What is it About Today's Press?

This morning I noted how the press has gone "AWOL" in its coverage of recent progress in Iraq (while intent to make big stories from the rants of antiwar reporters). Thus I thought I'd follow up that entry with Wordsmith's powerful essay, "The NYTimes Once Again Shapes the Battle Space."

Be sure to read the whole thing, but I especially liked this part:

What is it about today's press that has impaired judgment, given aid and comfort to America's enemies, endangered lives, prolonged the conflict, and sabotaged and undermined anti-terror programs by publishing leaks regarding such things as CIA secret prisons, NSA surveillance program, the SWIFT program? Were 32 frontpage stories on abu Ghraib published in the New York Times really warranted? Did the act itself inflame the Arab world and create more terrorists, or was it the media hype about the abuses, which did so? What about Haditha? Who has done more damage to the war effort? Soldiers on the frontlines to win hearts and minds, protesters out on the streets, politicians back in Washington, or perceptions created and driven by the media in its coverage of the war? The Bush Administration is held accountable for its failures in prosecuting the Iraq battle with zero percent casualties; but where is the media accountability?

I replied at the post:

I can't answer the question, but I just refer to my framework of postmodern culture, where there's really no good or bad, or if anything, to the leftists, we're the "bad guys."

Obama and Change: Unlocking the Puzzle

Dorothy Wickenden argues that Barack Obama's promise of change remains an enigma, at the New Yorker:

On October 7, 2002, in Cincinnati, Ohio, George W. Bush delivered the defining speech of his Presidency. In the face of “clear evidence of peril” from a regime harboring terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, he declared, “we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

Five days earlier, a forty-one-year-old Illinois state legislator had given a momentous speech of his own, although few recognized it as such at the time. “I don’t oppose all wars,” Barack Obama told a few hundred Chicago protesters, adding:

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush discovered a big idea for his Presidency. He would bring down a tyrant, crush terrorism, and impose democracy and peace on what his regent, Vice-President Dick Cheney, called “freedom-loving peoples of the region.” As the world now knows, that idea was based on faulty intelligence reports and executed with a fatal disregard of political reality in the Middle East and at home. By the time of the 2008 Presidential campaign, Bush’s approval rating had shrunk from sixty-seven per cent to thirty-seven per cent, the Republican Party was coming apart, and Obama’s 2002 speech had proved a precondition for an astounding climb to victory this month as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for President.

Still, sixteen months after announcing his candidacy, and after twenty-six Presidential debates and thousands of public-speaking engagements, Obama remains a puzzle to many voters. Almost as dedicated a policy wonk as Hillary Clinton and arguably more centrist in his economic beliefs, he offers plenty of specifics about what needs to be done. But his captivating eloquence and his slogan—“Change We Can Believe In”—have seemed to lift him dangerously high above the concrete. He has proved his steadiness of purpose without clearly defining his priorities. What, above all, does he intend to accomplish if he is elected President?

Obama is said to have been dissatisfied with the slogan. If so, he has a point. The “change” he advocates can be understood as a pragmatic correction to the radical policies and the ineptitude of the Bush brigade. His political departure is a kind of return. He has written two unusually revealing books—one describing how he came to be who he is, the other delineating how he proposes to reclaim the qualities that once made America so admired. He argues that the United States must relearn the fundamental lessons of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and its own long journey toward a more perfect union, and then apply them to the global upheavals of the twenty-first century.

In his books, Obama emerges not as the personification of cool projected onto him by his young adherents—or as the disdainful élitist suggested by his offhand remark about a “bitter” working class—but as something of a square: someone who doesn’t have to strain to talk about “values,” God, and family. His eerily objective self-analysis is matched by his lawyerly ability to see things from the perspective of those on the other side. In January, after Obama uttered a few words of praise for Ronald Reagan in an interview with newspaper editors, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards rushed to condemn his apostasy. But he meant what he said. In 2006, in “The Audacity of Hope,” he had written, “Reagan spoke to America’s longing for order, our need to believe that we are not simply subject to blind, impersonal forces but that we can shape our individual and collective destinies, so long as we rediscover the traditional virtues of hard work, patriotism, personal responsibility, optimism, and faith.”

Wickenden goes on to suggest that Obama's a model of consistency in his political views, not a "flip-flopper," like John McCain.

Actually, some have argued that it's Obama who flips on the issues (see "Barack Obama, Serial Flip-Flopper"), although I do think Obama demonstrates an overall consistency in his ideological program.

While maybe he's not clarified it so much yet (and I think that's a questionable assumption), he's clearly to the far-left on most of the big issues of the day. It's a little extreme to call him an evil "Obamanation," or the Beast of Revelations, but he's out there, that's for sure.

"Clean Hands" and the Triumph of Evil?

Neo-Neocon offers a highly philosophical post in her meditation on "clean hands" and the triumph of evil:

Commenter “gringo” wrote in earlier thread:

Re keeping hands clean. That was one motive for my becoming a Conscientious Objector during the Vietnam War.

The genocide in Cambodia changed my mind. One has “clean hands” and stands on the sidelines while others are slaughtered.

Sorry, “clean hands” become bloodstained in such abstention, from my point of view. What is that quote about standing by and doing nothing when evil men are doing their deeds?

What is that quote? The answer is not so simple; although the quote is usually attributed to Edmund Burke, the original source appears to be lost. No matter who said it, it is justly famous because it expresses an idea not always fully appreciated and yet profoundly important:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Note that the sentence states that inaction by good men (we’ll update that to “people”) is all that’s required. The speaker—whomever he or she may be—assumes that the existence of evil intent, and the willingness and means to act upon it effectively, are always present and always will be present among human beings. The author implicitly rejects the idea that humans can ever reach the sort of perfection that eliminates this impulse, its enormous capacity to harm, and its tendency to seek control. That’s why the author speaks not just of the “existence” of evil but its possible “triumph,” and posits that action on the part of those who are “good” will always be required.

However, the sentence offers no guidance on judging what (or who) is evil and what (or who) is good. Nor does it take into account the unintended consequences of action, only of inaction.

That’s why there’s another saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” One of the hallmarks of those who do evil is that they often think they are doing good. The situation is made even more complicated by the fact that it is difficult, although necessary, when evaluating an action, to try to imagine as best as possible its consequences, knowing that some will always be unforeseen and even unintended. And still another problem is trying to imagine the consequences of inaction—as in the quote attributed to Burke.

