Obamacons, Tin-Foil Hats, and McCain Derangement

Things are getting crazy on the right side of the political spectrum.

In the months since John McCain became the GOP's presumptive nominee, the conservative political community has hardly coalesced into a unified front of support for the Arizona Senator. I've noted previously that some traditional conservatives have announced their support for Barack Obama's presidential bid, but events of late have frankly gotten out of control, and I'm both dismayed and embarrassed that purported partisans of the conservartive right would consider supporting the Democratic Party's most extreme left-wing candidate since the Vietnam War.

There's a lot of disturbing news available on right-wing dissension - I'll try to be brief but comprehensive.

First, Bruce Bartlett at the New Republic reports that many in the conservative movement - disillusioned with the George W. Bush administration - have gravitated away from the Republican Party in support of Barack Obama - these are the "Obamacans":

There have been a few celebrated cases of conservatives endorsing Obama, like the blogger Andrew Sullivan and the legal scholar Douglas Kmiec. But you probably have not have heard of many of the Obamacons--and neither has the Obama campaign. When I checked with it to ask for a list of prominent conservative supporters, the campaign seemed genuinely unaware that such supporters even existed. But those of us on the right who pay attention to think tanks, blogs, and little magazines have watched Obama compile a coterie drawn from the movement's most stalwart and impressive thinkers. It's a group that will no doubt grow even larger in the coming months.

The largest group of Obamacons hail from the libertarian wing of the movement. And it's not just Andrew Sullivan. Milton and Rose Friedman's son, David, is signed up with the cause on the grounds that he sees Obama as the better vessel for his father's cause. Friedman is convinced of Obama's sympathy for school vouchers--a tendency that the Democratic primaries temporarily suppressed. Scott Flanders, the CEO of Freedom Communications--the company that owns The Orange County Register--told a company meeting that he believes Obama will accomplish the paramount libertarian goals of withdrawing from Iraq and scaling back the Patriot Act.

Libertarians (and other varieties of Obamacons, for that matter) frequently find themselves attracted to Obama on stylistic grounds. That is, they believe that he has surrounded himself with pragmatists, some of whom (significantly) come from the University of Chicago. As the blogger Megan McArdle has written, "His goal is not more government so that we can all be caught up in some giant, expressive exercise of collectively enforcing our collective will on all the other people standing around us in the collective; his goal is improving transparency and minimizing government intrusion while rectifying specific outcomes."

In nearly every quarter of the movement, you can find conservatives irate over the Iraq war--a war they believe transgresses core principles. And it's this frustration with the war--and McCain's pronouncements about victory at any cost--that has led many conservatives into Obama's arms. Francis Fukuyama, the neoconservative theorist, recently told an Australian journalist that he would reluctantly vote for Obama to hold the Republican Party accountable "for a big policy failure" in Iraq. And he seems to view Obama as the best means for preserving American power, since Obama "symbolizes the ability of the United States to renew itself in a very unexpected way."

You can find similar sentiments coursing through the Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich's seminal Obamacon manifesto in The American Conservative. He believes that the war in Iraq has undermined the possibilities for conservative reform at home. The prospects for a conservative revival, therefore, depend on withdrawing from Iraq. Thus the necessity of Obama. "For conservatives, Obama represents a sliver of hope. McCain represents none at all. The choice turns out to be an easy one," Bacevich concludes.

This passage is interesting for its diverse cast of characters. Some of these folks, like Andrew Sullivan, aren't really so conservative. As Neo-Neocon has suggested:

Sullivan’s an unusual case: a sort of liberal who became a sort of conservative and then did an about-face towards the end of the first Bush administration over issues of Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and gay marriage.

Sullivan's actually a scholar of Oakeshottian conservative ideology, although I do think he's jumped ship from the movement with his schoolboy's crush on the Illinois Senator.

Some of the others that Bartlett mentions raise more troubling issues.

This "libertarian wing of the movement" is a bit hazy - even subterreanean - and includes a few crazed "tin hat" acolytes among its followers. For example, Robert Stacy McCain (no relation to the Arizona Senator) is a libertarian supporter of Bob Barr's presidential bid this year. I've communicated with Robert on a couple of occasions, and he's a jovial kind of guy. Yet I disagree vehemently with his politics, and I don't know if people like him are good for small-government advocates in the United States. Robert's obviously not a supporter of Obama, and it's no wonder: The Southern Poverty Law Center reports (SPLC) that Robert Stacy McCain's a former member of the League of the South who is on record as opposing interracial marriage.

I have no other sources to corroborate these claims, although I would note that Robert keeps abreast of neo-Nazi reporting in an effort to nip potential extreme right-wing associations in the bud.

It's a good thing too, as it turns out the SPLC's got a story out suggesting that right-wing extremists are hoping for an Obama victory in November, which they hypothesize will lead to a race war in the United States:

With the nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential candidate clinched, large sections of the white supremacist movement are adopting a surprising attitude: Electing America’s first black president would be a very good thing.

It’s not that the assortment of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, anti-Semites and others who make up this country’s radical right have suddenly discovered that a man should be judged based on the content of his character, not his skin. On the contrary. A growing number of white supremacists, and even some of those who pass for intellectual leaders of their movement, think that a black man in the Oval Office would shock white America, possibly drive millions to their cause, and perhaps even set off a race war that, they hope, would ultimately end in Aryan victory.

Now, I am not - I repeat - I am not broad-brushing all libertarians. Megan McArdle's on record as admiring Barack Obama's achievement as a historical milestone for our nation.

But some of these so-called "libertarian conservatives" mentioned by Bartlett are more accurately identified as "paleoconservatives," who are generally considered as outside of the mainstream conservative establishment in the United States.

