Category: Idiotarianism

Shattered Glass Redux?

Even after the Steven Glass embarrassment, The New Republic once again faces yet another major journalistic scandal. Earlier this year they published pieces by a “Baghdad Diarist” and “Scott Thomas” that talked of how US soldiers abused Iraqis, killed dogs and insulted a woman horribly disfigured in an IED blast. His piece, entitled “Shock Troops” was designed to paint a terrible picture of how US soldiers were cracking under the horrors of war. Those in the military immediately latched on to gaping holes in the stories, such as the fact that heavy Bradley fighting vehicles couldn’t be driven in such a way as to swerve to hit things. The questions mounted as The New Republic and its editor, Franklin Foer, continued to stall.

The Baghdad Diarist was revealed to be a Pvt. Scott Beauchamp, who did serve in Iraq, but began to quickly change his story. First, he admitted that the story about the burned woman didn’t occur in Iraq, but claimed it had occurred in Kuwait. This admission itself undercut the whole point of his story that the Iraq War was turning soldiers into monsters. Beauchamp also happened to be married to a TNR staffer, Elspeth Reeve.

Now, it appears that his story is falling completely apart. An Army investigation into the matter has revealed absolutely no evidence that any of his stories were true. No other witnesses, no corroborating evidence, and findings that Beauchamp wanted to the next Hemingway and had manipulated the truth to get there.

This report, along with other evidence uncovered by Matt Drudge paints a very damning picture. Beauchamp himself doesn’t stick by his stories, and understandably doesn’t want anything more to do with the story. He doesn’t directly confess to TNR, but the Army’s Article 15 papers indicates that he has confessed and the Army has found that a preponderance of evidence supports his stories being false.

In short, TNR got hoodwinked again. They fell for someone who told them the stories that matched the biases, and they didn’t bother to check. After all, “Scott Thomas'” allegations fit their particular worldview. They had no way of knowing that his story was false since so few journalists have any military experience and tend to be lazy in checking facts. So they ran with the story, defended in from the initial attacks and dug in against their critics.

One would think that TNR would have learned from the Steven Glass scandal—but sadly, they seem to have made the same mistake again. What this means for the future of TNR is not yet known. However, their credibility has been destroyed not once, but twice now. The numerous journalistic scandals of the past few years only highlight the need for substantial reform in American journalism. The question then becomes whether or not it will take even greater collapses and scandals before professional journalists get the message.

Another Smear Against The Troops

The New Yorker has a scathing review of Brian DePalma’s anti-war, anti-American film Redacted. DePalma’s motivation in making this film is made quite clear:

De Palma has announced that his intention in making “Redacted” is to end the war. “The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people,” he said after a press screening in Venice. “The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to get their congressmen to vote against the war.” It seems unlikely to me that “Redacted” will have that effect, or even that De Palma is serious about wanting it to. The movie encourages you to abandon the very powers of analysis and discrimination that might lead you to write your congressman. De Palma presents soldiers as psychopaths and Iraqis as their nameless victims. The dialogue in the rape scene, with the ringleader babbling about weapons of mass destruction and supporting the troops, is so heavy-handed that it has the opposite effect of making the war’s violence real; instead, it makes you think that you’re watching a highly stylized cinematic rape scene. The same is true of all the “realistic” camera devices: they are so many frames around a director’s incurious and unconvincing fantasy. Every scene, down to the checkpoint where there are mysteriously no Iraqi soldiers, betrays its creator’s indifference to “the reality of what is happening in Iraq.”

This shouldn’t be surprising. The Hollywood community’s ham-handed attempts to portray the Iraq War have almost nothing to do with the actual war and everything to do with the simpleminded caricature that Hollywood wants to push upon the American people. The days in which Hollywood felt allegiance to this country and tried to support the democratic culture that supports them have long since past. The days of great American filmmakers who felt that they could be both Americans and filmmakers—men and women of vision such as Elia Kazan, George Capra and John Wayne have long since passed. Instead, the Hollywood elite have become aligned with the radical left, with only a few exceptions, many of whom keep their beliefs hidden to avoid recrimination.

