Worldview: Politics of War

Introduction (19 Jun 06): Although I talk a lot about the Iraq war elsewhere on my website, this section will focus of the domestic politics of the war. At the moment, I am interested in the fact that, according to one poll, 48% of Americans wish to withdraw from Iraq while 44% do not. Democracy does not work according to polls but according to who is in power, and those in power are often willing to defy the polls. Besides, the public is fickle, and success in Iraq could make Republicans champions in 2008, and the Democrats know it. On the other hand, I believe that the Democrats hurt themselves by seeming timorous and vacillating. If they boldly took an anti-war stance, without lurching too far to the left, then they would earn more respect and credibility and the public would be more likely to rally to their side. We would at least have a real choice. Nobody wants to follow a weak leader and nobody respects equivocation (which is not to be confused with a sophisticated analysis of a complex situation). Unfortunately, politicians of all stripes now care more about their careers and their egos than their principles, if they have any. That is why I favor independently wealthy politicans who are highly educated and informed, who have principles and who don't care about losing elections. Thomas Jefferson comes to mind.

Joe Klein: Why Bush Is (Still) Winning the War at Home

Angus Reid Consultants: Half of Americans want to withdraw from Iraq

Collier & Horowitz: The Party of Retreat and Defeat

Amy Goodman: Access of Evil

H.D.S. Greenway: Cut and run? Hardly

Mooney: Media and Preemptive Attack

FrontPageMag is one of my favorite sources of non-mainstream, non-PC information, but their partisanship is on display in the Collier article. As I discuss elsewhere, the options are more numerous than a binary choice between staying indefinitely and 'cutting and running'. A gradual withdrawal of troops would put pressure on the Iraqis to get their act together. The future of their country is up to them. We must stop treating them like children. The problem is ultimately the sectarian divide and not Al Qaeda, something the pro-war advocates refuse to address honestly, being content with the vague assumption that elections (confused with 'democracy') will take care of everything. Only the Iraqis can resolve their sectarian divide, and if they do not, then elections will only confirm tribal domination and will probably not be repeated. It is interesting how the Republicans deplore Big Brother and the nanny state at home, yet assume a White Man's Burden attitude in other countries. More political games for you. And if there is a sectarian bloodbath after we leave, it would not have happened without our invasion, and it was entirely predictable. This does not make Saddam any less evil, but sometimes one must analyze the situation with a coldly realistic eye and balance bad alternatives, as Bush's father did. At the very least, the situation is not as simple as Collier's clever and well-written article would have you believe.

Amy Goodman, despite being from the evil leftist Nation magazine, does make a good point that mainstream journalists have often served as a megaphone for this and previous administrations, trading 'truth for access' as she puts it. This is the same self-serving careerism as we see in our politicians. (Gotta get that lovely house in the best neighborhood! I deserve it! I went to an Ivy League school!) It wasn't clear before the invasion that Saddam had no WMD, but in retrospect there were a lot of indications that the public (and the Democrats) should have been more skeptical of the administration's spin and impetuousness. It seems that right before the invasion, the UN was making significant progress with inspections and turning up nothing, then Bush jumped the gun. But none of this is perfectly clear, and may never be.

So does the threat of terrorist WMD condemn us to a future of pre-emptive imperialistic action based on shadowy probabilities? Now that is quite a political game. We must invade unless we are certain you have no nukes! The Russians and Chinese will remember our present behavior as their power grows and ours declines, due to our fiscal and military recklessness. But as some brilliant congressman put it: If you don't vote for the present policy, you are voting for Al Qaeda! That's what we need: moral clarity! You'll never get that from wimpy liberals (though many liberals have indeed brought justified opprobrium on themselves by seeming to dislike mainstream Amerca). And the games go on. Meanwhile, even a Republican President and Congress are too PC to implement the no-nonsense profiling of Muslims, or at least the likeliest suspects, such as anybody from Saudi Arabia, suggested by common-sense. After all, 'Islam is a religion of peace'. How could we liberate a country without assuming that most of them are decent freedom-loving people like us? Are you sure?

The reality, of course, is that no one knows how Iraq will turn out. All politics must be based on speculations, probabilities and scenarios. Rather than racking our brains (and doing the homework) to determine the likeliest scenarios, the vast majority of politicians and pundits simply pluck the scenario that fits their preconceptions. The classier ones find a few simple 'facts' that confirm their thesis. I have my own ideas, based on my understanding of the situation, and so does everyone else. However, I think I am being rather more realistic about the Islamic and tribal mentality of the Iraqis themselves, based on material from the same FrontPageMag and related websites which gave us the Collier article. Anyhow, conservatives need not worry. If we leave, and the likeliest outcome does occur, namely civil war, then they are covered. They have set the war skeptics up so that everything can be blamed on them. No matter when we leave, one could always argue that staying a bit longer may have prevented the disaster. Or not. Or if we stay, and the civil war escalates anyway, then they can argue that we didn't try hard enough, or our morale was undermined by the skeptics, etc., etc. The critics, on the other hand, could argue that our presence aggravated the situation and denied Iraqis the incentive to get their act together. A clever pundit of any persuasion, like a clever lawyer, knows that he will have a good excuse no matter what happens. Look at Andrew Sullivan, blaming it all on Rumsfeld. How convenient! Or perhaps a miracle is about to occur in Iraq, and everything will be fine in six months or so. I wouldn't bet my money on it.

Right Web: Individual Profiles

Justin Raimondo: War: The Great Clarifier

Jonathan Alter: How To Beat 'Cut And Run'

CNN Video: Biden and Hagel Behave like Statesmen

Joe Conason: Bush's Supporters Will Libel Any Foe

Joan Vennochi: White House Diverts Message Again

Ben Johnson: Liberals and the Death of Zarqawi

FrontPageMag: Horowitz debates with Peter Beinart

S. Frederick: Harry Reid's Utter Incoherence on Iraq

Joe Conason: Our Coarse President Can't Fix Middle East

Cathy Young: A Chasm in Conservatism

N. von Hoffman: Timid Dems Fail To Pin Blame on Bush

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Politics of War: August 2006

Joe Lieberman Losing Primary (06 Aug 06): Everybody is interpreting Sen. Joe Lieberman's imminent defeat in the Connecticut primary as a sign that the Democratic party may be lurching to the left on defense matters. Also, the Democrats, most of whom voted for the Iraq war, are being painted as hypocrites. I don't quite see it that way. I have always maintained that decent people might have supported the war in the beginning, because of the furor over WMD, but intelligent people would have predicted the present sectarian chaos and the failure of the democratization project. Perhaps we should have got out when the WMD were not found and allowed Iraqis to assume responsibility for their country. Perhaps we shouldn't have disbanded the Iraqi army but merely purged it. At any rate, I see no reason why one cannot change one's mind as a war or other major event evolves and the conditions on the ground change. I do not respect Lieberman's 'honesty' but rather disdain his (and Bush's) stubbornness at not revising the rhetoric as the situation worsened. Part of the problem is that hawks feel the need to maintain morale at all costs, regardless of the reality on the ground. Perhaps WWII could not have been won if we had agonized too much during the darkest hours. However, the Iraq war was different, in that it was no longer a vital interest, once the WMD were not found. At the least, the failures and foolishness of the democratization project should have been honestly acknowledged by its unrepentant cheerleaders. I must say, though, that I have no respect for the 'Kos kids' who claim to have unseated Lieberman on the internet. They seem to lack maturity, to put it mildly. Also, I fear that this country seems incapable of distinguishing between the very real danger of militant Islam and the intelligent way to go about fighting it. It is not a choice between fighting uselessly vs. denying that the threat exists. Unfortunately, the political rhetoric always tends to degenerate into simplistic notions of 'hawk' vs. 'dove' on foreign policy issues. This happens in Europe as well as America. To compound the problem, many senior and experienced politicians on all sides, who should be playing the role of our statesmen, seem to have internalized these simplistic distinctions.

UPDATE (20 Oct 06): Today, Lieberman is up 17% in the polls over his adversary Ned Lamont. I guess he isn't going down after all! But the G.O.P. might be.

James Pinkerton: Doves should remember Nixon

Jason Horowitz: In Lamont Race, Bitter Democrats Do Pre-Mortems

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Andrew Sullivan on Iraq (11 Aug 06): For a while now, Andrew Sullivan has been arguing that the Iraq democratization project was a 'noble endeavor', to which he signed on, but that the incompetence of Bush and Rumsfeld turned it into a fiasco. As he says here, the 'proclaimed' goal behind the Iraq invasion was 'ostensibly to create a beach-head for modernity and democracy in Iraq', but the noble endeavor was botched in the execution, leading to the present disaster. This reasoning seems a bit too facile and self-serving to me. For one thing, the original purpose of the mission was to get WMD, with some vague talk about democratization, which then became ever more convenient a rationale as WMD were not found. However, the main point that Sullivan refuses to address is whether democratization was ever likely or practicable in a country imbued with ethnic tensions and Islamic ideology. Can democracy suddenly be planted in a society bound by a medieval mentality? Such cultural discussions may seem a bit esoteric, but I would argue that these psychological and cultural factors are the real reason the project failed. Hardly anybody discusses this. Instead, we make gratuitous and self-serving assumptions about human nature: 'They are just like us.' Perhaps they are not. Come on, Andrew. For someone who studied history at Oxford, I would expect you to think of this.

Erik Leaver: Iraq's Sectarian Bloodshed 'Made in the USA'

Andrew Sullivan: Did Cheney and Rumsfeld have a 'Likud Strategy'?