Andrew Bacevich, a professor of history at Boston University, came out for Obama in an article at the American Conservative, "The Right Choice? The conservative case for Barack Obama." I have not spoken with Bacevich, but I'm familiar with his argument claiming a new American militarism, and his arguments in opposition to the Iraq war are perhaps made more compelling by the emotion of losing a son in the conflict. Be that as it may, I find paleoconservative arguments hard to take seriously, even offensive particularly as the movement's flaghip, the Amercan Conservative, routinely publishes outslandish stories, like the current issue's piece alleging Israel's complicity in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Apart for the Obamacans and the crypto-racism of the tin-hat libertarian/paleo axis, we also have plain-old partisans of McCain Derangement Syndrome.

These folks actually irk me the most, for if they would just put aside issues of ego and pride, they might powerfully contribute to building a strong conservative coalition in furtherance of a John McCain victory in November.

As Patrick at Born Again Redneck has suggested, Republicans who don't like McCain ought just "grow up!" In question is Dee's entry from Conservatism With Heart, where she writes:

Even if all of us political junkies hold our nose and vote for McCain, he's going to have a hard time. Why? Because as I have been saying for months and Limbaugh points out in his article the conservative base are the foot soldiers in campaigns. Unless McCain can elicit some excitement, passion and trust among the base he's going to have a hard time getting people willing to volunteer. And without volunteers to get out the vote, you'll have an extremely difficult time winning.

Dee and many like her are indoctrinated by conservative talk radio mandarins such as Rush Limbaugh, who in my opinion care more about their listenership than they do about maintaining conservative power. Calls for "purity" keep irrational Rush-bot "foot soldiers" in check while simultaneously facilitating Barack Obama's threatening shift to a 21st-century socialist utopia. (See the "Open Letter to John McCain," at Right Wing News, for more of what I'm talking about).

So think about it: The American people have now made their choices for the major-party standard-bearers, McCain vs. Obama. The ideological differences between the candidates are stark:

For me, the most important issue's long been the Iraq war. John McCain will maintain troops in Iraq to increase security and facilitate the independence of Iraqi forces. He sees victory on the horizon and envisions troops home by 2013. Barack Obama, on the other hand, has been one of the most vocal Iraq detractors in the Senate, and he'll implement an immediate troop withdrawal upon taking office, putting in jeopardy the hard work and great sacrifice of America's fighting personnel.

On taxes, John McCain wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. He wants to maintain current capital gains tax rates at 15 percent and cut corporate taxes to 25 percent from the current confiscatory 35 percent level. Barack Obama on the other hand, will raises taxes dramatically, repealing the Bush tax cuts and hiking capital gains taxes, with more likely to come through efforts at "restoring fairness" to the tax code. Watch this YouTube for more:

On health care, John McCain wants to unleash insurance markets and use tax incentives to expand health coverage. McCain focuses on deregulation, choice, and affordability. Barack Obama, on the other hand, will socialize American medicine, launching a federal takeover of healthcare with a price tag starting at $110 billion, a program that includes punitive mandates on commercial owners certain to drive down small-business expansion.

On social issues, John McCain is a rock-ribbed conservative, opposing abortion rights, the distribution of birth control to minors, same-sex marriages, and restrictions on the rights of gun owners. Barack Obama' on the other hand, is implacably opposed to traditional social values. He would further shift American culture to the anything goes moralism of the Demoratic Party's multicultural, abortion-on-demand, and military-bashing ideology of the contemporary left.

Sure, John McCain's got his apostasies, on global warming and immigration, but if the deranged anti-McCainiacs remain intent on privileging purity over victory, then America may well be in for a long-period of Democratic Party Jacobinism.

The general election's now engaged. As far as the extreme right-wing surrender hawks and racists are concerned, cut them loose I say. Let these libertarian/paleos forage in the wilderness for a few cycles, until they come to their moral senses. But red-blooded conservatives still smarting over Mitt Romney's collapse or Fred Thompson's laziness should just suck it up and get with the program.

This year represents the most important election in my lifetime. The stakes in '08 are of the highest order, between traditionalism and radicalism, and it's about time that right-wingers of all (good) stripes pull together in support of the GOP nominee. History's in the making, so let's do right by our nation's historical vision of goodness, honor, and values. I firmly believe Barack Obama is genuinely opposed to upholding that heritage.

**********

UPDATE: My good friend Stogie, in the comments, vouches for Robert Stacy McCain:

I know Robert Stacy McCain and he's no racist. I remember when the Bell Curve came out and the subject of IQ variances by race were a hot topic of discussion. Robert, who is a devout Seventh Day Adventist, refused to believe that God would cause some races to have lower IQ's than others. He also knows that I have an Asian wife and never said boo about it. The Southern Poverty Law Center should never be taken as a credible source.

Morris Dees is an extreme leftist and manufactures "racists" for his group to oppose...

My response to Stogie is here.

I have no particular beef with Robert Stacy McCain. As I noted at the post above, Robert is a friendly man, but we have political differences, and it looks now as though these include questions of race. And as always, my purpose here is to simply clarify differences of opinion among various factions on the right.

For corroboration, here's some additional information on Robert Stacy McCain's views, from Michelangelo Signorile:

Last week I quoted the scary Washington Times’ backer, the Unification Church leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon ("Satan’s harvest is America," was just one of that charmers’ comments), whose paper Al Gore two weeks ago charged was "part and parcel of the Republican Party." Some people wrote in with the rather weak but nonetheless entertainable argument that Moon funds the paper but he has a "hands-off" approach and let’s the editors do what they want....

So, let’s take a look at the views and not-so-hidden agenda of one of the actual editors of the paper, specifically, assistant national editor Robert Stacy McCain, who has a habit of posting commentary on message boards and elsewhere around the Internet:

"[T]he media now force interracial images into the public mind and a number of perfectly rational people react to these images with an altogether natural revulsion. The white person who does not mind transacting business with a black bank clerk may yet be averse to accepting the clerk as his sister-in-law, and THIS IS NOT RACISM, no matter what Madison Avenue, Hollywood and Washington tell us."

