History is Happening Now

The Bush Doctrine is a phrase used to describe various related foreign policy principles of United States president George W. Bush. The phrase initially described the policy that the United States had the right to aggressively secure itself from countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups, which was used to justify the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.^[1]

                            – from Wikipedia article: Bush Doctrine

Though both sides in the Middle East are intensely aware that this battle (in Gaza) will establish facts on the ground in the region for the new administration, Obama’s advisors have sent only vague signals, with David Axelrod on “Face the Nation” Sunday calling Israel a “great ally” and citing America’s “special relationship” with the Jewish state.

In a visit this summer to Israel, Obama did appear to give implicit approval to such a strike, saying that, “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”

                       – from Politico article: Israel lands on Obama’s front burner

There seems to be one set of rules for America and Israel, and another set of rules for India.

Let’s consider just three events: (1) the September 11th attacks, which were widely considered to be adequate justification for our invasion of Afghanistan, (2) rocket attacks on Israel, which are now considered adequate justification for Israel’s current military strikes on Gaza, and (3) the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which prompted India to do … almost nothing.  

Here is how the New York Times reported on India’s apparent reluctance to follow in the footsteps of the U.S. and Israel:

NEW DELHI — Though tensions have risen in the past few days, neither India’s governing coalition led by the Congress Party nor its habitually hawkish political opposition is advocating a military confrontation with Pakistan, the country’s neighbor and archrival.

Pakistan’s redeployment of troops late last week to its border with India, from its tribal areas in the northwest, raised fears. The troop movement came a month after the attacks in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, which India says were orchestrated by Pakistan-based militants.

Fear of a conflict in South Asia is unlikely to pass quickly, as Pakistan has resisted a broad crackdown on the militants India says were behind the Mumbai assault.

But for India, many here say, the cost is too high, not just because both sides have nuclear arms. As an Indian official put it, “Almost anything against Pakistan would be messy.”

The Mumbai attacks prompted bellicose outbursts from the Indian news media and led Indian officials to state that their “restraint” should not be mistaken for “weakness.” Yet even a surgical strike on terrorists’ training camps in Pakistan, one of the options floated in the immediate aftermath of the attack, would bring unwanted risks, according to policy makers and analysts.

They say it could damage India’s economic prospects at a time when the country is vulnerable to the global downturn.

Moreover, past military engagements with Pakistan strengthened the political influence of Pakistan’s Army and weakened its civilian government. Many in India say they are reluctant to do anything to undermine civilian rule there.

“The Pakistan military is itching for a fight,” said Lalit Mansingh, a retired Indian ambassador to the United States. “That will give them the excuse not to carry on the fight on Afghanistan.”

This time, he said, the Indian government is left with no choice but to mount a diplomatic offensive against Pakistan, in part by appealing to some of its most stalwart allies, like Saudi Arabia, China and the United States. “People realize war would be more costly in its impact,” Mr. Mansingh said.

I do not interpet India’s restraint as weakness — I’m no expert on these matters, but I can’t help thinking India is wise to avoid war. This restraint seems especially impressive, given that the Indian public seems hell-bent on demonizing their own political leadership for failing to prevent these attacks.

But their decision is still somewhat bewildering. If we accept that Americans and Israelis, in general, hate war and want to avoid war — then we must believe they went to war (America in Afghanistan and Israel in Gaze) only because it was absolutely necessary to protect their citizens. The purpose of these wars was to send a message that anyone who attacks America or Israel will face horrible consequences. 

So why isn’t it absolutely necessary for India to send that same message? Doesn’t India’s willingness to let Pakistan off the hook put its own citizens in danger? (Again — I support India’s decision to hold off — but I believe this question still needs to be answered.)

I am reminded of some news from early October, reported in another New York Times article, Senate Approves India Nuclear Treaty:

WASHINGTON — The United States opened a new chapter of cooperation with India on Wednesday night as Congress gave final approval to a breakthrough agreement permitting civilian nuclear trade between the countries for the first time in three decades.

The Senate ratified the deal 86 to 13 a week after the House passed it, handing a rare foreign policy victory to President Bush in the twilight of his administration and culminating a three-year debate that raised alarms about a new arms race and nearly toppled the government of India.

The agreement, in the view of its authors, will redefine relations between two countries often at odds during the cold war and build up India as a friendly counterweight to a rising China. But critics complain that it effectively scraps longstanding policies intended to curb the spread of nuclear weapons and that it could encourage nations like Pakistan, Iran and North Korea to accelerate their own programs outside international legal structures.

Under the terms of the deal, the United States will now be able to sell nuclear fuel, technology and reactors to India for peaceful energy use despite the fact that New Delhi tested bombs in 1974 and 1998 and never signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In exchange, India agreed to open up 14 civilian nuclear facilities to international inspection, but could continue to shield eight military reactors from outside scrutiny.

“The national security and economic future of the United States will be enhanced by a strong and enduring partnership with India,” Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in the Senate debate on Wednesday.

Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, called the deal a “grievous mistake” that would reward rogue behavior. Mr. Dorgan and Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, tried to amend the agreement to explicitly require the United States to cut off nuclear trade if India conducted a new nuclear test. The agreement’s backers defeated the proposal, arguing that it was unnecessary and that nuclear trade would be halted in such a situation.

Mr. Bush has been pursuing the agreement since 2005, and his advisers have called closer relations between the United States and India a key part of his foreign policy legacy. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, visiting Mr. Bush at the White House last week, endorsed that view. “When history is written,” he said, “I think it will be recorded that President George W. Bush made an historic goal in bringing our two democracies closer to each other.”

Is India showing restraint because that’s what the United States wants? Is India doing what the United States wants because the U.S. has taken steps to strengthen its alliance with India, in part by approving the treaty described above? In other words, is India basically risking its own security — and avoiding a “messy” war, for the good of all mankind — out of deference to us?

If so, we’d better make sure India doesn’t regret the decision. Apparently, Israel isn’t our only important ally on this planet, and it may be that India’s political leadership deserves our support.

(I am inspired to write this post after reading Lee’s thoughtful post below about the selection of Rick Warren to give the invocation at Obama’s inaugural.)

Remember back to the Democratic primaries, when Barack Obama was attacked by both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards for saying something non-hateful about Ronald Reagan? Here is what Obama said:

I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure.  I think part of what’s different are the times.  I do think that for example the 1980 was different.  I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.  He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.  I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating.  I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

There’s no disputing the fundamental accuracy of Obama’s remarks above. By the time Reagan arrived on the national stage, many Americans felt — rightly or wrongly — that it was time to reject the Democratic Party, which had dominated American politics for decades.

But Obama wasn’t just offering up an analysis of Reagan’s presidency; Obama said what he said in order to indicate that he, too, wants to “change the trajectory of America” — but in a left-wing direction. And Obama believes the “times” are right for such a realignment, which will rebrand the Democratic party and set the stage for major progress on a whole host of issues, from health care, to taxes, to the environment, to foreign policy. These days, many Americans feel that it is time to reject the Republican Party, which has dominated American politics since Reagan.

