Condoleezza Rice: American Realism for a New World

Condoleezza Rice has a new, wide-ranging essay on American foreign policy in the July/August 2008 volume of Foreign Affairs.

As careful followers of U.S. foreign relations may know, Secretary Rice is less a neoconservative than a traditional realist (for some of her work, from the G.H.W. Bush-era, see Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft).

In her current essay, Secretary Rice surveys America's international relations in all the regions of the world, and her tone is positively upbeat, stressing the Bush administration's many achievements in recent diplomatic and security affairs.

I'm especially pleased to see Secretary Rice lay out an elaborate defense of the administration's forward policy of democracy promotion, which many commentators have ridiculed as fried-to-a-crisp in the ashes of the Iraq "disaster."

I've consistently disagreed with these positions, and posted many times in defense of the administration's coming legacy of democratic consolidation in the Middle East (here and here, for example).

In any case, Secretary Rice offers a powerful affirmation of American commitment to development in Iraq:

Although the United States' ability to influence strong states is limited, our ability to enhance the peaceful political and economic development of weak and poorly governed states can be considerable. We must be willing to use our power for this purpose -- not only because it is necessary but also because it is right. Too often, promoting democracy and promoting development are thought of as separate goals. In fact, it is increasingly clear that the practices and institutions of democracy are essential to the creation of sustained, broad-based economic development -- and that market-driven development is essential to the consolidation of democracy. Democratic development is a unified political-economic model, and it offers the mix of flexibility and stability that best enables states to seize globalization's opportunities and manage its challenges. And for those who think otherwise: What real alternative worthy of America is there?

Democratic development is not only an effective path to wealth and power; it is also the best way to ensure that these benefits are shared justly across entire societies, without exclusion, repression, or violence....

Then, of course, there is Iraq, which is perhaps the toughest test of the proposition that democracy can overcome deep divisions and differences. Because Iraq is a microcosm of the region, with its layers of ethnic and sectarian diversity, the Iraqi people's struggle to build a democracy after the fall of Saddam Hussein is shifting the landscape not just of Iraq but of the broader Middle East as well.

The cost of this war, in lives and treasure, for Americans and Iraqis, has been greater than we ever imagined. This story is still being written, and will be for many years to come. Sanctions and weapons inspections, prewar intelligence and diplomacy, troop levels and postwar planning -- these are all important issues that historians will analyze for decades. But the fundamental question that we can ask and debate now is, Was removing Saddam from power the right decision? I continue to believe that it was.

After we fought one war against Saddam and then remained in a formal state of hostilities with him for over a decade, our containment policy began to erode. The community of nations was losing its will to enforce containment, and Iraq's ruler was getting increasingly good at exploiting it through programs such as oil-for-food -- indeed, more than we knew at the time. The failure of containment was increasingly evident in the UN Security Council resolutions that were passed and then violated, in our regular clashes in the no-fly zones, and in President Bill Clinton's decision to launch air strikes in 1998 and then join with Congress to make "regime change" our government's official policy in Iraq. If Saddam was not a threat, why did the community of nations keep the Iraqi people under the most brutal sanctions in modern history? In fact, as the Iraq Survey Group showed, Saddam was ready and willing to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction programs as soon as international pressure had dissipated.

The United States did not overthrow Saddam to democratize the Middle East. It did so to remove a long-standing threat to international security. But the administration was conscious of the goal of democratization in the aftermath of liberation. We discussed the question of whether we should be satisfied with the end of Saddam's rule and the rise of another strongman to replace him. The answer was no, and it was thus avowedly U.S. policy from the outset to try to support the Iraqis in building a democratic Iraq. It is important to remember that we did not overthrow Adolf Hitler to bring democracy to Germany either. But the United States believed that only a democratic Germany could ultimately anchor a lasting peace in Europe.

The democratization of Iraq and the democratization of the Middle East were thus linked. So, too, was the war on terror linked to Iraq, because our goal after September 11 was to address the deeper malignancies of the Middle East, not just the symptoms of them. It is very hard to imagine how a more just and democratic Middle East could ever have emerged with Saddam still at the center of the region.

Our effort in Iraq has been extremely arduous. Iraq was a broken state and a broken society under Saddam. We have made mistakes. That is undeniable. The explosion to the surface of long-suppressed grievances has challenged fragile, young democratic institutions. But there is no other decent and peaceful way for the Iraqis to reconcile.

As Iraq emerges from its difficulties, the impact of its transformation is being felt in the rest of the region. Ultimately, the states of the Middle East need to reform. But they need to reform their relations, too. A strategic realignment is unfolding in the broader Middle East, separating those states that are responsible and accept that the time for violence under the rubric of "resistance" has passed and those that continue to fuel extremism, terrorism, and chaos. Support for moderate Palestinians and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for democratic leaders and citizens in Lebanon have focused the energies of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the states of the Persian Gulf. They must come to see that a democratic Iraq can be an ally in resisting extremism in the region. When they invited Iraq to join the ranks of the Gulf Cooperation Council-Plus-Two (Egypt and Jordan), they took an important step in that direction.

At the same time, these countries look to the United States to stay deeply involved in their troubled region and to counter and deter threats from Iran. The United States now has the weight of its effort very much in the center of the broader Middle East. Our long-term partnerships with Afghanistan and Iraq, to which we must remain deeply committed, our new relationships in Central Asia, and our long-standing partnerships in the Persian Gulf provide a solid geostrategic foundation for the generational work ahead of helping to bring about a better, more democratic, and more prosperous Middle East.

I can see the jeers of the implacably unhinged antiwar activists now.

But Secretary Rice is absolutely correct: The changes she foresees in positioning Iraq as the region's democratic candle will bear fruit. We are now witnessing increased recognition that America is on the verge of success, and the Iraq people have begun to step up to their military and political obligations.

There may be more ups-and-downs of violence, but the trends are moving in the direction of transformative freedom for the region and the marginalization of terrorist violence.

Thank goodness for the Bush administration and Secretary Rice.

Texas Fred's Bigotry

I had a run with Texas ("Tex-ass") Fred in 2006. He's a Lone-Star redneck blogger, whose my-way-or-the-highway style of blogging has earned him a reputation as a genuine sleazebag.

It turns out that one of my blog buddies, Stogie at Saberpoint, has called out Texas Fred for his bigotry, and I'm happy to share this here to double the viral exposure: "Texas Fred: The Bigot Connection":

Yesterday I posted an email exchange with Texas Fred of "Reject the U.N." Fred treated me to an extreme racist rant on how he hates "gooks" (bigot-speak for Asians).

It seems ol' Texas Fred has a lot of these blog roller lists. Besides "Reject the U.N." there is "Come and Take It," "Children of the Confederacy," "The American Conservative" and "Naked Bloggers." His personal website is "Texas Fred's." You can google them all, if you are so inclined.

Fred likes to pose as a great crusader for morality, particularly against pedophilia. We can all agree that pedophiles are scum; but what about bigots, Fred? Will you be starting a a new blog roll soon, perhaps "Bigots Hating Hatchet-Faced Gook Bitches"?

