General McClellan: The Agony of Bush's Chief Propaganda Minister

Thanks to Edge for the heads up on Bob Dole's McClellan smackdown.

I noted previosly McClellan's self-aggrandizing betrayal, but Kimberley Strassel's got an unfiltered review of the book up today at the Wall Street Journal, and this passage is a nugget:

"What Happened" reads as a long, agonizing justification for time spent in what is now an unpopular administration. Just who Mr. McClellan is striving to get absolution from isn't clear, but it is absolution he seeks.

But check out the lead editorial today at WSJ as well, which argues that McClellan's a turncoat for the antiwar left:

Iraq is the reason this book is getting so much political attention. Mr. Obama has staked out a position for immediate troop withdrawal that looks increasingly untenable amid the success of the "surge" and improving security in Baghdad and Basra. John McCain was a key supporter of the surge, so Democrats now want to change the subject and claim the war was a mistake in the first place and sold under false pretenses. Mr. McClellan's confessions fit neatly into this political narrative.

The problem is that Mr. McClellan presents no major new detail to support his conclusions about Iraq, or even about the Administration's deliberations about how to sell the war. This may be because he was the deputy press secretary for domestic issues during the run-up to war and thus rarely attended war strategy sessions. His talking points are merely the well-trod claims that the Administration oversold the evidence about WMD and al Qaeda.

Three independent investigations have looked into these claims, and all of them concluded that political actors did not skew intelligence to sell the war. These include the Senate Intelligence Committee report of 2004, the Robb-Silberman report of 2005, and Britain's Butler report. They explain that U.S. – and all Western – intelligence was mistaken but not distorted. Saddam Hussein himself told U.S. interrogators that he kept the fact that he lacked WMD even from many of his own generals.

As for the "propaganda" claim, any U.S. President has no choice but to make his case for going to war. It is an obligation of democracy. In Iraq, the long march to the 2003 invasion included months of debate at the U.N. and in Congress. Far from rushing to war, Mr. Bush heeded Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Prime Minister Tony Blair and sought U.N. approval. That required longer debate and a heavy reliance on WMD claims because the U.N.'s Iraq resolutions were mainly concerned with WMD after the first Gulf War. That too was a mistake, but it wasn't a lie.

Mr. McClellan joins the queue of those who supported the war at first only to turn against it when it became difficult. The polls say most Americans now feel the same way, and that is no surprise: Long wars are rarely popular. But we continue to believe that a Middle East with Saddam ruling Iraq would be more dangerous than it is today. Saddam would again be pursuing WMD, in competition with Iran, and we might never have discovered Libya's nuclear program or unraveled the A.Q. Khan proliferation network. With the success of the surge, Iraq now has a chance to emerge as a stable, pro-American government.

A stable, pro-American government is the last thing the nihilist base of the Democratic Party wants. It's all about victory in November, damn the strategic consequences, and damn the sacrifices of so many Americans to the cause of expanding freedom in the Middle East.

********

Last-Minute Addition: Astrological Musings on Scott McClellan:

Scott McClellan (2/14/1968) was born with the Sun conjunct Mercury in Aquarius, the sign of the radical - the revolutionary ... For McClellan, Mars is in Pisces where it tends to lose its aggressive nature and instead submerges in the will of the masses.

That sounds about right: McClellan's abandoned the Bush revolution in foreign affairs to join the revolutionary masses looking for a November overthrow of the regime!

Yo, Attackerman! C'mon bro, let the sun shine in!

Lamontian Postmodernism

I'm reading with amazement David Sirota's interpretation of Ned Lamont's defeat to Joseph Lieberman in Connecticut's general election to the U.S. Senate in 2006.

Recall that Lamont, the Kos-backed candidate of the hard-left antiwar contingents, failed to upset Lieberman in the November contest. But to Sirota, this was a victory for progressivism:

Recall that two years ago, a little-known businessman named Ned Lamont mounted an anti-war primary challenge to Connecticut's warmongering senator, Joe Lieberman. Lamont's campaign, which I worked for, was controversial. It was just four years after many congressional Democrats voted for the war, and the Washington Post was reporting that Speaker Nancy Pelosi "said that Democrats should not seek a unified position on an exit strategy in Iraq." Though polls showed the public against the conflict, Democratic strategists insisted that opposing the war "could backfire on the party...."

Lamont, though he lost his own general election, showed that representing the public's anti-war sentiment and ignoring Washington's self-appointed gurus wins national elections. And as the current campaign unfolds, the Lamont Lesson is resurfacing.

Read that last sentence again: Although Lamont lost his election, he showed that the public's anti-war sentiment wins elections!

Yep, you read that right: Up is down, black is white, hot is cold, according to Sirota's logic. Talk about win for losing!

Certainly the election of many antiwar candidates in 2006 would provide support to the thesis that candidates can win office on the wave of "the public's antiwar sentiment," but Sirota's rewriting history to suggest that Lamont represents the course of change and progress.

If voters didn't like Joseph Lieberman in 2006 they would have thrown him out on his can.

Perhaps 2008 is the year for the Democratic Party's antiwar campaign agenda, and we'll see because we have a whole slate of candidates committed to an immediate end to the war. Here's Sirota on that:

Today's political landscape has not changed from 2006. America still opposes the conflict, and Democrats not only refuse to use their congressional power to cut off war funding, but have opted to insult the public's intelligence. Indeed, at the same time the party is airing ads attacking John McCain for wanting to continue the war, Democrats in Congress are championing a $165 billion military spending bill that indefinitely prolongs the occupation. The party's leaders are not debating strategies to end the war, but "the kind of pro-war Democrat[s] that we ought to be," as Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tenn., said a few months ago.

Now, instead of one candidate crashing the party, there are more than 50. That's how many are backing A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq. Initially launched by Darcy Burner, a Seattle-area congressional candidate, this plan has been endorsed by the likes of retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who served in Iraq, and Lawrence Korb, former assistant defense secretary under President Reagan. It supports an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

As heady talk of "bottom up" politics fills the air, Democrats face a full-blown anti-war uprising - one that is beginning to act like a mature movement in putting its agenda before party.

Since the Iraq invasion, many anti-war groups inside the Beltway have made polite excuses for pro-war Democratic politicians, insisting that anti-war criticism be aimed primarily at Republicans. This is Washington's unspoken corruption - the kind that sees issue-based groups put their partisan affinity and cocktail party friendships above their stated agendas.

