Republicans aren't the only ones caucusing tonight...photos (updated)

You can watch TV to see what's going on at the Iowa Republican caucuses. But they're not the only ones gathering tonight. Here are some pictures I picked up from the OFA Iowa twitter feed (will update if more are posted).

While we're waiting for the Iowa results...

For all of those "Romney is inevitable" folks:

Tea Party Nation’s Judson Phillips appeared on Monday’s Martin Bashir and boldly declared, “The Tea Party will never rally behind Mitt Romney.”

“Really?” host Martin Bashir exclaimed. “Never?!”

“Never!” Phillips reiterated. “I think I told you this before, we’ve done surveys on our site where it shows one third to one half of the Tea Party members will not vote for Mitt Romney if he is the nominee in the general election...

Phillips later said as the race goes on, we will see “this coalescing and it will be around Newt Gingrich. It will happen. Eventually it will send Mitt Romney to the showers.”

If a third to a half of teapartiers will NEVER vote for Romney in the general election, maybe that's who we should be rooting for tonight.

Whateva...

The latest whack-a-mole

After tonight, we'll finally see the end of 24/7 news coverage in Iowa and go on the 24/7 news coverage in New Hampshire. All of that is designed to have us on the edge of our seats over who the Republicans will nominate as their presidential candidate. As one after another not-Romney pops up - only to be taken down - its been a somewhat entertaining battle to watch.

But I'm sooooo ready to be over it. Trying to keep up with all the stupid things these candidates are saying would take more than 24/7 blogging. And I'm just not interested in whacking every mole that pops its head up for a few minutes. When we finally have an identified candidate - whoever it is - their record against President Obama will come to light and that's when the real fun starts. Because none of them are going to look good in that picture.

I suppose that some pundits share my feelings and that's why they come around to "Romney-the-inevitable." But as I've said before, until I see that 75% of Republicans who are wary of him begin to get on board, I'm not ready to go there.

So Santorum is the latest whack-a-mole that has surfaced. Al Giordano thinks he might win Iowa. That sounds like a pretty good prediction to me seeing as how it was only 4 years ago that a little-known Senator organized his ass off there and took out the "inevitable" establishment candidate. CNN is reporting that Santorum's fundraising is soaring after his recent poll numbers. Remind you of anyone?

Its pretty easy these days to call New Hampshire for Romney. But as I said before...then we're on to South Carolina where the Governor, Nikki Haley, is taking a lot of heat for her Romney endorsement. That 75% keep telling us that they will NOT go quietly into the night.

Some of you have probably heard that yesterday Santorum threw out the dog whistle and picked up the bull horn.

He talked about how Iowa is going to get fined if more people don’t sign up for Medicaid and then said, "They're pushing harder and harder to get more and more of you dependent upon them so they can get your vote. That's what the bottom line is. So I don't want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else's money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for themselves and their families."

(Emphasis mine)

But lets also remember that Santorum is the so-called "Christian" who believes that poor people should suffer.

During a town hall meeting in Ottumwa, Iowa Friday afternoon, Rick Santorum argued that Americans receive too many government benefits and ought to “suffer” in the Christian tradition. If “you’re lower income, you can qualify for Medicaid, you can qualify for food stamps, you can qualify for housing assistance,” Santorum complained, before adding, “suffering is part of life and it’s not a bad thing, it is an essential thing in life.”

I'm still searching through my New Testament to find the time when Jesus saw the hungry, homeless or sick and simply told them that suffering was good for them. Can anyone point me to where that happened?

This is the passage that keeps coming to my mind.

Then the king will say to those good people on his right, 'Come. My Father has given you great blessings. Come and get the kingdom God promised you. That kingdom has been prepared for you since the world was made. You can have this kingdom, because I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was alone and away from home, and you invited me into your home. I was without clothes, and you gave me something to wear. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you came to visit me.' "Then the good people will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and give you food? When did we see you thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you alone and away from home and invite you into our home? When did we see you without clothes and give you something to wear? When did we see you sick or in prison and care for you?' "Then the king will answer, 'I tell you the truth. Anything you did for one of the least of these my brethren, you also did for me.'

