Archives for December 2004

There’s one situation that we’re all painfully aware of, in which a top official of the U.S. government oversaw a war that began in a flurry of now-disproven charges and then degenerated into disastrous and worsening chaos. During the course of this war incidents of shameful torture were perpetrated by the U.S. military and those hired by the U.S. military. Yet this official did not take responsibility and step down; indeed, when his boss cleaned house and fired a passel of his peers, the official was specifically asked to stay in place.

Then there’s this other situation, in which the top official of the U.N. oversaw a program that may well have been be marred by significant amounts of corruption. There’s even a charge of petty corruption on the part of the official’s son. An investigation led by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, an unimpeachable “wise man,” has yet to weigh in with a verdict. But voices from within the same administration and party that have accepted no responsibility or consequences for their botched war and their torture victims are the first in line to call for the U.N. official to take reponsibility and step down.

Secretary Rumsfeld, meet Secretary Annan. You two gentlemen have a certain amount in common these days. Isn’t it amazing, though, how differently the Republican powers-that-be view your two cases?

I swear my jaw dropped on Friday evening as I listened to the fulminations (on the PBS News Hour) of Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, who has publicly called for Kofi Annan’s resignation. Let’s look at Coleman’s argument in detail:

“Mr. Annan was at the helm of the U.N. He must, therefore, be held accountable for the U.N.’s utter failure to detect or stop Saddam’s abuses. It’s in his interests and it’s in the interest of the U.N. to step down, and I say this without pointing the finger of accusation against the secretary-general. Clearly he knows that people who were under him, people that he put in place allowed this massive fraud and abuse to occur…. There’s no dispute that Saddam Hussein perpetrated a massive fraud on the Oil-for-Food Program, stole billions of dollars, used it to fund terrorism, rearm himself and to bribe high-ranking individuals connected to member states and Kofi Annan was the guy at the center. He was the boss at that point in time…. In any other organization in the country or in the world, a CIA [I assume this is a transcription error for “CEO”] who oversaw, who was in control when a multibillion dollar fraud took place under his nose and under people that he appointed to oversee the program would step down…. He should step back, get somebody fresh in there, then we can have the transparency and credibility we need to get to the bottom of this…. My criticism is that he was at the helm. We do not have evidence today that ties him and so this shouldn’t be about him.”

OK, Coleman’s point one: Annan was in charge when some really bad stuff went down, and though no “evidence” “ties him” directly to that bad stuff, we call for him to resign — “without pointing the finger of accusation against him” — because it’s the right thing to do.

This, of course, is precisely what Democrats and Americans everywhere who were disgusted by Abu Ghraib demanded of Secretary Rumsfeld. In fact, the secretary of defense’s responsibility at the top of a disciplined military chain of command was if anything much clearer than that held by the leader of a loose international organization that serves many masters.

Back to Coleman: “And I don’t believe there’s any way for us to credibly investigate all of this if the guy who was in charge of the organization, who had appointed Benon Sevan is the guy who’s going to receive these reports and have responsibility for ferreting out the fraud…. And if we’re going to get to the bottom of it — if he doesn’t have credibility — how do you have the guy who was in charge at the time of the fraud be responsible for ferreting it out?”

OK, Coleman’s second point: We can’t count on Volcker to report the truth because the Volcker investigation will deliver its conclusions to Annan himself. Well, let’s see, who did the investigators of Abu Ghraib deliver their reports to, again? I don’t recall an independent counsel being given years of time, massive budgets and free rein to pursue the matter.

Former Sen. Tim Wirth of the U.N. Foundation, set up by the News Hour as Coleman’s foil, invoked the Abu Ghraib comparison himself, but I’m afraid he fumbled it. Here’s what he said: “I think to suggest that because Kofi Annan was the secretary general at the time and because there was a problem that’s being looked at independently that he should go is a little bit like saying that Don Rumsfeld ought to leave because of the Abu Ghraib scandal or because of what went on with Halliburton or so on. I mean, that’s sort of an absurd jump to make.”

Well, no, the point is, it’s not an absurd jump. In any other administration Rumsfeld would have been out on his tuches ages ago. And if he didn’t have the integrity to tender his own resignation, any president with a a soul and a conscience would have fired him and his whole cadre of incompetent lieutenants as the first step in cleaning house after Abu Ghraib and trying to set the war against the al-Qaida terrorists back on track from the disastrous Iraq detour. (Well, a president with a big soul and conscience would have resigned himself, but that’s probably asking too much of any politician.)

We’re still waiting for the full record on Kofi Annan and the oil-for-food program. A reasonable person could argue that Annan ought to quit simply for being the man in charge at the time the program went awry. But you can’t make that argument with a straight face unless you accept that the same logic condemns Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney and probably George W. Bush himself.

In my book — pardon me, I should say “according to my moral values” — corruption is bad, but torturing people and launching unnecessary wars under false pretenses is worse. (Of course, there’s a theory that the Republicans are just getting Annan back for his criticisms of the Iraq war. But they’re above that. Er, right?)

Coleman closes with this: “Why are we arguing over Kofi Annan? Why doesn’t he step back, bring someone in there who is not tainted by the allegations, the concerns, the fraud that took place…?”

Indeed. With a little tweak you could inscribe his words over the Pentagon doors: “Why are we arguing over Donald Rumsfeld? Why doesn’t he step back, bring someone in there who is not tainted by the torture, the lies, the intelligence failures that took place…?”

In this winter of Democratic discontent, here are some good reads that have been percolating through my brainpan:

## George Lakoff’s name is well-known in the blogosphere, and his theories about framing and context are not exactly news, but his piece on “How to Respond to Conservatives” deserves even more attention than it has already received. Here’s a taste:

You should be able to recognize the basic frames that conservatives use, and you should prepare frames to shift to… Example: Your opponent says, We should get rid of taxes. People know how to spend their money better than the government. Reframe: “The government has made very wise investments with taxpayer money. Our interstate highway system, for example. You couldn’t build a highway with your tax refund. The government built them. Or the Internet, paid for by taxpayer investment. You could not make your own Internet. Most of our scientific advances have been made through funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health — great government investments of taxpayer money. No matter how wisely you spent your own money, you’d never get those scientific and medical breakthroughs. And how far would you get hiring your own army with your tax refund?”

## Over at Personal Democracy, Dean campaign veteran Zephyr Teachout outlines how little of the Internet’s potential the Kerry campaign really harnessed and lays out the still-unfulfilled but still-huge potential for Net-based collective action.

For all the money-raising, perhaps the most powerful use of the Internet was by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which framed much of the debate for a third of the last critical months. Of all the speedy, turn-on-a-dime fundraising efforts, this one was the most potent, if also the most pungent. But basically, in the political evolution of the Internet, we have barely touched the surface of its potential to shift the locus of real political power. Never before in history have we had a tool that enables–with so little work–local groups to act in coordination with other local groups elsewhere. Never before in history have we had a tool that at its core holds the solution to the most difficult collective action problems in democracy. And almost no one used it.

##These November 3rd Theses, suggesting that Democrats need to figure out how to “communicate with the core needs of the American people,” make for bracing and provocative reading. Memo to organizers (who seem to include Adam Werbach and others): Tell us who you are, and publish your manifesto in text form (what’s there is a big old graphic file and PDF) so people can actually quote from it.

## Micah Sifry surveys The Rise of Open-Source Politics in The Nation. Most interesting to me here is the perspective on the political pros’ fear that they, like so many other middlemen, will be squeezed out by the rise of new Net-based approaches to political organizing:

“Anybody who does politics the old way will fight doing things the new way because it’s harder to get paid for it,” says Mark Walsh, CEO of Progress Media, the parent of Air America and a veteran of such companies as VerticalNet and America Online. “Look at every other industry and how the Internet has altered it. Take E-Trade and the selling of stocks. Or Orbitz and the travel industry. In every case, the Internet enables getting rid of the middlemen.” For about a year, starting in late 2001, Walsh was McAuliffe’s chief technology officer, earning $1 a year to help the Democratic Party upgrade its tech systems. “Terry did want to do the right thing,” Walsh says, “but I found the same buzz saw — legacy behavior and consultants who are compensated highly for non-cyber-centric behavior. TV, telemarketing, direct mail — that’s where the margins are.”