Are We Bitter? Yes We Are.

At 8:54 pm ABCNews put the URL for its website on the TV screen for the Philadelphia Democratic Debate, and by 8:57 there were 2152 comments. Most of them looked something like this:

"Stop asking #### stupid questions. We are not morons out here. could we please discuss REAL ISSUES. This debate is ridiculous, the next thing they will ask is why Obama used a bad word when he was in third grade. this is why I hate network news, the talking heads believe we are all as stupid as the flag pin lady.

"Like many others, I want to express my outrage at the ridiculous questions being posed. I can't believe George asked Barack if he thinks his pastor loves this country as much as he does. We might as well get Rush Limbaugh to be moderator."

"WAKE UP...TALK ABOUT ISSUES, NOT THE STUFF THAT THE MEDIA HAS DISCUSSED FOR WEEKS....WE ARE SMARTER THAN THAT!!!"

Are any of these media gurus aware that the country is actually at war? Our media is shamelessly out of touch. The ENTIRE WORLD IS WATCHING US EMBARRASS OURSELVES.

If pigs could spread democracy...

This has been up awhile at Arms and Influence but still deserve a hat tip: Kingdaddy posted the following quote from the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City:

"America's been so successful at being a free and permanent democracy that we think democracy is the natural way to rule--just let people go and there you have it: Democracy. But all the ingredients that make it good and free--limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances, calendared elections, staggered elections, plurality selection, differing terms of office, federalism with national supremacy, the development of a civic spirit and civic responsibility, and above all, the breaking and moderating of factions--all this we forgot about. We act is if the aim is "democracy" simply and not a mild and moderate democracy. Therefore...we seek out the loudest and most virulent factions and empower them...

We, as a country, don't have a clue as to what has made our own country work, and so we spread the gospel of democracy-at-all-costs abroad. Until this country can find a Madison, it would be far better off with just a good ruler.

Kingdaddy has some cogent thoughts of his own on democracy as well.

Ah-ha-ha!

Who's The Boss?

I'm always tickled when political scientists' research makes the news. Foreign Policy reports on a study by Steven Fish and Matthew Kroenig arguing that powerful legislatures make for more resilient democracies.

"In a groundbreaking new study, Fish and Kroenig rank the power of 158 national legislatures around the world, based on a survey completed by more than 700 country experts. The strength of parliaments and congresses is measured using four groups of factors: influence over the executive (such as powers of impeachment), autonomy (such as whether the executive can dissolve parliament), vested powers (such as the power to declare war), and the capability to get things done (such as having the resources to hire staff).

They find that... weak legislatures often cannot keep executives in check, especially when autocratic leaders come to power. 'This decade, the great enemies of democracy are presidents,' says Fish, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley."

Presumably this helps explain why the Kenyan opposition was prepared for civil war in order to affirm its Presidential win, despite its majority in the weak Kenyan legislature. However, one wonders about the dependent variable in the study. BY "enemy of democracy" do they mean the tendency of one branch or the other towards authoritarian policies? Or do they mean political instability? Two very different things which I expect often trade off one another.

Case in point: due to our system of checks and balances, the US is in 40th place according to the study. Certainly the US Presidency's greater power (for example the veto) has facilitated some violations of civil liberties by the executive branch. Yet the US remains incredibly stable in the face of this: no bloodletting along Kenyan lines is occurring between red and blue neighborhoods, for example. Is stability the enemy of human rights? If Americans have so much respect for our resilient institutions that we won't take to the streets after election fraud, CIA wire-tapping, and an admission by the executive branch that torture may be used on detainees, one wonders about whether "democratic resilience" is a public good.

He's a Nut, But He's Our Nut

Dan Drezner’s blog shmarmily reproduced an excerpt from an op-ed by The New Republic's Jamie Kirchik today. Kirchik blasts Ron Paul over “obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays,” continuing:

“In short... Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing--but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.”

But Kirchik’s piece and Drezner’s approving post, in which he calls her analysis “devastating,” assumes that Ron Paul "supporters" are supporting him as a candidate. The ones I know personally certainly aren't so naive. They know his record well, but also know that they have nothing to fear since he’ll never be nominated. They funnel him money and lip service in the hope he stays in the race long enough to keep boring old issues like the constitution, civil liberties, our international reputation, and the real meaning of patriotism on the Republican agenda.

Since John McCain, the only other Republican candidate with a similar regard for the Geneva Conventions, mopped the floor with the other candidates in the NH primary tonight suggests that the strategy is working. Paul may be a nut, but he’s a nut who makes a lot of sense on issues that many, many people care about, and in so doing he makes McCain look credible.

Kenya is Not Rwanda

I have read a number of op-eds this morning comparing the mounting post-election violence in Kenya to the Rwandan genocide or referring to the violence as "tribal." I think this is a mistake for a number of reasons.

First, it's not conceptually accurate. Second, exaggerating the facts at a moment of crisis can inflame political violence, whereas what is needed is efforts to mute it.

