President Nixon: Alone in the White House 9

On page 287 of President Nixon: Alone in the White House, Richard Reeves states:

"If that deficit spending would entice more private spending, by both corporations and consumers, then the Republican president was now ready to buy into the pump-priming theories of John Maynard Keynes, the British economist, patron saint of liberal economists and big-spending politicians.  But that did not change the fact that most of the men around him were still conservatives who had always seen inflation as the true devil."

When I read this, I thought about the West Wing episodes, "Memorial Day" (from Season 5) and "NSF Thurmont" (from Season 6).  In these episodes, President Jed Bartlett and his Chief-of-Staff, Leo McGarry, are on different pages on how to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  In Bartlett's earlier days in the White House, Leo was his mentor when it came to foreign policy, for President Bartlett was not as experienced in that field.  By the end of Season 5, however, President Bartlett had his own ideas about the Middle East, and Leo recognized that it may have come to the point where President Bartlett might not value his counsel, for the two of them were on different pages.

This reportedly occurs in real life, too.  President George W. Bush supposedly relied on Vice-President Dick Cheney's counsel on foreign policy in the early days of his Administration, but it got to the point where the two of them diverged.  Cheney supported strikes on Syria, for example, whereas President Bush did not.  I've even read talk that Bush was briefly considering replacing Cheney with Senator Bill Frist!  On certain issues, Bush and Cheney were on different pages.

I read an article recently about how Christians become apostates (non-Christians).  One factor that the author mentioned is that the Christians surround themselves with non-believers, such as atheists or non-Christian Jews.  That may be a contributing factor, but I think that there are many cases in which it's the other way around: that a person becomes uncomfortable with the Christian faith, due to intellectual doubts or other factors, and that person then finds that he or she does not quite fit into the Christian community anymore.  That person then seeks out people who are on the same page.

Take It Back 4: The Iraq War

My latest reading of Take It Back: Our Party, Our Country, Our Future, by James Carville and Paul Begala, was about national security.  Essentially, Carville and Begala criticized how George W. Bush's handled 9/11----both the events leading up to it and also its aftermath----and also how Republicans who never served in the military have smeared Democrats who have stellar war-records.

In this post, I'll talk about my evolving view on the Iraq War.  There was a time when I would defend George W. Bush against his detractors and haters.  See this post as an example of that.  Do I regret doing that?  Not at all.  There are two (and often more) sides to every story.  Why should I assume that a left-wing narrative is the only one that's legitimate?

Just looking at the claims that Carville and Begala made in my latest reading, I could find articles that said something different from what Carville and Begala were saying.

----On page 93, Carville and Begala say that Cheney repeated the claim that a senior Iraqi intelligence official met with 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta in Prague, even though Czech authorities said that was false, and CIA and FBI officials investigated and found no indication that Atta left the U.S. during the time in question.  For Carville and Begala, the implication of this was that Cheney was lying to get us into a war.  Here, however, is Cheney's account of why he initially believed that Atta met with the Iraqi official in Prague, only later to repudiate that view.

----On page 95, Carville and Begala say that George W. Bush out-sourced the hunt for Osama Bin-Laden to local warlords in Afghanistan, which allowed Bin-Laden to escape.  According to this article, however, information after Bin Laden's death has shown us a different story.

----On page 114, Carville and Begala say that "It was Democrats who stood and fought when the Bush administration tried to eliminate imminent-danger pay and family-separation pay for the 148,000 troops in Iraq."  According to this, however, the Department of Defense had "an alternative proposal to maintain total compensation for those serving in a combat zone, or in direct support of a combat zone, through increased use of Hardship Duty Pay (HDP)."

Who's right, and who's wrong?  What's fact, and what's propaganda?  What is a legitimate claim, and what is an unfair attack, or spin in defense of a certain position or party?  I'm sure that people could go more deeply into these issues than I have done here, and than has been done in a number of discussion forums.

