Hating America: The Real Danger

Fareed Zakaria, writing in the latest "Foreign Policy" magazine, describes how Hating America is one of the world's most dangerous ideas. And, of course, the Bush Administration has greatly and needlessly exacerbated that hatred.

"Support for the United States has dropped dramatically since Bush rode into town. In 2000, for example, 75 percent of Indonesians identified themselves as pro-American. Today, more than 80 percent are hostile to Uncle Sam. When asked why they dislike the United States, people in other countries consistently cite Bush and his policies....By crudely asserting U.S. power and disregarding international institutions and alliances, the Bush administration has pulled the curtain on decades of diplomacy."

And The Verdict on Living Standards: Ouch!

The Center On Budget and Policy Priorities has released the numbers on earnings, poverty and health insurance for 2003. Does this sound like we have "turned the corner?"

"2003 marked the third straight year that living standards have deteriorated, with poverty increasing, the number of uninsured climbing, and the income of the typical household stagnating.  The income of the typical, middle-class household is $1,535 below where it was three years earlier, while 4.3 million more Americans were poor than in 2000, and 5.2 million fewer people had health insurance, producing the largest number of uninsured on record, with the data going back to 1987.  Further, by some indicators, gaps between the most well-off and other Americans — already at exceptionally wide levels — became still larger in 2003."

Blundering Into Bagdad

Check our Larry Diamond's article in the upcoming issue of Foreign Affairs. Diamond makes clear that "As a result of a long chain of U.S. miscalculations, the coalition occupation has left Iraq in far worse shape than it need have and has diminished the long-term prospects of democracy there." The Reason? "hubris and ideology. Contemptuous of the State Department's regional experts who were seen as too "soft" to remake Iraq, a small group of Pentagon officials ignored the elaborate postwar planning the State Department had overseen through its "Future of Iraq" project, which had anticipated many of the problems that emerged after the invasion. Instead of preparing for the worst, Pentagon planners assumed that Iraqis would joyously welcome U.S. and international troops as liberators. With Saddam's military and security apparatus destroyed, the thinking went, Washington could capitalize on the goodwill by handing the country over to Iraqi expatriates such as Ahmed Chalabi, who would quickly create a new democratic state. Not only would fewer U.S. troops be needed at first, but within a year, the troop levels could drop to a few tens of thousands."

From January to April 2004, Diamond served as a Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. You can get a glimpse of Diamond's condemnation, in Sidney Blumenthal's short piece in The Guardian.

When Bob Dole Had Class

I used to respect Colin Powell but he sold out. For some reason he decided to do dishonorable things for George Bush and has never taken responsibility for his actions. I am still waiting to see what John McCain decides to do after first campaigning with Bush and then not speaking up forcefully enough to stop the smearing of war heroes and Vietnam veterans. But I have now lost all respect for Bob Dole. Read Noel Koch's column in today's WP titled "When Bob Dole Said No." Here is the close:

"Time in-country, how often a man was wounded, how much blood he shed when he was wounded -- it is hurtful that those who served in Vietnam are being split in so vile a fashion, and that the wounds of that war are reopened at the instigation of people who avoided serving at all. It is hurtful that a man of Bob Dole's stature should lend himself to the effort to dishonor a fellow American veteran in the service of politics at its cheapest.

There was a time when he would have refused. I know. I was there. "

What's the Matter with Kansas?

"Kansas is ready to lead us singing into the apocalypse. It invites us all to join in, to lay down our lives so that others might cash out at the top; to renounce forever our middle-American prosperity in pursuit of a crimson fantasy of middle-American righteousness." Thus closes Thomas Frank's fascinating new book called "What's The Matter with Kansas?" You can get a taste of this writer's gift in a Bill Moyers interview at Working For Change. But I recommend you read the book.

Iraqi Soccer Team Speaks Out

Bush is taking credit for the Iraqi soccer team appearance in the Olympics. In fact one of his campaign ads features the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan as a narrator says, "At this Olympics there will be two more free nations -- and two fewer terrorist regimes."

What do you suppose the Iraqi soccer team has to say about Bush and the American occupation of Iraq? Sports Illustrated has a scathing report here.

'Ahmed Manajid, who played as a midfielder on Wednesday, had an even stronger response when asked about Bush's TV advertisement. "How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women?" Manajid told me. "He has committed so many crimes."'

'But they also find it offensive that Bush is using their team for his own gain when they do not support his administration's actions in Iraq. "My problems are not with the American people," says Iraqi soccer coach Adnan Hamad . "They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?"'

Why Kerry Is Right About Iraq

In today's WP, Fareed Zakaria explains Why Kerry Is Right About Iraq. Zakaria quotes Louis Gerstner that "strategy is execution" and agrees that Bush's execution has been unforgivable with disastrous consequences.

"Was toppling Hussein's regime a worthwhile objective? Bush's answer is yes; Howard Dean's is no. Kerry's answer is that it was a worthwhile objective but was disastrously executed." I agree with both Dean and Kerry.

