Category: Politics

NYT: War Support Increases

The New York Times found itself puzzled when their own polling showed that support for the war had increased beyond the margin of error. So, they did the poll again and found the same result.

I’m not surprised — if more people actually pay attention to what’s going on in Iraq, they can see that progress is being made. Meanwhile, a scant 3% support Congress on the war — if people pay attention to the shameless politicization of this issue, they’re likely to see why the current Congressional leadership are acting like petulant children.

Still, polling ultimately doesn’t matter. We don’t conduct our military policy by poll in this country, nor should we. What this does say is that the political winds can and do shift, and when a party “leads” by nothing more than political expediency, they’re not leading at all. Especially if Gen. Petraeus gives a positive report next month the Democratic caucus could be split.

What’s truly disgusting is that Rep. Clymer’s comments make it official — what is good for the country is viewed as bad for the Democratic Party. If we want to criticize the Iraqis for blind sectarianism, perhaps we should be setting a better example.

Deconstructing Obama’s Foreign Policy

Barack Obama has given his first major foreign policy speech, and while trying to sound tough on terrorism, he’s demonstrated exactly how much of a foreign policy neophyte he is. (The full text is available here)

In a strikingly bold speech about terrorism scheduled for this morning, Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Sen. Barack Obama will call not only for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, but a redeployment of troops into Afghanistan and even Pakistan — with or without the permission of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

“I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges,” Obama will say, according to speech excerpts provided to ABC News by his campaign, “but let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

In other words, the second Barack Obama takes the Oath of Office, the Pakistanis can know that they have no reason to continue the support they’ve given us during this war. Obama’s comments will probably end up creating a diplomatic row with potentially grave consequences, all because Obama wants to sound tough.

Obama forgets that a “democratic” Pakistan is all too likely to be an Islamist Pakistan. Obama also seems to forget that Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and not all that long ago there was a real concern of an Indo-Pakistani nuclear exchange that would leave millions dead. The price of going after one man is not worth the risk of inflaming regional tensions or risking the Pakistani nuclear arsenal going into the hands of terrorist groups — or even secular Pakistani ultra-nationalists who are willing to provoke a fight over Kashmir.

One of the diplomatic success stories of the Bush Administration has not only been in securing the help of Pakistan in fighting this war, but in also defusing the tensions between Pakistan and India over Kashmir. Those tensions nearly sparked a devastating war.

What Obama would do would be to signal to President Musharraf that the US is willing to violate Pakistani territory and give support to Musharraf’s political opponents — some of whom have direct ties to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The Pakistanis would have no reason to assist the United States and would be likely to turn against us. The specters of Musharraf’s government failing, increased tensions over Kashmir, or worse are all likely scenarios under a President Obama. It was always the Democrats who claimed to be the party of nuanced diplomacy — now Obama is threatening one of our allies in a bid to make himself look strong on national security. It’s a foolish and dangerous thing to do, and Obama’s irresponsible comments demonstrate precisely why he’s not wise enough to lead.

Obama also gets it wrong about Iraq:

By refusing to end the war in Iraq, President Bush is giving the terrorists what they really want, and what the Congress voted to give them in 2002: a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

The problem with that especially silly arguments is that the terrorists themselves don’t see it that way. Bin Laden believed that the US would respond to the September 11 attacks in the same way that we responded to al-Qaeda’s previous provocations — by launching a few cruise missiles and nothing else. Why did he believe that? Because he saw how the US reacted in Somalia in the early 1990s — how after just a few casualties we ran away from the fight. Bin Laden is famous for his statement that people fear and respect a strong horse but feel contempt for a weak one.

Obama has it backwards — a withdrawal from Iraq would prove to bin Laden and the rest of the terrorist networks that America does not have the stomach for a fight against the mujihadeen. Just as America’s weakness after Mogadishu, Khobar Towers, the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, the African embassy attacks, and the bombing of the USS Cole told al-Qaeda that they could launch yet bolder attacks, so to would a withdrawal from Iraq signal to al-Qaeda that they could freely escalate their attacks against the West without fear of long-term reprisal. Obama fails to understand the psychology of terrorism, and his signal of weakness would be seen for what it is.