In my right-wing days, while I was skeptical about left-wing narratives about Bush and the Iraq War, there were seeds that were planted that led me to have second thoughts about my "yay rah Bush" attitude.  I was learning about the horrors of war, as I watched TV and read stories and heard about people who had lost life and limb, and my conservative friends' dismissal of those horrors with the platitude of "War is hell" did not cut it with me after a certain point.  In 2008, I was gravitating towards John McCain and Sarah Palin, and one thing that attracted me to them was that they either served in war (in the case of McCain) or had family that was serving in war (in the case of both McCain and Palin), and that differentiated them in my mind from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who, as far as I know, did not have family in the wars (but I'm open to correction on this).

There were other factors as well: my enthusiasm about Ron Paul; my reading about anti-war conservatism; Bill Clinton's discussion of the waste of money that was occurring in Iraq; the fact that politicians with stellar military records were speaking out against the Iraq War, and efforts to smear them were becoming old, if not tacky (which is an understatement, I know); how Halliburton was costing taxpayers a lot of money; the Iraqi woman in Fahrenheit 9/11 who lost a loved one as a result of our bombing and pleaded to Allah for justice; etc.  I still believe that there is more to the story than the "Bush lied, people died" mantra that leftists used to repeat.  But I concluded that there was more to reality than what I was hearing from the Bush Administration and right-wing media, too.

Paul Krugman's The Conscience of a Liberal 2

In my latest reading of The Conscience of a Liberal, Paul Krugman tells a typical left-wing narrative, and yet he also diverges from it, in areas.  Where Krugman echoed the typical left-wing narrative was in his argument that a number of Republicans succeeded in the late 1960's-1970's through exploiting the race issue.  Ronald Reagan when he ran for Governor of California in 1966 was an opponent of a fair housing law.  And Reagan's attacks on welfare----when the Aid to Families to Dependent Children was only a small part of the government's budget----won racist voters, even if Reagan did not explicitly mention race.

At the same time, Krugman acknowledges nuance.  He notes that President Richard Nixon had progressive policies.  He acknowledges that crime was a real problem in the late 1960's-1970's, whereas a number of liberals maintain that Republican appeals to "law and order" at that time were racist.  He argues that the Democratic Party's coalition included the South for some time after the New Deal, since southern states benefited from government programs, and that the Republicans for some time were the progressive party when it came to race.  At one point, Krugman says that Harry Truman was progressive on race for a political reason----because he thought that he could benefit from urban African-American votes in 1948----whereas Bruce Bartlett in Wrong on Race contends that Truman was principled because he stood for African-Americans even when it hurt him politically (see here).

I thought that Krugman's discussion of crime was noteworthy.  According to Krugman, the reason that there was a high crime rate in the inner-cities was the lack of manufacturing jobs there, as these jobs moved to the suburbs.  But Krugman notes that crime came down during the 1990's, when more cops were put on the street.  During the 1960's-1970's, were there attempts to bring jobs to the inner-cities?  Krugman says that the increase in crime during that time shocked a number of liberals because they did not expect for crime to rise after their social justice policies were put into effect.  Maybe there were efforts to revive the inner-city at that time, but they were poorly administered.  As I discussed in this post, one reason that Richard Cheney became a conservative was that need-based assistance to poor areas lined the pockets of local politicians.  But could the enterprise-zones that Bill Clinton supported in the 1990's have contributed somehow to the decline in crime during that decade, by bringing jobs to the inner-cities?

More Stephen Hayes

Tomorrow, I will finish and return Stephen Hayes' biography of Cheney, so I want to take this opportunity to share some more of its jewels. The book is Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).

1. Remember when Bush's detractors were saying we should give the UN weapons inspectors more time? Well, Bush and Cheney had a good reason not to do so. They were basing their decision on what had happened before. Let Hayes explain:

"Cheney...believed that the UN had done too little to thwart Saddam Hussein's ambitions regarding WMD over the past decade and he had little confidence it would be successful if given another chance. Although the UN's inspectors had found and destroyed stockpiles of weapons, the record showed that at other times Saddam's regime had duped them. Cheney noted the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law, who, after leaving Iraq in 1995, pointed inspectors to a chicken farm where they found evidence of the continuing programs. The lesson, said Cheney, is 'that we often learned more as the result of defections than we learned from the inspection regime itself'" (380-381).

