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.
Showing posts with label Scott Pullins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scott Pullins. Show all posts
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Is waterboarding torture?
By Rick Morris
Listeners to The FDH Lounge program are aware that fellow Lounge Dignitaries Burrell Jackson and Chris Galloway are good friends of mine dating back to our days navigating the political sphere at Ohio University. The same can be said of Scott Pullins, Ohio's foremost lawyer/political advocate/lobbyist/etc.
Scott penned a short introduction to a piece on his site last month denouncing our government's practice of waterboarding on terrorist suspects. Frankly, this is a strange topic for me in that I don't have a fierce and unshakable take one way or another, as I almost always do on any subject. I know that our government has considered it torture in the past and that it is not wise or moral for our government to indulge in torture. Without wanting to resort to something as cliche as the "Jack Bauer exception," I would probably be in favor of desperate measures under the most extreme circumstances (i.e. a nuke about to be detonated), but I would not want it to be standard operating practice.
But just the fact that I am at least somewhat sympathetic to Scott's arguments would put me afoul of the absolutists he references in his post. Now, I know from many, many conversations that I am way more of a paleocon than any of my fellow members of "The OU Mafia," so I won't associate Scott or anyone else with what I'm about to argue.
What Scott references, the people who can't form a single cogent thought beyond "Support the president" or any other cliche -- they are the neocons who have taken over the conservative movement and the Republican party. Revisionism aside, unrestrained militarism was never a cornerstone of the conservative movement. How many hot wars did Ronald Reagan engage in on his way to bringing down the Soviet Union? He showed that he was prepared to commit the military where necessary (Grenada, the Libyan president's mansion), but used proxies in other instances (Central America, Afghanistan). In short, he used the full range of options for every situation, unlike today's hairy-chested tough-talkers like Bill Kristol -- whose response to the Israeli-Hezbollah War of '06 was to call for the United States to invade Iran!
Somewhere along the way, those of us on the right side of the spectrum have allowed the neocons, who have historically not placed a tremendous amount of importance on traditional conservative issues like the right to life, to hijack this ideology and to paint anyone with legitimate questions about any aspect of American military or foreign policy as un-American. I will note in the very same breath that many on the left deserve the vitriol of the neocons and are actually interested in undermining our nation's standing in the world. But for the main conservative organs in this country, such as National Review, to act as though neoconservatism is the only legitimate strain of thinking is a slap in the face to those of us who read it and cherished it for the decades prior to its decline into intellectual sloth. To disagree, from another vantage point on the right, from the doctrine of Jonah Goldberg or Hugh Hewitt is not to be lacking in patriotism, it is to live up to the definition of the word. And whether Scott Pullins and I agree on every last point on political or military policy, that is definitely a point of agreement for us both.
Listeners to The FDH Lounge program are aware that fellow Lounge Dignitaries Burrell Jackson and Chris Galloway are good friends of mine dating back to our days navigating the political sphere at Ohio University. The same can be said of Scott Pullins, Ohio's foremost lawyer/political advocate/lobbyist/etc.
Scott penned a short introduction to a piece on his site last month denouncing our government's practice of waterboarding on terrorist suspects. Frankly, this is a strange topic for me in that I don't have a fierce and unshakable take one way or another, as I almost always do on any subject. I know that our government has considered it torture in the past and that it is not wise or moral for our government to indulge in torture. Without wanting to resort to something as cliche as the "Jack Bauer exception," I would probably be in favor of desperate measures under the most extreme circumstances (i.e. a nuke about to be detonated), but I would not want it to be standard operating practice.
But just the fact that I am at least somewhat sympathetic to Scott's arguments would put me afoul of the absolutists he references in his post. Now, I know from many, many conversations that I am way more of a paleocon than any of my fellow members of "The OU Mafia," so I won't associate Scott or anyone else with what I'm about to argue.
What Scott references, the people who can't form a single cogent thought beyond "Support the president" or any other cliche -- they are the neocons who have taken over the conservative movement and the Republican party. Revisionism aside, unrestrained militarism was never a cornerstone of the conservative movement. How many hot wars did Ronald Reagan engage in on his way to bringing down the Soviet Union? He showed that he was prepared to commit the military where necessary (Grenada, the Libyan president's mansion), but used proxies in other instances (Central America, Afghanistan). In short, he used the full range of options for every situation, unlike today's hairy-chested tough-talkers like Bill Kristol -- whose response to the Israeli-Hezbollah War of '06 was to call for the United States to invade Iran!
Somewhere along the way, those of us on the right side of the spectrum have allowed the neocons, who have historically not placed a tremendous amount of importance on traditional conservative issues like the right to life, to hijack this ideology and to paint anyone with legitimate questions about any aspect of American military or foreign policy as un-American. I will note in the very same breath that many on the left deserve the vitriol of the neocons and are actually interested in undermining our nation's standing in the world. But for the main conservative organs in this country, such as National Review, to act as though neoconservatism is the only legitimate strain of thinking is a slap in the face to those of us who read it and cherished it for the decades prior to its decline into intellectual sloth. To disagree, from another vantage point on the right, from the doctrine of Jonah Goldberg or Hugh Hewitt is not to be lacking in patriotism, it is to live up to the definition of the word. And whether Scott Pullins and I agree on every last point on political or military policy, that is definitely a point of agreement for us both.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Annual list proves many of us are quite old
By Rick Morris
It's that time of year again. The Beloit College Mindset List has just been issued for the tenth year. No doubt, you've received this list previously via email spam from your friends -- it's the one with the theme that reads something like "This year's incoming college freshmen have never ..."
