Bill's Big Diamond Blog

The Honduran Coup and the U.S.

The question that comes to mind here regarding the recent coup in Honduras is, “What role will the US government play in either restoring democracy or in allowing the Honduran military to rule?”  As most readers know, the history of US support for coups in Latin America is a long and shameful one.  Now that one has taken place during the Obama Administration, we wonder what will distinguish his reaction to it from that of past US presidents.

The Bush Administration supported the last attempted Latin American coup against an irritant of the US, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, in 2002.  Bush’s support backfired when the coup was overturned quickly and decisively by Chavez’ supporters, earning the US further condemnation in the region.  Even stated opposition to coups by the US has historically been halfhearted and sometimes merely a show for international audiences.

 In fact, the joke question one hears frequently in those parts is, “Why has there never been a military coup in the United States?”  The answer is, “Because the United States is the only country in the Americas without a US Embassy.”  Militaries across the region have always taken the pulse of US diplomats before acting to overthrow their governments by coup.  It appears that in Honduras as well, the military calculated that, at worst, the US will not act decisively against their actions.

 So will Obama let the Honduran coup pass into record, even while the country’s neighbors have united to shut down trade and called for the restoration of the elected President?  What means would the US employ to convince the Honduran military, which has historically lived on aid from the US, that their coup must be reversed?  Will the Administration put its prestige on the line to stand on the side of democracy in its own backyard, even as it is powerless to do so on the other side of the globe in Iran?

 We're interested to see.

(Bill Kavanagh cross-posts at Buck Naked Politics.)

Iran's Future

The continuing uprising in Iran is a hopeful sign for that beleaguered nation, but hardly a sure bet that the regime will fall anytime soon.  It’s inspiring that the activism of ordinary Iranians has kept even an old pol like Moussavi from abandoning claims to legitimacy in the face of the overwhelming power of the state.  However, the Revolutionary Guard has the force to make the streets of Tehran unsafe for protest and it is clearly willing to use violence on Moussavi’s supporters— and possibly on him as well.  

The nightly shouts from the rooftops of “God is Great” and “Death to the Dictator” remind the Iranian people that they are not alone but simultaneously that they cannot protest in the bright light of day without severe consequences.  The resistance to the Supreme Leader and to the militarization of Iranian life is now entering a precarious phase, during which reform leaders must decide how to sustain themselves and their movement in the face of increased repression and further violence.

As for Americans who support the Iranian people, there is much we can learn about their country’s history, but little we can do to change it.  It’s instructive to remember that our meddling in Iran has already led to decades of dictatorship there.  In 1953, the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh was deposed by a CIA and MI6 sponsored coup.  Mohammed Reza Palevi, known in the West as the Shah, was installed from abroad in what became a brutal 26-year rule against the will of the Iranian people.  The cries of Iranians against the US do not come out of nowhere.

While the 1979 Iranian revolution had the wide support of the people, from socialists to hard core Islamists, theocracy and the exigencies of war with Iraq soon took a heavy toll on more secular groups.  During the 1980’s, religious fundamentalists in Iran tired of the messiness of democracy after the revolution and blood ran in the streets while the Revolutionary Guard accumulated power during Iran’s long war with their neighbor Saddam Hussein.  The dictatorship of the military and the Ayatollahs today stems from that period of reaction and battle.

What happens now?  We don’t know, but we can keep lines of communication open, people to people.  What we can’t do is to ask our government to become involved.  With our country’s history in Iran, the US government can only cause harm to the Iranian democracy movement by demanding it be recognized.  Condemning state violence against protest is about as far as our government should go in inserting itself where it clearly cannot change the balance of power inside Iran.

Gail Collins has this to say about the US Administration’s limitations:

…Obama has to be very, very careful not to offer any kind of encouragement that might lead some of the dissidents to believe that the United States has their back if they take to the streets. That would be incredibly cruel, not to mention dangerous. We all remember what happened to the Shiites in Iraq in 1991 when they thought that the first George Bush would come to their rescue if they rose up against Saddam Hussein.

As people, however, we can help spread news out of Iran and let the sunshine of truth help thwart the repression against the Iranians. It’s not much help to a student being beaten bloody or being shot for his/her resistance, but the ripples of our solidarity may have unforeseen consequences down the line.  Let’s hope that by staying in touch and speaking out internationally, we as citizens can show some small reflection of the courage of Iran’s people as they face their own struggle.

(Bill Kavanagh cross-posts at Buck Naked Politics.)

