Bill's Big Diamond Blog

One Last Ride— Take Me To Harlem!

It’s been a week for dying.

However, one story out of the sad news makes a body feel lighter. Link to Steve Guillard and a Daily News story about James Brown’s driver taking his friend from Georgia up to Harlem without a murmur of complaint. How could he refuse one last long ride for the hardest working man in show business?

Saddam Hussein, Hanged

Here we come to the end of 2006 and I am sad. Not simply sad for the state of the country, but for the state of our humanity, as Iraqis. We've all lost some of the compassion and civility that I felt made us special four years ago.

—Riverbend, posting on the occasion of Saddam's execution

The violent end of this kangaroo court proceeding is fitting only to the kind of idiots who are running the Iraqi occupation. The rush to do away with Saddam ends any chance that he will bring forth a defense to his crimes that might indict his long-standing American intelligence contacts or highlight visits from US luminaries like Donald Rumsfeld during the height of Iraqi chemical attacks, but it will not erase the records of these contacts.

Hanging Saddam certainly will not improve the situation in the country either. If the present atmosphere is any guide, his execution will only increase the feeling among Sunnis that the American occupation intends to subjugate them and wishes to make that plain by killing off their popular culture proxy. What will this portend? I guess we'll find out.

Moreover, the rough, politicized, and very violent nature of the entire Saddam trial makes it impossible to claim any honor or justice in the manner of redressing his regime's crimes against humanity. There is no chance that the occupation's brand of law can be accepted by anyone except those it can intimidate rather than convince. So much for creating a democratic Iraq. What we have instead in Iraq is a system of torture and violent misrule worthy of Saddam himself.

Wanted: A Presidential Candidate With Foresight

The topic below was originally posted in my blog the Intrepid Liberal Journal and crossposted here at Bill's invitation.

The silly season of presidential politics is here. Posturing, fundraising and repositioning to simultaneously win support from party activists and independent voters that decide general elections. A candidate that can thread the needle with their party's base and remain viable to the center has achieved a sublime nexus.

In our current culture a candidate must demonstrate fidelity to their party's core principles and a maverick streak of independence. They must project manliness (or in Hillary Clinton's case toughness) with a soft side of empathy. After six years of Bush's insipid rule a winning candidate will also need to project gravitas but not appear above us. As women are burdened with a double standard Hillary Clinton will have to demonstrate firmness without coming off as shrill. Most importantly a winning candidate better have terrific hair.

 

We expect too much and too little from presidential candidates. Al Gore partly lost in 2000 (even though he really won) because he couldn't pass the "beer test" while George W. Bush deceived voters into believing he was a "regular guy." Abraham Lincoln wouldn't stand a chance today but Arnold Schwarzenegger could win in a landslide if the Constitution permitted him to run. Hence, the realities of our culture require a measure of compromise when deciding upon a winning horse during the Democratic Party's primary season.

With 2008 on the horizon there is one trait I'm not willing to compromise about during the primary season: foresight.

Among the definitions listed online for foresight is,

"knowledge or insight gained by or as by looking forward; a view of the future."

Yesterday, the Democrat's 2004 Vice Presidential nominee, John Edwards declared his candidacy. There is much to like about Edwards. He's a self-made man who remembers where he came from and cares deeply for people struggling to survive in our treadmill economy. Conservatives denigrate trial lawyers such as Edwards but I rather like somebody who earned a fortune by defending the little guy against corporate interests.

Both Edwards and his wife Elizabeth appear to be talented and down to Earth. They lost a teenage son and Elizabeth recently endured the scare of breast cancer. These are people who can empathize with the struggles of others.

John Edwards is also an attractive, articulate man and can effectively advocate the progressive cause in our soundbite culture. Unlike Barack Obama however Edwards doesn't speak in platitudes and takes firm stands. Edwards also appears to be embracing the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and not running from it like Hillary Clinton. So in many ways Edwards is easy for me to like. We sure as hell could do a lot worse and have.

