More Public Optimism on Iraq War

This morning's Washington Post reports new poll findings on the rebound in public support on Iraq:

A year after approval of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq dipped to an all-time low, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds discontent toward the war easing slightly, with Republicans and independents significantly more positive about the situation than they were 12 months ago.

Baseline judgments about the war are unchanged -- six in 10 in the poll said the war is not worth fighting -- but the public is somewhat more upbeat about progress in Iraq. Optimism about the year ahead is also higher than it was a year ago.

Although a majority say the United States is not making significant gains toward restoring civil order in Iraq, the public's views are more positive than at this time last year. About four in 10 say the United States is making progress, an increase of 10 percentage points over last year.

Looking ahead to the new year, the public is somewhat more hopeful about the situation in Iraq. Forty-six percent said they are optimistic about the situation in Iraq in 2008, six points higher than in December 2006.

The improved public assessment comes as the rate of U.S. casualties and the violence in general in Iraq have declined. The war has also recently been overshadowed by other issues on the presidential campaign trail.

Movement in public assessment on the war is largely driven by a more positive outlook among Republicans.

Nearly eight in 10 Republicans, 77 percent, said the United States is improving the security situation in Iraq, up from 54 percent a year ago. Three-quarters of Republicans are optimistic about the year ahead in Iraq; 12 months ago, barely more than half felt that way.

A majority of independents continue to see a lack of progress, but the percentage seeing significant gains is up 14 points, to 42 percent. At the same time, independents are about as pessimistic as they were. Democrats remain overwhelmingly negative about the situation on the ground now and in the year ahead.

Democrats are still largely disapproving of the decision to go to war, with 85 percent saying that, given the costs and benefits to the United States, the war is not worth fighting. More than six in 10 independents agree, whereas three-quarters of Republicans call the war worth the effort. These numbers have shifted only marginally, as 37 percent of all Americans call the war worth fighting, nearly identical to the percentage saying so in December 2006.

This is interesting: It's a partisan war.

The improvement we see is mostly from Republicans who were war-weary, but are now pleased with the progress being made. The poll finds a 14 percent improvement among independents on the prospect of making significant gains, while Democrats appear as retreatist as ever.

Continued improvement will help the GOP next fall, and most importantly, the Iraqi people.

See also my earlier posts on the Iraq rebound in public opinion, here and here.

Blog Watch: Lawyers, Guns and Money

I thought this might be a good time to add a new post to my "Blog Watch" series. I noted at the start of the series that I was particularly interested in hammering hard-left bloggers and their nihilist ideologies.

Well it turns out that "d" over at Lawyers, Guns and Money (LGM) is the focus of today's dissection.

I don't read LGM, but I'm moved to write following the little dust-up I've had this week over LGM's attack post, "So Many Anecdotes." The author, "d", had a little fun with my entry on Republicans in academe.

I'm not dwelling on that debate, although the fairly vicious comments in both posts - here and here - are showcases in left-wing adolescence and intolerance. (But note Kreiz's response in the comments at PoliGazette: "It’s a bit like getting gang-mugged in an alley. Ah, a place where ridicule substitutes for reason.")

No, I thought I'd just have a little fun returning fire a bit.

It turns out that "d" over at LGM is really David Noon, an assistant professor of history at the University of Alaska Southeast.

Unless Noon's tardy in updating his curriculum vitae (available at the previous link), the man's untenured, which explains why he didn't pile on his posse's attacks on my academic credentials. Noon's crew got off on the "instructor" versus "associate professor" distinction in their argumentum ad hominem jubiliee, and for nothing really. My department's outdated webpage lists me as an "instructor," although I was promoted to "associate professor" a few years back. A quick check in my college catalog shows the current listing of full-time faculty and their professional titles (human resources bestows the title of associate professor to Ph.D. recipients after the completion of a four-year probationay period). LGM's mob was too busy foaming to find accurate information to sustain their folly.

In any case, back to Noon: This guy's perfect for a Blog Watch entry! Here's his biographic details, as listed at his department's homepage:

David Noon has taught U.S. history on the UAS Juneau campus since Fall, 2002. His dissertation, “This is (Not) a Child: Race, Gender, and ‘Development’ in the Child Sciences, 1880-1910,” displays the full range of Dr. Noon's research interests in history, which include developmental psychology, criminology, medicine, and the social construction of race and gender. More recently, Dr. Noon has written about the use of World War analogies in contemporary political rhetoric, cold war historical memory in the fiction of Don DeLillo, and the work of neoconservatives and Christian prophecy writers in the war on terrorism.

There you have it: Race and gender! That's a pretty good clue to this man's ideological orientation! I especially love the "social construction" part - code words for postmodern, radical multicultural blather. This guy's in the thick of the nation's campus culture wars. You've got to love it!

Not only that: He's written on "the work of neoconservative writers...in the war on terrorism!" Aghast! No wonder I've been targeted! I'm part of that evil Bush/Cheney cabal now turning the country into a fascist dictatorship!

Here's a good example of his schtick: In his post today Noon riffs on some dissertation research performing a comparative analysis of the post-Civil War economic status of Cherokee freedmen and emancipated black slaves of the former Confederacy (some of this research is available in pdf).

I have not read any of this work, and my satire is not directed at the author, Melinda Miller. I did however get a kick out of Noon's blurb at the post. Commenting on how many Cherokee did better than blacks following the Civil War, Noon wonders if stable patterns of land ownership and cultivation could have taken place thoughout the South:

I don't think it could have been. There's no question that any morally just outcome to the Civil War would have included massive agrarian reform, including the total liquidation of the plantation economy and the redistribution of the region's land without regard to race or previous condition of servitude. The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 made some effort in this direction and - had it been applied to more than five states, and had it actually hacked apart the viable plantations lands that were largely restored to their previous owners - it might have worked some of the effects that Miller finds among the Cherokee.

Notice the language: "massive agrarian reform" and "redistribution of the region's land without regard to race or previous condition of servitude." This is the historicism of class analysis (I'm reminded of Eugene Genovese's Marxist analysis of the post-bellum South, see here and here).

I returned fire in the comments, poking fun at Noon with an attack on the cult of racial victimology his genre represents:

Now that sounds sophisticated! Whoo! I'm impressed, boy!....

Tsk, tsk...

Man, those faces really are at the bottom of the well! I thought all men were created equal!

Good thing Miller’s paper’s in pdf! I got to get caught up on my reading! Hey, where’s my copy of C. Vann Woodward? It’s around here somewhere. Oh yeah, it’s right over there with Eric Foner. Shoot, I thought I was losing my mind there!

I’ve got the light of freedom! The fire next time!

My words are playing off the titles of canonical works in the black politics literature, especially Derrick Bell's, Faces at the Bottom of the Well (a founder of "critical race theory"), C. Vann Woodward's, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, and Eric Foner's, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877.

I'm also playing with the titles of Charles Payne's, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississipi Freedom Struggle, and, of course, James Baldwin's, The Fire Next Time.

These are important works - especially Woodward, Payne, and Baldwin - and I don't begrudge them in any sense (or at least only to the point that they constitute components of revolutionary pedogogy).

My game here is to return the ridicule, just poking into the hornet's nest over at LGM. Last I checked, it looked like Noon had had enough and was throwing in the towel. Here's my last follow-up drive-by:

"d": What's the matter, buttercup? You're giving me the cold shoulder?

