Israel at 60: Can the Jewish State Survive?

May 14th marks the 60th anniversary of the creation of the Jewish state in Israel.

As a staunch supporter of the Israeli people, I'm deeply interested in debates on the future of the nation.

We'll be seeing much more commentary and analysis on this in upcoming weeks, but let me share some of the articles I've been reading on Israel's milestone.

The current cover story at the Atlantic, for example, asks "Is Israel Finished?"

The piece traces current debates in Israel over Ehud Olmert's handling of the 2006 Mideast War with Hezbollah, with particularly attention to the criticisms of the government among prominent public intellectuals, like the novelist David Grossman.

It's a good piece, and includes this great passage on the background of Israel today:

Israel’s people are among the world’s most patriotic—in a recent survey, 94 percent of Jewish Israelis said they are willing to fight for their country (by contrast, 63 percent of Americans are willing to fight for theirs), but 44 percent of Israelis said they would be ready to leave their country if they could find a better standard of living abroad. There are already up to 40,000 Israelis in Silicon Valley (and more than a half million across the U.S.), and the emigration of Israel’s most talented citizens is a constant worry of Israeli leaders. “Jews know that they can land on their feet in any corner of the world,” Ehud Barak, the defense minister and former prime minister, told me. “The real test for us is to make Israel such an attractive place—cutting-edge in science, education, culture, quality of life—that even American Jewish young people want to come here. If we cannot do this, even those who were born here will consciously decide to go to other places. This is a real problem.”

There are other, more disturbing issues, ones that many Israelis don’t care to address ... How can Israel survive the next 60 years in a part of the world that gives rise to groups like Hamas? How can Israel flourish if its army cannot defeat small bands of rocketeers? Does the concentration of so many Jews in a claustrophobically small space in the world’s most volatile region actually undermine the Jewish people’s ability to survive, an ability that was called into question little more than 60 years ago, when 33 percent of the world’s Jews were murdered?

The article portrays Israel as a country in paralysis, with the public commentariat on the left - represented here by Grossman, who is receptive to an accomodation with Hamas - opposed to Olmert's policy on Israel's West Bank settlements, and his simmmering war with the Palestinians in the absence of a negotiated compromise.

Grossman's position sounds like a recipe for self-destuction, but Olmert is in a bind himself, being sympathetic to compromise while fearful of being the prime minister who lost Israel.

But I'm also reading Foreign Policy's new essay, "Think Again: Israel," which offers an incomplete assessment of Israel's politics of survival.

The piece asks if, "Israel’s Existence Is in Danger"?

Not anymore. When Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, its Arab neighbors responded by invading. “It does not matter how many [Jews] there are,” said Arab League Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Azzam. “We will sweep them into the sea.”

Instead, disorganized and inexperienced Arab armies quickly crumbled before them. By the war’s end, Israel held more land than the United Nations had allocated it. Before the June 1967 Six Day War, as Arab states massed their forces on Israel’s borders, Israelis feared a second Holocaust. Israel’s astonishing victory showed that it had become the regional superpower, a status confirmed when it repulsed Egypt and Syria’s surprise attack in October 1973. Five-and-a-half years later, the peace agreement with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat neutralized Israel’s most formidable foe.

Today, there is no conventional military threat that remotely compares with the alliance led by Egypt. Left isolated by the Israeli-Egyptian peace, Syria has carefully observed a cease-fire since 1974. Afraid to risk full confrontation, Damascus has supported substate forces such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories. Along with other guerrilla groups, they employ terrorist tactics and rocket fire. Those methods have claimed many Israeli civilians’ lives. But on a national level, they’re equivalent to a chronic illness, not a fatal disease.

The essay also asks if , "Hamas Seeks Israel’s Destruction":

In its dreams. Hamas’s founding charter, issued in 1988, defines Palestine as “an Islamic waqf”—sacred trust—“consecrated for future Muslim generations.” That includes pre-1967 Israel. All of Palestine, says the charter, must be liberated by jihad. Diplomacy is a “vain endeavor.” The document turns the goals of radical Palestinian nationalism into timeless religious truths.

Yet with time, Hamas has indeed changed. It hasn’t renounced its charter, but has stopped referring to it. The movement has gradually morphed into a hard-line but more pragmatic Islamist organization. A milestone was its decision to participate in Palestinian Authority elections, even though the Authority was born of the Oslo agreements with Israel. In its 2006 election platform, Hamas stressed liberating the land that Israel occupied in 1967, even while insisting that it would not renounce the claim to pre-1948 Israel or Palestinians’ right of return.

This balancing act looks much like the change that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) underwent a generation ago, when it adopted its 1974 “phased strategy”—willingness to establish a state in part of Palestine while maintaining a claim to the rest. For the PLO, that was a way to justify participating in diplomacy on the future of the occupied territories, and it was a step toward recognizing Israel. Today, there are disagreements within Hamas over whether to negotiate directly with Israel. However, the organization appears willing to accept a de facto two-state solution and long-term cease-fire, as long as it doesn’t have to recognize Israel outright.

Not that Hamas has turned moderate. It hasn’t renounced “armed struggle,” including attacks on civilians. It may be willing to put up with Israel’s existence, but it still hasn’t negotiated with itself the way to say so publicly. Nonetheless, an eventual agreement with Israel is within the realm of the possible.

The essay's written by Gershom Gorenberg, a senior correspondent for the American Prospect.

I think Gorenberg badly misrepresents the nature of Hamas - and for more to that effect, see Caroline Glick's essay on Jimmy Carter's recent meetings with that terrorist organization, "Revealed Truths vs. Revealed Lies."

Also, Gorenberg doesn't really address Israel's demographic problem. Can Israel survive as a democracy if the Jewish population loses its majority status?

The Atlantic piece sums it up:

Political parties of the left and the center see the “demographic threat” to Israel’s Jewish majority as an existential menace nearly on a par with that posed by Iran and its nuclear program. The demographic trend has raised fears that Israel will become a state like pre-Mandela South Africa, in which the minority ruled the majority. But if the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza were given the vote, then Israel, a country whose fundamental purpose has been to serve as a refuge for persecuted Jews, and to allow those Jews to have the novel experience of being part of a majority, would disappear, to be replaced by an Arab-dominated “binational” state. Yet Israel has not found a way to escape the West Bank.

This is the biggest problem.

As left-wing anti-Israel groups in the West continue to demonize the Jewish state with incessant cries of "apartheid" and demands of the "right of return" for Palestinians, Tel Aviv will continue to face a crisis of existential proportions.

I'll have more on this, but in the meanwhile check out the question of worldwide support for Israel's survival across the Jewish diaspora, in Hillel Halkin's, "After Zionism: Reflections on Israel and the Diaspora."

Who's Your Favorite Public Intellectual?

We've all got 'em: A favorite author who's influenced the way we see the world. Some scholar or activist whose thinking's opened up new vistas in our own lives.

I go back and forth on this, of course.

In the past few years I've enjoyed Robert Kagan ("Power and Weakness") and Juan Williams (Enough).

I think some of Jamie Kerchick's recent writings are really cool ("The Anti-Neocon Fervor"), but I don't think he's really established enough to rate up there among today's top public intellectuals.

