Why good people hate them: Republicans reject the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

By Mustang Bobby

If the Republican Party ever has a moment of introspection — yeah, right — and wonders why they lose elections and get portrayed as cold, heartless, and unfeeling bastards, this would explain it:

The Senate Tuesday fell short of the two-thirds vote required to ratify a United Nations treaty aimed at securing rights for disabled people around the world, when the vast majority of Republican senators voted against the treaty. The final vote was 61-38 vote. All the nay votes were Republican.

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities essentially makes the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act a non-binding international standard. It requires no change to U.S. law.

Originally signed by then-President George W. Bush in 2006 and re-signed by President Barack Obama in 2009 shortly after he took office, the treaty has been championed by former Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS), the one-time GOP presidential nominee who suffered a disability while serving in the Army in World War II. Dole was on the Senate floor Tuesday ahead of the ratification vote, in a wheelchair, accompanied by his wife, former Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC).

Longtime Republicans like Sens. John McCain (AZ), Dick Lugar (IN) and John Barrasso (WY) voted for the treaty. But that didn't stop the party's more conservative members from warning that it would violate U.S. sovereignty and dictate to parents with home-schooled children.

"I do oppose the CRPD because I think it does impinge upon our sovereignty," said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK). "Unelected bureaucratic bodies would implement the treaty and pass so-called recommendations that would be forced upon the United Nations and the U.S. ... This would especially affect those parents who home-school their children. ... The unelected foreign bureaucrats, not parents, would decide what is in the best interests of the disabled child, even in the home."

Inhofe was joined by Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (SC), Mike Lee (UT), Marco Rubio (FL) and most of the party's leadership in quashing the treaty. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY), who is up for re-election in 2014, voted against it.

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Here we go

By Carl 

Maybe the Mayans were right after all...

Syrian forces have mixed chemical weapons and added them to bombs in preparation for possible use on President Bashar Assad's own people, Fox News confirms.

A senior U.S. official told Fox News that bombs were loaded with components of sarin gas, a deadly nerve gas. Syrian forces have 60 days to use these bombs until the chemical mixture expires and has to be destroyed.

The nerve agent has been loaded into canisters in aerosol form that can be dropped from planes, Fox said. A Fox reporter spoke with Pentagon officials, who expressed grave concern. Sarin is capable of killing many people in a short time. There is no antidote.

Earlier, Fox reported that U.S. troops were deploying to the Syrian border for defensive purposes.

Any solution to the Syrian conflict that comes before sarin is deployed will be tricky, and the pressure to deploy sarin has been anted up as rebels continue to advance on Damascus.

Already, Russia has warned Turkey about meddling in the internal politics of Syria, a major arms purchaser from Russia. Those differences have been papered over in recent days, but the use of sarin gas would cast a whole new light on the tenuous agreement.

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No apology necessary

By Carl 

It looks like Obama is going to hit 'em and hit 'em hard:

Foreign policy is taking on new urgency in the presidential campaign as President Barack Obama prepares to address the United Nations amid a resurgence of unrest in the Muslim world and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, intensifies his criticism of the White House's approach to the region.

The president will condemn in his speech Tuesday to the annual gathering of the U.N. General Assembly the anti-Muslim video that sparked protests, according to excerpts of his speech. Violence in Libya led to the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, after a storming of a U.S. consulate in Libya.

Mr. Obama will refer to Mr. Stevens multiple times in his speech, citing the ambassador's approach to the region to challenge the U.N. to denounce the violence that has taken hold there and to underscore the values the U.S. is seeking to promote abroad with its policy toward the Arab Spring.

Mr. Obama also will stress the importance of those in the region condemning slander against Christians and Jews, people familiar with his speech said.

Mitt Romney, of course, stuck his head out his Learjet window and shouted down prematurely:

Mr. Romney accused the president Monday of playing down tumult in the Middle East, saying the U.S. needs to exert stronger leadership and that the president needs to do more to shape events abroad.

This is what they believe, believe it or not. It doesn't matter that the U.S. has been instrumental in freeing Arab nations left and right. It doesn't matter that we do this at great risk and peril to not only our own populace, but those of Israel and Turkey, and by extension NATO and Russia and China.

No. We have to walk around the globe like it's our own private Muscle Beach, flexing and preening (key word, that) like a muscle-bound oaf.

Diplomacy, peace and real security only come about when you respect the sovereignty and rights of the peoples of other nations. It only takes one side to say "Today, I will not commit war," and war will end eventually. If the goal is peace, then the less the army is used, the better the chances of achieving it.

True strength comes not from deploying troops at the drop of a hat, or against people who hold no harm towards us. I don't know that anyone disagrees with the original intent of a war in Afghanistan: to root out and destroy Al Qaeda and its allies.

And had that been the first war since World War II, I don't think anyone could find fault in deploying troops there. We would have been viewed as just and right, and would be dealing now from a position of world strength, our word being the only weapon needing deployment.

Unfortunately, this nation has a large segment of "fapscists," people who believe that regimenting the world in all senses of the world is the best way to achieve peace and security, when it only generates resentment and hatred. And then they'll say "they hate us for our freedom."

They don't hate us for our freedoms. They hate us because we don't want them to have that freedom.

The only apologies that America needs to make is that these asshats are dense and douchey but are allowed a megaphone instead of a kazoo.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

World War III

By Carl 

You think I speak in hyperbole. I do not.

Turkey deployed anti-aircraft guns and other weapons alongside its border with Syria, state television reported on Thursday, days after the downing of a Turkish military jet by Syrian forces heightened the tensions between the two countries.

A small convoy of military trucks, towing anti-aircraft guns, entered into a military outpost in the border village of Guvecci, which faces a Syrian military outpost across the border and where Syrian forces and rebels clashed in recent months, TRT television footage showed.

Several anti-aircraft guns have also been deployed elsewhere alongside the border. Some trucks were seen carrying self-propelled multiple rocket launchers, TRT footage showed. 

As a member of NATO, Turkey has called on that group to stand with it. The NATO charter is pretty explicit: an attack on one member shall be deemed an attack on the alliance. Turkey's complaint is kind of small beer, since it's fighter strayed into Syrian airspace, except...

