I rise today to a point of personal privilege: the opportunity to defend my friend and colleague, and fellow blogospheric furry mammal, The Bull Moose (a.k.a., Marshall Wittmann) from a double-barreled attempt over at DailyKos to barbecue his tough old hide.What did the Moose do to earn this extensive abuse? He provided a short quote to the Washington Post commenting on the likely Republican treatment of Nancy Pelosi’s Iraq statement the other day, the point being that the timing of the statement reinforced the White House’s effort to frame the Iraq debate as offering a Manichean choice between victory or immediate withdrawal. The Post reporter, sensing an opportunity to make some trouble, tracked down David Sirota and read him the quote, and Sirota dutifully called Marshall an “insulated elitist” who was stabbing the Democratic Party in the back. (Side-note to David: you might want to discard the stab-in-the-back metaphor, given its unsavory origins in post-World-War-I German politics. Sorry for the “elitist” pedantry, but it’s good advice).In response to this exchange, Markos went on for a number of graphs accusing The Moose of calling Pelosi a coward, of calling Jack Murtha a coward, of supporting Bush on the war, of being a neocon chickenhawk, etc., etc. Armando went further, accusing Wittmann of McCarthyism, and of being a “Rovian pawn,” and concluding with a demand that the DLC fire his ass.Lordy, lordy. So many words of abuse in response to so few words of provocation. Where to begin?When I read the quote, I thought it was pretty clear Marshall was describing the Rovian spin on Pelosi’s statement, not agreeing with it, and I know for a fact that’s what he meant, in a longer conversation with the reporter from which the quote was lifted. But okay, let’s say for the sake of argument that he left the impression he did agree with it. Where did he call Pelosi a “coward?” Where did he call Murtha–whom he has previously defended from Republican attacks–a “coward?”To avoid any misunderstanding on this point, let me be clear: Marshall’s beef with Pelosi isn’t about her position on Iraq, or Murtha’s, or anybody else’s. It’s a free country and a big-tent party. But she’s the party leader in the House, making a statement transparently designed in its timing to become the Democratic response to Bush’s speech. Sure, she claimed she wasn’t speaking for the Caucus, but in the next breath, said a majority of the Caucus agreed with her but wouldn’t come out and say so (which certainly ran a higher risk of being interpreted as an accusation of “cowardice” against Democrats than anything Wittmann’s said, BTW).Now, over at Kos, and all over the blogosphere, people say positive and negative things about the leadership qualities and tactical and strategic decisions of Democrat leaders all the time, and sometimes that causes heartburn, but they’re rarely if ever accused of “McCarthyism.” Marshall’s criticism of Pelosi is something I’ve heard echoed in conversations with many Democrats, some of whom agree with the actual Pelosi-Murtha position. I hardly think it’s the Sin Against the Holy Ghost to tell a reporter what he already knew about this line of internal debate.The next cookie on the plate is the assertion that Wittmann is a stay-the-course shill for Bush’s war policies. Gee, let’s see: just yesterday, The Moose said nobody should believe Bush is really changing his strategy on Iraq until he gets rid of Donald Rumsfeld. I somehow don’t think that was in the daily Pentagon talking points on Iraq. And in fact, Wittmann has been regularly critical, often angrily so, about Bush’s handling of Iraq and national security generally. Yes, he’s more hawkish than many Democrats (after all, he’s an independent), and he’s more hawkish than I am, but he’s no shill for Bush on any subject.And that brings me to the real howler in the attempted Moosicide, the “Rovian pawn” bit.I don’t expect Armando to know that much about Marshall Wittmann’s history, but I certainly do. He was a conservative intellectual and activist in the 90s who got to see people like Rove, DeLay, Reed, Abramoff, Norquist, Gingrich, Bush I and Bush II, up real close, and got very sick of what his party was becoming, and started saying so publicly. He was a key figure in John McCain’s 2000 effort to take the GOP away from the K Street/theocon crowd, and became if not Public Enemy Number One, then certainly on everybody’s enemies list. He was shown the door at two conservative think tanks for his heresies, and finally, when his hero McCain decided to make at least partial peace with the Power Crowd, he walked.I don’t see anybody holding David Brock’s past associations against him, but The Moose, probably because he hasn’t totally jumped over to Our Team, doesn’t seem to benefit from any Prodigal Son generosity, at least outside the DLC. And anybody who reads his blog regularly knows that nobody, not Markos, not Armando, not me, not you, does a more savage and effective job of exposing the rottenness of the whole GOP machine in lurid and extremely well-informed detail.And that’s why the DLC employs him; why we don’t demand that he tow anybody’s party line; and why he’s a valuable ally to Democrats, even if you disagree with him, which I do pretty often. We need to listen and even sponsor independent voices; maybe we’ll learn something from them, if only how to appeal to the millions of voters who have left Their Team but haven’t joined ours.On a more personal note, it pains me to see Wittmann demonized by anybody, especially as some sort of hatchet man, because he’s actually one of the nicest and certainly funniest people I’ve ever met. He and I have a water-fountain routine where we lapse into Marxist factional jargon in describing the day’s political events (“Lieberman has clearly exposed himself as a Social Fascist Right Opportunist;” “Our red state strategy must separate the small peasants from the kulaks.”) And far from Sirota’s description of him as a Washington Elitist, Wittmann’s greatest thrill in politics was his recent opportunity to hang out with Kinky Friedman (and his sidekick, “Jewford,” one of the original Texas Jewboys) in Dallas. I hope when he’s grazing in retirement, he can publish the full account of this encounter in its screamingly hilarious detail.So please, Moose-o-phobics, lighten up and recognize a rare talent whose regular refusal to serve up turgid partisan fare, and occasional outrages, are more than offset by his knowledgeable skewering of the right-wing machine, and his independent willingness to tell us things we don’t like but probably ought to consider.

