Don't Make Afghanistan the Democrats' War

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

Barack Obama not only had the good judgment to oppose the war in Iraq, he argued for the need "to end the mindset that took us into" that war. So it is troubling that a man of such good judgment is now ramping up his rhetoric about how we need to end the war in Iraq to focus on what he calls the "central front in the war on terror"--Afghanistan.

In his convention speech Wednesday night, Vice-Presidential nominee Joe Biden sounded hawkish notes --not only in flagrantly misrepresenting the Georgia-Russia crisis but in talking about Afghanistan. (This holds true not just for the two Senators, but for too many Democrats in Washington who argue, mantra-like, that we need to leave Iraq in order to free additional troops to serve in "the right war.)

Last month, the bipartisan Rand Corporation concluded in an important report that the very notion of a "war on terror" is counterproductive, and that intelligence and police cooperation should be the centerpiece of our strategy. More recently, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman--no milquetoast when it comes to using military force--criticized the Dems' position on Afghanistan as ill-conceived "bumper sticker politics." Friedman quoted a valuable Time article by Afghan expert Rory Stewart. Reporting from Kabul, Stewart explains: " A troop increase is likely to inflame Afghan nationalism because Afghans are more anti-foreign than we acknowledge, and the support for our presence in the insurgency areas is declining...The more responsibility we take in Afghanistan, the more we undermine the credibility and responsibility of the Afghan government and encourage it to act irresponsibly."

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August 28, 2008

The End of the eXile?

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

The crackdown on Russian media is a familiar story. Certainly, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and particularly the Washington Post are quick to hurl charges of authoritarianism, autocracy, even Stalinism at the Kremlin and Putin whenever free speech in Russia is threatened. So why haven't all those influential mainstream newspapers reported on the silencing of Moscow's English-language alt-newspaper The eXile?

The eXile was forced to shut down June 11 after a surprise on-site audit by the Russian authorities. There are different theories as to why those authorities moved against the paper at this time. Some believe the crackdown was connected to the newspaper's regular columnist, Eduard Limonov, a radical opposition leader, or to an ongoing clan war in the Kremlin that the paper had been reporting on. But the explanation is less important than the silence of the American media.

Launched in 1997, the tabloid rocked Moscow's expat community with a mix of gonzo-style journalism, meticulous reporting, hard-hitting political analysis, quirky columns and sophomoric, often scatological humor. There was also a seriousness of purpose. Co-founders Matt Taibbi, now a correspondent for Rolling Stone, and Mark Ames scrutinized and exposed what they saw as inaccurate and ideologically slanted reporting by US correspondents in Moscow, especially their apologias for the misery caused by the US-backed shock-therapy reforms in the Boris Yeltsin years. The eXile's annual "Worst Foreign Correspondent in Moscow" contest was dreaded by many--and cheered by a few, including this magazine. (For an example of their keen press criticism, see Taibbi and Ames's "The Journal's Russia Scandal" in the October 4, 1999, issue of The Nation.) The eXile was an equal-opportunity critic, contemptuous as well of US academics who took the same line.

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June 19, 2008

NYT Investigation Exposes Pentagon Pimps & Propaganda Operation

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

If you thought the US media had hit a new low with last week's ABC Debate Debacle, read Sunday's New York Times's 10,000 (plus) word cover story, "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand."

Using 8000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records, accessed through suing the Pentagon, the NYT report exposes the Pentagon's propaganda machine, its control over access and information, and its selling of the "war on terror" --beginning with the buildup to the Iraq war. As someone posting here put it, Goebbels would be proud.

This was an all out effort at the highest levels of the Bush Administration, continuing to this day, to dupe, mislead and lie to the American people-- using propaganda dressed up and cherry-picked as independent military analysis. As one participant described it, " it was psyops on steroids."

