Image via Wikipedia

Depending on who you ask, war is either too important to be left to Generals or Politicians.  In matter of fact, there is little distinction between the two save that, as General McChrystal learned yesterday, one can fire the other.  Barack Obama’s dismissal of General McChrystal from the Afghan war effort has been addressed as many things by the media: a case of injured pride, military discipline, even blatant partisanship.  It could well be any or all of these things but below all of that, the conflict between General McChrystal and President Obama comes down to a singular word: priorities.

Indeed, American Generals and Presidents have a long and proud history of not getting along well.  Peter Beinart of The Daily Beast made this point fairly brilliantly yesterday when he pointed out not just that the Obama/McChrystal dispute echoed the much more [in]famous falling out between Truman/MacArthur during the Korean War, but why and how.

Obama’s problem isn’t that McChrystal is talking smack about him. His problem is that McChrystal isn’t pursuing his foreign policy. McChrystal wants to “win” the war in Afghanistan (whatever that means) no matter what it takes. Obama believes that doing whatever it takes will cost the U.S. so much money, and so distract the administration from other concerns, that it will cripple his efforts to stabilize America’s finances and rebuild American economic power.

….

Truman didn’t just fire MacArthur because the general treated him with disrespect. He fired him because MacArthur wanted to do whatever it took to liberate the Korean peninsula, including bombing mainland China, whereas Truman came to realize that Korea must be a limited war, fought merely to preserve South Korean independence. In insisting that America’s Cold War strategy be the containment of communism, not the rollback of communism, Truman kept the pursuit of military victory from destroying American power.

Indeed, this conflict between military and political leadership stretches back through American history both before and after.  President Abraham Lincoln feuded constantly with his military leadership; after the battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg the President reportedly told General George B. McClellan (famous for his unwillingness to commit to battle with Lee) “if you don’t want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while.“  A century later, President John F. Kennedy would arrive at an equally antagonistic position with his military leadership due to the hawkish sensibilities of General Curtis LeMay who, Kennedy believed, sought nothing so much as to maneuver him into open war with the Soviet Union.

Barack Obama’s conflict with McChrystal is just the latest installment in this ongoing and contentious relationship between the military and its civilian Commander in Chief. Indeed, so universal is this conflict of interests that Americans can turn to two long-dead Germans to encapsulate the issue in two brief sentences:

“Politics is the art of the possible” – Otto von Bismarck

“War is a continuation of politics by other means” – Carl von Clausewitz

The President operates in a world that is fundamentally political and is therefore defined by the exchange of possibilities.  What can be done and what it costs to do it are the components on the day to day decisions made in the Oval Office.  Politics is a game of trade-offs and the sacrifice of one set of possibilities for another.  War is one such possibility and, as Clausewitz reminds us, an inherently political one.  Wars are fought to achieve political ends be they the preservation of the Union, the containment of Communism, or the stabilization of Afghanistan.  Viewed as such, limitations upon the commitment of the nation to a given conflict are logical.  Absent a truly existential threat to the survival of the country, there can be no political justification for unlimited sacrifice in pursuit of victory.

To those fighting the war, however, nothing less seems appropriate.  The men and women fighting for their country have already committed themselves to an unlimited sacrifice and it understandably rings hollow with them when their hand is stayed by political necessity.  Nonetheless, Clausewitz chose his words carefully.  Politics is not the continuation of war by other means; wars are fought for political reasons.  History shows that when war drives politics the results are catastrophic and perhaps for that very reason the drafters of the Constitution of the United States saw fit to ensure that the military answered to a political and civilian authority.

General McChrystal forgot that and the rest, as they say, is history.

Image by uscgd8 via Flickr

President Obama’s speech to the nation last night has been roundly panned in the media with everyone from Keith Olbermann to Sarah Palin dismissing it as signifying little but sound and fury.  Americans are upset about the 40,000 – 60,000 barrels of oil that are, daily, gushing forth into the gulf of Mexico.  With each passing hour, it seems, the leak itself grows worse and the spill grows more severe.

Obama has been lambasted for his failure to take control of the crisis, for his failure to involve international assistance, and for his failure to – quite simply – stop the leak.