However, his support for the Iraq War while in the Senate is like a worm in my brain. I appreciate his apology for supporting it and hope he's sincere. We all make mistakes. I'm certainly not perfect. Nevertheless I wonder if his initial support for the Iraq War was about political expediency. Is it possible his apologizing for the Iraq War is also about political expediency? This troubles me. Politics requires a measure of expediency on a broad range of issues but matters such as war and peace should be about one's conscious.

Admittedly, Hillary Clinton's stubbornness on the issue also troubles me. I acknowledge the inconsistency in my reaction to both of them. There is a criticism one can fairly level at Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and John Kerry: a lack of foresight. Many of us protested the Iraq War in 2002-2003 and predicted the civil war taking place today. I'm not surprised Iraq has gone to hell and a hand basket and partly marched because I had no faith in our ability to manage the post Saddam era.

There were also public figures at the time that demonstrated foresight and courage such as Howard Dean, Russ Feingold, Al Gore, Dennis Kucinich and Paul Wellstone. Barack Obama partly propelled his candidacy for the Senate by opposing the neocons folly. Alas, Wellstone is dead and Feingold has opted not to seek the presidency. Dean is also not a candidate for 2008. As for Kucinich, I admire his commitment to peace but his overall record troubles me and I don't believe he can win.

Obama is flirting with the presidency and has generated much attention. I suspect the Hillary Clinton political machine will dissect him and force Obama from his zone of comfortable platitudes to actually defending positions she will distort. The junior Ilinois Senator will come away bloodied.

Also, what kind of president would Obama be? My intuitive sense is Obama is bit too corporatist and tolerant of religious intolerance. I reserve the right to change my mind as I learn more about him. Perhaps Obama will win me over but I doubt it.

Al Gore made a courageous stand against the war while contemplating the 2004 campaign. Gore also had to think about a general election dynamic at the time because he would've been the front-runner for the nomination. Many Democrats feared appearing weak on national security after opposing the Gulf War in 1991. Taking the stand Gore did was courageous and right. He showed principle, foresight and courage in doing so. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards demonstrated neither at the time and Obama doesn't have the same track record of foresight as Al Gore who warned about global warming before it was cool to do so.

Gore is the one prospective candidate that can knit the Democratic Party's disparate coalitions into a coherent whole and compete effectively in the general election. Admittedly Gore has flaws such as an expanding waistline and thinning hair.

Right now Clinton, Edwards and Obama are regarded as the "big three" in the Democratic Party for 2008. Gore is head and shoulders above all of them. I hope he runs. Nobody else in the Democratic Party possesses his track record of foresight and can compete with the big three.

Petty Officer Third Class Dustin E. Kirby, Wounded Christmas Day in Iraq

Petty Officer Third Class Dustin E. Kirby, the subject of a recent NY Times feature article, was seriously wounded with a sniper’s bullet to his head and mouth while he patrolled near Falluja on Christmas Day.

True to his character as described in C.J. Chivers’ NYT article, Kirby, a Marine medic, apologized to the company’s senior enlisted man for being wounded and then refused a stretcher to the medivac helicopter that had been called to take him for treatment. He walked to the chopper on his own. Since the wound took away his ability to speak, Kirby wrote his message to his company and superior officer on a piece of paper. Kirby was taken to a hospital in Germany.

In the November story, Chivers described how Kirby gave first aid to Lance Corporal Colin Smith after Smith had been gravely wounded with a sniper bullet to the head.

I posted after reading the original article:

Dustin Kirby….(has) suffered casualties to two
close friends in his platoon in Iraq, both shot in the
head. He’s angry. According to Chivers, Kirby, who
fought bravely and successfully to keep Smith
breathing long enough for a chopper to come pick
him up, wants to do something medics don’t get
trained to do. “I’d like to think I’m a good person,”
Kirby told Chivers. “But after what happened to
Smith, I want to hurt people. You know what I
mean?”

… There’s not much reason to believe that the
people sending Smith and Kirby and their platoon
day after day into harm’s way see their lives as
more than a small piece in a giant puzzle—one
that they can’t seem to put together correctly.
That’s pissing me off tonight.

Hearing about Kirby now, I’m more numb than angry. It’s hard to know what to think. These are good men and women in Iraq, fighting in a war that becomes more senseless daily. Does any of it make a difference to the men who decide how long to keep them there?