Boo hoo! I think I'm gonna cry...I better cuddle-up with my secretly-coded black slave quilt hand-me-down!

Speaking of curriculum vitae: You're an assistant professor? That's rough, the old publish or perish thing, right? Got to keep on pumping out those manuscripts, I guess.

Hey, I've got an idea for a paper: "The Erotic Adventures of the McKingford Trio in the Donald Douglas Exsanguination Affair."

How’s that? You do have some of your underlings responding for you. I saw old Matt Weiner playing tough-guy second-fiddle in that last thread: Clinton supported affirmative action? Yes, dismally, I might add. His whole race initiative was panned – no legacy, you know - but you never did specify the dependent variable at the post, leaving your bracketed presidential records waiting for some filler.

I’ve got to hand it to you though: You haven’t gone to comment moderation! You don’t want to ban me, naturally. You’d look like a loser: If my ISP gets the delete, then my victory’s complete!...

Toodle-oo, big boy. I’ll head back on over to my place now. Come on out to play when you finish that Yoohoo.

The "erotic adventures" line is a take on one of Noon's articles, listed on his resume,
"The Erotic Adventures of Stacy Koon in the ‘Rodney King Affair’"; McKingford's one of the commenters in LGM's attack posse (who, spinelessly of course, comments pseudonymously, with no back link).

If anyone's really interested, read the full comments at the LGM threads, here and here.

Let me close with one more example of Noon's blogging. Check out this passage, from Noon's post on this year's anniversary of the September 11 attacks:

Six years ago today, four airplanes - hijacked by a small army of freedom-hating suiciders, lesbians, civil libertarians, Islamofascists (and their appeasers), stem-cell researchers, Francophiles, historical revisionists and unelected judges - descended through the gaping national security hole pried open by Bill Clinton's eight years of distracted, fellated rule. While The Decider thumbed through a children's book about goats - demonstrating how quickly ordinary life must resume if the terrorists are to be deprived of victory - Hugo Chavez, Dan Rather, Michael Schiavo, Kofi Annan, George Soros, the Dixie Chicks and Michael Moore each pondered how they might declare their hatred of America and freedom and frozen embryos.

At an undisclosed location somewhere in the United States, Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Stephen Cambone raised their heads from the goats they were hungrily exsanguinating. Wiping their glistening lips, they nodded silently to each other and loped away. America's corporate press corps, in an unprecedented gesture of patriotism, expressed their near-unanimous devotion to the cause of liberty by agreeing to suspend their disbelief for the next several years. In a Paris hospital, the first case of Bush Derangement Syndrome was diagnosed by a team of researchers who nevertheless failed to properly quarantine the patient and incinerate the corpse. Tony Blair, selflessly drizzling lighter fluid over his historical legacy, quickly assembled a care package filled with massage oils, scented candles, and a large, monogrammed dog collar. Hoping the American President would not find his gift too suggestive, the Prime Minister threw caution to the wind. "See you in Baghdad," he scrawled quickly on the outside of the package before giddily stuffing it in the nearest post box.

There's more, if anyone's got the stomach for the rest.

I had to look up "exsanguinate," which according to Answers.com, means "to drain of blood." Thus, the Bush/Cheney cabal I mentioned earlier (here seen as the rogue's gallery of Libby, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Cambone), are portrayed as draining the vital liquid of goats, or metaphorically, the people.

This is what comes from that radical, class-analysis historical frame I mentioned, and franky I find it sickening.

In a post yesterday, I cited Dr. Sanity's discussion of how Bush-bashers have responded to the National Intelligence estimate on Iran, "Sympathy for the Devil." I think this passage helps explain Noon's propensity for exsanguinating metaphors:

The delusional abyss wherein this kind of leftist logic simmers and marinates is the part of the leftist mind that simply is unable to cope with a dangerous and frightening reality. In that dark void of the mind, BUSH=HITLER, BUSH IS WORSE THAN BIN LADEN; BUSH IS THE WORLD'S WORSE TERRORIST, AMERICA IS HUMANITY'S #1 ENEMY etc. etc. etc. because it is just too scary to contemplate the real danger that faces civilization. The logic that proceeds from the delusional premises, however, is impeccable: get rid of Bush/Cheney/America and the danger will vanish in a puff of magical smoke!

In psychiatry this phenomenon is called psychological displacement and you can read more about it here, here, and here.

Like deer paralyzed with fear in the headlights of an oncoming train, people exhibiting this particular form of psychological denial are immobilized and frozen, focusing on trivialities and blithely unconcerned about the lethal danger that is speeding toward them. But they feel completely safe --for the moment anyway.

If you go back and check the comments over at LGM, one of the visitors, "aimai," has attacked me as "nuts":

He'd better hope his supervisors and students don't google his name and find out what he's been posting on the internet. No one wants to work with someone who seems to be losing his mind.

Noon's obviously flummoxed in his retreat, and now his commenters have picked up his sword. But in my opinion - and in all seriousness - in both the original writing and in the comments the real crazies are to be found among the anti-American multiculturalists at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

See also the previous entries from Blog Watch: The Blue Voice, Firedoglake, Glenn Greenwald, and Digby's Hullabaloo.

Democratic Finger-Pointing

Check out the Washington Post's great piece on finger-pointing among congressional Democrats (via Thunder Run):

When Democrats took control of Congress in January, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) pledged to jointly push an ambitious agenda to counter 12 years of Republican control.

Now, as Congress struggles to adjourn for Christmas, relations between House Democrats and their colleagues in the Senate have devolved into finger-pointing.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) accuses Senate Democratic leaders of developing "Stockholm syndrome," showing sympathy to their Republican captors by caving in on legislation to provide middle-class tax cuts paid for with tax increases on the super-rich, tying war funding to troop withdrawal timelines, and mandating renewable energy quotas. If Republicans want to filibuster a bill, Rangel said, Reid should keep the bill on the Senate floor and force the Republicans to talk it to death.

Reid, in turn, has taken to the Senate floor to criticize what he called the speaker's "iron hand" style of governance.

Democrats in each chamber are now blaming their colleagues in the other for the mess in which they find themselves. The predicament caused the majority party yesterday surrender to President Bush on domestic spending levels, drop a cherished renewable-energy mandate and move toward leaving a raft of high-profile legislation, from addressing the mortgage crisis to providing middle-class tax relief, undone or incomplete.

"If there's going to be a filibuster, let's hear the damn filibuster," Rangel fumed. "Let's fight this damned thing out."

In the past few weeks, the House has thrown wave after wave of legislation at the Senate -- on energy, Iraq war policy, the housing and mortgage crisis, and middle-income tax cuts offset largely by tax increases on the wealthy.

Most of it has died quietly, a predetermined fate that both sides could foresee before the first vote was cast. Yet they went ahead anyway. Just last night, the House, for a second time, passed legislation to stave off the growth of the alternative minimum tax, to be paid for by a measure to stop hedge fund managers from deferring compensation in offshore tax havens. Like the previous House version, it has virtually no chance of passing in the Senate.

Officially, House Democrats blame Senate Republicans, who have used parliamentary tactics to block even uncontroversial measures. But they are increasingly expressing public frustration with Reid and Senate Democrats for not putting up a better fight.

This is rich: An article tailor-made for conservatives. Thank you liberal media. You make my job easier.

