Obama on Iraq: Wrong from the Beginning

Peter Wehner's absolutely the hottest conservative commentator of the moment!

Wehner eviscerated liberal columnist Joe Klein at Commentary last month, a debate I covered in "The Klein Takedown."

Well, it turns out Wehner's at the center of another kerfluffle with Jonathan Chait at the New Republic.

At issue this time? Barack Obama's disastrous foreign policy views on the Iraq war. Apparently Chait badly mischaracterized Wehner's recent piece on Obama in Commentary, and Wehner set the record straight:

In the current New Republic, senior editor Jonathan Chait writes about the foreign-policy views of Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. He concludes his piece this way:

Obama, as Michael Crowley explained in the previous issue, understands that events could change his plans (see “Barack in Iraq,” May 7). But he also grasps that the risks of appearing indecisive outweigh the risks of appearing too dovish, which is why he so quickly disowned [Samantha] Power’s remarks. Republicans have arrived at the same conclusion. A reliable barometer of the GOP’s calculations is the writing of Peter Wehner, who recently left his post in the Bush Administration as director of strategic initiatives, a position that roughly translates to “minister of propaganda.” In a long Commentary article, Wehner detailed Obama’s record of statements on Iraq, from opposing the war at the outset, to favoring its prosecution once we were in, to finally favoring withdrawal in the fall of 2006. Wehner sneeringly described this as “a record of problematically ad-hoc judgments at best, calculatingly cynical judgments at worst.” My God: He’s tailoring his position to fit . . . changing circumstances! In the Bush administration, this kind of flexibility would never be tolerated.

To begin with the trivial first: To have one’s writing called ”sneering” by a writer for The New Republic is rich indeed. It is a magazine, after all, that has perfected a snide, adolescent tone among its writers. But such indulgences come at a cost. TNR was once an influential journal of opinion. Today, it is not. And to the degree that it creates any “buzz” at all, it tends to be because it has to apologize for fictional war accounts by people like Private Scott Beauchamp (The New Republic, you may recall, at first forcefully stood by Beauchamp’s account of misconduct by American soldiers in Iraq — but after pressure by others to actually investigate the facts, TNR decided “we cannot stand by these stories”).

Ouch!

Not only does Wehner take down Chait decisively, check out Obama's transcendent incompetence in his Iraq advocacy:

It would be useful if Chait, having cited my essay, might now make an effort to read it — or, if he has, to actually analyze what I wrote....

The problem with Obama is that his positions on Iraq were the wrong ones to embrace based on the facts on the ground at the time.

To be specific: When the Bush administration had the wrong counterinsurgency plan in place, Obama was supportive of it. He told the Chicago Tribune in July 2004, “There’s not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage.” While John McCain was calling for more troops and a different counterinsurgency strategy in 2003, 2004, and 2005, Obama was not.

In late 2006, when the situation in Iraq was dire, Obama declared it was time to “execute a serious change of course in Iraq” — but rather than advocating a “surge” in troops, he was advocating a ”phased withdrawal.” His predictive judgment was this: “We cannot, through putting in more troops or maintaining the presence that we have, expect that somehow the situation is going to improve.”

In January 2007, when President Bush announced the administration’s change in strategy in Iraq — which included tens of thousands of additional troops and a new COIN strategy led by David Petraeus, Obama declared that nothing in the plan would “make a significant dent in the sectarian violence that’s taking place there.”

Then, in May 2007, Obama did what he had never done previously: He voted against funding for combat operations, claiming as a reason the fact that the bill included no timeline for troop withdrawal. And in September, just three months after the final elements of the 30,000-strong surge forces had landed in Iraq and fairly substantial security progress was discernible, Obama declared that we needed to withdraw combat troops “immediately.” “Not in six months or a year — now.”

It got so bad that Obama at first denied progress was being made, then denied that the surge had anything to do with the progress, and even insisted (in a debate in January 2008) that the reduction in violence was due not to the work of the American military but to the results of the 2006 midterm election in America. Finally Obama was forced by the overwhelming evidence to concede the surge had made progress — yet in the process Obama misrepresented his past position, insisting that when the surge was announced, he had “no doubt” that “if we place 30,000 more troops in there, then we would see an improvement in the security situation and we would see a reduction in violence.”

All of which led me to conclude this in my Commentary essay:

Unlike his presidential rival John McCain, an early and vocal and truly consistent critic of the Bush administration’s counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, Obama . . . was opposed to doing anything about Iraq even when, like everyone else, he believed Saddam Hussein was a menace who was likely armed with weapons of mass destruction; became a supporter of the war after the fact and remained one even as things were going poorly; and morphed into an aggressive opponent again just as the prospects of an American victory began to brighten. If there is a consistency here, it would appear to be the consistency of one consistently divorced from the facts on the ground and, lately, almost hermetically sealed off from even the possibility of good news. In a politician admired for his supposed open-mindedness and his ready willingness to consider new evidence, this is, to say the least, striking.

As a cheerleader for Obama, I’m not sure Chait wants to draw scrutiny to Obama’s real positions on the war, which are at odds with the popular impression. Perhaps Chait could next turn his analytical powers to the fact that a foreign-policy adviser, Robert Malley, was just released from the Obama campaign after admitting that he had met secretly with Hamas. This, of course, follows the news that Obama was endorsed by a top Hamas political adviser, Ahmed Yousef (“We like Mr. Obama and we hope that he will win the election.”). When Sen. McCain said this endorsement was a legitimate point of discussion, Obama responded with a post-partisan, trans-political, dignified, let’s-turn-the-page-on-the-old-politics comment. McCain, Obama said, was “losing his bearings.”

Ouch again!

You can see why I can dig Wehner!

Basra Marks Big Shift in Iraq Progress

Events in Basra these last few weeks have emerged as some of the most significant signs of Iraq's political development in the last year, particularly with the exertion of state authority by the government of Nouri al Maliki.

The most recent news of progress out of Iraq deals with the recent cease-fire between the government and renegade Shiite forces.

Never one to look on the bright side, here's Cernig at Newshoggers:

The outlook, as a wrote yesterday, is that the new truce is not a "milestone towards Iraq's bright, free future" but rather a milestone on a continuing cycle of violence and political manouvering. Sadr's movement has returned to ist [sic] roots and again become an insurgency with a political wing - not unlike Hezboullah or the Sinn Fein/IRA double act - and an insurgency wins simply by surviving.

Actually, insurgencies rarely win, but that doesn't stop those like Newshoggers from backing the terrorists in Iraq to defeat the American "occupation."

Note Captain's Ed's take on things:

American media outlets have been surprisingly quiet about the latest developments. In Basra, they couldn’t wait to proclaim Maliki’s operation a disaster and the battle a Sadr victory. Unfortunately for them, Sadr sued for peace and agreed to dump his own militias in exchange for political crumbs. In Sadr City, where he based his political power, he has done exactly the same, winning only a reprieve for his forces while conceding the entire territory to the central government.

Expect the Basra Narrative to heavily emphasize that Sadr “allowed” forces into Sadr City and the government to re-open its offices in the area, rather than Sadr capitulating the inevitable.

The Captain updates with today's front-page New York Times story, "Drive in Basra by Iraqi Army Makes Gains."