I'm thinking about this because Foreign Policy's put out the call for readers to vote for "The Top 100 Public Intellectuals":

They are some of the world’s most introspective philosophers and rabble-rousing clerics. A few write searing works of fiction and uncover the mysteries of the human mind. Others are at the forefront of modern finance, politics, and human rights. In the second Foreign Policy/Prospect list of top public intellectuals, we reveal the thinkers who are shaping the tenor of our time.

Foreign Policy's already got its list of the top 100. Kagan's on there, as well as David Petreaus, who's also a hero of mine. Samuel Huntington's a great inclusion too!

I don't see Williams or Kirchick, although lefties will love the inclusion of Paul Krugman, and true radicals will rejoice at the listing of Noam Chomsky!

So, don't delay: Submit your vote today!

Defining Success in Iraq

Frederick Kagan's got a new essay laying out a metric for determining American success in Iraq, at the Weekly Standard:

The president's nomination of generals David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno to take command of U.S. Central Command and Multinational Force-Iraq, respectively, was obviously the right decision. By experience and temperament and demonstrated success, both men are perfectly suited to these jobs. Given the political climate in Washington, however, their nominations are likely to be attacked with the same tired arguments war critics used to try to drown out reports of progress in Iraq during the recent Petraeus-Crocker hearings. So before the shouting begins again, let us consider in detail one of the most important of these arguments: that no one has offered any clear definition of success in Iraq.

Virtually everyone who wants to win this war agrees: Success will have been achieved when Iraq is a stable, representative state that controls its own territory, is oriented toward the West, and is an ally in the struggle against militant Islamism, whether Sunni or Shia. This has been said over and over. Why won't war critics hear it? Is it because they reject the notion that such success is achievable and therefore see the definition as dishonest or delusional? Is it because George Bush has used versions of it and thus discredited it in the eyes of those who hate him? Or is it because it does not offer easily verifiable benchmarks to tell us whether or not we are succeeding? There could be other reasons--perhaps critics fear that even thinking about success or failure in Iraq will weaken their demand for an immediate "end to the war." Whatever the explanation for this tiresome deafness, here is one more attempt to flesh out what success in Iraq means and how we can evaluate progress toward it.

Read the whole thing.

I can guarantee you that no matter what definition Kagan provides - no matter how rigorous - he'll be attacked as "wrong" again.

I can hear it now: "These stupid, evil neocons, all of these chicken hawks ... they've been wrong all along! Why should we listen to another Kagan spinning the same old web of lies? Oil, oil ... American imerialism ... the neo-fascist regime ... that's what it's all about! Forget about precise definitions. It's the big lie! Ahhh."

Of course, Kagan anticipates this, and throws down the challenge:

Here is a gauntlet thrown down: Let those who claim that the current strategy has failed and must be replaced lay out their own strategy, along with their definition of success, criteria for evaluating success, and the evidentiary basis for their evaluations. Then, perhaps, we can have a real national debate on this most important issue.

Thank goodness for the Kagans.

Shark Kills Professor Emeritus in Solana Beach

I saw the story on the California shark attack yesterday, and this morning's Los Angeles Times has the details:

The attack was swift and deadly. A shark expert who examined the mangled body said the bite marks showed the classic pattern of a great white: Strike from underneath and then retreat quickly.

Despite attempts by lifeguards at resuscitation, retired veterinarian Dave Martin, 66, a dedicated triathlete who swam every Friday with other fitness buffs, was declared dead just minutes after he was pulled from the water.

A shark estimated at 12 to 17 feet in length had bitten both his thighs, leading to massive bleeding, rescue personnel said. Martin's death left friends, beach lovers and fellow competitive swimmers in shock.

Though sharks are known to roam the ocean off Southern California, and millions of people swim in the waters annually, this was the first death attributed to a shark attack in San Diego County since 1994.

Officials immediately placed a 72-hour off-limits designation on an eight-mile stretch of the ocean from Torrey Pines to South Carlsbad, prime swimming and surfing territory.

Surfers just as quickly ignored the warnings and got in the water.

I used to be in the water all the time when I was in high school, boogie-boarding and swimming.

"Jaws" was always in the background, of course, but I tried not to think about it.

Obama's Failure to Clinch: It's Not About Racism

I noted in my earlier post, "Is it Really Race That's Messy Up the Democrats?," that Barack Obama's inability to clinch the white working class vote is not about race. It's culture and ideas - not to mention a bit of radicalism - that's thrown off Obama's mojo.

Well it turns out Betsy Newmark's posted on John McWhorter, the author of Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, and his reflections on Obama's recent campaign missteps:

John McWhorter makes what I consider a very important point concerning Barack Obama in this election. McWhorter supports Obama. I saw him on C-Span a while ago talking about what a wonderful thing it would be for this country to elect a black president and how he's genuinely excited about Obama's candidacy. McWhorter is a black man who has written in what some would consider a conservative vein about having high standards for blacks in education and how blacks need to eschew using black English. So that is why his essay in the New York Sun has special resonance. He is a man who can see both sides of ideological arguments.

What seems to almost frustrate some is that the answer to the question as to what role racism has played in this campaign is: none whatsoever.

Already many are wondering whether Mr. Obama’s inability to “close the deal,” as Mrs. Clinton has put it, with less educated whites indicates that they don’t like black people. To conclude that racism is the issue here is, however, reflexive and even lazy.

What we are seeing is that to whites of this stratum, there is nothing especially magic about Mr. Obama. That is, a considerable amount of Mr. Obama’s appeal is based on his charisma, his air of “freshness,” and so on. And yes, a considerable part of that is his color. I have written this before and will write it again: many white voters are stimulated by the idea of voting for a black candidate for president, as a gesture toward getting past America’s racist past.

People isolating that sentence as evidence that I oppose Mr. Obama’s candidacy will be neglecting countless columns I have written supporting him in this space. Nevertheless, anyone who claims that he would be where he is now if he were white is exerting the same kind of mental gymnastics as someone who claims “I don’t see race.” Mr. Obama’s color gave a boost to an interesting and qualified candidate and, well, here we are.

But that boost, it would seem, came mostly from educated, collegetown sorts. To this crowd, attendance to the fact that racism still exists, policing themselves for remnants of it, and taking especial delight in diversity are more important than to most blue-collar, small-town whites. That is, opposition to racism as a high priority is, as the blog has it, “Stuff White People Like,” the idea being white people of a certain demographic.

This does not mean that the whites in Pennsylvania don’t like black people, are “not ready” for a black president, or are evidence of racism “lurking beneath the surface of polite discussion.” It simply means that these people are evaluating Mr. Obama in a neutral way, and find Ms. Clinton more experienced, better prepared to steward a nation at war, and perhaps even having paid her dues in a way that Mr. Obama has not.

Exactly smack on!

There might well be people who are not voting for Obama because he is black. But there are many who are voting for him precisely because he is black. Geraldine Ferraro made the mistake of saying the exact truth when she stated that he wouldn't have been where he is today if he weren't black. A young white senator with just a couple years experience in the Senate would not have gotten the attention that Obama had and the encouragement he had to run for the presidency in the first place. Part of his appeal is that he sells himself as a bridge between the races and there are many people, like John McWhorter, who are excited at what it would mean for our nation to elect a man with Obama's ethnic heritage.

See also McWhorter's take on Obama's speech on race and religion, which the Illinois Senator delivered in trying to get out of his Wright-driven anti-American theological jam "John McWhorter Reviews Obama's Speech."

