GOP Unfairly Branded as White Supremist

Christopher Bodenner, writing at the Daily Dish, was impressed with Shelby Steele's recent analysis of Barack Obama's racial politics at the Wall Street Journal - and for good reason. Next to Juan Williams, Steele's the most thoughtful commentator on the pathologies of black victimology in America today.

But what really got me interested was Bodenner's link to an essay by Margaret Kimberley, "Freedom Rider: Shelby Steele Loves White Supremacy."

Kimberley, writing at The Black Commentator, says:

Shelby Steele is a well known black conservative, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a leading right wing think tank. Steele has made a lucrative career for himself by lambasting black people and praising white people. He says that racism is all in the past, that all is right with the world and it is up to black people to admit it and stop complaining.

Recently on the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal Steele outdid himself. Steele lamented that white people just aren’t as vicious as they used to be. He believes that the legacy of slavery, segregation and American imperialism left a terrible legacy on white people. Of course, the worst impact was on the oppressed and subjugated, but Steele isn’t very worried about the legacy the past left on them.

Kimberley stretches too far when she goes off on the Iraq war as "racist." Yet, she's clear in making the radical left-wing case for an alleged entrenched, undending white supremacy in the GOP today:

Steele’s confusion is so great that one has to wonder if he even reads the newspaper or watches the news. “There are no serious advocates of white supremacy in America today, because whites see this idea as morally repugnant”....

Steele’s assertion that there are no advocates of white supremacy is truly difficult to fathom ... If he thinks white supremacists have disappeared he need only look in the mirror. He has achieved the rare feat of being a man of color who cheerleads for an idea that has murdered and otherwise destroyed the lives of millions of people he should identify with. He believes in manifest destiny, imperialism and white skin privilege. Consequently, he exults in shame and hatred of his own people ....

The Wall Street Journal and Steele have had a long running love affair. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the onslaught of federal government inaction that created so much suffering...

The Black Commentator announces it's committed to the "struggle" for "peace" and "social justice," Marxist revolutionary code language, but Kimberley's ideas are common on the left today.

For example, we saw a left-wing backlash in response to Bruce Bartlett's recent article, "The GOP Is the Party of Civil Rights."

Crooked Timber, for instance, attacked Bartlett's necrophilia, that is, his love of "dead" Republicans:

Bartlett does not even claim, in the op-ed, that there are living Republicans who deserve the support of African-Americans, due to their support for civil rights. The most recent instance he cites is Richard Nixon, who supported affirmative action as a way of busting racist unions. He is, apparently, seriously arguing that African-Americans should consider voting for dead people.

Lawyers, Guns and Money also attacks Bartlett:

The problems with Bruce Bartlett's pseudo-historical WSJ piece are almost too numerous to contemplate. For starters, it's laughable for him to suggest ... that the varieties of racism [marking] the pre-civil rights era have somehow been "buried"...

The left's outrage with Shelby Steele, as well as with writers like Bruce Bartlett, reflects the nihilist tendency to smear all Republicans as unequivocally racist.

These attacks are unprincipled and outrageous. Republicans (or conservatives) historically stress traditional values, such as equal treatment under the law. They argue that society should be organized around excellence and achievement, not handouts, quotas, and racial recrimination.

Douglas MacKinnon, a longstanding GOP operative, argued last week that the GOP is unfairly branded as racist:

As a Republican with a conservative point of view, I have written more on the greatness of black America, and the need for my party to reach out to that community, than just about anyone I know....

And yet as much as I and other Republicans try to increase the dialogue, correct the record and derail the hateful rhetoric that divides us, others choose to deliberately ignore heartfelt efforts. As one example, last September, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote a column titled “The Ugly Side of the GOP.”

In a somewhat rambling piece that was syndicated all over the nation, Herbert said, “Last week the Republicans showed once again just how anti-black their party really is”...

MacKinnon wrote a column in response these claims, and then forwarded it to Herbert. To which MacKinnon notes, "Unfortunately, he chose to ignore my outreach..."

Herbert's non-response is no surprise.

The meme that America is irredeemably racist - and especially that the GOP is the bastion of today's Jim Crow ideology - provides the far left-wing of the Democratic Party a powerful tool of guilt-mongering and racial victimology.

Jesse Jackson blew the mask off this meme, however, with his totally corrupt double-standard on Barack Obama, when he announced that the Illinois Senator should be castrated for allegedly talking down to black Americans about personal responsibility.

Note how Fox News was branded as "racist" for just broadcasting these issues.

As I've noted many times this year, to the extent that we've seen outright racism in election 2008, it's been on the Democratic Party side (see, "Barack Obama and the Political Psychology of Race").

If we see genuine white supremacy on the right, it's at the margins, among people associated with Stormfront and extreme right-wing Paulbots, as well as racist vigiliante blogs on the redneck wilderness.

One extremist blogger announced recently that Sherri Shepard of the View should be kicked to the curb, which reflects the kind of white supremist hatred depicted in films such as American History X:

Elisabeth Hasselbeck got baited into a discussion she can not win, not on the air, not in a liberal minded show and not being as sweet as she is. She needed to get up and grab that dumb bitch by her horse hair weave and curb stomp her ass.

It's true that vile views like these can be readily found on the extremist right-wing fringe, but as we've seen in Bartlett and MacKinnon's essays above, mainstream Republicans have repudiated this hatred time and again.

This will continue to be a challenge for the GOP (who are not only slurred by the left as racist, but "pseudo fascist" as well), although the party's eminently better positioned - on the basis of history and basic values of decency and fair play - to lead the country toward the colorblind society that is rightfully America's bounty.

See also, The Next Right, "How John McCain Should Respond To Racism."

Related: Classical Values, "The Fascists Are Still Coming!

Obama in Germany: Ich Bin Ein Beginner!

The New York Times notes that Barack Obama borrowed liberally from America's greatest presidents in his speech in Berlin last week, and that's not mentioning The Bard:

Any presidential hopeful introducing himself to a German-speaking crowd might be tempted to draw on the eloquence of Shakespeare, the wisdom of Lincoln, the idealism of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the youthful energy of John F. Kennedy or the grit of Ronald Reagan. Better yet: why not invoke them all? This is what Senator Barack Obama seems to have done in the speech he gave on Thursday before a crowd of 200,000 in the Tiergarten. Here are the candences and phrases, along with Mr. Obama's echoes [at the link].

Obama's been compared favorably - or at least, credibly - to Abraham Lincoln, but if his copycat turn in Berlin is the measure, he can't touch America's greatest leader:

History is Watching

Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, Pa., Nov. 19, 1863. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

Barack Obama: Now the world will watch and remember what we do here - what we do with this moment.

