President Bush

Although he denies it, it is often said that Karl Rove’s political idol is Mark Hanna the Ohio political boss who was the power behind the throne of William McKinley’s presidency which ushered in an era of GOP predominance in the White House that lasted from the turn of the old century to FDR’s election in 1932. What is not in dispute is the hope that Rove had for building an enduring Republican majority for the first part of the twenty-first century. This majority was to be built on holding onto the old Reagan Democrats on cultural issues and reaching out to potentially new GOP voters among more successful Latinos and he wanted to use big government to do it. This was to be the essence of “compassionate conservatism”.

McCain vs. Markets

So Rove and Bush never made any concerted effort to tackle the spending side of the equation in their budgets and Bush most tellingly never saw fit to raise his veto pen when the profligate 109th Congress was porking and corrupting its way into oblivion. The Social Security reform plan was designed to appeal (as it should have) to younger voters and move them into the GOP column by allowing them to invest a portion of their FICA withholding taxes in private accounts which over a lifetime of work would have provided the basis for real wealth as opposed to the pittance returned by Treasury securities in traditional SS. The Medicare Prescription Drug Bill, the largest expansion of a federal entitlement program since Medicare’s adoption in 1965, was likewise designed to expand government to the betterment of the GOP politically. And now the dream lies amidst the likely rubble that will be the results electorally for the GOP on Tuesday November 4th.

Now it is arguable that there are many reasons for this. The difficulty of any party retaining its dominance for a period of nearly thirty years as has been enjoyed by the Republicans since Reagan’s first term. And most importantly an economic situation that in its severity always cuts against the party holding the White House. Yet I believe the primary reason is one thing and one thing only and that is the Iraq war. Because while Iraq is now tenuously looking much better and which as a result has taken this issue (the worst for Obama) off the table for the most part as a political issue the war itself is what drove George Bush’s approval ratings into the cellar and along with them much of the GOP’s as well. As Iraq exploded in 2005 any political capital the president had would remained deployed to try and shore up support in the Congress for the war and keep Iraq from turning into another Vietnam. That he succeeded in this against long odds is to his everlasting credit but it bankrupted him for the domestic arena and the attempt to reform Social Security.

How much of the failure of US policy in Iraq prior to the turnaround in ‘06 can be placed at Rove’s feet? That’s an open question that will only be answered by historians down the round but I believe a hint might be available now. Rove assumed his position as Deputy Chief of Staff for domestic affairs shortly after the president’s second inaugural. In that position he was to have a policymaking role for all matters related to domestic affairs including the economy. While I have no proof to back up my suspicions it would seem to follow that instead of reasonably asking for some sacrifices from the American people from a financial standpoint in order to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rove’s idea of a “guns and butter” approach would have been wholly in keeping in what he considered to be the key to keeping voters happy with the GOP brand. Further, how much can the Fed’s disastrous cheap money policies which contributed to the inflation of the housing bubble be attributed to Rove? Again, I honestly don’t know but what I do know is that this administration’s penchant for borrowing has been enormous.

Unfortuntately for him, John McCain’s shoehorning into the Rove box has proven an uncomfortable fit. McCain, whose instincts are more Rooseveltian (Teddy) than Rovian, in order to placate GOP mossbacks, has been forced into a schizoid general election campaign that echos as a pale imitation of the same old same old standby Bush has practiced. Instead of swinging for the fences with a truly audacious plan like calling for a broadly based carbon tax to be offset by cuts in FICA taxes that would have the dual benefit of both spurring investment in alternative energy sources and giving working and middle class taxpayers real relief from the most regressive of our taxes, McCain is losing the tax issue to a Democrat which is something unheard of for a Republican. And McCain finds himself falling in the polls virtually in lockstep with the decline in the equities markets. Maybe this was simply too much for McCain to overcome but there is no denying that he missed a signal opportunity to point the party in a new direction as I pointed out nearly ten months ago in The McCain Moment and the Future of the GOP. So in this election cycle Republicans find themselves of being in a position to hope only for classic overreach on the part of Democrats that might restore their hopes in 2010’s midterm elections. It’s a far cry from the high hopes that Karl Rove and George Bush believed was theirs for the taking eight years ago.

Some time back, I wrote about Robert Farley’s review of David Horowitz and Ben Johnson’s Party of Defeat.

Recall that Farley completely bombed in his attempt at making even the slightest dent in the Horowitz and Johnson’s thesis, a thesis holding that the Democrats - pandering to their antiwar base - turned against a war they had nominally supported, an about face unprecedented in the domestic politics of American warfare.