But note Nibras Kazimi's take on recent developments:

Basra had a moment of clarity, illuminating the convergence of several positive trends in Iraq. What’s driving these trends is a sense among regular Iraqis that their state has outlasted its challengers, whether they are Sunni insurgents, organized crime cartels, or hostile regional powers. Basra is “Exhibit A” for those who argue that Iraq’s remaining problems are fixable, that the achievements seen so far are irreversible, and that a sense of patriotic cohesion is salvageable and viable.

Consequently, the events in Basra do not sit well with those who have argued otherwise and staked their careers and credibility to the storyline that Iraq is irredeemable, such as the many journalists and pundits who have been covering Iraq over the last five years.

See more analysis (and some who see Iraq as "irredeemable") at Memeorandum.

Photo Credit: "Trash burns as children play soccer in a field at the northern entrance to Basra. Only a month ago, the city shuddered under deadly clashes between Iraqi troops and Shiite militias," New York Times ("The Quietening of Basra").

Maryland Schools Deal With Black Students' Suspensions

Black students in Maryland's Anne Arundel School District are more than twice as likely to be suspended from school.

What's interesting in this Baltimore Sun report is how if only teachers were less threatening, black student delinquency rates would improve:

Under pressure to reduce the suspension rate of black students, Anne Arundel County is making progress by training staff in how to work with people of different backgrounds and giving troublesome students more support.

Experts say such training is a key to keeping African-American students throughout Maryland in school. Last year, 13.9 percent of black children were suspended statewide, compared with 5.8 percent of white kids. Studies have linked suspensions and expulsions to lower academic achievement and higher dropout rates.

Teachers and administrators may misinterpret the body language and occasional confrontational behavior that some African-Americans learn in their neighborhoods and use at school as a way of standing up for themselves, veteran educators say. They will often back down if they're made to feel safe.

"Being rude means one thing to you and another to me," said Ella White Campbell, a retired city school teacher and an education advocate in Baltimore County.

Anne Arundel schools have been suspending black students at a much higher than average rate - nearly 20 percent in each of the past two years. The NAACP and a group of parents filed a complaint with the federal Office of Civil Rights alleging discriminatory treatment of black students. In response, the county signed an agreement in September 2005 that, among other things, required schools to act to reduce suspension rates.

Principals, assistant principals, psychologists and other administrators receive two days of training, according to Carlesa Finney, director of equity assurance in Anne Arundel. School officials also adopted a new discipline code and placed added emphasis on intervening in the lives of the most troubled students.

While the overall suspension rate for black students hasn't fallen, they are receiving fewer long-term suspensions, county data show. In addition, significantly fewer black children are being referred to principals' offices for misbehavior.

Other school systems are also training teachers. "Teachers," state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick said, "have the ability to escalate or de-escalate a situation."

Finney says negative stereotypes of black children play into teachers' perceptions of student behavior. Schools need to help teachers overcome that bias and do more than teach "content."

"We have the opportunity to teach children to behave in particular settings," she said.

Much of the teaching staff in many counties is white and may be inexperienced in dealing with children from troubled neighborhoods.

"We get 900 new teachers every year. Most of them have never taught in an urban-like setting," said Dale R. Rauenzahn, director of student support services in Baltimore County.

If you noticed, the problem is all about "negative stereoytpes of black children," and not the behavior of the kids themselves.

Another job for Bill Cosby?

(But the NAACP is on the job!)

Left Blames Delay in Cyclone Aid on Bush Administration

The Wall Street Journal reports on the strained response of the government of Myanmar, which has begun to allow U.S. aid shipments into the country:

The Myanmar junta's refusal to accept foreign help stems from its strained relations with the international community, especially the West, which has regularly criticized its refusal to allow democracy....

The acceptance of the U.S. relief flight Monday could be "beginning of a long line of assistance from the United States," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters in Crawford, Texas, over the weekend. "They're going to need our help for a long time."

The plane carried 28,000 pounds of supplies, including mosquito nets, blankets and water in an operation dubbed "Joint Task Force Carrying Response." Lt. Col. Douglas Powell, the U.S. Marines spokesman for the operation, said the U.S. had 11,000 servicemen and four ships in the region for an annual military exercise, Cobra Gold, which could be harnessed to help the mercy mission.

What's interesting is how some on the left are blaming the crisis on the United States, rather than Myanmar's military regime:

Here's Think Progress attacking First Lady Laura Bush:

“The response to the cyclone is just the most recent example of the junta’s failure to meet its people’s basic needs,” she concluded. Yet the Bush administration has also turned its back on the hurricane survivors...

"Hurricane survivors" is a reference to the U.S. Katrina disaster in 2005, where we saw an inept government response at all levels of the federal system - especially by Governor Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin - but the left is here making the Bush administration into a greater impediment to international humanitarian assistance than Myanmar's own obstructionist dictatorship.

Here's the left-wing Mahablog attacking the Bush administration's response:

Around the globe, nations and international relief agencies are scrambling to send as much aid as possible as quickly as possible.

Well, except for the United States. The Bush Administration released a whopping $250,000 from a U.S. Embassy emergency fund for the Burma relief effort. The Bushies refuse to send more until the government of Burma allows American disaster assessment teams into Burma to, um, assess.

Keep in mind that the U.S. will be the world leader in providing the infrastructure of logistical relief, as was the case in the Indonesia tsunami relief efforts in 2005.

But it's easier to attack the United States than to acknowledge the responsibility of the Myanmar junta itself, which has slowed the delivery of goods from all international actors:

Relief workers who are still prohibited from entering Myanmar warned that it could take weeks to reach many cyclone victims due to the nation's decrepit infrastructure. Such a delay will increase the number of people at risk and raise the possibility of unrest, they said.

As many as 1.5 million people -- including more than 200,000 now believed to be congregating in temporary camps along Myanmar's coast -- face an increasing risk of epidemics of malaria, cholera and other potentially deadly diseases, aid workers said....

The country's secretive military government, which continues to withhold visas for most foreign aid workers, has increased its surveillance in Yangon, the largest city in the region, and is closely watching the movements of opposition politicians, monks, activists and foreigners, according to a Yangon resident.

Truckloads of soldiers were seen throughout the city on Sunday, patrolling public areas and monasteries that were at the forefront of pro-democracy protests that erupted across the city in September.

"Both the government and general public fear that an uprising may happen, based on the general dissatisfaction" with the handling of cyclone relief, said a local tour guide contacted by email.

Many people are distraught with what they believe to be apathy from the government and the international community, the guide said, and are unaware that Myanmar's ruling junta has blocked many foreign aid agencies from entering the country. A doctor in the town of Bogalay, in the heart of the affected region, said many victims are drinking unpurified water from lakes and other places, with many freshwater sources littered with decaying human bodies and animal carcasses.

Note the key here: The military junta's blocking aid from getting through to those in deathly need.

Here's this on Myanmar's regime from the Australian:

The Orwellian character of the regime has been reflected in its management of the disaster response. As thousands starved, state television aired programs with smiling actors singing about "national unity", and happy army officers handing out international food aid packages with their names embossed to thankful peasants. The state-run media yesterday trumpted a "massive turnout" in the national referendum, but made no mention of the tens of thousands still missing in the cyclone's wake. Behind this bamboo curtain lies a different story - one of starving soldiers pillaging what little food is left from survivors and of bodies being secretly buried by officials hoping to downplay the extent of the tragedy. The few aid workers on the ground say the Government wants total control of the situation, even though it has no experience in relief efforts.

