Seventeen Minutes Not Wasted

I'm not a "swoon" kind of guy. However, she makes a good point: 

Imagine if we had more of @mehdirhasan on the air. The electorate would be smarter. There’d be a lot more accountability. And restored faith, perhaps, in the political media landscape. He does interviews incredibly well. And. I swoon. https://t.co/1TQIMeePVz

— @tiffanydcross (@TiffanyDCross) October 15, 2020

Not only was this excellent interviewing but it was even better than suggested. Hasan introduced this general topic at 11:47 of the interview, a full 91 seconds before Bolton began to state "this is really about as low...."

The viewer benefits when an interviewer challenges a guest's pat answer to a pre-determined question. When the guest responds by criticizing the host, it's obvious that something important is being elicited.

A moment earlier, Bolton had referred to Iran and, unlike bad interviewers, Hasan did not revert to a pre-determined issue. Hasan then noted that- according to the International Atomic Energy Administration- when the nuclear deal was in place and Trump became President, Iran had 100 kilograms of enriched uranium and now has 2,000 enriched kilograms. As the conversation proceeded, Bolton eventually claimed that the "IAEA is not an espionage agency. It knows what people declare to it. It does not know much else."

If true, that would imply that conclusions of the IAEA could not be trusted. Except that it's not, for a month ago we had learned from Reuters

Iran has let the U.N. nuclear watchdog inspect one of the two sites it agreed last week to grant access to after a protracted standoff, while Tehran’s stockpile of enriched uranium has risen further, quarterly reports by the agency said on Friday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspected one of the sites and took environmental samples there, one of the two reports obtained by Reuters said, referring to samples aimed at detecting traces of nuclear material that may have been present.

The agency’s inspectors will visit the other site “later in September 2020 on a date already agreed with Iran, to take environmental samples”, the report said.

The other report said that Iran’s stock of low-enriched uranium (LEU) rose by 534 kg in the most recent quarter, roughly the same amount as in the previous three months, to 2,105.4 kg.

That is more than 10 times the 202.8 kg limit set by Iran’s 2015 nuclear accord with big powers, which Iran has been breaching in response to Washington’s withdrawal from the deal in 2018 and reimposition of sanctions against Tehran.

 

Admittedly, it is not a "spy agency," instead having inspectors, which make it at least a little more credible. And if in fact the IAEA knows only "what people declare to it," the truth is even more damning to the Trump Administration. Presumably, it would be what the Iranian government is declaring to it, and Tehran would be likely to underestimate, rather than overestimate, its current stock. It is better to calm fears than to inflame them.

Unfortunately, Hasan didn't make the connection at the time. However, he made some progress in emphasizing the failure of the Trump policy on Iran and engaged the former National Security Advisor in a spirited discussion of both Iran and Iraq.  Also, as Cross observed, he exposed Bolton's hypocrisy. 

Not bad for a day's work. And for extra points:  once again we saw an example of the 30-year GOP project to demonize Hillary Clinton, an ultimately highly successful scheme with devastating consequences to the families of 213,000 Americans

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"Obama The Appeaser"

So I had planned yesterday to write a post noting how Mike Pompeo went on the Sunday talk show circuit with the dual purpose of defending (obviously) the Administration's assassination of an Iranian official and ridiculing (almost as obviously) former President Obama.

On Meet the Press, the Secretary of State argued

We suffered from eight years of Iranian support from America. We gave them billions of dollars. We gave them resources.We allowed countries to trade with them, to build up their economy.... We've seen Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, the PIJ in Gaza Strip, all of these terrorist organizations, the Shi'a militias, the Shi'a militias that we are now challenged to push back against today, all underwritten by American policy in the Obama administration. We've flipped the switch. We're draining those resources. We're going to protect America and keep American people safe.

He contended that the families of Americans being held hostage by Iran

are suffering greatly. They're suffering from the very Iranian regime we're seeking to counter. Most of these folks were taken during the previous administration. It was a policy that was designed to guarantee that the Iranian regime would have power, authority, capacity to take Americans, but not only Americans. Other Westerners, too.