But the anti-war uprising outside of D.C. is done playing nice. Congressional candidates are now giving anti-war orders to their party, rather than taking pro-war orders from the Wise Men of Washington - and the Responsible Plan is just the beginning. Anti-war primaries in Maryland and Iowa have been mounted against pro-war Democratic incumbents. Meanwhile, the uprising is bleeding into the gears of commerce, as dockworkers this month shut down ports to protest the war.

Again, take apart these paragraphs, starting with that first sentence: The truth is not that the political landscape "has not changed."

Americans are tired of the war, but they have not given up, and it's a stretch to suggest the current environment is unequivocally conducive to the radical agenda of the Darcy Burner-retreatists:

Five years after the start of the Iraq war, American public opinion has solidified around the notion that the war was not worth fighting and that the United States is not making significant progress toward restoring civil order there....

But not everyone has turned on the war, which most Americans supported at the outset. Republicans have remained strongly behind the war since the outset, with more than two-thirds saying the was worth fighting in the most recent Post-ABC poll. Only a third of independents and one in eight Democrats agree.

In other words, support for the war breaks down along partisan lines, and it's in the interest of hard-left Democratic activists to demonize people like Senator Lieberman and John McCain, who are clear about America's stakes in the war and the rightness of our cause.

Note further that's Sirota makes no mention of Iraq's military progress.

It's no surprise. As the U.S. continues to make gains, and Iraq's success in democratic consolidation evolves, the Democrats are left to devise bizarre theories to explain the outcome of events. Who would have thought we would credit the benevolence of Iran for the decline of violence and political progress in Iraq? Well, Nancy Pelosi does!

All of this reflects the rise of "Lamontian Postmodernism," which can be seeing as an analytically descriptive term for the utter rejection among today's antiwar left for societal progress and the greater striving for human betterment and meaning, and the attendant political program of denying and distorting reality in the furtherance of today's dreadfully nihilist antiwar.

Scott McClellan's Postmodern Truth

Peter Wehner suggests that Scott McClellan's memior epside illustrates old-fashioned Washington Politics:

I have a few preliminary thoughts about Scott McClellan and his new book. I want to draw particular attention to a paragraph that appears in his preface:

Writing it wasn’t easy. Some of the best advice I received as I began came from a senior editor at a publishing house that expressed interest in my book. He said the hardest challenge for me would be to keep questioning my own beliefs and perceptions throughout the writing process. His advice was prescient. I’ve found myself continually questioning my own thinking, my assumptions, my interpretations of events. Many of the conclusions I’ve reached are quite different from those I would have embraced at the start of the process. The quest for truth has been a struggle for me, but a rewarding one. I don’t claim a monopoly on truth. But after wrestling with my experiences over the past several months, I’ve come much closer to my truth than ever before. (p. xi)

[Emphasis in original.]

This is a very postmodern outlook that subordinates actual truth for “my” truth. And the validation for “my truth” is not anything objective; it is, rather, based on sentiments which — we see clearly in the case of Scott — can shift like the wind. But what appears to be Scott’s existential journey has led him to make sweeping and reckless allegations that are at odds with reality. He would have us believe that the Bush administration was, at bottom, massively and deeply deceitful and corrupt — but this has only dawned on Scott since he started writing his book, years after the fact. Let’s just say that for these revelations to spring forth as if truth were like a time-released capsule, in which things magically get clearer with the passage of time (and the signing of book contracts), is, well, suspicious. And my former colleagues are absolutely right to point out that Scott not only never raised any objections contemporaneously, in meetings or with his superiors; in fact, he said almost nothing at all, at any time, about anything of consequence.

My own experience in this regard is telling and not at all uncommon. When I was troubled by something during my White House years — whether it had to do with policy or other matters — I raised those concerns, often with a variety of high-ranking officials (usually Mike Gerson, Dan Bartlett, Karl Rove, or Josh Bolten). I once requested a private meeting to discuss Iraq with Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, a friend for whom I had (and have) enormous respect. I was deeply concerned at that point about what was happening to the war effort, the failures I thought we were making, and the personnel changes I thought needed to be made — and for more than 45 minutes Josh listened to me in his office, carefully, intently, asking questions and asking for clarifications. He seemingly had all the time in the world for me. There are other examples I could cite from my experience and from the experience of others. Scott seems to be that rare bird who kept those concerns suppressed, if he had them at all. And now, years later, he finally feels liberated to make arguments he didn’t appear to believe at the time.

Scott’s broader claim that “in some small way” his hope is to “move us beyond the destructive partisan warfare of the past 15 years” and that he wants to “contribute to [a] national conversation” about making our politics higher and better is not terribly persuasive. The same can be said about his complaints about his disdain for “the Washington game.” In fact, one of the oldest games in Washington is to turn against those in power who cared for you and gave you the greatest opportunity in your life to serve this nation — and to do so in a book, for which you received a hefty advance.

George W. Bush is an imperfect man, as are we all, and our administration certainly made mistakes over the course of two terms. Many of us, in fact, feel quite free to talk about them. But the president is, at his core, a decent and honorable man. His presidency will, I think, be judged much better by history than it is being judged right now, though of course much depends on how circumstances play out in Iraq and elsewhere (it’s puzzling that Scott seems to have turned against the war at a time when, thanks to the surge by the president and the leadership by General Petraeus and others on the ground, we’ve seen remarkable progress on almost every front and a good outcome in Iraq is achievable). But regardless of history’s verdict, what Scott McClellan has done — which is to both turn on the president and in the process to paint a false and misleading picture — is doubly dishonorable.

Scott claims he is on a journey to discover “his” truth. But what he has done is do injury to the truth. The vast majority of us who served in the White House and for President Bush are very glad and grateful we did — and we will always consider it to have been the professional honor of a lifetime.

Well, as I noted last night, McClellan's "intrigued" with Barack Obama, so perhaps the former press secretary envisions a partisan realignment of the electorate, and wants to get in on the action.

Still, it's simply amazing that someone who's main job was defending the adminstration from intrusive press inquiries and recriminations would flip so completely to embolden the very domestic enemies he was sworn by loyalty to combat.

Where's the McClellan Betrayal Headed?

Normally I don't pay attention to the he-said, she-said memoirist scandals, but I'm seeing something very significant about Scott McClellan's Janus-faced book-tour out this week.

I noted previously that McClellan wouldn't likely get a hearing from the implacable Bush-demonizers on the left, but sometimes you have to think again.

