Allegations of McCain Plagiarism Reveal Left-Wing Hackery

As I noted earlier, this week Think Progress accused John McCain of plagiarizing his foreign policy speech Wednesday from Los Angeles (the FOX story on the allegations is here).

Think Progress' unrestrained excitement made the blog look foolish, and I see this as a perfect case of the slimy attack politics of the left-wing blogosphere, so I was pleased to see Dean Barnett's story on the affair at the Weekly Standard:

LAST THURSDAY, A controversy erupted in the blogosphere. Like most controversies that start in the blogosphere and die there as opposed to gaining a second and more meaningful life in the mainstream media, the entire affair was a tempest in a virtual teapot. But this incident was a particularly pregnant one, as it revealed the difficulties the left will have in developing a coherent attack against John McCain. It also highlighted Barack Obama's most significant weakness in a match against Senator McCain.

In a campaign address to the Los Angeles World Council, McCain made a point of stressing his hatred for war:

I detest war. It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. The lives of a nation's finest patriots are sacrificed.

Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged; strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. Not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. Whatever gains are secured, it is loss the veteran remembers most keenly.

The statement is eloquent and powerful, but given the speaker, unremarkable. There are few people in America who can speak so personally to their dislike for war than a fellow who spent a half decade in the Hanoi Hilton. If there's anyone in this presidential race who has cause for hating war, it's obviously John McCain. Compared to McCain's personal experience, Barack Obama's exposure to war is a mere intellectual construct. Even Hillary Clinton, the Lioness of Tuzla, can't compete with McCain in this area.

For reasons that still mystify, men of the left decided that McCain's denunciation of war represented a soft spot. The bumbling gumshoes at the lefty website Think Progress got busy investigating McCain's speech and discovered that Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer had given a speech featuring remarkably similar language in 1996. "Plagiarism!" the left wing blogosphere cried, nearly in unison.

The American Prospect's Ezra Klein seemed the most excited by the "scandal," apparently thinking that with proper massaging, it could devastate McCain:

Some of you will remember that Joe Biden's 1988 bid for the presidency was felled when he plagiarized a major speech from British politician Neil Kinnock. Now, via Think Progress, McCain looks to be risking a similar fate. Turns out quite a bit of his foreign policy speech yesterday was stolen, without credit, from a speech Admiral Timothy Ziemer gave in 1996.

What's particularly telling is where the lifting happened--in the section where McCain explained his deep hatred of war. Turned out it wasn't quote his after all. If that section of the speech, which seemed so very personal, but was in fact anything but, than what can we really take away from the address? The point of the speech was that McCain's core beliefs militate powerfully against war. But that's not true for his policies, and we now learn, those aren't strictly his core beliefs. This seems like a big deal to me.

Without leaving you in any further suspense as to how the brouhaha ended, suffice to say McCain's critics beclowned themselves in the extreme. Turns out Admiral Ziemer's 1996 speech borrowed from a speech that McCain gave in 1995. The fact that the McCain campaign had posted the 1995 speech on its website should compound his critics' embarrassment. The additional fact that no one at Think Progress contacted the McCain campaign or even checked the Senator's website before charging "Plagiarism!" will likely cause professional writers to think twice before citing a Think Progress report in the future.

But the left's sloppy hackery here really isn't the point. Let's say for the sake of argument that John McCain did make a speech in which he borrowed a phrase or two to most clearly express his disdain for war. In Ezra Klein's analysis, that happenstance would beg the inference that McCain is a warmonger who does not truly dislike war.

If the Democrats and their house intellectuals decide to fight a campaign battle on this front, I imagine they'll delight the McCain campaign. John McCain doesn't have to rely on words to convey his disdain for war. His personal history speaks quite eloquently in that regard. For most reasonable people, that personal history will end any debate over whether John McCain is fond of war. If Obama supporters want to spend time trying to convince voters that a man who spent five and a half years as a POW getting tortured and maimed now bears a fondness for war, the McCain campaign will likely happily wish them luck as they tackle such a futile endeavor.

SO WHY DID CERTAIN Obama supporters make such a big deal about McCain's alleged "plagiarism?" After all, these are intelligent and savvy people most of the time. And yet they wanted to deliberately steer the conversation to McCain's valorous background. The answer is to be found in the kind of campaign Barack Obama is running and indeed must run.

In terms of personal accomplishments and service to country, Obama's cupboard is virtually bare next to McCain's. The same goes with political actions. You don't have to parse a John McCain speech to figure out where he stands. Heck, you don't even have to listen to McCain's speeches to know where he stands. From campaign finance to immigration to the Bush tax cuts to the Iraq War, McCain has been a man of action rather than words. Such men develop records and reputations. They become known quantities.

On the other end of the spectrum stands Barack Obama. Obama lacks a biography that tells you where he stands. He also has taken no defining or even noteworthy political action in his short time in public life.

And that's where the speeches come in. Obama's campaign is one purely of words. Verbiage matters for the Obama campaign, more than it has for any presidential campaign in memory. Verbiage matters for Obama in a way it couldn't possibly matter for McCain. The only way Obama can tell the country of his plans and of his basic nature is through speeches and other campaign set pieces. When Obama said "words matter" to rebut one of Hillary Clinton's attacks, he had it right. For his campaign, nothing matters more.

It's therefore understandable that Obama partisans would prefer the presidential race to hinge on the candidates' words and even on their words' provenance. That's Obama's home court. Obama is a remarkable speaker, and a gifted writer. McCain is neither.

But McCain is a man of action, one who has a 40 year history of being a man of action. And even in politics, actions speak louder than words.

See also my earlier post, "Blogging Foreign Policy: Bereft of Credentials, Left Strains to Shift Debate," where I take down the antiwar blog commentariat, and especially Cernig, who also engages in his own regular rounds of hackery.

Basra Offensive Issues Major Losses to Mahdi Army

The al Mahdi violence in Iraq has given the antiwar left a new breath of life for their endless recriminations against the Bush administration and the war.

Reading prominent posts by war opponents sees a cheerleading push among those rooting for the other side (Cernig and Juan Cole are two perfect examples).

Yet after five days of conflict, events are showing al Maliki's central government to be gaining on the renegade Shiite faction, as Bill Roggio reports:

With the fifth day of fighting in Baghdad, Basrah and the South completed, the Mahdi Army has suffered major losses over the past 36 hours. The Mahdi Army has not faired well over the past five days of fighting, losing an estimated two percent of its combat power, using the best case estimate for the size of the militia....

The major political parties in the ruling Coalition remain united in supporting the offensive against the Mahdi Army and the Iranian-backed Special Groups cells. President Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barazani, the president of the Kurdish Regional Government reiterated their support for the operation on Friday, while Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki ratcheted up the rhetoric against the Shia terror groups.

Maliki called the Shia terrorists "worse than al Qaeda" and vowed to remain in Basrah until the operation is completed. "Our determination is strong ... those who break the law are punished, and those who draw their weapons in the face of the state are punished," Maliki said on Iraqi state television.

