Barack Obama and the Dream of a Color-Blind America

Be sure to read today's lead story at the Wall Street Journal on Barack Obama and the politics of race in America. Obama's captured the hopes of many whites, who see in the Illinois senator's campaign the emancipation from racial guilt:

As he campaigns across the country, Sen. Obama, the son of a black father and a white mother, is both revealing and tapping into a changed racial landscape, especially among younger whites. After decades of often bitter polarization and racial tension on issues ranging from the spread of civil rights to affirmative action, many whites say they are drawn to Sen. Obama precisely because they think his mixed-race background reflects America's increasingly diverse population and projects a more optimistic vision of the country's racial future.

Sen. Obama's candidacy, whether it succeeds or not, appears to mark a turning point in race and politics in America: It is prompting significant numbers of white Americans to consider voting for him not despite his racial background, but because of it.

"Obama is running an emancipating campaign," says Bob Tuke, who is white and is the former chairman of the Tennessee Democratic party. "He is emancipating white voters to vote for a black candidate."

The aticle goes on:

Two decades ago, Jesse Jackson broke new ground by challenging whites to consider a black mounting a serious run for the presidency. Now Sen. Obama and a new generation of black candidates are running campaigns that make whites feel good about themselves. These younger black politicians, including Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr., are, like Sen. Obama, seen by many whites as proof of the country's racial progress - and their own....

Race remains a wild card in American politics. Candidates such as Mr. Ford, who narrowly lost the Senate race in Tennessee last year, have often come close to election only to find race flaring at the last minute to blunt their momentum.

"Obama knows that just because people are saying one thing doesn't mean they will vote that way," says Tim King, the African-American head of a charter school in Chicago who has known Sen. Obama for a decade. "No one ever really knows what people do once they close the curtain in the voting booth."

Sen. Obama's popularity among whites also stirs uneasiness among many blacks. In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, Sen. Obama trails Sen. Clinton among black voters 46% to 37%.

"There is a lot of debate [among blacks] over how appealing Obama is to white folks," says Mr. King. "People are saying, 'Is he too likeable to white people?"'

This last passage says a lot about the Obama campaign. Whites like Obama because he's non-threatening, with cross-over appeal. Blacks, on the other hand, don't see Obama as down with the 'hood.

I have to admit that I like Obama's multi-racial appeal. I'd like him even more if he'd switch parties and return to the language of personal responsibility and family values that he outlined in his speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston:

Obama's early message of hard work and individual effort has the potential to become the rallying theme of a new black movement toward greater upward mobility.

Unfortunately, his campaign's domestic policy platform has not lived up to that early vision of tradition and responsibility. His foreign policy, moreover, is much too idealisitic for America's current priorities in international affairs.

One-Sided Conversation? The Politics of Planting Questions

Via Ann Althouse, check out this YouTube of Hillary Clinton announcing a "consversation with America":

Clinton's national conversation has taken a decidedly scripted turn, with the revelations of a planted question at a campaign stop on Tuesday.

Here's what Michelle Malkin had to say about it:

Remember when Hillary launched her presidential campaign by touting her folksy bid to start a “conversation–with you, with America?” We knew it was phony baloney...

Captain Ed raises some interesting possibilities as well:

One might understand the reasons the campaign would "throw" a supposedly impromptu Q&A session after Hillary's disastrous debate appearance a fortnight ago. She clearly had not prepared to speak about Eliot Spitzer's plan to issue drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. Nor had she formulated any kind of coherent response to the demands to open her White House records while she insisted on running on her experience as First Lady as a reason to win the nomination. She could hardly afford any more hardballs.

However, this incident certainly calls into question whether Hillary has fixed previous sessions. So far, no one has come forward to allege any other question-planting in earlier appearances, but Grinnell [Iowa] seems a strange place to start. Just the fact that we know it happened once makes it reasonable to question whether it has happened before, and Hillary's credibility has been damaged enough to start investigating it. Once someone throws away their integrity, it is difficult to get it back.

It might be difficult for Clinton to get the big momentum back after another round of campaign goofs. Keep your eyes peeled for a tightening in the polls. Will Hillary Clinton be next year's Howard Dean?

Executing the Winning Strategy in Iraq

Kimberly Kagan's cover story at this week's Weekly Standard details the operational changes that have brought military victory in Iraq. Here's the introduction:

The surge of operations that American and Iraqi forces began on June 15 has dramatically improved security in Baghdad and throughout Iraq. U.S. commanders and soldiers have reversed the negative trends of 2006, some of which date back to 2005. The total number of enemy attacks has fallen for four consecutive months, and has now reached levels last seen before the February 2006 Samarra mosque bombing. IED explosions have plummeted to late 2004 levels. Iraqi civilian casualties, which peaked at 3,000 in the month of December 2006, are now below 1,000 for the second straight month. The number of coalition soldiers killed in action has fallen for five straight months and is now at the lowest level since February 2004. These trends persisted through Ramadan, when violence had typically spiked. "I believe we have achieved some momentum," General Raymond T. Odierno, commander of coalition combat forces in Iraq, said modestly in his November 1 press briefing. Since security was deteriorating dramatically in Iraq a year ago, how U.S. commanders and soldiers and their Iraqi partners achieved this positive momentum deserves explanation, even though hard fighting continues and the war is not yet won.

"As we assess the security gains made over the past four months, I attribute the progress to three prominent dynamics," General Odierno explained. "First, the surge allowed us to eliminate extremist safe havens and sanctuaries, [and] just as importantly to maintain our gains. Second, the ongoing quantitative and qualitative improvement of the Iraqi security forces are translating to ever-increasing
tactical successes. Lastly, there's a clear rejection of al Qaeda and other extremists by large segments of the population, this coupled with the bottom-up awakening movement by both Sunni and Shia who want a chance to reconcile with the government of Iraq." These dynamics worked together to improve security.

After President Bush decided to change strategy and increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, the goal became to secure Iraq's population from violence in order to allow civic and political progress. Generals David Petraeus and Odierno implemented the new strategy and determined how to use the additional troops.

Generals Petraeus and Odierno conducted three successive, large-scale military operations in 2007. The first was Fardh al-Qanoon, or the Baghdad Security Plan, which dispersed U.S. and Iraqi troops throughout the capital in order to secure its inhabitants. The second was Phantom Thunder, an Iraq-wide offensive to clear al Qaeda sanctuaries. The third was Phantom Strike, an Iraq-wide offensive to pursue al Qaeda operatives and other enemies as they fled those sanctuaries and attempted to regroup in smaller areas throughout Iraq. These military operations have improved security throughout central Iraq.

The additional forces, General Odierno explained, permitted "a surge in simultaneous and sustained offensive operations, in partnership with the Iraqi security forces. Furthermore, it allowed us to operate in areas that had not yet seen a sustained coalition presence and to retain our hard-fought gains. Our ability to put pressure on al Qaeda and other extremists and deny them safe havens and sanctuaries increased significantly. This was done with the goal of protecting the population and in concert with political and economic initiatives to buy time and space for the government of Iraq."

Read the whole thing.

Kagan also outlines the military's success in rooting out and destroying Iranian-backed terrorist cells and in neutralizing extremist elements of Moktada al-Sadr's militia.

With the consolidation of success in Iraq, many analysts are raising their sights to victory in the larger, worldwide anti-terror struggle.

Carolyn Glick, in her essay over at Real Clear Politics, notes that as in Iraq, defeating our enemies elsewhere entails actually fighting them, rather than pursuing policies of deterrence and appeasement.

See also Robert Satloff's piece over at the Washington Post. Satloff argues that with the departure of Karen Hughes from the White House (Hughes is undersecretary of state for public diplomacy), the Bush administration has an historic opportunity in its last year to prioritize ideological warfare over public relations in combating the scourge of nihilist Islamist radicalism.

