Iraq is getting better, but we are not done

Earlier in the week, I read this piece by Bernard Finel of the bipartisan but John Kerry led American Security Project. I have been struggling with how to respond to it. Final first argues that we are hitting metrics of improvement in Iraq. The Economist makes a very similar point. It seems clear that they are correct. Unfortunately, Finel, a man of the left and the Huffington Post, Finel goes too far and declares the progress illusory. The Economist, on the other hand, finds room for tentative optimism, or, quoting Petraeus, finds that progress is “fragile and reversible”.

Finel’s broader point is legitimate though. We must not let our domestic politics which will get very nasty over the next 5 months, get in the way of our assessment of what is happening on the ground. Read on.

Finel grasps the scope of the challenge that we face, but seems to think that it is both illusory and that it will be exploited for electoral gain:

This is a generational struggle. Our enemies are serious, dangerous, and unfortunately resilient. We cannot declare the struggle over for electoral convenience. The media failed to challenge the Bush Administration sufficiently on the Iraq war; perhaps as a group, the media ought to cast a more skeptical eye on recent claims that the “war on terror” is being won.

I prefer the way that The Economist makes this same point without seemingly pre-judging the resolution:

The violence, albeit still ferocious in parts of the country, has subsided dramatically. The American military “surge” that began a year ago has worked better than even the optimists had hoped, helped by ceasefires with Shia militias, by accords with Sunni tribal leaders and by the fact that sectarian cleansing in many areas is sadly complete.

The Economist also notes that progress is also being made on legal and economic fronts. What Finel fails to really account for in his analysis is the optimism on the ground in Iraq. Again, The Economist tries to capture this:

American officials in Baghdad are careful to avoid the misplaced triumphalism expressed immediately after the invasion five years ago. Progress, as General David Petraeus, the American commander on the ground, is wont to say, is “fragile and reversible”. But in Baghdad’s Green Zone, the sealed-off sanctuary on the west bank of the River Tigris where the American-led coalition’s headquarters and most of Iraqi ministries are ensconced, optimism is back in the air, reflecting a broader change of mood in the country. An opinion poll in February that asked Iraqis “How would you say things are going overall these days?” found that 43% said they were going well, up from only 22% in September. Among Shias, the figure rose from 39% to 61%; among Sunnis, it went from a paltry 2% to 16%, but a notable jump all the same. If the poll were conducted today, the answers would be more positive still.

These poll numbers are, frankly, astonishing.

The question that we need to seriously address is how we can protect the operations in Iraq from the next 5 months of brutal politics in the United States. John McCain clearly, and I think rightfully, thinks he has the upper-hand on this issue, which is why he invited Barack Obama to join him on a trip to Iraq. The entire logic of Obama’s candidacy unravels if he were to acknowledge succcess in Iraq.

But if the next 5 months of debate on Iraq policy is spent relitigating the decision to go into Iraq, as Finel finally ends up doing, rather than figuring out where to go from here in a way that maximizes Iraqi stability and American interest, we will not be serving our country well at all.

The fallacy of liberaltarianism, the failings of corporatism, and the future of the right

One of my favorite non-political blogs is The Future of News. Steve Boriss wrote a fantastic piece titled The Fight for Free Speech: Will We Be the Greatest Generation? about the idea of net neutrality. Referring to a NYT editorial, he says:

The Times ignores the fact that the First Amendment is designed to protect us against suppression of ideas by the government, not the private sector, which has neither the power nor the motive to suppress ideas.

This mistake with Boriss points out is, I think, the liberaltarian fallacy. It assumes that government action is going to protect you from business, rather than get coopted by business. Libertarians intituitively understand that this is absurd, but conservatives and, recently, Republicans, have been unable to make that argument. I suspect that we will not be able to achieve a majority until we have both an intellectually and politically serious critique of both government and big business. Read on.

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The Founders understood that the only way to stop a greedy, venal politician is with another greedy, venal politician with opposite interests. In the same way, economics teaches us that the only way to stop an greedy, venal businessman is with another greedy, venal businessman. If you try to stop a greedy, venal businessman with a greedy, venal politician, they will just get in bed with each other.  Adam Smith captured that point nicely:

The proposal of any new law or regulation which comes from [businessmen], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

The Economist, reprinted here, updated this with a spot-on critique of President Bush, and by extension, the GOP:

Mr Bush is the classic instance of a conservative politician who confuses support for particular businesses with support for enterprise in general. These seemingly similar ideas are in fact directly contradictory.

The progressive left (and John McCain) is basically correct in their critique of the current GOP that we are in bed with big business. We need to understand and fix this legitimate critique. Because of this we have lost our credibility in arguing for genuine free-market approaches, like cutting corporate taxes and corporate welfare, which is what The Economist is arguing for in that piece. But there is also a libertarian critique that we need to re-embrace.

I would point out that the two most energized activist bases in the GOP Presidential primary, Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee supporters, should find something to like in this. There is probably a reasonable place to land where you criticize the hedge-fund managers (a standard Huckabee attack) for rent-seeking (making Ron Paul supporters happy). To quote Hernando de Soto, who addressed in his book The Other Path the Latin American conflict between crony-capitalism and socialism, "may they one day realize that I am just as radical as they are." Center-right politics works precisely when it is optimistic, as de Soto was.

Boiling this down:

  1. We have allowed libertarian-like arguments to be used to attack the private sector. This is what I will call the liberaltarian fallacy.
  2. We have not sufficiently demonized rent-seeking by the private sector. In this way, we have become too corporatist. We have forgotten that Adam Smith is right.

