Hillary Swings to the Right + Clock Running Out on Afghan Extra-Legal Government

There is a good piece this morning by Gaius Publius, "The Clinton Campaign Speaks to the New York Times," which combs through a Patrick Healy story, "Clinton Campaign Underestimated Sanders Strengths, Allies Say," that appeared in the Sunday edition of the paper. One of the interesting points sussed out is that the Hillary brain trust is fearful of a "wave election," which means that the Clinton campaign, contrary to its publicly stated position that it plans to win by returning the Obama coalition to the polls, is actually now running against the Obama coalition; hence the attacks on Sanders' "Medicare for All" from the right. According to Gaius Publius,

A “wave election” is one where a very large number of new voters attempt to make big changes. Very large numbers of new voters. Now go back up to the Healy comment gleaned from the Clinton campaign. Ms. Clinton is “unnerved by the possibility that Mr. Sanders will foment a large wave of first-time voters…” 

How would a “wave of first-time voters,” which would heavily drive Democratic base turnout, not be very good for the Democratic Party, as in, 2008-good. The Healy passage basically says that Hillary Clinton would trade away all of that to-the-party benefit to become the nominee, that she would be willing to seriously weaken the party so long as she could then lead it. This is almost the definition of destructive ambition. Is that a fair characterization? I think we’d have to ask Patrick Healy, as the quoted passage is his. 

Don’t forget that the quoted passage add the phrase “and liberals” to the “large wave of first-time voters” that Mrs. Clinton and her husband are “unnerved by.”Are Mr. and Ms. Clinton really “unnerved” by “liberals”? Again, the phrasing is Healy’s, but the sentiments are claimed to be those of the Clintons.

Just as the Republicans are struggling with a "wave election" of their own in the form of Donald Trump, so too are the Democrats. At this point the two hands of the duopoly are trying to beat down a democratic uprising. In the case of Hillary, her campaign team now regrets not resorting to fearmongering earlier ("A vote for Sanders is a vote to raise your taxes"; "Sanders is unelectable"). Amy Chozick outlines this in an illuminating piece that appeared yesterday, "Hillary Clinton Gets Set for a Long Slog Against Bernie Sanders," the most revealing passage of which I found to be the prediction of where the Clinton campaign's current rightward drift will end up:

Even if Mrs. Clinton wins in Iowa, where she maintains a slight lead in most polls, Mr. Sanders could receive an outpouring of small donations if the outcome is close that would help him compete in subsequent states. Mr. Sanders, a small-state senator who has never run for national office, has shown surprising fund-raising muscle. Many of his donors have yet to give him the maximum individual contribution of $2,700, meaning they could be tapped repeatedly if the contest remains close. [Good point.] His campaign raised $33 million in the final quarter of 2015, just $4 million less than Mrs. Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton’s aides say they expect to win Iowa and New Hampshire [happy talk] and are ready for the grind. A giant whiteboard on the wall of the campaign’s headquarters maps out where staff members would be sent depending on the outcomes in the early states.

“We just game out a bunch of different scenarios,” Mr. Mook said. “It’s kind of like ‘choose your own adventure.’ ”

This is not the adventure the Clinton team would have chosen.

A prolonged primary campaign against an opponent widely popular with the party’s liberal base could exhaust donors who will also be asked to contribute to an expensive campaign to defeat the Republican nominee. A contentious race against Mr. Sanders could also weaken Mrs. Clinton’s standing among Democratic voters she would need in November.

The last sentence is the obvious one, the one that loomed large last year but has yet to be given the prominence it deserves. Now it is all the more prominent because Hillary is attacking from the right. After months of this, how are you going to drive turnout among the progressive Democratic base come November? You're not.

The pro-Hillary people are hoping that a defense of the Democratic status quo -- Obamacare, for instance (see Krugman's hopeless Monday column, "Health Reform Realities") -- will allow the Clinton campaign to muddle through. But while this might be a 50%+1 strategy to win the Democratic nomination, it basically guarantees a loss in the general election (unless the Republicans manage to concoct an even more perverse strategy to nominate an Establishment-friendly alternative to Trump).

One story that is worth taking a look at is Mujib Mashal's "Afghan Panel Sets Election Date, Drawing Government Criticism." Afghanistan and the United States are intimately linked. At the end of the 1970s when neoliberalism -- the eradication of social democracy -- was taking root in a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate America, a robust militarist accompaniment was called for. Afghanistan provided it with Charlie Wilson's War, the U.S.-led, Saudi-funded proxy conflict against the Soviet Union. Then there was the post-9/11 occupation, which remains to this day despite many announcements of the end of combat operations.

