Obama Can't Transcend Race?

Well, I guess race and politics is going to be the hot issue online today, and I'm also having a debate here on the relative propensity for partisan race-baiting, at "Obama's Rise Creates White Supremist Backlash."

So, let me point readers to a couple of posts of interest: On the Democrats as consumed by race, see Jammie Wearing Fool, "Race-Obsessed Democrats Have a Lot of Healing to Do." On Democratic victimology, see Shakesville, "Michelle Obama Racism/Sexism Watch, Part 11."

The latter post, from Shakesville, makes the startling claim:

Obama does not transcend race. Race is not something that can be transcended. There's no level of universal appeal that will somehow erase the color of your skin and all your experiences of living in it. Obama just happens to be the kind of black dude who doesn't automatically make a certain sort of white person uncomfortable -- the sort of white person who goes around the fucking bend if you point out even unconscious racism in something he's said and yet secretly believes our prisons are full of black men because black men commit more crimes, duh. Big difference.

This blogger's responding to Rupert Cornwell, who suggested:

Like the golfer Tiger Woods (and to a lesser extent Colin Powell), Obama transcends race. He is the post-racial candidate...

And for that, Cornwell's slurred as racist. Oh sure, read all of Cornwell for the context, but think about it: Just the notion that the country can transcend race is itself racist?

That's some freaky postmodern victimology, especially since Obama himself's been at pains to push a transformative racial appeal (to little success, as he's the first to call out folks as racists when the going gets tough).

I think we're really just getting into the season's politics of racial recrimination, and it's an odd thing: As the country's on the verge of historic change, if Barack Obama's elected as the nation's first black president, we're reverting to the most primitive debates, often for the most cheap points of partisan political gain. Somehow, I don't think this is what Dr. King had in mind.

Contrary to the suggestion in the comments to my post, it's clear that the lefties are especially intent to drag the country through the slime of racial grievance politics this year.

For more on this see, "Birth of a Meme."

Antiwar Columnist Wants More "Dead Americans Soldiers" on TV

Frank Rich, at the New York Times, laments the declining press coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, quoting a CBS reporter who argued that the press isn't showing enough bodies of "dead American soldiers":

THE Iraq war’s defenders like to bash the press for pushing the bad news and ignoring the good. Maybe they’ll be happy to hear that the bad news doesn’t rate anymore. When a bomb killed at least 51 Iraqis at a Baghdad market on Tuesday, ending an extended run of relative calm, only one of the three network newscasts (NBC’s) even bothered to mention it.

The only problem is that no news from Iraq isn’t good news — it’s no news. The night of the Baghdad bombing the CBS war correspondent Lara Logan appeared as Jon Stewart’s guest on “The Daily Show” to lament the vanishing television coverage and the even steeper falloff in viewer interest. “Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American soldier,” she said. After pointing out that more soldiers died in Afghanistan than Iraq last month, she asked, “Who’s paying attention to that?”

Her question was rhetorical, but there is an answer: Virtually no one. If you follow the nation’s op-ed pages and the presidential campaign, Iraq seems as contentious an issue as Vietnam was in 1968. But in the country itself, Cindy vs. Michelle, not Shiites vs. Sunnis, is the hotter battle. This isn’t the press’s fault, and it isn’t the public’s fault. It’s merely the way things are.

In America, the war has been a settled issue since early 2007. No matter what has happened in Iraq since then, no matter what anyone on any side of the Iraq debate has had to say about it, polls have consistently found that a majority of Americans judge the war a mistake and want out. For that majority, the war is over except for finalizing the withdrawal details. They’ve moved on without waiting for the results of Election Day 2008 or sampling the latest hectoring ad from moveon.org.

Perhaps if Americans had been asked for shared sacrifice at the war’s inception, including a draft, they would be in 1968-ish turmoil now. But they weren’t, and they aren’t. In 2008, the Vietnam analogy doesn’t hold. The center does.

The good news for Democrats — and the big opportunity for Barack Obama — is that John McCain and the war’s last cheerleaders don’t recognize that immutable reality. They’re so barricaded in their own Vietnam bunker that they think the country is too. It’s their constant and often shrill refrain that if only those peacenik McGovern Democrats and the “liberal media” acknowledged that violence is down in Iraq — as indeed it is, substantially — voters will want to press on to “victory” and not “surrender.” And therefore go for Mr. McCain.

One neocon pundit, Charles Krauthammer, summed up this alternative-reality mind-set in a recent column piously commanding Mr. McCain to “make the election about Iraq” because “everything is changed,” and “we are winning on every front.” The war, he wrote, can be “the central winning plank of his campaign.”

Notice the obligatory reference to the evil "neocons."

Rich goes on further down to defend Barack Obama, where he claims "he has never called for a precipitous withdrawal."

Well, sorry, Frank Rich. Throughout 2007 Barack Obama was among the most implacable war opponents in the Senate, calling the war a "failure" while pandering relentlessly to the surrender hawks of the Democratic Party base. As far back as November 2006, the Illinois Senator announced that he'd implement a troop drawdown immediately.

So what would help Frank Rich and his antiwar allies? More dead bodies on television?

We know the left cheers the bombings, and certainly the decline in violence is their worst nightmare. The fact that Obama's starting his move back to the center on the Iraq issue, as Rich strains to point out, shows his recognition that the United States has the reponsibility for the long-term security of the Iraqi people.

Barack Obama seems to know deep down - or at least he's now suggesting - that Americans have an interest in finishing the job honorably in Iraq. It goes without saying that John McCain does.

For war opponents like Frank Rich, however, there's no exit from Iraq that's too quick. Out of the way, John Murtha!!

If we see an uptick in the horrendous killings in Iraq, Rich will be among the first to revert back to the old line that the surge has failed.

It's all part the long leftist line of creative arguments in furtherance of retreat, and it's not going to work.

See also, "McCain's Won the Iraq Argument."

Obama's Rise Creates White Supremist Backlash

White supremist hate groups have seen an increase in activity and identification, according to the Washington Post:

Sen. Barack Obama's historic victory in the Democratic primaries, celebrated in America and across much of the world as a symbol of racial progress and cultural unity, has also sparked an increase in racist and white supremacist activity, mainly on the Internet, according to leaders of hate groups and the organizations that track them.

Neo-Nazi, skinhead and segregationist groups have reported gains in numbers of visitors to their Web sites and in membership since the senator from Illinois secured the Democratic nomination June 3. His success has aroused a community of racists, experts said, concerned by the possibility of the country's first black president.

"I haven't seen this much anger in a long, long time," said Billy Roper, a 36-year-old who runs a group called White Revolution in Russellville, Ark. "Nothing has awakened normally complacent white Americans more than the prospect of America having an overtly nonwhite president."