Ending the indefinite war

I have been arguing for awhile now that the civil liberties issues so many talk about in criticizing Obama stem from the idea of an indefinite war on terror. For example, detaining combatants on a battlefield indefinitely until hostilities are over has been an accepted practice of war in modern times. Those things turn into civil liberties issues only when the war itself is deemed to be indefinite.

The more I watch President Obama operate, the more I am convinced that he is working towards ending that indefinite war. First of all, he ended the rhetoric of Bush's global war on terror (GWOT) and instead has talked only about defeating al Qaeda. Next, he ended the war in Iraq. Now, as we're getting ready to leave Afghanistan, he's negotiating with the Taliban. Here's Vice-President Biden talking about why that's important.

We were in Afghanistan for two reasons. One is to deal with, curtail, begin to dismantle, and eventually eliminate al Qaeda. Not only from being able to come back into Afghanistan and control Afghanistan but from the region—to decimate al Qaeda...

The second reason for us to be in Afghanistan was to make sure that a country with tens of millions of people and nuclear weapons called Pakistan did not somehow begin to disintegrate or fall apart. That is a hell of a lot tougher job...

That is part of what the reconciliation process is about right now. We are not just deciding that all we are doing is supporting a government and building up their military capability. We’re engaged in a reconciliation process. Whether it will work or not is another question. But we are in a position where if Afghanistan ceased and desisted from being a haven for people who do damage and have as a target the United States of America and their allies, that’s good enough. That’s good enough. We’re not there yet.

Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us. So there’s a dual track here:

One, continue to keep the pressure on al Qaeda and continue to diminish them. Two, put the government in a position where they can be strong enough that they can negotiate with and not be overthrown by the Taliban. And at the same time try to get the Taliban to move in the direction to see to it that they, through reconciliation, commit not to be engaged with al Qaeda or any other organization that they would harbor to do damage to us and our allies.

Here is some information on what is happening in those negotiations.

In return for the release of prisoners still held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, the lifting of United Nations sanctions on its leadership and its recognition as a legitimate political group, the Taliban was expected to agree to sever its links to transnational organisations like al-Qaeda, end violence and eventually share power with the Afghan government.

The Taliban are not our enemies. But they were the ones that gave al Qaeda sanctuary and the ability to plan/carry out their attacks. Now Afghanistan has a government (weak and corrupted though it is) that could be put at risk by the Taliban when we leave. If the Taliban can be convinced to break ties with al Qaeda and negotiate a role with the Afghan government, that, along with the way al Qaeda has been weakened militarily, could open the way for an end to this war we've been waging since 9/11.

No one is saying the negotiations are a sure thing right now, nor are they predicting success. But to me, this is an incredibly big story that is basically flying under the radar right now. I suspect the WH is ok with that due to the sensitivity involved in working this out - not to mention the holy hell that would come from conservatives about it.

But as we talk about issues like NDAA, this is the backdrop we need to be aware of. The Obama administration will first have to traverse the dangerous waters of negotiations involving the Afghan government and the Taliban. IF they can be successful, the stage will be set for convincing the American people (and their representatives in Congress) that the war we all bought in to as indefinite is, in fact, over.

That's the long game I'm convinced President Obama is playing...and the one where we'll need to be prepared to have his back.

P.S. For more on this, read Winter Truce Talks with the Taliban at Osborne Ink.

Schlesinger on the Professional Left...in 1949

I was not the only one to think about Reinhold Niebuhr in response to Glenn Greenwald's latest article. Luke Brinker made the same connection over at "Politics Not as Usual" in a post titled Manicheanism and the American Left.

But in addition to Niebuhr, Brinker uses a fascinating quote from Arthur Schlesinger.

The weakness of impotence is related to a fear of responsibility – a fear, that is, of making concrete decisions and being held to account for concrete consequences. Problems are much simpler when viewed from the office of a liberal weekly than when viewed in terms of what will actually happen when certain ideologically attractive steps are taken.