And there can be no contest; Barack Obama has failed to do all of those things.

Yet, perhaps the question Americans should be asking is, did we really want or expect him to?

Control

Obama has failed to take control of the crisis and for this the right has vilified him.  Pundits call the spill  “Obama’s Katrina,” evoking memories of Federal inaction in the wake of the disastrous hurricane in 2005.  We see footage of oil exploding into the Gulf waters and the President gravely intoning that “We will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes,” and can not help but wonder what is actually being done.  The President seems inactive – supervisory at best – and largely removed from the day to day cleanup and containment operations.

Yet that is what the American people want — barely.  Gallup polling suggests that 49% of Americans think that BP should “continue to be in charge” of “the efforts to control the oil spill and its effects,” while 45% want the Federal Government to take charge.  Conservatives, not surprisingly, favor BP responsibility by the largest margin with 56% saying that BP should take the lead in the clean-up efforts while 61% of Liberals want the Federal Government to take charge.

Those numbers explain the lack-luster response the President received from left-leaning MSNBC, but suggest a partisan rather than pragmatic motive for Sarah Palin’s criticism of last night’s address.

Containment

Partisan or pragmatic, who can really blame the critics?  The simple truth is that Obama has failed to close off the leaking well.  5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico the wellhead is still pumping tens of thousands of barrels of oil a day into the murky depths.  Beneath the crushing pressure of more than 150 atmospheres – more than a ton per square inch – containment and collection efforts have failed and while BP’s relief well efforts inch closer by the day, Obama simply does not know how to stop the leak.

No one does.

There is a sense of impotent rage that comes along with viewing the video footage of that horrible inky blackness issuing forth into the Gulf Waters.  Americans are justifiably upset that the well has not been closed off and they have directed their ire at the President in large part because there is no one else – save BP itself, of course – to blame.  The American government is massive and powerful beyond measure and imagination and to see it rendered helpless by a broken pipe is infuriating.  Yet, despite the power and resources at his fingertips, there is really nothing Obama or anyone else can do.  BP’s relief wells are “Plan C,” after all, in the overall effort to stop and contain the leak and with their stock price plummeting nearly 50% since the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, one presumes that BP is fairly motivated to get the well under control.

Cooperation

Obama has failed to tap into the vast wealth of international aid and expertise in the cleanup effort.  Since the extent of the Deepwater Horizon disaster became known, the United States has received offers from assistance from around the world.  For the most part, those offers have been rejected.  In part, this is due to the Jones Act – or Merchant Marine Act – of 1920, a protectionist provision that keeps foreign owned, operated, or registered ships from operating domestically out of US ports.  While the Jones act can and has been selectively enforced – it was temporarily lifted during the response to hurricane Katrina – the Obama administration has made no moves to ease the restriction in light of the current situation.

This has angered a number of people.

Belgium and other nations have suggested that, should the US lift the restriction, European oil crews could make significant headway in the cleanup effort.  While a tempting offer, cleanup matters little so long as the well-head continues to spew oil into the Gulf.  Massive undersea plumes of oil defy conventional containment and the dispersant chemicals favored by the Europeans are as yet not certified for use in US waters.

Perhaps more important, however, is the economic argument.  As a result of the Deepwater Horizon disaster there is little fishing going on in the Gulf.  Tourism is nearly non-existent, oil drilling is suspended, and a host of other dependent businesses and industries sit idle.  Oil cleanup has become among the only industries still functioning along Gulf shores and with the United States still climbing out of the deepest recession in generations, the prospect of handing that industry and those jobs over to foreign workers seems foolish.

Conclusion

What then do Americans expect of their President?  The crisis in the Gulf is BP’s leak and BP’s responsibility.  There is no government A-team of oil crisis response specialists, no unobtanium shielded super-secret drill-ship that can stem the flow of oil.  The process of stopping, then containing, and then cleaning up this mess will be months, years, and decades in length and, for the time being at least, may prove the only surviving industry along the gulf coast for some years to come.  If Americans tuned in last night expecting to hear something different they are no doubt dissapointed and wish the President had some better news to report.

And if wishes were fishes they too would be covered in oil.