Yes, you read that right: a "natural revulsion" and "THIS IS NOT RACISM."

That was posted by Robert Stacy McCain (who has contributed to New York Press in the past) on a website called Reclaiming the South. The Washington Times editor posts a lot on the right-wing FreeRepublic.com as well, using an assumed name (BurkeCalhounDabney) but often linking back to his personal website, where there are photos of him and the rest of his large family of Seventh Day Adventists (and which identifies him by his real name and as a Washington Times editor). Editor McCain, who hails from Rome, GA, is one of those Confederate types who still hasn’t gotten over the Civil War and is trying to get the South to secede. He’s a member of a Southern secessionist organization called League of the South....

Perhaps attempting (unsuccessfully, in my opinion) to distance himself just a bit from this repugnant and totally kooky extremist stuff, McCain has written, in a piece he posted on the Web titled "Down On Dixie: The Confederate Cause and the South’s Scalawag Press," that "We may never all agree that The South Was Right!...but the least we owe our ancestors is a fair hearing and a balanced portrayal to our readers."

McCain, an editor and sometimes commentator at a paper that the gay Andrew Sullivan, the African-American Thomas Sowell and other right-leaning members of minority groups are only too happy to write columns for and take cash from, believes that Abraham Lincoln was a "war criminal" who should have been tried for "treason." (His reasoning, he writes, is that Lincoln and the Northerners were the true racists; something tells me–actually, studying his other comments and affiliations is what tells me–that that is not the real reason at all.)

In his Web postings McCain has stated that Harvard president Lawrence Summers should be "persecuted and run out of town" for supporting gay rights. He also believes that the civil rights movement directly resulted in "black criminality" because people were encouraged to break the law by getting arrested at demonstrations!

"I am disturbed…by [Jesse] Jackson’s idea that ‘breaking white folks’ rules’ was somehow inherently just," he wrote on FreeRepublic.com. "If rules were to be broken merely because they were work of white folks, then hasn’t Jackson gone a long way toward explaining the explosion of black criminality that began in the 1960s? This shows how the civil rights movement, to a great extent, represented a direct assault on tradition and law."

These viewpoints offer background for and insight into some of McCain’s pieces in The Washington Times. This past October he warned about the "Backlash Building in White America," as the headline of his article blared, and he interviewed and promoted an obscure professor who claimed "that society should combat white nationalists in part by acknowledging the legitimacy of some of their grievances" and that white nationalism is "the monster that identity politics created." (Yes, blame it all on blacks themselves!)

Signorile's essay does not include links, and I imagine he's got his own axes to grind.

Check, in any case, a separate SPLC article on Robert Stacy McCain, "Defending Dixie."

For Robert Stacy McCain's own essays in defense of Southern conservatism, see "Good-Bye, Dixie," and "The Confederate Cause in the 21st Century."

The discussion here is useful in that so far we've all agreed that such views are not acceptable for conservative discourse.

We on the right are better than the hate-addled leftists against whom we're fighting this election season. My goal is to help clear disputes among right-wing partisans, and marginalize those who continue to spew hatred.

Additional feedback and comments are solicited.

"Afro-Centric" Teacher Dismissed Over Activist Curriculum

The Los Angeles Unified School District has fired Karen Salazar, an untenured second-year English teacher at Jordan High, who was promoting student activism in her curriculum:

Students and fellow educators are rallying behind a fired Jordan High School teacher they say was sacked for encouraging political activism among her students.

About 60 students rallied Wednesday at the Watts campus, while a colleague of the fired teacher said he and 15 other instructors planned to resign or transfer to other schools to protest the dismissal of Karen Salazar, a second-year English teacher.

The dust-up has gone digital as well. Salazar backers have posted videos on the website YouTube. The postings, which have attracted thousands of hits, intersperse music, outraged protesters and interviews, as well as statements from the outspoken educator.

"You embody what it means to be a warrior-scholar, a freedom-fighting intellectual," she told students through a bullhorn in one video. "You are part of the long legacy, the strong history, of fighting back."

In another instance, Salazar rips the Los Angeles Unified School District, saying, "This school system for too long has been not only denying them human rights, basic human rights, but doing it on purpose in order to keep them subservient, to subjugate them in society."

A union official said the critique against Salazar included a statement that her teaching was too "Afro-centric." An assistant principal, in his evaluation of a particular lesson, accused Salazar of brainwashing students, according to Salazar and others.

Her course materials include "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," which is approved for students. Salazar, 25, also sprinkles in lyrics of slain rapper Tupac Shakur and the poetry of Langston Hughes.

Salazar's political science degree from UCLA includes minors in African American studies and Chicano studies. She recently completed a master's in education at UCLA.

A veteran teacher assigned to mentor Salazar took issue with the negative characterization of Salazar's teaching.

"I did not see the same things that the administrator said he saw," said Miranda Manners, who observed the same lesson during a different class period. "I saw a new, young teacher teaching her lesson according to the objectives she stated on the board. I saw her engage with her students and interacting with them in a very positive way."

As for Salazar's overall campus profile, "she is definitely a teacher who wants kids to wake up and look around them and ask questions and be motivated and be engaged."

It was the latter penchant that caused the furor, said others.

Salazar served as faculty advisor for campus student activists who wanted to pass out surveys about the school and students' education. Unlike at other schools, Principal Stephen G. Strachan forbade the distribution of surveys on campus.

Salazar said Strachan also accused her of starting a separate student activist group that demanded more culturally relevant courses as well as accurate, up-to-date student records. Some students have complained that transcript errors result in them being placed in the wrong classes.

"She's one of the teachers that needs to stay here," said junior Deysy Ruiz, 16, who estimated that at least half of her teachers had been ineffective by comparison.

Another group behind the protest was the Assn. of Raza Educators, which includes Santee Education Complex teachers who advocated successfully for the removal of a principal at that high school.