It’s a tall order, is it not? But if we are to be moral beings acting in the real world, and not in some ideal one that exists only in our minds, we must attempt it.

Neo-Neocon's putting her reflections in the context of the Supreme Court's recent habeas corpus ruling in Boumedine, but the enormity of evil is something I've grappled with in both personal and professional ways.

As 20th-century international politics demonstrates, good intentions - for example, Neville Chamberlain's appeasement - often have enormous implications for the triumph of evil.

I agree with Neo's case, at the post, that in comtemporary American politics, it's easier to discern moral weakness in the forces of the left (who wrongheadedly embolden evil in the nihilist terrorist mayhem of our times). But we see evil as well in domestic ideologies of racial eliminationism, which still have significant currency on the extremist fringe.

Thus, I would hold that in both the domestic and international realms, dirtying our hands is necessary to beat back the most primitive human impulses to evil, including the normalization of hatred.

I'll have more on this and related topics in future essays.

Photo Credit: "The Mythology of Munich."

Mapping the Political Blogosphere

I couldn't resist sharing Ethan Zuckerman's post on the "Map of the Political Blogosphere."

The idea here is to look at linking between political blogs in only a political context, discarding other links that are outside of context. The result is a tight, pretty map that shows a decided red/blue (conservative/liberal) split in the US political blogosphere, plus a small set of common sources used by both sides.The graph is remarkably easy to explore, allowing users to mouse over it and see the media sources referenced.

It's fun to play around with, especially locating favorite blogs and news aggregators.

Have fun!

Good Thing to Be American? Yeah, Since Barack Got Nomination

Will Smith, during his interview with Matt Lauer on this morning's Today Show, said it's just now, with Barack Obama's nomination, "a good thing to be American":

You know I just, I just came back from Moscow, Berlin, London and Paris and it's the first, I've been there quite a few times in the past five to 10 years. And it just hasn't been a good thing to be American. And this is the first time, since Barack has gotten the nomination, that it, it was a good thing...

Here's the video. Scroll forward to about 5:00 minutes:

I really like Will Smith, but I'm disappointed with him here. He must not be following politics very closely.

The "patriotism gap" is a legitimate issue for many Americans. The Obama campaign's already under fire on questions of national loyalty (he's been photographed with arms lowered and relaxed during the Pledge of Allegiance, and Michelle Obama's on record as not being proud of her country), so the message that Obama's an unpatriotic radical is likely to become increasingly embedded as more and more top Obama supporters announce that "for the first time" it's good to be American.

Hat Tip: Newsbusters

Iraq Sees Decline in Roadside Bombings, Left Goes AWOL

I looks like just a couple of bloggers wrote on USA Today's story of a decline in roadside bombings in Iraq:

Roadside bomb attacks and fatalities in Iraq are down by almost 90% over the last year, according to Pentagon records and interviews with military leaders.

In May, 11 U.S. troops were killed by blasts from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) compared with 92 in May 2007, records show. That's an 88% decrease.

Military leaders cite several factors for the drop in attacks and deaths...

There's lots of blog commentary, however, on today's New York Times story, "Reporters Say Networks Put Wars on Back Burner."

This is the same reporter who thought there weren't enough "dead American soldiers" shown on television - so it seems for many in the press it's not that war entails casualties (and should be reported), but that we need to see more battlefield deaths to influence public opinion.

Note that the decline of bombings is a result of the increased numbers of MRAP personnel carriers (vehicles that better protect the troops and stymie enemy attackers) and improved surveillance (to foil attacks in advance).

One is reminded of all the earlier left-wing denunciations of the Bush administration for "not protecting the troops" with adequate body armor. But now that battlefield equipment has been updated to meet the requirements of combat, we see little acknowledgment of the changes on the left.

Or how about that surveillance? It's certainly making a difference in Iraq, helping to thrwart terrorists. But, again no big mention of this. Nope, we see massive left-wing praise for the Supreme Court's granting of habeas corpus rights for enemy combatants, but when we actually see huge defeats for those same enemies on the battlefield, hardly a word.

There's a lot of significance in these observations. Most on the left aren't so worried about the well-being of American troops as they are the "human rights" of those who might return to the battlefield to slaugther and maim another day.

Fine Line: Obama Risks Offending Muslim Base

I've commented a few times on the continuing controversy surrounding Barack Obama's religious identity (see "Barack Obama's Soft Underbelly: The Muslim Smear").

Well, the Wall Street Journal reports that Obama could lose the Muslim-American vote if he lashes out too hard against the smears:

It is inaccurate to call Barack Obama a Muslim. Is it a slur?

The Obama campaign suggests it is. A new campaign Web site designed to air and rebut potentially damaging Internet rumors reads in one part: "Smear: Barack Obama is a Muslim... Truth: Sen. Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim and is a committed Christian."

The characterization highlights a tricky balance the campaign is trying to strike: to tamp down false rumors -- intended by some to link the Democratic presidential candidate to radical Islam -- without offending Muslims and harming his image of inclusiveness.

Muslim-Americans have made up one of Sen. Obama's most loyal bases of support since he announced his candidacy last year. But lately some Muslims, concentrated in several battleground states, say they are having second thoughts over his campaign's ardent defense of his religious background.

Having a Muslim in the White House would be controversial for many Americans, but the larger issue is the dupicity and evasion surrounding Obama's reaction to the allegations.

On the question of Obama's integrity in this debate, see once again, Melanie Phillips, "Obama Takes on the Great Global Blogosphere Conspiracy Against His Holiness."

Note how the WSJ piece continues:

The handling of Islam in American politics, particularly since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, has become a delicate issue. Politicians from President Bush on down have wrestled with how to attack radical Islam without seeming anti-Islam.

Sen. Obama, who says he has always been a Christian, has been grappling with the accusations for more than a year, when Internet rumors began to emerge that he was educated in a radical madrassa in Indonesia and that he took the oath of office with his hand on the Quran instead of the Bible.

"The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the U.S. from the inside out, what better way than to start at the highest level, through the president of the United States -- one of their own!!!" reads one email chain, evoking the communist plot to take over the presidency in the 1962 movie, "The Manchurian Candidate."

A Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life poll conducted in March shows the rumors have only stuck with a small portion of mostly conservative, noncollege-educated voters: 79% of respondents said they had heard the rumor that Sen. Obama is a Muslim, but only one in 10 said they believe it. A separate poll from the Pew Forum last September showed the liability of the perception. In the survey, 45% of respondents said they would have reservations about voting for a presidential candidate who is Muslim, compared with 25% for a Mormon candidate and 11% for a Jewish candidate.

