The recent immigration bill defeat has got me thinking a lot about what makes or breaks bipartisan legislation.  Clearly this bill was a prime example of a bipartisan compromise.  There were certainly parts of it that ran counter to my values.  Although I wasn’t a wholehearted backer, I realized that there were necessary compromises made.  Of course, neither side got exactly what it wanted but each side got enough of the elements that it wanted that it was willing to concede on others.  Isn’t this what compromise is all about?  In politics, not necessarily. 

In terms of what makes bipartisan legislation successful, this bill had many important elements.  It had the support of two icons of the different parties, Ted Kennedy and John McCain.  It also had the support of the President.  What’s more, the vast majority of the American people seemed to broadly support the major elements of the bill.  See this recent LA Times/Bloomberg poll on the issue.   It’s clear that most Americans see immigration as a major challenge for the country and that most Americans are also agreeable to the the types of compromises that the bipartisan supporters of this bill made.  (more…)

It is sad that the national (and ultimately national security) issue of the inappropriate and possibly illegal activities of Attorney General Alberto Gonazales has become another unnecessary victim of partisan rancor in Washington. By voting yesterday to block a no-confidence resolution, Senate Republicans seem to have put party loyalty ahead of the national interest. At a time when the United States is struggling with a domestic and international perception that we no longer support basic issues of rule of law, the cloud over Gonzales is increasingly harmful to our country’s position in the world. Perhaps it is time for the employees of the Justice Department to take matters into their own hands in order to protect and preserve our nation’s commitment to rule of law. A petition by justice department employees to be released to the press might read something like this:

As career members of the Justice Department, we respectfully call on Attorney General Gonzales to step down from his post. Our commitment to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of our country. By supporting the detention without due process of American citizens in Guantanamo, Cuba, and by inappropriately interfering with the work of U.S. Attorneys, Attorney General Gonzales has undermined that basic principle of our democracy. The replacement of Attorney General Gonzales with an individual better able to defend and protect our commitment to the rule of law would be an important step towards reestablishing perceptions of our government within the Justice Department, across the United States, and globally.

At a panel on “Energy, the Environment and National Security” at this morning’s Center for American Progress/Century Foundation Conference, America in the World, three distinguished panelists agreed on one unsettling point: Energy independence is bad.

Huh?

General Chuck Wald, former deputy commander of US forces in Europe, John Deutch, former Director of Central Intelligence, and Catherine Zoi, of the Alliance for Climate Protection, all said that energy independence is neither possible nor a worthwhile policy goal. Deutch said “energy independence is not a constructive idea,” and Wald proclaimed that “energy independence would be the worst thing to happen to America.” Each asserted that we will remain dependent on energy imports, and either expressly or implicitly identified energy independence with what they called “energy isolationism.”

Alright, I see their point. It’s not immediately clear that even the optimal combination of conservation and alternative energy technologies can keep pace with growing demands for energy, meaning we will continue to need energy imports to fuel the US economy. Cutting off foreign energy sources would, by that reasoning, make us less competitive, and more “isolated” in a negative sense. (more…)

Hmm, I wonder if Sen. McCain recalled Last man Standing, the 1996 movie, where Bruce Willis played “John Smith”, a wandering gunman who decides to play off both sides of a gang war that takes place in the violence-riddled town of Jericho, Texas, when he said this on ABC’s This Week yesterday:

McCAIN: (From videotape.) We must succeed and we cannot fail and I will be the last man standing, if necessary.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That sounds like an open-ended, unconditional commitment.  McCAIN: I’m going to support this strategy even if I’m the last man standing. Now, if this strategy fails, if we give it enough time, if it fails, of course, then other options have to be examined.

But wait, there’s more. McCain attributes motives to Al-Qaeda in Iraq that not even Dick Cheney attempts: 

McCAIN: But if they gain control of Iraq, they’ll be sitting on one of the world’s largest supplies of oil.

(more…)

This morning I attended an event sponsored by the Arms Control Association at the Carnegie Endowment, and it has prompted a series of conversations on energy and national security (including an earlier version of this post) that got me thinking about what I’ll call “the Al Gore dilemma.” By this last term, I refer to the uncomfortable reality that many of our most prominent leaders, most famously Al Gore, have trouble explaining the apparent inconsistency between their leadership on matters of conservation policy and their energy-intensive personal lifestyle choices. It cropped up even more explosively after the first democratic presidential debate, when the AP reported that the majority of the candidates, all of whom are fans of kicking the fossil fuel habit, arrived by private or chartered jet. Well, the most recent (and admittedly much lower profile) example occurred this morning.

Ellen Tauscher, of California’s 10^th Congressional District (also my home district), Chair of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, spoke at Carnegie on the importance of a defensive missile shield for all our NATO allies (not just ourselves), and the imperative to build it in a transparent, cooperative manner with the Russians. She also railed against Bush for abandoning soft power and diplomacy as US security tools, and called for extension of the 1991 START agreement, set to expire in 2009.

Frankly, she made some excellent points. (more…)

It’s interesting to see what ideas topped the Democrats agenda in their recent debate. In his first hundred days, Edwards said he would “travel the world” and “re-establish America’s moral authority” while Clinton and Obama said they would bring home U.S. troops from Iraq. I think the visions the candidates laid out is telling for where the Democratic party currently finds itself, a position caught between laying out a positive vision for the future and acknowledging the mistakes of the Bush administration. All of the candidates tried as much as possible to envision a new role for America in the world where our country would lead by example. Yet, when asked about their first 100 days, the candidates all ended up saying in one way or another that their top priority in office would be undoing the harm of the Bush administration.