Horowitz and Johnson show in exacting yet excruciating detail that today’s Democrats have demonstrated a eager willingness to abandon objective national security threat assessments for narrow partisan political gain. Where once the party of John F. Kennedy led the fight against communism worldwide, the heirs of Democratic containment have sought to appease terrorism and coddle dictators. From Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha, to Harry Reid and Barack Obama, at no time in our historical memory has a political party sought to weaken American standing in war and diplomacy abroad.

As I noted in my post, “Farley’s essentially dishonest in his review,” which was apparent in the baseless allegations he made in his essay alleging “the summary field execution of Afghan civilians” in the war in Afghanistan.

It should be no surprise now, then, that Farley acknowleges - in an essay today at the blog Lawyers, Guns and Money - his own unseriousness and shallow motivations for undertaking a book review of a serious study of American foreign policy - a book he knew in advance would fundamentally challenge his ideological beliefs.

Here’s how Farley explains his approach to reviewing Party of Defeat, noting his response to an e-mail from Frontpage Magazine offering $1000 to formally comment on the book:

My first thought was “Have I read the book yet? Heh.” My second thought was “$1000. That sure could buy a lot of whiskey sours.” My third thought was “200. It could buy 200 whiskey sours, if I go to the right places. Maybe with a few Manhattans sprinkled in for variety.” My fourth thought was “Hey, it could even pay for whiskey sours that I’ve already bought, and that are still hanging around on my credit card balance.” It’s fair to say, then, that I found the offer appealing from the get go.

I immediately IMed Matt Duss, who told me that the offer had been floating around the DC blogging/journalism community for a while. Duss (and others) had given thought to taking the deal, but then decided that engaging with Horowitz would grant him too much legitimacy. This, I thought, was true enough; it was the reason that Horowitz was willing to pay an outrageous sum for lefties to review his book. He was trying to buy legitimacy. The point was to create the illusion that there was something in Party of Defeat that was worth engaging with, and consequently that David Horowitz was a man of ideas, rather than a thug and second rate polemicist. As such, engagement with the work as meaningful scholarship could be fundamentally dishonest, in that it accorded the book a level of respect greater than the typical bar bathroom scrawl.

Given these sentiments, why accept the offer?

There was a certain comfort in the recognition that Horowitz’ effort was transparent; taking the money to review the book was, in itself, subversive of the notion that Horowitz was a serious thinker. Of course, I would accept money to review a book that I had an interest in reading, but I would never read Horowitz were it not for the money.

Readers might carefully ponder all of this.

One thousand dollars is a great sum to write a brief book review, and self-interest alone might explain Farley’s decision. Yet, if that’s the only motivation, there’s logically little need for an intellectual investment in performing what most would consider a professional obligation: to review the work with good faith and rigor. Yet, Farley’s self-expose reveals nothing of the sort, as seen in his experience in first wading into the book after agreeing to write the review:

And so on a Monday evening I set out for the Mellow Mushroom with Party of Defeat and a yellow notepad. I ordered a pitcher of beer and a pepperoni, pineapple, and jalapeno pizza, and settled in, expected to read roughly a third of the book. And then, about halfway down the first page, I noticed a serious problem with my plan. The. Book. Is. Unimaginably. Terrible. You may think you can guess how bad it is, but you can’t. It’s Benji Saves the Universe Terrible. It’s notes on each of the first seventy pages terrible. It’s spitting up your valuable, valuable beer terrible. There’s just nothing there. It can’t be engaged with, any more than the homeless dude with the tinfoil hat can. It’s a disaster, and I just couldn’t understand how I could possibly come up with a thousand words that could conceivably be termed “engagement”, and still have any pretence to intellectual honesty.

As I so often do, I sought solace in alcohol. I gave some thought to bagging the project, because I didn’t think that the $1000 was worth having to do a genuinely dishonest appraisal. Then again, I’d spent some time and intellectual energy; I also really wanted the thousand dollars. Finally, I latched onto the idea of treating the book as if it were a work of historical fiction, or perhaps even the novelization of some crazy right wing movie.

I recommend that readers see for themselves what’s so shocking in Party of Defeat. The introduction is here, and includes this:

What nation can prevail in a war if half its population believes that the war is unnecessary and unjust, that its commander-in-chief is a liar, and that its own government is the aggressor? What president can mobilize his nation if his word is not trusted? And what soldier can prevail on the field of battle if half his countrymen are telling him that he shouldn’t be there in the first place?