DePalma’s crude smear against the troops is as patently ridiculous as the racism of Birth of a Nation, except the latter had some cinematic talent behind it. Instead of trying to understand the depth of the Iraq conflict, Hollywood is presenting a series of dumbed-down morality plays that treat American soldiers as brainwashed killbots. From Redacted to In The Valley of Elah to Rendition, Hollywood demostrates that the only worldview they care about is the one they create—and not only that, but they have the sheer audacity to think that the American people will be swayed by their propagandizing.

If one wants to truly understand the complexities of the war in Iraq, on all sides, documentaries like Gunner Palace, Voices of Iraq and The War Tapes present a balanced and realistic view of the war in Iraq—because they were made in Iraq, rather than cooked up in the fevered mind of a Hollywood radical.

There are plenty of incredible stories of human bravery and human depravity in Iraq—stories that not only need to be told, but would get people in the theaters. Instead, Hollywood is interested in producing only more crudely-made propaganda that fits their particular anti-American worldview. The real story of the war in Iraq remains that told in documentary films and by the men and women who have seen the reality of this conflict first-hand. Brian DePalma and the rest want to portray American soldiers in the most negative light possible—and in so doing they only demonstrate the contempt they feel for this country.

No Backsies

It appears as though Idaho Senator Larry Craig is rethinking his decision to resign from the US Senate. That is, to put it mildly, an incredibly bad idea.

Senator Craig made the decision to resign, which set in motion plans to appoint his successor and allowed the Senator to defend himself (such as he legally can) without the spectacle impacting the people of Idaho and the United States Senate. To try to go back on that promise now will not endear him to anyone. He made his choice, and now he has to live with the consequence of that decision. If he doesn’t like them, he should have thought first.

Senator Craig keeps compounding his situation. He plead guilty but now maintains his innocence. He resigned, but now wants to take it back. Those are not the actions of an honorable man. Senator Craig is proving to be an embarrassment, and it is time that he his political career came to an end. If he truly thinks that his ouster was undeserved, he can certainly try to clear his name and run again. Somehow, I have a feeling that the voters of Idaho will be less than impressed with such a maneuver.

Does The New York Times Even Have Editors?

Glenn Reynolds has a round-up of links on the Times‘ latest silly gaffe. The New York Times evidently can’t even identify whether a quotation comes from the U.S. Constitution or the Declaration of Independence.

If it were some blogger, it would be an error. But when it’s the “newspaper of record” for the country (although I’d dispute that claim) — an organization that’s supposed to have one of the strongest editorial staffs in the country, making a mistake that would get you dinged on a high school civics test is a sign that the Times doesn’t have the credibility to be considered a world-class newspaper. If journalists want to know why their profession is looked down upon, it’s because of things like this. If they can’t get the small stuff right, how in the world can we trust them to accurately inform us about the bigger things?

UPDATE: Lawprof Ann Althouse finds that the logic of the editorial itself is hardly befitting.

For that matter, their whole point is based on the notion that the suicide rate of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is somehow high enough to warrant extra caution — which isn’t true. The suicide rate for military veterans is less than that of their civilian cohort, and the increase in the military suicide rate is based on a statistically insignificant variation — 11 suicides out of hundreds of thousands of active duty military personnel. (The average suicide rate for 25-44 year-olds generally is 13.6/100,000 while the military rate is 13/100,000.)

Bad writing, bad logic, bad history… proving once more that on subjects deeper than food and fashion, the New York Times is rarely worth reading.

Doesn’t That Kind Of Defeat The Purpose?

This headline from the Star Tribune sounds like something more suited to The Onion:

Anarchists to hold planning meeting

C’mon people, you’re anarchists! Since when did anarchists have planning meetings?

Of course, these “anarchists” are just the usual leftist nutters whose idiocy will undoubtedly land many of them in jail. For all their talk about “direct, participatory democracy” they’ll do whatever they can to infringe upon the democratic rights of the Republicans attending the convention, because their idea of “democracy” is the same as their ideological kin like Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Joseph Stalin — as in “do what we say, or else.” (And no, comparing them to Stalin isn’t inappropriate – International ANSWER is an organization founded by the Stalinist World Worker’s Party — a Marxist/Leninist organization.)

