Great choice: Chris Van Hollen for DCCC
Nancy Pelosi has chosen Montgomery County's own Chris Van Hollen (D-MD-8) to succeed Rahm Emanuel as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the New York Times' Greg Giroux reports. Giroux quotes from a succinct political bio of Van Hollen by Emanuel at the DCCC web site:

"Coming in the same class as Congressman Van Hollen, it was clear to me from his hard-fought primary victory and even tougher general election win [in 2000, agains Connie Morella -- ed.] that he had an acute political capacity rarely found in Washington," Emanuel said Tuesday in a statement, in which he also noted that as head of the 2006 candidate recruitment team, Van Hollen "helped create the field that became the Democratic majority."

Van Hollen co-chaired the "Red to Blue" committee of the DCCC, recruiting and supporting candidates in districts that had leaned Republican in the past, but seemed vulnerable in '06.

This is a great choice. Van Hollen is no triangulating, finger-to-the-wind DLC Democrat -- Maryland blogger Stephanie Dray got this admirably succinct position from Van Hollen's staff on the issue of torture and the MCA bill:

"Congressman Van Hollen opposes torture, opposes efforts to redefine torture, and opposes efforts to redefine our commitment to the Geneva Conventions."

Van Hollen also took the lead in fighting for the Davis-Bacon Act when Bush wanted to revoke that in the Gulf Coast after Katrina, and voted "Nay" on the bankruptcy bill -- where both Steny Hoyer and John Murtha voted "Yea." He also stands for clean politics, most lately as a stalwart supporter of Jamie Raskin in this year's Democratic primary in my state district when misleading mudslinging began to get out of hand.

I have a feeling -- at least I sure hope -- that Van Hollen can also iron out something else that got out of hand: the rancorous differences between his predecessor and Democratic party chair Howard Dean. The DCCC and the DNC have different purposes, of course: the former is all about the next Congressional election, the latter is about the party as a whole, at federal, state, and local levels. But Dean's 50-state strategy has already paid dividends for the Democratic Party in the past election, and it will only get better as more and more strong candidates emerge at the local level across the country.

There's no need for Congressional leadership to alienate rank and file Democrats or undermine what we're all working for in different ways: a rekindling of a progressive, effective Democratic party. Both Dean and Van Hollen stand for that, and I have high hopes they'll work together as closely as possible in setting agendas and plotting strategies for the years ahead.


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UPDATE, 12/20: In comments, Nell Lancaster recalls Van Hollen's letter to Rice criticizing U.S. policy regarding Israel, Hezbollah, and Lebanon this summer -- and his subsequent rowback/clarification/call it what you will. I found links to the statements involved, and agree this was a disappointment, however rare.
UPDATE, 12/28: Giroux (writing for CQPolitics this time) interviews Van Hollen: “The main thing for our members is to be able to go into the next election telling voters that they heard the message that was delivered in November, and that they are following through and keeping the commitments that were made.” Via OnBackground at "Free State Politics."
posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:25:00 PM -- |    

 
Gifts of service, hope and life


There's another way to give a present this holiday season: give to a good cause in the name of your recipient. Among the many possibilities:

Seva Foundation --- "Compassion in Action."
Supports programs reversing and preventing blindness in India, Nepal, Tibet, Cambodia, and Tanzania; community self-development programs in Guatemala and Chiapas; and diabetes and community grant programs for Native Americans in the U.S.
Heifer International --- "Ending Hunger. Caring for the Earth."
Buy livestock for third world farmers: goats, cows, pigs, ducks, water buffalo -- even bees, what an excellent idea.

Kiva --- "Loans that change lives."
From the home page: "Kiva lets you lend to a specific entrepreneur in the developing world -- empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty." Your loan can be as little as $25, to whichever business venture interests or inspires you. And of course the idea is that the loan is repaid -- you can then withdraw the money, or re-loan it to another aspiring businessman or businesswoman. The site lets you monitor a "portfolio" of investments of this kind.

The Nature Conservancy --- "Saving the last great places on Earth."
When they see an ecosystem that needs to be preserved, they just buy it ...or get a conservation easement for it, or support the public park system it's part of, or use any of a number of other public or private acquisition or conservation approaches that work. The Nature Conservancy has an ambitious "Conservation by Design" approach that aims to "conserve enough of everything."

Goodyear USW strikers --- "Nearly 16,000 Goodyear employees are facing the holidays without paychecks. These United Steelworkers (USW) members are sacrificing for all of us, fighting the fight for good jobs. Being without a paycheck any time is painful—but right before the holidays, it’s especially hard. Every penny of your contribution will go to striking Goodyear workers and their families."

