Obama Grew Up Muslim, Half-Brother Confirms

I've noted many times here that the question is not whether Barack Obama is Muslim, but whether he's been honest and forthcoming about his personal history.

It's thus extremely interesting that Malik Obama, Barack's half-brother, confirms that the presumptive Democratic nominee grew up Muslim:

Apparently the Obamas of Kenya have been reading those scurrilous emails to which Barack likes to refer, because they have no doubt -- contrary to the claims of the Obama campaign, that the presidential candidate was raised a Moslem. They take that as a given.

As the Jerusalem Post reports, "Barack Obama's half brother Malik said Thursday that if elected his brother will be a good president for the Jewish people, despite his Muslim background. In an interview with Army Radio he expressed a special salutation from the Obamas of Kenya."

The Obama brothers' father, a senior economist for the Kenyan government who studied at Harvard University, died in car crash in 1982. He left six sons and a daughter. All of his children - except Malik -- live in Britain or the United States. Malik and Barack met in 1985.

In a remarkable denial issued last November that still stands on the official campaign website, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs issued a statement explaining that "Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian."

Apparently Malik Obama, himself a Muslim, had not read the press release.

Melanie Phillips is the most recent commentator to draw attention to the massive body of evidence that leaves no doubt that Barak Hussein Obama was born a Muslim (Islam is patrilineal) and raised a Muslim (so registered in school, acknowledging attending Islamic classes, reported accompanying his step-father to the mosque, and able to recite the Koran in the original Arabic).

Reuven Koret, Aaron Klein and Daniel Pipes have previously pointed to the attempts by Obama and his campaign to conceal the candidate's Muslim background. The well documented evidence draws upon the on-the-ground interviews by researchers in Indonesia and Kenya, published quotations of Obama's childhood friends and his school records, as well as the candidate's own autobiography.

It is not clear whether Barack Obama will now disown his half-brother Malik, or throw him under the campaign bus, for acknowledging that shared family background. In any case, some one should notify "Fight the Smear" tout de suite. Perhaps they can get him with the program.

Be sure to check the Obama campaign's official denial, "Obama Has Never Been a Muslim."

See also, "Obama's Appeal in the Muslim World."

Photo Credit: Israel Insider

**********

UPDATE: Jake Tapper at ABC News is debunking claims of Barack Obama's Muslim upbringing: "From the Fact Check Desk: What Did Obama's Half-Brother Say About Obama's Background?"

Note, though, that the question remains as to whether Obama's been completely forthcoming on his Islamic heritage.

According to Daniel Pipes, in his investigation, "Confirmed: Barack Obama Practiced Islam":

Obama was an irregularly practicing Muslim who rarely or occasionally prayed with his step-father in a mosque. This precisely substantiates my statement that he "for some years had a reasonably Muslim upbringing under the auspices of his Indonesian step-father."

See also Melanie Phillips on the massive evidentiary trail, "Obama Takes on the Great Global Blogosphere Conspiracy Against His Holiness."

The Science of Political Smear

Let me point readers to the comment thread to my post, "The Partisan Gap in American Morality."

I highighted in that entry that statistically, Republicans are more concerned about the collapse of American social values than are Democrats. The difference is not large quantitatively, but significant, and I frankly believe that conservative Republicans have more respect for traditionalism than do Democrats, who on average adopt and defend moral relativism.

Note too that we've seen all the outrage on the left and right about smear tactics during this campaign season. But what is a "smear"? Is this concept fundamentally reprehensible, or is political smearing part-and-parcel to bare-knuckled politics?

Within reason, I'd say the latter.

But check out Steve Benen at Crooks and Liars, who is bent out of shape with right-wing bloggers "trolling" the comments at radical-left blogs to find evidence of racist hatred:

For quite a while, conservatives have embraced an annoying strategy — trawl through liberal blogs’ comments sections in the hopes of finding intemperate remarks. The right then takes these comments to “prove” that the left is made up of unhinged radicals....

Little Green Footballs, a prominent far-right blog, had this item yesterday:

A search of the official my.barackobama.com site for “Jewish Lobby” reveals an enormous amount of antisemitic hatred being posted…. There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of posts that refer to the “Jewish lobby” at the Obama site. I stopped looking at the results on page 10. […]

By the way, it is absolutely no excuse to say that “anyone can post a blog there.” Barack Obama isn’t running a Blogspot blog, he’s running for president of the United States, and his official web site is full of hatred and antisemitism.

LGF’s criticism was interesting in part because it was only partially attacking Obama. The candidate, the argument goes, is wrong for having a forum filled with ugly content, even if the campaign didn’t produce the content. And, the argument continues, it speaks poorly of the campaign in general that it attracts people who’d provide the ugly content in the first place.

There are a couple of problems with this approach. First, the Obama campaign (to its credit) created an open online forum. Anyone can “post a blog there,” and it’s not the campaign’s fault when someone adds offensive content. Second, the campaign has moderators to delete the truly ridiculous posts and comments, but it’s hard to keep up with the level of abusive text. That’s just a practical, logistical problem, but it hardly speaks to bigotry within the campaign or among the campaign’s supporters in general.

Okay, say we accept that this is a "practical problem," that it would be unrealistic for the Obama campaign to effectively monitor every community blog post that goes up at barackobama.com.

Then what would Benen or other defenders of unhinged community racists say about the fact that the Obama campaign is openly coordinating political rapid-response planning with Markos Moulitsas at Daily Kos?

Someone at the Obama headquarters must know that hanging out officially with Markos Moulitsas is a political liability for the general election. It's not just the commenters at Daily Kos who are wickedly evil, racist, and anti-Semitic. Moulitsas himself has personally demonstrated his promotion of hatred many times.

But again, think about this question of political smear: It's not a smear to monitor and disseminate information on the hatred of the left. Indeed, I've been making an industry of it, and so far I've not been attacked as "smearing" people (well, maybe once or twice, by the targets of that opprobrium).

The truth is, political smear is an accepted, long-standing tradition in American politics, although there are degrees of partisan aptitude for the method, as Right Wing Nut House points out:

This is getting so painful to watch that I just had to write this piece.

