Bush hiding behind the General?

Hiding Behind the General
The New York Times | Editorial

Sunday 09 September 2007

The military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, is to deliver a report to Congress on Monday that could be the most consequential testimony by a wartime commander in more than a generation. What the country desperately needs is an honest assessment of the war and a clear strategy for extricating American forces from the hopeless spiral of violence in Iraq.

President Bush, however, seems to be aiming for maximum political advantage - not maximum clarity on Iraq's military and political crises, which cannot be separated from each other. Mr. Bush, we fear, isn't looking for the truth, only for ways to confound the public, scare Democrats into dropping their demands for a sound exit strategy, and prolong the war until he leaves office. At times, General Petraeus gives the disturbing impression that he, too, is more focused on the political game in Washington than the unfolding disaster in Iraq. That serves neither American nor Iraqi interests.

Mr. Bush, deeply unpopular with the American people, is counting on the general to restore credibility to his discredited Iraq policy. He frequently refers to the escalation of American forces last January as General Petraeus's strategy - as if it were not his own creation. The situation echoes the way Mr. Bush made Colin Powell - another military man with an overly honed sense of a soldier's duty - play frontman at the United Nations in 2003 to make the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Bush cannot once again subcontract his responsibility. This is his war.

General Petraeus has his own credibility problems. He overstepped in 2004 when he published an op-ed article in The Washington Post six weeks before the election. The general - then in charge of training and equipping Iraq's security forces - rhapsodized about "tangible progress" and how the Iraqi forces were "developing steadily," an assessment that may have swayed some voters but has long since proved to be untrue.

And just last week, senior military commanders in Baghdad who work for General Petraeus entered the political fray by taking issue - anonymously - with the grim assessment of Iraq's politics and security by non-partisan Congressional investigators.

As Congress waited anxiously for General Petraeus's testimony, a flurry of well-timed news reports said that he told the White House he could go along with the withdrawal of about 4,000 American troops beginning in January but wanted to maintain increased force levels well into next year - just like Mr. Bush. Democrats who once demanded a firm date for the start of a troop pullout immediately started backpedaling.

Withdrawing 4,000 troops and dangling the prospect of additional withdrawals is a token political gesture, not a new strategy. If it proves enough to cow Congress into halting its push for a more robust and concrete exit strategy, that would be political cowardice at its worst.

We hope that General Petraeus can resist the political pressure and provide an unvarnished assessment of the military situation in Iraq. He is an important source of information, of course, but he is only one source - and he is not the man who sets American policy. If Mr. Bush insists on listening only to those who agree with him, Congress and the public must weigh General Petraeus's report against all data, including two new independent evaluations sharply at odds with the Pentagon's claim that things in Iraq are substantially better.

The Government Accountability Office found that the Iraqi government has not met 11 of 18 benchmarks set by Congress and that violence remains high, despite the White House's disingenuous claims of success. And a commission of retired senior military officers determined that Iraq's army will be unable to take over responsibility for internal security in the next 12 to 18 months. That is four years beyond what the Pentagon predicted in 2004. It is too long.

Nothing has changed about Mr. Bush's intentions. Waving off the independent reports, he plans to stay the course and make his successor fix his Iraq fiasco. Military progress without political progress is meaningless, and Mr. Bush no more has a plan for unifying Iraq now than when he started the war. The United States needs a prudent exit strategy that will withdraw American forces and try to stop Iraq's chaos from spreading.

Fathers and Sons: perspective

Questions for Christopher Dodd

A Son’s Story

Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON

Your new book, "Letters from Nuremberg," takes us back to the rubble of postwar Germany, when your father, former U.S. Senator Thomas J. Dodd, was a young attorney assigned to prosecute Nazi criminals. Why did you wait so long to publish his letters? I didn’t find them until 1990. My sister had them in the basement of her house, and she gave them to my brother, and he gave them to me.

