french women

Countdown

One month until I depart for Switzerland....

Mad Men

peter sarstedt. where do you go to my lovely

one of my favorite all time songs

LAR · ThisTimeTomorrow

perfection

carla bruni

NERD - Spaz [Official Music Video]

hot shit

VBS Meets--Rajiv: Part 1 of 5

interesting shit

Barack's Iraq plan

Barack Obama: It's time to begin a troop pullout

By Barack Obama

Monday, July 14, 2008

CHICAGO: The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. The United States should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.

The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face - from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran - has grown.

In the 18 months since President George W. Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda - greatly weakening its effectiveness.

But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we've spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq's leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

The good news is that Iraq's leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lieutenant General James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq's security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.

Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis' taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition - despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq's sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops "surrender," even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.

But this is not a strategy for success - it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.

As I've said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 - two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq's stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq's refugees.

Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won't have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.

As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.

In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.

It's not going to work this time. It's time to end this war.

New York Times Op-Ed

Put War Powers Back Where They Belong

By JAMES A. BAKER III and WARREN CHRISTOPHER

THE most agonizing decision we make as a nation is whether to go to war. Our Constitution ambiguously divides war powers between the president (who is the commander in chief) and Congress (which has the power of the purse and the power to declare war). The founders hoped that the executive and legislative branches would work together, but in practice the two branches don’t always consult. And even when they do, they often dispute their respective powers.

A bipartisan group that we led, the National War Powers Commission, has unanimously concluded after a year of study that the law purporting to govern the decision to engage in war — the 1973 War Powers Resolution — should be replaced by a new law that would, except for emergencies, require the president and Congressional leaders to discuss the matter before going to war. Seventy years of polls show that most Americans expect Congress and the president to talk before making that decision, and in most cases, they have done so.

Congress passed the 1973 resolution in response to the Vietnam War. But it is ineffective at best and unconstitutional at worst. No president has recognized its constitutionality, and Congress has never pressed the issue. Nor has the Supreme Court ever ruled on its constitutionality. In fact, courts have largely shied away from refereeing war-powers disputes between the two political branches.

Most legal experts, however, interpret a 1983 Supreme Court decision on Congress’s authority to overrule the president to mean that parts of the statute are unconstitutional. Its provision saying that Congress may require the president to remove troops from combat merely by passing a concurrent resolution cannot survive the constitutional requirement that a measure must be presented to the president for signature or veto if it is to have the force of law.

The statute has other problems as well: it too narrowly defines the president’s war powers to exclude the power to respond to sudden attacks on Americans abroad; it empowers Congress to terminate an armed conflict by simply doing nothing; and it fails to identify which of the 535 members of Congress the president should consult before going to war.

As a consequence, the 1973 statute has been regularly ignored — a situation that undermines the rule of law, the centerpiece of American democracy.

Many have suggested that the war powers resolution be amended or replaced altogether. But proposals to do so haven’t gotten very far, typically because most have sided too heavily with either the president or Congress.

Our proposed new law, the War Powers Consultation Act of 2009, does not pretend to resolve the underlying constitutional issues — only a constitutional amendment or a Supreme Court decision could do that. It would reserve the ability of both Congress and the president to assert their constitutional war powers. In drawing up the statute we focused on a common theme that almost all past proposals shared: the importance of meaningful consultation between the president and Congress before the nation is committed to war.

Our proposed statute would provide that the president must consult with Congress before ordering a “significant armed conflict” — defined as combat operations that last or are expected to last more than a week. To provide more clarity than the 1973 War Powers Resolution, our statute also defines what types of hostilities would not be considered significant armed conflicts — for example, training exercises, covert operations or missions to protect and rescue Americans abroad. If secrecy or other circumstances precluded prior consultation, then consultation — not just notification — would need to be undertaken within three days.

To guarantee that the president consults with a cross section of Congress, the act would create a joint Congressional committee made up of the leaders of the House and the Senate as well as the chairmen and ranking members of key committees. These are the members of Congress with whom the president would need to personally consult. Almost as important, the act would establish a permanent, bipartisan staff with access to all relevant intelligence and national-security information.

Congress would have obligations, too. Unless it declared war or otherwise expressly authorized a conflict, it would have to vote within 30 days on a resolution of approval. If the resolution of approval was defeated in either House, any member of Congress could propose a resolution of disapproval. Such a resolution would have the force of law, however, only if it were passed by both houses and signed by the president or the president’s veto were overridden. If the resolution of disapproval did not survive the president’s veto, Congress could express its opposition by, for example, using its internal rules to block future spending on the conflict.

We believe our proposal is good for the presidency because it would eliminate a law that every president since Richard Nixon has treated as unconstitutional, while giving the president the political benefit of forcing Congress to take a position on going to war. And it would do so without insisting that the president get the consent of Congress.

The statute is good for Congress because the legislative branch would get a more significant role when the nation decides whether to go to war. Some may argue that Congress should have the dominant role in war powers debates. But it hasn’t played that role under the 1973 resolution. Rather than endorse any absolutist position, our statute would give Congress access to intelligence, a full-time staff for studying national security issues and a well-defined mechanism for consulting and voting on significant armed conflicts.

Finally, the statute is good for the country because it would enhance the prospects for cooperation between Congress and the president. It would ensure that the president received independent advice from Congress, and it would allow the people to hold Congress accountable for its role in the process.

