Iraq Residents Tired of Militia Violence

As the U.S. military surge in Iraq has progressed over the last year, antiwar types continue to devise new metrics with which to "measure" an alleged "absence of progress": aggregate casualties for 2007 (not the dramatically reduced numbers for the end of year), the total costs of the war (including the toll at home to returning veterans, which panders to public sentiments on "unfairness"), as well as the "inevitable" sectarian violence that will never improve enough for the U.S. to claim victory - hence Iraq is an "endless" war.

Cernig at Newshoggers is one of the biggest proponents of the sectarianism's-not-declining meme, but he's followed closely by alleged anti-Semitic Juan Cole, who also has a post up denouncing the continued U.S. presence in country.

But as I've shown recently, we're continuing to see real progress in the country (with drastically reduced levels of violence), and as the Los Angeles Times reports, were seeing "Iraqis Losing Patience With Militiamen":

Four summers ago, when militiamen loyal to hard-line Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr were battling U.S. forces in the holy city of Najaf, Mohammed Lami was among them.

"I had faith. I believed in something," Lami said of his days hoisting a gun for Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. "Now, I will never fight with them.

"Lami is no fan of U.S. troops, but after fleeing Baghdad's Sadr City district with his family last month, when militiamen arrived on his street to plant a bomb, he is no fan of the Mahdi Army either. Nor are many others living in Sadr City, the 32-year-old said. Weeks of fighting between militiamen and Iraqi and U.S. forces, with residents caught in the middle, has chipped away at the Sadr movement's grass-roots popularity, Lami said....

"People are fed up with them because of their extremism and the problems they are causing," said Rafid Majid, a merchant in central Baghdad. Like many others interviewed across the capital, he said the good deeds the group performs no longer were enough to make up for the hardships endured by ordinary Iraqis who just want to go to work and keep their families safe.

The Sadrists claim the residents on Iraqi street are with them, but the Times's piece suggests otherwise:

Lawmakers from Sadr's movement blame the United States and Iraqi forces for the bloodshed that began after the government launched an offensive against Shiite militias in Basra. Sadr representatives insist that, if anything, support has soared as people come to sympathize with the Sadr loyalists.

"Even some Iraqi people who were not sympathizing with us before have now started to feel and identify with the oppression on the Sadr people. It has become clear to them that we are being targeted," said Liqa Yaseen, a parliament member representing the Sadr movement.

But interviews with dozens of Iraqis living in Sadr City and other Shiite militia strongholds in Baghdad suggest otherwise. So do anecdotes from U.S. troops who have met with Sadr City residents and local leaders and who say there has been a shift in the things they hear.

"After March 25 was the first time I had anyone tell us, 'Go in and wipe them out,' " said Sgt. Erik Olson, who spends most of his time visiting residents of Sadr City's Jamila neighborhood gathering "atmospherics," the military's word for figuring out what locals are thinking.

It isn't surprising that people on the front lines of the standoff would lose patience with the warring sides. Their homes and streets have become battlegrounds, making it impossible at times to go to the market, the hospital or work. Military and militia snipers fire from rooftops. Militiamen launch mortar shells and rockets from residential streets. U.S. aircraft respond with devastating airstrikes that often cause casualties and damage beyond their targets.

It's a public relations problem that even some Mahdi Army members acknowledge, and a fragile truce reached by Sadr and the Iraqi government this month, which allowed Iraqi troops to deploy into Sadr City, suggested that at least privately, Sadr's political wing recognized the need to back down from the fighting.

While some on the left will endlessly deny that the U.S. and Iraqis are genuinely making progress, some surrender hawks see the decline in violence as the key to implement their plans for a precipitous withdrawal:

It seemed to me back in late 2004 that the looming elections in January 2005 would be a good opportunity to declare victory and go home on a relatively upbeat note. Instead, the president decided that we needed to stay in order to forestall civil war and ethnic cleansing. Then came several years of civil war and ethnic cleansing. Now we're looking at another spate of good news. So why not take the opportunity to leave?

See that?

Leaving in 2005, when sectarian violence skyrocketed - soon leading to massive ethnic cleansing by Shiite death squads - would have been a good time to leave on an "upbeat note."

Yeah, that's real upbeat? Anything that permits the withdrawal of American forces is on the up side - good news, bad news, it doesn't matter ... the lefties will spin it any old way, as long as Americans high-tail it out of there ignominously.

Happy Memorial Day!

Here's to wishing everyone a safe and warm Memorial Day Holiday!

Photo Credit: "Memorial Day Activities Focus on World War II," Army Public Affairs.

Great Success: Iraq Violence Plunges to Four-Year Low

The Los Angeles Times reports that violence in Iraq has declined to the lowest point in four years:

The U.S. military said Sunday that the number of attacks by militants in the last week dropped to a level not seen in Iraq since March 2004.

About 300 violent incidents were recorded in the seven-day period that ended Friday, down from a weekly high of nearly 1,600 in mid-June last year, according to a chart provided by the military.

The announcement appeared aimed at allaying fears that an uprising by militiamen loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr could unravel security gains since 28,500 additional American troops were deployed in Iraq in a buildup that reached its height in June.

Navy Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll, a military spokesman, credited the decrease to a series of operations launched by the Iraqi government in the last two months to extend control over parts of the country that have been under the sway of armed Sunni Arab and Shiite militants. They include crackdowns in the southern oil hub of Basra, the northern city of Mosul and Baghdad's Sadr City district.

The late March operation in Basra triggered a fierce backlash by Sadr's militiamen in Sadr City and across the overwhelmingly Shiite south, drawing in British and American forces.

The number of attacks nationwide rose to about 850 in the week that the Basra crackdown began, according to the military's chart. The figure has ebbed and flowed since then.

Read the whole thing. The military's reporting is cautious, noting where significant security challenges remain.

Still, I can just hear all of the lefties protest. Check Spencer Ackerman, Newshoggers (it's already happening, here), or Matthew Yglesias, where I'll bet you'll see posts ripping apart the military assessments as "lies" or as abjectly denialist about the "imminent" sectarianism that will rip the country apart.

Don't believe it.

For the hard left's antiwar nihilists, war - any war - is a fiction, a right-wing manufacture to keep the racist military-industrial fascists in power.

For more on that, unsurprisingly, see Comments for Left Field, "The Right’s Neurotic Addiction to War."

Photo Credit: "Children jump and run as Iraqi troops arrive in their neighborhood to distribute food rations in the impoverished Sadr City district of eastern Baghdad. Iraqi troops poured into the Baghdad Shiite bastion of Sadr City three days ago for the first time in eight weeks, without resistance from militias who have fought deadly street battles with US forces," Los Angeles Times.

Racial Resentment and the Making of the President, 2008

As I've noted many times, campaign '08's doing more for race relations than any other event in the last couple of decades. Where Bill Clinton wanted to have a "national conversation on race," his wife's campaign - targeting voters in Appalachia or in reflecting on the presidential politics of political assassinations - is lightyears ahead in terms of opening up the country's scars from earlier eras of slavery and Jim Crow.