Calling Their Own Bluff

Ed Morrissey notes that Congressional Democrats are about to end up fighting a losing battle over executive privilege by filing contempt charges against two White House aides. As The Washington Post reports:

The House Judiciary Committee voted today to issue contempt citations for two of President Bush’s most trusted aides, taking its most dramatic step yet towards a constitutional showdown with the White House over the Justice Department’s dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys.

The panel voted 22-17, along party lines, to issue citations to Joshua B. Bolten, White House chief of staff, and Harriet E. Miers, former White House counsel. Both refused to comply with committee subpoenas after Bush declared that documents and testimony related to the prosecutor firings were protected by executive privilege. …

Republicans on the panel argued strongly today against issuing contempt citations, and Democrats shot down two proposed GOP amendments before voting for the contempt findings.

“I believe this is an unnecessary provocation of a constitutional crisis,” said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.). “Absent showing that a crime was committed in this process, I think the White House is going to win an argument in court.”

Captain Ed observes:

Tony Snow rather forcefully responded to this development, calling it a singular event in American history, where the legislative branch will direct the executive branch — in the form of the federal prosecutor — to file contempt charges against itself. The Department of Justice reminded Congress that administrations of both parties have long held that Congress has no power to issue contempt citations for claims of executive privilege. Obviously, the current leadership in Congress doesn’t care.

It portends a showdown in the Supreme Court over the nature of executive privilege, and Sensenbrenner is correct. Absent any evidence of criminal conduct, the Supreme Court is highly unlikely to grant the legislative branch free rein to pursue contempt charges or to undo executive privilege. Nancy Pelosi will in all likelihood force a ruling that will firmly establish executive privilege and leave Congress with less power than it has had, after having finally called its own bluff.

The problem the Democrats face is that they have almost no chance of pulling this off — the courts are not going to rule that the Constitution allows Congress to charge the President or his aides with contempt outside the formal process of judicial impeachment. The best outcome that they could hope for is that the Supreme Court falls back on political question doctrine and refuses to take the case — but even that’s doubtful as this appears to be a matter of separation of powers rather than a political question.

The Democratic-led Judiciary Committee, on a party-line vote, is essentially asking the Executive Branch to serve a subpoena on itself. This is something that the Supreme Court has already found to be unconstitutional. In Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714 (1986) the Court held that Congress could not fire the United States Comptroller General, as he was a member of the Executive Branch, and the only constitutional measure that the Legislative Branch has over the Executive is the power to impeach. Likewise, in Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 (1983) the Court held that one branch of Congress could not enact a legislative veto over an action of the Attorney General as that violates the separation of powers under the Constitution as well as the Presentment Clause. U.S. Const. Art. I, § 7, cl. 3. The Legislative Branch cannot infringe upon the powers of another branch even if that branch agrees with the infringement. New York v. U.S., 505 U.S. 144, 182 (1992).

There’s a long line of very clear precedent that does not allow the Legislative Branch to command the Excecutive Branch to do anything, especially when the Executive Branch is exercising its constitutionally-mandated powers. The Department of Justice may have been inept in handling the firings of the U.S. Attorneys, but the Executive has the plenary power under the Constitution to fire U.S. Attorneys at whim and for whatever reason they choose. U.S. Const. Art. II, § 3, cl. 2. The Courts are not going to allow the Legislative Branch — especially one House Committee to interfere in the right of the Executive Branch to carry out its constitutional duties. The chances of the Democrats surviving the inevitable court challenge should they choose to pursue this foolish game are close to nil.

So why bother? Like nearly everything the Democrats have done in the last six months, it’s all about political theater. It could be years before a court challenge is fully resolved, and by then the Democrats will have already done the political damage that they’ve intended to do. Of course, such a ruling explicitly limiting the power of Congress in these matters will effect future Congresses, but it’s rather clear that the Democrats aren’t looking any farther than the next elections.