USA Today reports that McClellan, in an interview, suggests he's "intrigued" by Senator Obama, so it looks like his volte-face reflects not just remunerative interests, but full-blown political opportunism.

Apparently McClellan's claim that the media's to blame has hit a nerve, for example, in this YouTube featuring NBC's David Gregory, who firmly rejects the media-culpability hypothesis:

Perhaps there's personal shame and recrimination involved, but McClellan's turn against a sitting president strikes me as childishly craven.

But for the left-wing anti-administration extremists, as I'm starting to see, McClellan's moment is about more than simple gotcha politics. This is already a Democratic year, so McClellan is further ammunition for the push to war crimes indictments upon the accession to power of a leftist administration, presumably that of Barack Obama and his angry hordes (for more on this, see "From Impeachment to War Crimes: The New Revenge Against BushCo").

Notice, for instance, the seemingly worn-out antiwar, anti-administration indignation in this Daily Kos post:

So, the right-wing's response to McClellan's confirmations of deceit and duplicity seems to be coalescing around, "This sure doesn't sound like the Scottie I knew ..." I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean or how they hope it will provide cover for their man Bush: should Scottie's head be scanned for slithering alien worms and his closet checked for body-snatching pods? Whatever, we can slap it down right now: It doesn't matter if McClellan was motived by money or revenge or a whole chorus of little Gaelic voices singing in his head. The former press Secretary has merely confirmed what we all knew already by the embarrassing truckload and that has conservative apologists squirming like slimy, salted snails (Apologies to innocent mollusks the world over). Of course, McClellan actually has the temerity to blame the media for letting his boss get away with all that shit. David Gregory to the rescue! ...

Here we have a story with almost everything any 'serious news' outlet could possibly want right at the time they need it most. It's been reported already, so there's little work and no risk involved, it concerns the entire electorate on the most pressing foriegn policy issue facing the nation during an election year, Congress may soon conduct an investigation into it, if true it's at the very least unethical and perhaps blatantly illegal, it's organized and vast; most important of all for the media incredulity vis-a-vie the Bush administration and Iraq, it involves, well, the integrity of the media regarding the Bush administration and Iraq.

I haven't toured too many extreme-left blogs tonight, but this take - especially the push for congressional investigations - is startling in its similarity to earlier eras of political payback.

Jimmy Carter's Disastrous Legacy for Campaign '08

I noted this morning that with the increasing attention to Barack Obama's ill-considered position statements on world politics, we're seeing the emergence of a "Carteresque" foreign policy.

Well it turns out that Paul Miller has a new essay up on former president Jimmy Carter's problematic legacy for the Democrats in '08:

It was a cold and rainy October night when my mother and I stood outside a Skokie, Illinois Synagogue to hear and hopefully meet Georgia Governor James Earl "Jimmy" Carter. My parents and most Americans were still sickened over Watergate, President Gerald Ford's unconditional pardon of Richard Nixon and the disaster of the Vietnam War. They hungered for "change" and "new hope". Many Americans believed they found what they desperately yearned for in a peanut farmer turned politician from Georgia.

Four years later Jimmy Carter's name couldn't be uttered by my father without being proceeded by four-letter expletives. My mother cried herself to sleep believing that Carter's school-busing program was going to take me from my elementary school down the block to a school and hour away on the southside of Chicago. Supporters of Israel began to distrust him as he began showing signs of an anti-Israel bias. The economy was devastating families with double-digit inflation and the Iran hostage crisis made Americans ashamed of their President.

Today there is an eerie similarity to the election that led up to the disastrous Carter administration. All the Presidential candidates are speaking the rhetoric of "change" and "trust" in government. However, assumed Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has based his entire bid for the White House with Carter-style ideas and campaign policy advisers stemming directly from the administration and school of thought of the Carter Presidency.

Obama has already begun running against GOP nominee Sen. John McCain (AZ). He is playing on the fears of Democrats, Independents and some Republicans that the Arizona Senator will be a third term for George W. Bush. While McCain has shown significant policy and philosophical differences then our current President, Barack Obama is a Democrat from the same far-left mold of Carter. I contend that Obama if elected, will be the second term of Jimmy Carter.
The first signs of an Obama/Carter similarity began early on the primary race when the Illinois Senator began hiring former Carter aides and cabinet members to be policy advisers. The biggest name that surfaced was former national security advisor under Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brezinski.

Why Obama would want to be in the same room with Brezinski is mind-boggling. He was the first prominent politician to deny that Islamic extremism was or would become a danger to the world. In a February 2, 1979 memo to President Carter he claimed Islamic fundamentalism is not an imminent threat and will not gain prominence in the Middle East.

Like his former boss, Brezinski has the same "blame the Jews" mentality. The former national security advisor has publicly endorsed the views published in the John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt paper "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," which has provided endless ammunition for anti-Israel activists, Zionist conspiracy buffs and Holocaust deniers.

Continuing the Carter tradition of employing "blame Israel" advocates, Obama hired former special assistant to President Clinton, Robert Malley. Recently the British newspaper, The Times interviewed Malley in which he admitted that he had visited Syria and held discussions with the terrorist organization Hamas. Last month President Carter also met with the terrorist organization in Egypt and Syria.

As news began to surface about Malley and his meetings with Hamas, he resigned his position with the Obama campaign. Unfortunately the public will never know to what extent Sen. Obama was influenced by Malley. Obama has called for direct talks with Iran, a country that continously calls for the destruction of the state of Israel. Malley and Carter are also vocal advocates for direct talks with Iran, without any stipulations such as denouncing terrorism or their desire to murder millions of Jews.

One of the criticisms facing Obama is his lack of foreign policy experience. Carter was under the same scrutiny during his 1976 Presidential campaign. He relied on Brezinski, Anthony Lake and his eventual Secreatary of State Cyrus Vance. Today Obama also utlizes Brezinski and Lake as well as similar minded foreign policy advisors such as Susan Rice and until recently Malley and Samantha Power, who resigned from the campaign for referring to Hillary Clinton as a Monster. The fact that she was hired by the campaign in the first place shows a dangerous lack of judgement. A judgement that is comparable to President Carter.

Obama's trust of the above mentioned policy advisors has been well documented by the "alternative/new media," so most likely I'm not telling you something you haven't heard before. However it can never be stressed enough that Carter's foreign policy was a disaster for the United States, so it must be asked until properly answered, "why would Obama want advisors who have already demonstrated incompetence under a previous administration?" Maybe Obama doesn't believe Carter's policies were detremental to the America. Does he want to once again go in that direction? America must know before election day.

