Democratic Frustration on National Security

This morning's Wall Street Journal has an excellent piece on the Democratic Party frustration and impotence on foreign policy:

The way in which Senate Democrats wavered and then consented to the confirmation of Michael B. Mukasey as attorney general reflects the party's broader struggle to make headway on its national-security agenda, despite President Bush's unpopularity.

On questions such as Mr. Mukasey's stance on waterboarding, warrantless wiretapping and the war in Iraq, Democrats have been stymied by Republicans in Congress and the White House. That has sparked frustration among supporters, especially those on the left, who anticipated that last year's congressional takeover would force some policy changes.

These dashed expectations are one reason polls give Congress an approval rating lower than Mr. Bush's. The difficulties faced by Democrats on these issues look certain to complicate the party's bid to expand House and Senate majorities and regain the White House in 2008, a wartime election in which national security will be a major issue.

Democrats acknowledge the difficulty in speaking up for civil liberties while maintaining a tough stand on homeland security and terrorism.

"On issues of wiretapping or torture or any of the other tools used to fight terrorism, it's a complicated message to sell," says Stephanie Cutter, a Democratic strategist in Washington who worked on John Kerry's presidential campaign. She says Democrats in Congress and their supporters have "faced a bit of an awakening that they're not getting everything they wanted."

On Friday, two senior Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Charles Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California, rescued President Bush's pick to lead the Justice Department when they announced their plan to vote for his confirmation when it comes up for a vote tomorrow.

Mr. Mukasey had run into trouble earlier in the week after he refused to define waterboarding as torture and was imprecise in answering questions about the White House's assertion of broad presidential powers. As a result, a handful of Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee said they would vote against the nominee, threatening to spoil what had previously been thought to be an easy confirmation.

Liberal groups were stirred to action by the uproar over waterboarding -- an interrogation technique that simulates drowning -- and by President Bush's public statements castigating Democrats for not giving Mr. Mukasey a speedy confirmation. Left-leaning groups and bloggers over the weekend renewed criticism that despite winning the House and Senate a year ago, Democrats were "caving in" to the president.

Noting tickles me more than to see the Democrats and their hard-left fringe backers up in arms over administration successes on national security and the war. The piece concludes with the remark from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi giving confirming public unhappiness with Congress:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaking at a recent news conference, said she doesn't blame Americans for giving Congress low marks, given that the party hasn't "been effective in ending the war in Iraq." She added: "If you asked me in a phone call, as ardent a Democrat as I am, I would disapprove of Congress as well."

Of course, by "Congress," Pelosi means the Senate:

Frustrated by lack of legislative progress in the Senate, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is increasingly touting Democratic achievements in the House.

Her statements represent a significant shift from the stance she took six months ago. In March, the Speaker celebrated the first 100 days of the congressional majority by stating, “Democrats have brought the winds of change to the Capitol.”

When pressed on the slow progress of spending bills during ABC’s Sunday morning talk show “This Week,” Pelosi passed the buck to the Senate, saying, “In the House we’ve passed every one of our bills.”

The change in talking points at the top reflects a deepening frustration among House Democrats, who are irritated with lack of progress in the Senate and are starting to publicly press their Senate counterparts to stop letting Republicans use procedural tactics and instead force Republicans to carry out a filibuster, if that’s what it takes.

Pelosi's apparently thinking strategically, working hard now to create the impression of policy effectiveness in the House in anticipation of next year's congressional elections. It probably doesn't occur to her that the Democratic Party's underlying problem is its weakness on national security.

See more here.

The GOP and Black Voters: Courting Victimologists?

The Republican presidential candidates skipped participation in a November 4 debate sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus.

Was this snub or strategy? Stuart Rothenberg makes the case against Republican Party outreach to black voters. If the black majority looks to government as a protector and source of handouts, the GOP platform of individualism and personal responsibility will be unattractive:

A shot was recently fired across the GOP's bow about the cancellation of the scheduled Nov. 4 presidential debate co-sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Institute and Fox News, and you can bet more shots will be fired over the next few months.

Writing less than a week ago, Huffington Post political reporter Michael Roston commented that "it appears that some GOP frontrunners are once again letting an opportunity to appear before African-American voters lapse, just as they decided to sit out a black voter forum hosted last month by Tavis Smiley."

Roston was referring to a September debate in Maryland that leading GOP contenders skipped, citing schedule conflicts.

But why would Republicans even consider participating in a debate sponsored by the CBC Institute, an arm of the Congressional Black Caucus, which includes 43 Democratic Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and which has been consistently critical of President Bush and Republican policies?

The CBC is essentially a Democratic group -- when he was in the House, Oklahoma Republican J.C. Watts refused to join it because of its agenda. Given that, it isn't surprising that less than a week before Roston's column appeared on the Internet, the CBC issued a news release announcing that the group was "outraged" by the confirmation of Leslie Southwick to the 5th Circuit Court, a nomination supported unanimously by Republican Senators.

There is no doubt that Republicans need to increase their support in the minority community, including among black voters. That's not a new observation. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp made that point many years ago, and Ken Mehlman reiterated it during his term as chairman of the Republican National Committee.

The problem, however, is more obvious than the solution. While Republicans have recently nominated black candidates for governor in Ohio and Pennsylvania and for the Senate in Maryland, the party has had only limited success wooing black voters.

Part of the GOP's problem is that the national black political leadership is both generally liberal and joined to the Democratic Party at the hip. That's good for Democrats and bad for Republicans, since it invariably sets up black political leaders against the GOP when controversies emerge.

To the extent that the CBC (or Al Sharpton) represents African-American opinion, it's unlikely that Republicans will get much of a break, at least as long as the party holds to its generally conservative views.

Conservative (i.e. Republican) African-Americans have tried to set up corresponding organizations to well-established black groups, as conservatives have tried to do to represent and speak for women and seniors. But any honest appraisal of those groups is that they've generally met with only minimal success. And in some cases, that's giving them more credit than they are due.

It's difficult to "create" a corresponding conservative leadership in the black community when most African-Americans share the general outlook of existing leaders. And that too is a problem for GOP strategists: The existing black leadership both reflects grass-roots opinion and reinforces existing preferences and assumptions by continually pounding on Republican policies and political personalities.

On certain social issues, black voters (and Hispanics, for that matter) are more conservative than their white, liberal allies. But that really doesn't matter, since they don't vote on those issues.

Though it admittedly is a generalization and there are exceptions, the GOP's fundamental problem is that African-Americans think of the government as a protector and benefactor, while most Republicans (and all conservatives) see government as a problem. As long as that is the case, and specifically as long as affirmative action is an issue, Republican opportunities in the black community are extremely limited.

I'd like to see some hard data supporting this hypothesis, but I have no doubt that Rothenberg hits the nail on the head.

Hillary Clinton Stumbling and Bumbling in Philadelphia

Via Goat's Barnyard, here's more gold-mine material on Hillary Clinton from Tuesday night's presidential debate in Philadelphia:

Also, check out Kate Michelman's Hillary smackdown, at the Los Angeles Times:

A prominent feminist, allied with the presidential campaign of former Sen. John Edwards, accused Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday of "disingenuously playing the victim card" by infusing her campaign with messages about gender.

"When unchallenged, in a comfortable, controlled situation, Sen. Clinton embraces her political elevation into the 'boys club,' " Kate Michelman, the former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, wrote in a posting on a blog of the liberal group Open Left.

"But when she's challenged, when legitimate questions are asked, questions she should be prepared to answer and discuss, she is just as quick to raise the white flag and look for a change in the rules," Michelman said. "It's trying to have it both ways."

The missive by Michelman, a senior advisor to the Edwards campaign, was the latest salvo in a week in which gender flared as an issue in the Democratic presidential contest. Her cutting comments were publicized by the Edwards campaign in a press release.

The issue erupted after the Clinton campaign complained that male Democratic rivals at Tuesday night's presidential debate in Philadelphia had subjected her to a "pile-on."

At the debate, Clinton appeared to give nonspecific answers on several topics, such as on whether she supported the controversial plan of New York's Democratic governor, Eliot Spitzer, to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Democratic rivals seized the moment as an opportunity to portray Clinton as a calculating candidate with chameleon-like views.

I shredded Clinton for her "nuanced" positions in an earlier post.

Still, I don't think Clinton's recent gaffes have derailed her inevitability as the Democratic standard-bearer. Note though that Dick Morris and Eileen McGann suggest Hillary can be beaten in Iowa. Interesting. A couple of more flops like this last week and I might be persuaded.

The Danger of Pakistan

Pakistan's political crisis has has thrown that country's future in doubt, the Washington Post notes:

Pakistan's government on Sunday continued a nationwide crackdown on the political opposition, the media and the courts, one day after President Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency rule and suspended the constitution in a bid to save his job.

Police throughout the country raided the homes of opposition party leaders and activists, arresting hundreds. Top lawyers were also taken into custody, and at the offices of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in the eastern city of Lahore, 70 activists were detained. Journalists covering the raid had their equipment confiscated by police, and were ordered off the premises.

The international advocacy group Human Rights Watch issued a statement condemning the move as "an appalling attack on human rights defenders."

Up to 500 opposition activists had been arrested in the last 24 hours, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said Sunday.

Aziz said the extraordinary measures would remain in place "as long as it is necessary." Aziz said parliamentary elections could be postponed up to a year, but no decision has been made regarding a delay.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday that the United States would review its $150 million a month assistance program to Pakistan in response to Musharraf's declaration of emergency rule.

Over at The Weekly Standard, Bill Roggio notes the disastrous implications of Musharraf's state of emergency:

In his address to the nation, Musharraf cited the rise in terrorist attacks, the creeping power of Pakistan's Supreme Court, and an economic downturn as the reasons for taking such drastic action. "Pakistan is on the verge of destabilization," Musharraf declared. But the reasoning behind Musharraf's imposition of a state of emergency is more likely due to his weakening political situation, not the rise of Islamist militancy in the country.

Musharraf's usurpation has weakened, not strengthened his ability to fight the dramatic rise of the Taliban and al Qaeda in the Northwest Frontier Province, Baluchistan, and elsewhere. National unity and political consensus is needed to fight the rising threat of militancy sweeping across Pakistan, yet the state of emergency has pushed Musharraf's potential political allies into the opposition, weakening support for the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Militarily, Musharraf has focused his energy on quelling the political opposition, which will detract from his ability to tackle the increasing radicalism. And to is unclear what effect, if any, the state of emergency will have on the sagging morale of the Pakistani military and police, which have performed poorly in the tribal areas of Waziristan and the settled district of Swat. Soldiers have been captured by the hundreds and surrendered or deserted by the dozens. The Taliban has beheaded well over a dozen soldiers and policemen. The Pakistani military also boasts an inordinately high number of Pashtuns in its security forces, many whom are sympathetic to the Islamists. Other Pakistani soldiers resent the thought of fighting what they perceive as an American war against their own citizens....

The declaration of a state of emergency is one of the worst possible moves Musharraf could have made to address the problem of the rise of the Taliban and al Qaeda. He has alienated his potential allies, turned away Benazir Bhutto, and united disparate elements of the opposition. Secular parties and Islamists will now share a single voice in opposition to his blatant disregard for the rule of law, and the emphasis of the Pakistani security forces will shift from combating the Taliban to maintaining order in an increasingly turbulent political environment.

Newsweek recently reported on Pakistan's danger to international security:

Today no other country on earth is arguably more dangerous than Pakistan. It has everything Osama bin Laden could ask for: political instability, a trusted network of radical Islamists, an abundance of angry young anti-Western recruits, secluded training areas, access to state-of-the-art electronic technology, regular air service to the West and security services that don't always do what they're supposed to do. (Unlike in Iraq or Afghanistan, there also aren't thousands of American troops hunting down would-be terrorists.) Then there's the country's large and growing nuclear program. "If you were to look around the world for where Al Qaeda is going to find its bomb, it's right in their backyard," says Bruce Riedel, the former senior director for South Asia on the National Security Council.

The conventional story about Pakistan has been that it is an unstable nuclear power, with distant tribal areas in terrorist hands. What is new, and more frightening, is the extent to which Taliban and Qaeda elements have now turned much of the country, including some cities, into a base that gives jihadists more room to maneuver, both in Pakistan and beyond.

In recent months, as Musharraf has grown more and more unpopular after eight years of rule, Islamists have been emboldened. The homegrown militants who have hidden Al Qaeda's leaders since the end of 2001 are no longer restricted to untamed mountain villages along the border. These Islamist fighters now operate relatively freely in cities like Karachi—a process the U.S. and Pakistani governments call "Talibanization." Hammered by suicide bombers and Iraq-style IEDs and reluctant to make war on its countrymen, Pakistan's demoralized military seems incapable of stopping the jihadists even in the cities. "Until I return to fight, I'll feel safe and relaxed here," Abdul Majadd, a Taliban commander who was badly wounded this summer during a fire fight against British troops in Afghanistan, told NEWSWEEK recently after he was evacuated to Karachi for emergency care.

Pakistan's crisis places a tremendous burden on the United States. As the New York Times notes:

For more than five months the United States has been trying to orchestrate a political transition in Pakistan that would manage to somehow keep Gen. Pervez Musharraf in power without making a mockery of President Bush’s promotion of democracy in the Muslim world.

On Saturday, those carefully laid plans fell apart spectacularly. Now the White House is stuck in wait-and-see mode, with limited options and a lack of clarity about the way forward.

General Musharraf’s move to seize emergency powers and abandon the Constitution left Bush administration officials close to their nightmare: an American-backed military dictator who is risking civil instability in a country with nuclear weapons and an increasingly alienated public.

Mr. Bush entered a delicate dance with Pakistan immediately after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when General Musharraf pledged his cooperation in the fight against Al Qaeda, whose top leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are believed to be hiding out in the mountainous border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The United States has given Pakistan more than $10 billion in aid, mostly to the military, since 2001. Now, if the state of emergency drags on, the administration will be faced with the difficult decision of whether to cut off that aid and risk undermining Pakistan’s efforts to pursue terrorists — a move the White House believes could endanger the security of the United States.

Adm. William J. Fallon, the senior American military commander in the Middle East, told General Musharraf and his top generals in Islamabad on Friday that he would put that aid at risk if he seized emergency powers.

But after the declaration on Saturday, there was no immediate action by the administration to accompany the tough talk, as officials monitored developments in Pakistan. Inside the White House the hope is that the state of emergency will be short-lived and that General Musharraf will fulfill his promise to abandon his post as Army chief of staff and hold elections by Jan. 15.

It's time for Musharraf to step aside. The January 15 elections need to go forward. The United States should use the potential loss of Pakistan's military aid as leverage to restore constitutional government in Islamabad.

Americans Pessimistic on War and the Economy

A new poll from the Washington Post finds Americans deeply pessimistic on Iraq and the economy:

One year out from the 2008 election, Americans are deeply pessimistic and eager for a change in direction from the agenda and priorities of President Bush, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Concern about the economy, the war in Iraq and growing dissatisfaction with the political environment in Washington all contribute to the lowest public assessment of the direction of the country in more than a decade. Just 24 percent think the nation is on the right track, and three-quarters said they want the next president to chart a course that is different than that pursued by Bush.

Overwhelmingly, Democrats want a new direction, but so do three-quarters of independents and even half of Republicans. Sixty percent of all Americans said they feel strongly that such a change is needed after two terms of the Bush presidency.

Dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq remains a primary drag on public opinion, and Americans are increasingly downcast about the state of the economy. More than six in 10 called the war not worth fighting, and nearly two-thirds gave the national economy negative marks. The outlook going forward is also bleak: About seven in 10 see a recession as likely over the next year.

The overall landscape tilts in the direction of the Democrats, but there is evidence in the new poll - matched in conversations with political strategists in both parties and follow-up interviews with survey participants - that the coming battle for the White House is shaping up to be another hard-fought, highly negative and closely decided contest.

Not only that, the battle for Congress will be competitive as well. The poll finds public opinion on Congress at lower levels than that of the Bush administration, at just 28 percent (Congressional Democrats have a 36 percent job approval rating).

I commented on the state of public opinion in a post earlier this week: "Republicans Facing Tough Year in 2008."

It's clear that next year looks to be the best electoral environment for the Democrats in generations. I don't see realigning tendencies in the electorate, however. Voters are uncertain about the future and are looking for change. Still, I would argue that continued success in Iraq will help the GOP (some polls find less pessimism on the war), which is all the more reason for Republicans from the administration on down to develop better public relations regarding our progress.

Neocon Dead-Enders and the Mad Rush to War: Not Again?

Frank Rich, in his column today at the New York Times, pulls off the feat of simultaneously attacking the Bush adminstration, "neocon dead-enders," and Hillary Clinton all in the same essay. The hard-left blogging hordes must be in nirvana:

WHEN President Bush started making noises about World War III, he only confirmed what has been a Democratic article of faith all year: Between now and Election Day he and Dick Cheney, cheered on by the mob of neocon dead-enders, are going to bomb Iran.

But what happens if President Bush does not bomb Iran? That is good news for the world, but potentially terrible news for the Democrats. If we do go to war in Iran, the election will indeed be a referendum on the results, which the Republican Party will own no matter whom it nominates for president. But if we don’t, the Democratic standard-bearer will have to take a clear stand on the defining issue of the race. As we saw once again at Tuesday night’s debate, the front-runner, Hillary Clinton, does not have one.

The reason so many Democrats believe war with Iran is inevitable, of course, is that the administration is so flagrantly rerunning the sales campaign that gave us Iraq. The same old scare tactic — a Middle East Hitler plotting a nuclear holocaust — has been recycled with a fresh arsenal of hyped, loosey-goosey intelligence and outright falsehoods that are sometimes regurgitated without corroboration by the press.

Mr. Bush has gone so far as to accuse Iran of shipping arms to its Sunni antagonists in the Taliban, a stretch Newsweek finally slapped down last week. Back in the reality-based community, it is Mr. Bush who has most conspicuously enabled the Taliban’s resurgence by dropping the ball as it regrouped in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Administration policy also opened the door to Iran’s lethal involvement in Iraq. The Iraqi “unity government” that our troops are dying to prop up has more allies in its Shiite counterpart in Tehran than it does in Washington.

Yet 2002 history may not literally repeat itself. Mr. Cheney doesn’t necessarily rule in the post-Rumsfeld second Bush term. There are saner military minds afoot now: the defense secretary Robert Gates, the Joint Chiefs chairman Mike Mullen, the Central Command chief William Fallon. They know that a clean, surgical military strike at Iran could precipitate even more blowback than our “cakewalk” in Iraq. The Economist tallied up the risks of a potential Shock and Awe II this summer: “Iran could fire hundreds of missiles at Israel, attack American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, organize terrorist attacks in the West or choke off tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s oil windpipe.”

Then there’s the really bad news. Much as Iraq distracted America from the war against Al Qaeda, so a strike on Iran could ignite Pakistan, Al Qaeda’s thriving base and the actual central front of the war on terror. As Joe Biden said Tuesday night, if we attack Iran to stop it from obtaining a few kilograms of highly enriched uranium, we risk facilitating the fall of the teetering Musharraf government and the unleashing of Pakistan’s already good-to-go nuclear arsenal on Israel and India.

A full-scale regional war, chaos in the oil market, an overstretched American military pushed past the brink — all to take down a little thug like Ahmadinejad (who isn’t even Iran’s primary leader) and a state, however truculent, whose defense budget is less than 1 percent of America’s? Call me a Pollyanna, but I don’t think even the Bush administration can be this crazy.

Yet there is nonetheless a method to all the mad threats of war coming out of the White House. While the saber- rattling is reckless as foreign policy, it’s a proven winner as election-year Republican campaign strategy. The real point may be less to intimidate Iranians than to frighten Americans. Fear, the only remaining card this administration still knows how to play, may once more give a seemingly spent G.O.P. a crack at the White House in 2008.

Rich doesn't stop there. Here's his point about Hillary Clinton:

In Tuesday’s debate Mrs. Clinton tried to play down her vote for Kyl-Lieberman again by incessantly repeating her belief in “vigorous diplomacy” as well as the same sound bite she used after her Iraq vote five years ago. “I am not in favor of this rush for war,” she said, “but I’m also not in favor of doing nothing.”

Much like her now notorious effort to fudge her stand on Eliot Spitzer’s driver’s license program for illegal immigrants, this is a profile in vacillation. And this time Mrs. Clinton’s straddling stood out as it didn’t in 2002. That’s not because she was the only woman on stage but because she is the only Democratic candidate who has not said a firm no to Bush policy.

That leaves her in a no man’s — or woman’s — land. If Mr. Bush actually does make a strike against Iran, Mrs. Clinton will be the only leading Democrat to have played a cameo role in enabling it. If he doesn’t, she can no longer be arguing in the campaign crunch of fall 2008 that she is against rushing to war, because it would no longer be a rush. Her hand would be forced.

Rich is good at mounting all the leftist antiwar talking points. The difficult truth, for Rich and the peaceniks, is that we're winning in Iraq. The "rush to war" meme just recycles all the old anti-Bush denunciations, while changing the subject. Things are going well in Iraq, and we have al Qaeda on the run. Iranian nuclear weapons capability would not be a positive development Middle East politics, no matter how much the left says otherwise. Of course, any tough talk against our adversaries will be denounced as fear-mongering.

Rich is right about one thing, though: The Clinton campaign needs to get a compelling theme. Denunciations of the war aren't going to cut it heading into November 2008, when the consolidation of Iraq's democracy will be further along.

For more commentary check Memeorandum.

Weekend Interview with Natan Sharansky

Natan Sharansky, the Israeli Zionist and former Soviet dissident, comes about as close as possible to living a life of neoconservativism.

Sharansky's the subject of this weekend's Wall Street Journal interview. A main theme of the interview is that democracy promotion, especially as that practiced by the Bush administration, is on the ropes. Sharansky, as the author of The Case for Democracy, has been a major influence on the adminstration's agenda.

Here's a key excerpt from the article:

But democracy is a dirty word these days. So Mr. Sharansky is lonely too, bounced out of Israeli politics and out of favor. He, Vaclav Havel and other former Eastern European dissident faces of the freedom agenda are dismissed as Cold War naïfs, pernicious Utopians, or worse--men whose moral Manichaeism has no business in the "complex Middle East."

America is back to its realist ways in the region, propping up Egyptian and Saudi gerontocrats. The day I visit Mr. Sharansky, Condi Rice is here to prod all sides to another Middle East peace conference, with no mention of political opening as part of the bargain.

Across town at the Shalem Center, his new professional home in Jerusalem's German Colony, Mr. Sharansky puts a brave face on this latest turn in his life. Nine years in a Siberian prison camp without seeing his young wife, he says, puts everything that follows in healthy perspective. His smiling eyes are framed by a recognizable bald pate and graying sideburns (he's almost 60). An anecdote or joke is never absent for long in conversation. As almost any East European will tell you, humor makes unpleasant reality go down easier.