Such groups have historically inflated their influence for self-promotion and as an intimidation technique, and they refused to provide exact membership numbers or open their meetings to a reporter. Leaders acknowledged that their numbers remain very small -- "the flat-globe society still has more people than us," Roper said. But experts said their claims reveal more than hyperbole this time.

"The truth is, we're finding an explosion in these kinds of hateful sentiments on the Net, and it's a growing problem," said Deborah Lauter, civil rights director for the Anti-Defamation League, which monitors hate group activity. "There are probably thousands of Web sites that do this now. I couldn't even tell you how many are out there because it's growing so fast."

Neo-Nazi and white power groups acknowledge that they have little ability to derail Obama's candidacy, so instead some have decided to take advantage of its potential. White-power leaders who once feared Obama's campaign have come to regard it as a recruiting tool. The groups now portray his candidacy as a vehicle to disenfranchise whites and polarize America.

Read the whole thing.

Apparently Stormfront's seen an "explosion" of activity over the last year or so.

These folks are a small minority, although the Washington Post also reports today on a new survey, which finds that 3 in 10 Americans "acknowledge feelings of racial prejudice." Still, the poll finds an improvement in racial sentiment, with just 1 in 10 saying they wouldn't feel comfortable voting for a black president.

As I've noted before, we do see a miniscule extremist fringe, just a couple of percentage points nationally, that espouses the most disgusting racial supremist doctrines (see, "Barack Obama and the Political Psychology of Race").

Not only that, to the extent that bigotry's been a factor in electoral politics this year, it's been on the Democratic side, as Sister Toldjah points out in her post on Obama and the race card.

See also, "Obama Calls Out Republicans for "Campaign They'll Run."

Daily Kos Anti-Semitism: An Update

Daily Kos, the "mainstream" blog of the Democratic Party's netroots hordes, has yet to remove its recent vile anti-Semitic essay, "Eulogy before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel."

So it's no surprise that additional posts attacking the Jewish state continue to appear on Markos Moulitsas' home page. Here's the latest, "Apartheid Israel Trying to Start World War 3."

During the last couple of days, news reports have come out regarding Israel's recent military exercises preparing for an eventual attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Suddenly, Ari Fleischer's name comes to mind recalling a conversation I had with a friend over a year ago regarding some secret Jewish coalition raising funds in excess of $200 million to wage a propaganda war in America in an attempt to gain American support for another war against Iran. Now that story didn't seem to hang around for long until recent. Ari Fleichser [sic] aka "Joseph Goebbels" and his Israeli warmongers are testing the waters for a possible attack on Iran in an attempt to drag America in to the fold. Do we just stand by and allow Israel to further incite tensions bringing the world to the brink of WWIII?

So, here's the Kos poster calling Ari Fleischer, an American Jew, "Joseph Goebbels," who was the Nazi's minister of propaganda and most loyal Hitler henchman.

That's despicable.

But the Kos poster blames Israel for September 11:

We've seen what complacency gets us with regard to Israel's foreign policy. It got us attacked on 911.

It's a short post, but no less noxious the earlier Kos entries demonizing Israel. Talk about left-wing degeneration...

Hat Tip: LGF

Obama Calls Out Republicans for "Campaign They'll Run"

Barack Obama, at a fundraising stop yesterday, alleged that Republicans will mount a fear-based racial campaign against him this fall:

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said on Friday he expects Republicans to highlight the fact that he is black as part of an effort to make voters afraid of him.

It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy," Obama told a fundraiser in Jacksonville, Florida. "We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going to try to make you afraid.

"They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?"

He said he was also set for Republicans to say "he's got a feisty wife," in trying to attack his wife Michelle.

Right-wing bloggers are up in arms, calling out Obama for playing the "race card."

Karl at Protein Wisdom suggests that "Barry O" is dealing the race card.

Captain Ed at Hot Air notes the hypocrisy, since Obama provided no evidence, and it was Hillary Clinton supporters during the spring primary who circulated pictures of Obama outfitted in traditional African dress (and Bill Clinton portrayed Obama as the next Jesse Jackson, an "ethnic" candidate, beholden to the racial grievance masters).

Captain Ed also indicate how the McCain campaign's been quick to repudiate racist smears in his campaign operation:

John McCain, meanwhile, was a lot more outspoken in criticizing his own supporters for relying on crypto-ethnic references. He immediately and publicly disowned, without any prompting, Bill Cunningham in Ohio after the radio host enphasized Obama’s middle name (Hussein) in his introductory remarks. McCain also fired one staffer for e-mailing a Jeremiah Wright video after explicitly saying that his campaign would have no comment on Wright or Trinity United.

McCain, for all his alleged apostasies, is solidly on conservative ground on this issue. As we saw with the Ron Paul phenomenon, there are a lot of far right-wing extremists, as well as the their irrationalist defenders, who will be all too happy to deploy the most vile racist hatred as part of their political agenda.

People like this do not speak for genuine conservatives (and they gives the nihilist lefties ammunition), much less the GOP. It will be interesting to see how things turn out, because as I've noted previously, this election's going to fought intensely on racial grounds.

Poster Girl for the Antiwar Left

Darcy Burner, shown in a campaign spot below, might be considered the "poster girl" for the antiwar war left in this year's congressional elections:

Burner's also got a piece over at Open Left, "Retroactive Immunity: Frustration and Disappointment.

If folks aren't up on this issue, "retroactive immunity" holds that American telecom companies cannot be sued for constitutional violations for allowing the Bush administration access to their communications infrastructures. The Wall Street Journal put it this way last year:

For centuries, the common law presumption has been that private parties should have legal immunity if they comply with such requests. In the absence of evidence that the government's request is illegal, private actors should be given the benefit of the doubt for cooperating.

Imagine a society in which everyone refused such requests for fear of being sued: No airplane passenger would dare point out suspicious behavior by another passenger, and no subway rider would speak up about a suspicious package. In the case of these wiretaps, the help of the telecom companies is crucial because electronic surveillance isn't any longer a matter of merely pulling microwaves from the sky as the feds could do during the Cold War. We now live in a world of packet switching and fiber-optic cable, where terrorist calls and emails go through telecom switching networks ... [congressional] immunity provision is critical to gaining this telecom access.

So, basically, Burner advocates punishing corporations who've acted out of a sense of duty to nation for assisting the administration's alleged "illegal" wiretapping intelligence efforts.

For Burner and her allies, the constitutional issues are actually peripheral to the ideological ones. The Democrats want to move to a system "domestic law-enforcement" in handling the terror threat to the United States (indeed, most of the hardened left discount any notion of a terror threat whatsoever).