Employment Disaster

For those who need convincing that the crisis precipitated by the meltdown is still with us, try on these stats for size:

•   Unemployment is currently 9.4%
• 
 Unemployment will soon top 10%, even by the predictions of economists who believe the recession is ending.
• 
 There are 14 million Americans now counted as unemployed.
• 
 There are 30 million Americans who are counted as “underutilized.”

 These are statistics that are derived from official sources.  If one looks at more realistic models that don’t throw out various groups of people no longer even looking for work, or if one doesn’t throw in the armed forces to boost the employment figures, the picture is even bleaker.  It’s worse for young people, men, and—dramatically—for people of color.

 For more on the implications of our current employment disaster, read Bob Herbert today at the NY Times.

(Bill cross-posts at Buck Naked Politics.)  

Looking Forward

There is a tendency in the absence of crisis to believe that things are now working.  A human willingness to look on the bright side is a wonderful thing when applied to making the best of one’s own situation, but it’s dangerous when applied to the macro scale of our economy.  Lately, many of us have stopped worrying about a continuation of the meltdown of 2008, thanks to an odd patchwork quilt of bailouts, managed bankruptcies, and some prospect that a compromised stimulus will kick in soon.  Oh, and not to mention… the fact that our economy has fallen so far that we have a hard time imagining that we haven’t already hit bottom.

 My concern is that we are now at a post-crash stage, but without having put in place many changes that would ensure a sustained recovery, beyond the limping, flatline lack-of-further-disaster we have presently.  It is a relief not to worry that our major financial institutions will continue to disappear daily—and there is some reason for optimism in the decline of the increase (not an actual decline) in the unemployment rate.  But this end to the meltdown does not necessarily portend a beginning of something new and better happening.

 We now have the opportunity to imagine what the US economy should look like some years down the road and begin to work towards it, rather than simply paying lip service to cosmetic reform.  Conversely, we could instead let the folks who had the power to create the meltdown make those critical calls.  The corporate elite had the power over the last several decades—and used it—to turn our country essentially into a giant company that services the rich, mortgages the middle class into eternal financial servitude, and ignores the poor altogether, all the while exporting our manufacturing and skimming foreign natural resources from people overseas.

 This model has failed, disastrously.

 If we want to do the former rather than the latter, we better talk more about real alternatives, rather than simply defending compromise.  We can’t just follow.  The White House can do only so much without pressure from the grassroots.  We’ve already seen too much presidential willingness to water down the stimulus, new financial regulations, and now, possibly, a public health care option.  We hear less than we’d like to about green jobs, real housing solutions, a retooled auto industry producing mass transit, investments in solar, wind, and geothermal energy, and more jobs, jobs, and jobs for the huge and growing number of unemployed and underemployed people in the US.

 We’re not going to get any of these changes, save some cosmetic reforms, unless we are able to wrest the microphones away from an endless debate between the center and the far right. Obama’s plans and actions have been mainly centrist, not truly progressive.  While his instincts may be to aspire to real change, his cautious nature is then to compromise.   Obama wants to get what he considers a consensus enacted, whether that’s regarding health care, the stimulus, the war in Iraq, or reforming extralegal detentions outside the Constitution.

 I’m not saying that the President should commit political suicide and step way out ahead of the people (although he’s got the political capital to do so, on occasion).  What we need is more pressure on Obama— people getting in front of him on the issues, envisioning a better future, and presenting a case for change. Our leaders, even Obama, are essentially timid; let’s face it. As for our media, it’s the nature of the media to embrace any conflict, whether it’s between the far Right and the President or between progressives and the Right.  Why not present the media with the second alternative and give the politicians the option of compromising with us, rather than with the Right?

 Unless progressives treat the present as a continuation of the paradigm that got us into the meltdown of 2008, we will probably look back on 2009 in the years ahead and wonder why things didn’t really change.  The question on the floor is how to focus attention on real progressive proposals—and get them in front of the country, rather than the public hearing only criticism by the Right of any change at all.

 One thing progressives can do is to continue to discuss serious ideas publicly, whether the oddsmakers say they’re viable or not.  Single-payer healthcare should be debated, not dismissed because it infuriates the insurance companies.  More stimulus is still needed and we should say so, not be silent because Republicans are already angry that some stimulus passed during the winter.  Joblessness will soon pass 10%, so why shouldn’t we act to relieve it?  There also needs to be a real debate about rebuilding the financial firewall between our banks and speculative investment activities, like the ones that caused the meltdown.

 The list goes on and on of changes that should be under consideration now, but aren’t yet.  If progressives have a role in shaping the agenda of 2009, it should be to press open the political envelope, before the usual suspects come back to power, insisting that even the meltdown of 2008 was the fault of too much government.

