Ode to Dirk

SFTFOD lost an esteemed reader last week. Dirk Wolf, who lived in Stevens Point, WI, is survived by his fiancee, Evelyn Kondrot, their daughter Meghan, his parents, Rodney and Mary, and his brother Wayne. My cousin was 23.

Since my parents had all their children long before any of their siblings followed suit, I grew up with cousins that were quite a bit younger. Being ten years older, Dirk was playing with toys while I was passing into adulthood. The memory of him that is permanently etched into my mind is an evening I was privileged to spend with him in 1999. I was living in Chicago at the time, and my Aunt Mary called me to say that they were going to be in the area for a book fair downtown, and she wondered if Dirk could stay with me for a night. I said that was fine. I didn't really know what to expect, but I looked forward to reconnecting with a seldom seen cousin. At the time, he was 17. We chatted in my apartment for a long time, and I was impressed that he didn't seem like the child that I recalled. When you don't see relatives often, particularly children, it is easy to forget that they grow up. I took Dirk out to dinner and we continued to catch up on the events of our lives. I never stopped being impressed by his vast intellect and emotional maturity.

After that fine evening we managed to stay in better contact despite our distance. The spread of internet access and widespread use of email certainly helped in this regard. Dirk was one of the original members of SFTFOD, and several years later started an online magazine. He asked me if I would be a contributing editor. It is unfortunate that this venture was so poorly timed and ultimately went nowhere. Even as he was starting this, he was already moving on to his next big idea. Dirk had too many grand plans he was working on and never stayed with one for very long. I last saw Dirk on Christmas day in 2003, when his family came over to my parents' house to spend the day. Even though it had been over four years since that evening, it didn't seem like much time had passed at all. Life is so short, and so it's important that we can always enjoy the quality moments with the important people in our lives.

Last Wednesday Dirk was shot in the head in broad daylight in what appears to have been a planned incident. There are many details of this story that were still being sorted out as SFTFOD went to press, not least of which is a motive. Dirk's death seems to have set off a very interesting mystery as to why this happened, and what may have been involved. Knowing Dirk, he wouldn't have had it any other way.

A Slightly Different Topic

Another weekend has gone by leaving us wondering if this baby will ever choose to come out. Since October we have had the date of May 20th etched into our minds. We have been spending what free time we have getting ourselves ready for the impending arrival. The date came and went without a hitch, and it seems like we don't have anything to do because we expected to have other things going on this weekend. Thus far I am 0 for 2 on my predicted dates. Early on I had decided that May 15th would be the day. About four weeks ago I revised that to May 17th. A further revision took that to May 23rd, and that would appear to be wrong as well. A topic came up with friends in the last week that was resolved in our house several months back, but I have been talking out it with a few friends recently. Until we had our own baby on the way, I had no idea that the topic of circumcision aroused so many passions (no pun intended).

Amy made it clear to me early on that she really didn't see the point in circumcising baby boys. My first response was that such was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard. When I was born all baby boys as a matter of course were circumcised. In fact, I never even knew there was a such thing as a foreskin. Having grown up in a mostly Jewish area, I don't think I knew anyone who was uncircumcised. I grew up thinking circumcised penises were as American as mom and apple pie. After Amy made her concerns known, I said I would consider it some more, which I did. She did say that she would defer this one to me. I would be truly torn for some time, and since we had chosen to not know the sex of our baby, that only made this more complicated. I was sure that the more time we spent considering this the more likely it was that we would have a girl. Nonetheless, it seemed like something that shouldn't be swept under the carpet and discussed for the first time in the delivery room.

At first I thought that it only made sense that I have a son that looked like me. I soon realized that such differences are probably not terribly difficult to explain, even to kids. That didn't count as a good reason to follow through with it. I spent some time considering the fact that this was a most ancient and important Jewish custom. For the past year or so I have been studying Jewish customs and history in order to learn more about my own heritage. Surely this was a ritual I wanted to keep up with. The link below is one of the interesting writings I read on this topic.
www.myjewishlearning.com/lifecycle/Ceremonies_For_Newborns/Overview_Contemporary_Issues/The_Circumcision_Debate/A_Difficult_Rite.htm
The problem has been that while I have been enjoying this journey, I really haven't made the decision to become a full-fledged member of the Jewish community. With that in mind I wasn't sure whether this should be a factor.

A friend that I mentioned this to claimed that there was a movement in the Jewish community to move away from this ritual. I spent some time researching this and did find one correspondence to support that notion.
www.myjewishlearning.com/lifecycle/Ceremonies_For_Newborns/Overview_Contemporary_Issues/The_Circumcision_Debate/Brit_Cruel_Unnecessary.htm
However, subsequent research and talks with the Rabbi have cast some doubt on that one. It seems that in all mainstream Jewish societies there is really no question as to the importance of brit miloh.