Justin Raimondo: Andrew Sullivan and the Bourbon mentality [more]

David Talbot: Andrew Sullivan's Jihad

Peking Duck: Decline and Fall of Andrew Sullivan

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Typical Anti-Antiwar Rant from the WSJ (11 Aug 06): As you might expect, the basic message is that those who don't want to fight in Iraq are capitulating before the terrorists. Naturally, this applies to Ned Lamont, in his recent successful upset victory over Senator Joe Lieberman. And what bad timing that the huge London airline bombing plot was foiled a few days later. Lamont is toast! Well, not quite. This potent propaganda exploits fear by oversimplifying the situation. I've addressed this many times before, but because it is so effective, I'll take another stab. It is especially annoying to see such doctrinaire thinking from a supposedly educated and influential newspaper like the Wall Street Journal. Have they never heard the word 'nuance'? You may laugh at this effete word, but it can mean the difference between life and death. Many simpleminded and unnuanced fools (and nations) have brought about their own demise by biting off more than they could chew or by flailing at the wrong enemy. Beware of hubris! And of stupidity!

Let us refresh our memories once more about Iraq. Bush went in after WMD, and I am willing to grant that his intentions were sincere. The fact remains that attacking a nation on false evidence has had a devastating effect on American credibility and provides propaganda fuel for those who don't particularly like us. That is just about everybody at this point. Some of these adversaries are relatively powerful, like Russia and China. When would we ever, ever, ever excuse a nation that attacked us based on a 'misunderstanding'? We must be reasonable here. Add to this the folly of trying to jump-start democracy in an Islamic country. This folly may not seem evident to those who indulge in lazy, self-serving, neocon presuppositions that others are 'just like us', but any informed and perspicacious mind will grasp that the combination of Islamic militancy, sectarian strife and years of a brutal dictatorship have created psychological conditions in Iraq that are highly adverse to the democratization dream. Then again, is democratizing a Muslim country such a good idea? We have seen to where this leads with Hamas and others. The inanity of the rosy neocon assumptions regarding human nature is bewildering. Those people are supposed to be intellectuals. Maybe that is the problem. Such frivolous games are permissible in the Alice in Wonderland environment of a university but not in real life.

Now we are bogged down in an Iraq that is disintegrating, while Iran presents a grave threat to our security. Is it not at least conceivable that for purely selfish reasons we should get out of Iraq and rebuild our strength for what may come next? Or at least withdraw to the border and allow Iraqis to assume responsibility for their country? Even the argument that Iraq would become a hotbed of terrorism is not too convincing. For one thing, it already is, due to our intervention, and for another, the terrorists can plan their operations just about anywhere. I mean, how much real estate does it take to pour explosives into bottles and to buy a disposable camera for ignition? The potency of terrorism comes from the suicide bomber and not from territory. It is psychological and not physical. It seems to me that our main weapons against terror are intelligence and immigration reform. The real debate should be over possible alterations to our civil liberties. At any rate, I am annoyed and dismayed by the sheer idiocy of the smear that those who don't want to fight in Iraq are necessarily cowards in the overall war on terror.

However, I will concede one point on which the conservatives and Republicans have credibility. That is on the overall will to fight terror. It does often seem that few liberals and Democrats take the threat of terrorism seriously; criticism of the Iraq war does not make up for this. The reason that Republicans like those at the WSJ can get away with using such dirty tactics is that too many liberals project an aura of weakness on defense. It doesn't help that so many of them are obsessed with blaming America first. It is on the atmospherics that the left is losing, if it is indeed losing. Partly this is because the conservatives love to single out the radicals and the fruitcakes and portray them as typical 'liberals'. More dirty tricks. It would help considerably if Democratic leaders would provide detailed plans of how to defend against terror, but so far they have been acting like selfish politicians, holding their fingers to the wind and saying little that is specific. They are afraid that their words will be exploited by the devious Karl Roves, but they should realize that being wishy-washy makes it all the easier to be exploited. They need to think less of their careers and more of their country. In this sense, they are like the greedy, doctrinaire conservatives at the WSJ (tax cuts for rich and so forth). Our entire elite suffers from this same disease of selfishness and careerism, which is a serious danger to our country. Those who are rich, informed and principled should be willing to lose in the service of their country. And there is another failure afflicting all factions within our elite — its failure to appreciate the true nature of militant (i.e. orthodox) Islam. Maybe that's because they all watch too much PBS.

Rosa Brooks: Antiwar Wackadoos Are Winning

Charles Krauthammer: Democrats as Myopic Doves, Again

Andrew Greeley: Arrogance, ignorance invite disaste

John Gibson: Here Come Pol Pots of Democratic Party

Breitbart: Cheney accused of politicizing terrorism

Ken Miller: Wall Street Doesn't Like This War

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Anti War = Hard Left?!! (14 Aug 06): It is becoming increasingly humorous to watch Michelle Malkin and FrontPageMag shine the spotlight on fringe radical groups like ANSWER or the World Worker's Party in an attempt to explicitly or implicitly associate war critics with commie traitors or aging hippies from Berkeley. The operative root word is 'left', as though everybody to the 'left' of the political spectrum is basically a different shade of the same color. I question whether the crude binary terminology of 'left' and 'right' even makes sense. I don't doubt that a hard left exists, which hates the US and Israel, and has little regard for the truth, but to suggest that this is representative of the Democratic party, or of the 60% of Americans who want to withdraw from Iraq, is ridiculous. As I said, the Democrats have done themselves a great disservice by being wishy-washy political opportunists, instead of clearly articulating how they would fight terrorism. They have left themselves open to being defined by the opposition, and the results are farcical. Oh well, we do have some entertaining lunchtime diversion! But the sad truth remains. Dealing with terrorism is extremely difficult and will require the most careful thinking and understanding of the realities on the ground, especially in the Middle East. I don't think the political hacks and operators back home have much to offer there.

Think of it this way. If only 1% of the American public were 'radical' in some sense, that would be about 3 million people, far more than the hundreds or thousands who show up for these demonstrations. Yet that would be politically insignificant. Relax. Most Democrats and 'liberals' are nice suburban types, like you or me, who look indistinguishable from their Republican suburban counterparts. There are some radical weirdos who vote Democrat, just as there are some religious nuts who vote Republican. In primaries, they can even have more influence than they should, if only because such small numbers of people show up to vote. This game of shining the spotlight on the fringe is entertaining, but I worry that too many people are starting to take it seriously. Here is a useful civic exercise. Go to your local shopping center and see how many strange, radical, dangerous people you see. OK, there may be a few, but most are pretty boring, aren't they? Just like you and me. See, nothing to worry about. A little reality check never hurts. (On the other hand, San Francisco is a major US city... But even here, there was a 'well-attended' pro-Israel rally!)

Now here is an issue where the distinction between 'right' and 'left' is worth considering: the profiling of people of Middle Eastern origin in the fight against terror. Clearly, conservatives tend to be in favor of it and liberals opposed. That is because conservatives in America tend to be of Anglo-German origin and don't worry about government racism, whereas liberals are either of a different origin or are more sensitive to such concerns. Yet even here, the binary distinction is overly simplistic. Many respectable conservatives, like the crusty old folks at CATO, are worried about the erosion of our civil liberties under the war on terror. You can't even say that conservatives 'trust government' and liberals don't. It depends on the issue. Conservatives generally trust government when it comes to defense, and liberals when it comes to solving domestic problems. The question of trust is highly agenda-dependent. As for protecting the homeland against terror, it is clear that we need extensive surveillance, but that this must be done very carefully. Imbecilic political partisanship simply drowns out this crucial discussion. Let us borrow a chapter from the British. They are more to the 'left' than we are, but they have been more forceful and sensible in their police efforts, with a recent spectacular success to their credit.

Scott McConnell: Bush's Reckless Foreign Policy

David Greenberg: Lamont vs. McGovern

Eleanor Clift: Bush Exploits the Fear Factor

E. J. Dionne: A GOP Rush to Exit Iraq

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Politics of War: September 2006

Robot Republicans (01 Sep 06): Last night, the Newshour had a discussion on the war on terror between Democratic Representative Marty Meehan of Massachusetts and Republican Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. I am appalled at the lack of thinking and factuality in Blackburn's responses. She seems to be a programmed robot for the Republican party, as does most of the party.

For example, the administration has made a point of linking the fight against terror with the war in Iraq. Such a claim seems highly doubtful, as the war in Iraq has every appearance of being primarily a sectarian civil war. Yet Blackburn can only reply:

When you talk to the legislators that are elected in Iraq, and they talk about their focus, and they talk about how hard they're working to unify that country, when you look at the fact that this — as I was saying earlier — this is the central front of where the war is taking place right now, Jim.
You know, it's more like the Cold War. We knew when we started fighting back, when we changed 20 years of the way America responded to terrorism — which was, you know, was law enforcement, as civil disobedience — and we started treating it as what it is — war — that, yes, indeed, there would be some that were going to disagree with that. That is always going to happen.
But the thing is: We cannot allow the terrorists to win. And I know a lot of people think it's a cliche to say, 'We either fight them over there or we fight them over there', but it is one that people do understand. If we are not stamping out terrorism over there, where terrorism breeds, in the Middle East, then, yes, we are going to find ourselves stamping it out, not only in the U.S., but around the world.
Terrorism had its toehold. We have to fight; we have to win on this. We have to be certain that America remains a free and sovereign nation.

Where is the acknowledgement of the deep sectarian divisions in Iraq, which include the army and police? (In this video, David Corn alludes to reports that Shia militias, controlled by the Ministry of the Interior, are dragging Sunnis from hospital beds and killing them.) What about prime minister Maliki's refusal to condemn Hezbollah? Does this not indicate that a Shia takeover, democratic or otherwise, would be in Iran's favor? Who says the 'front' of the war on terror is in Iraq? What did the 9/11 bombers, or the London bombers, or the Madrid bombers, or the Bali bombers have to do with Iraq? At most, the war in Iraq is fueling terrorist anger, but the planning is elsewhere, as in Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or Europe itself, with funding from Saudi Arabia. Such ignorance on the part of our elected representatives! How long would it take them to be briefed about these basic facts? Do they even care? Can they even think?