Too often the Doughface really does not want power or responsibility. For him the more subtle sensations of the perfect syllogism, the lost cause, the permanent minority, where lie can be safe from the exacting job of trying to work out wise policies in an imperfect world.

Politics becomes, not a means of getting things done, but an outlet for private grievances and frustrations. The progressive once disciplined by the responsibilities of power is often the most useful of all public servants; but he, alas, ceases to be a progressive and is regarded by all true Doughfaces as a cynical New Dealer or a tired Social Democrat.

Having renounced power, the Doughface seeks compensation in emotion. The pretext for progressive rhetoric is, of course, the idea that man, the creature of reason and benevolence, has only to understand the truth in order to act upon it.

But the function of progressive rhetoric is another matter; it is, in Dwight MacDonald’s phrase, to accomplish “in fantasy what cannot be accomplished in reality.” Because politics is for the Doughface a means of accommodating himself to a world he does not like but does not really want to change, he can find ample gratification in words. They appease his twinges of guilt without committing him to very drastic action.

Thus the expiatory role of resolutions in progressive meetings. A telegram of protest to a foreign chancellery gives the satisfaction of a job well done and a night’s rest well earned. The Doughfaces differ from Mr. Churchill: dreams, they find, are better than facts.

Progressive dreams are tinged with a brave purity, a rich sentiment and a noble defiance. But, like most dreams, they are notable for the distortion of facts by desire.

I have nothing to add. But given the fact that Schlesinger wrote this in 1949, it makes me think of this quote from the magnificent Molly Ivins.

Things are not getting worse; things have always been this bad. Nothing is more consoling than the long perspective of history. It will perk you up no end to go back and read the works of progressives past. You will learn therein that things back then were also terrible, and what's more, they were always getting worse. This is most inspiriting.

I'd like to introduce Glenn Greenwald to Reinhold Niebuhr

I had a very strong reaction to reading Glenn Greenwald's latest article titled Progressives and the Ron Paul Fallacies. But if you'd like a raging post about the evils of Greenwald, I'm afraid you're going to have to look elsewhere. My plan is to try to respond reasonably - whether or not he would be inclined to do so in return. I'll also fall short of tackling everything Greenwald said that I disagree with. Instead, I have a particular point to make and for today, I'll stick with that.

It was when I got to the part in Greenwald's article where he extolled a piece written about Ron Paul by Matt Stoller that I thought of Reinhold Niebuhr.

As Matt Stoller argued in a genuinely brilliant essay on the history of progressivism and the Democratic Party which I cannot recommend highly enough: “the anger [Paul] inspires comes not from his positions, but from the tensions that modern American liberals bear within their own worldview.” Ron Paul’s candidacy is a mirror held up in front of the face of America’s Democratic Party and its progressive wing, and the image that is reflected is an ugly one; more to the point, it’s one they do not want to see because it so violently conflicts with their desired self-perception.

He then goes on to list all of the "heinous" things President Obama has done - mostly in his execution of the battle against al Qaeda.

I won't claim to be an expert on Niebuhr's philosophy, but I did spend some time reading both his work and things that were written about him when I heard about this exchange between then-Senator Obama and David Brooks.

Out of the blue I asked, “Have you ever read Reinhold Niebuhr?”

Obama’s tone changed. “I love him. He’s one of my favorite philosophers.”

So I asked, What do you take away from him?

“I take away,” Obama answered in a rush of words, “the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away ... the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism.”

Niebuhr was a Christian theologian/philosopher who lived from 1892-1971. He began his career as a pastor committed to the social gospel and pacifism. The rise of fascism and the events of WWII caused Niebuhr to question these commitments in a way that holds the tension between "the world as it is" and "the world as we want it to be.'

The most cogent description of this tension comes from Wilfred M. McClay who surrounds it with alot of verbiage that is steeped in religion. As someone who doesn't hold to the Christian faith, I find this a powerful statement when I exchange the word "Christian" with "liberal" or "progressive."