Photo Credit: "Jordan High School teacher Karen Salazar, center, is greeted with cheers during an after-school rally to protest her contract not being renewed," Los Angeles Times.

Here's Jordan's educational statistics for English Language and Math Achievement:

Schoolwide or LEA-wide ELA Percent of students scoring Proficient or Above: 12.9%

Here:	13%
State average from 1015 schools:	50%

Schoolwide Math Percent of students scoring Proficient or Above: 10.8%

Here:	11%
State average from 1024 schools:	45%

ELA Percent Proficient or Above African American: 5.3% (5 proficient out of 94)

Here:	5%
State average from 514 schools:	41%

Math Percent of students scoring Proficient or Above African American: 3.2% (3 proficient out of 94)

David Starr Jordan Senior High:	3%
State average from 511 schools:	31%

ELA Percent of students scoring Proficient or Above Hispanic: 14.7% (59 proficient out of 401)

Here:	15%
State average from 887 schools:	40%

Math Percent of students scoring Proficient or Above Hispanic: 12.5% (52 proficient out of 415)

Here:	13%
State average from 888 schools:	36%

ELA Percent of students scoring Proficient or Above Socioeconomic Disadvantaged: 13.7% (60 proficient out of 438)

Here:	14%
State average from 913 schools:	38%

Math Percent of students scoring Proficient or Above Socioeconomic Disadvantaged: 11.3% (50 proficient out of 444)

Here:	11%
State average from 920 schools:	36%

ELA Percent of students scoring Proficient or Above English Learner: 11.3% (39 proficient out of 346)

Here:	11%
State average from 776 schools:	28%

Math Percent of students scoring Proficient or Above English Learner: 10.3% (37 proficient out of 359)

David Starr Jordan Senior High:	10%
State average from 776 schools:	33%

ELA Percent of students scoring Proficient or Above Students with Disabilities: 1.9% (1 proficient out of 53)

David Starr Jordan Senior High:	2%
State average from 724 schools:	17%

Math Percent of Students with Disabilities scoring Proficient or Above: 1.5% (1 proficient out of 65)

Here:	2%
State average from 731 schools:	15%

Graduation Rate for 2006, Class of 2004-05: 51.9%

Graduation Rate for 2005, Class of 2003-04: 53.5%

ELA 2006 Percent Proficient Target: 22.3%
Math 2006 Percent Proficient Target: 20.9%
Number of Scores included in the 2006 Academic Performance Index (API) : 1414

Barely half of Jordan's students graduate. Perhaps these folks need less activism and more academics.

Arguing Freedom of Speech: American Enlightenment in Perspective

As noted, I've only followed Mark Steyn's legal case before Canada's Human Right Commission intermittently (here and here).

I do check Blazing Cat Fur for updates occassionally, but today's New York Times has a great background piece for the uninitiated, "Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech:"

A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article’s tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal.

Things are different here. The magazine is on trial.

Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress say the magazine, Maclean’s, Canada’s leading newsweekly, violated a provincial hate speech law by stirring up hatred against Muslims. They say the magazine should be forbidden from saying similar things, forced to publish a rebuttal and made to compensate Muslims for injuring their “dignity, feelings and self-respect.”

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, which held five days of hearings on those questions here last week, will soon rule on whether Maclean’s violated the law. As spectators lined up for the afternoon session last week, an argument broke out.

“It’s hate speech!” yelled one man.

“It’s free speech!” yelled another.

In the United States, that debate has been settled. Under the First Amendment, newspapers and magazines can say what they like about minorities and religions — even false, provocative or hateful things — without legal consequence.

The Maclean’s article, “The Future Belongs to Islam,” was an excerpt from a book by Mark Steyn called “America Alone” (Regnery, 2006). The title was fitting: The United States, in its treatment of hate speech, as in so many other areas of the law, takes a distinctive legal path.

“In much of the developed world, one uses racial epithets at one’s legal peril, one displays Nazi regalia and the other trappings of ethnic hatred at significant legal risk, and one urges discrimination against religious minorities under threat of fine or imprisonment,” Frederick Schauer, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, wrote in a recent essay called “The Exceptional First Amendment.”

“But in the United States,” Professor Schauer continued, “all such speech remains constitutionally protected.”

Canada, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and India all have laws or have signed international conventions banning hate speech. Israel and France forbid the sale of Nazi items like swastikas and flags. It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Canada, Germany and France.

Earlier this month, the actress Brigitte Bardot, an animal rights activist, was fined $23,000 in France for provoking racial hatred by criticizing a Muslim ceremony involving the slaughter of sheep.

By contrast, American courts would not stop a planned march by the American Nazi Party in Skokie, Ill., in 1977, though a march would have been deeply distressing to the many Holocaust survivors there.

Six years later, a state court judge in New York dismissed a libel case brought by several Puerto Rican groups against a business executive who had called food stamps “basically a Puerto Rican program.” The First Amendment, Justice Eve M. Preminger wrote, does not allow even false statements about racial or ethnic groups to be suppressed or punished just because they may increase “the general level of prejudice.”

Some prominent legal scholars say the United States should reconsider its position on hate speech.

“It is not clear to me that the Europeans are mistaken,” Jeremy Waldron, a legal philosopher, wrote in The New York Review of Books last month, “when they say that a liberal democracy must take affirmative responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against certain forms of vicious attack.”

Professor Waldron was reviewing “Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment” by Anthony Lewis, the former New York Times columnist. Mr. Lewis has been critical of efforts to use the law to limit hate speech.

But even Mr. Lewis, a liberal, wrote in his book that he was inclined to relax some of the most stringent First Amendment protections “in an age when words have inspired acts of mass murder and terrorism.” In particular, he called for a re-examination of the Supreme Court’s insistence that there is only one justification for making incitement a criminal offense: the likelihood of imminent violence.