It seemed like I wasn't getting anywhere. Then I read a letter in Dan Savage's column from a 24 year old man who had been the victim of a botched circumcision as a baby. This letter freaked me out. For sure I couldn't subject my son to that. The link to that and the follow up column are below. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Dan Savage, you read these at your own risk.
www.citypages.com/databank/25/1247/article12623.asp
www.citypages.com/databank/25/1252/article12724.asp

I still was uncertain. I spent time talking to a lot of different people who recently had sons, and asking about what they had decided to do. There do seem to be more and more people nowadays that are opting not to circumcise, and so, among other things, I decided that I wasn't going to be terribly concerned with the locker room scenario, whereby my son finds himself the only one among his peers to have a foreskin and gets ridiculed for it. I also inquired about how it might be viewed from the standpoint of future romantic partners. I learned that straight women in general are more troubled by uncircumcised males than are gay men. Of course, not having any idea how my son might turn out, that didn't tell me much.

I turned to Cecil Adams, the world's smartest human being, because I assumed that the topic had been broached with him as well.
www.straightdope.com/classics/a940128.html
www.straightdope.com/columns/940805.html
I eventually came full circle and decided that if we do have a boy, I want him to be circumcised, but for different reasons than I initially had. It seems that, despite what some sources say about the foreskin being easy to keep clean, I'm not so sure that's really true. Infections are still a rather common problem, as are problems that result from the foreskin being prematurely retracted. It seems to me that, while circumcision is not absolutely necessary, if this little piece of foreskin is going to cause that much trouble, then why not get rid of it? Sure there's a risk involved, but it's infinitessimally small. Such risk doesn't stop people from immunizing their babies against various diseases, and so it's hard to see how this is any different. Of course, given the ardor with which people discuss this topic, I'll probably hear from a few of you on this.

discussion on how the rise of the Christian right can help the Democrats

This actually began as a letter to a friend about the Christian right and the future of the Democratic party, but I ended up posting this for all to see and comment on. Some of this is only rantings from a man with a tortured relaionship with the idea of faith in God, and some of this is political concern. I have been deeply concerned for a long time about the growing influence of this group, but before the rise of George W. Bush I was never really in tune to how big they might become. The power that the Christian right has amassed has come to frighten me, but not because of the power itself but rather in the way that it is being wielded. I fist began considering this last March, when I went with a friend to see "The Passion of the Christ," which was cinematically an excellent film, notwithstanding Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic overtones, some subtle, some not so subtle, as well as a seemingly pornographic display of violence and absolutely no focus on the central point of the story of Jesus, which is the resurrection.
It reawakened a dormant quest (several years running) to consider the relationship between humans and god. I began to seek out my Jewish roots, and studying at a local synagogue. Where that goes is anyone's guess. Anyway, sometime after that movie I read an article about the budding Christian left. This article included a conversation with Jimmy Carter, who launched into a long discussion about President Bush's fundamental misreading and misunderstanding of the Book of Revelations. This caused me to wonder if perhaps Bush and his "brand" of Christianity was actually a hot topic among Christians. I brought this up later when talking with a friend of mine who is an Episcopal minister. She was very quick to say that she did not recognize the God that these people (Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson) talk about, and nor did she even want to know this God.
This is precisely the concern that I have, and why I am so bothered by the growth of this movement. I was listening to a great interview with Gene Robinson, the gay Bishop of the Anglican church in New Hampshire. He spent a lot of time discussing Jerry Falwell and how little of the message he appears to live by. He said one thing that stood out for me. It is that Jerry Falwell is the reason that Jesus has become a dirty word. This hit the nail on the head for me. I recall talking to my wife after I went to see the Passion, and we both seemed to be of the belief that the story of Jesus is one of the great stories ever told, and if it were possible to just believe in the story of Jesus Christ, it would be alot easier to stomach. But of course it's not really possible because it is too easily associated with those who feel the need to proselytize constantly, and too easily conjures up images of troublemakers that spend more time sitting in judgement of the rest of us and not enough time actually living the message of Jesus Christ. It has gotten to the point where, when I hear people bring up Jesus I cringe. This is not a reaction I would like to have.
I recall the first time I ever saw Jerry Falwell. I was in High School, and he was on TV hitting up his followers for cash, exhorting them to be true faith partners. I recall thinking, "does anyone really take that guy seriously?" It has been nearly 18 years since that evening, and I am still wondering about that. I no longer doubt that people really do take him seriously, but I find him dangerous and demagogic. The movement he inspired seems to me to be a sort of political Christianity, not at all unlike political Islam in the way it came about (I am not talking about terrorism here).
My research seems to suggest that what is at issue is the Revelations claim about the second coming. Instead of going about their lives and living the message and so on and so forth, and awaiting the Judgement Day, the Christian Right of today seems to be most interested in doing what it can to hasten the end of the world. This is happening in some bizarre ways, like vehemently opposing pro-environment policies instead of being proper stewards of the earth that they are supposed to be, allying themselves with the fanatical Jews living in the West Bank and Gaza and turning a blind eye to the atrocities carried out by the Israeli government, and opposing attempts to stem nuclear proliferation. This starts to sound more like an apocalyptic death cult than an actual religion. Now, I have a hard time believing that most Christians are really of this mindset, and this is where I begin to have some hope for the future.
I have come to believe that the rise of the Christian right is the most dangerous development America has ever seen, and it needs to be squashed like a bug. The movement more or less started in 1978, when Jerry Falwell delivered a sermon on abortion. The abortion wars really hadn't heated up at this point, and what he, and other GOP strategists found, was that this was an issue that galvanized people, and so he used it to harness this passion into a movement. This part is actually quite admirable, because it is truly a grassroots movement. There is a sense that, while Roe v. Wade remains the law and is unlikely to get overturned, the Pro-Life movement has won the abortion war. I say this because, while there is still a clear majority of Americans who believe that abortion should stay legal, most of these people still have problems with the idea of it, and wouldn't ever be able to have an abortion themselves. It was this national sentiment that led Bill Clinton to stake out a "safe and legal, but rare" stance. I suppose the accuracy of that claim is another discussion altogether.
It has led me to wonder, among other things, if from a political standpoint the Democratic Party needs to abandon its rigid stance on abortion. I first began wondering this last summer when there were rumors that john McCain would join John Kerry to form a bipartisan ticket. I heard one Democratic official say that he liked the idea, but that first McCain would have to publicly disavow his pro-life stance. Now, I know better than to think that this is the real reason that McCain didn't go for it, but it got me to thinking that there are probably many otherwise moderate to liberal candidates that could be running for office that are being shut out of the party. From there I began to think that there are probably many voters who are not terribly conservative but who nonetheless place such a high value on the abortion issue that they only vote on that. From there I began to wonder if perhaps this is the way to break the back of the Christian right. My impression is that this single issue has been placed at the top, and that there probably are many Christians who are not very comfortable with the public face that Christianity has taken on, but abortion holds them back.