"Bush's position is that if Kerry agrees with him that Hussein was a problem, then Kerry agrees with his Iraq policy. Doing something about Iraq meant doing what Bush did. But is that true? Did the United States have to go to war before the weapons inspectors had finished their job? Did it have to junk the U.N. process? Did it have to invade with insufficient troops to provide order and stability in Iraq? Did it have to occupy a foreign country with no cover of legitimacy from the world community? Did it have to ignore the State Department's postwar planning? Did it have to pack the Iraqi Governing Council with unpopular exiles, disband the army and engage in radical de-Baathification? Did it have to spend a fraction of the money allocated for Iraqi reconstruction -- and have that be mired in charges of corruption and favoritism? Was all this an inevitable consequence of dealing with the problem of Saddam Hussein?"

Nevada Turns Blue

The AP reports that "For the first time in 21 1/2 years, Nevada Democrats now outnumber Republicans, according to reports obtained Friday from local and state election officials." You can help win Nevada for the Democrats by "adopting a precinct" at MoveOn PAC.

JibJab Trounces Both Kerry and Bush

CNET reports that in July 2.2 million americans visted the official Kerry Edwards campaign website while 1.1 million americans visited the official Bush Cheney website. But "JibJab's online lampoon of President Bush and Sen. John Kerry received 10.4 million unique hits during the month of July."

$144 Billion: Cost of Iraq War...So Far

Check out this chart suggesting ways the $144 billion cost of the war in Iraq could have been spent to make us all safer.

Mirna Galic at the Center For American Progress reports here that "The 9/11 Commission concluded, "we are safer today. But we are not safe." The more pertinent point is that with better policies over the past three years, we could have been in a position of greater safety today than we are. First, we could have invested the international goodwill towards the United States after 9/11 into serious initiatives for North Korea and Iran, instead of squandering it on the invasion of Iraq. Second, we could have spent the $144 billion that the Iraq war will have cost us by the end of this year on pursuing the most dangerous terrorists; preventing the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons; fortifying our homeland; and attending to many other security imperatives."

Bush's "Jobs and Growth Plan"

In May of 2003 the Bush Administration passed a tax cut program which they claimed would create "5.5 million jobs by the end of 2004 or an average of 306,000 new jobs each month starting July 2003." The Bushies have failed miserably in meeting the overall objective but the trend had been in the right direction from July 2003 through March 2004. Since March, however, the trend has reversed. In fact only 32,000 jobs were created in July (this number will be revised downward next month) and that is 274,000 jobs short of the projection. In fact "job creation failed to meet the administration's projections in 11 of the past 13 months."

Straight Talk From George W. Bush

Today the President had this to say to a White House audience which included miltary brass and the recently missing in action Donald Rumsfeld. The occaision was the signing into law of a new $417 billion defense appropriation bill.

Genuinely Useful or Just Political?

The last post shows that the financial institutions in this country have long known that these institutions have been scouted and targeted by El Qaeda terrorists. We all hope they have taken necessary precautions and have had the full assistance of the federal government in making these preparations. So what was the value of the weekend "orange alert" about possible terrorist attacks on financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington DC? It could have been to raise the alert that we have just received credible evidence that an attack is immenent. That would constitute new information recently received. But this does not seem to be the case. Instead, we are told that the targeting information is, in fact, old (pre 9/11) and although there is a surge in "chatter", there is no information that an attack is immenent. So what is a reasonable person left to believe? Unfortunately, as Ron Suskind reported in Esquire back in January, "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus," says DiIulio. "What you’ve got is everything—and I mean everything—being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."

Recycling Fear: Terrorist Threat to Financial Institutions

Go here to read the CNN story. But first, the punch line: this is a story from April 20, 2002!

"'Unspecified terrorists are considering physical attacks against U.S. financial institutions in the Northeast, particularly banks, as part of their campaign against U.S. financial interests,' the FBI said. Sources said the information indicated a possible mode of attack was suicide bombing.

The information that led to the alert, the sources said, came from a variety of intelligence sources, including al Qaeda detainees captured as part of the ongoing war against terrorism. Law enforcement learned the information in the last couple of days, the sources said.

One U.S. official told CNN that Abu Zubaydah, the highest ranking al Qaeda leader in U.S. custody, was a key source in providing the information about the threat. Zubaydah -- al Qaeda's head of operations and man in charge of recruiting -- was arrested in Pakistan earlier this month, handed over to U.S. custody and is being held at an undisclosed location."

Reagan on Bush

Ron Reagan blasts George W. Bush here. First he describes the pattern of deceit and lies and then he skewers Bushonomics.

"And chances are your America and George W. Bush's America are not the same place. If you are dead center on the earning scale in real-world twenty-first-century America, you make a bit less than $32,000 a year, and $32,000 is not a sum that Mr. Bush has ever associated with getting by in his world. Bush, who has always managed to fail upwards in his various careers, has never had a job the way you have a job—where not showing up one morning gets you fired, costing you your health benefits. He may find it difficult to relate personally to any of the nearly two million citizens who've lost their jobs under his administration, the first administration since Herbert Hoover's to post a net loss of jobs. Mr. Bush has never had to worry that he couldn't afford the best available health care for his children. For him, forty-three million people without health insurance may be no more than a politically inconvenient abstraction. When Mr. Bush talks about the economy, he is not talking about your economy. His economy is filled with pals called Kenny-boy who fly around in their own airplanes. In Bush's economy, his world, friends relocate offshore to avoid paying taxes. Taxes are for chumps like you. You are not a friend. You're the help. When the party Mr. Bush is hosting in his world ends, you'll be left picking shrimp toast out of the carpet."