The Broad View

Hang in there, General

Updated below. Update II below.

As dday predicted, the "Mother Of All Hissy Fits" has broken out in the McCain camp over Gen. Wesley Clark's remarks on "Face the Nation" yesterday. Quite predictably, the media chuckleheads are agape, rendered so by this simple statement from Clark:

“I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president.”

The gasbags would rather question Clark's judgment and motives than McCain's mythical qualifications. To even consider Clark's arguments would cause such cognitive dissonance and so undermine the media's long-cherished McCain narrative that it cannot be allowed.

MSNBC has made it the "controversy" of the day, as if a bald statement of fact is controversial. Check out Mika Brzezinski once again for her sneering contempt. Following up on my post of June 14 re Clark's opening shots in this battle, this is the second time vis-a-vis Clark that Brzezinski has mulishly refused to consider the facts over the myth:

Let the piling on begin! There's Perry Bacon from the Washington Post agreeing that Clark has stepped in it, big time. He also claims that the Obama campaign has "already started distancing itself" from Clark's remarks. If so, Obama and his advisors are losing their touch. I don't know what they're feeding the media hounds back in the kennel, but Obama's speech on patriotism this morning didn't make any reference to this manufactured controversy.

The Repubs and the media are trying to twist Clark's remarks as somehow attacking McCain's service or patriotism. That's pure moonshine and the Repubs know it, even if the media can't or won't understand. The media's only other explanation for Clark's interview is that he's auditioning for the Veep/Attack Dog position. It may be so but that doesn't negate the truth of what he's saying.

Finally, it doesn't help when the Dems go on the air to validate the Repubs' hissy fits. I earlier heard Chris Kofinis on MSNBC yammering about Clark's remarks being "inappropriate". I'm sorry, Chris, but you are wrong, wrong, wrong. You're the guy who can brag about the losing Edwards campaign's communications -- you know, the communications that were never heard, the shots heard 'round your head.

It's going to take a sustained attack to make a dent in McCain's media armor. It can't just be Clark out there putting his own credibility on the line. It's time for every Dem standing in front of a microphone to go through the obligatory thanks for McCain's Vietnam experience -- forty years ago -- and then insist that it has nothing to do with judgment or leadership in a very different world. Dems must get over their craven resistance to confronting the McCain Myth head-on.

Wes Clark had better not back down on this. He's right, he knows it, and it behooves him to be one Dem who's not afraid to stand by what he knows is right.

Maybe it will be a lesson for Obama, who's looking more and more the Clintonesque triangulator. Paul Krugman puts it this way:

"In effect, they [progressive activists] convinced themselves that he [Obama] was a transformational figure behind a centrist facade.

They may have had it backward."

Here's the video from "Face the Nation" with the "controversial" remarks in their entirety:

Update: Well, not surprisingly, I'm disgusted. I couldn't characterize anything in Obama's "patriotism" speech today that directly or even indirectly disparaged Wes Clark's comments but it seems everybody on the teevee disagrees. That's all debatable, but there's no mistaking the pitiful surrender to the baying hounds when Obama's campaign spokesman Bill Burton says this:

"As he's said many times before, Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain's service, and of course he rejects yesterday's statement by General Clark."

Does Obama merely reject, or does he repudiate, revile and recoil? Does he repulse and regurgitate? Give me time, I'll think of a few more. Way to go, Barack. You're really looking like a stalwart example of a different kind of politics. Yep.

Steve Benen sums up the problem with dancing to the Repub's tune:

Now, it's possible that everyone is just playing a part here. Clark takes on one of the pillars of McCain's campaign pitch (just as MoveOn.org took on Petraeus), it gets lots of attention, and Obama distances himself from the remarks, nevertheless pleased that the arguments have been inserted into the public discourse.

The problem, though, is that the Obama campaign's response implicitly accepts the criticism offered by the media and the right -- that Clark was attacking McCain's military service, despite the fact that it never happened. Four years ago, Republicans said John Kerry's military background didn't necessarily mean he was right about national security, and didn't necessarily make him qualified to be president. Sunday, Clark made the same argument about McCain.

