Why Kerry Will Lose

Senator John Kerry tonight will accept the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.  Unfortunately for Democrats and the rest of us vehemently opposed to the current president, I still believe Kerry will lose.  Why?  "'I'd damn near vote for a dishwasher in a good restaurant rather than vote for Bush,' [Boston voter Keith] Willits said."  That says it all.  Even among the core of the Democratic party, Kerry's support is based, not on him or his agenda, but simply on the fact that he is not George Bush.  This has become known as the ABBA (anyone but Bush again) strategy.  In any campaign, ultimately the candidate has to talk about him- or herself.  Simply saying "the other guy stinks" isn't going to carry a lot of weight with most less partisan voters, especially when the less partisan voters are perhaps not as convinced that the other guy really does stink.  It comes down to what the candidate can offer the voters, not how bad the other guy is.  If Kerry cannot even motivate his own party, the foundation of his campaign, how do you think he will do with the more centrist voter who may not be so vehemently opposed to what Bush has done as president as a hardcore Democrat?

Ultimately, the Democrats seem to be following the script written by the Republicans in 1996.  We remember the story.  The more extreme wing of the opposition party is passionately committed to bringing down the incumbent president.  The incumbent has some popularity, but voters are not totally convinced and are open to considering the opposition.   To win, the party establishment quickly settles on a long-serving Senator presumed to be able to appeal across the party, but who lacks a certain charisma and presence.  Defying the party establishment, a renegade outsider claims the early attention in the primary campaign.  Fearing that the renegade might actually win, voters supporting the disparate, more mainstream candidates, quickly close ranks behind the charisma-challenged senator the establishment annointed to begin with, converting a candidate struggling to find traction to front runner.  Lacking much of an agenda other than "I'm not the other guy", the senator fails to spark much interest outside the reluctant support given by his own party, many of whom liked other candidates and have compromised on this guy because he was more "electable".  The story climaxes on election day when the incumbent wins in a cake walk.

Kerry is walking down Dole Street.  Unless he and his supporters can start articulating a clear agenda of why voters should choose him, rather than merely why the other guy is bad, he will ultimately follow Dole's lead into oblivion.

Liberal Opposition to the Iraq War

I have published several posts in this blog and my old one criticizing the Bush administration's approach and justification for the Iraq war.  But, as opposed as I am to the administration, I am equally uncomfortable with much of the liberal opposition to the war.  Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 has been criticized for, among other things, painting something of an idyllic picture of Baathist Iraq, a desert oasis of smiling, happy children ruined by American clumsiness.  Just today, I read the following on page 16 of the 7/30/2004 issue of Entertainment Weekly:  "We felt really guilty about what our country had done to [Iraqi production intern Muthana Mudher's] country," says producer Peter  Saraf.  "And then, of course, he gets here, and it never occurred to me that he would say something like 'But I love George Bush--he changed my life!'"  There is too much of this kind of sanctimonious drivel from opponents of the war, people who can't get their minds around the idea that someone might actually be appreciative of a nation that has freed him from a tyrant.  I see too much of this driving the Kerry campaign's support, especially among the "anyone but Bush again" crowd.

The issue is not that the war was somehow immoral, that we somehow destroyed a wonderful country.  From a purely political perspective, this is an argument that Bush will win any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.  All he has to do is trot out pictures of Hussein torture chambers and Iraq's mass graves and ask, "Tell me again how deposing this guy was an evil thing?"  Saddam was a brutal, sadistic, evil dictator.  It is an honorable thing to have taken him down.  It remains to be seen, however, if we have truly made Iraq better.  We'll have to wait and see what government takes root to replace Saddam.  The ability of a president opposed to the concept of nation building to build a better Iraq or Afghanistan is a legitimate issue to raise.  It is also legitimate to ask the cost of committing a large segment, even a majority, of US combat forces to Iraq, where vital security interests were not at stake.

War is not immoral simply because we attack first.  Germany in 1941 had never once launched a single attack against the United States.  (Yes, the Germans attacked US ships in the Atlantic, but by then, the US was waging undeclared war against German subs to protect convoys to Britain.)  Hitler had even mocked FDR on the question of Germany attacking the US.  Yet, most would consider the US war on Germany a morally justified war.   War is not immoral simply because others decide to not join us.  If your neighbor decides not to put an alarm in his house, are you going to say, "Well, I worry about someone robbing me, but Joe across the street doesn't think anyone will, so I won't put the alarm in?"  Of course not.  Your sense of security in your home is not dictated by what your neighbor's think, anymore than our national security is determined by France or Russia.

The primary issue in the Iraq war, rather, is the process by which the decision to go to war was reached.  The justification for the war was intelligence data which indicated Iraq stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and associating with terrorists, including al Qaida.  This intelligence was portrayed as being so strong, the argument was, in the immortal words of CIA Directory Tenet, a "slam dunk."  We now know this intelligence was incredibly spotty, based on unreliable information, and sometimes bordered on fiction.  A properly run administration would have ascertained the weakness of the information.  There would have been extensive questioning of the data and interpretations, arguments back and forth discussing the reliability of the information, a thorough vetting of the claims.  Instead, the conclusions supported preconceived notions of the president and his neocon cohorts.  Since the data supported what was already "known", the president effectively decided no further examination was required.  Furthermore, since it supported what he "knew", it was obviously reliable data.

Our national security is founded on intelligence gathering.  It always has been.  Only with proper intelligence can we battle our elusive, shadowy enemies.  We have to be able to trust what our intelligence agencies tell us, and what our leaders tell us about what the agencies say.  By improperly vetting the intelligence data, exaggerating the reliability of the intelligence, and waging a war in which nearly 1000 Americans have, so far, died, the president has undermined our trust in the intelligence community.  The president claims he has made us safer.  On the contrary, he has put us considerably more at risk.

To see what happens when people lose faith in the intelligence process, look at public responses to the silly alert system the Department of Homeland Security invented.  The first time Director Ridge raised the level to orange, there was panic.  There were runs on grocery stores and duct tape.  In the end, nothing happened and the alert level went back to normal, er, elevated.  What happened the second time Ridge raised the alert to orange.  Nothing.  Nada.  Rien.  Nichts.  No one paid attention.  With one false alarm, the public became immune to the warnings given out by the government.

What will happen the next time President Bush tells us of reliable intelligence information that al Qaida is connected to someone, say Iran?  Will anyone outside his die-hard supporters believe him?  What if that information is actually right?  Mrs. Bush is a librarian and the president is known to read books to children.  Maybe she ought to get him a copy of the Boy Who Cried Wolf sometime. 

By exaggerating evidence that wasn't there, no one will listen when the president tells us the real deal about some other country.  That puts this country at risk.  We have a president we cannot trust to make informed decisions based on facts.  This is the danger to our country.  Let's stop muting the point by weeping over a fallen tyrant.

Silly Security Advisory System

Some time ago, the US Department of Homeland Security created a color-coded alert system to represent the terrorist threat.  Effectively, this is a 1-5 scale with 1 (green) being "low" risk to terrorist attack, and 5 (red) being "severe" risk to terrorist attack.  Why does my title call this silly?  Name one politician with the cajones to set the threat level to "low".  The threat will never be low, because the fallout for the president who declares the threat low just before an attack, even a small one, will be far too great.  How about a "guarded" (2) threat?  This isn't much better than a low threat.  It just means a "general" threat, and again the cost of being wrong will be too high.  So, they invented a 1-5 scale with only 3-5 being meaningful.

OK, then yellow (3, "elevated") is the normal risk.  This is in fact the usual threat level.  This is the lowest level that actually conveys some sort of threat.  What does "elevated" mean? 

3. Elevated Condition (Yellow). An Elevated Condition is declared when there is a significant risk of terrorist attacks. In addition to the Protective Measures taken in the previous Threat Conditions, Federal departments and agencies should consider the following general measures in addition to the Protective Measures that they will develop and implement:

• Increasing surveillance of critical locations;
  
• Coordinating emergency plans as appropriate with nearby jurisdictions;
  
• Assessing whether the precise characteristics of the threat require the further refinement of preplanned Protective Measures; and
  
• Implementing, as appropriate, contingency and emergency response plans.