I would argue that because of (2), we have not been able to develop an intellectually serious critique of liberaltarianism, which has damaged us among the value adding creative class like software engineers that are increasingly siding with the Democratic party (more on this soon).

Ultimately, we know what the medium term future is going to look like. Democrats will get on the take, as Democratic Senators Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad already are and as Jim Johnson demonstrated himself an expert at. (Note that Matt Stoller, in a moment of either dishonesty or ignorance, describes this as "the free market" as opposed to rent-seeking companies and corrupt politicians) They will be corrupt, and we will attack them for it.

But to really win, we are going to have to develop a serious anti-government and anti-big business critique. Only when people see that the Democrats have (and indeed already are) whored themselves out to business will we be able to credibly get the majority back.. But we aren’t going to win by advocating for our own crony capitalism. We are going to need a reform agenda that attacks precisely this problem. And it is going to have to be relevant to the information ecomony that we are increasingly moving towards. (again, more on that in a bit)

Sister Souljah moments don’t get standing ovations

Earth to Jonathan Martin (and the rest of the press corps): Bill Clinton’s Sister Souljah moment was telling truth to people who didn’t believe it. Not to a standing ovation:

Obama’s Father’s Day speech includes some remarkable language about absentee dads that only he could deliver. More than that, though, it’s something of a Sister Souljah — yet one delivered from a member of the black community. …

This passage, which prompted a standing ovation, really stood out as a cut-to-the-bone, almost shaming challenge to African-Americans:

Where is the shocked silence? Who is going to attack Obama like Jesse Jackson attacked Clinton.

Give me a break, and stop giving Obama a free-ride.

Stories from Arkansas Elections: “Absentee Ballot Queen” and more

This will make you laugh and cry. On the 12th, the Arkansas State Senate voted against expelling Senator Jack Crumbly. The problem was that the 2006 Democratic Primary that he won by 68 votes was found to be “completely corrupt.” That’s a quote from the statement Democratic Senator Bobby Glover contained in the report of the Senate Committee on State Agencies and Government Affairs. But this gets a whole more tastier… For example, Glover describes one campaign worker known as the “absentee ballot queen”:

A paid campaign worker for Crumbly stated under oath that she personally handled between 250 to 275 absentee ballots in this election. Furthermore, this worker is known as the “absentee ballot queen” in Forrest City, … Under Arkansas law, a bearer is only allowed to handle two absentee ballots or applications per election.

Ok. Clearly electoral laws were broken. And then there are were the forged signatures:

In carefully examining the absentee applicants and ballots that would not qualify, including forged ballots, handwriting expert Dawn Reed, testified under oath that Louise Fields, a pain campaign worker for Crumbly, had made at least 75 entries on absentee ballot applications and related records. She pointed out that the same 3 people wrote numerous entries on these documents, which included the name of Louise Fields. …

This is how Democrats run elections.

H/T Election Journal.

More online openness from Team McCain

John McCain’s campaign took a big step when they created the McCain Report. Michael Turk has written on this. I am struck by a new post from the campaign’s Director of Strategy, Sarah Simmons. She’s senior staff whose opinions drive large-scale strategic decisions made by the campaign. And she is telling you on their blog what they are thinking:

John McCain continues to defy expectations. We all (pollsters, pundits and campaign leadership) were braced for a Barack Obama bounce — like a pretty big one. The great news: it hasn’t really materialized, not yet anyway. Yes, he’s seen a bounce — daily tracking polls show him up around 6-points — but that’s a far cry from the hype that many of our friends on cable news had been selling.

 

And, two major polls released in the past 24 hours are full of good news for the campaign — Diageo/Hotline shows Senator McCain trailing by 2 points overall, but we lead by 10 points with independents. WSJ/NBC shows Senator McCain trailing by 6 points, but the same poll shows Senator McCain has big leads with suburban women and white men.

 

Clintonista DNC Delegate for McCain

This is making the Wisconsin Democratic Party very unhappy. They nominated someone that even their own hyper-activists can’t support:

As an avid supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Debra Bartoshevich is not alone in her frustration over Clinton’s defeat.

She’s not alone in refusing to support Barack Obama.

And she’s not entirely alone in saying she’ll vote this fall for Republican John McCain instead.

But what makes her unusual is that she holds these views as an elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer.

Why? The biggest reason seems to be her sister, who served in Iraq and who wants a leader who she can believe in:

Encouraged by her sister, who has served in Iraq, Bartoshevich signed up as a supporter with “Citizens for McCain,” an arm of the campaign targeting Democrats and independents.

She just doesn’t trust Barack Obama. Read on for why.

“I just feel you need to have somebody who has experience with foreign matters.”

She said a series of controversial Obama associations, including but not limited to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Chicago developer Tony Rezko, reflected poorly on his judgment. And she echoed the complaints of many of Clinton’s most ardent supporters that Clinton was treated unfairly in the nominating process and by the party.

“No self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her — that’s by Susan B. Anthony,” said Bartoshevich, referring to the suffragist.

Bartoshevich called herself a “devoted Democrat” who had never voted for a Republican for president.

“I’m on a lot of the (pro-Clinton) blogs, and so many people, male and female, feel the same way as I do,” said Bartoshevich, who was listed as a Racine County co-chair for the Clinton campaign and who traveled outside Wisconsin to volunteer for Clinton. “The Democrats jumped on this wagon of Barack Obama, and nobody really knows him.”