One of the saddest aspects of modern life is that modern advance-society people and their news media tend to get bored with ongoing challenges that lose novelty.That’s definitely the case with the global AIDS crisis.Yes, the AIDS crisis in America has abated somewhat, but it’s still with us.Yes, the AIDS crisis in Asia has yet to gain headlines, but it will.And yes, the AIDS crisis in Africa is old news by now, but it continues to represent the most massive humanitarian disaster in a continent already beset by disasters beyond measure.Many of us outside Africa have learned to beat our breasts about our failure to stop the genocide in Rwanda, and a few of us are agitated about the ongoing quasi-genocide in Darfur, and that’s all good. But the death toll, actual and potential, from AIDS in Africa makes every man-made contribution to the Grim Reaper’s work pale by comparison.There are things we can do to succor the dying and suffering, to limit future deaths, and to take care of the vast number of orphans AIDS is producing. And taking those steps, particularly in terms of medical and pharmaceutical supplies, should be divorced from the broader argument over conditional or unconditional assistance to African regimes.It’s sad that “awareness” remains the primary goal of AIDS advocates on this World AIDS Day. But that’s where we are, and any American who professes fidelity to a compassionate view of human morality, based on religion or any other system, should manifest this awareness in a serious effort to demand action and save lives.

There’s lots of things going on this week in the tangled politics and policy of U.S. policy towards Iraq. I’ve already commented on Bush’s latest big speech on the subject; indeed, I may have been uncharacteristically too generous towards the slippery Chief Executive, based on subsequent analysis of the Great Big Policy Document he released along with his speech.The DLC issued its own assessment today, not only challenging Bush’s continued happy-talk on Iraq (and its unwillingness to show a change of strategy by, say, firing Donald Rumsfeld), but also disagreeing with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s ill-timed endorsement of an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, combined with an unhelpful I’m-not-speaking-for-the-House-Caucus-but-they-secretly-agree-with-me statement. Beyond these large points, there was another negative assessment of Bush’s speech from an unusual quarter with an unusual message: Lawrence Kaplan of The New Republic. A writer often described as a Democratic neocon, and an unambiguous supporter of the Iraq war effort, Kaplan takes on Bush’s claim that the military is now adopting state-of-the-art counterinsurgency methods learned in Vietnam, and pretty much hits it like a pinata from several different directions. It’s definitely worth reading. Matt Yglesias’ comment on Kaplan’s piece is quite good as well.And speaking of Iraq and Vietnam, I had one of those old-guy moments today when I suddenly remembered a moment in the debate on Vietnam which reminds me of the odd disjunction between the relatively small policy differences dividing most Democrats and many Republicans on Iraq, and the big tonal and intepretative differences they sometimes convey.In the famously fractious 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the big platform debate over Vietnam (note to young people: this was back when big platform debates were still possible) involved a majority plank which endorsed free elections in South Vietnam to create a coalition government including the National Liberation Front (the political arm of the Viet Cong), and a minority plank endorsing a coalition government including the NLF that would be required to sponsor free elections. The policy distinctions between these two planks were about as meaningful as today’s difference between supporters of a benchmarked withdrawal from Iraq based on estimated dates, and a timetable withdrawal contingent on benchmarks. Yet at the time, these two proposals were almost universally described by the news media as “pro-war” and “anti-war” platform planks. The lesson is this: So much as many of us might wish to focus on the policy details of proposals about what to do now in Iraq, you can’t take the politics out of politics, and the “tonal” or “contextual” implications of various proposals, despite their substantive similarity, matter a great deal.

