First, please go read The Hue & Cry's valuable roundup on high-stakes happenings in foreign affairs.   With political ressure mounting against Bush and polls as low as a Rove smear campaign, new Middle East baddies are being trotted out with troubling alacrity. And what's America Abroad talking about? The conferences they went to and Iraq.  If TPMCafe can do anything worthwhile, it's to call "BS" as its happening.  

With all due respect to the contributers to America Abroad: you're failing.  You can do better.

What should we be talking about?  Dr. Rice's troubling comments on Syria and Iran, for one (hat tip: pzykr).  Or this Times story which has unnamed officials claiming, in the Times' words, that  "operations [in Syria] have spilled over the border - sometimes by accident, sometimes by design." If American troops have deliberately crossed the Syrian border, we're engaging in a troubling, covert war - all the more covert because we're not disucssing it.

I wish we were discussing things like the sourcing of the story: who's telling James Risen and David Sanger about, for example, the "series of clashes in the last year between American and Syrian troops, including a prolonged firefight this summer that killed several Syrians," and why?  The story's built around anonymous "current and former military and government officials." Shouldn't we be responsibly wondering if such leaks are intended to garner support for stronger action in and against Syria?  Has Judy Miller taught us nothing?

Or the fact that:  

In a meeting at the White House on Oct. 1, senior aides to Mr. Bush considered a variety of options for further actions against Syria, apparently including special operations along with other methods for putting pressure on Mr. Assad in coming weeks

Though the story goes on to say that nothing's been decided, shouldn't we be recalling how the "nothing's been decided" line operated as political cover for the Iraq buildup long after things - important things, thing involving millions of lives - had in fact been decided?

I'd love to see the America Abroad folks talking about this.  Mostly, I think our experts here can do better, and I'm calling them on it.  Talking about "what ifs" about Iraq is fine, but probably less useful - useful in the sense that things can be altered one way or antother - than focusing attention on what those in charge are actually thinking about right now.  

And that's military action in Syria and Iran. Tell me about your conference next month.  For now, I'd rather be talking about how we can keep ourselves out of some more wars.

With some notable exceptions, it's like we've forgotten what can happen when this administration cries "uranium" and solicits UN legitimacy for military actions it's already decided to undertake.  

Recently, the rhetoric over Iran's become heated and volatile questions of sovereignty have come to the fore.  In statements largely ignored in American coverage, the British have been crying foul - loudly - about purported Iranian violence against their troops in Iraq.  US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns last week called Iran a country "embarked on a very radical course."  Rice expressed "every confidence in what the British are saying" about Iranian involvement in southern Iraq.

This weekend, however, added a new twist that could escalate things further.  On Saturday, bomb blasts in a southwestern Iranian shopping center killed 6, and today, Iran is linking the blasts to British agents, claiming "Foreign agents, led by treacherous and criminal Britain, have trained teams in Iraq to create insecurity and an air of fright and terror in the province of Khuzestan."  Besides what undoubtedly is Iranians' very real perception that England's responsible for killing Iranians, this statement is also likely a plea for sympathy from the 35 countries voting on Nov. 24th.  For both reasons, this could get ugly, and quick.  I concede the temptation to see this as a problem for Britain and Iran to sort out.  However, such a view ignores how concerted American and British efforts are and have been, and how closely they're linked in the world's eyes.

I'm far from knowing what US designs are at work here, nor what we should be doing.  But one thing I'm sure of is we should be paying a lot more attention and having a lot more debate.  

The effete might recognize my line from an academic book called Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, a great book that's about Republics in the sense Josh is into, not the party of Dobson.  The source is less important than the sentiment, however. What our truckdriver and Petit both recognize is that domination tends to be a matter of common knowledge among parties involved, not some secret only Democrats are privy to.  And it offends everyone's sense of fairness.  

So what if we start talking about it? And talking about it that gets to the core of liberty that we Americans value?  

The principle extends to foreign policy.  When respecting people's freedom means deploring domination above all else, we're in a position both to deplore Saddam Hussein and deplore American occupation of Iraq.  And we're in a position to deplore autocrats and American dependence on Middle Eastern fuel sources as well.  Isn't that a language a whole lot of Americans can speak?  

Is there a useful theme for Democrats here?

Mr. Cooper also wrote about a

conversation he initiated with I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff for Vice

President Dick Cheney. Although it has been known that reporters spoke

to Mr. Libby, what he said was not known. His conversation with Mr.

Cooper is the first indication that Mr. Libby was aware of Ms. Wilson's

role in her husband's trip to Africa. When Mr. Cooper asked if Mr.

Libby knew of that, Mr. Libby said he had heard that as well, the

article said.

Now, we know Plame's role in the trip is strictly irrelvant to the

dislosure of Plame's identity and only an important issue insofar as it

helped (and helps) paint Wilson as a henpecked recipient of

nepotism.   But, as Josh has reminded us in "Upping the

Ante, Part I", Roberts' report is far from probelmatic and

shouldn't, in any case, be given total credulity, as it was in today's

Times piece.  In fact, it traffics in some highly debatable

information.   For example, remember the INR report that the

Senate Committee treated unskeptically that claimed the CIA meeting

where Wilson was chosen was "apparently was convened by Wilson's

wife"?  Well, here's the CIA on that report, according

to the Washington Post in December 2003:

CIA officials have challenged the

accuracy of the INR document, the

official said, because the agency officer identified as talking about

Plame's alleged role in arranging Wilson's trip could not have attended

the meeting.