It is little wonder that the international community is growing increasingly impatient with the Burmese regime.

But it's all the fault of the U.S. government, to hear it from the lefties. It's a symptom of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

One of the most cynically ruthless Third World dictatorships resists multilateral efforts to prevent a mass calamity, and we have the purveyors of left-wing wisdom boiling all the problems down to "the imperial stinginess" of the Bush administration.

God help the world community if the lefties come to power next January.

Rocket's Red Glare: Vandenberg Missile Launch

Regular readers will recall that I lived in Santa Barbara for seven years while in graduate school.

The city's basically a resort town, with a few colleges and universities thrown in, as well as some key industries, including high-tech and defense-related firms (especially back in the early-1990s, when at that time a powerful slow-growth movement slowed economic development in the county).

There's a bunch of opportunities for outdoor activities in Santa Barbara.

One thing I used to love was going for long summer drives. We'd start up in Goleta, heading down south a few miles from Cathedral Oaks, then cut back west into Santa Barbara proper via Highway 144, coming out along the city's lower downtown. Then we'd cut back up north along Cabrillo Boulevard by the main beach, following that back north and around, all the way up to Hope Ranch, along some of the coastal bluffs overlooking the Pacific, until we'd come back out to Highway 101 at the La Cumbre Plaza mall, where we'd stop for a bite to eat or some shopping.

This was especially common for me when my oldest son was born, and on weekends when my wife was working, I'd load up my kid - who was still in a baby car-seat at the time - and head out for a drive to kill some time in the late afternoons or early evenings.

On a couple of occassions, when we'd come up around Shoreline Drive, past Santa Barbara City College, where we'd sometimes stop at the roadway pullout to take in the sights, and we'd find a spectacular view of missile launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The launches would light up the whole sky, and it seemed almost like a natural phenomenon, when the trailings of the rockets mixed up with the distant clouds on the horizon amid a purplish sunset. It's was very beautiful.

The image above is from the New York Times, photo-essay, "The Rise of Rockets."

The Vandenberg photo brought back the memories, which I thought I'd share as part of my "lightening up" series.

I miss those times quite a bit, but on to new adventures they say!

Happy Mother's Day to all my friends and readers!

Photo Credit: New York Times

Default Power: The Endurance of American International Preponderance

In an earlier entry, "The Coming Post-American World?," I suggested that the thesis of Fareed Zakaria's new book, The Post-American World, bears a striking resemblance to the debates on American international decline from the late-1980s.

I noted, as well, that Zakaria's notion of the "rise of the rest" is probably overrated (with reference to the rise of countries like China and India):

We're ... not genuinely in a "post-American" world, for while we are seeing the "rise of the rest," the traditional bases of American global preponderance remain intact - other key actors are just not so far behind.

We'll see more economic, cultural, and technological diversity on the world stage, but it's not likely that a new great power will supplant the United States soon, at least in the traditional conception of international power transitions.

Well, it turns out that Joseph Joffe, in his review of Zakaria at the New York Times, makes some simliar points.

He calls the United States the international system's "default power," a coinage I just love!

But note his hypothetical matchup of comparative U.S.-Chinese GDP growth projections, which puts the "rise of the rest" in perspective:

The real problem [of America's relative decline], Zakaria argues, is the rise of China, trailed by India....

“The problem is size,” Zakaria writes. “China operates on so large a scale that it can’t help changing the nature of the game.” True, but let’s play another game, that of compound interest. China’s (nominal) G.D.P. is about $3 trillion, while America’s is $14 trillion. Assume indefinite Chinese growth of 7 percent. That will double G.D.P. to $6 trillion in 10 years and double it again to $12 trillion by 2028. Assume now that the United States will grow at its historical rate of 3.5 percent. By 2028, G.D.P. will measure $28 trillion. This is a silly game, but no more inane than those projections that see China overtaking the United States as early as 2020. American output would still be about one-quarter of the world total, the average for the past 125 years, as Zakaria reminds us.

Note once more, for clarity: According to Joffe's power projections, in 2028 U.S. GDP would be $28 trillion to China's $12 trillion, more than twice as large!

Now that is stylin'!

But wait! Zakaria's own analysis on the continuing dynamism of the United States tends to discount the importance of the "rise of the rest" meme:

What’s the problem, then? “America remains the global superpower today, but it is an enfeebled one.” It has blown wads of political capital, but it is still better positioned to manage the “rise of the rest” than its rivals. Europe is rich, but placid and graying. Resurgent Russia is too grabby. China is more subtle in its ambitions, but still a classic revisionist that wants more for itself and less for the whole. It craves respect but will choose bloody repression in the crunch, as in Tibet.

The United States, too, has acted the bully in recent years, and it has paid dearly. Still, why does it retain “considerable ability to set the agenda,” to quote Zakaria? How can it muster the convening power that brings 80 nations to Annapolis? The short answer (mine) is: America remains the “default power”; others may fear it, but who else will take care of global business? Maybe it takes a liberal, seafaring empire, as opposed to the Russian or the Habsburg, to temper power and self-interest with responsibility for the rest.

Exactly, "with responsibility for the rest."

No one else is likely to take that responsibility for decades (see here for more on that).

Can We Justify Invading Burma on Humanitarian Grounds?

In my entry yesterday, "Regime Change Myanmar?," I touched on the debate in the 1990s on liberal internationalist support for humanitarian intervention.

Now, via Ann Althouse, check out this early, 1990s-era op-ed piece by Steve Sesser, "Are Invasions Sometimes O.K.?":

Clearly, opposition to military intervention under any circumstances is anachronistic in a world of growing interdependence. Human rights abuses, wherever they might occur, are no longer accepted as business as usual. And new forms of communication - as indicated by the use of fax machines in China during the pro-democracy demonstrations - are turning human rights struggles into movements that cross national boundaries.

Can anyone really argue that we should grant any government - no matter how brutal or how unpopular - the right to terrorize or kill its citizens for as long as it can cling to power? Would it have been morally wrong for France, or the U.S., or the Soviet Union, to intervene in Pol Pot's Cambodia and thereby to have saved at least one million Cambodian lives?

Good question, especially in the era of post-Saddam international politics.

I've almost finished Mattew Yglesias' book, Heads in the Sand, and he directs almost as much criticism at liberal interventionist hawks in the Democratic Party as he does to neoconservatives. I'll have more on this later, but note that Yglesias claims, for example, that "it's clear under George W. Bush hegemonism in action accomplished virtually nothing for the United States and has done so at great cost."

What's bothersome about Yglesias (and his Flophouse-style idological partners) is their complete repudiation of the popular pre-March 2003 humantarian rationale for regime change in Iraq (and their subsequent and complete hostility to any use of American military power):

The United States has an obligation ... to preserve its security by preemptively trumping the sovereignty of a defiant Iraq, making the world safe for democracy in the process.

This is why we're not seeing far left-wing advocates calling for regime change in Myanmar.

For more on hard-left's knee-jerk reaction to the use of force under any circumstances, see The Belmont Club's excellent post, "Invasion Burma."

Geographic-Political Polarization in the Electorate

We often hear commentators and pundits claim that American politics is more polarized than ever. It sure seems like it, but is it true? How polarized is American politics today?

I'm currently reading Ronald Brownstein's new book, The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America, which provides considerable support for the thesis.

But check out William Galston and Pietro Nivola's piece over at the New York Times, "Vote Like Thy Neighbor," which includes this interesting passage discrediting some more recent claims of a shift to "post-partisanship":

The buzz these days is that American politics may be entering a “postpartisan” era, as a new generation finds the old ideological quarrels among baby boomers to be increasingly irrelevant. In reality, matters are not so simple. Far from being postpartisan, today’s young adults are significantly more likely to identify as Democrats than were their predecessors....

The great majority of voters now fuse their party identification, ideology and decisions in the voting booth. The share of Democrats who could be called conservative has shrunk, and so has the share of liberal Republicans. The American National Election Studies asks voters a series of issues-based questions and then arrays respondents along a 15-point scale from -7 (the most liberal) to +7 (the most conservative). These data indicate that 41 percent of the voters in 1984 were located at or near the midpoint of the ideological spectrum, compared with only 28 percent in 2004. Meanwhile, the percentage of voters clustering toward the left and right tails of the spectrum rose from 10 to 23 percent.

The authors then review some of the evidence on the "social geography of political polarization," which claims that people move to locations where they can be around people more like themselves ideologically. It's not so much "white flight" as a more natural, demographic-educational sorting around geographic regions:

...young people have deserted rural and older manufacturing areas for cities like Austin and Portland. Places with higher densities of college graduates attract even more, so that the gap between such communities and less-educated areas widens further. Zones of high education, in turn, produce more innovation and enjoy higher incomes, generating communities dominated by upper-middle-class tastes. Lower-educated regions, by contrast, tend to be more family-oriented and more faithful to traditional authority.

Not surprisingly, this demographic sorting correlates with a widening difference in political preferences.

Apparently this geographic-political sorting exacerbates political polarization.

This sounds plausble, although I'd like to see more evidence that people really move to different regions according to the causal relationship stressed here (i.e., desire to be near ideological brethren causes a shift in socio-demographic movement patterns).

A good place to start is with Bill Bishop's, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, which is cited by Galston and Nivola.

I'll have more later on this stuff later, but in the meanwhile, check out Greg Wythe's interesting observations, "The Not-So-Big Sort."

Regime Change Myanmar?

The humanitarian crisis in Myanmar is the most recent example of state failure among the developing world's authoritarian regimes.

Yesterday's Los Angeles Times noted, for example, that the Myanmar government's initial refusal to accept international relief reflected the junta's indecision and fear.

Whatever the cause, it's simply unacceptable for the world community to stand by idly while hundreds of thousands perish, and the nation descends into a nightmare of disease and hunger.

The woman above, stands amid the ruins of her cyclone-destroyed house south of Yangon, while the world waits. Below is the image of one of the "thousands of bodies" drifting in Myanmar's water delta:

We've been in situations like this before, when the major powers of the West said, "Never Again." In Bosnia, the West stood immobilized amid Serbia's murderous campaign of ethnic cleansing. After Rwanda, Western leaders bemoaned the failure of the international community to halt the genocide.

What about today?

Will we hold back, while aid trickles into the country, to slowly to help the lives of the multitudes, and while the regime proceeds with a regularly scheduled referendum designed to cement its grip on power?

Ace of Spades points out there's some clamor in the mainstream media for international action, for example, in Time's piece, "Is It Time to Invade Burma?"

Ace finds a cruel, ironic bitterness in left-wing media-based advocacy for unilateral action in Burma:

Give the left a purely humanitarian mission, untainted by any possibility of the US advancing its own security interests, and they're ready to expend all the blood and treasure in the world in a unilateral war of choice.

There's no doubt that we have the moral right to invade Burma. There's little doubt that, given enough soldiers (and deaths), we could do some good there.

But isn't it awfully funny the left is forever undermining the wars we're actually fighting and agitating to start wars which are not in our clear national interest and hence almost certainly won't fight?

This is an excellent point, and it reminds me of the pre-9/11 debate on American power and the responsibility to protect (see David Reiff, "A New Age of Liberal Imperialism?").

I'd suggest, further, however, that besides the Time piece, I'm seeing very little advocacy for the robust exertion of American military capability in South Asian to stem the humanitarian crisis (more on that here)

Yet, if there was ever a time for bipartisanship in foreign policy, regime change in Myanmar should be it.

Conservative "realists" argued against intervention in the Balkans, and now "liberal internationalists" argue for a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. At some point partisan bickering needs to stop. American leadership is a force for good, and that's a more powerful thing than victory in the next election.

Photo Credits: New York Times, here and here.

The Foreign Policy Stakes in Election '08

As regular American Power readers know, I've long griped, groaned, and grumbled about the radical left-wing foreign policy of the Democratic Party base.

Rebutting this nihilism is one of the main reasons why I blog, frankly. I literally get angry sometimes at what passes for respectable foreign policy analysis among the mindless hordes of the anti-Bush far-left opposition.

So it's nice to actually hear that I'm not the only one! Gabriel Malor, over at the Ace of Spades, says that Eric Martin's slanderous post on the Iraq war "is really going to make you mad":

What follows is the type of thinking that you will see in the White House should the Democrats win in November. WARNING: it is a concentrated example of the half-truths, distortions, and outright lies that passes for foreign policy discussion on the Left. And if you're anything like me, it's really going to make you mad.

So let's recap the scene: the US military and its Iraqi "allies" are laying siege to a sprawling neighborhood in Baghdad housing roughly 2.5 million Iraqis, launching air strikes, artillery attacks, tank shells and other assorted ordnance, shutting down hospitals and bombing others, cutting off the supply of food and walling off entire sectors of the embattled region, causing a refugee crisis by their actions - and now actually pursuing a policy with the intent of creating a larger refugee crisis!

Witness the liar's casual blend of truth and falsity, used to imply malicious intent that doesn't exist. It's true that U.S. and Iraqi forces are fighting to take and keep control of portions of Sadr City and that one hospital was shut down and another damaged in a bombing. It is also true that the U.S. is building a concrete barrier through the city.

It is absolutely false that the hospital was bombed intentionally--as the liar implies--or that the U.S. has cut off food to the city. In fact, the article he links to (which we will, for now, assume is accurate) notes that the U.S. military is distributing food and medical supplies. This is curiously omitted from the liar's post, given how concerned he is about the residents of Sadr City. According to the article, the Red Crescent estimates that only 6% of the city's population have experienced food, water, or medical shortages during the weeks of fighting. More than that, it also notes that the "refugee crisis" which he blames on the U.S. and Iraqi forces hasn't actually materialized.

It is also manifestly untrue that the intent of the U.S./Iraqi operation is to create a "larger refugee crisis." In fact, the idea is to put an end to mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone, U.S. military bases, and civilian areas which are coming out of parts of Sadr City.

Confusion about the difference between purposeful goals and regrettable, unintended, but unavoidable consequences is not unusual on the Left. The twisted morality that disregards intent makes claims of moral equivalence so much easier.