I would say to my good friends on the left guys, where in all that is good and holy did you people learn how to smear someone? Jesus, Lord you suck at it. Taken as a whole, your efforts are beyond pitiful. Amateurish, disorganized, barely a grade above schoolyard bullying and taunts. Sometimes, you’re not even that good.

In the interest of practicing the “new politics,” – which basically means if you smear someone, you’re only pre-empting a “right wing attack machine” effort that only distracts from the issues in this campaign and if the right smears anyone, they are racist pigs who deserve 5 years in a re-education camp – allow me to instruct you in proper smear etiquette as well as show you the ropes on how to make that smear a winner.

The trouble is, your efforts to date have been horribly childish and uncoordinated. Allow me to give you some pointers:

When attacking another candidate, please refrain from making fun of their physical characteristics like “yellow teeth” or, more broadly, trying to smear the candidate by criticizing him for being tortured while in service to his country, receiving disability pay as a result.

From a tactical standpoint, this is a total waste of good smear material. First, you didn’t say anything about McCain’s cancer – a smearariffic gaffe in that you should always go for the jugular. You could have put it this way:

“John McCain’s teeth are yellowed as a result of his chemotherapy treatment for skin cancer – a disease that will almost certainly kill him before his first term in office is over.”

A truly inspired smear would include the disability pay and the fact that the torture McCain had to endure was so severe he can’t raise his arms above his head. Perhaps you could have thrown something in about how such extreme pain shortens the lives of those who experience it and tie it into the cancer meme.

Get the idea? When smearing someone, creativity and a keen eye for detail is a must.

The real problem you have is that you took the whole thing out of context and the smear was easily debunked. Taking words that someone says and then not putting them in the proper context is so…so…Clintonesque, so 1990’s. This is the 21st century guys! The YouTube of what McCain actually said was all over the place before your smear had a chance to get rolling.

Now, if you’re going to smear someone by taking what they say out of context, the quote must be more extensive and much harder to debunk – like Obama’s “bitter” remarks in San Francisco. The guy went on for 5 minutes about the misguided yokels who cling to their guns and bibles while harboring racist thoughts about blacks and Hispanics. The right wing noise machine went gaga over those remarks and turned them into political dynamite because the explanation by Obama’s camp was almost as long as the quote itself.

See what I’m getting at...?

Now let’s look at a successful smear, shall we? The “Obama is a Muslim” smear is so perfect, it makes me weep to think about how elegant and perfectly logical it is. First, please note the sheer volume of noise on this one. Almost every right of center blogger has posted about it at one time or another. It doesn’t matter if they try to debunk it, it’s like they say about your name in public relations; as long as they spell it right, it’s free advertising. As long as the smear is mentioned, it doesn’t matter which way the writer goes on it.

Secondly, note how impossible it is to be proved wrong. The Obama camp can try and debunk the smear all they want, they only dig a deeper hole for themselves. That’s because every time they try, some Indonesian who knew Obama back when pops up and swears the guy worshipped in a mosque when he was 8 years old or something.

Does that make Obama a Muslim? OF COURSE NOT! But you’re not thinking like the right wing attack machine. What does “true” have to do with a political smear? While an element of truth should reside somewhere in the smear – Obama was in a Muslim country when he was a boy – the rest just follows logically.

Now, that's a pretty good piece of Machiavellianism!

I'll have more later, but keep this post in mind next time you see pictures of Obama in a turban on my page.

Texas Fred's No Holds Barred Anti-Immigrant Racism

The First Amendment goes a long, long way in protecting freedom of political expression, including hate speech, which can be defined as "Bigoted speech attacking or disparaging a social or ethnic group or a member of such a group."

I raise the question of hate speech in the context of my recent post, "Texas Fred's Bigotry."

I noted there that Texas Fred has advocated a policy of "shoot-to-kill" in defending our southern boundary from illegal border-crossers, who are identified by Texas Fred as "wetbacks":

Close the damned border and shoot any SOB trying to sneak back in...

I am guessing that at least half of the 18 million or so WETBACKS in this nation would be denied admission to the USA if we’d act, but the time to act is NOW, put the National Guard on the border, with full combat capabilities and tell em, ANYTHING coming over that border is an ILLEGAL invader, KILL IT!!

Piece of cake, we have dead wetbacks all over the place, now that’s what I call ‘Happy Holidays’!!

Now, note that Texas Fred's got at theory (at the link here), that by empowing the U.S. military, or National Guard, to defend the border by force, the practice of shoot-on-sight would constitute the legimate internationalization of the "castle doctrine," from Anglo-American common-law, which protects the rights of property owners to defend their homes by use of lethal force.

I personally embrace the "castle doctrine," but I don't see that as what's really going on in Texas Fred's ideological program of anti-immigrant eliminationism.

For example, Texas Fred is on record in favor of private vigilantism - that is, individual U.S. civilians taking up arms to shoot and kill illegal Mexican immigrants entering the sovereign United States to have anchor babies ("little bastards," in Texas Fred's lexicon), so as not to place "an additional burden on the American TAXPAYER."

The post indicates that the U.S. needs comprehensive immigration reform, and Texas Fred notes...

...as far as I am concerned, the ILLEGALS that are literally pouring into this nation can either be rounded up and deported or allowed to starve to death or die of thirst as they cross the hot desert of the American southwest, that saves the American patriot the problem of having to buy so many rounds of ammunition...

In the comments there, Texas Fred adds:

Americans are tired of this bullshit from the wetbacks and our government that cares more about the security of Baghdad than it does the folks right here…

Bush is your basic moron ... but yes, he DID call the Minutemen ‘vigilantes’ and his assertion was way off base ... until the vast majority of Americans stand and demand that this problem be eliminated, or they take matters into their own hands and carry out that elimination of wetbacks themselves, it will never happen...

Note also this comment from "Basti" and Texas Fred's response:

Basti: So they’re here illegally ... So anything they do (as in have brats, get jobs) is also illegal on our soil. Deport or cage them all, 2nd offenders will be SOS. (Shot On Sight)...