I'll have more later.

Image Credit: Investors Business Daily

Keith Olbermann: Off the Deep End of Moral Relativism

The few times that I've watched Keith Olbermann, I caught myself saying, "Hey, isn't this guy supposed to be a sports broadcaster, or something"?

He is that, of course, but he's also turned out to be the Paul Krugman of the left-wing TV commentariat (my background reference is, "Paul Krugman's a Respected Economist in His Other Life").

I was thinking about Olberman this morning while reading Time's essay, "Keith Olbermann Blows Last Remaining Gasket." The video at the entry is wild, and thus I agree with the argument that "... Olbermann is edging ever-closer to self-parody, or, worse, predictability."

But that was it - I had no plans to write anything about Olbermann's crazed anti-everything ramblings.

I changed my mind, however, after viewing another Olbermann video over at Robert Spencer's post, "Keith Olbermann: Anti-Jihadists Are the "Equivalents of Jihadists":

Here's Spencer's commentary:

Recently Pamela Geller, Charles Johnson and Michelle Malkin pointed out that a new Dunkin' Donuts ad featured Rachael Ray wearing a Palestinian kaffiyeh.

What's wrong with that? People in the Middle East, including Arabic-speaking Christians, wore it long before the establishment of the State of Israel and the invention of the "Palestinian" nationality. But there is no doubt that it has become a symbol of the Palestinian jihad. Charles posts a piece explaining the kaffiyeh as a "symbol of resistance and solidarity with the Palestinian struggle." Michelle Malkin accordingly asks, "It’s just a scarf, the clueless keffiyeh-wearers scoff. Would they say the same of fashion designers who marketed modified Klan-style hoods in Burberry plaid as the next big thing?"

Dunkin' Donuts pulled the ad, causing the company to be named "Worst Persons in the World" by Keith Olbermann. In the course of his fulmination in the video above (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist), he says this:

They pulled the ad? Because of the possibility of misperception? By the right-wing equivalents of jihadists -- the people in this country who most closely share the mentalities of the terrorists. Who act the most like Middle Eastern nutjobs. Who rail against diversity, try to murder dissent, and care more about flags than about people. You know, the Michelle Malkins of the world....How about the rest of us boycott Dunkin' Donuts, for giving in to fascists like Michelle Malkin? And for giving weight to perhaps the most absurd idea the lunatic fringers have ever belched forth: that there are terrorist scarves! Terrorist scarves!

This is another example of the witless moral equivalence that I devoted a book to refuting last year. It's just stupid rhetorical overheating, but it is worth noting because it distracts from the reality of the global jihad, and that keeps us from defending ourselves against it. If American conservatives really were the "equivalents of jihadists," Keith Olbermann's head would some time ago have been separated from his body. But the obverse is even worse: if jihadists are just like American conservatives, why, then they're just "nutjobs" who "rail against diversity" -- worthy of mockery, but not of serious concern.

And so meanwhile, they continue to advance.

Be sure to watch the video.

Related: Jason Pappas' must-read essay, "Islam and Our Denial."

Barack Obama's Authoritarian Socialist Ties

Via Little Green Footballs, Stanley Kurtz has the lowdown on Barack Obama's ties to another nihilist organization of the radical left:

What if Barack Obama’s most important radical connection has been hiding in plain sight all along? Obama has had an intimate and long-term association with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), the largest radical group in America. If I told you Obama had close ties with MoveOn.org or Code Pink, you’d know what I was talking about. Acorn is at least as radical as these better-known groups, arguably more so. Yet because Acorn works locally, in carefully selected urban areas, its national profile is lower. Acorn likes it that way. And so, I’d wager, does Barack Obama.

This is a story we’ve largely missed. While Obama’s Acorn connection has not gone entirely unreported, its depth, extent, and significance have been poorly understood. Typically, media background pieces note that, on behalf of Acorn, Obama and a team of Chicago attorneys won a 1995 suit forcing the state of Illinois to implement the federal “motor-voter” bill. In fact, Obama’s Acorn connection is far more extensive. In the few stories where Obama’s role as an Acorn “leadership trainer” is noted, or his seats on the boards of foundations that may have supported Acorn are discussed, there is little follow-up. Even these more extensive reports miss many aspects of Obama’s ties to Acorn.

Kurtz notes that "Acorn’s radical agenda sometimes shifts toward “undisguised authoritarian socialism," and he also highlights this about Acorn's subterranean subversion:

If Acorn is adept at creating a non-partisan, inside-game veneer for what is in fact an intensely radical, leftist, and politically partisan reality, so is Obama himself.

You don't say?

See also, "Barack Obama: The "Perfect Frontman" for the Radical Left."

Peace Fascists

In the comments to my entry on "pacifascists," my good blog buddy Wordsmith noted that he'd coined the term "peace fascists," and his reference was to "Code Pink":

Code Pink was active on the Memorial Day weekend protesting a John McCain stop in Stockton, California.

I'm still deciding on how to use the "peace fascist" terminology, but let's review a little about these folks:

Unless you travel in Marxist circles or work for the FBI or CIA, the names of the Code Pink moms may not ring a bell with you, though you’ve probably been reading news reports about their collective exploits for years. In the wake of their war against capitalism and self-determination, they’ve left a trail of anarchy and destruction that has cost property owners, corporations and consumers millions of dollars.

Naturally, they’ve toned their Marxist rhetoric down for their stint with Code Pink. Though they’ve taken great pains to differentiate themselves from the other, more radical anti-war protesters, they are one and the same. The leaders of Code Pink didn’t merely take part in the Washington and San Francisco protests that made international headlines – they also organized them. In the process, they’ve provided a rare public glimpse of the faces behind the modern, highly organized American Marxist movement. Needless to say, these women have little in common with the carpool moms of America.

I'm frankly more comfortable in identifying them this way.

But here's more:

Look at the REAL enemies of America. By their own words, they destroy property and target the innocent. These groups and people are TERRORISTS in every sense of the word. The sooner that these people are seen for what they truly are, the better it is for the rest of the world.

And just think, this stuff's hitting close to home: "Code Pink Hits Orange County."

Yikes, Red Dawn!

Back later, I need to batten down the hatches!