As your probably know, George W. Bush did another “big speech” on Iraq at the Naval Academy today, accompanied by the release of a big, fat document outlining a “victory strategy.” Going into the speech, there were two distinct schools of thought in the Washington buzz about what Bush would likely do: (1) just another repackaging of the “trust us, we’re winning” message, along with attacks on Bush’s critics, and an effort to ascribe “cut and run” as the official Democratic stance; or (2) a full-fledged flip-flop, along the lines of the famous 2002 Homeland Security maneuver, towards the prevailing Democratic (and increasingly, Senate Republican) “benchmarked withdrawal” position, along with attacks on Bush’s critics, and an effort to ascribe “cut and run” as the official Democratic stance. Having quickly read the speech, and the “strategy document,” my gut reaction is that Bush wound up coming in between these two poles, with the speech tending towards (1) and the actual policy details towards (2). What’s increasingly clear is that the administration is going to begin withdrawing troops, probably beginning with a “downsurge” of the “upsurged” pre-Iraqi-election deployment, by the beginning of the year. Larger withdrawals will happen at some propitious moment next year, unless all hell breaks loose, more because of internal military manpower limitations than because of any real strategy. The Pentagon has already begun shifting towards a less visible role for U.S. troops in going after the insurgents, as administration critics have been demanding for some time now. And at every step of the way, the Bushies will relentlessly claim this is how it was all planned to work out from the beginning, and that Bush’s Democratic critics are the primary obstacle to the task of achieving benchmarks for success and troop withdrawals. This whole emerging scenario creates a complicated set of challenges for Democrats. Some responses are pretty easy: Bush’s speech didn’t really reflect the change of course indicated in the “strategy document,” and to the extent that the American and Iraqi people aren’t likely to download the 35-page tome, he didn’t send the requisite signals of an adjustment to reality. And how can anybody trust him to get this right when he can’t admit specific mistakes, and won’t fire the people–most especially Rumsfeld–responsible for making the post-invasion situation so horrible? But beyond that, there is arguably an administration shift in strategy underway, albeit awkward, defensive, and mendacious, and Democrats have to decide pretty quickly if they want to deny the change, take credit for it, or shift their own position to demand a quicker withdrawal to maintain “partisan differentiation.”Regular readers of this blog probably know I don’t like the last response; you should never, on both moral and political grounds, let the opposition dictate your own position, and in any event, anyone at this stage of American political history who doesn’t think Ds and Rs have different policy agendas is clearly not a likely voter. Questioning, if not denying, the change is clearly appropriate. Demanding further documentation of the apparent shift in administration strategy towards Iraq, given all the past lies and mistakes, is undoubtedly the right thing to do. And demanding the head of Don Rumsfeld might not be a bad idea either. But we do need to be open to the option of loudly claiming that Democrats, not to mention the American people, have forced the administration to adjust their strategy, and must continue to keep the pressure on until the facts on the ground in Iraq really change. Bush and the GOP won’t acknowledge it; the MSM may not even “get it”; so it’s up to us to make some noise and keep up the heat, but without some short-sighted panicky rush to find a position diametrically opposed to Bush’s, whether or not it’s the right thing to do from a national interest or even political point of view. We don’t have a lot of time to figure this out, so let’s get on with it.