This doesn't make logical sense.  Government will increase surveillance.  Increase relative to what?  Relative to normal surveillance?  This level is normal surveillance.

When do we start coordinating efforts across the spectrum of security agencies?  Only at level 4 risk.  Shouldn't this coordination be commonplace?  Isn't lack of coordination between security agencies part of the problem identified in the 9/11 commission report?  Yet, according to this alert system, we still won't do this as part of normal activity, which is level 3.

I understand the government is trying to do something, but can't we get something a little better than this?  Sounds like politician's logic to me (taken from the British comedy series Yes Prime Minister): we have to do something, this is something, therefore we have to do it.

Ricky Williams

Ricky Williams, the Miami Dolphins star running back for the last two seasons and the only true threat on their offense, has abruptly retired from football.   Many are shocked at this, and are questioning his sanity.  Williams has always been viewed as an eccentric, from his habit in New Orleans of giving interviews with his helmet on, to his aloofness from teammates, to his dreadlocks.  But why should this be so suprising?  We fans see the gridiron and its gladiators as the ultimate heroes, the men we wish we could emulate.  We want their money, their fame, their women.  But how many of us realize the extreme price these men pay for those things.  I've never played myself, other than sandlot, but everytime I read about gatherings of Hall of Famers, I always hear about the constant pain they all live with, the difficulty walking normally, of just getting out of the chair.  This side is rarely shown to the public, and the public rarely wants to hear about it because we want to be like these men.  So a rich man chooses to walk away from his sport he no longer loves while he can still walk without too much agony.  And critics call this crazy.

The only thing I can question is the timing of the decision.  Rather than making the move early in the post-season, which would have allowed the Dolphins to draft a replacement or to pursue one of the handful of experienced free agents who came and went this spring and summer, he waited until just before camp, leaving Miami high and dry.  In my pre-season predictions, I described Miami as having "the worst passing game in the division (though the best running game)."  Clearly this is no longer the case.  Jay Fiedler is the worst quarterback in the division.  (Admittedly, the AFC East is one of the better quarterbacked divisions in the league, with 2 time Super Bowl MVP Brady, Super Bowl runner-up Bledsoe, and Chad Pennington.)  Now, unless the Dolphins can find a top tier running back buried in somebody's depth chart, they will have the worst running game in the division, to go along with the worst passing game.  The Dolphins are going nowhere this season, but to the basement.

The Dolphins have long struggled in the second half of the season, because of the cold weather division games in Buffalo, Foxboro, and New Jersey.  They always seemed to play their rivals in Miami in September and October, and in the snow in December.  This year they got a gift in that their division away games were scheduled first, leaving them on the beach in December.  That was the one thing they had going for them coming into the season.  Now, it won't matter.

A New World

It is fashionable to say that the world changed on September 11, 2001 with the attacks on the World Trade Center.  Columnist David Shribman says, "the old rules ... no longer apply to the crises of American national security."  Why?  Those attacks were not the first time terrorists had ever attacked somebody.  Islamist terrorism has been around for decades.  People were dying by the hundreds and thousands long before the Trade Center was even built.   The United States was confronting terror long before 9/11.

What were the "old rules"?  According to Shribman, "From the dawning of America's engagement in World War I until the evening of Sept. 10, 2001, American presidents worried about other nations, their leaders, their weapons and the stability of those nations and their leaders."  The idea is that the world is no longer driven by competition and struggles between nations, struggles addressed by statecraft and diplomacy.

Yet, is terrorism not merely an extension of that old model? In decades past, a nation might confront its enemies directly on the field of battle.  Take, for example, the Arab confrontation with Israel throughout the early decades of that nation's existence.  Today, those same nations might confront their same enemies via the proxy of terrorism, as Syria continues to confront Israel, but today through terrorist groups.  Islamic fundamentalists have confronted the West directly before, once they got political power in nations like Iran and Libya.  Now, they use terrorists.  The fundamental problem is the same, just expressed in a different way.