Survey data aren't going to be helpful. Whereas the Washington Post reported positively on race and polling trends last year, "Race, Gender Less Relevant in '08," events on the ground and in the media indicate that long periods of racial accommodation, healing, and equal opportunity can be blown apart by crass political opportunism and race-baiting by all parties.

What's so interesting, of course, is that most of the patterns of racial reaction are seen in the Democratic Party ranks. While counterintuitive, these trends are the natural end result of a political party movement built on increasing power by manipulating racial identity, grievance, and guilt. Why would such racial demonization of political enemies abate when the fighting's among candidates within the party's own presumed "big tent"?

So it's interesting to see the angst of racial recrimination in this week's cover story at Newsweek, "A Memo to Senator Obama":

Race is a difficult subject to talk and write about. Although the blogosphere is rarely shy, mainstream journalists often tread lightly for fear of giving offense or indulging in stereotypes. Political candidates sometimes slyly play the race card, but rarely overtly. Not eager to call attention to race as an issue, the Obama campaign plays it down as a factor in the election. But if an Obama adviser were writing an honest memo to the candidate, here's how it might read:

The good news is that you have all but won the nomination. The bad news, if we are willing to face reality, is that the country—some parts of it, anyway—may not be ready to elect a black president of the United States. It is hard to get a precise fix on the problem. Voters generally deny to pollsters that race is a factor in casting their votes, but when they step into the privacy of the polling booth, their prejudices can sometimes emerge. Probably only a tiny fraction of voters are outright racist. But race is not irrelevant to many others, black or white; exit polls vary greatly by state, but show that 10 to 30 percent of primary voters considered race as they voted (if white, those voters broke overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton; if African-American, they voted for you).

NEWSWEEK pollsters recently created a "Racial Resentment Index" to measure the impact of race on the 2008 election. White voters were asked a series of 10 questions about a variety of race-related topics, including racial preferences in hiring, interracial marriage—and what they have "in common" with African-Americans. About a third of these voters scored "high" on this index; 29 percent of all white Democrats did. Overwhelmingly, these Democrats are the ones most likely to defect to John McCain in the fall. (Among "High RR" white Democratic voters, according to the new NEWSWEEK Poll, Clinton leads McCain by 77 percent to 18 percent, while you win by only 51 percent to 33 percent.) Many Democratic voters in West Virginia interviewed by a NEWSWEEK reporter on primary night, May 13, did not hide their animus toward you as a kind of exotic alien. Menina Parsons, 45, said she will not vote for Obama in the general election because "I don't think he's real. I don't think he's American."

Some commentators have said that your problem is not with race—it's with geography. The Daily Kos Web site recently posted a map that makes the point: the majority of counties in which more than 65 percent of whites voted for Clinton closely track Appalachia—the mountainous region running from New York into the Deep South, where voters tend to be somewhat less well-off and less well educated than in other parts of the country. These same commentators note that you have done well in other mostly white, rural states like Wisconsin, Iowa and Oregon. That's all true, and it's important not to exaggerate the scale of the problem.

But Appalachia is a big place, encompassing 13 states: southwestern New York, western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, West Virginia, western Maryland, western Virginia, eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, western North and South Carolina, and northern Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. You cannot afford to lose all those states and still win in November. Other pollsters have suggested that the race factor is at least noticeable in a much wider swath of rural America, where 60 million voters reside. One recent Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll of rural voters in battleground states showed that you are trailing McCain by 9 points (and that Clinton runs even with him). Dee Davis, president of a Kentucky-based advocacy group called the Center for Rural Strategies, points out in a recent article on Salon.com that in June 2004, John Kerry trailed George W. Bush by the same 9-point margin in the same rural battlegrounds.

Note this section from the article, which I think's more important than the racial composition of the candidate:

The Internet has been a sluice for lies and distortions about your religion and background. It is widely and falsely rumored that you are Muslim (in the NEWSWEEK Poll, 11 percent of voters believe you are); that you chose to be sworn in to the Senate using a Qur'an rather than a Bible, and that you refuse to place your hand over your heart for the singing of the national anthem because, you are imagined to have said, "the anthem conveys a warlike message." As a recent post on Politico.com points out, there is a "Genealogy of Barack Hussein Obama" making the Web rounds, helpfully illustrated by pictures of your dark-complexioned relatives dressed in African garb. The message is not subtle: it says that Barack Obama is not a "real American."

You must confront this slur, with more force than you have shown so far. If you do not, you will be defined by your enemies and the Web, a dangerous combination. You movingly told your life story in a book that's become a best seller. And lately, you have wisely taken to often wearing an American-flag lapel pin. It would help to be seen venerating your white mother and grandparents as well as your black father. Your mother is a sympathetic figure, fighting to raise a child out of poverty. It is a good thing that this summer you are scheduled to go to the grave site of your grandfather, a World War II vet whose coffin was draped with the American flag when he died in 1992. Voters need to know that he, much more than your father who lived far away, was the man who raised you. Voters need to know that you are definitely not John Kerry, who was raised to wealth and privilege, an Ivy Leaguer educated, for a time, at a French boarding school.

The piece concludes by identifying Obama's biggest challenge: Making himself known to poor and working-class white Americans, making himself a candidate for all citizens, not just Ivy League or coastal elites, not just minorities who get lucrative affirmative-action set-asides, not just cultural snobs who think the American flag is coequal to the swastika.

From my own experience studying and teaching and living black politics, I can say that old-fashioned Jim Crow racial resentment is found in a small minority of the American population. It's still there, sure, and I've related personal stories to that effect, but these views are a tiny part of today's national identity.

In my view, to even ask if "Is America Ready for a Black President" only serves more to perpetuate racial divisions than eradicate them.

For Barack Obama, it's his character and questions of integrity, his divisive political and religious associations, and his far-left political agenda that are the greatest impediments to his accession to the White House.

We should repudiate crass racial appeals this election season, but pointing out Obama's political liabilities on cultural questions, or on his politicial radicalism, is not racist. Indeed, the GOP would be foolish not to take into consideration Democratic liabilities with traditional white (conservative) constituencies.

Photo Credit: Newsweek

Barack Obama and the Democratic Party Fracture

Some time back, I wrote an entry on the strangely fissiparous happenings around the far left-wing base, "Radical Schizophrenia? Making Sense of Democratic Party Constituencies."

My basic point was to identify the extremes of contradictory dialogues among those in the grassroots of a party putatively committed to diversity and equality of minority advancement. What we've seen, though, in fact, is the totalitarian impulses of radical activists who evince no tolerance of competing views - these folks, indeed, are intent to impugn the other as constituting the very evil of the partisan enemy, the GOP itself.

Well, I'm just fascinated at how all of this continues to play out. Sean Wilentz has a new piece up at the Huffington Post attacking Barack Obama as destroying the party: "Barack Obama and the Unmaking of the Democratic Party."

Keep in mind that Wilentz is the author of a popular left-wing smear against the Bush administration, "The Worst President in History?" - an article whose thesis has become the standard frame of reference to the left's unthinking nihilist hordes.