So Saddam continuously misled UN weapons inspectors? And a defector showed us where he was continuing his WMD program? Why was Bush trusting the defectors rather than Saddam and the UN, again?

2. In July 6, 2003, Joe Wilson wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times contradicting Bush's claim that Saddam sought uranium in Niger (though, actually, Bush just said "Africa"). In three separate interviews, he claimed that Bush was relying on forged documents, and that he found this out on his trip to Africa.

Here's the problem:

"Wilson had traveled to Niger in late February 2002. The U.S. intelligence community had received the forged documents on October 9, 2002, more than eight months after Wilson's trip, when they were delivered to the U.S. embassy in Rome" (411).

Wilson retracted his claim after U.S. Senate investigators confronted him. But here's the interesting thing: Wilson's report to the CIA about his Niger trip said that Iraq was seeking uranium. Former Nigerian Prime Minister Ibraham Mayaki stated that "a top Iraqi official official in 1999...told [him] he wanted to explore 'expanding commercial relations' between the two countries. As Niger has virtually nothing else the Iraqis might have desired, Mayaki concluded that this request for enhanced trade meant one thing: the Iraqis wanted uranium" (413).

That's why the White House was so shocked about what Wilson was saying publicly. Not only was he stretching the truth (or, as he called it, "misspeaking"), but he also contradicted what he had said in a secret report.

3. I found this detail interesting: You know how Reagan's detractors always say that he was aiding Al Qaeda in Afghanistan? The truth is actually a little more complex. Sure, the mujahideen who resisted the Soviets in Afghanistan included Osama Bin Laden. But it also included people who became part of the pro-democracy government after the fall of the Taliban. After the Taliban fell, Sibghatulla Mujaddedi "headed...the traditional decision-making body that was convened after the war to select a new leader" (471). And he was one of the leaders of the mujahideen. So there were more people than Bin Laden in that group!

4. Have you ever wondered why Cheney is so secretive about what he reports to Congress? He says he doesn't want to compromise national security, and he has good reason to be concerned. In 1975, when Cheney worked in the Ford Administration, the Church Committee in Congress was investigating the CIA. Well, that committee didn't hesitate to leak sensitive information. As a result of the Church Committee, the Washington Monthly told the world (including our enemies) "How to Spot a Spook." The media outed the identity of covert CIA agents, one of whom (Richard Welch) was later assassinated. An article appeared that disclosed the existence of U.S. submarines off the coast of the Soviet Union (85-86). Not surprisingly, even as a Congressman, Cheney did not trust the legislative branch with top secret intelligence information. Who can be sure that it won't compromise our national security for political purposes? It has in the past. Sure, the executive branch has its leaks, but it at least tries to keep them under control.

So this is a good book. It is worth reading for its lucid presentation of another way of looking at things.

Stephen Hayes Busts Some Myths

I'm currently reading Stephen F. Hayes' Cheney (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), which is based on hours of exclusive interviews. On Saturday night, I read the chapter entitled "Dick Cheney: New Democrat?" That was about the Vice-President's recent conversion to neo-conservative ideas, specifically the concept that America should spread democracy throughout the world.

What I like about this chapter is that it addresses a number of liberal myths--about the Bush Administration and the War on Terror. Here, I will post some quotes from Hayes and comment when I feel a need to do so.

1. In 2003, columnist Robert Novak revealed that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA agent. Someone from the White House leaked this to him. For many on the Left, the Bush Administration did so because her husband, Joe, disputed its claims that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. The Left sees the Bush Administration as sinister and evil. As far as they are concerned, there is no depth of depravity to which Bush and his cronies will not sink.

But, actually, "the leak about Wilson's wife came not as political payback from the White House, but as gossip from a top State Department official who had shared Wilson's skepticism about the Iraq War" (478). The name of the leaker is Richard Armitage, who does not strike me as a neocon.

