Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Congressional Pork Helps Vulnerable Democratic Freshmen

This story is classic!

The distribution the congressional pork-barrel spending is tilting heavily Democratic freshmen Members of Congress. USA Today has the line:

A year ago, Democrats won control of Congress in part by criticizing billions of dollars spent on pet projects. Now, freshmen Democrats are benefiting from the same kind of spending, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

All 49 of the new Democratic lawmakers sponsored or co-sponsored at least one project — known as an "earmark" — inserted into the House and Senate spending bills, the analysis found. Freshmen Democrats were the sole sponsors on projects worth $351 million, an average of $7.6 million. Republicans got approval for projects worth $65 million, or $5 million each.

The analysis found that some of the most vulnerable freshmen Democrats in next year's election were among those who got the most money: Eight of the top 10 House freshmen earmark sponsors defeated Republican incumbents, and five won in districts carried by President Bush in 2004.

Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., says Democratic leaders tried to help freshmen like him who are on a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee list of the most vulnerable incumbents. "I think I got a boost from being on that list," says Yarmuth, No. 9 among House freshmen as the sole sponsor of $10.5 million in earmarks.

That shows political considerations, not merit, get earmarks into spending legislation, says Steve Ellis of the non-partisan group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

"It's like earmarks are the door prize for being a member of Congress," Ellis says.

Most of those earmarks remain in limbo, since only the defense bill has become law. Bush vetoed one bill and has threatened to veto others. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., said the impasse may result in one combined spending bill without any earmarks.

There you go - political hypocrisy at its finest! The Democrats were hammering the Republican majority over the pork in last year's elections.

Look at that photo of bullying John Murtha above: He's shaking hands with Rep. Christopher Carney, a freshman Democrat from a traditionally-GOP House district. Carny scored big on earmarks this year - at $18.2 million, he took in the most among first-timers, independently sponsoring 21 pork-barrel projects.

I blogged about John Murtha's spending largesse earlier. In fact, I defended the congressional pork-barrel as a traditional practice of constituency service and credit claiming. But stories like this demonstrate precisely why earmarks are often bad public policy: They're vehicles for political patronage and corruption.

Betrayal of America? The Bureaucratic Shadow Warriors

Kenneth Timmerman, the author Shadow Warriors, is interviewed over at FrontPageMag:

FP: Kenneth Timmerman, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Timmerman: Thanks, Jamie. It’s always a pleasure to appear alongside other founding members of the Vast Right-wing Conspiracy.

FP: My pleasure as well.

What inspired you to write this book?

Timmerman: In the beginning were the leaks. I was curious how highly-classified intelligence information was winding up on the front pages of the NY Times and in other leftist media. Two stories, in particular, caught my attention initially: the leak of the CIA “secret prisons,” and the smearing of Ahmad Chalabi, to which I will return below.

I knew quite a bit about both stories, and knew that the way they were being reported was incredibly selective and politically motivated. I wanted to track them back to the source.

What I discovered was a vast, underground network of government officials, former intelligence officers, members of Congress and their staffs, who were in bed with a complacent, anti-Bush media. They were eager to publish anything that did damage to this president, even if it put the lives of our intelligence officers or of our front-line troops in jeopardy.

FP: So tell us about the underground resistance movement against President Bush.

Timmerman: It certainly comes as no surprise to readers of this page to discover that a segment of the Democrat party never accepted the legitimacy of the 2000 presidential election, and sought in every possible way to delegitimize George W. Bush.

What I discovered, however, was that this political “pay-back” went far beyond the realm of domestic politics, and that legions of “shadow warriors” purposefully burrowed into the bureaucracy with the sole purpose of undermining the president and his policies.

The sabotage was so intense, for example, that CIA officers actually stood by and watched as a key moderate Iraqi cleric was hacked to death in front of their eyes on the steps of a Shiite shrine in Najaf by the pro-Iranian radical, Muqtada al-Sadr, in April 2003. The death of Majid al-Khoie, who was brought back to Iraq by the Bush administration just after the overthrow of Saddam, was a tremendous setback to our efforts to help the Iraqi Shiite community to distance itself from Iran and organize itself around moderate, pro-Western leaders.

For the shadow warriors, the failure of the liberation of Iraq was not “collateral damage.” It was the actual goal of their efforts. Within just weeks of the liberation, as I reveal in the book, a retired State Department officer who briefly served in Iraq devised the mantra “Bush lied, people died.” The Left has never tired of repeating it.

FP: Your thoughts on the politicization of intelligence by Senate Democrats?

Timmerman: The end result of the extraordinary cherry-picking of intelligence by Senate Democrats that I describe in detail in the book is to devalue intelligence and to make it suspect.

As you know, I follow events in Iran quite closely. You will not be surprised to learn that I am skeptical of the latest National Intelligence Estimate that concluded with “high confidence” that Iran stopped nuclear weapons work in late 2003.

What I find truly disturbing, however, is the widespread skepticism that has greeted this NIE by ordinary Americans and by intelligence specialists alike. No one trusts the intelligence community to come to an unbiased conclusion any longer. This NIE is far worse than the much disputed October 2002 estimate of Iraqi WMD programs, which failed to properly weigh conflicting information but never recommended a policy to the President or to Congress. (No, Rosie, there was no ‘rush to war.’) This NIE explicitly advocates policy – something the intelligence community is not supposed to do – and gives the impression that the intelligence information it chose to credit was pre-cooked in support of a political conclusion.
Read the whole thing.

I've just learned of this book, and Timmerman. He's got an interesting biography.

The Anti-Bush Forces and the NIE

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Here's Dr. Sanity on the Bush-bashers and the NIE:

Michael Ledeen at The Corner is starting to feel sorry for the poor schmucks who wrote the NIE:

This embarrassingly crafted bit of fluff has failed to pass muster in London, Paris, Berlin and Jerusalem, and in much of Washington and New York. Most of us thought this would put an end to any aggressive policy toward Tehran, but life is full of surprises and if anything the call for tougher sanctions is stronger today than it seemed last week.

He then gets to the heart of the issue for those who enthusiastically embraced the report and are determined to believe in the good intentions of Iran; i.e., compared to the evil, irrational and lying BushHitlerCheney entity, the Iranian Mullahs represent the essence of civilized, peaceful, and virtuous behavior.

The delusional abyss wherein this kind of leftist logic simmers and marinates is the part of the leftist mind that simply is unable to cope with a dangerous and frightening reality. In that dark void of the mind, BUSH=HITLER, BUSH IS WORSE THAN BIN LADEN; BUSH IS THE WORLD'S WORSE TERRORIST, AMERICA IS HUMANITY'S #1 ENEMY etc. etc. etc. because it is just too scary to contemplate the real danger that faces civilization. The logic that proceeds from the delusional premises, however, is impeccable: get rid of Bush/Cheney/America and the danger will vanish in a puff of magical smoke!

In psychiatry this phenomenon is called psychological displacement and you can read more about it
here, here, and here.

Like deer paralyzed with fear in the headlights of an oncoming train, people exhibiting this particular form of psychological denial are immobilized and frozen, focusing on trivialities and blithely unconcerned about the lethal danger that is speeding toward them. But they feel completely safe --for the moment anyway.

This reality and the consequences that go along with ignoring it are, of course, why displacement is considered neurotic and not a particularly healthy - or smart - way for adults to cope with the world.

See another psychiatrist on Bush Derangement Syndrome, and an example here.

Republican Race is Free-For-All

The new Washinton Post poll finds Mike Huckabee's pulling up to Rudy Giuliani nationally:

Three weeks before the first contest of the 2008 campaign, Republicans remain sharply divided over whom to choose as their presidential nominee and which of the five leading candidates best embodies the core values of a fractured GOP, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani continues to lead the Republican field in the national poll, but his support is at its lowest point this year. Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, has more than doubled his support among likely GOP voters since early November and runs just behind Giuliani.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, former senator Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.) and Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) also draw double-digit support in the new poll, hinting at a potential free-for-all when the voting begins in Iowa and New Hampshire early next month.

The Democratic race nationally continues to feature Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) far ahead of Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and the rest of the field. But a highly competitive campaign in Iowa pitting Clinton, Obama and former senator John Edwards (N.C.), along with signs of a tightening contest in New Hampshire, suggest that the Democratic race is also far from settled.

The new poll found that the issues driving voters are shifting rapidly. Concerns about the economy are on the rise and assessments of current conditions in Iraq have eased slightly, propelling the nation's economic picture and jobs to the top of people's concerns. Although the range of issues could further destabilize the nomination battles, most of the uncertainty stems from more basic questions about the candidates.

In the Republican race, Huckabee's surge in Iowa, where he has overtaken longtime front-runner Romney in recent polls, has begun to translate to the national stage, further shaking up a race that has been volatile from the outset.

Although many of the candidates have been campaigning for nearly a year, the Republican electorate appears more fragmented now than at any previous point in the race. Asked which candidate best reflects the core values of the Republican Party, 18 percent said McCain, Giuliani and Huckabee were each cited by 16 percent, 14 percent picked Romney, and 13 percent named Thompson. As if to punctuate the confusion, 16 percent said they had no opinion.
I like that last set of stats: John McCain polls highest on core GOP values!

As I noted yesterday, McCain's picking up a lot of favorables in national polling, which could translate into more electoral support in the series of primaries held after the contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.

I still think it's a long-shot for him, but as the Post notes, "the Republican electorate appears more fragmented now than at any previous point in the race."

We'll see.


See also my posts on recent media endorsements of McCain, here and here.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Giuliani's Resiliency

Rudolf Giuliani's still got some wind in his sails, according to this Wall Street Journal article:

Rudy Giuliani's quest for the Republican presidential nomination is running into turbulence.

After selling himself more successfully than many expected, the former New York mayor's lead in national polls is narrowing. He could lose four early primary states -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan and South Carolina -- before reaching more favorable territory, such as Florida, New York and California. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's surge is rallying evangelicals and social conservatives who up until now have been divided and dispirited. The business dealings of Mr. Giuliani's company are under increasing scrutiny.

But like the city he once ran, Mr. Giuliani on the campaign trail is also turning out to be more resilient than expected -- drawing on decades of retail politics in New York as he works crowds with ease and vigor.

As his lead has narrowed in the past month, Mr. Giuliani has unleashed a blizzard of television ads in New Hampshire touting his economic record in New York and his toughness on terrorism. He has come out in support of a Supreme Court challenge to gun-control laws in an effort to bolster his support among conservative Republicans. He has lashed out at Mitt Romney in a televised debate, accusing him of running a "sanctuary mansion" because the lawn service Mr. Romney used employed illegal immigrants.

What his supporters and opponents are wondering is whether these moves and his campaign skills will be enough to overcome the hurdles that are coming into clearer and closer view.

Read the whole thing.

I'm less enthusiastic about Giuliani as I had been. His YouTube debate performance was weak. I don't know, but something turned me off with the nasty attacks on Mitt Romney.

After John McCain I don't really have a favorite. Electability in the general election is a key, so Giuliani might have an edge over Mike Huckabee in that respect.

We'll see.

President Bush Surging at End of Tenure

Ron Christie, over at The Hill, argues that President Bush is surging at the end of his term, despite public perception to the contrary:

Recent polls placing President Bush’s approval numbers near 30 percent miss an important distinction: The policies and positions the president has advocated since 2001 have led to significant results in recent days. In short, the presidency of George W. Bush is surging, rather than waning, with little more than one year remaining in his term.

On the domestic front, the tax cuts the president pushed through the Congress have led to remarkable economic growth, low unemployment and record-high tax receipts that members of Congress can hardly wait to spend. New data released last week showed that America added 94,000 jobs in November 2007 — capping a remarkable 51 straight months in which jobs have been created in our economy. Despite partisan claims that the economy is soft, more than 8.3 million jobs have been created since August 2003 and unemployment remains low (4.7 percent). America remains open for business.

More Americans have more money in their savings accounts and in their wallets as a result of the Bush tax cuts. Despite talk on Capitol Hill of rolling back the president’s tax cuts that “benefit only the wealthy” Democrats have been loathe to pass legislation and return to their districts to explain why raising taxes and eliminating the popular $500 per child tax credit is good public policy. Not going to happen anytime soon.

Roundly criticized back in 2001 for his position on stem cell research, the president’s resolve and strength to draw a moral boundary line to protect innocent unborn life has been vindicated. Despite the yammering that the president had hampered scientific progress in stem cell research, despite the vicious demagogy and false claims that if the president hadn’t placed restrictions on how federal funds were spent, people would rise and walk from their wheelchairs, scientists announced last week they could produce an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells. Or put another way, the president’s decision to draw a bright moral line against destroying human life while providing federal dollars for the first time to stimulate stem cell research has proven successful. The silence in the media about this remarkable development has been deafening.

Equally deafening have been the media (and congressional Democrats’) reaction to success on the ground in Iraq. After linking vital resources to fight the war on terrorism to a timetable for troop withdrawals, Congress has failed on numerous occasions in recent months to hamstring the president’s ability to conduct the war as commander in chief. And despite claims that the surge of troops and the leadership of Gen. David Petraeus and President Bush have failed, even ardent foe Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) has concluded that the surge in Iraq is working.

Not content to celebrate the success of our brave men and women in uniform who put their lives on the line every day to provide stability in a volatile region of the world, congressional Democrats now claim that while the surge might be working, the Iraqis have “failed” to produce meaningful political results on the ground. Once again, facts get in the way of those on the Hill who are pressing — wishing — for an American defeat on the ground in Iraq.

Absent from media coverage of late is the fact that the central government of Iraq has reached its 2007 budget revenue target of $30.2 billion. This figure is derived from oil revenues — revenues of which the Democrats have criticized the Iraqis and President Bush for not capturing to fund the cost of the new government in Baghdad. This criticism now rings hollow.

Similarly, 40 Iraqi leaders were killed in Iraq during the month of November and Lt. General Ray Odierno has reported that the has been a 23-week decline — nearly six months — in insurgent deaths and attacks upon Iraqi civilians. This decrease in violence has led thousands of civilians to return to the country each and every day to reopen their schools, businesses and neighborhoods that have long been abandoned due to violence.

In Mosul, the airport opened for the first time in 14 years for commercial aviation flights. In a region of the country long associated with violence, Iraqi Airlines is now open for business. While there is always a potential for violence to flare up, Iraqi civilians have returned home to provinces all around the country that had previously been strongholds held by terrorists and Saddam loyalists.

Political stability long thought to be an elusive dream is becoming a daily reality across Iraq.

From the surge in Iraq, vindication with his stem cell position and strong economic development on the home front, President George W. Bush has hit his stride and is surging rather than limping into his last year in office. For those who have counted him out, the president remains resolute, perhaps comfortable in the knowledge that history, rather than bitter partisans in Washington, will favorably reflect on his two terms in office for waging an effective war against terrorism while demonstrating capable stewardship and remarkable domestic accomplishments during a time of war.

I've made similar statements on the prospects of a favorable Bush legacy. History will mark G.W. Bush as one of America's great presidents.

Iowa Republicans Not Sure on Eve of Vote

Adam Nagourny and Megan Thee report the results of the latest New York Times poll on the Iowa caucuses. Republican voters are up in the air on their choices:

Three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Republican voters across the country appear uninspired by their field of presidential candidates, with a vast majority saying they have not made a final decision about whom to support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Not one of the Republican candidates is viewed favorably by even half the Republican electorate, the poll found. And in a sign of the fluidity of the race, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, who barely registered in early polls several months ago, is now locked in a tight contest nationally with Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney.

By contrast, Democrats are happier with their field and more settled in their decisions. For all the problems Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to be having holding off her rivals in Iowa and New Hampshire, she remains strong nationally, the poll found. Even after what her aides acknowledge have been two of the roughest months of her candidacy, she is viewed by Democrats as a far more electable presidential nominee than either Senator Barack Obama or John Edwards.

Not only do substantially more Democratic voters judge her to be ready for the presidency than believe Mr. Obama is prepared for the job, the poll found, but more Democrats also see Mrs. Clinton rather than Mr. Obama as someone who can unite the country.

The Republican and Democratic nominating contests, which begin with the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, are approaching at a time of anxiety and uncertainty. Americans, the poll found, think the economy is bad and getting worse. A vast majority think the country is heading in the wrong direction. More people cite the Iraq war as the most important issue facing the country than cite any other matter, and though 38 percent say the dispatch of extra troops to Iraq this year is working, a majority continue to say that undertaking the war was a mistake.

The candidates are running against a backdrop of a decidedly negative view of Washington. At 21 percent, the approval rating for this Democratic-led Congress is at a new low, reflecting the defection of independent voters, a potentially worrisome development for Democrats going into next year’s Congressional elections. President Bush’s approval rating is at 28 percent, one point above the lowest of his tenure.

The poll confirmed that former President Bill Clinton was an effective campaign weapon for his wife. Forty-four percent of Democratic voters say Mr. Clinton’s involvement will make them more likely to support her. In fact, about as many of Mrs. Clinton’s backers say they are supporting her because of her husband as say they are supporting her because of her own experience.

The poll found that just 1 percent said they might be swayed by the involvement of Oprah Winfrey, who has been campaigning for Mr. Obama in Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire the last three days, drawing huge crowds and allowing his campaign to identify new supporters.

The nationwide telephone poll, of 1,028 voters, was taken from last Wednesday through Sunday and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. Within that group, 266 respondents identified themselves as likely Republican voters, and 417 as likely Democratic voters; the margin of sampling error among the Democrats is five percentage points, and among the Republicans six percentage points.

More than anything else, the poll underlines sharp differences between the Republican and Democratic electorate in how each views its candidates. Democratic voters, on the whole, see their candidates considerably more favorably than Republicans see theirs.
Read the whole thing.

An encouraging sign for John McCain backers: Thirty-seven percent of Iowa voters hold positive views of John McCain. The Arizona Senator is second to Rudy Giuliani. While McCain's largely conceded the Iowa caucuses, his favorables there might translate into less of rout than expected, which could redound positively on the New Hampshire and South Carolina races, especially if either Mitt Romney or Giuliance faces an upset in one of the early contests.

Note this as well:

In the national poll by The Times and CBS News, Republican voters said by 61 percent to 27 percent that they were looking for a presidential candidate who had the right experience rather than one with new ideas. Democrats were far more evenly divided on which of those two qualities was more important.
This is a point Ron Claiborne raised in his comment yesterday at ABC News.

See also my posts on recent media endorsements of McCain,
here and here.

Monday, December 10, 2007

How McCain Could Win

Ron Claiborne over at ABC News suggests how John McCain might win the GOP nomination:

A year ago, he was the odds-on favorite to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2008. Today, he's considered a long shot.

His campaign has rebounded from a near implosion in the summer, but in these crucial weeks before the first balloting in January in Iowa, John McCain has been eclipsed by the emergence of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as a serious contender, the Mitt Romney religion speech and recent Romney-Rudy Giuliani verbal fracas. Yet political analysts say do not count the Arizona senator out yet.

Down, but Not Out

"The reality is, as it's been for many, many months is that the [Republican] candidates all have weaknesses and at the end of the day John McCain is hoping that Republican voters take a deep breath, reassess the candidate and say it's not about a specific position on immigration or campaign finance reform, it's about strength and leadership and toughness in standing up in the war against terror," said Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report.

"If that's how Republicans decide, they may come back to him and decide 'Well, I rejected him six months ago, but he looks like the best of the lot now.'"

It will not be easy for McCain to pull off, but there are scenarios  for McCain a "perfect storm" of events breaking his way, according to some pundits  in which he could still wrest the GOP nomination away from his rivals.

One of them goes something like this: Huckabee wins the Iowa caucus Jan. 3 and Romney finishes second. McCain is running far behind in Iowa and barely campaigning there.

A Romney win could propel him to victory in New Hampshire where he now leads McCain in the polls, so, for McCain, it is critical that Romney be stopped in Iowa. A Huckabee win in Iowa would be a huge setback for Romney, who has invested time and money - lots of money - into winning there followed by New Hampshire for an early one-two punch that would ignite his campaign.

Meanwhile, McCain has been concentrating instead on New Hampshire, which holds the first primary five days after Iowa.

Eye on New Hampshire

He spent most of the last week in New Hampshire and is now running a television commercial (on New England sports channels) featuring Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling pitching McCain as "a man of principle who sticks to his guns."

Schilling may not exactly be the most popular guy on his team nationally, but among New England sports fans he's the heroic figure who helped pitch the Sox to victory in the now legendary curse-busting 2004 World Series.

A Romney loss in Iowa could open the door in New Hampshire for McCain. He and the Granite State have a "relationship" that goes back to 2000 when he stunned George W. Bush in the GOP primary and won by 19 points.

McCain remains popular there, admired even by some voters who have drifted away this year to Romney or Giuliani. He draws large, enthusiastic crowds to his campaign events, and recently won the key endorsement of the state's newspaper, the New Hampshire Union-Leader.

While McCain's prominent support of the doomed immigration bill hurts him, he is also the rare Republican to talk about the issue of climate change - a big deal to many in New Hampshire - and the liability of his early support for the troop surge in Iraq has turned into an asset now that it seems to be succeeding.

Comeback Kid?

A McCain win in the New Hampshire primary would be huge. It would spell serious trouble for Romney and slow the Huckabee boom.

McCain would be anointed the latest comeback kid and bask in the glow of renewed media attention and just maybe get a second look by Republican voters.

"It would certainly create a boomlet for him after New Hampshire," Rothenberg said. "It would give him an opportunity to raise more money and get more visibility. But it's still tough for him. There are still a lot of conservatives who will never support [him] even because of his leadership on immigration, his position on campaign finance reform. There are many Republicans who see him as his time has passed. So, even a strong showing in New Hampshire, it would be a plus, it would certainly help his campaign, but it [would] still be uphill the rest of the way."