Andrew Ferguson, sums it up as nothing more than ethereal fluff:

Floating along on a cloud of metaphor and generality allows Obama to do what he wants to do, in the Berlin speech and elsewhere....

To pump a little vigor into his limp sentiments, Obama attached them to a hypnotic refrain. "This is the moment," he said in Berlin, repeatedly. But where's the urgency come from? What's the rush? In the long train of platitudes he suggested no discrete, definable policy that needed to be adopted urgently, beyond his call to unity, which isn't a policy but an aspiration. You get the idea that the urgency doesn't arise from an assessment of reality but from a rhetorical need. He's got to keep the folks on their toes somehow.

Obama couldn't come to Berlin and deliver a speech full of portent, as Reagan and Kennedy did before him, and as his publicists suggested he might. For all the talk about this being our time and us being the people, Obama shows no sign of really believing we live in portentous times. This is surely part of his appeal. It's not surprising that when he came to Berlin and said nothing at all, none of his admirers seemed disappointed...

Image Credit: Michelle Malkin

McCain Hammers Obama with New Ad Buy

John McCain's taking advantage of Barack Obama's recent military missteps with a new campaign spot that notes:

Barack Obama never held a single Senate hearing on Afghanistan. He hadn't been to Iraq in years. He voted against funding our troops. And now, he made time to go to the gym, but cancelled a visit with wounded troops...

Watch the "Troops":

Allahpundit and Mike Allen at the Politico have the analysis (here and here).

Allen notes that the Obama campaign hit back, saying McCain "is an honorable man who is running an increasingly dishonorable campaign."

Maybe that reaction will play with the press corps, but the McCain camp's smart to take advantage of the gaping liabilities opening up from Obama's European tour.

The trouble is not just Obama's scrubbed Landstuhl visit, but his overall presumptuousness as some president-in-waiting; moreover, the Berlin address was so hopelessly radical in its "one-worldism" that former Ambassador John Bolton called it "nearly incoherent" in its complete divorce from Cold War history and the realities of international power politics.

It was, for Karl at Protein Wisdom, "The Vacuity of Hope."

See also, Jamie Kirchick, "On Iraq, Now is When Judgment Matters."

**********

UPDATE: The nihilist left contingents aren't too happy about McCain's new ad:

The stink of desperation is permeating the McCain campaign. Obviously fearful and jealous of the positive reception that Obama received in the allied countries, he's releasing an ad criticizing Obama for failing to visit the wounded troops in Germany after the Pentagon threw an 11th hour restriction on the visit.

Keep these ads coming - the Democrats'll be twisting throughout the summer and fall.

Plus, in London today, Obama's caught on a hot mic saying, "if" he's successful, he's going to be needing "big chunks of time during the day when all you're doing is thinking."

Well, at least the presidential transition's already underway.

San Diego Minutemen Adopt-a-Highway!

The immigration crisis had made headlines this last couple of weeks, but frankly the news that the Minutemen won their federal court case to Adopt-a-Highway along San Diego's stretch of Interstate-5 is a kicker:

An anti-illegal-immigration group's Adopt-a-Highway sign was re-posted this week on Interstate 5 near the Border Patrol checkpoint in San Clemente after a federal judge ruled that it did not pose a danger to the public.

State transit officials had moved the San Diego Minutemen's sign to a less-busy highway in eastern San Diego County, saying they were concerned that it would become a gathering place for protesters and clog the busy interstate.

The Adopt-a-Highway program "is not a forum for advertising or public discourse," Caltrans officials said on the agency's website.

The Minutemen sued in federal court, saying that the sign's removal violated the organization's right to free speech. A judge ruled last month that the sign did not pose a danger to the public and should be re-posted. It had been moved to a stretch of California 52.

"We are all thrilled to see our Adopt-a-Highway recognition sign back up, standing more proudly than ever," the group's founder, Jeff Schwilk, said in a statement posted on its website. "The U.S. Constitution has thankfully trumped the lies and coercion of the illegal alien activists. . . . Thank you to Americans nationwide who helped us win this critical legal fight for our rights and to have our message heard by all America!"

I doubt San Francisco's getting the message.

As Cinnamon Stillwell pointed out recently:

Under the city's 1989 voter-approved sanctuary ordinance, police officers and other city employees are prohibited from inquiring into immigration status. In addition, the city will not direct municipal funds or employees towards assisting federal immigration enforcement, unless such assistance is required by federal or state law or a warrant.

No doubt such protections warm the heart of the city's liberal leadership. But San Francisco's status as a sanctuary city is having unintended consequences.

The brutal and senseless murder last month of Tony Bologna and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, at the hands of Edwin Ramos, a native of El Salvador and known member of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) street gang, was a reminder that inviting illegal activity can turn deadly. The Bolognas were on their way back from a family picnic when they inadvertently blocked Ramos' car from making a left turn in the Excelsior district. When Bologna politely backed up to let the other car past, Ramos responded by opening fire and killing all three passengers. Ramos has been charged with three counts of murder, with the added penalty of street-gang involvement....

While San Francisco's sanctuary city ordinance may have been well-intentioned, it has resulted in an untenable and anarchic situation that is taking its toll on city residents and surrounding counties alike. Providing sanctuary for law-breakers at the expense of law-abiding citizens is neither a compassionate nor a moral approach.

That's well said.

There's more on this at Neptunus Lex and Wake Up America!

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

The Left's Demonology of Vengeance

At the same time that Barack Obama's been presumptiously preparing his presidential transition team, the hard left forces of the nihilist left are sharpening their knives in preparation for a campaign of legal vengeance against the Bush administration's alleged record of war crimes in the battle against global terror.

Salon, for example, ran a piece earlier this week entitled "Exposing Bush's Historic Abuse of Power," which suggests the formation of a new "Church Commission" to investigate domestic surveillance in the Bush years (the article includes the obligatory Nazi Reichsadler pictured above).

Also, there's news this week that left-wing bloggers (and their allies on the Paulbot right) are mounting a program of electoral mobilization against Democrats who supported the FISA reform bill just passed in Congress. Leading the pack is Jane Hamsher, who has teamed with fringe libertarians to form a group called The Strange Bedfellows. The organization's goal is to promote an "accountability" campaign of legal recrimination against the administration's "lawless surveillance state."

