An Open Letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates

Secretary Gates

I urge you to immediately ask for the resignation of Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman for his inappropriate communication to Senator Clinton in response to the exercise of appropriate oversight functions of the United States Senate. Specifically, I understand that he sent a response to Senator Clinton’s request for briefings on contingency planning for the withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Iraq that appeared to be a refusal to provide the requested information and in addition claimed that the very request “reinforce[s] enemy propaganda.”

Included among the many causes that I see for the troubles we face in Iraq, is a period during which Congress largely abdicated its oversight responsibility. Given this situation that has committed the nation to policies that have cost hundreds of thousands of casualties, millions of refugees, a trillion dollars of treasure, and a decidedly dissatisfied American public, I am frankly utterly disgusted that Under Secretary Edelman, acting on behalf of the Department of Defense, appears, now, to be arrogantly resisting appropriate oversight and engaging in what appears to be a campaign to impugn and intimidate a Senator for performing exactly the Constitutional oversight function that is fundamentally necessary to the effective functioning of my government.

I must conclude that Under Secretary Edelman is not serving the interests of the country and I urge you to immediately ask for his resignation.

BDS

Some commentators pejoratively refer to Bush Derangement Syndrome, an epithet which is most frequently used to marginalize resistance to this administrations policies. But the reactions that manifest as what is called BDS are based in large part for many simply on long experience with the utter incompetence and destructive record of the Bush administration.

When Bush was first elected I was put in the the position of comforting a crestfallen colleague of mine – incidentally, one of the most brilliant individuals I have ever known – with what I genuinely believed to be a reasonable case in defense of Bush: I told him that I agreed with him that the evidence was that Bush was probably not well qualified to be President and that he would probably be somewhat incompetent, but that the checks and balances in our system of government could adequately handle such a situation, indeed had in the past, and that the consequences, overall would be minimal. That is, I argued with him that, all in all, things wouldn’t turn out much different, no matter who was elected, that he should give the Bush administration a chance and that Bush’s election wasn’t a priori a disaster. I report this experience only to establish my bonafides as not having suffered from BDS, at least initially.

But now with a simply breathtaking record of incompetence, dishonesty, and partisan hackery I simply do not trust the Bush administration to do ANYTHING. I have worked in scientific laboratories where for the sake of safety and to protect delicate instrumentation the policy for visitors is “put your hands in your pockets and do NOT under any circumstances take them out.” THAT is the policy I want the current administration to follow. Their every act seems the apotheosis of farpotchket at best, like the moron who tweaks a mirror on an optical table that has taken six months to align. Act on a nuanced and delicate situation? Jeebus, I’d rather Bush perform my laproscopic gall bladder removal, and the evidence suggests a better chance of success!

I resent the marginalization of resistance to actions of this administration as Bush Derangement Syndrome: my resistance is based on an expectation from painful experience and on a desire to stanch the unremitting flow of disasters, and is well summed up by the sentiment: “…fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

Blame it on the Liberals

Placing even some portion of the blame for the failure of the U.S. in Iraq on liberals (and, oh yes, a tiny subset of conservatives) who opposed the war is absurd and smacks of desperation by a frightened and very culpable conservative movement. Analogously we might blame the failures of the War on Poverty in part on conservatives because they maintained a public posture that it was fundamentally flawed policy: “oh, if only they had kept their protests to themselves” moans L.I. Beral, wringing his (or is it her) hands, “or better, gotten behind the effort, the bureaucrats would have felt that their efforts were valued, and the Great Society might have had a fighting chance.” ABSURD and pathetic.

I have a difficult time imagining any military effort that isn’t likely to have some segment of the U.S. population opposed to it – that is a fundamental and necessary aspect of democracy and is exactly as it should be – and is a simple fact that must be competently managed as a part of war efforts by the nation’s leaders as any other aspect of a military undertaking: logistics, personnel, casualties, diplomacy and so on. If public opinion about the Iraq war has had a significant negative impact on its prosecution then that simply compounds the utter failures of this conservative administration in its diastrous misadventure in Iraq.

In several different contexts over the course of my life I had experiences or was engaged in work that suggested to me in the runup to the Iraq invasion that the administration had access to very tangible information about WMDs that it could not reveal in full to the public and that warranted the invasion. I therefore reluctantly, and perhaps to my shame, supported the invasion. As it became clear that the effort would uncover no significant WMDs, and that, perhaps, intelligence was manipulated to generate public and diplomatic support, I was aghast. Schadenfreude for those that opposed the war? I seem to remember a great deal of Schadenfreude on the right when we were kicking the a$$es of poor schmuck draftees in the Iraqi army and destroying infrastructure with precision bombing. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Iraqis suffer quite nearly as much as Americans from bullet wounds and explosions and I don’t remember any significant public rebuke for the pleasure that was taken at the expense of that suffering. Let the liberals have their tiny spark of pleasure in having been right about the absolute tragedy we unleashed – may it be, god willing, some small antidote to future leaders who would venture into such an ill-advised undertaking, uninformed, underprepared, incompetent.

An Open Letter to My Senators About S.J. Res 14, No Confidence in Alberto Gonzales

Over the past six months I have lost a great deal of confidence in the entire Department of Justice to act in a fair, non-partisan fashion, and in the best interests of the country. The origins of that loss of confidence include the blatant disrespect and dissembling or outright lying of DoJ officials in their response to the oversight role of Congress, the apparent use of bald-faced political motives in a range of personnel and policy matters, and admissions and allegations of unquestionably illegal actions including vote caging and politicization of the civil service hiring process. I am certain I am not alone in these feelings and I find it deeply, deeply troubling that the current leadership has administered the DoJ in a fashion that has so eroded citizens’ faith in this fundamentally important American institution that relies, for the good of the nation, so much on their trust.