Note something else about this campaign spot: Burner's focus on "telecom immunity" doesn't even rate among the top "issues of interest" this election season. As Gallup reports, "Fuel Prices Now Clearly Americans’ No. 2 Concern" (behind the economy), and Pew Research indicates, "Gas Prices Dominate the Public's Economic News Agenda."

The inordinate hard-left attention to legalistic anti-administration, antiwar issues is reflective of the postmodern mindset that's captured the imagination of the Democratic Party base. Most Americans are worried about putting gas in the tank, not wiretaps on their phones.

(Recall that Burner's the primary sponsor of the antiwar left/netroot's withdrawal plan, a proposal that's tantamount to an ignominious abdication of American responsibility to the future of the Iraqi people).

The Obama Seal

Behold, the official seal of Barack Obama, the Great One!!

It's a little presumptious, but for the background details, see "An Awfully Presidential Logo."

See also, Kingdom of Chaos, "The Leader's New Seal," and Little Green Footballs, "Obama Thinks He's Already President."

Neoconservatism: America's Tradition

One way to look at this year's election, ideologically, is to frame the battle between the Democratic and Republican nominees in ideological terms, between the forces of postmodern radicalism and neoconservatism.

Barack Obama is not Marxist, but his leftist positions on race and religion, government spending, and off-shore drilling, for example, place him on the extreme left of the political spectrum, essentially electoral radicalism.

John McCain, on the other hand, represents the great traditions in American history of peace through strength and moral certainty. His commitment to defending the nation in a time of terror, and his proven leadership on the Iraq war, put him closer in values to the neoconservative perspective.

Folks can quibble with the definitional categories, which are loose approximations, although the utility of this framework is demonstrated empirically, in terms of the identified political coalitions that have lined up behind each of the candidates (particularly on the left).

The left radicals, for example, are intent to demonize neoconservatism in their rush for power and recrimination. While traditional conservatives, many of whom rejected McCain early this year, have come to see his campaign as a bulwark against the coming to power of far-left relativism and retreat.

Politics is ultimately a battle of ideas and values, and while neoconservatism is generally reviled by the left as a warmonger's cult, neoconservative ideology can be seen as the essential firmament guiding America's relations with the world for over 200 years, as Robert Kagan notes in his piece, "Neocon Nation: Neoconservatism, c. 1776."

I'd like to just post the whole thing, Kagan's piece is so good! But I'll just add a couple of bits of flavor, from the introduction:

“The Iraq War will always be linked with the term ‘neoconservative,’” George Packer wrote in his book on the war, and he is probably right. The conventional wisdom today, likely to be the approved version in the history books, is that a small group of neoconservatives seized the occasion of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, to steer the nation into a war that would never have been fought had not this group of ideologues managed somehow to gain control of national policy.

This version of events implicitly rejects another and arguably simpler interpretation: that after September 11, 2001, American fears were elevated, America’s tolerance for potential threats lowered, and Saddam Hussein naturally became a potential target, based on a long history of armed aggression, the production and use of chemical weapons, proven efforts to produce nuclear and biological weapons, and a murky relationship with terrorists. The United States had gone to war with him twice before, in 1991 and then again at the end of 1998, and the fate of Saddam Hussein had remained an unresolved question at the end of the Clinton administration. It was not so unusual for the United States to go to war a third time, therefore, and the Bush administration’s decision can be understood without reference to a neoconservative doctrine. After September 11, the Bush administration weighed the risks of leaving Saddam Hussein in power against the risks of fighting a war to remove him and chose the latter, its calculus shaped by the terrorist attacks and by widely shared suppositions about Iraq’s weapons programs that ultimately proved mistaken.

If one chose to believe this simpler version, then the decision to invade Iraq might have been correct or mistaken, but the lessons to be learned from the war would concern matters of judgment, tactics, and execution—don’t go to war based on faulty intelligence; don’t topple a foreign government without a plan to bring order and peace to the country afterwards; don’t be so quick on the trigger; exhaust all possibilities before going to war; be more prudent. But they would not raise broader issues of foreign policy doctrine and grand strategy. After all, prudence is not a foreign policy. It is possible to be prudent or imprudent, capable or clumsy, wise or foolish, hurried or cautious in pursuit of any doctrine. The intervention in Vietnam was the direct product of the Cold War strategy of containment, but many people who think the Vietnam War was a mistake nevertheless do not condemn containment. They believe the war was the misapplication and poor execution of an otherwise sound strategy. One could argue the same was true of Iraq.

One could, but very few critics of the war do. The heated debate in the United States over the past few years has not been so much about bad intelligence, faulty execution, or imprudence in Iraq. In his book The Assassins’ Gate, Packer claims that he is unable to explain why the United States went to war without recourse to the larger doctrine behind it. “The story of the Iraq war,” he writes, “is a story of ideas about the role of the United States in the world.” And the ideas he has in mind are “neoconservative” ideas. His premise, and that of most critics, is that neoconservatism was uniquely responsible for the United States going to war in Iraq and that, had it not been for the influence of neoconservative ideas, the war never would have occurred.

To examine this premise requires first understanding what people mean by “neoconservative,” for the term conjures very different images. For some, it is synonymous with “hawk,” to others, it is an ethnic description, and to still others, it is a term to describe anything evil—I once heard a Cornell professor earnestly define neoconservatism as an ideological commitment to torture and political oppression. But when employed fairly neutrally to describe a foreign policy worldview, as Packer does, neoconservatism usually has a recognizable meaning. It connotes a potent moralism and idealism in world affairs, a belief in America’s exceptional role as a promoter of the principles of liberty and democracy, a belief in the preservation of American primacy and in the exercise of power, including military power, as a tool for defending and advancing moralistic and idealistic causes, as well as a suspicion of international institutions and a tendency toward unilateralism. In the hands of more hostile critics, the neocons are not merely idealistic but absurdly and dangerously hubristic about the unlimited capacity of American power to effect positive change; not merely expansive but imperialistic, seeking not only American pre-eminence but ruthless global dominance; not merely willing to use force, but preferring it to peaceful methods; and not merely tending toward unilateralism but actively spurning alliances in favor of solitary action. Even these deliberately polemical caricatures point to something recognizable, a foreign policy that combines an idealist’s moralism, and even messianism, with a realist’s belief in the importance of power.

I think that's key, at the end: the combination of moralism and power.