taxes and the proper role and function of government in our society

The current flap caused by the budget that the Bush adminstration recently submitted to Congress very effectively demonstrates the shortcomings of the way that town hall and living room debates on taxation and the the role of government are conducted. Americans traditionally have hated paying taxes, and that visceral dislike often clouds people's judgement. Some of this is historically unique to America. The American Revolution was born of a tax revolt. The slogan we were taught as kids studying history was, "No Taxation Without Representation," but the American spirit was such that taxation would have been abhorred even with Parliamentary representation.
The tax debate has morphed and simplified in recent years into one where Democrats
became the party of tax and spend liberals, and the GOP was by contrast the party of fiscal restraint. While there are certainly members of each party that do neatly fit these caricatures, the overall picture is, as usual, a lot less black and white. The Clinton administration may one day be remembered as the most fiscally responsible in history, but how much of that is due to Clinton's having to contend with a Republican-controlled Congress? Clinton's detractors, many of whom still foam at the mouth at the mere mention of his name, are fond of pointing out that is was the Republican Congress that was most responsible for that discipline. The fiscal recklessness of Bush's first administration has cast a lot of doubt on that theory, but even before that it wasn't so clear what actually contributed to the budget's being in surplus. The tax hikes from the beginning of the Clinton years quite likely contributed to that as well.
The first thing to understand when considering this issue is that no one likes to pay taxes, whether liberal or conservative. I know I don't, and mailing in my quarterly tax estimates, generally doesn't leave me in a terribly good mood. I always think, like everyone else does, of what I might have been able to do with that money. The second thing to understand is that the relationship between taxes and the economic cycle is far from clear, and can be said to be marginal at best. The tax cuts of the Reagan years are often still hailed as an incredible economic boost, and it brought supply side economics into vogue. This is the theory we heard from economist Arthur Laffer, which stipulated that tax cuts usher in an economic boom that in turn creates a rise in government revenues. It made Laffer into something of a cult hero and gave him the opportunity to appear in Cadillac commercials in the 80's purporting to show why buying Cadillacs made fine fiscal sense. Despite the continuing enthusiasm for supply side economics among the tax averse, this theory has never borne out. It is true that the economy was strong for much of the Reagan years, but the ecomony is always moving in cycles. Presidents don't have much to do with that. Recall that Clinton's "largest tax increase in history" was supposed to destroy the economy. One could hardly claim that the boom of the 90's happened because of Clinton's tax increases. Reagan's tax cuts left the government with far less revenue than it needed to meet its obligations, and left future presidents with a mess that needed to be cleaned up.
Anyway, the proper consideration isn't simply one's distaste for taxes, but rather, what do we expect our government to be able to do for us. If we want the strongest military the world has ever known, fine. If we want medicare prescription drug coverage, fine. If we want to have a government agency check the safety of new drugs before they come on the market, fine. When looking at all of these programs, we often find that, despite rhetoric about wasteful government programs, just about all of them do serve important and useful purposes. The biggest obstacle to attempts to cut spending is that they always focus on "discretionary" spending, which accounts for less than 20% of federal outlays. Even if many of these programs were dropped outright, they wouldn't take out nearly the bite from budget outlays that is needed to bring the budget back into balance. This is the part that tax haters have a hard time reconciling for themselves. For all the bluster we hear about privatizing, federal dollars are still required to pay for the tasks in question. If the government chooses to outsource some of its traditional responsibilities, it may be that federal employees no longer have to be paid, but the company receiving the contract still has to be compensated.
It is very important that people take issues of government spending and taxation together, because they are necessarily intertwined. The state of California's budget crisis is a testament to exactly what can happen when people separate the two issues. Various ballot referenda have mandated that taxes not be increased, and that the goverment maintain spending increases in several departments. This makes it impossible for the numbers to add up. A better way to approach the budget is to peg the income tax rate to meet a forecast for whatever the next year's expected budget outlays will be. This will force legislators to be accountable not just to bringing home the bacon, but also to any tax increases they may have voted for.

