Republicans for Harris

In late August more than 235 Republicans who describe themselves as "alumni" of the campaigns or presidencies of George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney published a public letter explaining why they would not be voting for Donald Trump -- and would be voting for Kamala Harris. 

Here's a key part of their message:

Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz. That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable. 

At home, another four years of Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership, this time focused on advancing the dangerous goals of Project 2025, will hurt real, everyday people and weaken our sacred institutions. 

Abroad, democratic movements will be irreparably jeopardized as Trump and his acolyte JD Vance kowtow to dictators like Vladimir Putin while turning their backs on our allies.

Earlier in the message, they blast Trump for lying about the results of the 2020 election and inciting an insurrection. They describe the crowd as "a mob of sore losers and sycophants."

I have an old friend who was part of the HW Bush administration, but I do not see his name on the list of signatories. From a conversation we had in the last year or so, I'm pretty sure he won't be voting for Trump. It's another step to say you are voting for Harris -- and to do so publicly as these individuals have done.

Incidentally, the list does not include Liz or Dick Cheney, though their positions on this are well-known. 

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Well, there's that other thing that I won't even say...

This seems an appropriate moment to listen to Todd Snider's "You Got Away with It."



Incidentally, this blog is now 15 years old. The teen years have been kind of quiet.
Sorry.

Obviously, the blog was most active during the Bush years. George W. is back in the news lately...

If you are interested in my opinions and web activity, you might try following my much more active professional or personal twitter feeds.

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Persian Gulf War: 25th Anniversary

This post is nearly a month late.

On August 2, 1990, Iraqi forces attacked Kuwait, reflecting what then-U.S. President George H.W. Bush a few days later called "brutal, naked aggression."

August 8, 2015, marked the 25th anniversary of  Bush's speech to the nation outlining the initial U.S. response. Bush emphasized America's commitment to Saudi Arabia:

I pledge here today that the United States will do its part to see that these sanctions are effective and to induce Iraq to withdraw without delay from Kuwait.
But we must recognize that Iraq may not stop using force to advance its ambitions. Iraq has massed an enormous war machine on the Saudi border capable of initiating hostilities with little or no additional preparation. Given the Iraqi government's history of aggression against its own citizens as well as its neighbors, to assume Iraq will not attack again would be unwise and unrealistic. 

And therefore, after consulting with King Fahd, I sent Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to discuss cooperative measures we could take. Following those meetings, the Saudi Government requested our help, and I responded to that request by ordering U.S. air and ground forces to deploy to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. 

Let me be clear: The sovereign independence of Saudi Arabia is of vital interest to the United States. This decision, which I shared with the congressional leadership, grows out of the longstanding friendship and security relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia. U.S. forces will work together with those of Saudi Arabia and other nations to preserve the integrity of Saudi Arabia and to deter further Iraqi aggression. Through their presence, as well as through training and exercises, these multinational forces will enhance the overall capability of Saudi Armed Forces to defend the Kingdom. 

I want to be clear about what we are doing and why. America does not seek conflict, nor do we seek to chart the destiny of other nations. But America will stand by her friends. The mission of our troops is wholly defensive. Hopefully, they will not be needed long. They will not initiate hostilities, but they will defend themselves, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and other friends in the Persian Gulf.

Eventually, the Pentagon claimed that 250,000 Iraqi troops threatened Saudi Arabia.

A few months later, after obtaining Soviet satellite photos of the region, the St. Petersburg Times reported that Iraqi troops were NOT poised to strike Saudi Arabia. The headline of January 6, 1991, was simple: "Photos don't show buildup."

two American satellite imaging experts who examined the photos could find no evidence of a massive Iraqi presence in Kuwait in September. 

A Soviet commercial satellite took a photo of Saudi Arabia on Sept. 11 and a photo of Kuwait on Sept. 13. At the time the Defense Department was estimating there were as many as 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks in Kuwait. The photos were obtained by the St. Petersburg Times two weeks ago.

As of 2002, the Pentagon had never released its own satellite photographs, though US officials have admitted that they greatly overstated the size of the Iraqi military at the time.

That might not have been the largest lie told about the Iraqi threat. One personal narrative was especially powerful -- and pernicious.

 in the fall of 1990, members of Congress and the American public were swayed by the tearful testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only as Nayirah.
In the girl's testimony before a congressional caucus, well-documented in MacArthur's book "Second Front" and elsewhere, she described how, as a volunteer in a Kuwait maternity ward, she had seen Iraqi troops storm her hospital, steal the incubators, and leave 312 babies "on the cold floor to die." 