Texas Fred: How do you determine if they are 2nd time offenders?? Just shoot the bastards and be done with it…

We thus see Texas Fred wants private citizens to take the law into their own hands, to kill the "wetbacks" on sight, which will save the country from being overrun by a bunch of brown-skinned "little bastards."

The legal complication for Texas Fred's violent advocacy is that it goes beyond First Amendment protection for the expressions of racist hatred - which have routinely been allowed by the Supreme Court - to the express advocacy of political violence and private acts of militia justice. Such programs of explicit hate-based calls to racial violence fall outside the boundaries of protected speech and are considered criminal offenses subject to federal prosecution.

(Added, in response to the comments: The legal standard for criminally offensive advocacy must be demonstrated to include the actual "incitement to violence" likely to produce "imminent lawless action," which is not clear in Texas Fred's case, but I've never scoured the archives, and as we're talking the razor's edge of essentially criminally-inclined conduct, Texas Fred's bears watching).

Note though my main point is not to argue for federal hate-crimes charges against Texas Fred. My main point is simply to rebut substantively and morally the embrace of racial hatred by Texas Fred and his blog rings of ignorant, intolerant, and racist rednecks.

These people claim to be conservative, for example, and star-spangled websites like "American and Proud" or "Miss Beth's Victory Dance."

The truth is, many of these bloggers - though not all - would fit closely to some of the extremist ideological movements I described in my entry, "Obamacons, Tin-Foil Hats, and McCain Derangement." As I noted in that post, I do not tolerate neo-Nazis, Klansmen, anti-Semites, or other assorted self-appointed border-protection heroes.

This is not conservatism, of which basic components include adherence to the rule of law and toleration of political difference.

But think about what one commenter at Texas Fred's page noted with respect to shooting "wetbacks" on sight:

A policy of shoot first and ask questions later is not, in my opinion, the best answer to the problem. As a Christ-follower, I believe that the unnecessary taking of life is wrong. In the case of shooting illegal border crossers I would have to consider it murder unless the force were necessary within a lawfully conducted arrest. Crossing the border illegally is a crime and the person committing the act should be treated as such.

This comment is longer and more complicated, but the introduction captures the basic moral question that's at base of Texas Fred's embrace and dissimination of racist hatred.

Texas Fred has stated he's a proud bigot, that he wants to kill "wetbacks" and "starve" their babies, and that, "damn right, I AM a racist..."

These kind of ideas represent an extreme minority and should rightly be delegitimized and marginalized as outside the bounds of socially acceptable discourse. The question is not whether one has a constitutional right to express this kind of racial intolerance, the question is whether moral, upstanding Americans should confer moral respectability on such views.

See also, "Texas Fred: The Bigot Connection."

Argentina Reconsiders Che Guevara's Murderous Legacy

The Wall Street Journal reports on Argentina's movement toward rehabilitating Che Guevara, the Latin American revolutionary hero:

No Argentine has left a bigger mark on the world than legendary revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, yet there is no major monument in his homeland to the face that launched a million T-shirts.

That changes Saturday with the unveiling of a 12-foot bronze statue in this town where he was born 80 years ago.

Since he was killed trying to foment revolution in Bolivia in 1967, the Marxist guerrilla has been a source of inspiration for revolutionary movements from Northern Ireland to East Timor, a symbol of rebellion for three generations of Western youth, and a marketing phenomenon selling everything from snow boards to air freshener.

Until recently, however, Argentina itself has played down its ties to this larger-than-life character, whose nickname comes from the country's most common slang, a catch-all word meaning "hey" or "dude." For many Argentines, he evokes painful memories of the bloody 1970s, when young Che-wannabes took up arms in the name of revolution. The ensuing turmoil gave rise to a brutal right-wing military dictatorship.

Even today, Mr. Guevara's image is often associated with social conflict, a link that has been reinforced lately as pro-government protestors have hoisted Che banners during confrontations with critics of populist President Cristina Kirchner.

When a government tourism official told Argentine travel agents at a conference last November that Mr. Guevara's high name recognition among Europeans meant he deserved a place in Argentina's "national brand," he drew boos from his audience.

"Che motivated a lot of idiots to go about killing people either because they had money or a uniform. How unenlightened is that?" said Michael Poots, a Buenos Aires travel agent.

Among Mr. Guevara's enduring critics in Argentina are members of his own extended family. In an article titled "My Cousin, El Che," Alberto Benegas Lynch wrote last year that to wear a Che T-shirt "is like flaunting the gloomy image of the swastika as a peace symbol."

Frankly, with all the veneration of Che worldwide, it's reassuring that Argentines themselves can see straight on what Guevara and his legacy really mean. Here in the United States, Che's legacy has overwhelmed reason among large segments of society, apparently even those in positions of leadership and power:

Ohio's Lorain County Judge, James Burge, who's pictured in this article at USA Today, must really have some big hopes for change under a potential Obama administration.

Indeed, perhaps Burge can secure a patronage post in correctional management when a Barack Obama administration establishes the American version of San Carlos de La Cabaña prison.

See also, "Che Guevara Totalitarian Chic."

Top Photo: "As in this Mexico City stall, Che Guevara's photo on T-shirts has become an iconic image of rebellion world-wide," Wall Street Journal.

Tim Russert, 1950-2008

The political world was shocked yesterday by the news of Tim Russert's death.

I watched Meet the Press regularly, and often blogged about the big stories generated by the broadcast. His moderation style was considered revolutionary for the Sunday morning talk format. For more on that see the Los Angeles Times, "Everyman of TV Politics."

In following the coverage on TV yesterday, I was fascinated by the basic fact that Russert knew pretty much everyone in the Washington political establishment. I mean, all the videotapes, all day, showed Russert meeting just about every political luminary under the sun, from presidents to party operatives to fellow journalists. Over and over, I saw the most heartfelt appreciations of the man and his life. Clearly, this election season's now left with a huge void of energy, information, and charisma.

May Russert rest in peace, and my best wishes go out to his loved ones.

