Obama: No Pride in Saying "I Am an American"

I've been saying for weeks that folks need to pay attention to Barack Obama's words (see, for example, "Barack Obama and the Power of Words").

In speech after speech, I keep hearing more stridently oppositional language, opposition not just to the war, but to our very traditions.

Maybe it's just me, but listening to his concession speech in Texas last night left me disturbed. Obama made what I would consider statements of anti-Americanism. Particulary, like his wife, Obama says that Americans today cannot take pride in their country. He yearns for the future day - presumable under an Obama administration - when young Americans traveling abroad can again hold up their heads and announce with pride, "I am an American."

Here's the YouTube of Obama's San Antonio speech. His longing for a time when Americans can be proud again is at 10:05 minutes:

Obama is, without a doubt, a powerful speaker. And while he does come off as short on specifics at times, his lofty rhetoric veers occasionally into very precise - even noxious - territory.

I'm a proud American, and I tell my kids and my students that they can be proud of their country.

This is not some peripheral issue that should get lost in all the debates about the precise scope of coverage under Obama's health insurance proposal, or whether he'd enter negotiations with our sworn enemies.

No, it goes beyond specifics to the fundamental qualities of what we want in our president, an American president.

I want a president who's not afraid to say that the United States will act when the international community won't. I want a president who's not afraid to say that Americans don't shrink from their international repsonsibilities, that they won't abandon nations of the world who look to us for vigorous leadership and commitments in trade, security, and humanitarian assitance.

We've seen this language of shame in nation before - regulary with the antiwar mobs, but more recently with Michelle Obama and her statement that she's not proud of her country.

Well, with Obama's San Antonio speech we don't have to guess whether Michelle's sentiments run in the family. The Illinois Senator suggests that Americans today traveling abroad have to drop their heads down low.

I disagree, and that's not the kind of presidential role model I want for America's youth.

See also my earlier post, "Looking for Substance in a Dangerous Left-Winger."

McCain is Republican Nominee!

Senator John McCain has clinched the Republican presidential nomination. The Los Angeles Times reports:

John McCain swept to victory in four state primaries today, capturing the Republican presidential nomination that just two months ago seemed beyond his reach...

"Thank you. Thank you, Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island," McCain said to supporters gathered in Dallas to help celebrate his securing the nomination. "I am very grateful for the broad support you have given our campaign. And I am very pleased to note that tonight, my friends, we have won enough delegates to claim with confidence, humility and a sense of great responsibility that I will be the Republican nominee for president of the United States."

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, McCain's last challenger for the nomination, dropped out of the race less than half an hour after the final polls closed in El Paso. Addressing his supporters in Irving, Texas, a resigned Huckabee said he called McCain moments earlier to congratulate the Arizona senator and pledged "to do everything possible to unite our party" and to "unite our country so that we can be the best nation we can be."

Flanked by his wife, Janet, Huckabee called McCain "an honorable man" who ran an honorable campaign.

McCain is expected to go to the White House on Wednesday to receive President Bush's endorsement.

Who McCain will face in the general election remained unclear....

Campaigning in Texas, McCain said he was eager to start the fall race against the Democrats. Asked to predict his likely opponent, McCain told reporters at San Antonio's Armadillo Palace that he would await the outcome of the party's nominating fight.

"We will have stark differences," he said, regardless of whom he faces in the fall.

I'll have more commentary later, as I'm going back to the TV to watch the Demcratic returns.

I can say now, though, that I'm so pleased with McCain's triumph. I can remember in December when the cable networks were broadcasting travel videos of McCain lugging his bags through airport terminals, with a lonely look of undeflected determination. Man, I can't forget those images!

I've felt good about McCain's campaign since New Hampshire - that is, I never really doubted his ultimate nomination after the huge Granite State comeback (momentum's a powerful thing). Sure, there were some tense moments, especially around the time of South Carolina and Florida, but when I posted on Robert Novak's essay in January, "McCain is Likely GOP Nominee," I genuinely believed it.

At this point, the longer the Democratic race drags out, the more tickled I'll be!

This week Obama's already faced considerably more scrutiny, and polls are finding McCain not only more experienced, but exponentially so. McCain naturally leads Clinton on defense as well, and contra to Stanley Fish's argument from last night, I don't think Clinton's that much better on national security than is Obama (he's a lightweight, she's a flip-flopper).

Congratulations to John McCain!

Photo Credit: New York Times

McCain Looks to Clinch GOP Nomination

UPDATE: McCain is Republican Nominee!

*********

Elisabeth Bumiller and Michael Cooper report that John McCain's on the verge of securing the Republican presidential nomination:

Senator John McCain, a one-time insurgent whose campaign was all but dead seven months ago, took a big step toward locking up the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday night as he appeared poised to defeat former Gov. Mike Huckabee in the Ohio and Texas Republican primaries, according to projections by television networks and The Associated Press.

Although Mr. McCain had been far ahead in the delegate count and been bestowed with the unofficial title of “likely Republican nominee” since his string of victories on Feb. 5, Tuesday’s results appear to put him within reach of the 1,191 delegates he needs for the nomination. Mr. McCain also won the Vermont primary and is projected to win the Rhode Island primary.

The Associated Press and television networks projected that Mr. McCain won enough delegates to clinch the nomination, but The New York Times has him still short of the mark.

In a sign that his party is now officially rallying around him, Mr. McCain will travel to the White House on Wednesday morning for a formal endorsement by President Bush, a Republican official said Tuesday night.

Even though Mr. Huckabee has not conceded the race to Mr. McCain, Tuesday’s results cleared the way for him to move more aggressively forward with fund-raising, building a national campaign operation and positioning himself as a general election candidate — at a time when the Democrats were fighting among themselves .

Mr. McCain’s advisers said he had a steady schedule of fund-raising through March, in New York, Palm Beach, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Denver.

Mr. McCain also has a weeklong foreign trip planned in March as part of his Senate business, but he will use it to try to promote his foreign policy credentials to voters.

The advisers said the official kick-off of the McCain campaign would be the first week of April, when Mr. McCain is planning to go on what his campaign is a calling a national “bio tour” to reintroduce himself to the country in places that have been important parts of his life: Annapolis, for example, where he graduated from the United States Naval Academy, and Naval Air Station Meridian in Mississippi, where McCain Field is named after Mr. McCain’s grandfather.

I'll have more later, after I watch some of the election returns.

Ecoterrorism Suspected in Seattle New Home Fires

I saw the news of the ecoterrorist arson-fires on cable the other night. The New York Times has the story:

Five luxury homes in a subdivision marketed as “built green” near here were destroyed or severely damaged by fire early Monday, and evidence at the scene suggested the fires might have been started by radical environmentalists who viewed the homes as violating rather than complementing the wooded wetlands in which they were built.