David Mayhew argued in Congress: The Electoral Connection, that Members of Congress are "single-minded seekers of reelection."

Perhaps we're seeing a bit of that dynamic here: While party's policy-making record is a disaster, the expansion of congressional pork-barrelling has hit records. Obviously Mayhew's right: These folks care nothing about pragmatic policy change and accomodation with the White House on the big issues of the day. Members in both chambers of Congress badly misinterpretated the electorate's message in 2006, and they've been beholden the Democratic Party's hardline antiwar base (remember "General Betray Us"?).

I noted yesterday that the congressional pork-barrel machine has been pumping money into the districts of vulnerable Democratic freshman. Bullying John Murtha's right in the center of it, a symbol of the scandalous old-boys (and girls) business-as-usual do-nothing Congress.

They'll be out on their rears come November 2008. PrivatePigg over at Liberty Pundit has more to that effect, with a post on GOP victories in special congressional elections this week.

See also Blue Crab Boulevard, "Let The (Finger-Pointing) Games Begin":

Much of what the Democrats in the House are complaining about amount to the exact, same tactics the Democrats used over and over to block things in the Republican-controlled Congress. They act as if this is a surprise. They came to power promising bipartisan relations and have, instead, turned everything they touch into a partisan battle without even a hint of trying to gain Republican votes - other than by promising lavish pork-bribery now and then. Instead, they offer theatrics, as even their own party members acknowledge...

Couldn't have said it better myself!

Hillary Clinton Sees California as Key

Hillary Clinton's sees California's February 5th primary as the linchpin of the 2008 nomination process:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is anticipating that she will not have to wait long to become the Democratic presidential nominee, privately telling campaign donors in California that the race "is all going to be over by Feb. 5."

Though the focus of the 2008 presidential campaign is on Iowa and New Hampshire, the states with the earliest contests, Clinton suggested that California's influence might be larger than was commonly believed.

"You've got to realize that people in California will start voting absentee about the time Iowa and New Hampshire happen," the senator from New York said at a closed-door fundraising reception Tuesday evening. "In fact, more people will have voted absentee by the middle of January than will have voted in New Hampshire, Iowa and a lot of other places combined."

On Friday, California absentee ballots began going out to members of the military and others living abroad.

California's remaining absentee ballots will be sent out beginning Jan. 7, one day before the New Hampshire primary and four days after the Iowa precinct caucuses.

California holds its primary Feb. 5, along with 21 other states and American Samoa.

"California, Texas, New York, New Jersey -- you've got way more than half the country," Clinton said at the fundraising event at a Sacramento restaurant. "And we're going to be ready, thanks to all of you. We're running a vigorous campaign here in California."

It seems Clinton's pretty confident on her chances. Rightly justified? Not to Andrew Malcom at Times' blog:

Hillary Clinton's state poll numbers are heading south for the winter. Barack Obama reaped a publicity, fundraising, volunteer and poll bonanza over the weekend with his Oprah Offensive. There are reports of internal Clinton staff dissension. The Republicans didn't even mention her in their debate yesterday.

One of her chief financial bundlers has been indicted. She continues stonewalling over release of her first lady papers which would -- or perhaps would not -- support her claim of sufficient experience to become Chief Executive. Two Iowa staffers got canned for forwarding e-mails alleging Obama is Muslim. She got caught planting questions at a public forum.

With precise Clintonian calculation, her New Hampshire co-chair went blabbing about Obama's past drug use yesterday, saying he feared Republicans would make it an election issue next year but actually doing that himself right now. Gee, must have been a slip of the tongue.

Her popular husband keeps talking about himself on the campaign trail and stepping all over her campaign's messages and making corrections that dominate another day's news and then claiming, typically, that the press misconstrued what he said. After an emergency planning meeting in Chicago, she's pumping more staff into Iowa, where Obama is so well organized, and even took her mother there on the campaign trail.

All the while reminding us of the soapy, sloppy diversions from the past Clinton years that she proposes to bring back....

As late as it seems after all these months of campaigning, it's still early. Polls show upwards of half the Democrats remain undecided. But if she loses Iowa or wins only narrowly, how long can Clinton keep talking inevitability? Will she have to become the second Clinton comeback kid?

Well, maybe California will be a kingmaker (queenmaker?) this year after all (or frontloading might have something going for itl).

Immigration is Big in Iowa

Iowa voters are deeply troubled by the nation's immigration crisis: "They ought to be all shipped back to where they came from," says Demey.

The New York Times has the story:

STORM LAKE, Iowa — Along the main thoroughfare of this small meatpacking town, the transformation of a single shop, once known as the Ken-A-Bob restaurant, tells the story of the town itself.

The Ken-A-Bob, an old-fashioned buffet with American classics of fried chicken and roast beef, went out of business and reopened as Sichanh market, catering to a wave of immigrants from Laos. Now the shelves are also packed with Mexican spices, tostadas, chicharrones, the walls covered in signs in Spanish for Mary Kay cosmetics, baby sitters and Senator Barack Obama.

The nation’s struggle over immigration may seem distant in states like Iowa, hundreds of miles from any border, but the debate is part of daily life here, more than ever now as residents prepare to pick a president. Nearly all of more than two dozen people interviewed here last week said they considered immigration policy at or near the top of their lists of concerns as they look to the presidential caucuses next month.

And yet, nearly everyone interviewed said that none of the political candidates had arrived at a position on immigration that fully satisfied them. In real life, they said, the issues surrounding immigration, both legal and illegal, were far more complicated than bumper sticker slogans or jabs on a debate stage or even the carefully picked language of campaign policy papers.

The subject went largely unaddressed in Wednesday’s Republican debate in Des Moines after the moderator discouraged discussion of immigration, suggesting that Iowans already were familiar with the candidates’ positions.

Those who said they favored granting a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in this country were leaning mainly toward Democratic presidential candidates, but most said they wished their candidate could better explain how to carry out such a path practically and fairly.

And those who said they favored tough and immediate penalties for illegal immigrants said they mostly favored Republicans (though not Senator John McCain, who seemed to draw special ire here for what people called his disappointingly lax position), but said they had doubts that so many people could really be found or punished.

“I care about the illegal immigration issue a lot,” said David F. Friedrich, a farmer who said he was a supporter of President Bush and had yet to decide who he would support. “But when you start looking for solutions, I just don’t know. I think it’s too far gone.”

Like a handful of communities in Iowa — places named Denison, Ottumwa, Postville and Marshalltown — Storm Lake, a city of about 10,000, offers a glimpse at how new immigration has transformed the nation’s rural middle and with it, the political landscape.

Two decades ago, less than 1 percent of the people in Buena Vista County, where Storm Lake is the county seat, were Hispanic. By last year, the county had the highest percentage of Hispanic people of any county in Iowa, with 19.2, compared with less than 4 percent statewide. Buena Vista County also ranks highest in Iowa in percentages of those learning English in school, of recent international immigrants and of residents born in other countries.

In the interviews here, peoples’ focus on immigration held regardless of what perspective they brought to the debate, whether they were Democrats or Republicans, Hispanic or not, recent arrivals or lifelong Iowans.

Some, like Bob DeMey, said they were troubled by all the change in Storm Lake, which was once almost exclusively white but which, Mr. DeMey said, has come to be known among his friends as Little Mexico. So much immigration — mainly illegal immigration, he says — has taken meatpacking jobs away from the locals, left the schools jammed, and driven up crime.

