Bush Barks, Democratic Leadership Quakes, Congress Passes Warrantless Eavesdropping Bill

You might think an administration as wildly unpopular as George W. Bush's would be unable to bully Congressional Democrats into rubber-stamping yet another bill that tramples on our civil liberties. Wrong! You can read the AP report for the gory details, or just check out Fred Hiatt's editorial in the Washington Post:

THE DEMOCRATIC-led Congress, more concerned with protecting its political backside than with safeguarding the privacy of American citizens, left town early yesterday after caving in to administration demands that it allow warrantless surveillance of the phone calls and e-mails of American citizens, with scant judicial supervision and no reporting to Congress about how many communications are being intercepted. To call this legislation ill-considered is to give it too much credit: It was scarcely considered at all. Instead, it was strong-armed through both chambers by an administration that seized the opportunity to write its warrantless wiretapping program into law -- or, more precisely, to write it out from under any real legal restrictions.

Because if there is one problem in America it is that the Bush administration is too constrained by laws. What's so frustrating about the Democrats' capitulation was how completely unnecessary it was. Now, if the Democrats really did need to pass every civil liberties-trampling law proposed by our Fearless Leader, or risk being thrown out of office, then their stance, though gutless, would at least be understandable. But the truth is that there is no reason for the Democrats to have gone against their principles on this issue. As Glenn Greenwald points out:

Karl Rove's election strategy prior to the 2006 election was to force the Democrats to vote against the Military Commissions Act and warrantless eavesdropping so that he could run around the country accusing them of being "soft" and "weak" on Terrorism. While Senate Democrats chose not to filibuster the MCA and thus allowed it to pass, Congressional Democrats did overwhelmingly vote against it. And most House Democrats voted against warrantless eavesdropping (the Senate never ended up voting).

As a result, Rove repeatedly boasted that Democrats were sure to lose because Americans would punish them for their refusal to be "tough" on the Terrorists...

Rove made national security -- specifically the Democrats' opposition to coercive interrogation, lawless detention and warrantless eavesdropping -- the centerpiece of the GOP 2006 midterm campaign....

How did that big, bad, scary "Soft-on-Terrorism" strategy work out? The Democrats crushed the Republicans in an historic election, re-taking control of both houses of Congress, protecting every single one of their incumbents, and vastly increasing their hold over governorships and states houses. Democrats won in every region of the country outside of the Deep South. Karl Rove's strategy of accusing Democrats of being "soft on terror" due to their opposition to warrantless eavesdropping, lawless detention and torture was a complete failure on every level....

We do not need to wonder or speculate about what might happen if Democrats obstruct warrantless eavesdropping legislation and Republicans are then able to make an issue of it politically. That already happened in 2006. That was Rove's whole strategy. It failed miserably, across the board. And yet the Democratic leadership just permitted, and many Democrats supported, a wild expansion of George Bush's warrantless eavesdropping powers based on a jittery fear of this already-failed tactic, if not based on actual support for these increased eavesdropping powers.

Against all logic, the Democratic Leadership is still terrified at thought that the big, bad Republicans might accuse them of being soft on terror. (As if voting for this bill will prevent that.) What a disgrace. Thank goodness that the legislation expires in six months. Maybe that will be enough time for the Democrats to grow a spine.

Fred Thompson, Peter Pace, and the Harry Reid "Controversy"

Fred Thompson has decided to jump into the Harry Reid "controversy":

Well, you've heard by now that Senate leader Harry Reid insulted one of this country's brightest military minds, Marine Corps General Peter Pace -- calling him "incompetent."

...

But Reid's comments are not meant for logical analysis. He proclaimed the war lost some time ago, and the surge as a failure even before the additional troops were on the ground. The problem is that every one of Reid's comments I've noted here has also been reported gleefully by Al Jazeera and other anti-American media. Whether he means to or not, he’s encouraging our enemies to believe that they are winning the critical war of will.