“Built green?” read letters spray-painted onto a bedsheet found hanging on a fence at the site, about 25 miles northeast of Seattle. “Nope Black!

“McMansions + R.C.D.’s r not green,” said the sign, apparently referring to “rural cluster developments,” which advocates say help prevent sprawl by limiting development density in rural areas. The section of the development, called Quinn’s Crossing, has fewer than a dozen lots on a cul-de-sac just off Echo Lake Road, an area where modest older houses and mobile homes are more common.

The message on the sheet was signed with the letters “E.L.F.,” the infamous initials of the Earth Liberation Front, a loosely organized group that has been linked to multiple bold acts of ecoterrorism across the Northwest and elsewhere for two decades. Banners have claimed E.L.F. responsibility for arsons at other housing developments in the region in recent years, and the fires on Monday came as jurors deliberated in a case involving an arson in 2001 at the University of Washington that was linked to E.L.F.

Fred Gutt, a special agent with the F.B.I.’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Seattle, said of Monday’s fires, “There’s a claim of E.L.F. responsibility and, given that, it’s being investigated as a domestic-terrorism act.”

“But the authenticity of the claims still needs to be borne out,” Mr. Gutt added, noting the elusiveness of the Earth Liberation Front. “There’s no membership rolls. There’s no clubhouse. It’s more of an ideology. They’re organized only to the extent of maybe cells that get together and decide to act on their belief.”

None of the houses were occupied at the time of the fires, and no one was injured.
Neighbors first reported hearing what sounded like gunfire or explosions early Monday, and firefighting authorities on the scene told reporters that the houses appeared to have had multiple fires set.

The fires stunned the builders and real estate agents promoting the development, who had cast it as reflecting the “best practices” of environmentally friendly high-end home construction. They emphasized features like landscaping that requires little water, sidewalks designed to minimize runoff and reused lumber for construction.

The five houses were models built specifically for the 2007 Seattle Street of Dreams tour, their size and price deliberately scaled back, to about 4,500 square feet and around $2 million, to respond to what one builder, Grey Lundberg, said was an increased interest in more subdued and “green” luxury homes.

“This is releasing more carbon into the air than they ever would have by building the houses,” Patti Smith, the listing agent for one house that burned to the ground, said of the fires. “That’s the tragic irony.”

It's tragic, alright, and frankly dumb.

I'm reminded of the ecoterrorist destruction of Hummers at a Southern California car dealership back in 2003.

It's not the Hummers (hybrid cars will not save the planet), it's the lifestyle.

Conspicuous pro-capitalist consumption, you know, in housing, cars, etc., it doesn't matter. The postmodern terrorists will burn them to the ground, damn the facts, and damn the consequences, to property, the environment, you get the picture.

Iraqis Rejecting Islamic Extremism, Bush Doctrine Cited

Abe Greenwald has an awesome post on the implications of events covered in this morning's New York Times story, "Violence Leaves Young Iraqis Doubting Clerics."

Iraq's young radical extremist are renouncing not just terrorist violence, but the nihilist religious doctrines justifying it.

Here's Greenwald:

Question: What is the most extraordinary thing about the following extraordinary sentence?

BAGHDAD — After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.

Answer: It is the lead of a story in today’s New York Times. The paper of record, which for the past few years could accurately be described as a body count with a styles section, is now acknowledging the realization of the most ambitious goal of the Iraq War: the de-radicalization of Muslim citizens. This is, in its way, more important than political reconciliation and even more important than hunting down al Qaeda. This is the long war stuff, the hearts-and-minds stuff.

The goal was to offer freedom as an alternative to extremism; the criticism was that it was a dream; the reality is that it is happening. From the Times:

Such patterns, if lasting, could lead to a weakening of the political power of religious leaders in Iraq. In a nod to those changing tastes, political parties are dropping overt references to religion.

And the revelations don’t end there. Sabrina Tavernise, who wrote the piece, notes that the extent of Iraqis’ wholesale rejection of jihad is unique in the region:

The shift in Iraq runs counter to trends of rising religious practice among young people across much of the Middle East, where religion has replaced nationalism as a unifying ideology.

It is impossible not to infer that the Bush Doctrine and the commitment of the men and women in uniform has facilitated this shift. Far from “creating more terrorists” as the failed cliché goes, the war has helped to nurture an appreciation for liberty among Iraqi youth.

Greenwald's absolutely right to note the epochal nature of this development, and the essential, continuing vindication of the Bush administration's Iraq policy. Greenwald also note the obvious: That these developments will not be recognized by Bush-bashers and America-haters who want nothing more than the U.S. to fail in Iraq. The antiwar forces will spin these developments in the most deranged ways imaginable.

For example, as al Qaeda has resort to even more barbaric tactics than previously imagined (stapping remote-control bombs to mentally-impaired Iraqi women), our nihilist leftists at home praise such developments as "brilliant strategic adaptations" in the fight to kill more and more Americans and Iraqis.

Even as the New York Times piece itself notes that...

Violent struggle against the United States was easy to romanticize at a distance.

“I used to love Osama bin Laden,” proclaimed a 24-year-old Iraqi college student. She was referring to how she felt before the war took hold in her native Baghdad. The Sept. 11, 2001, strike at American supremacy was satisfying, and the deaths abstract.

Now, the student recites the familiar complaints: Her college has segregated the security checks; guards told her to stop wearing a revealing skirt; she covers her head for safety.

“Now I hate Islam,” she said, sitting in her family’s unadorned living room in central Baghdad. “Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army are spreading hatred. People are being killed for nothing.”

...Our nihilist, freedom-hating defeatists explain it all away as a fluke, a rejection of the point that allows the antiwar cadres to blame it all on the occupation.

The antiwar defeatists are the same forces who compared the Taliban's 12 year-old boy terrorists - who inflict beheadings and live-immolations on their hostages - to the Catholic Church's scandals of homosexuality.

Nope, it's all moral relativism. Indeed the U.S. is even worse than our enemies, claim the antiwar types: The Bush administration's is the new Nazi regime.

We're winning in Iraq: The administration sees it, the military sees it, the American people see it, and Iraqis themselves see it - as they increasingly renounce their own religion's fight against the historic forces of freedom.

Yes, that's victory, on the largest scale imaginable.

See more at Memeorandum.

Clinton May Push Past Texas and Ohio

Although polls show that Hillary Clinton has little Democratic voter backing for a push past today's decisive voting (in the event of substantial losses), the Clinton camp has a number of scenarios that might keep the New York Senator in the running.

The Wall Street Journal has the story:

Hillary Clinton faces the judgment of Texas and Ohio voters today in what she and her backers have declared "must win" contests, following 11 straight losses to Barack Obama. The big question: What constitutes a "win"?

If the New York senator gets large majorities of the popular vote in both states, she will clearly keep fighting for the Democratic nomination, at least until the next major primary in Pennsylvania on April 22. If she loses both, she will face tremendous pressure to drop out of the race.

The latest polls suggest, however, that the outcome is likely to be muddier than either of those scenarios. The surveys show Sen. Clinton with a solid, even expanding, lead in Ohio. In Texas, two polls released yesterday, show Sen. Obama with a slight lead, while a third puts Sen. Clinton somewhat ahead. Texas's results will be complicated by separate caucuses held after the primary polls close. Sen. Obama is favored to win the caucuses even if he loses the primary.

Should the senators split the states' contests -- or if Sen. Clinton wins, but only by narrow margins -- the debate will turn to how to interpret the results. Two smaller states, Rhode Island and Vermont, also vote today. Clinton aides have started to imply that even just one big win today would allow her to claim she had broken Sen. Obama's momentum, justifying a continuing competition.

If the outcomes are as close as polls suggest, Sen. Clinton won't be able to cut into Sen. Obama's lead in delegates to the Democrats' August nominating convention. The more likely net result from the four states is that his edge will grow. The Illinois senator currently is ahead with 1,386 delegates to 1,276 for Sen. Clinton, as calculated by the Associated Press. A candidate needs 2,025 to secure the nomination.

It is possible Clinton could win, depending on turnout, the accuracy of polling predictions, and the potential electoral fallout to Obama from the last minute scrutiny he's received in the press.

See also, "Stay or Go? Results Today Dictate Clinton's Future."

Obama Lacks Experience for Highest Office, Poll Finds

A new Gallup survey finds the public divided on Barack Obama experience:

The most recent USA Today/Gallup poll finds 46% of Americans saying Barack Obama has the experience necessary to be president, and 46% saying he does not.

The Feb. 21-24 poll finds a sharp contrast between these attitudes about the three-year senator from Illinois and views of his rivals for the presidency -- Washington veterans John McCain and Hillary Clinton. Seventy percent of Americans believe McCain has the necessary experience to be president, slightly more than say this about Clinton (65%).

When Americans are asked to choose among the three candidates the one most ready to be president based on his or her experience, McCain wins more decisively, with Obama a distant third.

McCain's advantage on this dimension is not entirely because Clinton and Obama "split" the Democratic vote, so to speak. McCain dominates among Republicans as expected, but he also leads by a wide margin among independents. A majority of Democrats say Clinton is most ready to be president, with Obama and McCain closely matched for second.

The expected party differences occur when Americans are asked to rate each candidate individually on having the necessary experience to be president. The party gaps are most evident for Clinton, with 85% of Democrats saying she has the necessary experience but only 33% of Republicans agreeing. A majority of all three major party groups think McCain has sufficient experience. Democrats are about as likely to say Obama has the necessary experience as to say this about McCain.

While experience is often an important entry on a candidate's résumé, it may not be what voters are most looking for this year. When asked which of three candidate characteristics is most important to their 2008 vote, only 22% of Americans say experience. Thirty-four percent say the candidate's issue positions, and the most, 42%, say the candidate's leadership skills and vision.

These importance ratings show mild variation by party. Democrats choose leadership skills and vision by a wide margin over both issue positions and experience, something clearly working in Obama's favor. Independents choose leadership by a slim margin over issue positions, and Republicans' preferences are almost evenly divided between issue positions and leadership.

Implications

Obama's relative lack of experience has been an issue in the presidential campaign to date, and it could become a bigger issue if he were McCain's Democratic opponent in the general election. As many Americans believe Obama, the three-year U.S. senator, lacks the experience needed to be president as believe he possesses it. However, experience does not seem to be very high on Americans' list of qualifications for the next president, so this apparent weakness for Obama may not be fatal. Americans are more likely to be looking for a candidate with leadership skills and vision, characteristics on which Obama has obvious strengths.

There's a lot of concern over national security credentials in these findings, seeing how the public rates McCain's experience over both the Democratic candidates.

Things always tighten in the general election of course, so it's important to realize the importance of the campaign itself in bringing into focus each candidate's qualifications for office.

That said, I think Obama's highly vulnerable on this issue, especially as it plays into America's commitment to Iraq and the larger war on terror.

See also, "No Preference? McCain-Obama Matchup Would Be Better."

Stay or Go? Results Today Dictate Clinton's Future

A new ABC News poll shows Democrats backing Hillary Clinton's continuance in the race if she takes either Texas or Ohio today, but if not, well, adios amigo:

Democrats by more than a 2-1 margin say Hillary Clinton should stay in the presidential race even if she loses either the Texas or Ohio primary on Tuesday. But if she fails in both, fewer than half say they'd want her to fight on.

Many, in that case, have another idea for Clinton: the vice presidency.

The lead overall is now Barack Obama's. With his string of 11 consecutive primary and caucus victories, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents by a 50-43 percent margin would like to see him nominated. That's a remarkable reversal: Clinton held a vast lead in ABC News/Washington Post polls before the Iowa caucuses. Campaigns clearly matter.

Despite the overall preference for Obama, Democrats by a very wide 67-29 percent say Clinton should stay in the race even if she loses either Texas or Ohio. But if she were to lose both, far fewer say they'd want her to continue – 45 percent, with 51 percent saying otherwise.

Prospective attitudes, of course, can shift with events -- as vote preferences themselves have shown. At the same time, some within the Clinton campaign, as well as other Democrats, have described Ohio and Texas as must-wins.

Hillary for vice-president? I don't know if she'll like that. She'd be 70 at the end of a second Obama administration, and if she looks old and haggard sometimes now, just wait until 2016!

Besides, Obama's smart enough not to want a co-vice-presidency (you get two-for-the-price of one with the Clintons).

McCain Can Clinch Nomination Tuesday

CNN reports that John McCain could clinch the GOP presidential nomination tomorrow:

Sen. John McCain could clinch the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday, but Mike Huckabee refuses to call it quits.

McCain is 144 delegates shy of sealing the nomination, and 256 Republican delegates are up for grabs Tuesday.

The biggest prizes are Ohio and Texas, where polls show McCain with a comfortable lead. Rhode Island and Vermont also hold contests Tuesday.

Huckabee told reporters the future of his campaign is a fair question if he doesn't take Texas, but he says he believes he has a chance. In Texas, there are 137 delegates at stake.

It would be theoretically possible, but not likely for Huckabee to play spoiler Tuesday, according to CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider.

"If Huckabee were to win the four states by huge margins, he might be able to prevent McCain from going over the top," Schneider said. "But he'd have to win by pretty solid margins."
Vermont is the only winner-take-all state up for grabs Tuesday, and it has only 17 Republican delegates at stake.

Still, Huckabee says he's staying in the race to help the Republican Party stay true to its core values.