What did you think when you first read through them? I wept. My father was one of four people doing interrogations, and in one letter he is interviewing a thug like Hermann Goring at 4 p.m. — a man responsible for the incineration of millions of people — and writing my mother an intimate letter that night. He could really change gears.

Virtually all the letters he wrote to your mom are love letters that offered him what he described as an “all too brief few minutes with you.” He absolutely adored her. And she him. When he was coming home, it was very clear that everything else was secondary. We were there, but we were not the central event. There was never any doubt in my mind as to where his greatest affection was.

You seem eager in the book to contrast the idealism of the American past with the moral disasters of the present. Nuremberg — say the word and it conjures images of moral authority, of global leadership, of responsibility. Say the words Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and what images come to mind?

You’re probably aware that the position of U.S. attorney general is currently available. I don’t think I am a candidate for attorney general. I don’t think I’m on the short list.

I hear you’re running for president. Yes, Ma’am. I hear as well. Thank you for hearing!

You’re barely a blip in the polls. As a fifth-term senator with decades of experience, why do you think you’ve failed to generate at least as much interest as, say, John Edwards? Well, he ran for vice president. This is all about names that people recognize.

Do you think Connecticut is the problem? It’s doesn’t exactly have a populist image. That’s an interesting question. Living between New York and Boston is sort of like living in Alsace-Lorraine, between the French and the Germans. We’re the quiet zone between two very robust cities.

Do you think the recent debates helped you distinguish yourself from the other Democratic candidates? No. At the debates, I felt like I was back at St. Thomas the Apostle School with Sister Louise, trying to be recognized in the room. If you had a parochial education, you’d appreciate how frightening that can be — trying to be recognized.

It’s true you’re not overexposed. The only time you made national headlines this summer was when your office in Hartford was burglarized by a homeless man. Well, as someone once said, as long as they spell your name right.

You came late to fatherhood. You’re 63 and have two young children. Grace was born two days after 9/11. She’s 5, and Christina is 2. Little girls are wonderful. Fathers and little girls have special relationships.

All of this represents a departure from your former image as a longtime bachelor who dated Bianca Jagger and Carrie Fisher. I wouldn’t even begin to make a comment on that.

Do you think Americans have a right to know about a candidate's personal life? Well, look. What’s that great line? There’s no such thing as a saint without a past and a sinner without a future.

Who said that? I just did.

Questions for Christopher Dodd

A Son’s Story

Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON

Your new book, “Letters from Nuremberg,” takes us back to the rubble of postwar Germany, when your father, former U.S. Senator Thomas J. Dodd, was a young attorney assigned to prosecute Nazi criminals. Why did you wait so long to publish his letters? I didn’t find them until 1990. My sister had them in the basement of her house, and she gave them to my brother, and he gave them to me.

What did you think when you first read through them? I wept. My father was one of four people doing interrogations, and in one letter he is interviewing a thug like Hermann Goring at 4 p.m. — a man responsible for the incineration of millions of people — and writing my mother an intimate letter that night. He could really change gears.

Virtually all the letters he wrote to your mom are love letters that offered him what he described as an “all too brief few minutes with you.” He absolutely adored her. And she him. When he was coming home, it was very clear that everything else was secondary. We were there, but we were not the central event. There was never any doubt in my mind as to where his greatest affection was.

You seem eager in the book to contrast the idealism of the American past with the moral disasters of the present. Nuremberg — say the word and it conjures images of moral authority, of global leadership, of responsibility. Say the words Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and what images come to mind?

You’re probably aware that the position of U.S. attorney general is currently available. I don’t think I am a candidate for attorney general. I don’t think I’m on the short list.

I hear you’re running for president. Yes, Ma’am. I hear as well. Thank you for hearing!

You’re barely a blip in the polls. As a fifth-term senator with decades of experience, why do you think you’ve failed to generate at least as much interest as, say, John Edwards? Well, he ran for vice president. This is all about names that people recognize.