Shribman wants to argue that presidents starting with the current one no longer view the world as a competition between nations.  Yet both of the current president's responses in the so-called war on terror have been directed against nations, Afghanistan and Iraq.  The issue behind both wars was the leadership and, it the case of Iraq, weaponry of those countries.

The only thing that has changed since 9/11 is that the United States is no longer as naïve as it had been.  We are no longer deluded into believing our economic and military strength will protect us absolutely.  The world has not changed.  To say that it has is to reflect just how naïve we were before 9/11.

Sir Neville Henderson

Sir Neville Henderson was the British ambassador to Germany in the 1930's and was a principal figure in the appeasement of Hitler that lead to World War II.  I've been re-reading William Shire's classic The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich lately.  In it, Shirer quotes historian Sir L.B. Namier's evaluation of Henderson:  "Conceited, vain, self-opinionated, rigidly adhering to his preconceived ideas, he poured out telegrams, dispatches, and letters in unbelievable numbers and of formidable length, repeating a hundred times the same ill-founded views and ideas.  Obtuse enough to be a menace, and not stupid enough to be innocuous, he proved un homme néfaste."  (p. 786 of the 1983 Ballantine Books paperback edition)  Remind anyone else of a certain American president?

At Least Powell Tried

Elsewhere, I have criticized US Secretary of State Colin Powell for his role in the road to war in Iraq.  But in all fairness, one has to acknowledge that at least Powell tried to do the right thing.  It has recently been reported that, prior to giving his now infamous speech to the UN laying out the intelligence support for the administrations claims, the State Department did a detailed analysis of every point in the speech to decide how reliable each was.  Many claims listed in the original draft of the secretary's speech were removed.  "The analysts, describing many of the claims as 'weak' and assigning grades to arguments on a 5-star scale, warned Powell against making an array of allegations they deemed implausible. They also warned against including Iraqi communications intercepts they deemed ambiguous and against speculating that terrorists might 'come through Baghdad and pick-up biological weapons' as if they were stocked on store shelves. "
 
In the end, Powell chose to include several disputed points in his speech, and the State Department analysts did not challenge some claims that were later found to be based on suspect intelligence.  But at least someone in the administration was making a strenuous effort to critique the information being presented.  We never hear of meetings with the president "described as sessions marked by heated arguments over what to include."  The president just accepted what he was told, because he liked the answer.  Most around him did the same thing. Secretary Powell recognized his responsibilities and did his best to do his job and to serve his country.  We have to acknowledge this and give the man his credit.

Accepting Responsibility

Commenting on the intelligence errors that lead to the war in Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently said, "I accept full personal responsibility for the way the issue was presented and therefore for any errors made." Yet another reason to admire Mr. Blair, even if I don't necessarily agree with his support for the war. If only our own president were as forthright.

The Decline of the Media

For many years, it has been a conservative mantra in the United States to complain about the "liberal bias" in the media. When Republicans control the White House, the media rip into the presidents with relish, clearly demonstrating this bias they say. (When the same media ripped into Democrat Bill Clinton for 8 years, that was fact apparently. I guess it's only unfair bias when it is targeted at Republicans.) These conservatives are not far from the truth, their error being their focus on themselves as the only victims. The media have become increasingly driven by ratings and sensationalism, anything to grab our attention. The myth of "objective" news is rapidly falling away. It is getting so bad that sometimes the "news" is outright fiction.

The latest clear example of this is coverage of Paul Bremer's departure from Iraq after the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty. Newspapers such as the LA Times were highly critical of Bremer for not even giving a speech. I just queried the LA Times web site and could not find this article, but here is a quote from their article quoted by blogger Roger Simon: "L. Paul Bremer III, the civilian administrator for Iraq, left without even giving a final speech to the country - almost as if he were afraid to look in the eye the people he had ruled for more than a year." I think it is quite obvious this is a biased statement. It is also erroneous. Numerous bloggers from Iraq, including Iraq the Model, and elsewhere were commenting (admiringly) on Bremer's farewell to Iraq, given partially in Arabic no less, days before the Times published is critique of Bremer. (The Iraq the Model blog posting was on 6/29, the LA Times article on July 4.)

