Tonkin Toys

A couple of weeks ago I noticed something odd about Bush's latest news conference: his sudden rhetorical fixation on protecting the troops. He used a permutation of the phrase "protect the troops" seven times in a half-hour of Q&A. Initially, it merely sounded like he had glommed onto a talking point and didn't want to let go.

Digby has a more sinister interpretation. "So, when president Bush used the phrase 'protect our troops' followed by everyone from Gates to Rice, my antennae were way up; it was obvious that it was a potential cassus belli for an attack on Iran," Digby writes.

Like you, I haven't yet read Seymour Hersh's latest on the administration's Middle East shenanigans. I'll wait till my copy arrives in the mail Thursday. But you don't need to read the details of the administration's latest strategic flip-flops to arrive at a conclusion about the administration's tactics. Bush is looking for his Gulf of Tonkin excuse to attack Iran.

This is where the moral monstrousness of Bush stands out in bold and italic. He sends hundreds of thousands of our military people in harm's way, with insufficient armor and paltry numbers of boots on the ground. Then he uses their vulnerability as bait to draw Iran into military conflict.

To Bush, our military people are mere Tonkin Toys, to be expended as a way of getting his desired war with Iran. He will get his confrontation, whether manufactured or not.

History's greatest midwife to change

"We are losing our wars in the Muslim world because our vision of history is at odds with reality, " Michael Vlahos writes in, of all places The American Conservative.

Vlahos adds: "In fact, what empires have most in common is how their sacred narratives come to rule their strategic behavior—and rule it badly. In America's case, our war narrative works against us to promote our deepest fear: the end of modernity."

As I interpret it, Vlahos's argument goes like this: Our success as an empire leads us to believe that we embody the endpoint of history: American-style liberal democratic capitalism where religion is personal and not societal. When a group comes along to challenge that way of organizing the world, we regard it not as a political and philosophical disagreement, but as a mortal threat to The American Way of Life.

"The attacks were not simply a violation of the national person --as in 1941-- but an affront to all that was right and true. Yet its emotional symbolism had a darker side too -- the suggestion, felt but unvoiced by Americans, that the attacks were the first black sign of The Fall of the City, the beginning of the end of the American sacred narrative," Vlahos writes.

As we overreact, our opponents gain adherents. As they gain adherents, we tighten our embrace with authoritarian, corrupt regimes like those that run Saudi Arabia and Egypt. As our hypocrisy becomes clearer and clearer,our opponents gain more adherents. And as we attack them and they survive, they draw even more admirers. Eventually, their ideas will win many adherents. Maybe their ideas will prevail over ours.

Vlahos seems to say simultaneously that it didn't have to be this way because we could have reacted differently, and that it was inevitable that we would react this way because of our status as the world's dominant empire.

We lose our moral authority, Vlahos says, because we shut out the world's poor and dispossessed from our shiny vision of modernity. In addition, we strengthen our opponents when we demonize them. And we pick the wrong military fights, so when we lose, observers note that we are an emperor with no clothes.

We can't defeat our opponents by killing them, because most of our opponents are ordinary, unarmed civilians who disagree with our way of life, and disagree with our support for totalitarian regimes. We demonize groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Muqtada al-Sadr's followers. So when they win political legitimacy among their own societies, we have no one to talk to.

"America's destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan mobilized the Muslim world against us, but more than that it put the global other on notice. For much of the West and most of Islam, the lie of modernity as American altruism is dying in Iraq. Americans care about the death of their soldiers but barely a whit for the destruction of a society wrought in the name of 'democracy,'" Vlahos writes.

Eventually, maybe after we're dead, he says, we will "birth a changed world" and "cast off [our] claim to the universal." And maybe that won't be so bad. "No longer the object of all attack, we might productively rethink our national purpose."

Watch your language

Let's stop calling our occupation our war in Iraq.

There's a war going on, yes, between Sunnis and Shiites and among various militias. But we're no longer at war. That mission was accomplished years ago.

The verb for what we're doing is "to occupy."

The noun for what we're doing is "occupation."

The noun that most accurately describes our nation is "occupiers."

Despite its horrors, war often sounds noble and grand. As Lincoln so eloquently described it, the "exceeding brightness of military glory -- that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood, that serpent's eye that charms to destroy." People get angry when you question the mission of our men and women at war. They don't listen.

