Contrast in Iraq: How Do We Demonstrate Progress?

The wave of fighting that's broken out this week is being offered as evidence by the antiwar left that the surge has failed.

Glenn Greenwald attacked Frederick Kagan, for example, as failing to predict the outbreak of violence this week in an address at the American Enterprise Institute. Here's Greenwald:

Other than Bill Kristol and Fred's brother, war cheerleader Robert Kagan, nobody has been more wrong about more things with regard to Iraq than supreme war theorist Fred Kagan. He's also deemed by the establishment media and the Bush administration to be the most respectable and knowledgeable expert on Iraq. Within that depressing contradiction lies most of the answers as to why we have destroyed that country and will continue to do so indefinitely.

This quote is a classic example of the left-wing nihilism that's offered by prominent hardline critics of the war.

There's really nothing - no indicator of progress - that would satisfy the hard-left's implacable war opponents, who demonize the administration as the resurrection of the Nazi regime.

I don't see this as a good sign, frankly, of the power of left-wing thought. Greenwald's by no means alone in his demonizations, but let me, nevertheless, provide some contrast and perspective to the current outbreak of violence in Basra in the context of what's happening in Iraq overall.

Amid the fighting in Iraq, President Bush argued yesterday that "the battling in Basra not as a setback but as more fodder for optimism, a sign that Iraq's leaders were ready to challenge the militias that dominate the southern city with a tough security crackdown designed and led by the government's own forces."

Bush stresses the big picture: That Iraq's moving forward, that the al Maliki regime is taking independent action, and that while not glamorous, the crackdown on the militias indicates a forward movement toward greater capacity and autonomy for the Iraqi state.

It's good to remember that major military-strategic assessments have maintained the likelihood of continued violence, so this week's fighting was not unanticipated (see Raymond Ordierno, "The Surge in Iraq: One Year Later").

Also, Larry Diamond, a top democratization expert in political science, who served in the Coalition Provisional Authority, and who wrote a book on the political/strategic failures of the initial Iraq occupation, has now called the new strategy under General Petraeus a success, and that sectarian political compromise is possible but remains to be achieved.

Thus not only was there expert expectations of continued sectarian strife, it's simply not accurate to claim, as far-left critics do, that the administation's surge strategy has failed, and indeed has been a failure from its inception.

CNN's Kyra Phillips, reporting from Baghdad this morning, said that the violence in Basra should be viewed in light of the dramatic development of civil society across Iraq.

I see one of the biggest signs of this (in contrast to the gloom-and-doom antiwar spin) in the mass street demonstrations taking place in Baghdad. As seen in the New York Times photo above, thousands of demonstrators marched yesterday in a massive show of support for Iraq's Shiite faction.

The Los Angeles Times leads its report this morning by highlighting the protests:

In a sign of growing rage against the Iraqi and U.S. governments, tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims marched Thursday in their Baghdad strongholds to protest a crackdown on Shiite militiamen that has led to more than 125 deaths.

Yes, it's perhaps a sign of growing rage, but the photographic images are striking in how democratic is that rage. Amid the sectarianism, backers of the armed Shiite militias now fighting the central government have taken to the streets in peaceful protests to express their opinions and excercise their liberty to criticise the current parliamentary regime.

This in itself is one of the most dramatic displays of progress since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The al Maliki government has not called out police to clear the streets, the army has not opened fired on demonstrators, and we're not seeing a clampdown on dissent through an authoritarian backlash against the Shiite street activists.

What we are seeing is exactly as President Bush declared in his Iraq address yesterday, that "sometimes it requires grass-roots politics to get the folks in central government to respond."

This is true, as we can see from the pictures and media reports from the scene. But to acknowledge these facts would be to destroy the main antiwar Democratic talking point: That Iraq's been the greatest foreign policy blunder in history, that the country's falling apart, and that the current outbreak of violence demands nothing less than unconditional withdrawal.

The current military operations against the Mahdi army is troubling, but it is not a setback to the long-term consolidation of the Iraqi democratic regime. The peaceful protests on the Baghdad street attest to that.

See more coverage of Iraq the Washington Post and Memeorandum.

Iraq Worse Than Vietnam, Says Albright

Via Gateway Pundit, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has declared the Bush adminstration's liberation of Iraq as possibly the worst foreign policy fiasco in American history.

Here's the YouTube of Albright's "60 Minutes" interview from 1996, where, in response to the death of over 500,000 Iraqi children during the 1990s-era U.N. sanctions regime, she said "we think the price" of punishing Saddam "is worth it":

Here's the report, from the Gainseville Sun, on Albright's speech at the University of Florida:

Calling the invasion of Iraq possibly the worst foreign policy blunder in American history, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave a bleak assessment of the state of world affairs before a University of Florida audience Wednesday.

"I have said that I'm afraid that Iraq is going to go down in history as the greatest disaster in American foreign policy," Albright said. "Now that's quite a statement, because it means I think it's worse than Vietnam - not in the number of Americans who died or Vietnamese versus Iraqis, but in terms of those unintended consequences. And the biggest unintended consequence in Iraq is Iran. I think one might say that Iran has actually won the war in Iraq."

Looking toward Afghanistan, Albright said things aren't much brighter.

"President (Hamid) Karzai of Afghanistan is a very fine man, but he's basically mayor of Kabul," she said. "He does not control the whole place."

Albright gave two presentations at UF, first at the Levin College of Law and then at the Graham Center for Public Service. She fielded questions about foreign policy from both audiences, and in an interview with reporters afterward she commented on the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

..."The American forces are both the solution and the problem," she said. "They are like fly paper that attracts everybody who hates us."

These are odd statements from a former bellicose Secretary of State who said in 2003:

The ouster of Saddam has indeed made the world, or at least Iraq, a better place.

What explains the change of heart?

Political expediency sure, plus a little BDS, soothed by the Obama-messiah elixer, would be my guess.

Be sure to check Gateway's post for additional commentary and links.

Saddam Hussein and the Democratic Left

Saddam Hussein's intelligence services paid the way for a Democratic congressional visit to Iraq in 2002. The New York Times has the background:

The Justice Department said Wednesday that Saddam Hussein’s principal foreign intelligence agency and an Iraqi-American man had organized and paid for a 2002 visit to Iraq by three House Democrats whose trip was harshly criticized by colleagues at the time.

The arrangements for the trip were described in the indictment of an Iraq-born former employee of a Detroit-area charity group who was charged Wednesday with accepting millions of dollars’ worth of Iraqi oil contracts in exchange for assisting the Iraqi spy agency in projects in the United States.

The indictment did not claim any wrongdoing by the three lawmakers, whose five-day trip to Iraq occurred in October 2002, five months before the American invasion.
Two continue to serve in the House: Jim McDermott of Washington State and Mike Thompson of California. The other, David E. Bonior of Michigan, has since retired from Congress....

The three-man Congressional delegation was criticized on its return to Washington as having undermined the Bush administration’s campaign to gather international support to disarm and later invade Iraq.

Ben Johnson over at FrontPageMagazine has more:

“If being used means that we’re highlighting the suffering of Iraqi children, or any children, then yes, we don’t mind being used.” – Rep. James McDermott, D-WA, on his 2002 trip to Iraq, financed by Saddam Hussein.

We’ve long contended the terrorists could not buy better representation than the Democratic Left gives them for free. We never knew how right we were.

The media revealed last night that Saddam Hussein personally funded the trip of three Democratic Congressmen to Iraq on the eve of the war that led to his ouster....

On September 29, 2002, the ignominious trio appeared on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, via satellite hookup from foreign soil, to extol the truthfulness of Saddam Hussein, decry the already weakened sanctions imposed by the United Nations, and call President Bush a liar bent on war. David Bonior – who long served as House Democratic Whip, the second-highest ranking post in the House of Representatives – laid the blame squarely on the United States of America. Bonior denounced the regimen of multilateral sanctions, already weakened by the Oil for Food program, as “barbaric” and “horrific.” He backed this up with anecdotal evidence gleaned from the group’s well-supervised tour of Iraqi hospitals. Worse, the U.S. had been “trying to push and dictate” Iraq, namely by requiring its dictator verify his compliance with the cease-fire that ended the first Gulf War and the 17 UN resolutions he was currently defying. Although Saddam Hussein had frustrated all previous weapons inspections, Bonior blithely announced that he would now allow inspectors the “unrestricted” autonomy “to look anywhere.” (Of course, the inspectors’ job was not to play hide-and-seek with Iraq’s prewar WMD cache; it was to verify that he had destroyed all WMDs, as he had agreed to do as a precondition of peace in 1991.) Rep. James McDermott echoed that none of the arms imbroglio was the Iraqi regime’s fault, anyway, as “Iraq did not drive the inspectors out; we took them out.” Again, the United States was blaming the victim and punishing innocent children for her own misdeeds. When pressed about believing the promises of a murderous international pariah, McDermott said, “I think you have to take the Iraqis at their face value,” but he offered no such quarter to the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military. “I think the president would mislead the American people,” he declared.

On the eve of the war, three sitting U.S. Congressmen treated Saddam Hussein as President Bush’s moral superior.

The Iraqi media multiplied the propaganda value of their visit. The Iraq Satellite Channel reported that the three were scheduled to “visit hospitals to see the suffering caused by the unjust embargo.” Yet the three expressed no regrets for acting as Saddam’s stooges. Jim McDermott told CNN’s Jane Arraf, “If being used means that we’re highlighting the suffering of Iraqi children, or any children, then yes, we don’t mind being used.”

Read the whole thing, but note Johnson's poweful closing indictment:

Today, even as American troops are succeeding militarily via the surge strategy proposed by John McCain, the Democratic Left’s leadership demands unilateral withdrawal that would not merely maintain a thuggish and repressive, if stabilizing, status quo; it would vacate the battlefield, create a failed state, and give the perpetrators of 9/11 a new national base of operations.

But now, just as six years ago, certain leftists “don’t mind being used” by those with a thirst for massive bloodletting.

See also, "Unwavering Commitment: Democrats Dug In on Iraq Retreat."

Surviving Wright: Obama Weathers Race and Religion Controversy

New polling data available from Pew Research suggest that Barack Obama's avoided short-term political damage from the Wright controversy of earlier this month:

The videos of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's controversial sermons and Barack Obama's subsequent speech on race and politics have attracted more public attention than any events thus far in the 2008 presidential campaign. A majority of the public (51%) said they heard "a lot" about the videos, and an even larger percentage (54%) said they heard a lot about Obama's speech, according to the weekly News Interest Index.

Most voters aware of the sermons say they were personally offended by Wright's comments, and a sizable minority (35%) says that their opinion of Obama has grown less favorable because of Wright's statements.

However, the Wright controversy does not appear to have undermined support for Obama's candidacy. The latest nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted March 19-22 among 1,503 adults, finds that Obama maintains a 49% to 39% advantage over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, which is virtually unchanged from than the 49% to 40% lead he held among Democrats in late February. Obama and Clinton continue to enjoy slight advantages over John McCain in general election matchups among all registered voters.

The new polling suggests that the Wright affair has not hurt Obama's standing, in part because his response to the controversy has been viewed positively by voters who favor him over Clinton. Obama's handling of the Wright controversy also won a favorable response from a substantial proportion of Clinton supporters and even from a third of Republican voters.

More than eight-in-ten supporters of Obama (84%) who have heard about the controversy over Wright's sermons say he has done an excellent or good job of dealing with the situation. Reactions from Clinton supporters, and Republicans, are on balance negative; however, 43% of Clinton voters and a third of Republican voters who have heard about the affair express positive opinions about Obama's handling of the situation.

The survey finds that, in general, Obama has a highly favorable image among Democratic voters, including white Democrats. But while Obama's personal image is more favorable than Clinton's, certain social beliefs and attitudes among older, white, working-class Democratic voters are associated with his lower levels of support among this group.

In particular, white Democrats who hold unfavorable views of Obama are much more likely than those who have favorable opinions of him to say that equal rights for minorities have been pushed too far; they also are more likely to disapprove of interracial dating, and are more concerned about the threat that immigrants may pose to American values. In addition, nearly a quarter of white Democrats (23%) who hold a negative view of Obama believe he is a Muslim.

Less educated and older white Democrats, who have not backed Obama in most primary elections, hold these values more commonly than do other Democrats.

These patterns suggest the potential for future reverberations from the Wright controversy if Obama wins the Democratic nomination. More conservative beliefs about equal rights and race are not only related to negative opinions of Obama among Democrats, suggesting the potential for defections among Democratic voters, but also are associated with negative views of him in the electorate at large.

An analysis of the survey finds that holding conservative positions on political and social values is associated with a greater likelihood of supporting McCain over Obama among Republicans, Democrats and independents, and all demographic groups. In contrast, however, this pattern is much less apparent in the Clinton-McCain matchup, excepting views about women in leadership roles.

One of the few negative trends for Obama following the Wright affair is that a larger number of conservative Republicans hold a very unfavorable opinion of him in the new poll than did so in February. The survey also finds that Obama no longer enjoys the favorable image rating advantage over McCain among independents that was apparent in previous polls.

Thus, it's clear that there's considerable polarization surrounding Barack Obama and his relationship to Reverend Wright.

Note, too, that the decline in Obama's favorables mirrors Michael Barone's analysis of Rasmussen's surveys following the Wright video revelations. Plus, Pew's findings on less-educated and older white Democrats indicate Obama's key vulnerability: He's got a values gap among traditional Americans, which could tilt a significant number of these folks over to the GOP in November.

Indeed, Gallup reports today that the Democrats may see significant defections among their more conservative partisans:

Democrats are at most risk of losing the support of independents, conservative Democrats, and, among Hillary Clinton supporters, less well-educated Democrats if those voters' preferred candidate - Clinton or Barack Obama - does not win the party's nomination. Black Democrats appear loyal to the party regardless of who wins the nomination.

Thus, the overall impact of the Wright controversy will be to bolster GOP outreach efforts toward middle-of-the-road general election voters in the fall.

For some competing perspectives on such activities, see also, "The Wright Path? Race, Patriotism, and GOP Election Strategy," and "GOP Will Appeal to Craven Prejudices, Essayist Alleges."

Ecoterrorism and the Democrats: More on the Radical Left

This entry's the second in my series on progressives for Obama (see also the introductory post, "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama").