 In 2014 the U.S./NATO puppet government was in danger of splitting apart because of the fraudulent election of Ashraf Ghani over his opponent Abdullah Abdullah. Secretary of State John Kerry jetted in and cobbled together an "extra-legal" agreement enshrining a unity government that made Ghani president and Abdullah chief executive.

That agreement had a sunset date, this October, and some caveats, two of which are that parliamentary elections be held before October and that a loya jirga be convened, none of which has happened. According to Mashal,

The Afghan unity government, brokered by the United States after the bitter election dispute between Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah in 2014 threatened to tear the country apart, is in a race against time to meet the requirements of the political agreement it was founded on, set to expire in October. 

That agreement requires the government to hold local elections, which are already months overdue, by the time it completes two years in office in October. It is also supposed to have convened a grand assembly of elders from across the country by October to amend the Constitution and create the position of prime minister for Mr. Abdullah to move into. 

Pressure from political opposition groups has been increasing on Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah in recent months. Some of the groups have warned that the government, severely pressed by Taliban offensives across the country, will lose its legitimacy if it does not hold the elections soon. Other groups have given up on the current government entirely, calling for early presidential elections to bring in a new administration.

The problem is even if there were a decision by all in government to hold elections immediately there would likely not be enough time, with war raging in Helmand Province and Islamic State on the rise in Nangarhar Province, to have elections by October.

The October surprise in the U.S. elections could be the collapse of the quisling government in Afghanistan.

Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan: The Promise of Elections Will Not Bring Peace

There is little reason to hope that anything will come of the UN-approved peace plan for Syria announced last Friday. Just look at how poorly peace talks on Yemen have gone; and with Yemen you don't have nearly the number of large-state actors with their fingers in the mix as is the case with Syria. In Yemen, like in Syria, a significant problem is how to contain the efflorescence of Salafi jihadists who are supported by Saudi Arabia. Kareem Fahim and Saleed al-Batati report in "Yemen Peace Talks End With No End to Conflict" that

In recent days, anti-Houthi fighters have mounted a broad offensive across several northern provinces, and captured new territory, including a provincial capital. [What about the ceasefire?] The anti-Houthi forces are backed by a Saudi-led military coalition that has been conducting an aerial campaign against the rebels since March. Human rights groups say that bombing by the coalition is responsible for the majority of civilian deaths during the war. 

The Saudi-led coalition carried out airstrikes in Sana and other areas on Saturday and Sunday. And the Houthis, who have been making increasingly bold military incursions across the border into Saudi Arabia, have fired ballistic missiles at the Saudi-backed forces in the past few days, according to Yemeni military officials.

It appears that the Houthis are flying the white flag, but to no avail:

Nasser Bagazgooz, who was part of the Houthi delegation, asserted that his side had made “big” concessions, including agreeing to withdraw Houthi forces from cities and from government institutions, and to hand over weapons.

The Houthis had asked for the formation of a new government “from across the political spectrum,” and elections within a year, he added.

The Houthis are basically mirroring the UN-outlined peace process for Syria. But the Saudis don't seem to find this acceptable, which should tell us how smoothly things will go in January.

Interestingly, elections are also on the mind of a nascent opposition movement within the quisling Afghan government. But first a few words on the dire military predicament in Afghanistan from this morning's "Situation Report" by Foreign Policy's Paul McLeary:

Taliban keeps pushing. NATO’s combat mission in Afghanistan may have ended last December, but the deaths of six U.S. soldiers near Bagram airbase on Monday, and the rushed deployments of U.S. and British forces to Helmand province to hold back a resurgent Taliban, tell a very different story. 

The loss of six soldiers in one strike is the largest battlefield loss for the U.S. in Afghanistan in well over a year, and more than doubles American combat fatalities there in 2015, which stood at four before Monday.

Renewed Taliban offensives across the country call into question the effectiveness of the Afghan army, which continues to struggle despite years of training and billions spent on equipping the force. And now, American commandos are back in the fight in the southern province of Helmand to backstop Afghan forces, who are in danger of losing control of the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah and the key town of Sangin, FP’s Paul McLeary reports.

British troops have also been sent to Helmand, though London insists they are only acting in an advisory role. It’s worth remembering that Sangin resonates deeply with the British public, “as more than 100 of their 456 fatalities in Afghanistan since the start of the war in 2001 took place in the district,” the AP notes.