Except based on current foreign policy, there's strategic advantage for NATO (or at least the United States) to take an active role in Turkey. By occupying Syria, the US would have a clear path of friendly-ish nations to roll tanks through: Israel, Jordan/Syria, and Iraq.

Right to the Iranian border. Remember the first rule of chess: to control your enemy and win, you must control the middle of the board. If Syria were to fall into NATO hands, this would put Iran in an island surrounded by western forces, save for the north and nations like Kazhakstan and Uzbekistan.

Check. And if Iran does actually have nuclear weapons, there really is no telling what's next. Heck, even if they don't, Pakistan (nominally our ally) does and it's a mere hop, skip, and a smuggle to get them.

The distractions within the nation, the bombings of a Syrian television station and today's Justice Ministry bombings are indicative that the Assad regime does not have clear control. This will embolden the rebels to be sure, and that Turkey is on the border will give them a refuge in the north. In exchange, Turkey will have an antagonistic position that could come into play if they sortie across the border, then claim Syrian forces attacked them on native soil.

It doesn't matter what the facts will be, the "truth" will be that Turkey's sovereignty was assaulted.

The key development here, the one thing that could prevent now a crisis later, is a meeting in Geneva this weekend among UN special envoy Kofi Annan, the Syrian representative to the Arab League, and the heads of the Five Families, I mean, leaders from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

But I doubt it. I have serious reservations that this game of chess is anywhere near ended. Russia and China must see the threat to Iran, and given their previous support for that corrupt regime, will give it aid and comfort now. I'm not sure what would impel them to give Ahmadinejad a divorce, but one can pretty much see it's not Syria.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Mitt Romney throws America's allies under bus for political gain

Guest post by David Solimini and Benjamin Lowe

David Solimini is the Communications Director for the Truman National Security Project. Benjamin Lowe is a Fellow at the Truman National Security Project. Their statements are not endorsed by their employer. They can be reached at dsolimini@gmail.com and ben.lowe@gmail.com.

This week, Mitt Romney clumsily waded into the discussion of Israel and Palestine. By calling for a wholesale re-evaluation of relations with dozens of countries, he called more than his own judgment into question.

Strong alliances are an essential element of American power. They are difficult to build, important to maintain, and essential in a world of inter-connected economies and cross-border security threats. It is in this essential context that leading conservative voices have engaged in a perilous race to the bottom on issues of American national security. 

Most recently, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney suggested that the United States reconsider a number of long-standing alliances purely to further domestic political considerations. On Tuesday, right-wing radio show host Jordan Sekulow asked Romney how he would handle the application by Palestine for statehood recognition by the UN if he were president. Romney responded:

Putting aside what's already happened, at this stage the president should make it very clear that we stand with Israel, that this is very important to the United States of America and that any nation that votes against Israel and against the United States in the vote in the United Nations will recognize that America will very carefully reconsider our relationship with that nation.

Defenders of Romney's position might say it was an important statement in support of Israel. Critics would note that there are far better ways to demonstrate support for an independent Jewish state free from terrorism – a position he shares with President Obama. Romney went farther than he needed to go, apparently in an attempt to place political distance between himself and the president. Had the words he uttered – "America will very carefully reconsider our relationship with that nation" – actually come from the mouth of a sitting president, the impact would have been significant. 

The former governor's answer to a straightforward question is revealing to the point where one might wonder if Romney realizes the enormity of the job he seeks. These are not quarterly earnings reports or 10K filings, these are nations – some of which have nuclear weapons and thousands of our troops stationed in them. 

Let us consider exactly what Romney suggested:

Romney would be open to re-analyzing our relationships with China, the world's most populous nation; Russia, the nation with the most nuclear weapons in the world; India, the world's largest democracy; and Brazil and South Africa, two of the world's largest developing nations. Our relationship with Russia is essential to the prevention of a second Cold War. India is America's best bulwark against China in the East and Pakistan to the North. 

Also among those who would fall afoul of Romney's domestic political concerns include Spain, France, Norway, and Ireland, some of America's longest held friendships. 

If a president were to say what would-be-President Romney said, we would be forced to ask what it means to "reconsider" these relationships. Would a President Romney take the same actions in re-evaluating our relationship with China, our largest trading partner, as he would with Ireland? Would a President Romney cut funding to the efforts to stabilize Iraq over its vote on Palestinian statehood? Would he pull out of the 2016 Olympic Games because of Brazil's statement of support, or shut down the $160 billion per year in American goods sold to countries supporting the UN resolution?

And what of our ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Would we stop the rebuilding efforts essential to peace in Iraq over this issue, even if it meant stretching out our military presence there?

Governor Romney's willingness to use our international alliances for political gain will likely be seen by many as deeply troubling. America's interests are clearly served by a stable solution to the conflicts in the Middle East, and Israel is a valuable if sometimes imperfect ally. It's also in our interests for ostensibly credible candidates not to make inflammatory policy proclamations for political gain.

Romney's comments cannot be taken in isolation. It is possible, and perhaps even likely, that he is exercising the political triangulation he is famous for and is simply catching up with some of the clumsier comments of his peers on the campaign trail. Michele Bachmann, for example, believes the Arab Spring is a problem for which she must assign the blame to President Obama. It is a familiar and troubling playbook from the ex-governor. 

Keeping America safe requires that we exercise delicate diplomacy backed by the effective and powerful force of our military. We have seen both exercised with deftness under President Obama, with relationships improving between us and our allies and precisely targeted strikes taking out more of our enemies than the Bush Administration managed to accomplish. America is not well-served when the talk is tough but the strategic considerations are ignored.

Russia's position on Libya: Trying to have it both ways

Guest post by Dmitry Gorenburg

Dmitry Gorenburg is a senior analyst at CNA's Center for Strategic Studies, the editor of the journal Russian Politics & Law, and an associate at Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. From 2005 to 2010, he served as Executive Director of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS). He has taught in the Department of Government at Harvard University and has served as a consultant on Russian military and security issues for various agencies of the U.S. government and on ethnic and minority issues for the European Center for Minority Issues. In addition, he writes the blog Russian Military Reform.