Further, the news this morning indicates that al Sadr is issuing a stand-down order to his forces:

Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Sunday ordered his fighters off the streets nationwide and called on the government to stop raids against his followers and free them from prison.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a statement calling the order “a step in the right direction” towards resolving six days of violence sparked by operations against al-Sadr's backers in the oil-rich southern city of Basra.

Al-Sadr’s nine-point statement was issued by his headquarters in the holy city of Najaf and broadcast through loudspeakers at Shiite mosques.

Noting the contrasting interpretations of the direction of conflict, Captain Ed asks, "Remind Me Again — Who’s Losing in Basra?"

See also my earlier entry, "Contrast in Iraq: How Do We Demonstrate Progress?"

Hat tip: Memeorandum.

Photo Credit: USA Today

Stop-Loss Policy: No Secret to Enlistees

I'm seeing more reviews coming out on "Stop-Loss," the new Iraq war film by Kimberly Peirce (the New York Times' review is here).

I've thought about the film a great deal. For one thing, the movie's considered a work apart from other recent cinematic efforts on Iraq. It's well-acted and heartfelt, and raises questions people should be thinking about, issues that turn around and rebut the antiwar message of the film.

Specifically, we have an all-volunteer military. We do not have a draft, and the Pentagon's "stop-loss" policy is not a "backdoor draft," in contrast the major premise of the movie.

I raised these points my initial review, "Stop-Loss": The Thinking Man's Antiwar Movie?" For example:

...there's some power in this movie, which is worth seeing and evaluating. In addition to the gritty realism of the battles scenes, the movie's well-acted, particulary as seen in Phillippe's Staff Sgt. King. In Phillippe's hands, King comes off as a vigorous all-America fighter, in Iraq and on the streets back home, where his realizes his personal beliefs have been betrayed.I disagree with those beliefs, which is that the Pentagon's stop-loss policy is tantamount to a "backdoor draft," and that's the major problem with this movie (and where I can understand LGF's dismissal of the film).

We have an all-volunteer service, so when young Americans sign up to fight they go on the basis of choice and volition. Contractually, soldiers can be recalled to battle, and to be shocked, as Phillippe's King is when told he's returning to Iraq, is disingenuous, if not outright storytelling fraud.

Sure, families have been hit hard by the separations, the battle injuries, and the war dead. But the the consequences of joining the service are known in advance. Soldiers are not victims, no matter how hard the anitwar left tries to make us believe.

Plus, the film's gripping opening scene of battle provides a realistic portrait of the constraints on American fighters, who chase insurgents in urban environs peopled by civilians - old men, women, and children - who are then used murderously as human shields by the Iraqi terrorist fighters. No wonder many Americans have trouble adapting upon return home. Even the hardest warrior wants to battle legitimate enemy combatants, not civilians pawns who're sacrificed by Iraqi militias to keep the insurgency alive.

One of concern I had is with new Army recruitees' knowledge of the stop-loss policy. A major flaw in the movie's in how Ryan Phillippe's Staff Sgt. Brandon King makes it seem as if he didn't know he could be sent back to Iraq. Frankly, this premise is totally untenable. It's an attempt by the director to make the soldiers look like victims, when they are not.

But check out Urban Grounds' clarification of this question:

My little brother and I enlisted in the US Army together in August of 1990. The recruiter who signed us up went over our contract with us very thoroughly.

As the United States had just declared war on Iraq, he also explained the portion of our enlistment contract that detailed the Army’s Stop-Loss policy.

While I knew plenty of Soldiers who didn’t like the policy, I didn’t know any who didn’t know about it and that it was a part of their enlistment contract.

Which is why I think that the new movie Stop Loss is just another piece of Liberal anti-war, anti-military rhetoric.

"Stop-Loss" is liberal and antiwar, but it's not useless in its message, as I've indicated.

We will not doubt be seeing more impartial movies of Iraq. The war still rages, of course, so there's no opportunity for historical distance. But when conserservative critics, like that at Libertas, fail to analyze the totality of the film, nuances are lost in the outrage of opposition:

What is possibly left to say about a poorly produced, poorly acted, poorly directed, and very poorly written anti-war film that defames our troops…?

Read the whole review, much of which is agreeable. It does bear some consideration, of course, to think about the sacrifice of our soldiers, and to reiterate the military service is on a volunteer basis, and we might have less angst over the war if more people actually supported to decision for young Americans to join up and fight in the first place.

See Reihan Salam's essay, "Why Stop-Loss Matters," for more reflections along these lines.

McCain's Foreign Policy: Intensifying the Bush Doctrine?

Spencer Ackerman argues that John McCain's foreign policy speech Wednesday was not a tempered break from the Bush administration's record, but rather an aggressive update of it:

Since he began running for president, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has embraced President George W. Bush's foreign policy. He has done so for a simple and understandable reason: it was McCain's policy first.

"I'd institute a policy that I call 'rogue state rollback,'" McCain said during a GOP primary debate in February 2000. "I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically elected governments." Though Bush himself would not embrace McCain's weltanshauung until after 9/11, this approach to global affairs would eventually become known as the Bush Doctrine.

Yet when McCain walked to the podium yesterday at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council to deliver his clearest speech yet outlining a McCain foreign policy - a policy characterized by what could be endless wars - the media almost uniformly declared it a break with Bush.

McCain sanded down the edges of the Bush Doctrine by urging more consulting with allies and action on climate change. The result? "Republican presidential candidate John McCain suggested that as president, his foreign-policy approach would be different, more collaborative," Fox News's Molly Henneberg reported. Added CNN's Dana Bash:"This speech was mainly an attempt to highlight a McCain world view quite different from the president's."

Notably, one person who didn't jump at the chance to distance McCain from Bush was McCain's chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann. Asked by reporters if McCain intended to portray himself as departing from Bush's legacy, Scheunemann replied, "I'll leave that to you." For good reason: McCain represents not a break from the Bush Doctrine, but rather its intensification.

Much as Bush has never backed away from his invasion and occupation of Iraq, McCain endorsed a maximal, not minimal, definition of U.S. goals. "Success in Iraq is the establishment of peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic states that pose no threat to neighbors and contribute to the defeat of terrorists." Withdrawal would be "morally reprehensible" and an "unconscionable act of betrayal." It would yield, in McCain's telling, "genocide, and destabilize the entire [Middle East] as neighboring powers come to the aid of their favored factions." Iran would see "our premature withdrawal as a victory."

What of Iraq today? "Those who argue that our goals in Iraq are unachievable are wrong. Just as they were wrong a year ago, when they declared the war in Iraq already lost." McCain proceeded to rattle off some already-outdated statistics comparing the late-2007 reduction in violence to 2005 levels -- levels that already led his fellow Vietnam veteran, Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Penn.) to break from his hawkish past and endorse withdrawal.

McCain appeared divorced from reality over the war. As he spoke, weak government forces battled Moqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army. More than 200 have died so far in those clashes -- clashes which, according to NPR, have led government security forces to defect to Sadr's movement. With the departure of the final "surge" brigade from Iraq next week, the window during which the U.S. could operate with maximum military strength closes, and in the wake of that closure comes the most serious challenge to the government's authority since Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki took power in the spring of 2006.