Strangely enough, "gook"-hating Fred appeared on Fox News back in August 2007, where he was interviewed as to his anti-pedophile activities. I wonder if Fox knows about his "gook"-hating activities? Hmm, guess I'll have to tell them.

No doubt most of the sites on Fred's blogrolls are not aware of his virulent racism; Fred doesn't generally advertise it. If you know who the site owners are on the list below, you may want to warn them away from any affiliation with Texas Fred.

Check Stogie's page for some pictures of Texas Fred, although here's one of the Ten Gallon Bigot:

Stogie's debate with Texas Fred is timely, as it turns out one of my readers just had her own run-in the rotund "Reject the U.N." blogger. In communications with my friend, I found this post at Texas Fred's main page: "Illegal Immigrants Leaving Arizona":

Every single state in the nation needs to pass this law [Arizona's illegal immigration crackdown], we must make it so tough on employers that the illegals are faced with 2 choices, get legal, which is what they should do in the 1st place, or leave the USA, how simple can it be??

And here’s another little gem for all of you, I preached and howled at this same time last year and no one in a position of authority listened, and I doubt they will this year either, but every wetback in the USA tries to go back to Mexico or wherever for Christmas, they want to spend the holidays with their families, and I think that’s a really nice sentiment too, admirable even, well, there’s something WE need to do at this time of year too…

Close the damned border and shoot any SOB trying to sneak back in…

I am guessing that at least half of the 18 million or so WETBACKS in this nation would be denied admission to the USA if we’d act, but the time to act is NOW, put the National Guard on the border, with full combat capabilities and tell em, ANYTHING coming over that border is an ILLEGAL invader, KILL IT!!

Piece of cake, we have dead wetbacks all over the place, now that’s what I call ‘Happy Holidays’!!

If I am to be called ‘racist’, if I am to wear the name, if it makes me a racist to stand up and defend MY nation and to call an illegal invader a wetback, to call them by the only name that truly describes them for what they are, WETBACKS, then you’re damn right, I AM a racist, and I’ll wear the title proudly...

I post on this in the interest of "calling 'em as I see 'em."

As readers know, I routinely attack the racism and anti-Semitism (and anti-McCain sizism, for that matter) on the extreme left-wing of the Democratic Party's netroots, and I'll continue to do so.

But no commenter here at American Power (and I get lots of neo-confederate freaks) should ever allege a double-standard. I'll call out right-wing extremists when it's time, and folks like Texas Fred are a disgrace to this great nation.

There's no place for views like these in 21st-century America.

That Texas Fred can wear his racism like a badge of honor shines poorly on his fellow Texans, the great majority I know would never advocate or tolerate SHOOT TO KILL POLICIES AGAINST ILLEGAL BORDER CROSSERS. Such views are reprehensible, and should be fully repudiated.

Who need this baloney?

First Amendment protections don't extend to express advocacy of vigilante murder, so perhaps if my post, and Stogie's, can get some viral attention, the state of Texas might shut-down Texas ("Tex-ass") Fred once and for all.

See also, "Texas Fred Shoots Himself In The Foot."

Loving America, Especially When it Was Better

I absolutely love the United States, as readers probably know by now.

I rarely, if ever, have a bad thing to say about our fundamental political-economy, although I have strong views on political polarization and the defeatist nihilism of the American left, not to mention the collapse of cultural standards in education.

Still, I hesitate to say that America has seen better days, in previous decades. Having said that, let me share Dennis Prager's essay, "When I Was a Boy, America Was a Better Place":

The day the O.J. Simpson verdict was announced, I said to my then-teenage son, "David, please forgive me. I am handing over to you a worse America than my father handed over to me."

Unfortunately, I still feel this way.

With the important exception of racial discrimination -- which was already dying a natural death when I was young -- it is difficult to come up with an important area in which America is significantly better than when I was a boy. But I can think of many in which its quality of life has deteriorated....

When I was a boy, I ran after girls during recess, played dodgeball, climbed monkey bars and sat on seesaws. Today, more and more schools have no recess; have canceled dodgeball lest someone feel bad about being removed from the game; and call the police in to interrogate, even sometimes arrest, elementary school boys who playfully touch a girl. And monkey bars and seesaws are largely gone, for fear of lawsuits should a child be injured.

When I was boy, I was surrounded by adult men. Today, most American boys (and girls, of course) come into contact with no adult man all day every school day. Their teachers and school principals are all likely to be women. And if, as is often the case, there is no father at home (not solely because of divorce but because "family" courts have allowed many divorced mothers to remove fathers from their children's lives), boys almost never come into contact with the most important group of people in a boy's life -- adult men. The contemporary absence of men in boys' lives is not only unprecedented in American history; it is probably unprecedented in recorded history.

When I was a boy, we had in our lives adults who took pride in being adults. To distinguish them from our peers, we called these adults "Mr.," "Mrs." and "Miss," or by their titles, "Doctor," "Pastor," "Rabbi," "Father." It was good for us, and we liked it. Having adults proud of their adulthood, and not acting like they were still kids, gave us security (as well as something to look forward to in growing up). Today, kids are surrounded by peers twice, three, four times their age.

When I was a boy, the purpose of American history textbooks was to teach American history. Today, the purpose of most American history texts is to make minorities and females feel good about themselves. As a result, American kids today are deprived of the opportunity to feel good about being American (not to mention deprived of historical truth). They are encouraged to feel pride about all identities -- African-American, Hispanic, Asian, female, gay -- other than American.

When I was a teenage boy, getting to kiss a girl, let alone to touch her thigh or her breast (even over her clothes) was the thrill of a lifetime. Most of us could only dream of a day later on in life when oral sex would take place (a term most of us had never heard of). But of course, we were not raised by educators or parents who believed that "teenagers will have sex no matter what." Most of us rarely if ever saw a naked female in photos (the "dirty pictures" we got a chance to look at never showed "everything"), let alone in movies or in real life. We were, in short, allowed to be relatively innocent. And even without sex education and condom placement classes, few of us ever got a girl pregnant.

When I was a boy, "I Love Lucy" showed two separate beds in Lucy and Ricky's bedroom -- and they were a married couple. Today, MTV and most TV saturate viewers' lives with sexual imagery and sexual talk, virtually all of which is loveless and, of course, non-marital.

When I was boy, people dressed up to go to baseball games, visit the doctor and travel on airplanes. Today, people don't dress up even for church.

When I was a boy, Time and Newsweek were well written and relied little on pictures and illustrations. Today, those magazines often look like adult comic books by comparison. They are filled with large illustrations and photos, and they dumb down the news with features like "Winners and Losers" and "Who's Up and Who's Down." And when I was a boy, it would have been inconceivable for Time to substitute anything, let alone a tree, for the flag planted by the marines on Iwo Jima.

One might argue that these are the same laments that every previous older generation has expressed -- "Ah, when I was young..." But in America, that has not been the case. In America, the older generations tended to say the opposite -- "When I was a kid, things were worse."