Recall the premise of the series: I'm examing the nature of today's far left-wing movement in campaign '08, particularly the degree to which contemporary radicals are rallying to the Obama banner. So far, there some's evidence for this in Tom Hayden's call earlier this week for the left to unite behind the Illinois Senator, " Progressives for Obama."

Well, it turns out that Captain Ed's got an interesting post that provides some key insight to the direct action mindset and mobilization of today's radical left wing activists. Check it out:

Salon asks what should be a rather simple question, but the answer apparently eludes them. Should someone who commits violent acts on civilian targets in order to promote their radical political views be called a terrorist? Apparently, the sobriquet only applies if one actually kills people, at least in Salon’s eyes. If you’re a quiet violin teacher who conspires to commit arson on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front for radical environmental causes, the government should give you a pass:

Earlier this month, on March 6, a federal jury in Tacoma, Wash., found Waters guilty of two counts of arson for serving as a lookout at the University of Washington fire. According to two women who testified against her in return for dramatically reduced sentences, Waters hid in a shrub near the Center for Urban Horticulture with a walkie-talkie, ready to alert the others if the campus police strolled by. Waters testified she wasn’t even in Seattle that night.

Although Waters was on trial for only the University of Washington arson, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Friedman charged that she was part of a conspiracy — a member of a “prolific cell” of the Earth Liberation Front, responsible for 17 fires set in four states over five years. Ten conspirators have pleaded guilty and been sentenced; four have fled the country; three are awaiting sentencing. Waters, the only one of the accused to have pleaded innocent and therefore the only one to have stood trial, now faces 20 years in prison. …

Prosecutors celebrated the guilty verdict against Waters as a signal victory in the campaign against “eco-terror,” a mission that the U.S. Department of Justice has made the centerpiece of its domestic counterterrorism program. “This cell of eco-terrorists thought they had a ‘right’ to sit in judgment and destroy the hard work of dedicated researchers at the UW and elsewhere,” U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sullivan declared in announcing Waters’ conviction. “Today’s verdict shows that no one is above the law.”

Civil libertarians draw a different moral from the verdict. For them it is evidence of how the Justice Department has exaggerated the threat of eco-sabotage; they see Waters’ story as a disturbing example of the misuse of federal authority and the excessive reach of the American counterterrorism program in the wake of 9/11. As Lauren Regan, director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Eugene, Ore., remarks: “There’s a question of whether burning property is really the equivalent of flying a plane into a building and killing humans.”

The CLDC asks the wrong question and does so in the wrong context. Of course torching research facilities doesn’t equate to flying planes into buildings and killing 3,000 people. If the law did equate the two, Waters wouldn’t face 20 years in prison– she’d face the death penalty, and have 3,000 life sentences as her only alternative. Despite the vapidity of Regan’s response, the law has enough nuance to handle the different scales of terrorism.

But let’s not make any mistake here. What Waters and her co-conspirators did was terrorism, and should be investigated and prosecuted as such. The ELF and its “elves” want to force change in the nation by violence and force because they cannot get it through legitimate, democratic means. Not only to they want to destroy medical research facilities, homes, car dealerships, and Lord Glorious Hope knows what else, but they want to terrorize the people who would use such facilities into submission to their agendas.

It doesn’t matter what the cause might be. It might be abortion, tax reform, or stopping elderly abuse. When its advocates turn to violence to intimidate people into adopting their positions, then they have crossed the line from free speech to terrorism, and it strikes at the heart of democracy. The government of a free people have the duty to ensure that law-of-the-jungle tactics get stopped and carry huge consequences to the people who use them, in order to deter others from adopting them.

Salon’s Tracy Tullis calls it “alarming” that the federal government used “post-9/11 counterterrorism laws to pursue and prosecute an environmental activist”. Briana Waters stopped being an activist when she traded in picket lines for arson conspiracies, and became precisely the kind of criminal for which these laws were written. If she didn’t want to do 20 years in prison, she should have stuck with the picket signs.

Be sure to read the Salon piece, which really illustrates the true essence of "fringe" movements. These people of the Earth Liberation Front are truly radical in their orientation, and in the University of Seattle burning they destroyed $2.5 million in property, while no one, mercifully, was killed (this time).

Now, to be clear: There's no mention of partisan political ties between the ECL terrorists and the Barack Obama campaign. Still, a quick link to the Earth Liberation Front homepage indicates (as of March 27, 20008) that some activists in the eco-liberation movement advocate closer ties to the Democratic Party, specifically the Al Gore global-warming ayatollah wing (also via AP):

They say the environmental movement remains strong - building on the work of grass roots activists, or supporting mainstream advocates such as former Vice President Al Gore, or going deeper underground to avoid the fate of the 10 activists brought to justice in Eugene. “The environmental problems on the planet aren't getting any better, they're getting worse,” said Jim Flynn, former editor of the Earth First! Journal and a veteran of protests in Eugene. “People will do what it takes to either try and stop environmental degradation, or draw attention to it” [emphasis added].

That's about it. I make no more claims than that, but I will continue to update the series.

See also my earlier post on eco-terrorism, "Ecoterrorism Suspected in Seattle New Home Fires."

The Gore Theory of Campaign '08

Joe Klein of Time 's got a theory that if things continue to deteriorate for the Democrats, with, for example, Barack Obama failing to decisively wrap up the campaign with some big final-lap wins, Al Gore could be the answer for the Democrats.

Klein notes that the month of April provides a key decision timeframe:

It's the moment when pundits demand action—"Drop out, Hillary!"—and propound foolish theories. And so I'm rather embarrassed to admit that I'm slouching toward, well, a theory: if this race continues to slide downhill, the answer to the Democratic Party's dilemma may turn out to be Al Gore.

This April promises to be crueler than most. The two campaigns have started attacking each other with chainsaws, while the Republican John McCain is moving ahead in some national polls. At this point, Clinton can only win the nomination ugly: by superdelegates abandoning Obama and turning to her, in droves—not impossible, but not very likely either. Even if Clinton did overtake Obama, it would be very difficult for her to win the presidency: African Americans would never forgive her for "stealing" the nomination. They would simply stay home in November, as would the Obamista youth. (Although the former President is probably thinking: Yeah, but John McCain is a flagrantly flawed candidate too—I'd accept even a corrupted nomination and take my chances.)

Which is not to say that Clinton's candidacy is entirely without purpose now that she is pursuing a Republican-style race gambit, questioning Obama's 20-year relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah "God damn America" Wright. Democrats will soon learn how damaging that relationship might be in a general election. They'll also see if Obama has the gumption to bounce back, work hard—not just arena rallies for college kids but roundtables for the grizzled and unemployed in American Legion halls—and change the minds that have turned against him. The main reason superdelegates have not yet rallied round Obama is that the party is collectively holding its breath, waiting to see how he performs in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Indiana.

He will probably do well enough to secure the nomination. But what if he tanks? What if he can't buy a white working-class vote? What if he loses all three states badly and continues to lose after that? I'd guess that the Democratic Party would still give him the nomination rather than turn to Clinton. But no one would be very happy—and a year that should have been an easy Democratic victory, given the state of the economy and the unpopularity of the incumbent, might slip away.

Which brings us back to Al Gore. Pish-tosh, you say, and you're probably right. But let's play a little. Let's say the elders of the Democratic Party decide, when the primaries end, that neither Obama nor Clinton is viable. Let's also assume—and this may be a real stretch—that such elders are strong and smart enough to act. All they'd have to do would be to convince a significant fraction of their superdelegate friends, maybe fewer than 100, to announce that they were taking a pass on the first ballot at the Denver convention, which would deny the 2,025 votes necessary to Obama or Clinton. What if they then approached Gore and asked him to be the nominee, for the good of the party—and suggested that he take Obama as his running mate? Of course, Obama would have to be a party to the deal and bring his 1,900 or so delegates along.

I played out that scenario with about a dozen prominent Democrats recently, from various sectors of the party, including both Obama and Clinton partisans. Most said it was extremely unlikely ... and a pretty interesting idea. A prominent fund raiser told me, "Gore-Obama is the ticket a lot of people wanted in the first place." A congressional Democrat told me, "This could be our way out of a mess." Others suggested Gore was painfully aware of his limitations as a candidate. "I don't know that he'd be interested, even if you handed it to him," said a Gore friend. Chances are, no one will hand it to him. The Democratic Party would have to be monumentally desperate come June. And yet ... is this scenario any more preposterous than the one that gave John McCain the Republican nomination? Yes, it's silly season. But this has been an exceptionally "silly" year.

It's Klein who's silly, along with all those Democratic Party insiders who say this is a good idea.

McCain won the nomination fair and square: He hung in and hustled, carrying his own bags at airports terminals in the run-up to New Hampshire. He campaigned harder than any of the other candidates in the race. He stuck to his principles on the issues, like Iraq, and the GOP voters - with the exception of many base conservatives angered at McCain's apostasies - saw him as the rightful heir to the GOP nomination crown.

But what about Al Gore? What's he done?

Well, he's a rock star on the left, of course, something of a messiah himself, at least on global warming.

But he's damaged goods, as any political analyst worth his salt will tell you. If this year's already looking like a reprise of 1968, wait until the Dems nominate Gore. He's the Hubert Humphrey of the 21st century. His nomination will divide the party's base between the left's global warming ayatollahs and the "movement" activists who see Obama as the savior of antiwar, genuine "progressive" politics.

Ultimately, a Gore nomination will show to the entire country that the Democratic primary process failed, that it resulted in a disenfranchised electorate - not only in Florida and Michigan - but around the nation, where primary and caucus goers poured the hearts out to choose the candidate of their choice.

Perhaps there'd be some pleasure in Gore securing a second chance, the opportunity to mount another run for the White House after his disastrous campaign in 2000, when he chose to run as a populist, abandoning perhaps the biggest advantage he had: The Clinton-Gore's record of considerable peace and prosperity.

No, Klein's not serious - he's silly, sure, but not serious.

The Democrats need to finish out the primary, and the superdelegates need to do the right thing, which, even with only a couple of more wins for Obama, will be to throw their weight behind the Illinois Senator. He's the "one" this year, for good or ill, Jeremiah Wright or Samantha Power, be what may.

Anything else will make the '68 Chicago riots look like a hayride.

See more analysis at Memeorandum.

Wright Controversy Damages Obama, An Update

This entry's a follow-up to my earlier post, "Wright Controversy Damages Obama, Polls Find."

Last weekend Hillary Clinton appeared to open up a gap in polling over Barack Obama, on the heels of the Wright sermon controversy.

Yet, the results of a new Wall Street Journal poll finds Clinton and Obama in a statistical dead heat:

The racially charged debate over Barack Obama's relationship with his longtime pastor hasn't much changed his close contest against Hillary Clinton, or hurt him against Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducts the Journal/NBC polls with Republican pollster Bill McInturff, called the latest poll a "myth-buster" that showed the pastor controversy is "not the beginning of the end for the Obama campaign."

But both Democrats, and especially New York's Sen. Clinton, are showing wounds from their prolonged and increasingly bitter nomination contest, which could weaken the ultimate nominee for the general-election showdown against Sen. McCain of Arizona. Even among women, who are the base of Sen. Clinton's support, she now is viewed negatively by more voters than positively for the first time in a Journal/NBC poll.

The latest survey has the Democratic rivals in a dead heat, each with 45% support from registered Democratic voters. That is a slight improvement for Sen. Obama, though a statistically insignificant one, from the last Journal/NBC poll, two weeks ago, which had Sen. Clinton leading among Democratic voters, 47% to 43%.

But hold on, here comes Michael Barone with an analysis of the week's polling trends, which indicate some deterioration for Obama:

Has Barack Obama been hurt by his association, now revealed to most American voters, with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? Has the pope been hurt by his association, among people who don't like Catholics, with the Roman Catholic Church? The numbers from Rasmussen Reports supply some answers—mostly in the direction of yes.

The key dates here are March 13, when ABC News ran its report of Wright's rantings, and March 18, when Obama made his speech in Philadelphia in which he condemned some of Wright's remarks but refused to renounce him. Keep in mind that Rasmussen's numbers represent those on, typically, the last three nights (or the last night) before the date of the release.

Check the whole thing.

Barone indicates that Obama's unfavorables have been inching up, a trend coinciding with John McCain's favorables ratcheting upwards. That analysis is combined with some general election matchups in which McCain beats Obama in the general election, giving the Arizona Senator an edge in key states important for an Electoral College victory.

Apparently, these trends have not gone unnoticed among Democratic Party big wigs, and while things are dynamic, similar trends have been reported by Gallup, for example, in its post today, "Democratic Groups Most at Risk of Deserting."

Update on the Basra Offensive

Jules Crittenden's got an incisive analysis of the direction of battle in the Mahdi offensive in Iraq, and the media spin on it:

NYT declares the offensive as stalled, but fails to provide anything to back that up. Sounds more like 30,000 troops are engaged in heavy fighting, and an ultimatum has been issued. NYT fears a repeat of the 2004 Najaf fight. Me too, though not for the same reason. NYT fears a fight that would make it difficult to send home U.S. troops and usher in a new period of violence. I fear a fight that ends prematurely, leaving the Mahdi Army intact and Sadr claiming a new victory.

See also, Gateway Pundit, "It's Just Another Day of the MSM Hanging Out With the Enemy."

GOP Will Appeal to Craven Prejudices, Essayist Alleges

I've already noted how lefty bloggers are smearing as racist conservatives who highlight the pathologies of black culture (see here, here, and here).

In addition to that, we've now got Paul Waldman, over at the American Prospect, alleging that the GOP's fully gearing up for a campaign of racial prejudice:

For months, I've been predicting that conservatives would delicately prompt voters to see Barack Obama through the lens of race. They'd drop hints, they'd make roundabout arguments, they'd find a hundred subtle ways to encourage people to vote their prejudices, while denying vociferously that they were doing anything of the sort.

It turns out I was wrong. Not about whether they'd try to exploit racial prejudice (that was about as easy to predict as the rising of the sun), but about how they would do it. After some hesitation and baby steps, the conservative campaign against Barack Obama has finally begun. And there's nothing subtle about it.