Image via Wikipedia

The folks over at Gallup have a new poll out this morning that indicates that the percentage of Americans who think of the Democratic Party as “too liberal” is within a percentage point of an the statistic’s all time high.

In the past two years, Americans have become increasingly likely to describe the Democratic Party’s views as “too liberal” (49%), and less likely to say its views are “about right” (38%). Americans’ views of the Republican Party, on the other hand, have moderated slightly, with a dip in the percentage saying the GOP is too conservative from 43% last year to 40% today, and an increase in the percentage saying it is about right, from 34% to 41%.

Gallup contrasts this 49% to the 50% figure they observed in 1994 on the eve of the now-famous Republican Revolution, the dramatic takeover of the Congress by a resurgent Republican Party lead by Newt Gingrich.

Doomsayers be warned, however, the fat lady has not yet sung for the Democratic Party’s chances in 2010.  The 1994 elections hinged on the GOP’s successful nationalization of that year’s congressional race.  Through a fairly brilliant bit of campaign strategy, the Republicans managed to transform hundreds of local races into one massive national race.  Using national narratives like the Contract with America, Republicans made the race about party rather than about the individual candidates and thus changed the dynamic of the election.

This does not happen often, however, and proof of that may be found in Congress’ approval rating.  Another Gallup article from 2007 provides a useful trend of Congressional approval ratings going back to the 1970s.  In the 40 years depicted, Congress has had a positive approval for three brief periods, most notably immediately following the 9/11 attacks.  Despite this, incumbency remains a significant advantage in Congressional elections because most Congressional elections are about the candidate rather than Congress itself and thus Americans can easily reconcile a dislike of Congress in general with a positive impression of their Congressperson.

Much the same sort of dynamic likely holds true for parties as well.  While Americans may view the Democratic Party as “too liberal” the vote they cast is generally not for a party but for a candidate.  Unless the GOP manages to fundamentally transform the 2010 race into a referendum on the Democratic Party, something they have thus-far failed to do, Gallup’s numbers will mean little come November.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Fifty years of Presidential coverage came to an end today as Helen Thomas stepped down from her position at Hearst, the second in her long and storied career as a White House correspondent.    Her retirement announcement comes on the heels of controversial comments she made during what The Hill describes as “a White House event on May 27 celebrating Jewish heritage.”

Thomas (in)famously opined that Israeli Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go back home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else.” 

A lot of people are, no doubt, very happy to see Helen Thomas go.  The Dean of the White House Press Corps has shown herself to be among Washington’s most vocal liberals and has used her position to demand answers to difficult questions from both the Bush and Obama administrations.  Yet, while American audiences have been quick to call commentators on the carpet for insensitive, racist, or otherwise inappropriate comments, perhaps Thomas’ unceremonious departure from political journalism should be cause for some media introspection.

Yes, Helen Thomas voiced a contentious and controversial opinion.  The Israel/Palestine question is among the most reliable hot-button topics in world politics.  Israel is among the United State’s closest allies and certainly Thomas’ comments ruffled some very important feathers.  Yet, it would be dishonest to pretend that the Israel/Palestine question is meaningfully resolved upon the world stage.

Every day that rockets cross the border between Gaza and Israel, every day that shells fall on Gaza or that Israel or Egypt interdict supplies bound for Gazan markets, the world is reminded of the fact that, for centuries, the land presently labeled “Israel” on our maps was once “Palestine.”  Treaties and colonial powers very literally created the Jewish Homeland by drawing lines upon a map and they did so without so much as a thought for the individuals, families, and people who had called those lands “home” since Roman times.

Helen Thomas expressed an opinion shared by billions of people all over the world.  She expressed that opinion crassly and perhaps without her customary degree of tact, but to pretend that her opinion is in some way aberrant or unacceptable is pathetic.  The United States is well served by an independent media that need not fear the consequences of making unpopular statements and presenting challenging ideas.

A journalistic legend has been forced to go quietly into the night over what is fundamentally a deeply main-stream, if unpopular, opinion; we are all a little less for that.