**********

The Russian Government surprised many observers by going along with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorized international enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya. Russia was initially expected to veto the resolution. Instead, Russia chose to abstain in order to ensure the protection of civilians, while its ambassador to the United Nations made statements expressing concern about how the resolution would be implemented.

In recent years, Russia has had close trade relations with the Libyan Government. In particular, it has signed billions of dollars worth of arms contracts with the regime of Muammar Qaddafi. This is the context that partially explains the removal of Vladimir Chamov, Russia's ambassador to Libya, after he sent a telegram to Moscow arguing that allowing the U.N. resolution to pass would represent a betrayal of Russia's state interests. Chamov has since returned to Moscow, where he has publicly spoken out against the implementation of the no-fly zone.

Soon after the vote, Russia's attitude toward the no-fly zone unexpectedly became a factor in Russian domestic politics. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's statement on March 21 criticized the U.N. for getting involved in an internal conflict. In the most controversial part of his remarks, Putin argued that the resolution allowed international forces to take virtually any measures against a sovereign state, and in this he said it resembled medieval calls to crusades, "when someone called on others to go to a certain place and liberate it."

The response from President Dmitry Medvedev was almost immediate. He argued that Russia's abstention on the resolution vote was the proper position. Furthermore, he dressed down Putin (though not by name) by saying, "[u]nder no circumstances is it acceptable to use expressions that essentially lead to a clash of civilizations, such as 'crusades' and so on. It is unacceptable. Otherwise, everything may end up much worse than what is going on now. Everyone should remember that." And he removed Chamov from his position, essentially for public insubordination. Putin came out the next day with a statement indicating that the president is responsible for foreign policy in Russia and that he backed his president's policies. A spokesman indicated that Putin's previous statement was simply an indication of his own personal views rather than an official policy statement.

It may be that this conflict was yet another example of the good cop-bad cop show that the Russian leadership tandem has been putting on for the last three years. Or it may be that this is the first serious indication that Medvedev and Putin are engaged in a serious behind-the-scenes tussle for the right to run for president in 2012.

Why do Russian politicians see this conflict the way they do? Their inconsistent positions on Libya are essentially a case of wanting to have their cake and eat it too. Russian leaders decided not to veto Resolution 1973 for two reasons. First, they did not want to alienate Western leaders who were pushing for the intervention. While the rapprochement with the United States is important to them and certainly played a role here, we should also remember the importance of Russian political and economic ties with European states, and especially France and Italy, both of whom were strongly in favor of a no-fly zone because of the potential for a humanitarian and refugee disaster in the event of an attack by Qaddafi's forces on Benghazi. Second, Russian leaders did not want to be blamed for blocking the intervention if the result was a large-scale massacre of civilians.

On the other hand, Russian leaders also did not want to create a new norm of international intervention in internal conflicts, particularly when these conflicts were the result of a popular uprising against an authoritarian ruler. They genuinely dislike what they see as a Western predilection for imposing their values and forms of government on other parts of the world. They remember the color revolutions in Serbia, the Ukraine, and Georgia, in which friendly regimes were replaced by ones that were to a greater or lesser extent anti-Russian.

Furthermore, they believe that these popular protest movements were organized and funded by Western governments, particularly the United States. This creates a certain amount of suspicion of similar protests leading to the removal of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa, even when the deposed rulers do not have particularly close ties to Russia.

So Russian leaders are understandably nervous about the coalition's rather expansive interpretation of Resolution 1973. They were willing to allow for the establishment of a no-fly zone in order to avert a likely massacre of civilians and to help their European partners avoid a flood of refugees on their soil. They are much less willing to see NATO forces provide military assistance to a popular uprising against an authoritarian ruler that it has traditionally supported.

If this conflict drags on, Russian leaders will increasingly begin to speak out against the military campaign. They will be especially concerned if it becomes increasingly clear that NATO air strikes are targeting Qaddafi's ground forces rather than limiting themselves to preventing Libyan air forces from targeting civilian areas.

Unblogging

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

I'm sorry there's been nothing new from me the past couple of days. I've had to deal with some other priorities that unfortunately have prevented me from blogging.

Thankfully, there have been, as usual, some great posts from my co-bloggers.

I hope to be back at it later today.

In the meantime, I'll just note that the U.N. has approved military action against Libya. This would obviously be far preferable to, say, unilateral U.S. action. I consider myself something of a liberal interventionist, and I could be persuaded to support such action here, but, needless to say, serious questions remain.

I would also note -- though I'm sure you're paying attention to this -- that the situation in Japan continues to be, well, bad. And apparently getting worse. (I've spent some time the past couple of days reading up on nuclear power. We all think we know something about it, but of course most of us don't really know how it works. For a quick overview, both on how nuclear reactors work and what happens during a meltdown, I'd recommend this slideshow.)

Elephant Dung #16: House Republicans face internal turmoil

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

Poor Republicans. Poor, poor Republicans.

It looked like they were doing so well in 2010, propagandizing against health-care reform and otherwise lying to stir up their base, with the media eagerly repeating their talking points, obstructing anything and everything the Democrats proposed, using the filibuster in the Senate to block any number of Democratic initiatives, and capitalizing on angry Tea Party sentiment to whip up electoral success. Their poll numbers rose, they crested into the midterms, and they gave Obama and the Democrats a shellacking, slashing the Democrats' majority in the Senate and winning back the House with overwhelming force. Obama was down, the Democrats were in a state of apparent disarray, and the Republicans were back, baby!

Or not.

Lame-duckery notwithstanding, Congress used its time after the elections to put a cherry on top of Obama's first two years in office, repealing DADT, ratifying New START, and giving the Democrats hope that all was not lost.

Maybe it wasn't the Republicans' time after all. Maybe it was all something of an illusion, their success having more to do with a terrible economy and low voter turnout than anything else.