Bashing Thomas Friedman

I've never read one of Thomas Friedman's books.

I read his columns occasionally, but as he's usually on leave from the Times - so he can write a new book! - I pretty much forget about him most of the time.

Freidman's famous in the leftosphere, of course, for the "Friedman Unit," which is the six-month marker for extending the deadline for determining progress in Iraq. Friedman's also one of the biggest media champions of globalization, a fact I imagine helps explains why he was subject to a cream pie attack as he prepared to give a public lecture at Brown Univeristy last week:

Now, via Daniel Drezner, apparently Matthew Yglesias thought the attack on Friedman was funny:

Look, I like ripping into Thomas Friedman as much as the next blogger -- but I can't agree with Matt Yglesias that [this] is "funny..."

Friedman's the foil in the introduction to Heads in the Sand, Yglesias' new book in which he attacks the Iraq war as an unmitigated disaster.

Here's Yglesias, on the pie toss, bashing Friedman and plugging his book at the same time:

That's funny, but for a more intellectually rigorous Friedman takedown, I'd suggest the preface to Heads in the Sand, which attempts to elucidate the "Friedman Units" concept for a wider audience as well as explore the larger significance of Friedmanesque behavior.

Drezner doesn't like this, but he links to those who do, and quotes Jonathan Chait as well:

I don't think I'm particularly sensitive, but I find the notion of physically humiliating somebody who's trying to explain their ideas in a civic forum to be absolutely horrifying.

I doubt that description of the cruel depravity against Friedman can be topped.

I'm currently reading Heads in the Sand, and I'm trying to give Yglesias a fair shake, although I did write about his views previously, in "The Radical Foreign Policy of Matthew Yglesias."

In that entry I posted a picture of Yglesias wearing an arab kafiya, and I cite this comment from another blogger:

Terrorist chic is merely the latest retarded hipster trend to confirm the brutally obvious: spoiled liberal Ivy kids are not ready to talk to adults yet.

Applauding cruelly humiliating attacks on foreign policy journalists at a public speaking forum is not so grown up either.

The Radical Left's Denialism on Iraq Public Opinion

In a recent poll, Gallup found that the number of Americans who viewed the Iraq war as a mistake had reached the highest level in the history of the organization's surveys on the conflict.

Specifically, Jeffrey Jones indicated:

The most recent USA Today/Gallup poll finds 63% of Americans saying the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq, a new high mark by one percentage point.

The Gallup findings are in line with similar responses at the Washington Post's surveys, which since 2004 have found a decreasing number of Americans agreeing with the statement, "do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting, or not?"

This is straightforward and non-controversial. The difficulty comes when analysts and observers try to interpret the meaning of these numbers.

The Bush administration would no doubt like to see more positive general support for the deployment, at least by these particular measures. On the other hand, the administration's had the benefit of trends in polling on that war which reject an immediate pullout of American forces.

Indeed, since 2003 there's never been a majority in public opinion that supported an IMMEDIATE withrawal of all U.S. combat forces from Iraq (see Polling Report).

There has been past support for TIMETABLES for withdrawal. For example, a year ago a majority of Americans supported an 18-month timetable for the gradual pullout of American forces in Iraq, as measured by CBS/New York Times and NBC/Wall Street Journal polls, among others.

Note though that support for timetables was high back in 2007, just as the Bush administration had established a new security strategy in Iraq - the counterinsurgency policy of General David Petraeus, which has been more successful than war opponents could have imagined.

In the Gallup survey this week, Jones noted that while the public's weary of war, there's no demand for an immediate withdrawal:

Even though majority opposition to the Iraq war is basically cemented, other Gallup polling has found that the public does not necessarily advocate a quick end to the war. While a majority now favors a timetable for withdrawing troops, only about one in five Americans think the withdrawal should begin immediately and be completed as soon as possible.

Okay, let's stress this point, in italicized capitals for extra emphasis: JUST "ONE IN FIVE AMERICANS" SUPPORTS AN IMMEDIATE TROOP PULLOUT FROM IRAQ.

I have to stress this because the radical left's war opponents, in their complete loss of reason on the Bush administration and the war, refuse to even acknowledge straightforward statistics like these.

For example, antiwar blogger Repsac3, in a post entitled "Public Opinion on Iraq," has attacked me as outside of some "reality-based" community because I've argued there are no immediate demands for a precipitous pullout, which is exactly what antiwar activists have been demanding for years.

What evidence does Repsac3 offer for attack?

Well, he cites a badly misinformed post by Gleen Greenwald, especially this passage:

American public opinion isn't "divided" or "split" on this question. There are no pro-war trends here that signal the Iraq War is about to become a huge asset for the McCain campaign. Nor are any of the other cliches used repeatedly by the establishment press to claim that unconditional withdrawal is a politically unpopular position even remotely true.

To the contrary, Americans overwhelmingly favor unconditional withdrawal and it's not even close. They favor that by a 25-point margin, and it's a 29-point margin among independents. Those are huge margins. Very few public policy questions of any significance produce margins that large.

Okay, that sounds superficially plausible, except if we look at the poll that Greenwald himself cites - Gallup's survey from April 8 of this year - there's no evidence whatsoever to suggest that "Americans overwhelmingly favor unconditional withdrawal" from the conflict.

Jeffrey Jones also provides the summary to the poll Greenwald cites, and he indicates that Americans are favorable to Democratic demands on establishing timetables, but not to an immediate redeployment:

In general, the public tends to side with the Democrats from the standpoint of favoring a timetable, but relatively few advocate a quick withdrawal. And most seem sympathetic to the Republican argument about the United States needing to establish a certain level of security before leaving Iraq.

What does Jones mean when he suggests "relatively few"Americans favor a hasty retreat? Well, he's linking to Gallup's own survey research on an Iraq troop pullout, from March 13, which finds:

Americans are as divided today as they have been since last September about the United States' troop presence in Iraq: 41% favor setting a timetable for gradually pulling out of Iraq while 35% want to maintain troops there until the situation improves. Only 18% of Americans favor an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops.

Okay, this is only five weeks ago, and to stress Jones' crucial point once more, JUST "18% OF AMERICANS" SUPPORT A COMPLETE AND TOTAL PULLOUT OF U.S. FORCES FROM IRAQ.

I don't normally use so much exclamatory emphasis, but I want to be clear just in case any hardline radical war opponents happen to leave a nasty drive-by comment or two attacking me for my alleged "war mongering" or for slurring my reputation as "only a community college professor."

Thus, again, readers should check Gallup's post themselves, "Americans on Iraq: Should the U.S. Stay or Go?"

Repsac3, in particular, should take off his blinders and just acknowledge the facts: The war's been prolonged and costly, but Americans don't want to lose.

Indeed, a Pew Research poll on Iraq last month suggested:

Public perceptions of the situation in Iraq have become significantly more positive over the past several months, even as opinions about the initial decision to use military force remain mostly negative and unchanged.

The number of Americans who say the military effort is going very or fairly well is much higher now than a year ago (48% vs. 30% in February 2007). There has been a smaller positive change in the number who believe that the U.S. will ultimately succeed in achieving its goals (now 53%, up from 47% in February 2007).

The basic stess in American public opinion so far in 2008 has been that the war's been costly, but things are going better, so let's give the troops and their commanders some time.

As the Wall Street Journal noted in its article on recent improvements in Iraq, published March 5 of this year:

The perception that the U.S. troop surge in Iraq has succeeded is changing some public views of the war, potentially blunting Democrats' political edge on the issue.

Note, of course, that public opinion polls are snapshots in time, and they are subject to statistical margins of error. But the trends have been consistent, across a number of survey organizations: There's considerable public recognition of American progress, and there's little support for tucking-tail in retreat from the theater.

But all of this doesn't matter to the antiwar hordes, including Greenwald, Repsac3, and all of the other nihilists suffering from what could be considered psychological pathologies (and not just the amusing "Bush Derangement Syndrome").

The redoubtable Dr. Sanity, for example, argues that:

There are a wide variety of ways that psychological denial can be expressed by a person who is unconsciously defending or protecting themselves from unwanted knowledge, thoughts, or feelings....

The most obvious strategy is simple, or outright, denial. This is the basic technique of maintaining that something is true/not true despite all evidence to the contrary. It is usually encapsulated in slick slogans that can be mindlessly repeated until they take on the characteristics of some fundamental "truth". They are in fact, the kind of "big lie" that distorts reality and oozes its way into human consciousness effortlessly.

Or, in Repsac3's case, such denials are encapsulated in dismissive attacks on rigorous data analysis and logic as "straw men."

Dr. Sanity places far left-wing denialism in the context of radical epistomology and philosophy, especially postmodernism:

In history of denial, the philosophy of postmodernism which burst on the human scene about half a century ago, is probably the most recently developed denial strategy. It is usually resorted to when "intellectualization" and "rationalization" fail to convince others that one is "reality-based". It is at that point in the discussion that reality (and truth) are then abandoned with alacrity for the typical rhetorical tactics of postmodernism.

The resort to postmodern denial strategies is common among hardline leftists in generalized attacks on conservatives and those who support the war.

For more on the theory of military progress and public support in Iraq, see Peter Feaver, Christopher Gelpi, and Jason Reifler, "Success Matters: Casualty Sensitivity and the War in Iraq," International Security, Winter 2005/06.

Radical Activists Touring for Revolution in Venezuela

The Christian Science Monitor reports that Venezuela's become the magnet for social revolutionaries around the world, activists who're drawn to the regime of Hugo Chavez, where the air of anti-Americanism hangs over daily activities throughout the country:

Caracas in the early 2000s has become what Petrograd was under Lenin in the early 1900s. It's what Havana was in the early days of the Cuban revolution. It's what Chiapas, Mexico, became for a time in the 1990s when "Subcomandante Marcos" launched an armed struggle to help the indigenous people there – a magnet for socialists and students, radicals and revolutionaries, leftists and a few Hollywood luminaries.

Until recently, they didn't have anywhere to go. Socialism was in retreat, "revolutions" scarce. Then along came Mr. Chávez and his gambit to forge a "21st century socialism." Suddenly, Caracas is the new leftwing petri dish. "This is the most interesting social experiment in the world taking place today," says Fred Fuentes, an Australian who moved to Caracas last July, as he sips from a mug with the government motto "Rumbo al Socialismo" (On the way to Socialism). "Venezuela is the key place to be observing."

Since being sworn in as Venezuela's president in 1999, Chavez has championed the cause of the poor, making them the protagonists of his policies. He calls his crusade the Bolivarian Revolution, after Simón Bolívar who helped liberate Venezuela from Spain in the 1800s. His supporters say he is the only one who has ever cared about them. Critics call his peasant-class evangelism posturing – a man with too much oil money using politics as a personal sandbox.

Either way, he has given a sense of hope to and unleashed a fervor among millions of Venezuelans. "This is truly a revolution," notes Cira Mijares, a Caracas resident who says she found her voice when she joined a community council, a Chávez initiative to boost the poor.

It is this same sentiment that foreigners are arriving to steep in. At the International Miranda Center, which sits on the top floor of a hotel suite that houses large numbers of Cubans, who have been in Venezuela providing medical care and baseball training to the poor, visitors from around the world – with government aid – prepare conferences and papers on the merits of the country's social revolution. They talk politics, quote Lenin, and discuss the new cooperatives and councils....

The waves of wandering leftists usually co-incide with domestic upheaval in their own country. In the 1930s, when many trekked to the Soviet Union, it was widespread economic collapse around the world. In the 1960s and '70s, the Vietnam War and social unrest drove some dispirited Americans to socialist outposts. More recently the Iraq war has caused people to pack up their political tenets, such as Cindy Sheehan, the peace activist, who visited Chávez in 2006.

Other high-profile people have made brief appearances here, too, including actors Danny Glover and Sean Penn. But most are people like Jordan Winquist, who was working as a waiter in Philadelphia after college. One day searching Craigslist he found a job teaching English in Caracas. But politics was the real reason he journeyed here in 2006.

I wonder if people like Winquist genuinely understand the movement to which they're so romantically attracted.

As regular readers know, I do a lot of blogging on the radical left.

I found an interesting article recently on the antiwar movement, which has emerged during the Bush administration as the spearhead for the worldwide anti-capitalist revolution.

John Tierney, in his essay, "The Politics of Peace: What’s Behind the Anti-War Movement?", has some background on the membership and goals of today's "romantic" revolutionaries:

The irony of the modern “peace” movement is that it has very little to do with peace— either as a moral concept or as a political ideal. Peace is a tactical ideal for movement organizers: it serves as political leverage against U.S. policymakers, and it is an ideological response to the perceived failures of American society. The leaders of anti-war groups are modern-day Leninists. As Lenin used Russian war-weariness in 1917 to overthrow the Czar, so American street evolutionaries use reactions to the war on Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein as a way to foment radical political change at home.

The current peace movement is “neo-Communist,” says David Horowitz, the onetime radical-turned-conservative. This is a revealing and accurate label. In fact, the movement is heir to the Commu nist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), even though the party’s global base—the Soviet Union—no longer exists.

A variety of CPUSA splinter groups claim the mantle of the Left even as they spin-off a dizzying series of front groups and issue-oriented action “committees.” ANSWER is only the largest of these groups, which also include United for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, Not In Our Name,the Green Party and the Institute for Policy Studies. The Bush Administration’s war on terror, which includes the Iraq war, has prompted all of them to form coalitions and seek allies. Their aim is a “struggle” against “oppression” and “imperialism,” code words in the lexicon of revolutionary socialism. Not In Our Name (NION), a satellite of the Revolutionary Communist Party, decries the War on Terror as a Bush Administration ploy: “We will not stop until all of us are free from your bloodthirsty domination.”

After the attacks of 9/11, when the enemy targeted Americans for terror and death, the need for a “peace movement” vanished. Remember the isolationist group America First? On December 11, 1941, four days after Pearl Harbor, it honorably disbanded, declaring “The time for military action is here.” But the current movement just does the opposite. As this study demonstrates, many of today’s antiwar organizers used to support the Soviet Union and its proxies such as the Vietcong, the Sandinistas, North Korea, Castro’s Cuba and the Communist guerrillas in El Salvador. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern peace movement is composed of the ideological remnants of Communism. These groups are motivated by anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Semitism and anti-globalization. They are enamored of socialism, world revolution and class solidarity.

One of the great benefits of the Democratic Party's long nomination fight is that as the race grinds on, the public's offered penetrating revelations on just how deeply the modern Democratic Party base is rooted in the most radical forces on the contemporary political scene.

For example, ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers, whose relationship to Barack Obama is receiving intense scrutiny in the press, is an unbowed revolutionary who has said that ''I don't want to discount the possibility" of returning to direct violent action against the United States.

As Captain Ed point out, just last September Bernardine Dohrn, addressing an event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the SDS, spoke of her movement's continuing radical activism to "overthrow" this government's "hateful structures" (at about 2:50 minutes):

Today, of course, top radical commentators around the left blogosphere have formed a tacit alliance with the most implacable antiwar and revolutionary activists on the scene.

Under the banner of "progressivism," radical bloggers like Jane Hamsher, and groups like MoveOn.org and the United for Peace and Justice coalition, have adopted electoral poltics as the most acceptable, mainstream method of overturning the traditional capitalist status quo.

Hillary Should Forget North Carolina

Hillary Clinton's looking to North Carolina's primary to further make the case on Barack Obama's unelectability.

The Washington Post has the story:

North Carolina, with its large African American population, has long been seen as a firewall for Obama after contests in Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere that favored Clinton. A win here and in Indiana, which also votes May 6, could cement his status as the front-runner.

If Clinton wins in Indiana and is able to score an upset, or even lose by a small margin, in North Carolina, her comeback would probably gain fresh momentum. A lopsided Clinton loss would essentially negate any recent gains she has made in delegates, in the nationwide popular vote and in persuading superdelegates to support her.

"They're going to try to win in Indiana and close like crazy in North Carolina," said Joe Trippi, who was a top adviser to the campaign of former North Carolina senator John Edwards before he dropped out of the race. Edwards has not endorsed either candidate, despite repeated entreaties from both.

Obama and Clinton have campaigned heavily in Indiana, where the race is expected to be close because of its proximity to Obama's Chicago home and its large number of white working-class voters, who have backed Clinton in other states.

They have spent less time in North Carolina, and as the race has shifted here both campaigns have sought to lower expectations.

"This is an uphill climb. To win here would be the upset of the century," said Averell "Ace" Smith, director of Clinton's North Carolina campaign.

Actually, I don't know if it makes sense for Clinton to invest heavily in North Carolina.

Blacks make up roughly 25 percent of the state's population, and black voters will be a large factor in the Democratic primary.

Yet Indiana's where Hillary's gold is for the next stage of the nomination battle.

Obama holds a bare lead in the Hoosier State, 41 to 38 percent. The Clinton camp should prioritize the vote there, as a big win in the heartland will allow the campaign to continue hammering Obama on his inability to win over white working class voters.

Indeed, as Obama continues to struggle with the fallout from his radical ties, Hillary can paint an Obama win in North Carolina as possible only because of the far-left racial constituencies of Democratic Party.

Photo Credit: Washington Post

McCain Mounts Caring Conservative Social Agenda

Over the past few days, John McCain has taken his campaign to the hardscrabble corners of the deep south to showcase his agenda of caring conservatism.

In "On McCain Tour, a Promise to Find ‘Forgotten’ America," the New York Times notes:

Senator John McCain opened a weeklong tour of the nation’s “forgotten places” in the Alabama Black Belt on Monday by acknowledging the challenge he faced in appealing to African-Americans and admitting that “I am aware of the fact that there will be many people who will not vote for me....”

But in a speech delivered against the backdrop of one of the great symbols of the civil rights movement, the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, promised to hear voters’ concerns and be “the president of all the people,” including those who supported his competitors.

McCain's realistic in his assessment, as much of the black community continues to be mired in a politics social policy largesse rather than personal responsibility.

Yet considering the failures of the Johnson adminisration's war on poverty (there's been little improvement in the poverty rate since the 1970s), McCain's correct to adopt na educational and market-based approach to facilitate upward mobility among the nation's poor.

Time calls this a "caring conservative" agenda that will move away from Democratic big government themes:

Rather than promise much new federal money to address poverty, he spoke of "controlling spending" and scrubbing federal agencies for waste. Rather than announce any major anti-poverty initiatives, he proposed a three-month holiday from the gasoline tax, some subsidies for rural Internet providers and a doubling of the tax credit for families with dependent children. Rather than follow in the footsteps of Lyndon Johnson, he praised the nobility of Johnson's cause but then pointed out the failures of the "War on Poverty" effort.

"He proclaimed that large government bureaucracies and government was going to solve the problem," McCain said of Johnson. "Government didn't." When asked if he could promise that he would not cut the discretionary federal programs that help the impoverished communities he visited, McCain answered carefully. "I can't guarantee that every single program will be kept in place," he said. "But I can guarantee that every program that's viable, and that's achieving the purpose for which it is intended will be kept in place...."

McCain has said his major economic emphasis will focus on stimulating the economy by continuing President Bush's tax cuts, slashing the corporate tax rate and reducing wasteful federal spending, which he said would be accomplished by banning Congressional earmarks and reviewing efficiency of the cabinet-level agencies. He says he expects these policies, including a continuation of a lower capital gains tax rate, to help the economy grow, benefiting those at the bottom of the ladder as much as those higher up.

By contrast, both Democratic candidates have focused more of their policy prescriptions on measures to provide direct government support for the poor, including tax credits targeted for low-income workers, new spending on early childhood education, a higher minimum wage, and health insurance options available to all Americans. Obama and Clinton say they would pay for these plans by allowing President Bush's tax cuts to expire, and possibly raising the Capital Gains tax, moves that would have a greater impact on the wealthy than the poor.

In the coming days, McCain says he plans to deliver an address discussing some of the policy lessons of his trip through struggling parts of the country. He said he was impressed with the importance of Community Development Block Grants, which provide federal funds for infrastructure work. He also said he had seen the importance of allowing local communities to play a major role in deciding how to spend federal aid. He has also promised to return to many of the communities he visited.

McCain has a significant, complicated challenge before him in selling this message.

The left, for example, is hammering McCain's visit to New Orleans, where the candidate faulted the Bush administration's response to the Katrina disaster.

Yet, while McCain focused on the Bush administration exclusively, the presumptive GOP nominee should further develop the theme of state and local responsiblity in the welfare of the poor.

Recall Bob Williams' message on Democratic Party's failure in Louisiana in 2005:

Many in the media are turning their eyes toward the federal government, rather than considering the culpability of city and state officials. I am fully aware of the challenges of having a quick and responsive emergency response to a major disaster. And there is definitely a time for accountability; but what isn't fair is to dump on the federal officials and avoid those most responsible--local and state officials who failed to do their job as the first responders. The plain fact is, lives were needlessly lost in New Orleans due to the failure of Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Blanco, and the city's mayor, Ray Nagin.

Recall, too, that Louisiana's voters elected Republican Bobby Jindal to the statehouse in 2006, a vote that signifies the rejection of Louisiana's ineffective Democratic Party leadership in times of crisis.

McCain must continue to make the case that the GOP agenda offers a better vision of hope and uplift than the failed Democratic Party social welfare policies of the last forty years.

ROTC Cadet Robbed While Having Seizure

Sometimes the depths of depravity are simply incomprehensible, but the story of the ROTC cadet being robbed while having a seizure on a public sidewalk is about as low as depraved inhumanity can get:

See also, "Man Robbed By Having Seizure."

Hat tip: Hot Air, "The Bad Samaritan."