Here's Wilentz on Obama in his HuffPo piece:

The [Barack] Obama advocates declare ... that we have entered an entirely new political era. It is not only possible but also desirable, they say, for Democrats to win by turning away from those whom "progressive" pundits and bloggers disdain variously as "Nascar man," "uneducated," "low information" whites, "rubes, fools, and hate-mongers" who live in the nation's "shitholes."

Talk about transformative post-racial politics.

In fact, all of the evidence demonstrates that white racism has not been a principal or even secondary motivation in any of this year's Democratic primaries. Every poll shows that economics, health care, and national security are the leading issues for white working class voters - and for Latino working class voters as well. These constituencies have cast positive ballots for Hillary Clinton not because she is white, but because they regard her as better on these issues. Obama's campaign and its passionate supporters refuse to acknowledge that these voters consider him weaker -- and that Clinton's positions, different from his, as well as her experience actually attract support. Instead they impute racism to working class Democrats who, the polls also show, happen to be liberal on every leading issue. The effort to taint anyone who does not support Obama as motivated by racism has now become a major factor in alienating core Democrats from Obama's campaign.

Wilentz goes on to lament the ultimate outcome of the Democratic Party's relentless identity politics:

In every presidential election they have won, the Democrats have solidified their historic link to white workers, not dismissed them. Obama and the champions of a new party coalition appear to think that everything has suddenly changed, simply because of the force of their own desires. In any event, Obama had shown no ability thus far to attract the one constituency that has always spelled the difference between victory and defeat for the Democratic Party. The party must now decide whether to go along with Obama and renounce its own heritage - and tempt the political fates.

Wilentz is an historian, so far all of his BDS, you can see that he's not really hip to where the Democratic Party really is today - in other words, it ain't the party of Jackson!

But that's not all!

Over at Taylor Marsh's blog, the warning's going out against Obama as the presumptive nominee, "BUYER'S REMORSE: How Rank and File Democrats are Rejecting Their 'Inevitable' Nominee":

Ever since the media declared that Barack Obama was “inevitable” after February 19th, based on a two week period when the an unprepared Hillary Clinton campaign suffered “10 straight losses”, rank and file Democratic voters have been sending a message. Rather than rally ‘round the “inevitable nominee” that message has been a consistent, loud, and clear message to the Democratic Party – DO NOT WANT.

In nearly every demographic category since February 19, Clinton percentage of the vote has risen, while Obama’s has fallen. This includes Obama’s supposed “strong” demographic categories such as voters with college degrees post-graduate degrees and voters whose income is above the national median. And Clinton beat Obama in the primaries in March, April and May in most of the major categories.

In the aftermath of Super Tuesday, John McCain was anointed by the media as the inevitable nominee – and with good reason. McCain had accumulated 740 of the necessary 1129 “pledged” delegates necessary to clinch the GOP nomination, and all he had to do was win 40% of the remaining delegates against two “non-mainstream” Republican challengers (Huckabee and Paul). Rank and file Republicans accepted McCain as their nominee, and McCain won every contest held subsequent to Super Tuesday with the exception of the Louisiana primary held on February 9th..and that contest he lost by only 1% (43% to 42%).

McCain may not have been the choice of the majority of Republicans, but once he was declared the “inevitable nominee”, rank and file Republicans closed ranks behind McCain. Despite doing virtually no campaigning at all, McCain has been able to garner at least 50% of the vote in every other primary contest held subsequent to Super Tuesday.

But Democratic voters refused to accept the pronouncements of the pundits and “analysts”, and have voted in overwhelming numbers in support of Hillary Clinton. Not only did Clinton pick up the support that Obama lost, Clinton has picked up a lot of the support that, in February, had gone to other candidates. Moreover, the electorate in the Democratic primaries looked a lot more like the “general electorate” in the 2004 Presidential election.

Note that Marsh's blog project is obviously pro-Hillary, but the essay nevertheless reveals a phenomenal degree of antipathy to Obama and acknowledges that "racial resentment" is indeed a powerful factor in working class voting behavior (read the whole post, which includes way more data and conjectures).

See also, "Barack Obama and the Political Psychology of Race," and "Who has Harmed the Democratic Party?"

Pacifascists!

I'm stoked!

I've been needing some additional adjectives and nouns to augment "nihilist," especially now that the hard-lefties have appropriated my term!

Well, to the rescue is "pacifascists," via American Digest:

"Pacifascist" (pac*i*fas*cist) is my spin on a word suggested by a commentor @The Belmont Club: The valley of tears

"there are so many people now who see war as the ultimate wrong. Thus, anyone who participates in it is to be condemned. Taken to its extreme, this leads to a funny sort of fascism: "pacifiscism" would perhaps be a name for it. It begs the question: would the "pacifiscists" ever get so worked up that they'd be willing to physically punish someone for participating in war? I think yes, though they would fell horrible afterwards."

I'll take his definition and his estimate of their probable behavior. I just think my variant scan better.

The latest examples of the "pacifascists" among us would be those that raised the howl last week demanding that the US Armed Forces supply Burma's suffering millions with aid even if they had to go in at the point of a gun with massive air cover.

Typical "pacifascist" crap. As long as there are no real American interests in play, the use of the military is "enlightened" - even required. If there are actually reasons strategic and otherwise for the US to engage in a war an win it - i.e. Iraq, there is no justification that can possible satisfy the "pacifascists."

I wrote previously about this issue of "no American interests." It's good to see others making the case.

Hat tip: Dr. Sanity

Hillary Seeks Popular Vote Win in Last 3 Primaries

The Washington Post reports on Hillary Clinton's last stand in the remaining primaries: to pull out a win in the national popular vote totals:

Trailing in delegates while her debt continues to grow, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is aggressively campaigning in the final three contests of the primary season in the hope of seizing a victory in the overall popular vote from Sen. Barack Obama.

The effect of such a victory -- and the question of whether Clinton hopes to leverage it into the No. 2 spot on the Democratic ticket or simply leave it as a historical marker -- is less clear. "One hundred percent of her energy is on the popular vote," a senior adviser said. "The only thing she can control is how hard she works and what effort she puts into the remaining three contests. She wants to end this with as many votes as she can."

The pursuit of the popular vote sent Clinton to South Dakota on Friday, then back across the country to Puerto Rico yesterday. It also helps explain the sometimes-contradictory rhetoric she used last week -- on one evening highlighting party unity, and on the next, defiance and determination to continue running hard against Obama.

"Whatever happens, I'll work as hard as I can to elect a Democratic president this fall. The state motto of Kentucky is, 'United we stand, divided we fall,' " Clinton said after Tuesday night's victory. Her address in Louisville was interpreted by some as a sign that she is contemplating her post-campaign stance as Obama moves closer to the requisite number of delegates.

Yet the next day, with renewed vigor, Clinton compared her effort to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan to the abolition of slavery -- a sharp about-face that two advisers said reflects the difficult, emotional nature of this stage of the race for the candidate.

