Epitaph for Imperialism? Or, the Death of President Bush Foretold

Today's big foreign policy spin is the report that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has apparently backed Barack Obama's amorphous troop withdrawal plan for Iraq.

There's a malevolently otherworldly reaction to this around the leftosphere, where many appear to suggest that the success of the surge somehow validates the radical left-wing surrender agenda of the Democratic Party and the netroots base. Indeed, the overall response is positively Kafkaesque.

"The Survivor" by George Grosz 1944, Private Collection

In truth, Barack Obama has been consistently wrong on Iraq (see Peter Wehner's devastating portrait of Obama's flailing Iraq policy), especially throughout 2007.

Now, as Jennifer Rubin points out, Obama, in a statement, has seized on Maliki's agreement to a "horizon" framework as an endorsement of the radical meme that Iraq's not the frontline in the war on terror:

Now, instead of vague illusions to a ‘general time horizon,’ it’s time to pressure Iraq’s leaders to reach the political accommodation necessary for long-term stability, and to refocus on strengthening our military and finishing the fight in Afghanistan.

Obama's playing the Afghan card, pandering to the surrender hordes, but as Christopher Hitchens has pointed out, if Americans would have quit Iraq according to the pullout demands of the antiwar left, the Iraqis would now be under al Qaeda's totalitarian thumb, and the Islamists would have claimed a victory over the Great Satan:

Bear this in mind next time you hear any easy talk about "the hunt for the real enemy" or any loose babble that suggests that we can only confront our foes in one place at a time.

But there's more afoot today than some kind of political game-changer seen in Maliki's statement. Some on the left are arguing that the entire foreign policy debate over the last six-years is hereby decided in favor of the antiwar nihilists, game, set, and match.

Going even further is Spencer Ackerman, whose unhinged ravings fall categorically beyond the pale of reasonable partisan foreign policy debate:

The Iraq war is and has always been an obscenity, a filthy lie born of avarice and lust for power masquerading as virtue. This is what imperialism looks like. But the age of empire is over. The same hubris that led Bush into the Iraq disaster led him to miscalculate, again and again, over how to entrench it. But now he is impotent, unable to impose his will, and the nakedness of his attempted imposition has led the American and the Iraqi peoples to wake up and end his nightmare. May his war-crimes prosecutor be Iraqi; may his judge be American; and may he die in the Hague.

This is not the talk of someone's who's concerned about the appropriate role of American power in the world, or the proper balance between force and statecraft.

No, Ackerman demonizes the entire thrust of Bush administration foreign policy, and his concluding statement would see President Bush subject to an international authority above American law, prosecuted for alleged crimes against humanity, convicted at the Hague's star chamber, and executed like some murderous Third World tyrant - like, say, Saddam Hussein.

This is the highest stage of moral relativist anti-Americanism, topped-off with a flourish of abject secular demonology.

Can it be any wonder that large numbers of Americans have serious concerns - even fears - for the future of this country under a Barack Obama administration?

See also, Allahpundit, "Maliki: Obama’s 16-Month Timetable Sounds Good; Update: Spiegel Changes Quote."

Image Credit: All Things Beautiful, "The Big Push - To Take America Down A Peg Or Two."

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UPDATE! Welcome Protein Wisdom readers!

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UPDATE II: CNN reports that Nuri al-Maliki has renounced Spiegel's original story, where he was quoted as in agreement with Barack Obama on a 16-month troop withdrawal:

A German magazine quoted Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki as saying that he backed a proposal by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months.

"U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months," he said in an interview with Der Spiegel that was released Saturday.

"That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes," he said.

But a spokesman for al-Maliki said his remarks "were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately."

I wonder, then, if we're not really at the end of imperialism.

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UPDATE III: Welcome Just One Minute readers!

Kent State's Radical Academic Jihadist

FrontPageMag has posted the Discover the Networks listing for Professor Julio Pino, of the Department of History at Kent State University.

Pino's department page lists this biographical information:

Julio Cèsar Pino is Associate Professor of History at Kent State University, Ohio, specializing in Latin American History. He received his Ph.d in History from the University of California at Los Angeles. His current courses include "Comparative Latin American Revolutions.", “Afro-Latin America” and “History of Women in Latin America" and In 1997 he published Family and Favela: the Reproduction of Poverty in Rio de Janeiro (Greenwood Press), dealing with household organization and the feminization of poverty in the Rio shantytowns...

This academic background sounds fairly straightforward, given the "social movements" emphasis in contemporary historical studies. However, Pino's apparently a convert to Islam and he's alleged to self-identify as the "most dangerous Muslim in America."

Here's this from Discover the Networks:

Disillusioned with Catholicism and Christianity generally, Pino in 2000 became a Muslim after reading The Qur’an on a plane ride. “All religions claim they are more than just a religion but a complete way of life, but only in Islam is this vow fulfilled,” he says....

In an April 2002 guest column for the Kent State campus newspaper, Pino penned an effusive tribute to Ayat al-Akras, a teenage Palestinian suicide bomber who had murdered two Israelis at a Jerusalem supermarket on March 29. In that piece -- titled “Singing out Prayer for a Youth Martyr” -- Pino insisted that Akras was no terrorist but had “died a martyr’s death … in occupied Jerusalem, Palestine.” Pino also derided President Bush as a “numbskull,” and called for boycotts of all Israeli and American products.

In 2005 Pino wrote another controversial letter to his campus newspaper, this time lauding University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill for his “righteous obsession with European and American genocide and terrorism against peoples of color all over the world, from 1492 to 2001.” Pino also claimed that during the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy had planned a “genocide against the Cuban people”; that President Bill Clinton had killed “more than 500,000 Iraqi children” via sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq; and that “cocaine cowboy” George W. Bush had “added an extra 100,000 corpses to the pile of brown colored [Iraqi] corpses.” Referring to his students at Kent State as his "little jihadists" and his “beloved Taliban,” Pino made it clear that he sought to indoctrinate, not merely educate, the young men and women in his classes. He concluded that “[i]n an America rapidly descending toward Christian fascism, we need more Ward Churchills.”

Pino says that his worldview is animated by his “unfulfilled need to bring social justice to the world.” In the classes he teaches at Kent State, he compels his students to approach the study of Latin American history from the perspective of leftist “Third World” politics, which he identifies with such revolutionaries as Fidel Castro and the communist Sandinista regimes of Central America. Pino blames the political upheavals of Central America wholly on the “daily” butchery of “American-trained death-squads,” and praises the Sandinistas for having “succeeded in building a society free of class exploitation and gender inequality.”

There's more at the link. See also Pino's own essay, "Born in the Fist of the Revolution: A Cuban Professor's Journey to Allah."

Pino's apparently been at the center of campus controversies at Kent State, for example, when the chair of the department was removed from the chairmanship for granting Pino academic leave for travel to the Middle East (an academic pilgrimage for jihad?).

Some of Pino's students apparently are not that happy with the professor's teaching. The first entry at Pino's RateMyProfessors link say, "makes Noam Chomsky look patriotic..."

