The Plank

A Gift for Khartoum

2008-05-15T14:20:00Z

Eric Reeves, a professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College, who also runs sudanreeves.org, reports here on the latest tragic development in Darfur.

On May 10, one of Darfur's key rebel factions, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), struck military targets within Omdurman, the twin city of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. Although rumored for days, the long-distance rebel attack seemed to catch the ruling National Islamic Front (NIF) regime by surprise. This was an extraordinary military event, one without precedent under the regime, and its leaders have been badly rattled--perhaps the primary ambition of an assault that had no chance for sustainable military success.

But satisfying as the attack may have been for JEM, it is likely to prove extremely bad news for the people of Darfur. There have already been multiple reports from human rights groups and the Sudanese diaspora that Darfuris are being beaten, arrested, and in some cases, summarily executed. Most have been Zaghawa, the Darfur tribal group dominant in JEM and its leadership.

Currently, JEM has the strongest military among the Darfuri rebel factions, and it's the most willing to act alone--but it's also the least representative of the people of Darfur as a whole. Its leader, Khalil Ibrahim, has had deep political connections with Hassan al-Turabi, who did much to chart the Islamist agenda that has governed Sudan for the past 18 years. JEM's military has been assisted by the regime of embattled President Idriss Déby of Chad, also a Zaghawa, who is fighting a dangerous proxy war with Khartoum. And, finally, JEM's political concerns are perceived by most Darfuris as having an excessively national, as opposed to regional character--a consequence, according to many, of Khalil's personal ambitions.

None of these details mattered to the U.N. Security Council when it handed Khartoum an imbalanced and excessively accommodating statement on May 13. "The Security Council strongly condemns the attacks of 10 May perpetrated by the ... JEM against the Sudanese government in Omdurman and urges all parties to cease violence immediately," read the Presidential Statement. Nothing here about the years of human rights violations committed by Khartoum in Darfur. Reflecting on this language, Khartoum's especially thuggish ambassador to the U.N., Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem, declared, "This is exactly what we wanted the Council to do."

In the balance for the U.N. was a politically consequential, but militarily doomed, rebel effort to depose a genocidal regime on the one hand--and, on the other, a willingness by this same regime to pursue its aims in Darfur through a grim "genocide by attrition." Given these moral inequities, the one-sided U.N. statement implicitly signals to Khartoum that there will be few real consequences for future military actions, whether directed at JEM or not.

Recently, these actions have included a brutal series of bombings in North Darfur, one killing a number of civilians, including six schoolchildren. This follows the savage campaign that took place north of el-Geneina (West Darfur) in February, where hundreds of civilians of were killed, tens of thousands displaced, and more than 150,000 cut off from aid.

JEM's strategy and actions are misbegotten, its increasing military unilateralism deplorable. But we must not lose sight of the enormous frustration within the African Darfuri populations and rebel groups as they continue to confront what's essentially become international tolerance for crimes against humanity--their humanity. As a consequence, according to sources in Darfur, other rebel factions are likely to conclude they have been left to their own military devices. They see the increasing likelihood that UNAMID will not deploy significant additional protection forces for many months. They also believe--correctly, it seems--that Khartoum has little incentive or feels any significant pressure to engage in a good-faith cease-fire, let alone a just and sustainable peace process. Fighting is likely to intensify.

A regime guided by the most ruthless of calculations throughout the Darfur genocide has now been given further reason by the U.N. to believe that it can get away with its crimes. The prospects for peace in this tortured land have dimmed further.

--Eric Reeves

Apocalypse Soon

2008-05-15T14:05:00Z

Ben Smith reports that one of John McCain's prominent endorsers, whose views on the Middle East McCain has praised, has called for the elimination of the State of Israel, with the Jewish state to the covered in a "sea of human blood."

(Note: the above description is 100% accurate, but you might draw a misleading impression of it unless you click through to the link. My point is, if Republicans can simply repeat the outright lie that Barack Obama called Israel a "constant sore," why can't Obama make the utterly truthful yet context-lacking point I made above?)

--Jonathan Chait

The Republican Obama Wants to Run Against

2008-05-15T13:33:00Z

Bush at the Knesset:

In a particularly sharp blast from halfway around the world, President Bush suggested Thursday that Sen. Barack Obama and other Democrats are in favor of "appeasement" of terrorists in the same way U.S. leaders appeased Nazis in the run-up to World War II.
"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Obama's response:

It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power - including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy - to pressure countries like Iran and Syria. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.

Bush is wrong, or at least substantially misleading, on the facts--as Ben Smith notes, "Obama has advocated talking to the leaders of hostile states, but not of groups like Hamas." And making an attack this direct on a domestic political opponent while on foreign soil is generally considered out of bounds. But more than either of those responses, I'm struck by how politically foolish this assault appears to be. Bush attacking Obama, and Obama counter-attacking Bush, while John McCain sits on the sidelines, is a disastrous dynamic for the GOP. The more Obama can frame this race as him vs. the most unpopular president in modern history, the easier a time he'll have in the fall.

--Christopher Orr

John Edwards In Retrospect

2008-05-14T22:34:00Z

John Edwards is endorsing Obama this evening. Although he's been out of sight these past four months--save periodic cloak-and-dagger meetings with both candidates--in many ways, it's as if he never left.

As Jonathan Cohn explained in January, Edwards succeeded to a remarkable degree at making the Democrats' agenda his own. He pushed every candidate in the direction of universal health insurance, something Democratic presidential candidates hadn't endorsed since the 1990s, and he put poverty back on the table in a way that--especially now, with the race so focused on economics and the working class--has proved indispensable. Anyways, check out Cohn's post.

--Barron YoungSmith

Re-evaluating Rauschenberg

2008-05-14T21:47:00Z

Pop Artist Robert Rauschenberg passed away this week, so we asked TNR's art critic Jed Perl to reflect on his work. He knows it's impolite to "speak evil of the dead"--but of the works of the dead, "it seems to me that we have a perfect right to say whatever we think." In this fiery piece, he proceeds to critique the work of what many critics regarded as "America's unofficial avant-garde ambassador-at-large, spreading the anything-can-be-art Dadaist gospel to the four corners of the earth, teaching people all over the world that, by god, you too can make a collage, you too can act in the gap between art and life."

But Perl finds that the artist's eclectic style and arbitrary impulses "had less to do with art than with an art-world circus show."

Isn't part of what attracts people to this kind of act the suspicion that what they are seeing is a magnificent fraud? Doesn't the public draw closer because they are fascinated by the performer's ability to confuse and mislead? Rauschenberg's chutzpah--the man painted, sculpted, danced, choreographed, designed sets, even composed music--opened up the possibilities that are now being mined by contemporary con-artists such as Damien Hirst, Mike Kelley, and Jeff Koons. Rauschenberg didn't poeticize the ordinary. He aggrandized the ordinary, he put a high-art style price tag on the ordinary. That could describe much of the most widely discussed work being exhibited and sold in the art world today.

Perl's final assessment of Rauschenberg's art: "It stank in the 1950s, and it doesn't look any better today." Click here to read the entire piece.

--The Editors

McCain and the G.I. Bill

2008-05-14T21:08:00Z

In a speech in West Virginia earlier this week, Barack Obama attacked John McCain for opposing Jim Webb's "21st Century G.I. Bill," the original 1946 version of which paid full tuition and living costs for veterans enrolling in college. As this helpful Boston Globe piece explains, the original bill was curtailed during the relative peace of the 1980s, capping benefits at just under $10,000 per year. The new bill, which Webb introduced with Chuck Hagel and Frank Lautenberg and which John Warner has cosponsored, would raise the cap on the benefit to match the cost of the most expensive public university or college in any given state.

Such a measure may seem relatively uncontroversial, but McCain has joined the White House and Pentagon in opposing it because he fears it could lure soldiers out of the armed forces. Says McCain: "[Webb's] bill offers the same benefits whether you stay three years or longer. We want to have a sliding scale to increase retention." McCain has signed onto a counterproposal by Lindsey Graham, which would increase the monthly education benefit and allow career military personnel to transfer their benefits to their children, but is nowhere near as comprehensive as Webb's proposal.

The issue seems a good opportunity for Obama to practice his typical, compassionate politics while shoring up on national defense. Look for it to especially become an issue if he chooses as his running mate Webb, who has accused McCain of being "full of it." The dropouts McCain fears are real--the CBO estimates it will cost the military $1.1 billion over four years to offset them--but Webb has wisely described the bill's passage in moral terms, not economic ones (although economics may favor it too: Estimates suggest the original bill returned between five and 13 dollars on every one invested). The original G.I. Bill was more generous than Webb's proposal, covering even private tuitions. That McCain would defend it as "one of the greatest things about the 20th century" while opposing Webb's measure is a hypocrisy that Obama should seize.

