Rooting for the Enemy: Glenn Greenwald Takes on NYT

This post updates my earlier entry, "Oversimplifying the Threat? McCain, Iraq, and Al Qaeda."

It turns out Glenn Greenwald, who's normally completely rabid over the cheerleading media's enabling of D.C.'s "warmongers," is not so upset today with the New York Times' piece, "McCain, Iraq War and the Threat of 'Al Qaeda'":

I'm hesitant to criticize the article because it at least examines McCain's increasingly reckless and exploitative use of the term "Al Qaeda" when defending the war in Iraq. And it also notes that McCain did the same thing with Iran, previously and repeatedly linking the Iranians to "Al Qaeda" only to retract the claim. So that's progress, at least.

His hesitance shows how completely hypocritical he is, which is funny, since he's the author of the new book, Great American Hypocrites.

But all of this ties right in with his anti-American attacks on both neoconservative "chicken hawks" and American troops fighting in Iraq.

As I noted in my post last night, McCain's right to deploy "Al Qaeda" as shorthand in referring to the various terrorist groups arrayed against the U.S. and its Iraqi allies. But note Greenwald's argument, where he takes exception to war-backer Kenneth Pollack's quote that McCain's usage of the generalized "Al Qaeda" terminology is acceptable:

Is it really any wonder that Saban's Ken Pollack thinks it's "perfectly reasonable" to call various sundry Middle East groups -- including Iraqis defending their own country from foreign occupation -- "Al Qaeda" terrorists? To do that is actually called "lying" -- of exactly the type that led us into Iraq in the first place. It's extremely revealing that John McCain does it and Ken Pollack thinks it's a "perfectly reasonable" thing to do.

Iraqi "defenders," blowing up both Americans and Iraqi nationals in what has been routinely described as one of the most barbaric recent waves of postmodern terrorism, are essentially freedom fighters to Greenwald.

I think readers can see why I monitor Greenwald's activity. He's rooting for the other side.

Gingrich Teams With Pelosi on Climate Change, Loses Credibility

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has teamed up with current Speaker Nancy Pelosi to make a global warming advertisment for Al Gore's change awareness campaign, via YouTube:

I've seen this ad a couple of times now, and the word "INCONGRUITY" just jumps out at me as a look at Pelosi flashing her big smile at Gingrich.

These people are intense partisans, and given the controversial science on climate change, I'm thinking, especially about Gingrich, the bomb-throwing conservative: "What the heck has gotten into this guy?"

It turns out Gingrich has gone centrist, as the Fort Mill Times indicates:

Newt Gingrich says he wants to help Democrats. Really.

The former speaker of the House from Georgia who led the fiercely partisan Republican revolution in 1994 and once seemed to delight in firebombing Democrats with vicious verbal assaults is these days preaching a new breed of politics searching out the middle.

Gingrich just filmed a new environmental commercial with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He's back in Georgia this week pitching a platform of issues on which he says the vast majority of Americans agree. And he's shipped that list to Howard Dean at the Democratic National Committee, as well as to Republicans.

"If you want the level of change that I think America has to have to remain the leading country in the world it can't be just Republican," Gingrich said in an interview with The Associated Press at an Atlanta restaurant.

"It's a red, white and blue strategy rather than a red versus blue strategy."

At one point Gingrich interrupts the interview to take a call on his cell phone. He's beaming when he hangs up.

"That was Al Gore," he said. The former Democratic vice president had called, he said, to thank him for the ad with Pelosi on behalf of Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection.

What's going on? Some suspect that the politically-astute Gingrich - who abruptly abandoned a possible run for president last fall - is laying the ground work for another White House bid in 2012.

Gingrich, who will turn 65 this summer, does not exactly deny this.

"If the bow wave of acceptance got large enough that it was inevitable I'd run," Gingrich said.

But for right now, he said, "I'm happy to be a citizen."

A citizen who, through his political think tank "American Solutions," is jockeying to be at the center of the debate over public policy.

A conversation with the former college professor can be dizzying. Within minutes he has tackled the woes of the crumbling city of Detroit, the rise in childhood diabetes, alcoholism on Sioux Indian reservations and the troubling rate of sexually transmitted diseases in teenage girls.

The unifying theme: "We are crippled by bad culture reinforced by bad government," he said.

True to form, Gingrich is espousing some controversial ideas to turn things around. He's intrigued by an effort to pay students to study, saying it would instill badly-needed study habits in poor students. He also thinks that child labor laws should be reformed to allow those age 13 to 16 to be able to work and to keep their wages without paying taxes. The nation's entrepreneurs began young, he says.

Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University, said Gingrich will have an uphill climb in making himself over as a centrist unifier. Most people still know him as an angry partisan crusader, Black said.

But Gingrich said that label is something of a caricature. He points out that welfare reform - one of the signature accomplishments of his tenure in the House - passed with support from half the chamber's Democrats. (He doesn't mention that it was also being pushed by Democratic president Bill Clinton, whose presidency the then-speaker went on to compare to the Jerry Springer show.)

Still, Gingrich said although he remains a loyal Republican he hopes Democrats steal his platform, arguing - with his trademark self confidence - that it would raise the bar.

I agree with Merle Black: Gingrich has a huge chasm to bridge in making himself over as a centrist.

But that phone call from Al Gore's what really kills me. It's Gingrich's "inconvenient truth," on which he'll be pummelled by conservative global warming skeptics.

Don't Throw Away Lessons of the Surge

Jonathan Rauch, over at the National Journal, argues that recent military successes in Iraq are real and should't be thrown away. The greater problem for military success is found in political difficulties in Washington:

America has seen this drama before. In Act 1 of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon misunderstands the conflict and relies on an attrition strategy and search-and-destroy tactics that are useless or worse against an insurgency. In Act 2, after years of losing, a new general switches to counterinsurgency methods that work much better, pushing the enemy back on its heels.

Act 3, in which the United States loses the war anyway, is controversial. Some observers blame an American failure of will for relinquishing hard-won gains. Other observers argue, however, that the fundamental and fatal failure was in Saigon, not Washington. American strategy depended on converting U.S.-provided military gains into a South Vietnamese government that could defend itself and was worth defending, but Saigon was a basket case. Successful tactics were succeeding to no purpose, because the strategy had failed.

Does the administration have a viable strategy in Iraq? Reasonable people debate the point. Yes, says Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist and former Bush administration official who helped formulate the surge. “At last,” he writes in Commentary magazine, “the United States has a sustainable strategy for Iraq with a reasonable chance of success.”

In this view, keeping U.S. forces in Iraq while helping the Iraqis build a state and nudging them toward accommodation is a strategy, not a tactic. Bush, Petraeus, and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, all take this view. McCain, in fact, takes it to the point of Herbert Hooverism, promising, “Success is within reach.”

Skeptics counter that what Bush has is not a strategy but merely a tactic. “I believe the president has no strategy for success in Iraq,” Biden said in a speech this month. “His plan is to muddle through—and hand the problem off to his successor.” Tellingly, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the Foreign Relations Committee’s ranking Republican and one of Washington’s leading foreign-policy thinkers, agrees. “Simply appealing for more time to make progress is insufficient,” he said in hearings last week. “We need a strategy that anticipates a political endgame and employs every plausible means to achieve it.” Asked whether Lugar thinks Petraeus and Bush have presented such a strategy, a spokesman replied, “The simple answer is no.”

What I think I’ve learned from the surge is that Bush and McCain are right. The surge’s gains are real and should not be thrown away. But Democrats, Lugar, and other skeptics are also right. Bush and McCain have not figured out a way to build on the surge.

This is not for want of strategic ideas. A succession of expert witnesses offered an assortment of suggestions in Senate hearings earlier this month. Here are the leading contenders.

• Instead of propping up the central government in Baghdad, federalize Iraq, decentralizing security and many other state functions.

• Instead of pleading with Iraqis to share power, lock the United Nations, the neighbors, and the Iraqis in a room and broker a deal backed by international muscle and regional support.

• Instead of seeking a national political accommodation, stitch together a patchwork of local cease-fires and enforce them with U.S. and other peacekeeping forces.

• Instead of unconditional engagement (the Bush-McCain approach) or unconditional disengagement (the Democrats’ preferred approach), go with conditional engagement, making continued U.S. support contingent on progress in Baghdad.

The time to be vigorously debating these and other strategic options would be before the surge’s gains dissipate; before America’s deployment and influence in Iraq wane; and before developments there force our hand. Now, in other words.

Oddly, however, you don’t hear leading members of either party debating them. Bush and McCain don’t want to concede that the current strategy may be inadequate, so they harp on the surge’s tactical success. The Democrats don’t want to offer strategic proposals that concede that America may need to stick around a while in Iraq, so they harp on Bush’s strategic failures.

With the economy in trouble and Bush blocking any change of course in Iraq until next year, maybe it is unrealistic to expect politics to address the real question. That question is not “Is the surge working?” It is “What else needs to be done to make the surge work?”

The 2008 election cycle is ideally timed to take up this question—if only someone would. Maybe someone will. So far, however, the most dispiriting lesson of the surge is that on the crucial political front, which is where the war’s outcome will ultimately be determined, Washington is not coping much better than Baghdad.

See also Peter Feaver's new essay on Iraq at Commentary, "Anatomy of the Surge."

Obama's Whistle-Stop Tour in Pennsylvania

I'm watching CNN's "Ballot Bowl"coverage of the Democratic primary campaign in Pennsylvania.

Suzanne Malveaux's reporting live from a train depot in Paoli, and Barack Obama just rode by on the back of a traincar in a campaign-style reminiscent of Harry Truman's "whistle-stop" tour of 1948.

The Caucus has a report on Obama's train-depot tour, "Obama Takes Campaign to the Rails in Pennsylvania":

With a pull of the train’s whistle, Senator Barack Obama boarded his car today at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station and opened a four-city rail tour, arriving at his first stop here to hundreds of cheering supporters.

As he stepped off the back of a blue Georgia 300 Club Car, festooned with red, white and blue bunting, the crowd erupted in applause. Strains of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising” filled the air as Mr. Obama made his way to a stage built alongside the tracks.

“Now it is our turn, Pennsylvania,” Mr. Obama said. “This is a defining moment in our history. All of you are here because you can feel it.”

For more than a year, the field of presidential candidates have campaigned across America by plane and by bus. The trip across Southeastern Pennsylvania today was the first run on a train of the 2008 race, with Mr. Obama slowly making his way from Philadelphia to Harrisburg.

It is the final weekend push before the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday, where Mr. Obama is locked in a fierce battle with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. In recent weeks, Mr. Obama has campaigned on two fronts, alternating his focus between Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, and Mrs. Clinton.

Today, as he delivered his closing argument to the voters of this state, Mr. Obama focused on the Democratic side of the contest and drew sharp distinctions with Mrs. Clinton. To a burst of applause, he declared: “You do have a choice in this primary.”

The campaign rally here unfolded on a sun-splashed April afternoon, with hundreds of people of all ages turning out to see Mr. Obama, filling a large expanse alongside the Amtrak line here in the Philadelphia suburb of Wynnewood. Young children, perched on their fathers’ shoulders, waved blue Obama signs in the air. A crowd also gathered across the tracks, their views occasionally interrupted by a passing train.

Mr. Obama seemed amused by his latest mode of transportation. As he descended the escalator at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, he said: “Let’s get on this train. This is what I’m talking about.”

The conductor, waiting to greet Mr. Obama, told him that he could sound the train’s whistle. “Can I do that, right now?” Mr. Obama asked. “Am I allowed.”

With permission granted, he raised his hand and pulled the cable. “Woo, woo!” Next stop: Paoli, Pa.

We're almost to the third week of April and this Democratic campaign's still rolling along.

Hillary Clinton once again has a chance to keep her hopes alive for a breakthrough in the superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention.

Mathematically, a win at the convention is the only way Clinton can concievably win the party's nomination. Commentators have said that she needs to win the Keystone State by "double-digits" in order to sway remaining unpledged superdels to her side.

A double-digit win for Clinton on Tuesday looks extremely unlikely, if the most recent polls turn out to be accurate. Gallup has Clinton-Obama statistically tied at 46% for Clinton and 45% for Obama.

However, Newsweek published poll results yesterday showing Obama pulling away in Pennsylvania with a 19 percent lead, a shift in public opinion toward the Illinois Senator that's probably an extreme outlier in a basket of polls.

Rasmussen's findings yesterday are probabley more accurate, Clinton 47%, Obama 44%.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Pope Benedict XVI and Cultural Relativism

Dr. Sanity's got a post up identifying the central message of Pope Benedict XVI's speech on human rights at the United Nations on Friday: no yielding to cultural relativism:

From Pope Benedict's UN speech yesterday:

This reference to human dignity, which is the foundation and goal of the responsibility to protect, leads us to the theme we are specifically focusing upon this year, which marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This document was the outcome of a convergence of different religious and cultural traditions, all of them motivated by the common desire to place the human person at the heart of institutions, laws and the workings of society, and to consider the human person essential for the world of culture, religion and science. Human rights are increasingly being presented as the common language and the ethical substratum of international relations. At the same time, the universality, indivisibility and interdependence of human rights all serve as guarantees safeguarding human dignity. It is evident, though, that the rights recognized and expounded in the Declaration apply to everyone by virtue of the common origin of the person, who remains the high-point of God's creative design for the world and for history. They are based on the natural law inscribed on human hearts and present in different cultures and civilizations. Removing human rights from this context would mean restricting their range and yielding to a relativistic conception, according to which the meaning and interpretation of rights could vary and their universality would be denied in the name of different cultural, political, social and even religious outlooks. This great variety of viewpoints must not be allowed to obscure the fact that not only rights are universal, but so too is the human person, the subject of those rights.

Well said.

By the way, after reading the Pope's message at the UN, I was kind of surprised at the way it was being reported. Turns out, the AP made up some things and spun some other things that he said. Benedict did not deliver quite the "socialist-US bashing manifesto' they might like you to believe.

Pope Benedict, I think, is pretty clear that human rights and human freedom are the key issues that must be addressed in the world today. He is particularly concerned about freedom of religion and that countries where this is restricted are violating human rights (who might he be talking about, I wonder? Hmmmm.).

If we want to see the consequences of leftist socialism-lite, utopian pacifism, moral equivalence, and cultural relativism, then we need only look at how easily Europe and the leftists in this country have surrendered the fundamental values of Western civilization to the shrill (and violent) demands of Islamic fanatics--all done in the spirit of multicultural tolerance and politically correct compassion.

Europe, having given up any objective standard by which to mediate the vastly different perspectives and feelings of its varied populations; having abandoned reason altogether in favor of the expression of feelings no matter how destructive or unreasonable; and, finally, having endlessly touted the critical importance and essential need to "belong" to one's race, tribe, religion or group first and foremost; the outcome is what Stephen Hicks refers to as "group balkinization" --with all its inevitable and inescapable conflict.

That politically correct road which the left has taken us all down--billed as the path to peace and harmony--has instead led to a land dominated by emotions; a place where barbarism of the most primal sort is tolerated and excused; and where the human rights that the Pope talks about have been all but abandoned.

And, why should we be surprised at this destination? Why would peaceful coexistence be expected to result from a movement that has done everything in its power to eradicate universalism and undermine the very idea of a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and foist multiculturalism and tribalism into the public consciousness?

The Pope lauds the UN for its stand on basic human rights, but the words of the UN are often a far cry from its actions in the real world. All one has to do is take a look at the membership of the UN's own 'Human Rights' committee to see how far that organization has distanced itself from reality.: the worse human rights offenders in the world are given a platform with which to trumpet their own bigotry and oppression.

And the world yawns.

See also, "Pope Benedict XVI Stresses 'Duty' of Human Rights in U.N. Address."

McCain Says Americans Facing Tough Economic Times

Via PoliGazette, check out this YouTube of Barack Obama's distorting John McCain's position on the economy:

Obama's distortion's a dishonest smear, a preview of likely Democratic Party tactics to be seen this fall.

See also, "Obama Criticizes McCain on Economic Stance."

Islam is Dominated by Radicals?

The Rosenkranz Foundation sponsored a debate in Islam this past week in New York, entitled "Is Islam Dominated by Radicals?"

The moderator, Robert Seigel, suggested that survey data are "not encouraging," and goes on to pose the age-old question of this decade, "Are we engaged, in Samuel Huntington’s formulation, in a clash of civilizations?"

The "clash" thesis was offered in the mid-1990s, and while he engendered tremendous controversy at the time, Huntington was later thought prophetic in his analysis of the main axis of world cultural/political conflict at the dawn of the 21st century.

Of course, the notion that Islam's fundamentally radical and hostile to the West, and that the religion works to convert or destroy all non-believers, remains contested. But scriptually, these notions are at the core of Muslim doctrine, according to Asra Nomani, a participant at the Rosenkranz panel who argued for Islam's essential radicalism:

So I would say assalamu alaykum to all of you, but according to the prayer book that I was handed when I went on the pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, I’m not allowed to say this peaceful greeting to those who aren’t Muslim. When I see that headline: Islam is dominated by radicals, I don’t hesitate in believing it to be true. The opposite side wants to suggest that we can’t tell you stories from the trenches. But it is, in fact, in the trenches where we know what is happening, that we know that the radicals are, in fact, intimidating, silencing and paralyzing the moderates. I know it from my lifetime in the Muslim community and I know it from stories and anecdotes, sure, and historical and country cases. When I was given this proposition I asked my mother – a grandmother, who has taught me my Muslim prayers, who is teaching her grandchildren the prayers – I said, Do you think that Islam is dominated by radicals? You can dismiss her as an anecdote. You can dismiss her as somebody who isn’t pundit enough but she’s got her finger on the pulse of what’s going on in our communities. And she didn’t hesitate in saying yes. For the last thirty years that I have known, since the exportation of Wahabiism from Saudi Arabia to the far reaches of our Muslim world, I know that our community is dominated by radical ideology.

I know that it is an ideology that has taken root in countries from Pakistan to states in Nigeria to provinces in Indonesia with laws that put women in second class status, that give women criminal punishments because of sexual crimes. In each instance you could say that there’s a political purpose. But at the end of the day it is done in the name of Islam. I don’t stand up here and condemn my faith. I fight for it every single day. I fight for a progressive interpretation of our faith. But at the end of the day our religion, our institutional Islam out there in the world -- from my home town of Morgantown, West Virginia to Islamabad, Pakistan to Indonesia to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – we are controlled and dominated by radical ideology. The moderates don’t want to lose their status. They don’t want to lose their place in the community. They don’t want to lose their invitation to the potluck dinner parties and wedding halls that they get to go to.

It’s an issue of social dynamics. At the end of the day it isn’t worth it to them to take on the radical ideology because there’s too much at stake. You risk your own safety and then you risk your social standing. I know this as a woman in the faith. I know that what we are struggling with is a situation where more mosques in America than in the 1990s are putting women in separate sections. Two-thirds of mosques in America versus half in the 1990s have women separated. And you could argue that that’s not radical ideology. But at the end of the day it is part of a continuum of an interpretation of Islam that takes a literal read that says a woman is sexual temptation, that a woman is sexual distraction. You take that interpretation and it isn’t that long that you have to also add up to an interpretation that says that you can’t be friends with the Jews and the Christians, that violence is acceptable.

Why do I know this? Because I’ve heard it from my pulpit. I’ve heard it from the sermons that are downloaded on college campuses across this country and across the world. There is an exportation of this ideology. We may watch our borders, we may check the visas of people who come into this country but I know that there is an ideology that says that a woman is half the witness of a man in criminal cases, that that is law in countries of our, of our religion, that there is interpretation that says that a woman gets less inheritance. When we put women -- half of our population, in particular -- in second class status around the world, you can call it anything you want. But I consider it unacceptable and I call it radical ideology. It’s unacceptable to have tradition become religion with female genital mutilation. It’s unacceptable to have honor killings, as we are, from Canada to Texas to Turkey. You can call those anecdotes but it’s a trend.

It’s a trend that’s happening because our Islam of today is dominated by radicals. We don’t have mosque leaders who are keeping that kind of ideology in check. We are, in fact, having leaders who accept preaching from the pulpit that says that we cannot imitate the dis-believers, that we cannot say assalamu alaykum to those who are not Muslim. At the end of the day what I want you to know is that I stand up for Islam as a faith. I stand up for the principles just like every other religion. But like Judaism and Christianity have evolved so that there is a continuum in institutional religion, so that there is a reform synagogue along with the orthodox synagogue, our mosques are defined by an institutional puritanical interpretation that to me is very radical and very unacceptable. And I encourage you to vote to support this motion because we need a truth telling. We need to be honest.

Read the whole thing.

Nomani's thesis is challenged by panelist Reza Aslan, who argues that all religions distill complex world socio-political controversies into simple dichotomies of good versus evil:

As I say, this is true of every society, ours especially. And if you don’t believe me, I suggest you ask Karl Rove.

Classic moral relativism. The Rovian smear is shorthand for left-wing America-blaming, which is standard fare for those on the radical left who apologize for the unparalleled brutality of Islam in the world today.

For more on Aslan, see Robert Spencer, at Jihad Watch, who suggests that Aslan's academic program consists of a "shallow and distorted depiction of Islamic teachings."

Note too the audience results from the debate, on the motion, "Islam is dominated by radicals":

Before the debate:

For the motion: 46%

Against the motion: 32%

Undecided: 22%

After the debate:

For the motion: 73%

Against the motion: 23%

Undecided: 4%

Oversimplifying the Threat? McCain, Iraq, and Al Qaeda

In an article that's got to rate up there with the Vicki Iseman lobbyist-scandal hit piece, the New York Times is now taking Senator John McCain to task for his frequent references to Al Qaeda as a shorthand for the threats facing the United States in Iraq and beyond:

As he campaigns with the weight of a deeply unpopular war on his shoulders, Senator John McCain of Arizona frequently uses the shorthand “Al Qaeda” to describe the enemy in Iraq in pressing to stay the course in the war there.

“Al Qaeda is on the run, but they’re not defeated” is his standard line on how things are going in Iraq. When chiding the Democrats for wanting to withdraw troops, he has been known to warn that “Al Qaeda will then have won.” In an attack this winter on Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the Democratic front-runner, Mr. McCain went further, warning that if American forces withdrew, Al Qaeda would be “taking a country.”

Critics say that in framing the war that way at rallies or in sound bites, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is oversimplifying the hydra-headed nature of the insurgency in Iraq in a way that exploits the emotions that have been aroused by the name “Al Qaeda” since the Sept. 11 attacks.

There has been heated debate since the start of the war about the nature of the threat in Iraq. The Bush administration has long portrayed the fight as part of a broader battle against Islamic terrorists. Opponents of the war accuse the administration of deliberately blurring the distinction between the Sept. 11 attackers and anti-American forces in Iraq.

“The fundamental problem we face in Iraq is that there is not a single center of gravity, as in the cold war, but a whole constellation of contending forces,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism and counterinsurgency expert at Georgetown University. “This is much more fractionated than most people could imagine, with multiple, independent moving parts, and when you have that universe of networks, you can’t have a one-size-fits-all approach.”

The entity Mr. McCain was referring to — Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, also known as Al Qaeda in Iraq — did not exist until after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. The most recent National Intelligence Estimates consider it the most potent offshoot of Al Qaeda proper, the group led by Osama bin Laden that is now believed to be based on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

It is a largely homegrown and loosely organized group of Sunni Arabs that, according to the official American military view that Mr. McCain endorses, is led at least in part by foreign operatives and receives fighters, financing and direction from senior Qaeda leaders.

In longer discussions on the subject, Mr. McCain often goes into greater specificity about the entities jockeying for control in Iraq. Some other analysts do not object to Mr. McCain’s portraying the insurgency (or multiple insurgencies) in Iraq as that of Al Qaeda. They say he is using a “perfectly reasonable catchall phrase” that, although it may be out of place in an academic setting, is acceptable on the campaign trail, a place that “does not lend itself to long-winded explanations of what we really are facing,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, research director at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

But some students of the insurgency say Mr. McCain is making a dangerous generalization. “The U.S. has not been fighting Al Qaeda, it’s been fighting Iraqis,” said Juan Cole, a fierce critic of the war who is the author of “Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi’ite Islam” and a professor of history at the University of Michigan. A member of Al Qaeda “is technically defined as someone who pledges fealty to Osama bin Laden and is given a terror operation to carry out. It’s kind of like the Mafia,” Mr. Cole said. “You make your bones, and you’re loyal to a capo. And I don’t know if anyone in Iraq quite fits that technical definition.”

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is just one group, though a very lethal one, in the stew of competing Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, Iranian-backed groups, criminal gangs and others that make up the insurgency in Iraq. That was vividly illustrated last month when the Iraqi Army’s unsuccessful effort to wrest control of Basra from the Shiite militia groups that hold sway there led to an explosion of violence.

From a journalistic perspective, perhaps there's a case to be made for parsing McCain's references to Al Qaeda.

But war opponents won't pay attention to academic debates arguing for understanding the conflict as a "a multifactional civil war."

For these nihilists - now railing against a McCain presidency as "four more years of Bush" - this article's perfect fodder for perpetuating angry, irrational attacks on McCain, the GOP, and pro-victory supporters of Iraq and the war on terror.

Keep in mind, McCain's on solid ground. As Audrey Kurth Cronin noted, a couple of years back, at the beginning of Al Qaeda's emergence in Iraq:

As for al-Qaida becoming a full insurgency, some analysts believe this has already occurred. Certainly to the extent that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates in Iraq truly represent an arm of the movement (i.e., al-Qaida in Iraq), that transition is likewise well along. The alliance negotiated between bin Laden and al-Zarqawi is another example of an effective strategic and public relations move for both parties, giving new life to the al-Qaida movement at a time when its leaders are clearly on the run and providing legitimacy and fresh recruits for the insurgency in Iraq. As many commentators have observed, Iraq is an ideal focal point and training ground for this putative global insurgency. The glimmer of hope in this scenario, however, is that the foreigners associated with al-Qaida are not tied to the territory of Iraq in the same way the local population is, and the tensions that will arise between those who want a future for the nascent Iraqi state and those who want a proving ground for a largely alien ideology and virtual organization are likely to increase—especially as the victims of the civil war now unfolding there continue increasingly to be Iraqi civilians. The counter to al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaida in Iraq, as it is for other areas of the world with local al-Qaida afªliates, is to tap into the long-standing and deep association between peoples and their territory and to exploit the inevitable resentment toward foreign terrorist agendas, while scrupulously ensuring that the United States is not perceived to be part of those agendas.

Note too, that war opponents will relentlessly hammer McCain for "endless wars" (crying ceaselessly about how the U.S. invasion "created a terrorist breeding ground" in Baghdad).

But there's no need to argue the point, of course, for these attacks reflect pre-surge residual manifestations of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

The fact is that we have huge stakes in a continued successful deployment in Iraq, and we are likely to be in country for some time.

Indeed, the danger to the Iraqi people remains significant. As CNN reported this evening, in "Al Qaeda planning Baghdad attacks, says U.S.," the terrorists are working up renewed waves of suicide attacks "in the near future."

McCain's correct to make the case that a surrender in Iraq would be disastrous for American national security.

A Democratic administration in power next January - committed to unconditional surrender - can't be viewed positively in the context of this continuing threat analysis.

See also, Memeorandum.

Photo Credit: "Senator John McCain, flanked by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, on a visit last month to Amman, Jordan," New York Times.

Patriots' Day: The Least Known American Holiday

Jules Crittenden provides an in-depth historical review of Patriots' Day, the Nor'eastern civic holiday commemorating the the first battles of the American Revolutionary War:

Patriots Day may be the least known American holiday, and the day most deserving of our recognition. Observed in Massachusetts and Maine only. Don’t know it? It marks the day, April 19, 1775, on which Americans took up arms against their king, and bled, at the crack of terrible dawn...

Crittenden's not only a top journalist on military affairs, he's also a war history buff (and a neocon too, thank goodness!).

Democrats: No Clear General Election Advantage

Andrew Kohut reports that the Democratic candidates, in head-to-head match-ups against John McCain, have no clear advantage for the general election thus far:

One of the more surprising twists in a surprising year is that despite the obvious Republican disadvantages in this election cycle, John McCain is matching up pretty well against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in tests being conducted by national polls. Pew Research Center and CBS/New York Times polls show Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton holding only modest leads over Mr. McCain, while other national surveys — notably Associated Press/Ipsos and NBC/Wall Street Journal — have Mr. McCain running about even against the Democratic candidates.

Electability is an issue, and one that both Senators Obama and Clinton are likely to use to woo the superdelegates. But our polling suggests that neither candidate has a demonstrable advantage to tout. Where and among whom each candidate ran particularly well in the primaries is certainly not much of an indicator of how they will match up against Senator McCain.

Assuming a win in the Pennsylvania primary, the Clinton campaign can be expected to make the case that having won all of the major swing-state primaries, the former first lady is more likely than Barack Obama to carry these states in a general election. But a breakout of the results of recent surveys would argue otherwise.

An analysis of Pew Research Center surveys conducted in late February and March finds the two Democratic candidates running about equally well against Senator McCain among voters in Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Mr. Obama led Mr. McCain 52 percent to 40 percent among a representative sample of voters living in these states, while Mrs. Clinton bested Mr. McCain by a statistically comparable 51 percent to 42 percent margin.

However, the same analysis shows that while Barack Obama ran better in smaller swing states and in the red states than Hillary Clinton, the advantage does not necessarily carry over to the general election. He fares no better than she in the match-up polls among voters in states that have gone heavily for Republican presidential candidates in recent years. John McCain holds a significant lead over both Democratic candidates; 51 percent to 43 percent over Senator Clinton and 50 percent to 42 percent over Senator Obama in red states. Similarly, in smaller swing states, Senators Obama and Clinton tie with Senator McCain.

But more reassuring to Democrats is that Pew’s analysis of the blue states finds that each of their candidates trounce Senator McCain by a yawning, but equal margin: 20 percentage points.

At this early stage in the campaign, general election match-ups are still hypothetical, but even so there is little indication that either candidate can make any great claims about an electability advantage in particular parts of the country, or nationwide.

The primaries have shown that each has strengths and weaknesses with certain types of voters. Senator Clinton polled better in the primaries among Democrats, especially conservatives, while Senator Obama attracted more support from independents. Demographically, he outdrew her among men, younger voters, the affluent and the better educated. Her constituency has been more female, older and working class.

Race, of course, has been a major factor in the nominating contests, and is likely to loom at least as large in the general election. But it is not really possible to factor race or Senator Obama’s counter-balancing appeal to independents or any of these other variables — positive or negative — to come up with a who’s-more-electable quotient for either candidate versus Senator McCain.

When pitted against the presumptive Republican nominee each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses, made apparent in the primaries, balance out. The data is simply not there to choose a nominee based on electability.

See also, USA Today, "Poll: McCain Comes Up Even With Dems," which offers analysis in contrast to Kohut:

The poll shows McCain's appeal has grown while the Democrats' has dwindled — suggesting he may be aided by the continued scuffling between Obama and Clinton during their prolonged nomination battle.

The longer this Democratic race goes on, and the more intra-party acrimony we see, the better things will be for the GOP.

"MoveOn Didn't Even Want Us to Go Into Afghanistan..."

Hillary Clinton's being hammered over at the Huffington Post for "slamming" Democratic Party activists at a campaign fundraiser in February.

Check it out, as Clinton apparently took down MoveOn.org for its radical antiwar defeatism (via Memeorandum):

At a small closed-door fundraiser after Super Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton blamed what she called the "activist base" of the Democratic Party -- and MoveOn.org in particular -- for many of her electoral defeats, saying activists had "flooded" state caucuses and "intimidated" her supporters, according to an audio recording of the event obtained by The Huffington Post.

"Moveon.org endorsed [Sen. Barack Obama] - which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down," Clinton said to a meeting of donors. "We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that's what we're dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them. They know I don't agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me."

While I admire Hillary's candor, I doubt that her supporters are dramatically more pro-war than Obama's. It's an interesting empirical question, since the recent debate over Obama's "bitter" comments have focused attention on the relative constituencies of the candidates - Clinton doing better with lower-income working class voters, and Obama with blacks and the youth cohort.

Nevertheless, polls usually show 8 out of 10 Democrats supporting antiwar positions, so MoveOn speaks for them.

Perhaps those in attendance at the fundraiser were realist DLC-types, more inclined to maintaining a forward role for American power internationally.

Either that, or this is just more Clinton pandering. New constituency, new tune. What can you do?

BTW, Don't miss Jane Hamsher's piling on as well, where she notes:

MoveOn may not have opposed military action in Afghanistan (according to Eli Pariser in the Washington Post) but I did, because I was quite certain George Bush would bungle it and we'd just wind up spending billions on a bunch of junk that would make his buddies rich and a lot of poor people in the poorest country in the world would die senselessly.

That's classic. Hamsher would've had no problem invading Afghanistan in 2001 had Al Gore been in the White House, right, with the hated Joe Lieberman as V.P.?

Making the Case for the Awesome Stuff We're Going to Get?

I'm almost dumbfounded by the way Ezra Klein, who's supposed to be some über blogger of the progressive left, discusses taxes in his new post up on the Democrats and taxation.

The way he pumps the story, it's almost like levying taxes creates some grab bag of goodies that the redistributionist left can just dig into to fuel its assorted spending largesse:

Howard Gleckman points out that while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton aren't as egregiously out-of-touch as Charlie Gibson, they're pandering to the Gibsonian line on taxes, refusing to consider increases for families making less than $200,000 a year, and hamstringing themselves on needed revenue. This gets to a generalized problem in Democratic tax talk, which is that they're very unwilling to talk about taxes in terms of value. There are lots of government services which are actually a good deal for middle income families and should be sold as something that Americans would be wise to invest in. But rather than making a positive case around awesome stuff we're going to get, Democrats talk about taxes in complete isolation from the things that taxes buy, and begin with the premise that they're so odious and painful that they should only be levied on folks too rich to notice. It's not exactly the strongest argumentative ground.

"Awesome stuff"?

We're going to make a case for raising taxes because people are going to get "awesome stuff"?

I wonder what "awesome stuff" Klein's taking about, since from what I've learned of him, I doubt he was raised on welfare checks and food stamps.

This is a kid who grew up in affluent Orange County, California, attending University High School, one of the most prestigious public high schools in the state. But perhaps this is to be expected: Klein's young, at the tender age of 23, and he's still getting his analytical feet wet, after having been ideologically groomed while attending such colleges as the University of California, Santa Cruz, a campus notorious for its far left-wing fanaticism.

Maybe this is a case of the good, old liberal elitism we've been reminded of this last week?

What better way to demonstrate your left-wing bona fides than arguing that families making over $200,000 annually aren't having enough of their earnings confiscated to provide more "awesome" goodies to snotty but well-off kids who've graduated from premiere public educational institutions?

Oh, note too that Gibson's being praised for his pro-growth queries, which of course are anathema to those hostile to conservative tax policy restraint.

See more at Memeorandum; and also, Heidi's blog, "Don't Bemoan the LowTaxes, Pay More!!!"

Passion and Technology Drive New 21st Century Campaign

Ronald Brownstein, over at the National Journal, argues that a concatenation of forces this political season has created a model of electoral politics never seen before, "The First 21st-Century Campaign":

In scope and sweep, tactics and scale, the marathon struggle between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton has triggered such a vast evolutionary leap in the way candidates pursue the presidency that it is likely to be remembered as the first true 21st-century campaign.

On virtually every front, the two candidates’ efforts dwarf those of all previous primary contenders—not to mention presumptive GOP nominee John McCain. It’s easy to miss the magnitude of the change amid the ferocity of the Democratic competition. But largely because of their success at organizing supporters through the Internet, Clinton and, especially, Obama are reaching new heights in raising money, recruiting volunteers, hiring staff, buying television ads, contacting voters, and generating turnout. They are producing changes in degree from prior primary campaigns so large that they amount to changes in kind.

“This campaign does look dramatically different from any previous campaign,” says veteran Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. “My guess is, it is a watershed. The next time somebody runs for president, it is going to look a lot more like this than like 2000 or 1996 or even 2004.”

The transformation is visible in every direction. Through the end of February, Obama had raised more than six times as much money as John Kerry, the last Democratic nominee, did through the first two months of 2004, and Clinton had collected more than five times as much. In state after state, the two campaigns are organizing levels of voter outreach through phone banks and door-to-door canvasses previously seen only in presidential general elections—if even then. And through e-mail and the distribution of online videos, the candidates are communicating directly with previously unimaginable numbers of voters: By early this month, videos produced by the Obama campaign had been viewed 37 million times on YouTube. “I’ve never been in an election where the capacity you have to go door to door, or register voters, or you name the task is this enormous,” says Paul Tewes, a veteran Democratic organizer who ran Obama’s Iowa and Ohio campaigns.

Each of these advances is rooted in the same fusion of passion and technology: the intense emotions generated among Democrats by George W. Bush’s polarizing presidency combined with the relentless advance of information technology. “If I had to boil down what has really happened in the election cycle, it is [that] you are finally seeing the real fruition of the full power of … the Internet on politics,” says Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a Democratic group that studies campaign tactics and technology.

This surge of activity has helped to fuel record participation in the Democratic competition....

More fundamentally, this transformation may be changing the model of what it takes to succeed in presidential politics. Since the first televised debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960, and the rise of the 30-second TV commercial later in that decade, the ability to communicate effectively on television has arguably been the key to winning the White House; a close second has been the ability to tap big donors for the money to air plenty of TV ads. Those traits remain enormously valuable today.

But now the ability to inspire large numbers of supporters to work on your behalf—by contributing financially, participating in outreach programs organized by the campaign, or informally talking to friends and family—is joining and, perhaps, eclipsing those television-inspired skills in importance. The change is still incipient, but the unprecedented scale of the Clinton-Obama race suggests that presidential politics may be moving from the television-based network era to an Internet-based networked era in which candidates who can attract and inspire vast networks of supporters will enjoy potentially decisive advantages over those who cannot.

This is an interesting argument, but only time will tell how robust is the thesis.

If it's that "the intense emotions generated among Democrats by George W. Bush’s polarizing presidency" have combined with other variables to produce this year's unprecedented state of affairs, then maybe after four years of Democratic Party rule in Washington - perhaps under a Barack Obama administration - we might see a return of complacency set in, which restores politics to the normal dynamics of change and consolidation that accompanies our periodic moments of revolutionary politics. Take away the youth generation's hunger for change - and this is the key group driving the dynamics of Brownstein's new politics - and American politics could recycle back to traditional patterns voter mobillization.

Voter turnout was higher in earlier eras of great transformation, in the 1960s, for example, just when television really took off as the technological catalyst that replaced parties as the central organizers of political campaigns. But young Americans got the vote with the passage of the 26th Amendment in 1972, and voter turnout declined for decades as the drama and tumult of the rights revolution and the war in Vietnam settled down into a post-1970s consensus and stability.

By 1996, when President Bill Clinton was elected to a second term amid relative peace and prosperity, voter turnout was 49 percent of the entire electorate, with young Americans the least likely to exercise the suffrage.

Perhaps after a decade of the new Internet-fueled politics during Democratic Party hegemony, we'll also see a decline of the polarization-driven voter mobilization, with the country returning to it's traditional patttern of generalized indifference among the college-age demographic cohort.

See more analysis at Memeorandum.

Distorted Antiwar Propaganda

I'm moved to write a second post on today's McClatchy story on the new Iraq research report from the National Institute for Strategic Studies.

In my earlier entry, "Antiwar Rush to Judgment on Alleged Pentagon Surrender Report," I noted that the left's ejaculatory outbursts of defeat need to be "discredited with reasoned, sober assessments and rebuttals."

With this concluding recommendation in mind, it's noteworthy to cite the remarks left at the post by a drive-by antiwar commenter:

Excuse me?!

You seem to think that the Miami Herald piece is scandalous and then go on to quote the author himself, Joseph Collins, as saying "The central finding of this study is that U.S. efforts in Iraq were hobbled by a set of faulty assumptions, a flawed planning effort, and a continuing inability to create security conditions in Iraq that could have fostered meaningful advances in stabilization, reconstruction, and governance. With the best of intentions, the United States toppled a vile, dangerous regime but has been unable to replace it with a stable entity."

That sounds like a good description of a debacle to me. I think you're hoisted on your own petard.

What's so instructive in this comment, offered by "Satchel Topeka," who's most likely pseudonymous, is that in ommitting key segments of the quotation of Joseph Collins from which I draw, "Satchel" is replicating the exact practice to which Collins takes offense: The selective use of quotations and sources in an effort to distort the message of the article for warped political purposes.

Note Collins' initial paragraph from the quote, which is found in its original location at Small Wars Journal:

The Miami Herald story ("Pentagon Study: War is a 'Debacle' ") distorts the nature of and intent of my personal research project. It was not an NDU study, nor was it a Pentagon study. Indeed, the implication of the Herald story was that this study was mostly about current events. Such is not the case. It was mainly about the period 2002-04. The story also hypes a number of paragraphs, many of which are quoted out of context. The study does not "lay much of the blame" on Secretary Rumsfeld for problems in the conduct of the war, nor does it say that he "bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff." It does not single out "Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley" for criticism.

I often simply ignore - or even delete - such completely inane drive-by comments, but since "Satchel" is so representative of the mindless antiwar nihilism among the Bush-Petraeus bashing hordes, it's worth preserving in this more prominent follow-up entry.

But note as well Karl at Protein Wisdom (via Memeorandum), who's got a succinct post up on the antiwar blogosphere's reaction to the McClatchy hatchet job, "Leftosphere Recycles Distorted Antiwar Propaganda from McClatchy":

A McClatchy story about a study of the Iraq conflict by former senior Pentagon official Joseph Collins is blasted by Collins at the Small Wars Journal blog....

Of course, the usual suspects in the Leftosphere ran with the distorted McClatchy story. TPM’s Paul Kiel named it a “must read” — as opposed to the study itself, even though he linked it. Spencer Ackerman did an update post that does not link back to the original. ThinkProgress buries the link in its story, giving no indication that Collins is calling the story a distortion. The Carpetbagger Report simply parroted ThinkProgress. John Cole, to his credit, did a pretty straightforward update, though he might have mentioned that the study is not a NDU study and that most of it covers 2002-04, as opposed to telling his readers to read the study themselves. Curiously, the main post makes clear that Cole read the study, but he did not link to it until the update.

I've noted for the past five years, especially in discussions of the war with students in my classes, that there's nothing wrong with opposing the war on principle as long as those ideas are based on a rigorously and objective analysis of the facts.

Of course, so much of the left's opposition to the war's been based on distortions, lies, and smears that we're likely past the point of no return in reversing the slanderous illogic that paints the war as a "debacle."

Thus it's stories like McClatchy's which serve the vital function of exposing the left for what it is: Elliptical, irrational, and postmodernist in its fundamental hostility to journalistic and political reality.

A friendly thanks goes out to Karl for identifying a number of the irrationalist left's antiwar blogging contingent.

Antiwar Rush to Judgment on Alleged Pentagon Surrender Report

The left blogosphere's in a fit with the news from a new National Defense University study painting the Iraq war as "a major debacle."

McClatchy News and the Miami Herald have a posted a scandalous piece on the report, but a look beneath the headlines indicates a bit more going on.

The author of the report is a former Defense Department official, Joseph Collins. It turns out that Collins, according to his biographical sketch at Defenselink, worked under Deputy Defense (and arch neocon) Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and was later appointed to assistant secretary of defense for stability operations. Collins, in 2003, suggested Iraq had much greater potential for post-conflict stability than did Afghanistan, which at that time was in the early rebuilding stage following Operation Enduring Freedom:

Even though torn by the Iran/Iraq war and recovering from the recent regime change, the more-developed Iraq is in a better state than Afghanistan, he said. One key difference between the two is the higher degree of education and wealth due to oil resources in Iraq, which gives it "the potential to sort of pull itself up by the bootstraps."

Well, seeing that we are currently "pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps" after four years of ups and down - and widely acknowledged strategic mistakes - we might wonder what explains Collins movement away from his earlier upbeat aguments, particularly given his apparently close professional relations to top Bush adminstration Iraq war advocates.

For answers to these questions, check out Small Wars Journal, which reports that the media's taken Collins' study out of context:

The Miami Herald piece on a NDU "occasional paper" (Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath), quoted alternately as a Pentagon or NDU study, raised some flags here at SWJ. So we asked the author, Joseph Collins, to provide some context. His reply:

The Miami Herald story ("Pentagon Study: War is a 'Debacle' ") distorts the nature of and intent of my personal research project. It was not an NDU study, nor was it a Pentagon study. Indeed, the implication of the Herald story was that this study was mostly about current events. Such is not the case. It was mainly about the period 2002-04. The story also hypes a number of paragraphs, many of which are quoted out of context. The study does not "lay much of the blame" on Secretary Rumsfeld for problems in the conduct of the war, nor does it say that he "bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff." It does not single out "Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley" for criticism.

Here is a fair summary of my personal research, which formally is NDU INSS Occasional Paper 5, "Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath."

This study examines how the United States chose to go to war in Iraq, how its decision-making process functioned, and what can be done to improve that process. The central finding of this study is that U.S. efforts in Iraq were hobbled by a set of faulty assumptions, a flawed planning effort, and a continuing inability to create security conditions in Iraq that could have fostered meaningful advances in stabilization, reconstruction, and governance. With the best of intentions, the United States toppled a vile, dangerous regime but has been unable to replace it with a stable entity. Even allowing for progress under the Surge, the study insists that mistakes in the Iraq operation cry out in the mid- to long-term for improvements in the U.S. decision-making and policy execution systems.

The study recommends the development of a national planning charter, improving the qualifications of national security planners, streamlining policy execution in the field, improving military education, strengthening the Department of State and USAID, and reviewing the tangled legal authorities for complex contingencies. The study ends with a plea to improve alliance relations and to exercise caution in deciding to go to war.

SWJ Editors Note: Unfortunately this is not the first instance - nor will it be the last – of highly selective use of source quotes and excerpts as well as distortion of context by members of the “mainstream media” in reporting on recent events and trends in Iraq…

This distortion will continue as long as we're in Iraq, for no amount of progress will satisfy war opponents who are politically committed to an American defeat in Iraq and the larger Middle East.

This is just one more antiwar rush to judgment, outbursts that need to be repeatedly discredited with reasoned, sober assessments and rebuttals.

Obama and the Radicals

Barack Obama's early ties to '60s-era radicals have emerged as Topic "A" since Wednesday's debate. This morning's Los Angeles Times adds its coverage this morning, "Obama and the Former Radicals":

Democrats have tried to heal their party's angry passions ever since violent protesters disrupted the Democratic National Convention here in 1968, a shock to America's collective psyche that helped Republican Richard Nixon capture the White House.

But some of the old fault lines were visible again Thursday as Sen. Barack Obama's suddenly defensive presidential campaign sought to distance him from Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, aging academics who planted bombs in the Capitol, the Pentagon and other buildings to protest U.S. government policy. They are now widely respected community figures here.

The evidence linking Obama, who was born in 1961, to the two former militants, now in their 60s, remained thin, despite the appearance of a slickly produced, anonymously issued five-minute video titled "Obama's Terrorist Connections" on YouTube that sought to exploit the alleged tie.

Obama and Ayers moved in some of the same political and social circles in the leafy liberal enclave of Hyde Park, where they lived several blocks apart. In the mid-1990s, when Obama was running for the Illinois Senate, Ayers introduced Obama during a political event at his home, according to Obama's aides. Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, later contributed $200 to Obama's state campaign.

Obama and Ayers met a dozen times as members of the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a local grant-making foundation, according to the group's president. They appeared together to discuss juvenile justice on a 1997 panel sponsored by the University of Chicago, records show. They appeared again in 2002 at an academic panel co-sponsored by the Chicago Public Library.

Ayers and Dohrn, an associate law professor at Northwestern University, did not return phone calls or e-mail Thursday about their relationship with Obama, their leadership of the militant Weather Underground or their decade as fugitives from the law.

Here's the video, "Obama's Terrorist Connections," via YouTube:

While mainstream media reports suggest a weak connection between Obama and the radicals, the Barack-osphere's attacking the media for their "gotcha" politics. Yet there's no denying that Obama's radical ties raise legimate questions of character, judgment, and integrity.

