Below The Fold

by Brien Jackson

I don’t really understand what’s so hard to get about this idea:

President Barack Obama is planning to host a televised meeting with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders on health care reform.

The Feb. 25 meeting is an attempt to reach across the aisle but not a signal that the president plans to start over, as Republicans have demanded, a White House official said.

 “I want to come back [after the Presidents Day congressional recess] and have a large meeting — Republicans and Democrats — to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward,” Obama said in an interview with Katie Couric during CBS’s Super Bowl pre-game show Sunday.

The idea strikes me as pretty straight-forward; the White House is hoping to re-create the dynamic from the House GOP retreat. That is, the Republicans will throw out a lot of false, insane, claims, and Obama and healthcare experts will be right there to deftly bat them down. The goal being, to make Obama look good, and House Republicans look ridiculous, just like in Baltimore. And by announcing it so publicly, Obama has put the GOP in a bit of a bind; if they don’t show up, the White House will be further able to paint them as the ‘party of no” and point out that they aren’t offering alternative solutions. Not that any of that matters, of course, at the end of the day, it’s just an attempt to get something on C-Span, and create some political theater that generates some momentum for Democrats on the hill to pass the bill. I really don’t understand why we’re pretending not to get this.

by Brien Jackson

I confess, I’m pretty stupified by this:

At a time of increasing debate over the optimal relationship between government and business in the U.S., new Gallup polling shows that 57% of Americans are worried that there will be too much government regulation of business, while 37% worry that there will not be enough. Half of Americans believe the government should become less involved in regulating and controlling business, with 24% saying the government should become more involved and 23% saying things are about right.

My guess is that the results would change drastically if the generic “business” was replaced with “banks,” but anyway, there you go. Americans are skeptical of “government regulations.” Digby, in keeping with a general trend among some netroots bloggers to imagine that everything is about messaging, and a specific trend of her’s to argue that progressive politicians don’t make an explicit case for progressive beliefs, calls this “an epic failue of liberal politics.” But is it, or is it a success of conservative messaging?

At least since the late 1970’s, American conservative messaging has been based on two basic tactics; blatantly lying about things, and crafting talking points that drastically over-simplify issues to easy-to-remember, but highy inaccurate, dogma. In the case of regulations, the conservative line is pretty simple; regulations are bad, always in all places. What is the progressive line supposed to be in contrast? More regulations are always awesome? That’s ridiculous. As both Atrios and Yglesias point out, there really are bad regulations on business out there, mostly at the state and municipal level. Further, most local governments impose land use regulations that are bad for progressive goals, by limiting the amount of density that can grow in an area, leading to inefficient energy use, poor conditions for mass transit to grow, and adverse environmental consequences. These are all places where we really do need to deregulate, or at least re-regulate in a more intelligent way.

The problem progressive messaging has is pretty simple; progressives are still largely attached to reality, and still mostly trying to act like adults. They’re more comfortable handling nuance than conservatives, as opposed to constructing a religious like dogma to fit an entire worldview into. That makes it incredibly difficult to use rhetoric to change the way people respond to polls like this, unless Digby wants progressives to go all in with their own lies and over-simplified talking points, hoping they win out. Which I suppose they could do, but where does that leave us? With both sides living in their own personal reality, with their own religious-like views, talking in dogmatic, over-simplified absolutisms?

I didn’t have the time to do a full State of the Union reaction post, though I wanted to but suffice it to say, I think it was one of the most effective speeches Obama has ever given. It wasn’t the most inspirational, nor did it have the most soaring rhetoric, but that’s not really what the situation called for. Obama needed to project confidence and strength, both to the nation and to Congress, and I thought he did that very well. The speech ran a bit long and contained the requisite laundry list of proposals, but interspersed within were digs at Republicans, both procedural and substantive. He dinged them on the filibuster and climate change denialism. He laughed, he poked fun, he was light and jovial throughout. And more importantly, you could visibly feel the spirits of Congressional Democrats lifting. By about the mid-point of the speech they were smiling, laughing, tossing amused glances at uncomfortable Republicans. As I saw someone (Chait maybe?) remark, Pelosi and Reid should have gaveled their chambers into session after the speech and passed the entire agenda right then; it certainly looked like they might have had the votes for it.

But that pales in comparison to what Obama did today. Going to House Republicans at their retreat in Baltimore, Obama fielded questions from the most vehement of his opposition, the House Republican caucus, and he ran circles around them. One thing I don’t think conservatives realize is what talk radio has done to their attachment with reality. You can toss something around the echo chamber, unchallenged, and it starts to sound pretty good. When someone a lot smarter than you is handling the nonsense in real time, to your face, well, that makes you look quite a bit dumber (and it doesn’t help that House Republicans are really dumb to begin with). When you couple this with the address Wednesday night, it’s been a very good couple of days for the White House. They’re clearly back on top of the political world, at least for now.

What does it mean on a substantive level? It’s hard to say, but something has clearly had an impact on Congressional Democrats. Nancy Pelosi is absolutely determined to pass healthcare reform, and even Kent Conrad and Ben Nelson are holding out the possibility of going to reconcilliation to pass a bill.  A lot of Democrats clearly understand that they have to do healthcare reform, for political, policy, and moral reasons, and the momentum seems to be back, at least somewhat. Is that because of the White House? Maybe not, but something has lit a fire under very key players in the caucus to make this happen.