As I said, I was unable to find the original article on the LA Times web site. I did find a throw away comment from the Times addressing this coverage on July 8. They do acknowledge Bremer did something before leaving. Not that they made a mistake, though. The mistake was by Bremer because, while he taped a speech, it was only given to Iraqi media and not publicized to Western media. It's not like media covering Iraq could possibly be expected to watch Iraqi news to get news about Iraq!

No more sarcasm, I promise.

John Leo has other examples of the the creative forces working at the LA Times. The best/saddest is their report on how unknown and unpopular the new Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is, despite polls published days earlier by the Washington Post showing a 73% approval rating for Allawi. Not wanting facts to get in the way of their storytelling time, the Times chose to not bore its readers with such information and did not publish the poll results.

Pretty pathetic.

Abstinence and AIDS

I just read an article about a controversy at a global AIDS conference. The controversy is about the role of abstinence in AIDS prevention. Why is this such a big problem and controversy? AIDS is primarily a sexually transmitted disease. (I said primarily. There are obviously other means of distribution.) Therefore abstinence is a 100% guaranteed way of blocking the sexual transmission of HIV. What is so hard to understand? US Member of Congress Barbara Lee (D-CA) says this is not science. True. This is common sense.

Don't get me wrong. I fully support education about condoms and programs that encourage sexually active people to use them. This is a means of making sex safer, certainly. Use of condoms also addresses other sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancy. But, how can you ignore the only approach that is 100% guaranteed to work for all these considerations? That is incredibly irresponsible! Why suppose an either-or approach? Encouraging abstinence must coexist with education about condoms.

Representative Lee also says, "In an age where five million people are newly infected each year and women and girls too often do not have the choice to abstain, an abstinence until marriage program is not only irresponsible, it's really inhumane....Abstaining from sex is oftentimes not a choice, and therefore their only hope in preventing HIV infection is the use of condoms." Let me see if I can understand this logic. Some women do not have the choice to abstain. What does this mean? Rape victims? If they are being raped, do they still have the choice to request condom usage during the act? Anyway, because some women will be victims of hopefully conscientious, condom-toting rapists, or for some other reason are unable to choose whether or not to have sex, we should not even talk about abstinence for the millions of other women (and men, about whom Lee expresses little concern) who can and do make this choice every day.

This is science dicating policy?

Brilliant op-ed on Bush power grab

I just read a brilliant blog post on the Bush Administration's power grab in the aftermath of 9-11. I have long thought of putting together my views on what history shows about the fall of republics, but have never gotten around to it. Balkin's comments express quite eloquently what I would write.

Movie Review: Spider-Man 2

I saw Spider-Man 2 over the holiday weekend. What a great film! What makes the Spider-Man series so much better than the others? It has all the action you would expect in any superhero movie, but it adds real characters, story, and casts actors who know something about acting. The father of the modern superhero movie is Tim Burton's original Batman, which had many of these elements as well, before the franchise got ground into dust by Joel Shumacher. The Spider-Man series is a worthy successor. The only caution on that is to remember that the Batman series was great too, for two films.

Anyway, the opening credits give a comic book review of the first film. Then we jump into the film. Peter Parker is trying to live two lives, one as a college student studying the wonders of physics and trying to support himself as a pizza delivery boy, the other as Spider-Man. Unfortunately, these lives do not mesh well. Spider-Man is always getting in the way, making him late for class and work, keeping him from doing his homework, keeping him from his true love MJ. So our hero decides to ditch the high-life and focus on himself.

What makes the Spider-Man movies great is that on top of the requisite special effects and action sequences, there is an actual story with actual characters played by actors who do actual acting. In how many superhero movies can you actually watch a scene and be impressed by the acting? This film has a wonderful scene between Peter and his aunt where Peter finally tells the real story of what happened to Uncle Ben, admitting his responsibility in the sequence of events. It is in scenes like this that choosing a real actor like Tobey Maguire pays off.

