Stop The Spirit of Zossen 2.0

Here’s a hope that everyone enjoys the weekend. That you, Dear Reader, can tune out the media led fixation on the ankle biters downtown.

It’s an unholy brew. A rootless media seeks any form of self-generating narrative for lazy producing, story selection, Nielsens and click throughs. And the Movement? It follows centuries of Counter Enlightenment impulsive tradition using public theater to create false narratives and communal identity. All fodder for the 15 minute news cycle and shallow tweets.

We chose to visit Annapolis to start off the weekend. Sure, it’s long been a tourist trap. And like nearby D.C. it’s self-satisfied, bloated and keenly aware of its wealth. Still, it’s not far up Route 50. The Severn River retains echoes of boating memories many decades ago. Plus, traffic to the overcrowded (and even more overbuilt) Delaware beaches too daunting. One notable thing – young men in their twenties lounging around the Naval Academy entrance wearing the old ‘Blackwater’ paw t-shirts and Oakleys. Without irony, too.

Where were we? Oh right. The high school play downtown.

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Tuesday offers ominous signs and portents for Obama’s agenda of Lukewarm Dishwater. No, it’s not that his personal endorsement means squat. Rather, Obama actually would benefit from a Rightist takeover of at least one chamber of Congress. For his legacy and re-election. Tuesday’s results offer a chance that Democrats might muddle through with less carnage. Good for them, possibly bad for Obama and even worse for all of us.

Clinton surely benefitted from Newt after 1994. Clinton, more so than Obama, was a tactical political genius and counter-puncher. So what if the divided government meant a Clinton presidency offered almost no historic liberal achievement. Can you say ‘school uniforms’? In the eyes of many, Clinton remains the best Republican president since Reagan.

Obama’s case is different. He’s no Clintonian boxer. Nor is he the same voracious, natural political animal (in all senses). He’s obviously bright – didn’t Medvedev look into his eyes and see Obama’s IQ? But if Obama has any actionable convictions, they’re more classified than presidential Blackberry txt messages.

He’s not helped by the soggy Cherrios that is the (undeserved) Democratic majority on the Hill. Obama desperately could use *something*, *anything* to give him definition — and a plausible excuse for the inaction, watering down and plain fumbling. The Obama Administration is the Newsweek of American politics.

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Facebook’s much publicized user privacy meltdown is just the lastest example of massive social web services disregarding users’ privacy. Google similarly decided on its own all its users’ private information should by default be visible to any one. Despite the CW that ‘no one expects privacy’ anymore, anti-Facebook sentiment runs white hot. The query ‘how do I remove my Facebook account’ is now among the most popular searches on the web. Expectations of privacy are not quite dead.

Now imagine what happens in other less closely watched situations with all of our information. When it’s more than exposing private messages explaining how one’s spouse is a jerk. You know, involving little things like the 4th Amendment, FISA, etc. Yup, the Feds. (And if the Feds walk all over your privacy, do you really think something like HIPPA stops an insurance company?)

So what gives with Obama’s intransigent disregard of a 2007 law requiring him to appoint members to a privacy panel? The panel’s origins lie back in the dim recess of time when intelligence reform was given at least nominal jaw-jaw. Alas, if the panel was actually set up? McConnell might write an angry letter. And November is coming up. It’s not like intelligence reform, oversight, the 4th Amendment and privacy are important. Just ask Kagan – she has no opinion on them.

Who knew ‘hope and change’ had a sell by date of February 2009?

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It’s a given that Peter Beinart’s flatulence that Kagan should apologize for banning U.S. military campus visits for their policies violating school non-discrimination policies is more of his soft-minded weakness. Like his rah rah for the Bush Administration in the Middle East well into 2005. Not a serious mind for serious (or unserious) people. What about principled Obama supporters distancing themselves from Kagan?