There’s hope yet.

So it turns out I was wrong, and Martha Coakley, aka the Worst Candidate Ever, actually did manage to lose an election in Massachusetts to a right-wing Republican. And, apparently, among the many other attributes the new Senator-elect from Massachusetts possesses, he has the ability to make the collective internets lose its fucking mind. Or maybe that’s Washington Democrats, who are apparently suddenly wavy on healthcare reform.

Well far be it from me to be a party pooper, but it does seem worth pointing out that, for all the freakout, very little is actually different today than it was last Monday. The House and the Senate can come to an agreement on how to move forward together? Well the fact that Republicans can filibuster anything they want doesn’t help matters, but they couldn’t really figure much out regarding collective action this time last week either. House progressives don’t like the Senate bill and don’t want to vote for it? That might be a problem, but they didn’t like the Senate bill Tuesday morning either.

I tend to agree with the broad consensus that the House and Senate should pass a reconcilliation bill amending the Senate bill in agreeable ways, and f course ways that are possible through reconcilliation, after which the House should vote to pass the Senate bill. I also agree that if the two chambers can’t work out an agreement that can get enough Democratic votes in the useless upper chamber, that the House ought to go ahead and pass the Senate bill anyway. Yeah they’ll hate it, but it’s still better than the status quo, and if that’s the best that can be done, then that’s what you do. I also sympathize with the House where it comes to negotiating with the Senate; the filibuster gives the Senate a huge upper hand in negotiations, and makes a mockery of the notion of equal chambers. But it is what it is, for now anyway, and the House has to put aside its pride and do what’s best for the people. There will be a time to take on the Senate, but this is not it.

Outside of that, would everyone please calm down? It’s been 4 days since Brown won. That the House hasn’t passed something yet, or that the House and the Senate haven’t quite come to an agreement, isn’t that worrying. The Senate is the hard part, but they’ve already cleared their procedural ball. If 256 House Democrats, including the progressive caucus, put the bullet in healthcare reform, well, we’ve got bigger problems I guess.

by Brien Jackson

I haven’t had much to say about the race for Ted Kennedy’s seat, because, frankly, I haven’t really known what to make of it. I wasn’t a big fan of Coakley’s originally; beyond the fact that she has a somewhat troubling record as a prosecutor, she was also easily identifiable as a poor campaigner, and also lacks significant legislative appearance, or any history with any major national issues she’ll be tasked with making policy on. Coakley’s nomination is a good example of why I’m not a huge fan of special elections; hasitly throwin together a contest with little time for candidates to prepare for it and, especially, campaign, with very few voters actively paying attention to what’s going on almost always produces a contest where the candidate with the highest initial name recognition wins, especially in the primary. Especially where Senate seats are concerned that seems like a problem to me.

But do I think Coakley might actually lose this race? Well, I guess anything is possible, but I’m still pretty suspicious. Enthusiasm gap or not, Massachusetts is still an overwhelmingly Democratic state. It’s so Democratic, it doesn’t have a single Republican in its entire Congressional delegation. And healthcare reform is pretty broadly popular there, which makes Brown’s decision to campaign almost exclusively around blocking healthcare reform somewhat odd. And now, Nate Silver confirms a suspicion I’ve had for awhile, that pollsters generally understate a party’s advantage in states that overwhelmingly favor them.

Anything can happen in a special election, of course. Still, I think at the end of the day, Massachusetts is going to remain as blue as it has been, and I don’t think the teabaggers are going to score a major win in one of the country’s most liberal states.

Technorati Tags: Martha Coakley, Massachusetts, Senate

by Brien Jackson

Nate Silver writes:

I find this truly remarkable: in a National Journal survey of 109 Republican “party leaders, political professionals and pundits”, not a single one deemed Sarah Palin to be the most likely Republican nominee.

I’ve written extensive commentary about how I think Palin’s chances are in fact pretty decent. I’d probably call her the “favorite”, although “favorite” in this context might mean having a 25-30 percent chance of winning.[...]

But back to the point I made in November — there’s going to come a time, probably in July 2011 or so, where the knives are really drawn on Palin and Republican pundits, strategists and candidates start saying in public some of the things they’ve been thinking in private. And that in all likelihood will play very well for her. Although the Establishment’s concerns about Palin’s viability as a general election candidate are well grounded, mostly they’re just terrified of her because she doesn’t need them.

This largely misses the point. The problem with having no “establishment” support for your candidacy is that the establishment contains pretty much everyone with any idea how to run a campaign. Particularly the national campaign it takes to compete in a Presidential primary. We’ve spent a lot of time mocking Palin’s current staff, and some of the rather comical missteps they’ve made, and that’s just in booking speaking events. How well is she going to manage a year’s worth of on the ground campaigning in multiple states/regions if the same people she has arond her now are in charge of managing things? Moreover, the Clinton campaign proved that even professional operatives can be bumbling idiots, how well is a group of amateur bumbling idiots likely to do? And popularity alone, especially popularity within a narrow subset of the electorate, isn’t a substitute for a functioning campaign. Ask Fred Thompson.