The feigned, coordinated outrage here is transparent. The way in which the media is buying into the outrage, and exaggerating it, makes me wonder if the McCain campaign will have to report today's coverage as an in-kind contribution.

Update II: Interestingly, DIgby speaks directly to the idea that Benen outlines above, that everyone was playing a part in the kabuki [emphasis mine].

For those of you who insist that this is some kind of super-duper jiujitsu, well --- if it is, it's not very effective. When you have a "surrogate" go out and say something which you want to "repudiate" but need to get "out there" you don't send one of the most important and credible voices on the left. You send some lowly factotum or political operative whose job it is to be publicly slapped down and whose credibility is irrelevant. You don't repudiate someone of Clark's stature unless you are prepared for him to be damaged and undermined in the future.

I don't believe the Obama campaign sent out Clark to say this. I think Clark was speaking for himself as a Democrat and respected four star General. And what he said was perfectly reasonable and uncontroversial. The establishment reflexively turned it into one of their little pearl clutching pageants. It isn't real. One of these days Democrats will learn that the hissy fit is designed to make them look weak and unprincipled.

Gen. Clark is, as Digby says elswhere in the post, "a very special person in the Democratic Party and should be highly valued." She goes on:

...They don't have many people like him. He not only brings national security credibility and experience in a unique way, he has proven himself to be a tireless worker for Democratic candidates and causes for the last four years. He is very, very smart and would be an asset in any Democratic administration. Indeed, I think it was assumed that he would be in any Democratic administration. Certainly, one would think any Democrat would want him.

As I wrote yesterday, I think the Obama campaign is working overtime to prove to the Village that he isn't "dangerously" radical. At least that seems to be the campaign's overriding message at the moment. I have little doubt that everyone who's anyone has decided that Clark "screwed up" and that he had to be cut loose. The gasbag reviews are sure to be glowing. Everyone knows that you are not allowed to assail the military record of a war hero, right? (Oh wait .... only certain war heroes. I forgot.)

Again, it's all very convenient for Republicans. There's one less super smart,liberal military expert to contend with, paving the way, no doubt, for someone a little more ... reliable.

Another chapter in the neverending saga of "Democrats: Gun Meets Foot."

Mark Your Calendars

Naomi Klein is coming to our little "adobe Disneyland"

Saturday, September 29, 2007 @ 8:00 PM
Victoria Hall Theater, 33 W. Victoria St.

"The Shock Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism"

In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America's "free market" policies have come to dominate the world- — through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq's civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country's vast oil reserves.... Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the "War on Terror" to Halliburton and Blackwater.... After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans's residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened.... These events are examples of "the shock doctrine": using the public's disorientation following massive collective shocks — wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters — to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don't succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.

Books will be available for purchase and signing.

This is a FREE event.

For more info: 805.893.3535

Presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and the UCSB Women's Center as part of the 9th Annual Santa Barbara Book & Author Festival, September 28-29.

Word Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

It's crept up on the American public slowly, but with the installation of the "CEO president" in 2000, it has metastasized and is out of control. "It" is the selling of government -- government marketing itself vigorously, unashamedly and unabashedly. Propaganda. And we, the taxpayers, are paying for it.

It's gotten to the point that we don't think to question the rationale, and it isn't confined to the politicians who must persuade voters to periodically renew their misrule of us. It is as if every government branch and agency is just another corporation trying to convince us of the efficacy and benevolence of its products.

Government marketing has reached its apotheosis not, as one might think, in the propaganda that was peddled to broadcasters under the guise of actual news footage. It was not even in the editing and bowdlerization of scientific reports by government agencies to make the written record conform with administration political dogma.

The most insidious applications of government marketing itself are coming to us straight from the Pentagon. As a nation, we barely realize the amount and extent of propaganda emanating from the military, dedicated to instilling unquestioning, unending support from a patriotic populace.

On Thursday, the Washington Post reported on the latest attempt by the Pentagon to manage their brand:

U.S. military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, $20 million public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq.

The contract calls for assembling a database of selected news stories and assessing their tone as part of a program to provide "public relations products" that would improve coverage of the military command's performance, according to a statement of work attached to the proposal.