Economic Anxiety May Be Trouble for GOP

I was thinking about the relationship between politics and the economy upon reading this Wall Street Journal report on recent jitters in financial markets:

The credit crisis sparked by mortgage problems reared its head anew, as stocks tumbled on fears about shaky financial institutions. This time, the dollar's fall to record lows and oil's flirtation with $100 a barrel added to the worrisome brew.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 360.92 points, or 2.64%, to 13300.02. The index has now wiped out all of its gains since the Federal Reserve on Sept. 18 made the first of its two recent interest-rate cuts, sparking a short-lived rally that sent the Dow to a record high Oct. 9.

Wall Street is once again nervous about how much damage remains from subprime mortgages and other bad credit, even after tens of billions of dollars in write-downs. The wave of credit-rating downgrades on mortgage securities continued yesterday, and bank shares were especially hard-hit. Shares of Washington Mutual Inc., a major lender, lost 17%, and after the market closed American International Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley reported new write-downs connected to housing problems. (See related article.)

Something else is beginning to nag at investors. The dollar and oil are pushing to opposite extremes, one to record lows and the other near record highs. Gold, an age-old refuge in times of financial turmoil, is once again above $800 an ounce. The combination of economic worries and market movements is reminiscent of the chaotic 1970s, when the U.S. was beset by inflation, recession and a stock market going nowhere.

The global economy is much different today than it was then. Inflation is generally under control, and most investors trust central banks to keep it that way. The U.S. economy, though slowing, has kept growing even as higher energy prices hit consumers.

Still, the parallel points to some challenges that policy makers are trying hard to manage. One is the threat of inflation. Another is the risk of a broad international loss of confidence in America and its currency, which has long been the place where countries with big foreign reserves put the bulk of their assets.

In testimony yesterday, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chairman, noted that housing instability may pose deep dangers to the economy, but overall prospects remain for price stability and growth in employment.

That said, the Los Angeles Times has an interesting story today on the political economy of the 2008 elections. Here's the introduction:

Republican strategists are beginning to fear that a deteriorating economy will pose serious obstacles for their party's presidential candidates, who may ultimately have to answer for rising gas prices and a slumping housing market.

For most of the year, the campaign has been dominated by dueling positions on the war in Iraq, national security, immigration and healthcare. But with gas prices topping $3 a gallon and home foreclosures a deepening concern, the struggling economy could trump other issues in next year's general election campaign.

President Bush is in his second term and can't face reprisal at the polls. So to the extent there is a voter backlash, it would be aimed at the president's party -- chiefly the Republican candidates vying to succeed him, GOP consultants said.

Economic forecasts are worsening: On Thursday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said he expected a "sluggish" economy in the coming months. With millions of sub-prime mortgages due to be reset over the next 14 months, he said, more homeowners are at risk of default. The stock market has been volatile, dropping more than 393 points over the last two days.

"Any economic pain comes out of the hide of the Republican Party," said Don Sipple, a Republican strategist based in California.

"It's one more advantage for the Democrats."

Said Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and an aide in the unsuccessful 1992 reelection campaign of President George H.W. Bush: "What a weak economy does is, it lets the Democratic nominee go out and ask the Ronald Reagan question: Are you better off today than you were eight years ago?"

When the economy is not doing well, a political truism goes, the economy becomes the issue. Hyperinflation during Jimmy Carter's administration paved the way for Reagan in 1980. In the 1992 race, "The economy, stupid" became the catchphrase of Democrat Bill Clinton's successful campaign, reminding staffers to focus on the recession that emerged in 1990-91.

Now, said Scott Reed, campaign manager for Republican Bob Dole's failed presidential bid in 1996, "the economy has shot up to the No. 1 issue over the last 30 days, eclipsing Iraq. You have to remember that people vote their pocketbook."

A dip in the economy that squeezes voters would fit the narrative laid out by the leading Democratic candidates. All have said that middle-class Americans have lost ground under the Republican administration, and they have rolled out plans aimed at making healthcare and education less expensive.

Robert Samuelson made the case this week that a recession next year is possible, although economic slumps aren't all bad.

Yeah, tell that to the GOPers running against the gloom-and-doom Democratic candidates in next year's elections.

Ron Paul Basks in Fundraising Glow

The Los Angeles Times reports that Ron Paul is basking in the glow of his recent one-day take of $4.2 million in campaign contributions:

He may be pushed to the edge of the stage, literally and figuratively, when the candidates debate. He languishes in the low single digits in polls.

But Rep. Ron Paul is getting his moment in the sun in his long-shot bid for the Republican presidential nomination after this week's formidable online fundraising - a reported $4.2 million in a single day.

The Texas congressman with the sharp libertarian bent thanked his supporters Wednesday for what is one of the best single-day fundraising totals in presidential campaign history. He insisted the event is not an anomaly but a sign of real progress, a claim supported by several Web commentators.

"Amazing! I have to admit being floored by the $4.2 million you raised yesterday for this campaign," Paul wrote to his supporters, adding: "What momentum we have! Please help me keep it up. As you and I know, and our opponents are only suspecting, we have success on our minds and in our hearts."

Assuming the fundraising pledges are fulfilled, the total would nearly match Paul's receipts for the entire previous quarter and put him well on the way to his goal of $12 million for the final three months of 2007. About half of the 36,672 donors (average contribution $103) were giving for the first time.

Mainstream political commentators continued to give Paul -- who advocates an immediate U.S. pullout from Iraq and the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service and Department of Education -- little or no chance of winning the Republican nomination.

But several commentators said the ability to raise so much money so quickly had enhanced his credibility and would force other candidates and the media to take Paul seriously.

"This is the single biggest example of people-power this [election] cycle," wrote Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of the liberal-leaning website the Daily Kos. "And as annoying as it is that we're seeing it from a Republican -- and a crazy one at that -- it's nevertheless a beautiful thing to behold."

Salon.com commentator Glenn Greenwald wrote that the Paul campaign had become "a bona fide phenomenon of real significance."

Greenwald argued that Paul was catching on with people "hungry for a political movement which operates outside of our rotted political establishment and which fearlessly rejects its pieties, even if they disagree with some or even many of its particulars."

Well, as I've noted before, Paul is attracting all sort of fringe elements from across the political spectrum. But Paul's endorsement by Daily Kos and Glenn Greenwald - more than anything else I've seen - puts the lie to whatever core ideology those two hard-left bloggers presumably espouse. Indeed, as Kos and Greenwald demonstrate, any political figure who denounces the administration and the war - no matter how whacked out - will gain the backing of the country's most heinous America-bashers.

Reagan Library Can't Account for Thousands of Items

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, has suffered from a security breakdown that has resulted in the loss of an untold number of valuable artifacts. The Los Angeles Times has the story:

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library is unable to find or account for tens of thousands of valuable mementos of Reagan's White House years because a "near universal" security breakdown left the artifacts vulnerable to pilfering by insiders, an audit by the National Archives inspector general has concluded.

Inspector General Paul Brachfeld said that his office was investigating allegations that a former employee stole Reagan memorabilia but that the probe had been hampered by the facility's sloppy record-keeping.

"We have been told by sources that a person who had access capability removed holdings," Brachfeld said in an interview. "But we can't lock in as to what those may be."

The hilltop complex near Simi Valley that houses Reagan's papers -- as well as the Air Force One that served as the "Flying White House" for seven presidents -- is the most visited of the nation's 12 presidential libraries. Many of those facilities are understaffed. And many are struggling to keep track of hundreds of thousands of presidential gifts, including valuable objects bestowed by foreign leaders, American folk crafts, and T-shirts and political buttons.

But, investigators said, they encountered the most serious problems at the Reagan library, a finding that may mortify fans of the late president, who often inveighed against government inefficiency.

About six months ago, an archivist was accused of stealing from the collections and was fired, said a longtime volunteer at the library who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal. "It's just awful," she said. "He was someone in a position of trust."

Of particular interest is whether the artifacts that are unaccounted for include pieces from a large collection of ornamented Western belt buckles given to Reagan over the years by admirers who knew of his attachment to his ranch.

A National Archives spokeswoman said the agency had accepted the audit's criticisms and was working to fix the problems. Some library volunteers say they were called in this summer to start a massive inventory project that could take years to complete.

The theft of historical objects from library collections has become a serious problem across the country in recent years. Against that background, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) pushed for the audit of presidential libraries. He feared that artifacts associated with former presidents might attract thieves seeking to supply a burgeoning market for memorabilia.

"This report is a wake-up," Grassley said. "These papers, records and other items have historical value and should be safeguarded for the education and benefit of future generations of Americans."

Most gifts to presidents become property of the American people, and presidential libraries use them to tell a story in ways that documents alone cannot. The gifts are considered part of the libraries' museum collections. The Reagan library, for example, has displayed some of the belt buckles given to the former president, and an exhibit of First Lady Nancy Reagan's dresses and suits will be staged this week.

The audit found that the Reagan library was unable to properly account for more than 80,000 artifacts out of its collection of some 100,000 such items, and "may have experienced loss or pilferage the scope of which will likely never be known."

This story makes me sad. I keep telling myself to go and visit the Reagan Library. Now I'm thinking I better get over there before all the valuable memorabilia is gone.

It's unthinkable that people would steal from what is essentially a national monument. Of course, I'm never one to underestimate the essential venality of human nature.

The Next Step in Pakistan

Charles Krauthammer provides a nice recap of America's Cold War policy of balancing democracy and dictatorships. Looking out for national interests involves a careful weighing of the two regime alternatives, but at some point democratization become the best bet. It's that time in Pakistan:

Pakistan is not the first time we've faced hard choices about democratization. At the height of the Cold War, particularly in the immediate post-Vietnam era of American weakness, we supported dictators Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. The logic was simple: The available and likely alternative -- i.e., communists -- would be worse.

Critics of America considered this proof of our hypocrisy about defending freedom. Vindication of these deals with the devil had to wait until the 1980s, by which time two conditions had changed.

First, external conditions: The exigencies of the existential struggle of the Cold War were receding as the Soviet empire was rapidly weakening. Second, internal changes in Chile and the Philippines produced genuinely democratic opposition movements with broad popular support and legitimacy.

With a viable democratic alternative at hand, the Reagan administration turned about and decisively helped push the two dictators out of power. Under the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, Paul Wolfowitz, we supported Corazon Aquino's "people power" revolution in the Philippines and arranged a Hawaii exile for Marcos. Under the assistant secretary of state for Latin America, Elliott Abrams, we pushed Pinochet into a referendum that he lost, ushering in the transition to today's flourishing Chilean democracy.

The only thing we know for sure about Pakistan is that there will be no such happy ending. President Pervez Musharraf was a good bet in 2001 when, under extreme pressure from the Bush administration, he flipped and joined our war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But like Marcos and Pinochet, he has now become near-terminally unpopular, illegitimate and destructive to his own country. Is it time to revisit the 1980s and help push him over the edge?

That depends on whether we think Benazir Bhutto is Corazon Aquino and whether Bhutto and her allies can successfully take power, which means keeping both the army and the country intact. Heightening the risk of dumping Musharraf is that external conditions today are not like the relatively benign conditions of the 1980s. The Taliban and its allies are gaining in strength and waiting to pick up the pieces from the civil war developing between the two most westernized, most modernizing elements of Pakistani society -- the army, one of the few functioning institutions of the state, and the elite of civil society, including lawyers, jurists, journalists and students.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attempted to engineer a marriage of these two factions by trying to orchestrate Bhutto's return to Pakistan under a power-sharing agreement that Musharraf has just blown to pieces.

Our influence should not be overestimated. But we need to make clear our choices. The best among the awful ones Musharraf has presented to us is to try to broker a truce between the two forces before the blood starts to flow, keep Musharraf to his promise of holding early parliamentary elections -- which Bhutto will win -- and then guarantee him a dignified and gradual exit that ensures his protection while Bhutto and her allies claim legitimate authority and try to reach an accommodation with Musharraf's successor as military chief.

That sounds like a plan. See also my earlier post on neoconservatism and Pakistan.

Rudy Giuliani is GOP's Tough Guy

Yesterday's big political news was Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani for the GOP presidential nomination. Why would a top leader of the Christian right back the socially liberal former New York Mayor?

Today's Los Angeles Times argues that Giuliani's cultivated a tough guy image with a combative style on the hustings. This tough love approach may be paying off, even with hardline conservatives:

With his intense demeanor and aggressive policy stances - such as pledging to "prevent" Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon or to "set them back five or 10 years" - Giuliani has methodically built an image as the toughest guy on the block, unafraid of looking belligerent in the cause of keeping America safe.

Though it isn't always pretty up close, Giuliani's demeanor seems to be working. He leads the national polls for a Republican nomination that many believed he could never win because of his relatively liberal views on abortion and other social issues.

As a counterweight to his positions on social policy, Giuliani has broadened his image, once narrowly rooted in his leadership after Sept. 11, to one that projects strength on many fronts.

The man who led New York City through the trauma of terrorist attacks has promised to keep Al Qaeda on the defensive, possibly even sending troops into Pakistan uninvited. The man who chased prostitutes from Times Square now casts himself as a defender of free speech for religious groups and a protector of families from crime, drugs and high taxes.

And the man who governed a Democratic city as a Republican mayor, staring down the "toughest labor unions that anybody ever met," is promoting himself as the strongest opponent to the Democrats' presidential front-runner, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

On the campaign trail, some of Giuliani's rough City Hall edges are smoothed -- a familiar scowl has been replaced by frequent smiles and even a chuckle. But Giuliani has honed his own style of combativeness. As some in New Hampshire saw recently, he is unafraid to dole out tough love.

The article goes on:

Giuliani's success has exposed an unusual dynamic in the GOP primary race: National security and electability are trumping cultural issues. It is a dynamic that few anticipated last year, when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain of Arizona began their aggressive courtships of evangelical leaders, such as the late Rev. Jerry Falwell.

The primacy of national security was on display Wednesday, when Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson endorsed Giuliani, citing Islamic terrorists' "blood lust" as the top issue facing the country and calling Giuliani the best equipped to handle it.

Though the former mayor's national poll numbers have not risen above the low 30s, he maintains double-digit leads over his closest GOP rivals. And at least some social conservatives appear to be increasingly willing to support Giuliani, despite disagreeing with him on abortion, gay rights, immigration and gun control, and in spite of his three marriages and his strained relations with his children.

Viewed as the strongest GOP contender and the most able to defeat Clinton in the general election, the former mayor is winning support from nearly a third of Republican voters who believe abortion should be outlawed, according to a recent Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg survey. Many rank-and-file social conservatives appear willing to shirk calls from some leading Christian conservatives, such as Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson, to respond to a Giuliani victory in the primary race by leaving the GOP and backing a third-party contender.

He leads in national polls, and surveys show Giuliani running relatively strong in several key early-voting states, including conservative South Carolina. While Giuliani is running second in New Hampshire behind Romney, a recent Rasmussen Reports survey showed that 77% of likely GOP primary voters in that state viewed Giuliani favorably - more than any other candidate.

This is all very interesting, but it's nothing to write home to mom about. Giuliani's still in the thick of a competitive race. Iowa and New Hampshire could be make or break, especially if Mitt Romney, or one of the other GOPers, builds insurmountable momentum with a set of early victories in those two key first-in-the-nation contests.

I like Giuliani, though. He's not my first pick, but his national standings are competitive and he'd give Hillary Clinton a good thrashing in the general election.

Hillary Clinton is Vulnerable

The new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows Hillary Clinton remaining vulnerable on issues of trust and ideology. Here's the introduction:

Democrats enter the 2008 election campaign with powerful political advantages but face a tough and unpredictable battle because of the vulnerabilities of front-runner Hillary Clinton and the Democratic-controlled Congress.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that Americans have turned sharply away from President Bush and toward domestic issues favoring his partisan adversaries. Majorities believe the Iraq war can't be won and want most U.S. troops withdrawn by the dawn of a new president's term in 2009.

But offsetting that demand for change in the presidential contest are reservations about Sen. Clinton's truthfulness and ideology, even as Americans applaud her experience and leadership qualities. The result: She is in a virtual dead heat with leading Republican candidate Rudy Giuliani when the two are matched up.