But a larger point that needs to be made here, at the risk of sounding like a politco version of Mike Silva, is that Nate Silver actually doesn’t seem to understand that much about politics. He understands statisitcs and polling, to be sure, but that only takes you so far. His schtick, basically, is built on taking polling data and plugging it into a computer model that runs a lot of times, which tells you the most likely outcome. And that’s great, but it’s also a lot of work that really doesn’t add much value to the task of predicting election outcomes. I didn’t have a sophisticated compter program running thousands of scenarios, but I still managed to come pretty close to the ultimate outcome of the 2008 cycle; missing only Missouri in the Presidential contest, correctly predicting every Senate and Gubernatorial race, and missing by 6 seats in the House. Which isn’t (totally) to toot my own horn, so much as it is to point out that sometimes there’s a level of obviousness involved in last second pick ‘ems, and you don’t really need computer simulations to figure this stuff out, particularly when the election isn’t very close. Perhaps Silver’s computers add value in an unusually close contest, but those are, well, unusual.

There’s nothing wrong with Silver’s blogging mind you, but he’s much better when he’s analyzing polling and numbers, as opposed to trying to analyze non-statistical aspects of politics. Which isn’t to say he can’t toss his two cents out by any means, but I wish more “A-Listers” would keep that in mind a bit when reading him. I mean, Silver’s models still give Democrats a better shot to retain Blanche Lincoln’s Senate seat in Arkansas than Joe Biden’s old seat in Delaware. Perception and conventional wisdom can often prove to be wrong, and polling can, over time, show where it’s wrong, but that has to pass the smell test too, especially this far out of an election, with little to no actual campaigning having occured, and with very little data to work with.

Technorati Tags: Nate Silver, Sarah Palin

The big political news of the day is that both Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Chris Dodd of Connecticut will retire rather than seek another term. Dodd, of course, had been embroiled in a a scandal involving a sweetheart mortage deal from Countrywide that had tanked his poll numbers, with even libertarian kook Peter Schiff polling ahead of him head-to-head recently. Dorgan, however, was pretty well liked, had no major challenger yet, and probably would have retained the seat, although it might have been a tough contest. The obvious narrative is going to be that this spells trouble for the Democrats in 2010, but I’m not sure that’s a logical conclusion. For one thing, there are 6 Republicans who won’t be seeking re-election. For another, while Dorgan’s announcement guarantees they’ll lose the seat, Dodd’s pretty nearly guarantees they’ll hold his, which they probably would have lost if he sought re-election. So it’s basically a wash, but that is a wash that results in a net loss of one seat for Senate Democrats. Still, looking over the map for 2010, I think the field is pretty well set for a more or less even contest, and I think either party is going to gain one or two seats. Which is to say, don’t sleep on the possibility Democrats gain seats in the Senate.

Technorati Tags: Chris Dodd

By Tommy Brown

In the wake of the attempted terrorist attack on a Amsterdam-to-Detroit airliner, the WaPo’s editorial page breaks out my favorite way that the burden of failure is transferred from actual people to abstract concepts: “Connecting the dots.” From the editorial:

THE THWARTED Christmas Day airplane bombing raises three causes for alarm. First, it illustrates a screening system that remains porous enough to let a suspect board with the same explosive shoe-bomber Richard Reid attempted to use in 2001

Okay, I’ll give him that one, but it’s not exactly like it was unknown that the TSA is a complete disaster. Since 9/11, reporters and government types alike have repeatedly defeated the TSA’s security and gotten everything from box-cutters to guns to mock explosives aboard airplanes. So color me unsurprised.

Second, it exposes a terrorism bureaucracy too clumsy to catapult the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, at least to a higher level of preflight scrutiny after his father came forward with warnings that he might pose a danger.”

That may have something to do with the fact that both the no-fly list and the “extra attention” list are literally swamped with hundreds of thousands of names, ninety percent of whom seem to be on there for no apparent reason. This is thanks to a system called TIDEMART that literally runs off of a laptop in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC) and NSA data-mining run amok. Add in an element of political intimidation (scores of antiwar activists found themselves on one of the lists during the Bush Administration) and you have the recipe for a system that may be worse than not having one at all.

And his father did warn the US Embassy in Lagos that his son had been radicalized, which did get him on the increased scrutiny list. Why no more than that you ask? Well, two reasons: One, the CTC and NSA are absolutely flooded with vague warnings from all over the world that may or may not be the real deal, which basically reduces it to going with the odds-on favorite. Two, despite the fact that pretty much every CIA officer in the world using official cover poses as a Foreign Service embassy official, the striped-pants set from the State Department and the spooks from Langley are generally at each others’ throats. Then you add in the disdain that the FBI, which is responsible for domestic counterterrorism, has for the CIA (the saying is, “FBI catches bank robbers; CIA robs banks”) and it is yet again a recipe for disaster.

Expect to hear about “breaking information stovepipes” (my second favorite in terms of blaming abstract concepts) and “not just moving boxes around on a chart” when moving the boxes into an arrangement that makes a lick of sense would probably be a good idea.

Third, if it is true that the suspect received explosives training from al-Qaeda in Yemen, the incident underscores the emergence of that troubled nation as a training ground for terrorists.

This is the kind of thing that makes my blood boil. Yemen is not “emerging” as a training ground for terrorists, Al Qaeda has been there at least since bin Laden was kicked out of the Sudan and moved to Afghanistan in the Nineties. Yemen acted as sort of a regional command center for AQ Central in the Persian Gulf, given that the ruling council was in a Central Asian country on the far side of Iran.