That's not the best endorsement of radical teaching, athough maybe some leftist blog outfits can give Pino a gig if things don't work out at Kent State.

The Postmodern Culture of Animal Rights Activism

Last week, in "Human Rights for Animals?", I suggested that postmodern ideology explains the push in Europe to grant human rights to non-humans.

It turns out that Wesley Smith, at the Weekly Standard, has picked up on Spain's bid to grant rights to apes, seeing this as a threat to Western civilization's Judeo-Christian moral philosophy:

Specifically, by including animals in the "community of equals" and in effect declaring apes to be persons, the Great Ape Project would break the spine of Judeo-Christian moral philosophy, which holds that humans enjoy equal and incalculable moral worth, regardless of our respective capacities, age, and state of health. Once man is demoted to merely another animal in the forest, universal human rights will have to be tossed out and new criteria devised to determine which human/animal lives matter and which individuals can be treated like, well, animals.

Note some additional thoughts on the postmodern, relativistic mindset:

We are witnessing a broad based backlash against reason in our culture. This backlash is widely promoted in contemporary higher education. The argument is that every time somebody claims to be in possession of the truth (especially religious truth), it ends up repressing people. So its best to make no claims to truth at all.

Rejecting objective truth is the cornerstone of postmodernism. In essence, postmodern ideology declares an end to all ideology and all claims to truth. How has this seemingly anti intellectual outlook gained such wide acceptance in history's most advanced civilization? That question requires us to understand how postmodernists conceive the past three hundred years of western history.

Postmodernism abandons modernism, the humanist philosophy of the European Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinking is based on the authority of French philosopher Rene Descartes' autonomous man--the one who starts from his own thought ("I think, therefore I am") and builds his world view systematically from reason alone. Naively, postmodernists charge, modernists assumed that the mind was a "mirror of nature," meaning that our perceptions of reality actually correspond to the way the world is. From this presumption, modernists built a culture that exalted technological achievement and mastery over the natural order. Expansion-minded capitalism and liberal democracy, outgrowths of modernist autonomous individualism, subjugated the earth to the eurocentric, male dominated paradigm.

But modernism planted the seeds of its own undoing. As arrogant, autonomous modernists conquered the globe and subjugated nature in the name of progress, oppressed and marginalized people have responded. "Progress toward what?" they cry. Postmodernists say that the idols of autonomous reason and technological proliferation have brought the modern age to the brink of disaster. The "myth of progress" ends up in a nightmare of violence, both for marginalized people and for the earth.

Enter postmodernism. Postmodernism rejects modernism's autonomous individualism and all that follows from it. Rather than seeing humanity as an ocean of individuals, postmodernists think of humans as "social constructs." We do not exist or think independently of the community with which we identify. So we can't have independent or autonomous access to reality. All of our thinking is contextual. Rather than conceiving the mind as a mirror of nature, postmodernists argue that we view reality through the lens of culture. Consequently, postmodernists reject the possibility of objective truth. Reality itself turns out to be a "social construct" or paradigm. In the place of objective truth and what postmodernists call "metanarratives" (comprehensive world views), we find "local narratives," or stories about reality that "work" for particular communities--but have no validity beyond that community. Indeed, postmodernists reject the whole language of truth and reality in favor of literary terms like narrative and story. It's all about interpretation, not about what's real or true.

Postmodernists hold that the pretense of objective truth always does violence by excluding other voices (regarding other world views to be invalid), and marginalizing the vulnerable by scripting them out of the story. Truth claims, we are told, are essentially tools to legitimate power. That's why in postmodern culture, the person to be feared is the one who believes that we can discover ultimate truth. The dogmatist, the totalizer, the absolutist is both naive and dangerous.

A growing number, especially among the emerging generation, believe that reason and truth are inherently political and subversive. That's why they are often so cynical. According to the voices in contemporary culture that shape "Generation X" thinking, claims to truth are clever disguises for the pernicious "will to power." Consequently, rather than dominating others with our "version of reality," we should accept all beliefs as equally valid. Openness without the restraint of reason, and tolerance without moral appraisal are the new postmodern mandates.

See also, Dennis Prager, "Moral Absolutes: The Case for Judeo-Christian Values..."

Related: Victor Davis Hanson, "'Bomb Texas': The Psychological Roots of Anti-Americanism," and Dr. Sanity, "The Intellecutal and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Left."

Public Opinion Optimistic on Unfair Campaigning?

Gallup reports that a majority of Americans is optimistic that both John McCain and Barack Obama will campaign respectably, not sinking to unfair mudslinging:

Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain have both claimed that they will not engage in below-the-belt attacks during this race. And while the candidates have made some pointed comments regarding their issue differences, they have largely refrained from intense personal attacks to this point. History has shown, however, that campaigns tend to get considerably more negative as Election Day approaches, so it is an open question as to whether the candidates will keep their promises for the duration of the campaign.

A recent USA Today/Gallup survey shows that most Americans are at least somewhat optimistic that one or both candidates will follow through on that promise. But a variety of data show that many people view the tone of a race from a partisan perspective. As a result, there is likely to be little agreement about what constitutes fair or unfair attacks on the campaign trail once the general-election advertising season begins in earnest.

In the June 15-19 USA Today/Gallup poll, Americans were asked about the likelihood that the presidential candidates would keep their promises to refrain from personal attacks. Specifically, respondents were asked "Both John McCain and Barack Obama have said they want to conduct a presidential campaign based only on the issues and not based on personal attacks. How likely do you think (John McCain/Barack Obama) is to conduct a campaign based only on the issues?"

See also, Stephen Ansolabehere and Shanto Iyengar , "How Negative Campaigns Shrink Electorate, Manipulate News Media."

New Yorker's Referendum on Obama

Eleanor Clift argues that the New Yorker was woefully dull in believing that the Obama fist-bump cover would go over well as high-brow satire. Clift offers this reader's e-mail to the New Yorker as an example:

Your embarrassing attempt at satire is disgraceful in this climate of fear and ignorance. There is no journalistic freedom to justify this cartoon that could have easily been generated by the merchants of hate and fear and will certainly be used by them to justify their own moronic diatribes against this most American family. Shame on you New Yorker for this blatant attention grabbing exercise!

It's seems, however, that the cartoon hits so close to home that the left's not content to let this satire play out. A good case in point is No More Mister Nice Blog's post, "One More Word About That Magazine Cover":

I wonder what the reaction would have been if, one September or other in the past couple of years, the cover of The New Yorker featured a cartoon in which Dick Cheney in a hard hat oversaw the wiring of the Twin Towers with explosives, while out on the WTC plaza Ariel Sharon handed out flyers to yarmulke-wearing office workers that said STAY HOME FROM WORK ON TUESDAY! and, in a cutaway, George W. Bush sat down in the Situation Room with Osama bin Laden over artist's simulations of planes flying into buildings, as a calendar on the wall read SEPT. 10, 2001.