Clinton's sense of urgency about seating the delegates from those states, of course, is also rooted in her desire to move ahead in the popular vote. The Democratic National Committee sanctioned both states for moving their primaries up on the calendar in violation of party rules. Although neither candidate campaigned in Florida, Clinton ran up a big margin over Obama there, and she won the Michigan primary after Obama removed his name from the ballot.

After the two split primaries in Oregon and Kentucky last Tuesday, Obama held a lead of about 400,000 votes, according to various estimates, but counting the raw totals from Florida and Michigan would vault Clinton ahead of him. She hopes to close the gap further with what her campaign expects to be a big win in Puerto Rico's primary next Sunday.

Still, her aides struggled to explain what she hopes the popular-vote victory will yield. On Friday, they beat back rumors that she is negotiating to be Obama's running mate. "Totally false," senior aide Howard Wolfson said of a report that she is in formal talks with the Obama team over conceding. David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, called the same reports "laughable."

Members of the Clinton inner circle said that as the campaign has dragged on, her group of confidantes has grown smaller. One senior adviser normally privy to major decisions said it is unlikely that anyone beyond campaign manager Maggie Williams and attorney Cheryl Mills is having concrete discussions with Clinton about her strategy going forward.

Democratic officials aligned with Clinton continued to say that the race is not over and that she has every right to remain in, despite the long odds.

I doubt the popular vote argument's going to do much more to clinch the nomination for Hillary.

I'm ready for the challenge of a Barack Obama candidacy, although the outrage among Obama supporters from Hillary's comments on Robert Kennedy illustrates how raw things are down at the final stretch.

But see Hillary Clinton's case for why she's still in the race (hat tip: Memeorandum).

Chester County Victory Movement: Protesting the Antiwar Protesters

The Wall Street Journal reports on the Chester County Victory Movement, which is mounting pro-victory counter-demonstrations against America's Stalinist antiwar protest cells (Pictured above: International ANSWER).

Here's a bit from the story:

Memorial Day isn't until Monday. But for Rich Davis, a 20-year veteran of the Navy, it seems to come every Saturday. That's when he pulls out a handmade sign and heads for a street corner near the Chester County Court House in this suburban Philadelphia community.

Mr. Davis, 54, is a pro-military protester who makes a public stand each week in support of the troops and their mission.

In 2001, Mr. Davis retired from the Navy and ended up settling in West Chester, where he spent 2006 and 2007 watching antiwar protesters rally each Saturday from 11 a.m. until noon outside the courthouse near his apartment. The Chester County Peace Movement, Mr. Davis would later learn, had been demonstrating at the site since March 2003, when the U.S. invaded Iraq. At first he hoped someone would challenge the protesters, speak up for the troops, and defend their mission. On Sept. 8, 2007 he decided that someone had to be him.

Mr. Davis had been building to such a decision for a long time. He was just a kid during the Vietnam War, but he is still bothered by the disrespect heaped on returning Vietnam vets in the 1960s and '70s. In part that is because, in 1967, Mr. Davis attended the funeral of a man he idolized – his sister's boyfriend, Marine Lance Cpl. Alan R. Schultz from Levittown, Pa. Schultz was killed by mortar fire in Vietnam.

"Al was a great guy," Mr. Davis remembers. "When we got the word that he had been killed, I felt the bottom fall out. I cried the rest of that summer."

Even today, Mr. Davis can't look at an antiwar protest without thinking that Schultz, his comrades and their modern-day counterparts are being disrespected. So after seeing the war protesters each week, Mr. Davis said to himself, "Not this war. Not this time."

"We're not silent anymore," Mr. Davis told me. "We refuse to let antiwar protesters have the stage to themselves."

Not that he wants to stifle dissent. He just doesn't want to go unanswered the signs and protests that he believes encourage the enemy and demoralize U.S. troops. So, sign in hand in September, he walked to the corner praying he would have the strength to stand there, to be seen and heard.

Seen he was. Though there was plenty of room on the corner, he says he was bumped, shoved and challenged. One person asked, "Do you live in fear?" Another demanded, "Why don't you go and serve?"

"They had that corner for five years, every Saturday, unopposed," Mr. Davis told me. "They couldn't stand the thought of one person having a sign they couldn't tolerate."

More people than the antiwar protesters took notice. A few weeks after he started his own weekly protests, Mr. Davis had about 40 sign-holding, flag-waving supporters at his side, thanks to support from the Gathering of Eagles, a national organization supporting the troops.

The number of antiwar protesters began to swell in response, which led to an increase in taunts hurled between the two groups. Mr. Davis admits the childish behavior cut both ways. "At times we have been confrontational and done things that were inappropriate, especially in the early days." But now, he says, "I have zero tolerance for yelling and buffoonery."

In March, an angry antiwar protester hit a woman who covers the weekly demonstrations on her pro-troop blog. That led the local police to lay down a few ground rules. Now each group is to keep to its own side of the street, and the two groups swap sides of the street each week.

There are a few other changes. Mr. Davis's once informal group is getting organized. They have a name, Chester County Victory Movement, and a Web site (http://www.americansheepdogs.com/) that they use to share information about welcoming troops home, sending care packages, and joining discussions at West Chester University.

That "woman" is Skye who blogs at Midnight Blue and Flopping Aces.

American Sheepdogs has a post up, "Victory Movement Makes the Wall Street Journal."

Stop over and say hello to some of these good folks.

Robert Kagan and the Return of History

Robert Kagan, a foreign policy advisor to John McCain's presidential campaign, has a new book out, The Return of History and the End of Dreams.

I picked up a copy myself, but the basic gist of Kagan's thesis was laid out well in an essay at Policy Review.

It turns out that the Globe and Mail's got a new essay up discussing where Kagan's "return of history" thesis fits into the larger debates in American foriegn policy and international relations theory:

If you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, can you judge it by its author? It would seem to be a safe bet in most cases, but Robert Kagan delights in defying conventional wisdom. Though his views are always contentious and often questionable, Kagan is one of the most interesting, intelligent and perceptive foreign-policy intellectuals of the past quarter century. He has written several bestselling books on international politics and the U.S. role in the world. He is also one of John McCain's principal foreign-policy advisers. But he is perhaps best known as a leading neoconservative intellectual, probably the leading neocon intellectual now that Francis Fukuyama has deserted the sinking ship. Yet anyone prejudging The Return of History and the End of Dreams will be in for a surprise. This is not neoconservatism as you've known it.

Although he is mentioned only briefly, Fukuyama is Kagan's foil. In 1992, Fukuyama published the provocative The End of History and the Last Man. Like all grand, influential ideas, Fukuyama's "end of history" thesis was deceptively simple: The end of the Cold War marked the final triumph of liberal democratic capitalism. Its rivals, from premodern monarchy and theocracy to ultramodern fascism and communism, had all failed. After 1989, history would no longer be marked by the struggle between competing systems of government; instead, it would be shaped by the inexorable spread of democracy. Thanks to the United States, humanity had reached its end point in a nirvana of political and economic freedom.

