Month: July 2004

In case you were wondering about the point of the party convention: here’s one of the main reasons. In addition to an infomercial, with delegates as “cheer track”; and a celebration for rank and file party faithful, it’s about “donor maintence.”
Even as John Edwards gives a rousing speech about “Two Americas”, here’s who’s looking down on the populace from the Fleet Center Sky Boxes (as reported by Michah Sifry)
Level 9 boxes
902 DLCC
903 IAFF
904 B04/IBM & Verizon
905 DNC Vice Chairs
906 Kerry Faithful
907 Mayors
908 Trial Lawyers
909 USSS
910 MA Cong Delegation
Level 9 boxes:
901 DNCC Operation
916 B04 Org Labor/AFSCME
915 B04 Org Labor/SEIU
914 B04 Org Labor/AFT
913 New Balance and Simon Properties
912 Boston Foundation and Fidelity
911 B04 Org Labor
Like the Republican machine (Enron, Halliburton), the Democratic party machine is currently about raising millions of dollars for television ads.
Money buys access. A partial list of those being feted in the “Mayor’s club” includes: Daimler Chrysler, Diageo’s, DTE Energy, Faulker USA, Hinton, Communications, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, KNP/Dutko, Microsoft
Here are the advertised benefits for participating in the “Mayor’s Club”, for a $5000 donation. “an opportunity to share ideas and interact with the nation’s Democratic mayors

The Washington Post has the first articulate explanation I’ve seen for declaring war on “terror.” I don’t agree with the explanation, but at least I understand it.
Caleb Carr, a professor of military history, describes terrorism in the same category as slavery and piracy — practices that were once common, but have been rendered unacceptable.

It’s true that both slavery and piracy are still practiced, but only in remote corners of the world; certainly genocide is still with us, but its employment is now cause for immediate sanction and forceful reaction (theoretically, at any rate) by the United Nations. Banning such tactics and actively stamping out their practice has been the work of some of the great political and military minds and leaders of the past two centuries. Now it is time — past time, really — for terrorism to take its place as a similarly proscribed and anachronistic practice.”

The trouble with this argument is a Robbean one. Guerrilla warfare is an ancient tactic used by rebels to fight more powerful foes, using tactics of sabotage, assassination, and terror. Contemporary terrorists are fighting guerrilla wars, using modern techniques of organizing networks, and disrupting modern infrastructure.
Slavery and piracy could be banned because they were mainstream. They were practiced by states, which could be persuaded or compelled to obey laws. In England, abolitionists used political persuasion to outslaw slavery. The US fought a civil war, and the slave states were defeated. Piracy was once a common technique of interstate warfare and extralegal taxation (see wikipedia on Privateering. In the mid-1800s, nations signed treaties to ban privateering, and the tactic faded away. Meanwhile, criminal piracy appears to be on the increase.
Guerrilla groups behave the way they do because they cast themselves as outsiders. They don’t have empathy for the civilians of the enemy, so abolitionist-style appeals to morality won’t work. They’re using military tactics that are effective when you don’t have access to an army.
Carr damns explanations of guerrilla tactics as misplaced moral relativism. But you don’t have to sympathize with rebel groups, or morally justify killing civilians, in order to see that these tactics can be perceived as a rational way of fighting a war, for groups who see enemy civilians as infidels or occupiers.
It is possible to defeat particular guerrilla groups. But you can’t just dissuade groups who see themselves as outsiders from using the the tactics available to them. Some argue that terrorist tactics are a sign of desperation. Some groups may be desperate. Others are just calculating and smart. It is a very efficient way of using minimal resources to create maximum damage and distress to an enemy.
Terrorist groups aren’t states that will sign treaties and then abide by them. Getting involved in every guerrilla war on the planet is a way of ensuring perpetual warfare, and creating more enemies.
The September 11 commission suggests that we should give up trying to fight a war against a tactic, and should instead focus our efforts against Islamic militants, especially Al Qaeda, who have declared war on us.
Carr thinks that this will confuse Muslims, who will believe that we’re fighting a Crusade, in the medieval sense. I think this is bogus. If we don’t actually declare that we’re fighting a Crusade, and don’t make as if to invade and occupy
multiple Muslim nations, most Muslims will understand that we’re fighting particular groups of radicals.
I think the September 11 recommendation is sensible. Identify and defeat an enemy that has declared war on us. Build alliances around the world to help defeat a global network.
But the US shouldn’t storm into every guerrilla conflict from South America to South Asia, just because a given group of outsiders decides to bomb a power plant or a restaurant.

“If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child,” Obama said. “If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandmother. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It’s that fundamental belief — I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sisters’ keeper — that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. ‘E pluribus unum.’ Out of many, one.”

“The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats,” he said. “But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

I hate speechifying most of the time, and reading that had me teary. Here’s the transcript, and video.
Appealing to common feelings and ideas, from the heart. Reaching for the good part of American patriotism – tolerance and community, entrepreneurialism and political freedom – rather than the bad part – arrogance and self-righteousness.
Politics and policies through people. His stories don’t sound like a politician’s theoretical concept of the common man – trekking to a supermarket for a photo-op, trailing camera-men and handlers. He sounds like a guy who talks to people.

You know, a while back, I met a young man named Shamus at the VFW Hall in East Moline, Illinois. He was a good-looking kid, 6-2 or 6-3, clear eyed, with an easy smile. He told me he’d joined the Marines and was heading to Iraq the following week. And as I listened to him explain why he’d enlisted, his absolute faith in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty and service, I thought this young man was all that any of us might hope for in a child. But then I asked myself: Are we serving Shamus as well as he was serving us?

And he’s not an anchorman — doing a bit of background research, Obama has the policy details, enjoys the game, and has guts. From a New Yorker profile

In Springfield, Obama led a campaign for death-penalty reforms that resulted in unprecedented legislation, requiring the police to videotape all interrogations in cases involving capital crimes…. When he talks about the maneuvering it took to line up the state

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