South Carolina

To maintain the momentum from a New Hampshire win, McCain would have to do well in the South Carolina primary 11 days later.

In 2000, South Carolina dealt McCain what would turn out to be a fatal setback. But he is decently positioned there this time. He's been campaigning in the state often in recent weeks. He has the backing of South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham.

The Palmetto State has a large number of military retirees, and Democrats and independents can cross over to vote in the Republican primary.

Some Republicans might even be feeling a little guilty about the nasty negative campaign of 2000 in which McCain was the target of planted rumors that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock.

If McCain can prevail in South Carolina - even a close second-place finish might be good enough - the Republican race could be turned upside down. Romney would be down and probably out.

Giuliani would be left still looking for a win after the big three of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Huckabee would be stalled. And former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson would be 0 for 3 and likely reeling. And McCain would be rolling.
That sounds good to me!

See also my recent post, "
Endorsing John McCain."

Hezbollah Rearms for the Next Attack on Israel

The week's U.S. News reports that Hezbollah's rebuilding its military power as it bides its time until the next conflict over Israel's destruction. The piece says that no foreigners are allowed in Hezbollah's new "security zone" just north of Lebanon's Litani River:

There is a good reason why the Lebanese Shiite movement, designated a terrorist group by the United States, wants to avoid prying eyes. Hezbollah, by various accounts, is establishing new bunkers, arms caches, and other military positions, replacing those it lost a few miles to the south after the 2006 war with Israel. For years, Hezbollah controlled the rock-strewn hills south of the Litani River to the Israeli border. As part of a cease-fire, some 13,500 United Nations peacekeepers and 15,000 Lebanese troops now patrol southernmost Lebanon, creating a buffer zone south of the Litani. Hezbollah has refused to disarm as called for under the U.N. resolution that ended last year's 34-day war.

As new Israeli-Palestinian peace talks get underway, Israeli officials have reason to be concerned about developments in Lebanon, where Hezbollah's leaders vow no letup in their hostility to the Jewish state. The group is building up positions just north of the Litani River, reportedly buying land from Christian and Druze villagers. The location puts Hezbollah's paramilitary force still within range to fire rockets at Israel but away from the prying eyes of the U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese Army. The location also overlaps routes to the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, which has been the supply point for clandestine arms trafficking and training and logistics bases.

Hezbollah officials openly brag about the rebuilding without disclosing specifics, a common Hezbollah public-relations tactic that makes it hard to separate fact from bluster. "Of course we were able to rearm, and why shouldn't we? We are the legitimate resistance of Lebanon and are the only force capable of protecting the people from Israel. We have also added many new fighters since the war, but I won't tell you what new weapons we have, I just promise we have them," says one Hezbollah commander who has been a reliable, if vague, source of information in the past.

Regional intelligence officials confirm the rearming and point to Hezbollah's access to high-tech weaponry and training from Iran and Syria. In many cases, the group has been equipped with the latest generations of Russian-made weaponry, which allowed it to successfully fight the Israeli military directly in 2006 instead of relying on the guerrilla tactics that forced Israel from southern Lebanon in 2000 after 18 years of occupation. Israel has complained to the United Nations that Hezbollah's new arsenal includes rockets with a range of 155 miles, capable of hitting Tel Aviv. "They have what they need to fight and the expertise to use it. They're brilliant at adapting weaponry to their tactics and vice versa," said a regional intelligence official earlier this year. "The war changed nothing."

At this point, Hezbollah is caught up in a domestic power struggle with Lebanon's western-backed government led by Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, which wants Hezbollah fighters disarmed or incorporated into the Army. Hezbollah asserts it is not required to disarm since Lebanese law recognizes it as a "resistance" group against Israel, not a militia. Iran and Syria, meanwhile, may see a rearmed Hezbollah as a deterrent threat to the United States and Israel amid the tensions over Iran's nuclear activities and Syria's support for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, anti-Israel groups that the United States classifies as terrorist organizations.

Analysts don't anticipate Hezbollah's instigating a new war with Israel in the near term. But many were caught by surprise when a cross-border Hezbollah attack on an Israeli patrol set off the war in July 2006.
Note the passage on Hezbollah's allies:

Regional intelligence officials confirm the rearming and point to Hezbollah's access to high-tech weaponry and training from Iran and Syria.
Why would Syria and Iran be backing Hezbollah, other than to complete by proxy their designs for annihilation of the Jewish state?

I think actions speak louder than words. Peaceniks claim Iran has no designs for regional nuclear preponerance, and Bush opponents keep hammering the administration, perhaps with vague hopes for a diplomatic solution to Iran's growing power and revisionism.

See my earlier posts on
containing Iran and Persian Gulf power politics.

Military Families Unhappy With President Bush

The latest Los Angeles Times poll finds that President Bush has lost the support of military families. Here's the introduction:

Families with ties to the military, long a reliable source of support for wartime presidents, disapprove of President Bush and his handling of the war in Iraq, with a majority concluding the invasion was not worth it, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

The views of the military community, which includes active-duty service members, veterans and their family members, mirror those of the overall adult population, a sign that the strong military endorsement that the administration often pointed to has dwindled in the war's fifth year.

Nearly six out of every 10 military families disapprove of Bush's job performance and the way he has run the war, rating him only slightly better than the general population does.

And among those families with soldiers, sailors and Marines who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, 60% say that the war in Iraq was not worth the cost, the same result as all adults surveyed.

"I don't see gains for the people of Iraq . . . and, oh, my God, so many wonderful young people, and these are the ones who felt they were really doing something, that's why they signed up," said poll respondent Sue Datta, 61, whose youngest son, an Army staff sergeant, was seriously wounded in Iraq last year and is scheduled to redeploy in 2009. "I pray to God that they did not die in vain, but I don't think our president is even sensitive at all to what it's like to have a child serving over there."

Patience with the war, which has now lasted longer than the U.S. involvement in World War II, is wearing thin -- particularly among families who have sent a service member to the conflict. One-quarter say American troops should stay "as long as it takes to win." Nearly seven in 10 favor a withdrawal within the coming year or "right away."

Military families are only slightly more patient: 35% are willing to stay until victory; 58% want the troops home within a year or sooner.

Read the whole thing.

It's certainly not unreasonable to expect military families to reflect general dissatisfaction with the administration and Iraq. The war has been prolonged, and tremendous strains have been placed on our service personnel.

I would note, though, that the Times sample is small: the survey contacted 631 respondents from military families and 152 who have had someone in their family stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan (there is a 4 percent and 8 percent margin of sampling error, respectively).

Also, I get the feeling of buyer's remorse in some of the quotes from survey respondents, for example:

"The man went into Iraq without justification, without a plan; he just decided to go in there and win, and he had no idea what was going to happen," said poll respondent Mary Meneely, 58, of Arco, Minn. Her son, an Air Force reservist, served one tour in Afghanistan. "There have been terrible deaths on our side, and it's even worse for the Iraqi population. It's another Vietnam."

With all due respect to Ms. Meneely, I don't find that to be a particulary incisive comment on the origins, conduct, and historical consequences of the war. (Perhaps the Times could have provided interview responses more supportive of the administration's policies for some balance.)

The Times also suggests that their finding are similar to those of the 2005 Military Times poll, which also found military unhappiness with the Bush administration. See Mudville Gazette for an analysis of that poll.