Seven US Senators later referred to the story during debate; the motion for war passed by just five votes. In the weeks after Nayirah spoke, President Bush senior invoked the incident five times, saying that such "ghastly atrocities" were like "Hitler revisited." 

But just weeks before the US bombing campaign began in January, a few press reports began to raise questions about the validity of the incubator tale.
Later, it was learned that Nayirah was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington and had no connection to the Kuwait hospital. 

She had been coached – along with the handful of others who would "corroborate" the story – by senior executives of Hill and Knowlton in Washington, the biggest global PR firm at the time, which had a contract worth more than $10 million with the Kuwaitis to make the case for war.

President Bush's National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft later claimed not to know that the story was fabricated, but acknowledged that "it was useful in mobilizing public opinion."


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Cameron on Democracy

David Cameron; Photo credit = Foreign Press Association in London on Flickr

Have you read British PM David Cameron's address to the United Nations General Assembly, delivered September 26, 2012? In the speech, Cameron reminds the global audience that he is "a Liberal Conservative, not a Neo-Conservative." He continued:

I respect the different histories and traditions that each country has. I welcome the steps taken in countries where reform is happening with the consent of the people.  I know that every country takes its own path. And that progress will sometimes be slow.

Thus, he offers a hopeful reading of developments following the so-called Arab Spring and calls for the United Nations and the Security Council to support the "building blocks of democracy," which he defines most simply as "fair economies and open societies." In another section of the speech, he elaborates that the building blocks also include "the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law, with the majority prepared to defend the rights of the minority, the freedom of the media, a proper place for the army in society and the development of effective state institutions, political parties and wider civil society."

By making this claim, Cameron offers an implicit critique of the former George W. Bush era, when elections and democracy were often equated. Here's a snipped from a Bush speech in 2005, delivered as Iraqis were about to hold an election:

We are living through a watershed moment in the story of freedom. Most of the focus now is on this week's elections -- and rightly so. Iraqis will go to the polls to choose a government that will be the only constitutional democracy in the Arab world.

 In Cameron's words, however, "democracy is not – and never has been – just about simply holding an election. It is not one person, one vote, once." Think about the endurance of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, and the longstanding U.S. claims about how his election represents democracy for Afghanistan.

Despite making these arguments about elections, Cameron demonstrates progress after the Arab Spring primarily by pointing to election results:

First of all, there are those who say there has been too little progress, that the Arab Spring has produced few tangible improvements in people’s lives. This isn’t right. Look at Libya since the fall of Gaddafi. We have seen elections to create a new Congress...

As we saw so inspiringly in Benghazi last weekend, they are taking to the streets in their thousands, refusing to allow extremists to hijack their chance for democracy. The Arab Spring has also brought progress in Egypt where the democratically elected President has asserted civilian control over the military, in Yemen and Tunisia where elections have also brought new governments to power and in Morocco where there’s a new constitution – and a Prime Minister appointed on the basis of a popular vote for the first time. And even further afield, Somalia has also taken a vital step forward by electing a new President.

By the way, Bush's most famous speech about democratization, his Second Inaugural address, never mentioned the words "ballot," "election," "vote" or "voting."  Remember the theme of that speech? Cameron's fairly extensive discussion of religion focuses on the compatibility of Islam and democracy.


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Happy Birthday W

George W. Bush is 65 today.



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Bush memoirs: definitive takedown

Dan Froomkin has posted "The Two Most Essential, Abhorrent, Intolerable Lies Of George W. Bush's Memoir." Read it. I was going to quote some of the best parts, but there are simply too many to excerpt.

Froomkin has written a lengthy and link-laden piece demonstrating that George W. Bush was NOT reluctant about attacking Iraq. The former Yale cheerleader was also cheerleader-in-chief for war. Moreover, despite Bush's claims, torture was NOT a legitimate weapon in the war on terror.


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The Moon

George W. Bush's plan to revive the moon landing program is apparently dead. The NYT today::

President Obama is calling on NASA to cancel the program that was to return humans to the Moon by 2020, and focus instead on radically new space technologies.

Mr. Obama’s 2010 budget proposal for NASA asks for $18 billion over five years for fueling spacecraft in orbit, new types of engines to accelerate spacecraft through space and robotic factories that could churn soil on the Moon — and eventually Mars — into rocket fuel.

This is not directly related, but it seems apt
:



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