Author Archives: Josh Eidelson

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On September 11, 2002, the city of New Haven, facing absurd budgets from Washington and Hartford, closed its Homeless Overflow Shelter on the grounds that the weather didn’t get too cold until December. To protest the city government’s priorities, raise the visibility the homelessness crisis, and provide a safe and central community for newly displaced homeless, a coalition of homeless, students, and community members built a tent city on the New Haven Green, situated with Yale University towering on the on side and City Hall on the other. Looks like a similar tent city is coming to Denver.

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Garance Franke-Ruta on Dean in Plymouth, NH:

About 1300 people turned out for the event, including Judy Dean, who is campaigning with her husband during the final stretch. Howard Dean spoke in more measured tones than I’m used to hearing from him, ending his sentences on a note of surprise instead of condemnation and replacing his trademark fiery “that turned out not to be true” denunciations of Bush with “there was no evidence for that,” spoken in tones of eminent reasonableness…

Dean managed to exude confidence and self-control where he used to exude toughness and strength, but I almost missed the old firebrand who played the crowd like an accordian. Still, the roar of the crowd made it clear that the attendees — many of whom, when queried, said they’d been backing him since the fall or before — still loved him. He made light of his screaming post-Iowa speech, and his supporters joked right back at him about it.

One held a banner proclaiming a “Free Screech Movement” and another a sign that read “Scream for Dean” on one side and “After 4 years of Bush, we’ll all be screaming” on the reverse. When Dean noted the sign, the audience whooped and shouted with delight, screaming their enthusiasm for Dean.

…The Deans today have doubtless been shaped by their profession as much as their state of residence…They are doctors, not Vermont hippies, and they helps explain their anti-aesthetic aesthetic as much as anything else.

Meanwhile, Alyssa is right to argue that Dean appears to be trotting his wife out as the type of prop he promised she wouldn’t be, although I’m not sure I find the Kerry approach as convincing as she does. It may be that the other men’s appearances with their wives will be more convincing for their never having said in the first place

We support each other’s goals in life. Her goal is to be a good doctor and a good mom. I think that’s a pretty good goal and I support that. I do not intend to drag her around because I think I need her as a prop on the campaign trail.

But I do credit him for a remark that furthered a conversation about the essentialization of political wives that needs pursuing, even as it looks like he’s failed to continue it.

There is, of course, one candidate safe from charges of hypocrisy on this count.

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Nathan Newman offers a good reason to like Kerry. Mickey Kaus offers several reasons not to. As I see it, Kerry’s greatest offense of the past months has been telling Eric Alterman in early December

Eric, if you truly believe that if I had been President, we would be at war in Iraq right now, then you shouldn’t vote for me

and then using the capture of Saddam Hussein to argue Howard Dean was weak for opposing the war.

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Human Rights Watch has just released its annual World Report, focusing on Human Rights and Armed Conflict. In this report, HRW, which has provided some of the strongest documentation of human rights violations in Iraq under Hussein in the sanctions era, assesses and condemns the humanitarian case for the War:

Because the Iraq war was not mainly about saving the Iraqi people from mass slaughter, and because no such slaughter was then ongoing or imminent, Human Rights Watch at the time took no position for or against the war. A humanitarian rationale was occasionally offered for the war, but it was so plainly subsidiary to other reasons that we felt no need to address it. Indeed, if Saddam Hussein had been overthrown and the issue of weapons of mass destruction reliably dealt with, there clearly would have been no war, even if the successor government were just as repressive. Some argued that Human Rights Watch should support a war launched on other grounds if it would arguably lead to significant human rights improvements. But the substantial risk that wars guided by non-humanitarian goals will endanger human rights keeps us from adopting that position…now that the war’s proponents are relying so significantly on a humanitarian rationale for the war, the need to assess this claim has grown in importance. We conclude that, despite the horrors of Saddam Hussein’s rule, the invasion of Iraq cannot be justified as a humanitarian intervention…

We have no illusions about Saddam Hussein?s vicious inhumanity. Having devoted extensive time and effort to documenting his atrocities, we estimate that in the last twenty-five years of Ba`th Party rule the Iraqi government murdered or ?disappeared? some quarter of a million Iraqis, if not more. In addition, one must consider such abuses as Iraq?s use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers. However, by the time of the March 2003 invasion, Saddam Hussein?s killing had ebbed.

There were times in the past when the killing was so intense that humanitarian intervention would have been justified?for example, during the 1988 Anfal genocide, in which the Iraqi government slaughtered some 100,000 Kurds…But on the eve of the latest Iraq war, no one contends that the Iraqi government was engaged in killing of anywhere near this magnitude, or had been for some time. ?Better late than never? is not a justification for humanitarian intervention, which should be countenanced only to stop mass murder, not to punish its perpetrators, desirable as punishment is in such circumstances…

If the purpose of the intervention was primarily humanitarian, then at least one other option should have been tried long before resorting to the extreme step of military invasion?criminal prosecution. There is no guarantee that prosecution would have worked, and one might have justified skipping it had large-scale slaughter been underway. But in the face of the Iraqi government?s more routine abuses, this alternative to military action should have been tried.

…the controversial invasion of Iraq stood in contrast to the three African interventions. In making that point, we do not suggest that the African interventions were without problems. All suffered to one degree or another from a mixture of motives, inadequate staffing, insufficient efforts to disarm and demobilize abusive forces, and little attention to securing justice and the rule of law. All of the African interventions, however, ultimately confronted ongoing slaughter, were motivated in significant part by humanitarian concerns, were conducted with apparent respect for international humanitarian law, arguably left the country somewhat better off, and received the approval of the U.N. Security Council. Significantly, all were welcomed by the relevant government, meaning that the standards for assessing them are more permissive than for a nonconsensual intervention.