In Praise of Howard Dean

As SFTFOD went to press Howard Dean had been named the new Chairman of the Democratic Party, replacing the very poor Terry McAuliffe. McAuliffe, who had been a Clintonista, was representative of the entrenched guard that has become a liability for the party as a whole. Under his stewardship, the Democratic Party became increasingly bereft of any guiding set of ideas, which has made it only too easy to seem worse than the GOP. After all, it's easy for many people to see a bad set of ideas as better than none at all. The election of Howard Dean to the top post offers a great opportunity to change.
Many of those who are concerned that this may be a poor direction for the party to be heading in may end up being correct in their misgivings, but they may well be misguided. There is concern that Dean's candidacy in last year's Democratic primaries could be a harbinger of things to come. It is certainly true that Dean was a poor candidate, seeming at times incredibly undisciplined and having little self-control. His ill-fated scream on the night of the Iowa caucuses is thought to have done him in. Truth be told, support for his candidacy was never as strong as we might have been led to believe. He had many amateurs running his campaign, and they didn't do a very good job of gauging his real support. The campaign got some good hype, and a lazy media turned him into an overnight sensation. Nonethless it was Howard Dean that demonstrated very effectively that the policies pursued by the GOP aroused a tremedous amount of anger, and it was his insurgency that helped make John Kerry into a better candidate.
But of course, this is a different sort of position. The party boss is responsible for overseeing grassroots organization and helping to define what the party stands for, two problem areas for Democrats in the past few years. Speaking of himself as representative of the Democratic wing of the Democratic party initially sent shock waves through many people, but it served as a reminder of just how far away from guiding principles the party had strayed, and it should have been a reminder of why Ralph Nader's argument that there was no difference between the parties had a ring of truth to it. Dean's candidacy was a true grassroots organization, and this is the most compelling reason that he was a good choice to lead the party. He excelled at bringing in new voters and energy that had been previously uninvolved with politics, and he inspired many of them to join forces. His Democracy For America organization is working to recruit and train young Democrats to run for local offices. This is the method that the GOP has been using for years to organize and build strength at the grassroots, and Dean recognizes much better than the entrenched powers that this is was the Democrats sorely need to be doing. Dean's most important task will be to help reorganize and redefine the core principles of the party. One hopes that will include finding a way to harness the anger aroused by today's increasingly conservative GOP into a formidable voting bloc. Future editions will outline ways that can be done.