And as long as we're at it, we might consider the extent to which the

Roberts report taints the Wilson trip in just the way the White House

originally inteded.  The suggestions of the committee report, like

Rove's discussions with reporters have a threefold effect: (1.) They

cast doubt on credibility of the trip by hinting it had untoward

origins (2.) They raise questions about Wilson's possible alterior

motives and (3.) They suggest Wilson has obligations in the matter

other than to country that might keep him from telling the truth.

Some examples of the report's defamation of Wilson:

• "The Committee does not fault the CIA for exploiting the access

  enjoyed by the spouse of a CIA employee travelling to Niger."

  (25)  As if it might fault them? What's with "access enjoyed"? In context, why does this sentence

  need the "spouse" clause in the first place? Couldn't it have been "a former Ambassador"? And doesn't "travelling to

  Niger" help create the impression that the CIA job is a tack-on to

  Wilson's otherwise shady trip?
  

• Related: "The former Ambassador was selected for [a previous CIA

  mission to Niger] after his wife mentioned to her supervisors that her

  husband was planning a business trip to Niger" (39).  Imputation:

  money is Wilson's primary objective.
  

• "She approached her husband on behalf of the CIA and told him

  'there's this crazy report' on a purported deal for Niger to sell

  uranium to Iraq" (39).  Read: Wilson already knew what the "right

  answer" was and finding otherwise would have been disloyal to his wife,

  who got him the job in the first place. Imputation: commitment to wife

  makes commitment to country doubtful.

Roberts' report is a Republican document.  Can someone please inform Lorne and Manley?

Thibaud's post on TPMCafe's obsession with Rove at the cost of contemplating the weightier London bombings gives me a chance to articulate something I hadn't quite figured out--namely, why, as a longtime blog reader but rare contributer, I've glommed onto Rove this week. Relative to previous performance, I've been posting like a madman. (sorry to those who've already read this in comments). The answer, I think, complicates his distinction between people who care about things "inside the beltway" and those concerned with "outside the beltway."

I'm writing about Rove from England, where I live. What last week's terrorist attacks made chillingly clear to me was the disasterous effects of Bush's foreign policy, a foreign policy criminally enabled by Rove's disrediting of Wilson's findings.

Rove for me isn't just about partisanship. This is about me being really fired up by the fact after having been within a mile from the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 and then moving across the Atlantic, I'm followed by jihadist terror in large part because of a concocted war in Iraq. Truthfully, I'm less concerned about the outing of Plame than I am the sociopathic suppression of any information that might suggest that this war was a war of political choice built upon lies and marketed to the public like a happymeal. Eat shit, turd-blossom.

That's why I'm so eager to take Rove down. How about you?

1.) This is an important and easily neglected paragraph from the WaPo story:

In particular, Rove was urging caution because then-CIA Director George J. Tenet was about to issue a statement regarding Iraq's alleged interest in African uranium and its inaccurate inclusion in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address. Tenet took the blame for allowing a misleading paragraph into the speech, but Tenet also said that the president, vice president and other senior officials were never briefed on Wilson's report.

Rove's actions and comments suggest the White House knew of Wilson's report. Next question for Scott McLellan at today's gaggle: "Who knew and when?"

2.) Relatedly, Cooper's e-mail suggests to me that the "revenge" motivation is too simple, and not one Dems (at least rhetorically) should hang their hats on. It seems that it was more important for Rove to discredit the report than to out Plame--a priority that still makes the outing of a Plame a crime, but also points to the White House's need to suppress the impact of Wilson's report in the Iraq war runnup. In my reading, a CIA agent was outed in the course of telling lies about Iraq, rather than in retaliation for Wilson telling the truth. The retaliation might be seen as an ancillary benefit.

While "revenge" is clearly Wilson's explanation (and one many here at TPM are inclined to believe), the reasons we Dems shouldn't get stuck on it, I think, are that the Cooper e-mail suggests otherwise (and so there's an easy Republican counterpoint there) and that the outing of Plame in the course of lying about Iraq reverses the administration line that no-WMD's was an "intelligence failure" rather than the outcome (as we learn time and time again) that had been predetermined from the outset.

Yes, there's political value in casting Rove as outing Plame in revenge, but I hope that doesn't keep us from realizing there's bigger fish here to fry.

             

One of which is Habermas' charicterization of the public sphere as a dispassionate “space for people’s public use of their reason” apparently unaffected by emotion.

I hope we won't evict passion quite so easily here. 

The second is Habermas’ claim that the public sphere emerges out of educated elites’ inconsequential disputes over art and literature, disputes that only become significant when their norms and institutions are adapted to provide the spaces and methods for political dispute (Josh appears to ascribe to this theory here.)

Habermas says “critical debate ignited [in English coffeehouses in the late 17th century] by works of literature and art was soon extended to include economic and political disputes, without any guarantee…that such discussions would be inconsequential."

My beef is with the firm distinction between literature and art, on the one (inconsequential) hand, and economic and political disputes on the (consequential) other.  Any serious student of seventeenth century literature, for example, knows that political and economic disputes were taking place in the literature itself and you could very well get yourself thrown in jail for writing the wrong thing.  You couldn't just talk about something being pretty or well-written if you tried. 

On this, Habermas is just wrong. This is a small point in the grand scheme of things--one that would only stand out to a student of the intersection of seventeenth century literataure and politics--but as someone interested in literature's role in the making of political theory, I can't help but make it.

I find it unlikely that Habermas read Satan’s famous political choice in Milton’s Paradise Lost —“Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven”— before distinguishing the literary and the political so completely.  

  My plea: let's not talk about politics and art like they have to be different animals.