Fukuyama's post-Cold War triumphalism became the accepted wisdom for U.S. leaders across the political spectrum. Under Bill Clinton, the dynamic concepts of globalization, free trade and the "democratic peace" replaced the rather static Cold War priorities of containment, deterrence and mutual assured destruction. Not even spasms of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans or violent protests in Seattle and Genoa could deflect the spread of free markets and democracy around the world.

Then came 9/11. History may have appeared to be ending from the comfortable perspective of Washington, but around the rest of the world it continued to rumble along as usual, only to explode, literally, in the political and economic centres of the United States.

As its title suggests, The Return of History and the End of Dreams tries to make sense of what followed 9/11. Kagan portrays a world Fukuyama would scarcely recognize, where autocracy is on the rise and democracy on the defensive. Old-fashioned, great-power politics have returned at the expense of the democratic peace. Kagan dismisses post-Cold War hopefulness as "a mirage." Instead, the world is now entering "an age of divergence."

In making this argument, Kagan causes literary whiplash in the unsuspecting reader by committing an act of sacrilege for any self-respecting neocon: He embraces realism. Realists have always been the bêtes noire of neoconservatives because of their belief that power, not morality, is the language of world politics. To a realist, the narrowly defined national interest, not universal ideals of human rights, should determine foreign policy. Recall James Baker, secretary of state to George H. W. Bush, on why the United States would not intervene to stop genocide in Bosnia: "We have no dog in that fight."

To the neocons, this was tantamount to moral treason. In response, Kagan spent the 1990s formulating a robust doctrine of humanitarian intervention. Yet now he tells us that power really is the language of world politics after all. Russia and China are his two big examples. Contrary to "end of history" expectations, they have not been democratized by globalization. Instead, their new wealth has simply given their autocratic governments greater power to pursue their own national interests. In an arresting analogy that recurs throughout the book, Kagan compares our world to that of the 19th century, when several great powers continually jockeyed for geopolitical positioning - right up to August, 1914. Taiwan, he notes, might end up acting as this century's Sarajevo. Hence history's unfortunate return.

But Robert Kagan is no Henry Kissinger. While much of the book offers a realist's bleak diagnosis of the world today, it ends, somewhat incongruously, by offering a neocon's rousing call to arms as the cure. Kagan dismisses international law as irrelevant and counter-productive because, being based on the principle of inviolable state sovereignty, it allows autocracies to claim that internal repression is nobody else's business. He also dismisses the UN, based as it is on international law, as unhelpful and unworkable.

Where else would Kagan have us turn? To a "Concert of Democracies" comprising North America, Europe, Japan, India and Australia. Whether we like it or not, the future of international relations will be determined not by religious wars or a clash of civilizations, or even by competition for wealth and resources, but by the contest between democracies and autocracies. "History has returned," Kagan declares, "and the democracies must come together to shape it, or others will shape it for them."

The implications of this idea could be profound: In recent speeches, McCain has called for the creation of a "League of Democracies" that would "harness the vast power" of political freedom.

That's a nice essay, although if you go down to the conclusion, the author provides boilerplate slurs about how Iraq's been a "disaster.

Still, pay attention particularly to the notion that Kagan's "no Henry Kissinger." This point may hold implications for a McCain administration's foreign policy direction.

McCain's Foreign Policy Advisers

There's been a lot of debate on the nature of John McCain's foreign policy, with some observers calling the Arizona Senator "The Militarist" in an effort to impugn McCain's robust vision for America in a world of danger.

Others, like those at the Los Angeles Times, have struggled to find neat ideological labels: "McCain's Mixed Signals on Foreign Policy."

I see McCain as essentially neoconservative in his basic outlook, but perhaps more from a sense of personal experience and respect for what might be called an objective natural right of goodnesss in the world, something worth defending, even by force of arms when necessary, than from any overarching ideological framework.

In any case, the Council on Foreign Relations has posted an essay laying out the emerging foreign policy team of the McCain campaign, which gives us some clues to the candidate's likely direction in foreign affairs:

The McCain campaign’s foreign policy coordinator is Randy Scheunemann, a former top legislative aide for Republicans on Capitol Hill, including two former leaders of the Senate, Trent Lott and Bob Dole. Former Congressional Budget Office chief Douglas Holtz-Eakin coordinates economic policy. On national security issues, McCain receives advice from several generations of Republican strategists and former top foreign policy officials such as Henry Kissinger and Richard Armitage, often grouped in the realist camp of foreign policy, as well as William Kristol and Robert Kagan, leading neoconservative voices. The campaign lists Kagan as a leading foreign policy adviser, as noted below, along with State Department veteran Richard Williamson, former top defense and national security official Peter W. Rodman, and former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, who advises on national security and energy issues.

Media following the campaign have reported on jockeying for influence between the groups. The New York Times reported in April 2008 about concerns expressed by pragmatists advising McCain that more conservative Republicans and neoconservatives are gaining increasing influence. But other campaign advisers downplay any schism.

Scheunemann, Kagan, and Kristol are project directors of the Project for the New American Century, an organization formed when Democrats controlled the White House in 1997 around what many analysts say are neoconservative ideals. The project says on its website it aims to promote U.S. leadership in the world and “rally support for a vigorous and principled policy of American international involvement and to stimulate useful public debate on foreign and defense policy and America's role in the world.” The organization’s statement of principles says the United States needs to “increase defense spending significantly,” “strengthen ties to democratic allies,” “promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad,” and “accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.”

Some observers point to McCain’s embrace of policy issues identified with neoconservatives dating back to his presidential campaign of 2000, when he called for a “rogue state rollback” policy predicated on aiding opposition groups that could then drive from power some regimes seen as threats to the United States. His plan for a “League of Democracies,” envisioned as a group of like-minded nations that would act in lieu of the United Nations against some threats to international security, is also seen as consistent with the neoconservative aims. But Kagan, writing in World Affairs, challenges the notion expressed in a number of media that in backing such policies neoconservatives have deviated abruptly from U.S. foreign policy traditions.

I love it!

PNAC just drives the lefties nuts!!

But read the rest of the article, which includes discussions (with links) of other advisors, as well as a selected bibliography of McCain's writings and policy proposals.

Islamist Terrorists Will Deploy Mentally Unstable as Suicide Bombers

The enemies of Western civilizaton will sink to the lowest depths of evil, the bottomless pit of nihilist carnage, to destroy the institutions of a decent society.

The Times of London reports that jihadis in Britain have started to recruit the mentally ill as suicide bombers for attacks on British cities (via Memeorandum):

Islamic terrorists may be targeting mentally disturbed or disabled people in Britain in a bid to form a new “brigade” of home-grown suicide bombers, security officials fear.

MI5 and police say the case of Nicky Reilly, who is being held over a nailbomb attack last week in Exeter, may indicate a new strategy of targeting vulnerable people with mental health problems to carry out attacks.

A counterterrorism official said MI5 was investigating the extent to which Reilly had been manipulated by a “charismatic” Al-Qaeda recruiter.