The liar's most pernicious distortion comes next:

For what reason: because a majority of residents in these regions support a political movement, and militia, that oppose our presence. Can't have that. Because we have to keep 150,000 troops in Iraq to safeguard the Iraqi people. After all, whose gonna set up the tents in the refugee catch basins we so magnanimously helped set up to receive the overflow from our relentless assault on political movements that would make it harder for us to stay in Iraq. To safeguard the Iraqi people.

He thinks that the U.S. is targeting Sadr City merely because a "political movement, a militia" that opposes the U.S. hides in its slums. He makes no mention of the roadside, car, and market bombings, and rocket and mortar attacks that the Mahdi Army has committed. He ignores the Mahdi Army's attacks on Sunni mosques and attempts to "cleanse" a portion of the city of Sunni Arabs. Conveniently forgotten is journalist Steven Vincent who was killed almost certainly by members of that "political movement."

This distortion, wherein the Left imputes political animus to the U.S. government, is shameful, dreadful stuff. It is a mild flavor of conspiracy theory. The obvious purpose--American and Iraqi authorities want the Madhi Army to stop killing people--is disregarded in favor of a dubious, but oh-so-satisfyingly nefarious one: the Americans and their Iraqi stooges are "relentlessly attacking political groups." Another Leftist recently in the news, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, would no doubt agree. He's also fond of malicious government conspiracies.

This is the type of person you are inviting to enter the center ring when you say "we can wait 'til 2012." Democratic voters, Democratic thinkers, Obama's staff and advisers--these are the people you are flirting with when you say "McCain will do so much damage to the Republican Party." Consider for a minute how much damage these people will do to the United States.

This is why the Left must lose in November. I'm not asking you to vote for John McCain. I'm asking you to vote against having a Leftist in the White House.

Well, as my readers know, this is precisely why I've supported McCain since he declared his bid for the nomination back in 2007.

But let me add a little more background on why the left-wing retreatists can be so frustrating.

Eric Martin's a co-blogger at the radical left-wing group blog, Newshoggers, where I've had a long-running feud the publisher, Cernig, and another of the blog's regulars, Libby Spencer.

I provided a decisive take down of Cernig's inane rambings in my post, "Blogging Foreign Policy: Bereft of Credentials, Left Strains to Shift Debate," where I argue that many of the prominent and widely-cited left-wing foreign policy bloggers are indeed ignorant hacks who don't what they're talking about.

Cernig, in a recent post on John McCain's proposal for a "league of democracies" cited Ilan Goldenberg and Max Bergmann's recent piece at the New Republic, "Multilateral Like Bush," where they offer this attack on McCain's pledge to support the "collective will" of the Western democracies:

Only a press corps so enamored with McCain could imagine that one of the staunchest supporters of the Iraq War would be capable of breaking with the current administration's unilateral adventurism. Despite his conciliatory rhetoric, McCain's hawkish views, and his long history of castigating allies who do not agree with him, leave little reason to believe that when it comes to restoring America 's image, credibility, and alliances, he would be much different than George W. Bush.

For those who're hip with the radicals, this line's an extension of the claim that a McCain presidency will be "four more years of George W. Bush."

When I commented at the Newshoggers' post, suggesting that the "collective will" of the European democracies led to the Srebrenica massacre, Cernig refused to debate the issue and deleted my comments, replacing them with this:

This was posted by a banned commenter using a new IP, and the management have deleted it.

If this commenter wants to post he should be polite enough to email the site owners asking permission to do so and apologising for past infractions, rather than rudely and obsessively persisting in trying to circumvent the ban.

Until then, all his comments under any IP or alias will be deleted as soon as they are discovered.

What are those past infractions? Well, calling Cernig out for his continual assualts on reason with his routinely inflammatory hard-left attacks on the Bush administration, neoconservatives, the Iraq war, and the U.S. military.

These folks are afraid of debate, especially with those who'll hold their feet to the fire.

Libby Spencer's long been my nemesis. I've previously taken her to task for applauding Down's syndrome suicide attacks in Iraq and her fawning support of Central American terrorist-enabler and left-wing Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez.

Spencer recently aligned herself with revolutionary socialism in a blog post backing Senator Bernie Sanders for president.

So I can see why Malor at Ace of Spades might get a little peeved.

McCain Previews Attacks on Obama's Foreign Policy Weakness

As Barack Obama continues to have missteps in foreign policy (recall Friday's firing of an Obama adisor who had direct talks with Hamas), John McCain has initiated a new campaign approach taking down the likely Democratic nominee for his foreign policy inexperience.

The New York Times has the details:

In the clearest indication yet of how he intends to confront Senator Barack Obama on foreign policy issues in the general election, Senator John McCain on Friday again portrayed the Democratic contender as being the favorite of Hamas, the militant Palestinian group, and implied that he would also be friendly with Iran, a Hamas ally.

Speaking at a news conference in New Jersey, Mr. McCain said he believed that comments made by a Hamas leader approving Mr. Obama’s candidacy were “a legitimate point of discussion,” and he went on to accuse Mr. Obama of agreeing to negotiate with the president of Iran, who on Wednesday referred to Israel as “a stinking corpse facing annihilation.” He described that as “a distinct difference between myself and Senator Obama.”

Mr. Obama has not let attacks go unanswered. On Thursday, he replied by saying that Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, was “losing his bearings” and engaging in “smear” tactics. “My policy toward Hamas has been no different than his,” Mr. Obama said in an interview on CNN.

Mr. McCain’s attacks are part of a broader effort by his campaign to depict Mr. Obama, the leader in the delegate count in the Democratic race for president, as inexperienced and naïve on foreign policy in general and soft on terrorism and its sponsors specifically. Throughout the campaign, Mr. Obama has also had to fight a related perception, one encouraged by his Democratic rivals, that his support for Israel is also weak.

But important nuances appear to have been lost in the partisan salvos, particularly on Mr. McCain’s side. An examination of Mr. Obama’s numerous public statements on the subjects indicates that he has consistently condemned Hamas as a “terrorist organization,” has not sought the group’s support and does not advocate immediate, direct or unconditional negotiations with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president.

The McCain-Obama dispute about Hamas began last month, after Ahmed Yousef, a political adviser to the group’s leadership in Gaza, made complimentary remarks about Mr. Obama in an interview with WABC radio in New York. After initially complaining that “everybody tries to sound like he is a friend of Israel” when out on the campaign trail, including Mr. Obama, Mr. Yousef shifted tone.

“We like Mr. Obama,” Mr. Yousef said, “and we hope that he will win the election.”

“I do believe that Mr. Obama is like John Kennedy, a great man with great principles,” he continued. “He has a vision to change America, to make it in a position to lead the world community, but not with domination and arrogance.”

Though Hamas describes itself as both a political party and a movement with an armed wing, the State Department, as well as Israel and several other countries, classifies it as a terrorist organization. The group has sponsored suicide bombings against Israeli military and civilian targets, and its charter calls for the elimination of Israel and its replacement by an Islamic Palestinian state.

The United States has pursued a policy of isolating Hamas while trying to strengthen moderate Palestinian leaders.

For his part, Mr. McCain has taken pride in the enmity with which he regards Hamas. “I think that the people should understand that I will be Hamas’s worst nightmare,” he said late last month in a conference call with conservative bloggers.

McCain's generally expected to toughen the U.S. stance toward the new "Axis of Evil" of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar Assad. and Kim Jong Il.

In the meanwhile, the Obama campaign is said to be "flattered" by the fawing attention it's getting from Hamas.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Iran's Mahdi Failure in Iraq Leads to Lebanon Proxy War

Lebanon is now roiled in proxy warfare, a new round of conflict rooted in the wider realm of Middle East and international politics.

This video shows the dramatic civilian impact of the fighting in Beirut:

Nibras Kazimi, a Visiting Scholar at the Hudson Institute, argues that the outbreak of fighting in Lebanon is an extention of Iran's loss of influence in Iraq, following the defeat of the Mahdi army in March:

Ostensibly, Hezbollah is responding to the Lebanese government’s decision to sack the security chief of Beirut’s international airport, and to dismantle Hezbollah’s secure landline-based communications network that had been expanded recently.

What could have spurred-on this over-reaction on Hezbollah’s part, which has been manifested so far with flexing its muscles in the Sunni area of Beirut, seemingly showing-up the government as weak and vulnerable?

I believe Iran needed to show the United States and its Arab allies that it can humiliate them by overrunning the government they back in Beirut and that they’d be unable to do anything about it, and I believe that Iran needed to make this point now because the Mahdi Army in Iraq has collapsed.

Iran has been backing certain factions of the Mahdi Army with training and arms as an investment in a force for chaos, which can be held in reserve and unleashed against the Americans in Iraq in the event that George Bush may order a bombing run against Iran’s illicit nuclear program this summer—something he’s be egged-on to do by U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan....

But ever since Prime Minister Maliki launched Operation Cavalry Charge on March 25 in Basra, the Iraqi government, with some U.S. air cover and logistical support, has been engaged in a war of attrition with the Mahdi Army; witling away the once-sharp and threatening capability of Iran’s investment in terror. Whereas these ‘Special Groups’ could launch 30 to 40 projectiles into the Green Zone a few weeks ago, today they can only manage one or two rockets. The Iraqi Army and the US military have pushed on into all the redoubts of the Sadrists, notably Sadr City where some 1200 fatalities (a significant number of them non-combatants) have occurred.

Maliki has also ordered the Iraqi Red Crescent to prepare an initial contingency plan to absorb 100,000 refugees from Sadr City, indicating that he is not backing down....

The Sadrists and the Iranians have been reduced to bravado and PSY-OPS: one account has it that the Sadrists have a plan to take over the Green Zone within seven hours, and that they can take over Basra within 24 hours. Another is that General Suleimani of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard actually controls events in Iraq.

But in effect, Iran has lost the deterrence value of its investment in the Sadrists.

That’s why Iran needed to flex its might in downtown Beirut, to embarrass the Saudis and others who can do very little to bail-out Siniora’s government. The ruse seems to have worked: Saad al-Hariri basically rescinded the government’s orders against the airport security chief and the communications network today.

But see also the Charleston Post and Courier, which argues Iran's now launching its latest Middle East power play in Beirut:

For the past year [Iran] has encouraged Hamas in its violent takeover of Gaza to attack Israel with rockets supplied by Iran. The fate of ordinary Palestinians in Gaza — where the United Nations mission announced this week it is suspending humanitarian services for security reasons — is clearly a concern. For the past month Iran has also encouraged a breakaway militia in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, in its attacks on government offices and foreign embassies in Baghdad that have turned the crowded slums of Sadr City into a battlefield.

This week it was Lebanon's turn, as a power struggle between the popularly elected government and Iran's proxy militia Hezbollah turned violent, with street barricades throughout Beirut and gun battles between Sunni groups allied with the government and Shias allied with Hezbollah. Reports from Beirut say Lebanon is on the brink of civil war.

The proximate cause of the trouble in Lebanon was the courageous decision of the government on Tuesday to declare Hezbollah's separate telecommunications network in the country illegal and a threat to national security. Hezbollah used the network to conduct its war with Israel on Lebanese soil in 2006. Hezbollah's leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday, calling the network "the most important part" of the movement's military organizational structure, said the government's decision was "tantamount to a declaration of war," The Associated Press reported.

The government position is supported by the United Nations envoy to the Middle East, Terje Roed Larsen. Agence France Presse reported that Mr. Larsen told the U.N. Security Council Thursday the Hezbollah organization "constitutes a threat to regional peace and security." In 2004 the Security Council called for Hezbollah to disband its militia.

In recent months Hezbollah and its allies in Lebanon's parliament have refused to allow a quorum for a vote on the country's next president unless a deal is made to legitimize the organization's military structure. As Ambassador Larsen told the Security Council, Hezbollah is building "parallel institutional structures" to compete with and weaken the national government's army and other functions. U.S. officials in Iraq have charged the Mahdi Army, its leader Muqtada al-Sadr and Iran with trying to duplicate the Hezbollah "state-within-a-state" structure in Iraq.

The Iranian power grab is now on vivid display in Gaza, Baghdad and Beirut. It strains credulity to believe that these outbreaks are unrelated events.

It is a good thing the United States has troops in Iraq, and ships in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean, that can set limits to Iran's ambitions.

I'll have more updates later, but see also Walid Phares, "Hezbollah's Beirut Blitz."

Barack Obama's Flawed Judgment

Mortimer Zuckerman hits a homerun in highlighting Barack Obama's flawed judgment surrounding the scandalous relationship to Jeremiah Wright:

The political firestorm inescapably raises questions again about Obama's judgment: How naive could he be to fail to recognize the risks of such an association? One can understand how useful the pastor was in immersing the politically ambitious Harvard Law graduate in Chicago's South Side (no doubt the source now of Wright's resentment). Obama acquired "street cred." But how over 20 years could he fail to appreciate the pastor for the man he so obviously is? How could Obama borrow the title of his book The Audacity of Hope from the first sermon of Wright's that he heard decades ago, in which the pastor attacked an environment "where white folks' greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another"?

Senator Obama had to know, on some level, that his association was problematic, for he rescinded an invitation to have Wright speak at his campaign launch in 2007. Now we learn, according to Wright, that he and Obama's family prayed in the basement of the old Illinois State Capitol before Obama went out to speak. It stretches Obama's credibility to assert that only now has he learned of the views of the man he trusted as pastor to his children.

In rejecting Wright, Obama says the relationship has now "changed." In his March speech on race, he said he could no more disown Wright than he could disown the black community. The "change" in the relationship cannot mean he has now disowned the black community—parts of which have disowned Wright. We are left to assume he is no longer the spiritual adviser of whom Obama once said, "He is much more of a sounding board for me to make sure that I am speaking as truthfully about what I believe as it is possible and that I am not losing myself in some of the hype and hoopla and stress that's involved in national politics."

The sad outcome of all of this is that it undermines the strong support that Obama gained from so many voters. Too many people are now asking how he could not have been outraged much earlier. By escalating the racial element of identity politics, the pastor has undercut one of the major rationales of Obama's campaign, to wit, that it could and would be about healing. How is he going to be a unifier when his spiritual adviser is on TV, castigating America and scaring a lot of people?

Obama remains vulnerable for having sat for decades in the pews of a church that did good work but was racked with divisive racial rhetoric. As Juan Williams, a respected commentator on issues of race, put it, "What would Jesus do? There is no question he would have left that church."

The failure to extract himself early and decisively enough is not to question Senator Obama's commitment to transcending old racial animosities. But it unhappily sets back the progress his campaign has made. Wright deserves our condemnation for taking us backward on this difficult issue at what could have been such a promising time.