(Check out the transcript. He actually did conflate "families" and hostages.)

Pompeo told CNN's Jake Tapper "Team Obama appeased Iran, and it led to Shia militias with money, Hamas, the PIJ, hundreds of thousands of Syrians killed by Soleimani himself" but "America will no longer behave the way that it did during the Obama-Biden administration. We will no longer appease..."

The message should have been loud and clear to one of the newest multi-millionaires on Martha's Vineyard whom, rumor has it, was recently President of the United States of America. However, there is risk in shooting downward, for a former President to lower himself to an argument with a Secretary of State, albeit an influential one in a particularly reckless Administration.

But that's no longer the case because it's now the current President continuing the practice of disparaging his predecessor, now over a live, ongoing foreign policy crisis. Speaking from the Oval Office, Donald Trump on Wednesday stated

Iran’s hostilities substantially increased after the foolish Iran nuclear deal was signed in 2013, and they were given 150 billion dollars, not to mention 1.8 billion in cash. Instead of saying thank you to the United States, they chanted “Death to America.” In fact, they chanted “Death to America” the day the agreement was signed. Then Iran went on a terror spree funded by the money from the deal, and created hell in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq. The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration. The regime also greatly tightened the reins on their own country. Even recently, killing 1,500 people at the many protests that are taking place all throughout Iran.

The hostility (no such thing as hostilities) increased after President Trump led the USA out of the nuclear deal the previous Administration had consummated with Iran. He has no idea where Iran got the money to fire its missiles at US air bases. The "Death to America" reference sounds a lot like Trump's debunked claim of November 21, 2015 that "thousands and thousands of ('Arab') people" were "cheering as the World Trade Center came down" on September 11, 2001.

But lying is as important to Donald Trump as the air he breathes, and many people have become desensitized to it. There is still time, though, to rebut vigorously what Trump says about the prior Administration, for the benefit of the individual, his Party, and the nation. In the passage above, he is saying

You, Barack Obama, tried bribing Iran but they double-crossed you and then humiliated America while destroying the Middle East.  They took our money and after murdering thousands of their own, are trying to kill Americans with the money you gave them. You paid them to kill Americans.

Former President Obama posted his summer reading recommendations on Facebook last year.  He took to Instagram in late December to give us his list of favorite books of 2019.   He believes communicating to Americans his literary preferences is important.

When President Trump brings the USA to the brink of war- and more likely helps set off more terrorism and mayhem in the Mideast and beyond- by reckless actions taken in large measure because President Obama haddone the reverse, it should be as important to him.

Perhaps Barack Obama believes that the more dangerous President Trump becomes, and appears to be to the American people, the greater his own legacy. However, there is a point at which experienced and credible American citizens- such as a former President- need to speak up. The navel-gazing he seemingly revels in must give way to a larger concern, one about the maintenance of American democracy and the stability of international relations.

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Collapsing The Moral Space

As seen at twice in the video below  Secretary of Mike Pompeo appeared Sunday on CNN's State of the Union and reiterated one among the floating reasons the Trump Administration has given for the assassination of Iraqi government official/terrorist Soleimani. At 8:08, Jake Tapper asks him "When you say the attacks were imminent, how imminent were they? Are we talking about days; are we talking about weeks?" Pompeo maintans "If you're an American in this region, days and weeks, this is not something that's relevant. We have to prepare, we have to be ready, we took a bad guy off the battlefield."

At 6:30, there had been

Tapper: Do you know for a fact that the mission Soleimani was working on, you say attacks, you say that he was planning, have they been called off, these attacks?

Pompeo: We're prepared for anything the Islamic Republic of Iran may do, Jake. There are clearly actors that go beyond Soleimani.  That's why we're still doing the work we're doing.  That's why we're still preparing....

That will be enough, Mike. The answer, from what we can discern from your answers, is "no." Mike Pompeo is no Donald Trump, not even a poor man's Donald Trump. Unskilled in projecting righteous indignation and proper body image, Pompeo can't even fake lying or answering a question.  Recalling the focus in the media and elsewhere on impeachment of the President, Elizabeth Warren noted "There was a reason that he chose this moment, not a month ago, not a month from now, not a less aggressive, less dangerous response.” Prolific, never-Trump journalist David Frum has the best argument:

If a threat is imminent, killing the guy at the very top of the chain of command won't stop it.

If killing the guy at the top of the chain of command will stop it, the threat is not imminent.

Killing bin Laden on 9/10 would not have prevented 9/11.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) January 7, 2020

So the strike ordered in Iraq against Iran by commander-in-chief Trump probably was timed to divert attention from the impeachment battle in Washington. However, the President's goal- in this provocative act, in the Middle East more generally, and in international affairs even more broadly- goes beyond mere distraction. It's probably more sophisticated and Jonathan Chait recognizes

His real North Star is in fact an idea he has explicated many times, but — perhaps because it is so horrifying — even his critics seem hesitant to accept as a true motivation. Trump’s plan is to collapse the moral space between America and its enemies.

The president laid out his logic most recently on Sunday night, when he reiterated his threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites if that country retaliates in the wake of the targeted killing of Qasem Soleimani. “They’re allowed to kill our people,” Trump told the press pool. “They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.”

This is Trump’s deepest belief about foreign policy: The things that separate the United States from terrorists and dictatorships are not a source of strength, but of weakness. Our enemies are stronger and tougher, willing to do the hard things that must be done in order to win. To defeat them, we must become like them.

Trump has long dismissed respect for human rights, international law, and innocent life as a form of political correctness. During the campaign, he promised to kill the families of terrorists, steal oil from countries the U.S. invades, and restore torture. “Don’t tell me it doesn’t work — torture works,” Trump said in 2016. “Okay, folks? Torture — you know, half these guys [say]: ‘Torture doesn’t work.’ Believe me, it works. Okay?”

In February, 2017 then-Fox News host Bill O'Reilly told President Trump "He's a killer, though. Putin's a killer." Trump responded "There are a lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. What, you think our country's so innocent?"

Beside the obvious fallacy of moral equivalence, Trump's reply was disturbing on a level we didn't fully understand then.  For most people, charging that a person- or a nation- is not innocent is not a compliment.

But for Donald J. Trump, it may in fact be a positive.  Chait realizes that the President values strength and toughness (as he defines them) above all else and that he wants to make the USA more like its enemies.

That helps explain why Trump does not believe in "win-win" scenarios and is fiercely determined that his enemies- in foreign affairs, domestic politics, and elsewhere- lose.  It helps explain also why Donald Trump does not lack a moral compass. He most assuredly has one- but one valuing nefariousness and depravity.

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"No More War!"

At the right side of this site is a list of recommended blogs and websites, the first entry being "Attytood" by Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News.  The following is the text of a letter I e-mailed him today about a recent post of his:

As someone who voted in June for Bernie Sanders and will vote in November for Hillary Clinton, and who has found criticism of "Berniebros" a little overwrought, I appreciated "Why I totally support those 'jerks' chanting "No more war!'"  Additionally, as a Twitter rookie whose blog includes links to your columns (and those of others), it reminded me that I need to follow you.

Although agreeing with several of your individual points, I believe your support for the dissenters on the convention floor should be more nuanced.  You note the "dissidents- mostly pro-Bernie Sanders delegates- loudly chanting 'No more war!' during speeches by folks associated with the military, especially Leon Panetta, the former Defense secretary under President Obama, and retird Gen. John Allen, who showed up to give Hillary Clinton a very loud endorsement."

You recognize "the news today that the U.S. has embarked on yet another round of military adventurism in the Middle East- launching a bombing campaign (a 'precision' bombing campaign, the Pentagon and its chosen mouthpiece Barbara Starr of CNN assure us) against ISIS terrorists in Libya...."

Accurately, you argue "we're afraid of any frank discussion" of what "should be a scandal that the United States drops bombs from flying death robots or our obscenely expensive military jets over countries like Libya, swaths of Africa, or Syria based only on a 15-year-od congressional resolution passed after an attack carried out mostly by Saudi Arabians loyal to a terrorist group that barely exists in 2016."