"I do think that many people need to be looking at the future of our party. If we're not reaching out to younger voters, if we're not capturing the issues that people care about ... then we're going to be an extinct party in another few years," Huckabee said on CNN's "American Morning."

Huckabee trails McCain by nearly 800 delegates.

I'm still not 100 percent sure what Huckabee wants.

A McCain-Huckabee ticket is not discussed much, although the way Huck's stormed some of the Southern states, it can't be completely ruled out (and I think Huck would way more credible than Mitt Romney for vice-president). (Note too that Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty is considered out of the running for McCain's second spot.)

In any case, there's not too much doubt McCain will wrap it up tomorrow. That's good. The party can finally start rallying all its constituencies together, moving on toward the general election.

Rush Limbaugh (and not to mention Laura Ingraham) will finally have to put up or shut up. He's worn out his calls for GOP crossover voting for Hillary.

No Preference? McCain-Obama Matchup Would Be Better

I've looked for the links unsuccessfully (this is all I could find), but John McCain said today he has no preference between Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as his general election opponent in the fall.

But which candidate would really be better for McCain?

Stanley Fish at the New York Times offers his handicap:

If it is McCain vs. Obama in the general election, look for something to happen that was unthinkable only a short time ago. The Iraq War will become a Republican plus.
The reason is that McCain’s position on the war, as on so many other issues, looks in (at least) two directions.

On the one hand, he voted to authorize the invasion. On the other, he consistently disagreed with the administration’s prosecution of the war in general and with the judgment of defense Secretary Rumsfeld in particular. And on the third hand, he advocated for a course of action that was at last implemented in the so-called “surge,” and with some success.

So, at any moment, he would be able to present himself as a strong patriot, and at another moment as a critic of the hard-line hawks, and at still another as a hard-line hawk with more experience and military knowledge than the others. And, depending on which position he was occupying, he could deny that he was an uncritical supporter of the war or that he was inattentive to the needs of the troops, or that he had nothing positive to offer.

Meanwhile, as McCain was nimbly moving around, Obama would be standing still, stuck in the one-note posture he has assumed from the beginning of the campaign. In the democratic primaries and caucuses, Obama’s strong suit – the club he used to beat up Hillary Clinton – has been the absolute consistency of his position on the war: he would have voted against it had he been in the senate at the time; he has spoken out against it repeatedly since becoming a senator; and he has promised to end it and bring the troops home within a short time.

But once McCain, and not Clinton, is his opponent, that position becomes a liability, because it can be attacked as being inflexible and without nuance. McCain can ask, Don’t you see that the situation has changed in recent months, and shouldn’t a responsible leader adjust his or her stance according to the facts on the ground? And he can add, I too had my doubts about the conduct of the war, but now a policy I long advocated has been put in place with good results. Moreover, by saying something like that he would be reminding the electorate that he knows how to think tactically about military strategies, while his opponent’s only experience in combat has been trying to figure out how to beat Alan Keyes in the Illinois senate race, something anyone with the letter D (for Democrat) after his name would have been able to do easily.

Up till now, Obama has had a free ride on the Iraq War issue because Senator Clinton has been on the defensive since the campaign began. In her desire to avoid copping to a failure of judgment and apologizing for it (as John Edwards did), she came up with an explanation – I voted to authorize the use of force, but I wasn’t voting for it be actually used – that raised new questions about her credibility and made her vulnerable to the charge that her subsequent anti-war position had been adopted more out of political expediency than conviction.

Like McCain, Clinton tells a complex story about her relationship to the war, but unlike McCain. she tells a story whose parts pull against one another, and she has been caught in a cul-de-sac between them.

The parts of McCain’s story, even with one or two twists and turns, fit nicely into a coherent narrative that brings credit to him in every chapter. I was resolute in the beginning, I demurred for a while but for good reasons, and now I am resolute again, and you can trust me because, in this area especially, I know what I’m doing. He can rehearse this narrative without apologizing for anything and then turn around to Obama and (borrowing from Clinton’s attacks on him), declare: You, on the other hand, don’t know what you’re doing, as everything you say, not only about the war, but about the conduct of foreign policy, proves. (He and President Bush are already pushing this line in anticipation of Obama’s nomination.)

Indeed, every criticism Clinton has made of Obama – he lacks experience, he is all flourish and no substance, he gives shoot-from-the-hip answers to serious questions – falls into McCain’s lap, ready for instant use in the general election.

But, unfortunately for Obama, the reverse is not true. The criticisms of McCain made by his primary opponents – he twice voted against Bush’s tax cuts, he cooperated with Ted Kennedy on immigration reform and with Russ Feingold on campaign-finance reform, he said that waterboarding was torture and should not be used, he scorned fundamentalist Christian leaders, he supported stem cell research, he opposed a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage, he expressed doubts about Samuel Alito – cannot be appropriated by Obama because these are his positions, too.

With the Iraq War either neutralized or migrating to McCain’s side, and with the sharp distinction on social issues blurred by McCain’s heterodoxy (called apostasy by his critics from the right), Obama is left with health care (he would probably get the better of that one) and with the economy where there is in fact a genuine opposition between a firm free-trader and tax-cutter on the one hand, and a critic of Nafta whose economic policies might have the effect of raising taxes on the other. But that is a contrast that might not play too well in a general election campaign that lasts less than two months.

And Obama will not even be able to saddle McCain with the legacy of an unpopular administration, given that more often than not he has been viewed as a Bush opponent, except on the war, and on that issue his loyalty to the president’s policy will do him harm only with those hard-core liberals who would never vote for a Republican anyway.

With Obama as his opponent, McCain has the advantage every which way. He continues to get mileage out of the straight-talk express, and at the same time he also has the political flexibility that comes along with having taken a few detours along the way, and talked out of several sides of his mouth.

Things could change, of course (and Fish provides some flourish on his essay to that effect), but I think McCain will also have a winning issue in Iraq if Hillary winds up winning the nomination.

It's not completely a long shot for her, surprisingly.

McCain's Economic Plan

Today's Wall Street Journal offers a front-page perspective on John McCain's economic agenda:

Imagining how John McCain, the Navy war hero, would play the role of commander in chief has been easy. Imagining how John McCain, the policy maverick, would lead as chief executive of the U.S. economy has been tougher.

In a wide-ranging interview last week, Sen. McCain offered the most-detailed account to date of his thinking on economic issues.

The all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee cast himself as a defender of the Bush tax cuts he voted against, but added caveats to a "no new taxes" vow he made on a Sunday television talk show two weeks ago.

On Social Security, the Arizona senator says he still backs a system of private retirement accounts that President Bush pushed unsuccessfully, and disowned details of a Social Security proposal on his campaign Web site.