We confess to know almost nothing about Kagan. Not only because she has no substantial body of legal writings. She came of age after the Stitung’s work with and for some of the Nation’s foremost legal minds (including but definitely not limited to Kagan’s colleague, Liz Warren). We know nothing about how her mind works. A deanship or Supreme Court Clerkship? Ticket punches only. How she succeeds in quelling Harvard prima donnas as Lunch Room Monitor irrelevant and delusional – as if Alito, Roberts, Scalia or Thomas will somehow be hypmotized [sic]. Yet her ‘legal mind’ and Harvard faculty Jedi mind tricks are the crux of Obama’s confidence in her.

We can’t speak for you, Dear Reader. We no longer accept ‘Trust Me’ IOUs from this crowd. We look forward to the confirmation hearings (see comment below).

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Sandy Levinson continues to pine for a Constitutional Convention to fix our ‘broken system.’ He notes he’s just affirming his long standing position, one we’ve discussed at length here as well. It’s unfortunate he cuddles up to David Brook’s hush puppy bleat to join him on the Tennis Courts.

Levinson, whom we’ve respected for 20 plus years, is in some ways another, much smarter, Larry Wilkerson – both consumed with process. Recall Wilkerson’s pathetic arguments after his firing in 2005 (not before, mind you) that amending the 1947 National Security Act would halt future Cheneys/Addingtons/Scooters/Rumsfelds/Feiths/etc. from by-passing the orderly flow of paper work and inter-departmental consultation. Who knew Addington would have been halted in his tracks with just one more statute to ignore?

Utter idiotic claptrap and nonsense, of course. We here together for years understood the essence of the Warlord’s regime: *the law didn’t matter*. Even adding 1,000 more pages to the U.S. Code? Meaningless. Note that our disdain for Wilkerson is not limited to this website. We’ve said this to his face and exposed his ignorance at fora. He continues to shine at his full 15 watt potential.

Similarly, the much brighter Levinson, so-so Larry Sabato and now Brooks claim process will fix an obviously broken government. Once again, Levinson adopted the external political science approach rather than an internal legal one.

Levinson acknowledges concern about calling the Estates-General in today’s polarized political environment. But not enough. Like Wilkerson, Levinson fails to understand true political radical reality (we say this with kindness, he is an accomplished professor, not political operative). If Levinson ever worked on the Hill for a period of time and participated in electoral processes, he would see that the U.S. government is not paralyzed *because* of a flawed Constitution but in *spite* of it. More clever drafting of Constitution 2.0 (with a Bill of Tweets? Lord help us) will not address our underlying problem – the societal collapse of ‘virtue’ (per Douglas Adair), belief in republican liberal democracy or even ward room Dahl-esque pluralistic politics.

Assume one could re-write the Constitution along the lines Levinson suggests. Assume again Christian Socialist Authoritarian efforts to hijack the country’s DNA are rebuffed. Still, only deck chairs are moved. No piece of paper can mandate responsible outcomes. The fragmented Movement merely will game the new framework. 10 years? 5? 20? Eventually we will be back here. Efforts to seek better outcomes merely by changing the Constitution are akin to a substance abuser who moves to a new city thinking everything will be different.

A liberal democratic republic will exist only when its people and representatives subscribe to those underlying ideals and notions. The Left [sic], progressives and decimated moderate Republicans allowed them to die largely undefended. Even in 2010 they collectively still don’t really understand what they are up against. Our government fails because its institutions have lost self-identity, something we predicted would happen under the Counter Enlightenment ideological government of 2001-2008. They can operate – even with people like Shelby and the filibuster problem – if collective institutional memory and will exist. Both don’t. More importantly, the American people must step up. A Constitution 2.0 will be meaningless without that fundamental change at the societal level. Changing the rules merely shifts how the Movement’s nihilist game plays out. The same conditions that would enable Constitution 2.0 to function also render it moot.

That’s the hard truth the ‘Left [sic]‘ is only now recognizing. (We here have all been discussing this for 6 years now). A substantial portion of the American people don’t believe in or want liberal democracy. They will play along to gain power but reject investment in the system should they lose. Once the Movement tasted unfetted power 2001-2008 it refuses to go back on a Ken Duberstein-esque leash. No Constitution 2.0 can accommodate that. It’s the anti-Bruce Ackerman ‘High Constitutional Moment.’ No liberal democracy can function so without descending to Weimar feebleness, contempt and vulnerability to a Man on a White Horse.

Levinson perhaps can visit CPAC. He can watch Tea Partiers on cable. Superficial tourism – like suggesting someone can conduct a real federal trial based on watching CSI. Until he, Sabato et al. are immersed in the Movement at the actual granular level, none of them can understand how irresponsible it is to urge everyone onto the Tennis Court. The question is who plays Danton.

Republics are finite. History tells us that. We are way past America’s ‘Machiavellian Moment’ – Pocock’s examination of how a Republic confronts a crisis of ideals and self-awareness. Sandy, before you open up the Constitution on the Tennis Court, think twice about stepping through that dark doorway. None of us have any idea what will emerge.

A precondition to any successful Constitutional Convention? Advocates of Constitution 2.0 first must make every concerted effort to remind the American people of their inheritance. What is it to be a liberal democratic republic? Do people want a republic as much if not more than those determined to tear it down? A republic is not $19.95 DVD players from Shanghai, tax cuts or sectarian/authoritarian cults. Franky, we don’t think the Academy and others are up to the job. If they were, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.

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OPR’s final punt on Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury offers multiple layers for critique. Not all of them deserve immediate, reflexive rebuke.

This leak excerpt sums up matters:

Bush administration lawyers who paved the way for sleep deprivation and waterboarding of terrorism suspects exercised poor judgment but will not be referred to authorities for possible sanctions, according to a forthcoming ethics report, a legal source confirmed.

The work of John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, officials in the Bush Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, provided the basis for controversial interrogation strategies that critics likened to torture in the years after al-Qaeda’s 2001 terrorist strikes on American soil. The men and their OLC colleague, Steven G. Bradbury, became focal points of anger from Senate Democrats and civil liberties groups because their memos essentially insulated CIA interrogators and contractors from legal consequences for their roles in harsh questioning.

Initial reaction by ‘the Left’ [sic], mainstream pundits and lawyers is understandably harsh. On the surface these men unleashed torture, death and permanent moral defacement of the U.S. Internally within the profession and department, Jack Goldsmith, one of the few at DoJ to take a stand during the Dark Years, noted their ‘legal’ work was often incoherent, self-contradictory, and shockingly slipshod. Much of it that we know about today contained misrepresentation. Anonymous Liberal has a succinct summation.

We share those views generally. OPR is never known for its ‘teeth’ within DoJ, the wider legal community or Community. It’s not just another empty sham like the infamously useless ‘Intelligence Oversight Board’. Still, a career official’s decision to water down the original draft’s (reportedly) proposed sanctions gravely undermines the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) former elite status. A wider political science Weberian bureaucratic conclusion is inescapable: the optics are bi-partisan gloss. Regardless of non-political appointees. The bureaucratic (and career) realities are that ‘legal’ memoranda even from DoJ’s DoJ can be written by anyone about anything without serious consequence.

Precedent matters (unless you are the Roberts Court). This decision starts and stops a big deal. For the moment.

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We always get a chuckle when the WaPo clucks about some bureaucracy allegedly in scandal because said bureaucracy broke the iron clad rule of ‘good paperwork, always’. Here today the WaPo notes the FBI sent out thousands (doubtlessly the real total is much higher) of ‘special’ national security requests to phone companies without the proper paper work (read the now notorious ‘national security letter’). And shock, many of these requests really had nothing to do with national security! Gambling? Here? And shock, the bureau tried to cover its ass by creating false meta ‘terrorism’ investigation grab all files, putting the requests in them and then scrambled to back date the proper paperwork.

Of all the legacies left to us by the Warlord, must we endure the most shameful? Bad paperwork? According to what’s her face in the story, the FBI ‘technically’ was not in compliance. If only they had contractors on site who could manage and oversee compliance . . .