Greyhawk at Mudville suggests the Military Times findings reflected pre-surge disatisfaction with the way the war was being prosecuted. Thus with the current Times poll we should have expected to see a rebound in support if that hypothesis were true.

I think we have real war-weariness among military families, just like among the general public. As American success continues in Iraq - and we see reduced pressure on enlistees - we should see the numbers come up some, as is happening in public opinion generally.

Gulf States Recognize Iranian Threat

This Max Boot essay, published earlier in the week, argues that the Arab states of the Persian Gulf understand the true nature of the Iranian threat:


The release of the new National Intelligence Estimate will provide more fodder for those who claim that "neoconservative ideologues" and the "Israel lobby" are overly alarmed about the rise of Iran. In reality, some of those most worried about the mullahs wear flowing headdresses, not yarmulkes, and they have good cause for concern, notwithstanding the sanguine tilt many news accounts put on the NIE.

I recently visited the Persian Gulf region as part of a delegation of American policy wonks organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Throughout our meetings in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, the top issue was Iran's ambitions to dominate the region.

Evidence of those imperial designs is not hard to find. The Iranians are aiding extremists who are undermining nascent democracies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. The beneficiaries of Tehran's largess include Hamas, Hezbollah and even, the evidence indicates, al Qaeda. (Saudi officials are quietly furious that Tehran has given refuge to some suspects in the 2003 Riyadh attacks.) Iran is building up its military arsenal, and has threatened to shut down the Persian Gulf (or, as Arabs call it, the Arabian Gulf).

What particularly concerns Gulf Arabs is the possibility that Iran could go nuclear--a concern unlikely to be erased by the ambiguous findings of the new NIE. While this NIE claims that Iran stopped its nuclear-weapons program in 2003 (in direct contradiction to an NIE finding issued just two years ago that "Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons"), it concedes that "Iran's civilian uranium enrichment program is continuing." Such a "civilian" program could be converted speedily and stealthily to military use. As the new NIE notes, "Iran has the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so."

That thought fills Sunni Arabs with dread. "If we accept Iran as a nuclear power that is like accepting Hitler in 1933-34," warned one senior Arab official, using the kind of analogy that back in Washington would get him dismissed as a neocon warmonger.
Read the whole thing. Boot argues that the Gulf states possess the military capabilities to act preventively against Iran's nuclear development program.

See also my earlier post, "Containing Iran"?

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Are We Fighting World War IV?

Peter Beinart has a stimulating essay at today's Los Angeles Times, "Is This Really World War IV?" Check it out:
Last month, observers reacted with alarm to President Bush's declaration that if Iran gained the knowledge necessary to build a nuclear bomb, it would risk World War III. Perhaps they should have looked on the bright side. Compared with prominent conservative commentators, Bush revealed himself to be something of a dove. By warning about World War III, after all, he implied that we are not already fighting World War IV.

On the right, "World War IV" has become one of the most popular ways to describe America's conflict with the practitioners of violent jihad. It started with Eliot Cohen of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced and International Studies, who insisted just two months after 9/11 that we should call our new war by this "less palatable but more accurate name." After that, the term was picked up by Norman Podhoretz, the longtime editor of Commentary who is now an advisor to Rudolph W. Giuliani -- and who has made it the title of a recent book. Along the way it has entered the vocabulary of such conservative commentators as William Bennett, Michael Ledeen, R. James Woolsey and Larry Kudlow. Don't be surprised if a Republican presidential candidate uses it one of these days.

The shift from the "war on terror" to "World War IV" may seem semantic, but in subtle ways it fundamentally recasts not only the conflict we're in today but the one we fought for almost 50 years against the Soviet Union. To believe the United States is fighting World War IV, after all, you have to believe that during the second half of the last century, we fought World War III.

But did we? The truth is that the United States didn't fight World War III; we fought a "Cold War," which was the exact opposite. The whole reason Walter Lippmann invented the term in 1947 was to describe a state of geopolitical hostility that didn't include military conflict: That's what made it cold. The clear contrast was with World War II, in which America lost hundreds of thousands of troops in battlefield confrontations with Nazi Germany and Japan. Lippmann's term stuck because America's standoff with the Soviet Union never devolved into that kind of global war.
To be sure, each side aided local proxies, sometimes even sending in its own troops (as the U.S. and China did in Korea, and the Soviets did in Afghanistan). But unlike during World War I and World War II, Europe's industrial heartland remained at peace, regional wars never became globalized and American and Soviet troops never fought one another in any significant way.
Read the whole thing.

I think the idea that "Europe's industrial heartland remained at peace" or that "regional wars never became globalized" is an extremely narrow interpretation of events.

Citizens in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Poland (under Soviet puppet Jaruzelski circa 1981) might quibble with Beinart's notion of a peaceful European industrial heartland. Sure, we didn't enter into physical hostilities with East Bloc armies, but our deterrent strength in Western Europe kept the lid on the outbreak of a more deadly reign of terror.

And regional wars? Moscow's expansionist designs in areas such as Angola, the Arab world, Ethiopia, and Central America starting in the 1970s represented a dramatic strategic challenge to America's Western-led international order. Indeed, following U.S. defeat in Vietnam, America's geopolitical position was grim. South Vietnam fell to the Soviet-equipped North Vietnamese regime, and American power was ejected from the South Asian landmass, which had disastrous implication for regional stability and human rights.

That being said, I agree with Beinart that the World War IV nomenclature is difficult to defend in terms of "hot war" designations.
Normal Podhoretz's notion of the war on terror as World War IV is polemical. In truth, though, he's one of the few who's willing to state clearly and forcefully the existential nature of our times, and least in the "long war" sense of the terror war as a new, frighteningly cold-war-like geopolitical struggle.

Times have changed as well. There's much less unity in foreign policy than was the case during earlier eras, especially before Vietnam. Everything's partisan and polarized in foreign policy, and even the mention of the use of force among leftists brings out calls of fascist ascendency in the United States.

We're not fighting World War IV. But we are fighting implacable foes who would eliminate the U.S. if they could. This we must not forget, irrespective of semantic differences.

Republicans on the Fringe in Academe

Robert Maranto, an associate professor of political science at Villanova University, has an interesting article on Republicans in the academy at today's Washington Post. Here's the introduction:

Are university faculties biased toward the left? And is this diminishing universities' role in American public life? Conservatives have been saying so since William F. Buckley Jr. wrote "God and Man at Yale" -- in 1951. But lately criticism is coming from others -- making universities face some hard questions.

At a Harvard symposium in October, former Harvard president and Clinton Treasury secretary Larry Summers argued that among liberal arts and social science professors at elite graduate universities, Republicans are "the third group," far behind Democrats and even Ralph Nader supporters. Summers mused that in Washington he was "the right half of the left," while at Harvard he found himself "on the right half of the right."

I know how he feels. I spent four years in the 1990s working at the centrist Brookings Institution and for the Clinton administration and felt right at home ideologically. Yet during much of my two decades in academia, I've been on the "far right" as one who thinks that welfare reform helped the poor, that the United States was right to fight and win the Cold War, and that environmental regulations should be balanced against property rights.

All these views -- commonplace in American society and among the political class -- are practically verboten in much of academia. At many of the colleges I've taught at or consulted for, a perusal of the speakers list and the required readings in the campus bookstore convinced me that a student could probably go through four years without ever encountering a right-of-center view portrayed in a positive light.

