Maine Owl

It's just prior to the Maine Democratic State Convention, so let's review the mainline Party position on Israel. This position is so reactionary that the slightest whiff of "evenhandedness" with respect to Israel and Palestine will be shot down in an instant. So it is good to have a firm grasp of what we are dealing with: unquestioning pro-Israel commitments the Party and its presumptive headline candidate endorse.

There usually is a minor scuffle when a few platform amendments are brought up to express evenhandedness and suggest that Israel may not always be the good guys in white hats to whom America must shovel boatloads of advanced weaponry and prodigious financial aid that ends up supporting settlement development. We'll see what happens with that, but usually the debate is squelched rather quickly.

Here is how Barack Obama's official website, delineates his extreme pro-Israel policies:

• Ensure a Strong U.S.-Israel Partnership: Barack Obama strongly supports the U.S.-Israel relationship, believes that our first and incontrovertible commitment in the Middle East must be to the security of Israel, America's strongest ally in the Middle East. Obama supports this closeness, stating that that the United States would never distance itself from Israel.
• Support Israel's Right to Self Defense: During the July 2006 Lebanon war, Barack Obama stood up strongly for Israel's right to defend itself from Hezbollah raids and rocket attacks, cosponsoring a Senate resolution against Iran and Syria's involvement in the war, and insisting that Israel should not be pressured into a ceasefire that did not deal with the threat of Hezbollah missiles. He believes strongly in Israel's right to protect its citizens.
• Support Foreign Assistance to Israel: Barack Obama has consistently supported foreign assistance to Israel. He defends and supports the annual foreign aid package that involves both military and economic assistance to Israel and has advocated increased foreign aid budgets to ensure that these funding priorities are met. He has called for continuing U.S. cooperation with Israel in the development of missile defense systems.

So, could Obama turn even further right on Israel? Well, he told an audience last week at a Boca Raton, Florida synagogue that his commitment to Israel's security was "unshakable", in addition to "incontrovertible", as described above. He even threw in what sounded like some of his famous denouncement, this time in the direction of former president Jimmy Carter. Lately Carter has been talking to Palestinians, in particular leaders of the hated elected Hamas government in Gaza. And uttering just yesterday the unspeakable truth that Israel possesses "150 or more" nuclear weapons itself.

It seems to me that no useful diplomacy Obama or anyone else could bring to bear will be possible until the U.S.-supported rouge Israeli arsenal is officially acknowledged and placed on the negotiating table.

Sort of

Basically, again, what Gerald said. Seems this "forum" just was an opportunity for Senator Susan Collins to "tout" herself.

Sen. Collins touts bipartisan record
By Bill Trotter - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - Bangor Daily News

BANGOR, Maine - When time came Monday morning to talk about the specifics of America’s policies overseas, Sen. Susan Collins started off on an issue she has mentioned before and is likely to mention again in the months leading up to the Senate election this fall: bipartisanship.

The Republican incumbent cited her work in 2004 on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee with Sen. Joe Lieberman, a former Democrat who became an independent in 2006, as an example of how bipartisanship can get things done. She and Lieberman, the committee's ranking minority member, had set about to implement reform recommended by the bipartisan Sept. 11 Commission.

"This [resulting] legislation brought about the most sweeping changes in our intelligence community in more than 50 years," Collins told approximately 65 people who gathered Monday morning at Bangor Public Library for the Bangor Foreign Policy Forum. "I strongly believe we need more of that approach in Washington."

Let's stop right there. The reality is that the so-called intelligence "reform" she "touts" is a rump bureaucracy permanently subordinate to Pentagon prerogatives. Collins may posture as creator of some great new post-9/11 security apparatus, but the truth is she was kept on a short leash by Rumsfeld and more powerful Congressional Pentagon operatives, like former House Armed Services Committee Chair Duncan Hunter. As some may recall, Collins's original work could not pass in December 2004 until the Pentagon was satisfied its turf was protected.

Later, the original Director of National Intelligence (DNI, the key position established by the legislation), Jon Negroponte, left the job for an ostensible downgrade to Deputy Secretary of State under Condoleezza Rice with "disappointment" expressed by Collins. The structure established by the Collins-Lieberman legislation left the DNI hampered by having "little control" over its own budget.

It's not hard to see that the 2004 legislation was little more than an annoyance for the Bush Administration, and they figured out how to fold it in, now under the hand of retired Admiral and national-security-contractor-friendly J. Michael McConnell, late of the "international consulting" firm, Booz Allen Hamilton. For example, Bush has crippled the Privacy & Civil Liberties Oversight Board included in the law, again to the "disappointment" of Senators Collins and Lieberman. Is there a pattern here?

