How to deal with Iran

By Rick Morris

Rumors have run rampant for years now that the Bush administration plans an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities before it leaves office in January 2009. Certainly, the move by the mullahs to acquire nuclear weapons is a frightening one that should be focusing our energies on how best to protect our interests in the Persian Gulf.

But military intervention is not the only avenue open to us in the area. My longtime friend Scott Pullins has announced that his Pullins Report is part of a wide coalition dedicated to pursuing other means of addressing our very real issues with the regime in Tehran.

Ironically, while I'm a bit unsure as to the utility of free and unfettered talks with Iran right now, I support Scott's general efforts 100%. As with his stance on the treatment of detainees, I may differ with him here and there, but I think his general focus is exactly right.

He and I have traveled down parallel political paths, which helps me to understand and to support his present direction a bit better. We were both of college age at the end of the Cold War and we were both very hawkish given the realities of the day. Essentially, while shooting in that war was rare and generally confined to proxies (i.e. Vietnam, Afghanistan), it really WAS a war and we needed to be on a war footing when dealing with a grim enemy which hungered for nothing less than world domination. Ronald Reagan's method of confronting the Soviets directly, which was totally unprecedented, was appropriate and it worked -- and Scott and I supported him.

But we are now in a different time. The conservative movement long ago fractured into the (completely dominant) neoconservative wing and my paleocon wing. The neocons never moved from the "war footing" mentality and seemed well before 9/11 to be searching for any excuse to project American military might upon the world. For all the talk about how Eeee-Vil Republicans tried to destroy the Clintons with the impeachment saga, the neocons stood behind Bubba steadfastly as he wagged the dog with a completely unnecessary war in the Balkans in 1999.

George W. Bush, about whom I can honestly say I was skeptical from the very beginning given my aversion to Republican Establishment figures, came to office promising a humble, respectful foreign policy. But, as the cliche goes, "9/11 changed everything."

The foreign policy "realists" that Scott and I scorned in our youth were wrong then -- I will always believe that. But, given today's circumstances, they are right in this climate.

I have said on The FDH Lounge program that George W. Bush and Bill Clinton each accomplished the same dubious action -- by opposite means. Clinton destroyed American deterrence in the '90s by turning a blind eye to each successive attack by bin Laden and establishing us as a paper tiger. Bush destroyed American deterrence by getting us bogged down in Iraq from the end of the first phase of the war in April '03 until he FINALLY delivered the surge in 2007 -- thus reestablishing us as a paper tiger after restoring our global prestige by winning swiftly in Afghanistan in late 2001. Imperial overreach and pacifism both lead to disaster and to America's enemies licking their chops.

The neocons are right in the very narrow sense about staying on the offensive against Al Qaeda worldwide and this is a job that our special forces should continue to be pursuing in every nook and cranny of the globe regardless of who gets elected president in November (although I'm admittedly scared that Barack Obama will not agree with this basic common-sense point). But starting full-on conflagrations against other governments without fully thinking through the consequences -- haven't we been here before? Every Deskbound Rambo who proclaimed in 2002-2003 that Iraq would be a cakewalk should be permanently prohibited from being taken seriously.

George W. Bush and Karl Rove, who openly dreamed of creating another longstanding Republican dynasty in the mold of William McKinley, have seen their dreams die in the sands of the Middle East much in the same way that Jimmah Carter's aspirations did. To the extent that their militaristic brand of neoconservatism is left to define the Republican party and the broader American Right, then the party and the movement will never recover. That's why, in addition to personal friendship, I support Scott's efforts as strongly as I do. The school of thought about what's best for this country, as well as the country itself, is too important to be left to the rotting corpse known as GOP leadership. Whether you support every individual thread of anti-neocon policy, it's time to get with the program and work for the clear best interests of this country. If opposition to rampant militarism is ceded to the peaceniks and pinkos, we all lose.