We take this light heartened tone because a) we’re pretty sure the WaPo doesn’t have the whole story; b) the Bureau always was destined to abuse the Patriot Act; c) under the Patriot Act the Bureau had the power to xerox those ‘nsls’ like an office holiday party derrieres anyway (and did); and d) we are supremely confident nothing will really change. Bin Laden really did kill alot of America that day. Obama engorges the competence challenged (but very vindictive) Permanent National Security State. Hey, it’s a bi-partisan, Martha Stewart ‘good thing.’

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That’s fair for Obama’s annual review. Average.

We don’t agree with Clive Cook’s panglossian look back. It’s trussed up typical Neocon tripe in part passed as international savoir faire – i.e., Obama did the right thing in Afghanistan but dawdled, wants to talk to people, and might force repeal of the Warlord’s fiscally irresponsible tax cuts. Cook gives Obama a “B” but infers Obama is the sort of bloke who might have been rude to an Astor and even let the second class and steerage passengers have a chance to jump ship on the Titantic. We do agree that Obama is a walking vacuum of leadership.

We are less generous. We think Obama is the empty suit, rhetoric without spine, balls or convictions. We understand the progressives’ disappointment with Obama. We lost some readers during 2008 with our emphasis on the Boy King and his likely equivocation and craving for status quo acceptance. Can’t make all readers happy. But we did warn. It’s a cold comfort. We secretly nursed hopes that Obama would be more than a transitional figure, that he had a core besides rhetorical intoxication. Not to be so far. To add insult to injury, Obama is not a very competent status quo politician; he shows no understanding of power or how to use it. His wasted Asia trip merely Exhibit ‘A’. Lunching with the plagarist Doris Kearns Goodwin on the glories of LBJ holding conversations in the Oval Office while taking a dump won’t help, either.

On the issue we care about most, restoration of liberal democracy, Obama has done almost nothing. He arrested the acceleration into lawless bureaucratic tyranny but did not reverse it. His DoJ filed arguments on State Secrets that would have made Fredo Gonzales and his lawyers accredited from schools run by TV studios proud. The unnecessary and totally voluntary brief filed on behalf of John Yoo is Addington-esque. How repulsive to see German war criminal arguments regurgitated by an Obama DoJ. Obama is seeking preservation and even enhancement of the PATRIOT Act. Closing Gitmo in rhetoric is fine. To transfer detainees to Illinois is political window dressing. On torture, we hear not a pin drop. Perhaps Holder really is investigating and building a factual record for the future. But his lips move so we’re pretty sure he’s lying. But we leave that open for future review.

The Bureau’s staggeringly wanton abuse of national security letters? Other other alleged ‘powers’. Nada. No accounting for how DoD elements operated domestically outside congressional oversight. No accounting for the even more pervasive than realized NSA turn inwards against Americans. No one is accountable. ‘Mistakes were made’. Nothing to see, old news. Contacting reform? It’s to laugh.

We don’t give Obama’s F-22 cancellation a whole lot of credit (someone tell Rachel Maddow that politicized subcontracting for defense contracts is decades old. Or just yank her teeny bopper naive butt off the air, please). Sure there were program failures, but that’s common. Cost overruns, too. The F-22 was the first major victim of the inter service knife fight as we enter the procurement scissors crisis. We’ve talked about that looming problem at length here since 2005 or so. It’ll get worse. It’s tectonic military industrial politics.

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The U.S. Army doesn’t believe it can rely on its troops to maintain good order and discipline with Sarah Palin around. Or her ability to modulate herself. So why have her on base at all? Just another small but notable development given the rapid growth of seditious ‘oath keepers’ and other anti-liberal democratic groups.

The Movement long ago figured out that FDR’s liberalism reigned for 34 years because liberal personnel staffed government, especially the ‘power institutions’. In traditional political science terms the latter are usually internal security, law (DoJ) and the military. Today, FDR’s paradigm is on its head. The Warlord stuffed them with recruits during his most toxic years. Obama’s enemies now unsurprisingly are targeting power institutions first to de-legitimize Obama personally and secondly to activate their self-righteous impulses to act out.

