Jay Reding.com

The Politico reports that John McCain is circulating an action plan for staying in the race — basically cutting expenses and trying to utilize free media more effectively while also comparing the McCain campaign to Reagan’s early campaign in 1980.

I’m not sure McCain can make a comeback, but I’ve decided to make a small donation to his campaign regardless. Even if John McCain doesn’t make a political comeback, he has been a staunch supporter of America’s Armed Forces in this and prior conflicts. I may not always agree with Senator McCain on many issues, but when it comes to the most important this Republic faces, he has been as much of a patriot and as shown nearly as much bravery as he did when he faced the torture rooms of the Hanoi Hilton.

At the same time, I’ve decided to give a matching donation to Operation Troop Aid, a non-profit organization that sends care packages to American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Small items like granola bars, hand wipes, and something as simple as letters from home make a huge difference to American servicemembers who can spend days on patrol in the hot and dusty environments of Iraq and Afghanistan.

We who support this war have an obligation to give more than just moral support to our servicemembers fighting in this war — something as simple as a 120 minute phone card, some airline miles, or a care package lets them know that they’re not alone in this struggle. We can’t all serve on the front lines, but we damn well can give to this important cause.

America is lucky to have such patriots, and even if McCain’s campaign may not last all that long, the message he’s conveying on this war is one that needs to be heard — moreover, our troops need more than just the moral support of having a strong advocate in Washington, they need to know that the American people are thinking of them as well.

The latest National Intelligence Estimate has been released (PDF link), and after 5 pages of introductory material, there are only 2 pages for it to actually say something of substance: and what it is says is hardly groundbreaking:

Al-Qa’ida is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the Homeland, as its central leadership continues to plan high-impact plots, while pushing others in extremist Sunni communities to mimic its efforts and to supplement its capabilities. We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safehaven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership. Although we have discovered only a handful of individuals in the United States with ties to al-Qa’ida senior leadership since 9/11, we judge that al-Qa’ida will intensify its efforts to put operatives here.

The biggest problem we face in regards to al-Qaeda is Pakistan: al-Qaeda has found a refuge there, and now they’ve been able to reform and regroup. While some are suggesting violating Pakistani sovereignty to go after al-Qaeda, that option is deeply problematic. The Musharraf government hangs by a string, and if Musharraf falls the situation in Pakistan could go from bad to worse. Not only could a hardcore Islamist government take his place, but a dangerous nationalist government could also present a major threat by ratcheting up tensions between Pakistan and India — both of which are nuclear powers. As tempting as that course of action is, it has to be weighed in balance with the potential for a regional nuclear crisis. Is getting al-Zawahiri or bin Laden worth the costs? It’s not entirely clear that the benefits of taking down al-Qaeda’s leadership is necessarily great enough to justify the risk — at least not yet.

Ideally, President Musharraf would begin to take down al-Qaeda from his side of the border — and perhaps the assault on the Red Mosque signals that Musharraf is willing to take a harder stance against Pakistani Islamists. However, he also has to consider the risks to his life, and any pushback won’t come unless Musharraf knows that he has enough breathing room to bear the risk. Unfortunately for us, with the Islamist presence in Pakistan being as large as it is, it’s not clear when that might happen — or if it might happen.

The NIE continues:

We assess that al-Qa’ida will continue to enhance its capabilities to attack the Homeland through greater cooperation with regional terrorist groups. Of note, we assess that al-Qa’ida will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI), its most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the Homeland. In addition, we assess that its association with AQI helps al-Qa’ida to energize the broader Sunni extremist community, raise resources, and to recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland attacks.

With the Anbar Awakening creating a Sunni rejectionist movement, is this really the case? AQI is certainly the most visible “affiliate” of al-Qaeda (although there’s really not much of a distinction between the two — al-Qaeda in Iraq is for all intents and purposes a wholly-owned subsidiary of the al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan and acts under their orders), but as of yet the one Western attack linked to AQI has been a spectacular failure. If AQI is emboldening the larger Sunni community, why hasn’t there been any particular evidence of this?

