With so many eyes, especially Democrat eyes, turning toward 2008, possibly the most important thing to remember is that it is only 2006, and in Double Jeopardy, values double and the scores can really change.
Without a crystal ball, we cannot know what plans have been laid on the satiny tables of Washington’s most secure conference rooms with regard to fighting the war on terror in the homeland.
A comment from Bush in a ramblebleat yesterday may have been a hint; when asked about the duration of US occupation of Iraq he replied that that would be decided by future American presidents.
So from that we can make the admittedly large assumption that some sort of “election” activities will be permitted in 2008, but how the dynamic of those activities will be affected by events in the intervening two years, we can only guess.
The primary advantage the Democrats have in 2006 is that an increasing number of Americans do not like Bush. He is not appealing, neither telegenic nor charismatic, even those who voted for him do not find his persona pleasing.
Yet in 2008, whichever candidate wins, he will enjoy the distinct and certain advantage of not being Bush.
Unless the parties have, by 2008, merged by general agreement, there will also be a Republican candidate, who will, as previously noted, not be Bush. An unpleasant truth – that will be all that many voters will ask for.
This is something Democrats must prepare for. The “beat Bush” meme has become so ingrained in the last several years that it is easy to forget that in 2008, there will be no Bush to beat. Unless Jeb is placed in some sort of in-house training facility for the next two years, and emerges from it with sufficient polish to persuade Republican strategists that he can look Presidential if they are really obsessive with lighting and somebody in Japan can come up with a more effective and undetectable earpiece strategy than his brother had.
That’s just the beginning of the reality a 2008 Democratic candidate will face.
Not questions of whether the crusade should be expanded to Iran, but the reality of the full bloom of US occupation of Iran, as well as Iraq and Afghanistan, and likely other theatres as well.
Shall that candidate, whoever he or she might be, run on a promise to “bring all the troops home” as McGovern did in 1972, with a younger, feistier electorate? Even with anti-war sentiment at high numbers inthe polls, McGovern lost by a landslide to Richard Nixon, who ended up ending the invasion of VietNam and resigned as a result of backlash from campaign dirty tricks.
But that was then and this is now. Today, it is acceptable for a sitting president to decree that it is a crime to even suggest that he may have committed a crime. It must be hard for younger folks to imagine a political climate in which something as trivial as breaking into the opposing candidate’s office would result in a president resigning. However, to be fair, today it would not be necessary to break in to an office. Thanks to advances in technology, any information desired can be obtained through other means.
The 2008 candidate will need to appeal to a very different voting class. Older, for the most part, more affluent, as domestic economic policies, developed over decades, and across party lines, successfully swell the ranks of the poor and solidify their political disenfranchisement. And a bit fractious and not a little schizophrenic, being quick to criticize how the crusades are won, but loathe to end them, much less to cease aggression and disarm.
In 2008 then, to his economically winnowed-down, aging potential voters, shall he pledge to run the various crusades more efficiently, to “get the job done,” the job being doing whatever is necessary to bring the surviving populations of the occupied nations firmly to heel, to expedite resource extraction, and to that end, increase troop strength and provide better equipment and newer, more powerful weapons for those defending America’s way of life in this very different kind of war?
On the domestic scene, it is likely that by 2008, even the majority of the US voting class who consider themselves Democrats will list as their greatest concern increased security in the homeland, as rapidly expanding hordes of poor make daily life in America’s most beautiful cities a thing of peril, both aesthetic and otherwise.
Shall the Democratic candidate promise a Living Wage? a Right to Housing? Medical treatment for all regardless of ability to pay?
Or shall he pledge additional funds to states for increased law enforcement and prison construction? And “affordable health care,” perhaps up to a thousand dollars savings on insurance premiums for some families?
So far, the increase in the number of families downshifting from the middle class to poverty does not seem to have had the effect of causing those remaining in the discretionary resource classes to become noticeably more compassionate toward the poor. Will this trend continue, or could it reverse?