Moreover, Obama gets al-Qaeda’s fears in Iraq wrong. While we’re feeling the strain of the war in Iraq, al-Qaeda has an even worse time. We know based on captured communications that al-Qaeda fears the rise of democracy in the Muslim world. As Ayman al-Zawahiri himself wrote, “Democracy is coming, and there will be no excuse thereafter.” The radical Islamists of al-Qaeda have every reason to fear — the recent Anbar Awakening demonstrates that one of al-Qaeda’s worst fears is coming to pass: al-Qaeda is losing popular support. As another Zawahiri letter attests, once that happens, al-Qaeda’s situation rapidly becomes untenable.

Senator Obama is apparently unfamiliar with these communications, as they show in the enemy’s own words precisely why his arguments don’t match the reality of the situation in Iraq.

Obama further demonstrates his lack of understanding with this statement:

Ending the war will help isolate al Qaeda and give Iraqis the incentive and opportunity to take them out.

Again, Obama’s assertions can be easily disproven. Iraq’s Sunni population is ~ 20% of the total Iraqi population. Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias such as the Jaish-al-Mahdi (Mahdi Army) have been attacking and killing Sunnis for some time now. The US is one of the only forces strong enough to prevent these attacks. Without our support, who will the Sunnis turn to?

Obama has it exactly backwards — Iraq’s Sunnis, facing a deadly threat from Iranian-backed militias would have no choice but to ally themselves with al-Qaeda, who also oppose the Shi’ites. A premature withdrawal would leave the Sunnis with few choices — either be ethnically cleansed into submission, become refugees elsewhere in Iraq, or join with al-Qaeda and attack the Shi’ia before they can complete the job of killing Iraq’s Shi’ites. The argument that a US withdrawal would give the Iraqis any incentives to attack al-Qaeda is little more than a delusion. There’s no logical argument which supports such a position. Obama’s comment is breathtakingly non-sensical, a triumph of ideological naivete over any logical thought. If it were just a stupid political comment it would be one thing — the thought that such blindness could be shaping policy is downright frightening.

It’s ironic that later Obama states that “Above all, I will send a clear message: we will not repeat the mistake of the past, when we turned our back on Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal.”

Instead, he’d turn his back on Iraq, which would have even more dire consequences for the US than the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban did. But Afghanistan is the “popular” war and Iraq the “unpopular” one, and Obama is reading from a political script, not making reasoned and logically consistent arguments.

Obama’s rhetoric is good, but that’s all it is: empty rhetoric. Obama wants to argue that “hopelessness” and “poverty” are the root causes of terrorism — when it’s generally the middle class that ends up being members of al-Qaeda. He promises more foreign aid — foreign aid that invariably ends up fueling corruption rather than fighting it. He promises to reach out to the Muslim world and show them the best of American culture — forgetting that it was the founder of the modern Islamist movement, Sayyid Qutb who travelled to American, saw its culture, and believed it to be evil. “America Houses” are one of those programs that sounds good on paper, but ends up being little more than a rhetorical flourish with little actual value. Obama promises to share intelligence — yet opposes the measures like the Terrorist Surveillance Program that allows that intelligence to be gathered.

Barack Obama is a gifted rhetorician, that is to be sure. His speech sounds like it is a strong new direction on terrorism — but peer beyond the surface and there is nothing there. It’s the same old empty promises directly contradicted by Obama’s actual policy prescriptions. In this critical time in American history, we cannot afford a President who says the right words but has no idea of their meaning. We cannot have a President who fails to understand the basic psychology of terrorism. We cannot have a President who will turn his back on our most crucial allies in this fight.

Obama’s speech is ultimately what Cicero, the great Roman statesman and orator, would have called a triumph of oratio over ratio — rhetoric over logic. For all its eloquence, it truly says nothing.

Time To Clean House

The IRS and FBI have raided the home of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), the man (in)famous for the “Bridge to Nowhere” earmark and “series of tubes” speech. Sen. Stevens has proven himself to be an embarrassment to the Senate, and it’s not all that surprising that one of America’s worst politicians would be at the receiving end of a corruption investigation.

Politically, this is not good for the GOP, as Larry Kudlow points out. The GOP lost in 2006 largely based on the corruption issue, and keeping someone like Stevens around continues that liability. Stevens should have a fair chance to defend himself, but if there’s any evidence of official corruption, Senator Stevens should be cut loose.