That's 20 million of our dollars going to a bunch of P.R. flacks (or worse) to tell the Pentagon how to better sell themselves to us with "public relations products." It's not to provide better equipment to our troops. It's not to provide improved care of wounded veterans. It's not to fight wars, except a war of ideas against us, the American public.

Why is the Pentagon concerning itself with the "tone" of news stories about Iraq? What the fuck business does the Pentagon have with trying to influence "selected news stories?" Why is no one blinking an eye about the professional military engaging in psy-ops on the American people?

The Pentagon has already proved adept at locking down any battlefield reporting by restricting access to only the most pliant of journalists. Those they embedded with the troops, encouraging the co-opting of reporters by enlisting their identification with their unit above objectivity.

But this isn't about rah-rah stories designed to trigger another outpouring of "Support Our Troops" fervor. Our troops aren't the subjects for this P.R. campaign. It's the "military command's performance" that's getting a burnished halo for our admiration. They can't risk the media or the public finally digesting the notion that Rummy and his sycophants among the brass have been complete, royal fuck-ups who deserve to be fired, cashiered, driven from their perches of power.

Rumsfeld and Bush have come in for some of the sharpest rebukes to date for their heavy-handed tactics in bashing critics this week. (If you haven't seen or read Keith Olbermann's comments on Rumsfeld's scurrilous spewing at the VFW American Legion convention, click on over now.)

The administration contains no warriors, merely a pack of vicious little street thugs, so we can expect them to use tire irons and shivs. The Pentagon, on the other hand, resorts to more subtle measures. Hence, $20-million to figure out ways to make sure we all return to our former starry-eyed stupor.

One P.R. "practitioner" who spoke with the Post (and who may bid for the contract), described the brass' balls this way:

"They want it [news] to be received by audiences as it is transmitted [by them], but they don't like how it turns out," he said. As an example, he said, there are complaints that reports from Iraq sometimes quote Shiite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr more than military commanders.

Now why is that, do you suppose? It is, perhaps, because nearly every confident prediction the military commanders have made has proven to be wildly optimistic or downright false? Is it because the military serves up evasive mush with every press conference? Is it because our troops' fortunes in Iraq seem to hinge more on what al-Sadr is planning than on what our troops' commanders are doing?

The time is long past for the two-thirds of Americans who are not congenitally authoritarian to disenthrall ourselves of the military myth-making. We have permitted a permanent standing military to entrench itself in our culture and our politics. This is precisely what many of the Founders feared -- and with good reason.

With WWII, the large permanent military was created and with the Cold War it became entrenched. We pay more and more, and have sacrificed so much to support it. Benefits that other nations with less money and lower productivity enjoy -- national health care, a tighter social safety net, infrastructure creation and maintenance, superior schools for all our children, a sounder currency, investment in citizens rather than the instruments of war -- these are as far from our grasp as "victory" in Iraq is from the generals'.

I suppose we can't get rid of the Pentagon at this point, but we damned well don't have to let them market themselves domestically or -- to add insult to injury -- spend our own money in the effort.

The threat of domestic psy-ops is not new, either. Back in June 2005 Billmon wrote, in "Blowback", about another Pentagon scheme:

Even before the Iraq invasion, you may recall, Rummy and the gang were scheming to create their own in-house propaganda and disinformation operation, to be called the Office of Strategic Influence. The program was nominally killed after the critics pointed out how easily the phony news it created could drift back into the domestic media. (This was back when the Democrats still had a foot in the door of power, and Rumsfeld had to back down every once in awhile.)

But the Donald soon made it clear he intended to push through the budgetary back door what he couldn't get through the front door. And after the Dems lost the Senate, he didn't even try too hard to conceal what he was doing. The occupation of Iraq -- and the money and lack of accountability it spawned -- put the Pentagon in the "strategic influence" business in a big way, with its own TV news operation (the Pentagon Channel), a Coalition-controlled Iraqi TV and radio network (now nominally in the hands of the Iraqi government, I presume, but still powered by Pentagon dollars and run by a U.S. vendor) and millions of dollars to hire PR firms and consultants to spin the coalition's propaganda to the Iraqi people.