And then there was the question of what they would do back in power in the House. Obstruction would still be the name of the game in Congress, thanks to Mitch McConnell et al., and there would be overreach by over-eager Republicans looking to paralyze Congress through hearings and investigations to score political points, but with the Tea Party emerging as a major force in the Republican Party, and with Teabaggers and those sympathetic to them heading off to Washington, it was probably inevitable that the cracks in the GOP would deepen, dividing the party and threatening even the limited power it could wield in Congress. 

Yes, of course, House Republicans voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a meaningless vote, but since then things haven't exactly gone smoothly: 

Under pressure to make deeper spending cuts and blindsided by embarrassing floor defeats, House Republican leaders are quickly discovering the limits of control over their ideologically driven and independent-minded new majority.

For the second consecutive day, House Republicans on Wednesday lost a floor vote due to a mini-revolt, this time over a plan to demand a repayment from the United Nations. Earlier in the day, members of the party’s conservative bloc used a closed-door party meeting to push the leadership to go well beyond its plans to trim about $40 billion from domestic spending and foreign aid this year, demanding $100 billion or more.

The spending rebellion came after the House on Tuesday rejected what was expected to be a routine temporary extension of anti-terrorism Patriot Act provisions when Democrats and about two dozen conservative Republicans balked at a fast-track procedure. Republicans, still searching for their footing after assuming control in January, were also forced to pull a trade assistance bill from the floor after conservatives raised objections. They found themselves mediating other internal fights as well.

Speaker John A. Boehner conceded that the fledgling majority was encountering turbulence. "We have been in the majority four weeks," Mr. Boehner said. "We are not going to be perfect every day."

There's your understatement of the day. 

Now, Washington has a way of corrupting everyone who steps foot in it, and it's likely that some of these supposedly principled conservatives, many of them Teabaggers of some variety, will ultimately cave. They may want to stand for their extremist right-wing ideals, but such extremism generally doesn't go over well in Congress, not least when you have to compromise to get anything done and when you have to bring home some bacon to win re-election votes.

But what these two votes tell me is that the Tea Party is very much for real not just as a loosely coordinated "movement" at the grassroots level but within the Republican Party in Washington.

The fraying of party unity, if not of a scale or intensity that imperils Mr. Boehner's ability to advance the main elements of his agenda, nonetheless stood in sharp contrast to the record of Republicans in remaining remarkably united against President Obama and the Democrats over the past two years. The infighting foreshadowed potential difficulties for Republicans in holding their troops together for clashes with the White House and the Democratically controlled Senate as well as their ability to corral reluctant Republicans to vote to increase the federal debt limit.

Yes, Republicans like order and stability and are awfully good at being a united front against Democrats, but how long will that last in the current Congress, what with the competing priorities of the leadership, the more conservative (and rigidly ideological) rank and file (including the new Teabaggers), and renegades looking to advance various personal interests, with Obama rising again in the polls and looking extremely strong (along with a strengthening economy), and with Republicans already at each other's throats in anticipation of 2012?

This series -- Elephant Dung -- is about highlighting the divisions within the Republican Party. Much of the time, the divisions are personal, with one leading figure attacking another (often Sarah Palin), but what these latest developments in the House show is that the divisions are also political and ideological, with the various constituencies of the party, usually at peace with one another, eagerly vying for supremacy in the wake of the party's reacquisition of power (at least in the House). There have been such divisions before, there always are to some degree, but what makes their emergence more threatening this time is the rise of the Tea Party, which came out of 2010 with a sense of arrogant righteousness that makes it feel entitled to get its way and therefore not to have to compromise not just with Democrats but even with other elements of its own party, the GOP, mostly notably the less rigidly ideological establishment represented by the likes of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. 

And I think we ain't seen nothin' yet.

The UN, peacekeeping operations, and great power politics

by Peter Henne

As world leaders and pundits get ready for the upcoming United Nations session, the usual discussions of the UN's relevance are emerging. The UN is in a paradoxical situation of a favorable change in the United States--with Obama relatively less UN-hostile than Bush--but an increasingly difficult international and bureaucratic situation. As one story discussed, this can be seen in the small number of peacekeeping missions the UN is undertaking, compared to earlier eras.

It is interesting to note the crises in which the UN has not intervened. These include the Congo, Kyrgyzstan, Somalia, and Sri Lanka. A pattern can be discerned. These are all situations where there is little public attention paid to the conflict (the Congo, Somalia, Sri Lanka) or a great power is opposed to action (Kyrgyzstan-Russia).

I am not an expert on UN peacekeeping missions, but it is fair to say UN action is caused by the convergence of two factors: public attention to the crisis (the "CNN effect") and the absence of great powers opposed to intervention. Both must be present. If publics are clamoring for action but a powerful state has an interest in letting the crisis continue, UN action will blocked. If, instead, no state is stopping action but people don't care about a crisis, leaders will not feel compelled to act.

The dynamics of UN peacekeeping decisions are therefore complex. We have an asymmetric causal relationship (explanations for action are not the same as those for inaction) and equifinality (multiple paths to the same outcome). This is interesting for social scientists, but is also important for those hoping for UN action on humanitarian crises. Namely, it is much easier to prevent a UN peacekeeping operation from occurring than it is to mobilize a response to a crisis. The latter needs both public support and great power acquiescence; the former can occur in the absence of only one of those conditions.

With the American public distracted from anything of real substance, and states like China and Russia becoming more involved in regional and extra-regional politics, the likelihood of the UN stepping up and trying to resolving ongoing crises is slim. But there are plenty of crises that the great powers care little about, and of which the American people could presumably be made aware. Theoretically, that is.

Sanctioning Iran, an Obama victory

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The NYT:

The United Nations Security Council leveled its fourth round of sanctions against Iran's nuclear program on Wednesday, but the measures did little to overcome widespread doubts that they -- or even the additional steps pledged by American and European officials -- would accomplish the Council's longstanding goal: halting Iran's production of nuclear fuel.

The new resolution, hailed by President Obama as delivering "the toughest sanctions ever faced by the Iranian government," took months to negotiate and major concessions by American officials, but still failed to carry the symbolic weight of a unanimous decision. Twelve of the 15 nations on the Council voted for the measure, while Turkey and Brazil voted against it and Lebanon abstained.