Further demonstrating McCain's unmooring, the enemy described in his speech is an undifferentiated "radical Islamic terrorism." It is less an entity than a metaphysical concept -- existing everywhere and without distinction.

McCain draws no distinction between the puny Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Qaeda senior leadership in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas. Interestingly, the U.S. military in Iraq does: it recently gave a briefing that described Al Qaeda in Iraq's foot soldiers as brainwashed twentysomethings rather than fanatical murderers.

Ackerman goes on to argue that Iran's the supreme victor from the Iraq war (as the conflict's "tied down" the U.S.), and he suggests that democratization has proceeded in the Middle East only to increase "sectarianism, religious fanaticism, illiberalism."

Note first that Ackerman's argument that Iraq's strengthened Iran, with the U.S., like Gulliver, "tied down and bloodied," has been discredited by recent analyses by Middle East experts and military analysts (see Reuel Marc Gerecht and Fouad Ajami, and Jules Crittenden, respectively). Iraq's threat to Middle East stability is long gone (a point conveniently forgotten by antiwar hawks), and from Damascus to Tehran to Tripoli the groups cited by Ackerman as strengthened have become marginalized at home or ostracized abroad. People in the Middle East have no taste for a some prolonged neo-imperial domination, but they welcome U.S. power as the handmaiden to freedom. American capabilities are vital to the defeat of mayhem and petty tyrants across the region.

As for Ackerman's "undifferentiated" radical terrorists who are supposedly making McCain look "unmoored," Amir Taheri made a geopolitical case today that McCain's right, actually, "that there are deadly and determined groups dedicated to destruction of the U.S. in the name of a perverted version of Islam, and that they need to be resisted, fought and ultimately defeated."

Underneath all of this, of course, is Ackerman's premises for U.S. international action. These notions, radical in essence, are rooted in a foreign policy orientation almost diametrically opposed to the ones offered by either Bush or McCain, whose GOP polices that have been attacked, again and again, by leftist antiwar surrender junkies.

Recall last week we saw Ackerman announce the "Obama Doctrine of dignity promotion," in which he sees traditional power politics and the use of military force as the fruits of a "corrosive mind-set" infecting the Washington foreign policy establishment. This is the same establishment that would allegedly back a McCain adminisration's "endless wars."

As nasty and foul-mouthed a commentator as Ackerman is (especially on his blog), there's a tender, soft-hearted idealism nestled right down in the middle of his Obama foreign policy advocacy.

These dignity doctrines, for example, are big on human rights promotion and quality of life indicators. Yet for all of Ackerman's talk of an unprecented Obama revolution, we've heard this kind of softy language before, back in the 1970s, when President Jimmy Carter shifted American foreign policy away from robust power politics vis-a-vis the Soviets, to a human rights doctrine of appeasement and indecision.

(See, for example, Slater Bakhtavar, "Jimmy Carter's Human Rights Disaster in Iran," and Victor David Hanson, "The Wages of Appeasement: How Jimmy Carter and Academic Multiculturalists Helped Bring Us Sept. 11.")

Further, Ackerman's also a member of the self-proclaimed and megalomaniacal radical foreign policy netroots, an antiwar faction implacably committed to defeating Bush politically at home rather than prevailing in America's relations abroad (for more on this, see "Blogging Foreign Policy: Bereft of Credentials, Left Strains to Shift Debate").

These folks, apparently weaned on the mother's milk of post-Vietnam "lessons" of foreign policy, and motivated moral condemnation and a penchant for elite conspiracy, oppose any and all use of American military power (yet, depending on the advocate, say, someone like Samantha Power, the use of force is fine, as long as it doesn't involve protecting vital national interests).

This really is the context for Ackerman's diatribe against McCain's Los Angeles address. More than any other candidate in campaign '08, the Arizona Senator's got the background and experience to state the case that one doesn't tarry with our enemies, that in defeating them there's no replacement for the use of force as needed, and that sometimes what's required is an unfliching willingness to kill those who want nothing less than the total annihilation of the American state.

The demonizations of perennial warfare aren't completely new. Rather, we're seeing a beefy up version of foreign policy anti-Americanism, that is, antiwar BDS-plus.

Photo Credit: USA Today

McCain is Right on al Qaeda-Iran Alliance in Iraq

Amir Taheri provides a penetrating analysis of Iran's support for Sunni terrorists in Iraq. Forget religious factions - the relationship is political:

The American presidential election campaign took a bizarre theological turn recently when Barack Obama accused John McCain of not being able to distinguish Sunnis from Shiites.

The exchange started when Sen. McCain suggested that the Islamic Republic in Iran, a Shiite power, may be helping al Qaeda, a Sunni outfit, in its murderous campaign in Iraq and elsewhere. Basing its position on received wisdom, the Obama camp implied that Sunnis and Shiites, divided as they are by deep doctrinal differences, could not come together to fight the United States and its allies.

The truth is that Sunni and Shiite extremists have always been united in their hatred of the U.S., and in their desire to "bring it to destruction," in the words of Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar.

The majority of Muslims does not share that hatred and have no particular problem with the U.S. It is the country most visited by Muslim tourists and it attracts the largest number of Muslim students studying abroad.

But to understand the problem with extremists, it is important to set aside the Sunni-Shiite divide and focus on their common hatred of America. Theology is useless here. What we are dealing with is politics.

For Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, the slogan "Death to America" was as important as the traditional device of Islam "Allah Is The Greatest" – hence his insistence that it be chanted at all public meetings and repeated after each session of the daily prayers. And to that end, Khomeinists have worked with anyone, including brother-enemy Sunnis or even Marxist atheists.

The suicide attacks that claimed the lives of over 300 Americans, including 241 Marines, in Lebanon in 1983, were joint operations of the Khomeinist Hezbollah and the Marxist Arab Socialist Party, which was linked to the Syrian intelligence services. The Syrian regime is Iran's closest ally, despite the fact that Iranian mullahs regard the Alawite minority that dominates it as heretics or worse. Today in Lebanon, Tehran's surrogate, Hezbollah, is in league with a Maronite Christian faction, led by ex-Gen. Michel Aoun, in opposition to a majority bloc that favors close ties with the U.S.

For more than a quarter century, Tehran has been host to the offices of more than three dozen terrorists organizations, from the Colombian FARC to the Palestinian Hamas and passing by half a dozen Trotskyite and Leninist outfits. It also finances many anti-American groups and parties of both extreme right and extreme left in Europe and the Americas. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has bestowed the Muslim title of "brother" on Cuba's Fidel Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, Bolivia's Evo Morales and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega. Communist North Korea is the only country with which the Islamic Republic maintains close military-industrial ties and holds joint annual staff sessions.

Read the whole thing, and see also my earlier entry, "McCain and the Iraq Issue."

Poll Weakens Case for Clinton Electoral College Victory

As the Democratic primary contests grinds on, one case made for Hillary Clinton is that she's done better in more populous states, crucial to a November Electoral College victory.