Image via Wikipedia

Back when Arizona passed it’s “Papers Please” anti-illegal-immigrant law a lot of writers, myself included, were fairly judgmental of the whole thing.  We saw it – and indeed still see it – as a thinly veiled attempt to criminalize being brown in the great state of Arizona.  Sure, you weren’t actually guilty of something unless you were actually in the country illegally, but the simple way in which the law was written encourages police to question and detain anyone who looks like they might be an illegal immigrant and in Arizona that pretty much means Latinos.

Arizonians were pretty upset by this sort of judgment and a lot of folks from that particular part of the country told me as much.  I was accused of passing judgment upon people, governments, and policies in which I have no meaningful investment.  I owed them, they claimed, the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe I did; maybe I didn’t; but I certainly don’t now.

A hat tip to Wonkette for pointing out the depths to which the people of Arizona are apparently capable of sinking.

A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school.

The project’s leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children’s ethnicity. But the school’s principal says the request was only to fix shading and had nothing to do with political pressure.

The “Go on Green” mural, which covers two walls outside Miller Valley Elementary School, was designed to advertise a campaign for environmentally friendly transportation. It features portraits of four children, with a Hispanic boy as the dominant figure.

R.E. Wall, director of Prescott’s Downtown Mural Project, said he and other artists were subjected to slurs from motorists as they worked on the painting at one of the town’s most prominent intersections.

“We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars,” Wall said. “We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics).”

…

Faces in the mural were drawn from photographs of children enrolled at Miller Valley, a K-5 school with 380 students and the highest ethnic mix of any school in Prescott.

[Blair] spearheaded a public campaign on his talk show at Prescott radio station KYCA-AM (1490) to remove the mural.

In a broadcast last month, according to the Daily Courier in Prescott, Blair mistakenly complained that the most prominent child in the painting is African-American, saying: “To depict the biggest picture on the building as a Black person, I would have to ask the question: Why?”

So, Arizonians, if you would like to know why millions of your countrymen are looking at you in slack-jawed outrage; if you’d like to know why Americans by the hundreds of thousands are boycotting your state; if you’d like to know what has lead the nation and indeed the world to judge you as petty, bigoted, and cruel you need look no further than Prescott Arizona and the white faces upon the mural outside Miller Valley Elementary.

The Geography of the Gaza strip makes blockading it easy. Image via Wikipedia

Israel’s boarding and seizure of the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, has sparked debate and outrage world wide.  Media, pundits, and politicians, despite a real lack of facts and hard information, have lept to alternately defend and condemn Israel, Turkey has withdrawn its ambassador, and Israel has urged sympathizers to its defense on internet forums.  As usual, when it comes to the always-contentious Jewish State, the entire world is just itching for a fight.

To quote a pragmatic, if fictitious, Scottish king: “Let’s not bicker and argue over who killed who.”

While shocking and certainly bad for public relations, the level of violence that Israel used to interdict the Freedom Flotilla is the least significant aspect of the story.  Far more important, particularly from an international standpoint, is the fact that Israel stopped the ships at all, thereby signaling a willingness to defend its blockade of the Gaza strip.  While the world is conflicted over the raid, the most concerning aspect of the story is what Israel’s blockade and its preservation could mean in the months to come. 

While the Turkish and Israeli accounts of the attack differ in many aspects, one central point is common to both: the Israeli military boarded the convoy in international waters.

International Waters and Military Commissions

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea defines two zones in which a state can legitimately interdict traffic: territorial waters and the contiguous zone.  Together, these regions represent a swath of ocean extending 24 nautical miles from a given country’s coastline.  Within that 24 mile perimeter, states may, according to the UN convention, stop and search vessels for a number of reasons; within 12 miles – within territorial waters – they have almost complete autonomy.

Outside 24 miles, however, international law mandates freedom of the seas and save for the regulation of very specific economic activities, sea traffic beyond 24 miles from the coast must be allowed to proceed unmolested.  Israel stopped and boarded the flotilla 40 miles from her coastline, well outside the 24 mile contiguous zone.