I mean, Yemen had a direct role in 9/11. Two of the hijackers came to America from Yemen; one actually returned there and came back during preparations for the hijackings. In fact, the best example of not “connecting the dots” before 9/11 involves Yemen. It goes like this: The NSA was actually tapping the communications of the Yemen command center, and identified those two future hijackers as AQ and on their way to America. The NSA told the CTC, but the call was taken by an FBI agent seconded to the Agency, who told his CIA boss, who for reasons unknown sat on the information.

At least this explains our targeted strikes in Yemen recently..

No screening system can be foolproof, and every system must balance security against the need to allow an acceptably free flow of travel. But the system apparently failed in the case of Mr. Abdulmutallab in significant part because available technologies were not employed. The explosive PETN, pentaerythritol tetranitrate, that Mr. Abdulmutallab allegedly carried would not be found through normal X-rays or metal detectors. However, it is detectable by bomb-sniffing dogs, by “sniffer” technology that blows particles off travelers, or by swabbing passengers for traces of explosives; full-body imaging might also have been helpful.

This is a whole bunch of words that can be boiled down to this: If someone in Lagos or Amsterdam had put the guy through a bomb sniffer, this would never have happened. Period.

The episode also serves as another sobering reminder that eliminating Afghanistan as a haven for terrorist planning is necessary but not sufficient. Yemen will be “a fertile ground for the training and recruitment of Islamist militant groups for the foreseeable future,” Andrew Exum and Richard Fontaine warned in a report last month for the Center for a New American Security.

Al Qaeda is in more than eighty countries, including every Sunni-ruled country in the Middle East, multiple countries in Africa, the Philippines, you name it. In spite of the fact that no one seems to know or care about it, Operation Enduring Freedom (the initial attack on Afghanistan) also included a Philippines component, with Special Forces pursuing and eliminating members of Jamaat al-Islamyiah, an AQ offshoot. So, again, color me less than surprised.

Hopefully this will be the final kick in the ass that will spark some serious intelligence and counterterrorism reform, but Your Humble Author remains doubtful. If 9/11 couldn’t do it, what can?

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Counterterrorism, Islamists, Pakistan, Yemen

By Tommy Brown

Another give-war-a-chance Op-Ed about Iran, hitting most of the same bunk talking points I covered yesterday in my post about yet another holiday season hysteria over the ayatollahs (with as many Nazi references as you can get in).

Now, this Op-Ed wouldn’t look out of place at all any time since 2002 on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post, who have been rah-rahing a war with Iran for quite awhile now. The interesting thing is that it is the New York Times running this particular opinion piece.

This leaves Your Humble Author wondering if this is an attempt to mainstream the idea of an Iranian war with moderates and the center-left. Think back to 2002 and the hawkish stance on Iraq expounded upon by Thomas Friedman or Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaraia.

I covered most of the niggling details of an Iranian nuclear breakout and what it means to America and Israel yesterday, so let’s just hit the high points and call it a wrap:

Complete dismissal of diplomacy with a total disregard for the consequences of military action?

Tehran’s rejection of the original proposal is revealing. It shows that Iran, for domestic political reasons, cannot make even temporary concessions on its bomb program, regardless of incentives or sanctions.

Incentives and sanctions will not work, but air strikes could degrade and deter Iran’s bomb program at relatively little cost or risk, and therefore are worth a try.

Check.

Subtle potshots at Obama painting him as an appeaser in the mold of Jimmy Carter or (now officially the most overused analogy in foreign policy) Neville Chamberlain?

This would let Iran run the reactor, retain the bulk of its enriched uranium and continue to enrich more — a bargain unacceptable even to the Obama administration.

Negotiation to prevent nuclear proliferation is always preferable to military action. But in the face of failed diplomacy, eschewing force is tantamount to appeasement.

Check.

Pretending that borderline-crazy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the real leader of Iran and not the pragmatic Supreme Ayatollah?

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad initially embraced the deal because he realized it aided Iran’s bomb program. But his domestic political opponents, whom he has tried to label as foreign agents, turned the tables by accusing him of surrendering Iran’s patrimony to the West.

Check.

Repurposed Iraq War talking points?

Iran supplies Islamist terrorist groups in violation of international embargoes. Even President Ahmadinejad’s domestic opponents support this weapons traffic. If Iran acquired a nuclear arsenal, the risks would simply be too great that it could become a neighborhood bully or provide terrorists with the ultimate weapon, an atomic bomb.

Check.

Completely destroying your own argument that a preemptive strike will constrain Iranian nuclear ambitions while acting as if it supports your case?

But history suggests that military strikes could work. Israel’s 1981 attack on the nearly finished Osirak reactor prevented Iraq’s rapid acquisition of a plutonium-based nuclear weapon and compelled it to pursue a more gradual, uranium-based bomb program. A decade later, the Persian Gulf war uncovered and enabled the destruction of that uranium initiative, which finally deterred Saddam Hussein from further pursuit of nuclear weapons (a fact that eluded American intelligence until after the 2003 invasion).

Checkmate.