The electorate's shifting agenda "does tilt the field against Republicans," said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who helps conduct the Journal/NBC survey. And yet his Democratic counterpart, Peter Hart, said, "This is an exceptionally close election" less than a year before Election Day.

Mrs. Clinton's rivals in both parties are moving to exploit the doubts revealed by the survey, which was conducted after last week's Democratic debate at which she faced accusations of evasiveness and double talk. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois used humor over the weekend, doffing a Halloween mask on the "Saturday Night Live" television program and declaring, "I have nothing to hide." Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina has attacked more sharply, challenging Mrs. Clinton in Iowa to remain in "tell-the-truth mode all the time."

Messrs. Edwards and Obama both run even against Mr. Giuliani, too, matching Mrs. Clinton's standing even though they aren't as well known as she is. But Mr. Obama would enter a general election with serious vulnerabilities of his own, since just 30% of Americans rate him positively on having enough experience for the presidency and just 29% rate him positively on "being a good commander in chief."

Mr. Giuliani has maintained an aggressive stance toward his in-state rival for the White House. While promoting his antiterror credentials with tough talk on Iran, the former New York City mayor slammed Mrs. Clinton for displaying "the worst of the Clinton years" by equivocating in the debate on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. "If you think a question about driver's licenses is a tough question, a gotcha question, you're not ready for [Iranian leader Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad," Mr. Giuliani told a New Hampshire town hall meeting a few days ago.

Read the whole thing.

I've got a couple of recent posts on the shape of the 2008 elections (see here and here). Things are trending well for the Democrats. But as the Wall Street Journal poll shows here, in head to head match-ups Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic standard-bearer, is essentially tied with her Republican challengers. Especially interesting are Hillary's high negatives:

While a 51% majority gives her high marks for being "knowledgeable and experienced enough to handle the presidency," pluralities rate Mrs. Clinton negatively on honesty, likability and sharing their positions on the issues.

As I've said before, Republicans need to run an especially effective campaign. I think Clinton can be beat, but she's going to be formidable, despite of her recent gaffes.

Counterinsurgency in Iraq

Colin Kahl has a review essay on counterinsurgency in the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs. One of the books he reviews is the Army's new counterinsurgency manual, which was authored by General David Petraeus, who became the supreme commander of Iraq operations in 2007.

Here's Kahl on the difficulty of counterinsurgency in Iraq since 2003:

When faced with a growing Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the immediate response of Pentagon officials and the U.S. military was denial. By the late summer and early fall of 2003, however, the reality signaled by daily attacks and a wave of massive bombings had finally sunk in. The military initially responded with a "search and destroy" approach to counterinsurgency, which fell uncomfortably, and dysfunctionally, between the extremes of hearts-and-minds and pure coercion. Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, who led U.S. forces during the first year of the war, was both inept at and uninterested in counterinsurgency. Efforts to protect the Iraqi population were ad hoc, varied tremendously from unit to unit, and were underresourced; most units defined the requirements of counterinsurgency solely in terms of "the enemy" and deployed overwhelming conventional firepower to kill or capture a growing list of "former regime elements," "anti-Iraqi forces," "bad guys," and "terrorists." Although troops took steps to minimize the risks to Iraqi civilians, many innocent Iraqis were shot at U.S. checkpoints and alongside convoys; many others were caught in the crossfire during daily raids and major offensives in Fallujah, Najaf, Sadr City, and elsewhere. Detention centers swelled as thousands of military-aged men were arrested in indiscriminate sweeps of Sunni towns, and evidence of abusive interrogations - most notably at Abu Ghraib - surfaced with gruesome regularity.

Since insurgents almost immediately reinfiltrated areas left unprotected after U.S. raids and offensives, often murdering those Iraqis who had collaborated during these operations, U.S. efforts accomplished little in the way of security. At the same time, heavy-handed tactics were just harsh enough to trigger a cycle of revenge without being sufficient to rule through brute force alone. The early U.S. approach to counterinsurgency in Iraq was thus Goldilocks in reverse: not hot enough, not cold enough, just wrong.

As the self-defeating nature of U.S. operations became apparent, the mindset of the U.S. military began to change. Starting in 2004 and accelerating in 2005, training and education in counterinsurgency were revamped. In November 2005, the White House released its "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," proclaiming clear, hold, build to be the road map for success, and soon the effort to rewrite U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine was in full swing. On the ground, U.S. forces had become much better at clearing insurgent strongholds without destroying them and alienating the inhabitants. And in a handful of instances - in Fallujah after the devastating November 2004 offensive, in Qaim and Tal Afar in late 2005, and in Ramadi in 2006 - the entire clear, hold, build package was actually employed with positive results.

Yet despite these efforts, two countervailing factors stood in the way of effective counterinsurgency. First, beginning in 2004, there was an attempt to reduce the perception of occupation and enhance force protection by pulling U.S. troops out of smaller bases within Iraqi cities and consolidating them into larger forward operating bases in outlying areas. As a result, throughout 2005 and 2006, most U.S. forces remained hunkered down on large bases rather than nested within communities to provide local security. Second, because of insufficient troop levels, the "hold" portion was difficult to execute. Knowing that the administration was reluctant to send more troops and that pressure was building for withdrawal, General John Abizaid (the head of Central Command) and General George Casey (who had replaced Sanchez in 2004 as the overall commander in Iraq) crafted a strategy to rapidly give Iraqi army and police units the responsibility of providing local security in areas cleared by U.S. forces. Unfortunately, a combination of inadequate capabilities and sectarian bias meant that Iraq's fledgling security forces were not up to the task. The resulting security vacuum, especially in Baghdad, accelerated the action-reaction spiral between Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias -- tipping Iraq into an all-out sectarian war in the spring of 2006.

In January 2007, President George W. Bush reversed his long-standing aversion to sending additional troops to Iraq by announcing the "surge." Petraeus replaced Casey and set about using the 30,000 additional forces in Baghdad and surrounding areas to implement the strategy outlined in the field manual he had helped author. Soon U.S. units dispersed to smaller bases, where they were paired with Iraqi forces to provide security for the local populations.

If the U.S. military had gone into the Iraq war with this doctrine and enough troops, success might have been possible. Now it may simply be too little, too late. The current conflict landscape in Iraq has, in many respects, passed the COIN FM by. Coalition forces in Iraq are not only attempting to defeat a Sunni insurgency but also trying to police a fierce sectarian civil war, limit the spread of the intra-Shiite gangland violence in the south, prevent Kurdish separatist ambitions from creating an ethnic conflict in Kirkuk or prompting Turkish intervention, and contain the regional spillover from all these conflicts. Counterinsurgency is hard enough. Pile on these additional missions (which in many cases have contradictory requirements for success), stir in U.S. force levels that remain inadequate in most of the country, sprinkle on incapable and sectarian Iraqi security forces, and add a U.S. domestic political environment with zero support for a long-term commitment - and you have a recipe for likely failure.

Kahl's an international security expert who published an outstanding piece on the U.S. military and civilian casualites in Iraq this last summer.

He seems a little bit behind the news cycle in this Foreign Affairs article, however. Things are going much better in Iraq's counterinsurgency warfare than he indicates. Yet he does provide a worthy conclusion to his article in arguing that the United States should be judicious in its application of our new successful doctrine of clear, hold, and build.

Congressional Democrats Confident on 2008 Prospects

The Washington Post reports that congressional Democrats are confident about their party's electoral prospects in 2008:

One year out from the election, congressional Democrats are increasingly confident they can tighten their hold on the House and Senate.

Although public approval of Congress has dipped dramatically since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took control early this year, Democratic operatives believe they still can expand their majorities in 2008 by running hard against President Bush and his war policies. Republicans are also hampered by mounting retirements of veteran member and a huge disparity in fundraising by the two parties.

"I'd much rather be in our shoes than their shoes," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "George Bush and his legacy will be on the ballot."

Democrats wrested control of both chambers last year for the first time since 1994. The Democrats began the 110th Congress this year with a 233 to 202 vote edge over the Republicans, while on the Senate side Democrats and Republicans are evenly divided, 49 to 49, but two independents caucus with the Democrats, giving them a narrow ruling majority.