Obama on Foreign Policy? Same Old McGovernesque Agenda

Captain Ed cuts to the shallowness of Barack Obama's foreign policy experience, with reference to a Washington Post article up today:

The Washington Post runs a front-page analysis of Barack Obama’s policy positions today, and they find … nothing much. In fact, what little work Obama had done on policy since entering the Senate in 2005 he abandoned in 2006 as he prepared for his presidential campaign. To the extent that he has any policy credentials, Perry Bacon reports that it doesn’t differ at all from the standard platform of the Democratic Party....

Bacon notes that Obama largely goes along with the flow on policy — the Democratic Party flow. He doesn’t have any new ideas but instead aspires to put his face on the same old progressive agenda of big-government solutions that the party appeared to reject during the Clinton era. The DLC faction has all but disappeared, and what remains is a McGovernesque, Mondalesque Democratic Party that wants to expand federal power through massive redistribution of wealth. Instead of leading the party on this agenda, though, Obama cheerfully acquiesces to it, in a certain sense selling his brand as a label.

Quite frankly, this is a portrait of a dilettante. Obama doesn’t really have ideas of his own, not even an overarching governing philosophy as a prism through which policy could get made. He just wants to be President, and figures that he can charm his way to the White House.

I love that "portrait of a dilettante" line!

But to be fair, Obama actually does have some ideas of his own, as noted on the campaign website:

* "Obama has been a consistent, principled and vocal opponent of the war in Iraq."
* "Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq."

* "Obama is the only major candidate who supports ... diplomacy with Iran without preconditions."

* "Obama will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it."

So, while I can dig Captain Ed's descriptive phraseology, Obama's seems a little more specific than one would expect for a "dilettante."

I might even add "Carteresque" to Obama's foreign policy ideological orientation.

The Academic Consensus for Barack Obama

I'm sure David Noon will protest, but you've just got to love Crispin Sartwell's take on the absence of political diversity in the professoriate:

I teach political philosophy. And like most professors I know, I bend over backward to sympathetically teach texts I hate; I try to show my students why people have found Plato and Karl Marx -- both of whom I regard as totalitarians -- compelling. But when I get to the end of "The Communist Manifesto," I'm usually asking things like this: "Marx says that all means of communication should be centralized in the hands of the state. Anyone see any problems with that?"

I don't deceive myself into thinking that I teach these texts as well as, or in the same way as, a professor who found them plausible. And that's fine. What I'm trying to point out is that even as I try to be neutral (well, even if I did try to be neutral), my personal opinions affect every aspect of what I do, and I think that is generally true.

But it can be horrendously true in academia, where everything is affected by the real opinions of real professors, from the configuration of departments to the courses on offer to the texts taught. And because there's a consensus, there is precious little self-examination; a slant that we all share becomes invisible.

Academic consensus is a particularly irritating variety of groupthink. First of all, the fact that everyone agrees and everyone has a doctorate leads to the occasionally explicit idea that all intelligent people think the same thing -- that no one could disagree with, say, Obama-ism, without being an idiot. This attitude is continually expressed, for example, in attacks on presidents Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, not for their political positions but for their grades and IQs.

That the American professoriate is near-unanimous for Barack Obama is a problem on many levels, but certainly pedagogically. Ideological uniformity does a disservice to students and makes a mockery of the pious commitment of these professors simply to convey knowledge. Also, the claims of the professoriate to intellectual independence and academic freedom, supposedly nurtured by tenure, are thrown into question by the unanimity. Professors are as herd-like in their opinions as other groups that demographers like to identify -- "working-class white men," for example. Indeed, surely more so.

That's partly just a result of the charming human tendency to nod along with whomever is sitting next to you. But it's also the predictable result of the fact that a professor has been educated, often for a decade or more, by the very institutions that harbor this unanimity. Every new generation of professors has been steeped in an atmosphere in which the authorities all agree and in which they associate agreement with intelligence -- and with degrees, jobs, tenure and so on. If you've been taught that conservatives are evil idiots, then conservatism itself justifies a decision not to hire or tenure one. Every new leftist minted by graduate programs is an act of self-praise, a confirmation of the intelligence of the professors.

That this smog of consensus is incompatible with the supposedly high-minded educational mission of colleges and universities is obvious. Yet higher education is at least as dedicated to the reproduction of Obama-ism as it is to conveying information. But academics are massively self-deceived about this, which makes it all the more disgusting and effective.

See also, "Requiem For an Academic World of Inquiry," on the decline of objective pedogogy in academe.

Troop Retention is Key Issue in G.I. Bill of Rights

John McCain's being smeared for his position on the new G.I. Bill of Rights, but the law, if enacted as currently proposed, would hinder troop retention, according to Political Perceptions:

Twice, maybe three times a year, the people you send to Washington go out of their way to show how much they care about those in uniform.

Democrats in charge or Republicans in charge, the cycle is the same.

Right before Memorial Day, July Fourth and Veterans Day, the calendar prods the politicians to do something before they go home to march in parades, visit VA hospitals or speak at commemorations for the local war dead.

Whether there’s anything fresh for them to talk about depends entirely on whether the party in power schedules votes in time to give them patriotic talking points.

Before this Memorial Day recess week, the Democrats set up votes that could demonstrate that when they’re in charge, they line up behind the veterans.

To an appropriation needed to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they added what amounts to the G.I. Bill on steroids, offering a lot more government-paid college tuition to veterans. The bill is a legislative combo platter that Democrats hope will fortify their down-ballot candidates while giving Republican presidential candidate John McCain indigestion.

Sen. McCain prefers a different version, arguing that incentives to join the volunteer military should be designed with troop retention in mind. As it stands, the Democrats’ bill would reward three months of active duty with 40% funding for in-state colleges and universities. That would go up to 50% for those with six months of active duty, and full tuition for those with 36 months of active duty. The version Sen. McCain favors would offer maximum college benefits of $2,000 a month for those who have served at least 12 years.

The Arizona senator’s own war service doesn’t exempt him from criticism on this one. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called him “one of the few senators of either party who oppose this bill because he thinks it’s too generous” — a characterization that just barely stands up to fact-checking.

The McCain camp's hitting hit back against Obama, pointing to the Illinois Senator's own votes against funding for military veterans:

Responding to Sen. Barack Obama’s assertions that he is shortchanging veterans by opposing a Democratic plan to expand education aid, Sen. John McCain’s camp is depicting the Illinois senator as a lawmaker who has already voted against a key war funding measure that would have improved health services for veterans.