While I am generally one who seeks positive approaches, even I must admit that the top priority for the next President in foreign policy should be to undo the Bush administration’s harm. All of today’s major global challenges –  Darfur, climate, poverty, terrorism – are hampered by America’s loss of legitimacy in the world. We must rebuild our credibility before we can begin to solve these problems. Many pundits seem to be disappointed that Democrats have focused so much on undoing Bush and so little on a positive future for the country, but I see the two as inevitably intertwined and the former as the necessary precursor to the latter. So, I enjoyed the debate myself and hope whoever is elected, Democrat or Republican, undoing Bush is the top priority on the agenda.

In Bushworld unsightly things, like reality, never seem to stick and linger. It is not just individuals that seem Teflon coated, like, say, former President Ronald Reagan, but their entire universe.

Consider today’s news. The Washington Post reports that widespread public pessimism over President Bush’s temporary troop buildup in Iraq, has left satisfaction with the overall direction of the country at its lowest point in more than a decade, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. 

Almost six in 10 Americans said they do not think the additional troops sent to Iraq since the beginning of the year will help restore civil order there, and 53 percent — a new high in Post-ABC News polls — said they do not believe that the war has contributed to the long-term security of the United States. 

Yesterday according to a U.S. military report released yesterday that U.S. and Iraqi troops have pushed insurgents and other fighters out of about a third of Baghdad’s neighborhoods under a three-month-old plan to pacify the city of 6 million people. In some parts of the city, military operations to gain control over contested areas have taken longer than projected before the Baghdad security plan started in February, both because of the number of U.S. and Iraqi troops available and the need to adjust to a constantly shifting insurgency.

Okay, plans never go as expected but at this rate the surge, which is now almost at its full projected strength, with just one brigade left to deploy, will never clear Baghdad by September, the date long seen as the make or break point for judging its success. (more…)

Ask and ye shall receive. That is you shall receive the duly expected answer to the duly predictable question. These are Washington talk shows after all. For example consider this little exchange on This Week on ABC between with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani: 

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: When I met with president Talabani on Friday, I asked what he would say to those Americans losing patience with Iraq.

PRES. JALAL TALABANI: I don’t blame them, we are an Iraqi government. We are committed toward benchmarks. We are committed to do something tangible within next weeks and months.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the government has been talking about meeting the benchmarks for some time. Members of Congress have said that if the Iraqi government doesn’t make progress on these benchmarks by September, they will withdraw their support, call for U..S. troops to start coming home.

TALABANI: I think they have right to worry, but with growing forces, without achieving success, it will be, in my opinion, against the national interests of the United States and Iraqi people. 

STEPHANOPOULOS: But how long will it take? Can these benchmarks be met by September?  ALABANI: Benchmark, I think most of it will be done to the end of this year.

(more…)

Over the weekend it was revealed that the United States was preparing a 20 billion dollar arms transfer to Saudi Arabia. Reaction has varied in Washington and in the blogosphere. Bush administration officials state that this transfer in necessary to balance out the increased influence of Iran in the region’s politics. Opponents of the deal on Capitol Hill argue that this deal should not go through unless the Saudi government officially denounces “terrorism and takes steps to prevent it”. This transfer is a sure sign that the Bush administration has abandoned its “Freedom Agenda” in the Middle East for old fashion balance of power politics. This return to Cold War style geopolitics will only hurt long-term American interests in the region and intensify anti-American sentiment among Muslims.

This deal with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries is another manifestation of the balance of power politics that the Bush administration said they were eschewing in favor a more enlightened Middle East policy. However, moves like this deal and providing weapons to Sunni insurgents who promise to fight Al Qaeda in Iraq mirror American aid policy during the Cold War. It was these kinds of policies that may have seen the short-term gain of Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, but ultimately led to the creation of Al-Qaeda and the ascendancy of Osama Bin Laden. By arming the ‘enemy of my enemy’, we helped spawn a generation of people who are now armed and bent on fighting America.

So now we are flooding Iraq with more weapons in a misguided policy to halt the sectarian violence and we are giving high-end military weapons to a country, by our own admission, has not done enough to prevent insurgents from crossing the border into Iraq. As William Arkin has pointed out, the sale of these weapons to Saudi Arabia, will lead to more American defense contractors living in the Kingdom to help maintain and operate the machinery. This increased American presence only adds ammunition (excuse the pun) to the extremists who use our ‘occupation’ of Muslim lands as a terrorist recruiting tool. So this policy not only adds weapons to the insurgents whom stoke the violence in Iraq, it also provides more fuel for anti-American sentiment and becomes another rallying point for those who seek to attack American civilians here in the homeland.

Our alliances with repressive regimes during the Cold War came with long-term consequences that we are only now dealing with. The United States must recognize that by repeating the same mistakes, we may end up with the same disastrous results. Now is the time to reverse this misguided policy of trying to set up a ‘green curtain’ around Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah (we can’t even do this correctly). A policy of engagement, rather than isolation, could help bring Iran into the international community and forgo the need for immediate balance of power politics. President Bush remarked that during the Cold War “years of pursuing stability to promote peace had left us with neither”. It is amazing that we are making the same mistakes again.