Sen. McCain said the Federal Reserve should cut interest rates now to bolster the economy, but added that as president, he couldn't be so explicit on monetary policy. "Presidents have to be careful so they're not perceived as putting undue political pressure on the Fed," he said. "So I would certainly be more careful than I am today."

With the U.S. economy softening, he said he might have "a couple of fireside chats with the American people because of what we see in the [consumer] confidence barometers." But he added that the most potent economic stimulus would be to assure Americans that taxes won't go up in the future and to "call for a meaningful -- and I mean meaningful -- approach to simplifying the tax code so that it's fairer and flatter."

Those who know him well expect that a McCain presidency would be hard to categorize -- a conservative populist who acts by instinct rather than economic ideology. For businesses, that could make him hard to predict; for opponents, hard to pin down. In his 25 years in Congress, the Arizona senator has defined himself on economic issues more by his adversaries than by overarching economic principle.

Even if McCain adds a dose or two of populism here and there, his plan boasts enough bedrock conservative economic elements to satisfy the GOP's anti-tax base.

Economics is not the Arizona Senator's forte, but compared to the $100s of billions in new spending the Democrats are proposing - at a time of considerable worry over deficits - I think McCain will be just fine running head-to-head against his eventual opponent's left-wing economic agenda.

Schadenfreude in the Telecom Immunity Victory

Well, the partisan battle over telecom immunity is near an end, according to this New York Times piece, "Deal Close on Wiretap Law, a Top Democrat Tells CNN."

I haven't payed all that much attention to it, only to the extent that I've seen whacked-out hard-left blogger Glenn Greenwall getting worked up into an outrageous lather over the whole deal. To read Greenwald is to get the feeling that I should be expecting the "knock in the night" when I hit the hay every evening. This Bush administration is awful, I think...man, those Soviet Refuseniks never had it so rough!

In any case, Michael Goldfarb puts this all in perspective, especially this rowdy Greenwald smackdown in need of wide distribution:

The government shows up at your office just days after the 9/11 attack and asks for your help in the war on terror. What are you going to do? According to Glenn Greenwald, you should call a lawyer (isn't that always what the lawyers say). But telecom executives did the only thing they could do--assist the government in whatever way possible. I doubt any of them even had a moment of doubt in complying with the government's request--worst case, the NSA captures a call from some innocent, naturalized American talking to his al Qaeda-affiliated cousin in Paktia, not exactly an ethical minefield.

But the industry now faces as much as $7.243 trillion in liability, as practically every telephone customer in North America is to be considered a victim of this dastardly operation. After months of demagoguing the issue, the Dems in Congress are finally going to cave and grant the firms immunity from lawsuits that are not only frivolous, but a threat to national security.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald, who's devoted the last three months of his life to this issue, is despondent:

There's very little point anymore in writing about how the Congressional Democratic leadership is complicit in all of the worst Bush abuses, or about how craven they are. All of that is far too documented and established at this point to be worth spending any time discussing. They were never going to take a stand against warrantless eavesdropping or the destruction of the rule of law via telecom amnesty for one simple reason: many of them don't actually oppose those things, and many who claim to oppose them don't actually care about any of it. That's all a given.

But what is somewhat baffling in all of this is just how politically stupid and self-destructive their behavior is. If the plan all along was to give Bush everything he wanted, as it obviously was, why not just do it at the beginning? Instead, they picked a very dramatic fight that received substantial media attention. They exposed their freshmen and other swing-district members to attack ads. They caused their base and their allies to spend substantial energy and resources defending them from these attacks.

And to think of all the other things Glenn Greenwald could have not achieved over the last few months were his energy and resources devoted to other hopeless crusades!

I've administered a Greenwald smackdown a bit here and there myself, but this Goldfarb piece is pure schadenfreude.

Hillary Clinton Could Win!

While recent electoral results and the media spin have Barack Obama as the Democratic frontrunner and near-presumptive party nominee, Hillary Clinton's not completely out of the ball game yet. If she does well tomorrow, things in the Democratic race will have shifted dramatically once again.

Indeed, Jennifer Rubin at Commentary suggests Clinton could win:

Despite the horrid press and doom-and-gloom campaign leaks, Hillary Clinton is within the margin of error in Texas and slightly ahead in Ohio. She has gotten off the defensive and the press, if not favorable, has been talking about her issues - Tony Rezko, national security, and media “unfairness.” As a bonus, critics (contrary to the “free ride” for Barack Obama line) have begun to question what exactly he has done to “build bridges.” A few even have the nerve to question whether his refusal to wear a flag pin on his label, his relationship with Bill Ayers and his wife’s comment that she had never been proud of her country before her husband started winning primaries could be used against him by those crafty Republicans. (The media cannot quite bring themselves to admit that these facts actually suggest a real disregard for the patriotric sensibilities which animate most Americans, but raising the issue is a start.) Even a liberal pundit or two has shown dismay over Obama’s pandering on protectionism.

So if she should win Texas and Ohio there will be a gasp from the media (not to mention some of those superdelegates) who will then have to discard the Obama-mania, invincibility argument and absorb the new storyline: she’s baaaaaack. True, she won’t reach 2025 delegates by June, but the fact remains–neither will he. Momentum, press spin and the appearance that Obama can not take a punch will weigh heavily on those superdelegates. Oh, and with a little help from Governor Crist (hmm, who’s he trying to help?) the race could be extended by a do-over in Florida. Now if she loses Ohio and Texas?

Even the most die hard supporters won’t be able to come up with a scenario to rescue her.

Check out some of the polling data as well. It really is too close to call.

New Military Index Finds Likely Success in Iraq

Foreign Policy's debuted its new "U.S. Military Index," a survey of 3,400 active duty, reserve, and retired service personnel from the miliary's four service branches.

Here's the introduction:

Today, the U.S. military is engaged in a campaign that is more demanding and intense than anything it has witnessed in a generation. Ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, now entering their fifth and seventh years respectively, have lasted longer than any U.S. military engagements of the past century, with the exception of Vietnam. More than 25,000 American servicemen and women have been wounded and over 4,000 killed. Additional deployments in the Balkans, on the Korean Peninsula, and elsewhere are putting further pressure on the military’s finite resources. And, at any time, U.S. forces could be called into action in one of the world’s many simmering hot spots—from Iran or Syria, to North Korea or the Taiwan Strait. Yet, even as the U.S. military is being asked to sustain an unprecedented pace of operations across the globe, many Americans continue to know shockingly little about the forces responsible for protecting them. Nearly 70 percent of Americans report that they have a high level of confidence in the military, yet fewer than 1 in 10 has ever served. Politicians often speak favorably about people in uniform, but less than one quarter of the U.S. Congress has donned a uniform. It is not clear whether the speeches and sound bites we hear from politicians and experts actually reflect the concerns of those who protect our nation.