Can we return to the America of my youth? No. Can we return to the best values of that time? Yes. But not if both houses of Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court move the country even further leftward. If that happens, many of the above noted changes will simply be accelerated: More laws restricting "offensive" speech will be enacted; litigation will increase and trial lawyers will gain more power; the American military will be less valued; trees will gradually replace the flag as our most venerated symbol; schools will teach even less as they concentrate even more on diversity, sexuality and the environment; teenage sex will be increasingly accepted; American identity will continue to be replaced by ethnic, racial, gender or "world citizen" identity; and the power of the state will expand further as the power of the individual inevitably contracts. It's hard to believe most Americans really want that.

I left out a couple of Prager's examples of when he was a boy, but Just John's got a related post, and this section relates, from "School 1957 Versus 2007":

Scenario: Pedro fails high school English:

1957 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, and goes to college.

2007 - Pedro's cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against state school system and Pedro's English teacher. English banned from core curriculum. Pedro given diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.

When I was a boy, my father taught me never to give up: "You're a Douglas," he told me, and we never feel sorry for ourselves, or turn away from a challenge. So, that's just what my family does, and that value has always stayed with me, even when I seemed to be faced with insurmountable odds in my life hurdles.

All of what Prager and Just John lament, I think, is the secular collapse of traditional values (and perhaps the hegemony of political correctness). Yet, I have to think that the great silent majority holds out hope for preserving these traditions. In the meantime, I'll continue my fight for dignity, honesty, and respect to others, particularly our elders.

********

(Side Note: I stopped on the 405 freeway this morning, on my way to the office, to check on a woman who had crashed into the back of a big-rig. The traffic kept moving past her and no one seemed to be stopping. The truck driver has just pulled off the side of the road, and as I drove by, I thought they might need some help, perhaps just a cell phone to call 911, since the bustle of traffic kept moving by, I worried that assistance might be delayed. The truck driver said he was fine, that he was calling emergency response. I ran out to the vehicle and spoke to the woman, who was reeling back in pain and shock, and I said we were calling an ambulance for her. She thanked me but couldn't look back out the window. I wanted to hold her hand, to reassure her that she'd be okay, but her window was just cracked. I checked with the truck driver one more time, and he thanked me for stopping, and I continued on my way to work. I'm not sure why I stopped, but I think it was the look of the woman, with her airbag deployed, head back and gasping, which tugged at me and made me almost cry for her misfortune. It was spontaneous. I think I just wanted to help, to see if there was anything I could do - that is, to do the right thing. Those are my values.)

Israel is the Defining Moral Issue of Our Time

Via Thunder Run, here's a powerful case for (blogging and defending) Israel, from Melanie Phillips:

I have noticed a persistent complaint by some readers posting comments on my blog entries which I think requires some comment and clarification. Referring to my last entry on Barack Obama, they appear to find it objectionable that I singled out his attitude towards Israel for criticism. They seem to believe that it is wrong for me to write about Israel as often as I do, not least because they think that, since I am writing on the Spectator website, I have some kind of duty not to write about it so much. Some of these readers, as is painfully obvious from their comments, simply have a big problem with Jews – at least, Jews who identify with and defend the Jewish people. But others, whose instincts may be rather more decent, seem to be labouring under one or two misapprehensions. So let me make a number of things clear.

First, this is my personal blog and it represents my own views and interests and mine alone. The Spectator very kindly hosts it on its website, thus choosing to give me this splendid platform on which to air my views -- for which I am very grateful. Nevertheless, the content of my blog is wholly independent of the Spectator, and it does not try to replicate the magazine’s standpoint or its range of interests. People read my blog because they are interested in what I have to say. If they are not interested, they need not read it. Blogs hosted by mainstream media outlets are a relatively new phenomenon and so I can understand why some people are confused; but that’s how it works.

Second, my blog does cover a range of issues. However, one of the reasons I started it some years ago was very specifically to provide an alternative voice and an antidote to the stranglehold of left-wing group-think in the mainstream media, the domination of the msm by anti-American, anti-western and anti-Israel propaganda, and the resulting collapse of reason and (literally) murderous anti-Israel and anti-Jewish prejudice that has so twisted public discourse in Britain and western society.

Third, as far as Obama is concerned I have indeed previously written about him in a more general context. I was one of the first to identify, for example, concerns over his association with Pastor Wright and his 20-year membership of a black power church which preaches black racism against white people, as well as identifying additional concerns over his apparently troubling connection to the Islamist-endorsing, anti-democratic political opposition in Kenya.

Fourth, the suggestion that it is somehow illegitimate for a Jew to write in defence of Israel is in itself highly unsavoury. The implication is that this proves that Jews are only concerned with their own interests and wrench everything into that template. Exactly the same charge was levelled in the 1930s against those Jews who (vainly) tried to wake the world up to the dangers of Nazism. Unfortunately, this vile prejudice is not confined to a few cranks but is now widespread, mainstream and considered an acceptable viewpoint. It is precisely this poison that this blog seeks to expose and to combat.

Fifth, the reason why Israel figures so heavily in any discussion about the predicaments of our era is that Israel is the defining moral issue of our time. It is Israel, and the century-old existential onslaught against the Jewish people in its ancient homeland, which stands at the very centre of the titanic fight by truth against lies, fact against propaganda, freedom against totalitarianism, liberty against slavery, justice against injustice and reason against irrationality in which the entire free world is currently engaged. Israel is the quintessential canary in the mine. It is the front-line in the defence of the free world. If it goes down, the rest of us will go down. Those who are on the wrong side of the Israel issue are on the wrong side in the great struggle for civilisation against barbarism. That is why I return to it again and again.

I hope this makes things clearer.

Regarding the left-wing group-think in particular, I started American Power for precisely the same reason.

I'm honored to be in such good company with Melanie Phillips. Her post is epecially timely, considering all the debate around the blogosphere concerning anti-Semitic comments and gotcha politics.

Angela Merkel is Not the "President" of Germany

Many folks around the leftosphere are so obsessed with partisan gotcha politics that it seems they're forgetting to actually think before clicking "publish."

The latest case is Oliver Willis, who wants to slam John McCain for apparently confusing Vladimir Putin as the "president of Germany" in an earlier campaign rally, as seen here:

Well, it's true: McCain confused Germany for Russia.

But note how Willis tries to take down McCain:

You learn new things all the time!

(Nobody tell Angela Merkel that Pooty-poot got her job!)

Well, not quite, actually...

Angela Merkel is German Chancellor, which is roughly equivalent to the position of prime minister and head of government in a parliamentary regime. Horst Köhler is President of Germany, serving as basic symbolic and ceremonial head of state, and while not constitutionally powerful, some occupants of the office have provided a national model of moral clarity and rectitude - such as Richard von Weisacker who implored the German nation to confront the atrocities of the Third Reich.

Thus, Putin would have technically gotten Köhler's job.

Willis actually links to a BBC piece above that identifies Merkel as the occupant of the chancellor's office, but perhaps in the common ejaculatory haste of the left's blog-commentariat, Willis eschewed a more careful elaboration of all the offices in question, which would have made his take down reasonably effective, rather than an embarrassment.