One gets a good sense of how intense are the demands for extremist retribution in Matt Stoler's post, "Democratic Congressional Candidate Alan Grayson on Iraq Reckoning: 'We'll Put People in Prison'":

One of the most exciting candidates I've met this cycle is Alan Grayson, a high profile trial lawyer who has been suing defense contractors for fraud, and is now running for Florida's eighth district in central Florida. I spent some time with him at Netroots Nation, and took video. Usually I have to push candidates to become more aggressive, in Grayson's case, he pushed me. Grayson is part of a new crew of progressive professionals, people like Darcy Burner and Donna Edwards with a tremendous track record of success in fields other than politics who are crossing over into the progressive sector out of a sheer revulsion of where this country is headed. It's different than the civil rights era of liberalism and the single issue liberalism of the 1980s, much more fearless.

Because of his track record suing defense contractors, Grayson is completely uninterested and unintimidated by ridiculous arguments about secrecy and national security. He thinks that war crimes have been committed, that people need to be put in prison, and that we absolutely cannot let bygones be bygones with the 2000-2008 era.

That last section really sums it up.

For the nihilist left, few are putting a priority on improving the econony, rebuilding infrastruce, or exploring means toward American energy independence - some of the top issues facing the mass of rank-and-file Democratic Party voters. What's motivated the hard left hordes are subterranean questions of lawbreaking by the administration. The agenda of electing "agressive progressives" is code language for mounting a campaign of revenge against Republicans who are routinely alleged to have taken the country "recklessly toward war. Just this week Representitive Dennis Kucinich, a leader of antiwar contingent in Congress, held hearings on Capitol Hill to investigate the administration for "leading the country to war under false pretenses."

Recall that the Iraq war, of course, was launched under a bipartisan congressional mandate, but within months of the same Democrats in Congress - who supported America's goal to rid Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction - turned around for cheap partisan purposes to advocate the craven withdrawal from Iraq, the abandonment of our troops, and the surrender to the forces of Islamist totalitarianism.

As for the legal case for war crimes, the issue's debateable, and establishing them as a top priority in 2009 would create a political circus. The administration might do well to prevent a massive witch hunt by issues blanket pardons before leaving office.

Of course, it's hard to see the left's push for criminal prosecutions as more than diabolical partisan revenge. These developments, indeed, are the natural consequence of the left's doctrine of hatred. The incessant calls for criminal prosecution against the Bush administration satisfies the radical left's psychological need for vengeance against the percieved slights of intellectual and political marginalization.

It's not enough to organize for a restoration of the public spirit in health care, transportation, or other areas of needed revitalization, under a possible Democratic administration. The modern ideological hatred of the secular left demands nothing short of a totalizing political persecution for the very democratically-legitimated conservative leaders who have run the run the country for the last seven years.

Barack Obama's Audacity of Hopelessness

I read passages last night, at Powerline, of John McCain's speech to the American GI Forum in Denver. The full text of the address is here.

McCain's message is exceedingly timely, given this last week's debate on the surge in Iraq. McCain, in reminding us of the political risks in staying the course, foreshadows a powerful and promising direction for his campaign throughout the summer and fall:

Eighteen months ago, America faced a crisis as profound as any in our history. Iraq was in flames, torn apart by violence that was escaping our control. Al Qaeda was succeeding in what Osama bin Laden called the central front in their war against us. The mullahs in Iran waited for America's humiliation in Iraq, and the resulting increase in their influence. Thousands of Iraqis died violently every month. American casualties were mounting. We were on the brink of a disastrous defeat just a little more than five years after the attacks of September 11, and America faced a profound choice. Would we accept defeat and leave Iraq and our strategic position in the Middle East in ruins, risking a wider war in the near future? Or would we summon our resolve, deploy additional forces, and change our failed strategy? Senator Obama and I also faced a decision, which amounted to a real-time test for a future commander-in-chief. America passed that test. I believe my judgment passed that test. And I believe Senator Obama's failed.

We both knew the politically safe choice was to support some form of retreat. All the polls said the "surge" was unpopular. Many pundits, experts and policymakers opposed it and advocated withdrawing our troops and accepting the consequences. I chose to support the new counterinsurgency strategy backed by additional troops - which I had advocated since 2003, after my first trip to Iraq. Many observers said my position would end my hopes of becoming president. I said I would rather lose a campaign than see America lose a war. My choice was not smart politics. It didn't test well in focus groups. It ignored all the polls. It also didn't matter. The country I love had one final chance to succeed in Iraq. The new strategy was it. So I supported it. Today, the effects of the new strategy are obvious. The surge has succeeded, and we are, at long last, finally winning this war.

Senator Obama made a different choice. He not only opposed the new strategy, but actually tried to prevent us from implementing it. He didn't just advocate defeat, he tried to legislate it. When his efforts failed, he continued to predict the failure of our troops. As our soldiers and Marines prepared to move into Baghdad neighborhoods and Anbari villages, Senator Obama predicted that their efforts would make the sectarian violence in Iraq worse, not better.

And as our troops took the fight to the enemy, Senator Obama tried to cut off funding for them. He was one of only 14 senators to vote against the emergency funding in May 2007 that supported our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He would choose to lose in Iraq in hopes of winning in Afghanistan. But had his position been adopted, we would have lost both wars....

Senator Obama told the American people what he thought you wanted to hear. I told you the truth. From the early days of this war, I feared the administration was pursuing a mistaken strategy, and I said so. I went to Iraq many times, and heard all the phony explanations about how we were winning. I knew we were failing, and I told that to an administration that did not want to hear it. I pushed for the strategy that is now succeeding before most people even admitted that there was a problem.

Fortunately, Senator Obama failed, not our military. We rejected the audacity of hopelessness, and we were right. Violence in Iraq fell to such low levels for such a long time that Senator Obama, detecting the success he never believed possible, falsely claimed that he had always predicted it. There have been almost no sectarian killings in Baghdad for more than 13 weeks. American casualties are at the lowest levels recorded in this war. The Iraqi Army is stronger and fighting harder. The Iraqi Government has met most of the benchmarks for political progress we demanded of them, and the nation's largest Sunni party recently rejoined the government. In Iraq, we are no longer on the doorstep of defeat, but on the road to victory.

Senator Obama said this week that even knowing what he knows today that he still would have opposed the surge. In retrospect, given the opportunity to choose between failure and success, he chooses failure. I cannot conceive of a Commander in Chief making that choice.

A new hope is rising in Iraq today. Across the country, Iraqis are preparing for upcoming provincial elections. And security has improved enough to permit the Iraqi government to begin seriously providing services and opportunities to the Iraqi people. This progress is encouraging but reversible if we heed those who have always counseled defeat when they now argue to risk our fragile gains and withdraw from Iraq according to a politically expedient timetable rather than the advice from the commanders who so brilliantly led this stunning turnaround in our situation in Iraq.