Obama took an important step toward acheiving this goal when he selected Envangelical preacher Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inaugural. Obama also indicated how he intends to achieve this change in trajectory — and his strategy isn’t pretty for many on the left. Obama intends to minimize the significance of “God, guns and gays,” in the tradition of 2004 presidential candidate and current party chairman Howard Dean.

Throughout this year’s presidential campaign, I heard pundits say over and over again that the Republican Party’s electoral success has been based on a “conservative coalition” — a coalition of social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and foreign policy conservatives — that came together in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s under the leadership of Ronald Reagan.

Now, for the first time in decades, this coalition is showing signs of fraying, creating an awesome opening for Democrats and liberals to reshape American politics.

One of the first Democratic leaders to seize upon this vulnerability of the conservative coalition was Dean, who said he was “tired of coming to the South and fighting elections on guns, God and gays. We’re going to fight this election on our turf, which is going to be jobs, education and health care.”

Chris Wallace asked Dean about those comments on Fox News Sunday in Dec. 2003:

WALLACE: What do you mean by that, when you say that you don’t want to talk about guns, God and gays?

DEAN: What the Republicans have been doing since 1968 was actually the subject of a speech I’m about to give in a couple of hours here in South Carolina, is dividing us along racial lines by talking about quotas, dividing us about abortion or guns or other issues like that.

Well, let me tell you something about South Carolina. There’s 102,000 children here with no health insurance. Most of those kids are white.

White people and black people in the South have a common interest. Their jobs are going offshore. They haven’t had a raise because health-insurance premiums have eaten up all their money. They need — $70 million was cut, got cut out of public health insurance — public education here, because the president’s economic program has been such a disaster.

Everybody deserves a break — not just in the South, but everybody else. And working people, no matter what color they are, need to vote together, because their economic interests are not served by the Republicans. And I think that’s why the election needs to be about health insurance, economic opportunity and jobs, and better educational opportunities for everybody.

WALLACE: Governor, I don’t think anybody would deny that those are very important issues, but why take the others — abortion, guns, God, gays — off the table? I mean, it sounds like you’re uncomfortable talking about values.

DEAN: I’m very comfortable talking about values, but we’re never going to agree on some of these issues. I actually have a more conservative positions on guns than many Democrats, although I do support the assault-weapons ban and background checks and all that. But…

WALLACE: But aren’t those legitimate issues, whether it’s a woman’s right to choose versus right to life, whether there should a national ban on assault weapons, gay rights?

I mean, aren’t those issues — I have to say, I remember back in 1988, because I was covering the campaign, when Michael Dukakis said that the campaign is about competence, not ideology, and the Republicans killed him on that.

Don’t American voters care about values?

DEAN: They care about values. And there are a lot of different kinds of values. My attitude is, each state’s going to make their own kinds of decisions about these difficult issues that we’re — you know, the social issues that divide us.

My question is, what we have in common is what we ought to look at. This president ran as a uniter, not a divider, and that was a complete falsehood. What he has done is use words like “quota” to send race-coded words to folks, talking about scaring them into thinking somebody from a minority community is going to take their jobs. On and on it goes.

What about what we have in common? What we have in common is we need better education for everybody. We need health care, health insurance for everybody. Every industrialized country in the world has health insurance except for us. We don’t have to have a complicated government-run system. But we ought to have it, like we do, for the most part, in Vermont, at least for all our kids.

So why can’t we talk about jobs, health care and education, which is what we all have in common, instead of allowing the Republicans to consistently divide us by talking about guns, God, gays, abortion and all this controversial social stuff that we’re not going to come to an agreement on?

I really believe that states ought to have a role. My gun policy basically is let’s keep the federal laws, let’s enforce them with great vigor, and then let’s let every state make additional laws if they want to. You’re going to have states that want gun control making more, and you’re going to have states like my state saying, look, we’ll enforce the federal laws and leave it at that.

Why can’t we take that kind of an approach to these issues and stop getting exercised about them? That’s what cost this election. Why can’t we look at what we have in common: economic opportunity, educational opportunity, health insurance? Those are the things that I think are value-driven.

And I think that’s where this administration falls short on values. They don’t seem to care about ordinary people. They’ll do everything for corporations. They give $26,000 in tax cuts to the top 1 percent. The rest of the people get $304 and a big property-tax increase, big health-insurance increases and big college-tuition increases.

That’s where I think that the battle about values is in this country and in this election.

Dean was basically proposing that the Democratic party target voters who are socially conservative but otherwise open to Democratic ideas. Dean wanted to draw those voters into a new “working majority” that would enable the country to make important progress on issues like education, health care, the environment, the wars, etc. Of course, drawing these voters in means not alienating them — which in turn means offending gays and others who want to fight these battles vigorously.

The continuing disintigration of the conservative coalition was evident during this year’s Republican primary, when it was clearly hard for voters to find a candidate who could rally all three legs of the stool. Candidates such as Mike Huckabee seemed to represent social conservatives who were willing to move to the center on fiscal issues. Candidates such as Rudy Guliani seemed to represent fiscal conservatives and foreign policy conservatives who were willing to move to the center on social issues. Ultimately, nominee John McCain — a foreign policy hawk and fiscal conservative — was saddled with the task of “reaching out” to social conservatives, who weren’t comfortable with his seeming ambivalence about their agenda.

In my view, the most appealing Republican candidate was Mike Huckabee, partly because he seemed like the least angry man in America, and partly because he seemed open-minded and moderate on foreign policy and economic issues. He seemed to represent the kind of conservatives that Dean thought he could reach in his 2003/2004 campaign. Consider this excerpt from a New York Times article about Huckabee’s appeal entitled “Huckabee Splits Young Evangelicals and Old Gaurd”:

WASHINGTON — Much of the national leadership of the Christian conservative movement has turned a cold shoulder to the Republican presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee, wary of his populist approach to economic issues and his criticism of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. But that has only fired up Brett and Alex Harris.

The Harris brothers, 19-year-old evangelical authors and speakers who grew up steeped in the conservative Christian movement, are the creators of Huck’s Army, an online network that has connected 12,000 Huckabee campaign volunteers, including several hundred in Michigan, which votes Tuesday, and South Carolina, which votes Saturday.

They say they like Mr. Huckabee for the same reason many of their elders do not: “He reaches outside the normal Republican box,” Brett Harris said in an interview from his home near Portland, Ore.

The brothers fell for Mr. Huckabee last August when they saw him draw applause on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” for explaining that he believed in a Christian obligation to care for prenatal “life” and also education, health care, jobs and other aspects of “life.” “It is a new kind of evangelical conservative position,” Brett Harris said. Alex Harris added, “And we are not going to have to be embarrassed about him.”