“They ought to be all shipped back to where they came from,” said Mr. DeMey, who is retired.

I can understand where DeMay's coming from. We have a Little Mexico right here in Suburban Orange County: It's called Santa Ana (the county's federal seat, with a Latino population of about 90 percent).

It's frankly not practical to suggest shipping them "all back from where they came from," although I share some of the concerns of people like DeMay. We are a tremendously diverse country, although I think we ought to manage the expansion of that diversity a bit more.

I've written much about immigration. I favor tighening the borders to slow in-migration, but I also favor a path to legal status for the millions of undocumented migrants who have no other criminal offenses outside of their illegal alien resident status.

For more reading, check some of my favorites on the topic:

"Hispanic Nation,"at Business Week.

"The Hispanic Challenge," bySamuel Huntington, at Foreign Policy.

"What Grandma Would Say," by Peggy Noonan, at the Wall Street Journal.

Congressional Pork Helps Vulnerable Democratic Freshmen

This story is classic!

The distribution the congressional pork-barrel spending is tilting heavily Democratic freshmen Members of Congress. USA Today has the line:

A year ago, Democrats won control of Congress in part by criticizing billions of dollars spent on pet projects. Now, freshmen Democrats are benefiting from the same kind of spending, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

All 49 of the new Democratic lawmakers sponsored or co-sponsored at least one project — known as an "earmark" — inserted into the House and Senate spending bills, the analysis found. Freshmen Democrats were the sole sponsors on projects worth $351 million, an average of $7.6 million. Republicans got approval for projects worth $65 million, or $5 million each.

The analysis found that some of the most vulnerable freshmen Democrats in next year's election were among those who got the most money: Eight of the top 10 House freshmen earmark sponsors defeated Republican incumbents, and five won in districts carried by President Bush in 2004.

Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., says Democratic leaders tried to help freshmen like him who are on a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee list of the most vulnerable incumbents. "I think I got a boost from being on that list," says Yarmuth, No. 9 among House freshmen as the sole sponsor of $10.5 million in earmarks.

That shows political considerations, not merit, get earmarks into spending legislation, says Steve Ellis of the non-partisan group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

"It's like earmarks are the door prize for being a member of Congress," Ellis says.

Most of those earmarks remain in limbo, since only the defense bill has become law. Bush vetoed one bill and has threatened to veto others. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., said the impasse may result in one combined spending bill without any earmarks.

There you go - political hypocrisy at its finest! The Democrats were hammering the Republican majority over the pork in last year's elections.

Look at that photo of bullying John Murtha above: He's shaking hands with Rep. Christopher Carney, a freshman Democrat from a traditionally-GOP House district. Carny scored big on earmarks this year - at $18.2 million, he took in the most among first-timers, independently sponsoring 21 pork-barrel projects.

I blogged about John Murtha's spending largesse earlier. In fact, I defended the congressional pork-barrel as a traditional practice of constituency service and credit claiming. But stories like this demonstrate precisely why earmarks are often bad public policy: They're vehicles for political patronage and corruption.

Betrayal of America? The Bureaucratic Shadow Warriors

Kenneth Timmerman, the author Shadow Warriors, is interviewed over at FrontPageMag:

FP: Kenneth Timmerman, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Timmerman: Thanks, Jamie. It’s always a pleasure to appear alongside other founding members of the Vast Right-wing Conspiracy.

FP: My pleasure as well.

What inspired you to write this book?

Timmerman: In the beginning were the leaks. I was curious how highly-classified intelligence information was winding up on the front pages of the NY Times and in other leftist media. Two stories, in particular, caught my attention initially: the leak of the CIA “secret prisons,” and the smearing of Ahmad Chalabi, to which I will return below.

I knew quite a bit about both stories, and knew that the way they were being reported was incredibly selective and politically motivated. I wanted to track them back to the source.

What I discovered was a vast, underground network of government officials, former intelligence officers, members of Congress and their staffs, who were in bed with a complacent, anti-Bush media. They were eager to publish anything that did damage to this president, even if it put the lives of our intelligence officers or of our front-line troops in jeopardy.

FP: So tell us about the underground resistance movement against President Bush.

Timmerman: It certainly comes as no surprise to readers of this page to discover that a segment of the Democrat party never accepted the legitimacy of the 2000 presidential election, and sought in every possible way to delegitimize George W. Bush.

What I discovered, however, was that this political “pay-back” went far beyond the realm of domestic politics, and that legions of “shadow warriors” purposefully burrowed into the bureaucracy with the sole purpose of undermining the president and his policies.

The sabotage was so intense, for example, that CIA officers actually stood by and watched as a key moderate Iraqi cleric was hacked to death in front of their eyes on the steps of a Shiite shrine in Najaf by the pro-Iranian radical, Muqtada al-Sadr, in April 2003. The death of Majid al-Khoie, who was brought back to Iraq by the Bush administration just after the overthrow of Saddam, was a tremendous setback to our efforts to help the Iraqi Shiite community to distance itself from Iran and organize itself around moderate, pro-Western leaders.

For the shadow warriors, the failure of the liberation of Iraq was not “collateral damage.” It was the actual goal of their efforts. Within just weeks of the liberation, as I reveal in the book, a retired State Department officer who briefly served in Iraq devised the mantra “Bush lied, people died.” The Left has never tired of repeating it.

FP: Your thoughts on the politicization of intelligence by Senate Democrats?

Timmerman: The end result of the extraordinary cherry-picking of intelligence by Senate Democrats that I describe in detail in the book is to devalue intelligence and to make it suspect.

As you know, I follow events in Iran quite closely. You will not be surprised to learn that I am skeptical of the latest National Intelligence Estimate that concluded with “high confidence” that Iran stopped nuclear weapons work in late 2003.

What I find truly disturbing, however, is the widespread skepticism that has greeted this NIE by ordinary Americans and by intelligence specialists alike. No one trusts the intelligence community to come to an unbiased conclusion any longer. This NIE is far worse than the much disputed October 2002 estimate of Iraqi WMD programs, which failed to properly weigh conflicting information but never recommended a policy to the President or to Congress. (No, Rosie, there was no ‘rush to war.’) This NIE explicitly advocates policy – something the intelligence community is not supposed to do – and gives the impression that the intelligence information it chose to credit was pre-cooked in support of a political conclusion.

Read the whole thing.

I've just learned of this book, and Timmerman. He's got an interesting biography.

The Anti-Bush Forces and the NIE

Here's Dr. Sanity on the Bush-bashers and the NIE:

Michael Ledeen at The Corner is starting to feel sorry for the poor schmucks who wrote the NIE:

This embarrassingly crafted bit of fluff has failed to pass muster in London, Paris, Berlin and Jerusalem, and in much of Washington and New York. Most of us thought this would put an end to any aggressive policy toward Tehran, but life is full of surprises and if anything the call for tougher sanctions is stronger today than it seemed last week.

He then gets to the heart of the issue for those who enthusiastically embraced the report and are determined to believe in the good intentions of Iran; i.e., compared to the evil, irrational and lying BushHitlerCheney entity, the Iranian Mullahs represent the essence of civilized, peaceful, and virtuous behavior.