This is the message that needs to be sharpened and hammered consistently through November. It's a message that's been sitting idle, while McCain's fortunes have been smothered by media adulation for Obama, and the worldwide reception of the ethereal new world leader.

But public opinion shows that the press favoritism has not translated into political advantage for Obama at the polls. Americans are deeply concerned with Obama's cultural difference and lack of experience. McCain can sharpen public understanding by taking off the gloves, as he's begun to do so with his Denver speech.

As Karl at Protein Wisdom observes:

In today’s New York Post, Kirsten Powers may overestimate how juggernauty Barack Obama’s campaign may be, but she is generally correct about the way in which the McCain contraption (credit Allahpundit) is still sputtering: “If he wants to run as Hillary 2.0, then McCain should rip off some of her better stuff.”

Camp McCain does not lack for analysis of the campaign’s weaknesses. Powers follows Time magazine’s Mark Halperin (h/t RTO Trainer) and National Review’s Rich Lowry & Ramnesh Ponnuru in offering analysis and advice. The point common to these pieces — though not always expressly stated — is messaging. The McCain campaign too often seems like a pudding without a theme.

Perhaps we might now be seeing a productive theme emerging.

Obama's world tour highlights the Illinois Senator's massive popularity overseas, but his missteps at Berlin and Lansdstuhl demonstrate a host of personal contractions and a poverty of perseverance in the face of global threats. These may prove fatally damaging at home.

Are we at a turningpoint in the campaign?

I think we are, and events may well rebound in McCain's favor, especially if he's able to continue crafting a message the combines his embodiment of national greatness with a carefully delivered narrative on Obama's disastrous political liabilities.

Napoleon Was Hitler's Genocidal Model, Historian Claims

I noticed the Daily Mail article on the new postmodern history of Napoleon yesterday, while searching Google for information on blacks in the military. Here's the introduction from the story, "The French Fuhrer":

Three days after the fall of France in 1940, Napoleon, lying in his marble tomb in Paris, received a visit from his greatest admirer.

Adolf Hitler, on his one and only visit to the French capital, made an unannounced trip to the tomb in Les Invalides.

In his white raincoat, surrounded by his generals, Hitler stood for a long time gazing down at his hero, his cap removed in deference.

He was said later to have described this moment as 'one of the proudest of my life'.
The next day, during his official sightseeing tour of Paris, Hitler again visited Napoleon's tomb to salute him.

Conscious that his hero was known to the world simply as Napoleon, Hitler boasted that he would not need a rank or title on his gravestone. 'The German people would know who it was if the only word was Adolf.'

Throughout the war, Hitler had sandbags placed around Napoleon's tomb to guard against bomb damage.

Wooden floorboards were laid across the marble floor of Les Invalides so that they would not be scarred by German jackboots.

Until recently, the French would have been incensed by any comparison between Napoleon and Hitler.

But to their rage and shame, new research has shown that France's greatest hero presided over mass atrocities which bear comparison with some of Hitler's worst crimes against humanity.
These reassessments of Napoleon have caused anguish in France. Top politicians backed out of official ceremonies to mark what was possibly Napoleon's greatest victory, the battle of Austerlitz, when Napoleon's Grande Armee defeated the combined armies of Austria and Russia in just six hours, killing 19,000 of their adversaries.

A street in Paris named Rue Richepanse (after Antoine Richepanse, a general responsible for atrocities in the Caribbean) has recently had its name changed to Rue Solitude.

Claude Ribbe, a respected historian and philosopher and member of the French government's human rights commission, has been researching Napoleon's bloodcurdling record for some years.

He accuses him of being a racist and an anti-Semite who persecuted Jews and reintroduced widespread slavery just a few years after it had been abolished by the French government.

These are some sweeping claims, and without reading the book, they sound plausible.

Still, the historical consensus on World War II and the Nazi Holocaust is that the scale and brutality of Hitler's anti-Semitic eliminationist program is unprecedented in modern times, if not world history. The Shoah represents the height of mass-based, mechanized, industrial-scale murder. Further, it is understood that the banality of death under the Third Reich represented a collapse of the Western Christian conscience of man. For these reasons, "never again" is the phrase of warning so that this enormity of man's inhumanity to man is never repeated in the world.

Again, I can't fully criticize Ribbe without reading his work. I looked for information on him and his research online, and there's not a lot. I did find a French blogger who had interviewed Ribbe, where he's quoted:

There are perhaps as many books written on Napoleon as the days since his death (somewhere around 67,500 days). But none of the books talk about the gassing and the slavery.

The French racism is very linked to Napoleon, so attacking Napoleon is the best way to attack racism. He’s the man who reestablished slavery. If the man who reestablished slavery is a hero in France, then it’s impossible to do anything.

If we look at Ribbe's slim Wikipdedia entry we find this:

Claude Ribbe (born October 13, 1954) is a French writer and "human rights commissioner" of Caribbean origin. In his book The Crime of Napoleon, Ribbe claimed that Napoleon's regime used sulfur dioxide gas for mass execution of more than 100,000 rebellious black slaves when trying to put down slave rebellions in Haiti and Guadeloupe, nearly 140 years before Hitler's holocaust.

Some of this account appears historically commensurate with extent records of the times, for example, the history of Haitian independence.

Yet, Ribbe's apparently a controversial figure in the historical profession (by his own account), and it's a stretch to go so far as allege that black Haitians were victims of genocide.

As in the case of American Indians, what happened in Haiti under French imperialism was not a genocidal crime but a tragedy of cultures in conflict. Specifically, French suppression of Haitians - while unspeakably violent - was of a design and scale far below the extermination of the Jews in World War II. Neither is excusable, but Ribbe's allegations of Napoleonic genocide represents an indictment of the entire French system of politics and power. Ribbe, then, falls in line with the postmodern turn in social history that sees the history of the West and the imperial project an irredeemable stain on the course of human history, and thus the justification for a reordering of power relations in contemporary politics, complete with reparations and war crimes remunerations from the state.

Most of all, by elevating Napoleon to the realm of Adoph Hitler, Ribbe minimizes the ranks of evil. If Hitler's no different from Napoleon, then neither is Radovan Karadzic.

But to do this is to refuse discernment on the most horrifying chapter of human destruction in the 20th century.

I never would never wish the fate of French colonialism upon the Haitian people. Nevertheless, the sweeping charge of genocide against Carribean slaves is logically innacurate and politically motivated. It's just too much.