An occupation doesn't sound so noble, and people are more willing to listen. Yes, there have been moral and effective occupations. Our occupations of Japan and Germany come to mind. But there are ignoble occupations that corrupt the occupiers: the Soviet occupation of Germany, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. From the Iraqis' point of view, we're more like the Soviets in East Germany than the Americans in West Germany.

When the occupied country emphatically doesn't want the occupiers there, an occupation corrupts the occupying country. What we did in Japan was noble. What we're doing in Iraq is corrupting us, both there in Iraq and here at home.

It's harder to fit on a sign or on a lapel button, but "End the occupation" is a more powerful slogan than "End the war." Dirty hippies are anti-war. Decent people who take showers want to end an occupation and bring their men and women home.

Repeat after me: America's occupation of Iraq… Our occupation of Iraq… Occupation forces in Iraq… The nearly four-year-old occupation… Our occupiers are caught in the crossfire of an Iraqi civil war…

End the occupation. The war ended long ago.

Pay for a dishonest war? Here's what Lincoln said

On Jan. 12, 1848, U.S. Rep. Abraham Lincoln, a Whig from Illinois, gave a speech on the House floor in which he denounced President Polk for lying to justify an unprovoked war against Mexico. Not only that. Lincoln complained that Polk had characterized "every silent vote given for supplies, into an endorsement of the justice and wisdom of his conduct."

Lincoln continued:

…in his late message in which [Polk] tells us that Congress, with great unanimity, only two in the Senate and fourteen in the House dissenting, had declared that, "by the act of the Republic of Mexico, a state of war exists between that Government and the United States" when the same journals that informed him of this, also informed him that when that declaration stood disconnected from the question of supplies, sixty-seven in the House, and not fourteen merely, voted against it…

Lincoln accused Polk of an "open attempt to prove, by telling the truth, what he could not prove by telling the whole truth." He added that "all the President states as facts, he falls far short of proving his justification; and that the President would have gone farther with his proof if it had not been for the small matter that the truth would not permit him."

Lincoln brought up three issues, all of which are found in the debate over the occupation of Iraq: funding of the occupation, deception about the reason for war, and predictions about the ease and brevity of the fighting. On all three issues, today's Democrats echo Lincoln's arguments.

First, Lincoln thought Congress had a right and a responsibility to end the war in Mexico by tightening the purse strings.

Second, the bulk of Lincoln's speech concerned Polk's assertion that the war was justified because American blood had been spilled on American territory. Lincoln believed that Polk's assertion was a lie, just as today, most Americans believe Bush's warnings about weapons of mass destruction were lies.

Third, Lincoln bitterly recalled that Polk had "driven into disfavor" a general who had predicted that the war wouldn't be a cakewalk, and that it would take at least three or four months. The war was 20 months old when Lincoln made his speech.

Lincoln said that Polk had tried to escape scrutiny

by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory -- that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood, that serpent's eye that charms to destroy -- he plunged into it, and has swept, on and on, till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself where he knows not where. How like the half insane mumbling of a fever-dream is the whole war part of his late message!

Then Lincoln diagnosed the current problem in a passage that could be spoken on the floor of today's House with few alterations:

As to the mode of terminating the war, and securing peace, the President is equally wandering and indefinite. First, it is to be done by a more vigorous prosecution of the war in the vital parts of the enemy's country; and, after apparently talking himself tired on this point, the President drops down into a half despairing tone, and tells us that "with a people distracted and divided by contending factions, and a government subject to constant changes, by successive revolutions, the continued success of our arms may fail to secure a satisfactory peace." Then he suggests the propriety of wheedling the Mexican people to desert the counsels of their own leaders, and trusting in our protection to set up a government from which we can secure a satisfactory peace; telling us that "this may become the only mode of obtaining such a peace." But soon he falls into doubt of this too; and then drops back on to the already half abandoned ground of "more vigorous prosecution." All this shows that the President is, in no wise, satisfied with his own positions. … His mind, tasked beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it can settle down and be at ease.

Again, it is a singular omission in this message that it nowhere intimates when the President expects the the war to terminate. … As I have before said, he knows not where he is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. God grant he may be able to show there is not something about his conscience more painful than all his mental perplexity!

I, unlike Frank Gaffney, have not fabricated quotes from Lincoln. The text of the speech can be found on the site of the Library of Congress. If this link doesn't work, go here and search the phrase "Lincoln Mexican War."