See also FrontPageMagazine's expose, "Obama's World," which suggests, "Wright may be the best known of Obama's friends and allies, but he may not even be the most controversial."

Why We Need Guantanamo Bay

Today's Wall Street Journal includes a must-read editorial on Abdullah Salih Al Ajmi, the Kuwaiti terrorist who blew up seven Iraqis in a suicide bombing last month in Mosul.

Ajmi was interned at Guantanamo Bay, before the U.S. government released him to avoid prolonged litigation following the Supreme Court's ruling in Rasul. The Ajmi bombing is the latest case of a detained terrorist suspect who was freed and returned to the field after being kept prisoner at Gitmo, freedom that led to the eventual killing of innocents in Iraq.

Lefty bloggers are always screaming about the "criminal Bush regime," but there's never any outrage at the terror. Indeed, they routinely applaud the nihilist mayhem committed by sworn enemies of the United States.

Here's some of the WSJ piece:

In April 2002, a group of Kuwaiti families retained the law firm of Shearman & Sterling to represent the Kuwaitis held at Guantanamo, including Ajmi. (An attorney at Shearman tells us the firm donated its fees to charity.) Ajmi was one of 12 Kuwaiti petitioners in whose favor the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2004 in Rasul v. Bush, which held that the detainees were entitled to a habeas corpus hearing.

At the time, we wrote that Rasul had "opened the door to a flood of litigation. . . . This pretty much guarantees that the 600 or so Guantanamo detainees will bring 600 or so habeas corpus cases – perhaps in 600 or so different courtrooms, with 600 or so different judges demanding 600 or so different standards of what evidence constitutes a threat to the United States."
The Pentagon seems to have understood this point only too well, because in November 2005 it released Ajmi into Kuwaiti custody before he could have his hearing. A Kuwaiti court later acquitted Ajmi of terrorism charges, and last month the Kuwaiti government issued Ajmi and his accomplices with passports, which they used to travel to Mosul via Syria.

Ajmi's story is hardly unique. Some 500 detainees have been released from Guantanamo over the years, mostly into foreign custody. Another 65 of the remaining 270 detainees are also slated to go. Yet of all the prisoners released, the Pentagon is confident that only 38 pose no security threat. So much for the notion that the Gitmo detainees consist mostly of wrong-time, wrong-place innocents caught up in an American maw.

The Defense Intelligence Agency reported on May 1 that at least 36 former Guantanamo inmates have "returned to the fight." They include Maulavi Abdul Ghaffar, who was released after eight months in Gitmo and later became the Taliban's regional commander in Uruzgan and Helmand provinces. He was killed by Afghan security forces in September 2004.

Another former detainee, Abdullah Mahsud, was released from Guantanamo in March 2004. He later kidnapped two Chinese engineers in Pakistan (one of whom was shot during a rescue operation). In July 2007 he blew himself up as Pakistani police sought to apprehend him.

Ajmi's case now brings the DIA number to 37. It's worth noting that these are only the known cases. It is worth noting, too, that people like Ajmi were among those the Defense Department thought it would be relatively safe to free, or at least not worth the hassle and expense of the litigation brought about by cases like Rasul.

All this should give some pause to those – John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton among them – calling for closing Guantanamo. The prison is helping to save lives by keeping dangerous men from returning to the fight against our soldiers....

Our liberal friends argue that the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay have hurt America's image in the world, and that's true. Then again, Ajmi and others show that there are also lethal consequences to the legal war that liberals are waging on the war on terror. Liberals claim they are only fighting for "due process," but they are doing so for foreign enemies who want to kill innocents and don't deserve such protections. Mosul is one result.

For the liberal, terrorist-enabling case against the Bush administration's policy on enemy combatants and Guantanamo Bay, see Firedoglake, "Gitmo Show Trials: The Other Retroactive Immunity," and also David Cole's analysis of the Supreme Court's 2006 ruling in Hamdan, "Why the Court Said No."

Voters Doubt McCain on Economy, Poll Finds

The Los Angeles Times reports that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would beat John McCain in the general election.

The public finds the Arizona Senator lacking on economic leadership:

Although Democrats are still tangled in a fractious presidential primary, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would probably beat presumptive GOP nominee John McCain in the popular vote if the election were held now, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released today.

McCain remains competitive, but the poll identified one important vulnerability: Voters ranked him lowest among the three candidates on who could best handle the nation's economic problems, by far the most pressing concern for the public irrespective of party, gender or income.

Of the three main candidates, Clinton inspired the most confidence on the economy, even though she appears unlikely to win the Democratic nomination.

In a hypothetical matchup between Clinton and McCain, the New York senator led the Arizonan by 47% to 38%, with 11% saying they were undecided.

And in a contest between Obama and McCain, the poll gave the Illinois senator a 46% to 40% lead over the Republican, with 9% undecided. The nationwide poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The results represent a slight shift from a Times/Bloomberg poll in February, in which McCain led Clinton by 6 points, and Obama by 2 points, within the poll's margin of error. The direction has now changed in favor of the Democrats.

"Although there is such infighting now between the two Democratic candidates, we are finding that both Democrats are beating McCain, and this could be attributed to the weakening of the economy," said Times polling director Susan Pinkus, who supervised the survey.

For example, among the 78% of voters who said they believe the economy has slid into a recession, 52% would vote for Obama, compared with 32% for McCain. A matchup between Clinton and McCain showed nearly identical results.

The poll was based on telephone interviews with 2,208 adults nationwide -- 1,986 of them registered voters -- from May 1 to 8. That time period included several days before and after the recent Democratic primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, which Clinton and Obama split.

The poll offered fresh insights for Democrats trying to discern whether Obama or Clinton would best represent their party in the fall against McCain.

For example, Clinton and McCain were essentially tied among voters ages 65 or older. But if the race were between Obama and McCain, the Republican would lead, 47% to 41%.

Among people ages 18 to 44, Obama led McCain by 55% to 35%.

Clinton generated less enthusiasm with this age group, leading McCain by 48% to 35%.

African Americans would vote overwhelmingly for Obama, the first black candidate with a realistic chance of becoming president. In the poll, he carried 79% of African Americans, with 3% supporting McCain.

If Clinton were the Democratic nominee, however, McCain's share of the African American vote would rise to 9%, roughly in line with the performance of past GOP presidential candidates. Clinton had 60% of the African American vote, with 23% of respondents in this cornerstone Democratic constituency saying they would be undecided.

Among baby boomers, the giant post World War II generation that will begin to reach retirement age in the next president's term, both Democrats edged McCain, with Clinton leading, 47% to 39%, and Obama by 45% to 37%. Whoever is elected will have to deal with the serious financial shortfalls facing Medicare and Social Security.

McCain remains competitive, however, because of his showing among older voters and independents, constituencies that both parties are vying to win. McCain leads Clinton among independents and is essentially tied with Obama.

McCain's particularly competitive against Obama, according to these numbers, as a six-point lead separates the two, a spread at the outside of the poll's margin of error.

Don't forget as well, that on questions of leadership and national service, McCain far outstrips both the Democrats. See "McCain Widely Recognized as a “War Hero."

We have a lot of campaigning ahead, in any case.