“It is a grotesque concept but they are using people who are clearly mentally subnormal,” the official said. “We know they have clever radicalisers who will take advantage of anyone they think they can manipulate, whether they have an IQ of 60 or 140,” he said.

Reilly, 22, is a Muslim convert who has spent time detained in a mental health hospital. He has been described as a shambling introvert with the mental age of a 10-year-old. He is believed to have Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, and may also suffer from schizophrenia.

Security officials say Al-Qaeda appears to have exported the tactic from Iraq, where disabled “foot soldiers” have been used to devastating effect.

They point to a case in February when a suicide bomber in a wheelchair killed an Iraqi general in Samarra, north of Baghdad. Earlier, two women, initially thought to have Down’s syndrome, acted as couriers for a bomb in Baghdad, killing almost 100 people.

Officials say people with mental disabilities are not only easier to manipulate but also less likely to arouse suspicion. If they are white Muslim converts, they are even less likely to be noticed.

Al Qaeda's earlier shift to recruiting the sick and disabled has been applauded by far left-wing bloggers looking for an American defeat in Iraq.

If anyone sees a defense of the London jihadis recruitment practices among those in the leftosphere, please send me an e-mail with the information.

For more perspective on our fight, see Tony Blair, "A Battle for Global Values."

Lieberman Derangement Syndrome

After George W. Bush, the radical left blogosphere probably hates no one more than Senator Joseph Lieberman.

Why? Well, Lieberman stayed true to his convictions on foreign policy, backing American power toward the goal of victory in Iraq, standing up for our allies in the Middle East, while the Democratic Party moved further to the left. As the war has continued, the outrage against the Senator's apostasies has grown to unstable proportions.

Firedoglake endlessly demonizes the Connecticut Senator.

But check this entry from Daily Kos, which gets close to qualified mental derangement when talking about Joe, and his recent WSJ essay:

There are another dozen things to mock about Lieberman's column -- deconstructing it would take chapters, not just paragraphs -- but in the end Lieberman's very simplistic and fiction-touting assertions boil down to his own simplistic and fiction-touting notions of foreign policy. Lieberman's true problem (and the one that got him booted from the Democratic Party in his own primary) is that for Lieberman, all foreign policy "seriousness" is dependent on supporting the clusterfuck of Iraq and all related possible clusterfucks in neighboring countries. Not just before the invasion, but during the occupation, during all the "reorganizations" and "surges" and turned corners and imminent successes and plans for goddamned Green Zone theme parks, now and in perpetuity, and now continuing into Iran, and we're not supposed to talk about Pakistan because They Are Our Friends.

If you don't support indefinite action in Iraq, if you don't support the most aggressive of uberhawkish positions in the Middle East, Joe Lieberman will declare you an appeaser, pure and simple. It does not matter what other foreign policy positions you may hold: whether you support action in Afghanistan, or wish to see a non-nuclear North Korea, or what your opinions may be about Sudan or Myanmar or Tibet or Russia or Pakistan or the dozens of other crisis points around the world; for Lieberman, Iraq is all. Support Iraq, or you are not "serious." Support Iraq, or you are an "appeaser."

Here is a man unbalanced by the rage that can only come from a steady stream of human failures. Foreign policy is a simple land, for Joe Lieberman; it steadfastly consists of doing the most aggressive thing at the most aggressive time, and all other options are weak to the point of very nearly being anti-American. And yet as Iraq has shown, such actions can be not just unwise, but catastrophically destructive. For Joe Lieberman, asserting his opponents to be complacent or unpatriotic or appeasers is the only possible rhetorical option remaining, and he lacks the wisdom to leave it unused.

I can think of only one example of recent Democratic appeasement: the way Senator Reid and others have constantly appeased Joe Lieberman, in spite of Lieberman's constant and increasingly rabid attempts to undermine his previous party. As has been amply demonstrated by Joe himself, appeasement does not work.

What are the symptoms of a Lieberman Derangment Syndrome?

Perhaps we see, along with the hatred for President Bush, "the acute onset of paranoia" in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies - nay - the very existence of - Senator Joseph Lieberman (hat tip: Dr. Sanity)

For the hard left, Lieberman's just simply evil. By running as an independent in 2006, he defeated the handpicked Kos candidate, Ned Lamont, thus thwarting the radical netroots' push toward a filibuster proof majority in the Senate with which to launch their legislative drive for a neo-Stalinist collectivist state.

The left hates Lieberman, who serves as the focal point of their anger and displacement: The real evil is not the terrorists who took down the World Trade Center, or al Qaeda in Iraq, or the murderers who beheaded Daniel Pearl - that is, the genuinely despicable elements of world evil and violence. Nope, for the left, the true scourge of humanity is the Connecticut Senator (and his "war-loving" allies), with his support for winning a war that Democrats backed in 2002, a war the party authorized with its bipartisan support for the congressional authorization on Iraq.

Thank goodness for Joe!

See also, "Paranoid Discomfort."

Expect to Be Infuriated by John McCain

Via Maggie's Farm, check out Jules Crittenden, who puts the return of McCain derangement in perspective:

John Hawkins gets exercised over what we always knew about John McCain. He’s soft as an egg on illegal border crossing.

Put very simply: John McCain is a liar. He’s a man without honor, without integrity, who could not have captured the Republican nomination had he run on making comprehensive immigration a top priority of his administration. Quite frankly, this is little different from George Bush, Sr. breaking his “Read my lips, no new taxes pledge,” except that Bush’s father was at least smart enough to wait until he got elected before letting all of his supporters know that he was lying to them....

I genuinely regret having to do this because I do still believe the country would be better off with John McCain as President as opposed to Obama or Clinton. However, I just cannot in good conscience cast a vote for a man who has told this big of a lie, for this long, about this important of an issue.

Now Crittenden:

That’s too bad, because a withheld vote for McCain is a vote for Obama or Clinton. That’s a vote for a lot of other unpleasantness and lies, not to mention the abandonment of allies and a return to the wretched foreign policies of the Clinton and Carter administrations.

I’m trying to see where, in Hawkins’ excerpts, McCain previously repudiated his support for “comprehensive immigration reform” and where, in the last-straw remarks, he says he’s dumping border security. He addresses both in each of the quotes. The objection appears to be to McCain’s “but” that the “reform” part is a top priority as of Jan. 9, 2009. There is an apparent shift of emphasis in there. It’s debatable whether it rises to the level of lying, and an honor/integrity dump, but Hawkins apparently feels like he’s been personally lied to. Spend any significant amount of time in close proximity to a pol, it’s going to happen....

Maybe McCain wants his first 100 days to be marked by a repeat of the Kennedy-McCain-Bush immigration crash-and-burn. That’s what will happen if the next “comprehensive reform” isn’t significantly different from the last one, mutually despised on both sides of the aisle, and doesn’t include border security. Maybe he plans to kick it all off by alienating large blocks of the people who backed him, people he’ll need on many other issues. Could happen. He is a notoriously cranky maverick, after all.