Technorati Tags: Iran, Islamists, Israel, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, nuclear breakout

By Tommy Brown

First up, from Foreign Policy’s article on deterring and containing Iran:

Deterrence in the Middle East, they [policymakers and foreign policy analysts] argue, could be just as stable as it was between the United States and the USSR during the Cold War. “Israel’s massive nuclear force will deter Iran from ever contemplating using or giving away its own (hypothetical) weapon,” wrote Fareed Zakaria in the Oct. 12 edition of Newsweek. “Deterrence worked with madmen like Mao, and with thugs like Stalin, and it will work with the calculating autocrats of Tehran.”

But this historical analogy is dangerously misconceived. In reality, defusing an Israeli-Iranian nuclear standoff will be far more difficult than averting nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis. This is true even if those Iranians with their fingers on the nuclear trigger are not given to messianic doomsday thinking. Here are five factors that will make an Israeli-Iranian nuclear confrontation potentially explosive.

Before we dive into these five factors, I’ll just pause to say that comparing a nuclear Iran to the American-Soviet standoff or even comparing Cuba during the Crisis with Iran is pretty specious and silly. And so:

Communication and trust.

The October 1962 negotiations that settled the Cuban missile crisis were conducted through a fairly effective, though imperfect, communication system between the United States and Russia. There was also a limited degree of mutual trust between the two superpowers. This did not prevent confusion and suspicion, but it did facilitate the rivals’ ability to understand the other’s side and eventually resolve the crisis.

Israel and Iran, however, have no such avenues for communication. They don’t even have embassies or fast and effective back-channel contacts — and, what’s more, they mistrust each other completely. Israel has heard Iranian leaders — and not just President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — call for its destruction. Meanwhile, Iranian leaders remain prone to paranoid and conspiratorial views of the outside world, especially Israel and the United States. In any future Iranian-Israeli crisis, each side could easily misinterpret the other’s moves, leading to disaster. A proxy war conducted by Iran through Hezbollah or Hamas against Israel could quickly lead to a series of escalating threats.

This actually is a serious problem. The Cold War MAD-speak for it is “redlines,” a series of negotiated agreements between America and the Soviet Union on what provocations from the other side could cause a nuclear response. The name comes from the Red Line, the teletype device that directly linked the White House and the Kremlin, installed in the wake of several clashes with the Soviets that almost led to nuclear Armageddon.

Of course, comparing the Israel-Iran situation to the Cold War is ludicrous, the best comparison is undoubtedly the India-Pakistan nuclear standoff. Here as in a hypothetical Middle Eastern cold war, there are no redlines and no communication between Islamabad and Mumbai on this issue. And, in the author’s favor, we have come to the brink of a third India-Pakistan war that most likely would have involved nuclear exchanges twice since 9/11.

Both times, both sides were slowly pushed back from the brink by Washington. I’ll pick back up on this in a minute.

Goals.

The Soviets wanted to extend their power and spread Communism — they never pledged the annihilation of America. Iranian leaders, however, have called for Israel to be “wiped off the map of the Middle East.” After the street protests that followed the June presidential election, Iran has entered into chronic instability. In a moment of heightened tension and urgent need for popular support, an Iranian leader could escalate not only rhetoric but action.

There is a strong precedent in the Middle East of such escalation leading to war. Arab threats to destroy any Jewish state preceded a massive invasion of the new Israeli state in May 1948. In May and June 1967, Egypt’s President Gamal Abd al-Nasser loudly proclaimed his intent to “liberate Palestine” (i.e. Israel in its 1949 borders), and moved his panzer divisions to Israel’s border. The result was the Six Day War.

The revisionist history that has sprung up around the Cold War in the two decades since its end is quite fascinating. Does Krushchev banging his shoe at the United Nations and shouting “We will bury you!” count for nothing anymore?

The author of the piece is right that despite all the rantings and threats, the main goal of the Soviet Union was to extend their power and influence into the Third World under the guise of World Socialism and to stay militarily competitive with America. But the same is also true with Iran: Despite the loud, blustery threats from the ayatollahs lo these last three decades, Iran has time and again proved itself to be a ruthless and crafty player of the Great Game, certainly not an irrational actor.

The analogy to the Six Day War is baffling and somewhat deceptive. It wasn’t Nasser’s rhetoric that caused the war, it was him moving his armies to the Israeli border. And the analogy is doubly misleading because Iran has very little conventional capability, their influence in the Middle East is almost entirely based on assymetric power.

And by the way: Panzer divisions? Really? That’s about as subtle as a kick to the groin.

Command and control.

In 1962, the two superpowers possessed sophisticated command-and-control systems securing their nuclear weapons. Both also employed effective centralized decision-making systems. Neither may be the case with Iran: Its control technology will be rudimentary at first, and Tehran’s decision-making process is relatively chaotic. Within Iran’s byzantine power structure, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) mounts an army and navy of its own alongside the regular army and navy, and internal differences within the regime over nuclear diplomacy are evidence of conflicting lines of authority. Recent events suggest that the IRGC, allied with Ahmadinejad, has increasingly infringed on the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As a result, no one can be certain how decisions are made and who makes them.

This one’s pretty easy. The entire nuclear program is under the control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (the Sepha-i Pasdaran), a shadow military and secret police that reports directly to the Supreme Ayatollah Khamein’i. Simple. There is no issue with unity of command despite their recent civil unrest.

Mutual deterrence.