See also, Daniel Pipes, "Confirmed: Barack Obama Practiced Islam."

I Fought the Law...

Zombie Time offers a delightful new photo-essay of the Berkeley Marine Corps protests, which took place on Saturday:

Today's Summer Solstice showdown featured Move America Forward, the Marines Motorcycle Club, the Patriot Guard Riders and other veterans' and pro-America groups facing off against their traditional adversaries: World Can't Wait, Code Pink, the Revolutionary Communist Party, assorted 9/11 Truthers, far-left activists and their fellow travelers.

I particularly got a kick out of this World Can't Wait activist, above, getting a ticket for some disorderly conduct or another. Cue the music: "I fought the law and law won..."

Check out the whole thing.

See also, "Bikers Rally in Berkeley to Support Military."

Hat Tip: Memeorandum

The Powerful Legacy of George W. Bush

The antiwar left has been yammering away for some time about how George W. Bush is the "worst president in history."

I've consistently disagreed with "the worst president" thesis, so it's refreshing to see an article arguing for a powerful Bush historical legacy. Andrew Roberts makes the case:

If the West wins ... the War Against Terror, historians will look back in amazement at the present unpopularity of George W Bush, and marvel at it quite as much as we now marvel at the 67 per cent disapproval rates for [Harry S.] Truman throughout 1952.

Presidents are seldom remembered for more than one or two things; the rest slip away into a haze of historical amnesia. With Kennedy it was the Bay of Pigs and his own assassination, with Johnson the Great Society and Vietnam, with Nixon it was opening up China and the Watergate scandal, and so on.

George W Bush will be remembered for his responses to 9/11 in Afghanistan and Iraq, but since neither of those conflicts has yet ended in victory or defeat, it is far too early categorically to assume - as left-wingers, anti-war campaigners and almost all media commentators already do - that his historical reputation will be permanently down in the doldrums next to poor old Warren Harding's.

I suspect that historians of the future will instead see Bush's decision to insist upon a "surge" of reinforcements being sent into Iraq, combined with a complete change of anti-insurgency tactics as configured by General Petraeus, as the moment when the conflict was turned around there, in the West's favour.

No one - least of all Bush himself - denies that mistakes were made in the early days after the (unexpectedly early) fall of Baghdad, and historians will quite rightly examine them. But once the decades have put the stirring events of those years into their proper historical context, four great facts will emerge that will place Bush in a far better light than he currently enjoys.

The overthrow and execution of a foul tyrant, Saddam Hussein; the liberation of the Afghan people from the Taliban; the smashing of the terrorist networks of al-Qa'eda in that country and elsewhere and, finally, the protection of the American people from any further atrocities on US soil since 9/11, is a legacy of which to be proud.

While of course every individual death is a tragedy to the bereaved families, these great achievements have been won at a cost in human life a fraction the size of any past world-historical struggle of this magnitude.

The number of American troops killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan is equivalent to the losses they endured - for a nation only a little over half the size in the mid-Forties - capturing a single island from the Japanese in the Pacific War....

History will also shine an unforgiving light on those ludicrous conspiracy theories that claim that the Iraq War was fought for any other reason than to implement the 14 UN resolutions that Saddam that had been flouting for 13 years.

The CIA and MI6 believed, like almost every other intelligence agency in the world, that Saddam had WMD, and the "Harmony" documents seized and translated since the fall of his regime make it abundantly clear that he was also supporting almost every anti-Western terrorist organisation imaginable.

Historians will appreciate how any War Against Terror that allowed Saddam to remain in place would have been an absurd travesty.

When the rise of al-Qa'eda is considered by historians like Philip Bobbitt and William Shawcross, it will be President Clinton's repeated refusal to act effectively in the 1990s, rather than President Bush's tough response after 9/11, that will be held up as culpable.

For more analysis, click here.

See also, "Careful With Those Bush/Truman Analogies..."

Foreign Policy Remains Center Stage in Presidential Race

Despite tremendous public attention to domestic economic problems, foreign policy issues are likely to remain a powerful focus in the presidential campaign.

The Detroit Free Press reports:

It's not just the economy, stupid.

National security and foreign policy may have taken a backseat to pocketbook issues for many voters, but they're still very much in the car this campaign season, with presumptive nominees Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama continually sparring over who would be the better commander in chief.

McCain backers like 45-year-old Karen Katalinich of Howell say he's got the experience to lead and that Obama is too eager to talk to our enemies. Obama supporters like 61-year-old Tom Wilson of Detroit say he offers a fresh perspective on policy and an openness America needs.

"We can't continue to go around and force our will on the rest of the world," said Wilson, a 61-year-old physical education teacher. "You can't open up another country's mouth and pour democracy down their throat."

The message coming out of the two camps about the other's candidate could not be more clear:
McCain, the Obama camp suggests, is a Cold War-style warrior and President George W. Bush-wannabe who is more geared for saber-rattling and fear-mongering than real solutions that aid U.S. interests abroad.

Obama, the McCain camp argues, is a naive liberal newcomer to the ugly realities of world politics, too ready to talk to America's enemies and ill-prepared to take the tough steps to protect the United States from terrorists.

Their records and proposals, however, paint a more nuanced picture.

For instance, while Obama has staked a unique position far more grounded in open discussions with world leaders -- including enemies in Iran, North Korea and Cuba -- he has been downright hawkish on Afghanistan and Pakistan, saying as president he would take unilateral military action there if necessary to pin down Al Qaeda terrorists.

And while McCain, the 71-year-old former Navy pilot who spent five years in a Vietnamese POW camp, takes a hard-line approach with U.S. enemies, he has shown a moderate stance on issues such as climate change, calling for a new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia and creation of a League of Democracies to tackle problems worldwide.

Helle Dale, director of foreign policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, says both candidates have their contradictions.

"It's more like a menu approach to foreign policy," Dale said. "It could be what we're seeing is the shifting ground of U.S. foreign policy in the 21st Century."

The article continues with a discussion of the Iraq war, where voters will see the "starkest" differences between the candidates.

I've written about this many times, so readers know how I feel about Obama's positions on the war.

Question for Readers: How important a role will foreign policy play in an election environment likely to be dominated by news on the economy?