Mujib Mashal reported in yesterday's paper, "Afghan Government Faces New Set of Rivals," that allies of former president Hamid Karzai are demanding that the Ghani-Abdullah government honor pledges to hold elections within nine months. There is a hardcore segment of this opposition who want a loya jirga convened immediately and a caretaker government put in place:

It was unlikely that the members of the opposition council would have much popular support, because many of them had controversial pasts, Mr. Safi said. [Wadir Safi, a lecturer of political science at Kabul University.] But the government’s abysmal record has given many of them hope that they can exercise some power anyway, he added.

“The problem is also that the government hasn’t delivered at all — the two men came together in an illegal agreement, they have talked a lot and delivered nothing, and they are trying to extend that,” Mr. Safi said.

Mr. Ghani’s government came to power through a power-sharing agreement brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry after an election stalemate last year threatened to throw the country into a civil war. The agreement’s two-year deadline expires next September, and it calls for a thorough overhaul of the election process, the holding of parliamentary and district elections, and a national assembly of elders to amend the Constitution and formalize Mr. Abdullah’s position as a prime minister.

But 15 months after coming to power, the government has struggled with even the most basic steps needed for holding the elections, including an agreement on the makeup of the commission to oversee the vote. A harsh winter, and a Taliban offensive that is expected to intensify in the spring, makes their task of holding the elections as scheduled even more difficult.

In all three battle zones -- Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan -- elections will not bring peace. In not one of the three countries does the U.S. and its Saudi ally want truly free and fair elections. The U.S. doesn't have free and fair elections in the homeland, and neither do the Saudis. So the wars will continue.

Loya Jirga + NFL Week 12

The loya jirga begins tomorrow in Afghanistan. It will decide whether to approve the Status of Forces Protection Agreement (SOFA) close to being hammered out by the government of Hamid Karzai and the United States. According to a report today by Rod Nordland, "Afghans Demand That U.S. Admit Military Errors," everything is settled, even the contentious issues of immunity from Afghan law for U.S. forces and the continuation of the counterterrorism practice of raiding private homes. The only item pending is a letter of apology from Obama for military blunders:

With one day remaining to finalize the wording of the security agreement before the loya jirga meets, [Aimal Faizi, Karzai's spokesman] said that was the remaining issue in talks, carried out in their last phase by Mr. Karzai with the American ambassador, James B. Cunningham, and the American military commander, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. 

“The rest, everything is solved,” Mr. Faizi said.

It will be interesting to see the size of the U.S. military footprint once the loya jirga, whose participants are handpicked by Karzai, signs off on the SOFA. Iraq refused the customary U.S. demand for immunity during its SOFA negotiations, which led to a complete withdrawal of American forces. At the end of last month al-Maliki made an official visit to Obama to ask for drones and Apache helicopters to combat an Al Qaeda insurgency raging in Iraq. There is no doubt that without a substantial military commitment by Obama Karzai will be fleeing Kabul in a matter of months, if that, after U.S. troops withdraw from Afghanistan next year.

The Afghan loya jirga starts tomorrow, but so too does Week 12 of the National Football League season with the 8-2 Saints traveling to Atlanta to take on the hapless 2-8 Falcons. Surveying the big games nothing really pops out. The hometown Seahawks have a bye week. Next Monday night they will host New Orleans in a possible playoff preview. Seattle looked impressive in the second half against the Vikings. The Seahawks continue to underwhelm at home in the first half. The defense looks lackluster, though, to its credit, they completely dominated Adrian Peterson from start to finish. The remaining five games will tell Seahawks fans a lot about how far their team is going to go towards the Lombardy Trophy. The schedule is: Saints at home, 49ers away, Giants away, Cardinals home, Rams home. Each game is a potential loss. Besides the obvious challenge offered by conference powers New Orleans and San Francisco, New York is surging, as is Arizona, and St. Louis almost beat us at home last year. So Pete Carroll needs to get his team better prepared coming out of the bye than it was last year when they dropped a game they should have won in Miami. In that game the run defense and pass rush were piss poor.

Two Week 12 games promise to be interesting. The Cowboys travel to New Jersey to take on the Giants. The Giants have won four in a row after losing their first six games. The Cowboys have been banged up on defense. Without having watched a complete game of New York's this season, I'm taking the Giants over Dallas.

The other game that is worth watching is the Sunday night match-up between the Patriots and the Broncos. Much as I loathe to do it, I've got to take New England at home. Yes, Denver looked impressive at home against the Chiefs, but I'm convinced that Belichik as an underdog at home with Brady at QB in the premiere televisual event of the week is a safe bet. (Belichik often performs poorly as a favorite; but as an underdog, he is money in the bank.) Take the Patriots.