The United States and Europe acknowledged before negotiations started that they would not get the tough sanctions they were hoping for, promising to enact harsher measures on their own once they had the imprimatur of the United Nations. Congress is expected to pass a package of unilateral sanctions against Iran, and European leaders will begin discussing possible measures at a summit meeting next week. 

Sure, the sanctions could have been tougher (and I support targeted sanctions meant to hurt the government and military, though I prefer a mutifaceted approach that combines sanctions with respect for Iran's national pride and support for its more liberal, pro-reform elements), and it's too bad the vote wasn't unanimous, but I think this is a significant victory for Obama, not least to have Russia and China on board. On this, I agree with Yglesias:

[I]t seems to me that the UN Security Council's vote to impose sanctions on Iran counts as a vindication of Barack Obama's view that taking a more conciliatory approach to the world will help get more cooperation from other world powers on American priorities. 

Obama reached out and tried to engage in serious discussions with Iran, but he was firmly rebuffed. Much to his credit, he is now in a position to lead the international community in addressing Iran's nuclear program, as well as Iran's blatant disregard for the authority of the United Nations, not through reckless military action, which the warmongering neocons desire (and which would backfire terribly), but through tough but sensible measures designed to put pressure on Iran's rogue regime.

Iran selected for U.N. Commission on the Status of Women

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This is where I don't mind quoting Fox News, because it was right to focus on this appalling development:

Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged "immodest."

Just days after Iran abandoned a high-profile bid for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council, it began a covert campaign to claim a seat on the Commission on the Status of Women, which is "dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women," according to its website.

Buried 2,000 words deep in a U.N. press release distributed Wednesday on the filling of "vacancies in subsidiary bodies," was the stark announcement: Iran, along with representatives from 10 other nations, was "elected by acclamation," meaning that no open vote was requested or required by any member states -- including the United States.

I'm not anti-U.N., I'm really not, but is it any wonder it has a credibility problem? And is it any wonder so many people, in particular in the U.S., consider it a joke, if not something far more malevolent?

How can it possibly justify putting Iran on this commission? Did some countries go along with this because it further undermines the U.N? Or is it just that too many countries don't care? Or that too many countries are, like Iran, anything but liberal and democratic and respectful of women's rights?

Whatever the case, all the U.N. has accomplished with this asinine move is to provide yet more ammunition to its critics.

What did we learn this week?

By Carol Gee

"What we don't know about Obama" has diminished just a bit since Jim VandeHei and John Harris' piece in Politico last week (1/22). The authors posed some questions "still left hanging as the Obama administration begins:" Their answers of a week ago make for very good reading. To quote the queries:

1. Does he really think Afghanistan is winnable?


2. Do deficits matter?


3. How fast is too fast in Iraq?


4. What's in the files?


5. Do unions wear white hats?


6. Can U.S. power save Darfur?


7. How much does he have to placate the Left?

Today's post looks for clues in the news of the past few days that shed further light on the above questions. How is our new President leading, using his powers of persuasion and his deft touch? In a way, his task is as delicate as it would be if he were driving on the ice and snow of the states he declared weather disaster zones, Arkansas and Kentucky. How is he doing? What do we know?

1. Afghanistan? President Obama told the wider Muslim world, "The U.S. is not your enemy" in an Al-Arabiya TV interview. One of President Obama's principles is that we must win the hearts and minds of moderate Muslims, and of Afghans. This will certainly be a good first step.

2. Deficits? Yesterday's Obama stern lecture to greedy Wall Street executives, calling their $18 B in bonuses "shameful,"# gives a strong clue about how President Obama feels about government waste. He has said repeatedly that the high deficits will be only temporary and that entitlement shortfalls must be addressed next. Time magazine helpfully explains "how to understand a trillion-dollar deficit."#

3. Iraq? President Obama has said he will take "conditions on the ground" into consideration when finalizing the plans for Iraq. Tomorrow is the day set for Iraq's provincial elections. Juan Cole has some thoughts on the implications and possible outcomes of those elections. So we must wait and see what develops.

4. Accountability? There is rather stark contrast between how the new White House plans to deal with official records and how that was done in the Bush White House. ProPublica has published a comprehensive list of the "Missing Memos," in case you are interested. We have yet to see any movement by the new President to hold wrong-doers accountable. But I have not given up hope.

5. Unions? Though President Obama is reportedly considering Republican Senator Judd Gregg for Secretary of Commerce, today he reversed several of the Bush executive orders that have been considered unfriendly to labor.

6. Darfur? Presidential appointee, Susan Rice, U.S. Delegate to the United Nations, has had a powerful passion about the situation in Darfur for quite some time. See The Washington Times -- "Susan Rice offers Obama promise of ‘cooperation’" -- regarding Darfur.

7. Left Dems? Women's groups reportedly were somewhat upset by President Obama's move to get family planning funds removed from the House stimulus package now in the Senate. CQ Politics is currently saying that a coalition of labor unions and liberal advocacy groups will soon start lobbying for a health care system overhaul that would make the government the "single payer." Democratic strategist Ed Kilgore makes a good persuasive argument that Obama's agenda is truly progressive.

Ending on an idealistic note, I want to quote from AlterNet's 1/28/09 story, "The Economic Crisis Isn't All Bad; It's a Chance for Us and Obama to Reimagine How We Live Our Lives."# It begins: "Capitalism is on its knees and now we have a chance to create higher ideals beyond career climbing and mindless consumerism." To continue by quoting the opening:

As America, recession mired, enters the hope-inspired age of Barack Obama, a silent but fateful struggle for the soul of capitalism is being waged. Can the market system finally be made to serve us? Or will we continue to serve it? George W. Bush argued that the crisis is "not a failure of the free-market system, and the answer is not to try to reinvent that system." But while it is going too far to declare that capitalism is dead, George Soros is right when he says that "there is something fundamentally wrong" with the market theory that stands behind the global economy, a "defect" that is "inherent in the system."