Then there is the cheap comparison to the Cold War or to the Nazis. Yes, there is a similarity in that there is a threat, and our enemies do show 'fascistic' traits. But the similarity ends there. Germany had a major army breathing down the neck of free Europe. The terrorist threat is entirely different, and it probably does need concerted police effort more than anything else. The idea of 'reforming' the Middle East is at least implausible, but there is no discussion or even awareness of this basic reality. Just a lot of cheap rhetoric about the need to fight terrorists (of course!), with the sleazy implication that the Republicans are willing to do it and the Democrats are not.

Well, to tell the truth, the Democrats haven't really helped themselves in that regard, e.g. by offering an explicit alternative plan. They keep holding their fingers to the wind and look cynical and selfish. But at least they seem better informed about the facts, as Rep. Meehan illustrates. The Republicans show a dangerous tendency to have 'blind faith' in certain platitudes, especially when repeated by their party leaders. It seems psychologically related to their religiosity — a sanctimonious suspension of critical thought. But to be fair, Democrats often display similar tendencies as well, called 'political correctness'. Is this how democracy is supposed to work? I don't think so.

Rep. Blackburn continues with a trademark GOP smear:

You know, I think, Jim, that it is a debate that is going to be had, regardless of whether we would call it 'legitimate' or not or 'appropriate' or not. There are people who are always going to be against fighting for freedom, always is going to happen.
You know, when I talk to my parents and individuals that lived through World War II, you hear some of the same rhetoric that they endured during that time.
But one of the things I think that is very important to look at and to understand, when you have Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants saying the centerpiece of the war on terror is in Iraq, that is the battle that is at the forefront right now, then we know it would be foolish of us to leave and to let them take that battlefront. It would be a foolish move for us to do that.

Right! The 'liberals' today are the same people who surrendered to Nazis and Commies in the past. To criticize the Iraq war is to let terrorists win. As for Osama's opinion, the fact remains that the Iraq conflict is primarily sectarian. If the Shias win, they will ally with Iran and not Sunni Al Qaeda. If the Sunnis win, they will probably be nationalists as the Baathists were. Saddam and his henchmen cared mostly about themselves. At most they put on a show of religiosity towards the end, but they were really classic Arab autocrat thugs.

Then, like a good Republican, she accuses Meehan of being unpatriotic and undermining the troops, when he voices criticism of administration policy and conduct in Iraq. I won't even respond to this cheap tactic. The Republicans seem like morons, but the Democrats seem spineless and witless, unable to punch back in the war of words. How will we survive? The terrorists seem so much smarter. Our own stupidity is our most dangerous enemy.

Joe Klein: What Bush Should Have Said

Amir Taheri: America's muddled Iraq debate

Paul Waldman: Elections are about identity, not issues

John Kerry: Post-9/11 policy hasn't made world safer

Jonathan Chait: A Fighting Image Is Everything

Jeff Jacoby: A new low in Bush-hatred

Tony Judt: Bush's Useful Idiots

Ed Herman: The Liberal's Answer Tony Judt's 'Useful Idiots' Charge

The Best War Ever (on neocon propaganda)

A bit too far to the left for me, yet hard to refute!

Jonathan Rauch: Unwinding Bush

Brendan Conway: The Myth of the 'Fightin' Dems'

Chuck Todd: Fear vs. Loathing

Online Journal: Nancy Pelosi calls Hugo Chavez a 'thug'

Press Release: Congressman Rangel condemns Chavez [video]

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Politics of War: October 2006

Bob Woodward on State of Denial (02 Oct 06): Last night, 60 Minutes interviewed Bob Woodward on his new book State of Denial, which describes serious problems with the administration's conduct of the war in Iraq. Here is the transcript. Key disturbing points are that:

The administration has been suppressing the truth. A recently declassified secret graph shows that the level of violence has been escalating dramatically in the past few years, contrary to the optimistic assessments we keep getting from the White House.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has so 'emasculated' the joint chiefs that the JCS chairman has become 'the parrot on Rumsfeld's shoulder'. General John Abizaid, who is in charge of the whole gulf region, has said that Rumsfeld has 'lost all credibility', which means that 'he cannot go public and articulate the strategy'. For example, when Rumsfeld saw Secretary of State Condi Rice on TV outline the supposed strategy to Congress in October of last year, he disagreed completely and called the White House but was overruled. This indicates a dysfunctional administration and a lack of personal authority. As Woodward says, 'They cannot agree on the bumper sticker.'
General Abizaid confided privately a year ago that the US should 'get the **** out'. He expressed sympathy with Democratic pro-military Congressman John Murtha, who was savaged by the Republicans for daring to suggest withdrawal from a lost cause.
Then Chief-of-Staff Andy Card tried repeatedly to get Rumsfeld fired without success. He apparently had the support of Laura Bush. Vice-President Cheney also resists firing Rumsfled; evidently he fears he would be next.
Henry Kissinger is now a frequent visitor to the White House, who urges Bush to stay the course. According to Woodward, he is 'fighitng the Vietnam war all over again'. Kissinger believes we lost that war due to a lack of will, which he does not want to see repeated.

Any sensible and conscientious citizen should object to rosy statements from the White House that are divorced from reality. Our whole policy in Iraq has, from the beginning, been divorced from reality. We understood nothing of the political climate nor of the psychology of the people, when we invaded, just as we did not in Vietnam. Instead, we went in with our own idealistic but superficial preconceptions and took the natives for granted. Even their low-tech IEDs caught us by surprise. How brilliant a 'rocket scientist' does it take to anticipate that?

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Is Hillary Reasonable? (12 Oct 06): For all of the vilification dumped on her, this article by Hillary Clinton on what to do about the Iraq war seems reasonable and well thought-out to me. The article is sufficiently succinct that I won't summarize it. However, I will point out that, even though she has been called pro-war, she says she is in favor of a 'phased withdrawal' and shifting the burden to the Iraqis. That is, she does not want to leave precipitously but rather wishes to shift in the direction that we must. That sounds OK to me. Also, she seems much better informed than Bush. There is some genuine detail in her views, unlike the simplistic platitudes of the administration, which I find quite irritating. I'll admit that I've had some doubts about her, perhaps because I'm a male, but I can't say that she'd make such a bad president, unless the knuckle-dragging white males on the Hill simply refuse to respect her. There is the question of her core values, but frankly, even a decent person may have shifted on this war. Nevertheless, I still believe that an informed person could have predicted the horrendous sectarian strife, and I just called her informed, didn't I? She did vote for the war, as I remember, but maybe that was all about the WMD everybody feared back then. Anybody should be more competent than Bush, and McCain, virtuous as he is, will probably fight every war forever.

More Hillary here and here.

Peter Brown: Hillary is smart to take on the anti-war crowd

Howard Fineman: Planet Hillary-Pelosi

Hillary Cinton: Where I stand on Iraq

Dick Polman: Hillary Clinton could run and win

Times of London: Hillary falls to earth in poll race

Dick Morris: Hillary can win but mustn't

Matthew Continetti: Hillary's War

YouTube: Hillary vs. Code Pink in March 2003

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Bush Knows 'Caliphate' (15 Oct 06): Caliwho? is the title of the article in Newsweek. I guess I'm being too snide. He did, after all, get better grades than John Kerry at Yale. In fact, I wish he had done such in-depth homework about Islam before plunging into Iraq. Then he might have realized that, far from being greeted with flowers and paeans to liberal democracy, we would have a horrendous insurgency on our hands. So what about stopping the caliphate? Well, that doesn't necessarily require an ill-defined and ineffective global war, where we try to stomp on cockroaches. How about serious immigration control, here and in Europe, including ideological testing, where politically militant 'religions' are reclassified as ideologies? To me, that seems like the no-brainer place to start.

COMMENT: As I have said many times, I think Bush's intentions were good going into Iraq. He really seemed to believe that he was likely to bring democracy. Or at least, he selectively looked at facts such as to confirm this view. One can argue whether or not this is deceit. At any rate, I have never felt any of the far-left hatred for him. Which isn't to say that I don't have some negative impressions, which might be partly tainted by prejudice and foolishness. Bush seems like the proverbial 'frat boy', well-meaning and affable but not up to the task. Condi Rice seems like a girl scout, which is fine if you're a girl, but not if you're Secretary of State. She is full of smiles, but her rhetoric is way too simplistic for an 'expert' advisor. On the other hand, John Kerry seems like a pompous stuffed shirt (and some anecdotes confirm this). Whom do I like? Nice, boring, moderate, professional guys, like Joe Biden, Carl Levin, John Warner... Barack Obama makes a good impression, but is still an unknown (but see here). I like Charlie Rangel's dapper image, somewhat reminiscent of Duke Ellington. He may be a (shudder!) 'liberal' but he ain't no Malcolm X!

Will Marshall: Democrats Can Win on National Security

Mark Benjamin: [Some] U.S. generals call for Democratic takeover

Matthew Yglesias: What any Democrat should say about Iraq

Entertaining Letterman - O'Reilly Debate - Round I

CBS Lateshow 3 Jan 2006

Round II

CBS Lateshow 27 Oct 2006

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Paglia Rebukes The Dems (28 Oct 06): Camille Paglia is a 'social critic, intellectual, author ... and professor of the humanities'. She is also a Democrat who doesn't mind verbally thrashing the Dems, something they sorely need these days:

I'm not a Bush hater. I've always viewed him as a decent fellow who was pushed into the presidency because he was his father's son. But he's been out of his depth in foreign affairs from the start. He certainly lacks the basic verbal skills for the presidency — reading speeches authored by others is no substitute. But I've become concerned about Bush's mental state in the past few months. Sometimes in his press conferences or prepared statements (which I listened to on the radio), I heard a sort of Nixonian tension and hysteria. His vocal patterns were over-intense and his inflections impatient, lurching and sarcastic. There was this seething quality to his speech that worried me and that seemed to signal that something major is being planned — perhaps another military incursion.
Iran?
What else? Yet another folly — creating more generations of hatred against America. The feckless behavior of the Bush administration has been a lurid illustration of Noam Chomsky's books — which I've always considered half lunatic. Chomsky's hatred of the United States is pathological — stemming from some bilious problem with father figures that is too fetid to explore. But Chomsky's toxic view of American imperialism and interventionism is like the playbook of the rigid foreign policy of the Bush administration. So, thanks very much, George Bush, you've managed to rocket Noam Chomsky to the top of the bestseller list!
I'm worried about the future of America insofar as our academically most promising students are being funneled through the cookie-cutter Ivy League and other elite schools and emerging with this callow anti-American, anti-military cast to their thinking. How are we ever going to get wise leadership or sophisticated diplomacy from people who have such a distorted, cliched view about everything that's wrong with the United States? Neither the intellectuals nor the Democrats have any answers to the problems we face. It's not as if the Democrats are offering a coherent and persuasive foreign policy — they have no foreign policy! They just come across as small-minded politicos jockeying for power. [. . .]
I was so distressed when I heard that Mark Warner had dropped out of the presidential race. I thought he was going to bring fresh blood into the primaries. Are we really left with the same old tired nags and with robo-Hillary leading the pack? It's extremely discouraging because we would have won the last election if we'd had a better candidate than John Kerry, with his droning hauteur and his Boston-run campaign that made one gaffe after another. It was very close because the country was already getting tired of the Iraq war. But what candidate do we have to offer when national security is the No. 1 item on the front burner? Democrats became so distracted by their focus on domestic issues over the past 25 years that they're weak on national defense.