This kind of ill-advised political maneuvering is exactly why this do-nothing Congress has earned it’s abysmal approval ratings — while they engage in futile efforts to preen for the radical left by chasing after the Bush Administration, the nation’s problems like terrorism, Medicare reform, Social Security reform, transparency in earmarking, and other crucial matters go completely neglected. This Congress has become a joke, and they seem to have no idea that ultimately the punch line will be on them.

Playing Politics

The Washington Post has a scathing editorial on the way in which Harry Reid is playing politics with Iraq:

The decision of Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) to deny rather than nourish a bipartisan agreement is, of course, irresponsible. But so was Mr. Reid’s answer when he was asked by the Los Angeles Times how the United States should manage the explosion of violence that the U.S. intelligence community agrees would follow a rapid pullout. “That’s a hypothetical. I’m not going to get into it,” the paper quoted the Democratic leader as saying.

For now Mr. Reid’s cynical politicking and willful blindness to the stakes in Iraq don’t matter so much. The result of his maneuvering was to postpone congressional debate until September, when Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will report on results of the surge — in other words, just the outcome the White House was hoping for. But then, as now, the country will desperately need a strategy for Iraq that can count on broad bipartisan support, one aimed at carrying the U.S. mission through the end of the Bush administration and beyond. There are serious issues still to resolve, such as whether a drawdown should begin this fall or next year, how closely it should be tied to Iraqi progress, how fast it can proceed and how the remaining forces should be deployed.

The only way the actions of the Democrats make sense is to understand that it all comes down to the most shameless brand of politics. Harry Reid certainly doesn’t care about Iraq — his own lack of care or understanding about what happens to the Iraqi people in the absence of US forces is demonstrable proof. There’s no room for doubt that a US withdrawal would lead to massive violence in Iraq — there’s no guarantee that the Iraqi military can keep the peace at this point, and the Interior Ministry forces remain far too closely tied with the sectarian militias. Moreover, the Iranians have every interest in either keeping Iraq divided and impotent or as a Shi’ite dominated client state. Al-Qaeda is being pushed out of al-Anbar, but without the support of US troops, al-Qaeda could simply slaughter the local Sunnis into submission. In the largely successful Kurdish north, Turkey is already amassing troops on the border — without the US to moderate, it’s quite possible that they would choose to invade to end the potential of the Iraqi Kurds supporting Kurdish terrorist groups on Turkish soil.

However, what the MoveOn.org crowd doesn’t understand is that Harry Reid is playing them for chumps. Reid knows quite well that he could end the war right now — all he has to do is defund the war. That’s exactly how the Founders intended Congress to balance the President’s powers as Commander in Chief. Of course, that would mean that the Democrats would be responsible for leaving our troops in harm’s way — and taking responsibility for anything is not the style of this Congress.

So, Harry Reid is kissing up to the MoveOn.org white flag crowd, but not enough to actually do something about the war. As long as he can keep the Iraq issue alive, it’s to his benefit to drag things out. The Democrats don’t want to end the war — they want to talk about ending the war. They don’t want to do anything that causes them to take responsibility for what happens once the US withdraws — which is why they’re hoping that the Republicans will cave and they can make this the biggest bipartisan mistake in United States history rather than the failure they forced upon the country.

This political acrimony is absolutely unnecessary — there’s a consensus that the American military needs to draw down in the near future and allow the Iraqis to transition into protecting their own country while we concentrate on training Iraqi units and fighting al-Qaeda. However, political comity isn’t what Reid wants — it’s the anger of the unhinged left that sustains the Democratic Party, and he’ll fan the flames as long as he can.

History will view Senator Reid and Representative Pelosi as the craven opportunists that they are — they had a chance to act as statesmen, but chose the path of partisanship instead. Leading Democrats had been supporting the surge a few months before preemptively calling it failure. A competent political party would have taken the fact that President Bush had fired Rumsfeld, changed course in Iraq, and embraced the strategy of adding additional troops and taken that as a major victory — but the Democratic Party has been hijacked by a group of extremists who wish for nothing less than an abject American surrender in Iraq.