With a little work, it should be easy to demonstrate to Maine voters that Senator Susan Collins has not been able to use her power effectively. She has been a very subservient figure within the operations the Bush government conducts.

How Collins will play:


Dirty


Trivial/disingenuous/straw-man attack

Nothing wrong with this...


Except it's not strong enough and doesn't say Collins helped start the war

This was the Tom Allen press release this morning:

Dear Eric,

We have high standards for Senators from Maine, and we have high standards when it comes to the campaigns that are run here too. That’s why we intend to have a healthy debate on the issues. I believe the people of Maine deserve a debate on the important issues facing Maine.

This race is already one of the most closely watched across the nation. And the level of interest by third party groups looms large.

By law, my campaign staff and I are prohibited from having any contact with these third party groups, so we cannot go to them directly with the request I am making of them publicly:

• If you plan to attack Senator Collins – don’t. That won’t help your cause and it has no place in the conversation I intend to have with the voters of Maine.
• If you want to help bring change to Maine and America, stick to the issues and talk about my record and my plans to solve our problems.
• If you plan to run advertisements in Maine about this race, do it positively and factually.

Our campaign has no place for the politics of personal destruction, and we will publicly denounce any negative radio or television advertisement by a third party mentioning my opponent by name or referencing her.

I believe there is too much at stake to allow this race to be undermined by third party groups using negative personal attacks on Susan Collins or me.

My sincere hope is that all third parties – those who favor Susan Collins and those who favor me – will limit their television and radio advertising to positive messages about their favorite candidate.

I respect Susan Collins, and I know she cares about Maine. But Susan Collins and I have fundamentally different views on the most important issues facing this country today -- on economic policy, on our policy in Iraq, on health care and on energy policy. I look forward to a vigorous debate on those and other issues that matter to the people of Maine.

Susan Collins and I see this world differently and in the last 12 years have made very different choices for Maine. The voters of Maine deserve an honest discussion about these differences, and about our competing visions for our country and our state. We cannot allow third party groups to poison this important debate.

I sincerely hope that Susan Collins will join us in a substantive conversation and agree with me that negative ads from third parties attacking either of us have no place in this debate. I hope that Susan Collins agrees to the rules we have adopted.

Thank you for all that you do. Remember, together we can change the direction of Maine and America.

Sincerley,
Tom

I'm not against the notion that the campaign should be respectful. For example, the Collins ad attacking Tom Allen for being supported by moveon.org that slimed the peace movement in the process is my definition of a dirty campaign that should be avoided. But with this declaration, Tom opens himself to charges of hypocrisy on any sort of sharp and direct criticism of Collin's record that he or anyone else might make. There will never be enough opening to deconstruct Collin's obfuscations of her role as a player in the Bush/Republican agenda. The campaign will rapidly devolve into trivialities about highly questionable small business ratings and voting record perfection. Collins will be free to perform mockery of Tom Allen in the manner suggested above, but Tom won't be able to touch her in any hard-hitting way on the war, like is done in the pretty strong anti-war ad above. This statement is a bad idea.

Was Kool Aid was on Augusta Civic Center menu?

Turn Maine Blue and Collins Watch each have multiple good posts containing a selection of the available media links for stories about this past weekend's Republican State Convention in Augusta.

It strikes me that the Republicans seem to be designing their 2008 Maine campaign around throw-back issues that have little resemblance to today's political and economic predicaments. In other words, Maine's Republicans will be reciting Reagan-era mantras on spending and taxes while re-invigorating anti-choice and anti-gay constituencies; and crossing out "Soviet" and replacing it with "Islamo-fascist" in fearful national security rhetoric. This is underscored by the appearance of reactionary anti-gay Jesus-is-God columnist Cal Thomas, a Reaganaut throw-back if there ever was one.

Thomas is an interesting choice to provide reinforcement for Collins, since his raison d'être is to bash gays with holier-than-thou religious rhetoric. How that comports with the recent endorsement of Senator Collins by an ostensible gay rights outfit called the Human Rights Campaign is a real head scratcher.

Some discussion about what is going on is HERE. The endorsement, Collin's own actions, and the reaction of Christian-oriented hate groups in Maine all seem to be at odds. If we want to try to explain it all, I would say Collins truly is not on the same page as bashers like Thomas and the Christian Civic League, but she feels she needs votes from those quarters bad enough to throw them bones, and not throw them under the bus in the manner Barack Obama did with his former pastor.

It's sure to be an interesting campaign.