Photo Credit: The Daily Mail

Decision to Stiff Landstuhl Was Obama's Alone

The postmodern lefties are trying to spin Obama's skipped Landstuhl visit as the Pentagon's fault:

I've just gotten clarification from the Pentagon on what really happened with regard to Barack Obama's canceled visit to an Army base in Germany, something the McCain campaign has been using to hit Obama since yesterday.

A Pentagon spokesperson confirms to me that because of longstanding Department of Defense regulations, Pentagon officials told Obama aides that he couldn't visit the base with campaign staff. This left Obama with little choice but to cancel the trip, since the plan to visit with campaign aides had been in the works for weeks.

Note how this is an unnamed Pentagon source, which is strange, as the matter's straightforward Defense Department policy, not top-secret classifed information.

There's no link at TPM other than Jeff Zeleny's piece at the New York Times, "The Cancellation of Obama’s Troop Visit."

Here's the key passage from Zeleny:

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, issued a statement emphasizing that the Pentagon did not cancel Mr. Obama’s visit.

“Senator Obama, in his official capacity, is always welcome to visit Landstuhl or any other military hospital. But it is not permitted to bring with him campaign staff. His team was notified of that, and they made a decision not to visit the hospital. But we were ready and willing to host him there. In fact, we had made arrangements for his campaign plane to land at Ramstein, and to take care of the campaign staff and press in a passenger terminal there, while the senator and senate staff, if he liked, went on to visit wounded warriors. They made a decision based on their own calculations not to visit. Senator Obama, like any other member of the senate, is always welcome to visit our wounded warriors or our military hospitals around the world. But they do so in their official capacity, and not as a candidate. He can come in and bring senate staffers as well, if he likes, but campaign staffers and press are not permitted to accompany him. That would be a violation of DoD directives.”

There you have it. The Pentagon did not cancel Obama's visit.

No one is responsible for this disaster but Barack Obama and his incompetent advance team.

But note TPM's pathetic spin attempt:

It's unclear how Obama could have made the visit at all, given the Pentagon's directives. No Senate staff was on the trip, and the Obama camp says they received the Pentagon's directives on Wednesday, after they were already abroad.

Bottom line: We're not seeing any issue here at all.

No issue at all? You've got to be kidding! Obama could have visited the troops by himself, with a military escort. And we do have transcontinental telecommunications. A simple phone call takes care of those "Pentagon directives."

I'm simply flabbergasted sometimes at the lengths the postmodern left will go to reduce uncontestable facts to some squishy dream world of illusion.

Maybe Talking Points Memo doesn't even read the stories to which they link?

But, more likely, this is an attempt to provide a postmodern narrative for the press, with the intended effect of washing Obama's massive military misstep away.

I shouldn't be surprised, that's for sure, since as Dr. Sanity notes, the standard recipe for postmodern talking points is to completely ignore reality, reason, and truth:

Those who live in the wonderful world of denial go through their daily lives secure in the knowledge that their self-image is protected against any information, feelings, or awareness that might make them have to change their world view. Nothing - and I mean NOTHING - not facts, not observable behavior; not the use of reason or logic; or their own senses will make an individual in denial re-evaluate that world view. All events will simply be reinterpreted to fit into the belief system of that world--no matter how ridiculous, how distorted, or how psychotic that reinterpretation appears to others. Consistency, common sense, reality, and objective truth are unimportant and are easily discarded--as long as the world view remains intact.

Most people want to believe there's an objective reality.

Unfortunately, in the left's version of relative truth all matters of substance are reduced to a subjective new age spin, with the effect in this case being to abuse the troops for political purposes.

Change we can believe in...

Media Hypocrisy on John Edwards Love Child Shocker

Fox News is now confirming the National Enquirer's breakthrough story on former vice-presidential candidate John Edwards' love child:

A hotel security guard told FOXNews.com he intervened this week between a man he identified as former Sen. John Edwards and tabloid reporters who chased down the former presidential hopeful after what they're calling a rendezvous with his mistress and love child.

The Beverly Hilton Hotel guard said he encountered a shaken and ashen-faced Edwards — whom he did not immediately recognize — in a hotel men's room early Tuesday morning in a literal tug-of-war with reporters on the other side of the door.

"What are they saying about me?" the guard said Edwards asked.

"His face just went totally white," the guard said, when Edwards was told the reporters were shouting out questions about Edwards and Rielle Hunter, a woman the National Enquirer says is the mother of his child.

The guard said he escorted Edwards, who was not a registered guest at the hotel, out of the building after 2 a.m. Edwards did not say anything while he was escorted out, said the guard, adding that at times the reporters on the scene were "rough on him," sticking a camera in his face and shouting questions.

The guard did not recognize Edwards at the time of the incident, but said he concluded it was the 2008 presidential hopeful after hearing reports about the incident and finding an Enquirer reporter's notebook at the scene.

I have been waiting to report on this, as the story first appeared as unsubstantiated rumors. But there's much more credible reporting on the story now, for example, Captain Ed at Hot Air.

Betsy Newmark has also been hot on the trail with a post today, as well as on Wednesday, where she wrote:

If this story about John Edwards is true, and the National Enquirer really seems to have the goods on him, all I can marvel at what a total sleaze he is. While I might be crass enough to get some shivers of schadenfreude at the description of him ducking into a hotel bathroom in the early morning to escape National Enquirer reporters and photographers and waiting for hotel security to escort him out of the bathroom, I can't help thinking of his poor wife and small children. And there is also his newest child to feel sorry for. It's always the innocent who suffer the most in these sorts of stories.

If the National Enquirer is correct, his girlfriend (are mistress and love child passé terms these days?) was six months pregnant in December 2007. Do the arithmetic. He and his wife announced that her cancer was back in March of that year and he must have been out working on his second family just a few months later. And it was all during the campaign last year when he still might have had a chance at the nomination. What is it with these politicians that they think they're immune from standards of normal decency?

We'll be able to trace the parameters of a feeding frenzy when it involves both a Democratic politician and a sex scandal uncovered by the Enquirer. Will the MSM give it the same sort of focus that they gave the arguably lesser scandals involving Larry Craig and Mark Foley? Will it travel the path from the National Enquirer to Drudge to the blogosphere to talk radio to cable TV to the MSM? Or will this story be limited to the fringes of the media? Byron York reminds us of how the media ran with the story of Rush Limbaugh and oxycontin that had been broken by the Enquirer. Mickey Kaus, who has been talking about this story since it first broke last year wonders if this will be

the first presidential-contender level scandal to occur completely in the undernews, without ever being reported in the cautious, respectable MSM? That's always seemed an interesting theoretical possibility--a prominent politician just disappears from the scene, after blogs and tabloids dig up dirt on him, but nobody who relies on the Times, Post, network news or Mark Halperin has the faintest idea why.