Many of the best Democrats are the offspring of first-generation immigrants, like Paglia. The family memory of oppression is strong enough to make them value America in general and the Democratic party in particular, as representing the most idealistic and egalitarian version of the American vision. The same memory of oppression prevents the brain meltdown which leads to Chomskyism, so rampant on the left, especially among intellectuals and would-be intellectuals. The Paglias can criticize an ill-conceived war, such as in Iraq, while remaining lucid enough to realize that the Democrats need a serious vision of American foreign policy, which would be a far cry from their recent ignoble reliance on scandals and politics.

UPDATE (28 Oct 06): Well, maybe I'd better not get too carried away in celebrating Paglia. Wikipedia says that, by her own description, she is 'a feminist bisexual egomaniac'. Not necessarily bad — certain kinds of egomaniac can contribute to society and even make pleasant company — but not representative of any large group either (viz. the sexuality rather than the ego). But that too can be seen as a plus. If an unusual Democrat can have her head screwed on right, so can the rest of them.

UPDATE (28 Oct 06): Later, in the article, Paglia says something else that I don't quit agree with:

The Democrats' portrayal of Republicans as fat cats out of touch with ordinary Americans just doesn't fly anymore, and they should drop it. I think the center of the Republican Party really is small-businessmen and very practical people who correctly see that it's job creation and wealth creation that sustain an economy — not government intervention and government control, that suffocating nanny-state mentality. The Democrats are in some sort of time warp in always proposing a government solution to every problem. It's like Hillary's philosophy that it takes a village to raise a child. Well, does it? Or does it take a strong family and not the village?
What's broadened the appeal of conservatism in recent years is that Republicans stress individualism — individual effort and personal responsibility. They're really the liberty party now — I thought my party was! It used to seem as if the Republicans were authoritarians and the Democrats were for free speech and for the freedom to live your own life and pursue happiness. But the Democrats have wandered away from their own foundational principles.

These remarks seem a bit cliched. The Republicans have learned that repeating certain memes gives them a life of their own in the public discourse. I'm all in favor of small and medium size businesses and businessmen, but the undemocratic grip of big corporations on society and on politics remains a real concern. Moreoever, simplistic rhetoric about 'nanny-state socialism' and 'rugged individualism' may keep people from considering government solutions that might actually proove a net plus for society, such as universal health care. I am still studying universal health care, and have formed no firm conclusions, but it might be better than having poor or unemployed people visit expensive emergency rooms, while one out of every four health insurance dollars goes to wasteful private-industry paperwork, and other reported horrors. Further, a loving and caring community spirit isn't such a bad idea, as long as it doesn't cost too much or intrude on privacy. Wouldn't we rather have a healthy and vibrant society than a lot of isolated people trapped in the stupefying shell of their home entertainment system? Do you know your neighbors?

Salon: Camille Paglia back on Salon

Justin Raimondo: I'm sick of Camille Paglia

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Politics of War: November 2006

Dems' Brilliant Strategy (08 Nov 06): I have been railing against the Democrats' lack of a clear message on Iraq, but John Podhoretz has called it a 'brilliant strategy' that won back the House.

Last night, Democrats nationalized the election on the issue of Iraq in the broadest sense.
By standing in vague but passionate opposition to the president's handling of the war, they formed a new voting alliance — an alliance between doves, who think Iraq was a mistake to begin with, and one-time hawks who think Iraq was a perfectly fine thing to do in the first place, but that it's a huge mess now and Bush should pay.
Going for that anti-Iraq alliance without offering an escape plan of their own was a brilliant political tactic.
For that, and for recruiting some terrific candidates, all glory goes to New York's own Chuck Schumer, who ran the Senate effort from Washington, and to Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who did the work in the House.
Where do they go with the new alliance in forcing the president's hand on Iraq? Well, they go — nowhere.

I think the Democratic ambiguity on Iraq was due more to confusion in their own minds, and in the minds of the American people, but what do I know? I have come to the view that staying in Iraq is futile, and it is up to the Iraqis to determine their future. A 'phased withdrawal' would put pressure on them to get their act together, rather than relying on us as a crutch (while hating our presence anyway). However, many decent Americans feel that we caused the mess, so we are responsible.

Ironically, it is now to the Democrats' advantage to leave it to Bush to deal with the war. That is, let Republicans decide if they want this millstone around their necks any longer. It's a pretty safe political bet for the Democrats to leave the GOP holding the bag of their own creation, even if it isn't the most honorable thing to do. Eleanor Clift sees it somewhat differently:

The impetus for a change of course in Iraq will almost certainly come from the Republicans, who will not want to endure another bloodletting in two years if the war is not resolved. Why should Democrats shoulder the burden of solving Bush's war when they've been left out of everything else? Republicans have run the Congress with an iron fist, excluding Democrats and bringing legislation to the floor only when it can command a 'majority of the majority', meaning Republicans only. It will be tempting for Democrats to exact revenge for a decade of mistreatment, but that would just trade one set of bullies for another.

The Republicans might try to trap the Dems by inviting their cooperation in a purported bipartisan spirit, only to blame the continuing mess on them during the next presidential election. Such a strategy would be in harmony with their previous tactics. Still, the Democrats should at least speak up in a clear and forthright way on all issues, even if they don't always take the initiative or even cooperate with actual legislation.

James S. Robbins: Back to the Seventies

David Corn: More GOP Blood?/The Iraq Fight To Come

Mark Steyn: U.S. must prove it's a staying power

Robert Dreyfuss: The Iraq Mandate

Seymour Hersh: Is a damaged Bush more likely to attack Iran?

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Politics of War: December 2006

McCain The Last Neocon (08 Dec 06): As reported by Joe Conason, John McCain is almost the only politician on Capitol Hill to defy the Iraq Study Group Report and call for an increase in troops:

JOHN MCCAIN, THE LAST NEOCON
Joe Conason, Salon, 8 Dec 06

Among his Capitol Hill colleagues, McCain was almost alone in joining the right-wing attack on the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton Commission, whose report dismissed demands for additional combat brigades as unrealistic. He was enraged by the report's emphasis on political negotiations and on the excessive costs of the military effort: 'Sustained increases in U.S. troop levels would not solve the fundamental cause of violence in Iraq, which is the absence of national reconciliation, Meanwhile, America's military capacity is stretched thin: we do not have the troops or equipment to make a substantial, sustained increase in our troop presence. Increased deployments to Iraq would also necessarily hamper our ability to provide adequate resources for our efforts in Afghanistan or respond to crises around the world.'
Over and over again, regardless of the realities on the ground and in the armed forces, McCain urged President Bush to deploy enough additional troops to Iraq to constitute an overwhelming force, although the specifics of his plan (and exactly where he hopes to find several brigades of trained, equipped and combat-ready soldiers) remain murky. The credibility he earned from his suffering in a North Vietnam prison camp — as well as his reputation for blunt honesty — evidently exempts him from answering difficult questions about his plan for 'victory'.
According to McCain, there is no alternative to winning except losing, and losing would create an existential threat to the United States. 'The consequences of failure are so severe that I will exhaust every possibility to try to fix this situation', he recently told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week. 'Because it's not the end when American troops leave. The battleground shifts, and we'll be fighting them again. You read Zarqawi, and you read bin Laden ... It's not just Iraq that they're interested in. It's the region, and then us.' He doesn't seem to understand that the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's 'al-Qaida in Iraq' organization is only a small part of the Iraqi insurgency, most of which is devoted solely to expelling the U.S. occupation.
[. . .]
Despite his bullish claim that more combat troops are available for deployment, McCain almost certainly knows the contrary to be true. Last month the Washington Post (a newspaper whose editorial page strongly supports the war) reported that top military officers and defense analysts think that McCain's escalation scheme is 'implausible' and probably impossible. ...
Does McCain really expect that the president and the Pentagon will accept his advice? Or is he merely positioning himself for the war's aftermath, when he will claim that his spurned counsel could have won the victory that eluded Bush? Is he truly an idealist — or is he a cynical demagogue? The answers may be impossible to know. There is much evidence that he values his integrity, and much evidence that he values his ambition even more.

I used to be impressed by McCain's apparent honesty, but ever since seeing him grovel to the religious right, I have had my doubts. But what alarms me most is the almost cartoonish view that leaving Iraq is a huge danger to us. The Muslim terrorists of the world are not like a large and powerful Nazi army breathing down the neck of Europe. They are simply gangs of dangerous criminals who carry out small but deadly operations here and there. All it takes is a dozen of them with the will to die to pull off a 9/11. Although the idea has been much ridiculed, this really seems to me more like a job for customs, intelligence and police than for a huge army. No matter what we do in the Middle East, a dozen or so of them could slip over here to engage in terrorism, and our army would be largely irrelevant. This seems so clear to me that I wonder why it is not to others. If anything, our presence in the Middle East will inflame those who are already inclined to commit terrorism against us, thus making it more likely that they will carry it out. The main problem with leaving Iraq, as I see it, is our moral responsibility towards the Iraqis themselves. I now feel that their future is up to them, but we do carry some responsibility for our ill-conceived adventure.