Mr. Huckabee, who was a Southern Baptist minister before serving as governor of Arkansas, is the only candidate in the presidential race who identifies himself as an evangelical. But instead of uniting conservative Christians, his candidacy is threatening to drive a wedge into the movement, potentially dividing its best-known national leaders from part of their base and upending assumptions that have held the right wing together for the last 30 years.

His singular style — Christian traditionalism and the common-man populism of William Jennings Bryan, leavened by an affinity for bass guitar and late-night comedy shows — has energized many young and working-class evangelicals. Their support helped his shoestring campaign come from nowhere to win the Iowa Republican caucus and join the front-runners in Michigan, South Carolina and national polls.

And Mr. Huckabee has done it without the backing of, and even over the opposition of, the movement’s most visible leaders, many of whom have either criticized him or endorsed other candidates.

“Some of them have been openly hostile to him, and others merely lukewarm in their hostility,” said John Green, a scholar with the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

If Mr. Huckabee can continue to galvanize evangelicals around his novel message while attracting other Republicans and perhaps independents, he will do more than advance his own campaign. He will also challenge the establishment of the Christian conservative political movement.

“To the extent that Governor Huckabee succeeds in advancing this new agenda that combines cultural conservatism with an economic and foreign affairs populism,” Mr. Green said, “it could undermine the existing Christian conservative political leaders and their organizations.”

In other words, Huckabee is a religious conservative (anti-choice, anti-gay marriage, etc.) but he isn’t afraid to use the frame of religion to prioritize government involvement in education, health care, jobs, etc. I remember his campaign pitch to improve the economy by spending heavily on infrastructure, and thought, “for a Republican, he’s not nearly as bad as he could be.” In a way, Huckabee’s strategy was based on the same ideas as Dean’s: that Republicans win on social issues, and Democrats win on everything else. So Huckabee figured he stay true to the social issues, move to the center on everything else, and remake the Republican Party.

Huckabee also seemed remarkably open to the sort of politics Obama was putting forward at that time. Consider this excerpt from a column by conservative pundit William Kristol immediately after the Iowa Caucus:

Who, inquiring minds want to know, is going to spare us a first Obama term? After all, for all his ability and charm, Barack Obama is still a liberal Democrat. Some of us would much prefer a non-liberal and non-Democratic administration. We don’t want to increase the scope of the nanny state, we don’t want to undo the good done by the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and we really don’t want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in Iraq.

For me, therefore, the most interesting moment in Saturday night’s Republican debate at St. Anselm College was when the candidates were asked what arguments they would make if they found themselves running against Obama in the general election.

The best answer came, not surprisingly, from the best Republican campaigner so far — Mike Huckabee. He began by calmly mentioning his and Obama’s contrasting views on issues from guns to life to same-sex marriage. This served to remind Republicans that these contrasts have been central to G.O.P. success over the last quarter-century, and to suggest that Huckabee could credibly and comfortably make the socially conservative case in an electorally advantageous way.

Huckabee went on to pay tribute to Obama for his ability “to touch at the core of something Americans want” in seeming to move beyond partisanship. And, he added, Senator Obama is “a likable person who has excited people about wanting to vote who have not voted in the past.” Huckabee was of course aware that in praising Obama he was recommending himself

I was watching the debate at the home of a savvy, moderately conservative New Hampshire Republican. It was at this moment that he turned to me and said: “You know, I’ve been a huge skeptic about Huckabee. I’m still not voting for him Tuesday. But I’ve got to say — I like him. And I wonder — could he be our strongest nominee?”

Alex Harris says “we are not going to have to be embarrassed about him.” The New Hampshire Republican says “I’ve got to say — I like him.” I think people like him for the same reason that I “liked him,” (although I would never vote for him) — he’s not angry, he’s a great communicator and he’s not running on the discredited ideas that have defined Republican ideas about the economy and foreign policy.

More from the New York Times article:

“Some of my Christian friends, just like some of my not-so-Christian friends, have become a little too Washingtonian,” said Rick Scarborough, an aspiring successor to the previous generation of conservative Christian leaders. He recently argued that his allies were wrong to balk at Mr. Huckabee’s turn toward environmentalism and “social justice.”

“Can you imagine Jesus ignoring the plight of the disenfranchised and downtrodden while going after the abortionist?” Mr Scarborough wrote on the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com.

Make no mistake: the “plight of the disenfanchised and downtrodden,” as a subject of public policy, is still owned by the Democratic Party, in the same way that lowering taxes is owned by the Republican Party. 

The libertarians and fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party hated Huckabee precisely because he and his ilk intended to introduce this sort of framework into Republican politics. The real ideological “base” of the Republican party — fiscal conservatives — want to privatize social security, get rid of the Department of Education, eliminate public education, criminalize unions, and take other steps that will weaken the “disenfranchised and downtrodden.” They will absolutely oppose taking the steps that are necessary to rescue the American economy, starting with a bailout of the auto industry.

There’s no doubt that Obama’s selection of Warren sends a message that “God, guns and gays” will not be at the top of Obama’s agenda. It also sends a message that Obama is trying follow through on Dean’s plan to lure social conservatives into a new Democratic coalition by targeting the sort of voters who were attracted to Huckabee – which means Obama will try to avoid alienating them, even if it means alienating gays.

Even Kristol had to acknowledge the significance of Obama’s gesture, and also conveyed a sense of the alienation social conservatives feel when attacked for their views:

The assault on Prop 8 supporters has been extraordinary in its mean-spiritedness and extremism–but the left knows what it’s doing. The purpose has been to intimidate people with an opposing point of view from defending their position. To be against same-sex marriage, even against the judicial imposition of same-sex marriage, is to be a bigot. As one leftwinger said on CNN, Warren is a “hatemonger” comparable to “the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.” Or, as the Human Rights Campaign’s Brad Luna told Byron York of National Review, dismissing the fact that the benediction will be delivered by the Reverend Joseph Lowery, who is more friendly to gay marriage: “I don’t think any Jewish Americans would feel much comfort in knowing that an anti-Semite is starting the inauguration with an invocation, but we’re going to end it with a rabbi.” So the claim is, opposing same-sex marriage is tantamount to being a racist or an anti-Semite.

Making that charge is at the heart of the agenda of the gay lobby. They don’t want to debate same-sex marriage. They want to demonize its opponents. Ironically, Lowery himself, who is a (somewhat equivocal) supporter of gay marriage, refuses to equate the gay rights and the civil rights movements: “Homosexuals as a people have never been enslaved because of their sexual orientation,” he told the Associated Press. “They may have been scorned; they may have been discriminated against. But they’ve never been enslaved and declared less than human.”

And, one could add, gender and sex are at least potentially morally relevant in a way a decent society will not allow skin color to be. Skin color is skin deep. Gender and sex are more complicated, which is why even in our “enlightened” age, all distinctions based on gender and sexual orientation haven’t collapsed.