When more voters realize the implications of Obama's pledge to negotiate with Iran and Syria, as well as the folly of closer ties Obama's adivisors want to develop with terrorist organizations and state sponsors (here and here), support for McCain will skyrocket.

The Democratization of the Bachelor's Degree

Via Maggie's Farm, the Chronicle of Education reports that the Bachelor's degree is "America's most overrated product":

Today, amazingly, a majority of the students whom colleges admit are grossly underprepared. Only 23 percent of the 1.3 million high-school graduates of 2007 who took the ACT examination were ready for college-level work in the core subjects of English, math, reading, and science.

Perhaps more surprising, even those high-school students who are fully qualified to attend college are increasingly unlikely to derive enough benefit to justify the often six-figure cost and four to six years (or more) it takes to graduate. Research suggests that more than 40 percent of freshmen at four-year institutions do not graduate in six years. Colleges trumpet the statistic that, over their lifetimes, college graduates earn more than nongraduates, but that's terribly misleading. You could lock the collegebound in a closet for four years, and they'd still go on to earn more than the pool of non-collegebound — they're brighter, more motivated, and have better family connections.

Also, the past advantage of college graduates in the job market is eroding. Ever more students attend college at the same time as ever more employers are automating and sending offshore ever more professional jobs, and hiring part-time workers. Many college graduates are forced to take some very nonprofessional positions, such as driving a truck or tending bar.

How much do students at four-year institutions actually learn?

Colleges are quick to argue that a college education is more about enlightenment than employment. That may be the biggest deception of all. Often there is a Grand Canyon of difference between the reality and what higher-education institutions, especially research ones, tout in their viewbooks and on their Web sites. Colleges and universities are businesses, and students are a cost item, while research is a profit center. As a result, many institutions tend to educate students in the cheapest way possible: large lecture classes, with necessary small classes staffed by rock-bottom-cost graduate students. At many colleges, only a small percentage of the typical student's classroom hours will have been spent with fewer than 30 students taught by a professor, according to student-questionnaire data I used for my book How to Get an Ivy League Education at a State University. When students at 115 institutions were asked what percentage of their class time had been spent in classes of fewer than 30 students, the average response was 28 percent.

That's not to say that professor-taught classes are so worthwhile. The more prestigious the institution, the more likely that faculty members are hired and promoted much more for their research than for their teaching. Professors who bring in big research dollars are almost always rewarded more highly than a fine teacher who doesn't bring in the research bucks. Ernest L. Boyer, the late president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, used to say that winning the campus teaching award was the kiss of death when it came to tenure. So, no surprise, in the latest annual national survey of freshmen conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, 44.6 percent said they were not satisfied with the quality of instruction they received. Imagine if that many people were dissatisfied with a brand of car: It would quickly go off the market. Colleges should be held to a much higher standard, as a higher education costs so much more, requires years of time, and has so much potential impact on your life. Meanwhile, 43.5 percent of freshmen also reported "frequently" feeling bored in class, the survey found.

College students may be dissatisfied with instruction, but, despite that, do they learn? A 2006 study supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that 50 percent of college seniors scored below "proficient" levels on a test that required them to do such basic tasks as understand the arguments of newspaper editorials or compare credit-card offers. Almost 20 percent of seniors had only basic quantitative skills. The students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the gas station.

This is the democratization of the four-year college degree.

It's a good thing promotion and tenure aren't dependent on student performance!

Chertoff Denied! New York Times Refuses Secretary's Op-Ed Submission

Via Maggie's Farm, the New York Times refused to run this article submitted by the Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff:

When it comes to illegal immigration, the American people are tired of thirty years of lip service. They want our laws enforced. As Secretary of Homeland Security, I have directed my department to pursue that mandate, using all the tools permitted by law.

This involves a three-fold approach.

First, we stem the flow at the border by increasing the likelihood that illegal entrants – and smugglers of all types – will be detected, apprehended, and removed.

Second, we drive businesses to comply with laws against employing illegal workers.

Third, when we encounter those who are here illegally, we remove them.

Granted, we need a long-term solution involving a temporary worker program, legal immigration reform, and a fair policy to deal with illegal immigrants long-rooted here.

But the American people have demanded that we first demonstrate an effective commitment to enforce current laws. And even those who are sympathetic to the painful circumstances of illegal immigration question any change that might trigger new waves of entrants seeking to benefit from still-future waves of “reform.”

Our policies respond to this demand and to Congress. They may be tough, yet they are fair, and they are succeeding.

That success has now bred a firestorm of opposition. Opponents are driven by factors ranging from an ideological commitment to open borders to reliance on illegal workforces. Apparently, their strategy is to challenge every enforcement action with exaggerated or misleading cries of outrage. These challenges add up to a position that would forbid any effective enforcement.

The New York Times editorial page is a case in point.

Regarding interior enforcement, a March 27, 2008 editorial (“A Foolish Immigration Purge”) attacked our proposal that businesses receiving letters about workers whose names don’t match Social Security numbers clear up the discrepancy within three months. Under this proposal, if a mismatch is caused by an innocent clerical mistake, the mistake is simply corrected. But if it’s caused by an illegal worker carrying a forged identity, the employer must act. Ignoring this distinction, the Times falsely implied that businesses would have to fire workers even for innocent errors.

A December 18, 2006 editorial (“Swift Raids”) protested earlier efforts at workplace enforcement. It was followed by an October 4, 2007 editorial (“Stop the Raids”) which depicted our enforcement efforts on Long Island and elsewhere as trampling on localities. But an April 16, 2008 editorial (“New Jersey’s Immigration Crackdown”) castigated Garden State localities for their enforcement efforts.

Concerning border security, an April 3, 2008 editorial (“Michael Chertoff’s Insult”) condemned our exercise of legal authority to waive certain environmental regulations that would have stopped us from fulfilling the explicit mandate of Congress to put fencing, roads, and lighting in place this year in order to stem drug and human smuggling.

The editorial failed to mention that we had previously conducted multiple environmental reviews or that the Interior Department has complained that some border areas are so endangered by smugglers that visitors and employees are turned away.

Taken together, these examples suggest that in some quarters, no enforcement technique is acceptable. Of course, if none is acceptable, enforcing immigration law becomes impossible.Perhaps that’s what some critics really want. In a March 4, 2008 editorial (“Border Insecurity”), this newspaper takes aim at the very propriety of defending our sovereignty and our laws:

“From San Diego on the Pacific to Brownsville on the Rio Grande, a steel curtain is descending across the continent. Behind it lies a nation….that has decided to wall itself off….”

In this rewrite of lines from Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain address, the editorialists outrageously compare America’s attempts to secure its own borders against smugglers with Josef Stalin’s subjugation of Eastern Europe.

In the end, the debate is not about enforcement tactics. It’s about enforcing the rule of law. Do our critics want a country where employers create economic incentives for people to come here illegally? Do they desire an America with open borders and uncontrolled illegal migration? Should federal officials tacitly allow this to happen by rejecting every meaningful effort to enforce the law?

In the end, two truths stand out. We need to continue to discuss reforms to our immigration laws. But we must continue to uphold our current laws by enforcing them.

- Michael Chertoff

Apparently, the New York Times doesn't want Chertoff discussing the New York Times' obstruction of our immigration laws in its own pages.