Via GSGF, note Douglas Murray, who explains the background for his book, Neoconservatism: Why We Need It:

... I try to demonstrate why the neoconservative impulse is vital at this moment in history ... But the drive of the book is really an attempt to put down a marker. Having observed the allegedly ‘anti-war’ left sink into what became in large part a pro-war, but pro-the-other-side-winning stance it seemed to me that a philosophical and practical explanation had to be attempted which identified not only the jihadist enemy, but also the disastrous relativistic bent of our time which has given that enemy some of its oxygen. Relativism has deeply damaged my own generation and greatly hindered our chances of defeating this or any future enemy.

That's an interesting concept, that the left's not so much "antiwar" but anti-American, and that many on the left will readily back the other side in the West's great defense of right in the world (for more on that, see "The Politics of Peace: What’s Behind the Anti-War Movement?")

I'll have more. In the meantime, check out "The Return of the Neocons: Bush Hawks Aggressively Working to Rewrite Accepted Iraq War History."

Barack Obama's Soft Underbelly: The Muslim Smear

Smears are a part of politics, as I noted in my previous, entry, "The Science of Political Smear."

A particulary good smear is one that's got elements of fact that make larger, tentative allegations difficult to put to rest, which is the case with the Barack Obama smear that he's Muslim.

Rick Moran take a look at the issue, in his piece, " 'Obama the Muslim': The Smear that Just Won’t Die":

There is a very soft, very sensitive spot on the underbelly of the Obama campaign. They fear its exposure perhaps more than any other vulnerability in the organization. It’s not some dark, buried scandal involving sex or money. It’s not a skeleton in either Barack or Michelle Obama’s family closet. In fact, it isn’t “real” in any logical sense at all.

It is a rumor — or, more prosaically, a smear. And touching on it brings out the teeth and claws of the Obama campaign beyond almost any other issue.

Barack Hussein Obama is not a Muslim. But the smear saying he is refuses to die and, if anything, is growing as the campaign becomes more intense. Aside from the obvious desire to beat down a false rumor, there are eminently practical political reasons why even mentioning the smear is avoided at all costs.

Recent polls show that between 45%-54% of Americans would never vote for a Muslim candidate. Already by some surveys, 15% of the electorate believes that despite vehement denials from the campaign, intensive investigations by mainstream media organizations, and all evidence to the contrary, Barack Obama is a Muslim.

This kind of irrational belief is fed by an army of online smear merchants and the more innocent but misinformed — or simply duped — group of largely conservative activists who see it as their duty to “expose” Obama as a Muslim to save the United States from. . . something. The cause is hazy. Either we should not vote for Obama because he is a Muslim “Manchurian Candidate” who, once ensconced in the Oval Office, will begin to turn the country into some kind of fundamentalist Muslim hell. Or, more earnestly, we must not elect Obama the Muslim because he will sell the US down the river in negotiations with Muslim countries.

There are several variations on those themes, and — if you wish to be educated — I suggest you peruse the comments of any article featuring Obama on this website. There you will come face to face with the lunatic fringe in all their ignominy. It is a sad commentary on American politics that so many give so much credence to such a tissue of lies and half truths.

But it is the sensitivity to the smear that has the entire Obama campaign on edge, as we witnessed on Monday at an Obama rally rally in Detroit. Two Muslim women wearing their traditional hijabs to cover their heads were denied the opportunity to sit behind the candidate and appear in the human tableau of diversity that all campaigns strive to present for the cameras.

Read the whole post.

Moran makes an point worth considering further down:

But the fact that the incident occurred reveals a more fundamental truth: the smear against Obama threatens his election as president of the United States and everyone on both sides knows it.

Obama's not Muslim, and that's really not the issue to a lot of people speaking out on this. The question is why hasn't Obama been completely forthcoming on his Islamic background?

See, for example, "Obama takes on the Great Global Blogosphere Conspiracy Against His Holiness."

Funeral March for Centrist Democrats

Kimberley Strassel argues that the "new" Democrats of the Bill Clinton era will be finally put to rest with Barack Obama's election:

Listen closely to all those cheers for newly crowned nominee Barack Obama, and in the background you'll catch the notes of a funeral march. Resting, if not in peace, are the New Democrats.

The Illinois senator's primary victory marked the end of many things, and one looks to be his party's 20-year experiment with ideological centrism. The New Dems are still out there, still urging their party to fight its natural liberal instincts. But who's listening? Buoyed by the Republican implosion, wild for their retro nominee, the intellectual soul of the Democratic Party is now firmly left.

The New Democrats were born in the 1980s, in response to Ronald Reagan's triumphs. Prominent Democrats worried the party was out of touch, and created the Democratic Leadership Council. Its members were foreign-policy hawks, unafraid of cultural conservatism, and preached economic centrism. Their poster boy: Bill Clinton.

The 1990s were their midlife heyday, though even then the New Dems struggled. Party liberals despised Mr. Clinton's embrace of free trade, hated his accommodation of welfare reform, cringed when he pronounced "the era of big government" over. But no one could deny his success at giving the party its first two full terms in the White House since FDR. So they shut up and went along.

When Mr. Clinton left, so did the most prominent New Democratic voice. Party liberals have been reasserting control ever since. Howard Dean's 2004 consolation prize was the Democratic National Committee. Nancy Pelosi became House Speaker in 2006, and gave back committee chairs to the old 1960s liberal bulls. And now comes Mr. Obama, the party's most liberal nominee since Hubert Humphrey.

What's left of the New Democratic agenda? On foreign policy, Bill Clinton engaged in Bosnia, and as recently as 2004 John Kerry saw the wisdom of running as at least a moderate hawk. But today's unpopular war has only emboldened the party to revert to its antiwar comfort zone.

Mr. Obama calls for an immediate pullout of troops from Iraq, no matter what the consequences. His foreign policy, to the extent it is one, flows not from strength, but from greater American accommodation in the name of diplomacy. Mrs. Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have together held some 72 votes on Iraq, most devoted to cutting off troop money, blocking the surge, or forcing a pullout. Last year, all but 10 House Democrats voted for a withdrawal timeline.

Read the rest, here.

See also, "Obama Would Undo Our Progress in Iraq."

How Bad Would Obama Be for Israel?

I'm having a little debate on the Democratic Party's support for Israel, at my entry, "The American Public and the Jewish State."

That being the case, I thought I'd update with Caroline Glick's views on U.S. support for Israel under a Barack Obama administration:

[Kathryn Jean] Lopez: How bad would a President Obama be for Israel? Why should that question matter to Americans?

[Carolyn] Glick: Senator Barack Obama would be bad for Israel most of all because he refuses to acknowledge that there is a jihad being waged against the free world. Indeed, he refuses to acknowledge that there is such a thing as an “enemy” in international affairs. And as a consequence, he is unable to understand what an ally is. As the U.S.’s most stalwart ally in the Middle East, and as the frontline state in the global jihad, Israel will likely suffer greatly if Senator Obama is elected to the White House.