God knows, Obama isn’t going to be out there defending such distinctions, or explaining which are reasonable and which aren’t. And it’s certain Obama is going to govern as a pro-abortion rights, not-particularly-pro-traditional-family, social liberal. But he at least seems open to a discussion of these issues. And that leaves some political space for social conservatives to continue making their case over the next few years.

Conservatives have to be ready to stand up for themselves–and for each other–if and when the left comes at them from the academy, Hollywood, and the media. Obama’s invitation to Rick Warren doesn’t mean his administration won’t put a heavy thumb on the left side of the scale in our cultural conflicts. It doesn’t even mean that organs of the federal government, over which Obama will of course be presiding, won’t try to stifle nonconforming opinions. But the Warren invitation means that one can at least appeal to Obama’s own precedent against suppressing out-of-favor views.

The left senses that the invitation to Rick Warren is a blow to their effort to establish a soft tyranny of “correct” opinion, to enforce society-wide political orthodoxy, on social issues. They’re right. This isn’t the time for conservatives to snipe at Obama’s motives. It’s time to welcome him into the American mainstream, to salute the president-elect’s progress from Reverends Wright to Warren.

So now those of us on the left who find Rick Warren’t views offensive have to do a cost/benefit analysis. The Dean/Obama strategy has costs and benefits: the costs are that the Democratic Party can’t be too aggressive in its tactics or its rhetoric in fighting for issues such as gay marriage, abortion rights, or gun control. The benefits are that the Democratic Party may win over a good chunk of socially conservative voters, giving Democrats an opportunity to govern this country for the foreseable future in ways that will be great for our economy, our foreign policy and our long term viability as a planet.

Is it worth it?

UPDATE: After writing the blog below, I read the following New York Times article, which shows the shoe thrower’s inpact on Iraqi history is intensifying:

BAGHDAD — A session of the Iraqi Parliament erupted in an uproar on Wednesday as lawmakers clashed over how to respond to the continuing detention of an Iraqi television reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush during a Baghdad news conference earlier this week, people attending the parliamentary meeting said.

As Parliament began to discuss legislation on the withdrawal from Iraq of armed forces from nations other than the United States, a group of lawmakers demanded that the legislature instead take up the issue of the detained journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, 29. After his shoes narrowly missed Mr. Bush’s head at the news conference on Sunday, Mr. Zaidi was subdued by a fellow journalist and then beaten by members of the prime minister’s security detail.

The legislative session became so tumultuous that it prompted the speaker of Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, to announce his resignation, according to The Associated Press. A spokesman for Mr. Mashhadani, Jabar al-Mashhadani, refused to confirm whether the speaker had tendered his resignation, although he would not deny it. Some in Parliament say the government should release Mr. Zaidi immediately, while others say the judiciary should decide his fate.

How badly injured Mr. Zaidi was by members of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s security detail is not clear. He has not appeared in public since his arrest, and his family members and his legal representatives say they have not been permitted to visit him. On Wednesday, Mr. Zaidi was scheduled to appear before a judge, but it was unclear whether that happened.

Dhiya al-Saadi, one of Mr. Zaidi’s lawyers, said Wednesday that he was not sure whether Mr. Zaidi had appeared before a judge. As part of the Iraqi legal system, a judge typically determines whether bringing formal charges against a suspect is warranted, criminal lawyers in Iraq said. Mr. Zaidi faces up to seven years in prison if he is charged with and convicted of offending the head of a foreign state.

The New York Times says Iraqi “journalist” Muntader al-Zaidi, 29, has become a “folk hero,” ever since he threw two shoes at President Bush during a press conference Sunday evening.

I put the word “journalist” in quotes not because I know anything about his work or career — but only because he ceased to be a journalist when he threw his shoes at the president. Throwing shoes at press conferences is not what journalists are supposed to be doing. His anger may have been more than reasonable, more than justified, but that doesn’t excuse his behavior. 

I believe he should be fired.

A reasonable question is: Should he be jailed? On the one hand, it seems silly to put a man in prison for throwing his shoes, an act which doesn’t seem to rise to the level of assault. On the other hand, it’s easy to understand why any government would make it illegal to throw a solid object at a foreign head of state during an official visit. In my humble opinon, I think it would be unreasonable for this man to spend more than a few months in jail — but that’s for an Iraqi court to decide.

He should not be beaten, however. But that may be what happened to the man, according to the several news outlets, including Reuters:

Zaidi’s brother said Tuesday he was hit in the head with a rifle butt and had an arm broken in the chaos that broke out after he threw his shoes at Bush and was leapt on by Iraqi security officers and U.S. secret service agents.

He was in a hospital in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, his brother Maitham al-Zaidi said.

“All that we know is we were contacted yesterday by a person — we know him — and he told us that Muntazer was taken on Sunday to Ibn-Sina hospital,” Maitham al-Zaidi said. “He was wounded in the head because he was hit by a rifle butt, and one of his arms was broken.”

The brother declined to identify the source of the information and his comments could not be independently verified. Asked about the brother’s remarks, various Iraqi officials denied having responsibility for the case.

Al Jazeera actually quoted Zaidi’s brother saying he was “tortured.”

An Iraqi journalist arrested after throwing his shoes at the US president has been tortured during his detention, his brother has said. 

Muntazer al-Zaidi, who called  George Bush ”a dog” during his attack, was beaten by security guards after his arrest, Durgham al-Zaidi told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.

“We know that [Muntazer] has been tortured and his hand was broken. I asked them to go and check on him in the Green Zone [in Baghdad],” he said.

Al-Baghdadia television, Muntazer’s employer, reported that al-Zaidi had been “seriously injured” while in custody.

The channel has urged the Iraqi government to allow lawyers and the Iraqi Red Crescent to visit him.

The Iraqi military has denied that al-Zaidi has been mistreated while in detention.

The New York Times indicates there seems to be no reliable way to determine what happened:

Ziad al-Ajeely, president of the Iraqi Journalistic Freedom Observatory, said he had contacted senior members of the Iraqi government after he heard rumors that Mr. Zaidi had suffered severe injuries. But, he said, “they assured me he was fine.”

Under the circumstances, it is possible to believe that Zaidi hadn’t been “tortured” in detention, but had been injured unintentionally by security personnel who were overly-zealous in their efforts to subdue him after the shocking shoe-throwing incident. Of course, it is also possible that he was deliberately beaten by security forces.

Either way, the idea that he was beaten, tortured, abused, etc., will only make his example more powerful — and while his actions may have provided plenty of fodder for late night comedy talk show hosts, they’re also a symbol around which Iraq’s most virulent anti-American elements may rally.

Al Jazeera reports:

Al-Zaidi’s attack on Bush, who ordered the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, has been met with broad support across the Arab world.

Iraqis calling for al-Zaidi’s release from custody held a second day of protests on Tuesday, with hundreds of students marching in Baghdad.

The demonstrations came a day after thousands of people turned out in Baghdad’s Sadr City in a show of support for al-Zaidi.

But the Iraqi government on Monday called al-Zaidi’s outburst against Bush a “barbaric and ignominious act”.