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April 20, 2008

Norman Mailer-Requiem for a Champion

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

Don DeLillo described him as a writer who "gave America a literature worthy of her vastness." Joan Didion spoke of his 1000 page nonfiction masterpiece "The Executioner's Song" (it was a "novel" she believes, as were all of his works) as "ambitious to the point of vertigo." It upended so many peoples' expectations, as it broke ground with what Didion described as a voice "as flat as the horizon" it depicted and with its strong women as storytellers of a broken heartland. "I can think of no other writer with the character to have risked" that book Didion told the 1500 or so who gathered at Carnegie Hall late Wednesday afternoon for a celebration of Mailer's life and work. A video tribute captured Mailer's rampaging through --and reflecting on-- life. "I became a species of combat soldier in life" he tells the interviewer. It's all there --his bouts with feminists, his bouts with boxers, the march on the Pentagon, the arrests, the campaign for mayor of NYC ("I would sleep better if Mailer were mayor" jibed one of the campaign buttons.) In his televised defense of writers' and artists's right to protest (was it on the Dick Cavett Show?) Mailer spews forth, brilliantly, about General Westmoreland's obscene Vietnam war crimes. His prescient opposition to the Iraq war elicited clapping: " I am worried about starting something we can't finish without changing the nature of America." Sean Penn spoke briefly, reading off his Blackberry, apologizing for that but promising he would be brief, and celebrating Mailer as "what greatness once was and what greatness should be ...a natural of the highest order and an earner who has left us with a towering legacy...." Muhammad Ali's wife Lonnie described meeting Mailer in 1997 when he visited their Michigan farm. "He reminded me of my uncle." And as Muhammad and Mailer sat in her kitchen she saw "two lions who had ruled the jungles in which they lived....their growls no longer as intimidating ...two kindred spirits..both champions of opposition, only the biggest and the best..fighters for ever..real men to the end."

It was Mailer's sprawling, irrepressible, creative children, all nine of them, who stole the show.Each carried the imprint, the impress of their father, and in different ways, with humor, passion, sadness, writerly detail, these actors, artists, writers, former boxers, producers, all united in abiding affection for their father, described a man who engaged them, cared about their lives and talents and always challenged his brood.

The evening closed--and it was evening by the time the close-to-three hour memorial ended--with announcement of the creation of The Norman Mailer Writers Colony --to be established in Provincetown, anchored in the home he shared for decades with his beloved wife Norris Church Mailer..... Advisory Board members, still coming together, now include Gunter Grass, Joan Didion, Doris Kearns Goodwin and William Kennedy. Mailer wasn't a fan of organized religion, organized fellowships or organized anything but I suspect that a project anchored in his home will have the spark to nurture risktakers, disturbers of false peace, fighters and adventurers of this time. We're going to need them. As we needed Mailer.

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April 9, 2008

Donna Edwards: A New Kind of Democrat

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

In 2006, long-time progressive activist and public interest lawyer, Donna Edwards shocked seven-term Congressman Albert Wynn, losing to him by just three points in the Maryland Democratic primary.  In Tuesday's Potomac primary, a more seasoned and well-financed Edwards didn't sneak up on anyone, and she sent the centrist Wynn packing with an inspiring and much needed victory.  In the closing days, Edwards stood strong against personal attacks levied by a desperate Wynn campaign, and supporters such as the League of Conservation Voters, Emily's List, MoveOn, Progressive Democrats of America, and the SEIU helped her to keep the voters focused on the issues.

As John Nichols recently noted in his excellent article, the Edwards-Wynn primary this year was "a bellwether contest in the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party."  There's a difference between a Democratic Congress and a progressive Democratic Congress.  As Nichols points out, the "cautious and unfocused" 2007 Democratic Congress has lower approval ratings than George Bush--and that's no easy feat.  The strong anti-war and populist message that led to the Blue Wave of 2006 was quickly watered down as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struggled to keep the caucus united.  The only solution to that struggle?  Replacing corporate-DLC-Blue Dog-centrist Democrats like Wynn--who voted with Bush on the Iraq war, Cheney's energy bill, and with the pharmaceutical industrry--with a true progressive like Edwards.

  "Donna Edwards is, for us, the prototype of what a new Democrat in the new Democratic majority in Congress ought to look and sound like," Patrick Gaspard, executive vice president of SEIU 1199, told the Washington Post.

Gaspard is absolutely right.  Nichols wrote that Democratic Congresses historically pull Democratic presidents to the left, "but Presidents rarely go willingly."  That's why we need a new kind of New Democrat--who, like Edwards, is fearless and true to their progressive values. 

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February 13, 2008

The Deadbeat FBI

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

At a time when we're entering a recession (it's official says Goldman Sachs), and many Americans are having a hard time paying their bills, is it that surprising that the FBI is a deadbeat when it comes to paying its phone bills on time?

According to the Washington Post's Dan Eggen, audit results released today found that "telephone companies have repeatedly cut off FBI wiretaps of alleged terrorists and criminal suspects because of failures to pay telecommunication bills, including one invoice for $66,000 at one unidentified field office....The report by the Justice Department's Inspector General Glenn Fine also identified one case in which an order obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was halted because of 'untimely payment.'"

According to Fine, "late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence."