Your concern about what appears to be "continual warfare" and the national security state (symbolized by the excessively restrictive "security zones") is welcome.  The vocal critics inside the Wells Fargo Center also deserved better than to be drowned out by choreographed chants of "USA USA!".

Surely Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton should not be immune from analysis of their role in extending the overuse of the American military, an approach generally supported by the two officials.

Yet, this approach to foreign affairs has held sway in the USA since at least President Bush, impatient with sanctions, decided to deploy the military to Iraq.  He has received widespread, largely justified, condemnation for his decision.  Notwithstanding a stable of (official and unofficial) advisors, he has been assigned most of the blame for this mistake and a portion of the responsibility for the terrifying impact it has had on global security.

Attaching blame primarily to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces has been less common during the current Administration.  "No more war" was robustly chanted in Philadelphia at former Defense Secretary Panetta and mention of Hilllary Clinton, Secretary of State during Mr. Obama's first term, was often met with boos from Sanders' supporters. To a lesser extent, Obama has been afforded less criticism by the left in this sphere than would be expected given his policies toward the military, indivdual liberties, and transparency.

You pointed out "the recent admission by the Obama adminstration that U.S. military actions in nations with which we're not technically at war have killed 116 innocent civilians." Such analysis should not be, and cannot be, expected by impassioned delegates inside a convention hall. Still, I find it passing strange that the individual who has been present for eight of the last eight years, and at whose desk the buck stops, completely escaped criticism, let alone derision and heckling, at the Democratic National Convention. It's almost as if President Obama does not exist or is at best a helpless victim of the irresistable military fervor of other individuals.

If you have an explanation for this imbalance, I'd surely like to hear it.









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The 'Whatever' Candidate

Politico notes that Donald Trump has named as his national finance chairman Steve Munchin who, after 17 years at Goldman Sachs

became founder, president and CEO of OneWest Bank Group LLC from 2009 to 2015, a bank backed by Soros and several other hedge fund managers and billionaires. The group sold the bank to CIT Group for $3.4 billion in a merger that was completed last August.

During his tenure at Goldman Sachs and beyond, Mnuchin contributed more than $7,000 to Clinton's New York Senate bids in 2000 and 2006 as well as her run for the Democratic nomination in 2008, according to federal contribution data on OpenSecrets. Mnuchin also donated $1,000 to Republican candidate Steve Forbes in June 1999, along with several other presidential and congressional candidates in both parties. Mnuchin contributed $2,000 to Barack Obama's 2004 Senate campaign and $2,300 for his presidential bid in 2007.

This is the guy who really wants to shake up the Establishment and smash politics as usual, just as he slammed Ted Cruz with "I know the guys at Goldman Sachs. They have total, total control over him. Just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton."   Or as one of the fellows at Red State remarked, Mnuchin is "an interesting guy. Big Hollywood connections, big Wall Street resume, big money friends. You know, all the stuff that was bad bad bad but is now good good good because Trump says so."

We were warned it is an act.  On April 21, the AP reported that in a private briefing  "Donald Trump's chief lieutenants told skeptical Republican leaders Thursday that the GOP front-runner has been 'projecting an image' so far in the 2016 primary season and 'the part that he's been playing is now evolving' in a way that will improve his standing among general election voters."

He was putting us on as early as February 13 when he argued in debate in South Carolina "I'm the only one on this stage that said, "Do not go into Iraq. Do not attack Iraq. Nobody else on this stage said that. And I said it loud and strong."  Or when one week earlier he had stated in a debate in North Carolina "And remember this, I’m the only one up here, when the war of Iraq — in Iraq, I was the one that said, “Don’t go, don’t do it, you’re going to destabilize the Middle East.' Nor on September 16, when he had claimed "I am the only person on this dais- the only person- that fought very, very hard against us (ph) and I wasn't a sitting politician going into Iraq, because I said going into Iraq- that was in 2003, you can check it out, check it out. I'll give you 25 different stories."