Carbonfund.org --- "Toward a zero carbon world."
Carbonfund.org supports so-called "offset projects," including renewable energy projects like low-income solar homes in Chicago, reforestation of national forests, and the purchase of RECs (renewable energy certificates) to encourage low carbon emission energy production.

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NOTES: Kiva via eRobin ("fact-esque"), who also recommends the Hunger Site, Project Heifer, Defenders of Wildlife, and the African Wildlife Foundation. Goodyear strikers via UFCW.
UPDATE, EDIT, 12/19: Explanatory sentence and Carbonfund entry (via Working Assets) added.
UPDATE, 12/26: Tentative deal in Goodyear strike (see Nell's comment).
posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:07:00 AM -- |    

 
The censored Leverett op-ed
As mentioned in the prior post, the White House has been engaging in a ham-handed attempt to squelch Flynt Leverett's op-ed about U.S. policy towards Iran. According to Leverett, his op-ed was to be based on previously OK'd, much more extensive published work, to wit, Dealing with Tehran: Assessing US Diplomatic Options Toward Iran," published on the web site of The Century Foundation. In that 34 page paper, Leverett writes

The paper’s core argument is that successful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue requires a “grand bargain” between the United States and Iran—that is, an overarching framework in which outstanding bilateral differences are resolved as a package. Any incremental, issue-by-issue or step-by step approach to engagement with Iran will fail. Moreover, while some would wish otherwise, at the heart of a U.S.-Iranian grand bargain there will need to be an American security guarantee to the Islamic Republic. However, under the rubric of a grand bargain, the United States would gain—among other benefits—strategically meaningful limits on Iran’s nuclear activities, termination of its support for terrorism, and Iranian cooperation in stabilizing post-Saddam Iraq. U.S.-Iranian rapprochement also could provide the foundation for establishing a regional security framework in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East more broadly.

(Emphasis added.) Now 'emptywheel' ("The Next Hurrah") has excerpted 1120 words worth of this article to construct a decent working hypothesis about the likely contents of the censored Leverett op-ed. emptywheel's guesstimate op-ed concludes with these words by Leverett:

Whether supported by a regional security framework or not, the foregoing analysis lays out the essential features of a U.S.-Iranian grand bargain. If Washington does not begin to pursue such an arrangement vigorously and soon, the window for this kind of strategic understanding between the United States and the Islamic Republic is likely to close. Under these circumstances, Iran’s development of at least a nuclear weapons option in the next few years is highly likely.

Thus, if it does not pursue a grand bargain with Tehran, the United States almost certainly will have to take up the more daunting and less potentially satisfying challenges of coping with a nuclear-capable Iran. And the standing of the United States in the world’s most strategically critical region will continue its already disturbing decline.

I've admittedly only skimmed the longer paper, but the fact that it was approved by the CIA is the key evidence that its derivative op-ed reveals no state secrets. Indeed, most of what Leverett points out is relatively common knowledge -- difficulty of ending Iranian nuclear efforts by bombing, Iranian cooperation with US operations in Afghanistan, etc.

The censorship of this op-ed is in turn evidence that this remains the same Bush administration: as committed as ever to unconstitutional domestic acts in pursuit of foreign policy disasters and war, as devoted as ever to learning and admitting absolutely nothing about its blunders and incompetence -- and as contemptuous as ever of the American people it is supposed to serve.

And some of the people behind this censorship -- specifically Elliot Abrams -- illustrate what the problem is with letting governmental criminals off lightly. Abrams got away with felonies in his involvement with Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s. Todays Abramses -- Yoos, Haynes, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush -- they must not. Pace David Corn and others, but impeachments and criminal indictments are not luxuries or "wishful shortcuts" that get in the way of serious business. They are the very essence of serious business. This corruption of our values and our laws must end. It should be dug out root and branch.


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EDIT, 1/5/07: Leverett, not Everett. Criminy. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:03:00 AM -- |    

 
Find the bad guys
Flynt Leverett wants to write about a better U.S. foreign policy in the New York Times. But he's having a hard time:

Middle East analyst Flynt Leverett, who served under President Bush on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the New America Foundation, revealed today that the White House has been blocking the publication of an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times. The column is critical of the administration’s refusal to engage Iran.

Donald Vance wanted to expose corruption in Iraq, and got arrested, held incommunicado, and basically tortured for that -- it's hard to believe he was considered a suspect for arms deals with death squads since he was the whistleblower. In the New York Times story about it by Michael Moss, he's initially referred to as "Detainee 200343" at Camp Cropper, the maximum security prison in Baghdad:

American guards arrived at the man’s cell periodically over the next several days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.

The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.