I'm sure the reaction would be that anyone who didn't think it was funny was just a snotty elitist who contemptuously assumed other people wouldn't recognize a joke as a joke. Don't you agree?

No, I dont, but since there's apparently a prohibition against analyzing satire, so I'll just note that satire seeks to hold up authentic human vices to ridicule, and Barack Obama's genuine vices include a still murky sympathy to the very images the New Yorker hoped to lampoon.

If, as Clift notes, this election's going to be a "referendum on Obama," with luck we'll see more New Yorker-style satirical "CliffsNotes" to inform the electorate's decision-making.

See also, "We Are All Racist For Not Hating that 'New Yorker' Cover."

Naomi Klein's Anti-Imperialist Blueprint for the Left

Jonathan Chait, at the New Republic, has a long review of Naomi Klein's, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

Klein's book is an attack on free-market triumphalism, and Chait argues Klein's penned the ultimate far left-wing jeremiad against modernity, with corporate power as the center of the new age of imperialist war.

Here's Chait's introduction:

It seems like a very long time--though in truth only a few years have passed--since the most sinister force on the planet that the left could imagine was Nike. In 2001, Time proclaimed that the anti-globalization movement had become the "defining cause" of a new generation, and that the spokesperson for the cause was the Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein. For puzzled outsiders grasping to understand why bands of youths had begun following the World Trade Organization wherever it went, brandishing oversize puppets and occasionally smashing up the local Starbucks, Klein was there to explain. She has always downplayed her place within the movement, but in fact her influence is as considerable as her press clippings proclaim. Her achievement, and it is no small feat, has been to revive economicism--and more grandiosely, materialism--as the central locus of left-wing politics.

From the time of Marx, and through the Depression, the left concerned itself primarily with economic inequality. The analysis of injustice in terms of class conflict and the forces of production was the canonical one. But the postwar boom--the authors of the Port Huron Statement famously described themselves as "bred in at least modest comfort"--turned the left's attention to foreign policy and national security in the Cold War, and to civil rights, and to feminism. By the 1980s, left-wing politics had withdrawn almost entirely into academia and other liberal enclaves, which it ruthlessly policed for any dissent from the verities of multiculturalist dogma and identity politics.

The essay continues with an involved discussion of the development of Klein's ideological thinking, and we see that September 11, for Klein and others, was a wake-up call for rejuvenated left-wing anti-imperialism.

Her basic premise is that the Chicago School of free-market economics is behind every ailment in the global public sphere. But there's the problem that Klein's one-size-fits-all approach is simplistic and selecitive. Klein, for example, claims that not only was the Iraq war a U.S. imperialist project, but that top Bush administration officials pushed the war directly for personal war profiteering, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney:

"When he leaves office in 2009 and is able to cash in his Halliburton holdings," she charges, "Cheney will have the opportunity to profit extravagantly from the stunning improvement in Halliburton's fortunes." This is a spectacular accusation -that the driving force behind the Iraq war stands to gain millions of dollars from it. You might wonder why John Kerry did not make this an issue in 2004, or why liberal pundits have not crusaded against Cheney's blatant self-dealing. The answer, of course, is that it is completely untrue. Cheney has signed a legally binding agreement to donate to charity any increase in his Halliburton stock.

Reading these passages indicates how perfectly Klein's writing cradles the conspiracist ideologies of today's far-left. But Chait simply doesn't buy it, and takes her to task for an abject ignorance of the role of ideas in Bush administration foreign policy:

She pays shockingly (but, given her premises, unsurprisingly) little attention to right-wing ideas. She recognizes that neoconservatism sits at the heart of the Iraq war project, but she does not seem to know what neoconservatism is; and she makes no effort to find out. Her ignorance of the American right is on bright display in one breathtaking sentence:

Only since the mid-nineties has the intellectual movement, led by the right-wing think-tanks with which [Milton] Friedman had long associations--Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute--called itself "neoconservative," a worldview that has harnessed the full force of the U.S. military machine in the service of a corporate agenda.

Where to begin? First, neoconservative ideology dates not from the 1990s but from the 1960s, and the label came into widespread use in the 1970s. Second, while neoconservatism is highly congenial to corporate interests, it is distinctly less so than other forms of conservatism. The original neocons, unlike traditional conservatives, did not reject the New Deal. They favor what they now call "national greatness" over small government. And their foreign policy often collides head-on with corporate interests: neoconservatives favor saber-rattling in places such as China or the Middle East, where American corporations frown on political risk, and favor open relations and increased trade. Moreover, the Heritage Foundation has always had an uneasy relationship with neoconservatism. (Russell Kirk delivered a famous speech at the Heritage Foundation in which he declared that "not seldom has it seemed as if some eminent neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States.") And the Cato Institute is not neoconservative at all. It was virulently opposed to the Iraq war in particular, and it opposes interventionism in foreign policy in general.

Finally, there is the central role that Klein imputes to her villain Friedman, both in this one glorious passage and throughout her book. In her telling, he is the intellectual guru of the shock doctrine, whose minions have carried out his corporatist agenda from Santiago to Baghdad. Klein calls the neocon movement "Friedmanite to the core," and identifies the Iraq war as a "careful and faithful application of unrestrained Chicago School ideology" over which Friedman presided. What she does not mention--not once, not anywhere, in her book--is that Friedman argued against the Iraq war from the beginning, calling it an act of "aggression."

That last line is really key: Klein simply ignores any bit of fact that disconfirms her anti-American theory.

In another review of The Shock Doctrine, Stephen Holmes, at the London Review of Books, offers this insightful little nugget:

Klein’s basic argument is curiously difficult to follow. One problem is her conflation of free-market ideology with corporate greed. There are plenty of connections between the two, of course, but it is impossible to understand the relation between the economic ideals of Milton Friedman and the economic aims of Halliburton or Lockheed Martin unless they are kept analytically distinct.

They aren't "analytical distinct" for Klein, apparently, which is exactly the point: The Shock Doctrine aims not analyze but to delegitimize the right. Her work is a manfesto for the left, a blueprint for the anti-capitalist revolution.

It's no surprise, therefore, that Klein's a darling of the hard left media and the netroots community, at places like Harper's, the Huffington Post, and the Nation.

Netroots Applauds Moulitsas' Lieberman Obscenity

I've sent an e-mail to Susan Davis of the Wall Street Journal. I'm hoping to get an exact quote, or thereabouts, on the obscenity Markos Moulitsas is said to have used in attacking Senator Joseph Lieberman at today's Netroots Nation meeting in Austin, Texas.

In addition to Davis' essay, the New York Times also mentions Moulitisas' anti-Lieberman attack.

Note first that Harold Ford made good on his promise to appear at the Yearly Kos/Netroots Nation meeting (he made the offer in an earlier appearance with Moulitsas on Meet the Press). During his panel, Ford was heckled by attendees when he spoke of his former colleagues at Fox News:

Here's Davis' report:

Can Democrats bridge the ideological divides within the party? A lunch keynote session at the Netroots Nation annual convention here in Austin tried to address that with a discussion between liberal DailyKos.com founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and the not-so-liberal Democratic Leadership Council’s Harold Ford Jr.. The answer was, well, unclear.