Reid and Pelosi rightly deserve the blame for pursuing the path of partisanship rather than acting as responsible statesmen. The price of their political considerations could come at a nightmarish cost — thousands upon thousands of Iraqi dead, a US military who has once again been let down by craven politicians, and a world made unnecessarily dangerous because we did not have a political class with the will to see things through. Everyone will suffer — including the Democrats themselves who will once again be considered the party of weakness on national security for decades to come.

No, The Fifth Amendment Has Not Been “Overruled”

Another round of left-wing hysteria is hitting sites like Digg and Slashdot making the argument that President Bush has (gasp!) “overturned” the Fifth Amendment with this Executive Order. As typical, this hysteria is completely unwarranted by the facts.

Presidents have traditionally had the power to order the seizure of assets during wartime. The most famous case dealing with this issue, and one of the most important cases in Constitutional Law is Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952). That case deals with President Truman’s attempted government seizure of a steel mill that produced war goods for the Korean War. Workers at the mill had gone on strike, and Truman had decided to seize the mill rather than risk it being shut down.

The Supreme Court overruled Truman’s order to seize the mill, but Justice Robert Jackson’s concurring decision ended up being more important than the Court’s opinion itself. Justice Jackson laid out the three categories of Presidential action: 1) When the President acts according to a law passed by Congress, the Courts should be the most deferential to the President; 2) when the President is acting within their Article II powers but Congress has been silent, less deference is due, and finally 3) when the President acts against the will of Congress little, if any, deference is due.

Justice Jackson felt that the seizure of the steel mill was a “Category III” action — Congress had specifically limited the President’s powers in prior legislation, even though President Truman had asked for them. Therefore, Truman was acting outside of Congress and outside of his powers, and the seizure was illegal.

With that history lesson behind us, we turn to what the real legal substance of Bush’s Executive Order is.

In 1977, Congress passed The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), 50 U.S.C. § 1701-1707. The IEEPA codifies the President’s power to seize private property for reasons of national security.

In order to seize property, the President must first declare a national emergency. This emergency must be either wholly or substantially foreign in nature. 50 U.S.C. § 1701(a).

During the Iranian hostage crisis, Dames & Moore, an American company that was (ironically enough) working with Iran to build a nuclear reactor had substantial amounts of money invested in the Pahlavi regime. When the Shah’s rule ended, they wanted to sue to recover that money from the Iranians.

However, as part of the deal releasing the American hostages, President Carter had signed an Executive Order (Executive Order 12170) which released all attachments on Iranian assets, transferred them in escrow to the Bank of England, and allowed for a US-Iranian tribunal to handle all claims. Dames & Moore would not be allowed to recover under this scheme, so they filed suit against the Secretary of the Treasury to recover their assets.

In Dames & Moore v. Regan, 453 U.S. 654 (1981), the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the President’s authority under the IEEPA to nullify the attachments and transfer the funds into the arbitration account. The Court found that President Carter was acting in a “Category I” situation under Youngstown — he was acting with the prior approval of Congress and the courts owed him a great deal of deference.

Back to Bush’s Executive Order, it essentially does the same thing as Carter’s Executive Order 12170. It states that the President, having already declared a state of national emergency for the war in Iraq, has the power to seize property being used to provide material support to the enemy in Iraq.

So, does this mean that the Firth Amendment is now “overturned” and the President can seize the property of whomever he wants? No, it doesn’t, and the arguments that say that it does are misinformed.

Can the President seize Michael Moore’s property for supporting the terrorists in Iraq? No, because it has to be material support. So, if Michael Moore donated 5% of the profits from Sicko to the Mahdi Army, yes, the President could probably invoke the IEEPA and attach that 5%. Under this Executive Order, he wouldn’t have to tell Mr. Moore in advance, which is what Sec. 5 of the Bush Executive Order is all about.

Ah, but what if Mr. Moore then decided to sue the government, claiming that he mistakenly believed that the Campaign for the Extermination of the American Enemy was really just Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s PAC? Does this Executive Order prevent him from suing the government?

Again, no, it does not. Mr. Moore can still sue to recover his assets — the IEEPA does not limit anyone’s rights to sue.