Iran has an air force. It is almost certain that initial air bombardment will result in US “casualties,” including the shooting down of American planes, an event so unthinkable to mainstream Americans and fraught with such emotional impact that even helicopters shot down in Iraq are said by the Pentagon to have suffered “mechanical failure.” On at least one occasion, such an incident in Afghanistan was blamed on “rough terrain.” Presentation strategies of this kind may not be feasible in the context of Iran during those early stages.
Pulling the string of the talking Mahmoud doll has also been very effective in strengthening support for expansion of the crusade to Iran.
And there is always the dark possibility of another Unity Operation, in the unlikely event that support for the war on terror itself may at some point appear to be waning.
With so many unknown unknowns, it is impossible even for professional strategists to predict with certain accuracy what political landscape the Democratic candidate will survey from his podium.
We can say with confidence that he will have a lot of presentin’ to do!
Given the new and expanding voter bloc of former middle class individuals (now lower class), the old “chicken in every pot” slogan might find new life. That is, assuming bird flu doesn’t make this impossible.
Funny story, I ran in college for a dorm post, one of my signs reading “Some pot in every chicken”. What can I say, it was the 70’s.
While everything you say is true, there are other wild cards that may be dealt as well; ones that might not reflect so well on the Republicans:
And those are only the events I’d classify as high-probability. One could easily dream up more outlandish scenarios.
Some of them we can hope for, like My Laioid events getting media coverage AND not being perceived by the voting class as “good news from Iraq.”
Or that little person leaking the big thing and not being received with a “so what” shrug
And of course the idea of a serious “backlash” caused by the overturn of Roe or any of a thousand other things would be most welcome.
could well be Washington DC — I heard on the radio that the Eastern Seaboard could be hit by a major hurricane this season…
Since I’m working my butt off on 2006….
I’ll worry about 2008 in January of 2007…or prepare to retire to the mountains if we get out butts whipped in 2006.
I expect the economy to be #1 in 2008. As someone that votes for fiscal responsibility almost always and watches the economy tank more every day…the economy will be it. Period.
Fascinating.
What’s a “Unity Operation?”
sometimes called a “sparkle,” sometimes called a “false flag,” it is basically a plan devised by a regime to create an event that will have the effect of bringing together a divided national population, who will then be less likely to resist policies and actions on the part of the regime, that might otherwise meet with significant opposition.
The Reichstag fire in Germany not too long ago is an example of a Unity Operation, probably the most well-known Unity Operation in more recent years would be the 911 events in the US.
As long as the Democratic candidate faces a privatized and corporate polling system (Diebold and friends), it makes no slightest difference what the candidate presents, believes, or might bring to the table… because s/he won’t have the slightest chance of actually getting to the table, except possibly as waitstaff.
in the unlikely event that support for the war on terror itself may at some point appear to be waning.
This “unlikely event” has already happened according to recent polls. The majority of the American public have made the distinction between the military occupation of Iraq and the war on terror.
50% of Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling the war on terror and homeland security.
65% Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq.
As you point out, and much more clearly than I did, not to mention briefly, for which I thank you, while there is opposition to the way both war on terror and crusade in Iraq are being run, opposition to prosecuting either or both remains quite low.
As I am sure you recall, one of the most oft-heard utterances in support of the Iraq crusade in the run-up was that the 1991 invasion had failed to “finish the job.”
The displeasure and dissatisfaction expressed today by those who express such, is not the result of an epiphany in which the individual suddenly realized that the United States is not the boss of earth, nor the sole determiner by divine right, of who shall or shall not be allowed to have which weapons, nor any sudden about face on the subject of just whose oil lies under that sand.
There is however, you may have figures to indicate growing, sense that the “job” is in fact not “being done right,” or “finished,” in other words, the problem as seen by many Americans is in the way the crusade is being run, not the fact that it is happening in the first place.