Photo Credit: "Female Suicide Bomber Kills 15 in Iraq."

Poll Shows Presidential Prefences Stable

Gallup reports that the presidential horse race has stablized this week, with John McCain and Barack Obama statistically tied in voter preferences:

National registered voters' preferences for the general election remain closely divided between Democrat Barack Obama (46%) and Republican John McCain (44%).

Gallup Poll Daily tracking for June 19-21 shows the same results Gallup reported the prior two days, with Obama holding a slight, but not statistically significant, advantage over McCain.

Obama has not trailed McCain by any margin in the last 15 Gallup Poll Daily reports (beginning with June 1-5 polling), but has only held a statistically significant advantage in less than half of these (six out of 15). His lead during this time has been as large as seven percentage points. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.)

The early horse race polls have come under a little criticism today.

Obama's been leading McCain in recent weeks, so the reminder's going out for the "Dukakis precedent." Commentators note, for example, that in June 1988, Michael Dukakis was leading George H.W. Bush by 16 percent, but by election day Bush defeated Dukakis by the same margin.

I would add as well that Dukakis still held a 17-point lead in the polls by the Labor Day weekend, and then turned around to crash by November. The Dukakis precedent - yep, that's something to keep in mind this year.

Photo Credit: "June Polls Don't Hold Up."

Yglesias Pulling for "Massive" Abuses Under Obama Administration

Matthew Yglesias, the radical lefty blogger nad foreign policy pundit, is rooting for "massive" constitutional abuses under a Barack Obama administration, as a "payback" for what the right's "been asking for":

Jim Henley on Barack Obama's lack of leadership on FISA: "If the House and Senate leadership really did sneak the bill past him last week, which I’m not inclined to believe, still nothing stopped him from shutting them down this week. Except if he either doesn’t consider it important enough to be worth his time and credibility, or if he’s just as happy that the measure might pass." And of course if I were Barack Obama it's very possible that I wouldn't think giving the executive branch unlimited surveillance powers was a bad idea at all -- I'm going to be president in a few months.

For the rest of us, this is a concern. But it's still baffling to me how little concern congressional Republicans seem to have about this. It's not that I expect logical consistency to restrain them -- they complained about Bill Clinton's expansions of executive power in the 1990s then turned on a dime when Bush entered office and they'll turn again in 2009. But while they'll be able to whine about the inevitable abuses Bush-era policymaking has opened the door to, they won't actually be able to do anything about it. Meanwhile, I guess I hope President Obama uses his powers responsibly, but on some level I'm sort of rooting for massive abuses so the right can get what they've been asking for.

With the radical lefties, it's not about achieving power for policy purposes, it's about revenge.

Obama Can't Transcend Race?

Well, I guess race and politics is going to be the hot issue online today, and I'm also having a debate here on the relative propensity for partisan race-baiting, at "Obama's Rise Creates White Supremist Backlash."

So, let me point readers to a couple of posts of interest: On the Democrats as consumed by race, see Jammie Wearing Fool, "Race-Obsessed Democrats Have a Lot of Healing to Do." On Democratic victimology, see Shakesville, "Michelle Obama Racism/Sexism Watch, Part 11."

The latter post, from Shakesville, makes the startling claim:

Obama does not transcend race. Race is not something that can be transcended. There's no level of universal appeal that will somehow erase the color of your skin and all your experiences of living in it. Obama just happens to be the kind of black dude who doesn't automatically make a certain sort of white person uncomfortable -- the sort of white person who goes around the fucking bend if you point out even unconscious racism in something he's said and yet secretly believes our prisons are full of black men because black men commit more crimes, duh. Big difference.

This blogger's responding to Rupert Cornwell, who suggested:

Like the golfer Tiger Woods (and to a lesser extent Colin Powell), Obama transcends race. He is the post-racial candidate...

And for that, Cornwell's slurred as racist. Oh sure, read all of Cornwell for the context, but think about it: Just the notion that the country can transcend race is itself racist?

That's some freaky postmodern victimology, especially since Obama himself's been at pains to push a transformative racial appeal (to little success, as he's the first to call out folks as racists when the going gets tough).

I think we're really just getting into the season's politics of racial recrimination, and it's an odd thing: As the country's on the verge of historic change, if Barack Obama's elected as the nation's first black president, we're reverting to the most primitive debates, often for the most cheap points of partisan political gain. Somehow, I don't think this is what Dr. King had in mind.

Contrary to the suggestion in the comments to my post, it's clear that the lefties are especially intent to drag the country through the slime of racial grievance politics this year.

For more on this see, "Birth of a Meme."

Antiwar Columnist Wants More "Dead Americans Soldiers" on TV

Frank Rich, at the New York Times, laments the declining press coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, quoting a CBS reporter who argued that the press isn't showing enough bodies of "dead American soldiers":

THE Iraq war’s defenders like to bash the press for pushing the bad news and ignoring the good. Maybe they’ll be happy to hear that the bad news doesn’t rate anymore. When a bomb killed at least 51 Iraqis at a Baghdad market on Tuesday, ending an extended run of relative calm, only one of the three network newscasts (NBC’s) even bothered to mention it.

The only problem is that no news from Iraq isn’t good news — it’s no news. The night of the Baghdad bombing the CBS war correspondent Lara Logan appeared as Jon Stewart’s guest on “The Daily Show” to lament the vanishing television coverage and the even steeper falloff in viewer interest. “Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American soldier,” she said. After pointing out that more soldiers died in Afghanistan than Iraq last month, she asked, “Who’s paying attention to that?”

Her question was rhetorical, but there is an answer: Virtually no one. If you follow the nation’s op-ed pages and the presidential campaign, Iraq seems as contentious an issue as Vietnam was in 1968. But in the country itself, Cindy vs. Michelle, not Shiites vs. Sunnis, is the hotter battle. This isn’t the press’s fault, and it isn’t the public’s fault. It’s merely the way things are.

In America, the war has been a settled issue since early 2007. No matter what has happened in Iraq since then, no matter what anyone on any side of the Iraq debate has had to say about it, polls have consistently found that a majority of Americans judge the war a mistake and want out. For that majority, the war is over except for finalizing the withdrawal details. They’ve moved on without waiting for the results of Election Day 2008 or sampling the latest hectoring ad from moveon.org.

Perhaps if Americans had been asked for shared sacrifice at the war’s inception, including a draft, they would be in 1968-ish turmoil now. But they weren’t, and they aren’t. In 2008, the Vietnam analogy doesn’t hold. The center does.

