A quick question

Are there any sane people who think that bombing the holiest site of the Islamic faith would actually deter Muslim extremists from attacking the United States? Although you have to love the idea of deciding who you will attack in retaliation before you even know who has attacked you, or hell, that you'll be attacked. It's so very... PNAC.

Equally amusing is the fact that people who promote this ideas probably consider themselves realists. But anyone with a firm basis in this reality knows that getting the US defense establishment to consider military action against Saudi Arabia would be about as likely as convincing the same folks we should stop sending bombs to Israel.

The New Workout Plan

NPR did a piece last week on the new communication strategy in Iraq (listen here). The U.S military is attempting a Madison Avenue approach, attempting to sell the U.S. occupation as a good thing in the way you would persuade someone to buy Pepsi. The exact tactics are unclear but there is an idea of a new communication strategy. Communication is presented as a new solution but the new solution is full of problems. One problem is the individual person’s inability to be neutral. The second problem is that the new strategy is based on old communication models.

Eric Dezenhall is astute in the NPR piece because he point out the problem with the “evangelical view” of communication. Communication is context-specific, meaning it enters into an existing psychological and cultural framework. Dezenhall points out that a completely neutral audience never exists in advertising. In the case of Iraq, there are a lot of upset people. The marketing strategy, in his estimation, is likely to fail because it is unable to understand the hostility of the Iraqi audience to messages from the U.S. government.

It is unlikely that the military will adapt to a new plan, leadning to the second problem. The military believes a message can be spread through force alone. If a message is repeated loudly and more frequently, then the military believes it will get through. The “Transmission Model” is flawed because it treats communication like a series of mortars. A communicator in any context is simply not able to launch an idea into an enemy territory and hope it does damage. Related to the first problem, the military is not only a believer in a failing plan but a group unable to change plans.

The Consortium for Strategic Communication (FULL DISCLOSURE: I am/was a member of this group) released a report claiming a new communication model was needed for the war on terrorism. The Pragmatic Complexity Model allows for greater adaptation to a specific context but has some disadvantages in presentation. The concept of “failure as the norm” is realistic but unpalatable. Planning small carries fewer political advantages than planning big. It is a tougher model but a new plan for the future. I ask the readers to listen and read, giving some feedback on the best course of action.

Ellison on trial

Keith Ellison (D-MN), for not the fist time, is the scourge of the conservative blogosphere. That's a title that is quite difficult to hold for any extended period of time, so props to him for even intermittently triumphing over such bogeymen as trans people who want to pee in our bathrooms, reds who want Castro to be America's health provider, and the always-popular Hilary Clinton, who, even while on hiatus from doing something that conservatives will find scandalous (read: anything), can at least be counted on to be Hilary Clinton. Which, for many bloggers, is enough.

But Ellison has incensed everyone from the reliably hateful JawaReport (Ellison is inexplicably asked to answer for the actions of a Muslim cleric who supported Hitler in WWII), to the predictably insane Michelle Malkin (who is still to convinced that Ellison is out to impose sharia law despite his having civil libertarian credentials that look especially convincing next to her own fascist bluster), and even harsh criticisms from conservative commentators who teeter precipitously on the edge of the mainstream at Power Line and Fox News. Ladies and gentleman, we may have the makings of a genuine controversy.The reason: KEITH ELLISON COMPARED GEORGE BUSH TO HITLER.

Kind of.


Ellison actually compared 9/11 to the burning of the Reichstag.

"It's almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that," Mr Ellison said. "After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted."

Which, if we limit the analogy to just what Ellison said, is not particularly extreme. And why shouldn't we? The purpose of an analogy, after all, is not to say that two things are homologous (the same), but, of course, analogous (that they bear comparison in at least one attribute). Keith Ellison is saying that 9/11 was a national tragedy which was quickly politicized and resulted in the extension of executive power to a level that would be easily abused and incredibly difficult to check. Yes, this means the analogy set Bush opposite Hitler, insofar as both were the recipient of enlarged, and subsequently misused, executive power. Given the Bush administrations use of torture, warrant-less wire-tapping, and continued invocation of executive privilege to dodge oversight, that comparison is not particularly extreme. Certainly, Ellison could have avoided the controversy altogether had he picked any other example of a leader who exploited nationalism and fear after a major tragedy to increase his power. Personally, I would have come out of left-field by dropping in an Emperor Palpatine reference (with the separatist menace to the Republic replacing 9/11 as the rhetorical cudgel). But I see nothing particularly offensive about the comparison Ellison chose to make. Politically unwise, perhaps, but not historically inaccurate or arguably unethical.

The reactions of conservatives are hard to understand.

Mark Drake, of the Republican party in Minnesota, said: "To compare the democratically elected leader of the United States of America to Hitler is an absolute moral outrage which trivialises the horrors of Nazi Germany."

Hitler too, was democratically elected. And it would be a moral outrage to say, for example, that United States use of violence in the war on terror surpasses or rivals the brutality of the Nazi regime. But that is not what Ellison said, nor is it implied by his comment. Ultimately, Ellison is making the oft-heard point that Bush, like so many ascendant authoritarians, is a masterful manipulator of fear. Research in political psychology bears this critique out. The linked study shows that reminders of death and terrorism don't substantially increase a subject's propensity to support George W. Bush. But when one group was made to reflect on the process of dying and death, while the other focused on less weighty concerns, it was found the first group was significantly more likely to support Bush. Sustaining support for his own counter-terrorism policies depends on Bush's ability to cultivate the fear of death amongst citizens. The political weaponization of fear has always been a reliable tool in the arsenal of despots. Fear silences dissent and breeds mistrust - both of which have been linked to stronger support for conservative policies.

The conservative blogopshere is certainly aware of this fact. Their menace-of-the-week approach to politics seeks to do at the grassroots what Bush does from the bully pulpit - to make American suspicious of their neighbors, mistrustful of immigrants, skeptical of the motives of reformers and leaders of communities unlike their own. Their spin on the Ellison story is a calculated move within that game. Their insistence on associating Ellison with terrorists, oppressive regimes culminating with some phantasmic clutch for the heart and soul of Middle America is demagoguery at its worst.

One commenter on Malkin's blog shouts down a level-headed defense of Ellison with this:

Why do I have the feeling that MikeB can’t wait to don the burqua and pay the jizya as a good, subservient dhimmi? (You do realize that your beloved 9/10-era Bill of Rights won’t be observed under the coming Sharia-based regime, don’t you?)

It’s amusing (in a sad and terrifying way) how hand-wringing useful idiots like you can’t stand the idea that you aren’t extending undeserved rights to forces who solely seek your conversion, subjugation or death. I’m sure the jihadis lay awake at night worrying about your rights as well.

A climate in which such a threat is even passingly entertained as probable has clearly collapsed into its own rhetorical constructs, utterly separated from reality by fear. But the real shockers is the bitter conclusion of the second paragraph. "Don't worry about their rights, they aren't worried about yours." The corrosive effects of fear on human solidarity could not be demonstrated more clearly.