--Ben Crair

Help from Above?

2008-05-14T20:58:00Z

Marc Ambinder asks whether the super-secret mystery endorser Barack Obama is planning to unveil at 6:30 is on this flight.

--Christopher Orr

The Misleading Right Track/Wrong Track Question

2008-05-14T18:59:00Z

Brendan Nyhan and Mori Dinauer have some thoughts on the startling right track/wrong track numbers in this week's ABC/Washington Post poll. Mori writes:

[T]he periods where a majority of Americans felt the country was on the right track are few and far between. The only sustained period, in fact, was during the late 90s, presumably because of the economic boom. This chart doesn't go back this far, but I'm willing to bet the rest of the 1970s were just as bad, and the late 60s not much better, which suggests that Americans haven't been happy with the direction of the country since the postwar boom, and that economic conditions had a lot--if not everything--to do with it.

I think this is probably wrong. More likely, it's an instance of the general phenomenon in public-opinion polling that when you ask people to evaluate large, nebulous, messy institutions ("Congress", "government", etc.) you tend to get very pessimistic responses. But when you ask people to evaluate more specific things (their own congressman, Medicare, etc.) you get a far rosier picture. This helps explain why, though Americans seem to always think the country is on the wrong track, most people tend to be relatively sanguine about their own personal financial situation. Of course, this doesn't mean that the right track/wrong track numbers are meaningless--the fact that the wrong-track figure is at a near-record high does suggest the obvious, namely that people are exceptionally dissatisfied with the Bush administration. But just because 82 percent of people say the country is on the wrong track doesn't imply that 82 percent of Americans think their lives suck.

There's also the interesting question of exactly why the wrong-track number is at 82 percent. It just seems hard to make the case that things in America are objectively as bad as they've been in the history of polling. The economy is sputtering but not, by historical standards, abominable; the war in Iraq is unpopular, but its social salience pales in comparison to that of Vietnam. One gets the sense that the nation's public ethos during the Bush era just makes people viscerally unhappy and pessimistic in a way that's difficult to quantify or explain.

--Josh Patashnik

Hangin' with Hezbollah

2008-05-14T18:17:00Z

Burning tires, roadblocks, masked gunmen, Beirut in flames--sound familiar? This isn't the first time that Hezbollah has laid siege to the Lebanese capitol in order to pressure the government to share more power. Last year, we had Zvika Krieger on the ground in Beirut giving us a thrilling tour of the city as pandemonium reigned. One memorable passage:

"We're also trying to stop American hegemony of Lebanon," pipes in fellow Hezbollah member Mohammad. "We are so happy when American soldiers are killed in Iraq because they are the ones responsible for our deaths here," he says, referring to the tacit American endorsement of Israel's attacks this summer. Mohammad fears that "America is trying to get the Sunnis out of Iraq and the Shia out of Lebanon" in order to create a balance of power in the region--a fear that receives nods of approval from the Hezbollah mob that has gathered around us.

As I try to break free from the crowd, one of the Hezbollah members grabs my arm. "You from America?" he asks in labored English. When I say yes, from Los Angeles, he whispers: "You like the Lakers? I hate America, but I love Kobe Bryant."

Read the whole piece to see how the more things change, the more they stay the same...

--The Editors

DOD Document Dump: Grave Concerns

2008-05-14T17:14:00Z

Remember that Pentagon program, revealed last month, that fed talking points to supposedly objective military analysts to push the Bush administration's line on Iraq? The Department of Defense just released thousands of documents from the program, so we asked Government Executive correspondent and TNR contributor Alyssa Rosenberg to sift through the documents and see what she can find:

One of our commenters on an earlier post joked about the "dangerous, bizarre and downright sadistic task" of going through 8,000 pages of DOD memos. The truth is, reading through these documents is more monotonous than anything else. The same statistics and stale phrases flash by my eyes page after PDF-ed page. And then something like this jumps out at me: "Talking Points on Mass Grave Sites in Iraq--May 30, 2003."