What is the actual state of America’s military? How healthy are the armed forces? How prepared are they for future conflicts? And what impact are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan really having on them? To find out, Foreign Policy and the Center for a New American Security teamed up to conduct a groundbreaking survey of current and former military officers. Recognizing that the military is far from a monolith, our goal was to find out what America’s highest-ranking military people—the very officers who have run the military during the past half century—collectively think about the state of the force, the health of the military, the course of the war in Iraq, and the challenges that lie ahead. It is one of the few comprehensive surveys of the U.S. military community to be conducted in the past 50 years.

The survey offers a sobering - and frankly realistic - assessment of the state of our armed forces. Sixty-percent of the respondents, for example, agreed that the U.S. military is weaker today than it was five years ago, and 88 percent said that the war in Iraq has stretched the military "dangerously thin."

Yet, on Iraq, the findings indicate a significant sense of having turned things around after initial disasters in strategic planning. The data provide some scientific evidence to the administration's claim that the surge is working and success in Iraq is likely:

Five years into the war in Iraq, the index’s officers have an overwhelmingly negative view of many of the most important early decisions that have shaped the war’s course. They believe more troops were needed on the ground at the start of the fighting. They believe disbanding the Iraqi military was a mistake....

The officers do not, however, necessarily believe that victory is beyond reach. Nearly 9 in 10, for instance, say that the counterinsurgency strategy and surge of additional troops into Baghdad pursued by Gen. David Petraeus, the chief U.S. commander in Iraq, is raising the U.S. military’s chance for success there.

Ninety-percent is an unusually high statistic for a polling response, and this finding is one of the most important results of the survey. For while the personnel who responded here are highly critical of the Bush administration's civilian planning on the invasion and postwar stabilization, there's no sense of fatalism that the mission has failed irreparably.

Success in Iraq, as Anthony Cordesman pionted out recently, will depend on domestic political circumstances, and especially on the nature of presidential leadership come 2009.

Be sure to check Foreign Policy's findings on the military's perception of the elected leadership. The article suggests:

Nearly 9 in 10 officers agree that, all other things being equal, the military will respect a president of the United States who has served in the military more than one who has not. The people we trust most are often the ones who remind us of ourselves.

I wonder if that respect extends to a certain Republican Senator from Arizona who's campaigning to run the Iraq war and the war on terror even more vigorously than President Bush?

Jack and Hill: The YouTube Endorsement

The presidential race this year was predicted to be " The YouTube Election." It's certainly turning out that way.

The latest evidence to that effect is Jack Nicholson's YouTube endorsement of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. The Houston Chronicle has the story:

He was The Joker in Batman, but Jack Nicholson says he wasn't fooling around when he said in "A Few Good Men" that there was nothing sexier than saluting a woman.

Nicholson, who is backing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, took his endorsement to the Internet on Saturday with a humorous collection of clips that put his support into the mouths of his most film famous characters.

"And now folks, it's time for who do you trust. Hubba, hubba, hubba. Money, money, money," Nicholson, as The Joker, asks his audience in the video titled "Jack and Hill."

Then he goes on to make it clear he puts his in Clinton. He also makes it clear he isn't happy with the current administration.

"Things could be better, Lloyd. Things could be a whole lot better," Nicholson, as frustrated writer Jack Torrance, tells Lloyd the bartender in "The Shining." In the movie, Nicholson's character then goes on a murderous rampage. In the video, a message flashes onscreen saying Clinton "has a plan to deal with the nearly 47 million Americans without health care."

She will also end the Iraq war and restore America's credibility abroad, the video says after Nicholson, as angry Col. Nathan Jessep in "A Few Good Men," shouts, "Maybe we as officers have a responsibility to this country to see that the men and women charged with its security are trained professionals."

Here's the YouTube:

I'm not all that impressed with Nicholson's endorsement or the video (it's not all that clever and seems jerkily editied - and man was he slow in getting around to it for that matter!

I just like how the technology's increasingly the message itself, if not the mischief of it all:

Islam's Worshippers of Death

Alan Dershowitz, over at the Wall Street Journal, provides a powerful contrast between the cultures of Islam and the West on life, death, and conventional warfare:

Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.

At the recent funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Moughnaya -- the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 -- Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times giving the following warning to her son: "if you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you."

Zahra Maladan represents a dramatic shift in the way we must fight to protect our citizens against enemies who are sworn to kill them by killing themselves. The traditional paradigm was that mothers who love their children want them to live in peace, marry and produce grandchildren. Women in general, and mothers in particular, were seen as a counterweight to male belligerence. The picture of the mother weeping as her son is led off to battle -- even a just battle -- has been a constant and powerful image.

Now there is a new image of mothers urging their children to die, and then celebrating the martyrdom of their suicidal sons and daughters by distributing sweets and singing wedding songs. More and more young women -- some married with infant children -- are strapping bombs to their (sometimes pregnant) bellies, because they have been taught to love death rather than life. Look at what is being preached by some influential Islamic leaders:

"We are going to win, because they love life and we love death," said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He has also said: "[E]ach of us lives his days and nights hoping more than anything to be killed for the sake of Allah." Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden told a reporter: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us."

Yes, that is a big difference between Islam and the West.

That's why is so frustrating sometimes to hear spokemen for the antiwar left denounce the administration and war backers as "hyping" the terrorist threat, or to see the anti-Bush hordes descend to cultural relativism when confronted with Islamic totalitarianism in the form of 12 year-old Taliban boys beheading hostages.

There's a lot of talk about "reaching out to moderate Muslims" in our ongoing policy debates on how best to respond to radical Islam.

I think that's an important component to our overall anti-terror policies in an age of fanatical violence.

But Dershowitz is less for reaching out than he is for eradicating the scourge of Islam's death worship:

The traditional sharp distinction between soldiers in uniform and civilians in nonmilitary garb has given way to a continuum. At the more civilian end are babies and true noncombatants; at the more military end are the religious leaders who incite mass murder; in the middle are ordinary citizens who facilitate, finance or encourage terrorism. There are no hard and fast lines of demarcation, and mistakes are inevitable -- as the terrorists well understand.

We need new rules, strategies and tactics to deal effectively and fairly with these dangerous new realities. We cannot simply wait until the son of Zahra Maladan -- and the sons and daughters of hundreds of others like her -- decide to follow his mother's demand. We must stop them before they export their sick and dangerous culture of death to our shores.

I would also remind readers that Islam's doctrinally a "religion of victory," and if one interprets Islamic theology strictly, the Muslim faith sees itself as being ultimately victorious in the world's (often unspoken) battle for divine supremacy. As Malise Ruthven has written:

In the majority Sunni tradition this sense of supremacy was sanctified as much by history as by theology. In the first instance, the truth of Islam was vindicated on the field of battle. As Hans Küng acknowledges in Islam: Past, Present and Future—his 767-page overview of the Islamic faith and history, seen from the perspective of a liberal Christian theologian—Islam is above all a "religion of victory." Muslims of many persuasions—not just the self-styled jihadists—defend the truth claims of their religion by resorting to what might be called the argument from manifest success.