The GOP needs to clean house before 2008 — it’s not good enough that the Democrats are every bit as bad, if not worse. The GOP needs to return to its roots as a party of limited government and fiscal discipline, and that requires ensuring that every member of Congress strongly supports those values. Sen. Stevens has amply demonstrated that he does not, which is why the GOP should fully and completely support any investigation that results and ensure that the rule of law trumps any political considerations. The GOP should have learned their lesson from the handling of the William Jefferson affair — supporting politics over the rule of law invokes the wrath of the voters, and it well should.

Rhetoric And Reality

Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack have a report back from their trip to Iraq in The New York Times. Both of them find that the last few months have produced great progress in securing the country:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

The massive chasm between the rhetoric of our political classes and the reality of our soldiers on the ground has never been wider in the history of American warfare. At the same time the Majority Leader of the Senate arrogantly tells our soldiers that the war is lost, apparently they’ve failed to get the message, since they certainly don’t seem to see it that way.

The surge has produced some preliminary results: civilian casualties are down in Baghdad and a senior leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq has been captured. Baghdad’s infrastructure is slowly being brought up, people are feeling more and more safe in their neighborhoods, and places where there was once massive bloodshed are now peaceful — perhaps an uneasy peace, but far better than what preceded it.

However, the left keeps arguing that these metrics don’t matter — it doesn’t matter that the markets are open if there are still car bombs in Baghdad. The reality is that those metrics are the most important in understanding how this war needs to be fought and won. The goal is not to eliminate car bombings in Baghdad — that’s a task that will years. It’s easy for AQI or another terrorist group to put one together and find a deluded fool to kill himself. What is much harder is to keep the population of Iraq frightened into submission — and al-Qaeda is failing miserably at that task. When al-Qaeda finds themselves kicked out of al-Anbar Province, that’s a sign that the winds in Iraq are shifting.

The problem is that the American system of government is failing more than anything else in this conflict. David Ignatius has a challenging editorial in The Washington Post about this conflict:

Future military planners will have to recognize that American democracy, in which political mandates must be renewed in two-year increments, makes us uniquely unsuited to fight protracted counterinsurgency wars. Petraeus likes to observe that it takes, on average, at least nine years to prevail in such a war. If that measure is correct, Petraeus must know there is little chance that a frustrated and angry American public will grant him enough time for success. So the question is: How to extricate ourselves in a way that minimizes the damage to the United States, its allies and Iraq?

A good start would be for Washington partisans to take deep breaths and lower the volume, so that the process of talking and fighting that must accompany a gradual U.S. withdrawal can work. Some members of Congress argue that pressure for an American troop withdrawal will persuade the Iraqis to put aside their sectarian agendas, but the opposite is more likely to be true.

However, the partisan idiocy in Washington has less of a chance of dying down than does the conflict in Iraq. Given that, it’s not all that surprising that Congress’ approval rating is abysmal, while the military remains the most trusted institution in American society. It says a great deal about the state of American democracy when our democratic institutions are looked upon with disdain, while the military continues to have broad support. It’s not the military that has failed in Iraq — quite the opposite. It’s our self-serving and blindly partisan political institutions which have failed and continue to fail. Instead of a rational decision about what the best course of action is for Iraq, it’s all about securing only one victory: the next election.

Washington believes in nothing but rhetoric, while our soldiers have to face the reality in Iraq: that everything they’ve done, all the progress that they’ve made, all that they’ve fought for could be undone for the sake of political expediency back home. Our political classes continue to betray the troops, and seem to think themselves better judges of the situation in Iraq than those who bear the responsibility for this conflict on a daily basis.

The conflict in Iraq is going to be the sort of conflict that this country will face throughout the 21st Century — and if Iraq is a harbinger of how fragile our democratic institutions will be in the face of this sort of conflict, the 21st Century will be a bloody one indeed.

Calling Their Own Bluff

Ed Morrissey notes that Congressional Democrats are about to end up fighting a losing battle over executive privilege by filing contempt charges against two White House aides. As The Washington Post reports:

The House Judiciary Committee voted today to issue contempt citations for two of President Bush’s most trusted aides, taking its most dramatic step yet towards a constitutional showdown with the White House over the Justice Department’s dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys.