McCain's views seem too simplistic and extreme to me. If it's McCain vs. Hillary in 2008, then that would make a most fascinating and momentous election. I think Hillary might pull it off. Americans were fooled into thinking Saddam was behind 9/11 and that WMD would be found in Iraq. I don't think the Republicans will be able to shake this off so soon. I also hope that Americans realize that mucking around in the Middle East does not really protect us from terrorism, unless the grand neocon dream of democratizing the region were plausible, which it is not. Even so, the Hamas elections (and other elections) do not indicate that democracy in the Middle East necessarily subdues Muslim militancy! I favor containing the Middle East and doing everything possible to keep their worst elements out of our country, even if it means ruffling our relations with our dubious allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. McCain is not thinking along these lines at all. Is he even thinking or is he just being hawkishly emotional? And Conason's point that McCain may just be cynically positioning himself is well taken, especially since his flip-flop with social and religious conservatives.

Shelby Steele: Our Unceasing Ambivalence

Sidney Blumenthal: The myth of McCain

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Dems Waffle on Troop Surge (26 Dec 06): So how brief is 'brief', Senator Reid? Did you ever hear the famous words 'light at the end of the tunnel'? And what purpose would the troops serve? They would be insufficient, and the real problem is not this or that atrocity but whether Sunnis and Shiites wish to hammer out a fair political solution (which might include partition). We can neither police nor babysit an entire nation. Biden is waffling and confused, as usual, since if there were a sincere political settlement, then US troops would be unnecessary. Only Kennedy knows where he stands, as does Chris Dodd and perhaps a few others. As usual, the Dems are wimping out, for fear of seeming 'weak' on defense, despite the election results. Or perhaps they still believe in America's sacred mission to set the world straight, in which case they are not much different from neocons. An Iraqi civil war would be a tragedy for Iraqis of their own devising, but it would not affect our security directly any more than the bloody Iran-Iraq war of the 1980's did. Let's stop mucking around in the Middle East. We aren't welcome, we don't understand it, and we only ever make things worse. They'll still sell us their bloody oil.

REID: BRIEF TROOP INCREASE OK IN IRAQ
Yahoo News, 17 Dec 06

WASHINGTON — The Senate's top Democrat offered qualified support Sunday for a plan to increase U.S. troops in Iraq, saying it would be acceptable as part of a broader strategy to bring combat forces home by 2008.
President Bush's former secretary of state, however, expressed doubts any troop surge would be effective, noting U.S. forces already are overextended. 'The American Army isn't large enough to secure Baghdad', said Colin Powell, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman during the 1991 Gulf War.
[. . .]
At least three other Democrats did not support Reid's position on the additional troops.
Sen. Jack Reed (news, bio, voting record), D-R.I., said that if it were a short-term increase, 'won't our adversaries simply adjust their tactics, wait us out and wait until we reduce again? So I think you'd have to ask very serious questions about the utility of this.'
Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass., said, 'I respect Harry Reid on it, but that's not where I am.' Kennedy, like Reed a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said there would be widespread opposition by members of his committee if Bush proposed a troop increase.
Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record), D-Del., the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said any proposal to send more troops should only follow a political solution that will end civil unrest. 'The president and others who support the surge have it exactly backwards', Biden said during a speech in Manchester, N.H.

UPDATE (27 Dec 06): Maybe I'm wrong about Biden.

Sen. Joe Lieberman: Why We Need More Troops in Iraq

Barack Obama: Escalation Is Not The Answer

COMMENT (29 Dec 06): Lieberman says the Iraqi government cannot function because there is no security, which must be provided by a surge in US troops. Like many hawks, he has it backwards. The Iraqi government is impotent because they can't come to a solution with popular support. If they could, then the sectarian violence would disappear. The US troops are only serving the futile purpose of acting as Military Police for an entire country during a civil war. They are hopelessly outnumbered, vulnerable and inadequate to an urban guerilla conflict. A few more troops won't make much difference anyway, and they are unsustainable. They increase anti-US resentment, already at very high levels, and they take pressure off the Iraqi leaders to come to a solution. Basically, the US troops are protecting those leaders inside of their Green Zone bubble. Lieberman is a good example of how a decent and highly-educated politician can still be sucked into misguided thinking regarding foreign policy. He is hardly the first. We remember the 'Best and Brightest' who got us mired in Vietnam. Let's just stop mucking around in parts of the world we don't understand. The best way to protect ourselves is to keep the terrorists from getting into our country, which they will be trying to do no matter what we are doing over there. The two issues are really separate. Let's put the money we are wasting in Iraq into increasing our domestic defenses, in terms of intelligence, surveillance, immigration control, etc. Bombing a lot of people over there does nothing to make us more secure and probably increases the chances that terrorists would want to attack us. At any rate, Lieberman's article shows how one can always come up with an argument to continue fighting a disastrous war, which sounds good on the surface. It takes careful analysis to be a responsible superpower, and I wonder if democracy can provide that.

UPDATE (29 Dec 06): Here's an example of the faulty analysis just alluded to. If there were a civil war, the Shias would probably win. That is hardly a victory for the Sunni Al-Qaeda, as Lieberman claims. Even if the Sunnis Baathists were to win, I doubt they would want to take orders from Al-Qaeda. In every respect, Al-Qaeda is merely incidental to this problem. Yet Lieberman, like Bush, paints Al-Qaeda as the giant Hitler behind all this. It's just foolish. The danger from Al-Qaeda is one of mere criminality — 'mere' in the sense that it is a few people who could slip in anytime, not mere in terms of the pain suffered by innocents. We do need to think of it as a police and intelligence matter. To turn the whole thing into a grand crusading war was very stupid and typically American — or should I say Republican? Well, the Democrats wimped out and failed to think, so let's call it American. Use a sledgehammer to swat flies (albeit lethal flies)? That's what a superpower is for, isn't it? OK, there was the grand dream of reforming the entire Middle East by force. Now that was really stupid and divorced from reality. Swatting files with a sledgehammer seems rational in comparison. And even if we 'reformed' the Middle East, the terrorists could still be plotting in Brooklyn. All it takes is a few suicidal guys and some elementary knowledge.

Robert Novak: Against the 'Surge'

UPDATE (4 Jan 07): I would call this waffling:

Pelosi: 'The American people rejected an open-ended obligation to a war without end.' Duh! That could apply to any war. Mere empty rhetoric.

Murtha: 'I will be recommending ... that we begin extensive hearings starting on January 17, 2007 that will address accountability, military readiness, intelligence oversight and the activities of private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.' Hearings doesn't sound the same as getting out now.

So much for the leading Democratic voices against the war. Was it all mere rhetoric to get elected? Or are the Dems getting cold feet again? Maybe they worry that another terror attact could start the hysteria all over again.

Some good news: About two weeks after President Bush started using the word 'surge', the pundits are finally figuring out that it is a weasel-word for 'escalate', unless we get extremely lucky.

UPDATE (5 Jan 07): But then there's this. Who knows?

TOP DEMOCRATS OPPOSE MORE TROOPS IN IRAQ
David Stout, NYT, 5 Jan 07

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 — As President Bush prepares to present his new strategy on Iraq to the American people, Democratic Congressional leaders said today they will fight any approach that calls for deploying more United States troops there.
'We want to do everything we can to help Iraq succeed in the future but, like many of our senior military leaders, we do not believe that adding more U.S. combat troops contributes to success', House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader, wrote to Mr. Bush. 'Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain', the Democrats' letter said.
Also reiterating his deep opposition to any troop increases was Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin. 'The administration refuses to acknowledge the devastating impact that keeping our brave troops in Iraq is having on our national security, and now the president is considering sending even more troops', Mr. Feingold said in a statement.
'We should be bringing our troops out of Iraq, not the other way around', he said. 'The American people's message at the ballot box was loud and clear, and it is past time that the administration listened.'

Jed Babbin: President Bush Can Still Sink the Democrats

UPDATE (6 Jan 07): Poor Senator Biden claims helplessness:

BIDEN: WHITE HOUSE POSTPONING LOSS OF IRAQ
Glenn Kessler, WP, 5 Jan 07

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that he believes top officials in the Bush administration have privately concluded they have lost Iraq and are simply trying to postpone disaster so the next president will 'be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof', in a chaotic withdrawal reminiscent of Vietnam.
[. . .]
'There is nothing a United States Senate can do to stop a president from conducting his war', Biden said. 'The only thing that is going to change the president's mind, if he continues on a course that is counterproductive, is having his party walk away from his position.'

COMMENT: That last remark is again rather disingenuous of Biden, who has really done little to prevent this disaster or to try to force change. Congress can vote to cut down on funds for the war. Of course, this will lead to demagogic cries of abandoning the troops, but that could only happen if a delinquent president orders troops into combat anyway. Basically, mainstream Democrats like Biden don't really want to fight, to 'go to the mat' with the President. Politics is unpredictable, and it could backfire. For example, there could be another 9/11, and the hysteria would start all over again. Also, elite pols like Biden tend to be worried about America's loss of face, but that has happened already. Rather, we should now be concerned with cutting our losses, but don't count on the Democrats for courage. Rhetoric perhaps, but not courage. They're professional politicians, just like the other side of the aisle. The fact that Biden likes to smile a lot and act like such a nice guy just makes me disdain him all the more.

UPDATE (7 Jan 07): Yes, the Dems are already caving in!