According to this argument, the Prophet Muhammad overcame the enemies of truth by divinely assisted battles as well as by preaching. Building on his victories and faith in his divine mission, his successors, the early caliphs, conquered most of western Asia and North Africa as well as Spain. In this view the truth of Islam was vindicated by actual events, through Islam's historical achievement in creating what would become a great world civilization.

The argument from manifest success is consonant with the theological doctrine according to which Islam supersedes the previous revelations of Judaism and Christianity. Jews and Christians are in error because they deviated from the straight path revealed to Abraham, ancestral patriarch of all three faiths. Islam "restores" the true religion of Abraham while superseding Judeo-Christianity as the "final" revelation. The past and the future belong to Islam even if the present makes for difficulties.

Hmm, food for thought for those who argue that Iraq's been a diversion from the war on terror.

Ad Campaign: Democrats Weaken Terrorist Surveillance

Newsweek reports that Defense for Democracies, a conservative national security group, plans a barrage of ads attacking Barack Obama and congressional Democrats heading into the fall election.

Here's one of the ads, "Terrorist Surveillance" (via YouTube):

Here's the Newsweek story:

A new series of TV commercials featuring sinister photos of Osama bin Laden may signal what's to come this fall: a wave of secretly financed political attack ads. The spots, by a group called Defense of Democracies, which was just created by former Republican National Committee spokesman Cliff May, target 15 House Democrats for their failure to support a White House-backed electronic-spying bill. May told NEWSWEEK he plans to spend $2 million on the ads, but declined to identify who is financing the effort, saying he set up the group as a tax-exempt nonprofit—known in the federal tax code as a "501(c)(4)"—thereby permitting it to engage in political advocacy without disclosing donors.

The ads spotlight what some experts say is a gaping loophole in the campaign-finance laws. On Dec. 26, 2007, the Federal Election Commission quietly issued new rules in the wake of a Supreme Court decision last June that give more latitude for 501(c)(4) groups to run political "electioneering" ads without disclosing contributors. That helped blow open the floodgates. In 2004, the chief conduit for such ads were so-called 527 groups, among them the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. But 527s had to identify donors. Now, said one GOP consultant who asked not to be identified talking strategy, "everybody is doing 501(c)(4)s because you don't have to disclose anything."

The rush to take advantage is underway. A consortium of liberal groups led by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta announced plans last week for a $20 million campaign attacking John McCain for his Iraq War support. The ads are part of a $200 million "independent" effort that will aim to "define" McCain on a host of fronts, including his "temperament," said one participant who asked not to be identified discussing the consortium's plans. Freedom's Watch, a conservative 501(c)(4) whose board includes Las Vegas casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, is planning to spend up to $250 million attacking the eventual Democratic presidential nominee for being soft on Iraq. Meanwhile, veteran "oppo" researcher Dave Bossie says his longstanding Citizens United 501(c)(4) has begun work on a $10 million effort that will include a feature film about Barack Obama. Among the issues "on the table," Bossie told NEWSWEEK, are Obama's ties to indicted developer Tony Rezko and former Weather Underground radical William Ayers. (Innocuous in both cases, Obama says.) "What we are trying to do is educate and inform voters," Bossie says. They might never find out, though, who's paying for their education.

As one can see from the article, it's going to be a bipartisan wave of attacks.

Hillary's "Who do you want answering the phone?" ad is just the tip of the subliminally nasty iceberg, even if Obama wins the Democractic nomination (an increasingly likely prospect):

• Hillary's Bleak Outlook - John Heilemann
• Why Hillary Will Lose - Dick Morris
• The End of BillaryLand Is On Its Way. Rejoice! - The New Republic
• "If she loses either Texas or Ohio, this thing is done." - James Carville
• The Tipping Point - Campaign Standard
• Why Is Clinton’s Back Against Wall? Nobody Prepared - New York Observer
• Clinton Plays Election Roulette - The Politico
• Losing, Hillary Style - The Politico

It ain't over 'till it's over, of course, so let's see what happens in Texas and Ohio on Tuesday.

Immigration Comeback: Border Issues to Reemerge After Election

Immigration's off to the back-burner of the policy agenda, right?

The major advocates of comprehensive reform got scorched in 2007, when the anti-open borders movement flexed its power in a fit of hardened interest group outrage. So logically were not likely to see another major reform attempt for some time, especially anything that smacks of amnesty.

Perhaps not, according to this New York Times report:

Immigration has a fantastically complicated political history in the United States. It has produced enough populist anger to elect Know Nothing mayors of Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington and San Francisco, all in the 1850s and, more recently, to help Lou Dobbs reinvent his television career and become a best-selling author. But when national politicians have tried to seize on such anger, they have usually failed — and failed quickly. “While immigration has always roiled large sections of the electorate,” said Eric Rauchway, a historian at the University of California, Davis, “it has never been the basis for a national election, one way or the other.”

That appears to be truer than ever in 2008. Mr. McCain will all but clinch the Republican nomination on Tuesday with victories in the Ohio and Texas primaries. In the Texas campaign, except for a couple of obligatory questions about a border fence during a Democratic debate, immigration has been the dog that didn’t bark. The candidates who would have made an issue of it exited the race long ago.

There is, however, one more historical parallel to consider: as a political matter, immigration probably won’t go away on its own. The anti-immigration movements of the past may not have created presidents, but they did change the country. The Chinese Exclusion Act helped cut the immigration rate by more than 40 percent at the close of the 19th century. The Nativist movement of the 1910s and 1920s had even more success passing laws to reduce the flow.

Unlike those earlier immigration waves, the current one includes a large number of illegal immigrants, which creates its own political dynamic. The subject also plays into the economic anxiety of today that stems from decades of slow wage growth and is now aggravated by the possibility of a recession. Perhaps most important, this immigration wave could turn out to be the biggest of them all. Last month, the Pew Research Center reported that the percentage of Americans born overseas would break a century-old record sometime before 2025, if current trends continued.

So, eight months after the Senate’s immigration bill collapsed, immigration has managed to fade into the background without really becoming less important. The next president isn’t likely to be elected on immigration, but he or she is going to have to reckon with it.

That's putting it mildly. In just the last few days the Los Angeles Times has had a couple of big reports covering trends in illegal immigation.

One piece focused on the Border Control's shift to a tougher enforcement policy of "catch-and-return" (which deports illegals rather than releasing them back into the general population after arraignment).