President Bush should privately apologize to the Iraqi government for embaressing it with his presence. Zaidi’s actions — and the support they inspired throughout the Arab world — may have provided angry Arabs with a relatively harmless way to achieve catharsis, just as a new American president with an Arab middle name takes Bush’s place. But the idea that Zaidi was beaten provides more than catharsis — it provides a new rationale for violence against the powers that be in Iraq.

There are three tidbits of interesting information I recently gleaned while listening to this past weekend’s dose of television and radio punditry about the debate over a federal bailout of the American auto industry.

The first interesting tidbit emerged from Sunday’s edition of Fox News Sunday, in which Chris Wallace interviewed Republican Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) At the end of last week — after it became clear that the Democrats couldn’t get enough votes to pass legislation to loan the auto industry $14 billion to stave off bankruptcy for a few more months — Corker proposed changes to the legislation, and claimed there was a good chance an amended bill would pass. 

Corker’s proposed changes included forcing members of the United Auto Workers union to accept painful salary and benefit cuts to make the American companies’ labor costs equivalent to the labor costs at Honda, Nissan and Toyota plants in America. Ultimately, the UAW wouldn’t support the plan, which means Democrats wouldn’t support the plan, which means the plan died along with any immediate hope of Congress passing a bailout plan.

This raises an obvious question: Why didn’t the UAW agree to the changes? The changes may have been painful, but a painful bailout is better than no bailout at all, right? From an auto worker’s perspective, a pay cut is better than a job loss, isn’t it?

As it turns out, the UAW President Ron Gettelfinger knew there was a third option — at least according to Corker:

CORKER: And the reason that it didn’t pass was the — and Gettelfinger told me this — he knew the White House…

WALLACE: The head of the UAW.

CORKER: He knew the White House would bail them out. So at the end of the day, they knew the TARP funds were available and, unfortunately, it kept us from doing something that I think would cause the auto industry, GM, Chrysler…

According to Corker, Gettelfinger knew that if a bailout bill died in Congress, the White House would step in and bail out the auto industry. How does Corker know this? He explains later on…

CORKER: … We had everything worked out except for one thing and that is that the UAW had to be competitive. Now, that’s a loose term. And if Deb Stabenow is right that the UAW actually gets paid less than Nissan and Toyota and Honda, then it seems to me it’s a no-brainer.

Gettelfinger, I called him the next day and said, “Look, please, I’m pleading with you. This is not something that’s that difficult. I’m pleading with you to let the”…

WALLACE: And he said?

CORKER: And he said, “We know the administration is going to come forth with TARP moneys and I am not going to agree to do this with you.”

So Gettelfinger’s decision to reject Corker’s proposals makes a whole lot more sense to me now than it did when I thought Gettelfinger was just playing chicken with Senate Democrats. As it turns out, Gettelfinger was betting he could get a better deal with the White House. (Previously on this blog, I’ve voiced deep frustration with Gettelfinger for refusing to accept the deal, but in retrospect I cannot fault Gettelfinger for refusing to accept a deal that would have involved eliminating promised pensions, taking income from elderly widows, etc.)

The second tidbit is that at least two prominent Democrats — and one American auto worker — is willing to testify that Corker was genuine in his efforts to broker a deal. (In other words, they won’t support the idea that Corker’s real motive in proposing changes was to put forward a plan so horrible that the UAW would have no choice except to refuse it, thereby giving the Republicans a misleading story to tell about why the bailout failed.)

The first Democrat who spoke in defense of Corker’s efforts was Stabenow, who drew a big distinction between Corker and the Republican leadership in the Senate:

WALLACE: Senator Stabenow, do you think there was an effort by either Senator Corker or other Republicans, as Ron Gettelfinger suggests, to break the union?

STABENOW: Well, Chris, let me say this. Bob Corker and I have talked throughout this last week. I believe he is sincere and came to the negotiating table in a sincere way.

I also believe, and it was very clear, that his leadership did not want an agreement. While Senator Corker was in the room and while they were negotiating and actually coming to an agreement, leadership staff, Republican staff were already circulating a story that the unions had killed the deal.

They did not want an agreement. And here’s my biggest concern. That is a political agenda of the leadership at a time when the economy is teetering on the edge and we have potentially three million people that will go over into the unemployment rolls, taking us off the cliff, and we have the largest manufacturers in the country, which is the backbone of the middle class of this country.

That is not a slogan. The reality is we built the middle class because we could build things and the fact is that manufacturing is on the edge in this country.

This is not the time for a political agenda. Yes, bring everyone to the table. The bill we had in front of us was tough. I believe if Senator Corker and I and others by ourselves, without the Senate leadership looking over his shoulder, were able to come together, we could get an agreement.

The second major Democrat I know of who has spoken out in defense of Bob Corker was Sen. Carl Levin, (D-Mich.), who spoke on Face the Nation with Bob Scheiffer. Levin gave some more information about exactly how the negotiations broke down — and it all apparently came down to a definition of the word “competitive.” Apparently, Corker wasn’t originally in favor of imposing the extreme cuts that later became part of the last-minute negotiations:

LEVIN: By the way, no other country–no other country that produces automobiles is allowing its industry to collapse. They all have the same problem, they’re all providing loans to those industries. This is not unique to the United States. And I want to–and that goes even to China, by the way, Bob.

SCHIEFFER: Mm-hmm.

LEVIN: Even the Chinese auto industry is asking the Chinese government for loans. I want to commend Bob Corker, by the way. He did, at the end, right–finally, on Thursday night, come up with a formulation that was acceptable to him which was saying that the cuts had to be — make them — the auto industry competitive. That was the word that he used. That was a word that was acceptable to Senator Corker, it’s acceptable to the Democrats in the Senate, acceptable to the White House. That word was not acceptable to the Republican leaders in the Senate who insisted not just that the auto industry wages be competitive, but that we specify in law precisely that those wages and benefits had to be equal to Nissan and other foreign manufacturers in the United States. That is what broke this deal. So I commend Senator Corker for coming up with language acceptable to him, acceptable to the Senate Dems, acceptable to the White House but not acceptable, tragically, I think, to the Republican leadership in the Senate.

 

And in case you don’t trust Democratic politicians, here’s Brian Fredline, president of UAW Local 602 in Lansing, Mich., talking Monday to Diane Rehm on NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show:

REHM: Your union as well as the UAW at large has been asked to make concessions. In fact, the bailout will last week failed because Republicans felt that the UAW was not willing to go as far as they wanted. Tell us about the concessions your union has made in the past few years.

FREDLINE: Yeah, I actually, I found that quite surprising that that was the lead line coming out of the Senate, was it was the UAW’s fault. Ron Gettelfinger actually went in with Senator Corker which was pretty interesting to me, too, that a Senator from Tennessee would actually be the lead negotiator with the UAW. And Ron Gettelfinger reached an agreement with Corker, and then Corker’s job was to deliver it to his Senate caucus, and he couldn’t make that happen.  

