Antiwar Factions Say No Price Worth Paying in Iraq

Senators Joseph Lieberman and Lindsay Graham, at the Wall Street Journal, offer a powerful rebuttal to incessant Iraq opposition among the antiwar hordes beating the drums of defeat:

When Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress tomorrow, he will step into an American political landscape dramatically different from the one he faced when he last spoke on Capitol Hill seven months ago.

This time Gen. Petraeus returns to Washington having led one of the most remarkably successful military operations in American history. His antiwar critics, meanwhile, face a crisis of credibility – having confidently predicted the failure of the surge, and been proven decidedly wrong.

As late as last September, advocates of retreat insisted that the surge would fail to bring about any meaningful reduction in violence in Iraq. MoveOn.org accused Gen. Petraeus of "cooking the books," while others claimed that his testimony, offering evidence of early progress, required "the willing suspension of disbelief."

Gen. Petraeus will be the first to acknowledge that the gains in Iraq have come at a heavy price in blood and treasure. We mourn the loss and pain of the civilians and service members who have been killed and wounded in Iraq, but adamantly believe these losses have served a noble cause.

No one can deny the dramatic improvements in security in Iraq achieved by Gen. Petraeus, the brave troops under his command, and the Iraqi Security Forces. From June 2007 through February 2008, deaths from ethno-sectarian violence in Baghdad have fallen approximately 90%. American casualties have also fallen sharply, down by 70%.

Al Qaeda in Iraq has been swept from its former strongholds in Anbar province and Baghdad. The liberation of these areas was made possible by the surge, which empowered Iraqi Muslims to reject the Islamist extremists who had previously terrorized them into submission. Any time Muslims take up arms against Osama bin Laden, his agents and sympathizers, the world is a safer place.

In the past seven months, the other main argument offered by critics of the Petraeus strategy has also begun to collapse: namely, the alleged lack of Iraqi political progress.

Antiwar forces last September latched onto the Iraqi government's failure to pass "benchmark" legislation, relentlessly hammering Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as hopelessly sectarian and unwilling to confront Iranian-backed Shiite militias. Here as well, however, the critics in Washington have been proven wrong.

In recent months, the Iraqi government, encouraged by our Ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, has passed benchmark legislation on such politically difficult issues as de-Baathification, amnesty, the budget and provincial elections. After boycotting the last round of elections, Sunnis now stand ready to vote by the millions in the provincial elections this autumn. The Iraqi economy is growing at a brisk 7% and inflation is down dramatically.

And, in launching the recent offensive in Basra, Mr. Maliki has demonstrated that he has the political will to take on the Shiite militias and criminal gangs, which he recently condemned as "worse than al Qaeda."

Of course, while the gains we have achieved in Iraq are meaningful and undeniable, so are the challenges ahead. Iraqi Security Forces have grown in number and shown significant improvement, but the Basra operation showed they still have a way to go. Al Qaeda has been badly weakened by the surge, but it still retains a significant foothold in the northern city of Mosul, where Iraqi and coalition forces are involved in a campaign to destroy it.

Most importantly, Iran also continues to wage a vicious and escalating proxy war against the Iraqi government and the U.S. military. The Iranians have American blood on their hands. They are responsible, through the extremist agents they have trained and equipped, for the deaths of hundreds of our men and women in uniform. Increasingly, our fight in Iraq cannot be separated from our larger struggle to prevent the emergence of an Iranian-dominated Middle East.

These continuing threats from Iran and al Qaeda underscore why we believe that decisions about the next steps in Iraq should be determined by the recommendations of Gen. Petraeus, based on conditions on the ground.

It is also why it is imperative to be cautious about the speed and scope of any troop withdrawals in the months ahead, rather than imposing a political timeline for troop withdrawal against the recommendation of our military.

Unable to make the case that the surge has failed, antiwar forces have adopted a new set of talking points, emphasizing the "costs" of our involvement in Iraq, hoping to exploit Americans' current economic anxieties.

Today's antiwar politicians have effectively turned John F. Kennedy's inaugural address on its head, urging Americans to refuse to pay any price, or bear any burden, to assure the survival of liberty. This is wrong. The fact is that America's prosperity at home and security abroad are bound together. We will not fare well in a world in which al Qaeda and Iran can claim that they have defeated us in Iraq and are ascendant.

There is no question the war in Iraq – like the Cold War, World War II and every other conflict we have fought in our history – costs money. But as great as the costs of this struggle have been, so too are the dividends to our national security from a successful outcome, with a functioning, representative Iraqi government and a stabilized Middle East. The costs of abandoning Iraq to our enemies, conversely, would be enormous, not only in dollars, but in human lives and in the security and freedom of our nation.

Indeed, had we followed the path proposed by antiwar groups and retreated in defeat, the war would have been lost, emboldening and empowering violent jihadists for generations to come.

The success we are now achieving also has consequences far beyond Iraq's borders in the larger, global struggle against Islamist extremism. Thanks to the surge, Iraq today is looking increasingly like Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare: an Arab country, in the heart of the Middle East, in which hundreds of thousands of Muslims – both Sunni and Shiite – are rising up and fighting, shoulder to shoulder with American soldiers, against al Qaeda and its hateful ideology.

It is unfortunate that so many opponents of the surge still refuse to acknowledge the gains we have achieved in Iraq. When Gen. Petraeus testifies this week, however, the American people will have a clear choice as we weigh the future of our fight there: between the general who is leading us to victory, and the critics who spent the past year predicting defeat.

See also my morning posts, "The Basra Model," "Postwar Germany: Messy Precedent for Iraq," "Iraq Hearings: The Iraqis Stepped Up to the Plate."

Willie Horton Reprise? Wright Damage Uncontained, Democrats Worry

I've known it all along: Reverend Jeremiah Wright's black liberation hatred's left a lasting stain on the presidential campaign of Barack Obama.

Oh sure, polls show Democrats holding the "God Damn America" preaching as insignificant in their long-term voting preferences. Media reports, moreover, confirmed that Obama's Philadelphia address on race and religion put the Illinois Senator back in good stead with the electorate.

But no, hold your horses, doggy!!

The Wall Street Journal reports that unpledged Democratic superdelegates are thinking twice about Wright's toxic black pulpit preachings:

Sen. Barack Obama's Philadelphia speech on race relations last month seemed to put the controversial remarks of his former pastor behind him. But three weeks later, there is evidence of lingering damage.

"It has not been defused," says David Parker, a North Carolina Democratic Party official and unpledged superdelegate. He says his worries about Republicans questioning Sen. Obama's patriotism prompted him to raise the issue of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.'s remarks in conversations with both the Obama and Clinton campaigns.

"I'm concerned about seeing Willie Horton ads during the general election," Mr. Parker says, referring to campaign ads that Republicans widely credited for helping defeat Michael Dukakis in 1988. Mr. Parker said the Wright controversy didn't hurt his opinion of Mr. Obama.