Do you think Connecticut is the problem? It’s doesn’t exactly have a populist image. That’s an interesting question. Living between New York and Boston is sort of like living in Alsace-Lorraine, between the French and the Germans. We’re the quiet zone between two very robust cities.

Do you think the recent debates helped you distinguish yourself from the other Democratic candidates? No. At the debates, I felt like I was back at St. Thomas the Apostle School with Sister Louise, trying to be recognized in the room. If you had a parochial education, you’d appreciate how frightening that can be — trying to be recognized.

It’s true you’re not overexposed. The only time you made national headlines this summer was when your office in Hartford was burglarized by a homeless man. Well, as someone once said, as long as they spell your name right.

You came late to fatherhood. You’re 63 and have two young children. Grace was born two days after 9/11. She’s 5, and Christina is 2. Little girls are wonderful. Fathers and little girls have special relationships.

All of this represents a departure from your former image as a longtime bachelor who dated Bianca Jagger and Carrie Fisher. I wouldn’t even begin to make a comment on that.

Do you think Americans have a right to know about a candidate’s personal life? Well, look. What’s that great line? There’s no such thing as a saint without a past and a sinner without a future.

Who said that? I just did.

WHAT THE CONSTITUTION SAYS ABOUT WAR...

What The Constitution Says About Iraq
Congress and The Courts Must Recommit To The Legislative Branch’s Sole Authority To Declare War.

by Mario M. Cuomo

Most Americans want the war in Iraq ended, but it continues and Americans are killed, mutilated or wounded every day, as the Democratic majorities in Congress struggle to produce legislation that will take our forces out of harm’s way. Meanwhile, President Bush continues to insist that as commander in chief, he has the constitutional power to go to war and decide when to end it, unilaterally. At the same time, another possible disaster emerges from the shadows: Bush appears to be considering a military assault on Iran, again apparently without Congress declaring war first.

How did we get to this point and what, if anything, can we do now?

The war happened because when Bush first indicated his intention to go to war against Iraq, Congress refused to insist on enforcement of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. For more than 200 years, this article has spelled out that Congress — not the president — shall have “the power to declare war.” Because the Constitution cannot be amended by persistent evasion, this constitutional mandate was not erased by the actions of timid Congresses since World War II that allowed eager presidents to start wars in Vietnam and elsewhere without a “declaration” by Congress.

Nor were the feeble, post-factum congressional resolutions of support of the Iraq invasion — in 2001 and 2002 — adequate substitutes for the formal declaration of war demanded by the founding fathers.

What can be done now?

First, Democrats should make clear that it is the president who is keeping the war in Iraq from ending. Even if Congress were able to pass a veto-proof bill with respect to withdrawal, the president would resist enforcement of the bill, insisting that as commander in chief, he is immune from Congress’ decision. That would raise a constitutional issue for the courts.

But judging by the courts’ history concerning constitutional war powers, including decisions involving the Iraq war in the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Massachusetts, the judiciary would, in all probability, choose not to intervene, claiming that the disagreement between the president and Congress is a political question.

However, the political-question thesis is nowhere referred to in the Constitution, and it denies the people the protection of the Constitution in dealing with perhaps the most serious question the nation has to face: “Should we go to war?” That position should be challenged as an abdication of constitutional duty by the courts, but the sad truth is that the current conservative-dominated Supreme Court would probably support our current conservative president. As a practical matter, that means only the president can end this waror change our strategy in Iraq.

Even if it is too late for Congress to remedy its failure to comply with the Constitution with respect to Iraq, at the very least our candidates for president and our congressional leaders should assure us that they will not allow this lapse to result in further unilateral acts of war — against Iran, Pakistan or any other nation — by this president or any other. Our leaders must make it clear that in the future, Congress will insist on compliance with Article I, Section 8 for any military action that is not fairly deemed an unexpected emergency.

It is frightening that our government has permitted this fundamental and costly constitutional transgression to persist for more than four years.