Was the media coverage overblown? Did the media indulge itself, making a venerated newsman into more than his journalistic position merited? John Cole at Balloon Juice thinks so:

I liked Tim Russert, even though I thought his BS gotcha nonsense was thorough idiocy and not helping the debate at all. He was a likable guy- friendly, always smiling. I understand it is a loss for the beltway folks, and he had a lot of really good friends and meant a lot to people, and I would be dishonest if I failed to mention that I feel sad by his passing....

But let’s get something straight- what I am watching right now on the cable news shows is indicative of the problem - no clearer demonstration of the fact that they consider themselves to be players and the insiders ... This is precisely the problem. They have walked the corridors of power so long that they honestly think they are the story. It is creepy and sick and the reason politicians get away with all the crap they get away with these days.

Tim Russert was a newsman. He was not the Pope. This is not the JFK assassination, or Reagan’s death, or the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. A newsman died. We know you miss him, but please shut up and get back to work.

Cole's a prominent left-wing blogger, and for all his preamble about how Russert was a friendly, likable guy, this is a sleazy partisan attack, and Cole badly underestimates Russert's legacy and political significance.

For example, George Stephanopoulos argued yesterday that the entire professional television media establishment had been influenced by Russert's style of moderation. Sunday talk hosts took their cues from Russert. Interviews became courtroom drama; guests were held accountable; previous public statements were placed on the screen, putting the owner of those words on the spot, feet to the fire. This is tremendous innovation in the standards of democratic accountability, and we should deeply acknowlege that.

Should we commemorate Russert life less than the loss of Pope John Paul II, who revitalized Catholic theology in an age of rising religious indifference and global postmodern relativism? Perhaps. But we should not belittle the achievements of a pathbreaking journalist because his project put our ideological programs under the spotlight. That's authoritarianism, and reflects what I've noted here as the "absence of divine soul" on the contemporary left.

Take for futher elaboration the case of leftist blogger Ezra Klein, who, before Russert's death, had attacked the NBC moderater in words so filthy I cannot post them directly to my page. Ann Althouse has the links, especially to the Wonkette's expose of Klein's vicious partisan hatred.

Sigmund, Carl and Alfred has even more on the left's loathing of Russert, "How The Left Loved Tim Russert."

I've said many times that the blogosphere's the contemporary Wild West, but it's sometimes disheartening to see the left's online values reverting to the often courser standards of 19th-century political demonization.

Let's close this discussion with a beautiful, genuine remembrance. Here's Tom Brokaw's announcement of Russert's death:

Thank you, Mr. Russert. You redefined political journalism.

Photo Credit: "Russert Had a Gusto for Politics Leavened With Affability," Los Angeles Times.

Has Affirmative Action Run its Course?

I've thought about affirmative action with increasing frequency in light of Barack Obama's victory as the pending Democratic Party standard-bearer.

I teach civil rights every semester, so I have the usual debates over the meaning of equality in my classes, but I noticed, in a recent New York Times article, that Ward Connerly had good words to say about Obama's triumph:

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.

“The entire argument for race preferences is that society is institutionally racist and institutionally sexist, and you need affirmative action to level the playing field,” Mr. Connerly said. “The historic success of Senator Obama, as well as Senator Clinton, dismantles that argument.”

Connerly, of course, is the mastermind behind California's push to end racial preferences in the state.

I mention all of this because this morning's Wall Street Journal has a big piece on Obama's success and the politics of affirmative action, "Fair Enough? Barack Obama's Rise Has Americans Debating Whether Affirmative Action Has Run Its Course."

Here's an excerpt:

WARREN, Mich. -- Stan Sheyn, a white student who attends community college in this working-class Detroit suburb, supports Barack Obama for president. But he has no time for what he calls "double standards and propagation of victim mentality."

"The fact that a black man can run for the position of the President of the United States of America only corroborates that there is enough opportunity and equality for great things like that to happen," he says. "And that there is no need to create special advantages for any demographic group."

Electra Fulbright, a black small-business consultant in prosperous Southfield, Mich., couldn't disagree more.

"Obama's privileges and his accomplishments are minute compared to the black population at large," says Ms. Fulbright, who plans to vote for Sen. Obama. "When we talk about Obama, we are not talking about the average black American. There is injustice in this country, and until we correct it, we need affirmative action."

Few issues have been as incendiary in the workplace and on college campuses as affirmative action -- in large part because so many blacks and whites have been personally affected by affirmative action, in ways both good and bad.

Now, Sen. Obama's rise is prompting some whites to ask -- and some blacks to fear -- the question: Does America still need affirmative action, given that an African-American has made it to the top of American politics?

The question has been asked before, as other blacks have risen to high positions. But Sen. Obama's swift ascent to the verge of the presidency may have created a turning point in the debate.

Read the whole thing.

I've stated my opposition to affirmative action many times. As the quote above demonstrates, the statement by Ms. Fulbright reflects the cult of victimology that civil rights shakedown artists deploy to perpertuate racial grievances and claims for preferential treatment.

This is the anti-intellectual ideology of equality of result, and it violates constitutional standards of equal protection on the basis of color blindness.

I don't think Obama's going to be favorable to that side of the debate (non-discriminatory equality of opportunity), considering that racial-quota-masters constituency forms a massive part of his postmodern coalition.

McCain's Won the Iraq Argument

It's clear now that things are going so well in Iraq, that the antiwar left has gotten increasingly creative in its arguments for retreat, in furtherance of the movement's endless project of souring public opinion on the deployment.

Amazingly, the "Bush-lied, people died" slur is still going strong among the surrender hawks, never mind that we're long past that leg of the debate, notwithstanding the New York Times' editorial efforts.

We've also had for the past 18-months the left's self-embarassment in attacking the surge as a failure. More recently, the "crushing" costs of the war became a big draw among surrender mavens, although that meme had hardly any shelf life at all (being easily dispatched, for example, here).

Then, of course, the antiwar meme of relentless sectarian violence, which is hypothesized to forever doom progress toward political reconciliation, has been a handy antiwar slur on the left.

I'm sure we could come up with even more of the war-bashing arguments, for example, the angry recriminations against the Freidman Units, the "genocide," "100 years in Iraq," and who know what else the nihilists have been able to come up with. We've had more attacks on the war than Bush's hated "mutliple justifications" for the deployment!

Well, now it turns out that the left's big antiwar smear is the permanent-bases, "neo-imperial" project slur, which is debunked by Abe Greenwald at Commentary:

John McCain has won the Iraq argument. The disagreement on Iraq between McCain and Barack Obama, indeed between Democrats and Republicans, was not about the future of American "neocolonialism" or about the candidates' sympathy for the Marines and soldiers eager to return home. It was about the strategic benefit of keeping active U.S. troops in the War. John McCain believed that a continued American troop presence would hasten Iraq's progress toward national security and political reconciliation. Barack Obama thought a speedy withdrawal would best achieve that goal. So there is no confusion on this point, let us consider the following:

Our troops have performed brilliantly in Iraq, but no amount of American soldiers can solve the political differences at the heart of somebody else's civil war. That's why I have introduced a plan to not only stop the escalation of this war, but begin a phased redeployment that can pressure the Iraqis to finally reach a political settlement and reduce the violence.

-- Barack Obama, January 2007

The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq's leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops," Mr. Obama said. "Not in six months or one year - now.

-- Barack Obama, September 2007

Now contrast those with the quotes below:

Sen. John McCain defended President Bush's Iraq plan on Friday as a difficult but necessary move, parting company with lawmakers questioning the wisdom of the military build up.

"I believe that together these moves will give the Iraqis and Americans the best chance of success," said McCain, R-Ariz., a leading presidential contender for 2008.

--CBS News, January 2007

"I am not guaranteeing that this [U.S.troop build-up] succeeds. I am just saying that I think it can. I believe it has a good shot."

The most optimistic scenario he envisioned involved a steady reduction in violence and a gradual turnover of security responsibilities to the Iraqis during the remainder of the Bush administration. Under those circumstances, Mr. McCain said, the United States military would gradually withdraw to its bases in Iraq, though he did not provide a timetable for how long that might take.

-- The New York Times, April 2007

We are currently in the midst of John McCain's "most optimistic scenario." What we're witnessing in Iraq is what McCain called success. Violence in Iraq is down to 2004 levels. Iraqi forces are taking the lead in more and more in successful operations countrywide. Al Qaeda is being marginalized. Political reconciliation is happening. Yesterday, even the anti-Iraq War Joe Klein acknowledged the manifestation of the scenario that McCain described in April 2007:

Daily attacks continue, but at a fraction of 2006 levels--indeed, at levels not seen since before the Sadrist and Falluja rebellions began in April of 2004. Al Qaeda in Iraq still has the capability to ignite the occasional car bomb, but it has been weakened to the point of defeat. The real estate market in Baghdad is beginning to blossom. And on a broader front, as reported in the New Yorker and The New Republic, Al Qaeda's wanton butchery is facing an intellectual challenge from within its own ranks.

With the Iraq argument resolved in John McCain's favor, Democrats, independent Obama supporters, and anti-war members of the media are now on the hunt for a new Iraq narrative--some hook that enables Barack Obama to look less than wrong.

Many try to claim that the two candidates' positions have grown closer since the primaries, but that's not true. The candidates never altered the positions described above. The facts on the ground simply determined who was right and who was wrong.

What we're seeing now is the strident effort to manufacture a new post-success argument about Iraq. Obama fan, Andrew Sullivan, for example, has wasted no time in completely reframing the issue as "A Question of Empire":

That's the critical question in this campaign: do Americans want a neo-empire in the Middle East? Do they want US troops permanently stationed in Iraq with up to 60 permanent bases? That's what the Bush administration wants to foist onto Iraq; and that's what McCain believes in. . . McCain would love to see US troops stationed peacefully in Iraq for the foreseeable future. To him it does not matter when they come home. What matters is that the casualty rate get low enough to persuade Americans they shouldn't care about another expansion of American empire. In fact, the entire debate about bringing them home is puzzling and frustrating to McCain. After all, why should we bring them home when being there for ever is the point?

It wasn't WMDs or Saddam's threat that motivated this war, we now understand, so much as the capacity to forward station US troops in an oil-rich region and help contain Iran. Is this a good idea? That's what the Iraqis are now furiously debating. And it's what Americans should be furiously debating in this campaign. It's the biggest difference between the two candidates and it couldn't be more important.

The details are still hazy. Sullivan can't decide if it's empire or neo-empire (whatever that is) - all he knows is that in the face of U.S. success his entire conception of the war must undergo some drastic change. He, like most who bet against the surge, must now bend their anti-Bush, anti-McCain passions around the facts on the ground, and it isn't going to be pretty.

Indeed the Obama camp itself is publicly conflicted about how to move the Iraq argument forward. Yesterday at a Democratic think tank even, two of Obama's Iraq advisors disagreed with each other on how to proceed after the success of the surge. Colin Kahl argued for leaving a large troop presence in Iraq, contingent upon continued political reconciliation. Brian Katulis argued for withdrawing all troops except for a small group left behind to defend the U.S. embassy.

It's clear that Obama and his supporters are guilty of the charge they'd grown accustomed to leveling at the Bush administration: no Iraq foresight. It's true that President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld had not come up with a plan B in the case of strong Iraqi resistance. Obama and Co. have failed to consider what their next move would be in the face of U.S. success.

Guilty? Did you say guilty? It's all the evil Bush/Cheney cabal ... impeachment now!

See also, Frederick Kagan, "Voting for Commander in Chief: There Can Only Be One."

We Don't Make Compromises ... We Make Marines!

An Angels-Braves interleague game just started, and this Marine Corps commercial just aired, and it's the first time I've seen it:

The Marine Corps ads are the best commercials on television, hands down.

I'm old and partially deaf, but these ads make me ready to head out to the recruiting office!

And for those who want to call me a "chicken hawk" anyway, I hang with some genuine Marines online, and they've got my back!