Kenya is not Rwanda - not yet, anyway. Like other genocides, the Rwandan genocide was deliberately planned and orchestrated by the opposition elite that had captured the state apparatus. Second, the Rwandan Hutu Power movement sought to deliberately wipe out an entire ethnic group as such, rather than to terrorize them for specific political reasons. Third, this event occurred in the wake of a long civil war and aborted peace process, not in a country characterized by relative stability, prosperity and a recent election.

At least two patterns of violence are occurring in Kenya (this is at a glance - if there is one thing the study of violence tells us is that it's always more complicated than two sides). First there are deaths as a result of police shooting into crowds rallying for a re-count. These seem to be simply the tactics of a regime on its last legs attempting to frighten the political opposition. We see this often where political authority is threatened - Tienamen, Abidjan, etc. This is not genocide against a racial, religious or ethnic group but rather run of the mill political violence (no less atrocious for that however, but it rarely results in a million deaths).

The other pattern is mob violence against civilians of the ethnic group (Kikuyu) whose leaders hold disproportionate economic and political power. Again, this is as much a story of class conflict as of ethnic hatred. As Amy Chua has detailed in World on Fire, elections can be a recipe for violence when a minority ethnic group is also viewed as "market dominant" - the real issue is economic scarcity, but if resources have been distributed according along ethnic lines in the past, there will be incentives for aspiring politicians to play the ethnic card to get elected. Resource disputes, then, get transformed through the election process into ethnic disputes; if the election is contested citizens may be primed to take matters into their own hands. Socioeconomic frustration turns into targeted "killing by category" when all those of an ethnic group become associated with the old, unjust order. Once the ball is rolling however, the killings can take on a life of their own, and this is why Genocide Watch is calling the violence in kenya "a stage away from actual genocide."

None of this equals "tribalism." If there is one paralell to Rwanda, it is that mob violence is generally whipped up by a few demagogues and by terrorizing one's ethnic brethren into going along or facing equal punishment as traitors and collaborators. The genocide in rwanda was cooked up by a small band of extremists who ensnared the general Hutu population into participating not because they hated the tutsi, but because they feared for their own families' lives. Ordinary Kenyans of all political stripes and ethnic affiliations are seeking security and stability. Wild tales of a looming bi-lateral genocide can only undermine efforts of moderates in the country to appeal for calm.

This is not to say the situation is not extremely serious. Certainly we don't need the violence to reach Rwandan levels before concern is warranted, and perhaps it is the hope of attracting preventive action from the international community that underlies the Rwanda analogy. If the Kenyan government cannot or will not exercise its responsibility to protect civilians, the international community must step in quickly. Because the violence is not yet out of control there is an opportunity for regional and international organizations to do their part.

The question is whether the current diplomatic and media attention can be sustained over the next few days as the caucuses get under way in the US midwest.

Radicals in Kenya are probably hoping for the opposite.

Most Under-Reported Story of the Year: Bush Paves Way To Stay in Office

Some stories Foreign Policy didn't include in their list of "Top Ten Stories You Missed This Year":

1) The establishment by the USG of a new Unified Combatant Command for Africa. While it is not clear to me yet what precisely Africom's scope of operations will be, it does suggest a growing awareness on the part of the USG that stability in Africa matters for America's own security.

2) Child mortality is at a historic low globally, largely because of orchestrated efforts by NGOs and the UN to vaccinate children against preventable diseases and provide mothers with basic education about child health. Anyone who doubts that foreign aid can make a difference in the security of human beings should take heed of these numbers.

And the most important story you may have missed this year:

3) President Bush has enacted a National Security Presidential Directive that would make it legal for him to remain in office as long as he declares a “catastrophic national emergency” first. Defined, according to the Directive, as:

“any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”

The mainstream news ignored this since May, but bloggers didn’t. Here are some views on the issue:

One Pissed Off Veteran writes:

“How fucking vague is that? A hurricane in Mexico? An ice storm in Canada? Pakistan dropping the big one into the men's room at the Taj Mahal? Even a precipitous drop in the value of the dollar against the Euro.

Any and all of these can be interpreted within the broad confines of this directive.

Note that it doesn't have to be on American soil. Anywhere on the planet (and probably off of it) is fair game for this far-reaching directive.

This is nothing less than a blueprint for instituting martial law in the United State -- with Der Monkey Fuehrer himself at the top."

Show Us The Inherent Law quoted Matthew Rothschild as saying:

“Under this plan, [Bush] entrusts himself with leading the entire federal government, not just the Executive Branch. And he gives himself the responsibility “for ensuring constitutional government.”

A slightly less paranoid view comes from InformationClearingHouse :

“These are profoundly, potentially calamitously, broad terms. Who defines what is extraordinary? Who defines how severe severely is? Is there any procedure to challenge the junking of constitutional government? …Even if you don't believe the most sinister paranoid coup theories, the document does nothing to allay one's fears that it could be used in a sinister way.”

Read the directive and decide for yourself whether we are likely to see Bush leave office on schedule.


Type rest of the post here

Worth Watching

Without endorsing any particular Republcian presidential candidate's overall platform, I must say the the following video is worth watching on its own merits: