Hitler’s Lost Army
September 28th, 2006Let’s start this off with a bit of light humor. Bruce Reed’s latest blog entry in Slate’s The Has-Been is out, and it’s a look at how Republicans can overcome Democratic ineptness and still lose the mid-terms. As usual, Reed manages to be hilarious and brilliant: the Jon Stewart of the Blogosphere.
Fail-Safe: As Jacob Weisberg explained last week, a growing chorus of conservative pundits has decided Republicans would be better off losing the midterm elections. This widespread conservative death wish casts new light on the Bush record. All these years, we’ve assumed Bush was running the country into the ground as a matter of principle. But perhaps his administration’s penchant for failure is just another way of pandering to the defeatist conservative base.
Conservatives say they want to lose, but can they pull it off? Republicans may have the desire, but can they overcome Democratic strategists’ experience and expertise? To be sure, Republicans have worked hard to lay the groundwork for a big defeat. But national elections are rarely lost solely on the merits. A losing campaign needs a losing game plan. In that regard, Republicans already seem to have stolen a page from the 2000 to 2004 Democratic playbook. In today’s world, it’s too risky to rely on a single bad strategy to lose an election. Campaign strategists need a fail-safe backup plan in case something goes wrong and the original losing strategy has to be abandoned.
This year, the Republicans are running three reasons to defeat them: 1. Raise the President’s profile. George W. Bush has been more visible of late, which is a clear and obvious mistake reminiscent of 1994, for Clinton. 2. Tell the public that George W. Bush is still in charge of the Senate, and moderation is only allowed on a case-by-case basis, but that otherwise, common sense will not prevail and Republicans will be pander bears. See Senator Frist’s immigration bill rebirth. 3. Allow the Congress to do-nothing. Easily said, easily done, of course, and then he finishes,
Of course, if their party fails to lose this fall, conservatives will be quick to blame Democrats. But by fighting back, running hard, and offering an alternative, Democrats are trying to help Republicans take a beating in November. Conservatives are right to put their foot down: If Republicans can’t lose this year, they ought to find a new profession.
Now, I’d like to talk about the most recent controversy in the news, that being George W. Bush’s partial declassification of the National Intelligence Estimate on whether or not terrorism has been exacerbated by the War in Iraq. The first thing about this that bothers me is that it took this “official” confirmation to set off a media frenzy. It’s been said plenty of times, by the State Department CIA and politicians, that Iraq has set off terrorists everywhere and provided a fertile feeding ground. Let’s look at the report a little more, however, by first taking a look at the TIMEpiece on it.
TIME’s stance on the piece is that it offers a little bit of everything for everyone, and that’s about true, although it’s very misleading. Ultimately, I think this report is a wash, as it’s all been said before and in stronger words, too, but TIME thinks this is a positive, as the report essentially states, “If we win the War in Iraq; things are very good in the fight against terror because we deal a blow against extremists. If we lose, which we are, terrorists have a new recruitment device and training center.” Any Republican who takes solace in this simple knowledge is silly. If we win, of course, things are good; the point is that we’re not, and it doesn’t look like we’re raising a victory flag anytime soon. To use the TIME logic on this: if George W. Bush happens to become a Harry Truman-George Washington hybrid in the coming years, instead of the Warren Harding-Jimmy Carter-Lyndon Johnson mix that he currently is, he’ll be considered a good, successful President.
Simply put, the TIME report is not good, and spinning it otherwise is illogical, as demonstrated in the prior paragraph. That isn’t the only criticism I have of the piece, however.
That isn’t the only problem I have with the article.
Bush responded hotly to the news accounts, saying during an East Room appearance on Tuesday: “Here we are, coming down the stretch in an election campaign, and it’s on the front page of your newspapers. Isn’t that interesting? Somebody has taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes.”
Isn’t it interesting that the man who sent Porter Goss to the CIA for the purpose Honor Killing and purging is talking about the politicization of intelligence? How about the fact that this man, who made it okay for the Vice President to declassify any intelligence he wants to just by mentioning it to someone (likely to cover them when they let something “slip” to a reporter). The hypocrisy aside, I think this column, which is the President’s stance on intelligence without the Bushian moron-speak, is right on.
There are some people calling for total declassifications of intelligence relating to Iraq and, pre-emptively, Iran, and I think these people are foolish. Intelligence analysts must be able to present their opinions free from political pressure from the White House and from the media. Given that today’s journalists can’t help but turn everything into Hitler’s Lost Army, it would be a mistake for intelligence analysts to ever make significant, consistent (in terms of leaks over a period of time) releases to the media so as to “help bolster public opinion.” Republicans have erased the CIA’s trust in the White House, this White House: it’d be brutal to make them fear the reporter, too, because the CIA should always be able to leak to a reporter if they have to, but not because the press demands it. You know what I mean?
Some things are secret for a reason, and the CIA should not be transparent like the Department of Commerce should be because otherwise, the press will turn their leader into Pinochet and their secrets into a mockery and their work into an impossibility.