U.S. News reports on new polling data that's undercutting that argument:

While Hillary Clinton tries to fight her way from behind in the Democratic presidential race, pouring millions of dollars into a last-ditch effort in the Pennsylvania primary, some of her supporters have begun suggesting a novel approach to selecting the nominee—and ending the current political deadlock. Instead of relying on the number of delegates the candidates have won (where Obama enjoys a small lead), the popular vote (which Obama leads by about 700,000 votes), or the number of states won (Obama's 27 trumps her 14), Sen. Evan Bayh, a Clinton backer, suggested this week that the nominee should be selected using another measure: the number of electoral votes the candidates have acquired. "Who carried the states with the most Electoral College votes is an important factor to consider because, ultimately, that's how we choose the president of the United States," Senator Bayh of Indiana said on CNN recently. Using this standard, Clinton, by carrying states like Texas, Ohio, and California, would have tallied a total of 219 Electoral College votes at this point in the race. Obama's wins in smaller states would have garnered him only 202.

A poll released today in California, the home of 55 electoral votes, the most of any state, underscores some of the weaknesses of this new electoral methodology—and serves as a reminder, experts say, of just how difficult it may be to determine a clear winner in the divided Democratic race, even in the states that have already voted.

On Super Tuesday, Clinton won the Golden State's primary by a margin of 52-to-43, surprising political experts with her dominance among Latinos, women, and older voters, in particular. Obama seemed to be unable to break through this electoral firewall. But in a new survey of more than 2,000 California voters, released today by the Public Policy Institute of California, an independent research group based in San Francisco, Obama appears to have experienced a significant bump since then. Over a month after voting in the primary, more Democrats here now say they have a positive view of Obama than of Clinton (78 percent to 74 percent)—a shift, experts say, that may be even larger than it appears, since much of Obama's support in the primary came from independents. Decline-to-state voters, who represent a sizable voting block in California, continue to flock to his campaign (57 percent have a favorable view of Obama, compared with 47 percent for McCain and only 35 percent for Clinton). Overall, more than 6 in 10 voters of all political stripes say they view Obama favorably, compared with 45 percent for Clinton. If the general election were held today, the poll indicates that Obama, not Clinton, would do better here: He polls at 49-to-40 percent over McCain, while Clinton-McCain is a statistical tie (46 percent of voters say they would support Clinton; 43 percent for McCain).

The Bayh approach, in other words—which assumes that because Clinton won the primary in California, she not only still enjoys the support of most voters in the state but would be more likely to win the state's electoral votes in the general election—seems flawed. "There's been a shift, no question about it," says Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Edmund "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State University-Los Angeles. "A lot of Democrats, who were once supporters of Hillary's—not bedrock supporters but voted for her on February 5—now they're leaving her."

It's worth noting, experts say, that the poll was conducted during the week of March 11, one of the roughest stretches Obama has experienced in his campaign, as he faced a barrage of questions about race and his relationship with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In spite of all the bad publicity, California voters still seem to be moving toward him—or at least away from Clinton. "That makes it all the more remarkable," says Regalado.

The Clinton campaign can't be blamed for trying to swing for the electoral fences, analysts say, but the challenges it faces appear to be growing ever more formidable, even, it seems, in some of the states she's already won. "People are getting tired of the contentiousness of the campaign," says Regalado. "Almost nobody except for Clinton supporters and Clinton herself wants to see this play out all the way into August."

If this new argument gains currency, it'll be interesting to see how long the Clinton camp holds together. Hillary's already under increasing pressure to exit the race, and top campaign operatives will see brighter futures elsewhere, as John Heilemann notes:

Despite all the wailing of the party’s Henny Pennys, my own view is that, in the long run, Clinton’s scuffing up of Obama has so far done him more good than harm; it has toughened him, steeled him, and given him a taste, if only a taste, of what he can expect this fall. But Democrats are right to fear that Clinton may find it irresistible to turn her campaign into an exercise in nothing less (and little more) than political manslaughter against Obama. They’re especially right to be worried that she may want to fight on all summer, all the way to the Denver convention—especially with Clinton now talking openly about a floor fight over seating the disputed Florida and Michigan delegations.

Some senior members of Clinton’s campaign have no intention of sticking around if Obama is substantially ahead come June; as much as they’re devoted to their boss, they want nothing to do with a black-bag operation designed to destroy her rival, no matter what the cost. But these same people are also deeply convinced—beyond spin, beyond talking points, to their core—that Obama would be doomed against McCain. And Clinton believes this, too, which is one important reason why she persists despite odds that grow longer each passing day.

Yet, by an irony, Clinton’s grim assessment of Obama’s chances may also be the best cause for hope that she will, sometime between now and the middle of June, find it in herself to leave the stage with a modicum of grace. It may even be a reason, as Walter Mondale’s campaign manager, Bob Beckel, suggested in a column this week, that she winds up filling, against her instincts, the slot as Obama’s veep. For if HRC believes that Obama will lose in November, there can be no doubt that she’s already calculating, in the back of her head, the best way to position herself for 2012. A scorched-earth campaign against Obama is plainly not the way to do that. A classy exit, a show of unity, an act that apparently places party before self: That’s the ticket.

All of which is why party elders aren’t the last best hope for a peaceful resolution of the Obama-Clinton race. The last best hope is that Hillary will eventually come to see yielding as not merely the path to self-preservation, but also as her only route to long-range self-aggrandizement.

See also, Mario Cuomo, "How to Avoid a Democratic Disaster."

Philadelphia Mayor Rejects Wright Hate Theology

Via Memeorandum, ABC News reports that Philadelphia's mayor Michael Nutter would have quit Reverend Jeremiah Wright's church upon hearing the pastor's black liberation America-bashing, "Philly Mayor Would Quit Obama Church":

Sen. Hillary Clinton's most prominent African-American supporter in Pennsylvania says that had he been a member of Sen. Barack Obama's church, he would have left because of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's fiery and controversial sermons.

"I think there's no room for hate, and I could not sit and tolerate that kind of language, and especially over a very long period of time," said Philadelphia's newly elected mayor, Michael Nutter, in an interview with ABC News' David Muir.

"If I were in my own church and heard my pastor saying some of those kinds of things," he added, "we'd have a conversation about what's going on here, what is this all about, and then I would have to make my own personal decision about whether or not to be associated or affiliated."

Asked by Muir if he would he have quit Obama's church, Nutter said, "Absolutely."

Wright preached that the U.S brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism." He also said the government "wants us to sing 'God Bless America'" but that it should be "God damn America" for the way it has treated minorities.

Obama condemned the comments, but said he could not "disown" Wright. He suggested the incendiary remarks reflected longstanding anger over past injustices against blacks.

Nutter said, "I think there is a big difference between expressing the pain and anger that many African Americans and other people of color may feel versus language that I think now crosses the line and goes into hate."

Clinton needs a decisive victory in Pennsylvania to keep her White House hopes alive. And Nutter, who took office in January, could play a pivotal role if he is able to help Clinton make inroads with African-American voters, a pillar of Obama's political base.