I'm cynical enough about the MSM to think that this story won't break through their protective ranks. If they can barely bring themselves to cover the Republican nominee for president, are they really going to take time from Obama's travels and adulation abroad in order to report a scandal about a Democratic politician?

This is the same press that's now contributing to the Obama campaign by a ration of 100-to-one over John McCain. (Source: "Putting Money Where Mouths Are: Media Donations Favor Dems 100-1").

See also, Roger Simon, "Getting Rielle - The Enquirer Files a Criminal Complaint in Edwards Love Child Case."

Landstuhl is Public Relations Disaster for Obama

Barack Obama's cancelled visit to Rammstein and Landstuhl U.S. military bases has turned out to be an ultimate public relations disaster.

Indeed, the presumptive Democratic nominee is now seeeking to atone for his callousness personally calling wounded soldiers at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center:

Obama made phone calls to wounded soldiers at Landstuhl Germany this morning, in lieu of a personal visit to the forces that was canceled by the Obama campaign.

Obama was expected to speak to a number of soldiers individually.

Also, Captain Ed shows that Obama scrubbed the troop visit after learning that he wouldn't be able to bring a media entourage to boost his campaign:

NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube get the skinny on the abrupt cancellation of Barack Obama’s visit to Landstuhl and Ramstein yesterday. The campaign tried to excuse it by claiming that it wouldn’t be appropriate to visit while on a campaign-funded portion of his trip, but that wasn’t the real problem. When Obama found out he couldn’t use the visit as a photo op, he canceled:

One military official who was working on the Obama visit said because political candidates are prohibited from using military installations as campaign backdrops, Obama’s representatives were told, “he could only bring two or three of his Senate staff member, no campaign officials or workers.” In addition, “Obama could not bring any media. Only military photographers would be permitted to record Obama’s visit”....

In fact, those same rules applied for the CODEL trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. They serve to keep politicians from exploiting military facilities for political reasons, and to ensure that all visitors get treated fairly. Andrea Mitchell, also of NBC, complained of this very issue during the earlier visits with the troops when she told Chris Matthews that the media couldn’t get access to Obama when visiting troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This makes the decision track very clear. Obama and his team set up the visits to military installations before going overseas. After seeing how the media got excluded in Iraq and Afghanistan, they decided it wasn’t worth traveling to Ramstein and Landstuhl to visit the severely wounded troops because they couldn’t bring the campaign and get the photo ops they wanted. Instead, Obama went shopping in Berlin.

As I noted yesterday, Obama's completely indifferent to the sacrifice and valor of U.S. military personnel.

I seriously doubt a few phone calls will heal the widening rift between the Democratic nominee and members of the armed forces.

See also, Rasmussen Research, "Military Veterans Favor McCain 56% to 37%."

Antiwar Hypocrisy on Iraq

Ralph Peters hits a home run with his analysis of antiwar hypocrisy on the Iraq war:

AM I the only one who's noticed the silence? Mere months ago, left-wing bloggers and demonstrators were wailing Support our troops, bring them home! seven days a week.

Now their presidential candidate has announced that he won't bring all those troops home, but will simply transfer combat forces from Iraq to Afghanistan - expanding that war. (He's discussed possibly invading Pakistan, too.)

And the left's quiet as a graveyard at midnight.

Where are the outraged protests from MoveOn or the DailyKos? I thought the extreme left felt sorry for our service members in harm's way and wanted to reunite them with their families.

What happened?

We all know exactly what happened. The left has nothing against foreign wars (as long as they don't have to fight in person). They just want to pick our wars themselves.

The problem with Iraq wasn't that America toppled Saddam Hussein, but that George W. Bush did it. I've been saying it for years: Had Bill Clinton done the job, the left would've celebrated him as the greatest liberator since Abraham Lincoln.

There's more at the link.

See also, Kathleen Parker, "Pride Clouds Obama's Vision."

Obama's Challenge is at Home

As I noted last night, Barack Obama "is struggling back home to pull out a lead in public opinion over the presumptive GOP nominee John McCain."

It turns out that Peter Nicholas, at this morning's Los Angeles Times, offers a front-page analysis of Obama's dilemma, "Obama's Path to Presidency is Far From Clear":

Even as his turn on the global stage hit an emotional peak Thursday with a speech before a cheering crowd of more than 200,000 in Germany, Barack Obama faced new evidence of stubborn election challenges back home.

Fresh polls show that he has been unable to convert weeks of extensive media coverage into a widened lead. And some prominent Democrats whose support could boost his campaign are still not enthusiastic about his candidacy.

Several new surveys show that Obama is in a tight race or even losing ground to Republican John McCain, both nationally and in two important swing states, Colorado and Minnesota. One new poll offered a possible explanation for his troubles: A minority of voters see Obama as a familiar figure with whom they can identify.

Republicans are moving to exploit this vulnerability, trying to encourage unease among voters by building the impression that Obama's overseas trip and other actions show he has a sense of entitlement that suggests he believes the White House is already his.

In Ohio on Thursday, McCain hit that theme: "I'd love to give a speech in Germany . . . but I'd much prefer to do it as president of the United States, rather than as a candidate for the office of presidency."

Obama also faces discontent from some of Hillary Rodham Clinton's most ardent supporters, who are put off by what they describe as a campaign marked by hubris and a style dedicated to televised extravaganzas.

Susie Tompkins Buell, a major Clinton fundraiser, said: "The Clinton supporters that I know are bothered by these rock-star events. These spectacles are more about the candidate than they are about the party and the issues that we care about."

Obama is to return home Saturday after a nine-day trip that has produced some of the most memorable images of the campaign. Speaking in Berlin before a sea of young faces, the presumed Democratic nominee echoed a famous line from President Reagan, who, at Brandenburg Gate, implored Soviet counterpart Mikhail S. Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."

"The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down," Obama told the warmly enthusiastic crowd in Tiergarten park. He spoke from a stage constructed near the Victory Column, a soaring monument to Prussian military triumphs.

Powerful as the image was, back home some voters wondered whether the trip was necessary. Both Obama and McCain had been invited Thursday to a cancer forum organized by cyclist Lance Armstrong's foundation at Ohio State University.

McCain showed; Obama did not. Some in the crowd took notice.

Ann Marie Jones, a stay-at-home mother whose 10-year-old son was diagnosed with cancer in September, said she had leaned toward Obama "until he didn't show up tonight."