Democratic nominee John Kerry said basically the same thing in 2004

There was a minor hubbub, especially on the Countdown program with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, about this remark in Denver Friday,

SENATOR MCCAIN: My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will - that will then prevent us - that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.

Later, McCain said this really "didn't mean the U.S. went to war in Iraq five years ago over oil," along with some incomprehensible reason why the word "again" did not so mean. He then "clarified" that the Iraq war really was "because of weapons of mass destruction."

Ha! That's funny! Weapons of Mass Destruction is a better reason to be in Iraq than oil! Or, maybe he misspoke there too, it's really because Iraq is the "Central Front" of the Terror War, like a McCain stand-in explained on Hardball Friday.

It's all pretty silly. It may be "politically inconvenient," as the former Fed Chair, Alan Greenspan, wrote in his memoir, but no one can seriously believe that the U.S. would have picked Iraq for an invasion, conquest, and attempt at permanent strategic control if it weren't for that country being the only one left in the entire world where a few million barrels per day of potential swing oil production might be possible into the future.

And Senator John Kerry formed basically the same equation of better energy policy = no more troops to the Mideast. From his New Hampshire primary victory speech on January 27, 2004,

SENATOR KERRY: Stand with us - and we will give America the security of energy independence, because our sons and daughters should never have to fight and die for Mideast oil.

It is difficult to find because no one official wants to discuss in the open the role oil occupies in the formation of policy. Witness McCain's backtracking above. But if you want a picture of how much oil drives policy, October 2005 remarks by former Secretary of State Colin Powell's deputy, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, should be your guide.

WILKERSON: The other thing that no one ever likes to talk about is SUVs and oil and consumption and, as one little girl said yesterday at the Yoshiyama Awards, do you know that we consume 60 percent of the world's resources? We do; we consume 60 percent of the world's resources. Well, we have an economy and we have a society that is built on the consumption of those resources. We better get fast at work changing the foundation -- and I don't see us fast at work on that, by the way, another failure of this administration, in my mind -- or we better be ready to take those assets. We had a discussion in policy planning about actually mounting an operation to take the oilfields in the Middle East, internationalize them, put them under some sort of U.N. trusteeship and administer the revenues and the oil accordingly. That's how serious we thought about it.

Five years after the invasion of Iraq, we have $4 gas knocking at the door while we have a debilitating quagmire in the target country. It just keeps getting more and more puzzling to me that we can't have a forthright discussion about why we are really in there.

Note: Below the fold is the entirety of the 2004 New Hampshire victory speech by Senator Kerry. I really had to dig to find it, so I'm keeping it handy right here. It's rather apropos to today's gas tax discussions. I'd even say that this speech is more critical of big corporate interests than most of what is going on in the campaign today.

Democratic challenger for Collins seat contrasts his position with hers


I want to be clear that I certainly will vote for Tom Allen in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary on June 10, despite a sincere challenge from Tom Ledue.

I recognize in these talking points that Tom is vastly better than Susan Collins, and that is why I can support him now and in the general election too. Tom is also an old friend from the days he was mayor of Portland and I was Chair of the Democratic City Committee. I know that electing Tom Allen will be a huge improvement for Maine in the U.S. Senate.

Still, I see reasons for concern and problems with his statement on Iraq. The worst single phrase he uses is "force the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own country." This hardly "contrasts" with the policy promoted recently by Senator Collins.

In fact, it has been U.S. policy over the last three decades to deny Iraqis the ability to run their own country and make their own history. The root of the insurgency is within this denial. Tom should listen to Iraqi-born Sinan Antoon on this, who spoke in Maine last month. (Listen HERE.) What Tom is doing here may be politically apt, or it may not. Personally, I believe that the Maine public is ready for a much stronger, more honest examination of how and why the U.S. is in Iraq, and an equally strong position in favor of complete withdrawal at the earliest possible time. Note: The Bangor Six were not guilty.

I don't see "complete" withdrawal in Tom's talking points, and I am distrustful of the legislation prohibiting "permanent" bases. The prohibition on permanent bases has been unworkable. It doesn't prohibit "enduring" bases and construction of the massive U.S. embassy-palace, for which Congress has continued to provide practically unlimited funds.

So while I will continue to support Tom, I do not think his election necessarily will be itself a solution in Iraq. Public pressure must focus on a timetable for complete withdrawal. Then maybe could begin the generations-long process (listen to Sinan Antoon) of healing Iraq after a decade of American support for its former dictator, more than a decade of Democratic-administration-approved sanctions & bombing, followed by the devastating Bush invasion, conquest, occupation, looting, and sacking.