The Washington Independent - U.S. news and politics - washingtonindependent.com: Comments by Nicholas Pisano

Nicholas Pisano — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:39:34 GMT

Mr. Easterbrook should know about Washington culture as this type of condescending “gotcha” on military terminology or accuracy is always one that pro-war defense mavens like to use. I was regular Navy for over 22 years and there is nothing more disgusting than Washington-based military “experts” from Brookings or AEI or the Council on Foreign Relations—all military wannabes without the cajones to actually serve—defending their turf, which is what this is. Rockefeller’s point that air power—dropping bombs from the air—somewhat removes the pilot from the humanity being bombed is a long-standing military debate even within the military community and one that can be contentious and heated. With the increasing use of technology which removes the warfighter from the battle and insulates him or her from the consequences of battle it is a serious ethical question. I would say that Mr. Rockefeller, having earned his bona fides on the ground through his work with Sargent Shriver in the Peace Corps in the Philippines, is probably on solid ground—more so than Mr. Easterbrook—in posing this ethical question given that Mr. McCain hasn’t seen a war or conflict he hasn’t liked. I have found that there is a species of Navy pilot that is vain and arrogant to the point of stupidity. Mr. McCain seems to fall into this category, regardless of the fact that he was shot down and a POW—something that he survived as any of us would try to do. Killing and surviving are elemental impulses borne of our instinct as a species and it can have unfortunate and tragic consequences. To actually reflect on that instinct and critique it, to me, takes more courage. Yes, it would have been nice had Mr. Rockefeller gotten the laser-guided part of the comment right but his point is as old as the debate of over Lidell-Hart’s work on air power and the toll taken on the civilian populace by its application.

Nicholas Pisano — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:08:31 GMT

The neo-cons were blinded by their faith in ideology and the certainty of their infallibility regardless of the facts or reality. It’s not the first time this has happened and it is a cautionary tale for those who care about effective democratic self-government and functioning republican institutions, which is why we must be careful of those who will develop opinions based on excessive partisanship or ideology. The greatest evils of human history have been created by simplifications: among them communism, fascism, laissez-faire capitalism and the revealed religions, both secular and sacred, that demand absolute belief without evidence. That is why most revolutions devolve into oppression and dictatorship. We were lucky that the American revolution was guided less by ideology than faith in self-government for the general welfare.
>
Feith can place a thousand endnotes in his book but if they are selective then they tell more about his desire to avoid accountability than they do about what happened. For example, he seems to expend a great deal of effort in distancing himself from Chalabi. The facts that we do have contradict his assertions. The Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon used information from the dubious Chalabi source “Curveball” to skew the case for war. This included the assertions about rolling biological labs, an al Qaeda-Iraq relationship and WMDs. Feith states there was no “conspiracy” to place Chalabi as head of the government but he was given a key role in the Iraq interim government council under the Coalition Provisional Authority. (A fact missing from the article). This was the culmination of many years of seeking to support the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which was Chalabi’s group. Thanks to lobbying by the neo-cons outside of government (which included Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz, among others) the (Republican) Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998 which funneled almost $97 million to the INC. Feith would scapegoat Powell and the CIA but the INC also received $33 million dollars from the State Department between 2000 and September 2003 and $335K a month from the DIA from September 2003 through May 2004—and that is only what has been uncovered by auditors and the GAO. He was a special guest of First Lady Bush at the 2004 State of the Union Address. So SOMEONE influential and senior in the Administration was working very hard to finance Chalabi and the INC and all fingers point to his sponsors: the principals at the Project for the New American Century—the neo-cons who drove the case for war based on a belief in American hegemony in the region. Ockham’s Razor, regardless of all of the jesuitical arguments that Feith and his ilk can come up with to try to cloud the issue, tells us that the obvious really is obvious. Documentary evidence, while the best evidence for determining motivation or establishing a direct relationship in a simple manner, is not the only evidence. Phone calls, undocumented personal conversations, unwritten orders can all be determined by the historian through cause and effect—what is called circumstantial evidence. No “smoking gun” standard stands against common sense. Documents can and have been destroyed and altered. Criminals are convicted every day absent documentary evidence.
>
The judgment of history will fall very heavily against this Administration. The cause and effect of Iraq and the economic effects we are now feeling has yet to be fully realized and the history yet to be assessed. Despite their assertions to the contrary, historians tend to get things right about an American Administration right. Few presidents have risen significantly over time. Even Truman—that favorite of Nixon and Bush apologists—though vilified and unpopular when he left office in 1953, was seen as an above-average president by historians when he left office; one who got the small things wrong but the big things right. He has risen to near-great in assessment but no one has gone from being considered a failure to rise above an assessment of mediocrity or malfeasance. I am afraid that this time in our history will be seen as not only one in which we experienced that manner of human frailty, but also an Administration, blinded by faith in the rightness of its cause and ideology, subjected the country to abuse of power and tyranny. Those who continue to want to paint this as a partisan issue (like Senator Lieberman) and not learn from it damn future generations of Americans to a worse fate.