To be fair, none of the others commenting at Memeorandum caught the appropriate variations in all of these constitionally-designated offices (see RADAMISTO, Cliff Schecter, Balloon Juice, Comments from Left Field, Newshoggers, Not-So-Brilliant-at-Breakfast, and Rising Hegemon).

RADIMASTO goes so far as to say:

I realize that people running for office will make the occassional verbal blunder but after a while we have to ask ourselves if the blunder reflects an underlying incapacity to govern.

Which begs the question: I realize that lefty anti-McCainiacs will make the occassional mindless blunder while attempting to take down the Arizona Senator but after a while we have to ask ourselves if the blunder reflects an underlying incapacity to blog intelligently.

Cernig provides some early evidence for my argument, but at the going rate I'm sure we'll find more later.

So readers can understand why I'm giving McCain the benefit of the doubt.

Related: Putin's still in the driver's seat in Moscow (Dmitry Medvedev is Russia's new president), or that's what some have said - kind of a co-president actually, of Russia, of course.

McCain vs. Obama: Early General Election Matchup

CNN's "Political Ticker" has John McCain slightly ahead of Barack Obama in November's Electoral College contest.

It's great McCain's doing as well as he is, but at this point projections will help candidate strategy a bit, but won't have a whole lot of predictive power as to the eventual general election breakdown.

Congressional Quarterly's got a wrap-up of November's election trends in essay format:

Now that he’s clinched the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama can join Republican John McCain in plotting strategy to corral the 270 electoral votes needed to winthe White House this Nov. 4.

The map shows that, five months out, the two appear fairly evenly positioned — with each enjoying advantages in those areas of the nation where their parties have long dominated. Obama should be strong on the Pacific Coast and Northeast, while McCain should romp in the South and the Plains and in most of the Interior West.

If recent elections are a guide, only a limited number of states are truly competitive. As close as the 2004 election was in both the cumulative popular vote (51 percent for George W. Bush to 48 percent for John Kerry ) and in the Electoral College (Bush 286, Kerry 251), only 11 states with a total of 115 electoral votes were decided by margins of less than 5 percentage points; the last time so few electoral votes were so closely contested was the Ronald Reagan landslide of 1984.

Some of the 11 states where Bush and Kerry fought to a near-draw four years ago surely will be close again this year. These include Ohio and Pennsylvania, which are partly in the Appalachian region where Hillary Rodham Clinton dominated Obama among lower-income white voters during the primaries. But those states also have cities and wealthy suburbs where Obama should do well.

Other probable battlegrounds include Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico — all fast-growing Western states. Arizona would be on that list except that it is McCain’s turf. He’s already aired Spanish-language radio ads in Nevada and New Mexico.

Both sides are going after states they lost in 2004. Democrats are making a strong push in Virginia, where Obama crushed Clinton in the primary and where Obama made his first campaign stop last week after clinching the nomination. Current polls show a close race in a state that last voted Democratic in 1964. Republicans will be looking to wrest away Michigan, where McCain has already aired television ads and where he beat Bush in a 2000 primary.

The obvious caveat to any electoral vote projections in June: It’s sure to change. Five months ago, remember, neither McCain nor Obama was a sure bet to win his party’s nomination.

A problem for McCain? Ohio.

It turns out the he's got heavy conflict with the state's GOP, and McCain's been slow to crank-out a statewide campaign organization. Ohio was the swing state in 2004, and has been key to GOP elections throughout history, so we should see a priority for McCain on mending-fences and ramping-up. See the Los Angeles Times, "John McCain's Ohio Disconnect."

I'll have more later.

In Power, Obama May Seek War Crimes Tribunals

I've noted a couple of times (here and here) that the continued demonization of the Bush administration by extreme left zealots reflects a vengeful preparation for war crimes indictments against the outgoing "Bush/Cheney regime."

Now there's some evidence to that effect, from Thomas Lifson at American Thinker:

Barack Obama's plan for imposing unity on the nation after he takes office apparently entails a close look at war crimes trials for Bush administration officials. He has even said so in an interview with Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News.

This kind of change -- putting your predecessors on trial for their conduct of policy -- may not be what most Americans really want or expect from someone with Obama's gauzy rhetoric of unity. But unity has a dark side in the hands of people who regard their opponents as criminals. America has two centuries-plus of history lacking the totalitarian practice of jailing the predecessors when a new president takes office.

This is the sort of proposal one might expect from a man steeped in Marxism at his church, from his friends like Ayers, and as a member of the Alinsky Left. But I am surprised he let this slip.
Few on the right noticed and became alarmed, as the interview in question appeared on a Philadelphia Daily News blog,

Obama said that as president he would indeed ask his new Attorney General and his deputies to "immediately review the information that's already there" and determine if an inquiry is warranted -- but he also tread carefully on the issue, in line with his reputation for seeking to bridge the partisan divide. He worried that such a probe could be spun as "a partisan witch hunt." However, he said that equation changes if there was willful criminality, because "nobody is above the law."

At the time it was picked up only by the Huffington Post.

To me the terribly frightening phrase is the wish to avoid a "partisan witch hunt." When a Harvard-trained lawyer inserts a qualifier into a phrase, that is a signal of wiggle room being created. In this case, the obvious implication is that if you get Chuck Hagel or some other antiwar Republican on board, then you have cover for your "witch hunt."

Read the whole post. Lifson directs us to LGF's screen capture from Obama's official page:

Imagine this: Precisely at a time when analysts are suggesting a historic victory in Iraq, the vengeful partisans of the left are sharpening their knives in anticipation for their Jacobin reaction.

Things are already taking shape along these lines. See, for example, "Time for a Special Counsel to Investigate Bush Administration Use of Torture."

Anti-Semitism at Obama's Official Page: The Gotcha Update

It turns out that there's some funky subterraneanism in all the allegations of anti-Semitism at Barack Obama's official campaign page. As I noted in my update on this today, the community blog for Jemaah Islamiyah for Obama host anti-Semitic statements, and this is the group responsible for some of the most destructive terrorist attacks early this decade.

Well, the post was planted, by Urban Grind:

For those of you not familiar with the Barack Obama website, individuals can put up blogs on there to support of their beloved candidate. And there have been plenty of controversial blogs on there, such as the New Black Panthers, for one. And there were two controversial blogs there, put up by Socialist for Obama. One was How The Jewish Lobby Works. The other one was The Israeli Connection to 9/11, which have recently been removed.

If it wasn’t for bloggers such as Pamela from Atlas Shrugs and Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, among others, these blogs would most likely still be up there....

I made a page called Jemaa Islamiyah, and called myself Fatima. And sure enough, there was no message saying that my page would have to be approved by an administrator. It went up immediately. And this was back in March. I was surprised at the friendly welcoming comments I received. In fact, I even received an invitation from one guy to be a friend.

Just to refresh your memory, Jemaa Islamiyah was the group behind the Bali bombing. And just so you know, that page is still up on the Obama site.

Now some of you might think what I did was bad. And I can see your point.