It was July 2003, only four months after American forces entered Iraq, when the Democratic Party launched its first all-out attack on the president’s credibility and the morality of the war. The opening salvos were reported in a New York Times article: “Democratic presidential candidates offered a near-unified assault today on President Bush’s credibility in his handling of the Iraq War signaling a shift in the political winds by aggressively invoking arguments most had shunned since the fall of Baghdad.”

While American forces battled al-Qaeda and Ba’athist insurgents in the Iraqi capital, the Democratic National Committee released a television ad that focused not on winning those battles, but on the very legitimacy of the war. The theme of the ad was “Read His Lips: President Bush Deceives the American People.” The alleged deception was sixteen words that had been included in the State of the Union address he delivered on the eve of the conflict.

These words summarized a British intelligence report claiming that Iraq had attempted to acquire fissionable uranium in the African state of Niger, thus indicating Saddam’s (well-known) intentions to develop nuclear weapons. The report was subsequently confirmed by a bipartisan Senate committee and a British investigative commission, but not until many months had passed and the Democratic attacks had taken their toll.[18] On the surface, the attacks were directed at the president’s credibility for repeating the British claim. But their clear implication was to question the decision to go to war—in other words, to cast doubt on the credibility of the American cause. If Saddam had not sought fissionable uranium in Niger, it was suggested, then the White House had lied in describing Saddam as a threat.

In the midst of a war, and in the face of a determined terrorist resistance in Iraq, Democrats had launched an attack on America’s presence on the field of battle. This separated their assault from the normal criticism of war policies.

The problem for Farley, seen in his original review, but also in his blog post, is that he refuses to engage Horowitz and Johnson at a genuine intellectual level. It’s all a “conspiracy” to him, and thus easily dismissed as unworthy of rigorous engagement.

Yet, David Horowitz, et al., is hardly the first person to argue that the Democrats have relinquished any sense of force of backbone since the Vietnam era.

In 2002, a few presidential wannabes - like Hillary Clinton and John Edwards - and some Democratic partisans confused over changes in international politics - like Harry Reid - rode the tide of national outrage over 9/11 into a vote authorizing intervention in Iraq. Many others in the Senate did not. The House vote, further, saw a majority of Democrats oppose the legislation.

A good case could be made, therefore, that on a straight roll-call analysis, the party - with the exception of a few aberrant members - stood fast in its ideological framework in opposition to a war considered ill-conceived and hastily arranged.

Farley doesn’t do this, however.

Instead, he attacks Horowitz himself as a wild-eyed bozo too crazed for a modicum of respect.

Indeed, as Farley admits at his post:

I decided simply to not engage at all with Horowitz’ use of evidence; factual claims in the book were designed for “truthiness” rather than for truth, and trying to start an argument about Plame or McGovern or Reagan or whatever else wouldn’t be productive.

To argue against “factual claims,” it seems, wouldn’t be productive, since Party of Defeat makes its case so well.

Farley basically throws up his hands in opposition to the book based on faith, and faith alone. Evidence in debate doesn’t count when all-encompassing leftist ideology provides comprehensive, irrefutable answers to the universe. With Howowitz and Johnson as “truthers” - selling a conspiracy to justify a con of the American people - Farley can keep sucking back a few drinks and take the money and run.

And that’s basically what he did.

Robert Farley pissed on David Horowitz. He wrote a cheap rebuttal to a genuine and serious work of critical research on the Democrats and Iraq, all because the book challenged untouchable leftist shibboleths. This is anti-intellectualism, at the least, and certainly outright fraud of the first order.

Farley is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School. I know many untenured faculty members wouldn’t put themselves this far out on a scholarly limb. No matter in this case, of course, as it’s clear that Farley doesn’t care one way or the other, not about reputation nor rigor.

This man’s not only an academic mountebank, but a moral abomination as well.

~cross-posted at American Power

Victory in Iraq was all but declared earlier this year.

Both major candidates have claimed success for the Petraeus surge, and each have proposed policy adjustments for the future of Iraq and global security. Even this week, the Associated Press conceded a major Bush administration argument on the conflict, that success in Iraq would stablize the Mideast and promote American interests in the region. Even American public opinion sees the administration’s counterinsurgency strategy as improving security in Iraq, and making it possible for the eventual drawdown of American forces.

If we might expect policy disagreements between the right and left in American politics, it should be on the pace and scope of the forthcoming troop withdrawal, or one might think.