The imminence requirement sets a high hurdle. Mere advocacy of violence, terrorism or the overthrow of the government is not enough; the words must be meant to and be likely to produce violence or lawlessness right away. A fiery speech urging an angry mob to immediately assault a black man in its midst probably qualifies as incitement under the First Amendment. A magazine article — or any publication — intended to stir up racial hatred surely does not.

Mr. Lewis wrote that there was “genuinely dangerous” speech that did not meet the imminence requirement.

“I think we should be able to punish speech that urges terrorist violence to an audience, some of whose members are ready to act on the urging,” Mr. Lewis wrote. “That is imminence enough.”

Harvey A. Silverglate, a civil liberties lawyer in Cambridge, Mass., disagreed. “When times are tough,” he said, “there seems to be a tendency to say there is too much freedom.”

Note something about this story: In the U.S., those arguing for resrictions on speech are on the left- folks who apparentlly have less confidence that their ideas will prevail in the marketplace of ideas.

Having said that, I do think that speech that constitutes express incitement to killing should not be constitutionally protected, and I've debated that question recently with regards to Texas Fred's constant advocacy of murdering undocumented Mexican migrants as they cross the border into the United States. Thus, one needs to be careful with the "imminence standard," basically looking for the shift from the mere expression of an idea to express advocacy and operational planning.

In any case, here's Steyn's piece:

"The Future Belongs to Islam."

Unscientific Support for Impeachment, but Unhinged Anyway

Representative Dennis Kucinich sought to introduce 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush today, although House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scuttled the bid, "saying such a move was unlikely to succeed and would be divisive."

Still, you've got to love this from LGF:

Never mind that there is absolutely no legal basis for even asking the question: Live Vote: Should Bush be impeached? - Politics- msnbc.com:

This is all leading up to war crimes trials for the Bush administration, if Obama is elected.

You don't say?

See my earlier entry, "In Power, Obama May Seek War Crimes Tribunals."

Al Qaeda in Iraq Struggling to Stay Relevant

Michael Ware is CNN's journalistic Cassandra reporting from the Middle East, which is why his report that al Qaeda in Iraq is seriously degraded should be given careful consideration: "Papers Give Peek Inside al Qaeda in Iraq":

Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll, the American military's spokesman in Baghdad, says the document trove [of al Qaeda's security prince for Anbar province, a man referred to in secret correspondence as Faris Abu Azzam] is unique, "a kind of comprehensive snapshot" of al-Qaeda during its peak.

"It reveals," Driscoll said, "first of all, a pretty robust command and control system, if you will. I was kind of surprised when I saw the degree of documentation for everything -- pay records, those kind of things -- and that [al Qaeda in Iraq] was obviously a well-established network."

That network is now under enormous stress, primarily from the more than 100,000 nationalist insurgents who formed the Awakening Council militias and initiated an extremely effective assassination program against al Qaeda, but also from recent U.S. and Iraqi government strikes into their strongholds.

As a result, says Lt. Col. Tim Albers, the coalition's director of military intelligence for Baghdad, "al Qaeda in Iraq is fighting to stay relevant."

While on the defensive, the files indicate the frightening degree of al Qaeda's murderous residual operations:

According to the internal al Qaeda correspondence in the files, Iraqis have taken to, and effectively run, al Qaeda in Iraq. Foreign fighters' roles seem mostly relegated to the canon fodder of suicide attacks.

Though the upper tiers of the organization are still dominated by non-Iraqis, in Anbar, at least, all the princes and brigade and battalion commanders are homegrown.

"Correct. They're all Iraqis," Abu Saif said. "In my house [one time], there were about 18 Arab fighters under Iraqi commander Omar Hadid, mercy of God upon him, and the [foreigners] did not object, they just did their duty."

That Iraqification of the network is what perhaps enabled al Qaeda to foresee its demise years before the Americans did.

Documents from 2005 and 2006 show that top-ranking leaders feared the imposition of strict religious law and brutal tactics were turning their popular support base against them.

One memorandum from three years ago warned executions of traitors and sinners condemned by religious courts "were being carried out in the wrong way, in a semi-public way, so a lot of families are threatening revenge, and this is now a dangerous intelligence situation."

That awareness led al Qaeda to start killing tribesmen and nationalist insurgents wherever they began to rally against it, long before America ever realized that it had potential allies to turn to.

Yet those same practices that accelerated al Qaeda in Iraq's undoing were breathtakingly documented.

In a vein similar to the Khmer Rouge's grisly accounting of its torture victims, within the files of one al Qaeda headquarters in Anbar alone was a library of 80 execution videos, mostly beheadings, none of which had been distributed or released on the Internet. And all were filmed after al Qaeda in Iraq ended its policy of broadcasting such horrors.

So why keep filming? According to former member Abu Saif and the senior U.S. intelligence analyst, to verify the deaths to al Qaeda superiors and to justify continued funding and support.

The videos also bear insight into al Qaeda's media units. Raw video among the catalog of beheadings shows how al Qaeda's editing skills hide not just its members' faces (caught in candid moments on the un-edited films) but also their failures.

When three Russian diplomats were kidnapped and killed in June 2006, a well-polished propaganda piece was released. It showed two diplomats being gruesomely beheaded, and yet the third diplomat was shot with a pistol, in a different location. The full video of the slayings answers why.

Though bound and blindfolded, the third diplomat struggled so defiantly that his ailing executioners could not draw their knife across his throat. In the horrific and chaotic scenes, the faces of his killer and the cameraman are seen.

And those scenes, like the intricacy of the prince of Anbar's planning and internal analysis of Operation Desert Shield, reveal an al Qaeda in Iraq that the world still barely knows.

Perhaps this residual terrorist activity explains some of the worries among Iraqi parliamentarians, who suggest that a rapid U.S. withdrawal would cause "chaos and anarchy" in the country.

Measly Poll Bounce for Obama Upon Securing Nomination

Jackie Calmes provides a balanced analysis of the Wall Street Journal's new poll finding Barack Obama with a six-point lead against John McCain in a general election matchup:

Democrat Barack Obama begins his presidential race against Republican John McCain with a lead in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, but not so great an edge as might be expected given the gale-force political headwinds against Sen. McCain's party.