But doesn’t this violate the Fifth Amendment? Well, the first step is to actually look at the text of the Firth Amendment:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The Fifth is a very dense Amendment, but the part we’re concerned with is the second to the last clause about Due Process. The courts have continually held that the usage of the IEEPA is not a violation of the Fifth Amendment. Chang v. United States, 859 F.2d 893 (Ct. App. Fed. 1988). Essentially, property is “taken” under the Fifth Amendment when that taking places a burden on a person that fairness and equity demand should be placed on all. Armstrong v. United States, 364 U.S. 40, 49 (1960). There’s no set definition of what constitutes fairness and equity, it’s up to the courts to decide whether the government’s interests are sufficient to outweigh the property interests of the individual. Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104, 124 (1978).

There’s no violation of Due Process here because the President is not unilaterally deciding that he’s going to seize property. This Executive Order, like the one in Dames & Moore is a “Category I” order — President Bush is invoking the IEEPA, which authorizes him to do exactly what he’s doing — take property being used to assist an enemy of the United States in order to prevent it from harming the national security of the United States. If that “overturns” the Fifth Amendment, then every invocation of the IEEPA “overturns” the Fifth Amendment. Which means that President Clinton also “trampled on the Constitution” when he invoked the IEEPA against UNITA (an African terrorist organization), against Serbia, and against international drug dealers. (The latter of which is much more constitutionally problematic than the Bush Executive Order.)

But, the argument goes, what prevents Bush from using this “national emergency” to justify broader takings? Like seizing the assets of everyone who watched Fahrenheit 9/11?

One word: Congress.

Under the IEEPA, Congress can “undeclare” a Presidential state of emergency under the IEEPA. 50 U.S.C. § 1706(b). Congress can pass a concurrent resolution that states that the national emergency is over and the President’s powers under the IEEPA are immediately terminated.

The arguments that the Fifth Amendment have been “shredded” and the Fifth has suddenly been “overruled” are based more on hysteria than anything else. Granted, knowing about Dames & Moore is hardly a requirement for citizenship in this country, but at the same time extraordinary claims should require extraordinary proof. It seems like every time a layperson argues that some part of the Constitution has been trampled, it never seems to occur to them to actually take a look at the text of the Constitution. People make these sort of hysterical arguments all the time, and few bother to actually look at the substantive law and see what’s really going on.

So, what’s the harm of all this? People make hysterical arguments all the time, right?

It’s the “boy who cried wolf” problem. If we have hysterical cries about civil rights all the time based on nothing more than partisan prejudices, it’s a lot harder for people to take real violations of civil rights seriously. These frequently hysterical accusations numb people to the idea that the government can take actions which are deeply injurious to the Constitution. If 99% of the time a claim of an action being unconstitutional is a silly partisan argument, that 1% can easily slip by the consciousness of the public.

This Executive Order is a straightforward invocation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. It is not a “power grab” by the Bush Administration — it was passed by Congress in 1977, during the Carter Administration. It is not an unprecedented act, every President since has invoked the IEEPA for various reasons. It does not apply to groups who are not giving material support to terrorist groups in Iraq. It does not remove anyone’s right to judicial redress. It can be overridden by an act of Congress. It does not “trample on the Constitution,” it does not “overrule” the Fifth Amendment, and it does not signal the dawn of fascism.

People have the right to their own opinions, but not their own facts, and the people who have flogged this story are practicing the Paranoid Style in American Politics — the sort of grand conspiracy theories preferred by radical groups like the John Birch Society who 50 years ago saw Communist conspiracies to shred the Constitution everywhere they went. That sort of paranoia is not healthy, not for the people who frighten themselves with it, and not for the country.

Live Earth: Climate Change Jumps The Shark

Tim Blair take Al Gore’s “Live Earth” concert and gives it a good whack upside the head:

Consider the vast carbon footprint of Live Earth, during which the world’s most indulgent people – rock stars – will demand that their followers pledge to “take personal action to help solve the climate crises by reducing my own C02 pollution as much as I can.”

Has Live Earth performer Keith Urban sold his Bentleys yet? (Actually, merely selling those 12-cylinder babies won’t reduce C02 emissions; he must destroy them.) I’ve been trying to come up with a violently destructive Gaia-raping stunt for us to participate in on Live Earth day, but it is literally impossible for even several thousand non-millionaires to match Live Earth’s own level of eco-vandalism while remaining within their means and the law.

