Molly Ivins Calls Progressives To Arms

I don’t know about you, but I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there, and that includes Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Damn straight. I really don't want to vote for Hillary or for Joe Biden or for whatever other stiff that Demo party establishment throws out there. I didn't want to vote for Kerry, either, but I had to vote against Bush. I'd like to vote for Russ Feingold, although I worry he doesn't have the charisma to be elected. Barak Obama does, but his time hasn't come yet. I wouldn't vote against John McCain - unless I could vote for Feingold instead.

I'd also vote for the this platform, regardless of who proposes it:

1) Getting out of Iraq.
2) Balancing the budget.
3) Fixing the health care crisis, which includes both universal health care and getting Medicaid/Medicare under control (these are not mutually exclusive goals).

And recognizing that we're not fighting a war on terror so much as getting caught up in an Islamic Reformation would be a real bonus.

Three Years Gone, and Almost Three More Years To Go

Monday is the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, as you probably know. The war is bound to continue for some time, but I'm guessing it will come to some sort of close within 2-4 years. The Bush administration cannot afford to withdraw quickly - doing so would destroy whatever credibility they have left on the subject of national security. Neither can they afford to try to stay indefinitely; most of the public has turned against the war, and more join them every day. Whether the administration withdraws our forces while loudly proclaiming victory (again) or leaves the dirty job of cleaning up the mess for the next president depends on circumstance. I'd bet on the former; another year of this slow-motion train wreck of a war might see Bush's approval ratings plummet to Nixon/Watergate-like numbers.

In the big scheme of things, I don't think it matters much what the timetable for withdrawal is (although sooner is better, since it means fewer soldiers and maybe even fewer Iraqis will get killed). The war was lost the day we invaded, because we invaded, and made worse by the collateral damage from the occupation, e.g., Abu Ghraib. It's a setback, not a defeat, but the consequences may last for decades. We've damaged our standing in the world, weakened our alliances, damaged our economy, eroded our civil liberties, and polarized the electorate, as well as destabilizing the Middle East even further.

The agony of the occupation may continue for several more years but politically it's over, in much the same way Vietnam was over after the Tet offensive.

The only possible non-bad consequence of this ("good" is too strong an adjective) is that the administration's ability to make bold unilateral moves is gone. And that makes them less dangerous, because the two things they've consistently demonstrated is their inability to make good decisions and their inability to competently execute any policy or strategy.

And because incompetence is the hallmark of the Bush Administration, we should all pray that no more disasters on the scale of 9-11 or Katrina happen while they're still in office. The failure of their Iraq adventure is not the worst thing that can happen.

The Triumph of Conservative Economic Policy

Max Sawicky (via Brad DeLong):

The upshot is that the triumph of Republican-conservatarian economic policy consists of an expansion of government jobs financed by loans from the Communist People's Republic of China.