More Ford Notes...

Two pieces about the passing and Presidency of Gerald Ford (as well as another important figure of the period, James Brown) are worth checking out. Bob Herbert has a great column about both figures and how their deaths make him aware of the missed opportunities of our time. Rob Ellman takes a critical look at the ascension of “Plan B” types like Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney during Ford’s tenure, rather than on Ford’s pratfalls (which still make me laugh). Both are good reading.

...and in his next post, Ellman properly asks whether Ford's 2004 views about the war in Iraq would have been embargoed until after his death had a Democrat been in the White House. There seems to be a lot of silent disagreement among Republicans over Iraq—that might have made a difference if actually spoken in public.

Outsourcing War

Here’s an outsourcing story I missed over the holiday weekend:

The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting
goals, are considering expanding the number of
noncitizens in the ranks -- including disputed proposals
to open recruiting stations overseas and putting more
immigrants on a faster track to US citizenship if they
volunteer.

(link to entire Boston Globe story)

This war in Iraq is so unpopular that even as the White House insists it will prevail, the Pentagon knows there’s no way to expand the all-volunteer armed forces without chicanery. So why not outsource the armed services themselves? Perhaps we could even hire the army of some relatively impoverished countries to fight the war completely and send our troops home. That would complete the political isolation of the war from the American public.

Gerald Ford, 93

Here on the Big Diamond, we pause to note the passing of America’s affable interim President of the 1970’s, Gerald Ford. He died at his California home at age 93 last evening.

Ford, a 26-year Congressman from Michigan before being appointed to the executive branch, was a politician in the old mold. He was a man who, while conservative, did not revile those with whom he disagreed. As a leader of the Republican minority in the House, Ford was a civil man, but was never mentioned as a presidential possibility and never sought the office.

Ford was appointed vice president in 1973 when President Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned to avoid prosecution on corruption charges in his home state of Maryland. Some thought that Ford’s lack of presidential qualities were Nixon’s ‘insurance,’ making himself ‘impeachment-proof’ as the growing Watergate scandal enveloped his administration.

However, as the shadow of Watergate grew longer over Nixon, the House Judiciary committee voted in favor of impeachment nonetheless. Nixon resigned his office on August 9, 1974, making Ford the 38th US President (On the occasion, my father sent a telegram to the White House that read, “BEST DECISION YOU’VE MADE IN YEARS. DON’T CHANGE YOUR MIND.”)

Ford took office with the statement that, “Our long national nightmare is over." However, in an effort to end that nightmare precipitously, the new President Ford pardoned former President Nixon of all crimes only a month after assuming office. The pardon came even as a criminal investigation of Nixon’s spying on his opposition, his extralegal break-in squads, and his consequent cover-up of these activities was still under way. Ford’s re-election chances in 1976 were probably doomed from that moment on.

There was much speculation that Ford had made a deal with Nixon to pardon him in order to ascend to the Presidency. To his death, Ford denied that there was any truth to the accusation. Even without proof, the timing of Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon gave rise to strong opposition to his Presidency. His vetoes were overridden frequently by a Congress that included a large number of the “Class of ’74,” a group of liberal Democrats swept into office in the midst of Watergate anger that year.

In office, Ford presided over the evacuation of the last Americans from Vietnam in 1975, as the Vietnamese communists took the city of Saigon from the Republic of South Vietnam, renaming it Ho Chi Minh City. Ford also fought an economic battle at home to stem inflation, sporting buttons that read “WIN,” an acronym for “Whip Inflation Now.” This campaign was also a largely losing effort, and was soon overshadowed by a mild recession in 1975.

Ford will also long be remembered for his reaction to the fiscal crisis in New York City, which faced the specter of bankruptcy in 1975. He refused to support a federal bailout for the city, prompting the New York Daily News to run the now-famous headline, “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”

Ford was a member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Ironically, he was twice the target of unsuccessful attempts on his own life as President.