An equally compelling theory is that al-Qaeda’s resources are being devoted to fighting in Iraq, leaving them constrained in their efforts at attacking elsewhere. Al-Qaeda does not have a limitless supply of terrorists, and it takes time and effort to train and equip a terrorist cell. The NIE does indicate that our counter-terrorism efforts have limited al-Qaeda’s financial resources in a serious way — does al-Qaeda have the capability to simultaneously fight an increasingly difficult battle in Iraq and launch ambitious new attacks on the West?

There are several unwarranted assumptions here — for example, AQI is certainly not the only branch of al-Qaeda which desires to attack the United States — what terrorist group doesn’t have that goal? Furthermore, al-Qaeda didn’t seem to have a problem with recruiting extremists before the invasion of Iraq — their hatred of the West goes back a lot longer than recent political history.

While there’s no doubt that the invasion of Iraq has had an effect on al-Qaeda — the group itself admits as much, that effect has hardly been positive. Al-Qaeda, like any organization has only so many resources under its command, and they’re devoting the bulk of their forces to Iraq. Each al-Qaeda operative killed or captured there is an al-Qaeda operative unable to launch or assist in attacks elsewhere. Every riyal, dollar, or Euro spent on Iraq is a riyal, dollar, or Euro that can’t be spent on equipping terrorist cells in the United States. The argument that Iraq is somehow a “distraction” from the larger war on terror ignores the fact that al-Qaeda is in Iraq, and that’s the battlefield they’ve chosen. Given the extremely one-sided nature of our battles with al-Qaeda in Iraq, it’s far more likely that they are spending more of their manpower and resources fighting the United States then we are fighting them — and if the Sunnis continue to reject AQI, they may be fighting a battle that it is no longer possible for them to win.

The NIE then states the most obvious point of all:

We assess that al-Qa’ida’s Homeland plotting is likely to continue to focus on prominent political, economic, and infrastructure targets with the goal of producing mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, significant economic aftershocks, and/or fear among the US population. The group is proficient with conventional small arms and improvised explosive devices, and is innovative in creating new capabilities and overcoming security obstacles.

• We assess that al-Qa’ida will continue to try to acquire and employ chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material in attacks and would not hesitate to use them if it develops what it deems is sufficient capability.

In other words, we can’t let our guards down, and we can’t count on purely defensive measures to save us — al-Qaeda is planning the next attack, and they know that all it takes is one bit of luck to inflict another mass casualty attack. We cannot blithely assume that this war is little more than a “bumper sticker” — the stakes are very real, and we need leadership that comprehends the threat and is willing to face it rather than hope it all goes away.

The McCain Presidential campaign may be cratering, but no one can say that it’s because McCain isn’t standing firm on his principles. Ed Morrissey has Senator McCain’s floor speech at yesterday’s Democratic surrender-fest which does an excellent job of putting the defeatist Democrats in their place:

Mr. President, we have nearly finished this little exhibition, which was staged, I assume, for the benefit of a briefly amused press corps and in deference to political activists opposed to the war who have come to expect from Congress such gestures, empty though they may be, as proof that the majority in the Senate has heard their demands for action to end the war in Iraq. The outcome of this debate, the vote we are about to take, has never been in doubt to a single member of this body. And to state the obvious, nothing we have done for the last twenty-four hours will have changed any facts on the ground in Iraq or made the outcome of the war any more or less important to the security of our country. The stakes in this war remain as high today as they were yesterday; the consequences of an American defeat are just as grave; the costs of success just as dear. No battle will have been won or lost, no enemy will have been captured or killed, no ground will have been taken or surrendered, no soldier will have survived or been wounded, died or come home because we spent an entire night delivering our poll-tested message points, spinning our soundbites, arguing with each other, and substituting our amateur theatrics for statesmanship. All we have achieved are remarkably similar newspaper accounts of our inflated sense of the drama of this display and our own temporary physical fatigue. Tomorrow the press will move on to other things and we will be better rested. But nothing else will have changed.

In Iraq, American soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen are still fighting bravely and tenaciously in battles that are as dangerous, difficult and consequential as the great battles of our armed forces’ storied past. Our enemies will still be intent on defeating us, and using our defeat to encourage their followers in the jihad they wage against us, a war which will become a greater threat to us should we quit the central battlefield in defeat. The Middle East will still be a tinderbox, which our defeat could ignite in a regional war that will imperil our vital interests at risk there and draw us into a longer and far more costly war. The prospect of genocide in Iraq, in which we will be morally complicit, is still as real a consequence of our withdrawal today as it was yesterday.

During our extended debate over the last few days, I have heard senators repeat certain arguments over and over again. My friends on the other side of this argument accuse those of us who oppose this amendment with advocating “staying the course,” which is intended to suggest that we are intent on continuing the mistakes that have put the outcome of the war in doubt. Yet we all know that with the arrival of General Petraeus we have changed course. We are now fighting a counterinsurgency strategy, which some of us have argued we should have been following from the beginning, and which makes the most effective use of our strength and does not strengthen the tactics of our enemy. This new battle plan is succeeding where our previous tactics have failed, although the outcome remains far from certain. The tactics proposed in the amendment offered by my friends, Senators Levin and Reed – a smaller force, confined to bases distant from the battlefield, from where they will launch occasional search and destroy missions and train the Iraqi military – are precisely the tactics employed for most of this war and which have, by anyone’s account, failed miserably. Now, that, Mr. President, is staying the course, and it is a course that inevitably leads to our defeat and the catastrophic consequences for Iraq, the region and the security of the United States our defeat would entail.

Yes, we have heard quite a lot about the folly of “staying the course,” though the real outcome should this amendment prevail and be signed into law, would be to deny our generals and the Americans they have the honor to command the ability to try, in this late hour, to address the calamity these tried and failed tactics produced, and salvage from the wreckage of our previous failures a measure of stability for Iraq and the Middle East, and a more secure future for the American people.

I have also listened to my colleagues on the other side repeatedly remind us that the American people have spoken in the last election. They have demanded we withdraw from Iraq, and it is our responsibility to do, as quickly as possible, what they have bid us to do. But is that our primary responsibility? Really, Mr. President, is that how we construe our role: to follow without question popular opinion even if we believe it to be in error, and likely to endanger the security of the country we have sworn to defend? Surely, we must be responsive to the people who have elected us to office, and who, if it is their wish, will remove us when they become unsatisfied with our failure to heed their demands. I understand that, of course. And I understand why so many Americans have become sick and tired of this war, given the many, many mistakes made by civilian and military leaders in its prosecution. I, too, have been made sick at heart by these mistakes and the terrible price we have paid for them. But I cannot react to these mistakes by embracing a course of action that I know will be an even greater mistake, a mistake of colossal historical proportions, which will — and I am as sure of this as I am of anything – seriously endanger the people I represent and the country I have served all my adult life. I have many responsibilities to the people of Arizona, and to all Americans. I take them all seriously, Mr. President, or try to. But I have one responsibility that outweighs all the others – and that is to do everything in my power, to use whatever meager talents I posses, and every resource God has granted me to protect the security of this great and good nation from all enemies foreign and domestic. And that I intend to do, Mr. President, even if I must stand athwart popular opinion. I will explain my reasons to the American people. I will attempt to convince as many of my countrymen as I can that we must show even greater patience, though our patience is nearly exhausted, and that as long as there is a prospect for not losing this war, then we must not choose to lose it. That is how I construe my responsibility to my constituency and my country. That is how I construed it yesterday. It is how I construe it today. And it is how I will construe it tomorrow. I do not know how I could choose any other course.

I cannot be certain that I possess the skills to be persuasive. I cannot be certain that even if I could convince Americans to give General Petraeus the time he needs to determine whether we can prevail, that we will prevail in Iraq. All I am certain of is that our defeat there would be catastrophic, not just for Iraq, but for us, and that I cannot be complicit in it, but must do whatever I can, whether I am effective or not, to help us try to avert it. That, Mr. President, is all I can possibly offer my country at this time. It is not much compared to the sacrifices made by Americans who have volunteered to shoulder a rifle and fight this war for us. I know that, and am humbled by it, as we all are. But though my duty is neither dangerous nor onerous, it compels me nonetheless to say to my colleagues and to all Americans who disagree with me: that as long as we have a chance to succeed we must try to succeed.

I am privileged, as we all are, to be subject to the judgment of the American people and history. But, my friends, they are not always the same judgment. The verdict of the people will arrive long before history’s. I am unlikely to ever know how history has judged us in this hour. The public’s judgment of me I will know soon enough. I will accept it, as I must. But whether it is favorable or unforgiving, I will stand where I stand, and take comfort from my confidence that I took my responsibilities to my country seriously, and despite the mistakes I have made as a public servant and the flaws I have as an advocate, I tried as best I could to help the country we all love remain as safe as she could be in an hour of serious peril.

Senator McCain may never be President, but he’s a valuable public servant nevertheless — and his clarity and perspective stand in direct opposition to the self-serving defeatism of the Senate Democrats who continue to push this country towards a unnecessary defeat for nothing more than their own political expediency.

This country needs more patriots like Senator McCain.

Wired reports on the Democrats plan to add $35 billion in new spending for children’s health insurance by dramatically raising federal excise taxes on tobacco products. The problem with this plan is that it makes no economic sense — they won’t be able to raise the money projected, and furthermore they only will be able to sustain the funding for five years.

Funding anything with tobacco excise taxes is a bad idea — because it isn’t a stable funding source. If you raise the price of cigarettes, more people will quit smoking. If you raise the price of luxury items like cigars (the current bill increases the maximum federal tax on cigars by over 20,000% to up to $10 a cigar) then people will stop buying cigars. For example, I’ll smoke at most a few cigars a month, no more than 1 per week. If the amount of tax pushes the price of cigars up to where even the cheapest cigars are north of $15 a cigar, I won’t smoke them at all. Instead of contributing a few dollars to the federal budget a year in excise taxes, it’ll be zero. Multiply that by the thousands or millions of causal cigar smokers, and it’s clear that the government simply can’t count on raising $35 billion solely on the backs of smokers.

By 2012, Congress either has to raise taxes elsewhere or the program dies. Either outcome is bad. It’s the sort of voodoo math that Congress gets away with all the time — pretending that they’re doing something to help by creating another program they can’t fund.

If Congress wants to fund children’s healthcare, that money should come out of the general fund and should be matched by commensurate reductions in discretionary spending. Spending a few million per district on pork-barrel projects should be a lesser priority than covering the insurance gap for children, right?

Except for Congress, it doesn’t work that way. They want to have their pork and eat it too — and meanwhile the American taxpayer gets stuck with the bill.

UPDATE: I wonder how many uninsured children could get healthcare instead of Charlie Rangel getting a $2 million dollar taxpayer-funded shrine to himself in New York?

There’s an interesting discussion in The Corner at National Review Online about whether we should be less “liberal” (in the classical sense) in our conduct of the war in Iraq. Rich Lowry first observes that this isn’t a liberal war any more. Andrew McCarthy than argues that the sinking approval for the war is because we have no long-term plan to deal with our enemies.

However, I find Jonah Goldberg’s arguments the most compelling. His fourth argument is the vital one here:

The root causes crowd isn’t entirely off base. The Arab world is a riot of dysfunction. One of the main arguments our enemies use against us is that America doesn’t really care about democracy, we just want to guarantee the flow of oil. Does anyone doubt that America’s acquiescence to a tyrannical regime in post-war Iraq would result in anything but a propaganda coup for these people? Moreover, another tyranny in Iraq would ultimately serve as a breeding ground for precisely the forces we’re at war with. That is assuming Iraq doesn’t simply become the seat of the new al Qaeda caliphate, in which case it won’t merely be a breeding ground for terror it will be a terror state par excellence. In short, you can’t beat something with nothing. They’re something is sharia and post-mortem virgins. Our something must be freedom.

That’s the big issue here, and the one that the President understands, but has never conveyed. The root cause of terrorism is the cultural failure of the Middle East. The UN’s Human Development Report has indicated a widespread failure of Arab states to adapt to the modern world. It is this failure of modernization that motives much of the terrorist violence in the region. The people of places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Iran are fundamentally disconnected from any control over the lives. The state controls everything, and the only measure of power they have comes from religion — the one thing greater than the state.

Even if we secure Iraq, we still have to use soft power to guide its democratic development. The problem is that we have the wrong idea of what democracy is: we think it’s institutions when it is based upon a strong civil society. If we could magically replace the Iranian government with a perfectly formed democracy, Iran would not last long as a democratic state, because they have seen decades of oppression which has gutted Iranian civil society. Indeed, the reason why Iraq is a mess right now is because we concentrated on forming democratic institutions without laying the groundwork of civil society.

The key to defusing the suicide bomber culture isn’t to defeat it militarily — unless the US wants to wage the kind of total war against the entire Muslim world that would involve the massive destruction of life and property, a solely military solution isn’t realistic. We can kill and degrade the capacity of terrorist groups, but that won’t stop them over the long haul. We have to deprive them of the ideological oxygen that feeds them.

Goldberg is right — they have shari’a and the promise of 72 virgins. We have to offer a compelling alternative. The realpolitik solution to Iraq would be to set up a local strongman friendly to our interests — except the realpolitik solution is precisely the wrong one. We already did that when we assassinated Mossadegh in Iran and replaced him with the Shah — and look at how well that turned out for us. Our compelling alternative is to replace the autocratic and undemocratic regimes in the Middle East with regimes that respect human rights and offer democracy. Let’s face it, 72 virgins in the afterlife is compelling to a typical teenager living in an Arab state — but it’s nothing compared to the freedom to vote, to have a life, to find a girl in the here and now, and to know that you live in a state where you have the opportunity to be someone.

We on the right ignore the fact that Muslims aren’t the enemy. We have to start thinking like them to understand this war — and if you lived in a society in which you had no opportunities, you had almost no chance of getting married or even going on a date without paying a substantial dowry, you had no job, and no prospects for the future, wouldn’t you be more likely to blow yourself up if you honestly thought it meant a Paradise of unending wealth and 72 nubile virgins? We’re fortunate enough to live in a world where such oppression doesn’t touch us. They don’t. Unless we’re willing to change the circumstances that generates such feelings, we have either the choice of facing a world in which groups like al-Qaeda are a constant threat or facing a massive conflict of civilizations that we will win — at such a grave human and economic cost as to be virtually unthinkable.

Democracy matters. It not only matters, but it is the key to this war.

While it’s perfectly understandable that some on the right should be “to hell with them hawks,” that position isn’t tenable for us. We can’t just pretend that the problems of the Arab world don’t effect us — they do, and not just because we get a good amount of our oil from those places. We can’t build a wall around our country and be safe — nor should we want to.

Both the “to hell with them hawks” and the “withdraw now” left have similar positions: that we should not bother to engage with such a dysfunctional region. The problem with that temptation is that we have little choice: our world has grown much smaller in the last few decades, and even a place like faraway and dirt-poor Afghanistan can have profound impacts on our national security — whether we like it or not.

Bill Roggio takes a detailed look at the organization in the wake of the capture of one of their key leaders. Apparently the “leader” of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi does not in fact exist — he’s a fictional character used to give AQI an Iraqi face. The real leader of AQI is Abu ‘Ayyub al- Masri, an Egyptian native and former close associate of al-Qaeda #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri.

What we’re learning about al-Qaeda in Iraq is that it is essentially a foreign-run enterprise with little input from Iraqis — and now that the Sunni tribes in al-Anbar are turning against them, the leadership of AQI is becoming increasingly paranoid about Iraqi turncoats. This makes it impossible for them to lead a popular uprising, and instead they’re reliant on foreigners (mainly disaffected Saudis) to carry out their attacks. While the numerical bulk of the insurgency is made up of Iraqis, the leadership of AQI is almost completely foreign, and the façade of nativism that AQI has traditionally used is collapsing on them.