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January 10, 2008

Lawyers Stepping Up

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

We are lawyers in the United States of America. As such, we have all taken an oath obligating us to defend the Constitution and the rule of law…. We believe the Bush administration has committed numerous offenses against the Constitution and may have violated federal laws…. Moreover, the administration has blatantly defied congressional subpoenas, obstructing constitutional oversight …. Thus, we call on House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy to launch hearings into the possibility that crimes have been committed by this administration in violation of the Constitution…. We call for the investigations to go where they must, including into the offices of the President and the Vice President. -- American Lawyers Defending the Constitution

Over one thousand lawyers – including former Governor Mario Cuomo and former Reagan administration official Bruce Fein – have signed onto the above statement demanding wide-ranging investigative hearings into unconstitutional and potentially criminal activity by the Bush administration.

In a conference call with reporters yesterday, Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and winner of the 2007 Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship, said: "The majority of lawyers in this country understand that the Bush administration has really gone off the page of constitutional rights and off the page of fundamental rights, and is willing to push the Congress to restore those rights." Ratner said he was "dismayed" that a Democratic majority has failed "to push on key illegalities… the torture program, and now the destruction of the tapes involving the torture program; the warrantless wiretapping, the denial of habeas corpus, the secret sites/rendition program, special trials, and of course what we now know is the firing of US Attorneys scandal…. The minimal that absolutely is needed to get us back on the page of law is to have serious investigative hearings that go up the chain of command and figure out who is responsible for what."

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December 21, 2007

Putin--Time Magazine's 2007 Person of the Year

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

In its selection of Russian President Vladimir Putin as its 2007 Person of the Year, Time magazine is careful to make clear that "it is not an endorsement. It is not a popularity contest. At best, it is a clear-eyed recognition of the world as it is and of the most powerful individuals and forces shaping that world-for better or for worse. " Reassuring words.

It's also reassuring to know that Time's editors didn't get hoodwinked by Putin's steely blue gaze or hard-as-rock presidential pecs (which, by the way, are featured on several softporn-style politico websites). As stated clearly in its lead editorial, "Putin is not a boy scout." (Are there any world leaders who are boy scouts?)

More seriously, what Time's selection does acknowledge, with all the appropriate concerns and caveats about the rollback of democracy and a free press, is that Putin "has performed an extraordinary feat of leadership in imposing stability on a nation that has rarely known it and brought Russia back to the table of world power."

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December 19, 2007

Like Nuclear Waste, the Nuclear Lobby Never Goes Away

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

Recently I wrote about the grassroots fight to keep billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for the nuclear industry off of the historic Energy Bill (and also here ). So far, that fight has been successful.

But, as I suggested in my previous post, it looks like Big Nuclear's cronies – led by Senator Pete Domenici – are trying to slip $25 billion in nuclear giveaways into the Appropriations bill, as the New York Times reported today: "Congress reached a tentative agreement on a major energy package that it plans to enact outside the energy bill….The agreement would guarantee loans of up to $25 billion for new nuclear plants and $2 billion for a uranium enrichment plant, something those industries had been avidly seeking. It would also provide guarantees of up to $10 billion for renewable energy projects, $10 billion for plants to turn coal into liquid vehicle fuel and $2 billion to turn coal into natural gas."

Despite the carrot of a renewable energy subsidy in this package this is no way to embark on a new, green future of energy independence. Use this link to let Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and your representatives know that it's time to oppose regressive, failed, brought-to-you-by-yet-another-corporate-lobbyist energy policies, and promote a bolder and brighter future.

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December 14, 2007

Some Sanity When It Comes to the "War" on Drugs

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

In a bold step forward in the campaign to reduce the damage the war on drugs is causing, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously today to make a recent amendment reducing recommended sentences for crack cocaine offenses retroactive. The decision come a day after the US Supreme Court ruled that federal judges can sentence individuals below the guideline recommendations in crack cocaine cases.

The sentencing commission's decision means that up to 19,400 currently incarcerated people will be eligible for early release. "The government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars and incarcerated millions of Americans --disproportionately black or brown Americans--yet drugs are as available as ever," said Bill Piper, national affairs director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "It's time to start treating drug use as a health issue instead of a criminal justice issue."

While the three leading Presidential candidates support ending the sentencing disparity that punishes crack cocaine offenses one hundred times more severely than powder cocaine offenses --(although Clinton is the only one, based on a recent report, who opposes retroactivity) the House Democratic leadership, according to the Drug Policy Aliance's Piper, has posed "the biggest obstacle to eliminating the racist/crack/powder disparity." (The House leadership has reportedly prohibited committees from dealing with the issue.) In the Senate, on the other hand, Senator Joe Biden has a bill to completely eliminate the disparity; and two Republican bills reduce the disparity, but do not elmininate it. Hearings are expected in February. (Write your Representative and urge them to demand hearings so as to send a clear signal that they care about reducing racial disparities.

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December 11, 2007