Generally, the boarding and seizing of of a ship under a foreign flag on the high seas is an act of piracy or war.  Since the IDF operates under the authority of a military commission from the state of Israel, its seizure of a Turkish ship would, ordinarily, constitute an act of war against Turkey.  Israel maintains otherwise, however, citing the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea. Mark Regev, a spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister, points out that “if you have a boat that is charging a blockaded area you are allowed to intercept even prior to it reaching the blockaded area if you’ve warned them in advance, and that we did a number of times and they had a stated goal which they openly expressed, of breaking the blockade. That blockade is in place to protect our people.”

In other words, Israel maintains that it has the right to board ships – even ships delivering humanitarian aid – because it maintains a blockade against Gaza and international law gives Israel the right to enforce that blockade.  Indeed, international law gives Israel more than the right to enforce it; it compels enforcement.  Per the 1865 treaty of Paris, a blockade is only legal if it is effective; if the blockading nation does not enforce interdiction the blockade fails and other nations are not bound to respect it.

A blockade thus stands on four pillars:the relative weakness of the opposing force, the geography of the blockade, the value of the thing blockaded, and the willpower to maintain it.  Israel holds the advantage in the first two categories.  Her own military might in conjunction with her strong alliance with the United States tip the scales of power strongly in her favor.  Moreover, Gaza’s geography and Egypt’s willingness to cooperate with the blockade mean that most of Israel’s work is already done for her; with Gaza hemmed in on three sides, Israel must merely patrol a tiny sliver of coastline immediately adjacent to her own.

Israel is disadvantaged on the latter two pillars.  Though Israel seeks to prevent weapons – particularly supplies for the construction of rockets – from entering Gaza, losses from Hamas rockets have never constituted a serious threat to Israel’s security.  Consequently the value of the thing being blockaded – rocketry supplies – is fairly small when weighed against the potential cost of blockading it.  This undermines the political legitimacy of Israel’s blockade and makes the enforcement of the blockade a potential liability for Israel on the world stage, particularly when the blockade is challenged.

Therein lies the fundamental problem with the Israeli blockade.  It is, ultimately, an act of brinksmanship and one that can and is being turned against Israel. Turkey has announced that more aid ships will follow and that they will be escorted by the Turkish Navy.  Israel thus finds itself in the unenviable position of having to fire the warships of a NATO ally or allow the blockade to fail, neither of which are particularly desirable options.  Firing on a NATO warship would constitute a clear and unequivocal attack upon a NATO signatory, thereby triggering Article 5 of the NATO charter and forcing the United States and most of Europe to choose between the Cold War alliance and their loyalty to Israel.  Allowing the blockade to fail would flood Gaza with supplies, including weapons and bomb making materials.  Neither outcome is one Israel will like.

In failing to allow the peaceful passage of humanitarian aid, Israel has set itself up for catastrophe.  Hamas knows this, which is likely why Israel’s offer to turn over supplies from the seized ships was so rapidly rebuffed.  Turkey also knows this; it called an emergency NATO meeting after Israel interdicted the flotilla and while NATO can turn a blind eye to the hostile boarding of a humanitarian vessel, an attack on a warship is another matter.

Image via Wikipedia

It has now been more than a month since the Deepwater Horizon disaster which killed 11 and began an ongoing ecological disaster a mile under the Gulf of Mexico.  Since then containment efforts on the spill have fallen flat.  Booms have failed, oil has contaminated miles of shoreline, and efforts to recap the well or stem the flow of oil have met with little or no success.  British Petroleum, despite admonitions from the EPA, continues to use toxic and potentially dangerous chemicals in its attempts to clean up the spill, while oil industry executives seemingly mock Congressional attempts to work out what went wrong and were on the rig.

Patience is staring to wear thin. 

Lousiana Governor Bobby Jindal, hardly an advocate of government intervention, feels it is time for Uncle Sam to step in and hold BPs feet to the fire.  At a recent news conference Jindal informed the press “BP is the responsible party, but we need the federal government to make sure that they are held accountable and that they are indeed responsible. Our way of life depends on it.”

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar gave voice to a similarly frustrated element in the Federal Government when he discussed “push[ing] BP out” of the oil cleanup effort but as Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen commented, “to push BP out of the way would raise the question of: Replace them with what?”

Allen is not wrong; the Federal Government lacks the expertise and equipment necessary to respond to an oil spill, but then again the Federal Government does not need those things; it can acquire them from BP.