Check out the roundup at Huffington Post yesterday, "ABC's Democratic Debate: HuffPost Bloggers Respond," which includes over two-dozen entries attacking both Hillary Clinton and the media for McCarthy-ite shallowness.

But Taylor Marsh, who's included at the link, puts things in the appropriate perspective:

So no one should be surprised that Obama had a a nightmare night. He finally got real questions for which he should have had ready answers. Over the last year Barack Obama has gotten a complete pass on his record, his life and everything associated to his political rise....

The facts are that the progressive community and Obama supporters have done their candidate no favors by the kid glove treatment they've applied to all things having to do with him and his record, including his associations. What happened last night is a result of one year of people ignoring reality. That's right, reality. Because the closer Obama got to the nomination and the general election, the curtain would eventually be pulled back on every event in his life, good, bad and horror show, which includes Rev. Wright....

Again, I'd blame Gibson and Stephanopoulos, but it's not their fault that someone, anyone finally asked questions that have been out there for months and months. It's not tabloid to ask about Ayers any more than it was tabloid to question Bill Clinton about his past. Hillary's been asked about everything more than once, as they reload to ask it all over again.

Notice how Marsh starts to pin the blame on the moderators, and then takes it back as "not their fault."

Maybe she doesn't want to suffer the same fate as Mayhill Fowler, who's become the subject of vicious attacks, including some right there at Huffington Post itself.

And this Democratic primary's no more nasty than those of earlier era?

It may be time to revisit that history, and keep in mind, things are just now starting to get good!

No más! No más! Obama Nixes Future Debate Rounds

CNN reports that Barack "Roberto" Obama's saying "no mas" to further debates with Hillary "Sugar" Rodham Clinton!

Those toughies at ABC are trying to do me in ... aahhhaaa!! (via Memeorandum):

Sen. Barack Obama suggested Thursday that he doesn't see any point in having another debate with Democratic rival Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Clinton has agreed to a debate next week, but Obama has not accepted the invitation.

At an appearance in Raleigh, North Carolina, Obama said he has a lot of campaigning to do in a limited amount of time.

Obama said he had agreed to an earlier debate, but Clinton declined that one.

"I'll be honest with you, we've now had 21," he said. "It's not as if we don't know how to do these things. I could deliver Sen. Clinton's lines; she could, I'm sure, deliver mine."

Obama said he has to look at his schedule, considering the upcoming primaries.

The two Democrats went head-to-head in a debate Wednesday night on ABC.

During the first part of that debate, the candidates largely rehashed the controversies that have marked their past six weeks on the campaign trail.

Much of the fire was leveled at Obama, who once again answered questions about controversial statements by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and his own comments that some rural Pennsylvanians are "bitter."

Obama said it took too long for them to address anything substantial.

Anything substantial?

Oh sure, longstanding ties to the Weather Underground, "bitter" American smackdowns, and Wright's greatest hits aren't substantial, right ... it's all "trivial pursuit."

Maybe Obama had a stomach ache?

Democratic Debate in Philadelphia: Obama’s Waterloo

I noted in my previous entry, on last night's Democratic debate in Philadelphia, that the blogosphere's up in arms over alleged Lee Atwater-style attacks against Barack Obama.

But note the introduction to today's Los Angeles Times story, which suggests Obama might not have handled things so well, in any case:

The Democratic candidates for president debated forcefully Wednesday over who would prove more electable in November, with Hillary Rodham Clinton repeatedly raising questions about Barack Obama's past associations and Obama contending that her approach typified the blowtorch political style that Americans decry.

Obama, the Illinois senator, was thrown on the defensive for the first half of the nearly two-hour debate. The moderators, ABC News anchors Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, pressed him on his recent comments about "bitter" small-town Pennsylvanians; his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.; his acquaintance with a long-ago member of the Weather Underground group; and the absence of an American flag in his lapel -- though no one else on stage wore one.

Clinton criticized Obama as well. She defended those who she said were "taken aback and offended" by Obama's remarks at a recent San Francisco fundraiser that voters upset by economic downturns "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment."
The New York senator repeatedly zeroed in on Wright and -- after Stephanopoulos opened the issue -- Obama's relationship with fellow Chicagoan William Ayers, the 1960s radical who is now an education professor at the University of Illinois. She noted that Obama and Ayers were at one point on the same philanthropic board.

"I think it is, again, an issue that people will be asking about," said Clinton, who repeatedly characterized herself as thoroughly vetted during her husband's administration.

I think Clinton's absolutely correct.

But Captain Ed takes the point further, suggesting that last night was "Obama's Waterloo":

The last Democratic debate has finally concluded, and perhaps the last chances of ending the primaries early. Thanks to a surprisingly tenacious set of questions for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton from ABC moderaters Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous, Barack Obama got exposed over and over again as an empty suit, while Hillary cleaned his clock. However, the big winner didn’t even take the stage tonight.

The first 45 minutes of the scheduled 90-minute debate (which went 15 minutes over) wound up focusing on the series of gaffes and stumbles from both candidates. Hillary more or less defused the Tuzla Dash by admitting she essentially lied about it, trying at one point to use the “sleep deprivation” defense. Obama, however, never did figure out the First Rule of Holes. Once again, he described religion as a refuge people use when government doesn’t work — a fatal misreading of religious faith in America. He not only came up with bad answers, he looked lost and tentative throughout the entire period.

Hillary didn’t let him off the hook, either, not when it came to Crackerquiddick or on the Wright Stuff. Noting that “you choose your pastor, not your family,” Hillary once again pounded Obama for not doing anything about Wright when he had the chance. She also jumped at the chance to note that former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers was more than just a “neighbor”, as Obama described him. Hillary pointed out that Obama and Ayers worked on a foundation together for years, even after 9/11, even after Ayers said publicly that he didn’t regret his terrorism.

And what was Obama’s response? He compared Ayers to Senator Tom Coburn, who opposes abortion. Of course, Coburn hasn’t bombed abortion clinics, but Obama can’t tell the difference between a Senator and a terrorist. That won’t help him in Middle America either, and Coburn may have a few words for Obama after this night.

By the time Gibson got around to the issues, Obama looked lost and upset. It got worse when Gibson asked about capital-gains tax rates, which Obama has pledged to raise. When Gibson repeatedly pointed out that decreasing the rates actually increased the revenues, Obama simply couldn’t come up with an answer, stammering while trying to change the subject. On guns, both Hillary and Obama stumbled through tortured explanations of how they support a Constitutional right for individuals to own guns while backing gun bans like the one in DC.

The winner of this debate? John McCain. Both Democrats came out of this diminished, but Obama got destroyed in this exchange. If superdelegates had begun to reconsider their support of Obama after Crackerquiddick, they’re speed-dialing Hillary after watching Gibson dismember Obama on national TV tonight.

And kudos to ABC News for taking on both candidates fearlessly. John McCain has to feel grateful not to be included. Don’t forget that you can read through our live blog at any time.

Also, check the Los Angeles Times' analysis of the debate's implications, "Obama Says Debate Foreshadows GOP Campaign."

For all Obama's touted savvy transcendance, he's lately making Michael Dukakis look like a political superstar!