Sure, Moulitsas and Ford both offered platitudes about how Democrats need to come together in November to elect Sen. Barack Obama, and how the factors that unite Democrats are greater than those that divide them.

But what divides them makes them angry.

The political leanings of the crowd were skewed decidedly to the left of Ford, a former centrist U.S. House member from Tennessee who lost his 2006 Senate bid to Republican Bob Corker. Ford gamely made an agreement with Moulitsas last year following a joint appearance on “Meet the Press” that each would attend the other’s political conferences as a sign of goodwill.

The crowd in the convention hall was less generous. One questioner pressed Ford on why he has taken actions “smearing Democrats,” in part by appearing on Fox News. Ford’s response that he has “great respect and admiration” for his former Fox colleagues was met with hisses and boos. (Although he duly noted his contract is with MSNBC these days.)

Here's Davis relaying Moulitsas' attack on Lieberman:

Moulitsas offered up Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Jim Webb of Virginia as two Democrats the netroots generally support because while there are policy differences between them “they aren’t afraid to be Democrats.”

Moulitsas also offered one area where he believes there is common ground. Recalling his own into-the-lion’s-den appearance at the DLC’s conference, he said he was trying not to push the envelope too far with the party’s more center wing when he slipped [and] used an off-color epithet for Sen. Joe Lieberman. The crowd here cheered at the reference, since Lieberman—aligned with the DLC—has become a sworn enemy of many in the netroots for his support of Republican Sen. John McCain in the presidential race.

Here's the New York Times on the same moment:

The two sat on stage with a moderator in front of an audience of about 2,000 people, most of them progressive bloggers, who were generally more supportive of Mr. Moulitsas than they were of Mr. Ford.

Mr. Moulitsas said he was not the one who decided for the netroots whether they approved of someone’s vote on a certain topic, but the voters were. “I didn’t decide to take on Joe Lieberman,” he said, “but the people in Connecticut decided, ‘he’s not representing us.’” Actually, Mr. Moulitsas and his blog were vocal supporters of Ned Lamont, Mr. Lieberman’s primary challenger. But the audience here applauded heartily, prompting Mr. Moulitsas to recall that when he spoke recently at Mr. Ford’s D.L.C. convention, he blurted out an obscenity about Mr. Lieberman — and also was applauded.

Moulitsas has a reputation for abject and totalizing demonology, and I'm particulary interested to know if his obscenity included anti-Semitism.

As readers will recall, Moulitsas claims his movement represents the "mainstream" of the Democratic Party, and he's on record as coordinating campaign activities with the Barack Obama campaign.

Barack Obama's moved steadily to the center but he's clearly not repudiated netroots support for his presidential bid.

Hopefully we'll see more details on Moulitsas' obscene attack on Joseph Lieberman. If Moulitsas and the netroots truly are the party's mainstream, I'm sure the general public has an interest in knowing how these folks treat one of their own past vice-presidential nominees.

See also, "Harold Ford Heckled Over Fox Comment At Netroots Nation."

Related: "At 'Netroots Nation,' Obama Campaign Goes to Ground."

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Assassinating Robert Mugabe?

Charli Carpenter, of the academic blog group at Duck of Minerva, offers a provocative case for the assassination of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe:

In the wake of Mugabe's "re-election," political violence in the country is on the increase. Jake Farr Wharton has a modest proposal:

"Mugabe’s forces violently bullied and intimidated the people of Zimbabwe into a second election. Last week, Tsvangiri withdrew his candidacy, siting that he could not stand for president when anyone who voted for him, was doing so at a very real risk to their families lives. As such, Mugabe ran unopposed and won. The many people he had killed, maimed, imprisoned, held hostage and the villages he had destroyed devastatingly culminated in a win for him. The violent intimidation worked.

Where is the UN when they are actually needed? Where is the African Union when they are actually needed? End this man in the only way he knows how, assassinate him. Let it be done and hold a new election, one overseen by the UN and African Union."

There are moral arguments to be made here. Politicians whose thugs burn little boys alive because their father supports the opposition don't deserve the protection of sovereign immunity. And Ward Thomas has made a convincing case that the norm against assassinating heads of state has little ethical basis, since it protects the guiltiest civilians while often resulting in protracted wars that cost the lives of the most innocent or, at best (when wars are fought professionally) of soldiers who have often been conscripted. Besides, the CIA would no doubt dispatch him more humanely than his own people ultimately will... recall the untimely end of Samuel Doe, former President of Liberia.

So why not assassinate Mugabe? At Elected Swineherd, Empedocles harbors doubts on pragmatic, rather than moral grounds:

"Such an operation would likely leave an open door for widespread ethnic violence in its wake. What is needed instead is a UN or SADC (South African Development Council) peacekeeping deployment to coordinate humanitarian aid and a slow political transition."

Hmm, s/he's got a point there. The Rwandan genocide was tipped off by the apparent assassination of the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, after which the Tutsi population of the country was scape-goated, providing a pretext for root-and-branch massacres. Though, is Zimbabwe Rwanda? Or is it early Nazi Germany, where the stage is not yet set for full-blown genocide but the leadership has the power and political will to do so if not removed? And a peacekeeping mission? One was in place in Rwanda in April 1994....

Perhaps the best (though perhaps also the worst) reason why not to go down this road is a self-interested one: to preserve the anti-assassination norm itself ... Which still begs the question of what should be done ...

Recall that I've argued in favor of topping the Mugabe regime (here), although I hadn't thought about an assassination attempt, frankly, because the norm against such action is so deeply embedded.

For example, see the response to Carpenter's post at the American Prospect, "Shooting Those Washington Bullets Again."

Carpenter, who revised the original post, says American Prospect's essay is a misinterpretation of the original version of this post.

Suggestion for Readers: Read the full exchange, including the comment thread at the post, and leave your thoughts here .

I'd be more likely to favor toppling the regime, followed by a U.N.-backed occupation, and new elections supportive of some kind of national reconciliation government. No matter, I'm intrigued that the liberal international side of the spectrum is contemplating such boldly forceful action in favor of Zimbabwe's people.

Obama, the Democrats, and Iraq

Peter Wehner argues that the Democrats, led by Barack Obama, were against the surge before they were for it:

This is the week that the Democratic party ran up the white flag when it comes to the surge in Iraq. Leading the surrender was none other than Barack Obama, the Democratic party's presumptive nominee for president and among the most vocal critics of the counterinsurgency plan that has transformed the Iraq war from a potentially catastrophic loss to what may turn out to be a historically significant victory.

On Monday, Obama wrote a New York Times op-ed in which he acknowledged the success of the surge. "In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge," Obama wrote, "our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda--greatly weakening its effectiveness." A day later, Obama gave a speech in which he declared for the first time that "true success" and "victory in Iraq" were possible. In addition, the Obama campaign scrubbed its presidential website to remove criticism of the surge.

The debate, then, is over, and the (landslide) verdict is in: The surge has been a tremendous success.

Obama, in typical fashion, is trying to use the success of the surge he opposed to justify his long-held commitment to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq as quickly as possible. But turning Iraq into a winning political issue won't be nearly as easy as Obama once thought. He has stepped into a trap of his own making.

The trap was set when Obama repeatedly insisted that his superior "judgment" on Iraq is more important than experience in national security affairs. Judgment, according to Obama, is what qualifies him to be commander in chief. So what can we discern about Obama's judgment on the surge, easily the most important national security decision since the Iraq war began in March 2003?

To answer that question, we need to revisit what Obama said about the surge around the time it was announced. In October 2006--three months before the president's new strategy was unveiled--Obama said, "It is clear at this point that we cannot, through putting in more troops or maintaining the presence that we have, expect that somehow the situation is going to improve, and we have to do something significant to break the pattern that we've been in right now."

On January 10, 2007, the night the surge was announced, Obama declared, "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq are going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse." A week later, he insisted the surge strategy would "not prove to be one that changes the dynamics significantly." And in reaction to the president's January 23 State of the Union address, Obama said,

I don't think the president's strategy is going to work. We went through two weeks of hearings on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; experts from across the spectrum--military and civilian, conservative and liberal--expressed great skepticism about it. My suggestion to the president has been that the only way we're going to change the dynamic in Iraq and start seeing political commendation is actually if we create a system of phased redeployment. And, frankly, the president, I think, has not been willing to consider that option, not because it's not militarily sound but because he continues to cling to the belief that somehow military solutions are going to lead to victory in Iraq.

In July, after evidence was amassing that the surge was working, Obama said, "My assessment is that the surge has not worked."

Obama, then, was not only wrong about the surge; he was spectacularly wrong. And he continued to remain wrong even as mounting evidence of its success gave way to overwhelming evidence of its success.

But Obama is not alone. Virtually the entire Democratic party, including every Democrat running for president, opposed the surge. For example, Senator Joseph Biden--considered by some pundits a foreign policy sage--declared, a few days before the surge was announced, "If he surges another 20, 30 [thousand], or whatever number he's going to, into Baghdad, it'll be a tragic mistake."

There's more at the link.

Wehner actually builds on a long story of Democratic surrender on Iraq, but what's interesting now is how the Obama turnaround genuinely demonstrates how wrong, for so long, the Democrats have been on this war.

See also, the Wall Street Journal, "Obama's 'Judgment' [on the surge]."

McCain Gets It! Obama "Most Extreme" in Senate

Here's some of the best news indicating the presidential campaign's turned the corner: It turns out that John McCain, speaking at a campaign stop in Kansas City, called out Barack Obama as the most extreme member of the U.S. Senate, further to the left than socialist Bernie Sanders:

The capacity crowd strained at times to hear McCain through the booming echo of the station’s north waiting room. But audience members applauded warmly and repeatedly as McCain riffed on a variety of topics — abortion, immigration reform, education and health care.

He criticized opponent Sen. Barack Obama for his opposition to the surge of troops in Iraq, offshore drilling and expansion of nuclear power.

“I think we should change (Obama’s slogan) to ‘no, we can’t,’ ” McCain told the crowd.

He also said Obama had the “most extreme” record in the Senate.

Asked later if he thought Obama was an extremist, McCain said: “His voting record … is more to the left than the announced socialist in the United States Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont.”

Does McCain think Obama is a socialist? “I don’t know. All I know is his voting record, and that’s what people usually judge their elected representatives by.”

Obama’s campaign, in a statement: “John McCain squandered an opportunity to talk with Missourians about solutions to our economic problems and chose instead to launch the same old tired political attacks that the American people are sick of.”

Before the town hall meeting, McCain met with reporters on his bus — the Straight Talk Express — and said he was skeptical about Obama’s upcoming trip to the Middle East.

“I hope he learns he was wrong when he said that the surge would not work in Iraq … when he set out a timetable (for withdrawal) … and when he said the war was lost.”

He also criticized Obama for not consulting active-duty military leaders more vigorously.

“Failure in Iraq would have had catastrophic consequences in Afghanistan. … He doesn’t understand warfare.”

Geez, McCain's finally getting it on Obama, none too soon either!

See also, "McCain: Obama Might Be a Socialist."

Hat Tip: Ace of Spades HQ

Bombing Iran?

Benny Morris looks at the circumstances leading to a possible Israeli military strike on Iran, and the potential strategic ramifications:

ISRAEL will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven months — and the leaders in Washington and even Tehran should hope that the attack will be successful enough to cause at least a significant delay in the Iranian production schedule, if not complete destruction, of that country’s nuclear program. Because if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war — either through a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike or a nuclear exchange shortly after Iran gets the bomb.

It is in the interest of neither Iran nor the United States (nor, for that matter, the rest of the world) that Iran be savaged by a nuclear strike, or that both Israel and Iran suffer such a fate. We know what would ensue: a traumatic destabilization of the Middle East with resounding political and military consequences around the globe, serious injury to the West’s oil supply and radioactive pollution of the earth’s atmosphere and water.

But should Israel’s conventional assault fail to significantly harm or stall the Iranian program, a ratcheting up of the Iranian-Israeli conflict to a nuclear level will most likely follow. Every intelligence agency in the world believes the Iranian program is geared toward making weapons, not to the peaceful applications of nuclear power. And, despite the current talk of additional economic sanctions, everyone knows that such measures have so far led nowhere and are unlikely to be applied with sufficient scope to cause Iran real pain, given Russia’s and China’s continued recalcitrance and Western Europe’s (and America’s) ambivalence in behavior, if not in rhetoric. Western intelligence agencies agree that Iran will reach the “point of no return” in acquiring the capacity to produce nuclear weapons in one to four years.

Which leaves the world with only one option if it wishes to halt Iran’s march toward nuclear weaponry: the military option, meaning an aerial assault by either the United States or Israel. Clearly, America has the conventional military capacity to do the job, which would involve a protracted air assault against Iran’s air defenses followed by strikes on the nuclear sites themselves. But, as a result of the Iraq imbroglio, and what is rapidly turning into the Afghan imbroglio, the American public has little enthusiasm for wars in the Islamic lands. This curtails the White House’s ability to begin yet another major military campaign in pursuit of a goal that is not seen as a vital national interest by many Americans.

Which leaves only Israel — the country threatened almost daily with destruction by Iran’s leaders. Thus the recent reports about Israeli plans and preparations to attack Iran (the period from Nov. 5 to Jan. 19 seems the best bet, as it gives the West half a year to try the diplomatic route but ensures that Israel will have support from a lame-duck White House).

There's more at the link.

Morris argues that the international community will continue to "do nothing" to stop Tehran's march to nuclear capability, and Iran will beef up its rhetorical campaign favoring Israel's annihilation, and it will continue "prodding its local clients, Hezbollah and Hamas," agents who would join a war of extermination against the Jewish state.