The Democratic candidates

This is long, but for those of you paying attention to the Democratic presidential race, it's very important. I have been reluctantly going through the motions of paying attention to the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. It has been hard to get excited until fairly recently. I had been thinking that if some of these candidates were the best the party had to offer, then the future looked awfully bleak. At some point I began to think that the excitement I felt over Bill Bradley four years ago would have to live on as a distant memory, a sentiment I was too jaded to ever reproduce.
Ever since the election of 2000, I have been deeply concerned about the future of the Democratic party, and have discussed it frequently. Some of the problems will be laid out here, but a good in depth analysis of the problem the party is having can be found in a recent book, A National Party No More by Zell Miller, former Governor and Senator from Georgia. It seemed that after Bill Clinton rescued the party from the wilderness in 1992 with a winning formula that promised to purge the party of some bad habits, Al Gore was all too willing to throw this gift away, preferring to run on a populist ticket and employing the attack dog politics that had been a staple of his career. Many in the party chose to write this off to Ralph Nader and the Supreme Court. While there is some truth in the notion that those two factors did figure into Gore's electoral defeat, it showed a willingness to conveniently ignore the fact that Gore should have won by 5-6 million votes nationwide, and really lost because of Al Gore. Then came the 2002 midterms, and the Democrats employed a remarkably dumb strategy of ignoring national security, this only a year after the deadliest attack on American soil. There seemed to be a strategy at play of hedging their bets, whereby Dems would vote in favor of a resolution to invade Iraq, but criticize Bush anyway, with the idea that if things went well they could say they were for it all along, but then if it failed say they've been critical from the start. It was politically uncourageous and very incoherent. Two days after that disastrous election I wrote in these pages that while it didn't seem immediately obvious, the Democratic party was in serious trouble because it has forgotten what the hell it's all about. I think many Dems continue to bury their heads in the sand, saying that 2002 was an aberration because they were up against a popular wartime president. That's hogwash of course, as Bill Clinton was up against similar conditions and he did just fine. The 2004 election is critically important to the future of the party as it tries to answer questions about what it stands for.
After planning to review the candidates in detail back in August, I've gotten a bit sidetracked, to say the least. I will attempt to do some of that here, although length and space concerns will keep some candidates limited. I will then focus on what I consider to be the three serious candidates.
Let's begin with a courtesy mention of the Reverend Al Sharpton. I will ignore his history as an extremely divisive and polarizing figure and mention that he has gone on record to say that he would perform same sex unions, for what it's worth. I will also mention Carol Mosely Braun, the one term Senator from Illinois. This is a candidate who couldn't even defeat a very weak opponent in Peter Fitzgerald in 1998, a year in which Democrats did well nationally with a backlash against the relentless prosecutors of Blowjobgate. Of course, Peter Fitzgerald went on to be a pretty good Senator, but that is another story altogether. I will also mention Dennis Kucinich, who might be a good fellow, but comes across as a raving lunatic. His central theme seems to be that he will bring soldiers home as soon as he is elected. This is an incredibly irresponsible idea, despite what one may think of Bush's plans for getting into Iraq to begin with.
Next, we have John Kerry, whose resume is actually quite impressive, being a man of integrity and having served two tours of duty in Vietnam. For interesting reading about him, see the cover story of the December issue of The Atlantic. Unfortunately, he lacks the charisma needed to get his message across and resonate with people. In this paragraph I will also mention Dick Gephardt. Gephardt also comes across as wooden and uncharismatic. To his credit, he can't be accused of a lack of coherence. He stood with Bush from the beginning on Iraq, and has been clear about his views on trade for whole time he has been in public office. These views represent the older, less progessive Democratic party. The reason Bill Clinton broke ranks with Gephardt's wing and endorsed NAFTA is that there has come to be greater understanding that free trade, in the long run, benefits everybody and contributes to the enrichment of everyone, not just a select few.
John Edwards intrigued me at first because when he announced his candidacy more than a year ago, Karl Rove issued a blistering attack on him. I found it interesting that he would even bother commenting in any way. Knowing as I do that Karl Rove is supremely clever and politically astute, I figured there was good reason for the Bushies to be afraid. He has incredible charm and charisma, but has not put it to good use until only recently. He has spent much of the runup to the primary season on the "I Hate Bush" (IHB) bandwagon, and failing to put forward a compelling vision for the future, one that can unseat George W. Bush. He has only recently chosen to polish his image by being positive. It remains to be seen whether this will help him, as it may be too late.