For those of you who haven't been following this sorry Republican talking point, the gist of it is that Reid (supposedly) called Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, incompetent in a conference call with bloggers. This is, apparently, not only hugely insulting to Pace but a boon to our enemies. So says White House spokesman Tony Snow:

Snow told reporters that he hoped what he had read about Reid is "not true, because in a time of war, for a leader of a party that says its supports the military, it seems outrageous to be issuing slanders toward the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and also the man that is responsible for the bulk of military operations in Iraq.

Of course, Pace will only be responsible for military operation in Iraq until September 30, 2007, because Bush has essentially fired him. (Bush Defense Secretary Robert Gates advised President Bush not to renominate Pace for the job, and Bush agreed.) Pace didn't want to step down:

In his first public comments on the Bush administration's surprise decision to replace him as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace disclosed that he had turned down an offer to voluntarily retire rather than be forced out.

Now, let's get this straight. Calling General Pace incompetent in a conference call gives aid to our enemies, but firing him doesn't? Joe Sudbay at AMERICAblog is all over the cognitive dissonance here:

If Pace is so competent, why is he losing his job as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff while we are in the middle of a war?

Is Tony Snow telling us that it's Pace's competence that has led us to where we are in Iraq? Pace is being fired as our top military commander either because he's incompetent (which is fine) or for purely political reasons (which is not fine in the middle of a war), so which one is it? Either way, Bush made the decision to get rid of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs "in a time of war." And now that Harry Reid agrees with Bush for once, he's the bad guy? Then who is to blame for how horribly things are going in Iraq? Not Bush, apparently. And not the military commanders either, we're now being told. So does the White House blame the troops, or did some magic pixie run the war into the ground when nobody was looking?

There is nothing inherently with either criticizing or firing generals in the middle of a war. We've done it many times before in our history. As Kos puts it:

How many generals did Lincoln go through before he found Grant?

If I was in a satirical mood, I might write something like this:

"Personally, I think it was a huge mistake on Lincoln's part to fire General George McClellan in the Civil War. Not only was it insulting, but it made the Confederacy believe they were winning the war of wills. War isn't about competence and job performance, remember, it's about stick-to-it-ivness. Lincoln should have stood by McClellan through thick and thin. If only he could have turned to Tony Snow for advice, he might have learned a thing or two about leadership."

UPDATE: For more on this topic, check out the excellent Glenn Greenwald:

But beyond that obvious point, the spectacle of George Bush's press secretary lamenting attacks on military officers is just laughable. The President was re-elected following a political convention where his followers mocked John Kerry's purple hearts by waiving around band-aids. And decorated war veterans from John Murtha to Max Cleland to Wes Clark have seen their character and integrity -- not their mere competence -- publicly mauled by the President's political movement.

Republican debate reaction

Yesterday, I read this post by Glenn Greenwald:

The great fraud being perpetrated in our political discourse is the concerted attempt by movement conservatives, now that the Bush presidency lay irreversibly in ruins, to repudiate George Bush by claiming that he is not, and never has been, a "real conservative." This con game is being perpetrated by the very same conservatives who -- when his presidency looked to be an epic success -- glorified George W. Bush, ensured both of his election victories, depicted him as the heroic Second Coming of Ronald Reagan, and celebrated him as the embodiment of True Conservatism.

This fraud is as transparent as it is dishonest, yet there are signs that the media is nonetheless beginning to adopt this theme that there is some sort of epic and long-standing "Bush-conservative schism." But very little effort is required to see what a fraud that storyline is.

One of the few propositions on which Bush supporters and critics agree is that George Bush does not change and has not changed at all over the last six years. He is exactly the same.

Or as Digby puts it more succinctly (quoted in the same article):

George W. Bush will not achieve a place in the Republican pantheon. Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. (And a conservative can only fail because he is too liberal.)

So I looked forward with great anticipation to seeing if this dynamic would surface in the Republican debate this evening-- and, lo and behold, it did. You see, the Republicans in Washington didn't fail because of flaws in their conservative ideology, they failed because they turned into liberals! And in a contest between "professional spenders" (the Dems) and the "amateur spenders" (the Republicans), the Democrats will always win, said Tommy Thompson. Apparently the answer for the Republicans is to take a turn to the right. Um, good luck, fellas.... let me know how that works out for you.