I hope you will take into consideration the extraordinary negative impact these situations have had on my perceptions of the Department of Justice, as you consider your vote on whether or not the Congress has confidence in the Department’s continued leadership by Alberto Gonzales.

Please Stop, It's Hurting America - An Open Letter to Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman

Mr. Fineman and Mr. Matthews-

Jon Stewart said it ever so much more eloquently than I ever could - "it's hurting America ... stop hurting America." That you could look around this nation with so many difficult and crucial issues facing us, and given your implicit responsibility by virtue of your journalistic roles, and then sink to these inane depths in speculative commentary on its potential leadership:

FINEMAN: He doesn't—he looks like a guy who, if he had had the opportunity to grow up as a hunter, would have been a great one.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
FINEMAN: He just gives off the aura of a guy who wouldn't be afraid to use a gun, you know? That's just—and that's the record that he had in New York.
MATTHEWS: Would he—would he have been a catch-and-release guy when he went fishing?

[transcript from Hardball May 23, 2007]

that you could actually consider these "insights" anything less than utterly degrading to yourselves and your networks and generally destructive of our democracy given your roles, particularly in these troubled times, is mind-boggling. Please stop, you're hurting America.

"...But Withdrawal Will Be So Much Worse!"

The argument usually goes something like this: “yes, the occupation is a disaster for Iraqis, but if we withdraw it will be so much worse.” It seems to me that there is a major flaw with these analyses. Briefly, the flaw is inherent in the question: are we, as a country, going to commit to the sacrifices necessary to prevent this disaster from unfolding? As far as I can tell, this desperately incompetent administration figured that they could “do Iraq on the cheap” and more than just about anything else I see that as the “strategy” that they are unwilling to change. They have been unwilling to ask for any form of national sacrifice, though, of course some have sacrificed all. I expect someone genuinely concerned with our responsibility to the Iraqis, someone maintaining we have a moral obligation to the Iraqis that can ONLY be met by our continued military commitment in Iraq, will recognize the abject failure, the disastrous consequences of the current Iraq policy and will, because of the moral obligation, advocate strongly for the sacrifices that are necessary to redeem this disaster.

What sacrifices? A military DRAFT, so that we can field appropriate anti-insurgency military forces, realistic, engaged, flexible DIPLOMACY that starts extracting the U.S from the extreme isolation in which we have been positioned in this quagmire, an Iraqi (or even Middle East) “MARSHALL PLAN” to rebuild the destroyed infrastructure of Iraq and channel the efforts of Iraqis into being productively engaged in the world economy, and, finally, much higher TAXES to pay for these things rather than mortgage our children’s and our grandchildren’s economic future and threaten our own. Empirically, it seems obvious undertaking such a program is extraordinarily unlikely, at least a single data point being that no serious politician has even broached these ideas – our professional political class understands that these ideas would be touching, nay, clutching, the third rail of politics.

So, even though we are currently engaged in a slow motion disaster (is it really that slow?) we are not committed to doing what is necessary to stop it. Taken in this context it occurs to me that an analogy for the “we must stay to prevent a greater disaster” crowd is folks who go to their doctor with a bad cold demanding antibiotics who then fail to take the full course of the drugs. That “slow motion disaster” produces, as is well known, drug resistant bacteria that become dangers to everyone. That is what I see the these analysts arguing for – a low-level, inadequate, “treatment” of the Iraq disaster, in most cases, simply advocating for some variation of a “Friedman unit” approach. We already have some solid evidence that this produces results that are, at a very minimum, contrary to our military goals – serving as a means to recruit for (global) insurgency against America, honing the skills, tactics and strategies of those engaged in the insurgency, and exporting these experienced fighters to other regions.

So, I can not even begin to take pieces like this seriously until I see their authors take a deep breath and advocate, integrally in their positions, for the SACRIFICES that are necessary to stop the disaster. Go home, take two aspirin, and get into bed. When you are ready to take the medicine, all the medicine, the full course, come back and we’ll talk. Otherwise, methinks you are really not so serious about the moral obligation and perhaps withdrawal is the better of a fistful of dreadful options.

Another Moron Mismanages, Oh, Maybe the Most Important Issue EVER

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin:

“I have no doubt that … a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change. First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown. And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take.”

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld:

“As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

Shorter NASA Administrator Michael Griffin:

'As you know, you live (and die) with the climate you have. They’re not the climate you might want or wish to have at a later time.'

Enough said. No, I take that back, not enough said – there are not adequate words for what should be said. Insert guttural primal noise HERE.



Update - Here's the email I sent to NPR about their reporting of this on Morning Edition:

Thank you for Steve Inskeep’s reporting that provided us with NASA Administrator Michael Griffin’s views concerning climate change, but I am deeply disappointed that NPR elected not to completely fulfill its journalistic responsibilities in this report.

Griffin's eerie mirroring of Donald Rumsfeld’s irresponsible unwillingness to plan for and act on potentially disastrous scenarios – (Rumsfeld: “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time”; Griffin: “I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change.”) – aside, I was stunned by the ideologically positioned empty moral posturing of his statement: “…I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take.”

Why, of course, Administrator Griffin, in the context of his straightforward recognition of anthropogenic climate change, has precisely and unilaterally decided that HE is “... to be accorded the privilege of deciding …[the] particular climate that we have” - and perhaps a not very forgiving climate at that - by refusing to take action on our placement of over 10 TRILLION pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. I think it borders on journalistic misfeasance for your reporters to be served up such conspicuous garbage from a public official and not point it out to your listeners.