Decade's most influential people in the world

By Rick Morris

Since we passed the 3/4 mark of the decade a few months ago (to little fanfare), I hatched an idea for a blog post about the most influential sports figures of the decade, largely because I firmly believe that the individual befitting that award goes unmentioned by all. But it occurred to me that a list of the most influential people in the world as a whole would be interesting as well.

I'm basing these rankings on the amount of influence these individuals have had over the ways we live, the ways that society functions and the ways society will function in the future. These influences can be for good or ill -- influence is influence, after all.

First of all, I want to give honorable mention to Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, the founders of YouTube. When the history is finally written about the technological advances of our day, I'm convinced that they will be on a very short list of the most important innovators. While Internet video certainly existed before YouTube came about in 2005, it wasn't nearly as mainstream. The invention of this website dovetailed nicely with the explosion in various types of broadband availability and served as THE entity most important in developing video-on-demand on the Internet. Quite simply, Hurley, Chen and Karim created something that will affect the way we consume media far into the future.

5. (TIE) Vladimir Putin and Howard Dean. Surely, this is an odd couple if ever there was one! But since my rankings were only five-deep, I could not choose between them for the final spot.

Let's examine Putin first. For several decades leading up to the Nineties, the leader of the USSR would have had to make such a list. For example, could a Top Five of the Eighties have not included both Reagan and Gorbachev? Unlikely. But as the Soviet Union faded into history, it took with it its vast influence over the world. Russian President Boris Yeltsin would certainly not have made such a list in the Nineties, at the low ebb of power for that country in the last hundred years. But Putin's Russia has roared back with a vengeance this decade, taking advantage of openings caused by ramifications of American foreign policy mistakes. While Russia has asserted itself as a key player on the world stage, make no mistake, the means it has chosen will be a major cause of strife and a threat to free societies in the years to come. The old Soviet axis seems to be reconstituting in a way, as Putin gathers up any adversaries of the U.S. that he can find to befriend (Iran, Venezuela and to a certain extent China). Also, his regime is taking on disturbing fascist tendencies at home, as our blog post from August documented. Even after his term as president ends next year, Mad Vlad will continue pulling the strings in the Kremlin and the effects of just the actions he's already set in motion will already be extraordinarily far-reaching.

Now to Howard Dean, who emerged from complete obscurity as governor of the gay-friendly state of Vermont to become one of the most important American political figures of the last 50 years. While he's best-known nationally as a punchline with his infamous speech after the Iowa caucuses in 2004, Dean actually emerged from that election cycle as an enormous transforming figure in the political system. In the months following the end of the first phase of the war in Iraq, when George Bush was appearing in front of "Mission Accomplished" signs and the public was still savoring the heady feeling of having deposed Saddam Hussein, Dean rode his opposition to the war to the front of the pack in the Democratic presidential field. This was made possible in large part by Dean harnessing the nascent blog movement and the organizing power of the Internet to level the financial playing field with an absolute blizzard of small-time contributors. By combining grass-roots political practices with the technological possibilities of the Web, Dean managed to bring the antiwar movement into the mainstream and changed forever the ability of political insiders in both parties to dictate party nominations by fiat. Personally, I regard the former as a great negative and the latter as a great positive, but the far-reaching influence is undeniable and led to his selection as chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

4. Osama bin Laden. I imagine that an explanation of bin Laden's influence in the 2000s needs little elaboration. The fact that he's not #1 on the list is certainly a measure of the extremely consequential presidency we've lived under for the last seven years. The phrase "9/11 changed everything" became a cliche long ago, but as I always say, cliches get to be cliches because they are true. OBL belongs on the list if for no other reasons than the fear he instilled by launching the first attack on the American mainland since the War of 1812 and the resulting security measures that followed -- and those factors are just the tip of the iceburg. There's certainly a spot waiting for bin Laden in Hades, but in the meantime, he resides both in the hinterlands of Pakistan and at #4 on our list of the decade's most influential people.