Also, today's paper examines the increasingly clever tactics of human traffickers, who are now using ATVs to mingle in with recreational enthusiasts as they smuggle illegals over the Southwest border of the United States (see the photo essay here).

I've written a lot on this, and I'm certainly hoping immigration reform returns to the front of the agenda next year.

See also Peggy Noonan, "What Grandma Would Say: We don't need to solve the immigration problem forever. We need to solve it now."

Iraq Success to Resonate Through International System

Robert Kaplan, at American Interest, makes the case that success in Iraq will resonate to the benefit of U.S. foreign policy and international security:

The Iraq war has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and the death of close to 4,000 American troops, plus many more seriously wounded. This is not to mention the death of perhaps 100,000 or more Iraqis (estimates vary wildly). Thus, it is hard to imagine any future circumstance that will make the cost of invading Iraq seem worthwhile—and I say this as a supporter of the war years back. Moreover, I am leery of assuming that we may win this war merely because of the demonstrable improvement in conditions on the ground throughout the course of 2007. That is because we will not know how sustainable that improvement really is until we start withdrawing troops in significant numbers. Still, improvements on the ground certainly raise the possibilities of a better rather than a worse outcome.

My definition of a “better” outcome would be a continued, gradual decline in American and Iraqi deaths coupled with a gradual return to normal living conditions. No one could credibly declare victory, and Iraq would continue to drop out of the news. Iraq has already gone from a page-one to a page-two story in the course of the last year; if it drops to page three or four, say, by the end of 2008, that would qualify as a better outcome, if not a “win.”

What might be the repercussions of such a better outcome? Inside Iraq, it would result in a residual number of American troops, say about 80,000, with semi-permanent bases in the country. In other words, in historical and strategic terms, a key result of the war will have been to replace U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia with new ones in Iraq. No Iraqi government will ever admit to this, but that will be the practical result of the continued need for American troops into the future.

These American bases would exist alongside an Iranian sphere of influence in Shi‘a-dominated southern Iraq, a Sunni tribal chieftaincy in the center, and an autonomous Kurdistan in the north. The country would remain formally united, but in the loosest of ways. It would be a weak state where the Iranians, through their high-handed meddling, might wear out their welcome mat faster than we would by our troop presence. Meanwhile, suspicion and corruption would reign as a legacy of the Ba‘athi regime, something that will take decades to assuage. A balance of fear would limit violence to largely criminal elements.

This is, of course, a best-case scenario. The better Iraq does, the better I believe will be our relationship with the Iranians. There is a saying about Iranians: They don’t give in to pressure, only to a lot of pressure. The stabilization of conditions on the ground in Iraq, coupled with the emerging reality of a continued American troop presence, would constitute the centerpiece of that pressure. If the United States and Iran are destined one day to negotiate at high diplomatic levels, that centerpiece will underwrite the U.S. position in those negotiations.

Because everything is interlocked in the Middle East, a better outcome in Iraq will affect many other issues positively, as well. With more leverage on account of Iraq, the United States will be in a stronger position to, in effect, dictate—yes, dictate—terms to Palestinians and Israelis, once they inevitably encounter one impasse after another in their negotiations. More leverage both in Iraq and in the peace talks will, in turn, lead to more leverage for the United States throughout the Sunni Arab world, especially with respect to Saudi Arabia. Expect, therefore, the Saudis to become progressively more helpful in intelligence sharing and many other related matters concerning the war on terror.

The better we do in Iraq, the more helpful the Syrians may prove to be in Lebanon and in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Had we still been bleeding in Iraq late in 2007, as we were before the surge, the Annapolis peace conference might not have convened, and certainly the Syrians would not have participated. In other words, Annapolis presaged the results of a better outcome, and indeed, there is already a well-established pattern of how events in Iraq affect our regional prospects. Consider the years 2003 through the beginning of 2005, in the wake of our invasion and up through the first Iraqi election, which went off so smoothly: Think of what happened in the region during that period of relatively positive news from Iraq. The Libyans gave up their nuclear program, the Iranians, we now (think we) know, suspended their attempts at nuclear weaponization, and in Lebanon came the Cedar Revolution. Now imagine for a moment what could transpire if we recover that positive momentum in Mesopotamia. To wit, expect to see nascent democracy movements pick up steam throughout the Arab world, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt.

Kaplan suggests American leaders approach the international ramifications of Iraq with humility. We should reach out Muslims leaders and put all issues on the table, he argues, and that includes Iran.

I wouldn't go so far. Just this week President Ahmadinejad proclaimed Iran the "world's greatest superpower," obviously a slap at the American preponderance and the U.S.-backed nuclear non-proliferation agenda directed at Tehran.

Still, Kaplan's essay's a penetrating rejoinder to those who argue we need to restore American power and prestige in the world. Nothing succeeds like success, a point both friends and enemies can't miss.

See also my earlier entry from the American Interest Iraq series, "Winning in Iraq? Ask a Neoconservative."

The End of Democracy Promotion?

The Atlantic's polled a group of policy makers, political scientists, and pundits on the prospects for democracy promotion worldwide.

Obviously, the Bush administration's made things tough for would be neo-Wilsonians, although the findings - certainly pessimistic on the future of global democratic consolidation and expansion - aren't all that bad.

Here's one of the key question items:

"Is the U.S. capable of meaningfully affecting the prospects for democracy in most nondemocratic states?"

68% YES

“The Bush administration has given democracy a bad name. The U.S. can’t impose democracy or insist on democracy; it can only carefully support indigenous democrats (sometimes by staying far away) and the aspiration of human beings to live a better life. Most important in supporting the democratic impulse, the United States must ensure that it stays true to that impulse in its own deeds, not just its words.”

33% NO

“The U.S. can nudge nondemocratic states to head in a democratic direction by providing political and economic incentives. But the U.S. has little direct leverage over the domestic developments that decisively determine the character of a state’s government.”

The article doesn't say, but I imagine these are selected quotes from some of the respondents.

Check out the whole thing, in any case. When asked, "Do you believe the proliferation of democratic government is inevitable in the long run?" one respondent indicated:

“Despite the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, people who are free to choose (as Mrs. Thatcher said) do choose to be free. And the information revolution enables more people to see lives in free countries.”

Don't forget to check the "List of Participants," which did include a couple of neoconservatives.

Unfortunately, I think the findings reflect considerable Bush-fatigue, and perhaps even a little BDS.

After Bush has long left the White House, similar surveys will be more positive on the possibility of democracy promotion.

Note too, that even now the administration doesn't get enough credit for U.S. democracy promotion efforts outside of Iraq, as the New York Times points out, "In Kenya, U.S. Added Action to Talk of Democracy":

For more information, see Larry Diamond, "The Democratic Rollback: The Resurgence of the Predatory State."

Photo Credit: Atlantic Monthly