So it may be that Corker wasn’t actually the villain here who tried to turn honest negotiations over a bailout bill into political theater for the benefit of Republicans. It appears that the Republican leadership was actually the party responsible for insisting on concessions they knew the unions wouldn’t make. How could they be so certain that the unions wouldn’t make the concessions, thereby calling the Republicans’ bluff and forcing Republicans to either accept the deal or admit they’d been negotiating in bad faith? Simple — the Republicans had the same info Gettelfinger had, that the White House would step in and bail out the auto industry if Congress refused. The Republicans knew that Gettelfinger had no incentive to accept an unreasonable deal — and so they put the deal forward, manipulating events to their own political advantage. 

We can only wonder what would have happened if George Bush hadn’t given the green light for Gettelfinger and the Senate to let the bailout die. If Bush had held the line — if he’d promised that no bailout would happen if Congress didn’t pass one — would Gettelfinger have refused to accept the Republicans’ demands, knowing the consequences would have been the collapse of the American auto industry? Would the Republicans have been willing to let the negotiations collapse, knowing the consequence would be millions of lost jobs and a renewed identification of the Republican Party as the party of Herbert Hoover (as Dick Cheney put it)?

We’ll never know. Bush was very useful to the Senate Republicans, because he enabled them to avoid passing a necessary but unpopular bailout bill.

The third tidbit is that it’s not clear whether Gettelfinger will end up avoiding the deep concessions the Senate Republicans demanded. Again, from Fox News Sunday:

WALLACE: But if I may, just briefly. The direct question is doesn’t that same dynamic exist now. If the White House were to insist on all of these concessions, Gettelfinger is going say, “You know what? They’re not going to let us go down. I’ll resist the concessions and the White House will blink.”

CORKER: Well, of course, I think we should deal with it legislatively. OK. But if that’s not going to occur, look, I’m here, I can be down to the Capitol in about an hour. I think Chris Dodd can be down from Connecticut.

I think we could solve this appropriately legislatively. But if the government, if the administration is going to use TARP funds, they can write in these same exact conditions.

Corker said something similar on Face the Nation, in response to the commendation from Levin:

CORKER: Well, I think it’s in the neighborhood of 14 billion. And I hope that if they choose not to do it through Congress, but themselves, that they’ll put in place exactly the same concepts that we almost agreed to the other night; and that is if the bondholders do not agree to taking 30 cents on the dollar by March the 15th, they have to file bankruptcy. If labor and management cannot agree that they would be competitive by a date certain, March 31st–taking them into competitiveness even in the next year, but that they agree to that by March 31st–that they will go–they will go into bankruptcy. It’s that crisis that actually causes everybody to want to come to the table.

And I do want to say–and I thank Carl for the nice comments. Actually what ended up happening is our caucus was fine with the words “competitive.” They just wanted it done in a finite time. I offered anytime during the year…

SCHIEFFER: Mm-hmm.

Sen. CORKER: …’09. And it was difficult to get the UAW there, but mainly because they knew the White House had these TARP funds and there was really no reason for them to agree to this.

 

So what happens now? Will Bush offer the UAW a better deal than the Senate Republicans offered? If Bush takes a hard line with the UAW and says, “take it or leave it,” will the UAW say no again? Can Bush afford to take a hard line with the UAW when Bush’s approval ratings are so low? Or does Bush’s unpopularity actually give him more leverage to play chicken with destiny? And what choice will Gettelfinger and the UAW have except to accept any offer Bush puts forward?

If no bailout happens, the next step would be some kind of bankruptcy — which some economists argue is actually the best way for the auto companies to restructure so they can be competitive in the future.

UPDATE: Congratulations United Auto Workers’ union! Well Done! Great work shooting yourselves in the foot! Your behavior — and the behavior of the Democrats who are apparently in your pocket – is political strategy at its self-destructive best!

Check out this excerpt from a Politico article, which describes a Republican plan to blame the UAW for Congress’ failure to pass a rescue plan for the American auto industry:

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who played a central role in the negotiations that fell apart Thursday, put parts of the plan into play Friday.

In an interview with Politico, Corker said that the bailout plan lost any hope of Republican support in the Senate when the UAW refused to agree to a “date certain” on which the secretary of labor would begin the process of certifying that the wages paid by domestic automakers were “competitive” with those paid by foreign manufacturers with U.S. plants.

And in a press conference, Corker said a Republican alternative to the White House-backed plan could have passed both the House and the Senate if the UAW had “released” Democrats to vote for it.

“I hate to be so blunt,” Corker said. “That’s politics.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) echoed Corker’s suggestion that the UAW’s position on the wages issue was the “sticking point,” and he washed his hands of responsibility for the Big Three’s larger problems.

“None of us want to see them go down,” he said in a statement, “but very few of us had anything to do with the dilemma that they’ve created for themselves.”

This argument may be valid or not, but either way, I predict Republicans will use this argument to great effect. The Republicans will argue that they wanted to save the American auto industry, they wanted to save the auto workers’ jobs – and all they wanted in return was for those workers to accept pay and benefit packages equal to what other American auto workers get. But the auto workers turned down the deal because they just can’t bear the thought of making the same amount that other auto workers make.

So congratulations UAW — you’ve done an awesome job casting yourselves as greedy power brokers using your special influence with the Democratic party to try to force American taxpayers to subsidize inflated wages while millions of non-union workers are losing their jobs. Instead of forcing the Republicans to publicly admit that they refuse to bailout the auto industry, you’re letting them argue it’s actually YOU who don’t want to be bailed out at a reasonable price.

Ugh. Even Dick Cheney (of all people!) tried to help the cause recently:

Administration officials have been warning for weeks that failure to pass the bill could lead to an even deeper recession.

That was the message Vice President Dick Cheney brought to a closed-door Senate GOP lunch Wednesday, reportedly warning that it’ll be “Herbert Hoover” time if aid to the industry was rejected, according to a senator familiar with the remarks. A Cheney spokeswoman would neither confirm nor deny the vice president’s remarks.

Thanks to Cheney for trying to make the point that it’s the Senate Republicans, rather than the UAW, who should be forced to take responsibility for killing an auto bailout. But by refusing to accept the last deal that was on the table, the UAW workers have given the Republicans a great strategy to deflect this line of criticism from Cheney and others.

Ugh.

……….

Why is it that so many newspaper articles begin one way and end in a completely different way?

Here’s an example: Compare the beginning and the end of the following article, dated December 12, entitled “White House Ready to Aid Auto Industry.”

First, here’s how the article begins:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration said on Friday that it was prepared to intervene to prevent the collapse of General Motors and Chrysler after Republican senators blocked a compromise proposal to rescue the automakers.

The decision came after a tense standoff this week in which senior White House officials pleaded with Senate Republicans not to block the measure, including a warning by Vice President Dick Cheney that they would be remembered for decades as the party of Herbert Hoover if the industry collapsed.