1. (TIE) George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. For one man to trump bin Laden's influence this decade in the aftermath of 9/11 would have seemed unlikely, but three would have seemed preposterous! Yet, the style of governance in America the last seven years has made it so. Bush is, as he says, "The Decider," and must therefore be listed here as the man with the final word. But his chief deputies belong right with him for the directions they've successfully pushed for him to adopt, Cheney in foreign policy and Rove in domestic policy.

First, Cheney. He and his neoconservative fellow-travelers persuaded Bush to enter into war in Iraq. Effects of this conflict will be felt for decades. Most are negative, from the diminishing of our deterrent threat around the world to hostility stirred up in Arab countries to the trillions of dollars we are sending over there to the fact that the American people were able to turn against a war so quickly after 9/11. Cheney was the chief backer of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and the successes of 2007 would never have occurred if Rumsfeld had not been forced out and the surge policy inserted in. The positive side of the ledger for Cheney is mostly in his rare forays into domestic policy, such as pushing Bush to pursue positive tax policies (leaving aside the disastrous spending ones).

Rove, while no longer in government, did more to shape Bush's theories on government than any other figure. Like the Clintons, he merged policy with politics in a crude manner. Unlike the Clintons, he was not quite so skilled at it. True, he helped Bush manage to slip across the finish line in 2004, although the jury is out about whether it could have been accomplished against a candidate better than the pathetic John Kerry. Rove's notion of "compassionate conservatism," a feel-good compilation of contradictory blather, became Bush's domestic governing philosophy and ultimately his political undoing along with the Iraq mess. Rove had greedy dreams of stitching together a Republican dynasty like the one in the early 1900s, but he sold the conservative soul to do so. From education (the horrific "No Child Left Behind" boondoggle and reprehensible sellout of poor kids by abandoning vouchers in the face of bullying from Ted Kennedy) to health care (burdening generations to come with the asinine Medicare prescription drug fiasco) to spending (completely condoned as long as Republicans were operating Congress and operating the old pork dispenser) to immigration (let the illegals flow in unchecked so that Big Business contributors can hire them for 10 cents per hour) to the basic issue of competence in government (Katrina, which in fairness was also victimized by state and local lack of government), the Rove/Bush philosophy of trying to build a permanent majority by being all things to all people did nothing but alienate the base. Their tone-deaf White House political apparatus was constantly a day late and a dollar short in answering Democratic attacks after the 2004 reelection campaign and led straight to the debacle of 2006. There would be no Speaker Pelosi or Majority Leader Reid were it not for the bumbling of this Republican trinity. Even as they fade into history, however, their legacy will loom strong for at least a quarter century. And that gives them a collective influence the likes of nobody else this decade.

Famous pundits weigh in on Karl Rove

By Rick Morris

Rush Limbaugh interviewed Karl Rove today, "interviewed" actually being a kind euphemism for the most shameless sucking up since the last time he had an Establishment Republican on his show. The next time Limbaugh starts with his "conservative grass roots" charade, remember this display when he whiffed on his chance to confront George Bush's main man about:

* the attempted Dubai ports sellout
* the attempted travesty of Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court
* the attempted immigration amnesty monstrosity
* aiding and abetting the drunken-sailor spending and pathetic pork-barreling of the Congress when it was under unified Republican control
* aiding and abetting the Congress in running from any shred of the Contract with America reforms when it was under unified Republican control
* this administration's passive tolerance of Iraq's slide into chaos and the complete collapse of our capacity for military deterrence before this year's troop surge
* the No Child Left Behind boondoggle and the double-cross of poor families who voted for Dubya believing his rhetoric about fighting for school vouchers
* a fight for Social Security reform waged with such ineptness and such a political tin ear that the resulting rout has poisoned the waters for needed reforms for at least the next decade
* the Medicare prescription drug boondoggle that didn't even succeed in its only cynical goal: bribing a decent number of old people to switch to the Republican party
* a federal response to Katrina that somehow managed to match, if not trump, the incompetent local and state efforts and which the Bush crew decided to whitewash by pushing reckless and loosely regulated federal spending

In other words, Limbaugh, who shilled for Bush during the 2000 primaries and made fun of Pat Buchanan for leaving a Republican party which was stacking the deck in W's favor, did exactly what you would expect.