The good news for Democrats — and the big opportunity for Barack Obama — is that John McCain and the war’s last cheerleaders don’t recognize that immutable reality. They’re so barricaded in their own Vietnam bunker that they think the country is too. It’s their constant and often shrill refrain that if only those peacenik McGovern Democrats and the “liberal media” acknowledged that violence is down in Iraq — as indeed it is, substantially — voters will want to press on to “victory” and not “surrender.” And therefore go for Mr. McCain.

One neocon pundit, Charles Krauthammer, summed up this alternative-reality mind-set in a recent column piously commanding Mr. McCain to “make the election about Iraq” because “everything is changed,” and “we are winning on every front.” The war, he wrote, can be “the central winning plank of his campaign.”

Notice the obligatory reference to the evil "neocons."

Rich goes on further down to defend Barack Obama, where he claims "he has never called for a precipitous withdrawal."

Well, sorry, Frank Rich. Throughout 2007 Barack Obama was among the most implacable war opponents in the Senate, calling the war a "failure" while pandering relentlessly to the surrender hawks of the Democratic Party base. As far back as November 2006, the Illinois Senator announced that he'd implement a troop drawdown immediately.

So what would help Frank Rich and his antiwar allies? More dead bodies on television?

We know the left cheers the bombings, and certainly the decline in violence is their worst nightmare. The fact that Obama's starting his move back to the center on the Iraq issue, as Rich strains to point out, shows his recognition that the United States has the reponsibility for the long-term security of the Iraqi people.

Barack Obama seems to know deep down - or at least he's now suggesting - that Americans have an interest in finishing the job honorably in Iraq. It goes without saying that John McCain does.

For war opponents like Frank Rich, however, there's no exit from Iraq that's too quick. Out of the way, John Murtha!!

If we see an uptick in the horrendous killings in Iraq, Rich will be among the first to revert back to the old line that the surge has failed.

It's all part the long leftist line of creative arguments in furtherance of retreat, and it's not going to work.

See also, "McCain's Won the Iraq Argument."

Obama's Rise Creates White Supremist Backlash

White supremist hate groups have seen an increase in activity and identification, according to the Washington Post:

Sen. Barack Obama's historic victory in the Democratic primaries, celebrated in America and across much of the world as a symbol of racial progress and cultural unity, has also sparked an increase in racist and white supremacist activity, mainly on the Internet, according to leaders of hate groups and the organizations that track them.

Neo-Nazi, skinhead and segregationist groups have reported gains in numbers of visitors to their Web sites and in membership since the senator from Illinois secured the Democratic nomination June 3. His success has aroused a community of racists, experts said, concerned by the possibility of the country's first black president.

"I haven't seen this much anger in a long, long time," said Billy Roper, a 36-year-old who runs a group called White Revolution in Russellville, Ark. "Nothing has awakened normally complacent white Americans more than the prospect of America having an overtly nonwhite president."

Such groups have historically inflated their influence for self-promotion and as an intimidation technique, and they refused to provide exact membership numbers or open their meetings to a reporter. Leaders acknowledged that their numbers remain very small -- "the flat-globe society still has more people than us," Roper said. But experts said their claims reveal more than hyperbole this time.

"The truth is, we're finding an explosion in these kinds of hateful sentiments on the Net, and it's a growing problem," said Deborah Lauter, civil rights director for the Anti-Defamation League, which monitors hate group activity. "There are probably thousands of Web sites that do this now. I couldn't even tell you how many are out there because it's growing so fast."

Neo-Nazi and white power groups acknowledge that they have little ability to derail Obama's candidacy, so instead some have decided to take advantage of its potential. White-power leaders who once feared Obama's campaign have come to regard it as a recruiting tool. The groups now portray his candidacy as a vehicle to disenfranchise whites and polarize America.

Read the whole thing.

Apparently Stormfront's seen an "explosion" of activity over the last year or so.

These folks are a small minority, although the Washington Post also reports today on a new survey, which finds that 3 in 10 Americans "acknowledge feelings of racial prejudice." Still, the poll finds an improvement in racial sentiment, with just 1 in 10 saying they wouldn't feel comfortable voting for a black president.

As I've noted before, we do see a miniscule extremist fringe, just a couple of percentage points nationally, that espouses the most disgusting racial supremist doctrines (see, "Barack Obama and the Political Psychology of Race").

Not only that, to the extent that bigotry's been a factor in electoral politics this year, it's been on the Democratic side, as Sister Toldjah points out in her post on Obama and the race card.

See also, "Obama Calls Out Republicans for "Campaign They'll Run."

Daily Kos Anti-Semitism: An Update

Daily Kos, the "mainstream" blog of the Democratic Party's netroots hordes, has yet to remove its recent vile anti-Semitic essay, "Eulogy before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel."

So it's no surprise that additional posts attacking the Jewish state continue to appear on Markos Moulitsas' home page. Here's the latest, "Apartheid Israel Trying to Start World War 3."

During the last couple of days, news reports have come out regarding Israel's recent military exercises preparing for an eventual attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Suddenly, Ari Fleischer's name comes to mind recalling a conversation I had with a friend over a year ago regarding some secret Jewish coalition raising funds in excess of $200 million to wage a propaganda war in America in an attempt to gain American support for another war against Iran. Now that story didn't seem to hang around for long until recent. Ari Fleichser [sic] aka "Joseph Goebbels" and his Israeli warmongers are testing the waters for a possible attack on Iran in an attempt to drag America in to the fold. Do we just stand by and allow Israel to further incite tensions bringing the world to the brink of WWIII?

So, here's the Kos poster calling Ari Fleischer, an American Jew, "Joseph Goebbels," who was the Nazi's minister of propaganda and most loyal Hitler henchman.

That's despicable.

But the Kos poster blames Israel for September 11:

We've seen what complacency gets us with regard to Israel's foreign policy. It got us attacked on 911.

It's a short post, but no less noxious the earlier Kos entries demonizing Israel. Talk about left-wing degeneration...

Hat Tip: LGF

Obama Calls Out Republicans for "Campaign They'll Run"

Barack Obama, at a fundraising stop yesterday, alleged that Republicans will mount a fear-based racial campaign against him this fall:

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said on Friday he expects Republicans to highlight the fact that he is black as part of an effort to make voters afraid of him.