This opening is quite clear in indicating that it was Senate Republicans who made it impossible for Congress to pass legislation bailing out the American auto industry. The article clearly suggests that Democrats were willing to pass an auto bailout, but Republicans refused to go along, and so the legislation died.

Compare that with the end of the article:

There was little appetite among Senate Republicans for another multibillion-dollar corporate bailout and less so for the American automakers who were widely perceived as victims of their own bad business decisions over decades. But Senator Bob Corker, the junior Republican from Tennessee, offered to pursue a potential compromise.

Mr. Corker quickly provided Democrats with the text of a five page amendment to the auto rescue bill, which would require much steeper concessions by the companies and the U.A.W.

As the senators met in the ceremonial conference room of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the first floor of the Capitol, lobbyists and other representatives of G.M. and the Ford Motor Company gathered nearby. Eventually, they were also joined by Stephen A. Feinberg, the reclusive founder of Cerberus Capital Management, which owns Chrysler.

Negotiators on both sides said they were able to agree on Mr. Corker’s proposal to require a huge slashing of debt obligations by the automakers, including an agreement for the union to accept an equity stake in place of payments that it was owed to employee benefits accounts.

But Mr. Corker said Republican senators were also insisting on steep cuts in wages and benefits that would bring the American automakers in line with United States-based employees of Toyota, Nissan and Honda. And he said that the Republicans wanted a firm deadline, sometime in 2009, for the automakers to carry out those cuts.

It was over that point that the talks deadlocked, with the union pushing for those cuts to take place after its current contract expires in 2011.

Alan Reuther, the chief lobbyist for the union, said labor leaders back in Detroit were astonished at what Mr. Corker was attempting to accomplish — a virtual rewriting of the U.A.W. contract, which typically takes the better part of a year to negotiate. “That’s one thing that our folks in Detroit were just amazed at,” Mr. Reuther said. “Does Senator Corker really think he can do a restructuring of the industry in six hours?”

When the U.A.W. would not agree to a 2009 deadline, it was clear that no deal could be struck. “It seems that the U.A.W. blew it up,” said Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana.

The ending is quite clear in indicating that Corker was trying to get a bailout bill passed, but the United Auto Workers refused to accept Corker’s proposal.

So the beginning of the article tells a story that Democrats were pushing to pass a bailout but Republicans refused to accept it. The end of the article tells a story that some Republicans were pushing to pass a bailout but the UAW refused to accept it.

The New York Times clearly believes the former story is more accurate than the latter, which is why the former story is at the beginning and the latter story is buried at the end. But why is the former story more accurate than the latter story?

I realize part of my confusion about this has to do with my ideas about the need for an auto bailout, and my misunderstanding about what has been going on in Washington over the past few weeks. I’m ready to spend hundreds of billions of dollars investing in education, health care, infrastructure, energy innovation and more, in order to make this country a better place for all Americans — and especially for people who lose their jobs but still want to provide for their families. But I also believe in fairness, which means I hate the idea of spending billions of dollars saving one set of companies and one set of workers while thousands of other companies go bankrupt and millions of other workers lose their jobs. Nevertheless, I was willing to hold my nose and support the auto bailout bill in Congress (stongly, in fact) because I thought it was absolutely critical for our economy that the bailout bill pass.

Last week, I was scared of what would happen if the bailout bill failed. I was scared that if the auto bailout bill failed, it would create a downward spiral of economic catastrophe, creating more pain for everyone impacted by an already ailing U.S. economy.

So I furious with Senate Republicans for speaking out against the proposed auto bailout, but I was also rooting for Corker when he put forward his proposed compromise. It looks like my fears of disaster are being realized, I thought, but maybe, just maybe, Corker can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Because I figured that if Corker could push through a bailout — any bailout — it would be better than no bailout at all.

So when I found out that the United Auto Workers refused to accept the Corker Amendment, I was furious again. (To be clear, I was furious at the UAW for opposing Corker’s proposal, but I had no idea at the time that the union was actually responsible for killing Corker’s initiative. I figured at the time that Corker’s efforts ultimately failed to win the support of Senate Republicans who were opposed to a bailout in any form. Nevertheless, I was floored by the idea that the UAW would even come close to blocking a plan to spend $14 billion saving their jobs which would otherwise evaporate, leaving them jobless.) Why would the UAW workers cut off their noses to spite their faces? I thought. Why would they say no to $14 billion in taxpayer assistance, even if it meant losing their jobs? If the UAW workers don’t want to accept these proposed pay cuts and benefit cuts, that’s fine, I thought, but can’t they just formally accept the deal and then quit their jobs, allowing new workers to benefit from the taxpayer dollars? Why must they wreck the U.S. economy while they’re also wrecking their own livelihoods?

But here’s where I was wrong. It wasn’t actually crucial or critical or important or necessary for the auto bailout to pass. Passing the bailout wasn’t needed to save the auto workers’ jobs or to prevent a downward spiral of economic mayhem. Because as soon as the bailout bill died, the Bush Administration essentially proved that the bill had never mattered in the first place. From the same article:

After refusing for weeks to tap the $700 billion financial rescue fund, the administration suggested it would dip into the fund to at least permit the companies to continue their operations until the new Congress and new administration arrive next month.

“Because Congress failed to act, we will stand ready to prevent an imminent failure until Congress reconvenes and acts to address the long-term viability of the industry,” said Brookly McLaughlin, a Treasury spokeswoman.

So, as it turns out, it wasn’t necessary for Congress to pass an auto bailout bill — since the Bush Administration would see to it anyway that the American auto industry was bailed out. And since it wasn’t necessary to pass a bailout bill, it certainly wasn’t necessary for the UAW to accept Corker’s amendment.

So I can’t be angry at the UAW — they only realized what I failed to realize: that neither self-interest nor patriotism should have motivated them to accept any deal that was put before them, no matter how unpalatable.

In other words, I didn’t realize that UAW president Ron Gettelfinger was LYING when he said this in a press release before the Senate voted on the bill:

“The Senate must now act on this critical legislation, which President Bush helped to draft and will sign. It’s clear there is majority support in Congress for these emergency bridge loans, which will protect millions of jobs, thousands of businesses, and hundreds of billions in tax revenues at all levels of government.

“We can’t let a minority in the Senate obstruct an urgent response to an economic crisis which threatens the long-term viability of our U.S. manufacturing base — not when millions of jobs are at risk in all 50 states.”

In fact, the UAW knew full well that nothing was at risk — not the long-term viability of our manufacturing base, not millions of jobs in all 50 states. The bill was never “critical,” because if it were indeed critical and necessary, the UAW would have been willing to accept Corker’s proposal.

And the Senate Republicans who voted against the bill were also smart to vote against it — knowing, perhaps, that their vote in favor of this unpopular legislation wouldn’t be necessary to save the auto industry.