So, all you antiwar nihilists, bug off!

The Partisan Gap in American Morality

Gallup reports that Republican partisans are more critical of the country's moral climate than are Democrats and independents:

Republicans have grown more critical of the state of moral values in the United States, with the percentage rating present moral conditions "poor" rising from 36% in 2006 to 51% in 2007, and remaining at that level today. No comparable change is seen among independents or Democrats.

As a result, Republicans are now significantly more negative about moral values than independents or Democrats, marking a change from the recent past.

These findings come from Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs survey, updated May 8-11, 2008.

The overall results to the question about the state of moral values show that, as has been the case consistently throughout the decade, few Americans give the country's moral climate high marks. Only 15% consider moral values to be "excellent" or "good" while 41% call them "only fair" and 44% consider them to be "poor."

A follow-up question asks Americans whether moral values are getting better or getting worse, and yields an equally negative answer. Only 11% of Americans perceive that values are improving, while 81% say things are getting worse....

Bottom Line

Americans are reliably negative when it comes to rating moral values in the country. Since 2002, a majority of Americans have consistently said the state of moral values is less than good and getting worse.

Apart from this general pattern, Republicans' disaffection with the nation's moral climate (but not Democrats' or independents') has been elevated over the past two years. A number of "values" issues have been in the news in recent years, including gay marriage, pop-star misbehavior, and reports of high-profile elected officials involved in sex-related scandals, but it is unclear that any of these are responsible for the pattern in the data.

Whatever the cause, this may signal that Republicans will be particularly anxious to elect a new president this November who will help to uphold or restore the values they now find lacking in the country.

I would hazard that Republicans - in general - simply care more about maintaining traditional moral standards.

Indeed, Gallup's findings aren't surprising at all, especially as the increase in GOP moral concern coincides with an election campaign marked on the Democratic side by the defense of attacks on this country in statement's like "GOD DAMN AMERICA," or in Daily Kos posts proclaiming:

Do I think that 9/11 was the "chickens coming home to roost?" Yeah, I pretty much do.

Many - I repeat - many on the left think we deserve death and destruction at hands of Middle Eastern terrorists, perhaps because of the left's ideology that under the Bush administration the conservative movement's been transformed into "pseudo-fascism."

There's a partisan "morals gap" in America today, and I don't think this is something left should proud of.

Image Credit: Gallup Poll

Extreme Left-Wing Reaction to Ingraham's Fox News Premiere

Laura Ingraham's not my favorite conservative commentator, primarily because I'm tired of her McCain bashing. I do appreciate her clarity on the moral issues facing the country, as well as her commentary on the hopeless nihilism of the contemporary left.

So it's with some interest that I'm observing the reaction to her upcoming debut on Fox News, which coincides with the cancellation of her talk radio broadcast.

Captain Ed's got the story:

Laura Ingraham has apparently run into a contract dispute with her syndicator and has been off the air for most of the last two weeks. It seems like a bad time for the Right to lose one of its strong and entertaining national voices. The Republicans and conservatives look like they’re in for a bad time already in Congressional races, and the effort to inform people about the presidential race and its issues needs to be in full gear now.

Laura will have a new show on Fox News Channel at 5 pm ET starting on Monday called “Just In”. According to this video message, she doesn’t plan on that being a replacement for her daily radio show, but it will at least give her a platform until the issues get resolved. Her site has more details, including the local stations on which she appears and the means to communicate your desire to get this dispute resolved and put her back on the air.

I usually watch O'Reilly Factor at 5:00pm PST, so I imagine I'll be tuning-in to see Laura's new show.

Ingraham said earlier on Fox that her contract dispute was not "health related," a statement that elicited a nasty reaction at Think Progress, in the comments:

*** “It’s not health-related. It’s not family related.” It’s because she is a caustic, pathological hate-filled GOP shill with nothing to offer America but more GOP failure.

*** Reich-wingers are becoming increasing unpopular and are being rejected by America. The reich-wingers will continue to flock to Drugbaugh and Faux for their GOPig talking points. But, the rest of America will just laugh and point at the reich-wing imbeciles who are afraid of facts and reality ... The reich-wing GOPigs are going to be a permanent minority. Amen.

*** Now why would her radio bosses force her off the air?

*** The “business deals”, as O’Racist calls it, of the GOPigs are hate, vileness, lies, deception, racism, and anti-Americanism.

*** She has a good show. I’m sure she will be back.

*** VA Voter Says:

"She has a good show. I’m sure she will be back."

You’re probably correct; much like cancer, she’s difficult to eliminate entirely.

*** Laura Bush & Laura Ingraham;

C*NTS!

I guess it's not just BarackObama.com that should ratchet-up the comment moderation.

(Check the post, though, as a debate breaks out on the board over the intolerance there.)

Here's TRex's attack:

Oh, you know. I don’t think she’ll last. They’ve been dropping like flies over there and Ingraham is so inherently offensive that I expect it’ll take about four weeks, tops, before she wedges one of her size 11 hoofs so far into her mouth that Pox has no choice but to consign her to the same slag heap as John Gibson, E.D. Hill, Melanie Morgan, and all the other humiliated and discredited shills.

It's an empirical question of comparative analysis, of course, but I firmly believe that many of those on the left are more commonly deficient in the qualities of basic human decency than those of generally conservative persuasions.

Barack Obama and the Anti-Anti-Communists

Paul Kengor's got a pentrating piece on Barack Obama's communist ties, at the American Thinker, "Return of the Dupes and the Anti-Anti-Communists":

Since literally the founding of the American Communist Party in 1919, the extreme left - specifically, the communists -- have relied upon genuine liberals to be dupes, or suckers, to help further their cause. Here's how it typically worked: the communists would engage in some sort of work or agenda, very focused, and which they would be prepared to publicly deny. Anyone who has done any work with or on communists, from New York City to Moscow, can speak at length about how they operated with deceit. As Vladimir Lenin had said, in a favorite quote cited often by Ronald Reagan, the only morality that communists recognized was that which furthered their interests.