The US needs to continue to work with Sunni groups who will go after AQI. The Sunnis want the Americans to leave, and quite frankly, the Americans want to leave as well. The Sunnis want to have the ability to live in peace and not be steamrolled by the majority Shi’ites, which requires a strong central government in Baghdad. If Iraq fractures, the Sunnis can’t hope to hold out for very long. Their self-interest is the same as our interests: an end to al-Qaeda, a pluralistic Iraqi government, and no domination of Iraq by Iran. While the Sunnis have been our nominal “enemy” for most of the war, that is no longer the case — right now the Sunnis have every reason to be on our side, and that’s precisely why many Sunni groups have turned against al-Qaeda’s attempts at foreign domination.

Captain Ed has an excellent roundup of Iraq-related news, including General Peter Pace speaking from the al-Anbar capital city of Ramadi and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon warning the US about a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq.

First, General Pace is reporting that there’s been a “sea change” in Iraq since the beginning of the year. Remember, last fall the Marines had written off al-Anbar Province to the enemy — months of fighting there had failed to yield lasting progress. It wasn’t until the local tribes banded together to fight off al-Qaeda that the situation changed dramatically. This “Anbar Awakening” has made al-Anbar a much safer place than it has been in years.

Pace advocates adding more troops to secure the goals we’ve already achieved. Doing that would be nearly impossible politically and very difficult logistically, but in a sane world, it’s what we should be doing. The failures of the last few years have stemmed from too few boots on the ground leading to an inability to capitalize on our successes. We’d clear out a terrorist stronghold, but the Iraqi police and military couldn’t hold them and the terrorists would soon retake those areas. If we could reinforce places like al-Anbar with mixed US-Iraqi units, it would help ensure that al-Qaeda could not return. The US units would be predominantly responsible for training and backup, while the Iraqi units would be on the front lines. The Iraqis are getting better over time, but they’ve never fought an enemy like al-Qaeda, and they need the training and support of US and coalition troops until a seasoned corps of NCOs and combat soldiers is established.

In other news, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is warning the United States not to engage in a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq:

Although Ban expressed reluctance to jump into Washington’s fierce debate over Iraq, he emphasized that the rest of the world has a stake in the outcome of the conflict. He said that both the United States and the international community have a responsibility not to abandon the Iraqi people.

“It is not my place to inject myself into this discussion taking place between the American people and the administration and Congress,” Ban told a news conference when asked about the U.N. view on a pullout. “However, I would like to tell you that great caution should be taken for the sake of the Iraqi people.”

“Any abrupt withdrawal or decision may lead to a further deterioration of the situation in Iraq,” Ban said.

Indeed, the results of an American withdrawal would almost certainly be massive devastation to the Iraqi people. The argument that things in Iraq are as bad as they can be has never been a persuasive one — nor has the argument that Iraq would be better off without an American presence. The Iraqi government simply isn’t strong enough to hold things together, and if it collapses the result will be Iraq falling into warring factions. A partition of Iraq may not be so bad in theory, but the demographics don’t support it — they aren’t any clean ethnic or sectarian lines in Iraq. Baghdad is a mixed city, and would end up being a bloodbath as each faction tries to take control. The only people who would benefit from such an outcome are terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and hostile states like Iran. The United States would not be “ending” a war, they’d be expanding it into a regional crisis.

The willful blindness of American policymakers towards Iraq is appalling — the whole issue is being turned into nothing more than a political pissing match. We cannot abandon Iraq, and forcing the Senate to sit all night in a futile and childish attempt to force a surrender in Iraq is an act that is nothing less than reprehensible.

If we don’t have the will to win in Iraq, we cannot hope to have the will to win in the next inevitable conflict — and our enemies know this. The Secretary General’s warning is a prescient one, but the costs won’t just be felt in Iraq, they’ll be felt for years to come as bin Laden’s view of America being little more than a paper tiger is proven to have been correct all along.