This is the proverbial “nuclear option” governmental regulation; it’s been done before and it can be done again.  Back in 1952 then President Harry Truman issued executive order 10340, which nationalized the steel industry.  Truman issued the order to maintain steel production during the Korean War and and while the Supreme Court eventually ruled the seizure unconstitutional, it took a month for the fast-tracked case to reach that level.

A month is a long time.

One of the implicit powers of the Executive is that it has the power to – well – execute, to do.  Indeed, it is the only branch of government that actually does anything.  President Bush made famous use of this fundamental truth throughout the course of his Presidency, circumventing various laws and strictures about wiretapping American citizens and generally holding the axiom that it is better to ask forgiveness than permission.

Technically speaking, there is nothing that would prevent President Obama from doing much the same thing.  It could be political suicide, to be sure, and the Court would almost certainly read him the riot act a few weeks after the fact but the entire apparatus of BP’s oil cleanup operation could, at least for a month or so, be neatly swept into the hands of the Obama administration along with all of its specialized equipment and expertise.

So long as working conditions remain largely the same and pay stays stable, there is no reason to suspect a strike, as Truman faced when he nationalized the steel industry.

To be clear, this is almost certainly not going to happen.  Doing anything even remotely like this would be a political gamble of staggering proportions and would validate almost every paranoid and delusional fantasy the Tea Party and the Republican Right have concocted about Obama’s dreams of a socialist distopia.

But the possibility remains and that, in and of itself, is important.  BP may regard the Federal Government as a paper tiger and to a great degree that is true, but paper or not, that tiger has teeth.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

This morning’s New York Times headlines that Obama has reached a consensus with Congressional Democrats on the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the Clinton Era policy that allowed gays to serve in the military provided they didn’t act, look, sound, or seem gay. Congress will take up the measure later this week though, as the Times indicates “it [is] not clear whether the deal [has] secured the votes necessary to pass the House and Senate.”

It is entirely possible that the Democratic Party has gone out of its collective mind.

Repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is a worthy goal and an issue on which Obama campaigned; overturning the measure will repay the diligent work of a small but very active element of the Democratic base.  By almost any measure, however, this is the worst possible time to undertake such a fight.  By taking a stand on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell now, the Democrats are signing up for a beating at the hands of the GOP

The first blow will come this week.  If Congress takes up the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the next few days, almost all of the Democratic efforts to build up momentum on the bill will likely be lost.  Democrats will be counting on favorable media coverage like today’s New York Times article to help push the bill through committee and onto the chamber floors but if they lack the votes to get the bill passed before Friday, the long weekend will sap their momentum, focus, and energy.  By the time Americans start paying attention to the news again on Tuesday morning, 100 hours will have passed and the media and it’s attention deficit disorder will have moved on to another story.  At that point, Democrats will face a long and uphill battle on an issue that they fundamentally can not afford to lose.

And there will almost certainly be a battle. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted in February of this year shows Republicans opposed to the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell by 13 points.   Independents (and of course Democrats) favor repeal but Republicans looking to November will likely conclude that it will be a motivated base rather than a broad-based appeal to Independents that will see them through the mid-terms.  Consequently, the GOP will likely attempt to force a floor fight on the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, mimicking the ultimately unsuccessful but nonetheless politically advantageous Republican opposition to Healthcare Reform.

Memorial Day is the unofficial kick-off of the long summer campaigning season.  With the primaries behind them, candidates will use the summer to attend parades, shake hands, and generally see and be seen by their constituents in the bright summer sun.  Long days and warm nights make these summer months the ideal ones for candidates to present themselves to the voters and conservative candidates will be looking for issues on which to demonstrate their family-values bona fides.  Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is just such an issue.

Moreover, as the GOP begins addressing the issue directly and as more and more candidates work it into stump speeches the approval gap will likely narrow.  As with healthcare reform, concentrated media coverage and the unsavory nature of Congressional deal-making will mobilize a currently dormant opposition and motivate the Republican base while discouraging Democratic voters who will feel betrayed as lawmakers struggle to piece together a consensus bill that can survive a Senate filibuster.