Ford may be best remembered in the popular culture for the good-humored parodies of him done by comedian Chevy Chase on the then-new television show, “Saturday Night Live.” Chase would repeatedly tumble off sets, down stairs, and over any available object in his imitations of Ford, who had a habit of tripping himself in public. The parody never seemed to irritate Ford, who had a good sense of humor. He actually played along with Chase’s bumbling introduction of him at a broadcaster’s dinner in 1976, ‘inadvertently’ pulling out the tablecloth from the speakers’ table and sending dishes clattering to the floor.

Ford’s Presidency was followed by Jimmy Carter’s administration in 1977. Carter beat Ford narrowly in November,1976, after Ford’s unexpectedly vigorous campaign cut Carter’s 30-point lead in the polls to almost nothing.

Peace.

How about Christmas in America? Bring their baby home, Mr. Bush.

Thank you to our soldiers under arms and under siege in Iraq...and to all our troops in Afghanistan, fighting the forgotten war against Osama and Co. We are with you.

Peace on Earth. Goodwill towards man.

Someday.

Meanwhile, a Merry Christmas, wherever you may be.

A Saigon Newspaper in NYC

Those of us who’ve reached a certain age can tell you what the expression “like a Saigon newspaper” means. It looks a lot like today’s NY Times op-ed page. The redacted paragraphs of “classified” material in Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann’s article, all of which have been previously publicly revealed in open policy discussions by public figures, were censored at the direction of people like Eliott Abrams at the White House for political purposes.

Read the whole piece. It will tell you volumes about this government, this Presidency. It should make you angry— and active.

Democracy's Mr. Fix It: A Podcast Interview With Author Joel S. Hirschhorn

The topic below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal and crossposted here Bill's invitation.

Across the political divide Americans understand our democracy has stopped working for them - unless they happen to be comfortably wealthy. Prostitutes are held in higher esteem then today's politicians because at least they're providing a service. Our elected leaders appear to only service themselves and their cronies as Hurricane Katrina exposed to our national shame in 2005.

Many progressive political activists such as myself believe the best approach is to take over the Democratic Party the same way conservatives captured the GOP. Hence the enthusiastic pride of volunteers like me who helped Democrats recapture congress in November.

Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of Delusional Democracy: Fixing The Republic Without Overthrowing The Government (Common Courage Press) disagrees. He advocates for the systematic dismantling of the two parties "duopoly" instead.

Hirschhorn's views were shaped by his experiences as a professor at the University of Wisconsin, a congressional staffer at the Office of Technology Assessment, a business consultant and the Director of Environment, Energy and Natural Resources at the National Governors Association. Chapters 1-6 of Hirschhorn's book are essentially a rant against the corporatist state plaguing America.

On that score he's admittedly preaching to the choir with people like me. Bloggers such as myself eat the "our country is a corporate plutocracy" rant for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Venting about it has become our fuel and while I've read similar rants in many different places, I nevertheless appreciate what Hirschhorn has to say about it. His prose effectively combines earnestness with a common touch.

Chapters 7-10 are more focused on his proposed solutions to break the two party stranglehold such as compulsory voting, cleansing politics from "dirty" money, expanding ballot initiatives and giving voters the option to choose "none of the above." Some might consider his solutions impractical and I'm not a fan of ballot initiatives or his "none of the above" approaches. However, incremental change is not likely to reverse the trend of crony capitalism undermining our democracy and Hirschhorn deserves credit for thinking boldly.

From a scholarly point of view it annoys me that Hirschhorn doesn't footnote anything (which I ask him about). For example, in Chapter 7 Hirschhorn cites a national poll conducted in 2000 about Americans support for "public financing." As a reader I'd like to know what "national poll" he's referring to and where he's getting those figures. Typically, I review endnotes upon completing a chapter to see where information like this is coming from and it bothers me when I don't have that option. Was it a newspaper article? Thankfully, Hirschhorn does provide a bibliography of secondary sources at the end of his book.

I definitely share Hirschhorn's passion about the state of our democracy but remain inclined to try and change the Democratic Party instead of getting behind a third party at this time. From my vantage point we're more likely to achieve real change that way. Nevertheless, Hirschhorn wrote a thoughtful book and he agreed to a healthy give and take in a podcast interview.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST