A New Contract for America

A favorite talking-point of the right-wing TV and radio spin machine is that Democrats are attacking Bush on Plame etc. only because he is down in the polls and they have no plan of their own. Forget for a moment that people who attack a grieving mother like Cindy Sheehan whine like babies when someone attacks them back. Forget that these people are thin-skinned, hypocritical, and utterly vicious all at once. They have a point.

The Democrats have left themselves wide open to this charge, by having a platform with the consistency of Jello. The latest slogan is a gag-reflex-inducing repetition of the doomed Kerry campaign: "We can do better." How about "Restoring the American Dream"? Copyright Ralph Lopez.

We can do, uh, what? More of the same, but better? Just better? That really fires me up and makes me want to go vote.

A tight set of proposals will do wonders for the party of promise-you-the-moon-and-trust-us-on-how-we'll-get-there. As during the Kerry presidential campaign, the Republicans are lobbing slow softballs the Dems aren't even swinging at. Remember when Bush proposed cutting back time-and-a-half for overtime, and Kerry schlepped on with his "we can do better" canned speech? The Repubs laughed as Kerry stood at the plate with his helmet down over his eyes. How badly do you have to screw the American worker get these guys to get a pulse?

Here's my suggestion for a Democratic platform:

-Save American Pensions - Time magazine reveals that more and more people who have worked twenty or thirty years for the same company are getting their pensions yanked. At fault are recently-passed laws that enable corporations to renege on their pension promises. More than one little old lady in what was once solid middle America is collecting cans to make ends meet. We're not talking about New York bag ladies; we're talking Main Street. Did this trigger immediate and sustained calls for a congressional investigation from the Democrats? No, the silence is deafening. No wonder they are identified solely as the party of pro-sodomy baby-killers that wants to take away your guns, as Boston's little newspaper the Weekly Dig says.

-Restore college opportunity, by enabling students to go to any college to which they earn admission. Yes, I'll take credit for this idea, which I've been pushing since my first days as a candidate, in my books, and in many emails to the Kerry campaign. College "sticker shock" is a winning middle-class issue, because even parents making good money can't afford Junior's first-choice school. In addition, this is a "bootstrap" program that only leverages hard work already done. You have to get into the college first, then we help you go. In other words, this is no welfare hand-out. This is the first rung on the ladder of the American Dream.


-Distinguish Iraq from real war on terror - the task for Democrats is to articulate a position on Iraq that cannot be miscast as appeasement. We are properly at war in Afghanistan and in the mountainous border regions of Pakistan, but Iraq is exactly the quagmire bin Laden wanted. It draws resources away from the hunt for Al Qaeda and from the critical stablization of Afghanistan. This is what the former chief of the CIA's Al Qaeda unit, Michael Scheuer, says. He calls the invasion of Iraq a “never-to-be-hoped-for gift” to bin Laden. Scheuer says al-Zawahari practically cheered when we invaded Iraq, and gave thanks to God for "appeasing" Al Qaeda with the American invasion (see his book "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror.") Now one foreign policy heavyweight after another is calling for an exit from Iraq. The most recent is former Nixon Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, who says ""Our presence is what feeds the insurgency (in Iraq), and our gradual withdrawal would feed the confidence and the ability of average Iraqis to stand up to the insurgency." Joining him is former National Security Advisor for Bush Senior, Brent Scowcroft, who says "This was said to be part of the war on terror, but Iraq feeds terrorism."

George Bush takes extreme pains to conflate the Iraq War with the war on terror, for good reason. Once separation surgery is successfully performed, he stands vulnerable to charges of bungling the war on terror. I believe that drawing down forces in Iraq must be accompanied by boosting troop levels in Afghanistan, and that we must pour troops into the Afghan-Paki border region to hunt down the people who attacked us on 9/11.

This is not appeasement or pulling back. This is pulling the steering wheel back into the right lane after George Bush has drifted onto the sandy shoulder. The right-wing attack in the face of too much truth is predictable. When you can't argue with facts, just accuse "traitors" of "undermining our troops." This time Democrats should slash back. Number one, it was George Bush who appeased bin Laden with the war in Iraq. Two, it was the Bush administration that committed treason by betraying Valerie Plame (forget this "outting" talk, this is not about Plame's sexual preference. This is a national security betrayal, pure and simple.)

Three, anytime the righties can't answer an argument, they hide behind the troops, like sissies. Another idea: if Sean Hannity is so patriotic why don't we start a public challenge to him, to enlist and go fight?

Bush's grand plan of bombing the Middle East into democracy is shot through with hypocrisy that makes Middle Easterners hate us. They have been trying to win their freedom from corrupt and dictatorial regimes for years, in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and the Gulf states, only to face armies and police equipped with American weapons. Our addiction to oil is the cause of our unholy alliances with these governments, says Scheuer. He contradicts Bush's assertion that there is an Islamo-fascist ideology bent on taking over the world.

9/11 should not have been a surprise. It was the culmination of a steady stream of Al Qaeda attacks which included the Khobar Towers, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole. Each attack was preceeded by demands by Al Qaeda that the US change its policies of permanently stationing troops in the Arabian peninsula, of sending money and arms to Arab dictators, and of our lopsided support for Israel. Scheuer predicts that without changes in US policy to accompany the military campaign, we are in for "hundred years war drenched with blood on our own soil."

-Environment - A "Marshall Plan" commencing within the first hundred days of a non-Republican, filibuster-proof majority to put us on the path toward clean, sustainable energy independence. The wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, and conservation technologies necessary to set us free from Middle East oil have existed for years. All that remains is the political will to make it a reality.

-Back progressive candidates who are pro-gun-rights in red states. What's right in Manhattan is not necessarily what's right in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Our buddy Paul Hackett (for Congress!) says for a long time he thought "gun control meant being able to hit your target."

More specifically, challengers to Republicans should come out as the true defenders of the Constitution, while the Republicans are the ones who always talk about freedom but who actually hate it unless it means you are "free" to agree with them. No one ever got kicked out of a Kerry rally last year for wearing a pro-Bush T-shirt, the way Bush's thugs threw people out of Bush rallies for having the wrong bumper sticker on their cars outside. See "Life in Bush's America: Wear an anti-Bush T-shirt, get arrested, lose your job" by Tara Tuckwiller.

- speak the language of the fair playing field in a free market, not the language of big government. I've always said if we had a fair economic playing field, we wouldn't need much in the way of social programs. You could afford the rent, you could afford food, a house, health insurance. Instead of a fair playing field we have the biggest welfare bums of all, corporate welfare bums, sucking wealth from the middle to the top one percent of shareholders. Ralph Nader is the only public figure talking about it. Cut them off to pay for worker training vouchers, college tuitions, and reduction of the national debt.

It is tempting to keep adding to what could be done with a non-Republican majority in 2006, but this is a do-able list people can remember, and get excited about. If the opposition does not learn message discipline, it is doomed to lose, because when righties ask - "tell me what they stand for besides being against Bush?" - the average voter will keep drawing a blank, beyond vague promises of more of everything.

A Discussion of Plan Murtha

The details of a plan for an orderly withdrawal from Iraq are being discussed by the American people. In the Spring of 2004 I posted on my blog an imaginary interview with John Kerry in which he called for us to "pull back divisions to the borders, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and keep troops confined to bases ready to restore order if they have to..." ("The Elephant in the Room" which is a compilation of these blog posts, page 79.)

I also called for an internationalization of the peacekeeping force, with one big difference from what generally makes the rounds among policy-makers: it should, as far as possible, be drawn from Muslim nations, to take the steam out of Al Qaeda's Crusaders vs. Islam propoganda. On page 31 of the book I said that by doing so:

"the gravest humiliation to the insurgents can be removed. Armed, gibberish-speaking infidels with no knowledge of Arabic custom or religion, searching homes and patting down Muslim women is creating terrorists, and American troops are admitting it."

Congressman John Murtha's recent, now-famous speech calls for "an over-the-horizon presence of Marines" and "a quick reaction force in the region." Iraq veteran and congressional candidate Andrew Duck (Sixth District, Maryland) does not support a timetable for withdrawal of troops from Iraq. On his website, though, he puts forward a plan for success that includes transitioning to an international force, closing Guantanamo, energy independence within 10 years, and increasing literacy in the Muslim world. The following is an entry on his website in which Congressman Murtha's plan for withdrawal from Iraq is discussed.

Iraq
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on November 23, 2005 - 10:21am.

Andrew and Lea,

I think Iraq will not stay together as one country. I believe a partition of Iraq is the way to adjust to the realities there.

Iraq is really not 1 country: it is 3 countries, of 3 different peoples- the Kurds, the Sunnis, and the Shia. The history of violence and ethnic cleansing in this area is so stark that I don't think a unified government is possible-or even advisable.

Andrew, you should know this, based on your experience in the Balkans. There, Clinton used air power to split apart ethnic/sectarian groups, not put those groups together. I think something similar could be tried in Iraq: use air power to maintain general "no fly, no drive" zones between the 3 ethnic groups to stop invasions and massive attacks upon the US withdrawal- such withdrawal which should start immediately. While there are general areas of these 3 ethnic groups, there will still be enclaves of various ethnic groups found within each of the 3 new states. Their protection will be addressed through non-aligned courts, discussed next.

There will still be violence even as the US leaves: car bombings, assassinations, sabotaging of oil facilities and pipelines, will continue. To help bring this level of violence down, we could ask non-aligned countries- like Brazil and South Africa- to lend their judges to attempt to adjudicate criminal, civil violations, border disputes, and access to oil. At first, the peoples of the region are unlikely to accept any such legal assistance. But, if these judges issue rulings which are fair-even if not accepted or able to be put into effect at first- over time, the battered peoples of the region may see such legal recourse as an alternative to settling scores through violence. Also, the peoples have to realize that there will be enclaves of ethnic groups belonging to the other groups living among them: recourse to legal courts would be better than the alternative, which would be retaliatory actions against their ethnic group in the other country.

Reconstruction aid could be predicated on the resulting 3 nations (Sunnistan, Shiastan, and Kurdistan) having some modicum of a democratic framework, respect for some basic civil rights (especially rights of women), and willingness to implement the court decisions referenced above.

We can have our troops begin an immediate withdrawal, and use air power to provide general protection from invasions between the 3 new countries in the area, while assisting non-aligned countries to help with legal assistance to adjudicate disputes which will continue to be ongoing. All of this will get the Americans out now, and work to block major violence, and develope ways to gradually diminish the continuing violence there between the 3 groups.

While I'm not opposed to UN or other powers acting to intervene in the area, I don't think it's realistic that this will happen. Even if the Europeans intervene- with the prospect of obtaining control over contracts/ oil-then those powers will be colonial powers themselves, and just as reprehensible.

As for withdrawal, we should immediately start withdrawing US forces. I think we can get those forces out of the area in a very short time, as little as 1 month (if their equipment is destroyed) and perhaps even faster if the forces just drive out. Other folks believe that a 6 month withdrawal is more likely, but either way, those troops will be gone quickly.

Note: as there is concern about the safety of the Kurds vis-a-vis Turkey (since Turkey is hostile to the Kurds because of a long civil struggle in its country involving the Kurdish minority), it might be a good idea to station some US forces in Kurdistan as a block against Turkey. The Kurds are very pro-US, and the forces would be welcomed there. It's also easy to withdraw these forces into Kurdistan by merely driving there, which is only a couple of hundred miles away for a great number of them.