But let me remind you that Barack Obama is running as President of the United States. So his people had damn well better know about Jemaa Islamiyah! So as I see it, the fact that “Fatima’s” page is still up there proves to me that the Obama people are either extremely ignorant, OR that they welcome support of terrorist organizations because they share that same hatred of America and the JOOOS. Neither one is a good sign....

Update: On the same day that I put up the Jemaa Islamiyah page, I also put up another blog called Al Qaeda for Obama using the name “Fatima” as well.

I completely forgot about this, until I found a comment at Little Green Footballs that the page was still up. Naturally, I assumed they would remove such a page, since I had trouble finding it after I posted it. But of course the Obama people left it up.

Urban Grind's remarks are similar those I made this morning: Why would the Obama campaign tolerate hatred and terrorist views on its official page?

Now though, the allegation of anti-Semitism have become gotcha politics, with John Aravosis' post unearthing John McCain's comment boards for a variety of anti-Semitic views found there (and which I repudiate fully and unequivocally).

But check Firedoglake, with its interpretation of what's really going on (allegations of "rodent fornication"):

Funny how LGF somehow knew exactly how to find that particular comment on that particular blog, eh...?

But the RF's media trajectory was about to be interrupted with some heavy doses of reality. Bloggers such as John Aravosis and JedReport pointed out, using screen shots, that much more nasty stuff can be found on John McCain's website -- where Hillary is called a "bitch", and where somebody says that the "Antichrist" is a Jew, and that America brought 9/11 on itself, in addition to Obama's allegedly being a "Muslim fag".

Unlike with the planted RF on the Obama site, these nasty comments on the McCain site don't draw 100% condemnation, but often praise, thus indicating that they are posted by genuine McCain supporters who know what will be allowed on his site. As Aravosis noted, even though the McCain site allows for flagging of offensive comments, many of them have been on the McCain site for weeks and months; the oldest example dates to December of 2007 -- so either nobody's flagging these things, or the McCain webmasters couldn't care less.

So, who's "winning" this debate? Here's JedReport, posting at Daily Kos:

Yesterday, the Little Green Freakshow (aka Little Green Footballs) lied when it claimed that Barack Obama's website reveals a disturbing pattern of antisemitism. Edit: Also see this post from Comments from Left Field on how the stuff they did find was likely an example of cut-n-paste political sabotage.)

Well, I can now report to you that their ridiculous claim has also blown up in their face -- apparently, LGF forgot to check if there was any objectionable filth on any of their man John McCain's official campaign forums, and not surprisingly, it turns out there is. In fact, a quick check last night revealed at least one use of the N-word to describe Barack Obama, among other smears.I can't attest to whether LGF "forgot" to check for filthy posts on John McCain's blog pages.

I can say that, frankly, JedReport should take his own medicine while posting at Kos, since the virulently anti-Semitic Kos diary, "Eulogy before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel," remains available at the blog. As I've said many times, Kos claims that his blog represents the "mainstream" of the Democratic Party, but he refuses to take corrective measures to eliminate the hatred from his own platform.

Futher, there seems to be a convenient disconnect between the relative qualitative significance betweeen the online excrement at the McCain and Obama pages. As Gateway Pundit has pointed out, orignal webpage content and blog comments are distinct political animals. Comment boards are naturally going to attract freaky ideologial rif-raff, but Obama's site opens up its campaign site to any and all who want to post the most vile disease-ridden hatred, and then there's no effort to take this stuff down independent of cries of outrage around the blogosphere.

And then we have Firedoglake claiming their folks represent the "reality-based community"?

The swift response of the reality-based side of the blogosphere to shoot down this RF did not go unnoticed....

This sort of thing is only going to get more common, not less. But so long as we in the reality-based side of the blogosphere are ready to shoot down these RFs at first sight, we can keep them from causing damage...

Everyone wants to claim moral superiority on this. Yet there's little serious discussion about what needs to be done. All of these posts, on both campaign pages, have links to flag offensive commentary, and should both campaigns continue to welcome partisan community involvement, it's incumbent that more serious moderation needs to happen as this campaign pushes forward.

But one last point: As is clear so far, the RF'd posts at Obama's page originated in the extreme right-wing of the party, factions favorable to Ron Paul's presidential bid, as well as others, groups who have been officially repudiated by John McCain!

By contrast, some of the most central Obama supporters in the far-left blogosphere endorse the most evil anti-Semitic eliminationism, and Obama promotes this obscenity with his blogging communities.

The hard-left's "reality-based community" might be better served by seriously vetting their own establishment commentators and webpages before playing gotcha. Indeed, the left's mandarins can begin by denouncing the "reality" of hardline anti-Semitism at the base of the Obama movement, at home among its top blog commenters of the leftosphere, as well as at the community webpages of the party's presumptive nominee.

Danish-American Allied Combat, Afghanistan

Via Gates of Vienna, check out this YouTube of Danish contingents fighting to break-out an isolated unit that's come under heavy fire from Taliban forces. American airpower proves decisive:

Related: Bill Roggio, "Baitullah Mehsud's Fighters Killed in Afghanistan."

Gas Prices Averaging $4 a Gallon

When I was on holiday this last weekend, one of the croupiers starting talking politics, and he thought gas prices were without a doubt one of the biggest issue this election year. Sure, this is anecdotal, but we're hearing stories like this from around the country (see, for example, "Rural U.S. Takes Worst Hit as Gas Tops $4 Average").

It turns out that the Wall Steet Journal's got an interesting frontpage story on this, "Gasoline Hits Average of $4 a Gallon." Of all the economic issues outside of the mortgage mess, a continuing run-up in gas prices will likely provide for an earthquake of electoral volatility this November:

The average price of gasoline in the U.S. hit $4 a gallon for the first time Sunday, the latest milestone in a run-up in fuel prices that is sapping consumer confidence and threatening to nudge the nation into recession.

The record nationwide average for regular-gasoline prices, announced by auto club AAA, follows Friday's near-$11 surge in oil prices to a record $138.54 a barrel. Both are part of what, by some measures, is the worst energy-price shock Americans have faced for a generation, in terms of its toll on their pocketbooks.

In recent days, soaring fuel prices and disappointing employment data have reignited fears that the nation's economy -- which has taken a pounding over the past year from a housing downturn, credit crunch and weakening job market -- will slip into recession, or pull back further if a recession is already under way. Rising fuel prices are straining household budgets, damping the spending that drives more than two-thirds of the nation's economic activity.

"What we're seeing here is a lot of additional pressure on a consumer sector that was soft to begin with," said Alliance Bernstein economist Joseph Carson. "Is it a tipping point by itself? It's close."

Gasoline prices, which have risen 29% over the past year, have been high for months, and in some markets, such as Alaska and California, consumers have been paying more than $4 a gallon at the pump for weeks. But the latest increase at the nationwide level from a previous average of nearly $3.99 a gallon seems likely to deliver at least a psychological blow to many Americans.

The current drain on consumers' income from rising fuel prices is greater than it was during most of the worst energy-price run-ups of the past. Spending on fuel as a share of wage income has shot above 6%. That exceeds the percentage seen during the 1974-75 and 1990-91 oil-price shocks and approaches the 7% to 8% seen during the 1980-81 price surge, according to Mr. Carson.