When the controversy over Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright reached critical mass last week, it was the political equivalent of the green flag at a NASCAR race. The conservative strategists and talkers had been slowly circling the track, feet itchy on the accelerator, just waiting for the signal to floor it. But now, as The Politico reported in a story titled "GOP sees Rev. Wright as path to victory," the Republican strategists know exactly what must be done, starting with famed ad man Alex Castellanos:

"All the sudden you've got two dots, and two dots make a line," said Castellanos. "You start getting some sense of who he is, and it's not the Obama you thought. He's not the Tiger Woods of politics."

As Castellanos knows well, these kinds of attacks have their greatest power when they tap into pre-existing archetypes voters already carry with them, and the deeper they reside in our lizard brains the better. So they will make sure white Americans know that Obama is not Tiger Woods. He's not the unthreatening black man, he's the scary black man. He's Al Sharpton, he's Malcom X, he's Huey Newton. He'll throw grievance in your face, make you feel guilty, and who knows, maybe kill you and rape your wife. Castellanos knows what he's talking about -- when it comes to painting frightening pictures for the voters, he's the Rembrandt of racial resentment. Among other accomplishments, Castellanos was responsible for a series of ugly ads on behalf of Jesse Helms' 1990 Senate re-election race against Harvey Gantt, probably the most explicitly race-baiting campaign American politics has seen since the retirement of George Wallace. The story continues:

"It's harder for people to say it's taken out of context because these are Wright's own words," noted Chris LaCivita, the Republican strategist who helped craft the Swift Boat commercials against Kerry that employed the use of their target's own language when he returned from Vietnam and returned his medals. "You let people draw their own conclusions."

"You don't have to say that he's unpatriotic; you don't question his patriotism," he added. "Because I guaran-damn-tee you that, with that footage, you don't have to say it."

The Republicans are certainly setting down their marker: they intend, as they have so many times before, to wage a campaign appealing to the ugliest prejudices, the most craven fears, the most vile hatreds. It's not that people should vote against Obama just because he's black, they're saying, but you know, he's that kind of black. As Rush Limbaugh said on Friday, "It is clear that Senator Obama has disowned his white half, that he's decided he's got to go all in on the black side." Ladies and gentlemen, your "moral values" party.

Not saying it, as LaCivita noted -- whether "it" is that Obama hates America, or that he's just too black to be trusted -- is actually crucial to making the argument effectively. As Princeton political scientist Tali Mendelberg argued in her 2001 book The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality, appeals to racism only work when they are implicit:

When a society has repudiated racism, yet racial conflict persists, candidates can win by playing the race card only through implicit racial appeals. The implicit nature of these appeals allows them to prime racial stereotypes, fears, and resentments while appearing not to do so. When an implicit appeal is rendered explicit -- when other elites bring the racial meaning of the appeal to voters' attention -- it appears to violate the norm of racial equality. It then loses its ability to prime white voters' racial predispositions.

In other words, voters presented with racial appeals have two competing forces tugging them in opposite directions: the feelings they carry with them on at least a subconscious level, and their more conscious belief in equality and desire to not think of themselves as racist. In order to convince them to vote their racial fears and animosities, you have to give them a story they can tell themselves that acquits them of any accusation of racism.

By that logic, someone who focuses on the nihilist propensity for criminal behavior among large numbers of urban underclass blacks will be automatically identified as racist.

That's not to mention all of the other pathologies holding down blacks, today, like the crisis of illegitimacy that's destroying the black American family, nor the culture of witness intimidation in the inner cities that's hindering the ability of law enforcement to prosecute black thugs (see, "Witness Intimidation: An Urban Crisis").

But hey, we can't mention these things in the campaign. We wouldn't want to appeal to craven race prejudices.

Happy Blog Anniversary to Great Satan's Girlfriend!

GrEaT sAtAn'S gIrLfRiEnD's having a one-year birthday bash, so head on over to check out some of her posts!

Here's the anniversary post, but also check out some choice GSGF analysis on American power:

It is inconceivable that the United States, after having conquered Afghanistan and Iraq and driven al Qaeda into hiding, will give up with the job half done.

In Afghanistan we must establish order.

In Iraq we must prevent the Shiites from setting up an Iranian-style tyranny, the Sunnis from reimposing a dictatorship, and both from oppressing the Kurds.

Beyond Iraq, we must track down and kill terrorists wherever they exist. We must keep Iran from building an atomic bomb. We must force North Korea to give up its nuclear program. We must stop these and any other rogue states from selling weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

These are black-and-white issues for the vast majority of Americans, notwithstanding complaints from the far left. Just as America has gotten it right throughout our history, our government is getting it right today.

The leftist critics have got it wrong—because what they are hoping for, peace without a price, will never come to pass on this earth.

Yeah GSGF!! You go girl!

So come on readers, head on over to GrEaT sAtAn'S gIrLfRiEnD and wish her a Happy Anniversary!

Photo Credit: New York Times

The Culture of Black Out of Wedlock Births

Via Memorandum, check out the Weekly Standard's discussion of the culture of illegitimate birth in the black community:

SAY THIS FOR Barack Obama's big speech: It is still being analyzed this week, and it will be analyzed more in the weeks and months ahead. Senator Obama went beyond the controversy over his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and delivered a sweeping address on the recent history of U.S. race relations. But he gave short shrift to an issue that is inseparable from racial inequality: the issue of out-of-wedlock births.

"So many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow," Obama said. He did acknowledge that welfare policies "may" have hurt black families. But he affirmed with certainty that "a lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families."

That's true. But it's also true that African-American families were much more intact in the decades before the Civil Rights Act than they were in the decades after it. In 1963, according to the famous Department of Labor report issued by Daniel Patrick Moynihan two years later, the out-of-wedlock birth rate among blacks was 23.6 percent while the rate among whites was only 3.07 percent. By 2005, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the out-of-wedlock birth rate among non-Hispanic whites had jumped to 25.3 percent and the rate among non-Hispanic blacks stood at nearly 70 percent.

In other words, the black out-of-wedlock birth rate was lower in 1963--on the eve of the Civil Rights Act, when Jim Crow policies were still an ugly reality in the American South and white racism was far more widespread than it is today--than the non-Hispanic white rate was in 2005. While Moynihan was right to raise the alarm, the numbers show that African-American families proved remarkably durable through decades of repression and racism following Reconstruction. The most severe "erosion of black families" in the 20th century occurred in the years after the civil rights movement reached its apotheosis, when black economic opportunities were expanding rapidly. What explains that?

Broadly speaking, American society underwent a cultural revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Since then, out-of-wedlock birth rates among both blacks and whites have shot upward. But blacks were starting from a much higher base, and the spike among blacks was more precipitous than the spike among whites. As Heritage Foundation scholar Robert Rector has noted, the black out-of-wedlock birth rate ballooned from less than 25 percent in the early 1960s to 49 percent in 1975 and to 70 percent in 1995. The white rate increased from less than 5 percent in the early 1960s to 25 percent in 2005.

The connection between family breakdown and child poverty is well established. In a 1991 American Sociological Review article, David J. Eggebeen and Daniel T. Lichter estimated that if black family composition had remained constant from 1960 to 1988, the black child poverty rate in 1988 would have been 28.4 percent instead of 45.6 percent. If black family composition had remained constant from 1980 to 1988, Eggebeen and Lichter said, the black child poverty rate in 1988 would have been 40 percent instead of 45.6 percent.