And I don’t think it is likely that many Americans regardless of party affiliation, would express an opposition to the war on terror, though quite a few might disagree with how Bush is running that one too!
Oh, I forgot, you don’t need them. NOT.
You can call it a ‘crusade’ as you so often do, but from what I have read, the attack on Iraq was planned even before Bush was appointed. The neo-cons wanted to secure a military base in the middle east because their location in Saudi Arabia was becoming tenuous. This was more than American hegemony on the rise, it was just for plain old oil profits. So, if you want, it is an oil crusade but I don’t see it as a crusade in the religious/cultural sense, it is more base than that.
I am sure I could not come up with any better ones than you have to illustrate my point which you stated so much more clearly.
And I agree that as is usually the case, the purpose of the crusade is in order to generate more money for rich men, but as has been the case throughout history, popular support for such an undertaking is unlikely if a rich man simply steps out and says, I want your sons and your gold so I can make more money.
That would be an excellent example of an ineffective presentation.
Ever since greed and gods have existed, it has been proven to be much more effective to invoke the latter in order to feed the former.
Nor do I mean to suggest that all western anti-Muslim sentiment is religion based. On the contrary, although we cannot see into the hearts of men, I will bet if we could, we would see less actual religious hatred than plain old anti-Otherism, which in its way, especially when dealing with populations with a sizeable secular sector, is even more effective than religion when rich men want more money!
Your quote:
less actual religious hatred than plain old anti-Otherism
By this you mean, racism against Arabs? zenophobia against everyone? Hard to interpret your circular contradictions.
Hard to say when it comes to greed. In Las Vegas for example, we are told there are no religious or racial prejudices, only the colour of money counts there.
Here’s a quote about religion from Gibbon which Lewis H. Lapham uses to intro his recent essay in Harper’s:
The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philospher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.
And I would say this prevails to this day.
It is a relative term, a flexible term. Generally, it will increase with the number of “others” in the community, as well as the cultural messages from society, “authorities” such as government, religious institutions, in modern times these are transmitted through mass media.
The identity of “other,” as mentioned, is changeable. A community of whites with a couple of black families may not treat them so much as “other,” but if many black families arrive, the likelihood that they will be perceived as a threat somehow increases, and anti-Otherism may become more present. However if there are say one or two Asian families in that same community, they may not experience that anti-Otherism at all – until many Asian families arrive!
Throughout history, governments and regimes have found anti-Otherism to be a useful tool in obtaining and maintaining popular support for wars that benefit only a few, which idea might not be so appealing to the many, but if public anti-Other sentiment can be aroused, suddenly the war becomes quite the thing, and the population is willing to sacrifice its sons and its goal to make those handful of rich men richer.
While Jews were the designated and demonized other in Hitler’s Germany, in the US today, as a result of decades of low-grade and preparatory indoctrination, and a tidal wave of recent and more overt messages, anti-Arab sentiment is pandemic, intense to the point of rabidity, and permeates all social strata, even to an extent among the underclass and some other ethnic minorities.
At the same time, Latin Americans are becoming increasingly on the receiving end of anti-Otherism from some sectors, even by those who owe their ten dollar lunch and cheap flower beds to their presence. In some areas near the Mexican border, there are actually groups of armed Americans, private citizens, who attempt to wage war with the sons and daughters of the indigenous people of the continent as the exercise their inalienable right to move about it freely.
Both the US and Europe are in the process of undergoing a dramatic demographic shift, and as a result of this, a certain level of anti-Otherism is predictable and inevitable. Where the ethnicity of the “Others” dovetails with a nation’s key business interests, this can be increased, again to favor colonial aggression activities of the regimes who seek revenues from the region of the “Others.”
So while anti-Otherism exists as a standalone phenomenon, it also makes excellent food for greed.
sons and goal above should be sons and gold.
You made up the term?
Why?
What you describe is xenophobia, which is a pretty good word.
“The other” is a term used in Jungian psychology and it simply means, other than the self. I will keep to the Jungian definition, if you don’t mind.