One can debate how much immediate danger these brazenly treasonous activities may pose to the Republic. We do think it’s no longer debatable that Shy Meyer’s post-Vietnam tripwire all volunteer force (“AVF”) can be called a definitive failure. He designed the AVF in the 1970s to prevent the U.S. Army becoming a tool of imperial aggression divorced from domestic political commitment. In his world of mass armies with secondary and tertiary echelons he made sure a 500,000 commitment like Vietnam would be impossible because the AVF would be too small. A president would be forced to call out the national guard Meyer assumed. Something Johnson and Nixon never did. Both refused to burden the voters that way. Plus, Meyer knew ending the draft would save the military from civilian contempt.

Today’s quasi-mercenary AVF is untethered from all of Meyer’s anchors. In fact, rather than a safeguard protecting the Nation, Meyer’s AVF poses potential problems far beyond Westmoreland’s era. More than ever today’s military culture inherently is distinct from our civilian world (although what we know today as corporate hierarchies and chains of command were copied from the Union Army during the first industrial surge post Civil War). The AVF culture is self selecting – the evangelical problem at Colorado Springs just one indicia. Meyer couldn’t have foreseen how technology would be a force multiplier allowing a small, isolated, self-selected AVF force to maintain itself deployed while Americans shop and watch TV. Meyer devoted himself to prevent America from living out every day 2001-2009.

And resentment builds. These over-stressed troops see their reality in theater and broken families as merely fodder for stunt media reporting. Add a Nation which openly tolerates actual mercenaries to operate with more pay and less rules like Prince, Dyncorp, etc. Cynicism naturally builds. And then the top brass dip in. The underlying moral corruption becomes pervasive. It’s not a new thing – the Stiftung used to see it every week going back decades. But the trend line spiked sharply up.

Shy Meyer’s gift to the Republic? A dysfunctional civil-military relationship that breeds recruits for the oathiness crowd. Recruits committed to kinetic solutions and already largely strangers to civilian liberal democratic society and pluralism. We don’t know what percentage are *potential* McVeighs. But to shove Cheney-ism back at him, it’s gonna be above 1 %.

Meanwhile, local and state law enforcement likewise have been radicalized the last 8 years. Obama shows no sign of breaking the cycle. ‘Fusion centers’ where your local sheriff or police chief might have the almost pornographic thrill of rubbing elbows with FBI, Homeland Security, even the now considerably less cool CIA, etc. And how empowering for a local or state official to receive information stamped “Sensitive But Unclassified”. Why, they’re almost one of the team! National security is the ultimate get out of boring routine regulation free card. When the Warlord’s crew proposed creating that new tag we at first would sit in meeting and strain not to roll our eyes. But the goal was to radicalize and it worked. We can’t remember how many hours of our life we will never get back listening to pleas from dairy processing plants in Strawberry Point or truck refitting depots in Texarkana that they needed millions in federal aid to stop imminent Al Qaeda attack. Now, recruitment pools for anti-liberal democratic forces under the banner of oaths, the constitution, etc.

Shy Meyer failed. The AVF as a concept failed. America let them both down. The military must be reconnected with the polis. It’s time for Americans to cowboy up. Whether by draft, by changed incentive mechanisms or other means. The military burden must be shared and that experience flow both ways. Our liberal democracy will be revitalized with a broader life experience of the military’s perspective of team work, discipline and learning to tolerate diverse backgrounds re-entering our culture. The military will become a democratic force with fresh infusions of civilian tolerance of non-radicalized ideologies. Ending ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is getting it backwards. We all win by taking steps to ensure the military looks alot more like America.

The odds of any of this happening are about as good as Obama doing more than Goldilocks on Afghanistan. We know. Same with the Movement walking away from shot after shot of impulsive, nihilistic fantasies. We share some readers’ skepticism that a rebuilt Republican Party (or other means) committed to pluralistic participatory politics can put the leash back on. An interesting conundrum? Which problem is the more urgent for liberal democracy – an expanding radicalized Movement here at home or the bloated Permanent National Security State? We’ll concede it’s a false binary. There’s a third and possibly more likely outcome. Americans may not care.

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* We blew the mass spell check. Mea culpa General Meyer.

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