Comparing the rise in fuel spending to income growth, which has been especially weak in recent years, the current shock is far worse than any of the three prior ones, he said.

"It's just gotten out of hand," said 53-year-old Yvonne Brune of Des Moines, Iowa, referring to the rising cost of gasoline. Because of higher gasoline prices, Ms. Brune, who works for a printing company doing marketing on weekdays and separately as a bridal consultant on nights and weekends, no longer makes the drive home at lunchtime -- a 30-mile round trip -- to spend time with her dogs. Because of rising airfares, she has canceled plans for a trip to Texas to visit relatives. "I think the airlines are going to see their industry implode because people are going to stop flying," she said.

Some economists hold out hope the current oil-price surge won't be as devastating as some in the past. For one thing, consumers and businesses are far more fuel-efficient today than they were during the oil shock of the mid-1970s, requiring half as much energy to produce a unit of economic output.

Interest rates also are far lower than they were then, and the Federal Reserve is expected to hold its interest-rate target steady at 2% for much of this year. The dollar's weakness, meanwhile, is raising overseas demand for American products, and growth in exports is a key reason why the U.S. economy has continued to expand -- albeit slowly -- over the past six months.

Most important, consumers have shown surprising resilience over the past five years, despite continued surges in their fuel costs. "While it certainly makes it tougher for the economy for the next few quarters, I still believe consumers can adapt," said Peter Kretzmer, a Bank of America economist.

Still, as gasoline prices climb, they eat up money that consumers might otherwise spend on appliances or movie tickets or vacations. That could force businesses, hit by weaker consumer demand and an increase in their own costs, to pare operations and cut more jobs in an already weak labor market. The government reported Friday that the unemployment rate jumped to 5.5% in May from 5% in April as employers shed 49,000 jobs last month -- a fifth-straight monthly decline.

Check out the Journal's lead editorial today as well, "That Stagflation Show." A major factor in the increase of petroleum costs is Federal Reserve policy, which has sought to guarantee liquidity rather than defend the dollar.

The main trend I see in these stories is that international factors and U.S. monetary policies, have contributed to rising economic dislocation, and that Democratic Party solutions for Keynesian pump priming are not likely to provide the robust level of stimulus needed to invigorate the dynamic, diverse American economy - which has surprisingly weathered the recent shocks without the gas lines or rationing that we saw in the 1970s:

John McCain has a chance to break with this Beltway consensus and offer a pro-growth policy mix. To wit, tighter money to defend the dollar, burst the oil bubble and protect middle-class purchasing power; and marginal, immediate and permanent tax cuts to boost incentives and restore risk-taking.

No doubt Democrats would block a tax cut in Congress this year, and Barack Obama would say it's for the rich. But this is a fight Mr. McCain should welcome. Without his own economic narrative and policy breakout, Mr. McCain will find himself lashed to the status quo and playing defense. The markets are saying they don't want a repeat of the 1970s, and if they aren't heeded the voters will deliver the same message in November.

I'm not betting the Democrats will shift to pro-growth fiscal and trade policies on the advent of an Obama administration, but there's considerable bipartisanship rumblings for such a move.

Approaching Victory in Iraq

Last November I published, "Victory in Iraq? The War Has Been Won," which cited Andrew Bolt's essay arguing the case for an American triumph in the war.

There have been some difficult months in Iraq since then, but the facts of declining violence and increasing political progress augur well for the Iraqi people.

Arthur Herman suggests that the evidence of a shift to victory in Iraq is so compelling, only the most die-hard antiwar skeptics will refuse the news:

The Bush administration has taken heaps of abuse for its Iraq policy, including its decision to launch the "surge" last December. Now the strategy, which our nation's "best and brightest" regularly dismissed as a failure, has cleared the way for the establishment of a secure democracy in Iraq and a lasting peace.

It would be foolish to pop open the victory champagne yet. The truce between the Shia and Sunni in Iraq remains fragile; al Qaeda may well launch one more last-ditch offensive there (a la Tet 1968), in order to discourage the US and/or Iraq publics on the eve of the elections.

Meanwhile, we're still fighting a vicious insurgency in Afghanistan, and have yet to root out the al Qaeda remnants of along the Afghan-Pakistan border. And the continued threat of home-grown terror cells keeps European governments nervous.

In wars, however, trends have their own momentum. And the trend is running away from al Qaeda and its jihadist allies - not only in Iraq but also across the Middle East.

According to Hayden, al Qaeda faces a similar strategic debacle in Saudi Arabia.

And al Qaeda's fugitive leadership is learning that its former safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border is no longer so safe. Thanks to cooperation with Pakistan's new government, unmanned US Predator drones recently killed two top al Qaeda leaders there.

Once Gen. David Petraeus is confirmed as commander of US forces in the Middle East in July, he'll be able to apply the same strategy for victory learned in the Iraq surge to the war in Afghanistan.

In short, the larger War on Terror may be reaching a tipping point similar to that of the Iraq war.

The US public and policymakers need to recognize how this happened - and draw lessons from this success.

1) We need to acknowledge that the Iraq war wasn't a "distraction" from the War on Terror, as critics still complain, but its centerpiece.

It's not mere coincidence that our success against al Qaeda globally comes along with success in Iraq. For all its setbacks and frustrations, the Iraq war drew jihadists into a battle they thought they could win, because it would be fought on their home turf - but which they're now losing disastrously.

2) The US decision to "stay the course" in the Iraq war, which was also widely mocked and criticized, served to thoroughly demoralize the jihadist movement.

From its start in spring 2003, the Iraqi insurgency has been entirely built on the premise that it could use suicide and roadside bombings, sectarian slaughter and the torture and murder of hostages to force America out of the Middle East.

If Democrats had won the White House in 2004, the jihadists might have succeeded.

Instead, America doggedly refused to give in to terror, despite 4,000 combat deaths and massive antiwar sentiment, and unwaveringly supported an Iraqi government that was at times feeble and confused - and proceeded to break the jihadist movement's back.

In that interview, the CIA's Hayden also that al Qaeda is no longer able to use the Iraq war as a way to draw in new recruits. The reason is clear: If you go to Iraq to fight the American infidel you will die, and die for nothing.

3) Finally, the Bush administration's success in Iraq, and growing success in the War on Terror, offers a powerful object lesson in how to deal with the continuing threat from Iran.

Iran remains the most lethal state sponsor of terrorism, fomenting proxy wars in Lebanon and Gaza, and in Iraq itself. Its nuclear-weapons program proceeds despite minor sanctions and endless international efforts at engagement.

Now the Bush administration has shown the way for the next president. Instead of trying to "understand" the enemy, disrupt and defeat his plans. Instead of listening to domestic critics, act in the nation's best interests. Instead of relying on multilateral support to decide what to do, go it alone if necessary.

Instead of worrying about an exit strategy, realize that there's no substitute for winning.

Apparently the New York Times is one of the skeptics. In an editorial last week, the paper attacked the administration for launching a war based on "faulty" intelligence, and refused to mention even once the dramatic successes the United States has achieved over the last 18-month period.