Hat Tip Key: Regular contributors of links to leads are "betmo"* and Jon#.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

With Rice at the U.N., Obama may take tough line on genocide

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Susan Rice, Obama's pick to be U.S. ambassador to the U.N., may or may not be in line to replace Hillary one day, but, regardless, her nomination and elevation to the Cabinet table signals that the president-elect is serious not just about working with the U.N. but about confronting genocide:

During her first run at the State Department, Ms. Rice was a point person in responding to Al Qaeda's 1998 bombing of United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. But her most searing experience was visiting Rwanda after the 1994 genocide when she was still on the N.S.C. staff.

As she later described the scene, the hundreds, if not thousands, of decomposing, hacked up bodies that she saw haunted her and fueled a desire to never let it happen again.

"I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required," she told The Atlantic Monthly in 2001. She eventually became a sharp critic of the Bush administration’s handling of the Darfur killings and last year testified before Congress on behalf of an American-led bombing campaign or naval blockade to force a recalcitrant Sudanese government to stop the slaughter.

Much of the focus has been, and will be, on the bigger stars on Obama's foreign policy team, notably Hillary and Gates. And, of course, much of the focus has been, and will be, on Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, terrorism, and other such high-priority issues and challenges. With Rice at the U.N., though, and having Obama's ear, there is hope, at long last, that the U.S. will move aggressively to respond in meaningful ways to the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crises in Darfur, the Congo, and elsewhere.

As a proponent not just of humanitarian foreign policy but of humanitarian intervention (albeit on a case-by-case basis -- I'm a pragmatist, too), I applaud the move. Over time, Rice could prove to be an effective counterweight to the realist hawks with whom Obama has surrounded himself.

Military stays dominant in the field -- or not?

By Carol Gee

Conflicts large and small are going on around the world. The United States is underrepresented in some of them, and over represented in others. What is deemed to be in the national security interest will, in all likelihood, change with the Obama administration. However, just because the United States will have a new president in a couple of months, that does not necessarily mean much will change right away on the war fronts. The advice of military commanders will be heavily weighted in the decision making until the President gains his confidence and footing. What would happen if the new President and his advisers, with the help of thinkers who have studied jihadis closely and rationally, reevaluated the conventional wisdom about relative terrorist threats around the world, and redeployed our military forces based on new information?

If President-elect Obama sticks to his promise of getting out of Iraq, that may or not mean leaving completely. Criteria for troop draw-downs will probably depend on the degree of stability at the battlefronts. The definition of "stability" varies widely among the various stakeholders. It will depend on the terms of the Status of Forces Agreement, and whether a new administration has any flexibility to modify it. And it depends on what is going on at the benchmark times as they occur, in other words, the conditions on the ground. The commanders need to be able to withdraw the forces safely, both personnel and materiel. What if we took the Iraqis at their word that they would just handle whatever happened? And what if we were to declare victory there and move on to peace-making between the Israelis and Palestinians?

If President-elect Obama sticks to his promise of refocusing U.S. military operations into Afghanistan and the border areas of Pakistan, that probably means a trip to that theater for a lot of the soldiers, rather than a trip home. And it is doubtful that war fighting expenditures will go down appreciably in the near future. What is the new government of Pakistan came to believe that they had better clean up the tribal areas soon, or the United States would do it for them? What if the United States made an authentic and significant effort to substitute alternative cash crops for Afghan farmers in place of opium poppies?

And what if the balance of power between the influence of the Defense Department and the State Department with the President were to be adjusted for more soft power and less hard power. Would Hillary Clinton have the strength and wisdom to make such a fight within the administration? What if the rejuvenation of our alliances meant that there were much better uses of the United Nations and NATO? What would happen if our new President took a fresh look at Africa, seeing it as a large source of instability and of possibility. And what if AFRICOM were split into the separate elements of military and diplomatic/aid forces, and we put more of our money into non-kinetic helpers and teachers and aid workers?

If our next president is as good as I think he is, he should be able to energize a new and sophisticated effort to rebalance the relative influence away from the military-industrial complex in the direction of smarter and tougher diplomatic interventions in trouble spots. What if the United States tried to become a true example of a free and open society, with a strong Middle Class whose children could, once again, hope to do better than their parents? Who knows what might happen to the millions now consigned to hopelessness around the world. Do I dream too much?

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Why I (sometimes) hate the U.N.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Because both Russia and China can use their veto power as permanent members of the Security Council to block anything and everything.

And they've both vetoed U.S.- and U.K.-backed sanctions on Mugabe's illegitimate regime in Zimbabwe.

And why did they do that? Because China, for one, does business with Mugabe, and because neither Russia nor China wants the U.N. to challenge undemocratic regimes. Here's how the Russian ambassador put it: "This draft is nothing but the council’s attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of a member state."

But then what's the point of the U.N. if it can't organize international action as required? And, to be sure, what is happening in Zimbabwe, with Mugabe and his thugs turning an election into a sham and brutalizing the people, as they have done for many years now, requires international action.

U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad -- a Bush appointee who, on this issue, is quite right -- put it well: "China and Russia have stood with Mugabe against the people of Zimbabwe. This resolution would have supported the courageous efforts of the Zimbabwean people to change their lives peacefully through elections."

So much for that. So much for peace and democracy in Zimbabwe, or anywhere else for that matter, if Russia and China can help it.

The latest from Burma -- disaster, chaos, oppression

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've neglected to blog about the horrible devastation in Burma -- one gets caught up in other matters, and far less tragic ones, like the Democratic presidential race -- but, then, I'm not sure what can be said about it that isn't, well, obvious to any human being with compassion.

Except that there is now even greater reason to work to bring down the totalitarian military junta that rules the country -- and brutalizes the Burmese people.

Here's the latest from The Globe and Mail:

Fighting erupted among starving survivors of the [Burma] cyclone Wednesday as the military junta continued to prevent relief workers from entering the country after a disaster that killed as many as 100,000 people.

Aid agencies said they are facing an almost unprecedented situation: a massive catastrophe in a country whose government is blocking any visits by the relief experts who could assess how to tackle the disaster.

Desperate survivors, facing serious shortages of food and water, fought with each other and broke into shops in an attempt to find food. "Our assessment teams witnessed general mayhem," said Paul Risley, spokesman for the World Food Programme, the food agency of the United Nations.