On May 12, 2008, McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds singled out Obama’s May 24, 2007 vote against a fiscal 2007 emergency war spending measure to support ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying it violated Obama’s oft-stated dictum that it would be irresponsible to vote against funding troops in the field.

“It is absurd for Barack Obama to question John McCain’s commitment to America’s veterans when Obama himself voted against our nation’s veterans and troops in the field during a time of war,” Bounds said.

How's that for far left-wing hypocrisy on veterans benefits.

Will Obama Visit Iraq, Meet Petraeus? War Veterans Want to Know

Allahpundit's got the new Vets for Freedom ad on Barack Obama''s commitment to Iraq:

Allah predicts Obama will cave: "If he doesn’t have the stones to stand by his flag-pin boycott, he’s surely not going to let the GOP chip away at him on this."

Blind Hatred: President Bush and the American Left

The Conservative Voice has an interesting essay up today on the left's hatred of President Bush and his administration. Much of it is not new, but the piece reiterates a couple of points I've stressed lately.

Here's the introduction:

Liberals have blindly hated president Bush so much that they cross the line into anti-Americanism while dressing it up as criticism of America or criticism of President Bush. They even have the nerve to compare President Bush to Adolf Hitler and president Bush's America to Adolf Hitler's Germany.Liberals have for a long time been trying to bring out the worst of our great nation America, even portraying Americans as fat idiots who eat at fast foods way too much. Especially those who disagree with liberal nonsense are especially portrayed as that. Europe is becoming the new model for liberals. So to liberals, it's the horrible America verses the wonderful heavenly Europe.

Okay, this passage on the European model's significant. Why? Look at the continental democracies, like France and Germany, as well as the Scandanavian states, for their social welfare systems. The American left wants to dramatically expand domestic spending programs, on health and the environment, paid for by a far-reaching redistribution of wealth from the highest incomes brackets to the lower quintiles. Further, the left wants the U.S. to emulate the advanced postmodern ideology in European states, where, for example, it's not unusual to hear stories of women foregoing children to "save" the earth.

Finally, the left loves the European model of national security, where the weakening national commitment to large armed forces, amid continued utopianism regarding a "common European security," has shifted these societies to a near-permanent state of strategic unpreparedness. The American left would be in socialist heaven if its radical agenda in foreign policy results in a massive dismantling of the military-industrial sector, implemented in tandem with a dramatic reliance on international institutions for peace, such as the United Nations. Under this posture, the use of force, particularly unilaterally, is virtually out of the question.

But note another interesting blip in the Conservative Voice's essay, on the propensity for advocating nihilist violence among prominent far-left spokesmen:

Liberals, who favored the trying and any punishment on Pinochet for his human rights violations, whitewash Fidel Castro and favored the Sandinistas, both of whom were far worse than Pinochet.

Cuban-Americans, who flee Cuba on a raft out of desperation to get out of that poverty-stricken island, are bashed and shunned by liberals including the political correct guys.

Extreme leftist Alexander Cockburn, who is a contributor to the anti-American and anti-Israel extreme leftist Counterpunch Newsletter and a syndicated columnist said, 'There is a sound case to be made for dropping a tactical nuclear weapon on the Cuban section of Miami. The move would be applauded heartily by most Americans. Alas, Operation Good Riddance would require the sort of mature political courage sadly lacking in Washington, D.C., these days.' Gees, does that sound like the "tolerant left," who are bashing the Cuban-American community, which is one of the most patriotic and pro-American communities in this great nation America. Cockburn was not condemned for making that bigoted horrible remark [emphasis added].

Of course he wasn't condemned. The hard left cheers noxious statements such as Cockburn's - such sentiments are pretty much SOP over on the dark side of the political spectrum.

Hats off to the Conservative Voice!

Bush Invokes World War II in Air Force Commencement

In his address today to graduates of the Air Force Academy, President Bush invoked America's obligations to lasting peace after the defeat of Germany and Japan in World War II. MSNBC has the video:

President George W. Bush said Wednesday that rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan as the wars rage on is proving difficult and "we're learning as we go."

The president harkened back to the patriotic sacrifice of World War II, the deadliest conflict in history, in again suggesting the country must hold firm and not lose its nerve.

"After World War II, we helped Germany and Japan build free societies and strong economies," Bush said. "These efforts took time and patience, and as a result, Germany and Japan grew in freedom and prosperity. Germany and Japan, once mortal enemies, are now allies of the United States. And people across the world have reaped the benefits...."

At a cold, drizzly football-stadium ceremony, Bush said the United States has an obligation to stick with Iraq and Afghanistan. He said the lesson is rooted in history.

The president acknowledged one of the many differences between the global conflict six decades ago and the ones that began under his watch: Today's wars are not over.

"In Germany and Japan, the work of rebuilding took place in relative quiet," Bush said. "Today we're helping emerging democracies rebuild under fire from terrorist networks and state sponsors of terror. This is a difficult and unprecedented task, and we're learning as we go."

For example, he said, the U.S. learned the hard way that the newly liberated people in Iraq could not make progress unless they felt reasonably secure.

Bush said his own country must not lose resolve. He said terrorist enemies, using the media and the never-ending news cycle, attack innocent people to weaken American resolve.

"We need to recognize that the only way that America can lose the war on terror is if we defeat ourselves," Bush said.

The article notes that the president's day has been overshadowed by the news surrounding former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's memoirs.

See more at the Washington Post, "'Learning as We Go.'"

About That Other Press Secretary...

Today's big story is Scott McClellan's burn-all memoir, now in pre-release, full-smear circulation around the leftosphere.

I don't pay too much attention to these past-staffers' exposes, mostly because they're opportunistic, undignified, and unenlightening.

The memoir book-tours do tell us a lot about poliltics, however, especially left-wing media hypocrisy. Via Gateway Pundit, it turns out Ari Fleischer, press secretary in the first Bush administration, got little play in the press when his book came out in 2005:

Before Scott McClellan was President Bush’s Press Secretary, there was Ari Fleischer, and when Fleischer left the White House he wrote his own book, “Taking Heat: The President, the Press, and My Years in the White House.” Unlike McClellan, Fleischer did not take pot shots at his former employer, but did include some telling examples of the liberal bias of press.

Perhaps not surprisingly, then, while McClellan’s yet-to-be-officially-published book has already become the liberal media’s favorite story of the day, a Nexis search shows that Fleischer’s memoir generated virtually no broadcast or cable news coverage, and no front-page coverage in the nation’s newspapers.