A sociologist I know recalls that his decision to become a registered Republican caused "a sensation" at his university. "It was as if I had become a child molester," he said. He eventually quit academia to join a think tank because "you don't want to be in a department where everyone hates your guts."

Maranto believes that mention of his Republican leanings during a recruiting dinner with a hiring committee knocked him out of contention for the job. He also provides a nice set of statistics on the paucity of Republicans at research institutions, and he shows how ideological narrow-mindedness is stultifying:

All this is bad for society because academics' ideological blinders make it more difficult to solve domestic problems and to understand foreign challenges. Moreover, a leftist ideological monoculture is bad for universities, rendering them intellectually dull places imbued with careerism rather than the energy of contending ideas, a point made by academic critics across the ideological spectrum from Russell Jacoby on the left to Josiah Bunting III on the right.

It's odd that my university was one of only a handful in Pennsylvania to have held a debate on the Iraq War in 2003. That happened because left-leaning Villanova professors realized that to be fair they needed to expose students to views different from their own, so they invited three relatively conservative faculty members to take part in a discussion of the decision to invade. Though I was then a junior faculty member arguing the unpopular (pro-war) side, I knew that my senior colleagues would not hold it against me.

Yet a conservative friend at another university had an equal and opposite experience. When he told his department chair that he and a liberal colleague planned to publicly debate the decision to invade Iraq, his chair talked him out of it, saying that it could complicate his tenure decision two years down the road. On the one hand, the department chair was doing his job, protecting a junior faculty member from unfair treatment; on the other hand, he shouldn't have had to.

Unfortunately, critics are too often tone deaf about the solutions to academia's problems. Conservative activist David Horowitz and Students for Academic Freedom, a group he supports, advocate an Academic Bill of Rights guaranteeing equality for ideological minorities (typically conservatives) and ensuring that faculty are hired and promoted and students graded solely on the basis of their competence and knowledge, not their ideology or religion. That sounds great in theory, but it could have the unintended consequence of encouraging any student who gets a C to plead ideological bias.

Ultimately, universities will have to clean their own houses. Professors need to re-embrace a culture of reasoned inquiry and debate. And since debate requires disagreement, higher education needs to encourage intellectual diversity in its hiring and promotion decisions with something like the fervor it shows for ethnic and racial diversity. It's the only way universities will earn back society's respect and reclaim their role at the center of public life.

Maranto's discussion rings very true in my own circumstances. I became a 9/11 Republican after my own participation on an Iraq panel on March 19, 2003. Since then, I've had open ideological battles with a number of my faculty colleagues. One radical feminist philosopher on my floor turns up her nose and looks askance when passing me in the hallway. This is a woman who I had previously lunched with on faculty professional development days.

I strive for collegiality, but I've staunchly defended the war on campus. We have an International ANSWER cell within my social science division. Labeled the "Campus Progressives," the group sponsors talks by far-left speakers, hosts film screenings of all the hard-left cinematic fare ("An Inconvenient Truth," "Fahrenheit 9/11," "Why We Fight"), and recruits students for revolutionary activism.

Occasionally I find misplaced sociology syllabi in the classrooms on campus, and works like The Power Elite - or others arguing the institutional racism line - form the core readings. They're not balanced by more conservative voices.

I participated in a recent campus forum on the Iraq war. I debated two Marxist professors who argued that President Bush was a "pathological liar" and that the Iraq war was a disastrous failure. I provided point-by-point rebuttals to their every claim, especially noting the dramatic successes of U.S. forces under the new war strategy of General David Petraeus.

Some members in the audience were smiling and shaking their heads in agreement as I confidently deflected the leftist hokum (some of the students had jaws agape when they heard my alternative version of events).

The coverage in my school's campus newspaper wasn't so positive, however, quoting only those lines from the antiwar speakers and dismissing my remarks as uninformed (the paper's a hard-left mouthpiece, and the student reporters have little professional guidance on accuracy, fairnesss, and impartiality). I wrote a post on the experience, here.

I've been encouraged this semester to have the pleasure to teach a number of conservative students. It's heartening to know that some students on campus have more common sense and traditional values than the a few of the professors who are leading them in their classrooms.

I should note, as well, that some of my political science colleagues are conservative, and they serve as faculty leaders in student mentoring programs on campus, myself included.

Keep hope alive!

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UPDATE: Well, surprise, surprise, surprise! This entry has hit a nerve with some lefty academics! See Lawyers, Guns and Money: "So Many Anecdotes!"

Regarding my division's philosophy professor who no longer speaks to me, post-Iraq 2003, here's this:

Hard as it may be to believe, there are times when adults - even those who share lunch once in a while - stop hanging out together. And yes, sometimes those personal ruptures occur because one person has exposed himself or herself as an idiot by supporting an ill-conceived war. But unless this "radical feminist" happens to sit on the writer's tenure/review committee; serve as his dean or department chair; or functions in any other way that actually imperils his professional status or future, there's no foul.

I would argue the "idiots" are those who have no clue of the war's justification in international law: Saddam violated the Gulf War truce 1991 and all of its disarmament protocols, including UN resolutions 687 and 689, and the 15 subsequent UN resolutions to enforce them. The last of these, Security Council Resolution 1441, gave Saddam one last chance to disarm, which he botched. The U.S. toppled his regime three months later.

The foul? Backing the Bush/Cheney cabal in Washington!

I've earned the opprobrium of a couple of my campus's most vocifierous Bush-bashers. This feud is common knowlege on my floor and has been the subject administrative review (which I mention as some of the commenters, in their nutty, bashing little innuendo-fest of a thread, are conjuring fantasies of impropriety).

No matter: It looks like "d" at LGM is good at throwing out a few ad hominems in the place of logic. That's an example of the academic style that shortchanges students and narrows the marketplace of ideas on campus - exactly the problem Maranto discussed in his original article (and ignored by the lefty big boys a Lawyers, Guns, and Money).

(P.S. Some of those in the audience "smiling and shaking their heads in agreement " spoke with me after the panel, offering me their congratulations for administering a decisive smackdown. I thanked them, indicating it wasn't difficult.)

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UPDATE II: Michael Van Der Galien provides his perspective on the Conservatives in Education debate. Michael deploys his cool-headed reasoning, as usual.

BTW, the link's to Michael's new blog, The PoliGazette. Head on over there and wish Michael good luck!

High Confidence in Iran's Continuing Threat

This week's national intelligence assessment says with “high confidence” that although Iran was indeed working on a bomb until the autumn of 2003 it then stopped. By the middle of this year it had probably (“moderate confidence”) not started again. And unless it got fuel for a bomb from abroad it would take at least until late 2009 (“moderate confidence”) but more likely between 2010 and 2015 to make it at home.

What is the baffled layman to make of this? First that intelligence is neither art nor science but a system of best guesses based on incomplete evidence. If new evidence suggests that the previous guesses were wrong, it is a good thing that spies are willing to say so. Some of the outraged hawks who want America to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities accuse the spies of sexing down their latest Iran dossier in order to make amends for having sexed up the one that led America into a war in Iraq. But that would imply a truly impressive conspiracy between the 16 agencies that signed the report. Of course, the spies' new assessment may be wrong, as their previous ones proved to be. But it is most unlikely to be a tissue of lies.