Six Muslim clerics pray before boarding a plane and are later heard to make remarks critical of the U.S. on the plane:

The clerics were returning from a conference in Minneapolis of the North American Imams Federation, Omar Shahin of Phoenix, president of the group, told the AP.

"They took us off the plane, humiliated us in a very disrespectful way," Shahin said.

Shahin said three members of the group prayed in the terminal before the six boarded the plane.

They entered individually, except for one member who is blind and needed to be guided, Shahin said. Once on the plane, the six did not sit together, he said.

"We did nothing" on the plane, Shahin said.

According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the clerics were handcuffed and questioned for several hours by authorities before being released.

Good to know I can turn in a fellow passenger for praying too loudly and dissing the administration, that could come in handy in a couple of years.

Newt Gingrich thinks that's fine:

"Those six people should have been arrested and prosecuted for pretending to be terrorists," Gingrich said. "And the crew of the U.S. airplane should have been invited to the White House and congratulated for being correct in the protection of citizens." ....In an interview, Gingrich said it is possible to distinguish between terrorists and others when looking to fight threatening expression. "If you give me any signal in the age of terrorism that you're a terrorist, I'd say the burden of proof was on you," Gingrich said.

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NOTES: Leverett via Steve Benen ("Carpetbagger"), Vance via Mark Kleiman ("Reality Based Community"), Gingrich via Kevin Drum and Greg Sargent (TPMCafe).
EDIT, 1/5/07: Leverett, not Everett. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:27:00 PM -- |    

 
Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq
The Nation's Marc Cooper describes yet another anti-war protest -- except this one's by active duty military personnel. The text, in full, of the Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq:

As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq . Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.

Cooper writes that since appearing on the Internet seven weeks ago, the appeal has already been signed by nearly 1000 active duty soldiers, airmen, and sailors. The organizers say signers are protected under the Military Whistleblowers Protection Act, UCMJ free speech protections. And of course the Constitution protects free speech -- especially speech by citizens to Congress.

Cooper interviewed some of the signers; here's one that stood out for me:

"Sgt. Gary"--21 years old. US Army. Deployed with 20th Infantry Regiment, near Mosul, Iraq:...I supported the war in the beginning. I bought everything Bush said about how Saddam had WMDs, how he was working with Al Qaeda, how he was a threat to America. Of course, this all turned out to be false.

This is my second tour, and as of a few days ago it's half-over. Before I deployed with my unit for the second time I already had feelings of not wanting to go. When in late September a buddy in my platoon died from a bullet in the head, I really took a long hard look at this war, this Administration, and the reasons why.

After months of research on the Internet, I came to the conclusion that this war was based on lies and deception. I started to break free of all the propaganda that the Bush Administration and the Army puts out on a daily basis.

So far in three years we have succeeded in toppling a dictator and replacing him with puppets. Outlawing the old government and its standing army and replacing them with an unreliable and poorly trained crew of paycheck collectors. The well is so poisoned by what we have done here that nothing can fix it.

At minimum, this gauge of military opinion can be set against commments like those made by former general Barry McCaffrey in the Washington Post last week. Arguing against swapping combat troops for advisors (perhaps rightly, as far that argument goes), and for withdrawal by early 2008 rather than sooner, McCaffrey wrote:

Our troops and their families will remain bitter for a generation if we abandon the Iraqis, just as another generation did after we abandoned the South Vietnamese for whom Americans had fought and died. We owe them and our own national interest this one last effort. If we cannot generate the political will to take this action, it is time to pull out and search for those we will hold responsible in Congress and the administration.

Sentiments like those in the "Appeal for Redress" show that at least some troops are taking a deep breath and publicly concluding that it's already time to pull out. They're hoping we can generate the political will for that. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:51:00 PM -- |    

 
Worth reading
Why I blog (Teresa Nielsen Hayden, "Making Light") --- I had a talk the other day with a friend about the values and pitfalls of blogging. Sure, it's easy to "cocoon" and shut out alternative viewpoints; sure, it would be nice to have some kind of overarching, fair-minded, always trustworthy expert consensus narrative to the day's events. But as Teresa Nielsen Hayden's richly linked and well written (if necessarily long) post lays out, it's developed that we're often being spoon fed biases, that we're often having critical information withheld from us, and that, in her words, "deceiving us has become an industrial process." It's important to have venues where that's revealed and discussed; it's important that citizens not just passively experience and consume news, but actively question and comment on it.