And for once they're not really talking points at all, just a sober plan for what must have been an impossible situation: How do you deal with families who are desperate to find their loved ones, even if only to confirm that they died and end an agonizing wait? And how do you allow them to resolve those questions while preserving evidence for war crimes trials? The answer seems to be that you fly in forensics experts who can conduct interviews, issue death certificates, and catalog the personal effects of the dead, and you work with community and religious leaders to explain to Iraqis why you hope they can prolong their searches and what you hope to find.

And if they can't wait anymore, you let them dig.

"At sites such as al Hillah where extensive digging has already begun," the briefing reads, "Military ... will help inform the families of the importance of careful exhumation, and provide them with water, shade, plastic bags, gloves and masks.... At sites that have not been subject to extensive digging, [the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance] will hire local Iraqis to guard the graves, and deploy humanitarian response teams to meet with families who appear at the sites to explain the problems with uncoordinated exhumation and inform them of ORHA's plans to assist in identification and reburial of remains."

The talking points present no clichés, no pictures of grieving widows, no stories of Iraqis who were finally able to learn the truth. They don't try to encompass the full horror of the graves with statistics or catch-phrases, or to build a case for the military's accomplishments. The bulleted sentences just tell the reader what the military was trying to do in one situation, and it works. Nobody wins in an exhumation of a mass grave, but this simple list of actions makes a convincing case for the appropriateness of American decisions, at least in this case, in trying to deal with what must have been Iraqis' unfathomable fear and grief.

DOD Document Dump, Part 1: The Joke's On Us
DOD Document Dump, Part 2: Girl Power!

--Alyssa Rosenberg

Memo: We're Toast

2008-05-14T15:34:00Z

From Politico's John Bresnahan:

Following the victory by Democrat Travis Childers in tonight's special election, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole (Okla.) issued what can only be called a declaration of surrender.... [The] statement is an admission by Cole that he does not now how House Republicans can win in November as a group, so each member better protect himself or herself. To his credit, Cole has been warning his members that they need to run as outsiders this fall, but beyond that general admonition, the Oklahoma Republican can't show them a path to victory. It's an extraordinary statement by the head of a national campaign committee, but it is not one that's going to inspire any warm feelings from his GOP colleagues.

Cole's statement--and Bresnahan's analysis--are here.

--Christopher Orr

I Take Issue With "The Black Case For Obama-Skepticism"

2008-05-14T15:17:00Z

Cinque Henderson has an interesting piece in our new issue on the "black case for Obama skepticism." Particularly noteworthy are his comments about Obama's channeling of Malcolm X during the South Carolina primary fight and his criticisms of Obama's handling of the Wright affair. However, he also makes one of the most bizarre assertions I have come across in quite some time.

The section starts with a good point at the expense of Obama supporters like Senator Claire McCaskill:

Add to that another Obama supporter, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, calling Obama the first black politician to "come to the American people not as a victim but rather as a leader." You hear this kind of talk all the time. Never mind the dignified glories of Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Colin Powell, Kurt Schmoke, and others. We have arrived at the crux of the matter. So much of the educated white people's love for Barack depends on educated white people's complete ignorance of and distance from the rest of us. Barack is the black person they want the rest of us to be--half-white and loving, or "racially transcendent," as the press loves to call him. And, since picking a candidate makes you allies with his other supporters, why would I want to be allies with educated whites whose glorification of Barack depends in large part on their implicit denigration of the rest of us? [italics mine]

This is well put, but here is what follows:

But, once you stare past the radiant glow surrounding Obama and begin to study the exact reasons for his so-called racial transcendence, you can't help but conclude that it is mostly hokum. Why do black people love Obama? In large part, it's because of the dark-skinned woman on his arm. Black people (especially black women) are nuts for Michelle. Had Barack married a white woman, his candidacy would've never gotten off the ground with black people. And would whites really be so into him if he hadn't had a white mother? Based on U.S. political history, you would have to conclude: not a chance. My suspicion is that people are ultimately comfortable with Obama because a member of his family looks like them--and, if you think about it, that's not terribly transcendent. [italics mine]

Talk about "denigrating" a group of people--and giving them absolutely no credit whatsoever. What can you even say about this assertion? Not only does Henderson supply no evidence for it, but on its face it seems completely ludicrous. And what follows is not much better. Do most voters even know Obama has a white mother? Regardless, we are supposed to believe this is why white people like him?