"They said there was civil unrest. People were smashing what was left of the shops to look for food in storerooms."

The official casualty toll remained at more than 22,000 dead and 42,000 missing, but several sources said yesterday that the number could rise to 100,000 dead – a grim prospect that was also raised by Shari Villarosa, the U.S. chargé d'affaires in [Burma], in a conference call with reporters in Washington.

Another 1.5 million people were left homeless by the disaster, and about 24 million are without electricity and running water, according to UN officials and Western diplomats.

United Nations workers said they were stunned by the junta's refusal yesterday to allow UN experts to enter the country. "This was a real shock," Mr. Risley said.

About 40 experts and technicians from UN relief agencies, along with dozens of private aid workers, were forced to sit and wait for another day in neighbouring Thailand, five days after the cyclone smashed into Myanmar's major rice-producing region.

Really? U.N. workers were stunned and shocked? They shouldn't have been. And no one should be.

Have we already forgotten that the totalitarian junta responded to opposition protests by slaughtering Buddhist monks? And that, since the crackdown, it has worked to solidify its brutally oppressive rule? Yes, the U.S., the U.N, Europe, and others (but not China and India, which enable the junta) said the right things, and imposed tougher sanctions, but nothing really changed -- the totalitarians got away with mass murder, are still in power, and have "constitutionalized" their rule.

And now the totalitarians are blocking international efforts to bring aid and relief to its devastated people?

Of course. It's one of the world's most deplorable regimes. And this is what it does to its people.

Which is why, again, it needs to be brought down. Somehow.

**********

I want to repost something I wrote last September during the crackdown:

Can we all please stop calling it Myanmar? That's the name the military junta -- then the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), since 1997 the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) -- gave the country when it declared martial law in 1989.

As Yale law professor Amy Chua puts it in her book World on Fire (p. 23): "Members of the majority ethnic group in Burma are called Bamahs (in the spoken language) or Myanmahs (in the written language). The newly independent state that emerged from the end of British colonial rule in 1948 was called the Union of Burma. In 1989, SLORC changed the country's name to Myanmar. (It also changed the names of various cities: Rangoon, for example, is now called Yangon.) In deference to the democratic opposition party, which has refused to acquiesce in the name change, the United States government currently refers to the country as Burma, and I do the same."

We all should do the same. Burma it is.

Middle East food situation

By Carol Gee

People around the world do not have enough to eat. Many factors threaten the world's food supply. Nor will the problem be over any time soon. To quote from YubaNet.com:

On 6 March, while visiting the European Union in Brussels, the executive director of the UN World Food Programme, Josette Sheeran, warned that high food prices and resulting inflation would continue . . . fuelling discontent on the streets of poorer nations.

. . . Over 25,000 people die from hunger or related illnesses every day across the world, with one child dying every five seconds, according to WFP.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that the global food crisis has reached emergency proportions, and our current president acted quickly. To quote:

. . . rapidly escalating global food . . . threatens to wipe out seven years of progress in the fight against poverty, . . . He called for short-term emergency measures in many regions to meet urgent food needs and avoid starvation and urged longer-term efforts to significantly increase production of food grain.

. . . Ban's appeal came as President Bush ordered the release of $200 million in emergency aid to help nations where surging food prices have deepened hunger woes and sparked violent protests . . . Bush's move came one day after World Bank President Robert Zoellick's appealed to governments to quickly provide the U.N. World Food Program with $500 million in emergency aid that it needs by May 1.

The emergency includes people in the Middle East. The situation is particularly bad in several countries, according to an earlier editorial in The Middle East Times. Those include Afghanistan, Palestine, Pakistan, and Egypt. To quote:

Last week, the U.N.'s World Food Program, the globe's main provider of food aid, warned that it would soon have to start rationing deliveries. . . . This is not just bad news for countries like Afghanistan and Ethiopia that depend on its supplies, and for Palestinians who have just seen up to 90 percent of their crops wiped out by extraordinary frosts and cold weather.

. . . World grain reserves are at their lowest levels since records were first kept back in 1960, and the U.S. stockpile had not been this low since 1948. . . Pakistan has re-introduced food ration cards, an unpopular and crisis-driven move that has contributed to the unpopularity of President Pervez Musharraf and helps explain his party's recent stinging electoral defeat. . . Egypt has extended its own food rationing system. . .

Some food industry executives are already starting to use the dreaded F word for Famine. This could make Saudi Arabia reconsider its decision to stop growing wheat and start importing some 3 million tons a year. It should not. With intelligent use of arable land for food crops, suitable irrigation and seed technology and an end to market-distorting farm subsidies, the world can produce enough food. It is a political problem we face, rather than a food shortage.

IRIN reports that it is particularly troubling in Afghanistan,

Food shortages in Ajristan District of Ghazni Province, central Afghanistan, have forced some families to eat dried grass in order to survive, local people and the district administrator told IRIN."

. . . According to the World Food Programme (WFP), increases of up to 70 percent in staple food prices, road blockages and other winter-related problems have pushed millions of Afghans into "high risk food-insecurity."

YubaNet.com reports also that climate change could threaten food security in the Middle East. In addition to the above-named countries, add these countries where there is widespread protest against rising food prices: Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. To quote:

"Climate change will affect food security in all its four dimensions - food availability, food accessibility, food stability and food utilisation," Will Killmann, chairman of FAO's working group on climate change, told IRIN on 10 March.

. . . On 3 March Prime Minister of Bahrain Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman al-Khalifa used his weekly meeting with officials and ordinary people to address the issue of food security in the region: "We need to draw lessons from the current spiralling inflation hitting the world and start seriously to think about ensuring food security in the Arab world," he said.

. . . Recent incidents in Egypt highlight the vulnerability of the Middle East region to the vagaries of reduced agricultural production and the rise in food prices. . . In the past few weeks, there have been food riots or demonstrations - albeit on a smaller scale - against rising food prices in a number of countries in the region, including Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

. . . A number of Gulf states have introduced price controls, including food subsidies and caps on rent increases, to offset the impact of price rises on their populations. The Omani Chamber of Commerce and Industry, for example, proposed on 9 March that food suppliers should control price rises by introducing ceilings on nine basic food items, including rice, wheat flour, sugar, lentils, cooking oil, tea, milk powder, evaporated milk and ghee.