The net benefit of all this in terms of strategically influencing the Iraqis -- or the rest of the Islamic world -- has been roughly zero, or maybe even a negative number. But the benefit to the Bush administration and the Republican Party is a different sum, harder to measure. For some time now, one of my pet suspicions has been that the Pentagon's psywar budget is both a hidden piggy bank and an R&D laboratory for the GOP's own political propaganda operations.

I have no proof of this. I didn't even have anything that could reasonably be called evidence, until today, when I came across this story:

Pentagon Funds Diplomacy Effort

The Pentagon awarded three contracts this week, potentially worth up to $300 million over five years, to companies it hopes will inject more creativity into its psychological operations efforts to improve foreign public opinion about the United States, particularly the military.

"We would like to be able to use cutting-edge types of media," said Col. James A. Treadwell, director of the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element, a part of Tampa-based U.S. Special Operations Command. "If you want to influence someone, you have to touch their emotions."

He said SYColeman Inc. of Arlington, Lincoln Group of the District, and Science Applications International Corp. will help develop ideas and prototypes for radio and television spots, documentaries, or even text messages, pop-up ads on the Internet, podcasting, billboards or novelty items.

Billmon goes on to detail his research into the Lincoln Group, a shadowy company with a history that's hard to pin down:

So to sum up: We have a tiny start-up venture, controlled by persons unknown, that suddenly materializes in late 2003 doing "private equity" deals in the middle of a war zone, and then obtains a huge PR contract from the Pentagon, and then hires a bunch of unemployed GOP campaign operatives to execute that contract, and then is absorbed by a shadowy DC company that specializes in corporate and political detective work and that may have close ties to both the Republican Party and the intelligence community, which then is awarded an even bigger contract to produce even more Pentagon propaganda.

The "blowback" that is so problematical, as Billmon points out, is "how easily the phony news [...] could drift back into the domestic media." It is, of course, illegal for the Pentagon to deploy psy-ops on domestic audiences.

So this new $20-million contract is attempting to achieve the same result with a subtle difference. Instead of creating good news, it is studying the problem of bad press on Iraq with a view to somehow making it better.

And it's no coincidence that, as the Post notes, "The request for bids comes at a time when Bush administration officials are publicly criticizing media coverage of the war in Iraq." While the Pentagon studies the problem and contracts for "public relations products," administration heavies are out on the trail making speeches to bully the media into writing good news.

It may well work again, as it has in the past. Our press corps has too often proved itself easily gulled or unduly impressed with small things. Just ask Judith Miller.

As for us, the taxpayers, is it too much to ask that our employees at the Pentagon -- both uniformed and civilian -- stop protecting themselves from American citizens and start doing their jobs, including remembering their oaths of office?

"I also read three Shakespeares"

"I was in Crawford and I said I was looking for a book to read, and Laura said, 'You oughtta try Camus.' I also read three Shakespeares."

Well, I've got him beat. One summer I read six Nancy Drews!

Seriously, I'd really like to know which "three Shakespeares" Bush read. "Macbeth," perchance? "Hamlet"? Yes, yes, "Hamlet". The Decider could really give the wimpy Dane a few lessons in resolve. (Although the prince might teach George something about Mommy issues.)

[Hat tip to Tim Grieve; video of Brian Williams interview of Bush here.]

Alas, poor Dick! I knew him Karl:
a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy:
he hath borne me on his back a thousand times...

From cartoon to conflagration

[Update, February 11: Jonathan Steele's opinion piece in today's Guardian begs for distinctions and recognition of "shades of gray."]

"...on the road from quiet outrage in a small Muslim community in northern Europe to a set of international brush fires, the summit meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference — and the role its member governments played in the outrage — was something of a turning point."

The New York Times details the steps, before and after. Call it a tick-tock, or a time bomb:

At first, the agitation was limited to Denmark. Ahmed Akkari, 28, a Lebanese-born Dane, acts as spokesman for the European Committee for Honoring the Prophet, an umbrella group of 27 Danish Muslim organizations to press the Danish government into action over the cartoons.