The result will be a weakened and stripped down version of the already compromised Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal that leaves gay rights proponents dissatisfied and provides ammunition for Republican challengers in November.

Military history teaches that those who determine when and where a battle will be fought have a decisive advantage which can be exploited to great effect.  At Midway, Agincourt, and Yorktown brilliant commanders used geography and timing to trap and destroy what were often superior enemies yet controlling when and were the battle will occur is not an assurance of victory as Napolean and Pericles could attest… and as President Obama may be about to discover.

Image via Wikipedia

Thurgood Marshall once said that the Constitution of the United States, as originally drafted, “was defective from the start.”  As Marshall wound up a Supreme Court Justice, one is inclined to take him at his word, yet Republican opposition to President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States has brought Marshall’s critique back into the news.  “Does Kagan Still View Constitution ‘As Originally Drafted And Conceived’ As ‘Defective,’” the Republican National Committee asks.

The RNC is referring to Kagan’s quotation of Marshall in a 1993 article; they fail to mention, however, that Marshall found the document “defective” because the Constitution’s original text codified slavery and counted slaves to be 3/5th of a person.

Certainly the institution of slavery is among the great historical evils in which the United States participated and from our modern viewpoint the inclusion of slavery within the Constitutional framework is morally repugnant.  But the United States fought a civil war over (among other things) the issue of slavery for a reason and our present-day viewpoints exist largely because the Union won that war.

In 1787 there the only Civil War with which the founding fathers were terribly familiar was the Revolutionary one that they had just fought against the British Crown.  The institution of slavery was a matter of some contention amongst the men tasked with the second draft of American Democracy and though ultimately a compromise was reached, many of those who would back the Constitution as a blueprint for Democracy were displeased with the morally questionable middle ground.  As John Jay wrote in 1786, “It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished. The honour of the States, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused.”

Yet despite his misgivings on the issue of slavery, Jay proved among the most fervent supporters of the new Constitution, drafting Federalist Papers #2-#5 and #64.  Perhaps Jay saw a solution to the issue of slavery in the amendment process and hoped that, in time, the nation would come to abolish the institution verbosely codified in the document he fought so hard to make “the Supreme Law of the Land.”

One wonders if Jay might have agreed with Marshall, that the Constitution as drafted was intrinsically flawed and in need of amendment or if he would have argued that the possibility of amendment itself rendered the document redeemed or at least capable of redemption.  Indeed, had the RNC quoted Marshall in full their question would scarcely need asking.

“[T]he government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today.”

Yet that word “defective” remains problematic.  Without the three-fifths compromise and the codification of slavery it is doubtful that the US Constitution would ever have survived the Constitutional Convention, much less ratification by the states.  The greater political good and the construction of a democratic system of government both strong and flexible enough to survive centuries required, in the late 18th Century, significant compromise and a willingness to come together on a few issues at the expense of a host of contentious ones.

To modern eyes such a willingness to bend to one’s political opponents is almost unthinkable.  Present-day Americans have expressed time and again a preference for political leaders who are strong in their convictions, who reject compromise, and who fight for what they believe in.  All of those qualities are alternative ways of rejecting the sort of politics that made the drafting and ratification of the US Constitution possible in the first place.  Theodore Lowi once referred to American Democracy as an “Incomplete Conquest” yet that view has fallen out of political favor as the nation has become increasingly partisan.  Particularly on the right, the notion of compromise and concession in the name of political expedience have become cause for ideological outrage as seen in the reaction to Scott Brown’s (R-Mass) vote on Obama’s jobs bill and even Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Carly Fiorina over Chuck DeVore in the 2010 California Senate Race.

Given this political predisposition, Republican criticism of Kagan’s/Marshall’s critique of the Constitution as “defective” becomes even more puzzling.  Perhaps the RNC disagrees with Marshall for objecting to the codification of slavery or perhaps it finds fault with Marshall’s seeming rejection of the politics of compromise – a position the GOP has itself strongly advocated, even to the extent of proposing political purity tests for Republican candidates.

