps toward reform, including a gradual introduction of elections.

While elections and street demonstrations are frequent occurrences in Iran, Saudi Arabia had its first significant public protests ever last month.

The Saudi authorities reacted by arresting more than 80 people for breaking the law. [Jonathan Wright, "Bush Targets Enemies in Democracy Speech," The Bangkok Post, November 8, 2003]

Noeleen Heyzer, executive director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women, commented on September 23 that in many ways Iraqi women are worse off now than they were under Saddam. Under Saddam, Iraq was a secular society in which women enjoyed many of the same rights as men. Now, however, due to the rising extremism in Iraq which has developed out of the power vacuum created after Saddam’s fall, women feel they are being forced into playing traditional gender roles that they have no prior experience with. Heyzer stated, “There was a lot of hope that the lives [of women] would improve... but we have a situation where a lot of extremists have come into the country and women do not want to live under such extremism.”  [Erich Marquardt, "Removal of Saddam Reveals Bitter Irony," Islam Online, October 13, 2003]

• Successful societies limit the power of the state and the power of the military so that governments respond to the will of the people and not the will of the elite.
• Successful societies protect freedom, with a consistent impartial rule of law, instead of selectively applying the law to punish political opponents.
• Successful societies allow room for healthy civic institutions, for political parties and labor unions and independent newspapers and broadcast media.
• Successful societies guarantee religious liberty; the right to serve and honor God without fear of persecution.
• Successful societies privatize their economies and secure the rights of property. They prohibit and punish official corruption and invest in the health and education of their people. They recognize the rights of women.
• And instead of directing hatred and resentment against others, successful societies appeal to the hopes of their own people. [Link]

"I started this discussion in a clumsy way. This discussion will be painful, and I regret the pain that I may have caused either to African-Americans or Southern white voters in the beginning of this discussion. But we need to have this discussion in an honest, open way," Dean said.

I'm finding an astonishing number of people who interpret those words to mean that Dean personally endorses display of the Confederate flag, and/or that all Southernors are bigots. And this is from Democrats! Karl Rove will have people believing that Howard Dean is a Grand Dragon in the Ku Klux Klan.

Let's chill out for a minute, people.

I grew up in a Confederate flag stronghold. My high school's team name was "the Rebels" and our team mascot was a Confederate colonel character. The all-girl Pep Club (which I got kicked out of, for reasons I'll explain later) showed up at games wearing white blouses with red string ties and waving little Confederate flags (this was in the 1960s. I don't know if they're still doing that). When my high school was rebuilt in the mid-1990s, the image of a Confederate flag was inlaid in the floor near the entrance. This means people are walking on it all day long, so I've raised no objections.

This is to say that I've known all manner of people who are Confederate flag wavers, and many of them are good-hearted, salt-of-the-earth people. But I also believe in facing up to ugly truths, and the truth about the flag's history is about as ugly as truth gets.

For years I've been opposed to flying Confederate flags over southern statehouses and sensitive to the fact that the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism and oppression. And for years I have argued with the "heritage" guys who claim that the Civil War was not fought over slavery, but over states' rights.

The claim is that since most of the white Southern men who fought for the Confederacy were not slaveowners, and since Abraham Lincoln himself said that he would not fight a war to end slavery, but to save the Union, then the Civil War was not about slavery and the old battle flag does not stand for racism. The flag, they say, stands for an ideal of Southern heritage and culture, not slavery.

To them I say, hooey. The truth is that slavery was the raison d'être of the Confederacy. The Southern states did not secede in 1860 and start a war in 1861 over some abstract Constitutional principle. They went to war because the leaders of the South -- the plantation class -- believed that their lives and fortunes and way of life depended upon the institution of slavery. And, the institution of slavery as practiced in 19th century America depended on racism. The Confederates' own documents state this plainly.

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. [Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, 1861]

For more about the reasons for secession, I recommend the declaration of causes for secession documents drawn up by the seceding states.

Further, since 1865 the old Confederate battle flag has been taken up by generations of white supremacists, from Klansmen to skinheads to neo-Nazis. And the "heritage" guys never said boo about that.

But fast-forward to today, and to the guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks. On a day when the Christian Science Monitor proclaims "GOP Clout Rises in the South," can we afford to write off an entire subculture of American voters because of the decals on their tailgates?

Because as ugly as the Confederate flag's history is, I also know that many people who display it don't think of it as a symbol of white supremacy. To many, it's more of an expression of defiance -- to society, to know-it-all Yankees who look down their noses at "rednecks," to those mysterious powers in corporate boardrooms and the halls of government that jerk working-class men and women around.

These guys may not be paragons of racial sensitivity, but they aren't Klansmen, either.

As I wrote in yesterday's blog, clearly Howard Dean does not plan to pander to racists but to reach out to southern working-class people, who are not as racist as some damnyankees want to believe. Southern whites for years have voted Republican because of social issues (e.g., school prayer, abortion, gay rights), and they give victories to the GOP in election after election. But Republican economic policies are hurting them badly. If a chunk of the white working-class can be persuaded to vote for pocketbook issues instead of social issues, the GOP southern base would dissolve.

So I say Howard Dean is right. It's time for Democrats to reach out to guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks. As the Buddha said, hatred is not appeased with hatred, but with love.

And here's why I got kicked out of Pep Club. We had an enormous cheerleading squad of totalitarian cheerleaders who demanded the Pep Club members watch them instead of the game. And one time I got caught up in watching a really good, close basketball game and was hollering for our guys and not following the cheerleaders' directions. So I got kicked out of Pep Club for unauthorized cheering.