That’s the irony of these sort of things — these “awareness raising” concerts are more about a bunch of vapid celebrities trying to show the world that they care rather than getting anything of substance done. No doubt the amount of CO2 pumped into the stratosphere by these jet-setting rockers is more than mere mortals will produce in their entire lives. Having a worldwide concert to help promote cutting down on CO2 is about like having a hotdog-eating contest to promote awareness of childhood obesity: it’s just silly.

Have The Democrats Abandoned Democracy?

Ronald Asmus, a former advisor to Bill Clinton writes that the Democrats seem to have lost sight of their own foreign policy ideals:

Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy must be turning in their graves. Using U.S. power to promote freedom and democracy was central to their foreign policies and legacies. Even Jimmy Carter, a far less successful Democratic president, can be proud of making human rights a major U.S. foreign policy objective. And Bill Clinton’s interventions in the Balkans and drive to expand NATO were all about consolidating democracy in Europe’s eastern half. There was a time, not too long ago, when Democrats were proud of their track record on democracy promotion — and rightly so.

Is the party of Wilson abandoning Wilsonianism? Why have we gone mum on an issue that is so central to our own foreign policy heritage and past triumphs?

As usual, Asmus blames Bush — but this time rightly so. Because Bush has taken up the cause of democratic advancement, the Democrats don’t want anything to do with — despite the fact that it was supposedly one of the core values of the Democratic Party.

I’m more cynical than Asmus is — I believe that the Democrats have absolutely no principles anymore other than the naked exercise of power. They’d sell their mothers to take the White House in 2008 and expand their power in Congress — and given the meltdown of the Republican Party, they probably won’t have to. This hyperpoliticized climate is the reason why not only is democracy in Iraq in grave peril, but our own democracy is in serious trouble.

If all that remains is the will for temporal political power, we’re really no better than the Sunnis and the Shi’ites in Iraq — just with words rather than guns. How can we profess to value democracy when we’re entirely unwilling to defend it in Iraq? How can we honestly say we believe in a pluralistic society when we’re doing nothing to establish those values in the places where they are needed the most? The legacy of the Bush era will be the exposure of the fact that even when America is attacked, we’re too self-absorbed to manage but a few year’s efforts. The Democratic foreign policy has become nothing more than withdrawal for the sake of damaging a President (who is already politically irrelevant) regardless of the consequences. The true tragedy is that even if the Democrats get exactly what they want, the situation is only going to get worse. Only the most deluded of fools would think that absent the stabilizing force of the US and coalition military presence the situation would improve. Instead, Iraq truly would enter a period of bloody civil war that would quickly spread across its borders and consume the entire Middle East. We would have gone from an unstable “quagmire” to a regional war that would very likely end with a nuclear exchange.

Our mission in the post-September 11 world was to use the power of democracy to combat the authoritarianism that fuels terrorism. Now, that agenda lays in ruins. One can argue that Iraq was handled poorly — and certainly be right — but the way in which the promotion of democracy has been turned into part of some sinister “neocon” agenda shows that the United States has lost its values and lost its way. If we don’t believe in the promotion of democracy abroad, we abrogate our rights to have it here. Asmus is right in pointing out that the Democrats, once the party of Kennedy and Wilson, are no longer. Asmus points out that there is a better way:

Democracy promotion is often messy and hard. You need to work with authoritarian governments even as you try to encourage change in their societies; aid sent to democrats abroad can be wasted; elections don’t always produce the results we’d like. Still, the long-term benefits — as we see in Europe today — are worth it. The answer to Bush’s mistakes must be to develop a more realistic and credible democracy-promotion strategy, not to abandon the goal.

The Democrats have no stomach for anything messy or hard — they want to win, and if they can play to the new isolationism in American culture, that’s precisely what they will do. They can worry about foreign policy the day the first major American city falls to terrorist attack — a prospect which sadly had been growing fainter with time, but now once again becomes less of a probability than an inevitability.