The pressure on some of Clinton's prominent black supporters to abandon her has been intense. An icon of the civil rights movement, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., switched allegiances to Obama, partly because of anger in his home district over his choice for president.


Nutter has been called Philadelphia's Barack Obama. He is black, Ivy League-educated, popular and an agent of change -- just like Obama. But Nutter has remained steadfast in his support of Clinton -- to the surprise of many in this city.

The mayor acknowledges that some voters have approached him and asked, in his words, "Why not support a brother?"

"Somehow, someway, for some people there's an automatic assumption that a mayor who is African-American or some other elected official has to support another African-American," Nutter said.

"I thought that when Dr. King said that he wanted people to be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, I thought that's what he was talking about," Nutter added.

Nutter is sticking with Clinton, even though by doing so, he said he might be thwarting the election of America's first black president.

"Certainly the opportunity to demonstrate to my 13-year-old daughter that there is a bright future for her, that a woman could get elected president of the United States, is equally compelling," he said.

Nutter sounds reasonable. So, it looks like some Democrats aren't hopping on the progressives for Obama gravy train (flor more on that, see, "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama").

McCain Plagiarism Smear: Think Progress Issues Retraction

Think Progress earlier this week alleged John McCain of plagiarizing his foreign policy speech Wednesday from Los Angeles.

I read the post at the time, but was awaiting additional, independent confirmation. It turns out that Think Progress, in its ejaculatory haste to smear the GOP nominee-in-waiting, failed to find corroborating evidence prior to publishing their claims. FOX News has the story, via Blogs for McCain:

Here's Think Progress's retraction:

CORRECTION: As a blog that strives to maintain credibility and transparency, we would like to explain our mistake. When we were alerted to the tip that Adm. Ziemer gave a similar speech in 1996, we searched LexisNexis and McCain’s campaign site for whether the senator used the disputed phrases before that time. We did not find anything. After we published the post, the McCain campaign contacted us and pointed to a speech given by the senator in 1995, which appears on McCain’s Senate site. As soon as we were alerted to the error, we rushed to publish a correction. Once again, we regret the error, and we apologize for it.

Right, a blog that strives to maintain credibility. That makes me feel a lot better. Now, perhaps the rest of the left blogosphere could get the memo.

The FOX story is here.

"Stop-Loss": The Thinking Man's Antiwar Movie?

I saw "Stop-Loss" yesterday, the day of the movie's premiere. Here's the film's trailer, via YouTube:

It turns out the film's first-day take wasn't all that spectacular, an outcome perhaps explained as due to the unmarketability of antiwar movies today, as noted by Nikki Finke (via Memeorandum):

I'm told #7 "Stop-Loss" opened to only $1.6 million Friday from just 1,291 plays and should eke out $4+M. Although the drama from MTV Films was the best-reviewed movie opening this weekend, Paramount wasn't expecting much because no Iraq war-themed movie has yet to perform at the box office. "It's not looking good," a studio source told me before the weekend. "No one wants to see Iraq war movies. No matter what we put out there in terms of great cast or trailers, people were completely turned off. It's a function of the marketplace not being ready to address this conflict in a dramatic way because the war itself is something that's unresolved yet. It's a shame because it's a good movie that's just ahead of its time."

Here's Little Green Football's response to Finke:

Right. It’s “a function of the marketplace not being ready.” Have they ever considered the possibility that the marketplace doesn’t want Hollywood’s tedious left-wing anti-American self-hating bias shoved down its throat?

Now, while I can appreciate LGF's point about the left's "self-hating bias," there's much of "Stop-Loss" that's worthy of our attention.

I began seeing TV ads for the movie a week or two ago, and I thought the film looked interesting, and perhaps worth a look, considering how much I blog about the antiwar left.

I only read one review, Kenneth Turan's over at the Los Angeles Times.

Turan often offers penetrating cinematic critiques (like his review of "The Passion of the Christ"), but on the war he's been afflicted by the typical postmodern reaction to the use of force, which has largely tarnished his credibility on matters involving cinematic portrayals of Iraq.

It's better here for me to note Turan's concluding comments on "Stop Loss":

One of "Stop-Loss' " valuable qualities is the care it takes not to take obvious sides. It respects the patriotism of the men who serve while understanding just what Brandon means when he talks about "that box in your head where you put all the bad stuff you can't deal with." His box, he says, is full, and there's nothing either loyalty or duty can do about it.

Having seen the film, I can say that Turan's blatantly false when he argues that the film doesn't "take obvious sides." Either that, or he thinks the liberal discourse on the war's moved so far to the left that the movie's confused mix of the patriotism of the main character (Staff Sgt. Brandon King, who's played by Ryan Phillippe) with his conscientious objection to Pentagon policy represents an ideologically-centrist consensus on public opinion toward the war. This is not true, as polls show.

It's this point that's key, because the movie, in the vein of Oliver Stone's "Born on the Forth of July," blurs the lines of traditional American patiotic values (respecting the conservative honor of serving the nation in battle) with the postmodern values of pseudo-patriotism representative of the post-Vietnam American left.

That's not to say "Stop-Loss" is a disaster.

Far from it. The movie's clearly tapped into a degree of societal stress at a dangerous time, when the nation's at war but the costs are borne primarily by the men and women under arms, and their military families back home.

For example, the film's opening scene of Phillippe's unit manning a road checkpoint in Tikrit provides some of the most compelling cinematic footage of urban, house-to-house combat since "Black Hawk Down." Everyday American couch-potatoes need to see these images, they need to see what modern warfare looks like, and particularly the nihilism of our enemies, who take refuge in civilian quaters, and use old men, women, and children as human shields.

Yes, there's some power in this movie, which is worth seeing and evaluating. In addition to the gritty realism of the battles scenes, the movie's well-acted, particulary as seen in Phillippe's Staff Sgt. King. In Phillippe's hands, King comes off as a vigorous all-America fighter, in Iraq and on the streets back home, where his realizes his personal beliefs have been betrayed.

I disagree with those beliefs, which is that the Pentagon's stop-loss policy is tantamount to a "backdoor draft," and that's the major problem with this movie (and where I can understand LGF's dismissal of the film).

We have an all-volunteer service, so when young Americans sign up to fight they go on the basis of choice and volition. Contractually, soldiers can be recalled to battle, and to be shocked, as Phillippe's King is when told he's returning to Iraq, is disingenuous, if not outright storytelling fraud.

Sure, families have been hit hard by the separations, the battle injuries, and the war dead. But the the consequences of joining the service are known in advance. Soldiers are not victims, no matter how hard the anitwar left tries to make us believe.

I will note a good point raised by Turan in his review, which is that for an antiwar film, "Stop-Loss" is a cut above the rest of recent installments of the Iraq genre:

Four thousand Americans and counting have died in Iraq, and the litany of unsuccessful films about that part of the world -- "The Situation," "Redacted," "Rendition," "The Kingdom," "In The Valley of Elah" among others -- is growing as well. Do not add “Stop-Loss” to that list. "Stop-Loss" is a film that does it right.