Sen. Obama leads Sen. McCain by 47% to 41%, a spread that is twice the edge he had in the previous poll in late April . The poll's margin of error is 3.1 percentage points. Still, that lead is significantly smaller than Democrats' 16-point advantage, 51% to 35%, when voters are asked which party they want to win the White House, without candidates' names.

The record unpopularity of President Bush and the Republican Party, combined with economic worries among voters and a broad desire for change, would normally make this "the single best year for an Obama-type candidacy, and the single worst year for a McCain-type candidacy," said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducts the Journal/NBC poll with Republican Neil Newhouse.

But Sen. Obama continues to do poorly among white-male voters, according to the poll. More ominous is his weakness among white women, particularly suburbanites, who generally are open to Democratic candidates and whose votes could be decisive.

Memeorandum highlights additional polls out today, and of particular interest is this tidbit from Mark Murray's write-up of the WSJ data:

Looking at the issues that will drive the presidential race, respondents in the poll cite job creation/economic growth and the Iraq war as the top priorities for the federal government to address.

That is, the economy and Iraq are the top issues going forward, and I would argue that McCain will have a much better time making inroads with insecure econonomic voters than Obama will have in convincing Americans that we're losing the war. The public's conflicted on the economy, for example, as Market Watch reports:

While voters say we want government to act to boost the economy, a solid majority of us say the best thing government can do is to get out of the way by reducing regulations and taxes, just like McCain says.

Other recent polls continue to demonstrate no public demand for an immediate pullout, and McCain will be able to paint Obama as seeking to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as the Illinios Senator continues to pander to the antiwar base with calls for a disastrously precipitous withdrawal.

Don't forget that WSJ's survey has a 3.1 margin of error, which is another reason Democrats should call home to momma with the results.

Praise Allah! Multiple Deceptions on Obama's Afro-Muslim Heritage

Melanie Phillips is on a roll. Recall her outstanding entry yesterday in defense of Israel and Western civilization.

Well, Phillips has another great post today, where she begins with Barack Obama's anti-Semitic community blogs (which are posted at the official campaign website), then hits her stride on Obama subterranean religious deceptions and obfuscations: "Obama and the Giant Blogosphere Conspiracy":

Today’s Guardian reports that Barack Obama is setting up an entire unit to combat ‘virulent rumours’ about him on the internet. Doubtless one of the blogs in the sights of team Obama is Little Green Footballs, which in the last few days has been excavating examples of wildly anti-Jewish and anti-American prejudice and conspiracy theories posted up by fans on Obama’s own website. LGF is making hay with the fact that the Obamanables are belatedly taking (some of) this stuff down from the site while simultaneously insisting that its presence is nothing to do with them because the website has no moderators. Yeah, right.

The Guardian quotes the director of some monitoring outfit as saying that the blogosphere’s smears about Obama are particularly vicious.

He added that one of the most persistent is that Obama, a Christian, is ‘some kind of Muslim Manchurian candidate, planted by Islamic fundamentalists to betray the country and it is very widespread’.

Well now. Crazed Jew-hating American-loathing moonbats posting comments on Obama’s website are one thing. But the fact is that there are serious and troubling questions about Obama’s ancestry and associations and what he himself has said about them, which have surfaced in the blogosphere but have been almost wholly ignored by the mainstream media in its collective Obamanic swoon.

First is his childhood background. Last November, his campaign website carried a statement with the headline:

Barack Obama Is Not and Has Never Been a Muslim

followed by

Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian.

Obama has also said:

I've always been a Christian

and

I've never practised Islam.

But none of this is true. As is explored in detail on Daniel Pipes’s website, Obama was enrolled at his primary schools in Indonesia as a Muslim; he attended the mosque during that period; his friends from that time testify that he was a devout Muslim boy. A former teacher at one of these schools, Tine Hahiyary, remembers a young Obama who was quite religious and actively took part in ‘mengaji’ classes which teach how to read the Koran in Arabic. The blogger from Indonesia who reported this commented:

‘Mengagi’ is a word and a term that is accorded the highest value and status in the mindset of fundamentalist societies here in Southeast Asia. To put it quite simply, "mengaji classes" are not something that a non practicing or so-called moderate Muslim family would ever send their child to... The fact that Obama had attended mengaji classes is well known in Indonesia and has left many there wondering just when Obama is going to come out of the closet.

His father was a Muslim, as was his stepfather. His grandfather was a Muslim convert. His wider family appear to have been largely devout Muslims. Yes, we only know about Obama’s early years as a Muslim; and yes, twenty years ago he became a Christian. The issue, however, is why he has been less than candid about his early background and his family. Indeed, he appears to have actively deceived the public about it. That is why the blogosphere is so exercised about it.

Now here’s another curious thing. Much has been made of his membership of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago whose former pastor and his long-standing mentor, Jeremiah Wright, Obama was forced finally to renounce on account of his obnoxious views (although he has signally failed unequivocally to denounce those views themselves and the no less obnoxious philosophy of the Trinity United black power church). But according to a passing reference in a profile in The New Republic last year, Pastor Wright was himself a Muslim convert to Christianity. He seems to have moved from being a Muslim black power fanatic to a Christian black power fanatic – which might go some way to explaining his close affinity to the Muslim black power ideologue Louis Farrakhan.

Then there is also Obama’s troubling support for the Kenyan opposition leader -- and his cousin -- Raila Odinga, the leader of the violent uprising a few months ago against the newly elected Kenyan government and who signed a memorandum of understanding with Kenyan Muslims to turn Kenya into an Islamic state governed by sharia law. At the time, the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya released a statement in which church leaders said Odinga

comes across as a presumptive Muslim president bent on forcing Islamic law, religion and culture down the throats of the Kenyan people in total disregard of the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of freedom of worship and equal protection of the law for all Kenyans.