Niebuhr dismissed as mere “sentimentality” the progressive hope that the wages of individual sin could be overcome through intelligent social reform, and that America could be transformed in time into a loving fellowship of like-minded comrades, holding hands around the national campfire. Instead, the pursuit of good ends in the arena of national and international politics had to take full and realistic account of the unloveliness of human nature, and the unlovely nature of power. Christians who claimed to want to do good in those arenas had to be willing to get their hands soiled, for existing social relations were held together by coercion, and only counter-coercion could change them. All else was pretense and pipedreams.

This sweeping rejection of the Social Gospel and reaffirmation of the doctrine of original sin did not, however, mean that Niebuhr gave up on the possibility of social reform. On the contrary. Christians were obliged to work actively for progressive social causes and for the realization of Christian social ideals of justice and righteousness. But in doing so they had to abandon their illusions, not least in the way they thought about themselves. The pursuit of social righteousness would, he believed, inexorably involve them in acts of sin and imperfection. Not because the end justifies the means, but because that was simply the way of the world. Even the most surgical action creates collateral damage. But the Christian faith just as inexorably called its adherents to a life of perfect righteousness, a calling that gives no ultimate moral quarter to dirty hands. The result would seem to be a stark contradiction, a call to do the impossible.

Niebuhr influenced many of the people who went on to influence President Obama, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and Saul Alinsky On the later:

Alinsky was a self-described radical and Niebuhr was a devout Christian but neither man was an idealist. Both tended to see morality as a kind of cover story used by groups who, in Niebuhr's words, "take for themselves whatever their power can command." That doesn't mean that these two men believed that nobody had the ability or will to change the world for the better. However, anyone who attempts to do so better be ready to get his hands dirty.

So it should come as no surprise that you can hear the echos of Niebuhr in Obama's acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize.

We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.

I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there's nothing weak -- nothing passive -- nothing naïve -- in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.<...>

So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another -- that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier's courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause, to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.

So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly inreconcilable truths -- that war is sometimes necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly.

You see Glenn, the tension Stoller thinks is generated by Ron Paul is present in any liberal who has actually had to get their hands dirty with the work of facing down the realities of power, coercion and evil in the world. We don't need Paul for that.

What folks like you seem to be saying is that we should just ignore those realities and live in some kind of naive liberal/libertarian nirvana. In doing so, you demonstrate your own lack of experience with taking on the world as it is and simply pine for the world as you want it to be.

To tell you the truth Glenn, I've struggled with some of the decisions President Obama has made. When I watch him closely, what I see is that he has struggled as well. When you take on the mantle of leadership and all of the responsibilities that go with it - that's part of the price you pay. As Niebuhr pointed out so well, there aren't any clean hands around when it comes time to take on those very real challenges. Your options rarely come without some kind of collateral damage. An example would be the question of whether or not the US should take military action in Libya or watch a potential massacre.

After 9/11 President Bush declared a "global war on terror" and invaded two countries killing hundreds of thousands of people. Almost immediately after assuming office, President Obama rejected the GWOT and instead began to work on getting us out of those two wars. And yet he obviously supported the idea that it remained important to defeat al Qaeda as the perpetrators of 9/11 and other acts of terrorism. It is true that the drone strikes he's used against them in Pakistan and Afghanistan have killed innocent people (including children). But I have to wonder if you can imagine a humane way of taking on an avowed enemy like al Qaeda. Or, as I said before, should we just run the risk of ignoring them in search of our liberal/libertarian nirvana?

These are exactly the kinds of choices Niebuhr was talking about that President Obama faces every day. And yes, I struggle with them. There is no comfort to be found in any of this. It reminds me of a quote from another philosopher, Bertrand Russell:

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

Niebuhr would tell us that facing the world as it is involves giving up the comfort of surety and learning to live with the tension, doubt and collateral damages of our choices...all while remaining resolute in our commitment to our ideals. To me, that is the true calling of any liberal.

POWER

I thought I'd make my 2012 inaugural post a repeat of my favorite from 2011. Some things are worth hanging on to.

All power comes from the barrel of imagination.
Al Giordano, February 10, 2011