The story of a young American soldier played by Ryan Phillippe who resists an order to return to Iraq, "Stop-Loss" covers some of the same territory as those other features. The difference here is a quality of propulsive emotional intensity that pushes us over rough spots as it drives us insistently forward. An intensity that must be credited to director and co-writer, Kimberly Peirce....

This is a wrenching story of men at arms who cannot find peace outside the military circle, who return to civilian life on the horrific edge of violence and despair.

It is wrenching, but the story's vital.

Americans should see this film, not just for its remarkably genuine battle scenes, but for its portrayal of the real-life costs that are required of citizens in nation not fully at arms. Those who choose to fight take up a burden, one that's not highly praised by much of the population, but one that's essential to the way of life of a free society.

In that sense, despite the essential antiwar, soldier-as-victim" sensibility, "Stop-Loss," when viewed in the totality of its message - which is hard for implacable war opponents, whose nihilist ideas will be confirmed here) - is indeed a movie of breathaking power and vision.

(Footnote: For some additional context to the antiwar culture of contemporary movie-making, see Ross Douthat, "The Return of the Paranoid Style," and Andrew Klavin, "The Lost Art of War.")

Left-Wing Establishment Cheers Wright's "Brilliance"

I noted in my earlier entry, "Obama Defends Wright on ABC's "The View"," how Barack Obama's now backing away from his already tepid criticisms of Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Obama argued yesterday that Wright was a "brilliant" man whose entire "context" was being ignored by a focus on thirty seconds out of Wright's decades of preaching.

Well, fine, but that same thirty seconds has been defended ad nauseum as "brilliant" by the radical-left's identity mavens, according to Victor Davis Hanson in his incisive post this morning (via Memeorandum):

Watching the parade of apologists for Rev. Wright’s hatred—“garlic noses”; “KKK of A;” “God Damn America;” “Condamnesia;” the U.S. deserved 9/11; America is no different from al-Qaeda; we caused the AIDs virus; Israel is a “dirty word” and sought an Arab and black ethnic bomb, etc—is, well, depressing. Instead of offering distance from Wright, far too many African-American professors and pastors interviewed on the cable stations the last few nights instead praised his brilliance and inspiration.

At best, there was a feeble ‘you just don’t get it’ about the venting and wink-and-nod culture of the black church. But the net message from the African-American liberal establishment, at least I fear, seems to be something like the following: ‘Wright is not going to offer an apology and we aren’t embarrassed about his ranting, which is not ranting at all, but rather historical and biblical exegesis which we endorse. And the problem is yours, not ours, since we expect exemption—given the history of race in this country—from your so-called norms of public discourse.’

That's perfect!

If you cruise around the radical blogosphere, you'll find a cheering section for Wright's views. Far from denouncing him, Democrats and leftists argue Wright's hate sermons represent fundamental truths about America's evil.

For example, check out this from Dr. Biobrain:

I didn't want to watch any YouTube clips of him [Wright] saying these controversial things. Why bother? Guilt by Association is a pile of crap and I failed to see why Obama should be held responsible for what his pastor said. It's obvious Obama doesn't believe these things, so the whole thing was little more than just a smear against him and a blessed distraction for his two opponents....

I kept hearing about how his pastor had blamed America for 9/11 and had spent all my time insisting that it wasn't relevant to Obama. Apparently, Carpetbagger did the same thing. And then he actually saw the YouTube clip and felt as stupid as I did. Because I agreed with just about everything the guy said. In fact, not only have I been saying the same stuff, but feel that any liberal who isn't saying this stuff doesn't deserve to call themselves a liberal. This stuff is just a no-brainer [emphasis added].

It's a "no brainer" that Wright's hatred should be standard left-wing Democratic Party talking points?

Note something here: Dr. Biobrain's an alternate delegate for Barack Obama in Austin, Texas. So here we have a hard-left activist and Texas Democratic Party official saying the Jeremiah Wright's sermons are the standard of what a true "liberal" should be.

Dr. Biobrain's specifically cited Wright's sermon from April 2003, which included the following indictment of the U.S. government:

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes three-strike laws and wants them to sing God Bless America.

“No! No No!

“God damn America … for killing innocent people.

“God damn America for threatening citizens as less than humans.

“God damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and supreme.”

But note further the statements from Wright's sermon at Howard University's Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel on Jan. 15, 2006 (via Ronald Kessler):

"We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he began. "Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body...."

"America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God...."

"We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic. . . . We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means. . . ."

"We started the AIDS virus . . . We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. . . ."

Reverend Wright has made numerous sermons with such denunciations, and for this he's called brilliant by the African-American liberal establishment? Not only that, Wright's hatred is so basic to left-wing ideology and politics that it's a "no brainer" for genuine leftist advocates?

Perhaps this explains why, on one hand, polls find a huge majority of the general population holding Wright's blame-America hatred as "racially divisive," while on the other, the Wright affair has not hurt Obama’s standing among Democratic partisans.

Wright's comments are endorsed by members of the far-left establshment, as well as some Democratic Party activists. This is the electoral base of today's Democratic Party. On issues of race and the war, progressive politics has moved dramatically to the left of the ideological spectrum.

I'll have more on this in upcoming posts on contempary left-wing radicalism and election '08.

See also, "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama."

Cleaning Up Dodge: Big Picture Analysis in Basra Fighting

The eruption of intra-Shiite fighting in Iraq's just the recipe for antiwar mavens who've been straining since early last year to find purchase for their anti-Bush screeds.

But as I pointed out in my post yesterday, "Contrast in Iraq: How Do We Demonstrate Progress?," the larger picture amid the violence is the growing independence and institutional capacity of the Iraqi state. Max Boot adds a bit more to that perspective:

I have hesitated to comment on the fighting raging in Basra, which has spilled over into other cities including Baghdad, because the shape of events is so difficult to make out from afar-or for that matter even from up close. The best analysis I have seen is this article in the Financial Times which notes that Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is taking a major gamble by challenging the power of the Shiite militias–more like criminal gangs-which have seized control of Basra, Iraq’s second or third largest city and home to its only major port.

While most news coverage has focused on the renewed fighting as signs of impending doom–or at the very least evidence that the surge isn’t working so well–the FT correctly detects a silver lining: “If the prime minister succeeds, the pay-off would deliver a big boost to the credibility of a shaky government, proving that the growing national army is capable of taking on powerful militia.”

This gamble is long overdue. The British basically abdicated their counterinsurgency role in the south and allowed thugs to take over Basra. The police force is particularly corrupt. Maliki is now sending the Iraqi Security Forces to do what the Brits wouldn’t: clean up Dodge.

The risk of course is that Moqtada al Sadr’s Jaish al Mahdi (JAM)–one of Iraq’s largest and most threatening militias–will go to the mattresses in retaliation. There is some evidence of this happening with ultra-violent “Special Groups”, which have been loosely associated with JAM, ramping up rocket attacks on the Green Zone. There have also been clashes reported in Sadr City, Hilla, Karbala, and other Shiite areas.

