US Promoting Democracy in the Middle East? I Don't Think So.

I posted the following comment on Kevin Drum's blog in response to this post on Obama and democracy:

No US president can speak of "promoting democracy" in the Middle East as long as we are allied with and propping up dictators across the region, expanding a war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, failing to pay reparations to Iraq, and supporting Israel's denial of Palestinian refugees the right of return. Our overall effect in the region is utterly anti-democratic. You can't claim to promote democracy with one hand while you're holding people down and destroying societies with the other hand. Until the US ceases ALL its imperialist policies in the Middle East, it will be promoting tyranny and destruction there, not democracy. As I argued here, while Obama may be prettifying the face of US imperialism, he is preserving its core features, and the result is going to be more of the same for the Middle East (see also here). Finally, it's absurd for a US president to lecture the rest of the world about having an adequate civil society after the last eight years. It's the rest of the world that should be lecturing us.

Casey Says US Will Be in Iraq for Ten Years

On Tuesday, Gen. Casey, the Army chief of staff, said that the US was going to keep troops in Iraq for ten years. As far as I can tell, the White House hasn't issued any response Casey's comments, although though they obviously contradict Obama's plan to pull all US troops out of Iraq by August 2010. There also hasn't been any comment on this from any of the liberal bloggers I've checked. Matthew Yglesias, Kevin Drum, Ezra Klein, Spencer Ackerman (or rather, his guest bloggers, since he's on vacation), Atrios and TPM have all been silent.

It's hard to tell exactly what this means. Casey has gone on record as contradicting Obama's policy, yet there has been virtually no media coverage of it, no response from the White House or the Secretary of Defense and no pushback from liberals, all of which are disturbing. One thing it definitely implies is that Obama does not have control over his generals. But what is Obama's response going to be? Over the next year and a half, there are going to be numerous forces within the military, the Republican party, and among Obama's own advisors and other Democratics pushing to continue the occupation of Iraq. They have already won victories in Obama's decision to keep a "transitional force" in Iraq until 2011, the extension of Obama's withdrawal timetable by three months and the decision to seek exceptions to the June deadline for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraqi cities. Obama is going to need to be very steadfast to maintain his commitment to a complete withdrawal. Will he do what it takes?

Kevin Drum Throws Gay Rights under the Bus

A San Diego principal recently refused to allow a sixth-grade student to read a report on Harvey Milk to her class. The principal forced her classmates to get permission from their parents before hearing the report, then scheduled it during their lunch hour rather than the regularly scheduled class time.

Kevin Drum thinks that the ACLU's decision to demand an apology from the principal was "not exactly a profile in courage." Drum considers the principal guilty of "cretinism" but absolves him of blame because "he probably has long experience with mobs of angry parents making his life miserable over trivia."

In other words, Drum's position is that if you suspect you may be criticized for respecting gay rights, you're not out of line to toss them out the window. How's that for a strong liberal defense of equality?