He, and his supporters, have given us zero (0)..  According to BuzzFeed, Trump was asked by Howard Stern on September 11, 2002 if he supported invading Iraq and replied "Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly."   In January, 2003 he decisively old Neil Cavuto the President "has either got to do something or not do something,"

On balance, the record indicates Trump appeared ambivalent about the war, a far cry from the guy who claims he foresaw "exactly what happened."









It's impossible to now for sure what Trump believes even about immigration, despite his radical and harsh rhetoric. In early January, he discussed immigration off-the-record with members of The New York Times editorial board and later refused to release the transcript. Gail Collins- in what is believed to have reflected contents of the chat- concluded "The most optimistic analysis of Trump as a presidential candidate is that he just doesn’t believe in positions, except the ones you adopt for strategic purposes when you’re making a deal." On September 6, I had written

Clear, unambiguous, and definitive- or maybe not. Javier Palomerez, president and CEO of the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, appeared on Tuesday's All In With Chris Hayes.   When Palomerez stated "The Donald Trump that I met today and that I sat with today was very different from the Donald Trump that I saw in the media," Hayes asked "what do you mean by that?" and Palomerez responded

The Donald Trump I sat with today was hospitable, he was a gentleman. He listened much more than he spoke. He asked questions.

We continue to disagree, particularly on the wall. We agreed on this notion of mass deportation of 11 million people. And we continued to agree on the fact that we will not use Trump properties.

We agreed on this notion of mass deportation of 11 million people.  (Javier Palomerez doesn't want 11 people, let alone 11 million people, deported.)  If we don't know what Donald Trump's views are about immigration, we probably don't know what they are about anything- except himself. “He referred to my hands," Trump once boasted, "and said, ‘If they’re small, something else must be small,’ and I guarantee you there’s no problem. There’s no problem.”








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Two Remarkable Comments

A Daily Kos blogger weekly hosts a poll asking "Who won the week?" It is often won by President Obama, and includes a wide array of legitimate options. For this week, the results were

The Connecticut Supreme Court, for ruling the state's death penalty unconstitutional, sparing 11 inmates on death row   12%, 393 votes

James Tracy, Mike East and Larry Morris, the retired Marines who lowered the American flag at the U.S. Embassy in Havana in 1961…and helped raise it there again today, 54 years later  11%, 371 votes

The Black Lives Matter movement, which is effectively getting its message out and insisting that people pay attention  8% , 280 votes

Astronaut Scott Kelly, who chowed down on the lettuce he grew at the International Space Station and deemed it "tasty"  1%, 33 votes

Canadian parliament candidate Wyatt Scott, whose zany online ad in which he rides a goose, slays a dragon and high-fives a space alien went viral and entered political ad lore   2%, 72 votes

Hillary Clinton: still running strong against the GOP; unveils New College Compact; meets with members of Black Lives Matter activists in New Hampshire  6%, 219 votes

Go Left America and the Detroit School Board, for filing a Title VI complaint with the DOJ against MI Gov. Rick Snyder for misusing federal funds, discrimination against minorities, and abuse of power  4%, 159 votes

The senators who announced their intention to vote for the Iran nuclear agreement, inc. Franken, Tester, Durbin, Sanders, Schatz, Klobuchar and King (Go, Angus!)  20%, 655 votes

Bernie Sanders: draws a crowd of 28k in Portland and 27k in LA; National Nurses United endorsement; hires the amazing Symone Sanders of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice as new national press secretary  27%, 898 votes

Melissa Gilbert, who is running for Congress as a Democrat in Michigan's 8th District, and stands a good chance of winning  1%, 49 votes

Baseball trivia buffs: on Tuesday all 15 Major League home teams won their games over the visitors (with 4 shutouts) for the first time ever  2%, 85 votes

Bernie Sanders was the popular winner there but nothing he said last week compared to a statement from a Republican US Representative. Interviewed by a conservative talker from the southeastern part of the state, the conservative congressman admitted

I did not do what I should have done to read and find out whether Bush was telling us the truth about Saddam being responsible for 9/11 and having weapons of mass destruction. Because I did not do my job then, I helped kill 4,000 Americans, and I will go to my grave regretting that.