Finally, as Iran will grow in influence upon the American departure, we should realize that other countries will step into the vacuum to check Iran's expansion: countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia (one could see a scenario where the Saudis make a defense arrangement with Turkey to protect them from Iran; this will result in a huge cash flow to Turkey-which is relatively poorer and could use it-and would help alleviate anger in Turkey over the developments in Kurdistan). Eventually, you might even see some interesting defense alliances occur in the American absence: say Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and even Sunnistan all being on the same side, to check Iran, Shiastan, the Palestinian Authority, and Lebanon on the other.

Thus, deterrance could occur in response to the Iranian expansion- even in the absence of American forces.

Withdraw, Partition, Deter. I think this is the formula which will work in the area.

Chris Bush
chris.bush@verizon.net
reply

Chris and the Rest,

I agree that the Europeans in the UN want no part of Bush's Iraq mess; if he could have pulled them in to get shot at instead of us he would have done so by now. But I have been saying for a long time in my blog that peacekeeping troops from predominantly Muslim nations, like Indonesia, mixed under a UN flag would do a lot to take the steam of of bin Laden's anti-Crusader message, which is one his most powerful recruiting tools. Middle Easterners are acutely aware of their history going back to the Middle Ages, and they see Iraq as the latest in a long string of attempts by the West (formerly Europe, now the U.S.
too) to take their lands and convert them. This is why you see bin Laden tee-shirts all over the Middle East.

Chris has some good ideas on how to keep Iraqis from slaughtering each other once we are gone. Iraq as a unified entity is probably a fantasy, and using air
power along the Bosnia model to keep them apart might be more realistic. The strange alliances that may emerge will be part of a natural process of power moving in to fill a vacuum, which can be good because we will have heads of state to deal with instead of the total chaos that now provides a perfect breeding ground for terrorists.

I differ slightly with my fellow withdraw-the-troops-now proponents in that I think we should redeploy a good number of troops coming out of
Iraq into Afghanistan, where we still have a legitimate stabililzation mission and maybe half a chance of getting European help. It is also a base from which to criss-cross the Afghan-Paki border regions looking for the people who attacked us on 9/11. This is what Michael Scheuer of "Imperial Hubris" fame says we should have done right after 9/11, while even those opposed to us would not dare say anything because every night you could still see the towers smoldering on television. Al Qaeda would be in tatters now and the world would still be on our side.

Instead, George Bush used it to make a renewed stab at empire, to undermine our constitutional rights at every chance, and to personalize the war on terror into a scheme to get the guy he thinks tried to kill his daddy. Can you believe Jose Padilla is only now being charged with a crime, after 3 years in a military prison? This is what GWB has in mind for American citizens, first dumb kids like Padilla (who probably thought he was running drugs), then radio talkshow hosts giving "aid and comfort to the enemy" by criticizing the president in wartime and the like.

The attack on Iraq has played right into bin Laden's hands, with his clearly-stated goal of destabilizing and toppling allied governments in the Middle East starting to materialize. The recent attacks in Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, as well as electoral victories by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt are all signs that bin Laden's dream is going according to plan. By attacking Iraq on the grounds that he would not allow a phantom WMD threat to "materialize," Bush has materialized a true threat: the US kicked out of the Middle East, terrorists trained in Iraq attacking us here, no access to Middle Eastern oil, and everyone in the world hating us for re-electing this guy and thinking we deserve it.

Our safest course is a clean break with Bush's Iraq war, with an apology for the civilians killed, and re-focusing on the job of destroying Al Qaeda. We need about 10,000 Arabic languages translators, not a new generation of fighter-jet pork for defense contractors. We should also force our Middle Eastern allies like Saudi Arabia to give their people the freedoms and opportunities that now belong only to our buddies, the royal families. It's a pleasure to find this thoughtful discussion on Andy's website.

Ralph Lopez
http://polispolis.blogspot.com/