There are several reasons that Americans should care about the fact that an Obama White House will be hostile towards Israel. First, when Islamists perceive Israel as weak they become emboldened. And when they become emboldened, they tend to attack not only Israel but the U.S. as well. Indeed, some of the largest attacks against the U.S. — like the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983 — came when the U.S. was most hostile towards Israel.

Second, when the U.S. places pressure on Israel, Israel is perceived as weak by the Muslim world. And when this happens, the tendency for wars to break out is increased. So when the U.S. has in the past blamed Israel for regional instability — the Arabs and Iran — which are the actual sources of that instability — exploit the situation by attacking Israel and sending the region into a tailspin. One can for instance attribute Yassir Arafat’s decision to attack Israel in 1996 — an attack which left 15 Israelis dead — to the Clinton administration’s massive pressure on the new Netanyahu government to accept the PLO as its “peace partner.”

Finally, U.S. pressure on Israel tends to weaken Israel and as I have argued, Israel is perceived by the jihadists as the frontline state in their war, the ultimate aim of which is global domination and the destruction of the U.S. So when the U.S. weakens Israel, the U.S. appears weak. Jihadists are then emboldened to attack not only Israel, but also the U.S. This is why, for instance, Shiite violence in Iraq rose steeply after Israel was perceived as having lost the war in Lebanon with Hezbollah in 2006. And Israel ended the war when it was under tremendous pressure from Secretary Rice to accept a ceasefire that left Hezbollah fully intact and free to rebuild its forces with Iranian and Syrian assistance.

All of this happened under U.S. administrations which in their day were considered friendly towards Israel. If Sen. Obama, who is perceived as sympathetic to the jihadists, is elected, the consequences of U.S. appeasement of Iran and others at Israel’s expense will likely be more profound — both for Israel and for the U.S.

Note that point: Israel is perceived as the frontline in the war with the U.S.

See also, "Israel is the Defining Moral Issue of Our Time."

Americans Support Drilling

Gallup reports that a strong majority supports drilling for oil in environmentally sensitive or protected areas:

A majority of Americans (57%) interviewed in a mid-May Gallup Panel survey approve of expanding drilling for oil in offshore and wilderness areas considered to be off-limits.

This poll result suggests that President Bush's proposals this week to end bans on drilling for oil in areas held as off-limits and for opening up leases for oil shale production in federal lands may be generally in sync with majority American public opinion.

Naturally, Barack Obama's opposed to drilling, and even prominent members of his own party are opposing him.

That's because Obama represents the extreme left-wing base of the party, which is mired in postmodern environmentalism, and will likely oppose any sensible option to provide relief to everyday consumers.

See also, "McCain Has Reconsidered Drilling in ANWR,"

The American Public and the Jewish State

Walter Russell Mead, at Foreign Affairs, argues that support for Israel is deeply institutionalized in American history, although the nature of that support has become increasingly polarized with the emergence of the American left's radicalism in the post-Vietnam era:

Since the 1967 war ... the basis of Israel's support in the United States has shifted: backing for Israel has tended to weaken on the left and grow on the right. On the left, a widespread dislike of Israel's policies in the occupied territories and a diminished concern for its security in the wake of its triumph in the war led many African Americans, mainline Protestants, and liberal intellectuals, once among Israel's staunchest U.S. allies, toward growing sympathy with Palestinian views. Increased identification on the part of blacks with anticolonial movements worldwide, the erosion of the black-Jewish alliance in U.S. domestic politics, and the rising appeal of figures such as Malcolm X and the leaders of the Nation of Islam also gradually reduced support for Israel among African Americans. The liberal Protestant churches, for their part, were newly receptive to the perspectives of those missionaries sympathetic to Arab nationalism, and as the mainstream churches became more critical of traditional American ideas about the United States' national identity and destiny, they distanced themselves ever further from traditional readings of the Old Testament. (On the other hand, relations between American Catholics and the Jews began to improve after the 1967 war, largely due to the Catholic Church's new theological approach toward the Jews since the Second Vatican Council.)

On the right, the most striking change since 1967 has been the dramatic intensification of suppport for Israel among evangelical Christians and, more generally, among what I have called "Jacksonian" voters in the U.S. heartland. Jacksonians are populist-nationalist voters who favor a strong U.S. military and are generally skeptical of international organizations and global humanitarian aid. Not all evangelicals are Jacksonians, and not all Jacksonians are evangelicals, but there is a certain overlap between the two constituencies. Many southern whites are Jacksonians; so are many of the swing voters in the North known as Reagan Democrats.

Many Jacksonians formed negative views of the Arabs during the Cold War. The Palestinians and the Arab states, they noted, tended to side with the Soviet Union and the Nonaligned Movement against the United States. The Egyptians responded to support from the United States in the 1956 Suez crisis by turning to the Soviets for arms and support, and Soviet weapons and Soviet experts helped Arab armies prepare for wars against Israel. Jacksonians tend to view international affairs through their own unique prism, and as events in the Middle East have unfolded since 1967, they have become more sympathetic to Israel even as many non-Jacksonian observers in the United States -- and many more people in the rest of the world -- have become less so. The Six-Day War reignited the interest of prophetic Zionists in Israel and deepened the perceived connections between Israel and the United States for many Jacksonians. After the Cold War, the Jacksonians found that the United States' opponents in the region, such as Iraq and Iran, were the most vociferous enemies of Israel as well.

Those Jacksonians sound much like the earlier "Reagan Democrats," and they are reflective, frankly, of mainstream public opinion during the George W. Bush administration.

In contrast is the current Democratic Party, which has been taken over by Carteresque ideology and the community anti-Semitism at "mainstream" Democratic blogs - and such trends against the Jewish state are ultimately represented in the anti-Israel candidacy of Barack Obama for the presidency.

Obama Community Blogs: "A STORM IS COMING!!!"

Via Little Green Footballs, here's a little more insight on the the stakes in this year's election, "A STORM IS COMING!!!":

This storm is led by the youth of tomorrow, and reinforced by elders of yesterday. Change is coming to America. No more wars; no more poverty; no more hungry children; no more senseless killing; no more destruction of other nations; no more homeless vets; no more for the few rather than for the many. A storm is coming! A storm of change for a better tomorrow is on the rise. All is welcome, but be assured… if you stand in it’s way you will be swept away by the force of over 70 million rain drops...

Yep, a storm is coming alright, a red storm of revolutionary proportions...