Expect to be infuriated by McCain. It is going to happen. This has been, from the start, a hold-your-nose election. It is also, no matter who wins, very likely to be a one-term presidency, with the incumbent facing challenges from within his or her own party in 2012. The electorate, the candidates and the parties are too divided in too many directions, and none of the candidates look likely to manage a good patchup any time soon.

But I predict by the fall, we’ll see some people explaining why they’ve decided to vote for the people they swore they wouldn’t in the spring. Like this Boggfellow, who promises he’d vote for McCain before he’d vote for his treacherous erstwhile sweetheart Hill.

I like Crittenden's Machiavellian angle on politics, but frankly, I've have my run-ins with this "Boggfellow," and I seriously doubt he'd vote McCain.

RFK Comment: Last Straw for Hillary?

Michael Goodwin suggests that Hillary Clinton's reference to Robert Kennedy's assassination while campaigning against Barack Obama could be the last straw for her campaign.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post suggests that Hillary's comments were "unspeakable."

If I had to choose, I'd vote Hillary in the Democratic primaries, but having said that, I'm inclined to go along with this argument from Neocon Express:

I really do want to give Mrs. Clinton the benefit of the doubt here...people utter things in the heat of a campaign that may be true but are better left unsaid. But I sense that this comment came from deep down somewhere in the darkest corners of her mind. Nobody just blurts out this kind of thing in public. She had been thinking about it... hopefully not hoping for such a horrible tragedy, but one cannot help but wonder if her ceaseless ambition, her devastating sense of disappointment, hasn't finally driven her to the brink of madness. And this at a moment when Bobby Kennedy's brother Ted is diagnosed with brain cancer.

See also, "So, Hillary Would Do Anything to Win. Oh Really?"

How Many Gaffes Can Obama Get Away With?

Here's this, from Jammie Wearing Fools:

How many gaffes can a politician get away with?

Obviously none if you're a Republican.

But Barack Obama can pretty much say anything and the media brushes it off.

Aren't double standards wonderful?

More here:

And more:

Perhaps all the sunshine here in the Sunshine State is getting to Barack Obama. On his third day of campaigning in the state, Obama notably flubbed the name of the city where his campaign rally was taking place. “I am so glad to be in Florida, and I am so glad to be in Sunshine,” Obama said at the top of his remarks. Unfortunately, the name of the city is “Sunrise.”

At four different points during the speech, Obama referred to the town as “Sunshine,” as opposed to “Sunrise.” Amazingly, the crowd of 16,000 played along and no one corrected him. Sunrise is a city in Broward County, possibly best known for its role in 2000 presidential election.

Obama said he regrets not having campaigned in Florida, and said he will make up for “some lost time.” He also assured the voters that Florida delegates will be seated at the Democratic Convention in August. “They will be participating, your voices will be heard and most importantly we will work together to make sure that Florida goes Democrat in November and so does the rest of the country,” Obama said.

Communists for Obama?

Let me direct readers to Nice Deb's post, "Reds Who Support Obama":

Well, it looks like the Obama campaign is steamrolling ahead, with the whole Reverend Wright affair just a minor bump in the road, as far as Democrats are concerned.

So this is as good a time as any to present my companion piece to Radicals, Terrorists, and Tyrants of the World Root for Obama. This time, I thought we’d take a look at all of the known communists/Socialists/Marxists who have supported, endorsed, or influenced Obama. Some communists can be found on the Radicals, Terrorists, and Tyrants list, as well, because let’s face it, radicals and tyrants tend to be commies, (Fidel Castro for instance), but in the interest of keeping this post down to a manageable size, I’m going to try to avoid duplications.

What some might call, “guilt by association” I call Obama’s ‘calling card’.

Read the whole thing.

I especially like her link to "Socialists for Obama."

For more on Barack Obama's radical support, see "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama."

Pot Calls Kettle! Look Out for Those Opportunistic Nihilists!

Firedoglake's probably the last place you'd expect bloggers to throw around epithets like "nilhilist," but that's exactly the case here:

George Packer's New Yorker article asking if conservatives have "run out of ideas" caused quite the stir in the Right Blogosphere this past week. And right bloggers proved Packer wrong: as it turns out, they didn't have any "ideas" to start with. They have obsessions and vindictiveness in plenty, but ideas? Not really.

To me, the response to Packer's piece is far more illuminating than the actual article, which is rather banal. If "movement conservatism" has failed, as I sincerely hope it has, I'd argue that this is because too many of its proponents believed their own press and became persuaded that "movement conservatism" was ever an intellectual movement at all, as opposed to an essentially nihilist politics of vicious opportunism, where the entire goal is power for its own sake.

Packer is of course discussing the GOP's rather bleak electoral prospects this year, especially in the House and Senate. (He pretends to believe that McCain is a new kind of "post-partisan" candidate, a common form of elite journalist wishful thinking that ignores, for openers, Hagee and Parsley.) He speaks to a number of conservative writers, like David Brooks, Ross Douthat, David Frum, and Pat Buchanan. The Brooks part has gotten the most attention, perhaps because of Brooks' admission that "You go to Capitol Hill—Republican senators know they’re fucked," which is of course hugely entertaining. But the overall thesis is that the period of GOP dominance just may be over, because the Nixonian "Southern Strategy" as well as other mechanisms for splitting the old FDR coalition may just have finally run out of steam.

First, I think Packer's late to the party. Karen Tumulty made the case for the ideological decline of the GOP over a year ago, and at that time the thesis wasn't all that novel.

But for FDL to attack GOP partisans for the "nihilist politics of vicious opportunism" is like the pot calling the kettle black.

What's nihilism, in any case? I routinely deploy the term to identify hard-left terror-backing defeatists, many of whom are the main supporters of the Democratic Party.

I generally refer to my politcal opponents as "nihilist" in this sense:

An approach to philosophy that holds that human life is meaningless and that all religions, laws, moral codes, and political systems are thoroughly empty and false. The term is from the Latin nihil, meaning “nothing.”

Nihilist political philosophy's also identified with postmodern ideological movements, which privilege the notion that there exists no objective morality.

Postmodern nihilists on the left include those who've joined together in an anti-American alliance of socialism and Islam to destroy alleged American neo-imperialism worldwide. These are the same folks on the American left who call for the murder of American military service personnel as a putatively legitimate form of antiwar protest. Today's nihilists include the overwhelming majority of congressional Democrats who voted to authorize the war in Iraq in 2002, and within three months of the toppling of Saddam Hussein turned around to denounce the Bush administration for launching a "provocative and unnecessary" war.

That's opportunistic nihilism!

I also include Firedoglake as fundamentally, radically nihilist, root and branch, in its program of demonization, anti-Semitism, bereft of any shred of true traditionalism and essential value.

As always, I'll have more.

Until then, see Dr. Sanity, "The Children of Postmodern Nihilism."

Obama: It's Not Preconditions, Just Preliminary Extensive Diplomatic Work!