Morris also notes that most Israelis view Iran as an existential threat. What's amazing is how so few others do as well.

See also, Blackfive, "Israel Announces Winter Bombing Plans."

Related: "Iran's Threat to the Strait of Hormuz."

The Popularity of the N-Word: An Update

I'd like to think that some terms of hatred as so vile, so weighted with painful historical memory, that we'd see a consensus on the word's banishment from common usage.

The "n-word" is one of the top candidates, but for the strangest reason its use continues as some kind of badge of honor in the black community, and among those generally on the left of the spectrum. This episode below, from the View, shows Elisabeth Hasselbeck repudiating the private use of the word - and, note carefully how she's mercilously attacked by "holier-than-thou Whoopi Goldberg, who lays the racism guilt-trip on Hasselback - saying, "You have just got to understand..."

It's really sick:

Goldberg defends the use of the n-word with statements like "my own mother could not vote in this country," with the logical extrapolation being white people still owe, white people must give blacks a pass on using the n-word "in private."

But Hasselbeck's argument's the most compelling, where she says "in my home we were raised not to use words of hatred...", and that's the way it should be.

But Goldberg speaks for many on the left, and for an example, see the Tennessee Guerilla Woman:

Sparked by the media's shocked outrage and moral superiority at the discovery that civil rights leader Jesse Jackson uses the "N" word in private, Whoopi Goldberg tries to explain to Elizabeth Hasselbeck why context does indeed matter! Elizabeth might get it if only she listened as much as she talks.

I don't understand why people don't get this. For me, it's the stark difference between men using the term bitch and women using the term bitch. It simply does not mean the same thing.

And as to the harshness of Jackson's critique of Barack Obama, the civil rights leader is not the only one irritated by the fact that lectures on personal responsibility aimed at Blacks make Barack Obama sound far more like Clarence Thomas than the liberal Democratic candidate many of us were hoping for...

There's so much revealing in this passage, that, when added to Whoopi Goldberg's guilt-mongering attacks, reveals exactly where much of the left resides in its hypocrisy of victimology.

The only one who really gets it is Elizabeth Hasselbeck, bless her heart!

Allahpundit at Hot Air has more:

I too was in tears after viewing it, so excruciatingly inarticulate is our cast. Newsbusters has a transcript, but trust me, it won’t help. Hasselbeck’s point is a simple one: We all share a common culture, so in the interests of commonality, how about everyone agrees to quit dropping the N-bomb, yes? Whereupon Whoopi, seizing the opportunity for a righteous show of Absolute Moral Authority, duly pitches a fit about how we’re different and that’s the way it is and Elisabeth simply doesn’t understand the “frustration” over the “huge problems that still affect us,” even though, please note, in calling for everyone to stop using the word she’s making the same argument as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Consider this a punctuation mark on a week that began with that Obama New Yorker cover, the intent of which was clear but declared to be beside the point because it was unhelpful to the left’s agenda. Whoopi and Sherri Shepherd have a plausible intentionalist defense of their position available to them here — when blacks use the N-word the intent will almost always be innocent whereas it’s much more ambiguous when coming from whites — but that ends up being exploded when Walters asks Shepherd what would happen if she said the word, presumably in a friendly/jokey manner to Sherri. Answer: “I don’t want to hear it come out of your mouth.” So much for intentions.

Anyway. Hasselbeck ends up in tears, Whoopi ends up basically arguing that the gulf between the races is too great for them ever to understand each other (or at least for whites to understand blacks), and they end up quickly moving on to talk about something else. Is this the sort of great national conversation Barry O had in mind?

The gulf it is too great because many blacks will not give up their (falsely) assumed moral stranglehold over white people.

As I've noted before, my dad couldn't vote "in this country," and his parent and grandparents could not, with many of them by contrast working in the fields, or as domestics. But we never used that word in my house, and polite company never used it either, on holidays or weekend visits to the 'hood.

I'm ashamed of Goldberg's defense, and I applaud Hasselbeck for saying the word's totally inappropriate, "because I love all of you all so much"!

Love ... now that's something that's certainly lost in this election season.

See also, "The Popularity of the N-Word."

*********

UPDATE: Via Memeorandum, Fox News has picked up the story, "Elisabeth Hasselbeck in Tears After 'View' Discussion on N-Word":

"View" co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck was in tears Thursday after a discussion about the use of the n-word, in which fellow co-host Whoopi Goldberg told her the two "don't live in the same world."

During a segment covering Jesse Jackson's recent use of the n-word while preparing to tape an interview on FOX News, Whoopi and co-host Sherri Shepard, who are both black, contested that the word has a different meaning for black people.

"It's something that means something way different to me than it does to you," said Shepard. "I can use it as a term of endearment."

Shepard also said to co-host Barbara Walters: "I don't want to hear it come out of your mouth."

Hasselbeck contested that "We [blacks and whites] don't live in different worlds, we live in the same world."

Goldberg, who used the n-word repeatedly during the broadcast (it was bleeped out), said that "We don't live in the same world. What I need you to understand is the frustration that goes along with when you say we live in the same world. It isn't balanced."

Hasslebeck tearfully replied that "when we live in a world where pop culture then uses that term, and we're trying to get to a place where we feel like we're in the same place, where we feel like we're in the same world ... how are we supposed to then move forward if we keep using terms that bring back that pain?"

You sing it, sister!

Reeling in a 1000-Pound Blue Marlin

The Wall Street Journal reports on this summer's perfect storm of sport fishing opportunity off the coast of Kailua Kona Harbor, Hawaii. Prized deep-water blue marlin, with potential catches weighing 1000 pounds, have big-fish fisherman flocking to the islands:

For Anthony Hsieh and other wealthy big-game fishermen, this is a summer of great expectations. Or maybe grand illusions -- it's too early to know.

Mr. Hsieh, the former president of LendingTree.com, and some of the world's best-financed fishermen are flocking to the cobalt blue waters here off the coast of Hawaii to try to catch what many consider the holy grail of trophy fish, the grander -- a blue marlin that tops 1,000 pounds.

Not only are these fish prized for their size, beauty, and heroic fighting ability, they have serious literary cachet: the most famous one stars in Ernest Hemingway's classic novel "The Old Man and the Sea." Only 51 granders have been caught and recorded since 1939, according to the International Game Fish Association. Although locals here in Hawaii have a slightly higher tally, one thing is certain: Nearly everyone who has ever set out to catch one has failed.

Though little is known for certain about the current status of the blue marlin population in Hawaii -- the only place in the world where the elusive, migratory beasts have been caught year-round -- the stars seem to have aligned to produce a bumper crop. Increasing pressure from conservationists as well as new tournament incentives to "catch and release" fish shy of 1,000 pounds may be increasing the ranks of marlins that grow to grander size. A recent ban on long-line commercial fishing, which used to claim hundreds of marlin casualties each year, seems to be helping. What's more, soaring gas prices have cut the local sport-fishing charter business by around 40%, leaving the few there who can afford to stay on the water with little competition.

There's more at the link.

Boy, now that's an adventure!

McCain to Declare Victory in Iraq

John McCain is edging toward a declaration that the U.S. has won in Iraq, Fox News reports:

John McCain took one step closer to declaring victory in Iraq Thursday, telling Missouri residents and later reporters that the U.S. military has “succeeded.”

The presumptive GOP nominee usually couches his language and argues the troop surge is “succeeding,” but on Thursday he emphasized that strategic success has already been achieved.

The rhetorical development comes as Barack Obama prepares to travel to Iraq for the first time as a presidential candidate and to Afghanistan for the first time ever.

“I am happy to stand in front of you to tell you that this strategy has succeeded. It has succeeded. It has succeeded,” McCain said first at a Kansas City, Mo., town hall meeting.

He then reiterated the line for reporters aboard his campaign bus.

“I repeat my statement that we have succeeded in Iraq — not we are succeeding — we have succeeded in Iraq,” he said. “The strategy has worked and we now have the Iraqi government and military in charge in the major cities in Iraq. Al Qaeda is on their heels and on the run,” McCain said.

He added that progress on the ground is still tenuous.

“The success that we have achieved is still fragile and could be reversed, and it’s still — if we do what Senator Obama wants to do, then all of that could be reversed and we could face again the chaos, increased Iranian influence and American loss and defeat,” he added, noting that he hopes his Democratic rival comes around to his view during his visit to the war zone.

Obama has in recent days argued that the Iraq war is a distraction, and that more U.S. resources must be devoted to fighting terrorists in Afghanistan and securing loose nuclear material. Democrats accuse McCain of wanting to prolong a war with virtually no end.

At a second press conference called to clarify conflicting messages in the campaign about its view of Obama’s trip overseas, McCain elaborated again on his declaration of success.

“We have succeeded in Iraq. We have succeeded and if we continue the strategy we will win the war,” he said. “This is a fragile victory. This is a fragile success. … If we will continue this, we will win this war.”

That's not quite declaring total victory, but it's close. McCain wants the majority of troops home before declaring complete success.

See also, "Victory in Iraq: An Update."

Leftosphere Freaks Out at Fox News

For a long time I've shaken my head whenever I see the lefty loons denounce Fox News as "Faux News."

Maybe the left bloggers hate the "fair and balanced" slogan. Maybe, and more likely, they hate the fact that Fox takes on the left-wing hordes directly, on Bill O'Reilly, for example, exposing these ideologues for the nihilists they are.

Thus it's no surprise that Fox News is the target of the left's wrath at Netroots Nation, which is the renamed Yearly Kos convention, now meeting in Austin, Texas.

The Caucus has the lowdown on the anti-Fox offensive now playing, "Netroots Try to Label Fox News as ‘Opinion’":

It may be the blogosphere’s equivalent of the scarlet letter, and the organizers of Netroots Nation, a gathering of liberal bloggers that is taking place this week, say they will be more than happy to pin it on Fox News.

Planners of the conference want to force representatives of the cable news network to wear credentials identifying them as opinion media rather than providing them with the regular press passes other news outlets will receive.

“Fox News calls itself fair and balanced, but it’s not,” Josh Orton, political director for Netroots said in an interview. He accused the network, which is popular among conservatives, of misrepresenting itself.

The Netroots, however, may not get their way.A spokeswoman for Fox News called the policy a “predictable stunt and a moot point” since the network would not be sending anyone to cover the four-day conference that kicked off in Austin, Texas, on Thursday.

But if anyone from the network were to show up, Mr. Orton said they would have to wear a press pass with the words “Opinion Media” printed on it. The credential would not restrict Fox’s ability to cover the conference, but Mr. Orton said that journalists from other media organizations like Air America, the liberal radio network, and the National Review, a conservative journal, would receive regular credentials. The difference, Mr. Orton said, is that those outlets are “explicitly progressive or explicitly conservative. They don’t have a branding problem.”

Nope, no "branding problem" at Air America!

There's no problem here, for example: "Air America's Randi Rhodes Said Suspended for Calling Clinton, Ferraro 'Whores'").

I can see why people call these folks "Kos kiddies." Schoolyard taunting's more sophisticated than this.

Eulogy for Yitshak Meir Weissenberg

As visitors may have noticed, I've been reading and posting on some academic issues the last couple of days, and my pace has backed off a little. I'm enjoying the summer, getting outside a bit, eating and drinking well, and spending time with my family.

As such, my personal book reading has fluctuated somewhat. I am about a third of the way through Saul Friedlander's, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945, and I wanted to share with readers the opening vignette from the beginning of Part II, "Mass Murder: Summer 1941-Summer 1942":

The proportions of life and death have radically changed. Times were, when life occupied the primary place, when it was the main and central concern, while death was a side phenomenon, secondary to life, its termination. Nowadays, death rules in all its majesty; while life hardly glows under a thick layer of ashes. Even this faint glow of life is feeble, miserable and weak, poor, devoid of any free breath, deprived of any spark of spiritual content. The very soul, both in the individual and in the community, seems to have starved and perished, to have dulled and atrophied. There remain only the needs of the body; and it leads merely an organic-physiological existence.

- Abraham Lewin,

eulogy in honor of Yitshak Meir Weissenberg,

September 31, 1941

Mr. Weissenberg's just mentioned once more in the whole the book. He wasn't a famous Holocaust victim like some of the others discussed in the volume (like Anne Frank), but Lewin's eulogy of him was poetic and powerful.

See also my earlier entry, "Nazi Germany's Years of Extermination, 1939-1945.

More later, dear readers...

Neoconservatism and Moral Nationalism

Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, one of the friendly academic bloggers at Duck of Minerva, has responded to my essay, "Neoconservative Moral Nationalism in U.S. Foreign Policy."

Jackson's post, "Nationalism is Not Neoconservatism," takes exception to the notion that "moral nationalism" is an inherently neoconservative innovation in America's foreign affairs. For Jackson, this stretches credibility:

Moral nationalism - or, better, a moralistic tone or sympathy in American public policy - has in fact been characteristic of the United States since before its founding. But to call Alexander Hamilton and Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman "neoconservatives" is to strain the meaning of the term beyond all recognition, and certainly beyond any conceivable analytical utility.

This criticism serves only as an introduction to the larger critique, but by offering it Jackson attempts to knock down the notion that neoconservatism has a long heritage, dating back to the founders, thus discrediting not just Brian Rathbun's research (which I reviewed at my post), but Robert Kagan's as well.

Jackson, however, goes beyond the theoretical claim of moral nationalism in Rathbun's piece. As Rathbun argues, realist theory is essentially amoral and does not concern itself with moral superiority over international organizations (which are deeply distrusted by neoconservatives) because realism is fundamentally unconcerned with the possible threat from IOs, since states - as the primary actors in world politics - would not let them be threatening. Thus Jackson wants to wave away the moral bases of these perspectives, without a more satisfying probe of the comparative ontological egoism of the theories.