"I feel like I understand what he's doing over there, but I think he needed to be here tonight for this," she said.

The public disappointments with Obama's priorities are not likely to simmer down soon. The Illinois Senator frequently appears indifferent to key constituencies, whether it be cancer patients or American military service personnel.

Perhaps out of pride, hubris, or even megalomania, Obama seems handicapped in his ability to connect with ordinary Americans.

These liabilities may be in play in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, where McCain is leading in public opinion, on the strength of domestic policies, such as offshore drilling for oil.

On military issues, Obama's indifference to the troops poses additional problems. According to Rasmussen's new survey, "Military Veterans Favor McCain 56% to 37%," Obama's overseas tours to Afghanistan and Iraq did little to build confidence among veterans that the Illinois Senator's strong on national security or interested in the welfare of the troops.

Related: "Just Hours Later, Obama Campaign Uses Berlin Speech to Raise Campaign Cash."

Photo Credit: "Obama, Vague on Issues, Pleases Crowd in Europe."

Voters Uncomfortable With Obama on Values, Experience

Amid the virtually unprecedented worldwide adulation for a U.S. presidential nominee, Barack Obama is struggling back home to pull out a lead in public opinion over the presumptive GOP nominee John McCain.

A number of polls in recent days have found Obama holding a slight lead in presidential match-ups, often within statisticals margin of error. Gallup reported yesterday that Obama held "a modest 4-point lead" over McCain.

Today's Wall Street Journal, importantly, notes that Americans are deeply uncomfortable with the Illinois Senator, questioning his values and fidelity to nation:

Midway through the election year, the presidential campaign looks less like a race between two candidates than a referendum on one of them - Sen. Barack Obama.

With the nominations of both parties effectively settled for more than a month, the key question in the contest isn't over any single issue being debated between the Democrats' Sen. Obama or the Republicans' Sen. John McCain. The focus has turned to the Democratic candidate himself: Can Americans get comfortable with the background and experience level of Sen. Obama?

This dynamic is underscored in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. The survey's most striking finding: Fully half of all voters say they are focused on what kind of president Sen. Obama would be as they decide how they will vote, while only a quarter say they are focused on what kind of president Sen. McCain would be.

The challenge that presents for Sen. Obama is illustrated by a second question. When voters were asked whether they could identify with the background and values of the two candidates, 58% said they could identify with Sen. McCain on that account, while 47% said the same of Sen. Obama. More than four in 10 said the Democratic contender doesn't have values and a background they can identify with....

The excitement and the uncertainties about the Obama campaign flow from his unusual personal profile. Not only is he the first African-American to win a major party's nomination: He also was raised by a single white mother, spent his formative years in Hawaii and Indonesia, got an Ivy League law degree, has been in the Senate less than four years, attended a controversial African-American church, and is married to a strong professional woman who has stirred up some controversy herself.

Interviews with voters suggest that while many who seek change in the White House are excited by that profile, others will need time to digest it - and some may never do so.

Another key finding is that by a margin of 53-to-19 percent, voters found McCain more "knowledgeable" and experienced."

Note too that Obama's world tour has not generated a bump in public opinion for the Illinois Senator, as Fox News reports:

The significant news coverage Barack Obama is receiving on his foreign trip has not translated into a bounce in his numbers, a just-released FOX News poll shows. Obama now holds the slimmest possible edge over John McCain, leading by just 41 percent - 40 percent in a head-to-head contest. In fact, Obama’s support is down slightly from his 45 percent - 41 percent advantage last month.

See also, Gallup's most recent tracking poll data, "Obama Maintains Slim Edge Over McCain."

What can we make of all this?

Well, considering that Obama's currently enjoying superior press coverage relative to McCain - big media's contributed to Obama 100-to-1 over McCain in the money race - Obama's weakness in publc opinion portends serious political liablities.

The McCain campaign's opportunity is in exploiting the public's genuine insecurities on Obama, including questions of character, experience, integrity, and religon, not to mention domestic and foreign policy priorities.

Controversies surrounding Obama's patriotism are of further concern among traditional voters, folks who are resistant to Obama's elitism and absence of small-town values. On that front, the McCain campaign's already attacking Obama's commitment to the troops, following Obama's cancelled visit to U.S. military installations in Germany today.

The GOP would be smart to launch a "it's 3am and your children are asleep" media attack blitz upon Obama's return to the campaign trail next week.

Image Credit: Wall Street Journal

Obama Scrubs Troop Visit in Germany, Readies Transition Team

Via Hot Air, Barack Obama today cancelled a scheduled visit with deployed American service personnel in Germany, at Rammstein and Landstuhl U.S. military bases. Der Spiegel reports:

1:42 p.m.: SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that Obama has cancelled a planned short visit to the Rammstein and Landstuhl US military bases in the southwest German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The visits were planned for Friday. "Barack Obama will not be coming to us," a spokesperson for the US military hospital in Landstuhl announced. "I don't know why." Shortly before the same spokeswoman had announced a planned visit by Obama.

Note that the U.S. hospital facility at Landsthul is the premiere American armed forces medical center in Europe:

LRMC [Landstuhl Regional Medical Center] is the largest American hospital outside of the United States, and the only American tertiary hospital in Europe. We provide primary and tertiary care, hospitalization, and treatment for more than 52,000 American military personnel and their families within the center’s boundaries. The center also provides specialized care for the more than 250,000 additional American military personnel and their families in the European Theater.

The bulk of serious casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan are treated at Landsthul, and an Obama visit there would have sent a powerful message of support for America's fighting men and women.

Why'd the Illinois Senator blow off the troops? He wanted to party in Berlin:

Obama noted that in a break from his whirlwind schedule, "we've got some down time tonight. What are you guys gonna do in Berlin? Huh? Huh? You guys got any big. plans? ... I've never been to Berlin, so...I would love to tour around a little bit."

So here we have the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, who some are predicting that "this man will become the 44th president of the United States," putting a stroll along the Potsdamer Platz ahead of an up-close-and-personal visit the American grunts who are fighting and dying for our country.

The troops are noticing as well. Blackfive reported yesterday the disappointment of one enlistee in the USAF who saw Obama at Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan:

He got off the plane and got into a bullet proof vehicle ... As the soldiers where lined up to shake his hand, he blew them off and didn't say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the general ... I swear we got more thanks from ... the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders than from one of the senators, who wants to be the President of the United States...

Blackfive has more first-hand reports from troops in the field, "More Witness Email - Senator Obama's PR Tour."