Indeed, TV coverage the week after Fleischer’s book was released was limited to just eight interviews, none given that much prominence: one on NBC’s Today (7:43am), one on CBS’s Early Show (last half-hour), one on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, two on CNN (Lou Dobbs Tonight and Anderson Cooper 360) and three on FNC (Big Story, Special Report, and Hannity & Colmes).

So, what's the big deal now? Attack Bush, damage the GOP, what else?

Fleisher's not a Brutus-like figure, of course, slurring his former boss. He's thus likely to make a big comeback in GOP politics for his upstanding demeanor out of office. The same can't be said for McClellan, which is too bad for him, since the lefties never liked him so much in the first place, and they'll just use this Janus-faced media extravaganza for their own purposes.

Jules Crittenden touches on this a bit:

Ha. Someone else is bitter. The myth sometimes known as Glenn Greenwald indignantly cites McClellan in a bitter denunciation of the myth of the liberal media.

See also Lynn Sweet, "Why Didn't Scott McClellan Quit if He Thought He Was Selling Bush Iraq War Propaganda."

And Captain Ed, "Heckuva job, Scotty: McClellan writes a book; Update: AOL Hot Seat Poll added; Update: McClellan chastised tell-all tomes in 2004."

Bomb, Bomb Iran

Via Stan Rosenthal, here's a mock-up of John McCain's rendition of "Barbara Ann":

For the record, I'm posting this in jest.

If readers would like serious dicussion of the military option against Tehran's nuclear intransigence, see Norman Podhoretz, "The Case for Bombing Iran."

Some responses to the article can be found at Powerline, where Podhoretz is quoted:

In the months since the article was posted on the Internet, I have been described throughout the blogosphere as “pathological scum,” a “morally repugnant cretin,” a “superannuated Zionist hack,” a “war criminal,” “a traitor to the U.S.,” and a “threat to our grandchildren”—not to mention other even more colorful characterizations unfit for quotation in a family magazine.

That vitriol's not surprising, considering the extant hatred for the evil neocons at home and abroad.

For some scholary perspectives on Iran, nuclear weapons, and preemption, see Whitney Raas and Austin Long, "Osirak Redux? Assessing Israeli Capabilities to Destroy Iranian Nuclear Facilities," International Security (Spring 2007), Colin Dueck and Ray Takeyh, "Iran’s Nuclear Challenge," Political Science Quarterly (Summer 2007), and Ivo Daalder and James Steinberg, "Preventive War," A Useful Tool," Los Angeles Times (December 2005).

Are Conservatives More Implicit in the Egregious Sins of America?

Most conservative bloggers are familiar with the left's standards of moral relativism.

But how about comparative guilt? Should conservatives feel more historically guilty than leftists? Can we measure comparative culpabilities - for injustices like gender oppression, Japanese internment, or slavery most of all - between the two major ideological traditions in American history?

The folks at Daily Kos think so:

White guilt is the natural - and correct - emotion to feel when as a white person - hell as an American - one is confronted by America's original sin. For I, and all my white brethren, are the recipients, the beneficiaries of hegemonic system. My privilege - America's privilege - has been paid for through the blood and oppression of other peoples. This doesn't mean I ought to go flogging myself all the time (shame). It does mean that I ought to be aware and work to change the system as it is now. It means I ought to try to solve the problems that still haunt those on whose backs this country was made great.

When I call myself an American, I don't get to cherry-pick which parts of America's identity I bring along. For slavery is as much a part of America as The Emancipation Proclamation. Japanese Internment as much as the Bill of Rights. Guantanamo Bay as much as The Berlin Airlifts. So, by calling myself American, I give myself to a country that both enables some of the best opportunities for social change and justice in the world and requires deep guilt.

Rosenbaum points out that Conservatives are just as implicit - if not more so (their movement, historically) - in the egregious sins of America, yet they are the ones who reject guilt, and, thus reject awareness of America's sometimes dark past. The modern conservative incarnation has embraced the narrative of American Exceptionalism - America is always right. And, in so doing, have absolved themselves of guilt. In doing so, they have washed away any chance of seeing America for what it is. Great. Imperfect...

Ignoring guilt is only cause for more of the same. Perhaps, Conservatives glorify America, not solely out of patriotism (however warped it may be), but out of a desire to easily absolve themselves of the guilt that liberals must recognize. Guilt isn't a comfortable thing, after all. It's the easy way out, sticking one's head in the sand.

The reference is to Ron Rosembaum, "In Praise of Liberal Guilt: It's Not Wrong to Favor Obama Because of Race," who asks:

Since when has guilt become shameful? Since when is shame shameful when it's shame about a four-centuries-long historical crime? Not one of us is a slave owner today, segregation is no longer enshrined in law, and there are fewer overt racists than before, but if we want to praise America's virtues, we have to concede—and feel guilty about—America's sins, else we praise a false god, a golden calf, a whited sepulcher, a Potemkin village of virtue. (I've run out of metaphors, but you get the picture.)

What to make of all this talk of guilt and complicity?

Rosenbaum wants to make this a partisan question, so it's no surprise the Kos folks take up the banner. Considering how Markos Moulitsas claims his community's the mainstream future of progressive politics and the Democratic Party, I'm not surprised that this meme of liberal superiority on comparative complicity is taking root.

The problem? It's a scam.

When we talk about conservatives today compared to those of earlier era, we're not talking about static categories: We can't just hop in Michael J. Fox's DeLorean and zip back to 1619, to the dockside at the harbor in Virginia, waiting to off-load our fresh human cargo from West Africa. Who was conservative back then? Abolitionism was not a formal movement in the United States until the 18th and 19th centuries, and even those who had moral qualms about racial hierarchies in the 17th century certainly were outliers in a system of cultural acceptance of racial difference.

We can quibble with it, but the folks we venerate today, like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, were slaveowners. Yes, it's been our original sin, but Americans realized at that time - at the time of the founding, in 1787 - the contradictions of the American creed. We cannot have a country established on the principle that all men are created equal while simultaneously maintaining an economic and social system of human chattel bondage. We've sought to overcome this stain throughout the length of our history, and if we want to label one side more guilty than the other, let's be fair: President Lincoln was no abolitionist, but his movement for a national greatness Republican Party did more to restore equality under the law than anything the Democrats did for 100 years following the assassination of the 16th president.

