February 2005

Nah, I still Think You are Wrong Jeff

ArchPundit February 7, 2005 0 Comment

But amiably 😉

I playfully jabbed Jeff about his criticism of Mark Caro who had criticized Members of Congress for wagging purple thumbs at the State of the Union Speech. I pointed out one finger wagger was El Geraldo–Jerry Weller and Weller’s a bit suspect in consistency regarding democratization.

But to a larger point, the point that Caro makes is strong–finger wagging by one political party is a bit weak. Were Democrats who supported the war included in the effort? If not, why not?

Cynicism about cheerleading by Members of Congress is generally in order. They are a group that by the very process that got them there–that likes publicity and making a show.

Were any of them criticizing the President’s policy when Bremer was ignoring the fatwa by Sistani to call elections?

If not, how can this be viewed as a victory for American policy or for the Republican Party? Caving to Sistani is a success?

Even if the post-invasion process had been handled better, we might still have ended up right here with Sistani dictating the election. While I think we should have tried to handle this better, it’s an open question whether we could have managed Sistani successfully.

That said, having Sistani dictate the election has taken a toll on the US goals in the region. The election doesn’t seem to bode well for a liberal democracy. Lawrence Kaplan has a very strong article in The New Republic, The Last Casualty (subscription required), on what has happened to the liberal democrat efforts in Iraq.

So, yeah, I think Mark is right. The sort of cheerleading that was done at the State of the Unions is a serious disconnect from how these elections came about and the cheering is far too early. We all should hope that Iraq develops into a democratic country with strong safeguards for people’s liberty, but as of right now, that is a very open question.

Let me add, it wasn’t nearly as offensive as Republicans in Washington state who wore orange pins to compare themselves to the reformers in the Ukraine.

I flippantly referred to the Shiite domination of this election as a sign of a unified Shiite band across the Middle East and commenter took me to task–largely correctly.

It is very true that the Shiites in Iraq generally are not pushing for the same mechanisms of clerical rule in Iran. Iran’s system of government effectively gives the clerics a veto over many decisions. To many Shiites this is heretical as the tradition in Shia Islam is a fairly distinct break between the clerics and the government. Khomeini broke that down in Iran during his long crusade against the Shah’s rule and many Shiite Clerics were appalled.

One of the appalled was Sistani who takes what I would call a traditionalist approach to church and state in Shia Islam. Sistani is Iranian, but he is also fairly critical of how Khomeini organized the government and strictly speaking, Sistani appears to be sincere.

So the good news is that if Sistani is the guy who continues to be the major voice in Iraq in regard to Shiites, the Iranians and Iraqis will be closer, but not too close. The bad news is it’s anything but certain that Sistani will be the long term guy doing that. First, he is older, second there are both internal Iraqi challenges to him as well as external challenges from Iran.

In addition, a Shiite dominated non-clerical government could still be very friendly to Iran and we don’t need to be providing Iran with allies, even if only marginal ones, right now.

More troubling is the nature of the candidates he backed and who won a large plurality from the looks of it–they are very much in the vein of conservative religious based candidates who are unlikely to back a modern state based on liberty and democracy as we understand it. The candidates and Sistani have made it clear that they want Islam as the basis of the law.

Perhaps that won’t concern Judge Roy Moore types, but the rest of us probably were thinking of a more liberal democratic model that was modified to fit Iraqi’s peculiar population.

So Iraqis Deserve Elections–How about Guatemalans?

ArchPundit February 5, 2005 0 Comment

Jerry Weller, or El Geraldo as others have put it, was part of the Purple Finger Caucuse the other evening.

Yep, the same El Geraldo who married the daughter of one Rios Montt, former dictator and serial human rights violator in Guatemala. That daughter is a chief political ally of the General’s as well, not just a pretty little thing in the corner.

If El Geraldo is so concerned with human rights and democracy can we expect a member of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the International Affairs Committee to take a strong stand on Rios Montt’s extradition to Spain? After all, the rule of law is vital to democracy and Rios Montt is accused of a rather serious crime. in that case as well as in others.

Maybe Jeff can tell us how El Geraldo can both celebrate his solidarity with Iraqis when he got married at a lavish affair where his now father-in-law particpated despite his father-in-laws efforts to deny the right to vote to Guatemalans?

Doesn’t that seem a bit hypocritical? And doesn’t it suggest that Weller is less concerned about freedom and more about scoring political points?

Article on the DNC Chair Race

ArchPundit February 5, 2005 2 Comments

It’s being reported that Dean has the public endorsements he needs tow in the race and Simon Rosenberg officially withdrew. Ryan Lizza at the New Republic writes a great article that summarizes the race. (have to be a subscriber)

The strange thing is that the three candidates I was okay with were the three finalists. I’m not convinced Dean is the best solution simply because of the baggage he carries as Howard Dean. My biggest concern was that the State Chairs would extract too much and not seek to reform their own parties which is desperately needed because the desperate need is to build a farm team up from the bottom that is strong and less centered on incumbency in DC–a necessarily safe seat leaning view.

Dean may now be in the position of Gingrich who fought Bob Michel’s tendency towards compromise and getting what you can out of DC into full partisan warfare that brought the Republicans the Majority in both Houses.

Dean is in a position to build a true opposition party that isn’t worried about nibbling at the edges of legilslation, but providing a clear coherent attack on the ruling party’s agenda and thus an agenda to win, not just avoid losing more.

Gingrich was often seen as too ideological and too far right by many of the establishment Republicans during the late 1980s and early 1990s. But he won and he won not by compromise or moving to the middle, but by selling the ideas he liked that worked in the middle. By crafting a clear and coherent message on which to build his movement, he was able to define it in the middle even if overall he wasn’t. He took those ideas that were to the center of the public—term limits and balanced budgets and sold those while playing to his base on other issues. Gingrich then went too far and was stopped, but even then, his party still controls Congress. The parallels to the corruption in the Democratic Party in the 1990s with the lingering effects of Jim Wright and Rosty are very close to the problems we see developing around DeLay.

Dean, by laying claim to reform, can do the same now, though he needs to be able to convince the Washington players to go along.