Far more likely, however, is the possibility that Republican strategists found an exploitable quotation and took it out of context to score political points and drum up the usual brand of ignorant outrage in the hopes of using Kagan as a cudgle against Democrats in November.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

If you’re over the age of 20 you can probably remember a time when the United States demonized some foreign nation for the way it handled law enforcement.  When my parents were children it was Nazi Germany.  The phrase “papers please” is still synonymous with overbearing totalitarian dictatorships to the extent that it was invoked by opponents of the Arizona immigration bill before the media noticed that oil was leaking into the Gulf of Mexico.  Americans spent the late 1930s and early 1940s imagining the jackbooted gestapo dragging victims away without trial or resource and comforting themselves in the notion that, here, in the United States, we have rights and liberties.

When I was a child it was the Soviet Union.  Like Nazi Germany, the specter of Soviet totalitarianism also lingers in American politics.  Hammers and sickles featured prominently on the signs held aloft by the Tea Party in opposition to President Obama’s healthcare reform legislation and, as we did during the second World War, Americans spent the Cold War imagining nighttime raids by Stalin’s KGB and the horror of being “disappeared” without trial or resource.

Younger Americans will remember the run-up to China’s inclusion in the World Trade Organization and the characterization of China’s police state as much the same as the Soviet one.  Americans wrung their hands over China’s human rights record and congratulated ourselves on our moral superiority just as we did with the Nazis and the Soviets.  Once again we comforted ourselves in the knowledge that such callous disregard for due process and justice could never take root in the American system, steeped as it was in the Enlightenment philosophy of our Founding Fathers.

We like to imagine our enemies as demons – as inhuman incarnations of wickedness, depravity, and evil.  We like to ascribe our enemy’s actions – those we deem barbarous anyway – to their inhumanity.  How quickly we forget that the people of Nazi Germany, of Soviet Russia, of Maoist China were and are people too: people who feared and worried, who believed their nation was engaged in an epic struggle against shadowy enemies within, hellbent on destroying their very way of life.

To the Nazis it was the insidious Jews that sabotaged the rise of the German state to greatness and betrayed the Kaiser to the allies in the First World War.  To the Soviets it was the Kulak and nefarious capitalist spies that threatened the peace and kept the national economy from reaching a long-promised communist utopia.  To the Chinese, western corrupted dissidents imperiled the peace and stability of the nation and undermined the march of progress.

And to the Americans it is Muslim terrorists – extremists who hate us for our very way of life – who lurk in shadows and strike without warning.

Like everyone else, the United States has its own bogyman – an over-hyped and much feared enemy of minimal consequence in whose name all manner of travesties and previously unthinkable compromises may be justified.  Since the arrest of the alleged Times Square Bomber, the pundits and politicians have lined up around the block to weigh in on the virtues and villainy of the American treatment of terrorists.

Or more accurately, alleged terrorists.

The protections in the United States Constitution extend, not merely to US Citizens but, in most cases, to all individuals within the territory of the United States and while nefarious legal arguments may be made for the treatment or mistreatment of prisoners picked up in foreign nations and held on imprisoned islands, the United States Constitution is, unquestionably, the supreme law of the land in, among other locations, JFK International Airport.

When national leaders like Senator John McCain, who condemned law enforcement officers for Mirandizing the alleged Times Square Bomber, and Senator Joe Lieberman, who plans to introduce legislation literally stripping citizenship and constitutional rights from those accused of joining a foreign terrorist network, set aside American notions of liberty, justice, and due process out of fear and populist jingoism, they would render the United States little better than vilified regimes she has set herself against for the last century.  While the causes of war and political opposition are many and varied, to some extent American blood was shed in Europe and – yes – in Vietnam in opposition to the politics of despotic fear so gleefully embraced by these two United States Senators.

Lieberman, at least and for all his failings, has no election to concern himself with this November and so to some degree his willingness to reduce American Citizenship to a mere legal formality can be attributed to his own well meaning, if misguided, views on national security.  McCain, however, is engaged in a bitter primary battle for his seat and has shown himself willing to lunge to the right without thought for the ramifications of his mercurial politics.  Lieberman may be wrong, but McCain has truly sold his soul; what sort of man imprisoned without rights and tortured without resource, would wish such a fate on another?