Next, we come to some amusing wishful thinking from the Ragin' Cajun, James Carville. Here, he opines that Bush and Rove's many blunders have led to a Republican "lost generation." Now, I have long been a skeptic that a figure as politically polarizing as Carville's girl Hillary Clinton could be elected. But with the "Reagan precedent" of 1980 looming increasingly large -- a scenario in which a woefully unpopular incumbent can cause the nation to turn to a candidate of the opposite party previously dismissed as unelectable -- Hillary stands a good chance of becoming the next president, if for no other reason than the fact that the Republican nominee will have to work a John Kerry-esque straddle between denouncing Bush's above-noted failures and praising his successes (the tax cut-fueled economic expansion, two Supreme Court justices who interpret and don't legislate, the success of the Global War on Terror in most areas except Iraq). But nothing will bring back Republicans and independents chased away by Bush and Rove like the presidency of Madame Hillary, a figure already reviled in much of Middle America. Carville is greatly exaggerating the shelf life of the Republicans' toxic unpopularity in a nation with such a short attention span. Will he overreact with similar vigor to a second President Clinton presiding over the Democrats' second loss of the Congress in the 2010 midterm elections? Somehow, I doubt it.

Finally, we come to the analysis of one of my all-time favorites, Pat Buchanan. Unsurprisingly, I find his thoughts closest to the mark. I should note also that I am glad that his many years of well-received exposure on MSNBC since his presidential campaigns have exposed the lie about his brand of politics being hateful and destructive to the public interest. He is a true patriot, and is entitled to the "I told you so's" that he does not stoop to taking in this fine assessment of Bush and Rove's unpleasant legacy. As noted above, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the Republican Establishment were in the tank for Bush in the 2000 primaries and were working feverishly against Pat in 1996 when he appeared for one brief shining moment to be on the verge of sparing the party from the specter of horror known simply as "Republican Presidential Nominee Bob Dole." Were Rush and the rest of the backroom Republican elite capable of learning from their mistakes, one might well ask if they're happy they got what they wished for, but that would of course be an exercise in futility.

But for all of Buchanan's many cogent points, he hints at but does not actually state the heart of the matter about the Bush and Rove mistakes. He denounces the Wilsonian neoconservatives who co-opted the Bush presidency after 9/11 and led our country to increase our over-commitment around the globe and he also excoriates their insane immigration policies, but he does not mention the solution. It's called paleoconservatism, a school of thought to which he and I both subscribe and the Bushes and Roves of the world have tried in vain to exterminate. It places the needs of the Old American Republic over those of the New World Order, whether it be by resisting the efforts to erase our borders and submerge our people into an amorphous North American Union or by fighting only the battles vital to our national security. It is a coherent and brilliant theory of who we are as a people and a celebration of how we got to this point. It is intellectually consistent and honest, unlike the Bush crowd, which sees nothing contradictory in decrying the bigotry of low expectations for schoolkids in the underclass and toadying to Hispanic voters by assuming that those who got here legally will vote Republican if they abandon control of our borders. And it is the true reflection of where the American people are, post-Rove. While the alienation this country feels from the Republican party and what has come to be defined as conservatism is deep and true, it is most assuredly not a repudiation of what conservatism has historically been and could be again. The assumption that Bush and Rove have inadvertently driven this country to the left could not be more false, as voters continue to express disillusionment with Washington from the right on a fairly regular basis. While the Republican elite has quashed Buchanan and any other adherents of paleoconservatism in the past, in part because they tolerate no dissent on an absolutist free trade agenda that does not take into any account the predatory trade policies of other countries, they may not always be in position to do so. What we need is for a prominent presidential contender to find the guts to pick up Populist Paleocon Pat's megaphone and rally the people with his memorable cry from the '96 primaries: "Mount up, everybody, and ride to the sound of the guns!"