You can't get a better apology than that.  Compare those words of regret from North Carolina's Walter Jones to the Repub politician who on Thursday at a forum sponsored by Politico remarked

I'll tell you, though, that taking out Sadaam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal... In 2009 Iraq was fragile but secure. It was mission was accomplished in a way that there was security there. It is a fact.... It was important to create a secure situation so that the Iraqi people, uh, felt progress was being made; they weren't afraid to walk the streets.

The surge was a military success and political failure, paving the way for the election of Nouri-al-Maliki, who shut the Sunnis out of the government and created conditions ripe for increased terrorism and instability.  President Obama complied with the terms of the Status of Forces Agreement signed by the brother of the man who made the statement above.   Taking out Sadaam, an ardent foe of Al Qaeda, turned out to be a pretty bad deal, setting in motion the events which have led to the turbulence and instability in the region today.

It's a tale of two men, both Republicans. One of them doesn't understand the Middle East and is even more confused about economics. The other one, from a district which went 58%-41% for the GOP presidential nominee in 2012, offers a bold, nearly unprecedented, apology for his role in a war waged by a president of his own party. The other can raise an awful lot of money and is from a family which has produced two failed presidents. And he is the one who thinks he should be President.












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Going On The Offensive On Iraq

Two months before being elected President

Barack Obama said the surge of American forces in Iraq has ``succeeded beyond our wildest dreams,'' though Iraqis still haven't done enough to take responsibility for their country.

``The surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,'' Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, said in a recorded interview broadcast tonight on Fox News's ``The O'Reilly Factor'' program.

Obama has come under repeated criticism from Republican rival John McCain for opposing President George W. Bush's decision last year to send 20,000 extra combat troops to Iraq. While Obama said before that the additional forces have damped insurgent violence, his comments on the program were some of the strongest he's made on the issue.

Barack Obama, running for the highest office in the land in 2008, was loyal most of all to his own campaign for the presidency, which thankfully saved us from a Vice-President Sarah Palin.

Now, however, as Jeremiah Wright and millions of Americans have put it over the years, "the chickens have come home to roost."  Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Tuesday, John Ellis Bush (spinning the tale five days earlier, below) stated

So why was the success of the surge followed by a withdrawal from Iraq, leaving not even the residual force that commanders and the joint chiefs knew was necessary?

That premature withdrawal was the fatal error, creating the void that ISIS moved in to fill – and that Iran has exploited to the full as well.

ISIS grew while the United States disengaged from the Middle East and ignored the threat.

And where was Secretary of State Clinton in all of this?  Like the president himself, she had opposed the surge…then joined in claiming credit for its success … then stood by as that hard-won victory by American and allied forces was thrown away.

Author and Slate contributor Fred Kaplan demolishes John's argument as he explains

Bush got a crucial fact wrong in this chronicle: His brother’s administration—not Obama’s—signed the status of forces agreement, on Nov. 17, 2008, which stated, in Article 24: “All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011.”

Article 30 of that same agreement stated that its terms could be amended “only with the official agreement of the Parties in writing and in accordance with the constitutional procedures in effect in both countries.” These “constitutional procedures” included a vote by the Iraqi Parliament—and at no time between 2008 and 2011 was the Iraqi Parliament going to take such a vote.

Granted, President Obama did want to get out of Iraq; he won the White House in large part on that promise, and there was no more support in the United States than in Iraq for a continued presence of American troops. And yet Obama did send emissaries—among them former aides to George W. Bush—to seek an amendment to allow a few thousand residual forces. The Iraqi government refused. Unless Obama wanted to re-invade the country, there was nothing to be done.

There was another fallacy in Bush’s description of the surge: Though it was a huge tactical success, it did not pave the way toward “victory.” As its architect, Gen. David Petraeus, said on several occasions, the surge was meant merely to create some “breathing space,” a “zone of security,” so that Iraq’s political factions could form a unified government. The problem was that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki didn’t want unity: He didn’t want to make a deal on power-sharing, oil revenues, or land settlements with Sunni or Kurdish leaders; he wanted to maintain Shiite dominance—and it was Maliki’s stubbornness that revived the sectarian violence and left a lane open for ISIS, whose leaders exploited their fellow Sunnis’ resentments.