The delusional abyss wherein this kind of leftist logic simmers and marinates is the part of the leftist mind that simply is unable to cope with a dangerous and frightening reality. In that dark void of the mind, BUSH=HITLER, BUSH IS WORSE THAN BIN LADEN; BUSH IS THE WORLD'S WORSE TERRORIST, AMERICA IS HUMANITY'S #1 ENEMY etc. etc. etc. because it is just too scary to contemplate the real danger that faces civilization. The logic that proceeds from the delusional premises, however, is impeccable: get rid of Bush/Cheney/America and the danger will vanish in a puff of magical smoke!

In psychiatry this phenomenon is called psychological displacement and you can read more about it here, here, and here.

Like deer paralyzed with fear in the headlights of an oncoming train, people exhibiting this particular form of psychological denial are immobilized and frozen, focusing on trivialities and blithely unconcerned about the lethal danger that is speeding toward them. But they feel completely safe --for the moment anyway.

This reality and the consequences that go along with ignoring it are, of course, why displacement is considered neurotic and not a particularly healthy - or smart - way for adults to cope with the world.

See another psychiatrist on Bush Derangement Syndrome, and an example here.

Republican Race is Free-For-All

The new Washinton Post poll finds Mike Huckabee's pulling up to Rudy Giuliani nationally:

Three weeks before the first contest of the 2008 campaign, Republicans remain sharply divided over whom to choose as their presidential nominee and which of the five leading candidates best embodies the core values of a fractured GOP, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani continues to lead the Republican field in the national poll, but his support is at its lowest point this year. Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, has more than doubled his support among likely GOP voters since early November and runs just behind Giuliani.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, former senator Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.) and Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) also draw double-digit support in the new poll, hinting at a potential free-for-all when the voting begins in Iowa and New Hampshire early next month.

The Democratic race nationally continues to feature Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) far ahead of Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and the rest of the field. But a highly competitive campaign in Iowa pitting Clinton, Obama and former senator John Edwards (N.C.), along with signs of a tightening contest in New Hampshire, suggest that the Democratic race is also far from settled.

The new poll found that the issues driving voters are shifting rapidly. Concerns about the economy are on the rise and assessments of current conditions in Iraq have eased slightly, propelling the nation's economic picture and jobs to the top of people's concerns. Although the range of issues could further destabilize the nomination battles, most of the uncertainty stems from more basic questions about the candidates.

In the Republican race, Huckabee's surge in Iowa, where he has overtaken longtime front-runner Romney in recent polls, has begun to translate to the national stage, further shaking up a race that has been volatile from the outset.

Although many of the candidates have been campaigning for nearly a year, the Republican electorate appears more fragmented now than at any previous point in the race. Asked which candidate best reflects the core values of the Republican Party, 18 percent said McCain, Giuliani and Huckabee were each cited by 16 percent, 14 percent picked Romney, and 13 percent named Thompson. As if to punctuate the confusion, 16 percent said they had no opinion.

I like that last set of stats: John McCain polls highest on core GOP values!

As I noted yesterday, McCain's picking up a lot of favorables in national polling, which could translate into more electoral support in the series of primaries held after the contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.

I still think it's a long-shot for him, but as the Post notes, "the Republican electorate appears more fragmented now than at any previous point in the race."

We'll see.

See also my posts on recent media endorsements of McCain, here and here.

Giuliani's Resiliency

Rudolf Giuliani's still got some wind in his sails, according to this Wall Street Journal article:

Rudy Giuliani's quest for the Republican presidential nomination is running into turbulence.

After selling himself more successfully than many expected, the former New York mayor's lead in national polls is narrowing. He could lose four early primary states -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan and South Carolina -- before reaching more favorable territory, such as Florida, New York and California. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's surge is rallying evangelicals and social conservatives who up until now have been divided and dispirited. The business dealings of Mr. Giuliani's company are under increasing scrutiny.

But like the city he once ran, Mr. Giuliani on the campaign trail is also turning out to be more resilient than expected -- drawing on decades of retail politics in New York as he works crowds with ease and vigor.

As his lead has narrowed in the past month, Mr. Giuliani has unleashed a blizzard of television ads in New Hampshire touting his economic record in New York and his toughness on terrorism. He has come out in support of a Supreme Court challenge to gun-control laws in an effort to bolster his support among conservative Republicans. He has lashed out at Mitt Romney in a televised debate, accusing him of running a "sanctuary mansion" because the lawn service Mr. Romney used employed illegal immigrants.

What his supporters and opponents are wondering is whether these moves and his campaign skills will be enough to overcome the hurdles that are coming into clearer and closer view.

Read the whole thing.

I'm less enthusiastic about Giuliani as I had been. His YouTube debate performance was weak. I don't know, but something turned me off with the nasty attacks on Mitt Romney.

After John McCain I don't really have a favorite. Electability in the general election is a key, so Giuliani might have an edge over Mike Huckabee in that respect.

We'll see.

President Bush Surging at End of Tenure

Ron Christie, over at The Hill, argues that President Bush is surging at the end of his term, despite public perception to the contrary:

Recent polls placing President Bush’s approval numbers near 30 percent miss an important distinction: The policies and positions the president has advocated since 2001 have led to significant results in recent days. In short, the presidency of George W. Bush is surging, rather than waning, with little more than one year remaining in his term.

On the domestic front, the tax cuts the president pushed through the Congress have led to remarkable economic growth, low unemployment and record-high tax receipts that members of Congress can hardly wait to spend. New data released last week showed that America added 94,000 jobs in November 2007 — capping a remarkable 51 straight months in which jobs have been created in our economy. Despite partisan claims that the economy is soft, more than 8.3 million jobs have been created since August 2003 and unemployment remains low (4.7 percent). America remains open for business.

More Americans have more money in their savings accounts and in their wallets as a result of the Bush tax cuts. Despite talk on Capitol Hill of rolling back the president’s tax cuts that “benefit only the wealthy” Democrats have been loathe to pass legislation and return to their districts to explain why raising taxes and eliminating the popular $500 per child tax credit is good public policy. Not going to happen anytime soon.

Roundly criticized back in 2001 for his position on stem cell research, the president’s resolve and strength to draw a moral boundary line to protect innocent unborn life has been vindicated. Despite the yammering that the president had hampered scientific progress in stem cell research, despite the vicious demagogy and false claims that if the president hadn’t placed restrictions on how federal funds were spent, people would rise and walk from their wheelchairs, scientists announced last week they could produce an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells. Or put another way, the president’s decision to draw a bright moral line against destroying human life while providing federal dollars for the first time to stimulate stem cell research has proven successful. The silence in the media about this remarkable development has been deafening.

Equally deafening have been the media (and congressional Democrats’) reaction to success on the ground in Iraq. After linking vital resources to fight the war on terrorism to a timetable for troop withdrawals, Congress has failed on numerous occasions in recent months to hamstring the president’s ability to conduct the war as commander in chief. And despite claims that the surge of troops and the leadership of Gen. David Petraeus and President Bush have failed, even ardent foe Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) has concluded that the surge in Iraq is working.

Not content to celebrate the success of our brave men and women in uniform who put their lives on the line every day to provide stability in a volatile region of the world, congressional Democrats now claim that while the surge might be working, the Iraqis have “failed” to produce meaningful political results on the ground. Once again, facts get in the way of those on the Hill who are pressing — wishing — for an American defeat on the ground in Iraq.