It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy," Obama told a fundraiser in Jacksonville, Florida. "We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going to try to make you afraid.

"They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?"

He said he was also set for Republicans to say "he's got a feisty wife," in trying to attack his wife Michelle.

Right-wing bloggers are up in arms, calling out Obama for playing the "race card."

Karl at Protein Wisdom suggests that "Barry O" is dealing the race card.

Captain Ed at Hot Air notes the hypocrisy, since Obama provided no evidence, and it was Hillary Clinton supporters during the spring primary who circulated pictures of Obama outfitted in traditional African dress (and Bill Clinton portrayed Obama as the next Jesse Jackson, an "ethnic" candidate, beholden to the racial grievance masters).

Captain Ed also indicate how the McCain campaign's been quick to repudiate racist smears in his campaign operation:

John McCain, meanwhile, was a lot more outspoken in criticizing his own supporters for relying on crypto-ethnic references. He immediately and publicly disowned, without any prompting, Bill Cunningham in Ohio after the radio host enphasized Obama’s middle name (Hussein) in his introductory remarks. McCain also fired one staffer for e-mailing a Jeremiah Wright video after explicitly saying that his campaign would have no comment on Wright or Trinity United.

McCain, for all his alleged apostasies, is solidly on conservative ground on this issue. As we saw with the Ron Paul phenomenon, there are a lot of far right-wing extremists, as well as the their irrationalist defenders, who will be all too happy to deploy the most vile racist hatred as part of their political agenda.

People like this do not speak for genuine conservatives (and they gives the nihilist lefties ammunition), much less the GOP. It will be interesting to see how things turn out, because as I've noted previously, this election's going to fought intensely on racial grounds.

Poster Girl for the Antiwar Left

Darcy Burner, shown in a campaign spot below, might be considered the "poster girl" for the antiwar war left in this year's congressional elections:

Burner's also got a piece over at Open Left, "Retroactive Immunity: Frustration and Disappointment.

If folks aren't up on this issue, "retroactive immunity" holds that American telecom companies cannot be sued for constitutional violations for allowing the Bush administration access to their communications infrastructures. The Wall Street Journal put it this way last year:

For centuries, the common law presumption has been that private parties should have legal immunity if they comply with such requests. In the absence of evidence that the government's request is illegal, private actors should be given the benefit of the doubt for cooperating.

Imagine a society in which everyone refused such requests for fear of being sued: No airplane passenger would dare point out suspicious behavior by another passenger, and no subway rider would speak up about a suspicious package. In the case of these wiretaps, the help of the telecom companies is crucial because electronic surveillance isn't any longer a matter of merely pulling microwaves from the sky as the feds could do during the Cold War. We now live in a world of packet switching and fiber-optic cable, where terrorist calls and emails go through telecom switching networks ... [congressional] immunity provision is critical to gaining this telecom access.

So, basically, Burner advocates punishing corporations who've acted out of a sense of duty to nation for assisting the administration's alleged "illegal" wiretapping intelligence efforts.

For Burner and her allies, the constitutional issues are actually peripheral to the ideological ones. The Democrats want to move to a system "domestic law-enforcement" in handling the terror threat to the United States (indeed, most of the hardened left discount any notion of a terror threat whatsoever).

Note something else about this campaign spot: Burner's focus on "telecom immunity" doesn't even rate among the top "issues of interest" this election season. As Gallup reports, "Fuel Prices Now Clearly Americans’ No. 2 Concern" (behind the economy), and Pew Research indicates, "Gas Prices Dominate the Public's Economic News Agenda."

The inordinate hard-left attention to legalistic anti-administration, antiwar issues is reflective of the postmodern mindset that's captured the imagination of the Democratic Party base. Most Americans are worried about putting gas in the tank, not wiretaps on their phones.

(Recall that Burner's the primary sponsor of the antiwar left/netroot's withdrawal plan, a proposal that's tantamount to an ignominious abdication of American responsibility to the future of the Iraqi people).

The Obama Seal

Behold, the official seal of Barack Obama, the Great One!!

It's a little presumptious, but for the background details, see "An Awfully Presidential Logo."

See also, Kingdom of Chaos, "The Leader's New Seal," and Little Green Footballs, "Obama Thinks He's Already President."

Neoconservatism: America's Tradition

One way to look at this year's election, ideologically, is to frame the battle between the Democratic and Republican nominees in ideological terms, between the forces of postmodern radicalism and neoconservatism.

Barack Obama is not Marxist, but his leftist positions on race and religion, government spending, and off-shore drilling, for example, place him on the extreme left of the political spectrum, essentially electoral radicalism.

John McCain, on the other hand, represents the great traditions in American history of peace through strength and moral certainty. His commitment to defending the nation in a time of terror, and his proven leadership on the Iraq war, put him closer in values to the neoconservative perspective.

Folks can quibble with the definitional categories, which are loose approximations, although the utility of this framework is demonstrated empirically, in terms of the identified political coalitions that have lined up behind each of the candidates (particularly on the left).

The left radicals, for example, are intent to demonize neoconservatism in their rush for power and recrimination. While traditional conservatives, many of whom rejected McCain early this year, have come to see his campaign as a bulwark against the coming to power of far-left relativism and retreat.

Politics is ultimately a battle of ideas and values, and while neoconservatism is generally reviled by the left as a warmonger's cult, neoconservative ideology can be seen as the essential firmament guiding America's relations with the world for over 200 years, as Robert Kagan notes in his piece, "Neocon Nation: Neoconservatism, c. 1776."

I'd like to just post the whole thing, Kagan's piece is so good! But I'll just add a couple of bits of flavor, from the introduction:

“The Iraq War will always be linked with the term ‘neoconservative,’” George Packer wrote in his book on the war, and he is probably right. The conventional wisdom today, likely to be the approved version in the history books, is that a small group of neoconservatives seized the occasion of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, to steer the nation into a war that would never have been fought had not this group of ideologues managed somehow to gain control of national policy.

This version of events implicitly rejects another and arguably simpler interpretation: that after September 11, 2001, American fears were elevated, America’s tolerance for potential threats lowered, and Saddam Hussein naturally became a potential target, based on a long history of armed aggression, the production and use of chemical weapons, proven efforts to produce nuclear and biological weapons, and a murky relationship with terrorists. The United States had gone to war with him twice before, in 1991 and then again at the end of 1998, and the fate of Saddam Hussein had remained an unresolved question at the end of the Clinton administration. It was not so unusual for the United States to go to war a third time, therefore, and the Bush administration’s decision can be understood without reference to a neoconservative doctrine. After September 11, the Bush administration weighed the risks of leaving Saddam Hussein in power against the risks of fighting a war to remove him and chose the latter, its calculus shaped by the terrorist attacks and by widely shared suppositions about Iraq’s weapons programs that ultimately proved mistaken.