Dems Long Nomination Blows Opportunity, Reveals Weak Candidates

I often close my posts noting how this year presents the best electoral environment for the Democrats in decades.

President Bush has been battered in public opinion by a polarizing war, government by both parties has been ineffective (for example, in the Katrina response), an advantage that should accrue to the party out of power in Washington, the economy, a little uncertain last year, is now in a full-blown housing slump and likely recession, and legitimate public goods demands, like infrastructure improvements, are building up.

Even without the normal demands for change in the electorate after eight years of GOP rule, the Democrats should be seeing a slam-dunk electoral environment in '08.

But they're not. The party's been dragged deeper into the mud with its nomination battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and even top party officials are calling for an end to the bloodletting.

Gerard Baker adds some perspective to what I've got here, over at the Times of London:

Hillary Clinton's solid victory in the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday has condemned the party to many more weeks of strife and sinking public esteem. There's a popular view among Democrats and the media establishment that the reason for the party's current disarray is that it just happens to have two most extraordinary candidates: talented, attractive, and in their gender and race, excitingly new. But there's an alternative explanation, which I suspect the voters have grasped rather better than their necromancers in the media. Both are losers.

The longer the Democratic race goes on, the more obvious it appears that each is deeply, perhaps ineradicably flawed.

Until about a month ago Barack Obama had done a brilliant job of presenting himself as a transcendent figure, the mixed-race candidate with bipartisan appeal who promised to heal the historic and modern rifts in American life.

But the mask has slipped. Under pressure in a Democratic primary, Mr Obama has sounded just like any other tax-raising, government-loving Democratic politician. Worse, he has revealed himself to be a member of that special subset of the party's liberal elite - a well-educated man with a serious superiority complex.

His worst moment of the campaign was when he was caught telling liberal sophisticates about his anthropological observations on the campaign trail. In the misery of their daily lives, he said, the hicks out there in the sticks cling to religion and guns and the other irrational necessities of the unenlightened life. His wife had earlier told voters that they should be grateful that someone of his protean talents had deigned to come among them and be their president.

The events of the last month have also revealed another side of Mr Obama that threatens to undermine his whole message. He is a cynic. He tells the mavens of San Francisco one thing and the great unwashed of Pennsylvania another. In defending his long relationship with the Rev Jeremiah Wright, he shopped his own grandmother, comparing the reverend's views (God Damn America! The US deliberately spread Aids among the black population) to his grandmother's occasionally expressed fears about the potential of being the victim of crime at the hands of an African-American.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has been busy shedding the final vestiges of shame and honesty in her desperate attempt to save her candidacy. She has abandoned any pretence of a message, and simply seized on every opening presented to her by her opponent.

Mr Obama's missteps with the working class of Pennsylvania have thus transformed Mrs Clinton from the bluestocking Wellesley graduate into the good old girl, hanging out there with the straw-chewing rednecks, embracing their values, their worldview and even their lifestyle.

Obliterate Iran! Here comes Osama bin Laden! I love duck hunting! I can do shots and beer at the same time! It's hard to know what's worse - expressing condescending views about the working class or pretending to be one of them. The Democratic campaign is simply disappearing in the enveloping vapidity of the candidates' making.

Actually, one could attack Hillary for abandoning a campaign of ideas to shift over to a theme of Democratic working-class populism.

But that's Hillary. We know that she'll do whatever she can to win. In my view, she's abandoned her pandering to the left's interest-group oblivion, especially on the war, and has started to sound more like how a real president would govern.

No matter.

Let the Dems continue to thrash each other. The economy presents opportunities for John McCain to sell a socially responsible pro-market agenda, one based on competence not social policy largesse.

The war in Iraq, of course, continues to have support in public opinion (specifically, there are no demands for an immediate withdrawal), which works against the Demcratic Party's incessant demands for an unconditional surrender.

There's no slam dunk for the Democrats, and the Hill-Obama conflict's making it even more true than ever.

Blame All: Douglas Feith's Score-Settling New Book

Dana Milbank, at the Washington Post, looks at the political motivations behind Douglas Feith's new book, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism:

Mistakes were made. But not by him.

Doug Feith, the No. 3 man at the Pentagon before, during and after the invasion of Iraq, has come in for his share of blame for the failures there -- in large part because he led the Pentagon policy shop that badly misstated the case for war and bungled the planning for the aftermath. Gen. Tommy Franks called him "the dumbest [bad word] guy on the planet." George Tenet of the CIA called his work on Iraq "total crap." And Jay Garner, once the American administrator in Iraq, deduced that Feith is "incredibly dangerous" and, "He's a smart guy whose electrons aren't connected."

Now Feith, whatever the state of his electrons, is showing just how dangerous he can be. He's written a book designed to settle the score with his many opponents in the administration, and in a book-launch event last night at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he pointed his finger every which way but inward.

He argued that former secretary of state Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, were the ones who failed to challenge the logic of going to war -- not him. He suggested that Powell, Armitage, Franks, former Iraq viceroy Jerry Bremer and even Feith's old boss, Donald Rumsfeld, should be blamed for the postwar chaos in Iraq -- not him. He blamed then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice for the way she operated ("fundamental differences were essentially papered over rather than resolved"). He accused the CIA of "improper" and unprofessional behavior. And he implicitly blamed President Bush for not cracking down on insubordinate behavior at the State Department.

Yet at the same time, Feith told the CSIS crowd that he disapproved of the "snide and shallow self-justification typical in memoirs of former officials," or what Feith cleverly called the " 'I-was-surrounded-by-idiots' school of memoir writing." Feith pointed out that he supported his account with 140 pages of notes and documents. And yet, in his hour-long panel discussion, Feith seemed to be of the impression that he had, in fact, been surrounded by idiots.

I'll stop the quote there, as I'm not so impressed with Doug Feith.

I'm currently reading too many books to pick up another right now, but I'm especially not in the mood for a "blame all" tome such as this, on the political origins of the rise and fall of the Iraq war, precisely when American forces and the Iraqi political regime have reached a crucial turning point in the consolidation of an independent Iraqi state.

Iran Still Arming Iraqi Militants, U.S. Claims

The Wall Street Journal reports that Washington's offered new evidence showing continuing Iranian support for Iraqi factions fighting the legitimate government in Baghdad:

The U.S. military says it has found caches of newly made Iranian weapons in Iraq, leading senior officials to conclude Tehran is continuing to funnel armaments into Iraq despite its pledges to the contrary.

Officials in Washington and Baghdad said the purported Iranian mortars, rockets and explosives had date stamps indicating they were manufactured in the past two months. The U.S. plans to publicize the weapons caches in coming days. A pair of senior commanders said a presentation was tentatively planned for Monday.

The allegations, which couldn't be independently verified, mark a further hardening of U.S. rhetoric on Iran, which senior American officials now describe as the greatest long-term threat to Iraq.

This month, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iranian support for Shiite extremist groups had grown. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said for the first time that he believed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knew about the shipments.

Iran has long denied that its government knowingly funneled weapons into Iraq or trained Shiite militants there. It has derided the U.S. claims as propaganda. Several senior U.S. military officials said the weapons caches would undercut the Iranian denials and provide new evidence of continuing Iranian support for Shiite militants across Iraq.

"You can see the manufacturing dates right on the armaments themselves," one senior commander in Baghdad said. "These are very clearly weapons that were made in the last month or so."

Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, the top American military spokesman in Baghdad, said U.S. officials were "working on a briefing that we hope to be able to deliver in the next week or so." He said he would not be "disclosing the substance of the brief."

Last fall, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Mr. Ahmadinejad had told the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that Tehran would take steps to curb shipments of Iranian weaponry into Iraq.

The weapons of deepest concern to U.S. officials were explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, which U.S. officials accuse Iran of manufacturing and shipping to Shiite militants. EFPs, which are capable of punching through even the strongest U.S. armor, have been responsible for hundreds of American deaths.

The number of EFP attacks began to sharply decline after the Iranian assurances, resulting in a significant reduction in U.S. military casualties. That led several senior State Department officials to conclude that Tehran was honoring its commitments.

At the Pentagon, Mr. Gates and other top military officials have been skeptical, arguing it was too soon to draw that conclusion.

The number of EFP attacks against U.S. forces has rebounded this year. American commanders accuse Iran of providing the rockets that rained down on the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad recently, killing several Americans. U.S. officials said Iran provided the weaponry that Shiite militants used in block-by-block fighting with Iraqi government security forces in the southern port city of Basra this month.

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, focused his recent congressional testimony almost exclusively on Iran, which he said was playing a "destructive role" by funneling advanced weaponry to Shiite militants in Iraq.

Within the State Department, views about Iran have also been hardening. Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told reporters last year that there were signs Tehran was "using some influence to bring down violence from extremist Shia militias." Earlier this month, by contrast, he said Iran was playing a "highly dangerous" role in Iraq, and directly accused Tehran of providing the deadly rockets that slammed into the U.S. Embassy compound where he lives and works.

See also, the New York Times, "Groups With Iran’s Backing Blamed for Baghdad Attacks."

Barack Obama's Neo-Marxist Liability in Jeremiah Wright

Dr. Sanity's got a post up analyzing the neo-Marxist ideology of Reverend Jeremiah Wright:

Stanley Kurtz has gone through the sermons of Barack Obama's minister and father-figure:

Wright is not merely saying that there are tragic disparities between wealth in the West and in the rest of the world. Wright appears to believe that the capitalist system itself creates and depends upon the poverty and hunger of the "black and brown one-half or two-thirds of the globe." In effect, Wright believes that just as slavery supported the capitalist economy of early America, capitalism today depends upon the de facto slavery of Third World oppression.

Here's Dr. Sanity's response to Kurtz's thesis:

It shouldn't come as any surprise that the thing most feared by today's neo-Marxists is capitalism.

They are right to fear it, because capitalism works in the real world; while communism, socialism and all the utopian variants thereof do not....

In every empirical test in the real world, capitalism has worked better than socialism or communism or any Marxist ideology. The last century once and for all completely debunked all the original Marxist claims about socialism's supposed superiority.

Dr. Sanity goes on to elaborate some crucial differences between "the forces of freedom and individualism on the one hand," and "the forces of tyranny and collectivism" on the other.

But see how all of this relates to Reverend Wright's public resurfacing today, in Lynn Sweet's essay, "Wright Offering Fresh Fodder to Obama Critics":

The controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- Sen. Barack Obama's pastor -- is speaking Monday at the National Press Club as part of a divinity conference of black church leaders. Wright's decision to headline an event at the Press Club -- open to all media -- risks giving Obama's critics more fodder, as if they don't have enough already.

Meanwhile, PBS is touting an interview with Wright to be broadcast Friday on "Bill Moyers' Journal." Fresh material from Wright -- no matter how well-intended -- is not what Obama needs....

Wright looms as a serious problem for Obama in his fight to be the Democratic presidential nominee over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and, if he wins, as a general election candidate against Sen. John McCain. Look no further than an ad the North Carolina Republican Party released Wednesday featuring a clip from Wright's "God Damn America" sermon and calling Obama an "extremist."

Fox News has been all over Wright -- helicopter shots of his Tinley Park mansion under construction -- and host Bill O'Reilly has been pounding Obama over Wright regularly on his show.

The backfire potential of Wright having any sort of a public profile at this point seems obvious.

See further analysis of Wright's reemergence at Memeorandum.

Iraq On Verge of Major Milestone as Sunnis Eye Joining Government

Iraq's Sunni faction may end its boycott of the al Maliki government in Baghdad, in what's being reported as a possible major victory toward political reconciliation in Iraq.

The New York Times reports:

Iraq’s largest Sunni bloc has agreed to return to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s cabinet after a boycott that lasted nearly a year, several Sunni leaders said on Thursday, citing a recently passed amnesty law and the Maliki government’s crackdown on Shiite militias as reasons for the move.

The Sunni leaders said they were still working out the details of their return, an indication that the deal could still fall through. But such a return would represent a major political victory for Mr. Maliki in the midst of a military operation that has at times been criticized as poorly planned and fraught with risk. The principal group his security forces have been confronting is the Mahdi Army, a powerful militia led by Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric. Even though Mr. Maliki’s American-backed offensive against elements of the Mahdi Army has frequently stalled and has led to bitter complaints of civilian casualties, the Sunni leaders said that the government had done enough to address their concerns that they had decided to end their boycott.

“Our conditions were very clear, and the government achieved some of them,” said Adnan al-Duleimi, the head of Tawafiq, the largest Sunni bloc in the government. Mr. Duleimi said the achievements included “the general amnesty, chasing down the militias and disbanding them and curbing the outlaws.”

The recently passed amnesty law has already led to the release of many Sunni prisoners, encouraging Sunni parties that the government is serious about enforcing it. And the attacks on Shiite militias have apparently begun to assuage longstanding complaints that only Sunni groups blamed for the insurgency have been the targets of American and Iraqi security forces.

Exactly which ministries will be given to which Sunni politicians is still under negotiation, said Ayad Samarrai, the deputy general secretary of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest party within Tawafiq. Among those under consideration are the Ministries of Culture, Planning, Higher Education and Women’s Affairs and the State Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Samarrai said.

We're seeing real political alignments, the stuff of old-fashioned coalition politics.

Regional actors should be encouraging closer ties between Iraqi factions, which would serve to isolate renegade Shiite groups, and lend more legitimacy to the deployment in American public opinion.

The Problem of Obama's Tenured Radical Friend

There are some interesting developments concerning Barack Obama's relationship to Bill Ayers, the former '60s-era radical who's now a professor at the University of Illinois.

Sol Stern's got interesting piece up over at City Journal, "Obama’s Real Bill Ayers Problem: The Ex-Weatherman Is Now a Radical Educator With Influence":

Barack Obama complains that he’s been unfairly attacked for a casual political and social relationship with his neighbor, former Weatherman Bill Ayers. Obama has a point. In the ultraliberal Hyde Park community where the presidential candidate first earned his political spurs, Ayers is widely regarded as a member in good standing of the city’s civic establishment, not an unrepentant domestic terrorist. But Obama and his critics are arguing about the wrong moral question. The more pressing issue is not the damage done by the Weather Underground 40 years ago, but the far greater harm inflicted on the nation’s schoolchildren by the political and educational movement in which Ayers plays a leading role today.

Read the whole thing.

Stern's arguing that Ayers radical pedagogy is debilitating generations of American schoolchildren through the indoctrintation of anti-American radicalism:

Ayers’s texts on the imperative of social-justice teaching are among the most popular works in the syllabi of the nation’s ed schools and teacher-training institutes. One of Ayers’s major themes is that the American public school system is nothing but a reflection of capitalist hegemony. Thus, the mission of all progressive teachers is to take back the classrooms and turn them into laboratories of revolutionary change.