Mr. Sharansky says of his adversaries among the Western intellectual elite: "Those people who are always wrong--they were wrong about the Soviet Union, they were wrong about Oslo [the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace deal], they were wrong about appeasing Yasser Arafat--they are the intellectual leaders of these battles. So what can I tell you?"

But his side is today on a back foot. The war in Iraq and the rise of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, aided by the ballot box, are Exhibits A and B in the case against the Bush Doctrine and its contention that democracy can put down roots in Arab soil.
Mr. Sharansky considers these cases immaterial. "What's happening today in Iraq has nothing to do with the question whether promoting democracy is a good idea, or whether people in Iraq want to live in freedom." The Iraqis' refusal to defend Saddam Hussein and courage in voting for a new constitution and parliament settled that argument for Mr. Sharansky. Iraq's Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites are, he says, engaged in a different, no less ferocious struggle over "identity"--his current obsession, and the subject of his next book.

The victory of Hamas in last year's Palestinian elections is widely considered a defeat for the Bush Doctrine. Mr. Sharansky recalls seeing friends at the White House the day of the vote. "They said, 'Oh, it's the first time, it's a good experiment.' And I said, 'I fully disagree. It's a terrible experiment!' Now of course they come back and say, 'You see, you want to promote democracy and you get Hamas.'"

As he argued in his bestselling book, the West confuses the ballot box with democracy. "The election has to be at the end of the process of building free society," he says. "If there is no free and democratic society, elections can never be free and democratic."

Having not even attempted a "bottom up" overhaul of its politics and economy, the Palestinians weren't ready for a poll, he says, nor were other post-Cold War Western protectorates. He faults successive U.S. administrations for pushing votes before their time in Bosnia right after its war ended in 1995, Iraq and in the Palestinian territories. "Nobody thought in 1946 to have elections in Germany and Japan."

I think the neoconservative vision for Iraq will be vindicated ultimately (sooner rather than later, the way things are looking). History shows that the spread of freedom is generally welcomed. The controversy starts when that vision is backed by military power.

I noticed that Sharansky was spared a thrashing by the left blogosphere, as indicated by the dearth of blog posts at Sharansky's Memeorandum link. Perhaps he's old news, or perhaps the lefties don't have a clue on Sharansky's neoconservative significance. Considering his impact on President Bush (here and here), that would be a surprise.

Neo-Neocon 's on top of it, in any case.

Victory in Iraq? The War Has Been Won

It's been an interesting week for media coverage of Iraq. The good news keeps pouring in (see here and here, for example), and despite a tendency among some media outlets to portray stability in Iraq as a lull (see here and here), it's becoming increasingly clear that we've reached a turning point in the war.

In fact, Andrew Bolt, in an article syndicated from Australia's Daily Telegraph, agues the Iraq war's been won:

Here it is: The battle is actually over. Iraq has been won.

I know this will seem to many of you an insane claim. Ridiculous! After all, haven't you read countless stories that Iraq is a "disaster", turned by a "civil war" into a "killing field"?...

You have. And you have been misled. Here is just the latest underreported news, out this week.

Just 27 American soldiers were killed in action in Iraq in October - the lowest monthly figure since March last year. (This is a provisional figure and may alter over the next week.)

The number of Iraqi civilians killed last month - mostly by Islamist and fascist terrorists - was around 760, according to Iraqi Government sources.

That is still tragically high, but the monthly toll has plummeted since January's grim total of 1990.

What measures of success do critics of Iraq's liberation now demand?

Violence is falling fast. Al Qaida has been crippled.

The Shiites, Kurds and Marsh Arabs no longer face genocide.

What's more, the country has stayed unified. The majority now rules.

Despite that, minority Sunni leaders are co-operating in government with Shiite ones.

There is no civil war. The Kurds have not broken away. Iran has not turned Iraq into its puppet.
And the country's institutions are getting stronger. The Iraqi army is now at full strength, at least in numbers.

The country has a vigorous media. A democratic constitution has been adopted and backed by a popular vote.

Election after election has Iraqis turning up in their millions.

Add it all up. Iraq not only remains a democracy, but shows no sign of collapse.

I repeat: the battle for a free Iraq has been won.

Bolt anticipates left-wing denials of victory. For instance, he makes a penetrating point about assessing violence in Iraq comparatively:

Iraq remains an ugly place, with lethal hatreds, yet none of these killers are winning and Iraq will not fall to them.

Consider: Iraq's official estimate of civilian deaths from violence is now about 25 a day. In South Africa, with twice the population, the official murder toll is 52 a day.

That's a rate of killing equal to Iraq's. Do you think those murders will topple South Africa? And does anyone say of South Africa that these killings just prove freedom was not worth it?

Of course, radical war opponents will respond with, "Yeah, but Bush lied about WMD," or some such nonsense. Yet, truth be told, the radicals will have to sink to the depths of denial in refusing the obvious fact of impending victory.

Indeed, the time for political recrimination and division is over. Neither Americans nor Iraqis have an interest in endlessly debating the origins of the war or the administration's earlier incompetence. We are winning now. Americans need to unite.

Roberts Gates, in his comments on Iraq this week, indicated that substantial progress was being made, but he was careful not to declare a full-blown victory:

Asked whether he would declare that the United States was now winning the war in Iraq, Mr. Gates responded: “I think those end up being loaded words. I think we have been very successful. We need to continue being successful.”

Gates tempered his comments to show a proper concern about resisting euphoria over the war's progress. That said, the administration's been rightly criticized for its failure to adequately market Iraq's importance. Former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird made this point in 2005:

The president must articulate a simple message and mission. Just as the spread of communism was very real in the 1960s, so the spread of radical fundamentalist Islam is very real today. It was a creeping fear until September 11, 2001, when it showed itself capable of threatening us. Iraq was a logical place to fight back, with its secular government and modern infrastructure and a populace that was ready to overthrow its dictator. Our troops are not fighting there only to preserve the right of Iraqis to vote. They are fighting to preserve modern culture, Western democracy, the global economy, and all else that is threatened by the spread of barbarism in the name of religion. That is the message and the mission. It is not politically correct, nor is it comforting. But it is the truth, and sometimes the truth needs good marketing.

Laird was writing a year before the administration shifted to a new counterinsurgency strategy with General David Petraeus.

But the success of America's new course is clear, and it needs good marketing. Even if the administration hesitates in declaring victory (since war opponents will never acknowledge the point), the message of impending victory in Iraq ought to be distributed as widely as possible. We may have setbacks ahead, which is why a lengthy and large postwar military presence in the country is expected. But the Republicans have an historic opportunity to package success in Iraq as the defining issue of the upcoming elections. It's time to seize the moment.

Living Large in Russia: Economic Boom is Cultural Context for Authoritarianism

This morning's Wall Street Journal's got a fascinating piece on the politics of the Russian economy. The story is a case study on the economic fortunes of the Starodubovs of Moscow. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Starodubovs were featured in the Journal as a personal example of the hard times facing the post-Soviet Russian population:

When The Wall Street Journal first visited the Starodubovs as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, salami was also an important issue. To get some, Svetlana and her husband, Vitaly, had to stand in line for three-and-a-half hours in the winter cold holding baby Irina.

The paper has kept up with the family's progress. The Starodubovs have steady jobs and economic security today, and their fortunes are seen as an important bellweather of popular feeling on Russian President Vladimir Putun's political future:

The Starodubovs' ascent from the hand-to-mouth existence of the 1990s to relative security today helps explain why President Vladimir Putin is perceived so differently in Russia than he is in the West. For many here, he is a hero. After nearly two decades of crazy desperation and living from one day to the next, the relative calm of the Putin era feels like such a tremendous achievement that for many in Russia, it's more than enough to earn their loyalty.