Absent from media coverage of late is the fact that the central government of Iraq has reached its 2007 budget revenue target of $30.2 billion. This figure is derived from oil revenues — revenues of which the Democrats have criticized the Iraqis and President Bush for not capturing to fund the cost of the new government in Baghdad. This criticism now rings hollow.

Similarly, 40 Iraqi leaders were killed in Iraq during the month of November and Lt. General Ray Odierno has reported that the has been a 23-week decline — nearly six months — in insurgent deaths and attacks upon Iraqi civilians. This decrease in violence has led thousands of civilians to return to the country each and every day to reopen their schools, businesses and neighborhoods that have long been abandoned due to violence.

In Mosul, the airport opened for the first time in 14 years for commercial aviation flights. In a region of the country long associated with violence, Iraqi Airlines is now open for business. While there is always a potential for violence to flare up, Iraqi civilians have returned home to provinces all around the country that had previously been strongholds held by terrorists and Saddam loyalists.

Political stability long thought to be an elusive dream is becoming a daily reality across Iraq.

From the surge in Iraq, vindication with his stem cell position and strong economic development on the home front, President George W. Bush has hit his stride and is surging rather than limping into his last year in office. For those who have counted him out, the president remains resolute, perhaps comfortable in the knowledge that history, rather than bitter partisans in Washington, will favorably reflect on his two terms in office for waging an effective war against terrorism while demonstrating capable stewardship and remarkable domestic accomplishments during a time of war.

I've made similar statements on the prospects of a favorable Bush legacy. History will mark G.W. Bush as one of America's great presidents.

Iowa Republicans Not Sure on Eve of Vote

Adam Nagourny and Megan Thee report the results of the latest New York Times poll on the Iowa caucuses. Republican voters are up in the air on their choices:

Three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Republican voters across the country appear uninspired by their field of presidential candidates, with a vast majority saying they have not made a final decision about whom to support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Not one of the Republican candidates is viewed favorably by even half the Republican electorate, the poll found. And in a sign of the fluidity of the race, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, who barely registered in early polls several months ago, is now locked in a tight contest nationally with Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney.

By contrast, Democrats are happier with their field and more settled in their decisions. For all the problems Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to be having holding off her rivals in Iowa and New Hampshire, she remains strong nationally, the poll found. Even after what her aides acknowledge have been two of the roughest months of her candidacy, she is viewed by Democrats as a far more electable presidential nominee than either Senator Barack Obama or John Edwards.

Not only do substantially more Democratic voters judge her to be ready for the presidency than believe Mr. Obama is prepared for the job, the poll found, but more Democrats also see Mrs. Clinton rather than Mr. Obama as someone who can unite the country.

The Republican and Democratic nominating contests, which begin with the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, are approaching at a time of anxiety and uncertainty. Americans, the poll found, think the economy is bad and getting worse. A vast majority think the country is heading in the wrong direction. More people cite the Iraq war as the most important issue facing the country than cite any other matter, and though 38 percent say the dispatch of extra troops to Iraq this year is working, a majority continue to say that undertaking the war was a mistake.

The candidates are running against a backdrop of a decidedly negative view of Washington. At 21 percent, the approval rating for this Democratic-led Congress is at a new low, reflecting the defection of independent voters, a potentially worrisome development for Democrats going into next year’s Congressional elections. President Bush’s approval rating is at 28 percent, one point above the lowest of his tenure.

The poll confirmed that former President Bill Clinton was an effective campaign weapon for his wife. Forty-four percent of Democratic voters say Mr. Clinton’s involvement will make them more likely to support her. In fact, about as many of Mrs. Clinton’s backers say they are supporting her because of her husband as say they are supporting her because of her own experience.

The poll found that just 1 percent said they might be swayed by the involvement of Oprah Winfrey, who has been campaigning for Mr. Obama in Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire the last three days, drawing huge crowds and allowing his campaign to identify new supporters.

The nationwide telephone poll, of 1,028 voters, was taken from last Wednesday through Sunday and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. Within that group, 266 respondents identified themselves as likely Republican voters, and 417 as likely Democratic voters; the margin of sampling error among the Democrats is five percentage points, and among the Republicans six percentage points.

More than anything else, the poll underlines sharp differences between the Republican and Democratic electorate in how each views its candidates. Democratic voters, on the whole, see their candidates considerably more favorably than Republicans see theirs.

Read the whole thing.

An encouraging sign for John McCain backers: Thirty-seven percent of Iowa voters hold positive views of John McCain. The Arizona Senator is second to Rudy Giuliani. While McCain's largely conceded the Iowa caucuses, his favorables there might translate into less of rout than expected, which could redound positively on the New Hampshire and South Carolina races, especially if either Mitt Romney or Giuliance faces an upset in one of the early contests.

Note this as well:

In the national poll by The Times and CBS News, Republican voters said by 61 percent to 27 percent that they were looking for a presidential candidate who had the right experience rather than one with new ideas. Democrats were far more evenly divided on which of those two qualities was more important.

This is a point Ron Claiborne raised in his comment yesterday at ABC News.

See also my posts on recent media endorsements of McCain, here and here.

How McCain Could Win

Ron Claiborne over at ABC News suggests how John McCain might win the GOP nomination:

A year ago, he was the odds-on favorite to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2008. Today, he's considered a long shot.

His campaign has rebounded from a near implosion in the summer, but in these crucial weeks before the first balloting in January in Iowa, John McCain has been eclipsed by the emergence of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as a serious contender, the Mitt Romney religion speech and recent Romney-Rudy Giuliani verbal fracas. Yet political analysts say do not count the Arizona senator out yet.

Down, but Not Out

"The reality is, as it's been for many, many months is that the [Republican] candidates all have weaknesses and at the end of the day John McCain is hoping that Republican voters take a deep breath, reassess the candidate and say it's not about a specific position on immigration or campaign finance reform, it's about strength and leadership and toughness in standing up in the war against terror," said Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report.

"If that's how Republicans decide, they may come back to him and decide 'Well, I rejected him six months ago, but he looks like the best of the lot now.'"

It will not be easy for McCain to pull off, but there are scenarios  for McCain a "perfect storm" of events breaking his way, according to some pundits  in which he could still wrest the GOP nomination away from his rivals.

One of them goes something like this: Huckabee wins the Iowa caucus Jan. 3 and Romney finishes second. McCain is running far behind in Iowa and barely campaigning there.

A Romney win could propel him to victory in New Hampshire where he now leads McCain in the polls, so, for McCain, it is critical that Romney be stopped in Iowa. A Huckabee win in Iowa would be a huge setback for Romney, who has invested time and money - lots of money - into winning there followed by New Hampshire for an early one-two punch that would ignite his campaign.

Meanwhile, McCain has been concentrating instead on New Hampshire, which holds the first primary five days after Iowa.

Eye on New Hampshire

He spent most of the last week in New Hampshire and is now running a television commercial (on New England sports channels) featuring Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling pitching McCain as "a man of principle who sticks to his guns."

Schilling may not exactly be the most popular guy on his team nationally, but among New England sports fans he's the heroic figure who helped pitch the Sox to victory in the now legendary curse-busting 2004 World Series.

A Romney loss in Iowa could open the door in New Hampshire for McCain. He and the Granite State have a "relationship" that goes back to 2000 when he stunned George W. Bush in the GOP primary and won by 19 points.