As the Atlas Shrugs site reported, Obama actually went to Kenya in 2006 and spoke at rallies in support of Odinga, causing the Kenyan government to denounce him as ‘Raila’s stooge’. Why was Obama supporting such a person? Why has no-one bothered to find out??

Daniel Pipes makes another highly significant point about Obama’s Muslim background. He points out that, in the eyes of the Muslim world, Obama remains a Muslim regardless of what religion he now professes because he was born to a Muslim father. By his own admission (of Christianity) therefore, he is a Muslim apostate – a status regarded by the Muslim world as a sin to be punished by death. Pipes thinks this would put his life in danger and undermine his initiatives towards the Muslim world. But surely the more significant point is that much of that Muslim world has actually embraced him. Indeed the Muslim Brothers of Hamas – who most certainly would regard any Muslim apostate as someone to be eliminated – actually came out publicly in support of him (until Obama blotted his copybook by professing undying support for Israel).

We are entitled therefore to ask whether the Muslim world supports him because it believes he is still a Muslim. We are entitled to ask precisely when he stopped being a Muslim, and why. Did Obama embrace Christianity as a tactical manoeuvre to get himself elected? Why indeed has he dissembled about his family background if not for that end?

These multiple known deceptions by someone who may become President of the United States are deeply alarming. The concealment is the issue. To dismiss such concerns and the related questions they provoke as a smear campaign is to attempt to browbeat into silence those who legitimately raise them and require urgent answers as a matter of the most acute public interest.

Update: In this entry I originally included the following quote from the American Expatriate in Indonesia blog quoted above: 'Another of Obama’s former classmates, Emirsyah Satar, now CEO of Garuda Indonesia, has been quoted as saying: At that time, he was quite religious in Islam but after marrying Michelle, he changed his religion.' It has been pointed out to me that comments posted on that blog claimed that this was a mistranslation, and that the quote attributed to Satar was written instead by the author of the article.

See also, African Connection? Questions of Character Surround Barack Obama."

Related: "The Obama Campaign Deleted my Blog Post!"

Michelle Obama is Fair Game in Campaign '08

Michelle Obama is one of the most significant reasons Americans should oppose the election of Barack Obama to the presidency.

The role of the first lady is so multi-faceted, from the official West-Wing office with appointments, policy-advocacy, scheduling, and Secret Service, to the intimite late-evening pillow-slip political advice, the president's wife is an integral part of the direction and public image of any presidential administration.

I personally cringe at the thought of Michelle Obama travelling the country advocating particular policy position, meeting people around the country as a key spokeswoman for her husband's administration, knowing that she's never been proud of this country, and knowing that she's on record as supporting theories of active black separation from the American mainstream.

But these are Michelle Obama's positions - America's an unmitigated racist society, from which black Americans should fear for being sucked into a hegemonic white culture, thus losing a black identity that's apparently of tremendous worth as a source of grievance and reparation.

These issues matter a great deal in the race for the White House, because they touch on the ceremonial and symbolic position of the presidency as the repository of American tradition and values. Indeed, Michelle Obama's cultural oppositionalism - as a salient proxy for Obamist ideological foundations - may be one of the most important flashpoints in the election's partisan divide.

See Robin Abcarian, for example:

They loved to hate Hillary Rodham Clinton. They loved to hate Teresa Heinz Kerry. And now, it appears, conservative voices are energetically taking on Michelle Obama.
"Mrs. Grievance" bellowed the cover of a recent National Review, which featured a photo of a fierce-looking Obama. The magazine's online edition titled an essay about her stump speech "America's Unhappiest Millionaire."

Michelle Malkin, the popular conservative blogger, called her "Obama's bitter half."

Even the relatively liberal online magazine Slate piled on. In a piece subtitled "Is Michelle Obama responsible for the Jeremiah Wright fiasco?" the contrarian Christopher Hitchens blamed her for her husband's pastor troubles since she was a member of the church first.

The would-be first lady does not make pronouncements about policy and has insisted that her priority in the White House would be her two young daughters. But Obama has an earthy sense of humor that sometimes gets her in trouble. And in speeches, she shares her belief that the country's spirit is broken and in need of repair -- by her husband, whom she often describes as "special."

It was an unscripted remark as she spoke in February about the enthusiastic response to his message of hope that set off conservatives: "And let me tell you something," she told a Wisconsin crowd. "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country."

The Obama campaign clarified her remarks right away: "What she meant is that she's really proud at this moment because for the first time in a long time, thousands of Americans who've never participated in politics before are coming out in record numbers to build a grass-roots movement for change."

But conservatives pressed the attack. John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, wrote that she had inadvertently revealed "the pseudo-messianic nature of the Obama candidacy."

The issue has shown no signs of going away....

Michelle Obama's antagonists ignore her when she says: "We have overcome so much in this country: racism, sexism, civil wars." Instead, they focus on: "Life for regular folks has gotten worse over the course of my lifetime." Or: "Our souls are broken. . . . The problem is us." Or: "We're too cynical. And we are still a nation that is too mean -- just downright mean to one another. We don't talk to each other in civil tones."

In the current climate -- where sound bites are recycled endlessly and context is ignored in favor of impact -- her more dour pronouncements have paved the way for brutal critiques.

"This is a huge debate among Republicans," said Malkin, who noted that until Obama's "proud" remark, "she was the new, glamorous Jackie O, and most stories focused on her pearls and wardrobe." But, Malkin added, "from what I've seen, despite her husband's admonition to lay off of her, she's not stopping what she's doing, and I don't think the rest of us should ignore her and treat her with kid gloves."

Actually, Michelle Obama is still being feted in the left-wing press as the new Jackie O.

Sunday's New York Times fashion page boasted that Michelle Obama "dresses to win":

Unlikely as it seems, Michelle Obama, the corporate lawyer with a big education, a bigger résumé and a history of high earnings, can sometimes appear to be tempering her own strong personality with a modernized version of another era’s ladylike clothes....