The candidates that continue to put forth lots of vagueness about who they are and what they stand for are not candidates that have a prayer against George W. Bush. This leaves me with three candidates, all of whom have been clear about who they are, if not always coherently. I will start with Joe Lieberman. Many left of center folk really can't stand him, and consider him to be a Republican masquerading as a Democrat. While he quite likely lacks the charisma needed to resonate with many voters, he recognizes the pickle the Dems are in, and is asking hard questions that most other candidates sidestep. He understood the value of ridding the world of a menace like Saddam Hussein. He stood with Bush early on, and has been critical only of the deceptions used to justify the war. Despite what some may think, he can hardly be viewed as wimpy for standing with Bush on this issue. If he were timid, he would have fallen all over himself to drum up the IHB support, while all the others were not displaying any political courage in seeing who could throw the most red meat to his supporters. He is making a serious attempt to address the crisis of ideas currently taking place in the party establishment. Joe Lieberman is one of the only really sincere candidates in this race, save for Wesley Clark and Dick Gephardt. For a more complete reading on this, see the current issue of The New Republic, in which he receives its endorsement.
Howard Dean has done a tremendous job of going from being a dark horse candidate to being the current frontrunner. His campaign manager, Joe Trippi, was chronicled in TNR about a month ago, and is a brilliant strategist. He has managed to mobilize many thousands of supporters to his cause. What is that cause? The basis of his campaign has been to drum up the IHB vote, and to equate Democratic support for it with appeasement of President Bush. There have been many good reasons to question Bush's motives and competence to move forward with his grand plan for regime change. Despite his lies about WMD, there is much to be applauded in the fact that Saddam Hussein is gone from power and now in American custody. A concern for human rights abroad was not traditionally the GOP's stronghold, and many in the party were all too willing to abandon this concern to oppose Bush. Howard Dean has milked the anti-Bush fervor masterfully. About a month ago, in a further effort to differentiate himself from Bush, he announced that he would withhold judgement on the guilt of Osama bin Laden, despite bin Laden's many pronouncements of his own involvement in September 11th. If he becomes the nominee, we are going to hear that quote many times over. He is also stopped cold when it comes to Iraq and the absence of Saddam Hussein. Lost in all the IHB sentiment is the lack of a compelling vision for moving America forward in the world and recreating the high standing we used to have with our allies. Dean is correct in pointing out that Bush continues to humiliate our allies. This is a serious shortcoming of the Bush White House, and it will take future presidents years to repair the damage. However, Howard Dean won't be the man to start that process, and he is bad news for the Democratic party. Not only are his prospects grim, the consequences of his coattails, or lack thereof, on the House and Senate would be dire. There is a reason that Karl Rove wants Dean to be the nominee. He recognizes that Dean would help him to usher in an era of GOP dominance at every level of government. There is one benefit to Dean being the nominee. As I mentioned earlier, many Dems are in denial about the party being in deep trouble, as well as the need for the party to become more progressive. A landslide defeat by Dean would answer these questions rather effectively.
The concept of overthrowing dictators has basis in recent history, one showing that some Democrats know how to think beyond our borders. This was Bill Clinton's intervention in the bloodbath in Kosovo, and this leads me to my next point. Let us recall that the man in charge of the supremely successful Kosovo intervention was General Wesley Clark.
At this point in my narrative I am going to make a pitch for Clark. The main problem for Clark was the he was late in getting into the race, and was at a decided disadvantage in raising money. He has needed to ignore states like Iowa to concentrate on others, like New Hampshire. That shouldn't be too much of a problem, because a pattern has emerged in recent national elections that Iowa isn't as strategically important as has been previously thought. Wesley Clark is the most sincere and statesmanlike of all the candidates in the field. While many of the other candidates are busy with IHB rhetoric, General Clark has been talking about important themes like how to make Iraq a decent place once Bush is gone, how to rebuild strong diplomatic ties, and how to use them effectively. While Bill Clinton gets most of the credit for the success of Kosovo, it was Wesley Clark that made it possible through his expert diplomacy in keeping some bitterly divided opponents (like France and Germany) at the table to make this mission a success. Yes, he did blunder early on with regards to Iraq, but every candidate has at least one, and his has been explained very well. When one considers the message that he brings to the table, coupled with his charisma and forward-looking instincts, it would seem obvious that Wesley Clark is not only a great candidate for president, he is ideally suited to save the Democratic party from itself. He can articulate a good vision for America, and he is the really the only man with a chance (and his chances are good) to defeat George W. Bush. For those of you who have managed to read this far, I would appreciate some feedback.

