Ungrounded: Barack Obama's Failure on Iraq

Pete Hegseth, of Vets for Freedom, provides a penetrating analysis of Barack Obama's unfitness as commander-in-chief, at the Wall Street Journal, "Why Obama Must Go to Iraq":

Earlier this year, I spent five days in Iraq, walking the same streets in Baghdad where I had served two years earlier as an infantry platoon leader in the 101st Airborne Division.

The visit reinforced for me not only the immense complexity of the war – so often lost in our domestic political debate – but also the importance of taking the time to visit Iraq to talk with the soldiers and Marines serving on the front lines in order to grasp the changing dynamics of a fluid battlefield.

It is for this reason that the failure of Sen. Barack Obama to travel to Iraq over the past two and a half years is worrisome, and a legitimate issue in this presidential election.

Since his election to the United States Senate in 2004, Mr. Obama has traveled to Iraq just once – in January 2006. This was more than a year before Gen. David Petraeus took command and the surge began. It was also several months before Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government came into office. Although Mr. Obama frequently criticizes the Iraqi leader on the campaign trail, he has never actually met him.

Mr. Obama's conduct is strikingly different from that of Sen. John McCain, who has been to Iraq eight times since 2003 – including three times since surge forces began to arrive in Baghdad. The senior senator from Arizona has made it his mission to truly understand what is happening on the ground, in all its messy reality.

Mr. Obama has dismissed the value of such trips, suggesting they are stage-managed productions designated to obfuscate, not illuminate, the truth. This has become an all-too-common sentiment within the Democratic Party leadership, especially since the surge began to transform conditions on the ground for the better. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has denied that there is any value in visiting the troops in Iraq, and has never done so....

Even more astonishing than Mr. Obama's absence from Iraq, however, is the fact that he has apparently never sought out a single one-on-one meeting with Gen. Petraeus. The general has made repeated trips back to Washington, but Mr. Obama has shown no interest in meeting privately with him. It's enough to make you wonder who exactly Mr. Obama listens to when it comes to Iraq?

Mr. Obama frequently decries the danger of "dogmatists" and "ideologues" in public policy, yet he himself has proven consistently uninterested in putting himself in situations where he might be confronted with the hard complexities of this war. It suggests a dangerous degree of detachment and overconfidence in his own judgment.

After all, Mr. Obama was among those in January 2007 who stridently opposed the surge and confidently predicted its failure – even going so far as to vote against funding our soldiers in the field unless the Bush administration abandoned this new approach. It is now clear that Mr. Obama's judgment on the surge was spectacularly wrong.

Yet rather than admit his mistake, Mr. Obama has instead tried to downplay or disparage the gains our troops have achieved in the past 12 months, clinging to a set of talking points that increasingly seem as divorced from reality as some in the Bush administration were at the darkest moments of the war.

See also, "Obama's Judgment on Iraq Falls Short."

Judging Obama's Friendships

Captain Ed raises a red flag over Barack Obama's character and judgment, "The Sad Pattern of Obama Friendships":

One has to really wonder how well Barack Obama knows his close associates. When Obama finally put distance between himself and his pastor of 20 years, he claimed that the Jeremiah Wright who spoke at a press function in Detroit was not the man he heard preaching every Sunday. Now he claims that the Tony Rezko who got convicted yesterday on 16 counts of fraud and corruption isn’t the Tony Rezko who raised over $250,000 for Obama through 2004:

Obama has said whenever asked — and he has been asked repeatedly — that his relationship to Rezko, who had a history of befriending up-and-coming Illinois politicians, never strayed into official business. Obama said Rezko asked no favors and that he did him none.

Rezko has not raised money for Obama since 2004, and the Obama campaign gave to charity the donations linked to Rezko.

“I’m saddened by today’s verdict,” Obama said in a statement Wednesday. “This isn’t the Tony Rezko I knew, but now he has been convicted by a jury on multiple charges that once again shine a spotlight on the need for reform.”

Well, hold the phone for a moment. The timetable of the prosecution clearly shows that Obama “knew” this Rezko. The activities for which Rezko got convicted took place in 2004 and before. Rezko raised money for Obama for several years, the last of which was 2004, after which Rezko tapped out and got too hot for Obama and other politicians.

Obama’s association with Rezko coincides with Rezko’s corruption. Obama wants us to ignore the obvious and go away with the impression that Rezko somehow changed after their association ended, but that’s simply not the truth. Either Obama turned a blind eye to Rezko’s corrupt behavior or he didn’t have the judgment to see it.

It doesn’t work like that when a politician wants to sell his superior judgment as a key reason to elect him. So far, Obama wants us to trust his judgment despite the fact that he supposedly was ignorant of his preacher’s hate-filled sermons, directed taxpayer money to a Catholic priest who thinks America is the “greatest sin against God”, thinks William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn and their “overthrow capitalism” rhetoric is “mainstream”, and now is shocked, shocked! to find out that his fundraiser and real-estate partner was a corrupt fraud.

That shows extremely poor judgment in selecting associates. Why should we want to see that kind of judgment applied as President?

But check, Vinegar and Honey, "It Is Not Our Finest Hour":

Well, people...I hardly know what to think, anymore. It seems that there are those out there who are bound and determined that Senator Barack Obama will be our next President no matter what has to transpire to accomplish it....

It is a fact, that there is much more that has been hidden about Barack and Michelle Obama, and if it is not squelched, as much of it has been, before finally coming to light, it will be revealed in due time. One can only hope that it will not, then, be too late--and that it will matter to those, presently, unable to see wrong in anything concerning the Obamas.

Related: "Why Did Obama Pay Rezko an Extra $64,000 For That Strip of Land?"

Obama Questionable on Iraq

Peter Wehner delivers a precision analysis of Barack Obama's statement on his Iraq policy during his victory speech Tuesday:

Senator Obama’s speech on Tuesday in St. Paul, when he finally locked up the Democratic presidential nomination, was typical: rhetorically powerful, well-delivered, with some clever and well-constructed lines. But when you examine the substance of what he said, the speech breaks down. Some of his claims are questionable and misleading; others are ill-informed; and still others border on being intellectually dishonest. Obama’s statement on Iraq are particularly revealing.

According to Obama:

I won’t stand here and pretend that there are many good options left in Iraq.

In fact, Obama doesn’t have to “pretend” there are many good options left in Iraq. There is one obvious good option: to continue policies that are manifestly succeeding and qualify as one of the most impressive military turnabouts in our history. According to yesterday’s operational update by Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner,

For the third week in a row security incidents in Iraq are at the lowest levels in four years. These numbers reflect fewer attacks on Iraqi civilians, fewer attacks on Iraqi and Coalition Forces, and fewer attacks on the Government’s infrastructure. These security gains follow the coordinated offensive operations over the past year, and the recent security operations in Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra.

The security progress we’ve making is now translating into encouraging progress on the political and economic fronts as well. There is no question, then, that Iraq, which remains in many ways a broken and splintered country, has made enormous strides. It is virtually beyond dispute that the “surge” strategy endorsed by President Bush (and opposed by Senator Obama) is working, and working better and faster than anyone could have imagined just a year ago.

In his speech Obama also stated:

We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in - but start leaving we must.

Keep in mind that in his February 2007 speech announcing his bid for the presidency, Obama declared, “It’s time to start bringing our troops home. That’s why I have a plan that will bring our combat troops home by March of 2008.” In May, Obama voted against funding for combat operations. And in September, a mere three months after the final elements of the 30,000-strong surge forces had landed in Iraq, he declared that the moment had arrived to remove all of our combat troops “immediately.” “Not in six months or one year–now.”

Obama’s position, then, is the embodiment of carelessness in “getting out of Iraq,” and if he had his way, the progress we have seen would not have come to pass and Iraq would almost certainly be in a death spiral rather than on the (long and difficult) road to recovery.

Read the whole thing.

See also, "Obama, Andrew Sullivan, and the Surge: Foresight vs. Hindsight."

Related: "Obama at AIPAC: Was He Lying Then or Now? I'm Guessing: Now," and "McCain Attacks Obama as Too Easy on Iran."

Barack Obama: San Francisco Democrat

John Bolton's got an essay up today on Barack Obama's foreign policy, "Obama the Naïve."

The conclusion's great:

It is an article of faith for Obama, and many others on the left in the U.S. and abroad, that it is the United States that is mostly responsible for the world's ills. In 1984, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick labeled people with these views the "San Francisco Democrats," after the city where Walter Mondale was nominated for president.

Most famously, Kirkpatrick forever seared the San Francisco Democrats by saying that "they always blame America first" for the world's problems. In so doing, she turned the name of the pre-World War II isolationist America First movement into a stigma the Democratic Party has never shaken.

This is yet another piece of history that Obama has ignored or never learned. There may be one more piece of history worthy of attention: In 1984, Mondale went down to one of the worst electoral defeats in American political history. We will now see whether Obama follows that path as well.

See also, "Barack's Throwback: 'Guns v. Butter' Isolationism."

UC Irvine: The Most Muslim University in America

FrontPageMag reports on Islamic radicalism at the University of California, Irvine:

At the University of California, Irvine the Muslim Student Union (MSU), a virulently anti-Semitic and anti-American student group, holds several programs which unabashedly support terrorist groups and unjustly denounce Israel, America, and the Western world. MSU events have featured speakers like Norman Finkelstein, Ward Churchill, Muhammad al-Asi and Amir Abdel Malik Ali, and have had titles such as "Hamas: the People's Choice" and "Israel: The 4th Reich."

On May 12, 2008 the Muslim Student Union invited Muhammad al-Asi to speak on the main part of the campus in front of the flag poles. Al-Asi has spoken at UC Irvine before, and his speeches are usually riddled with stereotypical tirades on Jews and unrepentant affirmations of terrorist acts on American and Israel.

Out of all the MSU’s speakers, al-Asi has the most lurid personal history. A former Air Force Officer, al-Asi became radicalized by the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and is an avid admirer of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. In 1983, he was removed from his position at the Islamic Center in Washington D.C. for being too radical, and since then, he preaches his hateful message in front of the very same mosque to passers-by. Al-Asi also makes regular trips to Iran to meet hard-line officials, and as reported by the Washington Post, is under constant surveillance from the United State’s government.

Al-Asi’s hateful message was on full display during this year’s hate week. With a speech peppered with pro-terrorist and anti-Semitic overtones, he didn’t disappoint his keffiyah wearing devotees of the Muslim Student Union. In referring to the fate of the Israeli state, al-Asi boasted about the increasing endangerment of the concentrated Jewish population in the Middle East, and the pent up aggression of their Arab neighbors:

"As the years go by you are going to feel more cornered in the nation state ghetto you constructed."

The invocation of “ghetto” is a common theme in al-Asi’s speeches. To the defrocked Imam, the state of Israel isn’t a prosperous and civilized nation founded by legal land purchases and predicated on international law, but rather a bastion for alien savages that ran rough shod over an otherwise pristine Middle East. According to al-Asi, modern Jewish culture is deviant and depraved, born from thousands of years of exile and the violent “ghetto life” they failed to learn from in Europe:

"Just like you didn't learn from exile, you didn't learn from ghetto life.

You left the ghettos of Europe, there were no ghettos to speak about in Muslim Countries. You left those ghettos and came in the fashion that you did, with all the bloodshed that went with it and still continues.

You came to the holy land, which you desecrated and blasphemed with every decision that you made and still are making and then you realize that you are in a territory of hostilities around you. These hostilities didn't come from nowhere, these hostilities are a reaction to all the misery and all the hostility that you brought with you."

Amir Abdel Malik Ali echoed similar overtones in his speech on Thursday, May 15. Invoking repetitive and hazy distinctions between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, he did however characterize Jews that are politically active in Republican politics as traitors “masquerading as right wingers.” Ali was unequivocally adamant about the destruction of Israel, but was more reserved in his attacks on America, calling for what he narrowly defined as the fall of “empire.”

Video Credit: Reut Cohen, "Welcome to Irvinistan,"with more on Amir Abdel Malik-Ali:

In order for people to live like human beings America must fall as an empire and America is coming down. When you put the Israeli flag up next to the American flag, what it means for many of us, you will fall just like that empire is going to fall.

Islam's ideology of hate ought to raise questions for defenders of this nihilism mayhem.

Blacks Find Joy in Obama's Breakthrough

The New York Times reports that black Americans have rejoiced at Barack Obama's historic victory in securing the Democratic presidential nomination:

Kwabena Sam-Brew, a 38-year-old immigrant from Ghana, doubted that Nana, his 5-year-old American-born daughter, would remember the rally that effectively crowned Senator Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee Tuesday night.

But Mr. Sam-Brew said he would describe it to her: “I will tell her, ‘Tonight is the night that all Americans became one.’ ”

Mr. Sam-Brew, a bus driver living in Cottage Grove, Minn., said Mr. Obama’s achievement would change the nation’s image around the world, and change the mind-set of Americans, too.

“We as black people now have hope that we have never, ever had,” Mr. Sam-Brew said. “I have new goals for my little girl. She can’t give me any excuses because she’s black.”

In his remarks Tuesday, Mr. Obama did not mention becoming the first American of color with a real chance at being president of the United States, and, of course, most of the Democrats who had voted for him were white. But for that very reason, many African-Americans exulted Wednesday in a political triumph that they believed they would never live to see. Many expressed hope that their children would draw strength from the moment.

“Not that we’re so distraught, but our children need to be able to see a black adult as a leader for the country, so they can know we can reach for those same goals,” said Wilhelmina Brown, 54, an account representative for U.S. Bank in St. Paul. “We don’t need to give up at a certain level.”

Alison Kane, a white 34-year-old transportation analyst from Edina, Minn., said Mr. Obama’s success as a biracial politician would have a similar effect on her 21-month-old biracial daughter, Hawa.

“When she’s out in, God knows where, some small town in rural America, they’ll think, ‘Oh, I know someone like you. Our president is like you,’ ” Ms. Kane said. “That just opens minds for people, to have someone to relate to. And that makes me feel better, as a mom.”

But pride — in Mr. Obama and in white voters who had looked beyond race, in the view of many blacks — was tempered for many African-Americans by an unsettling concern. There remains a fear that race, which loomed large in some primaries and has previously been successfully employed as a political wedge by Republicans, might yet keep Mr. Obama from capturing the White House.

“People hate black people,” said Michella Minter, a black 21-year-old student in Huntington, W.Va., referring to persistent racism in the United States.

“I’m not trying to be racist or over the top but it is seriously apparent that black people aren’t valued in this country,” Ms. Minter said. “In the last 12 months, six kids were being tried for attempted murder for a school fight, an unarmed man got 51 bullets in his body by a New York police officer, died, and no one was charged, and endless other racist unknown acts have occurred this year.”

(In fact, three New York City detectives were charged in the shooting of Sean Bell, killed in a hail of police bullets on his wedding day in 2006, and were acquitted.)

Mr. Obama’s moment seemed to unite blacks across the political spectrum, even those who had no intention of voting for a Democrat for president.

For example, Ward Connerly, a conservative anti-affirmative-action crusader and chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, watched a replay of the announcement of Mr. Obama’s victory on Fox News early Wednesday “and I choked up,” he said. “He did it by his own achievement. Nobody gave it to him.”

Mr. Connerly expressed hope that Mr. Obama’s rise would boost his own efforts to end affirmative action.

This raises some interesting issues. Obama emerged as an extremely attractive national Democrat, after speaking to the party's convention in 2004, particulary because he spoke in terms of individualism and personal responsibility. I saw him as potentially leading the party away from its partisan attachment to the entitlement politics of race, rights, and spending givaways.

I'm skeptical of Obama's vision for America now, as I noted with special intenstiy regarding an Obama administration and foreign policy. On race I'm just as wary of any progress on race relations under an Obama presidency, particulary as long as the hard-left - the base of the Democrats' "progressive" coalition - continues to demonize those who are opposed to race preferences.

I discussed this in my entry, "The Realities of Left-Wing Race-Baiting in America." But note Megan McArdle's post today on seeing Obama's achievement rightly as "Technicolor," an optimism leavened by one of her commenters:

Race will always be an issue because liberals will see that it is. Race hustling is still a key arrow in the liberal quiver. The only people who really care about race (or gender for that matter) are liberal democrats and political hacks.

See also, "Let's Have an Honest Conversation About Race."

McCain vs. Obama: The Shape of the General Election Matchup

The Los Angeles Times offers a road map to the general election contest between John McCain and Barack Obama:

In many states that President Bush captured in the 2004 election, Barack Obama has swelled the ranks of Democrats by the thousands, drawing record numbers of young people and African Americans to the polls.

But will this enthusiasm -- which propelled his victory Tuesday in the race for the Democratic nomination -- deliver enough of these states to Obama to win the presidency?

That question is on the minds of strategists plotting the Democratic Party's drive to retake the White House. In national polls, Obama runs about even with Republican John McCain, but he cannot win the 270 electoral votes he needs unless he picks up states that Bush won.

McCain, for his part, must hold all of Bush's states, or else carry some new ones to make up for any losses.

"Everybody's top priorities will be those 12 to 15 swing states that were close in 2004," said Charles Black, a senior McCain advisor.

For weeks, Obama and McCain have crossed paths in those states, with a particular emphasis on Florida. When South Dakota and Montana handed Obama the delegates needed to clinch the nomination Tuesday night, he did not celebrate in either state, but in Minnesota -- a state that is crucial for Democrats to hold.

Obama is running in a climate that strongly favors Democrats. Advisors say he is well-placed to expand the map of Democratic states to Colorado and Virginia, a pair of Bush states now more friendly to his party -- and might even add such GOP strongholds as Georgia.

Yet a wholesale recoloring of the nation's red-and-blue electoral map is hard to fathom, strategists and independent analysts say.

Read the whole thing (McCain appears to have bigger challenges).

See also, Gallup's report on early polling demographics for the general election, as well as Protein Wisdom, "Do May-June Polls Mean Anything for November?

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

Talking Tough? Obama Meets Pro-Israel Lobby

The New York Times reports on Barack Obama's visit to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee today:

Senator Barack Obama, in his first day as the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee, plunged into the thicket of Middle East politics on Wednesday with comments on the status of Jerusalem and deterrence of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Speaking before the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the nation’s foremost pro-Israel lobby, Mr. Obama endorsed a two-state Israel-Palestine settlement, but also insisted that Jerusalem should remain both the capital of the Jewish nation and undivided.

Those remarks drew immediate criticism from Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza, with Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, saying that Mr. Obama’s speech proved there would be no change in American policy toward the Palestinians, which he described as “hostile.”

Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, expressed frustration. “The whole world knows that East Jerusalem, holy Jerusalem, was occupied in 1967,” Mr. Abbas said, “and we will not accept a Palestinian state without having Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.”

Mr. Obama, who was introduced as the Democratic nominee and received a hearty ovation, also drew contrasts with President Bush and with Senator John McCain of Arizona, the likely Republican nominee. Mr. Obama said he differed substantially with both of them on matters of timing and approach to various Middle East issues, including Iran’s expansionist goals.

“I won’t wait until the waning days of my presidency,” Mr. Obama said, in a slap at Mr. Bush. “I will take an active role and make a personal commitment to do all I can to advance the cause of peace from the start of my administration.”

Mr. Obama defended his willingness to negotiate with the nation’s enemies, but coupled that with a pledge of unstinting support for Israel’s security. He also promised to send military hardware to Israel under the same conditions governing NATO nations.

He talked tough on Iran, describing it in terms suggestive of a rogue nation and making clear that he would place the military might of the United States behind Israel in the event of an Iranian attack on the Jewish state.

“I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” he said, adding for emphasis, “Everything.

“That starts with aggressive, principled diplomacy without self-defeating preconditions, but with a clear-eyed understanding of our interests,” Mr. Obama said. He threatened harsh sanctions against Iran if it did not forsake its nuclear ambitions.

Mr. McCain has criticized Mr. Obama for what he has called a naïve approach to military and diplomatic affairs, including a willingness to engage with Iran and other potential threats.

Mr. McCain repeated that charge in a news conference on Wednesday as well as at his appearance before the Aipac conference on Monday. He also criticized Mr. Obama for not supporting a Senate resolution to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Iran as a terrorist organization. Mr. Obama did not vote on the resolution but has said he would have opposed it.

Mr. Obama answered that criticism on Wednesday, saying that the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards had rightly been labeled a terrorist organization.

See also, Jennifer Rubin, "It is a good thing ... that he now recognizes the Iranian National Guard as a terrorist organization. It does make it that much stranger, though, that he still wants to meet with the Iranian President."

Cartoon Credit: Michael Ramirez

What's Up With the Michelle Obama Whitey Tape?

There's more controversy surrounding the much-hyped Michelle Obama "whitey" tape that's rumored to be a radical bombshell of ammunition against the Barack Obama campaign.

Photo Caption: For about 30 minutes, Michelle Obama launched into a rant about the evils of America, and how America is to blame for the problems of Africa. Michelle personally blamed President Clinton for the deaths of millions of Africans and said America is responsible for the genocide of the Tutsis and other ethnic groups. She then launched into an attack on "whitey", and talked about solutions to black on black crime in the realm of diverting those actions onto white America. Her rant was fueled by the crowd: they reacted strongly to what she said, so she got more passionate and enraged, and that's when she completely loses it and says things that have made the mouths drop of everyone who's seen this.

Wake Up America has a nice background summary to the much-anticipated video goldmine:

Weeks ago a blogger by the name of Larry Johnson started touting news of a "video" of Michelle Obama ranting against "whitey", meaning whites in America, but no one has produced such a video. Speculation has run rampant about the existence of the tape....

Little bits of information have been put out there, at a time, but nothing concrete enough to be anything but rumor.

Rumor perhaps, but enough of one that strategists on news media shows have also been speculating about it, which in this day and age, makes it news.

John Fund from Wall Street Journal's Political Diary:

Indeed, rumors are swirling on the campaign trail that a new video will soon surface featuring Mrs. Obama appearing on a panel with radical speakers during which she makes more controversial statements.

With so many news media outlets and bloggers alike as well as political operatives trying to establish whether the tape exists and if it does, what exactly is on the tape that has been called "stunning" and whether it would actually damage Barack Obama beyond repair.

Barack obama has had to quit his church of over 16 years because of controversial racial statements made by not one, but two, of the people he has called his spiritual guides and/or advisers and has publicly stated he considered his "moral compasses".

He has been linked to questionable characters and this alleged tape is being reported as another link, this time to Louis Farrakhan.

Farrakhan has been the center of much controversy, and critics contend that some of his views and comments have been racist, homophobic, and antisemitic and he is also known well for his ties to The Nation of Islam.

You can see Farrakhan ranting against Jews here at YouTube.

Wake up America provides more on the media speculation and implications, but let's got to Gateway Pundit's entry:

Sister Rosetta at Hillary Clinton Forum reported this from HillBuzz yesterday on the mysterious Michelle Obama "whitey" tape yesterday:

The Michelle Obama Rant Tape was filmed between June 26th - July 1st 2004 in Chicago, IL at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Conference at Trinity United Church: specifically the Women’s Event.

Michelle Obama appeared as a panelist alongside Mrs. Khadijah Farrakhan and Mrs. James Meeks.

Bill Clinton spoke during the Conference, as did Bill Cosby and other speakers, but not at the panel Michelle attended.

Michelle Obama spoke at the Women’s Event, but referenced Bill Clinton in her rant — his presence at the conference was the impetus for her raving, it seems.

For about 30 minutes, Michelle Obama launched into a rant about the evils of America, and how America is to blame for the problems of Africa. Michelle personally blamed President Clinton for the deaths of millions of Africans and said America is responsible for the genocide of the Tutsis and other ethnic groups. She then launched into an attack on “whitey”, and talked about solutions to black on black crime in the realm of diverting those actions onto white America.

Well, that's about it!

I'll have more if and when this story really breaks open.

Photo Credit: AJ Strata

The Obama Nomination: Least Tested Major Party Ideologue in Modern Times

Today's lead editorial at the Wall Street Journal raises questions about Barack Obama's fitness and preparation fo the office of president of the United States:

With Barack Obama clinching the Democratic Party nomination, it is worth noting what an extraordinary moment this is. Democrats are nominating a freshman Senator barely three years out of the Illinois legislature whom most of America still hardly knows. The polls say he is the odds-on favorite to become our next President.

Think about this in historical context. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were relatively unknown, but both had at least been prominent Governors. John Kerry, Walter Mondale, Al Gore and even George McGovern were all long-time Washington figures. Republican nominees tend to be even more familiar, for better or worse. In Mr. Obama, Democrats are taking a leap of faith that is daring even by their risky standards.

No doubt this is part of his enormous appeal. Amid public anger over politics as usual, the Illinois Senator is unhaunted by Beltway experience. His personal story – of mixed race, and up from nowhere through Harvard – resonates in an America where the two most popular cultural icons are Tiger Woods and Oprah. His political gifts are formidable, especially his ability to connect with audiences from the platform.

Above all, Mr. Obama has fashioned a message that fits the political moment and the public's desire for "change." At his best, he offers Americans tired of war and political rancor the promise of fresh national unity and purpose. Young people in particular are taken by it. But more than a few Republicans are also drawn to this "postpartisan" vision.

Mr. Obama has also shown great skill in running his campaign. No one – including us – gave him much chance of defeating the Clinton machine. No doubt he benefited from the desire of even many Democrats to impeach the polarizing Clinton era. But he also beat Hillary and Bill at their own game. He raised more money, and he outworked them in the small-state caucuses that provided him with his narrow delegate margin. Even now, he is far better organized in swing states than is John McCain's campaign. All of this speaks well of his preparation for November, and perhaps for his potential to govern.

Yet govern how and to what end? This is the Obama Americans don't know. For all of his inspiring rhetoric about bipartisanship, his voting record is among the most partisan in the Senate. His policy agenda is conventionally liberal across the board – more so than Hillary Clinton's, and more so than that of any Democratic nominee since 1968.

We can't find a single issue on which Mr. Obama has broken with his party's left-wing interest groups. Early on he gave a bow to merit pay for teachers, but that quickly sank beneath the waves of new money he wants to spend on the same broken public schools. He takes the Teamsters line against free trade, to the point of unilaterally rewriting Nafta. He wants to raise taxes even above the levels of the Clinton era, including a huge increase in the payroll tax. Perhaps now Mr. Obama will tack to the center, but somehow he will have to explain why the "change" he's proposing isn't merely more of the same, circa 1965.

There is also the matter of judgment, and the roots of his political character. We were among those inclined at first to downplay his association with the Trinity United Church. But Mr. Obama's handling of the episode has raised doubts about his candor and convictions. He has by stages moved from denying that his 20-year attendance was an issue at all; to denying he'd heard Rev. Jeremiah Wright's incendiary remarks; to criticizing certain of those remarks while praising Rev. Wright himself; to repudiating the words and the reverend; and finally this weekend to leaving the church.

Most disingenuously, he said on Saturday that the entire issue caught him by surprise. Yet he was aware enough of the political risk that he kept Rev. Wright off the stage during his announcement speech more than a year ago.

A 2004 Chicago Sun-Times interview with Mr. Obama mentioned three men as his religious guides. One was Rev. Wright. Another was Father Michael Pfleger, the Louis Farrakhan ally whose recent remarks caused Mr. Obama to resign from Trinity, but for whose Chicago church Mr. Obama channeled at least $225,000 in grants as a state senator. Until recently, the priest was connected to the campaign, which flew him to Iowa to host an interfaith forum. Father Pfleger's testimony for the candidate has since been scrubbed from Mr. Obama's campaign Web site. A third mentor was Illinois state Senator James Meeks, another Chicago pastor who has generated controversy for mixing pulpit and politics.

The point is not that Mr. Obama now shares the radical views of these men. The concern is that by the Senator's own admission they have been major moral influences, and their views are starkly at odds with the candidate's vision as a transracial peacemaker. Their patronage was also useful as Mr. Obama was making his way in Chicago politics. But only now, in the glare of a national campaign, is he distancing himself from them. The question is what in fact Mr. Obama does believe.

The young Senator has been a supernova exploding into our politics, more phenomenon than conventional candidate. His achievement in winning the Democratic nomination has been impressive. Now comes a harder audience. The presidency has to be earned, and Americans have a right to know much more about the gifted man who is the least tested and experienced major party nominee in modern times.

That three-way relationship of Wright, Pfleger, and Farrakhan is the three-legged "radical triad" Rick Moran dicussed in his piece, "Obama's Alliance with Marxists."

For my thoughts on Obama's historic moment, see "June 3, 2008: Barack Obama Makes a Different Kind of History."

Barack Obama's Marxist Ties

Rick Moran, in his post, "Obama's Alliance with Marxists," wonders, "Are we about to elect a president who has made common political cause with Marxists?"

Moran's questioning Obama's ties to the "New Party," an electoral vehicle formed in the 1990s to elect extreme left-wing candidates to office:

Co-founded in 1992 by Daniel Cantor (a former staffer for Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign) and Joel Rogers (a sociology and law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison), the New Party was a Marxist political coalition whose objective was to endorse and elect leftist public officials -- most often Democrats. The New Party's short-term objective was to move the Democratic Party leftward, thereby setting the stage for the eventual rise of new Marxist third party.

Most New Party members hailed from the Democratic Socialists of America and the militant organization ACORN. The party's Chicago chapter also included a large contingent from the Committees of Correspondence, a Marxist coalition of former Maoists, Trotskyists, and Communist Party USA members.

The New Party's modus operandi included the political strategy of "electoral fusion," where it would nominate, for various political offices, candidates from other parties (usually Democrats), thereby enabling each of those candidates to occupy more than one ballot line in the voting booth. By so doing, the New Party often was able to influence candidates' platforms. (Fusion of this type is permitted in seven states -- Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Mississippi, New York, South Carolina, and Vermont -- but is common only in New York.)

Though Illinois was not one of the states that permitted electoral fusion, in 1995 Barack Obama nonetheless sought the New Party's endorsement for his 1996 state senate run. He was successful in obtaining that endorsement, and he used a number of New Party volunteers as campaign workers.

See also, "Obama's Radical-Left Ties Broad And Deep."

Anti-Bush Partisans Stuck on "No WMD" Meme

By this time, five years after the run-up to the Iraq war, it's abundantly clear that those on the left implacably opposed to the toppling of Saddam Hussein's murderous regime are stuck in a pre-surge mentality, and they'll continue to use any and all methods to prolong their deligitimization campaign of the American deployment in Iraq.

One of these antiwar nihilists is Cernig at "Newshoggers". I took down old "C" in a post some time back, "Blogging Foreign Policy: Bereft of Credentials, Left Strains to Shift Debate." "C" didn't like that and tried to resuscitate his "credibilty" in the comments.

Cernig's got a post up this morning on Australia's Rudd government and its effort to pull the country's contribution to joint security contingents in Iraq:

When War Party shills or the Bush administration repeat the old lie that "everyone thought Iraq had WMDs", they conveniently forget that French intelligence didn't, that weapons inspector Scott Ritter didn't, that Russian intelligence didn't, that Al Gore didn't, that German intel had already worked out that Curveball was a conman and warned the CIA...and leave out the fact that most Western governments were relying on the US to tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Australian PM Kevin Rudd has been laying out that latter inconvenient truth for his public, on the occasion of his ordering a withdrawal of Aussie soldiers from Iraq. It's a story that's got very little attention in the US, however.

Notice that language: The "war party shills." God, that's sounds positively evil. I'm sure the diabolical "neocons" had something to do with it!

I went to leave a quote from the Wall Street Journal at the post, but apparently I'm banned by Cernig for violating his abstruse "rules" for debate at the blog:

We're sorry, your comment has not been published because TypePad's antispam filter has flagged it as potential comment spam. It has been held for review by the blog's author.

I started to leave this passage, from the Wall Street Journal article:

That Saddam had WMD was the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community for years, going back well into the Clinton Administration. The CIA's Near East and counterterrorism bureaus disagreed on the links between al Qaeda and Saddam--which is one reason the Bush Administration failed to push that theme. But the CIA and its intelligence brethren were united in their belief that Saddam had WMD, as the agency made clear in numerous briefings to Congress.

And not just the CIA. Believers included the U.N., whose inspectors were tossed out of Iraq after they had recorded huge stockpiles after the Gulf War. No less than French President Jacques Chirac warned as late as last February about "the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq" and declared that the "international community is right . . . in having decided Iraq should be disarmed."

The point here is not so much the disagreement over Iraqi WMD (Prime Minister Rudd's going to spin his antiwar meme as best he can, in kowtowing to whatever left-wing surrenderist pressures he's facing), but to illustrate the total cowardice of the antiwar hordes in censoring opposition to their views based on reason.

Cernig's a hack who has a history of banning pro-victory commenters, according to some whacked system of ad hoc posting rules. As Dave in Boca pointed out in any earlier entry,

Petty autocrat [Cernig] banished/blocked me for consistently outwitting and outfacting his tendentious gibberish.

My neocon protege at GSGF was also banned after disputing a Newshoggers' post, so shining the light of reason on this guy triggered a good amount of reflexive "spam-filtering."

Recall this is the blog that cheered Downs syndrome suicide bombers in Iraq, and these folks routinely demonize the American deployment from the trenches of neo-communist antiwar ideological hostility.

*********

UPDATE: I frequently mention that many of my antiwar commenters, who I tolerate generously (including Repsac3), never denounce (but defend) the antiwar nihilism and left-wing anti-Semitism I regularly chronicle on this page.

Here's another example: In response to this post, and my reference above to Newshoggers' cheering of Downs syndrome suicide bombers in Iraq, Fauxmaxbaer responded in the comments, which is followed by my rebuttal and the comment of Gayle from Dragon Lady's Den:

** [1] I followed the links and could not find where anyone applauded or cheered the use of those with Down's Syndrome as suicide bombers. Could you provide that quote. [Fauxmaxbaer]

** [2] This is the only quote that I found and it does not fit the description of cheering or applauding:

For the record, assuming it's true, I think it's just horrible that whoever was behind this latest disaster used Down's women to perpetrate the bombings but I don't see it as a sign of desperation. I see it as a sign of adaptation and a brilliant one at that. Perhaps Mr. Owens can educate me on how our troops are supposed to counter this new evil tactic? That would be helpful. [Fauxmaxbaer]

** [3] "I see it as a sign of adaptation and a brilliant one at that."A brilliant adaptation, for killing the innocents? Is that okay with you, Fauxmaxbaer? That's cheering. If that's okay with you, you're as bad as they are. [Donald]

** [4]) Donald, I found that same quote, and I see it differently than Fauxmaxbaer does. "I see it as a sign of adaptation and a brilliant one at that." Sounds like approval and cheering to me! That quote came from here. I think Libby Spencer is morally challenged. [Gayle]

Gayle responded to me just seconds after I responded to Fauxmaxbaer, and I was already working on this update when I saw her comments. I was going to throw open the thread for some debate on defending as "brilliant" Downs suicide bombers, which for both Libby Spencer and Fauxmaxbaer, is a case in the worst form of moral relativism.

But to be clear: If war opponents see the strapping of explosive vests on mentally-challenged Iraqi women for the purpose of killing American soldiers and innocent civilians as a "brilliant adaptation," that can only be seen logically as applauding a shift in tactics by the terrorists to excalate the nihilist violence. Libby Spencer's original post, and Fauxmaxbaer's defense, demonstrates a moral equivalence (and depravity), that, frankly, I find sickening. Is there nothing that the terrorists will do that elicits an unequivocal denunciation by the far left-wing enemies of American success in Iraq?

Thanks to Gayle for the moral backup. Sometimes I go crazy with these lefties!

June 3, 2008: Barack Obama Makes a Different Kind of History

I'm watching CNN right now. I felt a profound moment of history earlier as Wolf Blitzer announced that Barack Obama had won enough pledged delegates to secure the Democratic presidential nomination:

Sen. Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination for president, according to CNN estimates, making him the first African-American in U.S. history to lead a major-party ticket.

Obama picked up a slew of superdelegate endorsements on Tuesday. Those endorsements, combined with the delegates he's projected to receive from South Dakota's primary, will put him past the 2,118 threshold, according to CNN estimates.

Obama will claim victory during a speech in St. Paul, Minnesota, according to prepared remarks released by his campaign.

"Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States," he's expected to say.

Obama's achievement is personally bittersweet for me, a victory that feels enormously anticlimactic, if not ominous.

I recall in 1988, as a young Democratic Party idealist, I watched Jesse Jackson's "Common Ground" address to the Democratic National Convention. I thought Jackson said more about the fundamental issues facing the country than any other candidate in the race that year.

While I did not like Michael Dukakis, I believed George H.W. Bush to be an American patriot and a fundamentally decent man. Yet, above the two, I felt that Jackson's eloquence rose to the heights of the great civil rights leaders of the past - even to the standards of Martin Luther King, Jr. After the Reagan years, its seemed to me - as a young man - that the country was moving too far to the right, and that the concerns of the disadvantaged were being swept aside in the tide of a morning-in-America political realignment.

When G.H.W.B. was elected, I saw him as my president, my national leader (there was no demonization of the enemy in my heart), and I believed the country was in good hands - and that perhaps indeed a "kindler, gentler" America might pull back from what many argued was the "greed-is-good" phenomenon of the earlier decade.

But in 1992, after the recession of the time, when many people spoke of an "economic depression," I welcomed the "pulse of morning" that was the promise of William Jefferson Clinton.

Yet by the end of that decade I felt betrayed. The man who had evinced so much vitality and hope, who showed that anyone in America might succeed and attain the most powerful leadership position in the world, betrayed the stature of the office through the dirt and dishonesty of a sexual liaison with a young White House intern.

When Al Gore lost the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000, I was not bitter. I saw the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore as legitimate, and I expected that the Democrats would have a shot at returning to the presidency in 2004.

But then we were attacked, on September 11, and for all my shock of the violation of the American mainland, I did not view the war on terror in partisan terms - I believed deeply that the country would rally to a cause greater than the individual, that the fabric of unity in nation would guide us to meet a larger challenge than anything my generation has faced before.

But that did not happen. Hard-left partisans showed little if any support for our deployment in Afghanistan, and I learned the hard way the true nature of the domestic fifth column, in seeing the anti-American attacks on the United States, with calls for "a million Mogadishus." I personally spoke out, at campus "war forums" (actually, antiwar rallies), in solidarity with the Bush adminstration on regime change in Iraq. Since that time I've never wavered in my support for the deployment nor for our troops in the field. Over the past five years, as even some of the most eloquent war supporters threw in the towel, or leaned close to admitting defeat, I never lost hope that our cause was right and just, and that the United States would prevail.

Instead, I have been radicalized by the radicals, and in my teaching and blogging I've resisted - forcefully and relentlessly - the antiwar nihilism on the left, and I have held firm in my unflinching belief that Americans would win, that our troops would take it from Baghdad's Euphrates to the streets of Basra and Fallujah, that we would fight, in the alleys, in the fields, and on the pockmarked highways of death, with their improvised explosive devices. We would never surrender.

So, now, on June 3, 2008, I feel this moment in history has no greater significance than a validation that we have indeed overcome. Today is, more importantly, unlike the day, on June 6, 1944, that Americans embarked on the D-Day invasion of Europe, to liberate the continent from the grips of Nazi totalitarianism. Americans then were united in the cause of a world free of the jackboots of oppression. And we did emerge victorious then, through ups and downs, through setbacks and near defeats, to end the spread of Nazi expansionism and genocide.

I do not see that kind of history in the electoral campaign today. The Democrats today are the party of defeat, and as the netroots hordes have beaten the drums of ignomious retreat, the contenders for the party's nomination have pandered remorselessly to the hell that is far left-wing Bush-hatred, Lieberman derangement, and Israel-bashing anti-Semitism.

The country that the left identifies as the contemporary manifestation of world evil is not the world in which I live. The country denounced as a hopeless abomination of hatred and repression is not the nation to which immigrants from around the world scratch and kick to make it to our shores, to join the great democracy that is the last best hope of freedom. That world that the left identifies as an unmitigated evil is foreign to my identity and sensibility, to my ideal of America as the bastion of universal opportunity.

No, June 3, 2008, is unlike that day, almost sixty-four years ago, when our people had a purpose. I see in Barack Obama, in his claim that "this is our moment," as pulling the country irretrievably into a netherworld of amorphous "change," hand-held by the soulless armies of 60s-era radicalism, and by the domestic bombers and black liberationists who populate the flag-crushing backwater of far left-wing multicultural jacobinism.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have now given their speeches. She won't concede, while he calls for a new America of ambiguous "forward movement" to some of partisan transformation.

So, in this historic moment, while I'm genuinely astounded in this nation's ability to open the doors of oppportunity to those who for so long were oppressed under the weight of real racist reaction and gender discrimination, there is little inside me that suggests we are seeing a new Reaganite affirmation of a "city on a hill" or a Clintonian promise of a new "pulse of morning." Instead, it seems that Obama and his hordes represent the new vanguard of the proletariat, who will seek to move this country far away from its historic roots in a political culture of anti-aristocratic egalitarianism and individualism, to a neo-collectivist regime, with higher taxes, regulation, and anti-Republican war-crimes prosecutions at home, combined with foreign policy surrender and unconditional diplomatic appeasement abroad.

That's my take on things. As always, I'll have more later.

Radical Islam and the Israel Day Parade

Members of the "religion of peace" made a showing at New York's Israel Day Parade on Sunday:

Israellycool's got a report with more photos.

According to Little Green Footballs:

At the Israel Day Parade in New York City on June 1st, the Neanderthal antisemites calling themselves the “Islamic Thinkers Society” made an appearance...

The Wikipedia entry for "Islamic Thinkers Society has this:

The group states they wish to see a reversal of what they consider to be colonialism and imperialism, including an 'on the ground' reversal of the Balfour Declaration, Sykes-Picot Agreement and San Remo conference. They allege these agreements are part of 'Colonialist Designs' on the Islamic world, and they urge Muslims to consider them illegal, null and void. The group calls for an end what it says are "Colonialist-Imposed Borders," "Colonialist-Imposed States," and "Colonialist-Imposed Rulers."They also show dislike for Jews, Christians, homosexuals and Shi'ites.

ITS calls on Muslims to oppose the United States, Christianity and Western society and culture, especially homosexuality, which they see as Western. ITS, is also notable for its hostility to Shi'ites whom they view as not true Muslims.

See also, "New Yorkers Celebrate Israel's Founding at Parade," and the anti-Semitic comments at the thread therein.

John McCain and Veterans' Benefits

In response to Edward Humes' commentary piece attacking John McCain's opposition to Democratic G.I. Bill legislation, Dick Evans of York, Pennsylvania, writes:

John McCain's commitment to veterans and services to support them is second to none. Regarding the current GI Bill proposal that recently passed the Senate, Edward Humes fails to understand that McCain and others proposed a bill that is better for veterans, better for military retention and is transferable to spouses or children.

McCain's bill acknowledges, as do sponsors of Sen. Jim Webb's (D-Va.) bill, that the Webb bill provides a substantial incentive for just one enlistment, which could deprive the military of candidates for extremely necessary non-commissioned officers (NCOs). NCOs are the heart and soul of the military.

McCain's bill enhances benefits to those who serve longer and, should the veteran so choose, educational benefits may be transferred to spouse or child, a benefit not included in the Webb bill. McCain's opposition to the Webb bill is based on the fact that it is inferior to the bill he has presented.

See also, "The War Over Veterans’ Benefits."

Photo Credit: "Mr. McCain autographed a flag for a supporter at a January rally in Keene, N.H.," New York Times.

Barack Obama May Clinch Nomination Tonight

As the Washington Post reports, "Obama Looks to Lock Up Nomination."

Over at the National Review, William Bennett reflects on the moment:

... the Democratic party is about to nominate a far left candidate in the tradition of George McGovern, albeit without McGovern’s military and political record. The Democratic party is about to nominate a far-left candidate in the tradition of Michael Dukakis, albeit without Dukakis’s executive experience as governor. The Democratic party is about to nominate a far left candidate in the tradition of John Kerry, albeit without Kerry’s record of years of service in the Senate. The Democratic party is about to nominate an unvetted candidate in the tradition of Jimmy Carter, albeit without Jimmy Carter’s religious integrity as he spoke about it in 1976. Questions about all these attributes (from foreign policy expertise to executive experience to senatorial experience to judgment about foreign leaders to the instructors he has had in his cultural values) surround Barack Obama. And the Democratic party has chosen him.

See also, Sister Toljah, "AP Says Obama Has the Delegates He Needs."

The Victimization of Soldiers on the American Left

Via Maggie's Farm, check out Jeffrey Schmitt's, "For Liberals, Soldiers are Victims":

Not surprisingly, something went unnoticed in the establishment media's coverage of Barack Obama's latest gaffe. What got the play was that Senator Obama had a great-uncle, not an uncle, who was involved, in some way or another, in the liberation of Buchenwald, not Auschwitz. Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army.

What didn't get much, if any, play was the Illinoisan's observation that his now great-uncle was, presumably, so traumatized by the experience of liberating a death camp that, when he returned stateside:

"...he just went up into the attic and he didn't leave the house for six months, right. Now obviously something had really affected him deeply but at that time there just weren't the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain."

What insight does Senator Obama's words give us about his and the liberal mindset? It gives us this: that war is largely about injury to our fighting men and women, not just in body, but in mind and soul. Senator Obama's great-uncle was a shattered man, so shattered that he holed-up in his family's attic for a half a year. And that if only the facilities were available, his great-uncle would have found proper treatment for his psychic and emotional wounds.

It is curious that Senator Obama would have had the need to add this detail. Memorial Day is about celebrating the triumphs of our men and women in uniform, living or dead. And, yes, it is certainly about remembrance of their sacrifices, and about mourning, though that mourning is vivified with the knowledge that their deaths were not in vain; that their sacrifices served noble ends, and that those ends -- the advancement or preservation of freedom - gave their sacrifices great worth and meaning.

For liberals, war is a no-win proposition. Since Vietnam, a compromised and venal United States engages in conflicts with enemies -- if they can be called that -- who are, at the very least, the nation's moral equivalents or, perhaps, like the Communist North Vietnamese, its superiors. Soldiers, when not despised by liberals (again, see Vietnam) are pitied as dupes, under-educated and unemployable youths who sought paychecks in the military.

And the consequences for these youths being duped into military service? Mental and emotional illness, drug and alcohol addiction, rage and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In fact, the latter is practically a rite of passage for men and women exiting the military, or so seems the liberal belief....

Today, [in fact] the unpopularity of the Iraq War hasn't spilled over onto the nation's soldiers and vets. However unfavorably the war is viewed by many Americans, fighting men and women are generally esteemed. Returning soldiers are met with gratitude and as heroes. Liberal politicians may try to deprecate General Petraeus, but they have the good sense not to mess with GI Joe or Jane.

Instead, as reflected in Senator Obama's comment about a great-uncle who fought in a long-ago war, liberals see soldiers as victims, who need access to "facilities" to cope with the inevitable traumas that result from the unspeakable horrors of war. It is surprising that Senator Obama didn't tack onto his remarks a proposal for additional hundreds of millions dollars for counseling and psychiatric care for vets. One senses that's where the Senator wanted to go, and still may.

Is combat a trauma? A firefight, with bullets flying and bombs falling, isn't quite like checking into the office at nine a.m. Are most soldiers traumatized by their combat experiences? No, most are not. Most Vietnam vets have gone onto live normal and productive lives. Most Iraq vets will do the same. Some will not, and most certainly, the facilities, as Senator Obama termed it, need to be available to make them whole again.

By virtually all accounts, combat is a searing experience, a life-altering experience. The soldier who has gone through that crucible has a greater appreciation for the value and fleetingness of life and the suddenness of death. His bonds to his comrades, living or dead, are greater still. And afterward, upon consideration, he knows that he's given his fullest measure to his country.

Actually, I did touch on Obama's troop victimization ideology, in "Barack Obama, the Radical Left, and Memorial Day."

Inside the Air Force's Control Center for Iraq and Afghanistan

U.S. News has an interesting piece on the U.S. Combined Air and Space Operations Center for the Middle East:

As the grainy intelligence video unfolds, one of Iraq's many jauntily decorated trucks rolls to a stop carrying passengers who are, according to U.S. military officials, insurgents from outside of Baghdad. An unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, has detected infrared signals—traces of heat—on the antiaircraft artillery gun mounted on the flatbed, which suggests that it has been recently fired.

At the same time, there are some unsuspecting neighbors strolling by the area. "Here you have three people who have just been shooting Americans," explains Col. Gary Crowder, commander of the 609th Air and Space Operations Center, pointing at the truck on the screen. "But there"—he points at the unsuspecting walkers—"you have innocent people. The question now is, how do you engage"—meaning to strike—"when, and under what circumstances?" In short, he says, "the question now is, what do we do?"

In this case, the answer comes serendipitously. The neighbors walk a safe distance away, and the insurgents pile out of the truck and head to a nearby tree line. "There they are, giving themselves high-fives for shooting Americans," says Crowder, offering his narration of the video. "Aaand...," he pauses for a moment. There is a bright flash. "That's the A-10." The powerful ground-attack jet is unseen, but its effect is evident as the insurgents vanish in a burst of light. Their truck meets a similar fate.

The strike is the result of fast intelligence analysis and a lucky break. Such breaks seemed hard to come by as recently as a year ago, when America was harshly rebuked for a spate of highly publicized civilian casualties in Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai angrily charged the United States with being cavalier about Afghan lives during a year in which the number of Air Force bombs dropped in Iraq and Afghanistan increased to 5,019, from 371 in 2004. Similar complaints have come from Iraqi government officials as the United States has increased airstrikes targeting insurgent bomb-making factories, safe houses, and weapons stockpiles.

In some cases, the U.S. military says it is confident that allegations of civilian casualties are false, intended to fan local anger. It is hard, says Crowder, to counter the claims of an insurgent in Afghanistan who drags a body to the scene of a bombing, "throws some toy animals there and says, 'Hey, they're killing civilians.'"

But behind the scenes, the outcry has been a wake-up call for a U.S. Air Force that opened the Iraq war with "shock and awe" megastrikes. Today, it is grappling with an evolving counterinsurgency role that requires pinpoint hits against discrete targets, such as a mobile group of insurgents. One particular source of tension has been getting the Air Force's pilot-in-the-cockpit culture to embrace UAVs, which are less costly and, in some cases, more effective for both reconnaissance and attack missions. Just last month, the Air Force was publicly rebuked by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who charged it with being "stuck in old ways of doing business." He added that getting the force to adapt and to send more UAVs and other assets to the Middle East has been "like pulling teeth."

Today, at the combat operations air center, where the Air Force makes its key targeting decisions and coordinates the air wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, officials say that they are working hard to hone "an airman's view" of counterinsurgency as more UAVs are put to work. U.S. News was granted access to the operations center on the condition that its location wasn't mentioned because of host-country political sensitivities (although its whereabouts has been widely reported).

Outside an innocuous-looking warehouse, a wind chime made of artillery shell casings tinkles softly in the breeze. Inside, on the hectic combat operations floor, Air Force personnel sit at computer terminals. On the wall in front are large maps of Iraq and Afghanistan, marked with locations of UAVs and military action. Smaller screens display real-time video from Predator drones (or, during occasional quiet spells, broadcasts of sports events). On individual sets of computer screens, analysts monitor dozens of secure chat rooms in which troops process observations of Predator feeds. One shows two men riding bicycles. Another is trained on a high-walled compound with palm trees, where nothing seems to be happening.

But it's all potentially useful intelligence for analysts, who make air targeting decisions here, hundreds or even thousands of miles from the physical battlefield. They spend much of their time here trying to establish a "pattern of life" around potential targets—recording such things as the comings and goings of friends, school hours, and market times. Despite the distance, the real-time video feeds often give them a better vantage point than an Army unit has just down the street from a group of insurgents.

And finding insurgents—what officials here call "going hunting" or "putting warheads on foreheads"—is now a major focus of the Air Force and a prime mission for the armed Predators. "What we're doing in a counterinsurgency war is looking for individuals and small groups," says Lt. Col. Walt Manwill, chief of combat operations here. "To do that, we have to find them, and make sure they are who we think they are."

There's more at the link.

Americans “Financially Worse Off,” Poll Shows

Gallup reports that a record-high number of Americans say they are financialy "worse off":

A majority of Americans say they are worse off financially than a year ago, marking the first time in Gallup's 32-year history of asking the question that more than half of Americans give this pessimistic assessment.

The previous high on this "worse off than a year ago" measure was back in 1982, in the first years of the Reagan administration, when 47% of those interviewed said they were worse off. When Gallup last asked this question in late January/early February of this year, 44% said they were worse off.

Only 26% of Americans now say they are better off financially than a year ago. This is one point shy of the all-time low reading on this measure, 25%, recorded several times from 1982 to 1990.

At the same time, Americans remain on a relative basis at least somewhat optimistic about the future. Fifty-two percent believe they will be better off financially a year from now than they are now, while just 31% say they will be worse off.

This "optimism" measure is actually quite a bit more positive than it has been at other times. The lowest reading on the "will be better off" measure is 33%, recorded in 1979, and the readings have been below 50% at several other points since then. The highest optimism reading occurred in March 1998, when 71% said they anticipated being better off in a year than they were at the moment.

Implications

The bad news from these data is clear: A record number of Americans have become convinced that their personal financial situations have deteriorated over the last year. Perhaps the high price of gasoline and the impact it is having on Americans' budgets is a major factor in these perceptions (although it should be noted that the negative read on the measure is worse than at other times when there was a sudden run-up in the price of gas). Because Americans are usually more positive about their personal situations than the situation "out there" more broadly, the record-high negative reading when the public is asked about its own financial situations suggests that the current economic downturn is having a significant personal impact.

The good news is that Americans have not lost their typical pattern of optimism: a little more than half retain some optimism that their financial situations will get better in the year ahead. In fact, a review of the history of asking these two questions shows that optimism is certainly the rule. There has never been a time when Americans have been more pessimistic than optimistic about their finances; and despite the sharp uptick in negative mood, that generally more optimistic attitude continues today.

Political questions:

Are we heading toward a Democratic realignment? Can Republicans avoid a political freefall?