National polls show the Illinois senator hasn't suffered among Democratic primary voters. Contests in Pennsylvania on April 22, Indiana on May 6 and West Virginia on May 13 could serve as an important test. His performance among largely white, less-urban voters could show how well he can secure critical swing states in November.

Sen. Hillary Clinton has argued that she can better withstand Republican attacks. One of her senior advisers last week told the Talking Points Memo blog that he had raised the Wright issue with superdelegates. The campaign didn't dispute the report. "[C]ertainly, as you recall, it was very heavily in the news and people, you know, sometimes have it on their minds," Sen. Clinton told reporters last week.

Recent polls suggest that, in key swing states, the New York senator fares better in head-to-head matchups with Republican nominee Sen. John McCain than does Sen. Obama. In Ohio, Sen. Clinton led Sen. McCain 48% to 39%, while Sen. Obama led Sen. McCain 43% to 42% in Quinnipiac University polls conducted in the last week of March.

In Pennsylvania, Sen. Clinton had a 48% to 40% lead against Sen. McCain while Sen. Obama was ahead 43% to 39%. The polls credit Sen. Clinton's advantage to her strength among white voters. No Democrat has won the presidency with a majority of white voters since 1964, and no president from either party has been elected without winning two of the three swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida since 1960. In those three states, some 23% of white Democrats would defect to Sen. McCain in a matchup with Sen. Obama, compared with 11% who would abandon Sen. Clinton, according to the Quinnipiac polls.

Well, it's no wonder...

Americans should not have to listen to lame defenses of Wright-style America-bashing and hatred.

But I think about the context here. Over the weekend Democratic party activists in Washington State voted down a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, and these caucus goers were overwhelmingly Obama backers. In Texas, one announced Obama delegate argues that:

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 ... 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.

Maybe these Obama supporters are low-level hacks, and they've lowered standards for caucus participation or something? On the other hand, given the recent polling, it's more likely that the worried superdelegates are anomalous:

The Pew Research Center unveiled a poll ... that found the Wright controversy “does not appear to have undermined support for Obama’s candidacy.”

The survey, conducted March 19-22 with 1,503 adults, still puts the Illinois senator in the lead for the nomination, 49%-39%, largely unchanged from the 49%-40% lead Obama held a month earlier. Both Democratic candidates continue to hold small leads over presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain. The findings were similar to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll released Wednesday.

The results of the Pew survey are of particular note because it also found that the Wright controversy, and Obama’s subsequent speech on race, has attracted more public attention than any other matter so far this campaign cycle—51% said they had heard “a lot” about Wright’s sermons and an additional 54% had heard a lot about Obama’s speech.

“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,” Pew states. “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.”

The survey similarly finds that the Wright matter has not significantly dented Obama’s popularity with voters, and he maintains an edge against Clinton among white Democrats as well.

Basically, Obama's statements were accepted as sufficient by his backers, many of whom - we might infer from anecdotal evidence - may even endorse black theology anti-Americanism.

The polls do indicate that the controversy could come back to haunt an Obama general election campaign.

But frankly, Obama's never put the controversty to rest, so that makes him vulnerable. Had he thought better of saying he could no more "disown" his pastor than he could the black community, he might have put this to bed

Who knows? Obama needs to go futher, in any case, as Victor Davis Hanson has suggested, with some statements along these lines:

You have all heard the racist and anti-American outbursts of my pastor Rev. Wright. They are all inexcusable. His speeches have forced me to reexamine my long association with Trinity United Church of Christ. And so it is with regret that I must now leave that church.

He still can.

Wright's retired, but it's not too late to make the big announcement of separation from theTrinity Unity hate preaching. It would send a message to both rank-and-file Demcrats and top party officials that when Obama says he's for racial transcendance, he means it.

McCain's Lethal Advantage!

The lefties have been hammering away at how "radically conservative" John McCain is. For example, Glenn Greenwald's positively freaked at the possibilty of a McCain administration:

The indisputable fact is that McCain, on foreign policy issues, holds views far to the Right and far outside of mainstream American public opinion. In Media World, the GOP presidential nominee is always a centrist, a new kind of Republican, a trans-partisan pragmatist, while the Democratic nominee is always just a dogmatic liberal....

But depicting McCain as a "centrist" is an attempt to mainstream decidedly extreme positions, and worse, it obscures and distorts one of the vital issues that ought to be decided in the election: namely, whether McCain's radical foreign policy views and war-based national security approach -- grounded in the defining Bush/Cheney doctrine -- is something America wants to continue.

Well, as I've pointed out time and again, the Bush doctrine's actually right in line with a long tradition of preemption, unilateralism, and hegemony in American foreign policy.

But I do have to concede to Digby, who points out today - no, warns! - that McCain's got a killer sense of humor:

McCain has a lethal advantage here. We all think he's a crazy old coot who nobody could possibly take seriously, but underestimating his appeal to the press (or his sense of humor) is stupid. He can deliver a line.

Not only can McCain hammer the punch line, he loves doing it!

As I noted earlier, McCain's a retail powerhouse who lives for the hustings. He'll out-campaign anyone, like his GOP rivals in January and February. Obama better be wearing his Skylon's if he's hoping to keep up with McCain in the fall.

So, the left's abiding fear is not only that McCain'll bomb Iran, but that he'll floor the crowd with "Barbara Ann."

Yglesias Just Can't Get it Right!

I've been hammering Matthew Yglesias quite a bit lately, and for good reason, when one considers how nasty his project is sometimes (cheap shots on the dead, for example).

But I agree with him today, with one big exception.

According to a new historians' poll at the History News Network, "more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history."

I'm always skeptical when I see these surveys, considering the over-representation of lefties in the academy.

But check out Yglesias, who caves in to reality at first, by recognizing that near-term historical evaluations are not that helpful in understanding a president's legacy, only to take it all back at the end:

It's very hard to know what to make of these kind of questions. How can you possibly try to evaluate someone like, say, Andrew Jackson in contemporary terms?

At any rate, it will surprise no one to learn that I think Bush has been a very bad president. More interestingly, I also take the view that Bush is probably correct to think that history will remember him kindly. American presidents associated with big dramatic events tend to wind up with good reputations whether they deserve them or not. One possible Bush analogy would be to Woodrow Wilson, who did all kinds of things with regard to civil liberties that look indefensible today and whose foreign policy ended as a giant failure, but who was associated with both big events and with big ideas that were influential down the road. Someday, I bet there will be democracies in the Middle East and some future Republican president will figure out a way to put meat on the bones of "compassionate conservatism" and Bush will be looked upon as a far-sighted figure who made some mistakes in a difficult period of time. Will he deserve a good reputation? No. Will he get one? I'd say yes.

See there? "Will he deserve a good reputation?"

Of course. This a president who staked his administration on something big, something in the grand tradition of American national greatness.

Other surveys have also found President Bush at the bottom of the heap among post-WWII presidents.

But unlike Yglesias, who looks at Woodrow Wilson's record, the appropriate comparison is with Harry Truman, who left office in worse straits than Bush will next January. Truman today is generally in the top-ten lists of great American presidents. But Truman's poll numbers were even lower than Bush's when he left office in 1952.

Note how Donald Lambro put things in 2005:

Bush's four-year war in Iraq has deeply divided Americans as the U.S. death toll mounts in the face of a furious guerrilla war that shows no signs of abating. Its eventual outcome is an uncertain one as we wait to see if the increase in U.S. forces can show some security improvements there.

But whatever happens on that score, Bush's decision to invade Iraq -- toppling its terrorist government and installing a democratic government that I believe will outlast its enemies - will remain a significant achievement of his presidency.

Five, 10 or 25 years from now, if that system of government still stands, whatever its internal problems and challenges, it will be seen as a major geopolitical change in a region marked by despotism and instability. And Bush will be seen as the leader who brought about that change.

This is the appropriate way to consider this administration: Bush will "deserve a good reputation."

See also, "Bad Poll Numbers, in Perspective," and "History's Verdict."

For additional analysis, see Memeorandum.

Anti-McCain Mobilization Rooted in Hardline Anti-Iraq Constituencies

The Politico reports that an attack campaign planned by left-wing fanatics against John McCain appears to have fizzled for a lack of money:

Democratic talk of an early, hard-hitting campaign to "define" and tar Arizona Sen. John McCain appears to have fizzled for lack of money, leading to a quiet round of finger-pointing among Democratic operatives and donors as McCain assembles a campaign and a public image relatively unmolested.

Despite the millions of dollars pooling around Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, anti-McCain funds have fallen far short of the hopes set in November, when a key organizer, Tom Matzzie, reportedly told The Washington Post that the "Fund for America" would raise more than $100 million to support the activities of a range of allied groups.

The Democratic National Committee, too, is organizing an anti-McCain campaign, but a spokeswoman, Karen Finney, said fundraising to support that effort has met "mixed" results.

The rest of the story details various, ongoing plans for Democratic Party attack advertising and media buys this year (we'll see plenty of anti-McCain ads in the months ahead).

But what caught my eye is the mention of Tom Matzzie, who's noted as a "key organizer" for groups allied with the Democratic Party's efforts at media mobilization against McCain.

This is significant. Matzzie's formerly the Washington Director for MoveOn.org.

He spearheaded last year's smear campaign against General David Petraeus on the eve of his congressional testimony on Iraq in September. Matzzie attacked Petraeus' strategic assessments with outright lies, for example, that a long U.S. deployment in Iraq would inevitably lead to the restatement of the draft: "Bush-Petraeus 10 Year War = Endless War and a Draft":

The left's demonization of Petraeus went over poorly in public opinion, giving MoveOn.org a black eye in ongoing partisan battles over the war (congressional Democrats even denounced the smear on Petraeus).

Matzzie's shifting gears however. As his profile at Source Watch indicates, he's refocused his efforts this year away from radical direct action to electoral politics:

Tom Matzzie is the former Washington Director and lobbyist for MoveOn.org and former Campaign Manager for Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI) who now runs the AAEI spin-off Campaign to Defend America.

On November 11, 2007, the Washington Post reported that MoveOn's Tom Matzzie has been hired to run an AAEI spin-off called Campaign to Defend America, "an independent money machine that will rival or eclipse what they created in 2004, when donors poured millions into two key outside-the-party organizations -- America Coming Together and the Media Fund. ... Those familiar with overall Democratic fundraising plans for 2008 say that everything is still in a very nascent stage, but party heavyweights are clearly on the march -- setting up various organizations that may be integrated into a larger uber-fundraising effort, perhaps under Mattzie's group. Last week John Podesta, a longtime Democratic operative who runs the Center for American Progress, and Anna Burger, a high-ranking official at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) formed a soft-money 527 group called the "Fund for America." Burger is also vice chair of the Democracy Alliance, wealthy liberal funders of various Democratic Party aligned organizations.

In February, 2008 journalists Matt Taibbi analyzed how the MoveOn-led Americans Against Escalation in Iraq has become "a political tool for the Democrats — one operated from inside the Beltway and devoted primarily to targeting Republicans. ... At the forefront of the groups are [former MoveOn lobbyist] Tom Matzzie and Brad Woodhouse... [M]uch of the anti-war group's leadership hails from a consulting firm called Hildebrand Tewes Consulting — whose partners Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes served as staffers for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Matzzie's quoted in the bio as indicating, "I've essentially quit anti-war organizing and gone into politics."

Today's Democratic Party is increasingly captured by hard-left forces extremely hostile to the Iraq war, forces who have much of their own base the hardline anti-American fringes of American politics (more information on MoveOn is available here).

As the Democratic campaign move towards is denouement, look for Matzzie and his radical attack organizations to pick up widespread financial support among mainstrain Democratic constituencies.

See also, "The Hole at the Heart of the Democratic Party."

For the introduction to the "No Enemies" series, see "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama."

Photo Credit: New York Times

Democratic Rally Attendees Vote Down Pledge of Allegiance

In my final entry last night, I asked, "Are conservatives more patriotic than lefties?"

As I noted, it's almost self-evident that conservatives are more genuinely patriotic than those on the left, and it's apparently not just the RADICAL LEFT, but regular Democratic Party activists as well.

It turns out that at a legislative district caucus in Seattle over the weekend, Democratic partisans booed down a suggestion to recite the Pledge of Allegiance:

There was some time to kill as multiple tallies of the delegates and alternates were done, and when the time-killer of taking audience questions had run its course and the idea of teling jokes had been nixed, someone suggested doing the Pledge of Allegiance to pass the time. (Are you listening, right-wing bloggers? This is going to get good.)

At the mere mention of doing the pledge there were groans and boos. Then, when the district chair put the idea of doing the Pledge of Allegiance up to a vote, it was overwhelmingly voted down. One might more accurately say the idea of pledging allegiance to the flag (of which there was only one in the room, by the way, on some delegate’s hat) was shouted down.

Groans and boos at the notion of pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States?

The meeting included intense jockeying for positions as delegates to the Washington state Democratic convention, so these people are true-blue (as in "blue state") Democratic Party activists and officials.

Of the 67 delegates apportioned at the caucus, 53 went for Obama and 14 for Clinton.

This was an Obama crowd. God help the United States if this man's elected in November.

See also the introduction to my recent series on far left-wing progressives, "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama."

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin

No Rest in Battle Against Radical Islam

I quoted Henry Kissinger at length yesterday, in my post, "From Impeachment to War Crimes: The New Revenge Against BushCo."

Well it turns out that Henry Kissinger, the former professor of international relations and Secretary of State, has a penetrating essay up today at the Washington Post.

The whole piece is worth a good read, but the section on the challenge of Islamist fundamentalism is particularly good:

Today it is radical Islam that threatens the already brittle state structure via a fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran as the basis of a universal political organization. Jihadist Islam rejects national sovereignty based on secular state models; it seeks to extend its reach to wherever significant populations profess the Muslim faith. Since neither the international system nor the internal structure of existing states has legitimacy in Islamist eyes, its ideology leaves little room for Western notions of negotiation or equilibrium in a region of vital interest to the security and well-being of the industrial states. That struggle is endemic; we do not have the option of withdrawal. We can retreat from any one place, such as Iraq, but only to be obliged to resist from new positions, probably more disadvantageously. Even advocates of unilateral withdrawal from Iraq speak of retaining residual forces to prevent a resurgence of al-Qaeda or radicalism.

See also my earlier entry, "Fitna": Islamist Univeralism and Western Civilization."

And for deeper reference, see Jason Pappas, "Islam and Our Denial."

Iraq Hearings: The Iraqis Stepped Up to the Plate

We can expect big political fireworks on Capitol Hill this week, as General David Petraeus prepared to testify on progress in Iraq.

The political stakes of the hearings have been raised by the recent fighting in Basra, which the Democrats and the antiwar backers will protray as proof the surge has failed (Senator Joe Biden made that case over the weekend).

But the overall picture on the eve of the testimony is that Iraq has achieved a crucial turning point, that Iraq's indigenous forces have indeed "stood up," which is what antiwar hawks have been demanding for the past few years.

The Washington Post has some background on the political stakes this week in the Iraq debate:

When Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker travel to Capitol Hill tomorrow, they might be the ones before the microphones, but the cameras will be trained on three of their inquisitors: Sens. John McCain, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

The hearings before the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees promise to be as much about presidential politics as about the past six months of military and diplomatic progress in Iraq. All last summer, Washington anxiously awaited the September appearances of Petraeus, the commanding U.S. general in Iraq, and Crocker, the top U.S. diplomat in Baghdad, anticipating that their testimony could determine the political viability of continued war.

Their return engagement is eliciting no more than shrugs -- except on the political front. It has been months since Obama, McCain or Clinton appeared at a hearing, but all three contenders for the White House will take rare breaks from their campaigns to be on hand. Although the committee chairmen are loath to admit it, two relatively junior Democratic senators and one ranking Republican are likely to steal the show.

"This is sort of a dress rehearsal for who is best prepared to be commander in chief, who has the best understanding of what has happened, what was wrong in Iraq and how to fix it," noted Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), an Armed Services Committee member and McCain backer.

For the three candidates -- and for the Senate at large -- there is little expectation of surprises. Last September, lawmakers anxiously watched for cracks, either in Republican support of President Bush's war policies or in Democratic opposition.

"It's all completely predictable this time, what everyone is going to say," said Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), a senior Foreign Relations Committee member and Obama backer.

If anything, the campaigns have dug the divisions deeper. Besides Bush, no other politician is as vested in the success of the troop increase and new counterinsurgency strategy as is McCain. He helped promote the troop increase, then used the fall and winter's drop in violence to resurrect his campaign. Graham said McCain has the opportunity tomorrow to make those successes his own -- and to challenge his would-be Democratic rivals to prove them illusory.

The Washington Post story suggests that recent figting in Iraq has been "inconclusive." But as Ralph Peters, a retired United States Army Lieutenant Colonel, and columnist at the New York Post, observes:

I watched the Basra dust-up from Panama, amazed at the willful obtuseness of "war correspondents" who still refuse to acknowledge basic military realities. They demanded a level of effectiveness from Iraqi troops that the British had been unable (and unwilling) to deliver over the last five years.

Unlike the Brits, who faked it, the Iraqis went into the city and fought. Was their performance perfect? Of course not. But this is where the punditry got really interesting.

Many of the critics had previously lavished praise on the counterinsurgency manual that Petraeus midwifed. One of the most-quoted maxims from that document was T.E. Lawrence's admonition that it's better for our local allies to do something imperfectly themselves than for us to do it perfectly for them.

Well, the Iraqis stepped up to the plate. A few units folded. Others fought ferociously. They did what we said we wanted - and the critics raised the bar again. (Unfair criteria for success now may pose a greater obstacle in Iraq and Afghanistan than do al Qaeda or the Taliban.)

And, by the way, it was Moqtada al Sadr, not the Iraqi government, who requested a cease-fire - after being urged by the Iranians to opt to let those militias live to fight another day.

Partisan critics refuse to accept that war is tough and results are never perfect. They want it all wrapped up neatly at the end of the two-hour movie so we can all walk out of the theater feeling good.

See also my earlier posts, "Postwar Germany: Messy Precedent for Iraq," and "The Basra Model."

Photo Credit: Middle East Online

Postwar Germany: Messy Precedent for Iraq

Lots of war opponents say Iraq and World War II are incomparable, that we can't use the American occupations of Germany and Japan as models for what may happen today in the Middle East.

Such arguments, often used to denounce claims of a long-term presence in Iraq in the years ahead, conveniently make the post-WWII occupations look like a Sunday walk in the park, without, for example, the sectarian violence or the American military and poltical incompetence alleged to have doomed the Iraq mission from the start.

This is, of course, selective, self-serving history, as David Stafford shows at the Washington Post:

Smash the enemy, deliver victory, topple the dictator, destroy his regime, eliminate his evil ideology, and establish peace and democracy. Oh, and -- almost forgot -- do this several thousand miles away on a distant continent while also fighting another life-or-death struggle elsewhere. Meanwhile, make sure to keep in step with our allies. And one last thing: Bring the troops back home as soon as possible.

Mission impossible? Entering year six of the Iraq war, with 4,000 Americans dead in the conflict, the president's popularity hitting new lows and results of the troop surge still fragile, it may look that way for the administration of George W. Bush. But we may also be rushing to judgment.

More than 60 years ago, during World War II, Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower didn't think that his similar, even more daunting, mission was impossible. By the time he had completed his crusade in Europe and thanked his staff for a job well done at a farewell ceremony in Frankfurt in July 1945, the German army, or Wehrmacht, no longer existed, Hitler was dead, the Nazi Party had been dissolved, war criminals were behind bars awaiting trial and retribution, de-Nazification had begun, and western Germany -- the part not occupied by the Soviet army -- was on its way to becoming one of the most successful liberal democracies of the Western world. The Third Reich was history.

So what did the United States do right 60 years ago that it has -- so far -- failed to accomplish in Iraq since the iconic toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad and Bush's "Mission Accomplished" declaration aboard a U.S. carrier on May 1, 2003?

The question is, of course, superficial. It would be harder to think of two more different societies than Germany in 1945 and contemporary Iraq. The former -- despite Hitler and the Third Reich -- had a long tradition of law, order, constitutional government and civic society to draw on in rebuilding democracy. Nor was it riven by deep-rooted ethnic and sectarian religious tensions that erupted to the surface once the dictator's iron fist was removed. And although Germany certainly had hostile neighbors -- especially to the communist East -- the threat they posed served to create, not crack, political cohesion.

Yet in looking at Iraq over the past five years, it's hard not to find poignant echoes of the post-WWII experience and to wonder whether a better knowledge of that history might have helped prevent some basic errors. Or even -- because there may be some small crumb of comfort for optimists here -- that it's too soon to declare that the mission has failed. Sen. John McCain's 100-year horizon for a U.S. presence in Iraq may be stretching things. But let's not forget that the postwar occupation of Germany lasted for a full decade.

In 1945, the Allies had a carefully thought-out plan for what would follow victory. For two years before his forces crossed the German frontier, Eisenhower and his staff at Allied headquarters worked on detailed plans for the occupation. The lines of command were clearly drawn, and everyone agreed that the military would be in charge. Thousands of soldiers were trained in the tasks of military government. Compare that with the chaotically devised schemes for Iraq that were cobbled together at the last minute amid squabbling between the Pentagon and the State Department. Or with the confused and confusing mandate handed to the hapless Jay Garner, the first administrator of postwar Iraq, to devise a comprehensive plan for its administration in a matter of weeks.

Nonetheless, plans, however thorough, are worthless if they cannot be implemented. For that, establishing law and order is a minimal and basic condition. There was plenty of looting and disorder when U.S. forces entered Germany. In fact, it was on a scale far greater than anticipated or now remembered, most of it due to the rage that millions of slave laborers who'd been deported to Germany from Nazi-occupied countries, chiefly Poland and the Soviet Union, vented on their captors upon liberation.

As in Baghdad five years ago, the disorder also engulfed cultural institutions. When U.S. forces entered Munich, Hitler's spiritual home and the seat of Nazi Party headquarters, scores of works of art simply disappeared from museums and art galleries. For two or three days, the northern city of Bremen was "probably among the most debauched places on the face of God's earth," wrote one witness of the frantic looting that took place after Allied soldiers entered its bomb-shattered streets.

But this anarchy was quickly and forcefully stamped out, and enough Allied forces remained in the country and in all major cities to impose stringent and often ruthless order. Military tribunals promptly disposed of Nazis who were inclined to continue the struggle by executing them or imposing severe terms of imprisonment.

The way victory was declared was crucial. Immediately after entering Germany in September 1944, Eisenhower issued a proclamation that declared: "We come as conquerors, but not as oppressors." The emphasis on conquest meant that military government ruled. There was no glib talk of liberation, and no dealing, either, with the large number of anti-Nazi exiles who had jockeyed for recognition as some sort of government in exile. Too many of them were long out of touch with realities on the ground or had axes to grind.

Critics of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq point to the decisions by L. Paul Bremer, Garner's replacement, to dismiss Baathists from public office and to dissolve the Iraqi army as critical and disastrous turning points that created a vast legion of the unemployed and disaffected. Yet in 1945, the Allies implemented a similarly draconian policy in Germany. They dissolved the Nazi Party, carried out a thorough purge of Nazis in public office and even abolished the ancient state of Prussia, which they believed was at the root of German militarism. Millions of Wehrmacht soldiers languished in prisoner-of-war camps while their families struggled to survive.

None of this, however, had the catastrophic consequences seen in Iraq. One reason is that pragmatism almost immediately took hold. It quickly became clear that Germany could be rebuilt only with the help of numerous people who had been members of the Nazi Party.

The Allies entered Germany with a strict policy of "non-fraternization" that forbade their forces to have any but the most minimal and formal dealings with Germans. "Don't get chummy with Jerry," urged the G.I. newspaper Stars and Stripes. "In heart, body and spirit every German is a Hitler." But by July 1945, the policy had been abandoned as unenforceable. It was also alienating the very Germans needed to rebuild the country and establish democracy.

As for de-Nazification, it sounded good, and indeed was morally and politically necessary. But distinguishing between real and nominal Nazis often proved extremely difficult. Small officials who'd joined the party out of necessity were thrown out of office, while big businessmen who'd profited under Hitler were left alone. The policy generated growing hostility to the occupiers, and its implementation was soon handed over to the Germans themselves. This caused its own bitterness as the Germans were often seen as being too lenient.

Even so, despite this willingness to rethink and adjust, occupation policy floundered. Two years after Allied victory, Germany was in desperate straits, facing an economic crisis that threatened to nip democracy in the bud. Only the Marshall Plan, with its massive program of financial aid, saved the country from disaster. Self-government did not come until 1949, and Allied troops remained in West Germany as occupiers until 1955, a full decade after the defeat of the Third Reich. Unrepentant Nazis stayed active on the extreme fringes of West German politics for years, and a few ex-Nazis held high positions even in mainstream politics until the 1960s. The Christian Democratic politician Kurt Georg Kiesinger, who had joined the Nazi Party in 1933, was chancellor of the Federal Republic from 1966 to 1969.

Rebuilding a nation is possible. But even in the best of circumstances, it takes effort, time, patience and pragmatism. As 1945 confirms, liberation from a dictator in itself offers no easy path to peace or democracy. Battlefield victory is the easy bit. Building peace is a constant struggle -- and it's a matter of years, not weeks.

See also, Victor Davis Hanson, "Nothing Succeeds Like Success," at Commentary.

The Basra Model

Via Michael Yon:

The outcome of the Battle of Basra is still unclear. But as things stabilize in that critical city—the southern gateway to Iraq's oil wealth—Basra may well turn out to be Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Kasserine Pass.

Click Here to read the entire article written by Michael Hirsh in Newsweek.

Also, check Wikipedia's entry, "Battle of the Kasserine Pass."

Dueling Patriotisms

Are conservatives more patriotic than lefties?

It seems like the answer's straightforward: On the big issues of the day - which I see as the defense of traditional values (like national greatness) and questions of war and peace - conservatives win hands down.

Simply, it's just hard to call yourself a patriot when you're rooting for the other side.

Yet, there's an interesting little kerfuffle on the topic breaking out in the blogosphere, with Peter Wehner at Commentary taking on Joe Klein at Swampland.

Klein's clever, but he's badly outmatched by Wehner on this issue.

Here's Wehner's post:

In a rather stunning sentence that Ramesh Ponnuru flagged over at National Review’s The Corner, Joe Klein, in saying that the “chronic disease among Democrats” is their tendency to talk more about what’s wrong with America than what’s right, wrote this:

This is ironic and weirdly self-defeating, since the liberal message of national improvement is profoundly more optimistic, and patriotic, than the innate conservative pessimism about the perfectibility of human nature.

As Ponnuru points out, can you imagine Klein’s outrage if the charge had been made the other way - that the conservative message of national improvement is more “patriotic” than liberalism?

Read the whole thing, but especially Wehner's knockout blow:

Beyond that, is Klein really prepared to argue that the aim of the institutional strongholds of contemporary liberalism - whether we are talking about the academy or Hollywood or others - is to deepen our love for America and increase our civic devotion and pride? That their efforts will make us a more perfect union? Does Klein believe that during the last several decades liberals rather than conservatives have been more likely to reject cultural relativism and radical multiculturalism? Have liberals rather than conservatives been more vocal in arguing why the United States is better in every way than its totalitarian enemies? Is Ted Kennedy really more patriotic in his “liberal message of national improvement” than Ronald Reagan was in his conservative message of national improvement?

To be sure, patriotism is a complicated matter, as it has many elements to it and tensions within it. It is certainly not the property of any one political party. It is not blind support for America, just as it is not reflexive opposition to America. But what we can say, I think, is that ... part of what it has traditionally meant to be an American is to believe in our most cherished creeds - most especially that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. Patriotism also demands that we hold an honest view of our nation — which, in the case of America, means we should acknowledge our injustices (past and present) even as we acknowledge that, in Allan Bloom’s words, “America tells one story: the unbroken ineluctable progress of freedom and equality.” And of course patriotism requires us to sacrifice for our country, to defend her when she is under assault, and to do what we can to help America live up to her founding ideals.

I like how Wehner notes how patriotism's a complex thing.

Not only should it be "bipartisan property," it's a shame that it's not more so, especially now, when being patriotic for many on the left is spitting on the troops with endless portrayals about how military service-personnel have been "victimized" by the Bush's war policies. That's hardly patriotic, and that's just one example.

But here's Klein's most recent rejoinder to the debate:

Pete Wehner, former chief White House propagandist for the Iraq war, has taken me to task for claiming that liberalism is more optimistic and therefore inherently more patriotic than conservatism. That takes some nerve. He would compare my statement to the constant drumbeat of right-wingnutters questioning the patriotism of those who do not support the Bush Administration's foreign policy foolishness. But I didn't do that at all. I didn't question the patriotism of conservatives: I simply argued that it is more patriotic to be optimistic about the chance that our collective will--that is, the best work of government--will succeed, rather than that it will fail or impinge on freedom.

In others words, it is more patriotic to be in favor of civil rights legislation than to oppose it...to be in favor of social security and medicare than to oppose them...and to hope that the better angels of our legislators--acting in concert, in compromise--will produce a universal health insurance system and an alternative energy plan that we can all be proud of. Conservative skepticism has its place; it can be a valuable corrective when government goes flabby and corrupt or engages in wild neo-colonialist fantasies abroad.

If you read further, you'll see Klein backs off a bit from the private interest versus public purpose contrast.

But as he continues, he buries his own case for the left's patriotism by more vehemently condemning the Bush administration as an unmitigated disaster:

Those who have stood in the path of progress have been wrong far more often than they've been right. And those who spent the past seven years as propagandists for the one of the worst, and needlessly blood-soaked, presidencies in American history, have such a fabulous record of self-righteous wrong-headedness that they needn't be taken seriously at all.

Frankly, for all the problems of the Bush administration, it simply strains credibility to suggest conservative backers for President Bush and the Iraq war are servile "propagandists."

Klein's gone completely the other way: He suggests that it's unpatriotic to back the administration's forward policy of democracy promotion in Iraq. The historical record is actually more in line with the Bush's agenda - from McKinley to Roosevelt to Reagan - than Klein acknowledges.

So, who wins? Perhaps the notion of "bipartisan patriotism" isn't such a possiblity after all.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Charlton Heston, 1923-2008

Charlton Heston always seemed like a good man to me.

His movies weren't my favorite, although that was really more of a generational thing than anything else.

I saw him perfrom live in London in 1985, as Captain Queeg in "The Caine Mutiny."

I can watch "The Ten Commandments" again and again, and I think that's how I remember Heston the most.

In my younger, pre-neocon days, I simply didn't assess Heston politically.

Frankly, I wasn't even going to post an obituary until I read Matthew Yglesias' depraved comments on Heston's death:

His political trajectory was a little silly, but also in a very fitting way utterly typical of the larger trajectory of American history. His death, we hope, comes at a time when the great backlash of which he was a part is finally receding.

Yglesias concludes with "rest in peace."

I recall reading that when a conservative becomes ill or dies, leftists cheer. Yglesias isn't so disrespectful as he is distasteful. Perhaps he could have posted a picture, a link to an obituary, and then signed off with "rest in peace." No, he had to try and pull some larger meaning from Heston's passing, that perhaps burying Heston will presage the death of the conservatives he loathes so much.

I noticed not too many lefties commenting on Heston's death (as measured by links at Memeorandum).

Perhaps they've learned their lesson, that they want to avoid the total hypocrisy of their low-down attacks. As FrontPageMage notes:

For the left, civility is a one-way street, running toward them – but never in the opposite direction....

Their modus operandi is calling conservatives: racists, bigots, hate-mongers, warmongers, Nazis, trigger-happy cowboys, gun nuts, psychos, despoilers of the environment and political Ebenezer Scrooges rubbing their bony hands together in greedy glee as widows and orphans starve in the streets simply to boost the profits of their junk bonds.

Or, they simply hope that the death of a revered conservative American preceeds the passing of the movement to which they belong.

No class there, no class at all.

That's not surprising, of course. See my earlier post, "The Radical Foreign Policy of Matthew Yglesias."

See also Ann Althouse, "Charlton Heston, "remembered chiefly for his monumental, jut-jawed portrayals of Moses, Ben-Hur and Michelangelo."

Photo Credit: "In 2003, Mr. Heston was a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by President Bush," New York Times

From Impeachment to War Crimes: The New Revenge Against BushCo

The radical left failed miserably in its half-decade campaign to impeach top officials in the Bush administration.

Bush-bashers haven't given up hopes of revenge, of course, and the latest controversy over the "torture memos" has given new impetus for legal action against members of the hated Bush/Cheney regime.

Crooks and Liars is positively ejaculatory over the suggestion by Andrew Sullivan that principals in the torture controversy should be tried as war criminals (via Memeorandum).

The left's dizzying rush of vengeful palpitations results not just from the Justice Department's release of the memos this week, but by the war crimes journalism of Phillippe Sands, who has a new full-length article on the administration's policy developments on coercive interrogations at Vanity Fair, "The Green Light." It's a long and technically detailed article, but the conclusion is red meat for radical left Bush-bashers seeking their tons of administration flesh:

Those responsible for the interrogation of Detainee 063 face a real risk of investigation if they set foot outside the United States. Article 4 of the torture convention criminalizes “complicity” or “participation” in torture, and the same principle governs violations of Common Article 3.

It would be wrong to consider the prospect of legal jeopardy unlikely. I remember sitting in the House of Lords during the landmark Pinochet case, back in 1999—in which a prosecutor was seeking the extradition to Spain of the former Chilean head of state for torture and other international crimes—and being told by one of his key advisers that they had never expected the torture convention to lead to the former president of Chile’s loss of legal immunity. In my efforts to get to the heart of this story, and its possible consequences, I visited a judge and a prosecutor in a major European city, and guided them through all the materials pertaining to the Guantánamo case. The judge and prosecutor were particularly struck by the immunity from prosecution provided by the Military Commissions Act. “That is very stupid,” said the prosecutor, explaining that it would make it much easier for investigators outside the United States to argue that possible war crimes would never be addressed by the justice system in the home country—one of the trip wires enabling foreign courts to intervene. For some of those involved in the Guantánamo decisions, prudence may well dictate a more cautious approach to international travel. And for some the future may hold a tap on the shoulder.

“It’s a matter of time,” the judge [interviewed for this story] observed. “These things take time.” As I gathered my papers, he looked up and said, “And then something unexpected happens, when one of these lawyers travels to the wrong place.”

Sands is a lawyer and professor of international law based in Britain (with a new book forthcoming, Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values). His reporting feeds the agenda of the global human rights movement, which has been building an international regime to enforce global justice in supranational courts of universal jurisdiction.

Actually, this latest controversy over the torture memos is part and parcel to the radical left's agenda of worldwide judicial tyranny, which is explained by Henry Kissinger at Foreign Affairs:

In less than a decade, an unprecedented movement has emerged to submit international politics to judicial procedures. It has spread with extraordinary speed and has not been subjected to systematic debate, partly because of the intimidating passion of its advocates. To be sure, human rights violations, war crimes, genocide, and torture have so disgraced the modern age and in such a variety of places that the effort to interpose legal norms to prevent or punish such outrages does credit to its advocates. The danger lies in pushing the effort to extremes that risk substituting the tyranny of judges for that of governments; historically, the dictatorship of the virtuous has often led to inquisitions and even witch-hunts.

The doctrine of universal jurisdiction asserts that some crimes are so heinous that their perpetrators should not escape justice by invoking doctrines of sovereign immunity or the sacrosanct nature of national frontiers. Two specific approaches to achieve this goal have emerged recently. The first seeks to apply the procedures of domestic criminal justice to violations of universal standards, some of which are embodied in United Nations conventions, by authorizing national prosecutors to bring offenders into their jurisdictions through extradition from third countries. The second approach is the International Criminal Court (ICC), the founding treaty for which was created by a conference in Rome in July 1998 and signed by 95 states, including most European countries....

THE IDEOLOGICAL supporters of universal jurisdiction also provide much of the intellectual compass for the emerging International Criminal Court. Their goal is to criminalize certain types of military and political actions and thereby bring about a more humane conduct of international relations....

The advocates of universal jurisdiction argue that the state is the basic cause of war and cannot be trusted to deliver justice. If law replaced politics, peace and justice would prevail. But even a cursory examination of history shows that there is no evidence to support such a theory. The role of the statesman is to choose the best option when seeking to advance peace and justice, realizing that there is frequently a tension between the two and that any reconciliation is likely to be partial. The choice, however, is not simply between universal and national jurisdictions.

The advocates Kissinger refers to are the leaders of such groups like After Downing Street and World Can't Wait.

These groups have vowed to "to send Bush, Cheney and the rest of those fascists packing."

This week's controversy over the torture memos, timed pefectly with Sands' legal manifesto, feeds the fires of radicals trying to do just that, with a war crimes tribunal the immediate destination.

Photo Credit: Vanity Fair

Iran Joined in Battle for Basra

The war in Iraq has taken a new turn with the fighting in Basra.

Like the during Cold War, where the Soviets challenged American world power by fighting proxy wars against U.S. allies on the periphery, Iran has escalated it strategic competition in the Middle East with the deployment of Iranian military personnel in the recent Shiite fighting in Iraq.

The Times of London has the story:

IRANIAN forces were involved in the recent battle for Basra, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is expected to tell Congress this week.

Military and intelligence sources believe Iranians were operating at a tactical command level with the Shi’ite militias fighting Iraqi security forces; some were directing operations on the ground, they think.

Petraeus intends to use the evidence of Iranian involvement to argue against any reductions in US forces.

Also, the Los Angeles Times reports that Petraeus may have some concern that the political alignments in Washington are turning against a sustained U.S. presence in Iraq.

On a related point, see also my earlier entry, "Basra Breakout: The Second Iran-Iraq War."

Left Smears McCain's Military Service as "Wrong Code" for Office

We already know the left's in full battle mode with its smears against John McCain as a "warmonger."

It should be no surprise, then, to see the beginning of a new delegitimization campaign against the Arizona Senator's service to country. McCain's family "honor" of military service is being attacked as "the wrong code for directing national policy":

The question is this: will America sacrifice herself to vindicate the personal sense of honor of one man? If there were no war, Senator McCain might be a good president. With the Iraq war going on, however, there is an overriding reason to vote against McCain in 2008 ... The reason to vote against McCain, paradoxically, is McCain's military experience. I'm not referring to his experience with military affairs, but the personal military experiences that shaped him....

The problem is that McCain doesn't see himself as a civilian. He was, is and will always be defined in his own mind by the code of military service. This would be a great quality in a general or perhaps in a peacetime president, but will be disastrous in wartime. There is a reason our founders wanted America's military to have dispassionate civilian leadership.

McCain thinks of himself in terms of honor, service and sacrifice. These laudable abstract spiritual ideas are a terrific quality in officers leading last stands or in medics attending the battlefield wounded. But honor, service and sacrifice are the wrong code for directing national policy....

McCain would bring both a historical perspective and psychological needs to the presidency. Simply put, McCain does not want to be the president that presides over today's Iraqi equivalent of the mass exit from the rooftop of Saigon's American embassy.

This is an extreme characterization of McCain's "psychological needs."

Throughout American history military service has been considered an asset for aspirants to the Oval Office. Recall that John F. Kennedy's call to "pay any price" for the survival of liberty gained more power and legitimacy by the fact that the 35th president was a highly-decorated World War II veteran of the Pacific war.

I see this delegitimization campaign as frankly of an extension of the radical left's hatred of the American military itself, with McCain now posited as the most visible and reviled symbol of that institution's place in American political history.

For an interesting, and not completed unrelated debate, see Ann Althouse, "McCain is "implicitly attacking Obama for basking in self-glory, when the Obama campaign is very much predicated on 'we' and not 'I.'"

Kos Ready for Clinton's "Declaration of Civil War"

Markos Moulitsas has a new essay up at Newsweek attacking Hillary Clinton for battling the Democratic nomination race to the bitter end:

Hillary Clinton has proved during the past few months that she is a fighter, that she is tenacious, and that she is in the race to win. There's just one problem. She's already lost.

No matter how you define victory, Barack Obama holds an insurmountable lead in the race to earn the Democratic nomination. He leads in the one metric that matters most: the pledged delegates chosen directly by Democratic voters. But he also leads in the popular vote,

the number of states won and money raised. Still, Obama's advantages aren't large enough to allow him an outright victory. He needs the 20 percent of party delegates who aren't bound to a candidate. It's with these superdelegates that Clinton has staked her ephemeral chances.

Clinton's near-lone chance of victory rests with a coup by superdelegate, persuading enough of them to overcome the primary voters' preference. Yet a coup by elite Democrats would be ill-received, to put it mildly. Obama's base spans the party's most loyal and engaged constituencies: African-Americans, professionals who generate hundreds of millions in small-dollar donations and a conventional-wisdom-defying outpouring of youth support.

If Obama lost at the polling booth, these supporters would accept the voters' verdict and carry on. Many, including those who backed Howard Dean's heartbreaking 2004 campaign, have been through such disappointment before. But if Beltway bigwigs steal a hard-won victory, it would amount to a declaration of civil war. Not only would the resolve of thousands of loyal foot soldiers and the party's new fund-raising base be irrevocably shaken, but it would torpedo the opportunity to build and strengthen a new generation of Democrats.

Clinton's best-case scenario for victory requires sundering her own party. It is an inherently divisive strategy, but she doesn't appear to care. For Clinton, all's fair in pursuit of victory—even destroying her party from within. Her campaign has adopted a bizarre "insult-40-states strategy," which has belittled states small, liberal and Red. Apparently, the only states that matter are the ones she coincidentally happens to win.

I'd just turn this around a bit.

Since Clinton can legitimately compete for the nomination under Demcratic Party rules, it's Kos himself who's announcing a rebellion.

And why not?

All along he's meglomanically declared that his blog's movement is the real heart and soul of the Democratic Party, and the Kos radicals are in the tank for Obama.

If Hillary takes it all the way to the convention, would it be out of hand to think of Daily Kos' suborning violent protests in the streets in August?

Denver, Colorado ... the Ft. Sumter of 2008?

Racial Resentment with Wright's Sermons: The Polite Label for White Racism?

Barack Obama really did have a transcendental racial appeal, but it was way back in 2004, at the time of the Democratic National Convention, when he was a relative unknown.

He could afford, then, to enunciate a true vision of racial equality that called forth both social reform and personal responsibility. Indeed, Obama could fire up the Democratic Party base by taking it to "de man" while simultaneously assuaging the powerful white racial guilt honed by decades of black racial victimology.

When does it all end?

Not soon, if this weekend's racial hornet's nest surrounding the 40-year commemoration of Martin Luther King's assassination is any indication.

I'm frankly still amazed at the commentary I read advancing the unmitigated racist society meme common among black intellectuals.

A prime example is this comment from Michael Dawson following Obama's Philadelphia speech on race and religion following the backlash against Reverend Wright's black liberation America-bashing (via Jacob Levy):

I'm worried it was it too little, too late.

It was too little in that while addressing race it equated white racial resentment (which scholars know is really just a more polite label for white racism) with the black anger and skepticism that comes out of past and current racial discrimination.

I suspect blacks will give Obama a break on this score, but those comments will not satisfy those large segments of white America that harbor racial resentment. It was too little when he argued that we can move forward toward racial justice for all without the "need to recite…the history of racial injustice."

It was too little because even though he strongly and correctly argued that today's racial disadvantage is based on the white supremacy of the past, we know that many, many whites do not connect the black situation today to either the injustices of the past or the present.

The history must be retold if a case is to be made to explain black disadvantage in this period. It was unfortunate when he implied that blacks were not willing to come together in multi-racial coalitions now or in the past. In the great populist and labor multi-racial coalitions of the late 19th century and early 20th century, during the Civil Rights era, and in modern times it was whites liberals and progressives that walked away from those coalitions with the predictable result of sparking much greater support for black nationalist movements such as those of Marcus Garvey, the Black Power movement, and Min. Louis Farrakhan.

Dawson's one of the top political scientists working on politics and race, which is one of the reasons I find his views unproductive.

Recent polls indicate huge majorities favorable toward an African-American presidential candidate this year. For example, in February 2007, just 6 percent said they'd be "less likely" to support a black candidate for the presidency in 2008. In addition, one of the big election stories this year in the Democratic primaries was the collapse of the "Bradley thesis." Why didn't voters go for Barack Obama after his powerful surge in Iowa? Racial "resentment? It's more likely that a women's "sympathy vote" helped Hillary Clinton come back after her poor showing in the Hawkeye State.

Dawson's at the Univeristy of Chicago, but he's formally of Harvard, having left there after University President Larry Summers was pilloried for suggesting innate gender differences in research productivity in the hard sciences. One doesn't want want to be associated with that type of intolerant scholarly environment, no siree. Not only that, there's a racial grievance project behind such resentment (or, in Ruth Wisse's words, an accusation of bias like this, "advanced by feminists and often accepted at face value by the academic community, attempts to transform guarantees of equal opportunity into a demand for equal outcome").

But hey, people don't want to talk about that.

I wonder if it ever occurs to folks like Dawson that white Americans just don't care to hear such black theological truths, such as, "Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run." Perhaps they might prefer their sermons without such fanatical chants as, "America is still the No. 1 killer in the world ... We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God."

No, I imagine folks are in no mind to carry much truck with such racial animosity. Who needs it, especially decades after America's historic commiment to racial equality has produced a vigorous African-American middle class, black executives and scholars like Dawson and Michael Eric Dyson, all part and parcel to the statistical evidence of the dramatic progress African-Americans have made since then?

See also my earlier post, "Will the Real MLK Please Stand Up?," as well as some of the other related commentary at Memeorandum.

McCain Attacked as "Warmonger" at Obama Rally

This Caucus story makes it look like Ed Schultz's slur of John McCain as a "warmonger" is exceptional, out-of-the-blue, in fact.

But, frankly, mainstream Democratic Party supporters are essentially indistinguishable from the party's hardline radical base, particularly those found in the antiwar netroots.

Here's the background:

On the air, Ed Schultz, a liberal talk show host based in Fargo, N.D., is well-known for his blunt criticisms of the Bush Administration and the Republican Party. But Mr. Schultz, a fervent supporter of Senator Barack Obama, may have gone too far late Friday when he called Senator John McCain “a warmonger.”

Mr. Schultz, whose program is syndicated nationally, made the remarks while revving up a group of Obama supporters at a $100-a-head fund raiser at the North Dakota Democratic Party’s convention in Grand Forks. As soon as the Republican National Committee got word of the attack, it issued a statement lambasting Mr. Schultz and calling on Mr. Obama to repudiate the characterization of the presumptive Republican nominee for President.

It's obviously difficult to corral potentially inflammatory rhetoric coming from fired up supporters, but such talk should certainly not be unexpected, given the implacable hostility to the administration's war among those on the antiwar left:

As his position as the Democratic front-runner solidifies, Mr. Obama has stepped up his attacks on Mr. McCain’s views and policies. But he frequently prefaces and tempers those criticisms, as he did Friday in Indiana and North Dakota and Saturday in Montana, by calling Mr. McCain “a genuine war hero who deserves our respect” and making clear that the differences between the two men are political, not personal.

The Republican primary was “nothing more than a contest to see who was best qualified to run for George Bush’s third term,” Mr. Obama said in a speech to the North Dakota Democrats on Friday evening. “John McCain won that contest, and now he’s offering four more years of the very same policies that failed us for the last eight.”

“We can’t afford to give John McCain the chance to carry on George Bush’s can’t-do, won’t-do, won’t-even-try style of politics,” he also said. “We are a better country than that.”

A better country than what?

One that will fight - with very few allies, if necessary - to uphold the pinciples of international law embodied in the U.N. Charter, as well as the specific resolutions on Iraqi violations of the world body's disarmement regime.

Is there a better country? I don't think so.

See more commentary at Memeorandum.