The quasi-genocidal crisis in Darfur is finally getting a bit of renewed attention from the rest of the world, but it’s not clear it’s happening fast enough to make a difference.In case you’ve forgotten Darfur because it hasn’t been in the headlines much, more than 300,000 people have probably died there since the government of Sudan unleashed a vicious counter-insurgency campaign in 2003 designed to squash an insurgency loosely linked to the Southern Sudan forces Khartoum was trying to outmaneuver in negotiations to end the long-running North-South civil war. Just as importantly, more than two million Darfurians have been displaced by the fighting, and are hemmed into refugee camps with no means of subsistence other than food shipments from international organizations.And while the direct violence against Darfurians by the Khartoum-paid-and-trained Janjaweed militias has abated somewhat, the strategy of keeping them penned up under atrocious conditions is doing the Grim Reaper’s work as efficiently as the previous kill-and-rape raids on hundreds of villages.That’s why, as Eric Reeves explained on The New Republic’s site yesterday, the most immediate threat to Darfur stems from Janjaweed attacks on the international humanitarian aid organizations that are literally serving as Darfur’s lifeline. Some are already withdrawing personnel from Darfur, and others may soon follow, given the general recognition that African Union peacekeeping forces are incapable of providing security in the region, and no one else is on the scene.But as always in Darfur, there’s a lot of political fog distorting a clear picture of the situation.There are ongoing if sluggish negotiations underway between Khartoum and the two insurgent groups it is supposedly fighting in Darfur: the Fur-tribal-based Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA), and the Islamist Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). Unfortunately, as the Kofi Annan statement I just linked to shows, these negotiations are helping feed the idea that this is a civil war or “ethnic conflict” where both sides are equally to blame for the death and destruction, and where the rest of the world can legitimately step aside as the parties to the dispute wrangle through a settlement.The only bright note recently was the voice-vote passage by the U.S. Senate of the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act, which would recommit our government to an end to the disaster in Darfur; pledge immediate military support to an expansion of the AU deployment; and place sanctions on the government of Sudan, including seizure of oil shipments and withdrawal of travel rights for Khartoum officials, until such time as it releashes the Janjaweed and starts cooperating with humanitarian agencies.The bill still needs to get scheduled in the House, which in an obscure committee action stripped out previously approved funds to support an expanded AU peacekeeping mission. And that’s a good example of what’s wrong in this whole debate. Nobody will come out and say they don’t want to take action in Darfur, but the Bush administration officials who are so appreciative of Khartoum’s assistance in the War on Terror are obviously helping slow down any binding congressional action that would complicate things for them. Today New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof helped shine a spotlight on this subterranean but effective strategy.The whole situation reminds me of a conversation I had many years ago with a veteran Georgia State Patrol trooper who used to work traffic accidents in a rural community. The ambulance service there was provided by a local undertaker, who got paid a small fee for hauling accident victims to the hospital, but who got the burying rights if the victims died. So, said my informant, the ambulance driver would pick up the grievously injured passengers and then head off towards the hospital, lights flashing and sirens screaming, at about 15 miles per hour.That’s what the U.S. and international mission to “save” Darfur looks like to me right now.

I didn’t plan on blogging about football after the Thanksgiving holiday, despite my joy at Georgia’s victory over Georgia Tech on Saturday. But tonight I ran across a Lang Whitaker post on the Sports Illustrated site that perfectly reflects the intimate love-hate relationship that enlivens “rivalry” games like Tech/Georgia, while celebrating the whole spectacle of deep-fried football. Check it out.

Over at Ruy Teixeira’s Donkey Rising site, he’s posted a summary of the current standing of the two parties on major issues. It’s mostly good news–in some cases spectacular news–for us Donkeys, but with a few exceptions that deserve attention, especially in terms of our credibility in fighting terror and the clarity of our overall message.On this last point, Ruy concludes:

In short, voters are still much surer of what they don’t like (Republican policies and Bush’s job as president) than of what they might like (Democratic policies and leadership). It’s up to Democrats to clarify that situation, starting with, finally, convincing the American public they know what they stand for.

That’s true, but we all have to remember one very important thing about “message clarity”: the only thing worse than leaving voters unsure about “what you stand for” is to resolve their doubts by “standing” for positions and/or values they don’t like. I’m not saying Democrats are in imminent danger of doing that, but given the influence of Lackoffian “framing” in high party councils, it’s worth reminding ourselves that “clarity” is not in itself a definitive answer to lingering public doubts about our party. Like everyone reading this blog, I have my own ideas about “what we believe in” and “what we stand for,” and we should not be shy about debating differences and then uniting behind the best and most accurate reflections of our values. That’s why we have intra-party discussions, and ultimately, why we have party primaries. You could make a good case that the current GOP meltdown is partly the result of an “our team” mentality that until recently has thwarted any real intra-party Republican debate, or any honest Republican discussion with the rest of the country. I’m perfectly happy to sacrifice a few points in polls on “message clarity” in order to keep my party from following this authoritarian pattern.