Jackson, however, spends more time on conceptual and research design issues. For example, he argues that Rathbun errs by equating "the analysis of elite opinion with the analysis of foreign policy."

I think this is a quick slight of the research. It's quite common to use "elite opinion" as a unit of analysis, and then compare how general attitudes in mass public opinion compare.

For example, Daniel Drezner, in "The Realist Tradition in American Public Opinion," specifically argues that international relations scholars assume the disposition of elites as the driving orientation underlying the development of international relations theory. Thus, for Jackson, it's not clear why Rathbun should be forced to relax an assumption that is common practice in the discipline. Further, Rathbun, more importantly, is actually testing how well elite opinion conforms to the three conceptions of conserative foreign policy he discerns - realism, neoconservatism, and islolationism. Here's Rathbun, from the introduction:

I offer a conceptualization of the three types of egoism and connect them to the ideologies of realism, nationalism, and isolationism. I then briefly review the historical manifestation of these ideologies in American foreign policy ... The next section considers issues of measurement. I identify items in Ole Holsti and James Rosenau’s 1996 survey of American foreign policy elites that tap into the three different notions of egoism and offer hypotheses about how they might load in a factor analysis of the beliefs of American elites if foreign policy is indeed constructed along these three dimensions.

For Jackson, then, rather than dismiss Rathbun as confusing elite opinion with foreign policy "analysis," he might provide a better alternative measurement scheme than to what Rathbun's research specifiies.

What we really might discern in Jackson review, however, is an antipathy to neoconservatism as an autonomously legitimate ideational foundation for theories of American foreign policy:

So if we shift our gaze from policies to policy debates, what do we find that might separate realists from nationalists, and from liberal internationalists and the other kinds of schools of thought we might find? I'd say that first of all we need to stop thinking in terms of "schools," since positions on foreign policy are rarely coherent enough for that moniker. Individual policymakers also pick and choose among the elements of the supposed "schools" when the occasion seems appropriate....

So what are those elements? ... The root of "distinction," I would argue, is a claim that the United States is both exempt from those rules and exempt from them on the grounds that the United States represents something special, distinctive, higher -- something that trumps the rules in force for merely ordinary polities. These two aspects combine to form a venerable commonplace in US foreign policy debates: exceptionalism.

Notice Jackson's stress on exeptionalism as a key element of legitimate differentiation, but he errs in arguing that neoconservatives can't raise the exceptionalist banner as their own, when he claims "multiple traditions" have aleady embraced it, for example, islolationism.

But to do this, Jackson moves far from Rathbun's own specification of isloationism, where he notes:

Isolationism attempts to separate the self from the other ... This impetus to disengage might be based on a sense of national superiority, but not necessarily. When it is, however, isolationists draw a different policy conclusion than the more assertive nationalists, one of retreat rather than dominance.

For Jackson, then, to say that America has a venerable tradition of "refraining from 'entangling' involvement in European political machinations," and intervening in world affairs "only reluctantly," and then to hold this up as casting aspersion on the particular neoconservative amalgamation of morality and power as a catalyst for international action, misses much of Rathbun's essential logic. Jackson wants to argue that neoconservatism can't be foundational in American foreign policy because if violates an inherent "liberal internationalist" conception of American exceptionalism that is purportedly the only legitimate kind.

But recall, Rathbun's key point: Neoconservatism is the only true nationalist persuasion of the "right-wing foreign policies" under consideration - and it's this frame, based on "the superiority of American ideals and values, a universal nationalism," which distinguishes the theory not just from conservative realism and isolationism, but from neoliberal institutionalism as well, because for neoconservatives the national interest always comes first.

Recall, neoconservatism is fundamentally differentiated from other internationalist theories seeking to restrain the American hegemon within a network of multilateral organizations.

That's all for now. Perhaps Professor Jackson might be interested in another interation of this exchange.

**********

Addendum: Brian Rathbun has himself declaimed any personal affinity to the neoconservative theoretical outlook, saying in an online comment thread, "For what its worth, I am a fairly typical left-leaning academic, not a pacifist but definitely not a conservative or neoconservative..."

Thus, it's not accurate for Jackson to lump Rathbun together with myself or Robert Kagan, for example, when he says, "Unfortunately for all three of these folks, the equation between "moral nationalism" and neoconservatism just doesn't hold up."

There are normative and theoretical issues here of which one can tease. Or, in other words, one can make the case for neoconservative moral nationalism, without actually identifying oneself as a neoconservative.

Obama Sows Doubt on Commitment to Iraq Security

The New York Times reports that Barack Obama's planning for Iraq is causing unease in that country, with some fearing a precipitous withdrawal of American forces:

A tough Iraqi general, a former special operations officer with a baritone voice and a barrel chest, melted into smiles when asked about Senator Barack Obama.

“Everyone in Iraq likes him,” said the general, Nassir al-Hiti. “I like him. He’s young. Very active. We would be very happy if he was elected president.”

But mention Mr. Obama’s plan for withdrawing American soldiers, and the general stiffens.

“Very difficult,” he said, shaking his head. “Any army would love to work without any help, but let me be honest: for now, we don’t have that ability.”

Thus in a few brisk sentences, the general summed up the conflicting emotions about Mr. Obama in Iraq, the place outside America with perhaps the most riding on its relationship with him.

There was, as Mr. Obama prepared to visit here, excitement over a man who is the anti-Bush in almost every way: a Democrat who opposed a war that many Iraqis feel devastated their nation. And many in the political elite recognize that Mr. Obama shares their hope for a more rapid withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.

But his support for troop withdrawal cuts both ways, reflecting a deep internal quandary in Iraq: for many middle-class Iraqis, affection for Mr. Obama is tempered by worry that his proposal could lead to chaos in a nation already devastated by war. Many Iraqis also acknowledge that security gains in recent months were achieved partly by the buildup of American troops, which Mr. Obama opposed and his presumptive Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, supported.

“In no way do I favor the occupation of my country,” said Abu Ibrahim, a Western-educated businessman in Baghdad, “but there is a moral obligation on the Americans at this point.”

Read the whole thing.

It's quite revealing that many Iraqis, who get such a warm glow from Obama, also realize that an Obama administration would be potentially devastating to the country's security, throwing the nation back to the darker days, pre-surge, when Iraq was torn by violence and mayhem.

Some would like a long-term presence for the Americans:

Saad Sultan, the Iraqi government official, said his travels in Germany, where there have been American bases since the end of World War II, softened his attitude toward a long-term presence. “I have no problem to have a camp here,” he said. “I find it in Germany and that’s a strong country. Why not in Iraq?”

Yes, why not?

Photo Credit: "Nassir al-Hiti, an Iraqi general, said Iraqis “would be very happy” to see Barack Obama elected president, but called Mr. Obama’s withdrawal plan “very difficult,” New York Times.