"To tell the truth, I don't know who runs out of money these days," says Vitaly. "I don't think anyone is that badly off."

Since Mr. Putin took office in 2000, about 20 million Russians have been lifted above the official poverty line (another 20 million remain in poverty, according to government figures). An oil-fired economic boom has brought long-awaited stability after a string of crises in the 1990s and more than doubled average incomes, adjusted for inflation, since 2000. A middle class is growing, but so is the gap between rich and poor. Still, the government is scrambling to pour tens of billions of dollars into rebuilding Russia's crumbling roads, power networks, hospitals and schools, all of which have seen little investment since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Rising incomes are the big reason why nearly half of Russians say they want Mr. Putin to stay on when his term ends next spring, even though that would require changing the constitution. Mr. Putin has said he won't do that, but recently said he might become prime minister after the March elections.

The Starodubovs say they like the stability Putin has brought to Russian. Their lack of concern for Putin's autocratic tendencies is an example of Russia's authoritarian political culture, which is charaterized by attitudes of dependence on the state, and the need for protection and security.

Read the whole article, in any case. Cell phones, DVDs, and the internet are regular features of Starodubov family life. A very Americanized family life, in many respects, and quite different from the Stalinist existence under the old Soviet Union (nothwithstanding the lingering cultural authoritarianism).

Piling On? A Case Study in Clinton Damage Control

The "piling on" meme, through which the Clinton campaign has portrayed her disastrous debate performance as a case of patriarchial attacks on her candidacy, has generated some interesting discussion. Barack Obama makes the point that Clinton should be touting her experience on the issues, not flashing the gender card (You Tube via Kate Phillips):

Ruth Marcus shreds the piling on meme in her Washington Post commentary:

The Philadelphia debate was not exactly a mob moment to trigger the Violence Against Women Act; if anything, this has been an overly (pardon the phrase) gentlemanly campaign to date. Those other guys were beating up on Clinton, if you can call that beating up, because she is the strong front-runner, not because she is a weak woman.

And a candidate as strong as Clinton doesn't need to play the woman-as-victim card, not even in "the all-boys club of presidential politics," as Clinton called it in a speech yesterday at her all-women alma mater, Wellesley College. I have a pretty good nose for sexism, and what I detected in the air from Philadelphia was not sexism but the desperation of candidates confronting a front-runner who happens to be a woman.

But check out Ezra Klein, in his post at the American Prospect, as he attempts to put up a smokescreen around the gender card issue:

Do you guys think Clinton is making this about gender, and I'm giving her comments too sympathetic a read? Or has the press been aching to make this a race again, and so are now in a feeding frenzy mode, and are making everything from complicated answers about immigration to straight descriptions of gender realities a huge issue?

Nice try. Clinton bombed the debate. The piling on meme represents a classic Clintonian attempt at political damage control.

For more commentary, see Memeorandum.

Trumpet the News: Good Things in Iraq

The London Times asks, "Is no news good news or bad news?" The question is important to ask when thinking about the political spin on Iraq progress:

Is no news good news or bad news? In Iraq, it seems good news is deemed no news. There has been striking success in the past few months in the attempt to improve security, defeat al-Qaeda sympathisers and create the political conditions in which a settlement between the Shia and the Sunni communities can be reached. This has not been an accident but the consequence of a strategy overseen by General David Petraeus in the past several months. While summarised by the single word “surge” his efforts have not just been about putting more troops on the ground but also employing them in a more sophisticated manner. This drive has effectively broken whatever alliances might have been struck in the past by terrorist factions and aggrieved Sunnis. Cities such as Fallujah, once notorious centres of slaughter, have been transformed in a remarkable time.

Indeed, on every relevant measure, the shape of the Petraeus curve is profoundly encouraging. It is not only the number of coalition deaths and injuries that has fallen sharply (October was the best month for 18 months and the second-best in almost four years), but the number of fatalities among Iraqi civilians has also tumbled similarly. This process started outside Baghdad but now even the capital itself has a sense of being much less violent and more viable. As we report today, something akin to a normal nightlife is beginning to re-emerge in the city. As the pace of reconstruction quickens, the prospects for economic recovery will be enhanced yet further. With oil at record high prices, Iraq should be an extremely prosperous nation and in a position to start planning for its future with confidence.

None of this means that all the past difficulties have become history. A weakened al-Qaeda will be tempted to attempt more spectacular attacks to inflict substantial loss of life in an effort to prove that it remains in business. Although the tally of car bombings and improvised explosive devices has fallen back sharply, it would only take one blast directed at an especially large crowd or a holy site of unusual reverence for the headlines about impending civil war to be allowed another outing. The Government headed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has become more proactive since the summer, but must immediately take advantage of these favourable conditions. The supposed representatives of the Iraqi people in Baghdad need to show both responsibility and creativity if the country's potential is to be realised.

The current achievements, and they are achievements, are being treated as almost an embarrassment in certain quarters. The entire context of the contest for the Democratic nomination for president has been based on the conclusion that Iraq is an absolute disaster and the first task of the next president is to extricate the United States at maximum speed. Democrats who voted for the war have either repudiated their past support completely (John Edwards) or engaged in a convoluted partial retraction (Hillary Clinton). Congressional Democrats have spent most of this year trying (and failing) to impose a timetable for an outright exit. In Britain, in a somewhat more subtle fashion admittedly, Gordon Brown assumed on becoming the Prime Minister that he should send signals to the voters that Iraq had been “Blair's War”, not one to which he or Britain were totally committed.

All of these attitudes have become outdated. There are many valid complaints about the manner in which the Bush Administration and Donald Rumsfeld, in particular, managed Iraq after the 2003 military victory. But not to recognise that matters have improved vastly in the year since Mr Rumsfeld's resignation from the Pentagon was announced and General Petraeus was liberated would be ridiculous. Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have to appreciate that Iraq is no longer, as they thought, an exercise in damage limitation but one of making the most of an opportunity. The instinct of too many people is that if Iraq is going badly we should get out because it is going badly and if it is getting better we should get out because it is getting better. This is a catastrophic miscalculation. Iraq is getting better. That is good, not bad, news.

Yesterday's Washington Post, in a main news story, spoke of Iraq progress hesitantly, call the decline in violence a "lull." To this, Jules Crittenden responded:

This and other lull articles are lullabies for war opponents who might be alarmed at the prospect of a Bush victory, and the implications that could have for their own congressional and presidential aspirations.

Crittenden really nails the point.

I'm always amazed at how the Democrats can't beat a track fast enough for an exit out of Iraq. One would think that victory in Iraq would present a "New World Order" moment for the party, a chance for them to build on Republican foreign policy achievements to put their own stamp on America's foreign affairs for the years ahead. This is a huge missed opportunity for the party, and all the more reason to vote Republican next year.

See more commentary at Memeorandum.

Will Rudy Be the Republican Nominee?

The Economist has an analysis of Rudolf Giuliani's presidential campaign. Will Rudy take on Hillary? Here's a key snippet:

Mr Giuliani's reputation as tough on terrorists rests largely on his unflappability after the World Trade Centre was attacked. That is a less substantial achievement than rolling back crime or welfare, but it is what television viewers remember about the man who has been dubbed “America's mayor”. He adds to his reputation with ferocious displays of hawkishness, vowing to remain “on offence” in Iraq and promising unflinching support for Israel. One of his foreign-policy advisers, Norman Podhoretz, urges President George Bush to bomb Iran's nuclear sites as soon as practically possible—though Mr Giuliani does not go so far.

Mr Giuliani's hawkishness could be a vital factor in his struggle to win over Republicans who think him too soft on social issues such as abortion. Many pro-life conservatives are also pro-Israel and convinced that Christendom is threatened by “Islamofascists”. Mr Giuliani addresses such audiences with deference. He admits to being an imperfect candidate. He admits that they will not always agree with him, but insists that they can always trust him. This is a veiled jab at Mr Romney, whose recent conversion to pro-lifery smacks to many of opportunism.