Both the United States and USSR had second-strike capability made credible by huge land masses. They possessed hardened missile silos scattered throughout the countryside, large air forces equipped with nuclear bombs, and missile-launching submarines. In the Middle East, Iran stretches across a vast 636,000 square miles, against Israel’s (pre-1967) 8,500 square miles of territory. This point was made by ex-president Hashemi Rafsanjani in 2001, who noted, “Israel is much smaller than Iran in land mass, and therefore far more vulnerable to nuclear attack.” If this is the way an Iranian pragmatist thinks, how are the hard-liners thinking?

In contrast, by 1962, the two superpowers implicitly recognized the logic of mutually assured destruction. And yet, they still came relatively close to war — in John F. Kennedy’s words, the risk of a nuclear conflict was “between one out of three and even.” When Iran goes nuclear, the huge disparity in size will pose a psychological obstacle for its recognition of mutual deterrence.

All things being equal, Israel’s small size would be a detriment to a mutually-assured destruction strategy. But things aren’t equal. Even if Iran obtains a handful of nuclear weapons and halfway decent missiles to shoot them at people with, Israel will be the only side that has a credible second-strike capability. Combined with the certainty of American assistance, this doesn’t seem like much of an impediment to MAD.

Even assuming the United States promises Israel a retaliatory nuclear umbrella, Iran will doubt U.S. resolve. The mullahs will be tempted to conclude that with Israel gone, the United States would see no point in destroying Iran. Given the criticism leveled today against President Harry Truman for using the bomb against Japanese civilians in World War II, what are the chances of American retaliation against Iran, especially if the Islamic Republic has not attacked the United States?

I seriously doubt the mullahs doubt American resolve when it comes to the Middle East, especially the Persian Gulf. Nuclear missiles exploding near the oil would be seriously bad for business, and if there’s one thing you can guarantee, it’s that America will respond swiftly and strongly to any perceived threat to our energy security. Not to mention, Israel is quite popular here in the States and they have a very vocal political lobby.

And the last sentence presupposes that if Israel is nuked by Iran, that America will have to nuke Iran in retaliation. We just might, but even if we don’t, American conventional power is strong enough to level the entire country in a month (despite its huge size, much of Iran is uninhabitable, and the population is clustered around urban and semi-urban areas). There isn’t a doubt in the world that America would descend upon Iran like the Wrath of God if they were to ever do something so stupid.

Crisis instability.

In view of the above dangers, if and when a grave crisis does erupt, Israel would be tempted to strike first in order to prevent an Iranian nuclear attack, which would devastate its urban core. Iran will be well aware of Israel’s calculations and, in the early years of becoming a nuclear power, will have a smaller and probably more vulnerable nuclear arsenal. This will give it, in turn, strong incentives to launch its own preemptive strike.

This will not happen as long as America has such a heavy military presence in the Middle East. Period. This favorite talking point of war hawk pundits was put to bed decisively in 2007 during the Bush Administration. They came to Washington to ask for the latest generation in nuclear bunker-busters for a strike on Iran (as well as permission to cross Iraqi airspace) and were turned down flat by Condi Rice and Bob Gates, who threatened to end the American-Israeli relationship permanently if they did go ahead and do it anyway.

Yes, you read that right. Israel wants to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program by dropping nuclear weapons on them. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Just a few more points to wrap up:

Once Iran is a nuclear power, the Middle East is likely to enter a fast-moving process of nuclear proliferation. Until now, most Arab governments have not made an effort to match Israel’s  nuclear arsenal.

Already happening. Saudi Arabia doesn’t have all those Chinese ballistic missiles hidden out in the Empty Quarter for nothing. But the fall of Iraq has as much to do with it as Iran’s nuclear program; that’s a whole ‘nother story though.

Contrary to the wishful thinking of some analysts that the possession of nuclear weapons could make Iran more cautious, a nuclear Iran will likely be emboldened. It could press Hezbollah to be more aggressive in Lebanon, flex its muscles in the Persian Gulf, and step up its challenges against U.S. forces in the region.

Iran is pretty bold now. Things really couldn’t be going any better for them if they had tried. Their unconventional warfare power by proxy in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, western Afghanistan and a host of other places makes them the de facto regional hegemon.

The most important point, and the one all these pro-war Iran pieces leave out, is that the critical factor in the Israeli-Iranian relationship is how the American-Iranian one  is doing. And it’s doing very very well, if you’re an ayatollah. With American forces tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan without sufficient numbers to pacify both countries, Iran has become sort of the unofficial peacekeeper in southern Iraq (where in true Iranian fashion they back every side and just wait to see who wins) and Herat in western A-stan. With a phone call they can make life very unpleasant for American soldiers in Iraq or start another Hizb’allah-Israeli conflict.

Bottom line, as long as these conditions persist America has very little influence to stop the Iranian nuclear program, but enough influence to stop Israel from attacking them preemptively, which is going to mean an enforced stalemate until something crazy happens or the strategic calculus changes drastically.

Technorati Tags: Iran, Iraq, Islamists, Israel, MAD, nuclear breakout

Until we find a better way:

Peace on Earth.

Early this morning, the Senate voted to pass healthcare reform by a 60-39 vote. With Jim Bunning (R-KY) not in attendance, 58 Democrats and 2 Independents voted aye, and every Senate Republican voted no. There’s some pretty serious implications of the dynamics at work here moving forward, and obviously more work to be done on the healthcare front, but it’s worth stopping for a moment to appreciate the historic moment.