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin at the helm. 1930s Soviet propaganda poster. (Source)

Congress Gets Lowest Institutional Rating Ever, Poll Finds

Gallup reports that confidence in Congress is lower than any other American institution, a finding unprecedented in the history of that particular survey item:

Gallup's annual update on confidence in institutions finds just 12% of Americans expressing confidence in Congress, the lowest of the 16 institutions tested this year, and the worst rating Gallup has measured for any institution in the 35-year history of this question.

Gallup first asked about confidence in institutions in 1973, repeating the question biannually through 1983, and obtaining annual updates since then. This year's update comes from a June 9-12 Gallup Poll.

In the latest update, Congress ranks just below HMOs, for whom 13% of Americans express "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence. Big business, the criminal justice system, organized labor, newspapers, television news, and the presidency all receive relatively low confidence ratings.

In contrast, Americans express the most confidence in the military, as they have each year since 1988 (with the exception of 1997, when small business edged it out). Small business ranks second in the current poll, just ahead of the police. These are the only three institutions that for whom a majority of Americans express a high degree of confidence.

From 1973 through 1985, organized religion was the top rated institution. Today, just 48% of Americans are confident in organized religion, one of its lowest ratings ever. The lowest score for religion to date was 45% in 2002 at the height of the Catholic Church's priest sex abuse scandal.

The most impressive finding is backing for the military, which shows widespread popular support for the professionalism of the armed forces, even amid a war that has badly split the public along partisan lines.

Politically, numbers like these appear to presage electoral conditions of earthquake proportions. I've been discussing party realignments this week in my classes, and while I don't think the Democrats are likely to make long-term gains at the presidential level (Barack Obama, indeed, may fail to beat John McCain), the political environment feels to have the makings of political change of historic proportion.

Lieberman: "Forever is a Long Time"

Joseph Lieberman appears on the verge of servering ties with the Democratic Party, according to USA Today:

Eight years after being nominated for vice president at an exuberant Democratic convention, Joe Lieberman describes himself as so estranged from the party over the Iraq war and national security policy that he is committed to siding with Senate Democrats only "for now" as he campaigns for Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

In an interview in his Capitol Hill office, the Connecticut senator tapped by Al Gore as a running mate in 2000 says he hopes to persuade disaffected supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton to back McCain. He's prepared to deliver a speech on his friend's behalf at the GOP convention in September.

Will he also attend the Democratic convention in August? "That could be dangerous," he says with a rueful laugh.

Elected to a fourth term in 2006 running as an independent, Lieberman has given Democrats majority control in the closely divided Senate by caucusing with them. Democrats kept him in his post atop the Homeland Security Committee.

Still, he's "not comfortable with any political party," he says, voting at times with Republicans, at times with Democrats.

"For now, I've decided to stay and fight for the kind of security policy, foreign policy that I think the party stood for when I joined in the '60s," Lieberman says. Asked if he plans to be a Democrat "forever," he replies, "You know, forever is a long time."

I think Lieberman's well-established disillusion with the Democrats, and especially the party's antiwar base, is one of the most powerful indicators of how far out of the mainstream the Democrats have moved.

Recall, in March, Lieberman announced, on This Week with George Stepanopoulos, that the party had been hijacked by its extremist netroots fringe.

See also, "Lieberman Derangement Syndrome."

Question for Readers: Do you think Lieberman will have to retire from politics at the end of his current term, since on social policy he may not have a home in the GOP.

New Obama Ad: Straight From the Heartland?

Barack Obama's clearly concerned about the effects of the month's long primary campaign, where he's emerged as being seen by many as an effete elitist who hangs with Hyde Park revolutionaries while attending Sunday services in black liberation theology.

Are those heartland values? That the message were getting in the Obama's first general election campaign spot, via Washington Wire:

It's a slick ad, but frankly it's intellectually dishonest, especially since a major theme of the campaign's been different, suggesting that "diversity" is American.

But here's Washington Wire's take:

The spot underscores a theme of patriotism—notable since Obama has been dogged by whisper campaigns and internet rumors about his faith and values. His campaign recently launched a Web site to combat such rumors.

“America is a country of strong families and strong values. My life’s been blessed by both,” he says in the ad, “I approved this message because I’ll never forget those values, and if I have the honor of taking the oath of office as president, it will be with a deep and abiding faith in the country I love.”

The ad will air in Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia.

I'll have more later...

Obama and the Muslim Women

Barack Obama's Muslim women incident is turning out to be fairly significant. Via LGF, check out Debbie Schlussel, who indicates that the women had ties to radical Islamists:

As soon as I heard about the Muslim women in hijabs being excluded from sitting behind Barack Obama at a Michigan rally, I knew what you probably knew: that CAIR and ADC and MPAC and ISNA, the alphabet soup of terrorist-sympathizing, pan-HAMAS/Hezbollah Islamofascist grievance theater, would milk the story like there's no tomorrow. It was ripe fodder for their PR branch of the jihad against America and the West.

Now, I've come to learn that one of the hijab-encrusted, rejected whiners, Hebba Aref, was an official of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), in charge of proselytizing. The Chicago Tribune identified the MSA as part of the American manifestation of the Sunni terrorist group, Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimeen--The Muslim Brotherhood. Aref served on the executive board of the University of Michigan-Dearborn's MSA, which demanded and obtained tax-funded Muslim foot bats at that university, a story I broke on this site last year. Two Muslim then-students at U-M Dearborn, Lola Elzein and Mohammed Fouad Abdallah, sent me violent rape and death threats.

Read the whole thing (link).

Skateboarding Launches Into Educational Curriculum

Skateboarding's becoming a regular part of grade-school curriculum, as this USA Today story indicates:

Skateboarders aren't frowned on at Oak Elementary School in Albany, Ore. In fact, students there get credit for performing grabs, kickturns and ollies in class.
Oak is among hundreds of schools across the country that have adopted a skateboarding curriculum in their physical education classes.

Skate Pass, the Boulder, Colo., company that created the curriculum in 2006, says skateboarding is now being taught in schools in more than a dozen U.S. states, plus Germany and Canada.

Educators say it's part of a "new PE" movement that recognizes that some kids aren't natural athletes.

"When people first hear 'elementary PE,' the first thing that comes to mind is dodgeball. Then all the other stuff they didn't like," says Jake Gerig, Oak Elementary's PE teacher.

"We're trying to focus on lifetime activities that are non-competitive and individualized so students can learn at their own pace," Gerig says.

Elementary schools are moving toward non-traditional activities, he says, such as rock climbing, unicycle riding, yoga and even Dance Dance Revolution, a music video game played on a dance pad.

"Only 10% of kids go on and play team sports," Gerig says. "What about the other 90% who are sitting at home playing video games because they're not star basketball material?"

