Third Way Dispatch

In ancient medicine, doctors used leeches to drain “excess” blood and “balance the humors” of the human body. (The leech actually gets its name from the word for doctor in Old English: læce). These doctors had basically one approach to medicine: if the patient was ill, drain blood. If things were really bad, drain MORE blood.

That, in short, is the modern conservative’s approach to the economy.

Yesterday, I posted on the Clemens food fight and wondered what got into the Republicans. Why did they behave like cheerleading baboons, and how could they have possibly read the evidence and concluded Clemens was au natural during his 4 Cy Young run in the “twilight of his career?” I surmised that perhaps that years of defending Alberto Gonzalez, WMDs, yellow cake in Niger, and Abu Ghraib had permanently distorted their ability discern truth from lies – even when the witness repeatedly used phrases like “misheard” and “misremembered” to explain away 60’ 6”-sized holes in his story.

Now we have an explanation and it’s even worse than I thought. Mark Souder, who is now my favorite Republican from Indiana, spilled the beans. In a moment of refreshing candor, he admitted that he and Tom Davis were the only GOPers to have read the sworn depositions. And then (slapping my forehead with my palm) I realized how stupid I was. If they’re not going to read the National Intelligence Estimate or the 9/11 Commission Report – something that could save or cost the lives of, oh, sentient life on planet earth, how could we expect them to do their homework in preparation for this 4 ½ hour, nationally televised clown-a-thon? Especially when there are no pictures. Well, we can’t can we?

Lanny Breuer and Rusty Hardin had it figured out. Just visit the offices. Sign a couple of balls. Drop a few Bush bombs. Wave a few shiny objects to distract them. And – snap! – we’re mired in an unwinnable and unconscionable conflict in the Middle East … Ooops, I mean we let another 9-figure cheat off the hook.

Shame on Brian McNamee’s lawyers for not preparing their witness. “Brian, realize that half of those buffoons have not read boo of the sworn testimony. And that cranky old feller over there – Burton – rumor says the last book he read began ‘I am Sam. Sam I am.’” Although, what good would it have done really? The fix was in.

Well, it’s February 14th and pitchers and catchers are due to report. Hope springs eternal. Can’t say I feel too good about the Congress though.

I have to admit, I was dumfounded – at first – by the Roger Clemens hearing. It wasn’t the nanny issue and the Jose Canseco party. It wasn’t the HGH injection for Madame Clemens for the SI swimsuit edition (note to self: get HGH for 20 year grad school reunion in May.). No, it was the unexpected partisan breakdown. I mean, this looked like the Alito hearings. The Republicans were with the Rocket; Democrats were against him. The Republicans thought Roger was telling the truth; Democrats thought he was lying.

But more than that – Republicans were like groupies trying to get an autographed ball. They were holding up pictures, asking him what insignia he would wear on his Hall of Fame plaque (how about $$$?), hell – they were fawning over him. It didn’t matter that everyone else McNamee fingered in the Mitchell report fessed up. Never mind that Mrs. Rocket admitted to using HGH. Never mind that Andy Pettitte said Clemens spoke to him about juicing. The Republicans circled the wagons around Roger like he was Alberto Gonzalez.

Think back for a moment to the days after 9-11, to the range of emotions we all felt: horror, sadness, anger, frustration. But we felt other things as well: determination and patriotism. We were resolved as a nation that no band of two-bit thugs was going to attack this country and murder Americans without us damn well doing something about it.

Now, imagine that you were specifically asked to do something about it and were told that your actions would hold the lives of innocent Americans in the balance. Imagine that you were Mary Smith, a senior executive of a telephone company and that an FBI agent came to you with a letter that asked for your help in tracking down terrorists. The letter assured you that the President and the Attorney General certified that what they were asking you to do was legal. Imagine that the FBI made it clear that if you failed to cooperate, Americans could die.

What would you do? Do you assist the government based on their representations that the help was both legal and urgently needed, or do you decline and risk the consequences?

I’ve been around politics a long time (circa the Mondale “surge”), and I’ve heard enough pandering and disingenuous nonsense spouted to keep aloft a flotilla of blimps. I’ve heard paeans to farmers of useless crops, love letters to members of narrow interest groups, and poetic praise to colorless down-ballot politicians. And all of this from candidates I support!

But rarely have I heard such dispiriting nonsense as that to which we were subjected during Tuesday night’s Democratic debate in Nevada, when the candidates turned to the subject of nuclear power.

(NOTE: This piece was authored by Third Way’s Senior Policy Fellow for National Security, Jonathan Morgenstein.)

Yesterday, the Department of Defense announced the expected deployment of about 3,000 Marines to shore up the NATO mission in Afghanistan. The decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, the actual central front in the War on Terror, although yet to be finalized by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, is crucial, if very, very tardy. If the Bush administration hadn’t waited six years to talk about such an idea, let alone implement one, perhaps Afghanistan wouldn’t be slipping back toward general chaos right now.

We give credit to Secretary Gates and his staff for making the shift and finally listening to the progressives who have been calling for such action for a long time. Although many progressive leaders in and out of Congress—and many field commanders for that matter—have been calling for a much greater expansion of US forces in Afghanistan than the 3,000 Marines offered by the administration, this is a good start. Of course, our NATO allies have to pick up the slack and strengthen their presence there as well. However, they will remain reluctant as long as the United States shirks its leadership responsibilities and doesn’t seriously commit the resources needed to win there.

Kudos to both the progressive national security voices who have been pushing for this kind of action, as well as to the progressive majority that took over Congress in 2006. This new majority was responsible for the President finally forcing out Donald Rumsfeld and his myopic staff that bungled so badly everything but the initial phases of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It was this progressive pressure that prompted the appointment of a new, reality-based Secretary of Defense, who then ushered-in more capable and less ideological Pentagon leadership.

Indeed, if there is progress as a result of this new deployment, let’s be clear where the credit should lie. This change made at the top of the Pentagon, was forced by progressive pressure and the overwhelming message of disapproval delivered by the electorate in November 2006. And, it was only this change that facilitated the possibility of refocusing on—and winning—the war that we’ve needed to fight from the beginning to actually defeat al Qaeda … Afghanistan.