Iraq & the transformation of the Middle East

I have often been asked why I haven't discussed this topic in SFTFOD, and the simple reason is that I have wavered in my feelings about this since day one. To consider what is currently at stake, let's briefly review some of the events of the past 16 months since September 11, 2001. In October 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan, and two months later, the Taliban fell. Soon after, the conservative punditocracy began talking of the need to return to Iraq and finish the job. This became a hot topic briefly in the early months of 2002, until President Bush made the pronouncement that there should be no more talk of invading Iraq for at least another 12-18 months. Skeptics like myself assumed that this was so that a victory lap could be more conveniently timed to coincide with the 2004 election season. Then, last summer the national agenda seemed to be slipping out of the hands of the administration. Events like the bankruptcy of WorldCom and Enron before that made corporate corruption a hot topic, and not one that plays particularly well for the administration. Questions about Bush's dumping his Harken Energy stock just before the bottom fell out, as well as Dick Cheney's role in potential mismanagement at Halliburton, were suggesting that the administration was poised to be caught with its hands in the cookie jar. Something needed to be done, and fast, to get Bush back in the driver's seat. Voila, let's bring Iraq back to the table! And so, for the remainder of the election season we listened as the rhetoric about Saddam got worse and worse.
It has been rather disturbing to hear the Bush administration attempt to settle on a reason to go to war. At first it was because Iraq could be making nukes. Then it was because Saddam Hussein might have links to al-Qaeda. Then it was because of human rights violations. Its inability, until recently, to settle on a reason has rightly set off alarms in many people's heads about what it might really be up to. The bellicose rhetoric we heard for so long was very disturbing at first, but it has served a very useful purpose. It got the world's attention, and more specifically, it got Saddam Hussein's attention. On September 12th President Bush addressed to UN, and made it very clear that the UN's credibility was at stake. This hit the nail on the head, because when it came to dealing with Iraq, the UN has become something of a joke. At the end of the Gulf War, a weapons inspection team was put into place, and for a very good reason. It was understood that even in defeat, Saddam Hussein needed to have a watchful eye kept on him. It has now been 12 years since that time, and it should be more clear than ever that Saddam needs to be closely watched. At the time, it seemed to many of us that the first President Bush was wise to not move troops to Baghdad with the intent to assassinate Hussein. In retrospect, of course, it now appears to have been a terrible move. But, just because it wasn't done 12 years ago doesn't mean it's too late to finish the job. The fact is that Saddam Hussein was producing unsavory weapons while the inspectors were doing their work. Inspectors routinely destroyed many bits of weaponry, and that was why he had them kicked out in 1998. Even before Colin Powell's presentation of all the proof that was needed, why would anyone have doubted that their absence might be used to produce ever more weapons and to learn just how to hide them from the watchful eyes of the United States?
It can be unnerving to imagine the worst conspiracy theories about what this administration might really be up to, it has been equally disheartening to watch as my ideological brethren on the left have consistently failed to articulate a single good reason not to follow through with such a bold action. Madison, WI, where I live, is one of the last remaining bastions of left wing liberal activity in the country, and we have seen plenty of antiwar protesters here. Some claim that Bush wants to invade another country for no reason at all. This is belied by all the facts, most convincingly of which was presented by Colin Powell on February 5th. Others accuse the Bush administration of crass imperialism, and wanting to impose its will on the rest of the world. It happens that the United States has been an imperial power for much of its history. Still others accuse Bush of wanting to steal the vast reserves of oil in Iraq and hand that control to pals in the oil industry. On the surface that might be a compelling claim, but a closer look at this makes it appear to be a highly unlikely scenario. It is true that this White House, more than perhaps any other in history, adheres to the principles of crony capitalism. However, an invasion of Iraq is such a magnificent endeavor that could easily go badly and have terrible consequences for the Bush team, possibly causing it to lose its reelection bid in 2004. It seems highly unlikely that anyone would go out on that kind of limb. I have also heard the claim that countries need to be left to be able to sort out their own problems without the constant meddlesome influence of the West. Lastly, I have been hearing that invading Iraq can destabilize the entire Middle East region. That might seem true, especially when considering the law of unintended consequences. The problem with that line of thought is that, at least the last time I checked, the Middle East hasn't been particularly stable for a long time. Iraqis live in a constant state of fear. The clerics who rule Iran fear the influence of a younger generation of people clamoring for deep change away from the current state of theocracy that they live under. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan until fairly recently. The Saudi Arabian monarchy has been enormously propped up, and lives in fear of revolution. It has become the prime breeding ground for al Qaeda terrorists. Just how does anyone think this passes for stability? Wouldn't it make more sense to deal with a fallout now rather than later, when a fallout can only be worse?
Let's focus on the issue of human rights. Wasn't it the left that had raised first raised awareness of the concept of human rights as an issue for all the world to consider? Was this imposition of American values not imperialistic? Why are so many left of center folk so reluctant to acknowledge the fact that Saddam Hussein has brutalized nearly everyone living in and near Iraq? Saddam Hussein has murdered more than 1 million Iraqi citizens, and jailed many other dissidents and political opposition leaders. He has so thoroughly ruled Iraq with such a strong fist of iron that no one can break free of him.
