Month: February 2008

The Onion succeeds with humor where a serious analysis couldn’t: highlighting the US’s absurd foreign policy regime and the information problem suffered by those who promote and enact foreign interventions.

Nation Of Andorra Not In Africa, Shocked U.S. State Dept. Reports

It took more than six years, but at least one Democrat enlisted after 9/11 by the hard-line neo-conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) seems finally to have caught on to the fact that its agenda is something other than what its name suggests. In a statement released by her office Monday, Democratic consultant and frequent television political commentator Donna Brazile “strongly condemn[ed]” what she called a “misleading and reckless ad campaign” undertaken against 17 Democratic lawmakers by the FDD for their opposition to the Protect America Act and resigned from its Board of Advisers.

“The organization is using fear mongering for political purposes and worse, their scare tactics have the effect of emboldening terrorists and our enemies abroad by asserting our intelligence agencies are failing to do their job. I am deeply disappointed they would use my name since no one has consulted me about the activities of the group in years.”

Of course, fear-mongering is exactly FDD’s stock in trade, as it has been from the very beginning, something of which Brazile unfortunately appears to unaware, claiming, as she does, that, “due to the influence of their funders, in the last few years, FDD has morphed into a radical right wing organization that is doing the dirty work for the Bush administration and Congressional Republicans.” If she had been paying attention, she would have seen from the moment she signed on that FDD’s messages — particularly concerning virtually anything from the Arab or Islamic worlds — were designed to create fear, starting with the TV ad that ran in 2002 which clearly sought to confuse the viewer into believing that somehow Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden were all part of the same threat. Indeed, FDD, the best profile for which is found on Right Web, has acted primarily as a front for the Likudist founders of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), the same group that is also behind the Freedom’s Watch about which I have posted here and here. Cliff May, FDD’s president since its founding Sep 13, 2001, served previously as RJC’s vice chair.

Might Brazile’s resignation prompt other self-identified Democrats, such as certified Friend of Bill (FOB) former Amb. Marc Ginsberg or Amb. Max Kampelman or Rep. Eliot Engel, to reconsider their own association with FDD (which, incidentally, also sponsors the Committee on the Present Danger)? (I won’t even mention the possibility that “Distinguished Advisors” Sen. Joseph Lieberman or James Woolsey might want to disassociate themselves, let alone Zell Miller.) How about Republicans who might be somewhat less partisan or less Likudnik in their policy preferences, like Jack Kemp, one of the two surviving members of FDD’s board of directors? (The other two are Steve Forbes and the late Jeane Kirkpatrick.) Or former Secretary of State George Shultz, who co-chairs the CPD along with Woolsey)? The full roster of FDD’s many boards, staff members and associates — already heavily weighted to the extreme right — can be found here.

What I found particularly intriguing about Brazile’s statement — other than her naivete about what FDD has been all along — was her assertion that FDD “would use my name since no one has consulted me about the activities of the group in years.” One would think that an organization dedicated to “defending democracies” would try to keep its associates, let alone its leadership, informed of its activities. But apparently that has not been the case. Also intriguing is the fact that she blames the group’s evolution on its the “influence of (its) funders” whose identities, however, she fails to disclose. In the interests of transparency — which all can agree are essential for democracy — perhaps the group will see fit to identify them.

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

Barack Obama reportedly said something very important and long overdue to a group of some 100 Cleveland Jewish leaders on Sunday — that being pro-Likud and being “pro-Israel” are two different things.

“I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel. If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we’re not going to make progress.”

He said even more about the confined nature of the debate over Israel and its security in this country, according to the dispatch in the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA). Apparently in defense of his consultations with Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has been harshly critical of neo-conservative influence in the Bush administration, Obama said:

“Frankly some of the commentary that I’ve seen which suggests guilt by association or the notion that unless we are never ever going to ask any difficult questions about how we move peace forward or secure Israel that is non military or non belligerent or doesn’t talk about just crushing the opposition that that somehow is being soft or anti-Israel, I think we’re going to have problems moving forward.”

And he contrasted those constraints on the debate here with the breadth and vigor of the discussion of those same issues in Israel itself.

“There was a very honest, thoughtful debate taking place inside Israel. All of you, I’m sure, have experienced this when you travel there. Understandably, because of the pressure that Israel is under, I think the U.S. pro-Israel community is sometimes a little more protective or concerned about opening up that conversation. But all I’m saying though is that actually ultimately should be our goal, to have that same clear-eyed view about how we approach these issues.”

The staunchly pro-Likud New York Sun is carrying a partial transcript of the meeting it obtained from the Obama campaign.

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

I’ve expressed my disappointment that the Democratic primaries haven’t thrown up a more demographically electable antiwar candidate (here and here). I’ve been accused of over-emphasizing demographics but, judging by Michael Medved’s “The Blue-Eyed Rule,” the opposite may be true:

“It turns out that in all of U.S. history, only five presidents had brown eyes – John Quincy Adams, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, LBJ and Nixon. …

“[T]wo of our three presidents who faced serious impeachment proceedings (Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon) were among our brown-eyed minority. The other three brownies (John Quincy Adams, Chester A. Arthur, and Lyndon Johnson) all hoped to win an additional term as president but failed to do, falling victim to bitter political critics and rivals.

“The general incidence of blue eyes in the population is about 16% today. In 1950, it was estimated at 30%; in 1900, 50%. …

“[O]ur population almost certainly never featured the 89% blue-eyed incidence of all our presidents. …”

Amongst all the media teeth-gnashing over the question of whether McCain did special favors for his blondie lobbyist,  his wife’s sweetheart deal for massive narcotics theft in the 1990s has been forgotten.

If a poor black woman from Anacostia had committed the crimes that Cindy McCain committed, the black woman might have been sent to prison for the duration of her life.

John McCain has never shown any courage on the drug war.  As long as people like his wife don’t need to fear jail time for crimes, there is no reason to reform the law to cease the persecution of other Americans.  

Here’s an excerpt on the case from an article I did for Playboy in 1997. (Full text of the piece, which details how many congressmen’s kin escaped hard time for drug offenses, is here).

* Cindy McCain, the wife of Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), admitted stealing Percocet and Vicodin from the American Voluntary Medical Team, an organization that aids Third World countries. Percocet and Vicodin are schedule 2 drugs, in the same legal category as opium. Each pill theft carries a penalty of one year in prison and a monetary fine. McCain stole the pills over several years. She became addicted to the drugs after undergoing back surgery. 

    But rather than face prosecution, McCain was allowed to enter a pretrial diversion program and escaped with no blemish on her record. McCain did suffer from the incident, though: Shortly after the scandal broke, a Variety Club of Arizona ceremony at which she was to receive a humanitarian of the year award for her work with the medical team was canceled because of poor ticket sales.