It takes no great leap of imagination to tie Obama's indifference to U.S. military personnel to questions surrounding the Illinois Senator's patriotism. Some star-bangled European photo-ops with the troops would have gone a long way in helping Obama distance himself from his earlier controversies involving the Pledge of Alligiance and American flag pins.

But Obama's got no time for that. He's too busy taking in the European nightlife, not to mention assembling his presidential transition team.

Change we can believe in...

Army Integration: Bullets Don't Care About Diversity

Buck Sargent, at Mudville Gazette, takes issue with this story from CBS News, "After 60Years, Black Officers Still Rare":

Sixty years after President Truman desegregated the military, senior black officers are still rare, particularly among the highest ranks....

The rarity of blacks in the top ranks is apparent in one startling statistic: Only one of the 38 four-star generals or admirals serving as of May was black. And just 10 black men have ever gained four-star rank - five in the Army, four in the Air Force and one in the Navy, according to the Pentagon.

The dearth of blacks in high-ranking positions gives younger African-American soldiers few mentors of their own race. And as the overall percentage of blacks in the service falls, particularly in combat careers that lead to top posts, the situation seems unlikely to change....

Army Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, [acknlowdges the] concerns.

"It's all about how many people you put in the front end of the pipe," Austin said in an interview from Baghdad. "It's very difficult for anybody to get to be a colonel or general in any branch of the service if you don't have enough young officers coming in."

Austin took the combat path to his three-star rank, starting as an infantryman and tactical officer. Later - as a general officer - he commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The forces he sees now, he said, are far more diverse than when he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1975. Then, he said, blacks made up only about 2.5 percent of the Army's officer corps.

"We treasure diversity because it brings in a lot of different viewpoints and blends in a lot of cultures," he said. "It makes us better."

Here's Sargent from Mudville:

I have so many problems with this article that I'm not even sure where to start. Last time I checked, a bullet didn't care what color you were, and in my time in the Army I've encountered very few soldiers who did either. If the Army isn't the most colorblind institution in America, I'd be hard pressed to name another. I can't speak for the other service branches, but I have no reason to believe they'd be much different....

My young son will not be raised to "treasure diversity," whatever that meaningless feel-good phrase is even supposed to mean anyway. He will be taught that the only "cultural blend" that is important is the uniquely American culture of political, economic, and individual freedom, and self-sufficiency from government. If he so chooses to serve in the Armed Forces of the United States, he will be instructed that service is the operative word. As in, selfless service, not self-service.

See also, United States Army, "Army Commemorates 60th Anniversary of Armed Forces Integration."

McCain, Obama, and the "Shorthand" of the Surge

Here's John McCormack's comment on McCain and the surge from yesterday morning:

The "surge" ... is often shorthand for both the addition of U.S. troops as well as the adoption of a counterinsurgency strategy.

Debate on this shorthand is currently raging across the left blogosphere.

Matthew Yglesias says, for example:

So John McCain said the surge led to the Anbar Awakening even though the Awakening, in fact, happened before the surge began. So he's ignorant. Or maybe dishonest....

Shawn Brimley tries to bring common sense to bear on this: "The word "surge" has always been used to as shorthand referring to President Bush's decision to deploy about 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq in early 2007, the first of which did not arrive in Iraq until later in the spring." McCain is arguing, I guess, that "the surge" doesn't refer to the manpower boost more formally termed the "surge of forces" by the military. Instead, "surge" is, perhaps, short for "counterinsurgency."

The main problems here would be that nobody uses "surge" that way...

Well, that's not correct.

Security studies experts do indeed use the term as a "shorthand" for the Bush administration's overall combined military AND political adjustments designed to bring order and progress to the Iraq deployment.

For example, in "The Price of the Surge," the lead article from the May/June 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs, Steven Simon noted:

In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new approach to the war in Iraq. At the time, sectarian and insurgent violence appeared to be spiraling out of control, and Democrats in Washington - newly in control of both houses of Congress - were demanding that the administration start winding down the war. Bush knew he needed to change course, but he refused to, as he put it, "give up the goal of winning." So rather than acquiesce to calls for withdrawal, he decided to ramp up U.S. efforts. With a "surge" in troops, a new emphasis on counterinsurgency strategy, and new commanders overseeing that strategy, Bush declared, the deteriorating situation could be turned around.

Thus, while there are technically discrete elements in the overall approach to strategic adjustment in Iraq, it's generally understoood that reference to the "surge" implies a macro-analytical concept, and the direction of success is evaluated by unpacking the various components in the military/political balance and making additional revisions .

Of course, the whole debate's something of a smokescreen hiding the fundamental issues: Victory in Iraq's impending, and the left forces are out to portray John McCain as a bumbling, fumbling old man, confused about the facts on the ground. This meme combines with a second thrust currently in play on the Iraq debate: that victory in Iraq means American troops can come home, and that Barack Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan is the ticket to "responsibly" ending the deployment.

All of this spin is geared to smothering the fact that Obama's been consistently wrong about the mission in Iraq, and thus his judgement as commander-in-chief is questionable. This strange turn of events sees those who not only opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, but who resisted the initial surge of troops while endlessly announcing the failure of the increase in troops, as the beneficiaries of the administration's resolve and McCain's forbearance.

The New York Times puts it all in perspective:

Conducting a presidential campaign in the middle of a war is somewhat unusual, and several foreign policy experts lament that a great deal of nuance and thoughtful discussion is lost in the political back-and-forth.

If Mr. McCain found himself criticized for seeming to confuse the chronology of events in Iraq, some analysts said Mr. Obama seemed to be giving too little credit to the surge for improving conditions in Iraq. Mr. Obama, who opposed the Iraq war, said in an interview with “Nightline” on ABC this week that if he had to do it all over again, knowing what he knew now, he would still not support the surge.

Mr. O’Hanlon, of the Brookings Institution, said he did not understand why Mr. Obama seemed to want to debate the success of the surge. “Any human being is reluctant to admit a mistake,” he said, noting that it takes on added risk in a political campaign.

And Anthony H. Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the political debate did not always illuminate the issues very well. “There are times, I think, where maybe we really ought to step back from this semantic horror show, and remember that this is a political campaign, it is posturing,” Mr. Cordesman said. “Would anyone want either presidential candidate to keep any promise they made today if reality was different in January, or in any point afterwards?”

That's it, then.

An unenlightening semantic debate, which is the forte of left-wing partisans, who've consistently opposed most everything geared to success in Iraq and peace for the Iraqi people.

Here's more examples, from the Huffington Post, "Depends on What the Meaning of the Word 'Is' (Surge) Is," and MyDD, "Depends What The Meaning of "The Surge" Is."

Okay, if ya'll say so...