Not so for the folks at Firedoglake, who seem stuck in 2003, up in arms over the long-ago controversy surrounding the American decision to topple the Baghdad regime in furtherance of over a dozen U.N. resolutions finding Iraq to be in material breach of its disarmament commitments.

But there’s more at issue tonight, for Firedoglake is essentially calling for the death of the United States as the Imperial hegemon, in its essay, “It is in Blood That Empires, Like Humans, Are Born, It is in Blood That They Die“:

War … is hell. This isn’t news, everyone knows it. But as with most of what everyone “knows” they don’t really get it, because most people don’t get things that have never effected them or people they love. And if you’re in Congress, well, with very few exceptions, no one you care about is going to fight, no one you know is going to risk their life and maybe even get captured and tortured. The same is true of most people serving in the administration….

And so we come back to the heart of the war. We rarely talk about it anymore, but it’s simple enough. All those people who supported the war, and most especially all those who voted for it, bear the moral responsibility for the results of the war. At least 100,000 dead Iraqis (and probably closer to a million). 4,000 and rising dead US soldiers. Rape. Murder. Torture. Orphans who got to watch their parents being killed. Husbands who saw their wives die, or wives who watched their husbands gunned down or blown into bloody carrion. Families who have buried multiple children.

All because members of Congress didn’t care and because they were gutless. Because they though [sic] to themselves “I might have to face attack ads if I vote against this war.” Can you think of anything more weak, anything more pathetically evil, than to care more about your reelection than about thousands dying? Than about the certainty that from your vote will come rape and torture and murder?

And can you think of anything more pathetic, more redolent of bad judgment than to say “but I didn’t know. I trusted George Bush?”

As far as I am concerned most of Congress doesn’t just have blood on their hands, they are in it up to their chins. Their gutlessness, cupidity and selfishness is such that most of them, in a just world, would be preparing their defenses for a Nuremburg trial. They attacked a country which had not attacked the US, based on lies that were debunked at the time, for petty personal reasons of political ambition or cowardice.

We all know that won’t happen, but what I will tell you is this. Without the Iraq war, the financial crisis happening right now either wouldn’t be, or would be much less harsh. It is quite likely that Iraq is the last mistake of the American century and marks the end of America as a superpower.

Where to begin?

Well, for one thing, international relations scholars document a current sustained American preponderance in the international system, and as stressful as Iraq has been, the U.S. is not at risk of losing is status as the world’s sole superpower. Who are the peer competitors likely to replace U.S. leadership of the world system? China? Russia. The European Union? Hardly… If we go down, they’ll go down with us, as international interdependence creates overlapping sensitivities and vulnerabilties to global crises and shocks.

But, frankly, all this is just grist for the larger attack on the moral legitimacy of the United States altogether. Firedoglake represents classic far-left anti-Americanism, and the project here is to continue the push for war crimes proceedings upon the possible accession to power of a Barack Obama administration. Ultimately, though, the goal is the destruction of the United States itself, which is alleged as racist and oppressive to the core, an irredeemable abomination in the world of nations.

Here’s Firedoglake’s conclusion:

American hegemony rose out of the ashes of WWII. World War II was an unprovoked war. Germany attacked those that did not threaten it. At Nuremburg Americans hung Nazis who had not been involved in the Holocaust, for no crime other than unprovoked war, declaring that it was a capital offense. Out of that war, and out of Nuremburg, America was born as the leader of the free world. Not just the mightiest, but the nation that said “never again”.

It is fitting then that an unprovoked war is what is bringing an end to America’s leadership of the free world, to its economic and military hegemony. Having done what it once condemned, having proven unwilling or unable to correct itself, America has reaped what it sowed….

It is in blood that empires, like humans, are born.

It is in blood that they die.

Notice the obligatory moral equivalence between Hitler’s Germany and Bush’s America.

Readers should have no doubts: The ideas expressed here are identical to those expressed by William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, tenured-radicals who sought death and destruction for American institutions during the Vietnam era. Ayers has said of America, “What a country … It makes me want to puke.”

Firedoglake, founded by Jane Hamsher, is a leading online fundraising and advocacy blog for the hardline radical left. Hamsher’s Blue America has been a central vehicle for netroots mobilization over the last few election cycles, and the organization has been central to Barack Obama’s fundraising success this year.

When Firedoglake announces that American hegemony will die in the blood of empires, know that these same people, who routinely spout this nihilism mayhem, have raised millions to install in the White House a Marxist-trained Chicago community organizer with ties to black liberation theology and unrepentant Weather Underground terrorists.