The panel voted 22-17, along party lines, to issue citations to Joshua B. Bolten, White House chief of staff, and Harriet E. Miers, former White House counsel. Both refused to comply with committee subpoenas after Bush declared that documents and testimony related to the prosecutor firings were protected by executive privilege. …

Republicans on the panel argued strongly today against issuing contempt citations, and Democrats shot down two proposed GOP amendments before voting for the contempt findings.

“I believe this is an unnecessary provocation of a constitutional crisis,” said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.). “Absent showing that a crime was committed in this process, I think the White House is going to win an argument in court.”

Captain Ed observes:

Tony Snow rather forcefully responded to this development, calling it a singular event in American history, where the legislative branch will direct the executive branch — in the form of the federal prosecutor — to file contempt charges against itself. The Department of Justice reminded Congress that administrations of both parties have long held that Congress has no power to issue contempt citations for claims of executive privilege. Obviously, the current leadership in Congress doesn’t care.

It portends a showdown in the Supreme Court over the nature of executive privilege, and Sensenbrenner is correct. Absent any evidence of criminal conduct, the Supreme Court is highly unlikely to grant the legislative branch free rein to pursue contempt charges or to undo executive privilege. Nancy Pelosi will in all likelihood force a ruling that will firmly establish executive privilege and leave Congress with less power than it has had, after having finally called its own bluff.

The problem the Democrats face is that they have almost no chance of pulling this off — the courts are not going to rule that the Constitution allows Congress to charge the President or his aides with contempt outside the formal process of judicial impeachment. The best outcome that they could hope for is that the Supreme Court falls back on political question doctrine and refuses to take the case — but even that’s doubtful as this appears to be a matter of separation of powers rather than a political question.

The Democratic-led Judiciary Committee, on a party-line vote, is essentially asking the Executive Branch to serve a subpoena on itself. This is something that the Supreme Court has already found to be unconstitutional. In Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714 (1986) the Court held that Congress could not fire the United States Comptroller General, as he was a member of the Executive Branch, and the only constitutional measure that the Legislative Branch has over the Executive is the power to impeach. Likewise, in Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 (1983) the Court held that one branch of Congress could not enact a legislative veto over an action of the Attorney General as that violates the separation of powers under the Constitution as well as the Presentment Clause. U.S. Const. Art. I, § 7, cl. 3. The Legislative Branch cannot infringe upon the powers of another branch even if that branch agrees with the infringement. New York v. U.S., 505 U.S. 144, 182 (1992).

There’s a long line of very clear precedent that does not allow the Legislative Branch to command the Excecutive Branch to do anything, especially when the Executive Branch is exercising its constitutionally-mandated powers. The Department of Justice may have been inept in handling the firings of the U.S. Attorneys, but the Executive has the plenary power under the Constitution to fire U.S. Attorneys at whim and for whatever reason they choose. U.S. Const. Art. II, § 3, cl. 2. The Courts are not going to allow the Legislative Branch — especially one House Committee to interfere in the right of the Executive Branch to carry out its constitutional duties. The chances of the Democrats surviving the inevitable court challenge should they choose to pursue this foolish game are close to nil.

So why bother? Like nearly everything the Democrats have done in the last six months, it’s all about political theater. It could be years before a court challenge is fully resolved, and by then the Democrats will have already done the political damage that they’ve intended to do. Of course, such a ruling explicitly limiting the power of Congress in these matters will effect future Congresses, but it’s rather clear that the Democrats aren’t looking any farther than the next elections.

This kind of ill-advised political maneuvering is exactly why this do-nothing Congress has earned it’s abysmal approval ratings — while they engage in futile efforts to preen for the radical left by chasing after the Bush Administration, the nation’s problems like terrorism, Medicare reform, Social Security reform, transparency in earmarking, and other crucial matters go completely neglected. This Congress has become a joke, and they seem to have no idea that ultimately the punch line will be on them.

The Unlikely Candidate

The New York Times Magazine has an interesting look inside the mind and the candidacy of Ron Paul. The Times makes an interesting reference to Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style in American Politics and how many of Rep. Paul’s supporters trace their origins back to the far-right John Birch Society and other conspiracy-minded organizations.