OTHER DEMOCRATS DISTANCE THEMSELVES FROM PELOSI
Associated Press, 7 Jan 07

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Some of the other leading Democrats in Congress aren't ready to echo House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's suggestion that lawmakers might hold up funding for additional troops in Iraq.
On CBS's 'Face the Nation' today, Pelosi said Democrats won't cut off money for those troops already in Iraq — but that President Bush would have to 'justify any additional resources'. The comment comes as Bush puts the finishing touches on a plan that could put thousands of additional U.S. troops in Iraq in an effort to stem the sectarian violence.
But Pelosi's second-in-command in the House Democratic leadership, Steny Hoyer, told Fox News he doesn't 'want to anticipate' that possibility. And the Democrat who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden, says Congress doesn't have the power to second-guess Bush's military strategy — because lawmakers had voted to authorize him to wage war. Biden appeared on NBC's 'Meet the Press'.
The Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell, agreed, telling Fox News that Congress can't 'micro-manage' the tactics in Iraq.
When asked about Pelosi's remarks, a White House spokesman said Bush welcomes any ideas on Iraq that 'lead to success'.

BIDEN: BUSH WILL 'BE ABLE TO KEEP THE TROOPS THERE FOREVER, CONSTITUTIONALLY, IF HE WANTS TO'
Huffington Post, 7 Jan 07

Whether lawmakers are prepared to advocate legislative steps to withhold funds from an expanded mission is unclear. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Sunday that as a practical matter, there was little that lawmakers could do to prevent Mr. Bush from expanding the American military mission in Iraq.
'You can't go in like a Tinkertoy and play around and say you can't spend the money on this piece and this piece', Mr. Biden said on the NBC News program Meet the Press. 'He'll be able to keep the troops there forever, constitutionally, if he wants to.'
'As a practical matter', Mr. Biden added, 'there is no way to say, Mr. President, stop.'

COMMENT: I reject Biden's spineless weasel-words as patent nonsense. I smelled this coming. Indeed, even Pelosi is wimping out. Congress most certainly does have the right to cut off funding, even for existing troops. It is then up to the President whether he wishes to make human sacrifices of them by sending them into battle, just to prove a point. Congress should be the authority to turn a war on or off, and our Constitution has failed us miserably in this, as have the feckless politicians who don't clarify or reform or even implement it. When it comes to war, our president is effectively a Caesar! A Caesar is the same thing as a dictator. And not just once the war has started. He can often get us into one rather easily, as we have seen. This is a national disgrace and a violation of the democratic spirit with respect to a most awesome and important power of the government: the power to wage war and to get a lot of people killed. Yet even when the war is almost universally judged a fiasco, the president still has free reign. The Congress is derelict in its duty. They are spitting on the public will. The polls are clear.

UPDATE (8 Jan 07): On the other hand, Iran is a much tougher nut to crack. I used to feel quite belligerent towards Iran, with an inclination to use military force, but the whole Iraq debacle has sobered me up and prompted me to reconsider some basic assumptions, as discussed here or here.

FOREIGN POLICY DIVIDES THE DEMOCRATS
Jeffrey Goldberg, New Yorker, 8 Jan 07

Bayh suggested that he was deterred [from running for president] by the morass in Iraq and, by extension, the challenges posed by Iran. Liberal Democrats, he said, would not respond to his views about the use of American military power. 'You just hope that we haven't soured an entire generation on the necessity, from time to time, of using force because Iraq has been such a debacle', he said. 'That would be tragic, because Iran is a grave threat. They're everything we thought Iraq was but wasn't. They are seeking nuclear weapons, they do support terrorists, they have threatened to destroy Israel, and they've threatened us, too.'

Boston Globe: Ted Kennedy tries to stop the surge

WSJ: Murtha Outlines Strategy To Restrict Troop Surge

UPDATE (9 Jan 07): Silly me! Here's what's happening:

SAY GOOD-BYE TO A FUTURE REPUBLICAN PRESIDENCY
Ivan Eland, 9 Jan 07

Despite the verbal support of many Republicans for escalation, it is they who should be most dispirited by the president's new policy. The gleeful Democrats will oppose the escalation rhetorically, but give the Republicans the rope to figuratively hang themselves. Despite their hints to the contrary, the Democrats will not take the courageous step of cutting off funding for the war, lest they be accused of pulling the rug out from under the troops. At a minimum, they should nix funding for added troops, but may be hesitant for fear of being blamed for 'losing' the war and out of a reluctance to stand in the way of the Republicans digging their electoral hole deeper.

Well, it these are the political dynamics, it serves the Republicans right. They have always played a sleazy game of painting the Dems as soft on defense.

John Dickerson: Dems hate the surge but don't dare stop it

Tony Blankley: Pelosian Honesty

USA Today: Americans oppose increased troop levels by 61%-36%

DEMOCRATS DRAW BATTLE LINES AGAINST BUSH'S SURGE
Alexander Zaitchik, Alternet, 10 Jan 07

If Murtha and Kennedy stand to one side of leadership's flank in the exercise of raw congressional power to end the war sooner rather than later, Joe Biden flamboyantly staked out his ground on the other during the first week of the first session. Appearing on Sunday's Meet the Press, the Senate's foreign relations chairman scoffed at suggestions that even a portion of Iraq funds could be choked in committee. He also dismissed the idea that Congress could tie funds in the 2007 supplemental defense bill to legislation capping the number of troops in Iraq. Moments before announcing his entry into the 2008 presidential race, Biden called the idea of spending caps 'constitutionally questionable'.
Except that they're not. As legal scholar and former Clinton administration Justice Department official Neil Kinkopf argues in a recent paper for the American Constitution Society, Congress has the legal and constitutional right to stop Bush's plans for escalation simply by passing a second war authorization bill. Funds going to enlarge the war could be killed by the attachment of a simple appropriations rider. The precedents are plenty.

COMMENT (10 Jan 07): OK, so here's my understanding so far. Most Dems are waffling (unwilling to block funds for a troop increase) because: (i) they are afraid of being labeled 'anti-troop', (ii) they don't want to be blamed as the situation deteriorates in Iraq, (iii) the 'cut and run' smear might still work, the midterms notwithstanding, and (iv) the situation will probably deteriorate anyway, so why not give Bush the rope to hang himself, so Dems can win in 08? So from the point of pure political selfishness, the Dems smartest calculation would be to let the president get his 'surge' (i.e. escalation). No wonder Joe Biden feels his poor Senate is so helpless! A political opportunist with a nice guy smile. And how can anti-war people vent their wrath in the polls? By not voting for the hypocritical Democrats? That only helps the Republicans. Further, conservative Jews are putting pressure on Democrats to fight in Iraq, bomb Iran, and otherwise get increasingly enmeshed in the Middle East. Perhaps pols like Hillary are afraid because opposing Jewish hawks can easily be spun as anti-Semitic. The fact remains: failure to block the 'surge' means voting for escalation. There is no way the surge will be temporary. We either fish or cut bait. Yet another reason to feel that the American Empire is unstoppable.

UPDATE (13 Jan 07): See also what I say about Hillary Clinton here. She is a good indication of how the Democrats have failed the American public on the Iraq war.

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Politics of War: 2007

Politics of War: January 2007

Is Israel Planning Our Next War? (9 Jan 07): Don't get me wrong. I fully support Israel, and I agree that the virulently anti-Semitic Arabs are mostly to blame for the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Moreover, I feel that Jews, especially the liberal ones, are among the most welcome and beneficial of social groups in America. Without them, we might have lost some of our basic civil liberties to Republican theocrats a long time ago. (We may be losing them anyway, but let us not digress.) Even so, the following seems rather astounding, given the recent electoral rejection of pre-emptive war in the Middle East.

WHO IS PLANNING OUR NEXT WAR?
Pat Buchanan, 9 Jan 07

Israel angrily denies the report. But, on Dec. 30, retired Gen. Oded Tira, who headed up all Israeli artillery units, burst into print with this admonition:
'As an American air strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help (Bush) pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party (which is conducting itself foolishly) and U.S. newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the Iranian issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure.'
'Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran', writes Tira. Thus, Israel and its U.S. lobbying arm 'must turn to Hillary Clinton and other potential presidential candidates in the Democratic Party so that they publicly support immediate action by Bush against Iran.'
'The Americans must act', Tira concludes. 'If they don't, we'll do it ourselves ... (and) we must immediately start preparing for an Iranian response to an attack.'
According to UPI editor-at-large Arnaud De Borchgrave, Tira's line tracks the New Year's Day message of Likud superhawk 'Bibi' Netanyahu, the former prime minister.
Said Netanyahu, Israel 'must immediately launch an intense, international public relations front first and foremost on the U.S. The goal being to encourage President Bush to live up to specific pledges he would not allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons. We must make clear to the (U.S.) government, the Congress and the American public that a nuclear Iran is a threat to the U.S. and the entire world, not only Israel.'
Israel's war, says Bibi, must be sold as America's war.
We are thus forewarned. A propaganda campaign, using Israeli agents and their neocon auxiliaries and sympathizers, who stampeded us into war in Iraq, is being prepared to stampede us into war on Iran.
We are to be convinced that Iran, with no air force or navy to speak of, an economy not 2 percent of ours, which has not started a single war since the revolution, 27 years ago, is about to give to terrorists, to use on us, a nuclear bomb it may be 10 years away from even being able to build.

COMMENT: Well, what the heck! We never had a real democracy anyway. Now I understand the Democratic waffling. Alles klar!