Some of these social conservatives are nonetheless so appalled by Mr Giuliani that they threaten to back a third-party candidate if he wins the Republican nomination. Others think that would be foolish, since it would virtually guarantee victory for the Democrats. But many Republicans fall into a third category—they are simply unaware that Mr Giuliani is socially liberal. A recent Gallup poll found that only 37% knew he was pro-choice and only 18% knew he favoured civil unions for gays.

This makes the race for the Republican nomination extremely hard to predict. As the primaries draw near, will voters learn more about Mr Giuliani and reject him? Some undoubtedly will. But others may not have bothered to find out where he stands on abortion because they do not think it matters much. After all, the president cannot ban the practice. The most he can do is to pick pro-life Supreme Court judges who, if confirmed by a substantially pro-choice Senate, might conceivably one day overturn Roe v Wade and hand the issue back to the states. This is highly unlikely, though, and most voters pay more attention to other issues.

For many Republicans, Mr Giuliani's chief virtue is that he has the best shot at beating Hillary Clinton. His boosters say his moderate social views could lure swing voters and bring big blue states such as New York and California back into play, at least forcing the Democrats to spend time and money defending them. Perhaps, but many swing voters will be repulsed by his hawkishness or his dodgy friends. (His third police chief, Bernard Kerik, is currently being investigated for tax fraud; were he to be indicted, that would be awkward for Mr Giuliani.)

Read the whole thing.

Giuliani's nowhere assured the nomination, and the article includes some polling data on voter preferences on both the Democratic and Republican candidates. As I've noted before, Giuliani's not my first pick, but I won't be upset if he wins the nomination.

Paul Tibbets, 92, Pilot of Enola Gay

Paul Tibbets, the pilot who ushered in the nuclear era, helping to end World War II, is dead at age 92. USA Today has a brief obituary:

Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the B-29 bomber Enola Gay, died today. He was 92.

Tibbets dropped an atomic bomb known as "Little Boy" over Hiroshima, Japan, at 8:16 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945. As many as 200,000 people may have been killed within five years by the blast and its aftereffects, according to the Energy Department. This website has photographs of the devastation the bombs wrought before they forced the Japanese government to surrender to Allied forces led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

The Associated Press reports that Tibbets, who retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general in 1966, had no regrets about his role in the world's first atomic airstrike. "You've got to take stock and assess the situation at that time. We were at war. ... You use anything at your disposal," he was quoted as saying in 1975. "I sleep clearly every night," he added.

Tibbets wanted to be cremated, with no funeral or grave marker left to inspire protests.

It's a sad commentary on the state of our politics that the man who helped save countless lives - and whose work hastened the end of the war - is today vilified as a mass murderer by the postmodernist America-bashers of the multiculturalist left. The Jawa Report cites this nasty attack on Tibbets, from White Noise Insanity:

Paul Tibbetts [sic] did not die a hero to America. I’m sorry, but it does not take a brave person to strap a bomb to a plane, fly high above a sleeping city, and then drop an atomic bomb on it! Only a coward could be proud of himself after doing something like that....

Not only was a he a typical reich winger throughout his life, meaning he had zero compassion for the people of our planet, but he managed to be the typical reich winger upon his death by being a coward. Why? He told his loved ones that he didn’t want a stone or a marker for his grave. Why? Well, apparently this “big brave reich winger” didn’t want Americans to stand around his grave protesting what he had done in WWII!

Tibbets is also attacked at The Progressive:

I’m making a partial exception to my self-imposed rule of not speaking ill of the dead.
Paul Tibbets, the pilot who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, died Nov. 1, unrepentant till the very end.

“I wanted to do everything that I could to subdue Japan. I wanted to kill the bastards. That was the attitude of the United States in those years,” he told an interviewer in 1995. “I have been convinced that we saved more lives than we took. It would have been morally wrong if we’d have had that weapon and not used it and let a million more people die.”

There was only one problem with his analysis: He was just plain wrong. In the last few decades, there has been a whole slew of studies showing that the dropping of the bomb was—militarily and strategically—completely unnecessary.

The Progressive piece cites revisionist historians who have criticized President Truman's decision to use nuclear weapons on Japan.

Other historians get the story right, however. In an essay published July 2005, on the eve of Hiroshima's 60th anniversary, Richard Frank, the author of a respected history of the Guadalcanal campaign, published a commentary piece in the San Fancisco Chronicle defending the decision to drop the bomb on Japan:

What if the United States had chosen not to use atomic weapons against Japan in 1945?

Americans typically believe that an invasion of Japan would have been the consequence, but four other possibilities have been raised: a diplomatic settlement; Soviet intervention in the Pacific theater; continuing war with dire effects on millions of Asians trapped in Japan's empire; and a new strategic bombing directive.

Contrary to wishful theories, no realistic prospect existed for a diplomatic settlement. The American aim of unconditional surrender was not just a slogan. It constituted the keystone to the enduring peace that followed. It provided the legal authority for the occupation of Japan and the ensuing fundamental renovation of Japanese society.

Japan's leaders opposed unconditional surrender precisely because they understood it meant the extinction of the old order dominated by the militarists and their consorts. That old order had started a war that killed more than 17 million people -- most of them Asian noncombatants. The strongest evidence that compromise remained out of reach is that even when the Japanese government finally issued its first real surrender offer on Aug. 10, 1945, it still demanded that the United States guarantee that substantial power would remain in the hands of the emperor.

Frank continues:

Had the war continued for two weeks or perhaps only a few days, the destruction of the rail system would have brought about the mass famine that probably would have prompted the Japanese to capitulate. But this also means that Japanese would have died by the millions.

What history without Hiroshima illustrates is that there was no alternative happy ending to the Pacific War. When realistic consideration is given to the alternatives, atomic bombs stand as the worst way to have ended the war - except all the others.

This is the context in which we should remember Tibbets. Also note these heartfelt words from the Flag Gazer:

Thank you, Paul Tibbets. Thank you for what you did for our country, thank you for ending the war, thank you for all of the lives you saved and all of us you allowed to be born. You will always be my hero. Farewell, and Walk with God.

Walk with God, yes...that's a much more appropriate eulogy.

Anti-Terror Interrogations Real Target of Democrats

Today's lead editorial at the Wall Street Journal argues that anti-terror interrogation practices are the real target in Democratic oppostion to Michael Mukasey's nomination for Attorney General:

Democrats welcomed Michael Mukasey as a "consensus choice" for Attorney General only weeks ago, but incredibly his confirmation is now an open question. The judge's supposed offense is that he has refused to declare "illegal" a single interrogation technique that the CIA has used on rare occasions against mass murderers.

All of the Democratic Presidential candidates have come out against the distinguished judge, and Democrats on the Judiciary Committee appear ready to block his nomination from even reaching the Senate floor. This is remarkable not for what it says about Judge Mukasey but for what it reveals about Democrats and the war on terror. They'd disqualify a man of impeccable judicial temperament and credentials merely because he's willing to give U.S. interrogators the benefit of the legal doubt before he has top-secret clearance.

Could there be a clearer demonstration of why voters don't trust Democrats with national security? In the war against al Qaeda, interrogation and electronic surveillance are our most effective weapons. Yet Democrats have for years waged a guerrilla war against both of these tools, trying to impose procedural and legal limits that can only reduce their effectiveness. Judge Mukasey is merely collateral damage in this larger effort.

Read the whole thing.

The editors make a powerful case that the Democrats' Mukasey fight is being driven not by calculations of what's best for American national security, but by the need to pander to the party's antiwar base.