More importantly, the speech shows that today's Democrats -- and 17 lonely House Republicans -- are the patriotic heirs of Abraham Lincoln.

GOP hands the reins to Osama bin Laden

Sun Tzu said, "the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him."

Fight for your objective. If you and your enemy are fighting for different reasons -- if your enemy wants to start a religious war, and you merely want to be left alone -- it's foolish to adopt your enemy's objective. To do so is a form of surrender.

Osama bin Laden wanted to provoke a religious war. The United States didn't, and doesn't. Only a fool would make this a war about religion. Among Americans, only a naif would agree with Osama bin Laden that this war is about religion.

Zac Wamp, R-Tenn.:

First, the war on terror is the worst-named war in the history of our country. We are at war with Islamic jihadists, fundamentalists, radicals. We need to be more clear as to who we are fighting. Frankly, my view is that this is a religious conflict.

Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va.:

When the commentary begins in the Middle East, in no way do I want to comfort and encourage the radical Muslims who want to destroy our country and who want to wipe the so-called infidels like myself and many of you from the face of the earth. In no way do I want to aid and assist the Islamic jahadists who want the green flag of the crescent and star to wave over the Capitol of the United States and over the White House of this country. I feel that radical Muslims who want to control the Middle East and ultimately the world would love to see "In God we trust" striken from our money and replaced with "In Muhammad we trust."

You have joined the wrong team, guys.

Awww, poor wittle babies!

The Republican Party is auditioning for a new name: the Pity Party.

This week, legions of Republicans take the House floor to oppose the resolution against the escalation in Iraq. Few Republicans argue that 21,500 additional troops will do any good. Instead, they talk about emotions. They shed tears for the hurt feelings of our men and women in uniform. They lament the jubilation that Iraqis supposedly will feel if the resolution passes.

It's odd to hear this kind of talk coming from Republicans, who frequently complain that liberals are mushy-headed dealers in therapy-speak. It is a most toxic form of narcissism.

Lamar Smith, R-Texas:

How would you feel if you were an American soldier in Iraq and Congress passed this resolution?

Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.:

You know, the Democrats have every right to disagree with the President's plan, but a nonbinding resolution is not the way to go. It sends a message of no confidence and no support to our troops in the field, weakening their morale while encouraging and emboldening the enemy.

John Carter, R-Texas:

So what should Americans expect from what is being asked for here today? I think they should expect discouraged troops. I think they should expect an encouraged enemy.

Mac Thornberry, R-Texas:

Just put yourself in the shoes of those men and women going into battle in Baghdad. Does this resolution encourage you or discourage you? Put yourself in the shoes of those people who do not want stability in Iraq, our adversaries. Does this resolution encourage you or discourage you?

Over and over, Republicans opposed the resolution because they believe the insurgents will feel happy if it passes. In doing so, these Republicans are allowing the insurgents to dictate their votes on the resolution. They have already surrendered.

It's a pity they feel that way.

Trillions, billions, thousands -- what's the difference?

The Washington Post reports that "President Bush will ask Congress for close to three-quarters of a trillion dollars in defense spending on Monday, including $245 billion to cover the cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan…"

It would be helpful if the Post did some math for us. How much is $245 billion? How much is three-quarters of a trillion dollars? Those numbers are abstract. The article throws around more numbers that are so large as to be meaningless: $170 billion to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this fiscal year and at least $145 billion next fiscal year, and $745 billion in war costs since Sept. 11, 2001.

That $745 billion comes out to about $2,500 for every man, woman and child living in the United States. In my family of three, that's $7,500 to pay for five years of war.

In 2003-4, there were 95,726 elementary and secondary schools (kindergarten through 12th grade) in the United States, and 48.4 million students. (Census) If we hadn't shipped that money to Afghanistan and Iraq, we could have kept it here and given it to schools -- for an average of $7,782,630 per school, total, over the five-year period. Or the federal government could have handed the schools $15,392 for each student. That's a student subsidy of $3,078 a year.

In 2004, there were 3.1 million public school teachers in this country. Instead of going to war, we could have given them $240,322 each. That would be an average annual raise of $48,000, which would more than double the average teacher's salary of $45,800. If we did that, we would probably end up with better teachers.

Does that put these numbers into perspective?