"This implies that changing black family structure in the 1980s accounted for roughly 65 percent of the increase in official poverty among black children," they noted. "Black family shifts in the 1980s also accounted for 51 percent of the increase in deep poverty, and about 90 percent of the growth in relative child poverty." Family breakdown also had an intensifying effect on the child poverty rates of whites, but it "had a much greater effect on the child poverty rates of blacks."

In 1960, according to the Eggebeen-Lichter analysis, racial disparities in child poverty "had very little to do with racial differences in family structure." Yet by 1988, this was no longer true. "Racial differences in child poverty cannot be explained by racial differences in family structure alone," they wrote. "At the same time, the changing family structure among black and white children has clearly exacerbated long-standing racial differences in child poverty. Indeed, in the absence of widening racial differences in family structure, the 1960-1988 period would have brought substantial convergence in racial differences in official, deep, and relative child poverty."

More recently, a 2002 study by Rector and two of his Heritage colleagues concluded that "if marriage were restored to 1960 levels," the black child poverty rate "would fall by nearly a third." A separate 2002 study by Urban Institute economist Robert Lerman, which relied on data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, found that "married couple households were much more likely to avoid poverty than all other types of households," and that "the apparent gains from marriage are particularly high among black households."

Due to America's racial history, blacks were uniquely vulnerable to the debilitating cultural trends of the post-1960s era and to the perverse incentives created by the federal welfare system. And indeed, today it is culture--not racism or a dearth of economic opportunities--that poses the biggest threat to black family structures, and thus to black progress. Any serious discussion of race must address that reality.

This is exactly what I've been saying!

Thank you Weekly Standard!

See my posts on race and culture, for example, "The Culture of Black Funeral Parlor Violence," and " Race Still Matters, Obviously: Or, Talking About Black Bitches and Whores."

Youth Cohort Creates Viral Explosion in Online News

The New York Times reports that young Americans have creating a viral explosion of online news:

Senator Barack Obama’s videotaped response to President Bush’s final State of the Union address — almost five minutes of Mr. Obama’s talking directly to the camera — elicited little attention from newspaper and television reporters in January.

But on the medium it was made for, the Internet, the video caught fire. Quickly after it was posted on YouTube, it appeared on the video-sharing site’s most popular list and Google’s most blogged list. It has been viewed more than 1.3 million times, been linked by more than 500 blogs and distributed widely on social networking sites like Facebook.

It is not news that young politically minded viewers are turning to alternative sources like YouTube, Facebook and late-night comedy shows like “The Daily Show.” But that is only the beginning of how they process information.

According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well — sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter — reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com — with a social one.

“There are lots of times where I’ll read an interesting story online and send the U.R.L. to 10 friends,” said Lauren Wolfe, 25, the president of College Democrats of America. “I’d rather read an e-mail from a friend with an attached story than search through a newspaper to find the story.”

In one sense, this social filter is simply a technological version of the oldest tool in politics: word of mouth. Jane Buckingham, the founder of the Intelligence Group, a market research company, said the “social media generation” was comfortable being in constant communication with others, so recommendations from friends or text messages from a campaign — information that is shared, but not sought — were perceived as natural.

Ms. Buckingham recalled conducting a focus group where one of her subjects, a college student, said, “If the news is that important, it will find me.”

A December survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press looked broadly at how media were being consumed this campaign. In the most striking finding, half of respondents over the age of 50 and 39 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds reported watching local television news regularly for campaign news, while only 25 percent of people under 30 said they did.

Fully two-thirds of Web users under 30 say they use social networking sites, while fewer than 20 percent of older users do. MySpace and Facebook create a sense of connection to the candidates. Between the two sites, Mr. Obama has about one million “friends,” Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his rival for the Democratic nomination, has roughly 330,000, and Senator John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, has more than 140,000. Four out of 10 young people have watched candidate speeches, interviews, commercials or debates online, according to Pew, substantially more than people 30 and older.

Young people also identify online discussions with friends and videos as important sources of election information. The habits suggest that younger readers find themselves going straight to the source, bypassing the context and analysis that seasoned journalists provide.

In the days after Mr. Obama’s speech on race last week, for example, links to the transcript and the video were the most popular items posted on Facebook. On The New York Times’s Web site, the transcript of the speech ranked consistently higher on the most e-mailed list than the articles written about the speech.

The way consumers filter their news is being highlighted now that a generation of Americans is coming of age in the midst of a campaign that has generated intense interest and voter involvement. Exit polls in 22 states estimate that more than three million voters under the age of 30 participated in Democratic primaries this year, up from about one million four years ago.

In three of the most populous states — California, Texas and Ohio — the share of voters under 30 who turned out for Democratic primaries increased to 16 percent, up from less than 10 percent in 2004, according to exit polls by Edison/Mitofsky. In the Republican primaries, the increases in most states have been less striking but still visible.

“Young people are particularly galvanized in this campaign, and they have a new set of tools that make it look different from the enthusiasm that greeted other politicians 30 years ago,” said Lee Rainie, director for the Pew Internet and American Life Project. “They read a news story and then blog about it, or they see a YouTube video and then link to it, or they go to a campaign Web site, download some phone numbers, and make calls on behalf of a candidate.”

This is great news.

I'd be interested to see some of this data on the youth viral explosion broken down into demographic indices, for example, socioeconomic status.

I teach young people, and I assign active particiption in news consumption as part of class assignments, but there's the old digital divide thing (an economic gap in online access and efficacy), and it does seem to be having an effect in depressing the power of the new media in terms of economic class standing.

These are just ruminations, totally unscientific. But of course, there's some evidence for them.

No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama

I've been having a debate with Repsac 3, a far-left partisan who blogs over at Wingnuts & Moonbats, over the degree of radical support for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Sure, I no doubt throw out terms like nihilist and Stalinist quite frequently, perhaps imprecisely. But one point I suggest has been that folks like this - however defined - are prominent members of the Obama coalition. In response, Repsac 3 claims that there's no evidence that hardline activists of this sort back Obama (for the debate thread see, "Where's the Revolution? Wait Until November").

I generally know what I'm talking about, so radical support for Obama's presidential bid's really just a matter of common sense to me. But Repsac's one to demand concrete evidence for claims (as are others, no doubt), and that's fine, so in that spirit I'll be documenting the degree of hardline radical support for the Obama campaign in my writing, beginning with this post.

First, let me be specific in what I'm referring to when I say "hardline left-wing radicals." A good definition is found in Leon Baradat's Political Ideologies, where he notes:

...a radical may defined as a person who is extremely dissastified with the society as it is and therefore is impatient with less than extreme proposals for changing it. Hence, all radicals favor an immediate and fundamental change in the society. In other words, all radicals favor revolutionary change.

Baradat also notes that the criteria to distinuish one type of radical from another is by examining the methods they advocate to bring about transformation.

Also, a good brief definition is also available from Wikipedia:

The Radical Left, an umbrella term to describe those who adhere explicitly and openly to revolutionary socialism, communism or anarchism — the "radical" qualifier tends in this case to denote a revolutionary fervor, and is a subset of, but should not be confused with, the far left.