What do people think? Aljazeera collected the views about the food situation from a number of people over several days for an interesting comment thread here.

The World Food Programme, at the United Nations, maintains an excellent website. There you can link to the wildly popular game FreeRice, where your play helps to feed people -- a grain at a time. I just donated 600 grains of rice to the cause. I note that I am already addicted to the game.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Rejected, mocked, punished

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So you want to know how the Bush Administration conducted itself -- and how Bush conducted himself -- in the international arena leading up to and after the start of the Iraq War? (And how it has conducted itself with respect to international relations generally? Consider:

In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.

The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, wrote Heraldo Muñoz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, in his book "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," set for publication next month.

"In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished" for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein's government, Muñoz wrote.

But the tough talk dissipated as the war effort worsened and President Bush came to reach out to many of the same allies that he had spurned. Muñoz's account suggests the U.S. strategy backfired in Latin America, damaging the administration's standing in a region that has long been dubious of U.S. military intervention.

In other words, the U.S. bullied anyone and everyone (including friends and allies) who dared to disagree with its warmongering, threatening opponents (and even would-be opponents) of the Iraq War with reprisals. (You know, you're either with us or against us -- and if you're against us, you're with the terrorists. That was pretty much the extent of Bush's worldview. And that hasn't changed.) Bush himself, it is clear, was the chief bully, but he was not alone. Powell and Negroponte issued threats as well -- as, of course, did Cheney and Rumsfeld (who are not mentioned in the article).

The bullying stopped -- or at least was finally reined in -- once the U.S. found itself in the predictably lame position of having to ask (if not beg) for international support, but by then it was too late. Bush had already destroyed U.S. credibility and had already stomped all over whatever international goodwill there may have been. Having been rejected, mocked, and punished, countries that had opposed the war, including some of America's closest allies, weren't about to come to the rescue.

In the world of diplomacy, as pretty much everywhere else, Bush has been, without doubt, an abject failure.

If we can put a man on the moon...

By Carl

I'm not sure what the footdragging by the Bush Administration here is about.

Bush himself has admitted that global warming is real, that it's largely man-made, and that the United States is a large contributor to the problem.

So what gives?

NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Reuters) - Delegates at U.N. climate talks resisted U.S. pressure to delete tough 2020 guidelines for cutting greenhouse gases with the European Commission saying they were a "crucial" element in a draft text.

The U.N.-led talks have become dominated by disputes over whether a text should keep a mention of a need for rich nations to axe greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid the worst impacts.

Any watering down or removal of the non-binding range would anger developing nations, which are demanding rich nations do more to cut their own greenhouse gas emissions.

Washington and Tokyo want the range cut out but it was still in the latest draft on Tuesday, delegates said.

Now, I'm not mathematician, but 2020 is exactly 12 years and 20 days away.

With far fewer resources in hand, with far more primitive technology, it took the United States approximately twelve years to make it off the ground and to land men on the moon. When computers were housed in huge storage spaces, and had vacuum tubes instead of transistors and micro-processors.

Is President Bush suggesting, through this intransigence, that America is incapable of meeting this modest goal? NASA's budget for the Apollo program was $20 billion dollars, which today would be about $100 billion, give or take a $20 billion.

In other words, less than six months' downpayment on the Iraq war. Is that not worth the price? The ability to save a significant part of the global environment? The likelihood of preventing a global cataclysm that will wreak havoc (as it already is) on the United States in terms of weather, drought, storms, and tornadoes? Hell, I'd wager than $100 billion dollars ANNUALLY might still be worth the price, if it also means weaning ourselves off oil and onto renewable clean energy sources.

The need for such extensive lead time is simple: in order to set up any kind of effective mechanism that will provide a long-term solution without major impact on the world economies, measures have to be introduced in steps. These measures will affect developed nations, to be sure, but will also affect less-developed nations and there's the rub: the infrastructure necessary for, say, a carbon trading market would have to include ways of enforcing adherence to the rules of the market (you can't use a credit that you've already received money for, is the obvious example) and for contingencies (to extend my example, what if you have a national emergency that forces you to resort to a more carbon-producing energy system?).

Too, the economic and technologic benefits to the nation that accrue from our "greening" can be enormous, and quite unexpected. We've seen from the space race that everything in American society changed, from how we do mathematics to what materials we use to build televisions (and indeed, the self-same microprocessors trace their roots in part to the space race).

We wouldn't have cell phones, or satellite TV. We wouldn't have laptops. We wouldn't have Palm Pilots. We wouldn't have arthroscopic surgery. We wouldn't have hip replacements or breast implants. I wouldn't be able to scuba dive in a dry suit. You probably wouldn't have microwavable food, altho you might have your microwave...it would be the size of your oven, however.

Imagine the kind of developments we would obtain from going green. For one thing, we could localize energy production to such an extent that the grid as we know it would be practically useless to the average homeowner, thus freeing up enormous capacity for business and commercial use, and if there's any one thing the history of this nation has shown us, abundance creates money.

In fact, the grid would likely become a source of income for many homeowners, who would be able to sell energy back to the grid rather than use it. Imagine trading electricity on eBay.

Cleaning technologies, probably the first step in meeting these reductions, would transfer to so many areas that it would stop being considered a nasty job. For example, what if the paint on your house could clean itself of dust and grime? This could be a direct outgrowth of advanced carbon scrubbing technologies that companies would eat up in a heartbeat in order to reduce their carbon footprints.

Imagine a house that vacuums and dusts itself, only needing a robot (or if you're old school, a push broom) for the really big messes. We're not that far away from it now, what with air handling technology in many central air conditioning systems.

And you'd think Bush would want to pump up his legacy by making this our nation's Apollo program for the 21st Century. You'd think he'd want to cement a legacy for himself that wouldn't be centered solely on the abject failure that is Iraq and the near-tragedy that Afghanistan is threatening to become.

You'd think he'd want to be known as more than a war president.

And you'd be wrong, apparently.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)