Personally, I started to feel a bit old the year that the list indicated that incoming college freshmen would not have had knowledge of an Atari 2600. That was a staple of my youth! But like many other people in their thirties, the list just rubs more salt in the wound each year. This year, a major theme of the list is that incoming college freshmen did not grow up in a world with the Berlin Wall or, more broadly speaking, the Cold War. Now, as a child of the Cold War and someone whose geopolitical references were framed by it (in a reactionary manner, naturally!), that's depressing enough.
But no Berlin Wall? I remember as though it were yesterday November 9, 1989, watching the wall come down while pounding celebratory vodka with a great friend and fellow college right-wing firebrand -- today known as Ohio's finest public policy and legal expert, Scott Pullins. If memory serves correctly, that was also the night (during Sweeps Month, naturally) that the Cheers episode aired in which Carla's husband got killed by a runaway Zamboni. Unfortunately, after the Cheers and Berlin Wall revelry was done, I still had to go work an overnight shift at the school newspaper with a whole lot of 80-proof vodka in my system. Suffice it to say, that's the kind of youthful mistake you only make once! Scott, who got to sleep off his fun immediately, was smarter than me even back then.
Clearly, I have vivid memories of that great moment in time, but now those images are tainted by the unmistakable fact that I am now "the old guy who remembers the way it was back then." I'm sure I'll get over it -- until next August when the list comes out and says that incoming college freshmen never knew a world in which we weren't at odds with Saddam Hussein.
It's that time of year again. The Beloit College Mindset List has just been issued for the tenth year. No doubt, you've received this list previously via email spam from your friends -- it's the one with the theme that reads something like "This year's incoming college freshmen have never ..."
Personally, I started to feel a bit old the year that the list indicated that incoming college freshmen would not have had knowledge of an Atari 2600. That was a staple of my youth! But like many other people in their thirties, the list just rubs more salt in the wound each year. This year, a major theme of the list is that incoming college freshmen did not grow up in a world with the Berlin Wall or, more broadly speaking, the Cold War. Now, as a child of the Cold War and someone whose geopolitical references were framed by it (in a reactionary manner, naturally!), that's depressing enough.
But no Berlin Wall? I remember as though it were yesterday November 9, 1989, watching the wall come down while pounding celebratory vodka with a great friend and fellow college right-wing firebrand -- today known as Ohio's finest public policy and legal expert, Scott Pullins. If memory serves correctly, that was also the night (during Sweeps Month, naturally) that the Cheers episode aired in which Carla's husband got killed by a runaway Zamboni. Unfortunately, after the Cheers and Berlin Wall revelry was done, I still had to go work an overnight shift at the school newspaper with a whole lot of 80-proof vodka in my system. Suffice it to say, that's the kind of youthful mistake you only make once! Scott, who got to sleep off his fun immediately, was smarter than me even back then.
Clearly, I have vivid memories of that great moment in time, but now those images are tainted by the unmistakable fact that I am now "the old guy who remembers the way it was back then." I'm sure I'll get over it -- until next August when the list comes out and says that incoming college freshmen never knew a world in which we weren't at odds with Saddam Hussein.
Friday, August 17, 2007
The GOP YouTube debate will happen
By Rick Morris
After some doubt, the Republican YouTube presidential debate is now back on, scheduled for November 28. The Pullins Report, a fine online newsletter dealing with all aspects of public policy published by my longtime friend Scott Pullins, has the details. He was part of the Save the Debate coalition dedicated to making sure that the doubts sown by the leading contenders would not be enough to sink the event itself.
As I indicated on The FDH Lounge show when we discussed this event, I believe that the candidates are obliged to attend this debate, but I do believe that they are well within their rights to refuse to answer any asinine agenda questions or anything undignified (i.e. a query from some creep in a snowman's suit). There should be a minimum baseline of dignity for any event, but I believe that these aspirants should show up and keep an open mind on what they will and will not address. I urge the readers of this blog to follow the Save the Debate link and submit questions to be asked.
After some doubt, the Republican YouTube presidential debate is now back on, scheduled for November 28. The Pullins Report, a fine online newsletter dealing with all aspects of public policy published by my longtime friend Scott Pullins, has the details. He was part of the Save the Debate coalition dedicated to making sure that the doubts sown by the leading contenders would not be enough to sink the event itself.
As I indicated on The FDH Lounge show when we discussed this event, I believe that the candidates are obliged to attend this debate, but I do believe that they are well within their rights to refuse to answer any asinine agenda questions or anything undignified (i.e. a query from some creep in a snowman's suit). There should be a minimum baseline of dignity for any event, but I believe that these aspirants should show up and keep an open mind on what they will and will not address. I urge the readers of this blog to follow the Save the Debate link and submit questions to be asked.
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