[According to] Hamish Bowles, the Vogue editor who assembled the clothes for the Jacqueline Kennedy show at the Met in 2001, the power of clothes “that look dramatic in newspapers and photographs” can boost a politician’s image, as Mrs. Kennedy demonstrated throughout her husband’s campaign and presidency.

“As Jackie did, the way Mrs. Obama presents herself sends out messages that are subliminal and sometimes overt,” Mr. Bowles said. This is not merely a matter of conjuring Camelot with a updated version of an iconic Kenneth coiffure. Hair matters, as anyone knows who has tracked the unending styling travails of a woman once known as “Hairband Hillary.”

WHILE Mrs. Kennedy relied on a carefully assembled coterie of wealthy women — Jayne Wrightsman, Bunny Mellon, Nicole Alphand— to advise her on matters of style, Michelle Obama apparently pulls off the feat of getting dressed on her own.

So here we have an early, hopped-up glamor comparison between Michelle Obama - who is on record as resisting the pull of a dominant white social-political hiearchy - being compared breathlessly to the 20th-century's most glamorous first lady, Jackie O, who few people would identify as harboring anti-American animosities or championing moral diatribes against the nation, such as "Our souls are broken..."

Save such style comparisons for someone more worthy. Let's let Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis rest in peace. Michelle Obama will never meet the elegance, rectitude, or style of the American Camelot's first lady.

Jim Webb and Neo-Confederate Ideology

As some readers may recall, I've denounced neo-confederate hate commenters at this blog on a couple of occassions (sample comments are here).

I'll note, though, it's a tricky subject dealing with affinity for the values of the Old South. If one respects Southern tradition, does that automatically make them bigoted? I don't think so, although some organizations - like the League of the South - have a history of supporting racist oppression, so it does matter where one positions themselves along the spectrum.

My blog buddy Stogie's family background dates back to the Confederacy, but you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who speaks out so consisently and eloquently against racism and anti-Semitism. Values of duty, honor, and pride of heritage are respectable sentiments, but in our age of extreme racial sensitivity, it must be difficult showing historical affinity for the patrician conservativism of the former plantation states.

I note all of this because Senator Jim Webb, who's name's being thrown around as a possible Barack Obama V.P., is apparently a philo-Confederate, as reported by the Politico:

Barack Obama’s vice presidential vetting team will undoubtedly run across some quirky and potentially troublesome issues as it goes about the business of scouring the backgrounds of possible running mates. But it’s unlikely they’ll find one so curious as Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb’s affinity for the cause of the Confederacy.

Webb is no mere student of the Civil War era. He’s an author, too, and he’s left a trail of writings and statements about one of the rawest and most sensitive topics in American history.

He has suggested many times that while the Confederacy is a symbol to many of the racist legacy of slavery and segregation, for others it simply reflects Southern pride. In a June 1990 speech in front of the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, posted on his personal website, he lauded the rebels’ “gallantry,” which he said “is still misunderstood by most Americans.”

Webb, a descendant of Confederate officers, also voiced sympathy for the notion of state sovereignty as it was understood in the early 1860s, and seemed to suggest that states were justified in trying to secede.

“Most Southern soldiers viewed the driving issue to be sovereignty rather than slavery,” he said. “Love of the Union was palpably stronger in the South than in the North before the war — just as overt patriotism is today — but it was tempered by a strong belief that state sovereignty existed prior to the Constitution and that it had never been surrendered....”

There’s nothing scandalous in the paper trail, nothing that on its face would disqualify Webb from consideration for national office. Yet it veers into perilous waters since the slightest sign of support or statement of understanding of the Confederate cause has the potential to alienate African-Americans who are acutely sensitive to the topic.
Ron Walters, director of the African American Leadership Center at the University of Maryland and a professor of political science there, said Webb’s past writings and comments on the Confederacy could dampen enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket, should he appear on it.
“Unless he is able to explain it, it would raise some questions,” Walters said.

Edward H. Sebesta, co-author of the forthcoming “Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction” (University of Texas Press), said Webb’s views express an unhealthy regard for a political system that propped up and defended slavery.

His book, in fact, will cite Webb as an example of the mainstreaming of neo-Confederacy ideas into politics, said Sebesta, a widely cited independent historical researcher and author of the Anti-Neo-Confederate blog.

Read the whole thing.

What's difficult is for Southern politicians to separate themselves from caricatures of ideological reaction. Webb himself argued previously that woman should not serve in the military in combat positions, so perhaps he's got some work to do in political correctness.

Note that Webb won his seat to the Senate by defeating George Allen for the Virginia Senate Seat in 2006. Allen himself got in hot water for his alleged racial insensitivity, so the issue looks to be a third-rail dilemma for anyone running below the Mason-Dixon line - and it's an especially interesting question for Democrats, who are supposed to be the paragons of racial sensitivity, but are in fact just the opposite, mired as they are in some of the most embarassing race-baiting imaginable.

Comments are welcome, but keep them clean. I denounce racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry.

**********
UPDATE: Outside the Beltway has also posted on the Politico story, and this paragraph adds some context:

Slavery was the key issue absent which the Civil War wouldn’t have been fought and the resurgence of the Confederate battle flag in the 1960s was mostly about segregationist defiance. It’s easy to understand, therefore, why expressing pro-Confederate sympathies is politically problematic. But Webb’s admiration for the against-all-odds fighting spirit of his ancestors, most of whom fought for reasons having nothing to do with slavery or, frankly, political considerations of any sort, is understandable, too. In a complex world, one can simultaneously admire Robert E. Lee’s character, J.E.B. Stuart’s generalship, and the courage of those who charged up Little Round Top while damning the institution of slavery.

That sounds like a pretty fair way to place reverence for Southern tradition and military grandeur in perspective.

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.