Van Hollen initially hoped his party could merely preserve their current majority in the 2008 election, after they picked up 30 seats last year, including many in conservative-leaning districts. Now, Van Hollen says he is "very much on offense" because of Bush's continued poor approval ratings and the sustained unpopularity of the Iraq war, both of which he expects to drag down a significant number of Republican incumbents.

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, flatly predicted a pickup of GOP seats next year, but without setting a target. "We expect to win all 12 [Democratic incumbents] and pick up a nice number of Republican seats," he said.

But Republicans contend that Democrats are running next year's campaign based on the previous political battle, overlooking the fact that their nascent majority has few substantial achievements and Congress is now even more unpopular than Bush.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows Bush's approval rating at a career low mark of 33 percent, but approval of Congress is only 28 percent.

While Republicans acknowledge Bush is currently a drag on their approval ratings, they are increasingly insistent that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) will be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2008 and that she will weigh down Democratic congressional candidates more than Bush with GOP candidates.

As I've noted before, 2008 is looking to be the best electoral environment for the Democrats in decades. Still, congressional elections are largely decided on localized conditions, so national polling data can be misleading. I'll admit, though, that the Democratic takeover of both chambers in 2006 was pretty stunning. Discontent in the electorate for next year will be significant if current trends stay stable, creating something of a mandate for change, rather than a shift to partisan realignment.

In any case, I'm not making any predictions at this point. Note, though, that Jim Geraghty at the National Review remains bullish on GOP hopes next year:

Gloom hangs over Republicans when they think of next year’s elections — but it shouldn’t. The sea change in political fortunes between 2004 and 2006 should not remind Righties only that the winds can change quickly — from a supportive breeze at your back, to a gale-force wind in your face — they should also be reminded that the political landscape can get better fast, too.

Next year could be a surprisingly good one for the GOP, though it’s clearly not guaranteed. The party will need good candidate recruitment, message discipline, a clear, unifying agenda, and a bit of good luck. But on a wide variety of fronts, there are pieces of good news that are overshadowed by the mainstream media’s preferred “Democratic-Tsunami Part Two” narrative.

It's still early, of course (so it's good to withhold prognostications), but I'm certain that continued progress in Iraq will bode well for GOP candidates.

Anti-Neoconservatism

Hatred of neoconservativism has become so intense that some on the left are talking about purging neoconservatives from American politics. James Kirchick, over at City Journal, takes a look at "anti-neocon fervor":

Today, no other political label gets thrown around as frequently, or with as much reckless abandon, as “neocon.” The most popular liberal blogs name and shame neocons, real or imagined, on a daily basis. The term is used in a fashion similar to the way “communist” was during the 1950s—an all-encompassing indictment—this time indicating an imperialistic and “warmongering,” even an “insane,” worldview. The anti-neocon fervor has reached truly McCarthyite proportions: just a few months ago, Steve Clemons of the left-wing New America Foundation argued in favor of “Purging the Neocons from the American Soul.”

The term “neoconservatism” has undergone a number of shifts in meaning. It was coined in 1973 by the socialist intellectual Michael Harrington to deride liberal thinkers such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Nathan Glazer, who had begun to criticize the welfare state’s excesses. By the 1980s, its meaning expanded to include a small group of former liberal intellectuals who hewed to a strong anti-Soviet line and had defected from the Democratic Party to support Ronald Reagan. They were motivated in part by an increased awareness of, and distinctive moral clarity about, human rights in international affairs, a worthy tradition whose liberal incarnation found embodiment in figures such as Senator Scoop Jackson, labor leaders George Meaney, Lane Kirkland, and Al Shanker, and intellectuals Bayard Rustin and Michael Walzer. None of these people held traditionally “movement conservative” views on economics or social issues—far from it; some of them were outright socialists. Neoconservatives had not been content with the détente policies of Richard Nixon, because they wanted not to coexist with communism, but to end it—a more ambitious goal that Reagan shared.

After September 11, the “neocon” label, which had fallen into disuse, came back into vogue as a way to categorize the intellectual godfathers behind the Bush Doctrine, which of course has advocated both military responses to terrorist threats and promoting liberty around the world via “regime change” (not all necessarily through military means). According to the leftist narrative, the neocons got us into the Iraq war—never mind the widespread assumption among intelligence services around the world that Saddam Hussein did have WMDs, or that large segments of the Democratic Party and liberal opinion leaders supported the invasion of Iraq, etc., etc.

By now, “neocon” has mutated into a political curse word to discredit not just those who happily accept their status as neoconservatives, but also anyone who merely believes that the West should respond in muscular fashion to national security threats, such as those posed by the cooperation of Iran, Syria, and North Korea on nuclear weapons technology and the equipping of terrorist groups around the world. The chief purpose of this emergent rhetorical style is to cast aspersions on anyone who believes, say, that Iran must not attain nuclear weapons, even if it requires war. International Herald Tribune columnist Roger Cohen, for instance, notes that “neocon has morphed into an all-purpose insult for anyone who still believes that American power is inextricable from global stability and still thinks the muscular anti-totalitarian U.S. interventionism that brought down Slobodan Milosevic has a place, and still argues, like Christopher Hitchens, that ousting Saddam Hussein put the United States ‘on the right side of history.’”

Examples of this new, broader, definitional standard abound. In 2004, writing in The Nation, Michael Lind termed the National Endowment for Democracy—a nonpartisan institution that provides millions of dollars to democracy activists around the world—“the quintessential neocon institution.” French intellectual Bernard Henri-Lévy deems France’s Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, a “neoconservative,” a label that the socialist Kouchner would likely find surprising. But Kouchner, who founded Doctors Without Borders and was one of the very few left-wing supporters of NATO intervention in the Balkans, recently observed that “it is necessary to prepare for the worst” against Iran, adding, “The worst, it’s war”—enough to range him in the neocon camp, it seems. When Joe Lieberman, whose positions on domestic policy are indistinguishable from those of the majority of his colleagues in the Senate Democratic caucus, makes mere mention of Iranian or Syrian support for armed elements in Iraq, Matthew Yglesias—one of the most popular leftist bloggers, writing from his perch at The Atlantic—duly calls the senator a “neocon,” a “psychotic rightwinger,” and a “warmongerer.”

The long tradition of liberal anti-totalitarianism thus appears to have come to an end, at least in mainstream political rhetoric. What about human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch? Largely staffed by leftists, these days they escape the neoconservative charge because they generally presume moral equivalence between democracies and anti-American thuggocracies. Amnesty, for instance, has referred to Guantánamo as a “gulag” and Human Rights Watch has issued more press releases about the lack of gay rights in the United States than any other country on earth. Freedom House, on the other hand, which rates countries on a scale from 1 (most free) to 7 (least free), and explicitly ranks some nations (invariably Western democracies) as “more free” than others, has long been the bane of the leftist “human rights community.”

Welcome to the new political discourse.

Kerchik's piece is a classic. Note, though, how neoconservatism has a strong roots in domestic politics, although the ideology's recent notoriety is founded in foreign affairs.

I love sporting the neocon label. I get occasional drive-by anti-neocon attacks in the comments, but for the most part my shift to an unequivocal neoconservative identity at American Power has been well-received.

See my introductory post for more on my neoconservative turn. (I get a kick out of this idea of a "purge," by the way: It sounds so Stalinist.)

Out of the Archives: German Family Memoirs Reveal Nazi Past

This morning's Wall Street Journal has an extremely fascinating piece on Katrin Himmler, whose great uncle, Heinrich, was one of Nazi Germany's most infamous killers:

As a young girl, Katrin Himmler asked her grandmother about the man in a black suit in a photograph hanging on her living-room wall. Her grandmother didn't say much, but she cried.

The man in the picture was Ms. Himmler's grandfather Ernst, a brother of Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler. The little that Katrin's family did tell her about her grandfather, who disappeared during fierce fighting in Berlin in 1945, was that he was apolitical.