Since the bill’s passage wasn’t actually that important, the New York Times’ editors have the luxury of dismissing the Corker Amendment as unreasonable, illegitimate and irrelevant to the larger issue of who killed “the bailout.” It was Senate Republicans who killed the reasonable, legitimate bailout that was supported by the White House, Democrats in the Senate, the U.S. Congress, and the UAW — and opposed by Senate Republicans and a majority of the American people. Meanwhile, it was the UAW and (apparently) Senate Dems who killed the illegitimate, unreasonable Corker Amendment. Fair enough.

I’m glad the auto industry will be ok, but I also worry that Democrats, the Bush White House, the auto company executives, and the UAW have all been crying wolf — telling us something big and bad will happen if Congress doesn’t pass a bill, then making sure that big, bad thing doesn’t happen when the bill failed.

The next time somebody tries to scare me about what will happen if Congress doesn’t support a “rescue” bill, I’ll be more skeptical.

(Update: If you want to read a column that does an excellent job summarizing the position I’m trying to fight against in my post below, check this out from The Huffington Post.)

Want to know why so many Americans hate unions?

Look no further than the following excerpt from an article in the New York Times, dated December 11, 2008, about the frenzied last-minute debate in the Senate over whether to spend billions in taxpayer dollars bailing out the auto industry. The article is about an 11th-hour proposal — named “the Corker amendment” after Tennessee Senator Bob Corker — put forward by Republicans after the Democrats’ plan (that had already passed in the House) seemed to be dead. Under the new proposed plan,

The automakers would also be required to cut wages and benefits to match the average hourly wage and benefits of Nissan, Toyota and Honda employees based in the United States, and the companies would have to impose equivalent work rules. The plan would bar any pay for idled workers other than “customary severance pay.”

Democratic Congressional aides said that the United Auto Workers union did not support the proposal, but was willing to negotiate.

Apparently, Democrats in the Senate are entirely beholden to the UAW, if this Politico article is to be believed:

UAW approval will be decisive for Democrats, “The UAW does not support the Corker amendment as offered. But we are in contact with them and they are discussing this,” said Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.)

Consider how this tidbit of political wrangling comes across to the many millions of American workers who do not belong to a union — such as the American employees of Toyota, Honda and Nissan. They read the news, they know this country lost nearly two million jobs last year, including more than 500,000 last month. They may accept the idea that a bailout is necessary to keep the American economy from spiraling downward, but they see that this “bailout” is fundamentally unfair.

Consider John Raternick, a tool and machine maker from Grand Rapids, Michegan, as quoted in the New York Times:

“If we look at thousands of workers in counties around here, they got no sympathy,” he said. “We got hurt, and we got hurt badly. As a result of (the auto companies’) practices, I haven’t seen a raise in six years, and I’ve seen my health benefits decline.”

…

At the shop where Mr. Raterink makes tools and machinery, there used to be 15 men. Now there are five.

“They weren’t offered any bailout,” he said of those who lost their jobs. Then, of the Big Three and the mismanagement he perceives, he added, “The wolf you let loose is at your door.”

“Where’s my bailout?” wonders Mr. Raternick, and millions of other Americans all across this country who don’t believe forming or joining a union is an option for them at a time when companies are scrambling to avoid bankruptcy. 

Is everyone in America entitled to their job? Obviously, the millions who’ve already lost their jobs weren’t entitled to keep theirs, and neither are the auto workers at Chrystler, GM and Ford.

The millions of already-jobless Americans may receive unemployment benefits and other federal and private help — but the federal government isn’t rushing in to spend billions saving their jobs. So why is the government making such a big deal over saving the auto workers’ jobs in Detroit? Here’s how the Bush Administration answered the question.

“We believe that the economy is in such a weakened state right now that adding another possible loss of one million jobs is just something our economy cannot sustain at the moment,” Dana Perino, President Bush’s chief spokeswoman, said at a news briefing.

And here’s what Obama says:

“… at this moment of great challenge for our economy, we cannot simply stand by and watch this industry collapse. Doing so would lead to a devastating ripple effect throughout our economy.”

In other words, it may be unfair that some people’s jobs are saved with billions in taxpayer dollars while other people’s jobs are allowed to disappear — but we have to weigh the imperative to be fair against a more pressing imperative: to minimize the suffering of Americans as a whole.

The American Auto Workers also explained their support for the auto bailout in terms of the U.S. economy as a whole, according to a press release issued today by the United Auto Workers:

“The U.S. House of Representatives has taken responsible action with a bipartisan vote to support bridge loans for the U.S. auto industry,” UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said.

“The Senate must now act on this critical legislation, which President Bush helped to draft and will sign. It’s clear there is majority support in Congress for these emergency bridge loans, which will protect millions of jobs, thousands of businesses, and hundreds of billions in tax revenues at all levels of government.

“We can’t let a minority in the Senate obstruct an urgent response to an economic crisis which threatens the long-term viability of our U.S. manufacturing base — not when millions of jobs are at risk in all 50 states.”

We must act now, Gettelfinger says! For millions of jobs, thousands of businesses, hundreds of billions in tax revenue! In all 50 states! We can’t allow anybody to obstruct an urgent response to an economic crisis. Anybody, that is, except for the Auto Workers, who are now apparently “willing to negotiate” over the plan.

What’s to negotiate? Is Gettelfinger seriously suggesting he’d be willing to walk out on the whole $14 billion deal if his workers have to work for the same pay and benefits that workers recieve at other car companies? First he says it’ll be terrible for the economy if the plan fails — but then he’s holding things up so he can push for special treatment?

I’d ask this of Gettelfinger and his workers: What makes them so special? Why are they entitled to a better deal than the workers get at Toyota, Honda and Nissan? More to the point, why should American taxpayers spend billions perpetuating a system that unfairly rewards one set of workers more than another set of workers? Why shouldn’t we spend those billions helping the millions of Americans who never had no unions, don’t have jobs, and may lose their homes?

The American auto workers are poised to benefit from a proposal that unfairly benefits them, and they’re quibbling over the details — and it infuriates the rest of America.

My understanding is that over the past several decades, American labor unions have shrunk in their size and influence, while our economy has become far more global, subjecting American businesses to far more foreign competition.

These two trends seem to go hand in hand in many cases: A huge share of our manufacturing sector –where unions were once far more powerful than they are today — has moved overseas to take advantage of cheap wages, cheasy or non-existent labor laws and environmental standards, etc.

The fact now is that most Americans don’t belong to unions and many Americans see unions as providing an unfair, almost exploitative advantage to their members.

Americans who don’t belong to unions and don’t believe they benefit from unions view the unions’ continuing influence within the Democratic party with suspicion — and can you blame them, when folks like Gettelfinger are trying to squeeze taxpayers just so their employees can have an unfair advantage?

Wouldn’t it be better — and fairer — if liberals abandoned their commitment to the concept of labor unions and focused instead on strengthening the social safety net, so the failure of companies such as the big three auto makers wouldn’t be such a threat to the overall economy?