But the Sadrist leadership has stuck by its promise to maintain a ceasefire, at least when it comes to operations against coalition forces. Even though some more mainstream JAM elements, not just the Special Groups, seem to be drawn into fighting against the Iraqi security forces and to a lesser extent coalition forces, that is not necessarily a bad thing. If we’re going to have a showdown, better to have it now then in the fall when there will be substantially fewer American troops on the ground.

The power of militias has been one of the most corrosive features of post-2003 Iraq. No prime minister, including Maliki, has shown much willingness or ability to take on the gunmen, because successive Iraqi governments have depended for their existence on political parties closely aligned with the militias, notably the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the Sadr trend. If Maliki is now getting serious about asserting the supremacy of the Iraqi state over the militias, that is a development to be cheered. I only hope he does not lose his nerve in this hour of crisis: if well-led, the Iraqi Security Forces have the power to defeat any militia on the battlefield.

Cleaning up Dodge. I love that!

See also the Financial Times, "Maliki Risks Open Sadrist Insurrection."

Photo Credit: New York Times

Obama Defends Wright on ABC's "The View"

I watched Barack Obama yesterday morning on "The View."

Since his Philadelphia speech, Obama's starting to back further away from his (very limited) renunciations of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's hate sermons.

The key Wright discussion is seen in this YouTube:

But check out Jennifer Rubin's anaysis, which penetrates right to the heart of Obama's duplicity and evasion:

With each new utterance on the topic of Reverend Wright, Barack Obama seems to confirm his own moral obliviousness. Worse yet, he seems to have disdain for those who are troubled by his own unwillingness, even now, to break with Wright. (Contrary to his liberal apologists who insist “leaving a church is never a simple transaction,” it is exceedingly easy–you just stand up and go.)

The latest: “I never heard him say some of the things that have people upset.” Let’s leave aside for a moment the Clintonian slipperiness of the word “some.” Let’s not dwell on the quite obvious possibility that he might have heard or read comments of Wright’s approximating those on the dozens of tapes that have now come to light. Here’s the meat of it: just “people” are upset–not him mind you, since he is operating on a higher moral plane. I suppose he would have defended Trent Lott’s single remark about Strom Thurmond with every fiber of his being.

But it gets worse. Obama insists Wright is “a brilliant man who was still stuck in a time warp.” So brilliant, apparently, that he has uncovered the plot by white America to kill African Americans and so insightful as to perceive the 9/11 attacks as caused by America’s own terrorism. Then there was his discerning observation that Israel is a “dirty” word. (In what time period would these type of views have been acceptable?) And after all this, Wright, in Obama’s eyes, is brilliant. This, we are told by the legions of Obamaphiles, is not supposed to affect voters’ view of Obama’s judgment.

Perhaps Democratic primary voters are immune to the implications of all this. Perhaps they still fancy Obama as a great ethical leader who is going to lead us out of our history of divisiveness and small-mindedness. Or perhaps they are just embarrassed to tell pollsters they are privately offended. But in a general election contest this is not going to go unnoticed. We will have to see if he can get any Republican votes and just how many independents will be irked by this moral obtuseness. (And that loud thud you just heard? The entire RNC oppo research team falling down in a faint. They are never going to top this.)

See also, the New York Times, "Obama Communicates, Even Without Words."

Responsible Plan? Antiwar Groups Endorse Unconditional Iraq Surrender

This post is a follow-up to my previous entry, "Iraq is Top Issue for Democratic Congressional Hopefuls."

That essay discussed the pledge of 42 congressional candidates to push for an immediate Iraq pullout if elected. One of the leaders of this unelected cohort is Darcy Burner, pictured here, who this week put out a comprehensive antiwar document, "A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq."

The plan calls for a complete pullout of all U.S. military forces from Iraq, with the exception of a minor stay-behind contingent to guard the American embassy in Baghdad.

A look at Burner's campaign homepage indicates a decidedly left-wing Democratic policy agenda; and a click over at Burner's entry at Wikipedia shows that Burner identifies herself as a "practical progressive" ideologically.

Being "practical" and "progressive" seem like reasonable attributes, but there's more to her campaign than that. Her retreatist stance on the war has apparently generated substantial hardline support among radical netroots contingents, including Daily Kos.

One netroots coalition supporting her campaign is the "Burn Bush for Burner" fundraising cell of a group called the "Netroots for Darcy Burner."

"Burn Bush?"

That sounds pretty far out. Taken literally, it almost sounds like an incitement to violence against the president. That's most likely untrue (although some of these people are terrorists). Still, it sounds a little over-the-top, if not ominous.

Well, it turns out a group called the Northwest Progressives have an announcement for another "Burn Bush for Burner" fundraiser up on their page, along with links to Barack Obama's campaign.

As I noted Wednesday, in my post, "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama," the "progressive" label is today's anodyne synonym for "revolutionary socialist."

Now, as usual, I try not to take my analyses too far, with sweeping generalizations.

Burner's a Harvard graduate, married with a son, and worked formerly for Microsoft Corporation. Nevertheless, her politics places her firmly on the far-left of the spectrum, particularly in her radical antiwar advocacy, as this story from the Nation indicates:

On the late afternoon of the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a grim, surreal procession made its way up DC's Capitol Hill. Down Independence Avenue alongside the House office buildings marched a single file of protesters, each clad in a black T-shirt, wearing a haunting white mask and holding a sign with the name of a civilian killed in Iraq. As they trudged up the Hill, a drummer rapped out a spare and mournful beat. Aside from several police escorts on bicycles, few were there to bear witness. Congress was in recess, the usual passel of commuters away or shuttered indoors, the streets empty under a misting gray sky. Like the real-life funerals for the Iraqi dead they represented, this re-creation, too, would pass with hardly a notice.

That morning in Washington, as protesters marched and danced and chanted, as progressives assembled for the Take Back America conference and as thousands of soldiers' families mourned their dead, Vice President Cheney gave an interview to ABC's Martha Raddatz. When she pointed out that two-thirds of Americans thought the war was not worth fighting, he answered: "So?"

"So?" Raddatz replied. "You don't care what the American people think?"

"No," said Cheney.

There you have it. To the millions who marched before the war began, to the hundreds of thousands who have protested since, to the tens of millions who voted for candidates in 2006 who pledged to end it, the Bush Administration says, more or less, Go fuck yourself.

We are now faced with two problems. One is a war that grinds on, subject only to its internal logic, each day further embedding an imperial occupation. The other is arguably even more profound, a terrifying breakdown in the basic mechanisms of democracy whereby the will of the majority is transferred into policy. We have two ostensible democracies (the United States and Iraq), each with a polity that wants an end to the war (the most recent polling from Iraq shows that 70 percent of Iraqis favor US withdrawal), yet the war does not end.