Mr. Akkari said the group had worked for more than two months in Denmark without eliciting any response. "We collected 17,000 signatures and delivered them to the office of the prime minister, we saw the minister of culture, we talked to the editor of the Jyllands-Posten, we took many steps within Denmark, but could get no action," Mr. Akkari said, referring to the newspaper that published the cartoons. He added that the prime minister's office had not even responded to the petition.

Frustrated, he said, the group turned to the ambassadors of Muslim countries in Denmark and asked them to speak to the prime minister on their behalf. He refused them too.

A cautionary tale for insulated, arrogant "leaders" who shut their ears to the voice of the aggrieved:

Sheik Muhammad Abu Zaid, an imam from the Lebanese town of Saida, said he began hearing of the caricatures from several Palestinian friends visiting from Denmark in December but made little of it.

"For me, honestly, this didn't seem so important," Sheik Abu Zaid said, comparing the drawings to those made of Jesus in Christian countries. "I thought, I know that this is something typical in such countries."

Then, he started to hear that ambassadors of Arab countries had tried to meet with the prime minister of Denmark and had been snubbed, and he began to feel differently.

In any event,

"...the case moved to a new stage," Mr. Akkari recalled. "We decided then that to be heard, it must come from influential people in the Muslim world."

[snip]

In early December, the group's first delegation of Danish Muslims flew to Cairo, where they met with the grand mufti, Muhammad Sayid Tantawy, Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League.

"After that, there was a certain response," Mr. Akkari said, adding that the Cairo government and the Arab League both summoned the Danish ambassador to Egypt for talks.

Mr. Akkari denies that the group had meant to misinform, but concedes that there were misunderstandings along the way.

Misunderstandings are inevitable when tempers are high and there is little common cultural language. This one quite possibly could have been avoided:

In Cairo, for example, the group also met with journalists from Egypt's media. During a news conference, they spoke about a proposal from the far-right Danish People's Party to ban the Koran in Denmark because of some 200 verses that are alleged to encourage violence.

Several newspapers then ran articles claiming that Denmark planned to issue a censored version of the Koran.

From that moment on, there was probably no way to avert the eventual catastrophe.

---

[There's more detail and insight in the Times article. Do read it all.]

Who even knew they had a Zabar's in Tehran

"In a twist on the way some Americans renamed French fries 'freedom fries,' the [Iranian] Commerce Ministry called for changing the name of Danish pastry to that of a flower named after Muhammad..." (NYT)

A welcome perspective on Muslims in Denmark

[Update, February 11: Jonathan Steele's opinion piece in today's Guardian begs for distinctions and recognition of "shades of gray."]

Sara at The Next Hurrah has a must-read piece giving historical context to the place of Muslims in the Danish polis. It demonstrates just how subtle and complex the issue is.

She traces the history of Muslim migration to Denmark — a migration largely enabled by Denmark's traditional humanitarian policies — as that of a middle-class diaspora fleeing first the Palestine of the 1967 war with Israel, then Iran upon the fall of the Shah, then Iran and Iraq as those two nations warred in the 1980s. Finally, she says, "...when they [the Danes] wondered what was happening with their open door policy in 1986 — they changed their laws to only admit those with a well founded belief they would be persecuted in their homelands, and as a result became a place of refuge for Afghan-Arabs, many of whom were linked to al Qaeda."

The members of this diaspora, she tells us, did not arrive in Denmark with the intention of hyphenating themselves. They chose, she implies, not to seek assimilation; to the contrary, they carried with them the burden of deep resentment at having to migrate at all. The failure to assimilate inevitably led to their marginalization — as it has in other Western European countries as well. The same may be said of immigrants in our own country who do not accede to the "dominant" culture but wish to preserve their own, not only in private, but in the public sphere.

"What Denmark did in those years was to profoundly misunderstand migration," she says.

Just as we have profoundly misunderstood migration to our own country in the later years of the 20th century, and now in the 21st. We still have a national narrative based on a glorified, mythologized model from our founding days and the late 1800s, a model which in any event we have cleansed of its many painful truths of intolerance and economic subjugation.

And thus we, too, are woefully unprepared, as were the Danes, as are almost all Europeans, to understand and cope with the new and ever-changing patterns of the vast international migrations we are faced with today. Just ask Lou Dobbs!