We did see, though, through the late-19th and 20th centuries, the building of a high tide of liberal guilt. Let me count the ways: the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, Guinn v. United States (1915), Executive Order 9981, Brown v. Board of Education, Little Rock, Arkansas (Eishenhower's Executive Order 10730, Desegregation of Central High School, 1957), the 24th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Executive Order 10925, Executive Order 11246, the War on Poverty, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the Philadelpha Plan, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education ...

I imagine I could go on, but my enumeration of actions toward equality and justice goes back, right there, over a full century in marking the agonizing, fitfull, and violent efforts at actualizing the promise of the American dream for all citizens - and that's the result of the EXPLICIT recognition of our moral failures as a people. And folks want to talk about guilt?

We no longer have slavery, Jim Crow, and the stigma of an American apartheid because we have worked so long and so hard to overcome.

But it's frankly never enough. That's why we have race hustlers arguing that we were all wrong about Martin Luther King: The slain civil rights leader disabused himself of the vision that one day we'd be able to live where all of God's children might realize conditions of mutual equality, love, and respect. Nope, we have to dig down, root out King's insecurities and doubts, the frustrations of a slowing of change, to the impatience of adjusting to the very revolution he, Dr. King, had brought about by his irrepressible reminder that we hadn't live up to our moral requirement. Nope, according the race grievance masters like Michael Eric Dyson, Dr. King became "darker and angrier; he grew more skeptical about the willingness of America to change without great social coercion."

So this is what we get? Instead of standing in awe at the edge of the great racial chasm, where the dawn is about to break on a new era of racial equality, with an eloquent young politician who has lived America's promise of diversity, inclusion, and opportunity, we get racial recrimination?

In response to Rosenbaum we see white conservatives pundits wringing their hands, trying to get out from the sting of opprobruim, by admitting - God help us! - shame for our past injustices.
Well, damn, you'd think a few conservative folks had just murderously beat the teeth out of some black youth whistling at a leggy Southern white housewife!

So, what to think? Are the Kos guilt mongerers right?

Well, no. We can reverse the arrows of discrimination nowadays. The "hegemonic" system that's oppressing society today is the Democratic Party's racial recrimination program, and the conservatives are down home on the plantation, serving remorseful penance for the "accumulated disadvantages" of 400 years of complicity in oppression.

This is not going away either, I'll note, this system of racial recrimination. It's not going away because the president we're very likely to elect does not repudiate the callous, egregious politics of racial resentment.

Despite spurious calls to "end identity politics" (including at Daily Kos, of all places) today's Democratic Party maintains power on the back of that guilt-ridden ideology.

It's time to put that nastiness to bed, and get on with the real job of strengthening traditional values of hard work and strong families, of educational achievement and professional accomplishment. Rather than play the comparative guilt game, let's restore the power of American individualism and pull out of this funk we're having, getting back to the nation's business of living out our dream up on that hill one of of which one of our more optimisitic presidents spoke.

Democrats Confident on November Victory

Gallup reports that 6 in 10 Democrats feel confident on winning in November:

Democrats are much more confident that their party will win the November presidential election than are Republicans.

A new Gallup Panel survey, conducted May 19-21, finds 61% of Democrats saying they are confident their party will win the election, including 35% who are "very confident." Meanwhile, only 39% of Republicans are confident, with only 13% saying they are very confident.

Thus, rank-and-file Republicans are aware the party faces an uphill battle in retaining the White House given the problems in the economy, an ongoing and unpopular war, and an incumbent Republican president with some of the lowest job approval ratings in Gallup Poll history.

While Republicans generally agree that their odds of winning are long, a majority (58%) believe that likely presidential nominee John McCain gives the GOP the best chance of any of this year's Republican candidates of winning the election.

Maybe some of that "conservative loathing of McCain" has died down a bit.

"And You Wonder Why US soldiers Are Being Blown Up on a Daily Basis..."

This is just in, from Little Green Footballs:

In order to stop this war, and any future American Wars of Aggression, those considering enlisting in the armed forces need to be stopped before they sign on the dotted line. They need to be shown that this is a choice with extreme consequences; that they will come home changed for the worse, physically, mentally or both; they need to be shown that patriotism, bravado, the youthful myth of immortality and the promise of $50,000 will not save them; they need to be shown that wars of aggression are NOT noble causes and that those who“give” their lives are not doing so for their country but for the greed of a few men in government and corporations.

Those who have come back from Iraq have learned all of the above the hard way. No one needs to follow in their footsteps. No one, given the chance, would choose to come back forgotten by their government and damaged for life - which is what happens when you fight to defend a lie instead of your country. Those in our government who sent these men and women off under the false banner of patriotism should be held accountable for their thoughtless and selfish actions.

And you wonder why US soldiers are being blown up on a daily basis, justify the means and keep killing innocent Iraqi civilians...

Actually, I don't wonder why Americans are being "blown up on a daily basis," but that's not the purpose of these comments, via the Huffington Post.

Obama Won't Visit Iraq

Barack Obama has rejected John McCain's offer of a joint visit to Iraq, and some have suggested, "Obama Too Scared to Visit Troops in Baghdad".

But here's this from Allahpundit:

If they’re worried about the military giving them a dog-and-pony show, the answer isn’t to decline the trip but to counterpropose a more comprehensive trip than even McCain’s suggesting and turn it into a real fact-finding mission. Don’t spend two hours looking at charts with Petraeus. Take four or five days; go to Basra and Mosul. If they simply can’t suspend campaigning for that long, send a joint team of advisors from both sides. He won’t do it because he’s afraid of what he might hear, which goes back to a point I’ve been making ever since the Jamil Hussein saga: The left would have you believe Iraq hawks can’t admit that any aspect of the war might be going badly, but the opposite has always been more nearly true. For purposes of the Narrative, it’s doves who can’t admit that any aspect of the war might be going better, as if to acknowledge that the surge has helped to improve security or that the Iraqi army is performing better than expected lately or that plenty of Shiites are tired of Sadr’s crap would be to validate neoconservatism or somehow tacitly rubber-stamp an invasion of Iran. So how about it, Barry? Break the mold. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of grim news in the briefings too to help take the sting out of the reports of progress. Exit question: How on earth did we arrive at an election scenario where the hawk is trying to bait the dove into talking about Iraq?

Break the mold? That'll be the day.

In the meanwhile, just ignore the fearmongering.