In the face of this official indifference to public opinion, it is tempting to succumb to despair. The antiwar strategy, after all, has not been static. In the run-up to the war, organizers managed to pull together the largest simultaneous worldwide demonstrations in history. That didn't work. Then the antiwar movement channeled much of its energy into electoral politics, helping to elect Democratic majorities in both houses. That hasn't worked either. So we find ourselves in the situation of Beckett's protagonist in Worstward Ho: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Although the electoral strategy has not yet borne fruit, it is still the most viable option, barring a draft or a radical turn in public opinion that would once again bring people en masse into the streets. (There are, of course, parallel strategies to be pursued. Passing a ban on mercenaries in Iraq would make the occupation untenable.) The question, then, becomes how to create the electoral conditions that maximize the power and representation of the majority who want the war ended. The antiwar caucus doesn't have enough votes to override a delusional President or enough members willing to bear the political risk of cutting off funding for the war. The solution to this impasse is, in the words of Congressional candidate Darcy Burner, to elect "more and better Democrats"--Democrats who have publicly committed to pursuing a legislative strategy to end the war.

So at Take Back America, Burner--a former Microsoft manager from the Seattle suburbs who narrowly missed unseating a GOP incumbent in 2006--with nine other Democratic Congressional challengers released A Responsible Plan to End the War. Developed in collaboration with retired military officers and national security professionals, the plan attracted the support of fifteen additional Democratic Senate and House challengers in the first week after it was unveiled (see ResponsiblePlan.com). Unlike the withdrawal plans offered by both Democratic presidential candidates, the Responsible Plan opposes any residual forces as well as permanent military bases. It flatly states, "We must stop counter-productive military operations by U.S. occupation forces, and end our military presence in Iraq." It looks toward restoring "Constitutional checks and balances and fix[ing] the ways in which our governmental, military, and civil institutions have failed us." It also addresses the need to take responsibility for a humanitarian crisis in which thousands of Iraqis who worked with US forces are in danger and millions are displaced across the region.

So there you have it, alright.

As I noted in "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama":

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.

By now it should be fairly clear that even mainstream Democratic candidates are emerging as the vehicle for hardline radical mobilization this season. We know, for example, that Tom Hayden, the prominent radical 1960s-era activist and politician, has put out a call for all progressives to unite behind Barack Obama's presidential bid.

Now, as the research here illustrates, many of the most implacable, nihilist contingents of the Bush-hating antiwar left have begun to focus their energies on building a "no enemies on the left" electoral coalition for both the presidential and congressional elections.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Iraq is Top Issue for Democratic Congressional Hopefuls

In a clear sign that antiwar sentiment remains a powerful force in Democratic Party politics this year, 42 Democratic congressional hopefuls have pledged to an unconditional withdrawal from Iraq if elected to Congess.

The Washington Post has the story:

More than three dozen Democratic congressional candidates banded together yesterday to promise that, if elected, they will push for legislation calling for an immediate drawdown of troops in Iraq that would leave only a security force in place to guard the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Rejecting their party leaders' assertions that economic troubles have become the top issue on voters' minds, leaders of the coalition of 38 House and four Senate candidates pledged to make immediate withdrawal from Iraq the centerpiece of their campaigns.

"The people inside the Beltway don't seem to get how big an issue this is," said Darcy Burner, a repeat candidate who narrowly lost to Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) in 2006.

The group's 36-page plan does not set a specific deadline for when all combat troops must be out of Iraq. "Begin it now, do it as safely as you can and get everyone out," Burner said.

The starkest difference between the group's proposal, dubbed a "Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq," and those embraced by many senior Democrats and the party's presidential candidates is that it rejects the idea of leaving U.S. troops on the ground to train Iraqi security forces or engage in anti-terrorism operations. The group instead calls for a dramatic increase in regional diplomacy and the deployment of international peacekeeping forces, if necessary.

One of the signatories, Donna F. Edwards, who bested Rep. Albert R. Wynn in his Prince George's County-centered district in the Democratic primary on Feb. 12, said the candidates are offering "real leadership." She also gave credit to "some in the Congress who are prepared to demonstrate the political will" to end the war, signaling that she disagrees with Democratic leaders who have been thwarted in their legislative efforts to reshape President Bush's Iraq policies.

The antiwar candidates include several challengers who are highly touted by Democratic leaders, including Burner and Eric Massa, who is running a second race against Rep. John R. "Randy" Kuhl Jr. (R-N.Y.). A few are running in Democratic-leaning districts and, should they win their primaries, are likely to win in November. Many more are, for now, longer-shot candidates running against veteran Republican incumbents.

Democratic leaders said the new candidate coalition does not signal a divide in the party's war policy.

Well, I agree with that last point.

I've noted many times how Barack Obama's pandering to the antiwar crowd. Indeed, Obama was one of the biggest antiwar proponents in Congress throughout 2007, and his main claim to big left-wing support today is that he wasn't in Congress in 2002, during the passage of the bipartisan Iraq war authorization.

Also, just yesterday, in response to President Bush's address on Iraq, congressional Democrats once again hammered the administration for "failed leadership":

Democrats in Congress assailed Bush for failed, tired leadership and questioned why he did not push Iraq's leaders to live up to promises.

"All the president seems able to offer Americans is more of the same perpetual disregard for the costs and consequences of stubbornly staying the course in Iraq," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Reid, of course, has been the biggest proponent of defeat and surrender in Iraq since the 2006 midterms.

The pledge by the "antiwar 42" just clarifies the stakes of the election, frankly. Members of this group, by winning in November, will join the already relentless congressional surrender faction, the "Out of Iraq" caucus, in continuing the push for a precipitous withdrawal from the conflict.

John McCain: An American President

John McCain's organization has released its first general election campaign ad, a 60-second spot that pumps up the Arizona Senator's all-American credentials (via YouTube):

The spot includes the announcer intoning, "John McCain: The American president Americans have been waiting for."

I love the ad. As regular readers here know, I'm a long-time McCain backer, for precisely the reasons mentioned in the ad: I believe McCain is best prepared to lead our country, and I don't think he'll flinch in meeting the challenges of the day.

Does that make me a bigot, or anyone else who identifies with the advertisment? Does trumpeting unabashed patriotism turn one into a raw Babbit-esque conformist, or worse, a jingoistic crusader for some puritanical American hegemony?

Absolutely not, but you wouldn't know it by the early smears around the web:

* Hold Fast, "American President?":

This ad is a clear signal that the McCain campaign and likely the GOP more generally are going to push narratives that imply that Barack Obama would not be an “American president.”

* Mother Jones, " McCain Ad: Cue the Ugly "American" Campaign":

Could the implication be that Barack Obama is not quite American and that he is not interested in protecting our country, which the ad describes with the feminine pronoun. In other words, the half-black dude with a funny name--who might be a secret Muslim--can't protect her. Has Lee Atwater been resurrected?

* Talking Points Memo, "New McCain Ad: "The American President Americans Have Been Waiting For":

Could the slogan be meant as a contrast against Barack Obama, with his foreign name and background?

I don't think there's really any serious debate over whether Obama's American.

Where there is some question is how much he truly loves this country and to what depth he's willing to defend it?

The same's not true for John McCain.

See my earlier post on this topic, "GOP Will Appeal to Craven Prejudices, Essayist Alleges."

Hat tip: Memeorandum.