Nicholas Pisano — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:01:54 GMT

You can’t run for public office today if you’ve had an affair because of media idiots like Ms. Fleming make it an issue. There are so many things wrong with this article that it’s mind-boggling but let’s settle on the few low points.
a. First example: “his caramel-voiced defense of the poor—- while he built a palatial country estate.” There is an enlightenment concept (we are, after all, the children of the Enlightenment) that one first makes money in order to be above the fray and then commits oneself to public service. In the mindset of the idiot baby boom self-interested media hounds having money and committing oneself to public service and—yes—actually caring about the poor is obviously an example of hypocracy because overpaid corporate media mavens no longer share anything with the great majority of Americans who live in the middle and lower classes and don’t bother to care a wit about their condition. Virtually all of the country’s founders as well as the Roosevelts and Kennedys fell and fall into this category and the country is better for their commitment. One could make the case that the Bush family falls into this category in defense of the privileged classes but, of course, there is no hypocrisy there: they openly stand for privilege, self-interest and cronyism.
b. Second example: “You can make the argument that this is private stuff, private pain…But that is not the world we live in right now, nor the country.” Not if the Flemings of the world have their way—this is journalistic chutzpah. Aside from the fact that John Edwards holds no public office and is not currently running for office, there is still an overwhelming segment of the population that feels that this is really a private matter. During the Lewinsky scandal Clinton’s approval ratings were consistently between 60 and 80 percent and the public in overwhelming majorities kept telling pollsters that they considered it a private matter between Clinton and his wife. So it is the media culture that made the Lewinsky affair a scandal and that has given this story more attention than it deserves.
>
Why did Elizabeth allow John to run for office? The dynamics of their marriage is between them and that’s how it should stay. Ms. Fleming apparently is unaware that we had a president who had a child out of wedlock: Grover Cleveland. The nature of his relationship, even in the Victorian era, was acknowledged as a private matter, particularly in an atmosphere where the Republican candidate and Republican Party in general had a well-deserved reputation for public corruption. The question then (as now) is whether one running for PUBLIC office who has consistently behaved in the public interest should be judged by PRIVATE behavior of a non-criminal type that has no connection to one’s public duties. Franklin Roosevelt had an affair prior to the decision to run for president and Eleanor, knowing that he did, continued to support him. Why did she support him? History shows that she felt that his talents and public virtues were more important than taking actions to deny him the office for which he was undeniably qualified to hold. Our history would be very different without Franklin Roosevelt’s simultaneous commitment to democratic self-government and free enterprise moderated by democratic and republican virtues in the public interest. He saved this country from its worst economic collapse, counteracted extremism from the left and right that would have undermined our republic and ensured the country was ready against Japan’s and Germany’s expansionist intentions.
>
The only people interested in this affair are Republicans desperate for any issue that will take attention away from their disastrous policies and the culture of cronyism and corruption that they have created and media mavens all too willing to repeat Republican talking points. This is not news and the American people realize that it is not.