Rep. Paul has managed to assemble a fringe candidacy — attracting everyone from radical libertarian activists to left-wing anti-war protesters. The problem with this, as the Times notes, is that the only thing that holds them all together is their dislike of the status quo:

“We’re in a difficult position of working on a campaign that draws supporters from laterally opposing points of view, and we have the added bonus of attracting every wacko fringe group in the country. And in a Ron Paul Meetup many people will consider each other ‘wackos’ for their beliefs whether that is simply because they’re liberal, conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis, evangelical Christian, etc. . . . We absolutely must focus on Ron’s message only and put aside all other agendas, which anyone can save for the next ‘Star Trek’ convention or whatever.”

But what is “Ron’s message”? Whatever the campaign purports to be about, the main thing it has done thus far is to serve as a clearinghouse for voters who feel unrepresented by mainstream Republicans and Democrats. The antigovernment activists of the right and the antiwar activists of the left have many differences, maybe irreconcilable ones. But they have a lot of common beliefs too, and their numbers — and anger — are of a considerable magnitude. Ron Paul will not be the next president of the United States. But his candidacy gives us a good hint about the country the next president is going to have to knit back together.

The Ron Paul phenomenon is an interesting one from a political science standpoint because it shows how the paranoid style is still an active force in American politics. It isn’t because Rep. Paul is a political genius — the Times piece makes it clear that he’s not exactly up to speed on modern politics, not knowing what The Daily Show is or knowing about GQ Magazine. It’s because Rep. Paul has become a symbol for those who live on the paranoid fringes of American politics. His message is all about rejectionism — rejecting foreign entanglements, rejecting the war, rejecting the Federal Reserve, etc. His campaign is attracting the hard left and the isolationist right because they can both latch onto one of his positions and seem to care little about the others.

Ultimately, cranky radicals will be with us forever — there are always those whose sensibilities include seeing sinister conspiracies in common events. Rep. Paul simply attracts those sorts — and while those people may love posting to blogs and spreading their theories, they’re not a political constituency. Even Rep. Paul himself knows that he has a virtually nil chance of winning. However, he seems to have stumbled upon the right message at the right time to become a fringe candidate who has managed to garner the support of the disaffected in American politics.

At the same time, there’s a problem with that. The paranoid style is not a healthy style in American politics — the radicalism of the John Birch Society was not a healthy force in American politics during their Cold War heydays. The sort of conspiracy theories spun by Rep. Paul’s supporters — the 9/11 “Truthers,” the Federal Bank conspiracies, the anti-Israel lobby — all of those are comforting fictions to some, but fictions nonetheless. Those who buy into these alternate realities only feed their own paranoia, further isolating themselves from the American mainstream. While the vast majority of them are harmless — when that sort of paranoia spirals out of control, people like Timothy McVeigh end up taking action. It certainly isn’t the case that Ron Paul supporters are the equivalent of the Oklahoma City bombers — far from it. What is true is that an atmosphere of paranoia and conspiracy leads to more and more radicalism and less and less civic engagement.

Rep. Paul is hardly a bad guy — he’s a crank, but a harmless and affable one. His rise to pseudo-celebrity is less about his own political skills, and more about being in the right place at the right time. Certainly the idea that the government has grown too large and too intrusive isn’t crazy — in fact, it’s rather crazy to argue that the state of our federal government would be shocking to the Founders of this nation. The problem with Rep. Paul’s candidacy is that it is based out of that paranoid style in American politics, and that style isn’t a healthy one. Rep. Paul may end being the political heir to the Lyndon LaRouche movement, but that’s hardly a good position to be in.

Rep. Paul does have real principles, and some of his positions are workable. It would be nice to see some serious discussion about returning to the principles of constitutional federalism that our Founders intended. However, those realistic positions are washed away by the bizarre cult of personality that has grown up around Rep. Paul — and in some ways, that’s the tragic aspect of the whole thing. Rep. Paul’s success has been as an avatar for the political fringe, but that avatar may well end up swallowing the real Ron Paul — an affable country doctor with some interesting political views and a strong sense of public service.

Playing Politics

The Washington Post has a scathing editorial on the way in which Harry Reid is playing politics with Iraq:

The decision of Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) to deny rather than nourish a bipartisan agreement is, of course, irresponsible. But so was Mr. Reid’s answer when he was asked by the Los Angeles Times how the United States should manage the explosion of violence that the U.S. intelligence community agrees would follow a rapid pullout. “That’s a hypothetical. I’m not going to get into it,” the paper quoted the Democratic leader as saying.