By “demographic shift” you mean ‘the white man’ is on the decline?
Big deal.
in Germany, for instance, were not foreigners, they were German citizens. And the same for Afro-Americans, and Latin Americans are essentially the indigenous people of the Americas.
Xenophobia would be applicable, though, to Latin Americans, or immigrants in general.
I don’t know if I can claim credit for the non-Jungian use of the term “anti-Otherism” but because the phenomenon does frequently involve people of a different religion, ethnicity, etc who are neither foreigners nor strangers to the larger population, it serves to describe that phenomenon.
In another thread a while ago, I used it to also apply to some aspects of the subjugation of women.
And yes, the demographic shift is a very big deal to many white people.
who are not exactly white. I never turned my children’s natural instinct of acceptance into hatred of others who were not like them. So the decline of ‘the white man’ is no big deal to me. I see that it is a very big deal to you since you harp on it so much.
Yes, you use every issue you can, even women’s issues to get your point across.
Not all of them, but there are obviously bumps in the road, in the US a lot of the “immigration” concerns are not really about immigration. They’re about people who have a lot of different feelings about the demographics of their community changing. And there are similar issues in Europe, though the predominant ethnic minority that is changing the demographics of communities there is not Latin Americans, you can see a lot of the same concerns in European “immigration” initiatives.
The US had legalized apartheid until barely a half century ago, and it would be inaccurate to suggest that there is no racism in American society today. It may manifest itself in different ways, at least most of the time, than back when Miss Billie Holiday wrote “Strange Fruit,” but not all Americans have had that advantage you speak of, of being raised in a good environment by people who form opinions of others based on the content of their character.
So while I can’t claim to have the same concerns about the demographic shift as a white man might, because they do have those concerns those bumps in the road can create situations with the potential to be a big deal for everybody.
. . . you have everwritten–the more so as it seems true.
Americans are no way ready to give up childish fantasies of omnipotence.
The deities do have a cure–
but that is not good news.
I can only offer a predictive view of 2008 based on my understanding of current political dynamics, my analysis of verifiable bits of fact relating to specfics in Iraq, and imperfect understanding of economics both global and domestic, and a gut instinct which, tragically, has been accurate far more often than it has been in error.
I see the Repub nominee as being “the second dumbest man in DC”, namely George Allen. I see over 100,000 US troops bivouaced in those hardened permanent bases in Iraq while a broader civil war rages on around them.
I see the neoconservative cabal that ran the Bush regime out of power. I see this departure of the neocons from the halls of power even if they stage or facilitate a major terrorist attack on US soil or even if they decide to reel in the dead body of bin Laden before the 2008 elections. I see this also even after the neocons dump Rumsfeld and Hadley in an attempt to salvage some measure of control. (I also do not see the neocons being able to implement their plans to attack Iran between now and ’08.)
I see Allen backed by the Carlyle Group type gang, (the creatures that used to run US policy before the neocons took that power from them). I suspect the Carlyle gang might try to woo Condosleaza Rice to accept the nomination for VP with Allen, (but I’m less certain about that). I see Allen getting the majority of the evangelical fascist vote, but I see the so-called foreign policy “realists” epitomzed by the Carlyle types moderating that evangelical influence especially as regards their religious enthusiasm for armageddon-based confrontation in the so-called holy land. I see the “Mammon worshipping” Norquist crowd backing Allen in conjunction with Carlyle,but again with Carlyle assuming the primary authority and as such moderating the rapacious and incredibly destructive greed of these treasury looters.
I see George Bush himself unable to serve out his full second term, stepping down due to health reasons (mental/emotional breakdown), sometime in 2007.
I see McCain self-destructing in public as his anger and contempt for others finally reveals itself to the public under the pressure of a violently contentious battle within the GOP. Also, of course, his warmonger insanity will not appeal to the masses by that time either.