American progressives have been working for a national healthcare plan since John Dingell Sr. introduced a national health insurance bill to Congress in 1933. He and his son have introduced a similar bill to every Congress since. It has been a 76 year uphill battle, with very few victories along the way. It’s worth keeping that futility in mind as we fight over whether or not the current bill is expansive enough to be worth passing. For whatever the bill’s flaws, for the first time ever, both the House and the Senate have passed universal healthcare bills declaring that the United States government believes equitable access to quality healthcare coverage should be universal. That’s not nothing, it’s arguably the hardest hurdle to clear.

A lot of paens to the moment have declared that this is something  of a hollow win, a legislative victory that doesn’t feel much like a win. Well I’m not having any of that. As someone who’s actually been involved in a fair bit of ground level organizing, it’s worth remembering that big changes rarely come at once. It might be getting cliche now, but these things really are long, hard, slogs. Progressive activism is like a football game, you accomplish your goal by moving the ball down the field, yard by yard, first down by first down. And while the ultimate goal is a touchdown, that’s no reason not to be happy about picking up a first down. So while the legislative process continues to be a mess, while fights over the adaquecy of the bill may cause headaches, and while the endless compromises with nitwits and sociopaths like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman may depress, that’s no reason not to feel joy over the accomplishment. For the first time in 76 years, the United States Senate has voted to move towards universal healthcare in America. The fight isn’t over, it never is, but this is a pretty big first down. And for that we can all be joyful this Christmas.

Our country’s Leading Progressive Activist goes on Fox News to argue against taxes.

How about we just rename the bill after Hamsher? Anyone else think that would satisy her need for attention?

by Brien Jackson

Ezra had a post this morning examining the fact that the bill likely to pass the Senate looks very much like the plan Obama ran on, with some exceptions, to which Marcy Wheeler responded by noting that the exceptions were fairly important. I think Wheeler is exaggerating the effect a little bit, after all, the bill is very large, and has hundreds of moving parts, so all things considered less than 10 things isn’t that much, but I do think she’s right to point out that they’re fairly important things, and they are largely the things that people are focusing on, some with more merit than others (that the excise tax on high cost insurance plans has drawn any criticism from the left is extremely depressing). Ezra had a fairly nice response, noting that Obama basically came around to the consensus of Democratic opinion on the matter:

Another way of saying this is that president is a follower who leads. Take health-care reform. Marcy Wheeler doesn’t agree with me that the reform bill we’re likely to pass is similar to the reform proposal that Obama campaigned on. She emphasizes the differences between the two, but consider for a second the size of those differences. Obama proposed, at least on the coverage side, a Massachusetts-style structure. So too did John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. The difference was that Obama initially fought the individual mandate.

In the end, he ended up supporting a … Massachusetts-style structure with an individual mandate. In other words, he moved from the Massachusetts-plan with one real variation to the Massachusetts-plan — towards the consensus, not away from it. The move wasn’t to Medicare for All, or a Clintonian managed care within managed competition, or Wyden-Bennett, or some approach that Obama dreamed up in consultation with Peter Orszag and Tom Daschle. It was just the consensus campaign approach with some concessions to the realities of the policy and the demands of Congress. Wheeler may think that’s a lot of movement. I’m surprised by how little of a stamp Obama chose to put on this policy, particularly given the work that past presidents, like Clinton, have put into developing an approach that is uniquely theirs.

I think Ezra’s on to something, and it is good to point out that there are some unique features to healthcare reform relating to the fact that so many center-left and leftist types have been chasing that goose for so long. Barack Obama is a politician who has been on the national scene for all of 5 years, but he’s surrounded by people who have been in Washington thinking about healthcar reform for twenty years, give or take. And some of those people are in Congress (I’m looking at you John Dingell). The Democratic Party’s committment to universal healthcare goes back to before Obama was even born. It is, in other words, a fairly odd situation at the intersection of party and issue, and Obama is in the odd position of being a President who, to a large degree, is simply overshadowed by the achievement itself, but to an even larger degree, he’s walking into a governing situation where a lot of key players in Congress have spent a long time working on this issue, and aren’t necessarily inclined to suddenly cede ground to the White House on putting the bill together, particularly a President who is as new on the scene as Obama. Allowing Congress to take the lead on the bill was probably a smart move, if for no other reason than Congressional Democrats probably weren’t going to allow the situation to play out any differently.

Another way of looking at it is outlined by Matt Yglesias:

I think that most people vastly overrate the President’s ability to influence this kind of thing. But one reason that people overrate it is that presidential candidates encourage unrealistic expectations. Obama didn’t canvass the country saying “I will use my agenda-setting powers to encourage congress to take up comprehensive health reform and then meekly accept whatever the 60th-most-liberal senator is willing to agree to.” Primary candidates competed with one another to offer the most aggressively sound climate change plans instead of acknowledge that this was all wishful thinking and congress would constrain the limits of the possible. Obama in particular encouraged the idea that he could and would deploy his undeniable skills at set-piece speech delivery to cause legislative action.