We can expect more of this "Bush lied, people died" thoughout the election campaign.

See also, Fred Hiatt, "'Bush Lied'? If Only It Were That Simple."

Anti-Semitism at Barack Obama's Official Page

How common is anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party base?

I've noted previously that Markos Moulitsas allows the most vile anti-Semitic diarists to post Jewish hatred to his blog, and I find it hard to understand why this entry hasn't been taken down.

On the other hand, it turns out that the web managers at BarackObama.com are apparently less tolerant of such religious hatred, although we may be seeing the tip of the iceberg with the scandal surrounding the post from Socialists for Obamas, "HOW THE JEWISH LOBBY WORKS."

The entry's now been removed, but a number of conservative bloggers have posted on it. Here's an excerpt captured for posterity at Atlas Shrugs:

NO LOBBY IS FEARED MORE or catered to by politicians than the Jewish Lobby. If a politician does not play ball with the Jewish Lobby, he will not get elected, or re-elected, and he will either be smeared or ignored by the Jewish-owned major media.

All Jewish lobbies and organizations are interconnected and there are hundreds upon hundreds of them. The leaders of the numerous Jewish Lobby Groups go to the same synagogues, country clubs, and share the same Jewish investment bankers. And this inter-connectedness extends to the Jews who run the Federal Reserve Bank, US Homeland Security, and the US State Department.

In other words, “Jews stick together.” Americans must know how extremely powerful the Jewish Lobby is and how it operates to undermine America’s interests both at home and abroad. At home - by corrupting America’s political system, and abroad - by dictating American Foreign Policy against America’s best interests.

Here's how Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs put things in perspective:

There’s something deeply wrong with a presidential candidate who attracts so many of these hateful psychotics. Read the comments; you just won’t believe what is allowed to be posted at Barack Obama’s web site.

I can see the standard left-wing response: "Guilt by association is a bunch of baloney," but one has to consider what it is about Barack Obama that attracts the most wicked rogue's gallery of all the usual suspects of the America-bashing, Israel-hating left.

Here's the screen capture from the Socialists for Obama post:

Some of the other really despicable stuff has also been taken down (Fausta has additional links to screen-capture evidence).

But the New Black Panther page remains available, with nasty comments (hat tip: Gateway), and like Power Line, I noticed (after a Google search) that the Marxists/Socialists/Communists for Obama page is available as well.

I also found this from Socialists for Obama: "An Open Letter to Our Next President Barack Obama." (The "letter concludes with "i hope you listen to my humble opinions about the fascist state of Israel and what we should do about it.")

So, how common is this anti-Semitism among Democratic Party supporters?

Perhaps it's infinitesimal, but if so, why does this stuff keep popping up on the most prominent places of the official Democratic Party establishment?

I'll have more later.

UPDATE: Cernig at Newshoggers claims that the Barack Obama post was a scam, republished from an extreme right-wing news group known for virulent anti-Semitism.

If true, this raises some interesting questions:

Why is the Obama campaign allowing open registration for diarists on its blog, thus making the candidate vulnerable to such smears? For a campaign that's supposed to be web-savvy, allowing open-access isn't too smart.

For example, why are we still seeing entries like this on the campaign's official page:

Jemaah Islamiyah For Obama

We are a group that supports social justice for our oppressed Muslim brothers all over the world. We support Barack Obama for President because he is sympathetic to the plight of Muslims. He is a man of integrity, who will not be bullied by the neo-cons and the zionists. He will stand up for our oppressed palestinian brothers and sisters, whose land is being illegally occupied by that evil zionist entity whose name I just hate to even write.

An "evil zionist entity"?

That's not surprising language coming from a group with ties to al Qaeda, and one that's responsible for the deaths of hundreds of civilians in the October 2002 car bombing at a Bali nightclub popular with Western tourists.

If those on the left want to attack right-wing conservatives for their outrage with alleged Obama-supported anti-Semitism, they should at least give equal attention to denouncing the real and continuing Israel-bashing that's common among left-wing partisans, hatred that continues to be hosted on the web-site of their party's standard-bearer.

Does Barack Obama endorse such views? The campaign ought to be spending more on web administrators to get this hatred off of its official page.

Get About As Oiled As a Diesel Train...

I'm heading out with my wife and sons to Las Vegas for the weekend, and I'm taking a break from blogging while gone.

Readers will recall that I visited Vegas in February, right after John McCain clinched the GOP nomination. I also traveled to Vegas in 2005, without the boys, and my wife and I saw "Elton John and the Red Piano" at Caesar's Palace.

I've always loved "Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)," so please enjoy this YouTube:

For Elton John's "Red Piano" performance of "Saturday Night's Alright," click here (the video quality's poor, but the live performance was awesome).

I'm planning a meet-up with the Vegas Guy while in town, and I hope in the future I'll be able to meet more of my readers (I met Heidi from Big Girl Pants a couple of months ago)

I'll be back sometime late Sunday afternoon, and blogging will resume shortly thereafter.

As is my regular practice, I'll visit and comment at the blogs of all those who comment here (excepting anti-neocon atttack-masters, of course).

Have a great weekend!!

Ungrounded: Barack Obama's Failure on Iraq

Pete Hegseth, of Vets for Freedom, provides a penetrating analysis of Barack Obama's unfitness as commander-in-chief, at the Wall Street Journal, "Why Obama Must Go to Iraq":

Earlier this year, I spent five days in Iraq, walking the same streets in Baghdad where I had served two years earlier as an infantry platoon leader in the 101st Airborne Division.

The visit reinforced for me not only the immense complexity of the war – so often lost in our domestic political debate – but also the importance of taking the time to visit Iraq to talk with the soldiers and Marines serving on the front lines in order to grasp the changing dynamics of a fluid battlefield.

It is for this reason that the failure of Sen. Barack Obama to travel to Iraq over the past two and a half years is worrisome, and a legitimate issue in this presidential election.

Since his election to the United States Senate in 2004, Mr. Obama has traveled to Iraq just once – in January 2006. This was more than a year before Gen. David Petraeus took command and the surge began. It was also several months before Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government came into office. Although Mr. Obama frequently criticizes the Iraqi leader on the campaign trail, he has never actually met him.

Mr. Obama's conduct is strikingly different from that of Sen. John McCain, who has been to Iraq eight times since 2003 – including three times since surge forces began to arrive in Baghdad. The senior senator from Arizona has made it his mission to truly understand what is happening on the ground, in all its messy reality.

Mr. Obama has dismissed the value of such trips, suggesting they are stage-managed productions designated to obfuscate, not illuminate, the truth. This has become an all-too-common sentiment within the Democratic Party leadership, especially since the surge began to transform conditions on the ground for the better. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has denied that there is any value in visiting the troops in Iraq, and has never done so....

Even more astonishing than Mr. Obama's absence from Iraq, however, is the fact that he has apparently never sought out a single one-on-one meeting with Gen. Petraeus. The general has made repeated trips back to Washington, but Mr. Obama has shown no interest in meeting privately with him. It's enough to make you wonder who exactly Mr. Obama listens to when it comes to Iraq?

Mr. Obama frequently decries the danger of "dogmatists" and "ideologues" in public policy, yet he himself has proven consistently uninterested in putting himself in situations where he might be confronted with the hard complexities of this war. It suggests a dangerous degree of detachment and overconfidence in his own judgment.

After all, Mr. Obama was among those in January 2007 who stridently opposed the surge and confidently predicted its failure – even going so far as to vote against funding our soldiers in the field unless the Bush administration abandoned this new approach. It is now clear that Mr. Obama's judgment on the surge was spectacularly wrong.

Yet rather than admit his mistake, Mr. Obama has instead tried to downplay or disparage the gains our troops have achieved in the past 12 months, clinging to a set of talking points that increasingly seem as divorced from reality as some in the Bush administration were at the darkest moments of the war.

See also, "Obama's Judgment on Iraq Falls Short."

Judging Obama's Friendships

Captain Ed raises a red flag over Barack Obama's character and judgment, "The Sad Pattern of Obama Friendships":

One has to really wonder how well Barack Obama knows his close associates. When Obama finally put distance between himself and his pastor of 20 years, he claimed that the Jeremiah Wright who spoke at a press function in Detroit was not the man he heard preaching every Sunday. Now he claims that the Tony Rezko who got convicted yesterday on 16 counts of fraud and corruption isn’t the Tony Rezko who raised over $250,000 for Obama through 2004:

Obama has said whenever asked — and he has been asked repeatedly — that his relationship to Rezko, who had a history of befriending up-and-coming Illinois politicians, never strayed into official business. Obama said Rezko asked no favors and that he did him none.

Rezko has not raised money for Obama since 2004, and the Obama campaign gave to charity the donations linked to Rezko.

“I’m saddened by today’s verdict,” Obama said in a statement Wednesday. “This isn’t the Tony Rezko I knew, but now he has been convicted by a jury on multiple charges that once again shine a spotlight on the need for reform.”

Well, hold the phone for a moment. The timetable of the prosecution clearly shows that Obama “knew” this Rezko. The activities for which Rezko got convicted took place in 2004 and before. Rezko raised money for Obama for several years, the last of which was 2004, after which Rezko tapped out and got too hot for Obama and other politicians.

Obama’s association with Rezko coincides with Rezko’s corruption. Obama wants us to ignore the obvious and go away with the impression that Rezko somehow changed after their association ended, but that’s simply not the truth. Either Obama turned a blind eye to Rezko’s corrupt behavior or he didn’t have the judgment to see it.

It doesn’t work like that when a politician wants to sell his superior judgment as a key reason to elect him. So far, Obama wants us to trust his judgment despite the fact that he supposedly was ignorant of his preacher’s hate-filled sermons, directed taxpayer money to a Catholic priest who thinks America is the “greatest sin against God”, thinks William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn and their “overthrow capitalism” rhetoric is “mainstream”, and now is shocked, shocked! to find out that his fundraiser and real-estate partner was a corrupt fraud.

That shows extremely poor judgment in selecting associates. Why should we want to see that kind of judgment applied as President?

But check, Vinegar and Honey, "It Is Not Our Finest Hour":

Well, people...I hardly know what to think, anymore. It seems that there are those out there who are bound and determined that Senator Barack Obama will be our next President no matter what has to transpire to accomplish it....

It is a fact, that there is much more that has been hidden about Barack and Michelle Obama, and if it is not squelched, as much of it has been, before finally coming to light, it will be revealed in due time. One can only hope that it will not, then, be too late--and that it will matter to those, presently, unable to see wrong in anything concerning the Obamas.

Related: "Why Did Obama Pay Rezko an Extra $64,000 For That Strip of Land?"

Obama Questionable on Iraq

Peter Wehner delivers a precision analysis of Barack Obama's statement on his Iraq policy during his victory speech Tuesday:

Senator Obama’s speech on Tuesday in St. Paul, when he finally locked up the Democratic presidential nomination, was typical: rhetorically powerful, well-delivered, with some clever and well-constructed lines. But when you examine the substance of what he said, the speech breaks down. Some of his claims are questionable and misleading; others are ill-informed; and still others border on being intellectually dishonest. Obama’s statement on Iraq are particularly revealing.

According to Obama:

I won’t stand here and pretend that there are many good options left in Iraq.

In fact, Obama doesn’t have to “pretend” there are many good options left in Iraq. There is one obvious good option: to continue policies that are manifestly succeeding and qualify as one of the most impressive military turnabouts in our history. According to yesterday’s operational update by Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner,

For the third week in a row security incidents in Iraq are at the lowest levels in four years. These numbers reflect fewer attacks on Iraqi civilians, fewer attacks on Iraqi and Coalition Forces, and fewer attacks on the Government’s infrastructure. These security gains follow the coordinated offensive operations over the past year, and the recent security operations in Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra.

The security progress we’ve making is now translating into encouraging progress on the political and economic fronts as well. There is no question, then, that Iraq, which remains in many ways a broken and splintered country, has made enormous strides. It is virtually beyond dispute that the “surge” strategy endorsed by President Bush (and opposed by Senator Obama) is working, and working better and faster than anyone could have imagined just a year ago.

In his speech Obama also stated:

We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in - but start leaving we must.

Keep in mind that in his February 2007 speech announcing his bid for the presidency, Obama declared, “It’s time to start bringing our troops home. That’s why I have a plan that will bring our combat troops home by March of 2008.” In May, Obama voted against funding for combat operations. And in September, a mere three months after the final elements of the 30,000-strong surge forces had landed in Iraq, he declared that the moment had arrived to remove all of our combat troops “immediately.” “Not in six months or one year–now.”

Obama’s position, then, is the embodiment of carelessness in “getting out of Iraq,” and if he had his way, the progress we have seen would not have come to pass and Iraq would almost certainly be in a death spiral rather than on the (long and difficult) road to recovery.

Read the whole thing.

See also, "Obama, Andrew Sullivan, and the Surge: Foresight vs. Hindsight."

Related: "Obama at AIPAC: Was He Lying Then or Now? I'm Guessing: Now," and "McCain Attacks Obama as Too Easy on Iran."

Barack Obama: San Francisco Democrat

John Bolton's got an essay up today on Barack Obama's foreign policy, "Obama the Naïve."

The conclusion's great:

It is an article of faith for Obama, and many others on the left in the U.S. and abroad, that it is the United States that is mostly responsible for the world's ills. In 1984, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick labeled people with these views the "San Francisco Democrats," after the city where Walter Mondale was nominated for president.

Most famously, Kirkpatrick forever seared the San Francisco Democrats by saying that "they always blame America first" for the world's problems. In so doing, she turned the name of the pre-World War II isolationist America First movement into a stigma the Democratic Party has never shaken.

This is yet another piece of history that Obama has ignored or never learned. There may be one more piece of history worthy of attention: In 1984, Mondale went down to one of the worst electoral defeats in American political history. We will now see whether Obama follows that path as well.

See also, "Barack's Throwback: 'Guns v. Butter' Isolationism."