Hitting the Fan

Draino is still on assignment and even though poor George Bush is on vacation, he can't escape the expoding turd blossoms all around him. Both of these articles are from yesterday's Boston Globe. It's finally happening fellow liberals and misguided conservadroids! The public (and the Conglomerate Media) are finally coming around to the fact that this administration is not only incompetent but downright evil. And while we ALL mourn the death, division and pain that has beset the families of this country, vindicated liberals deserve a well-earned moment to sit back and watch the fireworks. We have waited five LONG years but patience and Karma are beautiful things, don't you think? READ ON!

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Battle fatigue is setting in

The public has grasped that the Bush Iraq policy has made the Middle East more dangerous for US armed forces and US national interests. This reality is widely sinking in, except to a narrowing circle of Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and a compliant George W. Bush.
Not a day goes by without some surprise attack in Iraq showing the insurgency gaining, not on the run. Civil society for ordinary Iraqis is getting more dangerous, not more orderly. The enterprise of ''nation-building," an idea ridiculed in 2000 by candidate Bush, has become the disaster he warned about. It took the founders of the United States more than a decade from the failed Articles of Confederation to the 1789 Constitution. The Iraqis, far more divided and under siege, face unrealistic orders to complete their process in a few weeks.
Voters have no appetite for an indefinite occupation. The most recent CNN-USA Today Gallup poll shows Americans consider the war a mistake by a 54-44 percent margin, and 56 percent want some or all US troops withdrawn.
Bush's inept response to Cindy Sheehan's encampment outside his ranch has begun to catalyze the administration's worst nightmare -- a revived antiwar movement led by the loved ones of GIs killed and Iraq veterans themselves.
But now what? Many legislators of both parties, such as Democratic Senator Joe Biden and Republican John McCain, who have been scathingly critical of the war but can't quite bring themselves to discuss withdrawal, also insist that America must ''stay the course,"
This is muddled thinking. There are exit strategies more likely to produce tolerable stability than the present course.
One approach, promoted by the former minister of electricity in Iraq's interim government, Aiham al-Sammarae, would pursue a political solution to what is plainly becoming a civil war. Sammarae, long a prominent opponent of Saddam Hussein, has conferred with a range of US officials. He proposes bringing in most excluded groups that now fuel the armed insurgency.
Sammarae ties this process to a phased US withdrawal, a reduction of Iranian influence, and a political settlement, with major armed resistance groups participating, except the minority of foreign Jihaddists and terrorists of the al-Zarkawi network, who would then be politically isolated.
As part of a stabilization process, US troops could be replaced by a multinational constabulary and reconstruction force. The US occupiers, now a resented lightning rod, would exit Iraq, sparing thousands of young Americans likely to be killed or maimed, and reducing the level of daily violence menacing Iraqis.
In the meantime, there is growing independence among GOP members of Congress who got a wakeup call last month when Democrat Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran highly critical of Bush, nearly won an upset special election in Ohio's most Republican congressional district. Republican Jean Schmidt won, 52-48, down from a 72 percent win in 2004 by incumbent Rob Portman, who stepped down to become US trade representative.
As Bush becomes a lamer duck by the day, Republicans now worry more about saving their own seats in 2006. Unlike Bush, they must listen to public opinion.
As support for withdrawal grows, so it grows in Congress. In May, five House Republicans, along with 123 Democrats, supported Representative Lynn Woolsey's amendment to the defense authorization bill calling on Bush to submit a withdrawal plan -- up from last January, when only 35 members of Congress, all Democrats, supported Woolsey's similar resolution. Woolsey plans hearings next month.
In the Senate, Republicans such as John McCain and Chuck Hagel have become more effective opponents of the Bush policy than their Democratic counterparts. The most prominent Democratic foreign policy spokesmen are fearful of seeming irresolute, and reluctant to embrace anything smacking of withdrawal.
A June op-ed column in The New York Times by Senator John Kerry criticized Bush, but proposed mainly better planning and training of Iraqis, and creation of a multinational force to secure Iraq's borders -- all smart variants on Bush's policy, but none likely to hasten America's withdrawal.
Public opinion is fast outflanking Bush's war. It remains to be seen which party will lead in cleaning up his mess.
Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect, can be reached at kuttner@prospect.org. His column appears regularly in the Globe.
© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.

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Guzzle gas, and pretend

GASOLINE IS over $2.50 a gallon, the death toll of American soldiers in Iraq is over 1,850, and what patriotic, heroic displays of sacrifice can we find on the American landscape?
Bigger garages. Bigger houses. New fuel economy standards that will omit the biggest cars. Hoo-aah.
Brave Marines we are. From the halls of McMansions to the steps of our SUVs, we fight our exurban battles, ripping up every living tree.
Next month will mark four years since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Four years is a time period often associated with sending children off to institutions of higher learning in the assumption they will become members of an enlightened citizenry.
But the four years since 9/11 have come and gone with no sign that the United States sees the light. As soldiers pay the ultimate price in Afghanistan and Iraq, we continue to be toy soldiers, the invulnerable warriors of consumption. No report of a real soldier dying from a roadside bomb, no administration assertion that fades into falsehood, not even fill-ups that hit $40 and $50 a tank has spurred us to question our schizophrenic nature.
For four years, Americans have waved flags and stuck ''Support the Troops" magnets on the backs of their cars. Such acts, of course, stem from sincere sentiments we all share for their safety. But we can no longer escape our responsibility in one of the most insincere wars in the nation's history.
We have allowed a president to send off the sons and daughters of the working class and the poor to invade Iraq, killing thousands of innocent Iraqi working class and poor along the way. As each day passes, the fact that no Osama has been flushed out, the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and the fact that there was never a tie between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 becomes not just Bush's responsibility but ours as well.
Americans probably know this deep down. It is almost as if we are binging to distract us from the needless killing. We build bigger subdivisions as far out as we can, no matter what it means in commuting time and $2.55 gasoline.
Even though the average size of the American family has shrunk, the average size of a new home has grown from an average of 983 square feet in 1950 to 2,330 square feet today, according to the National Association of Home Builders. The percentage of new homes over 2,400 square feet has zoomed from 10 percent in 1970 to 38 percent today. The percentage of new homes with two-car garages has grown from 39 percent in 1970 to 82 percent today.
In a New York Times feature this week about ''living large" in the exurbs, a sales representative joked with a family that was looking at a model home, ''Lots of places to hide, aren't there, boys?" It is mathematically impossible for the rest of the world to live like this. As the boys play hide and seek for a moment, the parents play out the fantasy that hiding from the reality of consuming a quarter of the world's energy and producing a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases is an all-American right.
Unfortunately, it is difficult for a populace to be enlightened if its leader keeps leaving it in the dark. President Bush, according to the Times, is planning to leave out mega-SUVs such as Hummers from new fuel economy standards, apparently to ease the competitive strain on Detroit, which has invested far more in selling gas guzzlers than foreign automakers. With the explosion of SUVs (trucks now account for 50 percent of light-duty vehicle sales), the nation's average fuel economy has been flat for a quarter century and has actually fallen slightly, from 22.1 miles per gallon in 1987 to 21 miles per gallon today.
It is now the responsibility of Americans to turn on the lights in the White House. It is understandable that the United States prefers presidents who enable our denial. The death of each soldier denies us that privilege. Supporting the troops just might involve rethinking what it means to have a ''Support the Troops" magnet on an SUV, and asking ourselves if we need that much room in the exurbs to hide from each other.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.
© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.