2. According to Hayes, Cheney doesn't believe that the Geneva Convention protections apply to Al Qaeda. That always struck me as a lame excuse for torture, but Hayes offers a rationale:

"The war on terror, [Cheney and others] maintained, is a different kind of war. Not only do al Qaeda combatants fail to abide by the Geneva Convention themselves, but their primary targets are innocent civilians. According them legal status as prisoners of war, Cheney believed, would provide them with legal protections to which they are not entitled and could restrict U.S. interrogators from using aggressive techniques to extract information. And those interrogations could be crucial to preventing another attack" (479).

Cheney elaborates: "We had, I think, several concerns in the aftermath of 9/11. We had al Qaeda terrorists kill 3,000 Americans that morning. We were concerned about the possibility of follow-on attacks. We still are. We also, as we went into Afghanistan, encountered significant numbers of al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan that were either captured or killed. And the al Qaeda in particular didn't operate by the rules of conventional warfare. We looked at all of that, and the decision was made that they were not lawful combatants. They didn't wear uniforms or have badges; they didn't carry arms out in the open. They did in fact set out to kill civilians; and, by definition, they did not qualify as lawful combatants. Also, as terrorists, they were not represented as any state" (480-481).

So we have terrorists using fly-by-night tactics to kill innocent civilians. Shouldn't the rules be a little different in such a situation? How else are we supposed to get information about their coming attacks?

3. Remember that National Security Agency program of wiretapping people in America who were talking to Al Qaeda? Well, some prominent Democrats approved of it, until the New York Times revealed its existence to the public (including Al Qaeda). In 2003, Jay Rockefeller and Nancy Pelosi recommended that the NSA continue its program without legislative authorization (489). Wow, so does that mean the Democrats were playing politics after the program was made public? Say it ain't so!

It's good to read another perspective every once in a while.

How Cheney Became a Conservative

I remember when George W. Bush chose Dick Cheney as his running mate. An African-American Republican friend of mine was rather disappointed. "This guy has a record that is so conservative. More than that, it is unthinkingly conservative," he said.

And my friend's right about Cheney's record being conservative, for, as a congressman from Wyoming, he consistently voted against federal programs, including Head Start and the Department of Education.

How did Cheney become so conservative? Interestingly, he was not really a part of the conservative movement. He did not campaign for Barry Goldwater in 1964, for example. When he first went to Washington, D.C., he didn't really have any strong ideological commitments. But he became a conservative through his experience in government.

Stephen F. Hayes states the following in his book, Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (New York: HarperCollins, 2007):

"Cheney had come to Washington without a definite political philosophy. Though he had worked for Republicans in state politics, he had not been a partisan. Most young people came to Washington to end the Vietnam War, or to help Lyndon B. Johnson win the War on Poverty, or because they had walked precincts for Senator Barry Goldwater or passed out leaflets for Richard Nixon. They came with plans to change the world or at least to help their side.

"By contrast, Cheney's initial interest in national politics was procedural and methodological, almost technical. He was fascinated by how things were done in Washington, why some programs worked and others didn't, why some policies made sense and others seemed doomed to fail. It was the political science professor in him, detached and almost aloof.

"His experience in the Nixon administration began to change that. He saw well-intentioned government programs that solved one problem and created a dozen others. A plan by the Office of Economic Opportunity to train migrant workers to grow azaleas in South Carolina would have provided jobs for the workers but destroyed the market for azaleas in the process. Need-based assistance to the poorest parts of the country was diverted to 'community-action programs' that did little more than line the pockets of local politicians. Through the Cost of Living Council, the IRS targeted small businesses because their owners wanted to give employees a raise. Grocery stores had to fight with the federal government to raise the price of a dozen eggs. To protect the American public, the Price Commission directed McDonald's to reduce the price of Quarter-Pounders. To Cheney, these experiences not only demonstrated the inherent inefficiencies of big government but seemed to confirm the wisdom of individualism and self-reliance, the cardinal virtues of his home state" (71-72).

Yeah, seeing the effects of government policies can shake one's faith in big government!