~crossposted at American Power

As a rule, I don’t use sources from the Associated Press (for obvious reasons), but their article on Iraq’s role in stabilizing American power in the Middle East is noteworthy, “Stable Iraq Could Influence Mideast” (alternative link here):

Iraq is likely to play a significant role in America’s Middle East policy for decades — even as the Pentagon scales down military operations here and ramps them up in Afghanistan.

The Middle East has long confounded forecasters, and the rosy predictions from the Bush administration that Iraq would emerge as a beacon of Western-style democracy in the Arab world have been long discredited.

However unlikely it may seem today, a relatively stable Iraq would have all the cards necessary to emerge as a major player in the Persian Gulf, where Saudi Arabia and Iran are competing for leadership.

Jules Crittenden’s blown away, frankly, at AP’s confirmation of the basic neoconservative argument on Iraq all along:

The news agency that more terrorists prefer you’ll recall was rather late to the surge table, if not nearly as fashionably late as Obama. The Associated Press and the scribbler of this particular analysis, Robert H. Reid, were still neck deep in body counts and failure-mongering when al-Qaeda was out of Anbar and on the run in Diyala in mid-2007. AP’s Baghdad bureauistas were asiduously scribbling everything they could to avoid or obscure the terrible truth of the surge’s growing success. But despite its shortcomings, Reid’s latest analysis does a relatively good job of laying out our vital interests in Iraq.

I’ll update when we see the terrorist-enabling Newshoggers cover this story - it’s going to be tough to clinch the argument that the Bush administration “paid for” this narrative.

In another sign of how unglued members of the radical left have become, prominent netroots bloggers are blaming “Bush/McCain” for today’s terrorist bombing of the U.S. embassy in Yemen.

Here’s the resident foreign policy expert at Hullabaloo:

Y’know, occasionally I catch some grief by saying I have come truly to despise Bush/McCain and their ideological cronies like Cheney, Addington, Rumsfeld, and so on.

Here’s why: Because the Bush/McCain gang is so ignorant violent, mentally disturbed and powerful, they get hundreds of thousands innocent people killed. Sheer moral hygiene makes it imperative that this country say no to four more years of the same.

Matthew Yglesias add this:

I guess I don’t have a grand point to make about this, but it’s a reminder that if you want to curb radicalism it makes more sense to focus on ways to reduce its appeal in the places where radical movements are already strong (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, etc.) rather than, say, by invading Iraq.

(more…)

Interesting analysis of the early days of the surge and the movement to get behind Patreaus:

Retired Army Gen. Jack Keane came to the White House on Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007, to deliver a strong and sober message. The military chain of command, he told Vice President Cheney, wasn’t on the same page as the current U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus. The tension threatened to undermine Petraeus’s chances of continued success, Keane said.

Keane, a former vice chief of the Army, was 63, 6-foot-3 and 240 pounds, with a boxer’s face framed by tightly cropped hair. As far as Cheney was concerned, Keane was outstanding — an experienced soldier who had maintained great Pentagon contacts, had no ax to grind and had been a mentor to Petraeus. Keane was all meat and potatoes; he didn’t inflate expectations or waste Cheney’s time.

By the late summer of 2007, Keane had established an unusual back-channel relationship with the president and vice president, a kind of shadow general advising them on the Iraq war. This September visit was the fifth back-channel briefing that Keane had given the vice president that year.

~read the rest at the Washington Post

I say good for John McCain to criticize what can only be described as political opportunism by Sen. Obama. At the Saddleback forum, Obama said his decision to oppose the War in Iraq was his most difficult–even though he wasn’t even in the Senate at the time, and by the time he was running for the Senate, he was able to gain a great deal of popularity opposing what was already an unpopular war.

“With less than three months to go before the election, a lot of people are still trying to square Sen. Obama’s varying positions on the surge in Iraq. First, he opposed the surge and confidently predicted that it would fail. Then he tried to prevent funding for the troops who carried out the surge,” McCain said.

“Not content to merely predict failure in Iraq, my opponent tried to legislate failure.”

McCain was speaking to veterans, and was appearing confident after his stellar performance at Saddleback with Rev. Rick Warren.