Decades later, Ms. Himmler discovered that her family's story was untrue. Her father, long suspicious, encouraged her in 1997 to go dig in wartime archives that the U.S. had recently returned to Germany. Ernst Himmler, she learned, joined Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' party as early as 1931. Two years later, he joined the SS guard, the special unit responsible for carrying out many of the Nazi regime's worst atrocities.

Now 40 years old and married to an Israeli Jew, Ms. Himmler says she was shocked when she found out that Ernst was in the SS. "It might sound strange, but I never considered this possibility," she says.

Ms. Himmler investigated further. She unearthed records of Heinrich's elder brother, Gebhard, and coaxed his children into sharing memories and letters. She wrote a book, "The Himmler Brothers," about her family's history -- and the trauma involved in uncovering it.

Ms. Himmler's book, published in German in 2005 and in English this past summer, is one of several recent memoirs by the children and grandchildren of old Nazis that aim to reflect on how the party affiliation affected their families. Another book, published this past summer in German, "Kind L 364," tells the story of Heilwig Weger, a girl reared in one of the Lebensborn settlements the SS built for orphans and other so-called Aryan children. Ms. Weger was later adopted by Oswald Pohl, a Nazi officer hanged in 1951 for war crimes. The book conveys the pain she felt at losing him, the only father she knew, while being ostracized by other children because of his actions. Later, she hid her background from her own children.

Himmler's upbringing provides a glimpse into postwar Germany's difficult process of dealing with the politics of memory:

In the postwar period, memoirs of Nazis or their families were long taboo. Ms. Himmler has vivid memories of those years. In high school one day, a classmate asked during a history lesson whether she was related to the Himmler. When she said yes, a tense silence gripped the room, Ms. Himmler recalls, after which the teacher continued her lesson as if nothing had happened.

"I think she lost an opportunity," says Ms. Himmler. "She could have used what happened to discuss the link that our generation bears to the past."

What's particularly interesting about Himmler is that she married an Israeli Jew:

She says her husband never held her family's past against her, even as he struggled with anger over his family's persecution by the Germans. His parents, who live in Israel, knew postwar Germany well from their own travels there and didn't object to their son's relationship with her.

The couple also try to teach the family's history to their child:

Today, Katrin Himmler and her husband live with their 8-year-old son in an apartment not far from the Reichstag, the seat of the German Parliament. They talk a lot with the boy about the past. Ms. Himmler says she isn't sure whether he has yet put it together that his mother's side of the family once tried to exterminate his father's.

Of all the nations of the advanced industrialized democracies, Germany is the most conscious of its wartime history, and no country has made a greater effort at cultural transformation. In escaping its past, the German polity has shed its extremely authoritarian cultural legacy, undertaking a re-engineering process that has produced widespread support for democratic values.

The story of the Himmler family is a particularly powerful reminder of the process.

Democrats and Torture

Be sure to read Alan Dershowitz's commentary piece in this morning's Wall Street Journal. Dershowitz addresses the absence of bipartisan cooperation in the war on terror following 9/11. He notes, though, that hopes for interparty unity on national security are not realistic given the Democratic Party's impulse to antiwar pacifism:

This pacifistic stance appeals to the left wing of the democratic electorate, which may have some influence on the outcome of democratic primaries, but which is far less likely to determine the outcome of the general election. Most Americans--Democrats, Republicans, independents or undecided--want a president who will be strong, as well as smart, on national security, and who will do everything in his or her lawful power to prevent further acts of terrorism.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans may watch Michael Moore's movies or cheer Cindy Sheehan's demonstrations, but tens of millions want the Moores and Sheehans of our nation as far away as possible from influencing national security policy.

Here's Dershowitz making the case for the selective use of coercive interrogations to obtain real-time actionable intelligence:

Consider, for example, the contentious and emotionally laden issue of the use of torture in securing preventive intelligence information about imminent acts of terrorism--the so-called "ticking bomb" scenario. I am not now talking about the routine use of torture in interrogation of suspects or the humiliating misuse of sexual taunting that infamously occurred at Abu Ghraib. I am talking about that rare situation described by former President Clinton in an interview with National Public Radio:

"You picked up someone you know is the No. 2 aide to Osama bin Laden. And you know they have an operation planned for the United States or some European capital in the next three days. And you know this guy knows it. Right, that's the clearest example. And you think you can only get it out of this guy by shooting him full of some drugs or waterboarding him or otherwise working him over."

He said Congress should draw a narrow statute "which would permit the president to make a finding in a case like I just outlined, and then that finding could be submitted even if after the fact to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court." The president would have to "take personal responsibility" for authorizing torture in such an extreme situation. Sen. John McCain has also said that as president he would take responsibility for authorizing torture in that "one in a million" situation.

Although I am personally opposed to the use of torture, I have no doubt that any president--indeed any leader of a democratic nation--would in fact authorize some forms of torture against a captured terrorist if he believed that this was the only way of securing information necessary to prevent an imminent mass casualty attack. The only dispute is whether he would do so openly with accountability or secretly with deniability. The former seems more consistent with democratic theory, the latter with typical political hypocrisy.

There are some who claim that torture is a nonissue because it never works--it only produces false information. This is simply not true, as evidenced by the many decent members of the French Resistance who, under Nazi torture, disclosed the locations of their closest friends and relatives.

The kind of torture that President Clinton was talking about is not designed to secure confessions of past crimes, but rather to obtain real time, actionable intelligence deemed necessary to prevent an act of mass casualty terrorism. The question put to the captured terrorist is not "Did you do it?" Instead, the suspect is asked to disclose self-proving information, such as the location of the bomber.

I'm personally not opposed to the use of torture in the name of national security. As I've noted before, Jerome Slater provided the argument in favor of the principled use of coercive measures as part of the broader terror war:

If we are to succeed in the war against terrorism, we surely must do much more than defend ourselves against terrorist attacks. The broader task is to do whatever can be reasonably and legitimately done to address the causes of terrorism, as well as the motivations of terrorists to target the United States....

Put differently, so long as the threat of large-scale terrorist attacks against innocents is taken seriously, as it must be, it is neither practicable nor morally persuasive to absolutely prohibit the physical coercion or even outright torture of captured terrorist plotters—undoubtedly evils, but lesser evils than preventable mass murder. In any case, although the torture issue is still debatable today, assuredly the next major attack on the United States—or perhaps Europe—will make it moot.

Dershowitz concludes his essay by noting that the Democrats may lose the 2008 presidential election:

...if they are seen as the party of MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Dennis Kucinich and those senators who voted against Judge Mukasey because he refused to posture on a difficult issue relating to national security.

I hope he's right.

Targeted Force Only Option Left on Iran

Over at the New York Post, John Bolton argues that after four years of failed negotiations, a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear problem is beyond hope. Ministers from the permanant members of the U.N. Security Council met last week for another round of multilateral futility in stopping Iran's march to nuclear readiness:

This pattern of failed diplomacy has gone on for over four years, starting with the efforts of Britain, France and Germany ("the EU-3") to talk Iran out of its pursuit of nuclear weapons....

Unfortunately, the EU-3's fascination with negotiations lost sight of the ultimate objective - preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons - and became an end in itself. For the EU-3, the process became more important than the substance, especially the unstated but obvious EU-3 agenda of dealing with a proliferation threat their way, rather than resorting to military force, as the United States did against Saddam Hussein.

The result of more than four years of EU-3 negotiation is that Iran is more than four years closer to a nuclear-weapons capacity, and the United States and the world are in greater danger. I believe it was obvious from the outset that Iran wasn't going to renounce its quest for nuclear weapons voluntarily because it was part of a much larger strategy. The stakes were and are high: whether Iran and its radical Shiite version of Islam become dominant throughout the Muslim world, whether largely Persian Iran achieves effective hegemony in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East and whether a nuclear, terror-financing Iran emerges on the global stage as a real power.