However, even in light of the problems of the African interventions, the extraordinarily high profile of the Iraq war gives it far more potential to affect the public view of future interventions. If its defenders continue to try to justify it as humanitarian when it was not, they risk undermining an institution that, despite all odds, has managed to maintain its viability in this new century as a tool for rescuing people from slaughter.

HRW also calls attention to human rights struggles in post-war Afghanistan, post-war Iraq, Africa, Chechnya, the Balkans, and the US.

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Andy Stern writes from New Hampshire:

Since March 2003, 121 towns have passed resolutions calling for candidates for President of the United State to have a comprehensive health care plan and a way to pay for it. 50,000 New Hampshire voters have signed up as health care voters, and received detailed information on all the candidates position on health care. SEIU helped fund the first issue-ads of the election in NH on health care. So one victor for sure this election is health care.

Whomever wins the primary will have a comprehensive plan to give more people health care, and a funding plan. So, this will be an election in November that I am going to enjoy. A Democratic candidate with a plan to vastly expand and make health care more affordable campaigning against President Bush, who is more interested in drug company profits and the health of corporations than the American people.

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Josh Marshall on three candidate events yesterday:

Edwards may have the niceness campaign. But his folks aren’t above showing off what brickbats the other guys’ are using. In the hall behind the forest of tripods and the underbrush of AV cables and knocked over chairs, an Edwards staffer was telling a reporter he could come by Edwards Headquarters if he wanted to view the attack mailing Kerry was sending out about Clark. Right, Edwards will hook you with Kerry’s anti-Clark attack mailing…The crowd at the Edwards rally, by my count, was about 600 people, all very pumped up, with some undetermined number of others in an ‘overflow’ room somewhere else on campus….Edwards, as nearly as I can tell, never utters a word without one or more hands gesturing in some significant, word-intensifying manner. He railed at “that crowd of insiders in Washington and their lobbyists”, pumped his fists again and again, smiled again and again and told the audience about “the America we’re going to build.” I’ve realized that it’s impossible not to believe Edwards is going to be the nominee while you’re actually watching an Edwards event. The certainty wears off a while later, of course. But while he’s got you in his crowd you’re under his spell.

…Clark’s audience was in a similar-sized room with just as many people (roughly 600 we figured, with others in overflow) and, in their own way, just as charged as Edwards’. There was the same intensity, the crowd waves, the call and response, chants building up to fury and then lapsing away. The same intensity, but less organized — and more boisterous — or not so much directed by one person up on a stage…When I saw Clark a few days ago his delivery struck me as a tad rushed. He yelled his presentation a bit, or something — I’m not sure precisely what — was just off key. But today was different. He connected with the crowd. He hit the war issue hard — Bush is someone who “prances around on the deck of an aircraft carrier.”…Edwards is a bit like a high school rally: fun, loud, clean, exuberance, well-drilled. Clark’s event had no less intensity, but it was a bit more rough-edged, grittier somehow.

…Kerry’s event was in a cavernous high school gym at another school in Nashua, a room at least twice the size of the other two I’d been to that morning and bisected by a massive Patton-like American flag, which made the backdrop for Kerry’s speech…it seemed like many more than either Edwards’ or Clark’s — I wouldn’t be surprised if it were double the number…And looking around the crowd I noticed it was well seeded with political notables from both states…It reminds you that Kerry was the front-runner last winter and spring, before the wagon got upended…He’s also adopting the high presidential cant … “and so I say to you” … “in these final hours” … “stand with me and …”

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One of Cambodia’s leading labor activists has been shot to death:

Chea Vichea led efforts to organize garment workers and to fight for improved working conditions in Cambodia. In an interview with Human Rights Watch in 2002, Mr. Chea said that he had been attacked and threatened, and had been beaten by a military colonel in charge of security at a garment factory.

…Human Rights Watch noted that Chea Vichea’s assassination is the latest in a string of political killings in Cambodia. His death follows the October killing of a radio journalist and the shooting of a popular singer, both of whom were affiliated with FUNCINPEC, the royalist party led by Prince Norodom Ranariddh. A judge and a court clerk were killed in April 2003, a senior adviser to Norodom Ranariddh was murdered in January 2003, and 13 political party activists were killed in the run-up to the July 2003 elections.

Human Rights Watch said that a series of politically motivated attacks on opposition supporters had gone unpunished. Mr. Chea was a public supporter of political opposition leader Sam Rainsy.

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Zach argues that calling Saul Alinsky Machiavellian is a crude slur. I’m not sure Alinsky would agree. Certainly, the violent character Poe depicts bears little resemblance to Alinsky; same goes for his Hillary Clinton et al. Alinsky did, however, argue persuasively with his “rules of means and ends” that the left is overly hostile to the development and deployment of power through organizing, and overly paralyzed by metaethical debates and overly splintered over tactics. I’d say there were several respects in which he was right. Hillary Clinton, incidentally, wrote her thesis criticizing Alinsky’s tenant organizing in Chicago. Needless to say, while there’s much that’s deeply problematic about the top-down nature and rigidity of Alinsky’s organizing model, and the distance it creates between the roles of organizers and leaders, I’d take his leadership model over Hillary’s neoliberal village any day. I won’t say any more of Richard Poe’s Freeper ramblings except that the best condemnation of the “respected Hillary biographies” he cites is recorded by David Brock, who wrote one of them and worked with the authors of the others.