If one chose to believe this simpler version, then the decision to invade Iraq might have been correct or mistaken, but the lessons to be learned from the war would concern matters of judgment, tactics, and execution—don’t go to war based on faulty intelligence; don’t topple a foreign government without a plan to bring order and peace to the country afterwards; don’t be so quick on the trigger; exhaust all possibilities before going to war; be more prudent. But they would not raise broader issues of foreign policy doctrine and grand strategy. After all, prudence is not a foreign policy. It is possible to be prudent or imprudent, capable or clumsy, wise or foolish, hurried or cautious in pursuit of any doctrine. The intervention in Vietnam was the direct product of the Cold War strategy of containment, but many people who think the Vietnam War was a mistake nevertheless do not condemn containment. They believe the war was the misapplication and poor execution of an otherwise sound strategy. One could argue the same was true of Iraq.

One could, but very few critics of the war do. The heated debate in the United States over the past few years has not been so much about bad intelligence, faulty execution, or imprudence in Iraq. In his book The Assassins’ Gate, Packer claims that he is unable to explain why the United States went to war without recourse to the larger doctrine behind it. “The story of the Iraq war,” he writes, “is a story of ideas about the role of the United States in the world.” And the ideas he has in mind are “neoconservative” ideas. His premise, and that of most critics, is that neoconservatism was uniquely responsible for the United States going to war in Iraq and that, had it not been for the influence of neoconservative ideas, the war never would have occurred.

To examine this premise requires first understanding what people mean by “neoconservative,” for the term conjures very different images. For some, it is synonymous with “hawk,” to others, it is an ethnic description, and to still others, it is a term to describe anything evil—I once heard a Cornell professor earnestly define neoconservatism as an ideological commitment to torture and political oppression. But when employed fairly neutrally to describe a foreign policy worldview, as Packer does, neoconservatism usually has a recognizable meaning. It connotes a potent moralism and idealism in world affairs, a belief in America’s exceptional role as a promoter of the principles of liberty and democracy, a belief in the preservation of American primacy and in the exercise of power, including military power, as a tool for defending and advancing moralistic and idealistic causes, as well as a suspicion of international institutions and a tendency toward unilateralism. In the hands of more hostile critics, the neocons are not merely idealistic but absurdly and dangerously hubristic about the unlimited capacity of American power to effect positive change; not merely expansive but imperialistic, seeking not only American pre-eminence but ruthless global dominance; not merely willing to use force, but preferring it to peaceful methods; and not merely tending toward unilateralism but actively spurning alliances in favor of solitary action. Even these deliberately polemical caricatures point to something recognizable, a foreign policy that combines an idealist’s moralism, and even messianism, with a realist’s belief in the importance of power.

I think that's key, at the end: the combination of moralism and power.

Via GSGF, note Douglas Murray, who explains the background for his book, Neoconservatism: Why We Need It:

... I try to demonstrate why the neoconservative impulse is vital at this moment in history ... But the drive of the book is really an attempt to put down a marker. Having observed the allegedly ‘anti-war’ left sink into what became in large part a pro-war, but pro-the-other-side-winning stance it seemed to me that a philosophical and practical explanation had to be attempted which identified not only the jihadist enemy, but also the disastrous relativistic bent of our time which has given that enemy some of its oxygen. Relativism has deeply damaged my own generation and greatly hindered our chances of defeating this or any future enemy.

That's an interesting concept, that the left's not so much "antiwar" but anti-American, and that many on the left will readily back the other side in the West's great defense of right in the world (for more on that, see "The Politics of Peace: What’s Behind the Anti-War Movement?")

I'll have more. In the meantime, check out "The Return of the Neocons: Bush Hawks Aggressively Working to Rewrite Accepted Iraq War History."

Barack Obama's Soft Underbelly: The Muslim Smear

Smears are a part of politics, as I noted in my previous, entry, "The Science of Political Smear."

A particulary good smear is one that's got elements of fact that make larger, tentative allegations difficult to put to rest, which is the case with the Barack Obama smear that he's Muslim.

Rick Moran take a look at the issue, in his piece, " 'Obama the Muslim': The Smear that Just Won’t Die":

There is a very soft, very sensitive spot on the underbelly of the Obama campaign. They fear its exposure perhaps more than any other vulnerability in the organization. It’s not some dark, buried scandal involving sex or money. It’s not a skeleton in either Barack or Michelle Obama’s family closet. In fact, it isn’t “real” in any logical sense at all.

It is a rumor — or, more prosaically, a smear. And touching on it brings out the teeth and claws of the Obama campaign beyond almost any other issue.

Barack Hussein Obama is not a Muslim. But the smear saying he is refuses to die and, if anything, is growing as the campaign becomes more intense. Aside from the obvious desire to beat down a false rumor, there are eminently practical political reasons why even mentioning the smear is avoided at all costs.

Recent polls show that between 45%-54% of Americans would never vote for a Muslim candidate. Already by some surveys, 15% of the electorate believes that despite vehement denials from the campaign, intensive investigations by mainstream media organizations, and all evidence to the contrary, Barack Obama is a Muslim.

This kind of irrational belief is fed by an army of online smear merchants and the more innocent but misinformed — or simply duped — group of largely conservative activists who see it as their duty to “expose” Obama as a Muslim to save the United States from. . . something. The cause is hazy. Either we should not vote for Obama because he is a Muslim “Manchurian Candidate” who, once ensconced in the Oval Office, will begin to turn the country into some kind of fundamentalist Muslim hell. Or, more earnestly, we must not elect Obama the Muslim because he will sell the US down the river in negotiations with Muslim countries.

There are several variations on those themes, and — if you wish to be educated — I suggest you peruse the comments of any article featuring Obama on this website. There you will come face to face with the lunatic fringe in all their ignominy. It is a sad commentary on American politics that so many give so much credence to such a tissue of lies and half truths.