At some point as the communists pursued their intentions, someone or some group - usually conservatives or moderate Republicans - would catch on and blow the whistle. When the alarm was sounded, the communists typically would flat-out lie about whatever they were doing: claiming not to be guilty of the charges, but rather victims of right-wing paranoia. For this, they relied upon gullible liberals - non-communist liberals - to join them in attacking their accusers on the right.

These liberals, particularly after the McCarthy period, came to detest the anti-communists on the right. These liberals were not pro-communist but anti-anti-communist. They saw the anti-communists as Neanderthals, and still do, even though the anti-communists were absolutely right about the 20th century slaughter otherwise known as Marxism-Leninism. This ongoing anti-anti-communism is immediately evident in a quick conversation with your typical liberal in the press or academia. When I lecture at universities around the country, rattling off facts about the literally unparalleled communist destruction in the 20th century - easily over 100 million people died under communism from about 1917-79 - the young people are riveted, clearly having never heard any of this in the classroom, whereas their professors roll their eyes, as if the ghost of Joe McCarthy had flown into the room and leapt inside of my body....

Why do I mention this now? Because the entire process is being repeated once again before our eyes, except now it's worse, given that the modern left is so outrageously uninformed, having been trained -- by the mainstream media, Hollywood, liberal historians, and the academy -- to reflexively dismiss any charge of communism as illegitimate McCarthyism, even when the charge is not only accurate but, importantly, exposes how the communists have literally schemed to undermine yet another genuine liberal cause.

I will start from the beginning:

A couple of weeks ago in Washington, Herb Romerstein and Cliff Kincaid, two veteran investigators of American communism, held a press conference on Capitol Hill to announce the release of two new reports on Barack Obama's radical past, or, more specifically, his association with extremist elements from the American left -- yet more evidence of a frightening pattern of associations by Obama throughout his distant and recent life, from Bill Ayers to Reverend Jeremiah Wright, all of which at the least shows bad judgment. At the press conference, they discussed Romerstein's report on Frank Marshall Davis, an influential figure in Obama's early life, whom Obama refers to only as "Frank" (albeit affectionately) in his autobiography Dreams From My Father. Davis was a communist, a member of CPUSA. Romerstein developed that fact very carefully in his report, which contained at least a half dozen exhibits and other forms of reliable documentation -- a fact that itself is news, since many (on the gullible left) still like to question whether Davis was a Party member ....

... what did Romerstein find on Frank Marshall Davis? He showed not only that Davis was a communist, but -- listen up, liberals -- how Davis and his comrades worked to undermine genuine liberal causes because of their lock-step subservience to the Comintern and the USSR. Modern liberals need to understand, for example, how the American communist movement, including men like Davis, flip-flopped on issues as grave as Nazism and World War II based entirely on whether Hitler was signing a non-aggression pact with Stalin or invading Stalin's Soviet Union. The disgusting about-face by CPUSA on this matter was unforgivable. And what a shame that liberal college professors don't teach this to their students. Liberals also need to know how their friends inside government were used by communists who sought victory for Mao Tse-Tung in China in 1949, which would lead to the single greatest concentration of corpses in human history: 60-70 million dead Chinese from 1957 to 1969.

Where does Obama meet Davis? -- in Hawaii. Similar to Obama, who moved from Kansas to Honolulu to Chicago, Frank Marshall Davis went from Kansas to Chicago to Honolulu. Obama freely admits to learning and taking advice from Davis, which surely was nothing like the "Midwestern values" that Governor Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS) claimed he learned in Kansas. While most Americans by the late 1970s and early 1980s were at last convinced that détente with the Soviets was a sham, and that the USSR was an Evil Empire that needed to be dissolved, Obama almost certainly was learning exactly the opposite -- moving totally against what Ronald Reagan described as the "tide of history," a "freedom tide" that would "leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history."

Instead, as Obama writes in Dreams From My Father, he was hanging out with the "Marxist professors," attending "socialist conferences," and "discuss[ing] neocolonialism." Rather than learning about the American exceptionalism that would seek to bring freedom to the USSR and Eastern Europe, Obama was hearing about the glory of the Bolshevik experiment. This was the wrong side of history.

Enter Dana Milbank

Jumping into this unfolding drama is Dana Milbank, the columnist for the Washington Post. Milbank was apparently one of the few mainstream journalists to attend the Romerstein press conference on Capitol Hill, according to the reporting of columnist Bill Steigerwald, a good reporter who was also there. Steigerwald noted that it quickly became apparent that Milbank was basically there to mock the event. In response, Milbank could write about it in the Post, and his fellow liberals could enjoy a chuckle at the expense of the latest exhibit of right-wing anti-communist cavemen.

Milbank didn't disappoint. He described the press conference as a new Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, as the 2008 version of the 2004 Swift Boat veterans, and described Romerstein as "a living relic from the House Committee on Un-American Activities." The whole thing, reported Milbank, sounded "like a UFO convention." He even pooh-poohed the quite legitimate, quite telling point that Obama's past affiliations are so "dodgy" (Milbank's word) that he would have difficulty getting a government security clearance. Indeed, he would-and that's a big deal for a man who could be our next president.

To be fair, Milbank, while at the press conference, did ask the pertinent question: Was Romerstein trying to argue that Obama is a communist? What's the point of this if Obama is not a communist, right?

Well, yes and no. He has not, to anyone's knowledge, ever been a member of the Communist Party. On the other hand, his friends have been members. And there is a clear long-running association in this man's life with the most radical of the far left: on the religion side, there is Reverend Wright and Father Pfleger, on the political side, there is the likes of William Ayers and, yes, Frank Marshall Davis, to name only a few. And remarkably, Obama cites some of these people as mentors, and even draws from their messages in conceiving the title of the bestselling book that made everyone gaga over Obama in the first place - here I'm referring to Audacity of Hope, which is based on a Rev. Wright sermon.

These associations actually should tell us a lot, as should Obama's struggle to deal with them only once the public learns their full extent. It all points to a truly troubling reality: regardless of whether the man is a communist, his politics are remarkably radical, and have been for a very long and recent time - and that's a crucial consideration as America considers voting for him.