~by lisaed

I wonder if the young followers of Barack Obama remember a game show from yesteryear called “To Tell The Truth.“ It was one of my very favorites as a youngster. Hosted at the time by Garry Moore the idea was for a panel of judges often including Bill Cullen, Peggy Cass and my favorite Kitty Carlisle to determine with their questions which of three contestants was the show’s mystery guest. The mystery guest was typically a member of a certain profession or someone who’d done something otherwise notable. More specifically, two of the three contestants were imposters pretending to be say a commercial airline pilot while the third was the genuine pilot. If the imposters with their bluffing were able to fool the judges into believing they were the airline pilot the imposters would win prize money. It is watching Barack Obama all these months on the campaign trail that has me recalling this beloved game show from my childhood. Only in this special presidential edition of “To Tell The Truth” Obama plays all contestants and we the American people are the judges forced to guess which Barack Obama is the true one and which one is just bluffing.

Is he the Barack Obama from the democratic primary the one who limped over the finish line in the race for the democratic nomination by running to the anti-war left of Hillary Clinton? While his resume is quite thin for a Presidential candidate we have evidence from Obama’s voting record in the U.S. Senate that he rates as the most liberal among his peers. So in this his first incarnation we have contestant #1: Barack Obama the liberal candidate for the democratic nomination. This is the Barack Obama who was less than truthful to us earlier this year about his knowledge of the Reverend Wright’s hate filled anti-American rhetoric. This is the Barack Obama who said in his March speech on race he could no sooner disown the Reverend Wright than he could his “white grandmother” but then turned around and denounced Wright anyway by the end of April. This is the Barack Obama who said after disowning his reverend that he would stay at Trinity United Church of Christ his church of choice for over twenty years with the new young pastor Otis Moss but then turned around and walked away from it anyway by the end of May following the controversial Father Pfleger remarks about Hillary Clinton. Did I mention he’s a good bluffer?

This brings us to contestant #2: Barack Obama the general election candidate. Since locking the democratic nomination on June 3rd, Barack Obama has poof like magic transformed himself from the anti-war liberal of the democratic primary to the running as fast as he can to the center candidate of the general election. In just four short weeks we have seen this new Barack Obama change his mind about public financing. We’ve seen him embrace Antonin Scalia opinions on the death penalty for child rapists and the DC gun ban—changing his own previously held position that deemed that law “constitutional.” We’ve seen Obama thumb his nose at his base changing his mind about FISA and we’ve seen him pledge to expand our President’s faith based initiative. I wonder why Obama didn’t mention such intention during the primary? Obama seizes every opportunity to talk about his faith and I have to wonder is it because he really wants to talk to us about his love for Christ or is it rather that he really really wants us to know he’s not a muslim. And as an aside I wonder how inclined Hillary supporters are going to be to rally round this new general election version of Barack Obama. But I digress. Perhaps most shockingly of all this past Thursday we saw democratic nominee Barack Obama change his position on the war. Giving two press conferences that same day on the subject (the second no doubt for the purpose of damage control) Barack Obama sought to straddle both sides of the Iraq war issue beginning with this:

“I’ve always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed. And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies.”

Making reference in this first press conference to “training” and the Iraqi soldiers “standing up” Barack Obama was regurgitating the same pro-war Commander in Chief language that we’ve heard from President Bush ad infinitum since he won his second term in 2004. Obama’s words here were also reminiscent of his former foreign policy advisor Samantha “Hillary-as -Monster” Power’s wink wink comments made to the BBC last March about the junior senator’s 16-month plan to end the war in Iraq being a “best case scenario.” And then in his second press conference just a few hours later that same day, Obama backpedaled away from his flip flop I mean “refined policy” re-embracing both his pledged timetable for withdrawal and stronger anti-war rhetoric with this:

“Let me be as clear as I can be. I intend to end this war. My first day in office, I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission, and that is to end this war - responsibly, deliberately, but decisively. And I have seen no information that contradicts the notion that we can bring our troops out safely at a pace of one to two brigades a month, and again, that pace translates into having our combat troops out in 16 months’ time.”

So we the judges in this presidential version of “To Tell The Truth” are left to wonder just where does Obama stand on the Iraq war particularly now when it has become evident to the American people that the surge has worked not just reducing the level of violence but to also placing this young democracy on the road to some form of political stability. We must wonder is Obama’s Iraq war policy the more nuanced position in press conference #1 (i.e., the new general election Obama) or is it the more cut and dry 16-month plan for troop withdrawal designed to placate anti-war voters from press conference #2 (i.e., the old democratic primary Obama)?