Beyond the acting is director Sam Raimi's quirky style, best shown in the sequence following Parker's decision to throw away the Spider-Man costume, all set to "Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head." There's also the comedy, like Spider-Man's evaluation of his costume (kind of itchy and tight in the crotch) or an anxious citizen asking Spider-Man if he has any more bright ideas (I won't give away the context).

This is what superhero movies should be. Not too overwrought like Hulk, not too mindless like the latter Batmans. It shows what intelligent scripting, acting, and directing combined with state-of-the-art special effects and action choreography can do. Now the question is, can they keep this high standard going for a third film due in 2007. As I said at the beginning, the Batman series started strong too (but not as strong as Spider-Man) before tailing off into the creeping disease of franchise-itis.

Movie Review: Cold Mountain

I saw Cold Mountain this week on DVD. The film garnered multiple Oscar nominations, including acting noms for Renée Zellwegger and Jude Law. It was directed by Anthony Minghella, who also gave us the highly overrated and critically adored English Patient. His latest work continues in the vein of English Patient.

The film is really comprised of two stories that are slightly interconnected. Inman (Law) is a Southern commoner from Cold Mountain, North Carolina who enthusiastically enlists in the Confederate Army when the Civil War breaks out. Shortly before the war, Ada (Nicole Kidman) and her reverend father (Donald Sutherland) arrive in Cold Mountain. Ada and Inman meet and exchange a few words. That's the backstory. The bulk of the film takes place in the summer and winter of 1864, when the South is crumbling. After being injured in the great crater fiasco at Petersburg (the Union army digs a tunnel under the Confederate fortifications, plants a lot of explosives, blows a huge hole in the Confederate lines, and then promptly charges into the crater where they are easily defeated), Inman deserts the army and begins to walk back to Cold Mountain. He deserts because Ada wrote a letter 6-8 months prior asking him to. As he journeys home, he encounters a series of strange characters you will only find in movies, all the while trying to avoid the Home Guard, whose job is to find deserters and drag them back to the war. Meanwhile, Ada's father has died and the southern belle is forced to try to provide for herself. Ruby (Zellwegger), a tomboy, arrives to help, and together they put the farm back in order.

Like English Patient, Cold Mountain is a gorgeous film. But beautiful photography does not make a film. The story does, and the story fails miserably here. Inman's journey is reasonably interesting, but the characters he meets are unrealistic and have no connection. His story is a series of vignettes with quirky characters and nothing to connect them. Ada's story is uninteresting. Sheltered debutante has to learn the realities of life. OK. Seen it. What do we learn of Ada as a character? She's gorgeous (she is Nicole Kidman, after all). She's ....uh.... gorgeous. She ....uh.... looks good. She ....uh.... looks good playing a piano. There is nothing interesting about her. Ruby brightens the scene tremendously after she appears.

What is supposed to hold the story together is the love between Ada and Inman, a love that drives him to risk his life to get back to her, and causes her to ....uh..... look good waiting for him. This relationship is a joke, only to be found in romantic movies. As Ada herself admits, they've exchanged perhaps a dozen words in their lives. In the years of war and separation, Inman has read 3 letters from her (though she claims to have written more than 100) and has written precisely 0 back. Sure, I can believe that is the foundation of a meaningful, long-term, long-distance relationship! When they bump into one another out in the woods one day, they immediately pledge themselves to each other as a means of justifying their romp in bed.

Come on. Writing has gotten very lazy in film, and writing about relationships is even worse. Why develop characters and interactions when you can get the leading lady to drop her drawers for an extended nude scene? Sex means love, right? If they are having sex, they must be in love, because only people madly in love would ever dream of exchanging fluids, right? Who cares what kind of person she is, look at the butt! OK, so there is something interesting about Ada.

Anyway, the acting is reasonably good, especially from Zellwegger and Law. Renée is becoming quite the Meryl Streep, securing Oscar nominations three years in a row. She finally won for this performance. Given that she was the best part of the film, and the one character to watch with anything approaching interest, I can understand.