ANALYSIS: NEVER AGAIN?
Arnaud de Borchgrave, Washington Times, 2 Jan 07

Netanyahu then said Israel 'must immediately launch an intense, international, public relations front first and foremost on the U.S. The goal being to encourage President Bush to live up to specific pledges he would not allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons. We must make clear to the government, the Congress and the American public that a nuclear Iran is a threat to the U.S. and the entire world, not only Israel'.
There are signs this is already happening in Washington. Before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld troika decided the ousting of Saddam Hussein had to become an integral part of the 'war on terror'. Eventually 60 percent of Americans thought Saddam was behind 9/11, even though there was no link between the two. Today, the Bush-Cheney team faces the same spin scenario: how to weave the global war on terror and the Shiite powers that be in Iran. This one is relatively simple: Iran trains and funds Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories.
Anticipating the new line, Sen. Joe Lieberman (Independent-CT) referred to 'Iran and al-Qaida' on Wolf Blitzer's Sunday program on CNN. That Iran is Shiite and al-Qaida Sunni becomes irrelevant in the new game plan that will most probably lead to U.S. air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities in 2007/08. Can a Democratic Congress be bypassed under a blanket authorization already secured to hunt down transnational terrorists wherever they may be hiding?
The 'neocons' who work closely with Netanyahu on what could be the next phase of a nascent regional war in the Middle East, say Bush has the authority to take out Iran's nuclear threat. Because it has only one purpose — to take out Israel. One Hiroshima-type nuclear weapon and Israel ceases to exit.
[. . .]
And if Bush doesn't take on Iran, prominent Israelis are speculating that president Clinton 2 (Hillary) will do so. Oded Tira, the chairman of Israel's Association of Industrial Manufacturers, and former chief artillery office in the IDF, said, 'Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran. As an American air strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party, which is conducting itself foolishly, and U.S. newspaper editors'.
Writing in Ynet News (online Yedioth Ahronoth), Tira said, 'We need to turn the Iranian issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure. Hillary Clinton and other potential presidential candidates in the Democratic Party (must) publicly support immediate action by Bush again Iran'.
As for target Iran, Tira voiced widespread belief in Israel that the Jewish state must coordinate strikes with the U.S. — 'and prepare for the Iranian response'. Fearless forecast: It will be formidable.

UPDATE (27 Jan 07): Thank goodness Matt Yglesias can speak honestly about a taboo subject! He is Jewish, liberal and antiwar. Here he comes to General Wesley Clark's defense, after the general expressed himself in a way that left him open to smears. I knew that American Jews were divided on topics such as Israel and the Iraq war, or what to do about Iran, but I'm glad to have confirmation of something I'd long suspected: that the majority of US Jews are liberal and against the Iraq war, while certain well financed hawkish (i.e. neocon) lobbying groups exert disproportionate influence, not only on Bush but perhaps also on Democrats like Hillary (and certainly on Senator Joe Lieberman). How come so few pundits can speak with Yglesias' candor? Even other liberal Jewish commentators seem to shrink from this honest admission — an admission which makes most American Jews look good, in my opinion.

Jerusalem Post: Candidates for 2008 courting Jewish support

Gideon Rachman: Israelis, America and Iran

Joshua Frank: Hillary Clinton, AIPAC and Iran

HYSTERIA AT HERZLIYA
Pat Buchanan, 30 Jan 07

Newt Gingrich also brought his soothing touch to the proceedings: ... 'Three nuclear weapons are a second holocaust. ... I'll repeat it. Three nuclear weapons are a second holocaust. ... Our enemies are fully as determined as Nazi Germany and more determined than the Soviets. Our enemies will kill us the first chance they get.'
[. . . ]
Mitt Romney agreed. Ahmadinejad's Iran is more dangerous than Khrushchev's Soviet Union, which put missiles in Cuba. For the Soviets 'were never suicidal. Soviet commitment to national survival was never in question. That assumption cannot be made to an irrational regime (Iran) that celebrates martyrdom'.
Came then U.S. peace candidate John Edwards. Keeping Iran from nuclear weapons 'is the greatest challenge of our generation. ... To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table. ... Let me reiterate — all options'.

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Bush's Televised Speech (11 Jan 07): Nothing new. He wants to 'surge' (i.e. escalate). Everyone says it is too little too late. No matter. Why lose when you can drag it out and hand the problem off to the next president? The most humane and logical solution would be to start seeking a smooth partition. Not much talk of that unfortunately. Instead, everybody is simply assuming that the inevitable civil war is 'unacceptable', while doing nothing serious about it. Leaving aside humanitarian considerations, I wonder whether such a regional war would be so dangerous for us. Did we care about the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s? Perhaps this war would faciliate the most militant Muslims killing each other off. It could have a purgative effect, thus setting the stage for a possible democratic greening of the Middle East. But we're decent Americans. We don't talk like that. We just blunder a foreign country into an entirely predictable civil war, with the best of intentions, of course. Then, after being so irresponsible, those same blunderers get all pious about our 'responsibility'.

William Odom: Bush Needs to Learn When to Fold

Gerard Baker: Startling and Clear: Bush Defies Critics

Margaret Carlson: Bush Repeats Same Old, Fatal Mistakes on Iraq

Jonah Goldberg: At Least Bush Wants to Win

Terry Michael: Where Are the Democrats?

Sabrina Tavernise: Iraq wants no part of escalation

Sally Quinn: The Least Immoral Choice

David Corn: Bush's Speech Full of Reality-Based Desperation

BUSH'S SPEECH IS A SAD ATTEMPT
TO SALVAGE HIS REPUTATION
Robert Scheer, Alternet, 11 Jan 07

As for the speech's content, it is by necessity an exercise in the absurd, as the president previewed in his soliloquy for doubting Republican senators his conviction that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has had a profound change of heart. This radical Shiite leader, who only days ago turned over Saddam Hussein to the tender mercies of a mob chanting its allegiance to the even more fanatical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, now is expected to lead U.S. troops in battle against his chief political ally and sponsor of much of Iraq's most deadly sectarian fighting. Even Bush must know by now that those fellows with whom he is in bed over there bear us nothing but hate. Speak not of the pangs of despised love.
[. . .]
'I don't understand what he thinks is going on in Iraq, but whatever it is, he doesn't care about politics, or the Congress or his successor, when it comes to Iraq', offered Richard C. Holbrooke, a veteran of foreign debacles authored by a rival clan. 'He wants to either win the war or, since that is an impossibility, pass it on to his successor.'

Bobby Muller (Veterans for America): Vietnam All Over Again

Srdja Trifkovic: Bush Plays Va Banque

George Will: Bush & Congress, Hoping for a Miracle

THE 'SURGE' IS A RED HERRING
Paul Craig Roberts, Antiwar, 12 Jan 07

Republican US Senator Chuck Hagel declared Bush's plan to be 'the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam'. In truth, it is far worse. It is naked aggression justified by transparent lies. No one has ever heard governments in Iraq, Syria, or Iran declare 'their intention to destroy our way of life'. To the contrary, it is the United States and Israel that are trying to destroy the Muslim way of life. The crystal clear truth is that fanatical neoconservatives and Israelis are using Bush to commit the United States to a catastrophic course.

Justin Raimondo: Bush's Last Stand

Eric Alterman: Think Again: The 'Surge' and the 'Purge'

Harold Meyerson: Polarizer Vs. Polarizer

BUSH'S NEW STRATEGY — THE MARCH OF FOLLY
Robert Fisk, The Independent, 11 Jan 07

No, I would turn to another, less flamboyant, far more modern politician for prophecy, an American who understood, just before the 2003 launch of Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq, what would happen to the arrogance of power. For their relevance this morning, the words of the conservative politician Pat Buchanan deserve to be written in marble:
We will soon launch an imperial war on Iraq with all the 'On to Berlin' bravado with which French poilus and British tommies marched in August 1914. But this invasion will not be the cakewalk neoconservatives predict ... For a militant Islam that holds in thrall scores of millions of true believers will never accept George Bush dictating the destiny of the Islamic world ...
The one endeavour at which Islamic peoples excel is expelling imperial powers by terror and guerrilla war. They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon... We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before.

COMMENT: Yes, Pat. My secular vision of America is the opposite of yours, but your insight into human nature far outshines those of the well-known Washington insiders — more than a few of them Democrats — who got carried away by the democratization zeal and predicted none of this, though it now seems so obvious.

BUSH ADMITS MISTAKES, SENDS MORE TROOPS
MSNBC, 11 Jan 07

Democratic congressional leaders said shortly after Bush spoke that Bush's failure to impose a deadline on the Iraqis to assume responsibility for their own security doomed the initiative to failure.
'Iraqi political leaders will not take the necessary steps to achieve a political resolution to the sectarian problems in their country until they understand that the U.S. commitment is not open-ended', said the statement by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democratic Whip Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. 'Escalating our military involvement in Iraq sends precisely the wrong message and we oppose it.'
Anticipating such reaction, Bush warned in his speech that 'to step back now would force a collapse of the Iraqi government, tear that country apart and result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale.'
[. . .]
Usually loath to admit error, Bush acknowledged in his speech that it was a mistake to have allowed American forces to be restricted by the Iraqi government, which tried to prevent U.S. military operations against fighters controlled by the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a powerful political ally of al-Maliki. This time, the president said, al-Maliki had assured him there will be no such interference and that 'political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated'.

COMMENT (11 Jan 07): As the Tavernise article indicates, the Maliki government wants the US to fight Sunnis, but otherwise leave the Shias and the (Shia) government alone. I wouldn't be surprised if, in order to get some semblance of 'victory' in Iraq, or even some modicum of order, the administration simply takes the side of the Shias. They become the 'good guys'. After all, they are the majority, aren't they? (It might be convenient to temporally forget minority rights in a true democracy.) Not only would taking sides be immoral, but it would probably suck us in further, as our troops start dying from a well-defined 'enemy'. There's nothing like a little moral clarity!