For that very reason, however, relieved doves who think the spectre of a nuclear Iran or of an American attack has now disappeared had better read the report again. Its final sentence says (“high confidence”) that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it chooses. As to what “eventually” means, the assessment has not changed: it was always late 2009 at the earliest but more probably the middle of the next decade. As to whether Iran will do so, the spies say (“moderate-to-high confidence”) that “at a minimum” it is keeping the option open.

That is troubling, because Iran can continue to work towards a bomb without resuming the secret programme America now thinks it stopped in 2003. That programme was about “weaponisation”: the fiddly business of making a device that can set off a chain reaction in nuclear fuel. But creating such a warhead is the easier part of building a bomb. Harder by far is making the fuel. And, as the report notes, making the fuel is precisely what Iran continues to do in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions at its uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz. For now, it is true, Iran is enriching the uranium at below weapons grade. It says it is doing so only in order to power reactors to produce electricity. But it has no such reactors. And to get the uranium to weapons grade it has only to run the stuff often enough through Natanz's centrifuges.

In short, nothing in the new assessment makes the story Iran tells about Natanz any less fishy or the dangers posed by its dash to enrich uranium any less troubling. But it has utterly changed the politics of the issue. The case for American pre-emption now becomes almost impossible to sell either at home or abroad. That is probably a good thing, given that a military attack was always likelier to restore Iran's determination to build a bomb than destroy its ability to get one. Unfortunately, the report may also make it harder for America and Europe to maintain, let alone sharpen, the sanctions the world has imposed in order to make Iran stop work at Natanz.

See also my earlier entries on the NIE, here, here, here, and here.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

NBC Won't Run Pro-Troop Ads Over Holidays

NBC television has rejected advertisements from the pro-victory public advocacy group, Freedom's Watch, available at You Tube:

FOX News has the story:

NBC has nixed holiday advertisements meant to thank troops for serving overseas in opposition to the inclusion of a non-profit's Web address.

The ads, paid for by the non-profit Freedom's Watch, are a simple thank you, the group says, with people shown paying gratitude to members of the military and the final frame showing the group's Web address,
http://www.freedomswatch.org/.

Click here and here to view the ads that NBC won't air.

NBC is refusing to air the ads as long as the address is included, according to an e-mail exchange between NBC and the group, which Freedom's Watch provided to FOX News.

"Per my previous email, the www.freedomswatch.org website will have to be redacted from the commercials for approval. This comes from Alan Wurtzel and Rick Cotton," according to one of the notes.

Wurtzel is president of research at NBC. Rick Cotton is general counsel for NBC Universal.

Speaking with FOX on Friday, Wurtzel said NBC has no problem with the content of the ad, specificallythe well-wishes to troops.

However, he said, the link to the website violates their policy on controversial issue advertising because it encourages political action and other activities. He said the policy is applied consistently across the board and this group was not targeted in any way.

Not targeted in any way?

These are essentially public service advertisements. No wonder conservatives rail against left-wing media bias.


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UPDATE: Via Opinnionnation Times, it turns out NBC has reversed itself:

NBC reversed course Saturday and decided to air a conservative group's television ad thanking U.S. troops.

The ad, by the group Freedom's Watch, asks viewers to remember the troops during the holiday season. NBC had refused to air the ad because it guides viewers to the Freedom's Watch Web site, which NBC said was too political.

But in a statement issued Saturday evening, NBC said:

"We have reviewed and changed our ad standards guidelines and made the decision that our policy will apply to content only and not to a referenced Web site. Based on these amended standards the Freedom's Watch ad will begin to run as early as Sunday."

NBC' head of standards and practices, Alan Wurtzel, notified Freedom's Watch's media consultant Saturday by e-mail, writing: "This will confirm that the Freedom's Watch spot is approved for air."
Hoorah!!

Antiwar General Switches Sides to Back Surge

Via Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard, check out this Washingon Post story by John Batiste and Pete Hegseth, "Getting Beyond Stalemate to Win a War":

Congress has been entangled in a war-funding debate that pits war "supporters" against antiwar "defeatists." With all sides seemingly entrenched, a stalemate looms. The Pentagon, meanwhile, will soon begin stripping money from its training budget to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Our military men and women deserve better than partisan politics; they deserve honest assessments of our nation's performance in fighting the Long War.

We are veterans of the Iraq war with vastly different experiences. Both of us commanded troops in Iraq. We, too, held seemingly entrenched, and incompatible, views upon our return. One of us spoke out against mismanagement of the war -- failed leadership, lack of strategy and misdirection. The other championed the cause of successfully completing our mission.

Our perspectives were different, yet not as stark as the "outspoken general" and "stay-the-course supporter" labels we received. Such labels are oversimplified and inaccurate, and we are united behind a greater purpose.

It's time to discuss the way forward rather than prosecute the past. Congress must do the same, for our nation and the troops.

Overall, this will require learning from our strategic blunders, acknowledging successes achieved by our courageous military and forging a bold path. We believe America can and must rally around five fundamental tenets:

First, the United States must be successful in the fight against worldwide Islamic extremism. We have seen this ruthless enemy firsthand, and its global ambitions are undeniable. This struggle, the Long War, will probably take decades to prosecute. Failure is not an option.

Second, whether or not we like it, Iraq is central to that fight. We cannot walk away from our strategic interests in the region. Iraq cannot become a staging ground for Islamic extremism or be dominated by other powers in the region, such as Iran and Syria. A premature or precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, without the requisite stability and security, is likely to cause the violence there -- which has decreased substantially but is still present -- to cascade into an even larger humanitarian crisis.

Third, the counterinsurgency campaign led by Gen. David Petraeus is the correct approach in Iraq. It is showing promise of success and, if continued, will provide the Iraqi government the opportunities it desperately needs to stabilize its country. Ultimately, however, these military gains must be cemented with regional and global diplomacy, political reconciliation, and economic recovery -- tools yet sufficiently utilized. Today's tactical gains in Iraq -- while a necessary pre-condition for political reconciliation -- will crumble without a deliberate and comprehensive strategy.

Fourth, our strategy in fighting the Long War must address Iran. Much has been made this week of the intelligence judgments that Iran has stopped its weapons program. No matter what, Iran must not be permitted to become a nuclear power. All options should be exhausted before we use military force, but force, nonetheless, should never be off the table. Diplomatic efforts -- from a position of strength, both regionally and globally -- must be used to engage our friends and coerce our enemies to apply pressure on the Iranian regime.

Fifth, our military capabilities need to match our national strategy. Our military is stretched thin and will be hard-pressed to maintain its current cycle of deployments. At this critical juncture, we cannot afford to be weak. Numbers and capacity matter.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, America was not mobilized for the Long War. This was an opportunity lost, but it is not too late. Many Americans are frustrated by the war effort, the burden of which has been shouldered by less than one percent of our citizenry. Our country is accustomed to winning. We deserve a comprehensive strategy that is focused on victory and guided by decisive leadership. America must succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we also cannot focus too narrowly on those conflicts. We need a regional and global strategy to defeat worldwide Islamic extremism to ensure a safer world today and for future generations.

The day after his famous Pearl Harbor speech, President Franklin D. Roosevelt again addressed the nation. "I was about to add that ahead there lies sacrifice for all of us," he said. "But it is not correct to use that word. The United States does not consider it a sacrifice to do all one can, to give one's best to our nation, when the nation is fighting for its existence and its future life." His words inspired the "Greatest Generation," and they should inspire us again today.