I’ve made the point for some time that the way we act as though Congress simply doesn’t exist, with pretty much every candidate declaring that, “when I’m President, we’re going to get…” obscuring the broader point that these things have to go through Congress, clear the filibuster in the Senate, and so on. And while Matt frames this as the fault of candidates, I don’t really think it is, and all else being equal I think legitimate candidate, anyway, would very much like a campaign that was more reflective of the systemic reality. Rather, I think the problem is pretty much exactly what you see playing out right now; voters want a Presiddent to “lead,” and acknowledging the primacy of Congress doesn’t seem much like leading, especially since most Americans generally don’t much like Congress. So as long as a certain number seemingly legitimate candidates are willing to play along, everyone else is basically forced into the game as well. I mean, imagine the reaction John McCain would have gotten if instead of putting out policy white papers or trying to discuss healthcare or climate matters with Barack Obama he just acknowledged that it was highly unlikely he would be able to pass anything with a Democratic Congress. And that, I think, is te fault of a political media who, largely ignorant of the way American government works, plays along with the charade instead of putting on the brakes and trying to inform their viewers, because arguments between Presidential candidates that are presented as being crucial make for better television I guess.

by Brien Jackson

Ezra doesn’t quite go far enough here, in my opinion, but he does a pretty good job breaking down the shallowness of the progressive campaign against the backlash:

Indeed, last night, an activist friend angrily asked me why I thought I knew how to spend people’s money better than they did, which is exactly the attack I’d expected the right to launch. My friend is a supporter of Medicare-for-All.At the most basic level, Medicare-for-All and the House and Senate health-care reform bills are all coercive. Medicare functions through taxation. You pay your taxes, or you go to jail, or pay penalties. Affordability is dependent on getting the distribution of the tax burden right, which is no small task. Somewhat similarly, health-care reform functions through the mandate. You pay for insurance, or you pay a penalty (assuming that the monthly premiums would not be more than 8 percent of your monthly income, in which case you’re exempt from the mandate). Affordability is dependent on getting the distribution of the subsidies right, which is no easy task.

There is, of course, a big difference between forcing people to purchase a private product and forcing people to purchase a public product. But not, I think, as big a difference as some have implied. Many of my progressive friends warn of a backlash that will overwhelm health-care reform, but would spare a reform plan with, say, a public option. That doesn’t make sense to me. The comparison with Medicare-for-All, which I’d prefer to the current plan, is instructive. The idea that taxes do not cause backlash is belied by the past 30 years of American political history, which are largely the story of one sustained anti-tax backlash.

That last point, I think, is pretty important. The campaign against the mandate is ostensibly built upon two premises, the first being that they’ll be a political disaster. And while that may be true, there really isn’t any obvious corrollary to make one draw the conclusion that the inclusion of more public insurance options would make that any better, nor even that a full blown single-payer plan would be any better. As Ezra points out, there isn’t any obvious reason why a tax regime would necessarily be structured perfectly to achieve affordability for most people, at least any more than the mandate with subsidies and exemptions does, or at least could. And it really isn’t clear why a populace that has shown itself to be anti-tax to the point that even unions and some feminists have raised objections to the healthcare reform bill over taxes on unusually expensive insurance plans and a 5% tax on elective cosmetic surgery procedures would assuredly be more open to a system that achieved universality through taxes and direct spending than the mechanisms being proposed.

The second objection from the left is that the mandate represents a massive giveaway to corporations (I’ll have more on this so-called corporatism later). And while this may be true enough, the new found anti-corporate streak rings a bit hollow, to say the least. Keith Olbermann has been a bring proponent of it, and he’s spread his thoughts from the perch of his television show on MSNBC, a network owned by General Electric. And so far as Markos, Jane Hamsher, and Arianna Huffington go, they certainly don’t seem to have much of a problem appearing on those corporate television networks to promote their anti-corporate message. Beyond the superficial silliness of the messengers though, the message itself doesn’t really make much sense. While in a general sense I agree that, all else being equal, it’s a good idea to not take public money and give it to corporations, how exactly does one do healthcare reform without giving corporations any money? Even if we expand Medicare to everyone, the payments Medicare makes go to profit-drive doctors and corporate hospitals and other providers. If we somehow manage to construct an NHS style socialized medicine regime, payments will still be made to corporations that manufacture medical devices and pharmaceuticals. So unless you’re proposing we nationalize literally every aspect of the healthcare industry, the ultimate effect of healthcare reform is going to be to redistibute some public money to some corporation in the healthcare industry at some point.

More broadly than this, the aspect of the mandate debate I’ve found most troubling is the way in which those opposed to it have largely decided to just ignore its policy implications. To sum it up briefly, if you’re seeking to bring more sick people into the insurance pool, you also need to guarantee their will be healthy people in the pool over which to spread costs. If healthy people opt out, or see their incentives realigned by guaranteed access once they get sick, then you’re just spreading the cost amongst sicker people, which will have the effect of making the cost of insurance prohibitively high. This has been explained a number of ways by a number of places by a number of people, and for the most part it appears those arguing against the mandate just aren’t interested in hearing it. It wasn’t that long ago that people like Huffington and Hamsher were proud to be a part of the “reality based community” and were proud to listen to wonks on policy matters, but now that the center-left is back in political power and George Bush has exited the stage, they’re apparently just not interested in any policy explanations that don’t serve the conclusions they want to reach. Other mainstream progressives, bloggers, activists, or otherwise, need to recognize this, as well as its implications, and figure out what it means for broader progressive goals.