Note Wikipedia's reference to the "far left," which is a term used more commonly with reference to political competition in European parliamentary democracies (with the extreme left being represented by neo-Stalinism), but is still valid in U.S. political discourse when discussing extreme left-wing partisans.

Now, it's frankly not common in mainstream media commentary to note how substantial is radical left influence on today's Democratic Party. Yet there's considerable evidence that after the Clinton years of DLC centrism, a far-left wing version of Democratic Party liberalism has definitely made a comeback (a good case can be made that Ned Lamont's defeat of Senator Joseph Lieberman in the 2006 Connecticut Senate primary was based in the radical politics of the online netroots faction).

It's hard to deny the degree of essentially radical mobilization taking place today in American electoral politics, especially in the netroots, which I contend is replacing more traditional street mobilization as the main channel for fundamental change.

In any case, Tom Hayden, a prominent social and political activist and politician, who's still known for radical advocacy, has issued a major statement of far-left political support for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, "Progressives for Obama":

This call has been drafted for immediate circulation, discussion, and action.

All American progressives should unite for Barack Obama. We descend from the proud tradition of independent social movements that have made America a more just and democratic country. We believe that the movement today supporting Barack Obama continues this great tradition of grass-roots participation drawing millions of people out of apathy and into participation in the decisions that affect all our lives. We believe that Barack Obama's very biography reflects the positive potential of the globalization process that also contains such grave threats to our democracy when shaped only by the narrow interests of private corporations in an unregulated global marketplace. We should instead be globalizing the values of equality, a living wage and environmental sustainability in the new world order, not hoping our deepest concerns will be protected by trickle down economics or charitable billionaires. By its very existence, the Obama campaign will stimulate a vision of globalization from below.

As progressives we believe this sudden and unexpected new movement is just what America needs. The future has arrived. The alternative would mean a return to the dismal status quo party politics that have failed so far to deliver peace, health care, full employment and effective answers to crises like global warming.

During past progressive peaks in our political history - the late Thirties, the early Sixties - social movements have provided the relentless pressure and innovative ideas that allowed centrist leaders to embrace visionary solutions. We find ourselves in just such a situation today.

We intend to join and engage with our brothers and sisters in the vast rainbow of social movements to come together in support of Obama's unprecedented campaign and candidacy. Even though it is candidate-centered, there is no doubt that the campaign is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined.

Now some might argue that Hayden's mellowed from his prominent 1960-era radicalism - for example, when he was a member of the Chicago Seven - and, well, he may have to some degree.

But he maintains today, on his personal website, the full-text version of "The Port Huron Statement," which is widely considered the most important political document of new left revolutionary socialism of the 1960s era, and Hayden was the statement's primary author.

The document's worth a good read, especially for people wondering what the progressive movement would do today, should they gain power (the term "progressive" has been appropriated by far-left activists in order to make their radical policies appear more mainstream, and hence politically acceptable).

But note this passage, near the conclusion of The Port Huron Statement outlining an agenda for dramatic social transformation:

A new left must transform modern complexity into issues that can be understood and felt close-up by every human being. It must give form to the feelings of helplessness and indifference, so that people may see the political, social and economic sources of their private troubles and organize to change society. In a time of supposed prosperity, moral complacency and political manipulation, a new left cannot rely on only aching stomachs to be the engine force of social reform. The case for change, for alternatives that will involve uncomfortable personal efforts, must be argued as never before. The university is a relevant place for all of these activities.

We see striking similarities when comparing Hayden's positions in his current essay, "Progressives for Obama," to those in "The Port Huron Statement."

Of course, Hayden's not a spokesman for any major political advocacy group or political party, but his essay is going out as a general call to action among all left-wing progressive forces. Indeed, the language of his essay seeks complete mobilization, which we can infer as including the various left-wing factions that would normally be considered under the notion of the "radical left" as identified by Baradat.

So, whereas while some progressives would abjure revolutionary violence (and I assume Hayden's does), some would not. Indeed, some of the most prominent antiwar progressive organizations today, like World Can't Wait, are indeed revolutionary hard-left organzations, implacably committed to "driving out the Bush regime."

The World Can't Wait list of endorsers includes everyone from prominent left-wing actors like Susan Sarandon and Marin Sheen to neo-Stalinist organizations such as International ANSWER (a review of the listing gives some credence to the notion of "no enemies on the left").

So, while the exact degree and nature of Obama's support among the various hardline organizations is uncertain, we know without a doubt, from Hayden's essay, that many on the contemporary left see the Obama campaign as the electoral vehicle to operationalize their program for radical, revolutionary change.

I'll have more on this in upcoming posts.

**********

Also see the follow-up entries in the "No Enemies on the Left" series," starting with the most recent:

* "Left-Wing Establishment Cheers Wright's "Brilliance."

* "Responsible Plan? Antiwar Groups Endorse Unconditional Iraq Surrender."

* "Ecoterrorism and the Democrats: More on the Radical Left."

* "Democrats Hijacked by Hard-Left Base, Lieberman Says."

* "Muslim Students Association Seeks U.S. Destruction."

* "Imagine, Obama a Liberal: It's Easy If You Try."

* "Barack Obama's Antiwar Coalition."

* "What's a Radical?"

* "Palestinians See Obama as Close Ally."

* "Anti-McCain Mobilization Rooted in Hardline Anti-Iraq Constituencies."

* "Obama's Circle of Friends: The America-Hating Left."

* "Code Pink Bundling Contributions for Obama."

The Culture of Black Funeral Parlor Violence

I've written recently on race and culture, topics arising presently out of Barack Obama's Wright controversy (see here and here).

My basic point has been, obviously, race still matters quite a bit in American politics, and despite Obama's strenuous efforts to rise of above it, he's being ineluctably pulled back into the mire of racial identity.

A key point I've raised is that many of the problems of contemporary black America are rooted in an oppositional, anti-intellectual, and anti-achievement culture. This point is well discussed in Academic literature and conservative commentary, but for addressing this I've naturally been labeled racist by left-wing grievance-mongering bloggers (here and here).

Thus I read with great interest today's Wall Street Journal story on black-on-black funeral parlor violence, "Violence Roils Black Funeral Parlors":

Across the country, black morticians are changing the way they operate. The reason: a spike in African-American murders -- and the violence that sometimes follows victims to the grave. In an echo of more volatile parts of the world, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, African-American morticians report seeing an increase in violent behavior, and occasional killings, at funerals.

The violation of the once-sacrosanct funeral is one byproduct of a little-noticed upswing in the murder rate of African-Americans. The number of blacks killed in America, mostly by other blacks, has been edging up at a time when the rate for other groups has been flat or falling.

As a result, the black murder-victim toll exceeds that of the far larger white population....
African-Americans, who make up 13% of the population, have long had a higher homicide rate than other groups. And the total number of black murders is still significantly lower than in the early 1990s, when the U.S. was hit by a wave of drug-related killings. At that time, though, "funeral homes used to be the most respected places you could walk into beside the church," says Jeff Gardner, a co-owner of A.D. Porter & Sons in Louisville, Ky., and a third-generation undertaker. "Nobody respects life and the young folks nowadays don't mind dying."