I see plenty of evidence of this on my campus, but Stern, in discussing Ayers' radical classroom agenda, gives Obama a pass on his ties to the former Weatherman.

Not buying it, Andrew McCarthy's posted a response, "Re: Obama's Real Bill Ayers Problem":

Of course it's an enormous problem that Ayers has so much influence. But Stern writes:

"If [Mayor Richard] Daley fils can forgive Ayers for his past violence, why should Obama’s less consequential contacts with Ayers be a political disqualification? It’s hard to disagree." It's not at all hard to disagree. Daley is a hack, while Obama — who claims to be a transcendent unifying figure — wants to be president. Ayers hasn't merely engaged in "past violence"; he is saying in the here and now that he's sorry only that he didn't carry out more terrorist attacks — and it's in the here and now that Obama (who aspires to be commander-in-chief during a global war against terrorists) has cultivated him.

Stern further writes:

Unfortunately, neither Obama nor his critics in the media seem to have a clue about Ayers’s current work and his widespread influence in the education schools. In his last debate with Hillary Clinton, Obama referred to Ayers as a “professor of English,” an error that the media then repeated.

Baloney! Obama is pretending to be clueless and Stern is falling for it.

As I recounted in this piece, Obama not only served for years on the Woods board with Ayers; he also appeared with him on a panel arranged by Associate Dean Michelle Obama at U-Chicago in connection with which (a) Ayers' "social justice" work to fight against the incarceration of juvenile criminals — which had utterly nothing to do with teaching English — was elaborately described, and (b) Obama was joined with Ayers precisely because his (Obama's) work as a state legislator to fight jail sentences for juvenile criminals dovetailed perfectly with Ayers' conception of "social justice."

Obama did not call Ayers an English teacher because he was confused or misinformed. He called Ayers an English teacher because he was lying. That is, he was intentionally minimizing his relationship with an anti-American revolutionary with whom Obama has been friendly, collaborative and entirely comfortable.

See also, the Chicago Tribune's profile of the tenured radical, Ayers, Though Quieter, 'Still Outspoken'":

Photo Credit, "The door to Bill Ayers' office at the University of Illinois is covered with pictures, cartoons, graphics and various political paraphernalia Thursday morning. Ayers himself was nowhere to be seen after his name came up Wednesday night in nationally televised debates between presidential candidates Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton," Chicago Tribune.

Petraeus Promotion Consolidates Bush War Policy

As the Los Angeles Times reports in "Petraeus Promotion Ensures Future for Bush War Policy," the Bush administration's promotion of General David Petraeus to CentCom commander will solidify Iraq war policy into the next administration:

In promoting Army Gen. David H. Petraeus to commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, President Bush is doing more than rewarding a job well done in Iraq. The president also is taking a step toward perpetuating his policy of high troop levels in Iraq and is putting his most trusted general in charge of renewing the military's focus on Iran.

Petraeus has been the prime advocate of Bush's policy of a large troop presence in Iraq. By naming Petraeus to a job that lasts into the next administration, Bush ensures that the new president will confront the military's strongest voice for maintaining a big force in Iraq.

And Petraeus has emerged as a leading critic of Iran's interference in Iraq, making his appointment a signal of heightened U.S. attention to Tehran. His expertise with Iran's military and political leadership will allow him to take a more hands-on approach to dealing with the government.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday that Bush would nominate Petraeus to take over as chief of U.S. Central Command, which also oversees Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The job was left vacant in March when Navy Adm. William J. Fallon stepped down abruptly after appearing to criticize U.S. policy in the region, especially in Iran.

At the same time, Gates said, Bush will nominate Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno to take over Petraeus' current job as top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Odierno had served directly under Petraeus as day-to-day Iraq commander before stepping down in February.

Like Petraeus, Odierno has urged that Pentagon leaders and policymakers approach U.S. troop reductions cautiously to avoid creating gaps in Iraq's fragile security.

Both men must await Senate confirmation. Although confirmation hearings will be confrontational, with Democrats criticizing Bush's war policy, both men are likely to be approved.

Despite the policy disagreements, Petraeus and Odierno command wide respect because of their success in reducing the level of violence in Iraq.

During his time as Iraq commander, Petraeus has grown steadily more critical of Iran's interference in Iraq's politics and of its role in contributing to violence.

When he took command of U.S. forces in Iraq in 2007, Petraeus was surprised at the extent of Iranian meddling, said some who have worked with him.

During recent appearances in Washington, Petraeus highlighted "nefarious activities" by Iran's Quds Force and charged that the unit has armed Iraqi "special groups" that have killed U.S. troops.

"We should all watch Iranian actions closely in the weeks and months ahead, as they will show the kind of relationship Iran wishes to have with its neighbor," Petraeus told Congress.

But Petraeus also has displayed a keen understanding of the current Iranian government, and many said he would approach Tehran with reserve.

"You will find a very pragmatic general," said Frederick W. Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has advised the Bush administration on its war strategy. "The Iranians won't be happy because they are not going to be able to feed him nonsense. But he won't be handing anyone in Washington memos saying, 'It's time to go to war.' "

In his new post, Petraeus will have a chance to solve a problem that, before now, he and others could only complain about.

"The question is not if Iran is unhelpful in Iraq," said P.J. Crowley, a retired Air Force colonel and a fellow at the Center for American Progress. "The question is what to do about it."

Once Bush leaves office, his successor is free to change his policies. On Iraq, the president's most important influence will be through the military officers he installs in command.

But see also Robert Kaplan, at the Atlantic, who elaborates more on the changes in top military personnel:

Petraeus's appointment as combatant commander of Central Command was set in motion several weeks ago, with the firing of then-combatant commander Adm. William Fallon. The administration let him go not for opposing a possible strike against Iran, as was widely speculated, but for arguing too often with Petraeus over troop levels in Iraq. Petraeus, who may be the most well-read analytical mind in the military, wanted to maintain troop levels, rather than reduce them for use in Afghanistan and for other contingencies -- to say nothing of relieving strains on the army. But Fallon and Pentagon generals wanted troop levels in Iraq to come down. Petraeus won the debate.

He will be the new CentCom combatant commander, running developments in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a naval officer, Fallon had trouble gaining control of Central Command, since both Iraq and Afghanistan are Army-run wars. Petraeus will now have overall control of both conflicts. Replacing Petraeus as the top ground commander in Iraq will be Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, Petraeuss deputy until a few weeks ago. Odierno carried out the nuts-and-bolts work of Petraeuss surge. Together they made an effective team; the next-best thing to having Petraeus in Iraq is having Odierno there.

That they will again constitute a team overseeing the Iraq war, now at an even higher level of command, means the Bush administration is going for victory in Iraq over all other priorities. Indeed, the personnel changes indicate that the administration is desperate to show enough improvement in Iraq by the end of the year that an incoming Democratic president wouldn't dare reduce troop levels precipitously and risk being blamed for a dramatic security meltdown. To wit, these appointments demonstrate that, irrespective of who will be the next president, the presidential transition has already begun -- on this administration's terms.

And this just pisses off the left to no end.

See, "Ass-Kissing Little Chickenshit Promoted to Head U.S. Central Command."