Former professional snowboarder Eric Klassen developed the Skate Pass program with Denver PE teacher and fitness expert Richard Cendali.

"I've been skateboarding all my life and had been in the industry of skateboarding," Klassen says. "Richard is the one who thought it would make a good curriculum."

Skateboarding was my curriculum when I was in high school, LOL!

I'm stoked to see schools opening up the sport as an elective activity. Those years - my young skateboarding days - are some of the most memorable of my life.

Ultimate News Hotties

I turn on CNN every morning while I'm making coffee.

It turns out that Kiran Chetry returned to her post this week as co-anchor of American Morning. I've warmed up to Chetry, but it took a while. I was upset when she first premiered in the mornings last year, because she replaced Soledad O'Brien, whom I had grown to love - not just as an attractive news host, but for her genuine skills as a journalist (she's got a seriousness to her that goes beyond good looks).

All of these musical morning anchors got me thinking about what it is we like about our news talking heads. It seems CNN's intent to go with the prettiest women they can find.

Brianna Keilar, who's pictured above, took my breath away when I first saw her, and I'm telling you, I wasn't thinking about news reporting. But that was nothing compared to my first look at Poppy Harlow!

Of course, for all her beauty, when I used to watch Judy Woodruff I probably remembered more of the actual news, back when she co-anchored with Bernard Shaw, seemingly eons ago.

So, readers, who's your favorite "ultimate news babe?"

Fall Preview: Obama on Detainees and Afghanistan

Here's an excerpt from Barack Obama's prepared comments on national security, via Memeorandum:

The people who were responsible for murdering 3,000 Americans on 9/11 have not been brought to justice. They are Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and their sponsors – the Taliban. They were in Afghanistan. And yet George Bush and John McCain decided in 2002 that we should take our eye off of Afghanistan so that we could invade and occupy a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. The case for war in Iraq was so thin that George Bush and John McCain had to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein, and make false promises that we’d be greeted as liberators. They misled the American people, and took us into a misguided war.

This is a perfect example of extreme left-wing political grandstanding, which serves as your classic fall preview of Democratic retreatist attacks.

Obama's argument's not well reasoned, of course, as Max Boot has shown his his essay, "Obama and 9/11."

More later...

Smearing the GOP: The Obama "White House" Button Controversy

It turns out that a lone vendor was hawking a racist political button at this week's Texas GOP convention, which caused fits of apoplexy across the leftosphere yesterday:

A prototypical attack on virtually all Republicans as racist was offered by John Aravosis at Americablog:

Expect the Republican party to do absolutely nothing about the racists in its own midst. The national Republican party in Washington has contacts all the time with its state parties. I'm sure there's money involved, and you'd better believe that when John McCain visits the states, he meets with local party officials. At what point do we hold John McCain responsible for fraternizing with racists? You don't see John McCain ever saying that he's no longer going to meet with, fundraise with, any state parties that promote or tolerate racism (like the folks in NC and TN). All McCain and that national party does is say "gosh, that's so bad, stop that now." McCain and the GOP have the power to punish the racists in their midst. So when will they? Oh, and for all of you in the media who will of course say that this has nothing to do with the GOP: What would you say if racist pins were being handed out at the Democratic National Convention?

In truth, most genuine Republicans would be appalled if racist buttons were being distributed at ANY convention, because there's no room for any of this in either party. No one, least of all members of the Party of Lincoln, should be attacking Barack Obama or anyone else with vile bigotry.

Notice, though, how this one vendor, for Aravosis, becomes emblematic of the alleged embedded racism of the GOP.

As I've said many times (see here, for example), most Americans are not racist. But note what James Joyner has to say, with reference to the Texas GOP:

Is there still racism in America? You betcha. Is it going to play some role in an election featuring the first black man with a legitimate chance to be president? No doubt.

But let’s not pretend that one yahoo selling some buttons is emblematic of much of anything.

Exactly! One "yahoo" does not impugn the integrity of true conservatives, despite the most aggressive efforts of the left to smear us as such.

Sure, there are a few of these bigots around, along with their defenders:

Unfortunately, as I've discussed, these types give radical leftists like Dave Neiwart fodder for their unhinged, universal smears against the GOP as the party of contemporary fascism (see Neiwart's post today, "Talking Down Violent Rhetoric").

As evidenced by early indicators, campaign '08 will be marked by heightened allegations of racism, even at the highest levels. Some discussion of race will be good - that is, there may be benefit in having a meaningful national conversation on racial progress in the post-civil rights era.

But keep in mind a key distinction: While racism is frequently exposed among extremist fringe elements on the right of the spectrum, in contrast the mainstream of the Democratic Party base today is populated by some of the most vicious race-baiters imaginable, at Daily Kos, Firedoglake, and TRex, for example (see Noel Sheppard, "More Racism at a Prominent Liberal Blog").

True conservatives need to keep these points in mind, especially as we maintain the high ground this election in our fight against Barack Obama's radical hordes.

Related: See Michael Williams, Chairman of the Railroad Commission of Texas, and his address to the Texas GOP convention. Williams is a black American, and he offers words of (tempered) praise for Barack Obama - precisely the message of racial unity the GOP's poised to offer this year (Hat Tip: Panhandle's Perspective).

Obama's Community Blogs: Moderated After All...

Little Green Footballs is doing some fascinating online excavation at the Obama campaign's official webpage. It turns out Obama's hate-filled "community blogs" are indeed moderated:

Well, well. Look what’s going on at the official Barack Obama campaign web site; in one of their community blogs filled with hateful ranting, we discover that the administrators are paying attention to these “unmoderated” blogs after all: Barack Obama : : Change We Can Believe In C42D’S FEAR AND LOATHING IN AMERICA.

Hi David,

Thank you so much for your involvement in the BarackObama.com online community. Your voice is valued here; however, we were forced to remove your recent blog post due to your use of profanity. It detracts from a welcoming community where all people can engage in positive discourse.

This is your first warning. Please be mindful of your language in the future.

Thanks for your understanding and cooperation in maintaining a respectful dialogue on our website.

Emily

Obama for America

LGF's got additional examples (of demands to bring banned blogs and commenters back, for example), but I like the conclusion:

Obviously, this means blogs and groups like these, which have been pointed out at LGF over and over, must meet the standards of the campaign:

Barack Obama : : Change We Can Believe In Michael Morrissey’s Blog: 9/11 Truth
Barack Obama : : Change We Can Believe In Government of, by, and for The Israel Lobby: ‘The Israel Lobby: AIPAC’ 1-5
Barack Obama : : Change We Can Believe In Marxists/Socialists/Communists for Obama
Barack Obama : : Change We Can Believe In Adam Roberts’s Blog: The Nature of the Proletariat

And there are many, many more like these still posted at the site, with more going up every day.