It has become quite clear over these first four weeks of the general election campaign that Barack Obama is an opportunist - a man with no obvious core convictions of his own who will say or do anything to win the White House. Indeed in these past few weeks Obama has given new meaning to the word “CHANGE” as in the only change we can believe in is that he will change his positions like the changing wind. He has also completely undercut his own strategy to paint John McCain as “Bush Third Term” by closely aligning himself in the general election with our President re: faith based initiatives, FISA, and a new found willingness to listen to our commanders in Iraq. And so I find myself wondering if this new Bush light version of Barack Obama could have beaten Hillary Clinton for the democratic nomination. And I also find myself remembering how that game show “To Tell The Truth” ended each and every episode and I ask the presumptive democratic nominee for President: “Will the real Barack Obama please stand up?”

Yes, Americans love their game shows and their reality shows but I hope they will expect more than just good political theatre from the next President of the United States. My guess is that a President Obama would revert to the liberal primary version of himself particularly with a strengthened democratic majority in congress. But given the different versions of the democratic nominee we have met on the campaign trail we simply cannot know which is the real Barack Obama. And so I find myself remembering another game show from yesteryear hosted at the time by Bob Barker that I hope not to play in 2009 with a President Barack Obama in the White House and that game show was called : “Truth or Consequences.“

(more…)

There is an ancient wax like thingy from way back in the last millenium called a ‘Long Play Record’ or LP in the ancient tongue. Kinda round and frisbee like - they have a tiny tiny hole in the center.

They were packaged in ‘Album Covers’ and on the back of it they featured ‘liner notes’. Ancient PR - way before the net, blogs, satellite radio and MTV, MTV1, MTV2,VH1 and videos in general.

During this Nick at Night TV Land era, before Rock and Roll was transformed into Rock, bands of Brit Cats ‘invaded’ the states with a wild, new sound that wiped clean and drew again the face of pop music.

Hot on the heels of the Moptops (who were alledgedly bigger than Baby Jesus) were a gang of 5 that are still around in name today - The Rolling Stones.

On one of their first ‘records’ the liner notes featured a crazy, cool rant by their manager - Andrew Loog Oldham. Appealing to the inherent ‘hooliganism’ of baby booming kids in the Great Satan these notes commanded the kids

“If you haven’t the money for this record, then knock a blind beggar on the head
and steal his money”

In a way, this could be applied (in jest y’all - that means teasing - harmless joshing) to the latest pub by Dr Fred Kaplan. (more…)

~from Churchill’s Parrot

This March 17, while the civilized world dutifully besots itself in taverns the world over, Lefties will be taking their impaired judgment to the streets and parading it about for all the world to see. This March 17, you see, is especially significant to Lefties as it represents the 40th anniversary of the 1967 March on the Pentagon as well as the 4th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. Massive demonstrations (such as these planned here and here) have thus been organized to commemorate the first and decry the latter: the “criminal invasion of Iraq.”

No doubt among these Lefties are a few who sincerely believe Bushie’s decision to invade Iraq was a something he concocted out of thin air at his ranch in Crawford, or a misguided attempt to avenge the attempted assassination of his father, or the desire to line his cronies’ pockets with oil money, or his unthinking allegiance to those neo-con Jews who just don’t like Arabs and were itching for a fight.

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There is an absurd notion floating (or perhaps burning wild-fire-like) throughout the anti-war camp that Iraq is some invention of the Bush Administration.  Now, while I have professed many times to having been a critic of our entrance into Iraq due to what I perceived as poor (and avoidable) timing, I take offense at the notion that somehow this is Bush’s war, pawned off on the American public and the US Congress alike in some epic hoodwinking–as though there was no lead-up whatsoever during the Clinton years.

This ignores history, of course, and parces quite selectively the situation in Iraq in ways that are utterly untrue. (more…)

I must confess: I was completely against the War in Iraq from the beginning. It felt so…reckless. Right off the bat, I had the ominous sense that things hadn’t been thought through. Unfortunately, I was right.  My neocon brethren had rushed too quickly, or perhaps there were too many differing views on how the War should be carried out, or….

Maybe Rumsfeld’s vision of a New American Military was too ambitious or naive or visionary…I’m not sure. I wasn’t there. All I know, is that I felt we should have handled Hussein similarly to how the Israelis did in 1981. “Walk softly and carry a big stick” is how Teddy Roosevelt put it. Well it’s too late for the “walk softly” part. So what about that stick?

We diverted massive resources away from graver threats, such as Iran and Syria, and North Korea. Oh, and Afghanistan, while not really a threat anymore, was and still is unfinished business.  So entering Iraq was not really defensible, even if the blame for that can’t be laid solely at the feet of the Administration–many a Democrat participated in the march to war.   Invading Iraq wasn’t in our best interest at the time.