Chitchat by complacent and languorous European and State Department negotiators isn't enough to divert a theocratic autocracy like Iran's from its long-standing strategic course. To the contrary, the years of failed diplomacy gave Iran something it couldn't have bought with all of its oil revenues: time. Time is usually on the side of the would-be proliferators, and that has been true in spades for Iran. While the EU-3 thought they were "negotiating," Iran was perfecting the critical technique of converting uranium from a solid to a gas and then mastering the uranium-enrichment process to produce weapons-grade uranium. The timing on actual weaponization is now essentially in the hands of the mullahs. With oil at $90 a barrel, resources aren't a problem.

Thus, as a consequence of heedless, failed diplomacy, our options on Iran are limited, unless, as some believe, we can live with a nuclear Iran. Of course, that would leave to the likes of President Ahmadinejad the decision whether and when to use Iran's weapons. This isn't a happy prospect. As Israel's U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman once said insightfully, "Ahmadinejad denies the existence of the original Holocaust while preparing for the next one."

Regime change in Iran is the preferred option, and a feasible one given the regime's weakness. Rampant economic discontent caused by 28 years of economic mismanagement, the desires of younger Iranians to be freed from the mullahs' theology and dissatisfaction among Iran's ethnic minorities are all fertile breeding grounds for discontent. If we had supported and encouraged this dissent for the last four years, we might now be on the verge of regime change.

Absent regime change, the targeted use of force against Iran's program is the only option left. Risky and unattractive as it is, the choice may well be between the use of force and a nuclear Iran, which is really not a choice at all. Iran is already asserting itself in ways profoundly hostile to our interests and those of our close friends. Imagine adding Iranian nuclear weapons to that equation. That's why surrender is not an option.

Bolton's clarity on the Iranian threat is unsurpassed (a point that obviously doesn't sit well with the hard-left surrender forces).

Bolton's new book is Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad. The book's reviewed in today's Wall Street Journal, and Brendan Simms, the reviewer, notes that Bolton's no neocon.

**********

UPDATE: Via Goat's Barnyard, be sure to check out Bolton's interview with Hugh Hewitt at Townhall.

McCain Standing Firm in GOP Nomination Race

E. J. Dionne notes that John McCain's still standing in the GOP nomination race:

The strangest thing about John McCain's campaign for president is that it's supposed to be dead, but it isn't. This is a real nuisance for his competitors.

The comeback is not showy or dramatic. And it's true that while McCain is better off than he was in July, when his campaign imploded in a dazzling display of financial mismanagement and staff recriminations, he still faces a more difficult route to the GOP nomination than his well-financed rivals, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.

McCain himself, the overwhelming Republican favorite a year ago, is cheerfully humble in characterizing his standing. "We've got a long way to go, but we are in the mix," he said Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition." In the mix is a big improvement over being out.

Nationally, McCain got a boost over the weekend when a new Post-ABC News poll showed him in second place to Giuliani. The former New York mayor had 33 percent; McCain, 19 percent; and the stalled Fred Thompson16 percent. Romney, who leads in both Iowa and New Hampshire, came in at 11 percent, and Mike Huckabee had 9 percent.

The most interesting numbers are those of Huckabee and McCain. The former is finally being taken seriously not only by the media but also by Republican voters. McCain rose from just 12 percent a month ago.

Thompson's sluggishness has been a form of life-support for McCain. Nowhere more so than in New Hampshire, which McCain took by storm seven years ago against George W. Bush. This state's early primary only recently looked to be Romney's launching pad to national stardom -- or Giuliani's opportunity to finish off Romney. Now Romney and Giuliani have to calculate how McCain might figure in their plans.

The mood of McCain's loyalists here combines relief with the restrained glee that comes from walking away from a car wreck in one piece. Jim Barnett, the candidate's New Hampshire state director, traces McCain's local comeback to his strong debate performance in early September and his renewed emphasis on the freewheeling town-meeting formats that made him so many friends in this state.

Barnett points to a moment during a mid-October gathering in Hopkinton where McCain confronted a questioner who spoke of the "anger the average European Christian, native-born American feels when they see their country turning into a multicultural chaos Tower of Babel."

McCain has tried to appease conservative critics of his support for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants by stressing the need to secure the nation's borders first. His new stance, he says, reflects "a lesson learned about what the American people's priorities are."

But at the Hopkinton meeting, McCain was his old, combative self. He condemned his interlocutor's language and declared that he was "grateful to live in a nation that has been enriched by people coming to our nation from around the world." The applause, Barnett recalls with pride, "went on for a long time."

Yet there is also cold calculation on the part of Republicans who are giving McCain a second look. Their challenge is to find a candidate who can broaden the party's currently anemic appeal while still holding it together.

As I've said before, "McCain Deserves a Second Look."

I would be surprised, though, if he's able to overtake the party's frontrunners in the weeks remaining before January's caucuses and primaries. Perhaps Mitt Romney's peaked in New Hampshire, where he's currently holding a decisive lead in the polls. If so, McCain might stage a reprise of his 2000 primary upset in the Granite State. There's also Rudy Giuliani to consider. Currently a national frontrunner, Giulani's not well-respected in Iowa and he's just recently begun to invest major resources to the New Hampshire race.

A win or place in New Hampshire could help McCain replenish his war chest and bolster his campaign heading into Super Tuesday, February 5, 2008 , when over a dozen states will hold their nominating contests.

Go McCain!

Bush Family Will Not Endorse Presidential Candidate

The Bush family, one of the greatest political dynasties in recent American history, will not endorse a GOP candidate for the presidency, as this Washington Post story indicates:

With no certain Republican front-runner and the most open-ended nominating process in decades, it is perhaps no surprise that the party's first family is just as divided in settling on a candidate. While its most powerful members -- President Bush, his father and his brother Jeb -- have remained conspicuously on the sidelines, their public statements and body language carefully analyzed for evidence of whom they privately favor, other family members have spread their endorsements around.

George P. Bush's little brother, whom everyone in the family calls "Jebby," has signed on to the campaign of former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani as the young professionals chairman in Florida. Their aunt Doro, the president's younger sister, co-hosted a Washington fundraiser in February for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. One of the president's brothers, Neil M. Bush, attended a Texas event for Romney.

In a brief response to an e-mail inquiry last week, Jeb Bush said: "I don't know where the other Bushes sympathies are. I know I admire all of the candidates for different reasons. My boys made their decisions on their own. I am proud of them for their involvement."

In fact, the former governor has praised all his party's major candidates. In a recent interview online, he said Giuliani has "high energy and tremendous personality," and he called Thompson a "committed conservative." He said he admires the courage of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and praised Romney's "intellectual curiosity," saying "he's incredibly smart and asks the questions necessary."

President Bush has said he will make no endorsement during the primary season. His father, former president George H.W. Bush, who is 83, has met with several of the leading GOP candidates but has made it clear to close associates that he has little desire to jump into the fray in 2008.

The lack of political action represents only the second time since the 1970s that the Bush dynasty has not been actively involved in a presidential election.

To be sure, the campaigns of Republican candidates are filled with former staffers and advisers from the Bush world. But the family members are not focused on electing one of their own, as they were in 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000 and 2004.

"They don't feel entitled to push or pull the party in any direction," said Jim McGrath, who was a speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush and served as his post-White House chief of staff in Texas for many years. "They are quite content to let the political marketplace sort itself out."

Political endorsement by the Bush family opens up access to the family's phenomenal fundraising machine, one of the most valuable assets in contemporary politics. Winning the support of the Bush family would help a candidate in winning the GOP's 2008 presidential nomination.

But the primaries are close at hand, and as powerful as the Bush name is, at this point in the race a late endorsement might not change the dynamics of the GOP's nomination contest. Yet, the top candidates in both parties have announced that they'll forego public financing in the general election, so the eventual GOP standard-bearer should be able to put the Bush money machine to good use in balancing Hillary Clinton's own big money operation.

Neoconservatism, Pakistan, and U.S. Foreign Policy

A unfriendly commenter to my recent post on Pakistan's political crisis remarked: "You reap what you sow, neocon."

As is my practice, I simply ignore drive-by rants such as this, especially as they are normally anonymous, Ill-informed, and meant to intimidate. Besides, I have neither the time nor the inclination to fill-in the clueless on the necessary political trade-offs in a nation's quest for security in international relations.