Hat's off to the Daily Howler and its post on Barack Obama's folly of "no preconditions" for talks with America's enemies:

Last July, Obama said he “would be willing to meet” with unfriendly foreign leaders “without preconditions,” in his first year (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/21/08). Has Obama changed his position? You can decide that for yourself, after reading this part of Rick Klein’s report for ABC:

RICK KLEIN (5/20/08): Asked about Obama's original statement Tuesday morning on CNN, former Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., a top Obama adviser and supporter, said top-level meetings would not be immediate—and would not happen without preliminary extensive diplomatic work.

"I would not say that we would meet unconditionally," said Daschle. "Of course, there are conditions that we [would] involve in preparation in getting ready for the diplomacy... 'Without precondition' simply means we wouldn't put obstacles in the way of discussing the differences between us. That's really what they're saying, what Barack is saying."

Man! It sure is easy once Daschle explains it! According to his bone-simple limning, Obama will still be meeting “without preconditions;” he just won’t be meeting “unconditionally!” Indeed, when Obama said he’d be willing to meet “without preconditions,” he really meant that he “wouldn't put obstacles in the way of discussing the differences between us.” And of course, none of that alters a basic fact; “there are conditions that we would involve in preparation for the diplomacy.”

But these clarifications surely don’t mean that anything Obama said has changed! (Careful! John Judis might “recoil” if you said that.) A few grafs later, Klein explained Obama’s own thinking, as explained to Jake Tapper:

RICK KLEIN: "I have to say I completely disagree that people have been walking back from anything," Obama said. "They may be correcting the characterizations or distortions of John McCain or others of what I said. What I said was I would meet with our adversaries, including Iran, including Venezuela, including Cuba, including North Korea, without preconditions, but that does not mean without preparation."

Preconditions and preparations are different! What an outrage, that McCain has been out there distorting these simple adumbrations!

I like this section:

...Obama has said—specifically, by name—that he would negotiate with Ahmadinejad. There’s nothing automatically wrong with that, of course—especially after adding all the qualifiers, buzzers, gadgets and doodads which have now been employed to “clarify” Obama’s position (without “walking anything back,” of course—unless you want to “distort” things). But Klein was sure that Obama hadn’t said such a thing. (He doesn’t seem to know that “the crack Time Magazine research department” isn’t real good at crack research.) Using Nexis, it took us roughly a very few minutes to find the event last September where Obama was asked about this matter—and answered. In real time, Beth Fouhy reported it for the AP. And uh-oh! On Thursday, Robert Novak ran transcript:

NOVAK (5/22/08): Time columnist Joe Klein turned up in Savannah, Ga., on Monday for McCain's news conference, declaring that McCain had misrepresented Obama as proposing unconditional talks with the Iranian president. After asserting that "I've done some research" and "also checked with the Obama campaign," Klein said that Obama "never mentioned Ahmadinejad directly by name. He did say he would negotiate with the leaders."

In fact, Obama has repeatedly been questioned specifically about Ahmadinejad. At a news conference in New York last September, Obama was asked whether he would still meet with Ahmadinejad. He replied: "Yeah...I find many of President Ahmadinejad's statements odious....But we should never fear to negotiate.” On NBC’s Meet the Press in November, he defended "a conversation with somebody like Ahmadinejad."

Obama to Russert, last November: “Look, part of the reason it's important for us to talk to countries we don't like and leaders we don't like—it's not that I think that in a conversation with somebody like Ahmadinejad that I am going to somehow change his mind on everything. But what we do is we send a signal to other leadership in Iran, to the Iranian people, and to the world community that we are listening, and that we are willing to try to resolve conflicts peacefully.” But Joe Klein simply knew in his soul that Obama couldn’t have said such things. (Apparently, Time’s crack research staff hasn’t heard about Meet the Press yet.)

Can we talk? Joe Klein played the fool in that post—and when he badgered McCain in Savannah. But that’s the way the world starts to look when major journos start taking your side. They’ve run these games against your hopefuls for years—but now, they’re tired of the GOP War Machine. Result? More and more, excited scriveners are playing dumb games on your side.

We’d like reporters to do their jobs. It seems that just isn’t an option.

Final point: Something else happens when hacks take your side—Josh Marshall rushes to praise their hackistry. And omigod! The bamboozlement spreads! This time, he even hoodwinked Greg Sargent!

Obama's website notes that "Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions."

So while all the quibbling's a riot, the more play this issue gets the more unqualified Obama appears for the Oval Office.

The Will to Blog?

Is there a "will to blog?"

Emily Gould, a former pro-blogger at Gawker, makes the case at the New York Times:

The will to blog is a complicated thing, somewhere between inspiration and compulsion. It can feel almost like a biological impulse. You see something, or an idea occurs to you, and you have to share it with the Internet as soon as possible. What I didn’t realize was that those ideas and that urgency — and the sense of self-importance that made me think anyone would be interested in hearing what went on in my head — could just disappear.

Read the whole thing for context (and really read it, if you're thinking about professional blogging!).

Gould's blogging career's been mired in controversy (she believes she has the "right" to blog about anything, no matter how personal, damn the consequences), see here and here. Perhaps it's a pathology of the 20-somethings! The MySpace generation?

I do like this idea of the "will to blog" though - I can feel it!

It's kind of like the "will to power" (or fame?)

GOP Worries About McCain's "Lack of Progress"

The New York Times reports that Republican Party operatives are worried about the slow pace of organizational development in John McCain's presidential campaign:

Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign is in a troubled stretch, hindered by resignations of staff members, a lagging effort to build a national campaign organization and questions over whether he has taken full advantage of Democratic turmoil to present a case for his candidacy, Republicans said.

In interviews, some party leaders said they were worried about signs of disorder in his campaign, and whether the focus in the last several weeks on the prominent role of lobbyists in Mr. McCain’s inner circle might undercut the heart of his general election message: presenting himself as a reformer taking on special interests in Washington.

“The core image of John McCain is as a reformer in Washington — and the more dominant the story is about the lobbying teams around him, the more you put that into question,” said Terry Nelson, who was Mr. McCain’s campaign manager until he was forced out last year. “If the Obama campaign can truly change him from being seen as a reformer to just being another Washington politician, it could be very damaging over the course of the campaign.”

The ousters of some of the staff members came after Mr. McCain imposed a new policy that active lobbyists would not be allowed to hold paying jobs in the campaign.

Some state party leaders said they were apprehensive about the unusual organization Mr. McCain had set up: the campaign has been broken into 10 semi-autonomous regions, with each having power over things like television advertising and the candidate’s schedule, decisions normally left to headquarters.

More than that, they said, Mr. McCain organizationally still seems far behind where President Bush was in 2004. Several Republican Party leaders said they were worried the campaign was losing an opportunity as they waited for approval to open offices and set up telephone banks.

We heard similar arguments last summer, when McCain's bid for the nomination was on the ropes. Was the "maverick" about to drop out of the race? Nope. Who would have believed he'd be the last man standing at the end of the primary process?

We have a long way to go yet. McCain's been in politics a long time, and this is his second run for the White House. The GOP will pull together, and this election will be closely fought all the way to the finish line.

See the other opinions at Memeorandum.