I see no prominent Democrat with any stature able to rise up above the pathetic strategic blundering of party consultants and big money manipulators to mount a serious challenge to the Repub. I see that if there were any Dem to attempt to step forward in this way, he/she will be more brutally sabotaged by his own party than by the Repubs.
Uncharacteristically, I’m optimistic that the neocons wil not be able to advance their attack on Iran. Pessimistically, I see no Democratic president in ’08, and, reluctantly, I have the sense that it might even be better for the country in the long run that the immediate repercussions from the Bush regime’s disastrous rule play out for those first several post-bush, post-neocon years under Repub rule.
I don’t like seeing things this way and wish I could be more optimistic, but I don’t want to indulge myself in the false comfort of denial.
Unfortunately, the crusade in Iran is already underway, and will be completely decovertizized very shortly.
That throws a bit of a monkey wrench in your vision, which dismal though it may sound to Democrats eager to have their label on the package regardless of its contents, is less dismal than the inevitable result of bombing Teheran.
I have no doubt there is plenty of covert activity going on in Iran against the regime, and I believe that activity has been going on to one degree or another in it’s current form since the late 1970s.
But as eager as the neocon nuts both here and in Israel are to initiate a major overt military conflagration between Iran and themselves, I remain of the opinion that, in the end, they will not be able to instigate this.
I recognize how important the concept of “Crusade” is to so many people, both those who advocate for it and those who see it (rightly) as the most insidious of aggressions and yet make use of it as a fundamental supporting pillar of their world view. But while there are tens of millions of Christians in the US and a small number of Jews in Israel and I-don’t-have-any-way-of-knowing how many Muslims who are eager for Crusade, Jihad, Armageddon and all the rest, I just don’t see them running the show enough to prevail on that level with that agenda. (Many of the religious nuts may be cannon fodder, their ignorance is surely being weaponized, but for the most part they’re not the architects of the current agenda.)
I think the neocons, whose pathological irrationality regarding war and empire has done so much concentrated damage these last 5 years; I believe these lunatics are on their way out of power. There are signs that big oil is turning against their agenda, and even some of the major defense contractors are now beginning to see that an ever expanding war such as the neocons advocate will ultimately be bad for business in the long run.
I’m not saying things are likely to improve dramatically anytime in the forseeable future, but I do think the overt military assault on Iran will be averted.
Someone got very offended the other day when I said that US operations in Iran had been going on for a long time, or something to that effect, because colonization of the Americas had begun 500 years ago. I had not realized that was such a sensitive topic, so I will just say that US activities in Iran began before the 1970s.
I don’t mean to suggest that those running the crusade are motivated by religion, but religion is necessary in order to have the support for it.
To paraphrase what I said in a comment in another thread, if I, as a rich man, come to you, and say, give me your sons and your gold so that I can obtain more money, it is unlikely that I will receive a positive response from you.
However if I can tap into strong emotionally charged issues like religion and/or anti-Otherism, I will have a better chance.
It is true that expansion of the crusade to Iran, any more than starting and continuing those in Afghanistan and Iraq is not in the best interest of ordinary Americans.
But these decisions are not made by people who are motivated by the best interests of ordinary Americans.
And the “long run” is more a concern of those ordinary Americans, too.
What you say about US aggressive interference in Iran is why I said in it’s current form in my comment above. I contend that the impetus and motivation for interfering in Iran’s affairs has changed somewhat due to many factors pertaining to various competitive interests around the world, and as a result there are different strategies and different accomodative positions, and different business relationships required now that were absent previously.
The other point I thought I was making which perhaps you either refute or maybe even disregarded was that, as far as whose interests may be served as regards an attack on Iran, that my point was that it was the interests of big oil, defense contractors, and various other major trade multinational corporations that I believe are turning against the neocon advanced agenda for perpetual war and global hegemony. It has certainly never been my contention that the powers that be in any country, least of all in the US, have the best interests of the common citizen at the forefront of their agenda.