We must do everything we can to end the war in Iraq and avoid a new tragedy abroad by recommitting to strict adherence to the rule of law and to the Constitution by the president, Congress and the courts — especially with respect to war powers.

Mario M. Cuomo, the governor of New York from 1983 to 1995, now practices law in New York.

© 2007 The Los Angeles Times

What is changing for the ordinary guy and gal at work?

Anxious About Tomorrow
By Bob Herbert
The New York Times

Saturday 01 September 2007

You know you've stepped into a different universe when you hear a major American labor leader saying matter-of-factly that employer-based health insurance and employer-based pensions are relics of a bygone industrial economy.

Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, which has 1.9 million members and is the fastest-growing union in the country, is not your ordinary union leader. With Labor Day approaching, he was reflecting on some of the challenges facing workers in a post-20th-century globalized economy.

"I just don't think that as a country we've conceptualized that this is not our father's or our grandfather's economy," Mr. Stern said in an interview. "We're going through profound change and we have no plan."

The feeling that seems to override all others for workers is anxiety. American families, already saddled with enormous debt, are trying to make it in an environment in which employment is becoming increasingly contingent and subject to worldwide competition. Health insurance, unaffordable for millions, is a huge problem. And guaranteed pensions are going the way of typewriter ribbons and carbon paper.

"We're ending defined benefit pensions in front of our eyes," said Mr. Stern. "I'd say today's retirement plan for young workers is: 'I'm going to work until I die.'"

The result of all of this - along with such problems as the mortgage and housing crisis, and a domestic economy that is doing nothing to improve living standards for ordinary Americans - is fear.

"Workers are incredibly, legitimately scared that the American dream, particularly the belief that their kids will do better, is ending," said Mr. Stern. He is trying to get across the idea that in a period of such profound change, the old templates, the traditional ideas and policies of even the most progressive thinkers and officeholders, will not be sufficient to meet the new challenges.

"We can't be the only country on earth that asks our employers to put the price of health care on its products when a lot of our competitors don't," he said. "And job security? Even if you want to stay with your employer, as in the old economic model, we're seeing in many industries that your employer is not going to be around to stay with you."

A comprehensive new approach is needed, but what should that approach be? Franklin Roosevelt always hoped to inject a measure of economic security into the lives of ordinary Americans. But the New Deal was seven decades ago. Workers are insecure now for a host of different reasons and Mr. Stern wants the labor movement to be part of a vast cooperative effort to develop the solutions appropriate to today's environment.

He told me, "I'd like to say to the Democrats that we are as far today from the New Deal as the New Deal was from the Civil War."

He wants more people to pay attention to the big issues that affect not just union workers but all working families: How do you bring health care to all? What do you do about retirement security? How will the jobs of the 21st century be created?

And what about schools, energy, global warming, the environment?

Mr. Stern tends to see the nation as a team and wants the team to pull together to develop a creative vision of what the U.S. should be about in the 21st century. A cornerstone of that vision, he said, should be adherence to the "primary value" of rewarding work.

"We're a team in the 21st-century period of rapid change and competition," he said. "And right now, we don't have leadership, and we don't have a plan. At the same time, a group of people are enriching themselves far beyond anything that's reasonable."

What he would like to see, he said, is a large group of thoughtful people from various walks of American life - business, labor, government, academia and so forth - convened to begin the serious work of cooperatively developing a real-world vision of a society that is fairer, healthier, better educated, better prepared to compete globally, and more economically secure.

"I think you're already seeing the beginnings of odd formations of people who appreciate, issue by issue, that we have to do something different here," he said.

The kind of effort Mr. Stern would like to see would logically be initiated at the highest levels of government, preferably the White House. But if that's not in the cards, someone else should take up the challenge. And there should be a sense of urgency about it.

The fears of America's workers are well founded. "There's something wrong with the system right now," said Mr. Stern, "and we can't just say, 'Well, it's all going to work out.' It's not."

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