McCain remains popular there, admired even by some voters who have drifted away this year to Romney or Giuliani. He draws large, enthusiastic crowds to his campaign events, and recently won the key endorsement of the state's newspaper, the New Hampshire Union-Leader.

While McCain's prominent support of the doomed immigration bill hurts him, he is also the rare Republican to talk about the issue of climate change - a big deal to many in New Hampshire - and the liability of his early support for the troop surge in Iraq has turned into an asset now that it seems to be succeeding.

Comeback Kid?

A McCain win in the New Hampshire primary would be huge. It would spell serious trouble for Romney and slow the Huckabee boom.

McCain would be anointed the latest comeback kid and bask in the glow of renewed media attention and just maybe get a second look by Republican voters.

"It would certainly create a boomlet for him after New Hampshire," Rothenberg said. "It would give him an opportunity to raise more money and get more visibility. But it's still tough for him. There are still a lot of conservatives who will never support [him] even because of his leadership on immigration, his position on campaign finance reform. There are many Republicans who see him as his time has passed. So, even a strong showing in New Hampshire, it would be a plus, it would certainly help his campaign, but it [would] still be uphill the rest of the way."

South Carolina

To maintain the momentum from a New Hampshire win, McCain would have to do well in the South Carolina primary 11 days later.

In 2000, South Carolina dealt McCain what would turn out to be a fatal setback. But he is decently positioned there this time. He's been campaigning in the state often in recent weeks. He has the backing of South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham.

The Palmetto State has a large number of military retirees, and Democrats and independents can cross over to vote in the Republican primary.

Some Republicans might even be feeling a little guilty about the nasty negative campaign of 2000 in which McCain was the target of planted rumors that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock.

If McCain can prevail in South Carolina - even a close second-place finish might be good enough - the Republican race could be turned upside down. Romney would be down and probably out.

Giuliani would be left still looking for a win after the big three of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Huckabee would be stalled. And former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson would be 0 for 3 and likely reeling. And McCain would be rolling.

That sounds good to me!

See also my recent post, "Endorsing John McCain."

Hezbollah Rearms for the Next Attack on Israel

The week's U.S. News reports that Hezbollah's rebuilding its military power as it bides its time until the next conflict over Israel's destruction. The piece says that no foreigners are allowed in Hezbollah's new "security zone" just north of Lebanon's Litani River:

There is a good reason why the Lebanese Shiite movement, designated a terrorist group by the United States, wants to avoid prying eyes. Hezbollah, by various accounts, is establishing new bunkers, arms caches, and other military positions, replacing those it lost a few miles to the south after the 2006 war with Israel. For years, Hezbollah controlled the rock-strewn hills south of the Litani River to the Israeli border. As part of a cease-fire, some 13,500 United Nations peacekeepers and 15,000 Lebanese troops now patrol southernmost Lebanon, creating a buffer zone south of the Litani. Hezbollah has refused to disarm as called for under the U.N. resolution that ended last year's 34-day war.

As new Israeli-Palestinian peace talks get underway, Israeli officials have reason to be concerned about developments in Lebanon, where Hezbollah's leaders vow no letup in their hostility to the Jewish state. The group is building up positions just north of the Litani River, reportedly buying land from Christian and Druze villagers. The location puts Hezbollah's paramilitary force still within range to fire rockets at Israel but away from the prying eyes of the U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese Army. The location also overlaps routes to the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, which has been the supply point for clandestine arms trafficking and training and logistics bases.

Hezbollah officials openly brag about the rebuilding without disclosing specifics, a common Hezbollah public-relations tactic that makes it hard to separate fact from bluster. "Of course we were able to rearm, and why shouldn't we? We are the legitimate resistance of Lebanon and are the only force capable of protecting the people from Israel. We have also added many new fighters since the war, but I won't tell you what new weapons we have, I just promise we have them," says one Hezbollah commander who has been a reliable, if vague, source of information in the past.

Regional intelligence officials confirm the rearming and point to Hezbollah's access to high-tech weaponry and training from Iran and Syria. In many cases, the group has been equipped with the latest generations of Russian-made weaponry, which allowed it to successfully fight the Israeli military directly in 2006 instead of relying on the guerrilla tactics that forced Israel from southern Lebanon in 2000 after 18 years of occupation. Israel has complained to the United Nations that Hezbollah's new arsenal includes rockets with a range of 155 miles, capable of hitting Tel Aviv. "They have what they need to fight and the expertise to use it. They're brilliant at adapting weaponry to their tactics and vice versa," said a regional intelligence official earlier this year. "The war changed nothing."

At this point, Hezbollah is caught up in a domestic power struggle with Lebanon's western-backed government led by Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, which wants Hezbollah fighters disarmed or incorporated into the Army. Hezbollah asserts it is not required to disarm since Lebanese law recognizes it as a "resistance" group against Israel, not a militia. Iran and Syria, meanwhile, may see a rearmed Hezbollah as a deterrent threat to the United States and Israel amid the tensions over Iran's nuclear activities and Syria's support for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, anti-Israel groups that the United States classifies as terrorist organizations.

Analysts don't anticipate Hezbollah's instigating a new war with Israel in the near term. But many were caught by surprise when a cross-border Hezbollah attack on an Israeli patrol set off the war in July 2006.

Note the passage on Hezbollah's allies:

Regional intelligence officials confirm the rearming and point to Hezbollah's access to high-tech weaponry and training from Iran and Syria.

Why would Syria and Iran be backing Hezbollah, other than to complete by proxy their designs for annihilation of the Jewish state?

I think actions speak louder than words. Peaceniks claim Iran has no designs for regional nuclear preponerance, and Bush opponents keep hammering the administration, perhaps with vague hopes for a diplomatic solution to Iran's growing power and revisionism.

See my earlier posts on containing Iran and Persian Gulf power politics.

Military Families Unhappy With President Bush

The latest Los Angeles Times poll finds that President Bush has lost the support of military families. Here's the introduction:

Families with ties to the military, long a reliable source of support for wartime presidents, disapprove of President Bush and his handling of the war in Iraq, with a majority concluding the invasion was not worth it, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

The views of the military community, which includes active-duty service members, veterans and their family members, mirror those of the overall adult population, a sign that the strong military endorsement that the administration often pointed to has dwindled in the war's fifth year.

Nearly six out of every 10 military families disapprove of Bush's job performance and the way he has run the war, rating him only slightly better than the general population does.

And among those families with soldiers, sailors and Marines who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, 60% say that the war in Iraq was not worth the cost, the same result as all adults surveyed.

"I don't see gains for the people of Iraq . . . and, oh, my God, so many wonderful young people, and these are the ones who felt they were really doing something, that's why they signed up," said poll respondent Sue Datta, 61, whose youngest son, an Army staff sergeant, was seriously wounded in Iraq last year and is scheduled to redeploy in 2009. "I pray to God that they did not die in vain, but I don't think our president is even sensitive at all to what it's like to have a child serving over there."

Patience with the war, which has now lasted longer than the U.S. involvement in World War II, is wearing thin -- particularly among families who have sent a service member to the conflict. One-quarter say American troops should stay "as long as it takes to win." Nearly seven in 10 favor a withdrawal within the coming year or "right away."