(Bill Kavanagh cross-posts at Buck Naked Politics,  as well as well as here at BBD.) 

Cole on Iranian Election Fraud

Juan Cole’s post and Salon.com article on the fixed election in Iran are both worthwhile reading. There’s lot’s of good detail there on the probably hastily-organized and clumsy doctoring of the results— and why they are so improbable. He sees the “soft coup” holding and Moussavi probably backing down from sending his supporters into the streets.  The memories of the bloody civil strife of the 1980’s are key for his generation of reformers in shying away from direct conflict.

 Cole also notes his support for the Obama overtures to Iran, regardless of the real outcome.

Champagne for Franken?

Finally, it looks like time for Al Franken’s campaign to break out the champagne and get ready to celebrate his election as Minnesota’s junior US Senator.  Politico is reporting that not only will the Minnesota Supreme Court likely rule decisively in favor of Al Franken in the Senate recount case recently brought before it by Norm Coleman, but that it may also predicate its ruling on a lack of supporting evidence.  If that turns out to be the case, the state court may have precluded an appeal to the US Supreme Court by Coleman’s legal team on equal protection grounds.

 According to the Politico article by Michael Falcone:

 Raleigh Levine, a professor at William Mitchell College of Law, watched Monday’s oral argument with her colleague, Professor Knapp. Like other observers of the Coleman-Franken fight, she said that the justices seemed to be sending a clear message that the Coleman team had failed to present enough facts to back up their claims about the handling of absentee ballots.

“If that is the basis on which the court makes its decision, to a large extent it insulates the case from the U.S. Supreme Court,” Levine said. “If the factual premise is accepted then you have to wrestle with the Constitutional argument, but if he hasn’t even established that, there’s nothing really for the U.S. Supreme Court to do.”

See Memorandum for more comment.

Ginning Up the Fear Machine

We’ve all seen the Right Wing media talking heads going at Sonia Sotomayor last week for “racism,” concocting the thinnest rationales imaginable to do so.  Small wonder her Supreme Court appointment has the Right totally apoplectic, since Sotomayor appears to be a strong voice for the common man and woman.  The thing that never ceases to amaze is how many racist tropes these knuckleheads manage to incorporate into their cries about her supposed “racism.” 

 Even more repellent lines come out of some hypocritically halfhearted condemnations of the assassination of a Kansas physician by political media midgets who have spent an inordinate amount of energy whipping up the Fox News crowd to know and hate Dr. George Tiller, who might otherwise have continued to live and practice medicine at a women’s clinic in the Great Plains.  It was a truly naseating spectacle to see Bill O’Reilly, who called out Tiller as an “evil” man for performing legal abortions and who made references to “judgment day” awaiting the doctor, excuse his own words and further condemn Tiller’s life and work— immediately after his killing.

 Hatred and intolerance is indeed alive and well in the land of the free.  We ignore it at our peril.  Hopefully, however, the increased level of hateful speech on the Right is a sign of frustration at losing sway over American politics.  The Right must be amazed at how fast and how far the politics of jingoism and division have fallen since the Bush years ended in January.  But make no mistake, we haven’t nearly seen the end of their public lashing out— or their followers violent craziness.  It would be folly to pretend that one election has turned the Right into a gelatinous mass.  I’m sure we’ll see more fallout in the coming months.

 The good news is that the more over-the-top the Limbaughs and Liddys and their lesser chuckleheads are when they spout their nonsense, the clearer their real goals should become to most Americans.  They’re all about the traditional divide and conquer scheme, plain and simple.  Set off one identity group against another, call the aspirations of one belief set antithetical to all other American ideals.  Spread fear.  Then, they isolate public figures who would have us talk across political and racial lines.  The Right calls us “elites” and unpatriotic. Limbaugh and Co work hard to prevent us from seeing the common interests we share.

 Hopefully, the time of the chuckleheads is on the wane.  But history isn’t ever a straight line, even if it does bend toward justice.  It’s worth remembering how hard we all had to work to raise the flag of reality-based politics during the Bush years.  That work remains, even as our hope for real change rises out of the ashes of our economy in the wake of the new laissez-faire era.

 Meanwhile, we look for opportunities to show the greater possibilities that can be realized when American politics looks more like America.  As wise and committed jurists and political leaders from many backgrounds, both genders, and more varied political perspectives join in rebuilding our country after the economic pillaging it’s now surviving, we can hope to forge a stronger democracy and a better common bond with which to move past the divide and conquer crowd.

 Let’s just hope we can get it together fast enough and work smartly enough to meet the many challenges we face.  We’ve certainly got our work cut out for us rebuilding America.