It’s always nice when the New York Times looks beyond its prime readership and takes notice of the rest of the country. And that’s why I applaud Timothy Egan’s Week in Review piece today on successful Democratic governors west of the Mississippi. Those of you who read Democratic blogs probably know all about Montana’s Brian Schweitzer, and Egan gives him his due. But he also focuses on Wyoming’s Dave Freudenthal, Kansas’s Kathleen Sebelius, Arizona’s Janet Napolitano, and New Mexico’s Bill Richardson, and more generally makes the point that 12 of the 22 current Democratic governors have been elected in states carried by George W. Bush in 2004. The success of Democratic governors in “red states” is one of the most under-reported political stories of our decade. And the ranks of those red-state Donkeys may well increase significantly next year. So read Egan, but also get ready to make a New Year’s Resolution to pay more attention to gubernatorial politics in 2006, and join the debate as to why Democrats are able to win in states where our presidential candidates are losing. This is one subject on which the DLC–which is close to many of these red-state governors–and anti-Washington-Establishment Democrats, should be able to see things the same way.

Recovering somewhat from Thanksgiving lethargy, I dragged myself in front of the tube yesterday to get some non-food news. I did see a report on Michael Brown’s new consulting career, that supplied the material for my last post. But for most of the day, I was treated to Black Friday “coverage”–breathless on-location reports of mall parking lot conditions and mini-riots among avid consumers, mostly from CNN’s digs in my home town of Atlanta.I understand that the Christmas Rush is incredibly important to retailers, and I also understand this is a capitalist economy in which being “in the black” is generally important to all of us. But still, Lord have mercy: do Americans have to be spun by the news media to make the Spirit of Christmas one of acquisitive frenzy? I mean, really, absent high-profile encouragement to get out there and fight for the latest baubles, is there any serious risk that our countrymen will turn Christmas back into a religious holiday?Digby has a good rant on the subject you can read, but more generally, it seems to me that it would be healthy to limit Black Friday coverage to the business report.

So here I am, the day after Thanksgiving, exhausted and visibly gaining weight, the soul of sluggishness, unable to respond to the large number of people in my house with much of anything other than a noncommittal grunt. And I haven’t blogged since Tuesday.But ah, as I slumped in the living room wondering if I had the energy to watch a football game, easy inspiration arose on CNN: Michael Brown’s announcement of his new “disaster preparendness” consulting firm. The idea, it appears, is that having made every mistake in the book in dealing with Hurricane Katrina, Brownie is just the guy to tell companies what kind of mistakes they should look out for in dealing with natural disasters.After pocketing a “Political Turkey of the Year” designation by CNN’s Bill Schneider, ol’ Brownie seems determined to win some sort of Profiles in Chutzpah award. This goes well beyond such obvious analogies as Elizabeth Taylor becoming a marriage counselor, Terrell Owens holding seminars on “teamwork,” or Ozzie Osbourne starting a new “straight edge” anti-drug band. After all, Brownie’s accomplishment was to turn disaster response and relief into almost as big a disaster as the disaster he was “responding” to. And he did that with resources his potential clients are not likely to have, such as a multi-billion dollar budget, an entire federal agency, and the ear of the President of the United States.So what is Brown going to tell the corporate CEOs who are allegedly expressing interest in his services? Perhaps: “If you have no clue what you’re doing, be sure to hire some people who do.” Maybe: “Don’t let George Bush give you a nickname on national television.” Or finally: “Pick one person to shift blame to, and stick to your story.”The only thing I can think of that rivals Brownie’s self-salvage project is one once undertaken by William Calley, the guy who admitted ordering the cold-blooded murder of dozens of women and children at a hamlet named My Lai in Vietnam. In 1978, some television network aired a ten-year retrospective on the various convulsions that struck America in 1968, and the sections on Vietnam were narrated by Calley, who posed as some sort of anti-war martyr.At least he waited ten years.