An Open Letter to the Members of the Institute for Political and International Studies of the Foreign Ministry of Iran (Eric Muller, "Is That Legal?") --- An eloquent rejoinder to the shameful Holocaust denial conference recently staged by Ahmadinejad et al in Iran. Muller's great-uncle Leopold, a likeable looking fellow, was a Bad Kissingen merchant, a Wuerzburger (both cities near where I was born), German World War I veteran, and a Jew who was forcibly evicted from his home country to a transit ghetto in 1942 and never heard from again. He probably died in the Belzec extermination camp.

What is your dangerous idea? (The Edge) --- Last year, this foundation/online salon hosted over a hundred answers by scientists and thinkers to the question "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" This year, they've obtained equally interesting answers to the following:"What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?" Among the many, many interesting responses: The idea of zero parental influence (Judith Rich Harris); "The Landscape" (Leonard Susskind) on the unsettling implications of a strong anthropic principle; and "Telling More than We can know" (Richard Nisbett):

The most important thing that social psychologists have discovered over the last 50 years is that people are very unreliable informants about why they behaved as they did, made the judgment they did, or liked or disliked something. In short, we don't know nearly as much about what goes on in our heads as we think.

Perhaps better known figures like Stephen Pinker (who proposed the question), Ray Kurzweil, Stewart Brand, Richard Dawkins, J. Craig Venter, and Jared Diamond also offer answers. Venter:

It will inevitably be revealed that there are strong genetic components associated with most aspects of what we attribute to human existence including personality subtypes, language capabilities, mechanical abilities, intelligence, sexual activities and preferences, intuitive thinking, quality of memory, will power, temperament, athletic abilities, etc.

A Unified Security Budget for the United States, 2007 (Miriam Penderton, Lawrence Korb; Foreign Policy In Focus, May 2006) --- Citing recovering neo-con Francis Fukuyama's comment that "we need to demilitarize what we have been calling the global war on terrorism and shift to other types of policy instruments," Penderton and Korb continue:

This report shows how this can be done. It identifies nearly $62 billion in cuts to the regular defense budget mostly to weapons systems that have scant relevance to the threats we face, and therefore can be eliminated or scaled back with no sacrifice to our security because the war in Iraq is funded by supplemental appropriations. And it identifies $52 billion to be added to the budgets for the tools of defense and prevention. This shift would partially demilitarize our national security strategy by turning the current six-to-one military-to-non-military balance into a better balance of three to one. That is, it would double the proportional amount our government devotes to its non-military security tools. It would bring our spending more in line with the rhetoric of the president's own national security strategy.

Emphasis added.

Say you want a revolution (Mark Schmitt, Washington Monthly) ---

Over the next two years, Democrats must set the stage for a total overhaul of our tax system in 2009. Unlike the tax reform of 1986, it cannot be “revenue-neutral”; indeed, the guiding principle must be to raise enough money to finance the things that we have already agreed we want government to provide, and those we might want in the future. Everything will have to be on the table—income taxes, payroll taxes, new taxes on consumption and energy use—in order to make the system fairer to the middle class and better for economic growth even as it collects more revenue.

Anatomy of a Civil War (Nir Rosen, Boston Review, Nov.-Dec 2006) --- Rosen has traveled and reported extensively in Iraq, outside the Green Zone. He portrays an Iraq that is coming apart at the seams:

The Bush administration persists in its assertions of progress and clings to the idea that something called victory is possible. What victory? By every measure, life is worse for the Iraqis (leaving aside the Kurds, who don’t want to be Iraqis anyway). They are dying by the dozens or the hundreds every day—nobody even knows how many, since the Anbar province and much of the south, and even much of Baghdad, are black holes, with no information coming out. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died violently since the war began, probably eclipsing the number of Saddam’s victims. The ministry of health was recently ordered again not to disclose the number of casualties. The United Nations’ torture expert has stated that torture in Iraq is now worse than it was under Saddam. Over 1.5 million Iraqis have fled their country, to Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, and in late 2006 one European official in Syria estimated that up to 3,000 Iraqis a day were fleeing into that country. [...]

America did this to Iraq. We divided Iraqis. We set them at war with each other. The least we can do is stop killing them and leave Iraq. [...]

...this much is clear: the Mahdi Army is the police. It holds all the force of state power.

And the once confident and aggressive Sunnis now see the state as their enemy. They are very afraid. All Iraqis are.

It's hard to see how "doubling down" will solve any of what Rosen is observing. We either take the side of ethnic cleansing, or at best have expensive, lethal ringside seats as we watch, or we take on the most powerful militias in the land and reopen the open US-Shia war of spring 2004. We're now just another tribe in a civil war, and one with no business being there and no decent, realistic goal to aspire to there.


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NOTES: "Open Letter" via Michael Froomkin, "Unified Security Budget" via Yglesias. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:11:00 PM -- |