Definitely read the whole piece, but if Henderson is so concerned about white people "viewing" African-Americans in a certain way, he himself should avoid falling into the same trap.

--Isaac Chotiner

Is Jonah Hill the New Johnny Depp?

2008-05-14T14:59:00Z

...or the new Richard Grieco? Entertainment Weekly:

21 Jump Street by way of...Jonah Hill?! Yes, it's true: The breakout Superbad comic and Judd Apatow acolyte is in negotiations to develop a movie adaptation of the popular '80s TV show starring Johnny Depp.

But wait, there's some bad news:

It hasn't been decided whether Hill will actually star in the movie, but Sony confirms that he'll work on the screenplay and serve as executive producer.

Not star? What a waste that would be. I can't think of a better hook for the movie than featuring Hill--and is it too much to hope for Michael Cera?--as drunken, foul-mouthed, sex-obsessed high school dorks who are actually undercover cops zeroing in on a teen drug ring...

--Christopher Orr

A Thought About West Virginia

2008-05-14T03:29:00Z

In retrospect, Barack Obama may be lucky he didn't win Indiana last week. Why? Suppose he had--there would have been immense pressure on Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race, which she might have done. Given that around seven percent of West Virginia Democratic primary voters pulled the lever for John Edwards, who dropped out of the race more than three months ago, there's a pretty decent chance Obama would have lost West Virginia, or at the very least would have come up short of 50 percent. And as bad as tonight's results look for him (even though it's yet one more instance of the essentially unchanging demography-is-destiny story in the Democratic race), surely it would have been far worse to lose to Hillary if she had already conceded the race. As it stands now, he'll be able to take his licks in West Virginia and Kentucky without being totally humiliated, then make a victory declaration of sorts after a win in Oregon. That's about as reasonable an outcome as he could have hoped for, given that the quirks of the primary calendar put two of his worst states in the union at this juncture in the race. (Random question: Oregon uses mail-in ballots, so there are no exit polls. Will the networks be able to project him the winner early enough in the night for him to make a speech at a reasonable hour?)

If, in fact, it was the antics of Rush Limbaugh that put Hillary over the top in Indiana, it may well be that El Rushbo was the only thing standing between Obama and a deeply embarrassing loss to a non-candidate. The joys of unintended consequences.

--Josh Patashnik

Looking Good for Democrats in Mississippi

2008-05-14T02:06:00Z

In the special election in Mississippi's first congressional district that Eve mentioned, it looks like Democrat Travis W. Childers may well have pulled off a significant upset. With 79 percent of precincts reporting, Childers is taking 51 percent of the vote to 49 percent for Republican Greg Davis (about a 1,750-vote lead for Childers). Most of the votes outstanding are in three counties: Tate, Prentiss, and Itawamba. Tate County is a Davis stronghold in northwest Mississippi, but Prentiss is Childers's home county and should net him a couple thousand votes. Itawamba County is in the northeastern part of the state, where Childers has run very strong tonight (it also went for Childers in the primary election in April). And DeSoto County, Davis's home base in the southern suburbs of Memphis, has nearly finished reporting. It's still a little early to be calling anything, but things look pretty good for Childers at this point.

Suffice it to say this would not be a good sign for the GOP. Losing Denny Hastert's seat in Illinois was bad; losing Louisiana's sixth district to Don Cazayoux was worse. A loss in northern Mississippi (to a candidate who looks like Snidely Whiplash) would be close to catastrophic. This is a district no center-left party has any business winning.

Update: Jonathan Singer at MyDD says the AP has called it for Childers. I really wouldn't want to be John Boehner or Tom Cole tonight.

--Josh Patashnik

The Plank

A Gift for Khartoum

Apocalypse Soon

The Republican Obama *Wants* to Run Against

John Edwards In Retrospect

Re-evaluating Rauschenberg

McCain and the G.I. Bill

Help from Above?

The Misleading Right Track/Wrong Track Question

Hangin' with Hezbollah

DOD Document Dump: Grave Concerns

Memo: We're Toast

I Take Issue With "The Black Case For Obama-Skepticism"

Is Jonah Hill the New Johnny Depp?

A Thought About West Virginia

Looking Good for Democrats in Mississippi

The Republican Obama Wants to Run Against