In any case, the good news this afternoon is that key Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are backing Mukasey's appointment, which means the nominee will likely gain confirmation (maybe Senate Democrats read the Wall Street Journal).

For additional commentary, check Memorandum. For a prototypical demonization of both the Bush administration's anti-terror agenda and Judge Mukasey, check the comments from the left's foremost surrender hawk, Glenn Greenwald.

Ron Paul and the Fringe of American Politics

My recent post on Ron Paul's prospects in New Hampshire attracted a lot of attention from the "Paulites," the extremely vocal online activists committed to defending Paul with denunciations and threats. The exchange in the comment thread was colorful, and prompted Patrick at Driving out the Snakes to write a follow-up post suggesting I had a "bee in my bonnet."

Thankfully, Rick Moran at the American Thinker sheds some perspective on the unhinged masses attracted to the Paul campaign. Here's the introduction:

What is it about the candidacy of Ron Paul that has attracted the paranoid fringe of American politics?

Clearly, there are Ron Paul supporters who are rational and grounded, not given to spouting conspiracies or blaming "neocons" for everything bad that happens in the world (neocons being a blind for anti-Semitism). For all we know, they may be the majority of his supporters.

But just as clearly, there is a dark underbelly to the Paul campaign -- a ruthless, mob of internet ruffians who seek to intimidate those who would dare criticize them, the Paul candidacy, or most especially, one of their pet conspiracy theories about 9/11, the "New World Order" (an amorphous term that generally means the imposition of a one world government), or something as mundane and silly as planting a computer chip in every new born in America.

The question isn't whether Ron Paul believes in any of these conspiracy theories, although he has said on at least two occasions that he believes the investigation into 9/11 must be reopened to explore "unanswered questions" about the tragedy. It is his apparent pandering to this lunatic fringe that must be explored and reasons for it demanded from the campaign.

I say "apparent" pandering because there is the possibility that Paul is completely clueless that his anti-government rants (a subjective word but apt if you listen to his speeches or watch him in the debates) full of dark hints of conspiracy and wrongdoing by the highest officials in the land, actually ring a Pavlovian bell for the paranoid conspiracy freaks causing them to flock to his banner.

The article includes excerpts from Paul's statements suggesting that he's not completely oblivious to the ideology and interests of the lunatic hordes flocking to his side. Moran offers this passage too, which applies in my case:

Constant attention is paid [by the Paulites] to Technorati and other blog search engines so that the most minute negative mention of Paul will bring several commenters rushing to his defense. Some are indeed polite and accommodating. Most are not. Personal attacks are common as are charges that the blogger is part of a conspiracy against the candidate.

Such attacks prompted Red State to ban the Paulites from its comment section, a move that raises touchy questions of free speech. Captain Ed Morrissey disagreed with Red State's decision, but he then makes this rather naive statement on the relative repulsiveness of the Paulites versus the far-left antiwar, multiculturalists:

I'm no Paul supporter by any means. However, Paul's statements can be addressed and rebutted fairly easily, at least those with which I strongly disagree. I don't fear the commenters nor the debate, even if it does grow tiresome at times. It certainly can't be any more tiresome than the S-CHIP debate, or the Iraq War debate, or the FISA debate -- and I'd have less sympathy for opponents on those issues than the people who support Ron Paul.

Captain Ed's known for his cool-headed political commentary, but on this issue he's out of his depth. Ideologically, the extreme fanatics on both the left and the right have joined together in common cause against the Bush administration and Iraq. In this sense, the traditional left-right ideological continuum is being pulled up, like a string, to square the circle among the most implacable foes of the American democracy.

I pointed out in my post, for example, that Adam Kokesh, an activist in the Stalinist group International ANSWER, proclaims himself a card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party. Moreover, Paul's campaign is attracting the most vile contingents of America's neo-nazi movement. Indeed, this grassroots fringe mobilization represents the latest iteration in the long tradition of apocalyptic extremism in American politics.

Moran's piece provides a nice conclusion to this theme:

Is Paul pandering to the conspiracy nuts in America, knowing their enthusiastic support for him will assist his campaign? Or is he unaware that by appealing to the basest emotions brought to the surface by his dark hints involving dark forces carrying out a campaign to take away our freedoms, he is giving the paranoid, the fearful, and the ignorant haters a standard to rally around?

He is a foolish man if he believes he can control these forces. In the end, they can only destroy him.

That's a lesson otherwise anchored Paul supporters might do well to digest.

A Long Morning for Charlie Company

The American Spectator has a gripping retelling of the 82 Airborne's "Charlie Company" (2-505 Parachute Infantry Regiment) and its close-range firefight with insurgents in Samarra, Iraq, August 26, 2007.

The story focuses on "Reaper Two," a sniper team from the Charlie Company's 2nd Battalion. The team's mission that morning was to provide a rooftop observation point (OP) to guard against insurgent activity on the roads into the central Samarra, where Charlie Company's 3rd Platoon would be carrying out a search of an IED manufacturing shop.

Reaper Two's position atop the building was compromised, and the sniper team came under withering enemy fire. The team's four paratroopers - Sergeant Josh Morley, Specialist Tracy Willis, Specialist Chris Corriveau, and Specialist Eric Moser - fought courageously to hold their position:

ON THE ROOF OF THE APARTMENT BUILDING, Morley and Moser were taking AK-47 and PKC (a 7.62mm Russian-made machine gun) fire from both stairwells. As they spun around to return fire, they saw several small, dark objects flying onto the roof from the stairwell -- hand grenades. Morley recognized that the situation was rapidly deteriorating and knew that, though his team currently occupied the high ground in the emerging battle, they could not hold out for very long due to their vast disadvantage in numbers. Seeing that Willis, who was next to the team's radio, was busy firing into the stairwell through a window on the enclave's north side, and not knowing that one of the first hand grenades tossed onto the roof had disabled it, Morley made a dash across the roof to call for the QRF.

He never made it there.

As Moser fired into the door from his corner in an attempt to suppress the enemy assault, he saw Morley appear to stumble and go down, his weapon skidding across the rooftop toward the stairwell door. His first thought was that the team leader had tripped and fallen; a moment later, his brain registered the truth: Morley had been shot. A burst of gunfire from the southern stairwell across the dividing wall had scored a direct hit, with one round striking Morley directly in the forehead. He was dead before hitting the ground.

Moser didn't have time to dwell on Morley's death. Knowing that what had just become a three-man team could not long withstand the concerted effort by what was clearly a large enemy force to move up the stairs to his location, he took the same chance that Morley had, and crossed the roof to the radio while Willis continued to fire his .240 machine gun into the stairwell, killing at least two enemy fighters with well-placed bursts as grenades continued to be tossed up the stairs and out onto the roof. As he moved to the radio (which he found to have been disabled by a grenade), Moser was able to get a look down into the northern stairwell. Inside, he saw a number of armed men, both black and Arab rushing up the steps toward the roof -- none of whom were the individuals he had seen get out of the car moments before on the street. Apparently there had been fighters stationed in the building before the white car's arrival.

Read the whole thing.

We don't often get such intimate reporting of the modern American military in combat. The article, written by Jeff Emanuel, a special operations veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, keeps a tight focus on tactical developments of the firefight, and doesn't dwell on the carnage and losses. Emanuel's conclusion is uplifting, but not weepy. We see the perseverance and strength of our fighters, and we get a feeling for the importance of unit camaraderie in battle.

Hat tip: Infidel's Are Cool.