In the case of the Bush administration, Pakistan since 9/11 has been a front-line ally in the war on terror. Yet President Bush bargained with the devil in backing the regime in Islamabad, which moved away from democracy with Perfez Musharraf's coup d'etat of 1999. The Los Angeles Times discusses the new calculus of American foreign policy amid Pakistan's state of emergency. Democracy or security, is that the question?

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf seemed to be one of the Bush administration's most valuable foreign friends after the Sept. 11 attacks, when he denounced Al Qaeda and the Taliban and joined the U.S.-declared war on terrorism.

But the value of that friendship has come into question again and again in the last six years, and may be most in doubt today.

Musharraf's declaration of emergency rule Saturday has isolated him at home and abroad, and suggests that President Bush has risked his stated goals and principles for an ally who couldn't deliver on a fundamental promise: to hold together his turbulent country while facing down militant Islamists.

In Musharraf, an American president sometimes accused of naive neoconservative faith in democracy made the ultimate realist's bargain to help prop up an authoritarian leader.

The step Musharraf has taken now has raised fears that the world may end up with a nuclear-armed state that is at once more fractured and host to a stronger Islamic militant force.

The move is making Bush's deal look more like the one U.S. presidents made with the shah of Iran, whose authoritarian rule opened the way in 1979 to a resentfully anti-U.S. uprising and Islamist regime.

Bush has sought to reassure Americans that Musharraf, an army general who took power in a bloodless coup in 1999, was worthy of their trust. "He shares the same concerns about radicals and extremists," Bush said at an Aug. 9 news conference.

Yet from the beginning, U.S. officials have acknowledged concerns that the Pakistani government was not doing enough to foster democracy and halt nuclear proliferation. And an increasing number of U.S. officials have become convinced that Musharraf's regime hasn't done enough to fight militant Islamists.

One of the administration's top priorities has been halting the spread of nuclear know-how. Yet Musharraf has not been willing to allow the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency to interview A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear program, which had been a source of nuclear knowledge for countries such as North Korea and Iran.

Musharraf promised Bush from the beginning that he would eventually give up his position as head of the army, Pakistan's most powerful institution, and hold free and fair elections at the risk of ending his own rule. Yet his declaration of emergency rule has been widely judged a desperate attempt to hold onto power as the Pakistani Supreme Court deliberated on the validity of his recent reelection.

And though Musharraf's government has lost hundreds of soldiers since 2001 fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban, there always has been an ambivalence about the fight. Some members of the army's intelligence agency and other units have had ties to radical groups and believe they have a strategic value as a proxy in facing down rivals such as India.

And the Pakistani regime is wary of taking too many casualties or alienating parts of its population in a fight that many Pakistanis believe is largely inspired by the United States.

Many Pentagon officials have become increasingly frustrated by their partnership with the Pakistanis, believing that the army is all too eager to get the billions of dollars in U.S. aid it has received since 2001 but less eager to join the fight.

The dilemma for the U.S. has been building all year. In a September follow-up to his July/August analysis of Pakistan's political crisis in Foreign Affairs, Daniel Markey argues that the U.S. has no choice but to work with Pakistan to achieve both democracy and security. Markey reflects on Pakistan's summer crisis involving the state's attack on the Red Mosque in Islamabad:

On July 10, after a siege of several months, Pakistan's security forces stormed Islamabad's Red Mosque, leaving at least 100 people dead. In a somber address to the nation, President Pervez Musharraf declared that the terrorists within the mosque compound had "challenged the government's writ as a whole," by seeking to introduce a Taliban-style legal system into the heart of Pakistan's capital city. His message was a clear articulation of the new strategic outlook: Pakistan's Islamist militants could no longer be viewed as pliant tools, but must instead be confronted as a threat to the nation.

Musharraf then backed his words with a renewed military offensive in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Unfortunately, the militants responded with a series of deadly and demoralizing suicide attacks throughout the country and a unilateral withdrawal from the ceasefire "deals" they had struck with the Pakistani government. In late August, hundreds of Pakistani troops were reportedly taken prisoner by an extremely small contingent of Taliban fighters--an unprecedented event in Pakistani history. And just last week, an attack on the elite Special Services Group in the commandos' mess hall left 15 soldiers dead. There is strong evidence that the army is deeply shaken and that at least some officers are looking for ways to sidestep a fight that they still do not see as their own.

Facing this apparent crisis of confidence, Pakistan has received precious little encouragement from the United States. Over the summer, Pakistanis were treated to a series of highly publicized statements--most famously by Senator Barack Obama--suggesting that the United States should take unilateral action against militants inside Pakistan if Musharraf's government proves unwilling or unable to do the job. Whether or not the United States might someday seize the opportunity to take a clear shot at Osama bin Laden is beside the point. Threatening Pakistani sovereignty to play out a hypothetical scenario was bad diplomacy. It undermined Pakistan's trust in the United States at a sensitive time.

On the political front, pre-election jockeying for power accelerated and took a few surprising turns. Musharraf compounded his blunder of suspending Pakistan's Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry with a series of clumsy attempts to manage the fallout, each backfiring worse than the last. Musharraf's regime succeeded in harassing the media, stirring up bloody ethnic tensions in Karachi, and alienating Pakistan's lawyers as well as a wide cross-section of moderate opinion leaders. Washington's reaction did not help. The U.S. government's quiet acceptance of Chaudhry's suspension gave Pakistanis no reason to believe that the United States was sincere in promoting either the rule of law or judicial independence in Pakistan.

In the end, Musharraf lost popular support and failed in his bid to remove the chief justice. Musharraf's political rivals quickly seized the opening offered by a more independent, even oppositional, judiciary. Foremost among these rivals, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif appealed the terms of his ten-year exile, won the right to return to Pakistan, and staged a dramatic comeback attempt on September 10. In preparation, government security forces put Islamabad on lockdown and jailed thousands of Sharif's party organizers around the country. Upon landing, Sharif was quickly bundled up and "re-exiled" to Saudi Arabia to live under the watchful eye of the royal family.

The forceful steps that Musharraf's party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam (PML-Q), took against Sharif merely confirmed a widely-held belief that the party has failed to win the popular support needed to stave off even a recycled and discredited politician. In recent months, the prospect of Sharif's return to politics became a rallying point for more conservative political parties--including Islamists. Although his deportation may be a setback for those advocating a completely level electoral playing field, it may also have served the interests of moderates and progressives seeking to marginalize Pakistan's extreme right.

The other former prime minister from the 1990s, Benazir Bhutto, has taken a different approach in her summer power play. Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party still commands significant grass-roots support, but she has sought to negotiate her way into Pakistan by sealing a deal with Musharraf that would pave the way for her return to the prime minister's office. The deep mutual distrust between Bhutto and Musharraf, combined with the opposition of the conservative PML-Q leadership, who would lose power in such an arrangement, has until now prevented a deal.

Given the paucity of other viable options, Washington should support such a power-sharing agreement in order to facilitate freer and fairer national elections this fall. The United States should also continue to deliver robust military and diplomatic support to the Pakistani army.

If the United States plays its cards correctly over the next six months, Pakistan could become an even more stable U.S. partner in the war on terror; Islamabad's military leadership could be complemented by a cast of popularly elected civilians; and the foundations could be laid for a transition to sustainable democratic governance.

The alternative - allowing Musharraf and the PML-Q to run rigged elections and silence opponents - will only lead to harsher authoritarianism. Such a strategy would very clearly place Musharraf and the United States on one side, unifying the spectrum of Pakistan's political opposition - from progressives to Islamists - on the other. The balance would eventually tip, leaving Washington with few friends in Islamabad, and little hope of advancing U.S. interests, either in terms of democracy promotion or counter-terrorism.

Well, Pakistan's not becoming more stable, and harsher authoritarianism is here. Musharraf may have been a necessary exception to the administration's neoconservative impulse toward democracy promotion, but our long-run interests will be to put aside realism and push Islamabad back toward constitutionalism. Both ideals and interests will be served with such a move.