It is interesting to consider the revolution inside the GOP on the issue of human rights. For many years most Republicans really didn't care one way or another about human rights violations, at least until it was discovered that Christians were often among those being persecuted. Many conservatives have now expanded their worldview to include a concern for human rights abuses, and not just for those of Christian persuasion. Ideally, of course, nations should be able to sort out there own issues. Revolutions can overthrow unpopular regimes, and outside intervention in theory shouldn't even be necessary. In the whole of human existence, conflict is unavoidable, and sometimes outside help is needed to sort things out. This is why we have a United Nations. There does comes a time when it should be clear that outside intervention is needed. This was shown when President Clinton chose to intervene to stop the bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia. Foreign intervention does not have to be a bad thing.
There are actually three essential questions that need to be asked and answered in approaching this issue with any degree of intellectual honesty. First, is Saddam Hussein a dangerous man? This should be a no-brainer, but a good number of the antiwar folks seem to need reminding of this. In fact, he is a very dangerous man, a tyrant who kills all political opponents, started an eight year war with Iran, later invaded Kuwait. If the U.S. hadn't been interested and gotten involved, it seems very likely that he was going to continue his work by invading and occupying Saudi Arabia. He is not a man to be ignored. People once ignored Nazi Germany. Winston Churchill was arguing in the years prior to World War II that Hitler was a menace that needed to be toppled. His words were dismissed as warmongering, but we know now that he in fact knew just what he was talking about.
The second question is, if not war, then what? Is appeasement a better solution? It seems that many in Europe, until recently anyway, preferred this approach. All appeasement does is postpone the inevitable. Why most Europeans were nervous about our invading Afghanistan is a complete mystery to me. America is not the only target of international terrorism. Before flying planes into the World Trade Center, these people had tried a similar stunt with the Eiffel Tower in Paris before French authorities foiled that attempt. One of history's great mistakes was Neville Chamberlain's attempt to placate Hitler with territory. All this did was whet his appetite for more, and people should know better than that by now. Not everyone is amenable to peaceful resolution, especially when their intents are anything but peaceful.
The third question to ask is, is it time to rethink our method of dealing with dictators? As it stands, we slap sanctions on many dictatorships, and the results have been, for the most part, disastrous. Sanctions are usually worthless for one reason and one reason only: they don't inconvenience the dictators they are meant to affect. Sanctions against Iraq have caused the misery of millions of Iraqi citizens. How has it affected Hussein? He has built numerous presidential palaces for himself, and each of these has a whole staff of people running them, complete with three hearty meals being prepared each day, just in case the dictator should happen to pop in. Witness further the fact that Fidel Castro remains in power 41 years after the first American sanctions were introduced against his regime.
So, should we ignore growing dangers around us and leave them to others to worry about? The events of September 11, 2001 should have made clear to the last of the remaining holdouts that isolation is a stupid, boneheaded approach to foreign policy. Vital national interest can no longer be the only, or even the main determining factor in pondering foreign intervention. As Afghanistan shows, ignoring countries not thought to be important can be deadly. It was here that the world's most dangerous terrorist network was allowed to expand and flourish for years before anyone really noticed.
While I had been slowly gravitating to the pro-war side of the fence, what crystallized my view was an article I read in the February 10th issue of The New Republic, "The Day I Saw Iraq Liberated," by Zainab al-Suwaij. This article discusses the brief period of hope that filled so many ordinary Iraqis in the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War, and how so many believed that freedom from Hussein's brutality might soon be at hand. It has become clear that regardless of the suspicions people may have and conspiracy theories that inevitably abound, it is time for America to finish the job it started 12 years ago and begin to implement the first President Bush's vision of a new and more peaceful world order. Saddam Hussein is a clear threat to that order.
This endeavor has two aims, one stated and one unstated. The official purpose is to disarm Iraq, and the unofficial one is to transform it away from the stifling totalitarian regime that it currently is and to make it into something better. This isn't just a concern about human rights or other liberal issues. This is very much in the national interest. The neighboring totalitarian regimes will most certainly be taking note. If Iraq manages to flourish, it is very likely to foment revolutions in some of these other nations and help to bring them into the modern world. It seems to me that many people are so hell-bent on disagreeing with Bush that the obvious will be ignored. As much as some of us on the left may hate to give the benefit of the doubt to an administration that has been as arrogant, secretive, blatantly deceptive, and intellectually dishonest as this one has been, it appears that the fence sitters are out of options. Of course, the use of American power in this way is unprecedented and tremendously frightening. People are right to be concerned that this sort of power is open to abuse. However, it must always be remembered that the power to do bad is also the power to do good. If we hamstring ourselves completely, we can never change the world in any way, leaving that to the madmen in our midst. Is this imperialistic? You bet, but the consequences of not acting would seem to be greater.