Gotcha! Immigration Flip-Flop Haunts Clinton Campaign

I noted earlier that I missed Tuesday's Democratic debate. There's no worry, though, since I'm catching some of the key segments online. Hillary's illegal immigrant drivers' license flip-flop is a true classic in the history of presidential debate moments, available on YouTube:

Although Clinton herself took debate moderator Tim Russert to task for playing "gotcha" in his questioning on the issues, the immigration gaffe is Clinton's own "gotcha" moment. The episode powerfully demonstrates the hypocrisy of Clinton's "nuance" on the issues. The New York Times has more on Clinton's immigration moment:

It was a moment that crystallized Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s struggles in Tuesday night’s debate. Questioned about a plan to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, Mrs. Clinton at first seemed to defend it, then suggested she was against it, until finally, pressed for a direct answer, she accused the moderator, Tim Russert, of playing “gotcha.”

Her verbal twists and turns provided her opponents with fodder for their central critique of Mrs. Clinton, which coursed throughout Tuesday’s debate: that she was trying to have it both ways on the issue, much as she was trying to portray herself as antiwar while voting to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

Here's more, on the conservative reaction to Clinton's gaffe:

Illustrating the political dangers of the issue, Mrs. Clinton found herself under fierce attack Wednesday from Republicans and conservative radio hosts for her debate comments.

“I know there are some politicians like Hillary,” Rudolph W. Giuliani told the conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck. “They say different things to different people. They use different accents in different parts of the country. I’m used to that about her now. I had never seen it happen all in one place, in one minute.”

Thanks to Senator Dodd, by the way, for providing the opening for this classic Hillary Halloween haunt.

Also, hat tip to Flopping Aces for the YouTube. See also Michelle Malkin on Hillary's immigration moment.

Republicans Facing Tough Year in 2008

A new poll from The Pew Research Center indicates that 2008 will be tough year for the GOP:

A year before the 2008 presidential election, most major national opinion trends decidedly favor the Democrats. Discontent with the state of the nation is markedly greater than it was four years ago. President Bush's approval rating has fallen from 50% to 30% over this period. And the Democrats' advantage over the Republicans on party affiliation is not only substantially greater than it was four years ago, but is the highest recorded during the past two decades.

The public continues to express more confidence in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party as being able to bring about needed change, to govern in an honest and ethical way and to manage the federal government. The Democratic Party's advantages on these traits are much wider than during the last presidential campaign. Moreover, they remain about as large as they were just prior to the 2006 midterm election, in spite of rising public discontent with the Democrat-led Congress.

The voters' issues agenda also appears to benefit the Democrats. Along with Iraq, the economy, health care and education rate as the most important issues for voters. Compared with the 2004 campaign, fewer voters now place great importance on the issues that have animated Republican political unity in recent years – including gay marriage, abortion and terrorism.

Looking to the presidential election itself, the political climate appears to be affecting the morale of those in both parties. Democrats are more positive and more enthused than are Republicans. Since the beginning of the year, Democrats have closely followed campaign news at consistently higher rates than have Republicans, and somewhat greater proportions of Democrats say they have given a lot of thought to the presidential candidates.

Republicans not only are less engaged in the campaign, but they also rate their party's presidential candidates more negatively than do Democrats. Nearly half of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (46%) rate the Republican presidential candidates as only fair or poor; by comparison, just 28% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents give the Democratic presidential field comparably low ratings.

The poll also finds Hillary Clinton maintaining a large lead over Barack Obama nationally, 45%-24% among Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters. Clinton also leads Rudy Giuliani in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up, with a 51%-43% advantage.

Note though that the election's still a year away, and a lot can happen in the meantime. As William Kristol pointed out last week, the conventional wisdom on a Democratic presidential blowout next year could be wrong.

One factor likely to help the GOP is Iraq (as Kristol mentions). The surge has improved security in the country subsantially, and the public has become a bit less pessimistic on our chances of victory there. Indeed, good news on the war keeps coming, with today's Los Angeles Times reporting that the number of Iraqi civilian deaths dropped dramatically in October.

Additionally, campaigns matter, and should Hillary win the Democratic nomination, her "nuanced" flexibility on the issues (her flip-flopping) may provide a powerful issue for GOP attacks on her character and credibility.

That said, things are certainly not looking good for Republicans. USA Today also reports the results from a new survey finding dramatic discontent in the electorate:

One year before Election Day 2008, most Americans are dismayed by the country's direction, pessimistic about the Iraq war and anxious about the economy. Two of three disapprove of the job President Bush is doing. Nearly a year after Democrats took control of Congress, three of four Americans say it isn't achieving much, either.

In all, 72% of those surveyed in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Oct. 12-14 say they are dissatisfied with how things are going in the USA while just 26% are satisfied. Not since April have even one-third of Americans been happy with the country's course, the longest national funk in 15 years....

There's plenty of time for attitudes to change before the election, of course, but the current landscape is the sort that in the past has prompted political upheaval and third-party candidacies. The last time the national mood was so gloomy was in 1992, when the first President Bush was ousted from the White House and H. Ross Perot received the highest percentage of the vote of any third-party candidate in 80 years. Bill Clinton was elected amid economic angst.

Both polls augur well for Democratic prospects next year. As the Pew survey notes, Democratic partisans are more enthusiastic about their party's chances than are their Republican counterparts. The USA Today piece shows as well how political scientists are talking about 2008 in history-making terms: Next year might be "a lot like 1952", according to David Mayhew, a political scientist at Yale and author of Electoral Realignments.

Of course, that's the year Eisenhower took over the White House after twenty years of Democratic power. Republicans might find some consolation in the 1952 analogy, however. Nineteen fifty-two ended up being an abberation in an otherwise long period of Democratic Party dominance. Perhaps Republicans can take heart knowing that should they lose in 2008, history shows clear prospects for the defeated party's return to power within a decade.

Rivals Rattle Clinton on the Evasiveness Issue

Tuesdays are my long days at work, so I did not see this week's Democratic presidential debate. I've been watching clips of the candidates' responses on television, and the newspaper commentaries are starting to trickle in.

This Los Angeles Times article discusses the new focus on evasiveness among Hillary Clinton's rivals, a weakness which might turn out to be the frontrunner's Achilles heel:

After searching for ways to rattle Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and stem her momentum in the Democratic presidential race, her chief rivals believe they have found an opening: what they cast as her evasiveness on several key issues.

The campaigns of Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina wasted little time Wednesday suggesting that the New York senator's performance in Tuesday's debate unmasked her as a candidate unwilling to commit to concrete plans.

On at least five issues raised in the debate, Clinton replied in ways that left it unclear what she meant or what action she might take.

That practice has worked for her in the past, permitting her to avoid positions that might antagonize voters, particularly the less partisan ones important to victory in the general election.

But the limitations and potential perils of her approach were driven home at the debate in Philadelphia.

In comments likely foreshadowing the shape of the Democratic contest in coming weeks, top Obama strategist David Axelrod said: "We're going to spell out positions on issues and demand others do as well. One of the things that people are looking for is someone . . . who will be forthright with them and not pass everything through a political calculator. It's a distinction in this race."

A memo issued by the Edwards campaign was more blunt, charging that Clinton was not "telling the truth to the American people."

Republican presidential contender Rudolph W. Giuliani eagerly joined in Wednesday, taking a swipe at Clinton that echoed complaints from her Democratic rivals.

"She was being attacked all night for taking different positions in front of different audiences," Giuliani said in a radio interview. "And then, by the end of the night, she took different positions in front of the same audience. It was pretty amazing. I mean, in politics I've never quite seen that before."

Clinton was wishy-washy on Social Security reform, and she flipped-flopped on drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants. As usual, Clinton dissembled on Iraq and the war on terror:

On Iraq, she said she was for ending the war, but also said an unspecified number of troops may be left in place for an ongoing mission of battling Al Qaeda fighters in that country.

The shift to pointing out Clinton's evasiveness is probably too late to slow her campaign juggernaut (an effort as difficult as stopping a runaway train, the metaphor I've used to describe the disastrous implications of a Hillary presidency for American politics).

See also additional analyses of Clinton's debate performance at the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times.