For now Mr. Reid’s cynical politicking and willful blindness to the stakes in Iraq don’t matter so much. The result of his maneuvering was to postpone congressional debate until September, when Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will report on results of the surge — in other words, just the outcome the White House was hoping for. But then, as now, the country will desperately need a strategy for Iraq that can count on broad bipartisan support, one aimed at carrying the U.S. mission through the end of the Bush administration and beyond. There are serious issues still to resolve, such as whether a drawdown should begin this fall or next year, how closely it should be tied to Iraqi progress, how fast it can proceed and how the remaining forces should be deployed.

The only way the actions of the Democrats make sense is to understand that it all comes down to the most shameless brand of politics. Harry Reid certainly doesn’t care about Iraq — his own lack of care or understanding about what happens to the Iraqi people in the absence of US forces is demonstrable proof. There’s no room for doubt that a US withdrawal would lead to massive violence in Iraq — there’s no guarantee that the Iraqi military can keep the peace at this point, and the Interior Ministry forces remain far too closely tied with the sectarian militias. Moreover, the Iranians have every interest in either keeping Iraq divided and impotent or as a Shi’ite dominated client state. Al-Qaeda is being pushed out of al-Anbar, but without the support of US troops, al-Qaeda could simply slaughter the local Sunnis into submission. In the largely successful Kurdish north, Turkey is already amassing troops on the border — without the US to moderate, it’s quite possible that they would choose to invade to end the potential of the Iraqi Kurds supporting Kurdish terrorist groups on Turkish soil.

However, what the MoveOn.org crowd doesn’t understand is that Harry Reid is playing them for chumps. Reid knows quite well that he could end the war right now — all he has to do is defund the war. That’s exactly how the Founders intended Congress to balance the President’s powers as Commander in Chief. Of course, that would mean that the Democrats would be responsible for leaving our troops in harm’s way — and taking responsibility for anything is not the style of this Congress.

So, Harry Reid is kissing up to the MoveOn.org white flag crowd, but not enough to actually do something about the war. As long as he can keep the Iraq issue alive, it’s to his benefit to drag things out. The Democrats don’t want to end the war — they want to talk about ending the war. They don’t want to do anything that causes them to take responsibility for what happens once the US withdraws — which is why they’re hoping that the Republicans will cave and they can make this the biggest bipartisan mistake in United States history rather than the failure they forced upon the country.

This political acrimony is absolutely unnecessary — there’s a consensus that the American military needs to draw down in the near future and allow the Iraqis to transition into protecting their own country while we concentrate on training Iraqi units and fighting al-Qaeda. However, political comity isn’t what Reid wants — it’s the anger of the unhinged left that sustains the Democratic Party, and he’ll fan the flames as long as he can.

History will view Senator Reid and Representative Pelosi as the craven opportunists that they are — they had a chance to act as statesmen, but chose the path of partisanship instead. Leading Democrats had been supporting the surge a few months before preemptively calling it failure. A competent political party would have taken the fact that President Bush had fired Rumsfeld, changed course in Iraq, and embraced the strategy of adding additional troops and taken that as a major victory — but the Democratic Party has been hijacked by a group of extremists who wish for nothing less than an abject American surrender in Iraq.

Reid and Pelosi rightly deserve the blame for pursuing the path of partisanship rather than acting as responsible statesmen. The price of their political considerations could come at a nightmarish cost — thousands upon thousands of Iraqi dead, a US military who has once again been let down by craven politicians, and a world made unnecessarily dangerous because we did not have a political class with the will to see things through. Everyone will suffer — including the Democrats themselves who will once again be considered the party of weakness on national security for decades to come.

President Cheney

OK, it’s only for 3 hours, but for three hours, every left-wingers worst nightmare has come true… and it feels good.

No word on whether he’ll give a full pardon to Scooter Libby, which would be fun if only for the fact that it would cause several cranial explosions in Washington D.C….

The Next JFK? Not Even Close

The New Republic makes the argument that Barack Obama is the next JFK. Let’s see if that holds true:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

John F. Kennedy, January 20, 1961

And Senator Obama? Apparently preventing genocide in Iraq just isn’t his thing. Selling out the Iraqi people? Fine by him, so long as we tuck tail and run. Let the Iraqis kill each other, and maybe we’ll care when a few hundred thousand are dead. Genocide just isn’t our problem.

JFK? Not even close.

Helping McCain, Helping The Troops

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.