That's an extremely interesting story, and I want to reiterate that last point: Whether or not Obama's communist, throughout his life he's run with the radical crowd.

The information just keep coming in on Obama's oppositional political ideology, but of course just to point these things out gets me slured as a "chicken little" in the comments.

Frankly, it's people like Kengor and everyday regular bloggers who are powerfully grounded in reality. An Obama administration's going to shift American politics to the extrem left of the spectrum. How far depends on a wide-range of factors, but the country will see undeniably significant - er, radical - change upon the accession of a Barack Obama presidential administration.

Iraq, Israel, and Middle East Peace

Some of the most common left-wing attacks on the Bush administration hold that the war in Iraq "destabilized" the Middle East, "accelerated the terrorist threat" from al Qaeda, and "strengthened" Iranian power across the region.

These may have been legitimate issues of debate in the pre-surge era, but the undeniable fact of the Middle East today is the phenomenal strategic transformation in favor or Western power and influence.

Caroline Glick makes the case, with reference to Baghdad's current negotiations on the long-term basing of U.S. forces in Iraq":

The strategic agreement now being negotiated between the US and the Iraqi government is a watershed event. Five years after Saddam Hussein's terror-supporting, weapons of mass destruction-seeking regime was brought down by the US-led coalition, a democratically elected Iraqi government has emerged that views its strategic interests as aligned with the US's. Its forces are fighting side by side with US forces toward the shared goal of routing al-Qaida and Iranian-backed terror militias in Iraq. Indeed, in March, Maliki himself led the Iraqi assault on the Iranian controlled militias in Basra. Two months later, Iran had been routed not only in Basra, but in Sadr City in Baghdad where Iraqi and American forces fought side-by-side in street after street.

Although referred to as a security agreement, to all intents and purposes, the agreement that the US and Iraq are now negotiating is a peace agreement. As most political theorists will attest, peace agreements are contracts between countries with shared interests whose representatives sit down and write out how they will advance their shared interests together. So five years after the fall of Saddam, a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional democracy in Iraq has emerged that views the US as its primary ally.

This is what a strategic victory looks like.

Also, here's Glick on Iraq and Israeli security:

THERE IS no reason to doubt that Israel has a potential strategic ally in Iraq today. Indeed, Iraq could become the next decade's version of Turkey in the 1990s or Iran in the 1960s and 1970s. Both in their day were Israel's primary regional ally.

Diplomatic and military discussions may be drawn out and difficult. They may even be exasperating. And depending on developments in Iran in the coming years they may never lead to the signing of a peace treaty on the White House lawn or the exchange of ambassadors. On the other hand, they might.

But what is clear enough is that today Iraq shares vital interests with Israel. It has common enemies. It has common challenges as a democracy. And it doesn't hurt that Palestinians are nearly universally reviled by Iraqis who view them as Saddam Hussein's most stalwart henchmen.

Folks on the left, like Spencer Ackerman and Matthew Yglesias, are cheering for the failure of the Maliki talks, but note Glick's take on the backdrop of the negotiations:

The Iraqis are concerned about their future. Whether US forces remain in place for years to come under a President John McCain or they are summarily withdrawn by a President Barack Obama, the Iraqis know that one day they will be on their own. And they will need allies. They cannot trust their Arab neighbors, which treat the Shi'ite majority country now governing democratically with hostility and suspicion. Obviously Iran and Syria aren't good options. They will both be quick to pounce on a post-US withdrawal Iraq.

See also, Reuel Marc Gerecht, "A New Middle East, After All: What George W. Bush Hath Wrought."

Hat tip: Atlas Shrugs

An Obama Presidency: National Suicide?

Many bloggers around the web are genuinely concerned with the possible accession of Barack Obama to the presidency. I frankly think Obama will be a disaster for our country, and some have gone so far to argue that an Obama administration will be tantamount to national suicide:

Barack Obama is simply the most extreme left candidate in presidential history. He is also one of the least experienced and least qualified candidates in history....

Yes, he's a good orator – if you ignore the nonsensical, ludicrous, Marxist substance that only the most committed MoveOn.org member could understand or believe. And that's on the few occasions when he's offered any substance at all. Most of the time he simply says nothing better than anyone else, throwing around his four favorite words – future, change, believe, hope – for mindless audiences drooling and panting over them like Pavlov's dogs at the sound of the dinner bell. As speeches go, they have about as much value as Twinkies do nutrition.

Here's a gem from last Tuesday night at the Xcel Energy Center:

“I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

Just what the hell are you running for – president or messiah? And how full of yourself can even you be to think that the world consisted of nothing but unspeakable suffering until you came along and waved the magic wand of government to instantly fix it all, even the weather? Have you not an ounce of humility?

Sick people haven't been getting care? That'll only happen when socialized health care is forced upon us and government rations it away. Jobs to the jobless? By utterly annihilating the oil, coal and nuclear power industries and the entire U.S. economy that depends upon them? And the rise of the oceans – it's been far colder than normal the last six months running and if anything, global cooling should be our concern if sunspot activity is any guide. He might freeze us all to death in his stupid attempt to save us all from warming that isn't happening and wouldn't be a danger if it were.

Obama is a delusional, arrogant fool, presuming to lead a country that exists only in his mind and those of his cult-like followers. The problems he describes don't exist and ones far worse will be created in his insane attempts to fix what isn't broken. If this lunatic gets elected opposite a Democratic super-majority in Congress, America as we know it is finished. We will suffer the dire consequences, and it will make the stagflation, gasoline lines and malaise that was the Carter Administration look like the good 'ol times by comparison.

But this goes beyond garden variety far-left nuttiness. Obama is also dishonest and disloyal, and has repeatedly been so....

Barack Obama cannot be allowed to become president in January. If he does, Iran's Ahmadinejad won't have to nuke America into oblivion – we'll have already committed suicide.

See also my perspective, "June 3, 2008: Barack Obama Makes a Different Kind of History."

Image Credit: Investor's Business Daily