When it comes to war, Americans deserve better than a law that is ineffective and ignored. They deserve a law that will encourage future presidents and Congresses to work together to protect our nation.

James A. Baker III, the secretary of state from 1989 to 1992, and Warren Christopher, the secretary of state from 1993 to 1997, are the co-chairmen of the National War Powers Commission.

"No nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over others."
-Kofi Annan

oh la la

summertime music

Currently listening to....

"Gettin Down"- The Kills

"Fine Day" - Erland Oye

"She Loves Everybody" - Chester French

"Viva la Vida" - Coldplay

"Just Another Summer" - Moneybrother

"She Wants to Move" - N.E.R.D

"Jaguar" - DJ Rolando

"Right as Rain" - Adele

"In my Arms" - Mylo

Breathless

Godard's first film, "Breathless"

Fall Ads

Burberry and Longchamp

Roger Cohen: Mbeki's shame

Published: July 2, 2008

International Herald Tribune

Sometimes stubbornness gets measured in blood, and sometimes the wounds of race are blinding.

That's the kindest verdict I can find for the listless mediation in a devastated Zimbabwe of Thabo Mbeki, the South African president. Faced by all the brutal expressions of his neighbor Robert Mugabe's megalomania, Mbeki has prodded here and there, like a learned physician mildly intrigued by a corpse.

As a once flourishing economy has imploded, as inflation has assumed Weimar proportions, as millions have fled to South Africa, and as an octogenarian tyrant has dispatched goons to murder and ravage, Mbeki has gone on mumbling that the people of Zimbabwe must solve their own problems.

They tried by giving a clear victory to the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, in the March 29 election. But the 48-to-43 percent margin over Mugabe fell short of an absolute majority, conveniently so, allowing the liberator-turned-despot to terrorize his way to a sham second-round victory and sixth term.

Enough already! Mugabe in his labyrinth is a study in ruin. That, however, has scarcely bestirred Mbeki of "What crisis?" fame. As Georgina Godwin, a Zimbabwean journalist, put it, "Mbeki's quiet diplomacy is comatose."

Herding cats is easier than finding significance in the Delphic utterances of Africa's Mr. Imperturbable. I interviewed Mbeki back in 2003, along with my New York Times colleague Felicity Barringer. The conversation yielded a 345-word story, huge given Mbeki's erudite-sounding vacuity, worthy of a Soviet apparatchik.

Mbeki did, however, say he'd been urging Mugabe to meet with his political opponents - sound familiar? - and declared of Zimbabwe: "The political problems and conflicts they've experienced, I think they'll get over that."

Right.

That was five years ago. Now, we hear that Mbeki is hopeful of arranging a meeting between Mugabe and Tsvangirai and we have the African Union calling this week for a Zimbabwean "government of national unity."

Fine sentiments, but it's late in the day. I can't see Tsvangirai, even if he were offered the post of prime minister, finding any "unity" with Mugabe and his militarized ZANU-PF party, which he wants to disarm.

This mess is Mugabe's but Mbeki has been his enabler. Why? The filial respect of a fellow African liberation fighter? Distaste for Tsvangirai, a former trade union leader, at a time when Mbeki's own power has been undermined by South African trade unions and their man, Jacob Zuma? A loathing of Western interventionism?

I'm sure all the above play a part, but I think the real clue lies in Mbeki's previous act of blind stubbornness, whose harvest was not the blood of neighbors but of his fellow citizens.

For more than three years Mbeki indulged in a bout of AIDS denialism that stopped antiretroviral drugs getting to millions infected with HIV. Hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths ensued.

Mbeki was never specific about the roots of his dissent, now sidelined if never disavowed. But when asked in Parliament in 2004 if he believed widespread rape played any role in spreading AIDS, he exploded:

"The disease of racism," he said, led to blacks being portrayed as "lazy, liars, foul-smelling, diseased, corrupt, violent, amoral, sexually depraved, animalistic, savage and rapist."

The link between HIV and AIDS, in this angry vision, was a fabrication foisted on Africans by whites determined to distract the continent from real problems of racism and poverty, and accepted by blacks still afflicted with the slave mentality engendered by apartheid.

Mbeki's pseudo-science was death-propagating nonsense. But his theories of sexuality under apartheid were not.

I spent enough time under apartheid to see that the portrayal of blacks as sexual animals was integral to a white policy of dehumanizing them. More than once I was asked with a boozy sneer by South African whites if I could ever imagine being attracted to a black woman.

So when Mugabe rails against the white colonialists, and expropriates white-owned farms, and portrays himself as the African fighting back white intrusion - when he resurrects the core of the long struggle - I suspect he strikes a chord with Mbeki, whose own pragmatism is no Mandela-like conciliation.

"The racial petulance lives on in Mbeki," said Peter Godwin, whose superb book, "When a Crocodile Eats the Sun," chronicles how he and his sister Georgina saw their family's life in Harare destroyed. "He's the black intellectual living with the fact that whites think they are better."

Mbeki should read Godwin's book. It might even inspire him to criticize Mugabe. But then, he'd say, it's a white man's work. And that's the truth.

But what the disaster of Mugabe and of Mbeki's non-mediation teaches is that the wounds of a racist past, however deep, cannot justify the dismemberment of a nation. Mugabe must go, South Africa move on, and Mbeki must consider the blot that tarnishes his legacy.