COMMENT (11 Jan 07): I'm repeating myself, but notice how nobody questions the assumption of a worse situation if we disengage. Will there really be a 'terrorist sanctuary'? The Shia part may go to Iran, which would make Iran incrementally stronger (or weaker) but won't change the threat to us by much. The Sunni part will go to the Baathists, and I doubt they wish to take orders from Al Qaeda. Would a civil war be so dangerous for us? I have discussed this at some length already. Basically, the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s was much worse, but we not only felt unthreatened but supported Saddam. A civil war might also lead to the most aggressive Muslims in the region liquidating each other. And if the civil war is inevitable, why not seek a smooth partition? Is it not inhumane to be ignoring this seemingly logical solution? Again, all the talk of morality and responsibility serves to suppress thinking about options. Is it that the war supporters are grasping for any cheap excuse not to lose? Is it ego masquerading as conscience? Perhaps this happens at a subconscious level so deep and convoluted that even the protagonists are unaware. Something similar happened with the WMD going in. It was taken for granted that a threat was imminent, and so on. Just assume a set of scenarios and options that will enable and gratify your gut instincts. So what? It's only 100,000 Iraqis who pay the price. Nobody in Washington pays any price whatsoever, from top politicians to sycophantic pundits.

COMMENT (12 Jan 07): A comment is in order on Roberts' article, since it gets to the heart of the matter. Was it ever right for us, even in principle, to try to 'democratize' the Middle East? Was this not a form of imperialism and neo-colonialism, as repeated even by a 'mainstream' voice such as Brzezinski's? Of course I believe that liberal democracy is far preferable to orthodox Islam, but do we have a right to invade and try to impose it by force? (Note that I say 'try', since the attempt has been a dismal failure so far.) How can we not expect them to consider us as invaders and enemies? Would we not feel the same, if anybody invaded us for any reason? Moreover, I don't think democracy can be imposed by force, as I have said many times. It must grow from within, from a change of heart and mentality. I have agreed with the conservatives on the aggressive nature of orthodox Islam, but I now see how this has been misused for a radical foreign policy. We have a right to defend our territory from enemies, but a pre-emptive war into someone else's territory can hardly ever be justified. That is what the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor. I do agree that the neocons are largely populated by pro-Israel hawks, who thought they would make Israel safer with some social engineering of Muslim countries. One is hardly 'anti-semitic' if one opposes them; indeed, most American Jews were against the Iraq war. And now Bush and the neocons appear to be trying to extend the war to Iran and Syria. They are reckless gamblers who know they can push some buttons, and once troops are dying in a new theater, Congress will feel obliged to go along, based on past experience.

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Chuck Hagel for President! (17 Jan 07): This article by Robert Scheer sums up so much of what I think that I decided to reproduce it in full for the record. I can't understand why Scheer was fired by the 'liberal' LA Times, or why he doesn't get on Sunday morning TV more often. Could my worst liberal fears about an evil corporate stranglehold over America have some truth to them?

NOTE: Maybe I'd better be a bit careful about Scheer. This page says he once extolled the virtues of North Korean Communism! Then there is this and this, from David Horowitz. Well, Scheer may be older and wiser now. I can't find anything wrong with the following article.

CHUCK HAGEL FOR PRESIDENT!
Robert Scheer, Huffington Post, 17 Jan 07

Chuck Hagel for president! If it ever narrows down to a choice between him and some Democratic hack who hasn't the guts to fundamentally challenge the president on Iraq, then the conservative Republican from Nebraska will have my vote. Yes, the war is that important, and the fact that Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, the leading Democratic candidate, still can't or won't take a clear stand on the occupation is insulting to the vast majority of voters who have.
Sen. Hagel is a decorated Vietnam War vet who learned the crucial lessons of that Democrat-launched debacle of post-colonial imperialism. Even more important, he has the courage to challenge a president from his own party who so clearly didn't.
'The speech given last night [Jan. 10] by this president represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam', Hagel said. 'We are projecting ourselves further and deeper into a situation that we cannot win militarily. To ask our young men and women to sacrifice their lives to be put in the middle of a civil war is wrong. It's, first of all, in my opinion, morally wrong. It's tactically, strategically, militarily wrong', he added.
If Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, another Democratic darling, has uttered words of such clarifying dissent on the president's disastrous course, then I haven't heard them. Instead, too many leading Democratic politicians continue to act as if they fear that if they are forthright in opposing the war, they will appear weak, whether on national security or the protection of Israel, and so ignore the clear, strong voice of the American people that just revived their party's fortunes.
Ever since President Ronald Reagan painted foreign policy as a simplistic war of good versus evil, the Republican Party has been in the thrall of neocon adventurers. Yet, the national emergence of Hagel reminds us that, two decades earlier, it was Dwight D. Eisenhower, a war hero and a Republican, who was the only president to clearly challenge the simplistic and jingoistic militarism that most Democrats embraced during the Cold War. It was Eisenhower, in fact, who refused to send troops to Vietnam, and his Democratic successors who opened the gates of war.
True conservatives, going back to George Washington, have always been wary of the 'foreign entanglements' that our first general and president warned against in his farewell address. And it is in that spirit, recognizing the limits to U.S. military power, that Hagel spoke this past Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press.
Independent Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, late of an oft-opportunistic Democratic Party that saw fit to nominate him as recently as 2000 for the vice presidency, had just finished accusing those who don't support President Bush's escalation of the war of being 'all about failing'. In his defense of the indefensible, Lieberman baldly repeated many of Bush's lies that launched this war four years ago.
'The American people ... have been attacked on 9/11 by the same enemy that we're fighting in Iraq today, supported by a rising Islamist radical super-powered government in Iran', said the fear-monger. 'Allowing Iraq to collapse would be a disaster for the Iraqis, for the Middle East, for us, that would embolden the Iranians and al-Qaida, who are our enemies. And they would follow us back here.'
Never mind the ridiculous image of 'super-powered' Iran invading the United States, or the fact that foreign jihadists — arriving after the overthrow of anti-fundamentalist strongman Saddam Hussein — make up only a tiny fraction of the combatants in Iraq. The question is how the apparently intelligent Lieberman doesn't understand that the main task of our troops for most of their stay in Iraq has been, de facto, to expand the power of Shiite theocrats trained for decades in Iran. Tehran couldn't have baited a better trap.
In any case, Hagel refused to bite on Lieberman's apocalyptic vision, which somehow manages to skip the hard truth that Iraq has collapsed because of our involvement, not despite it.
'[T]he fact is, the Iraqi people will determine the fate of Iraq', Hagel responded, in what amounts to a radical opinion in paternalistic, arrogant Washington. 'The people of the Middle East will determine their fate. We continue to interject ourselves in a situation that we never have understood, we've never comprehended [and] we now have to devise a way to find some political consensus with our allies [and] the regional powers, including Iran and Syria.'
'To say that we are going to feed more young men and women into that grinder, put them in the middle of a tribal, sectarian civil war, is not going to fix the problem',he added.
Words of wisdom that set the standard for anyone running for president.

COMMENT: Notice how it's not really a left vs. right or Republican vs. Democrat thing! The Dems have done more than their share of wasting blood and treasure on futile neo-colonial wars based on simplistic Machiavellian political slogans. What irony in the idea the true conservatives like Eisenhower or Hagel would be far better for us (and the world) than Democratic bigshots like Hillary or Lieberman or even the overhyped Obama. Isn't it amazing that the leading Dems seem disdainful of the clear mandate of the election? Perhaps that is because the public is fickle, and another terrorist attack could unleash the hysteria again. (I'm all in favor of protecting the homeland and screening immigration from Muslim countries.)

UPDATE (17 Jan 07): I'll add something else. I think that Hagel and Scheer are simply more intelligent than most politicians or pundits, respectively, at least on this war. Sorry for the elitism, but there you have it. Not sure what this says about democracy... Oh wait! I forgot! The American people sent a clear message in the midterms to get out of Iraq. OK, I get it, democracy gives us a Congress dumber than the American people! Or maybe the high-flying big-ego pols and pundits in D.C. have all drunk the superpower kool-aid. It's so intoxicating just being on Capitol Hill.

UPDATE (17 Jan 07): It is interesting to read the comments. One Democrat blasts Hagel for being 'against reproductive choice'. When I check online, I find out that Hagel has (i) voted NO on $100M to reduce teen pregnancy by education & contraceptives; (ii) voted YES on criminal penalty for harming unborn fetus during other crime; (iii) voted YES on banning partial birth abortions except for maternal life; and (iv) voted YES on banning human cloning. This doesn't seem too extreme to me. Anyhow, I have argued elsewhere that Roe vs. Wade is constitutionally flawed, and it wouldn't be such a bad thing if the issue reverted to the states. Other criticisms of Hagel are lightweight, such as voting for the flag burning amendment, or oil drilling in ANWR in Alaska, or holding back from the dubious global warming craze. As for not voting to raise the minimum wage, I am willing to listen to economist Robert Samuelson who says that the minimum wage benefits suburban teenagers more than the poor. The war supersedes all of this, not least because of the gargantuan economic cost. But I'll keep an eye on Hagel, and maybe decide he isn't so great. Chris Dodd looks pretty good, based on what I know so far.

UPDATE (17 Jan 07): Someone else mentions that Edwards is sincerely against the war but also liberal on other issues dear to Democrats. So why not him? Well, does he have enough experience and gravitas to win? Or to be a good president?

UPDATE (17 Jan 07): I also enjoyed this comment by an old Republican named Viper:

When you spend what the next 20 nations combined spend on their militaries and yet have trouble fielding another 20K men or a total force of of less than 160K... your military is weak and is broken. The Repugs are responsible for this weakening of a military by engaging with such incompetance, lies and corruption on a War of Choice... bad choice....
We spend more on intelligence than China spends on its entire military and yet still went into Iraq and thanks to Vacation Boy could not even protect the Pentagon even 45 minutes after the first plane hit WTC! Good thing the Soviets had not launched an attack....
And to keep our economy going we have to borrow from a Communist Country... not much of an advertisement for capitalism or free market concepts.
Repugs appear to be for graft, lies, cronism, massive deficits for our kids, pollution and a banana republic style country with no middle class..
What happened to my old party for 30 years... It a religious new world order party with a touch of imperialism thrown in for measure.
Hagel is the only thing left of my old party. Even McCain has kissed the dark side.
Regards

UPDATE (17 Jan 07): Or how about this timely and classic quotation from Lincoln (perhaps) mentioned by another commentator? (I'm really getting off topic. Better stop.)

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of th