Change we can believe in?

Keith Olbermann: Another Update on Moral Relativism

Scott at Power Line has an update on Keith Olbermann's nihilist hatred, "Keith Olbermann, Liar":

Observers of the insane clown posse on MSNBC - observers such as Ed Morrissey, for example - noticed the classless comments made by Chris Matthews to Keith Olbermann on Olbermann's "Countdown" show in connection with the death of Tim Russert. "It may be tricky to say this, and I'll say it," Matthews said, introducing his weirdly derogatory remembrance of Russert.

Matthews said that Russert had believed the administration's assertion that Saddam was trying to get nuclear weapons and that Russert was "an everyman" for believing it. Matthews was giving Russert what was at best a backhanded compliment, essentially portraying the just-deceased Russert as a dupe. Watch the video for yourself here.

On Monday Olbermann promoted my friend Andrew Breitbart as the Worst Person in the World throughout "Countdown." Breitbart's photograph was displayed and Andrew was given reason to get excited. In the event, however, Olbermann conferred the honor collectively on FOX News because of an observation Andrew had made in a segment on "FOX and Friends" that morning. The "FOX and Friends" segment with Breitbart talking about Russert can be seen here.

In conferring the honor on FOX News, Olbermann baldly lied about the ground for it. Olbermann's Worst Person in the World segment can be seen here. With his crazed pomposity, Olbermann intoned: "For God's sake, do you have to do it the first morning of the first week day after the man has died? Could you not shut the spigot off just for a little while? Could you not wait until after we have the funeral? Of course, you couldn't. You're FOX News and you are the worst persons in the world." He vaguely derided FOX News for the comments that Matthews had in fact made to Olbermann.

In other words, in the clip above, Olbermann falsely imputed Matthews's offense committed on Countdown and on MSNBC on the evening of Russert's death this past Friday to Breitbart and FOX News. In the only critical comment Breitbart made on FOX, Breitbart had accurately described Matthews's offense in his segment discussing Russert on FOX News. The offense for which Olbermann seems to have called out FOX News as the Worst Person in the World was actually committed with Olbermann on MSNBC, and Breitbart had criticized Matthews for it.

Because Breitbart's observation about Matthews was correct and damning, Olbermann chose not to quote or show it. Olbermann was thus free to misrepresent the gist of Breitbart's comments for the purposes of conferring his Worst Person in the World honors. In short, MSNBC accused its nemesis at FOX News -- not Breitbart, a somewhat less appealing target to Olbermann -- for what Breitbart said, and imputed Matthews's offense committed on MSNBC to Breitbart and FOX.

Pot. Kettle. Black. Or worse.

See also, "Keith Olbermann: Off the Deep End of Moral Relativism."

Matthew Yglesias Annointed as "Foreign Policy God"

I've read Matthew Yglesias' recent book, Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats, so I'm not surprised that hard-left partisans are annointing him as a divine foreign policy analyst.

Case in point: Josh Marshall, in his post, "Yglesias Becomes Foreign Policy God," with a brief interview:

Matt Yglesias, former TPM Associate Editor and all-around blog star, has a new foreign policy book out, Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats. We caught up with him last week at The Strand bookstore here in lower Manhattan and asked him whether he thinks Democrats are ever going to get out of the fetal position when it comes to taking the fight to Republicans on their catastrophic foreign policy record ...

I've written much on Yglesias, for example, my entry, "The Radical Foreign Policy of Matthew Yglesias."

That essay draws on Jamie Kirchick's incisive take-down of Yglesias' pacifism, but last week's Los Angeles Times featured a review of the book, by Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

Yglesias occasionally assumes the bloggerish pose of an outsider screaming at the Establishment, but in its substance his preferred foreign policy is as Establishment as could be. What he offers is a livelier version of the sort of "liberal internationalist" platform that might be found in, say, a task-force report put out by a center-left think tank. The "liberal alternative," he explains, "does not consist of 'new ideas' or a search for new glib slogans. It is rather an age-old doctrine that has been developed over time [and] was working well in the 1990s." It is "the professional consensus," sensible but stale -- or, as he characterizes the liberal approach to nuclear nonproliferation policy, "frankly, dull."

After Sept. 11, as Americans rallied around the president and his approval ratings shot up, Democrats sold out those principles and assumed a "defensive crouch": "The purpose of all this was to weather the political storm resulting from 9/11 and to position Democrats for the electoral battles to come." Instead, Bush and his Republican allies not only won the major fights over foreign policy but also achieved historic political gains. "Like ostriches with their heads in the sand," Yglesias writes, the Democratic Party leaders "believed they could make the security issue go away by ignoring it, but instead they only made it easier for their adversaries to devour them." Their "short-sighted opportunism and inattention to basic principles would harm the party's long-term fortunes." The policy cost came with a war of choice that continues today. (Yglesias, like the Democrats he chastises, backed the war, and some of the ire he directs at pro-war Democratic politicians and policy experts seems to stem from a sense that they misled his more naïve self.)

As a Democratic political strategist, Yglesias is shrewd, and his critique of the Bush administration's foreign policies is trenchant. He tends to overstate, however, the effect his recommended course of action would have had on those policies at the outset. More forthright argumentation, more intellectual courage, more faith that voters would recognize the wisdom of calm and caution -- all this, he suggests, would have allowed Democrats to reshape the debate about foreign policy in the months and years after Sept. 11. But, as he concedes, "9/11 marked the beginning of an enormous psychological change on the part of the American people," and "[f]rightened, anxious, and justly outraged people are not eager for self-examination or the message that patience is needed." The Bush administration had something it wanted to do, and Americans wanted something done. Prudence and restraint stood little chance against the shock and awe of the new.

Kurtz-Phelan's a bit too even-handed than is warranted by the subject matter. Yglesias has a way of twisting leftosphere attack-points into a seemingly acceptable Democratic Party policy planks.

I naturally disagree with the premise that the war's been a "disaster" or a "castastrophe."

Mistakes were made when political officials in the Bush White House and the Pentagon ran an ideological war, and as military professionals began implementing innovative methods of counterinsurgency on the ground, circumstances improved - to the point that now most mainstream obervers agree that the United States is poised at the threshold of victory.

Moreover, neoliberal institutional theory in international relations cannot honestly be sold, as does Yglesias, as an implacably antiwar doctrine of Democratic Party retreat.

Yglesias' book is well timed, but the thesis he proposes is outside of mainstream thinking on U.S. foreign policy, and to implement his recommendations under an Barack Obama administration will make this nation less safe in a world of complex and genuinely threatening challenges abroad.