Americans must mobilize for the Long War -- bolster our strained military, galvanize industry to supply troops with what they need right now and fund the strategy with long-term solutions. We have no doubt that Americans will rally behind a call to arms.

America's veterans -- young and old -- are resolved to support and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. This commitment, and nothing less, should compel us to stand together, in and out of uniform. Would that Congress finds the courage to bury its pride and do the same.
Here's the significance of the essay, according to Goldfarb:

Major General John Batiste.... you will remember, is the formerly "antiwar" general who
spoke out against
Donald Rumsfeld, and who, until recently, was a Board Member of VoteVets.org (the antiwar MoveOn.org vets front group)....

There are two stories here: 1) A formerly anti-war general flips on supporting the war, and now believes Petraeus has the right strategy; and 2) Batiste has left VoteVets.org, and the antiwar movement, and joined up with the pro-troop, pro-surge, pro-victory Vets for Freedom.

The antiwar movement has lost one of its most powerful voices today, and it will be interesting to see whether they turn on one of their own, or come around to the view, supported by a preponderance of evidence, that the surge is working.
I'd simply add that nothing suceeds in Iraq like success.

Antwar opponents will argue that it was really ethnic cleansing that reduced casualties of late (not the change in strategy), but when an esteemed military commander renounces his previous antiwar position - and the movement he backed - that's big news.

Hillary Clinton Strains to Build Sisterhood Solidarity

Today's Wall Street Journal provides an excellent analysis of Hillary Clinton's struggles in attracting professional women to her campaign:

She's the ultimate professional woman. So you'd think Hillary Clinton's biggest source of support would be other alpha females.

But as the New York senator's presidential campaign works to mobilize women executives, doctors and lawyers around America, it's getting a reality check: Many have resisted the call-up. So far, she's doing better among women of more modest means.

Professional women are "much harder sells" than men, says a Clinton campaign adviser. "They're tough." They are less inclined than men to see things in black and white, and seek more information before deciding, this adviser says. Events for businesswomen must be substantive, because they frequently ask more questions than businessmen, Sen. Clinton's advisers say. At one such Clinton event, former tennis star Billie Jean King and other supporters tried to pump up the crowd as if it were a political rally. The feedback from attendees, says senior campaign adviser Ann Lewis, was "less rah-rah, more substance."

Dr. Janice Werbinski, past president of American Medical Women's Association and an early Clinton supporter, says she didn't like the New York senator's answers in a recent conference call for female physicians. "Now I'm having second thoughts," she says.

"I saw the same thing when I ran for Senate the first time in 2000," Sen. Clinton said in an interview on Wednesday afternoon. "Professional women were the last to close for me." They were not about to support her just because of her gender, she said. "This is very much in line with what I've seen" in past campaigns.

Among all women - Democrats, Republicans and independents - feelings toward Sen. Clinton vary with professional status, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC national poll, taken in early November. Among nonprofessionals, 52% said they had positive impressions of her, while 38% were negative. But women who identify themselves as professionals or managers were markedly less enthusiastic, with 42% reporting positive impressions, and 44% negative.

What expains this? The article continues:

One theory about Sen. Clinton's weaker numbers among professional women is that more-affluent women aren't as worried about health care, child care, the minimum wage and other issues important to nonprofessionals. But in the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, professional women gave her lower ratings than did nonprofessional women in such categories as "being honest and straightforward," "being compassionate enough to understand average people," "having high personal standards that set the proper moral tone for the country," and "being easygoing and likable." Both groups gave her high marks for being "knowledgeable and experienced enough to handle the presidency."

"Women who work on their feet -- nurses, teachers -- strongly prefer Hillary," says Geraldine Laybourne, founder and former chief executive officer of Oxygen Media LLC, now a unit of NBC Universal, who's helping the Clinton campaign. The goal, she says, is to "make visible that women in business support Hillary" in order to build that base.

What's Clinton's response?

Critics of Sen. Clinton say she is trying to have it both ways -- to play down her gender with some audiences and to play it up with others.

"This is such a strange argument to make," Sen. Clinton said. "When I talk with women, I talk about what it's like to be a mom and daughter. If I talk to the armed services, I talk about how I would be as a commander-in-chief." Different circumstances, she said, require different approaches. "Moms who work in business don't act the same with their kids or at the office."

The Los Angeles Times covered this story yesterday, "The Clinton Resisters":

On paper, they look an awful lot like Hillary Rodham Clinton. They are professional women of a certain age -- politically active Democrats, liberals, unabashed feminists who remember what it was like to be told they could not become firefighters or university department heads, let alone president of the United States of America.

They are women of accomplishment who have bumped up against glass ceilings, sometimes breaking them, while managing marriages, raising children and trying to make the world their version of a better place.

They have waited a long, long time for a plausible female presidential candidate. You'd think they'd be rushing to support Clinton. But they can't stand her.

"She leaves me cold," said Sidonie Smith, who chairs the University of Michigan English department. "I hate to say that. It's a very strange feeling to have."

Like her husband, former President Clinton, Hillary Clinton has inspired highly mixed emotions over the years. For the political right, she has served as a protean symbol of everything wrong with Democrats and feminists.

For upscale women on the left -- historically her toughest crowd -- negative reaction has been more nuanced. Polls show that blue-collar women see her as a defender of their economic interests. But their well-educated upper-middle-class sisters, who aren't as worried about job security, feel free to judge her as they would a peer. She has recently gained substantial ground with this constituency, but polls continue to show that fully half of college-educated Democratic women do not support her.

The reasons vary. For many, it's visceral. While they struggled to break through institutional barriers in the workplace, Clinton hitched her star to her man and followed him to the top. When his philandering imperiled his political career, she not only pulled him out of the fire but helped orchestrate attacks against his accusers.

For others, the anger they feel is purely political. Some are disappointed by her support of the Iraq war, her reluctance to take stands on some hot-button issues or the fact that she has re-created herself as a centrist.

Read the whole thing.

Why aren't women going for Clinton? Ann Althouse has a clue:

The classic feminist diagnosis would be: sexism. Did you think feminism immunized you from sexism? You consciously favor the advancement of women, but then when you look at a particular woman who is at the point of advancement, you think: Yes, but not her.

But is this what we are feeling about Hillary? I think not. Hillary is not just another professional woman of my generation, who ought to inspire sisterly empathy. She is a throwback to an earlier era, when women found their place through their husbands. The resistance I feel toward Hillary has to do do with her advancement under the aegis of a powerful man — a powerful man who seems to have diminished quite a number of women.

So, Hillary hitched her wagon to her male protector, Bill Clinton (she's been known to "stand by her man"). I've covered this topic before, writing in a previous post:

...as women executives get closer to bumping into the glass ceiling, they're less likely to support Clinton than are women at lower levels of workplace advancement. Perhaps Clinton's nanny state agenda is less attractive to women who've proven themselves entreprenurial, independent, and upwardly mobile (and less likely to be receptive to Clinton's redistributive policies).

You've got to love Clinton's contortions!

She's pulling out all the stops in pandering on gender: She had her mom stump for her in Des Moines last night. Chelsea Clinton's making the rounds today.

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UPDATE: See also the Washington Post's story on Hillary's gender rollout, "Clinton Team Turns Iowa Focus to Women."