What worries law enforcement, criminologists and sociologists is that there's no unifying theme to explain today's increase. Some killings are drug related. Researchers trace others to a glut of ex-felons re-entering society. Others correlate the rise in murders to the lack of a proper education.

As one can see, it's a complicated multi-causal phenomon, but I particularly find the anti-intellectual strain - acting like "whitey" - as an important variable for discussion. This passage from the article, on Carl Swann Jr.'s experience, is particularly revealing:

Mr. Swann, of Cincinnati, says his family has been burying the dead since the early 1900s. "I caught the school bus in front of the funeral home and I got off the bus in front of the funeral home," he says. Now, at age 37, he's thinking of getting out of the business.

One particularly harrowing experience was the funeral of Raeshaun Hand Jr. The ex-convict had continued to deal drugs after being released from prison, according to police, and was wanted at the time of his murder. Mr. Hand, 27, was found shot inside his car in February 2005.

Mr. Hand's father tried to keep the service private, but word got out. The father stood guard at the church door, trying to limit access. Some mourners made it in, drinking and smoking in the church bathroom, Mr. Swann says. Later as he prepared to close the casket, a large group rushed inside, pinning the undertaker.

"One dude punched me in front of the casket. The dead man's son was there and he got punched and his father was punched. My professionalism went out the window," Mr. Swann says. "I started fighting back, throwing punches. This wasn't in the job description and it doesn't come with the job."

Drinking and smoking in the church bathroom? Pinning the undertaker to the wall because it was time to close the casket, as part of the memorial service?

No wonder he wants to quit the business.

The article reveals the situation among many blacks where there's little attention to the normal civilities and courtesies of a polite society.

Such norms are traditionally transmitted in the home, and today, as was true when the issue burst on the scene as a major social problem in the 19060s, the divergence from traditional cultural norms in the American urban black family presents one of the greatest impediments to realizing the tremendous opportunies of the post-civil rights era.

Again, this is a difficult topic to discuss, and to just raise such issues opens one up to the most rank denunciations and repudiations - one will be "unfairly pilloried," to use Bill Kristol's term.

But the discussion's worth having, nevertheless (although the Journal's piece is not currently getting play on Memeorandum).

Iraq War Protests: From Ugly Remarks to Violence

Skye over at Midnight Blue's one of our many great pro-victory counter-demonstrators who are unflinching in their support for our nation and troops under arms.

Skye was active in counter-demonstrations last week marking the 5th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. Antiwar protesters apparently went well beyond non-violent resistance: Here's how Skye relates events:

A beautiful day for a rally that turned ugly when a peace protester crossed the line from ugly remarks to violence....

Snarky retorts, name calling and mis-characterizations ... are commonplace events in my 7 month documentary of this rally. Yesterday crossed the line, when I was struck twice by a peace protester. I can deal with all the above, but will NOT tolerate any form of violence against my person. I am consulting legal advice on this matter.

Remember, these are "peace" activists.

Photo Credit: New York Times:

Protesters gathered in rallies across the country Wednesday to mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Demonstrators converged in front of the White House, left, wearing placards bearing the names of troops and civilians who died in the war.

See also Sniper's blog, where he's got all kinds of information on how to counter the nihilism and violence of the antiwar movement.

McCain On the Use of Force

USA Today's got a big piece on John McCain's disposition on the use of force, "McCain: Life Shaped Judgment on Use of Force."

Check the whole thing, but here's an excerpt from the graph of McCain's military decision-making in Congress:

Republican John McCain says his experience in national security and foreign policy makes him the best candidate for president. That experience includes his education at the U.S. Naval Academy, his work as a Navy pilot in combat during the Vietnam War and his entire military career, and service on key committees in Congress. Since entering Congress in 1983, McCain has been confronted with several decisions of when to use military force.

The trend over McCain's career in Congress has been his tendency to move from a position of realist restraint, carefully assessing the costs and benefits of military action in terms of rational national interest maximization, to more of a foreign policy exceptionalism, seeing moral clarity in America's international challenges.

In this shift McCain appears to be more open to the robust exertion of American military power to achieve national security objectives.

This is especially true after September 11, 2001.

McCain's expected to give a major foreign policy address today in Los Angeles.

Fighting Erupts in Basra

McClatchy's headline on the outbreak of violence in Basra suggests the collapse of the surge: "Battles Wrack Basra, Threatening Success of U.S. Surge."

Here's the lede:

With Iraq's top leaders directing the battle, Iraq's army and national police pressed a major operation Tuesday to wrest control of the southern port city of Basra from the Shiite Mahdi Army militia. Fighting between government forces and the militia quickly spread through Iraq's south and into Baghdad.

Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and his defense and interior ministers took charge of the 15,000 Iraqi army troops and police units, which were deployed for what aides said was to be a three-day operation against militias in the city.

The battle at the oil-rich port began before dawn Tuesday and lasted into the early evening before subsiding slightly as the Mahdi Army, headed by firebrand cleric Muqtada al Sadr, defended positions in several neighborhoods. In the dead of night, residents reported artillery shelling, mortar rounds and guns being fired outside their homes.

In the al Timimiyah neighborhood, government forces surrounded a Mahdi Army stronghold and the home of the Rwaymi family, who residents said are well-known oil smugglers and supporters of the militia.

There's no mention of a threat to the long-term success of the surge strategy, which is not surprising, given McClathy's style of tabloid reporting.

Here's how the New York Times describes the turn of events:

Even before the crackdown on militias began on Tuesday, Pentagon statistics on the frequency of militia and insurgent attacks suggested that after major security gains last fall, the conflict had drifted into something of a stalemate. Over all, violence has remained fairly steady over the past several months, but the streets have become tense and much more dangerous again after a period of calm.

It is not clear how responsible the restive Mahdi militia commanders are for stalling progress in the effort to reduce violence. In recent weeks, commanders have protested continuing American and Iraqi raids and detentions of militia members.

If the cease-fire were to unravel, there is little doubt about the mayhem that could be stirred up by Mr. Sadr, who forced the United States military to mount two bloody offensives against his fighters in 2004 as much of the country exploded in violence.

What's explains Mahdi's return to violence? Here's Captain Ed:

The Iraqi Army has moved to establish central-government control of the southern city of Basra after the British pullout ignited a turf war between the Badr Brigades and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. The Mahdis have resisted with force despite orders from Sadr to stand down....

Sadr’s organization already has issued a statement asking for a negotiated peace. They know that they cannot defeat the Iraqi Army, even if Sadr decided to fight all out in Basra. The Mahdis have never really represented a military threat to either the US or trained Iraqi forces; their only victories came against green IA units in the first days of their reconstitution, four years ago. The Mahdis are nothing but a gang with military pretensions, and Sadr knows that better than anyone else.

The Sadrists want to blame this clash on the Iraqi central government, but Nouri al-Maliki had little choice. The Mahdis and the Badr Brigades have been fighting a gang war for control of southern Iraq, and the central government had to put an end to it to demonstrate that their writ runs in all of Iraq. Sadr should have gotten a clue when Maliki quarterbacked a political deal between the central government, the Kurds, and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council that runs the Badr Brigade last summer. The writing was on the wall, but Sadr apparently didn’t bother to read it.

See also, the Los Angeles Times, "Iraqi Leader Issues Ultimatum as Clashes Continue in Basra."