But it is the sensitivity to the smear that has the entire Obama campaign on edge, as we witnessed on Monday at an Obama rally rally in Detroit. Two Muslim women wearing their traditional hijabs to cover their heads were denied the opportunity to sit behind the candidate and appear in the human tableau of diversity that all campaigns strive to present for the cameras.

Read the whole post.

Moran makes an point worth considering further down:

But the fact that the incident occurred reveals a more fundamental truth: the smear against Obama threatens his election as president of the United States and everyone on both sides knows it.

Obama's not Muslim, and that's really not the issue to a lot of people speaking out on this. The question is why hasn't Obama been completely forthcoming on his Islamic background?

See, for example, "Obama takes on the Great Global Blogosphere Conspiracy Against His Holiness."

Funeral March for Centrist Democrats

Kimberley Strassel argues that the "new" Democrats of the Bill Clinton era will be finally put to rest with Barack Obama's election:

Listen closely to all those cheers for newly crowned nominee Barack Obama, and in the background you'll catch the notes of a funeral march. Resting, if not in peace, are the New Democrats.

The Illinois senator's primary victory marked the end of many things, and one looks to be his party's 20-year experiment with ideological centrism. The New Dems are still out there, still urging their party to fight its natural liberal instincts. But who's listening? Buoyed by the Republican implosion, wild for their retro nominee, the intellectual soul of the Democratic Party is now firmly left.

The New Democrats were born in the 1980s, in response to Ronald Reagan's triumphs. Prominent Democrats worried the party was out of touch, and created the Democratic Leadership Council. Its members were foreign-policy hawks, unafraid of cultural conservatism, and preached economic centrism. Their poster boy: Bill Clinton.

The 1990s were their midlife heyday, though even then the New Dems struggled. Party liberals despised Mr. Clinton's embrace of free trade, hated his accommodation of welfare reform, cringed when he pronounced "the era of big government" over. But no one could deny his success at giving the party its first two full terms in the White House since FDR. So they shut up and went along.

When Mr. Clinton left, so did the most prominent New Democratic voice. Party liberals have been reasserting control ever since. Howard Dean's 2004 consolation prize was the Democratic National Committee. Nancy Pelosi became House Speaker in 2006, and gave back committee chairs to the old 1960s liberal bulls. And now comes Mr. Obama, the party's most liberal nominee since Hubert Humphrey.

What's left of the New Democratic agenda? On foreign policy, Bill Clinton engaged in Bosnia, and as recently as 2004 John Kerry saw the wisdom of running as at least a moderate hawk. But today's unpopular war has only emboldened the party to revert to its antiwar comfort zone.

Mr. Obama calls for an immediate pullout of troops from Iraq, no matter what the consequences. His foreign policy, to the extent it is one, flows not from strength, but from greater American accommodation in the name of diplomacy. Mrs. Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have together held some 72 votes on Iraq, most devoted to cutting off troop money, blocking the surge, or forcing a pullout. Last year, all but 10 House Democrats voted for a withdrawal timeline.

Read the rest, here.

See also, "Obama Would Undo Our Progress in Iraq."

How Bad Would Obama Be for Israel?

I'm having a little debate on the Democratic Party's support for Israel, at my entry, "The American Public and the Jewish State."

That being the case, I thought I'd update with Caroline Glick's views on U.S. support for Israel under a Barack Obama administration:

[Kathryn Jean] Lopez: How bad would a President Obama be for Israel? Why should that question matter to Americans?

[Carolyn] Glick: Senator Barack Obama would be bad for Israel most of all because he refuses to acknowledge that there is a jihad being waged against the free world. Indeed, he refuses to acknowledge that there is such a thing as an “enemy” in international affairs. And as a consequence, he is unable to understand what an ally is. As the U.S.’s most stalwart ally in the Middle East, and as the frontline state in the global jihad, Israel will likely suffer greatly if Senator Obama is elected to the White House.

There are several reasons that Americans should care about the fact that an Obama White House will be hostile towards Israel. First, when Islamists perceive Israel as weak they become emboldened. And when they become emboldened, they tend to attack not only Israel but the U.S. as well. Indeed, some of the largest attacks against the U.S. — like the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983 — came when the U.S. was most hostile towards Israel.

Second, when the U.S. places pressure on Israel, Israel is perceived as weak by the Muslim world. And when this happens, the tendency for wars to break out is increased. So when the U.S. has in the past blamed Israel for regional instability — the Arabs and Iran — which are the actual sources of that instability — exploit the situation by attacking Israel and sending the region into a tailspin. One can for instance attribute Yassir Arafat’s decision to attack Israel in 1996 — an attack which left 15 Israelis dead — to the Clinton administration’s massive pressure on the new Netanyahu government to accept the PLO as its “peace partner.”

Finally, U.S. pressure on Israel tends to weaken Israel and as I have argued, Israel is perceived by the jihadists as the frontline state in their war, the ultimate aim of which is global domination and the destruction of the U.S. So when the U.S. weakens Israel, the U.S. appears weak. Jihadists are then emboldened to attack not only Israel, but also the U.S. This is why, for instance, Shiite violence in Iraq rose steeply after Israel was perceived as having lost the war in Lebanon with Hezbollah in 2006. And Israel ended the war when it was under tremendous pressure from Secretary Rice to accept a ceasefire that left Hezbollah fully intact and free to rebuild its forces with Iranian and Syrian assistance.

All of this happened under U.S. administrations which in their day were considered friendly towards Israel. If Sen. Obama, who is perceived as sympathetic to the jihadists, is elected, the consequences of U.S. appeasement of Iran and others at Israel’s expense will likely be more profound — both for Israel and for the U.S.

Note that point: Israel is perceived as the frontline in the war with the U.S.

See also, "Israel is the Defining Moral Issue of Our Time."

Americans Support Drilling

Gallup reports that a strong majority supports drilling for oil in environmentally sensitive or protected areas:

A majority of Americans (57%) interviewed in a mid-May Gallup Panel survey approve of expanding drilling for oil in offshore and wilderness areas considered to be off-limits.

This poll result suggests that President Bush's proposals this week to end bans on drilling for oil in areas held as off-limits and for opening up leases for oil shale production in federal lands may be generally in sync with majority American public opinion.

Naturally, Barack Obama's opposed to drilling, and even prominent members of his own party are opposing him.

That's because Obama represents the extreme left-wing base of the party, which is mired in postmodern environmentalism, and will likely oppose any sensible option to provide relief to everyday consumers.

See also, "McCain Has Reconsidered Drilling in ANWR,"