Military families are only slightly more patient: 35% are willing to stay until victory; 58% want the troops home within a year or sooner.

Read the whole thing.

It's certainly not unreasonable to expect military families to reflect general dissatisfaction with the administration and Iraq. The war has been prolonged, and tremendous strains have been placed on our service personnel.

I would note, though, that the Times sample is small: the survey contacted 631 respondents from military families and 152 who have had someone in their family stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan (there is a 4 percent and 8 percent margin of sampling error, respectively).

Also, I get the feeling of buyer's remorse in some of the quotes from survey respondents, for example:

"The man went into Iraq without justification, without a plan; he just decided to go in there and win, and he had no idea what was going to happen," said poll respondent Mary Meneely, 58, of Arco, Minn. Her son, an Air Force reservist, served one tour in Afghanistan. "There have been terrible deaths on our side, and it's even worse for the Iraqi population. It's another Vietnam."

With all due respect to Ms. Meneely, I don't find that to be a particulary incisive comment on the origins, conduct, and historical consequences of the war. (Perhaps the Times could have provided interview responses more supportive of the administration's policies for some balance.)

The Times also suggests that their finding are similar to those of the 2005 Military Times poll, which also found military unhappiness with the Bush administration. See Mudville Gazette for an analysis of that poll.

Greyhawk at Mudville suggests the Military Times findings reflected pre-surge disatisfaction with the way the war was being prosecuted. Thus with the current Times poll we should have expected to see a rebound in support if that hypothesis were true.

I think we have real war-weariness among military families, just like among the general public. As American success continues in Iraq - and we see reduced pressure on enlistees - we should see the numbers come up some, as is happening in public opinion generally.

Gulf States Recognize Iranian Threat

This Max Boot essay, published earlier in the week, argues that the Arab states of the Persian Gulf understand the true nature of the Iranian threat:

The release of the new National Intelligence Estimate will provide more fodder for those who claim that "neoconservative ideologues" and the "Israel lobby" are overly alarmed about the rise of Iran. In reality, some of those most worried about the mullahs wear flowing headdresses, not yarmulkes, and they have good cause for concern, notwithstanding the sanguine tilt many news accounts put on the NIE.

I recently visited the Persian Gulf region as part of a delegation of American policy wonks organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Throughout our meetings in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, the top issue was Iran's ambitions to dominate the region.

Evidence of those imperial designs is not hard to find. The Iranians are aiding extremists who are undermining nascent democracies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. The beneficiaries of Tehran's largess include Hamas, Hezbollah and even, the evidence indicates, al Qaeda. (Saudi officials are quietly furious that Tehran has given refuge to some suspects in the 2003 Riyadh attacks.) Iran is building up its military arsenal, and has threatened to shut down the Persian Gulf (or, as Arabs call it, the Arabian Gulf).

What particularly concerns Gulf Arabs is the possibility that Iran could go nuclear--a concern unlikely to be erased by the ambiguous findings of the new NIE. While this NIE claims that Iran stopped its nuclear-weapons program in 2003 (in direct contradiction to an NIE finding issued just two years ago that "Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons"), it concedes that "Iran's civilian uranium enrichment program is continuing." Such a "civilian" program could be converted speedily and stealthily to military use. As the new NIE notes, "Iran has the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so."

That thought fills Sunni Arabs with dread. "If we accept Iran as a nuclear power that is like accepting Hitler in 1933-34," warned one senior Arab official, using the kind of analogy that back in Washington would get him dismissed as a neocon warmonger.

Read the whole thing. Boot argues that the Gulf states possess the military capabilities to act preventively against Iran's nuclear development program.

See also my earlier post, "Containing Iran"?

Are We Fighting World War IV?

Peter Beinart has a stimulating essay at today's Los Angeles Times, "Is This Really World War IV?" Check it out:

Last month, observers reacted with alarm to President Bush's declaration that if Iran gained the knowledge necessary to build a nuclear bomb, it would risk World War III. Perhaps they should have looked on the bright side. Compared with prominent conservative commentators, Bush revealed himself to be something of a dove. By warning about World War III, after all, he implied that we are not already fighting World War IV.

On the right, "World War IV" has become one of the most popular ways to describe America's conflict with the practitioners of violent jihad. It started with Eliot Cohen of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced and International Studies, who insisted just two months after 9/11 that we should call our new war by this "less palatable but more accurate name." After that, the term was picked up by Norman Podhoretz, the longtime editor of Commentary who is now an advisor to Rudolph W. Giuliani -- and who has made it the title of a recent book. Along the way it has entered the vocabulary of such conservative commentators as William Bennett, Michael Ledeen, R. James Woolsey and Larry Kudlow. Don't be surprised if a Republican presidential candidate uses it one of these days.

The shift from the "war on terror" to "World War IV" may seem semantic, but in subtle ways it fundamentally recasts not only the conflict we're in today but the one we fought for almost 50 years against the Soviet Union. To believe the United States is fighting World War IV, after all, you have to believe that during the second half of the last century, we fought World War III.

But did we? The truth is that the United States didn't fight World War III; we fought a "Cold War," which was the exact opposite. The whole reason Walter Lippmann invented the term in 1947 was to describe a state of geopolitical hostility that didn't include military conflict: That's what made it cold. The clear contrast was with World War II, in which America lost hundreds of thousands of troops in battlefield confrontations with Nazi Germany and Japan. Lippmann's term stuck because America's standoff with the Soviet Union never devolved into that kind of global war.
To be sure, each side aided local proxies, sometimes even sending in its own troops (as the U.S. and China did in Korea, and the Soviets did in Afghanistan). But unlike during World War I and World War II, Europe's industrial heartland remained at peace, regional wars never became globalized and American and Soviet troops never fought one another in any significant way.

Read the whole thing.

I think the idea that "Europe's industrial heartland remained at peace" or that "regional wars never became globalized" is an extremely narrow interpretation of events.

Citizens in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Poland (under Soviet puppet Jaruzelski circa 1981) might quibble with Beinart's notion of a peaceful European industrial heartland. Sure, we didn't enter into physical hostilities with East Bloc armies, but our deterrent strength in Western Europe kept the lid on the outbreak of a more deadly reign of terror.

And regional wars? Moscow's expansionist designs in areas such as Angola, the Arab world, Ethiopia, and Central America starting in the 1970s represented a dramatic strategic challenge to America's Western-led international order. Indeed, following U.S. defeat in Vietnam, America's geopolitical position was grim. South Vietnam fell to the Soviet-equipped North Vietnamese regime, and American power was ejected from the South Asian landmass, which had disastrous implication for regional stability and human rights.

That being said, I agree with Beinart that the World War IV nomenclature is difficult to defend in terms of "hot war" designations. Normal Podhoretz's notion of the war on terror as World War IV is polemical. In truth, though, he's one of the few who's willing to state clearly and forcefully the existential nature of our times, and least in the "long war" sense of the terror war as a new, frighteningly cold-war-like geopolitical struggle.

Times have changed as well. There's much less unity in foreign policy than was the case during earlier eras, especially before Vietnam. Everything's partisan and polarized in foreign policy, and even the mention of the use of force among leftists brings out calls of fascist ascendency in the United States.

We're not fighting World War IV. But we are fighting implacable foes who would eliminate the U.S. if they could. This we must not forget, irrespective of semantic differences.