I agree with you completely, (it’s patently obvious, after all, that weaponizing the ignorance of the people in the name of God, any God), is always a bonus for warmongers when they can pull it off, but I remarked above that despite the zeal of the religious nuts in the US, I do not think the powers that be will be able to mobilize them the way they would need to in order to further their war agenda as aggressively as they would have liked. I say this with two things in mind. One is that more war is going to cost a lot more money and things are already deteriorating quickly on the domestic front. Two is that politicians are self-serving cowards and, like with the Vietnam debacle, once the record of failure and the loss of trust by the pubic reaches a certain point, congress will not be so easily strongarmed into allocating more money to widen a state of war that is already seen to be going badly.
The other thing, and in this I agree with something you alluded to above, is that the American public’s change in perspective as reflected in polling results is not, in my opinion, a reflection that more people are opposed to this war now on principle; it doesn’t indicate they’ve had a collective epiphany across a broad swath of the populace. I think these poll results indicate basically that many people are just sick and tired of hearing about this war thing all the time. I think they’re resentful of the fact that BushCo didn’t just take care of it all in a way so that they wouldn’t have to be confronted with it so much. People supported Bush because they turned over their decisionmaking rights to him and his gang and now they’re pissed because they fucked it all up. (I want to add here that even though the polling done a few weeks ago that showed an alarming number of people in the US generally favoring action against Iran related to nukes was disturbing, I suspect that such results would change dramatically if and when a truly serious campaign to initiate an overt attack begins to take shape.) I don’t think even the major media, (except the Murdoch/Fox empire), would support it like they did the invasion of Iraq.
But, even though I agree with you that there are a far higer number of people who would be approving of this war to continue if they just didn’t have to think about it so much and if it wasn’t costing so much, the fact remains that this particular dynamic of a public being “sick and tired” of dealing with the war is by itself a factor that has the capacity to seriously inhibit the ability of the warmongers to garner public support for even more aggression on an expanding front.
So my position is that while I don’t think all that many people recognize the “wrongness” of this war, there may be enough more now who are sick of it that there won’t be enough support for the neocon expansion going forward.
oil. And in this case the ones calling the shots happen to be, in my opinion, nuttier than baklava, their greed having weaponized itself into lunacy.
I think where we disagree, and where I would love for you to be right, is on the question of whether the juggernaut can be stopped short of military intervention that will result in some extremely less positive consequences for all concerned.
In my view, that is a window that closed long ago, and the door that opened up in its place does not lead to a pleasant vista.
I would guess this is the American presence.
This level could be maintained indefinitely, but clearly the administration is going for something bigger.
Not knowing why they did not attack in force last year, I cannot guess why those reasons don’t apply this year.
before the invasion, and operatives have been a constant presence there since the 1950s.
My speculation is that they did not understand about Kurds and Kirkuk, and also wanted to shore up US domestic support for occupation of both Iran and Iraq simultaneously, and did not feel that this could be effected until they had their talking Mahmoud doll.
Pull his string and watch the numbers of those polled who favor invading Iran soar! 😀
to self-destruct with his recent hiring of someone involved in the Delay/Abramoff scandal.
I see you as overly pessimistic. Call me Pollyanna but, I see Russ Feingold as a dark horse. The Republicans are looking like losers already, and I can’t see any improvements on the horizon. Imagine how low they will sink by 2008.
I sure hope that you are right about the attack on Iran but I’ve read that it has already begun. Just a few USAF sorties missing their targets over Iraq…
The threats, I see are environmental degradation and the impossibility of cleaning up and restructuring the countries GWB has destroyed, Afghanistan, Iraq and the USA. He will stay the course and go out with a whimper. In fact, he has already started to whimper at his recent press conference.
I mean, aircraft are supposed to be in the air. What has terrain to do with it?
It’s not that they can no longer tell when they are lying and when they are not, and it’s not that they have reached the point where they no longer care whether we notice, it’s that I don’t think they can distinguish reasonable statements from absurdities in their own minds.