It wasn’t in our best interest and it certainly wasn’t in the best interest of Israel, either.  Many critics of the so-called “Israel Lobby” claim America always acts in the best interests of Israel, or that Iraq was somehow a war for Israel, but that is purely absurd as can be seen here and here.  Besides, it’s not hard to see that an unstable region is bad for Israel.  A weak Saddam is better than a strengthened Iran.  America often does work to benefit Israel, which makes sense.  We have common allies and common foes.  Many Americans are also Israeli citizens.  We share commerce, technology, and have an intelligence relationship rivaled only by the one we share with the United Kingdom.

Well What About Now?

Now that we’re in Iraq we need to decide how to get out of Iraq. Nobody wants to be there anymore, least of all the soldiers who have to risk their necks every day to try to make the world safer. There are many schools of thought on this subject, but the two most popular are:

1. Begin withdrawing troops and funds immediately. The only way the Iraqis will ever solve their problems is if we let them hash it out. Like a crowd letting a fight continue with breaking it up. “Eventually they’ll tire out, you’ll see.” Eventually….

or,

2. Continue the “surge” and maintain troop levels and funds until the job is done. Nobody is quite in agreement on what “the job” is that needs to get done, but several things are agreed upon:

• The Iraqis need a stable political system and a government than can actually operate on its own. To get here, they obviously need a stable and secure enough country in which to operate said government.
• A solution to the Civil War has to be political, and this will be heavily influenced by economic factors such as the division of oil profits; the autonomy of the Kurds; and the under-representation of the once politically dominant Sunni Muslims.
• No political aims will ever be achieved in a state of chaos, which is likely if too many American troops are withdrawn before Iraqi security forces can take over.
• That’s going to take time and money, and its going to take its tole in lives as well.

What’s the result of our early withdrawal?   Will the Iraqi people simply duke it out–and when the punches stop, and the dust settles, will they help each other up like two spent boxers and shake hands?

Doubtful.

The only reason there wasn’t Civil War under Saddam was that he provided security and stability. Of course, he did so with brutal and inhumane tactics, but nevertheless, the various groups were able to live together relatively peacefully. I think what most Iraqi’s want is running water, roofs over their heads, a steady paycheck, and no lines at the gas pump. It is the minority that wants death, suicide bombings, and constant chaos.

The problem with Option #1–our early withdrawal–is that I don’t think it will give the moderate majority time to do what they need to do - cast out the radicals and retake the country.  A moderate majority is easily cowed by a radical minority–especially one so well armed and well-funded by hostile Iranian and Syrian interests. So the only option to create a political solution in which the moderates win and the radicals lose, is to stay and provide the necessary peace-keeping and security that only American troops can provide, at least until Iraqi troops can take over.

Too bad NATO and the UN decided not to help. More peace-keeping forces are needed until the Iraqis can take the reigns. Until such time, though, we need to “stay the course” because it’s the only humane thing to do, now that we’re here. I wish we’d been wiser in the beginning, but at least we can be wise, and humane, now.

The Cafferty File reports Republican Senator Chuck Hagel is calling the Iraq war

The triumph of the so-called neoconservative ideology, as well as Bush administration arrogance and incompetence.

Apparently he’s also suggesting that it might be time for a “unity” ticket. This following an uproar from his Republican colleagues over the ‘Iraq is a blunder’ statement.

Now, to be clear, I think we should have handled Iraq differently. Neoconservative ideology does not call for all-out war with a country, and we could have bombed a few palaces and suspected arms sites first. Saddam wasn’t responding to sanctions because through the UN he was actually profiting from them.

But a few well-placed air strikes may have caused the Iraqi dictator to change his tune. He was, after all, fond of palatial comforts. He was also rather attached to being in charge, and had we spent a couple years diminishing his power over the region–bombing his estates, military sites, etc.–we may have been able to shake up his regime enough to get true oversight of his capabilities without actual war.

Then again, we’d still have had Saddam. As long as Mr. Hussein was in control of Iraq, things were never truly going to settle down. Ridding the world of Saddam was necessary, and I don’t think Mr. Hagel has his facts straight when he calls it the failed ideology of neocons or the arrogance of Bush. After all, he voted for the war.

So Chuck Hagel may be dead on in his call for a third party, but his remarks about Iraq are typically short-sighted. Perhaps, if the third party thing doesn’t pan out, he can join the Donkeys.