What's Really Going On, Part 1

They said it couldn't be done, but the Dash Brothers have been walking around in stunned silence, thanks to the increasingly tragic and increasingly surreal situation in Iraq.

"The hallmark of the Bush foreign policy has been a naïve radicalism married to an operational incompetence," writes Robert Kuttner in the November American Prospect. "A small clique with a preconceived blueprint took advantage of a national emergency and a callow president, blowing a containable threat into war while dismissing more ominous menaces. These people are out to remake the world, with little sense of risk, proportion or history."

Of course we've been saying all this for months, and as we've also said, one remarkable feature of this context is that the above analysis has quickly become the conventional wisdom among several if not nearly all of the Democratic candidates for president, as well as the established "liberal" or what's left of the Left within the ruling class, from Washington to Hollywood, the Nation magazine to Doonesbury. It took years for this kind of critique made by outsiders demonized as radical leftists to enter the public commentary of establishment liberals during the Vietnam sixties and seventies.

And if this analysis has any impact on the 2004 presidential election, we suspect political historians will refer to this past week as a key moment. That's because two sets of events happened almost simultaneously. One set was a series of almost incredible missteps and disasters for the Bushies.
Just hours before Bush himself was scheduled to get on the phone to heads of state of France, Germany, Canada and Russia, to pitch them on forgiving debt to Iraq and otherwise help the U.S. get out of this mess without going into bankrupt Depression, the Pentagon announced that major reconstruction contracts would be banned from going to companies in France, Germany, Canada and Russia. This carries the policy of preemptive destruction to new heights.

The fallout from this appalling act has already caused international furor, and will likely lead to incalculable consequences, probably in a number of small and subtle ways that will add up to real damage to U.S. internal security and interests in the world. But it may have greater consequences domestically and politically. There are lots of people supporting Bush in Iraq who don't have the resources to ignore consequences to themselves. The Bush government may feel free to plunge the country into massive debt, and strain society to the limit by sending thousands of National Guard weekend warriors to get picked off one by one in the Middle East, but American families will feel the real pain. Nobody except well paid ideologues are going to be happy that the U.S. is alienating allies who could help and share the burden. Now it will take a change of administration for that to happen.

Stories in the Boston Globe and elsewhere are already charging that this policy, ostensibly to reward Bush's allies among other nations, is more likely to reward only Bush's allies in U.S. business, because the countries excised from consideration are precisely the countries that have companies with the capabilities to compete for major contracts.

Shortly after this Pentagon announcement, another Pentagon office announced that Halliburton, one of the two U.S. companies to benefit most richly from the occupation of Iraq, has overcharged the government for gasoline. Every report mentions that Halliburton was headed by vice-president Cheney.

These reports hurt immediately because they say that things are not likely to get better in Iraq in the future. Other reports dramatized how wrong things are going right now. Besides the guerrilla war and terrorist bombings, the growing suspicion that more civilians are being killed and injured and the charges that information about all of this is being covered up, there was the report that between a third and half of the recently recruited new Iraqi army has quit. We assume this is going to set back the timetable for turning over security and so on to Iraqis.

That's the first set of events. The second set concerns the political opposition. Al Gore, whose timing was suspect in his own 2000 campaign, came up with a thunderbolt of timing and surprise. He unexpectedly endorsed the candidacy of Howard Dean for the Democratic nomination, before even the first caucuses in Iowa let alone the first primary in New Hampshire.

The endorsement by the man who won the popular vote in 2000 is politically powerful, but what's more important is the basis for it. Gore said it was because of Dean's position on foreign policy and the war in Iraq specifically. Until now, the zeitgeist was unsure what issue was going to be emphasized in the election, the war or the economy. Of course they are related and they will both be debated, and no one knows which will be more important to voters ten months from now. But Gore's endorsement put Iraq at the top for the political moment. He emphasized its importance by saying he endorsed Dean now because the issue is so important, Democrats need to be uniting behind one candidate with this message ASAP. And the events described above as the first set, all happened shortly afterwards, making Gore's move not only bold but prescient.

Dean had other good news this week, solidifying his position at the frontrunner. But even if another candidate emerges later, Gore's endorsement has set the bar. And if it happens, this week may have been crucial to ending the Bush reign in 2004.