Unfortunately, the surge as a success is an idea deeply embedded in American journalism and as a result, influential with the American people. It has not been a dominant argument because voters understand that Gulf War II, initiated by George W. Bush under false pretenses, was a mistake and bears more responsibility than anything for unleashing dangerous forces in the Mideast.

Still, John Ellis Bush's argument is dangerous, one which might resonate with voters in a general election, whether the candidate is the former president's brother or someone else.  It would not have fooled anyone, had Democrats pushed back against it when it was continually claimed by John McCain. Worse yet were those Democrats, such as Barack Obama, who lacked the fortitude to rebut the false argument that the surge, largely a failure, was a smashing success.














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Here Is Another Nice Mess He Is Getting Us Into

The surge in Iraq worked. No, not in the conventional sense, but in a political sense. Strategically, it was a failure, as Stephen Walt explained in 2009:

The surge had two main goals. The first goal was to bring the level of violence down by increasing U.S. force levels in key areas, forging a tactical alliance with cooperative Sunni groups, and shifting to a counterinsurgency strategy that emphasized population protection. This aspect of the surge succeeded, though it is still hard to know how much of the progress was due to increased force levels and improved tactics and how much was due to other developments, such as the prior “ethnic cleansing” that had separated the contending groups.

The second and equally important goal was to promote political reconciliation among the competing factions in Iraq. This goal was not achieved, and the consequences of that failure are increasingly apparent. What lies ahead is a long-delayed test of strength between the various contending groups, until a new formula for allocating political power emerges. That formula has been missing since before the United States invaded — that is, Washington never had a plausible plan for reconstructing a workable Iraqi state once it dismantled Saddam’s regime — and it will be up to the Iraqi people to work it out amongst themselves. It won’t be pretty.

In the last six years, it has become even less pretty, rather downright ugly. But, the surge has been a tremendous success politically.  So effective has promulgation of the surge myth been that even Barack Obama, opponent of the Iraq War when he was a state senator and had no responsibility for foreign affairs, told Bill O'Reilly in 2008 "I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated.... I've already said it succeeded beyond our wildest dreams."

Politico reports that John Ellis Bush (working on his 36th revised remarks about Iraq) "maintained that ISIS has spread because of Obama’s decision not to maintain more of a military presence in Iraq and criticized his decision not to keep between 8-10,000 troops there, instead of the 3,000 now on the ground." John Ellis, with George Walker as a foreign policy adviser, is significantly exposed on the war. However, a less vulnerable Scott Walker, the leader in Iowa poll(s), similarly now claims (on his Facebook page)

Any president would have likely taken the same action President Bush did with the information he had, even Hillary Clinton voted for it, but knowing what we know now, we should not have gone into Iraq. President Bush deserves enormous credit for ordering the surge, a courageous move that worked. 

Unfortunately, President Obama and Secretary Clinton hastily withdrew our troops, threw away the gains of the surge, and embarked on a broader policy of pivoting away from the Middle East and leading from behind that has created chaos in the region.

The GOP learned, quickly, following John E. Bush's fumbling of the issue last week.   Few if any Democratic politicians have bothered to speak the truth about the surge and it may come back to haunt them.  Instead of biting the bullet by recognizing defeat and withdrawing the American soldiers from Iraq, President Bush delayed the day of reckoning . The genius of the surge was that, in Walt's words, it was "a well-intentioned attempt to staunch the violence temporarily and let President Bush hand the problem off to his successor. "

Whereupon Barack Obama took the easy way out and praised the surge, perhaps to establish foreign policy gravitas, or to appear bipartisan, or to avoid an argument with O'Reilly.  But Democrats, beware: circa 1952, the myth was that another Democratic President, Harry S. Truman, "lost China." Walker has given fair warning that the GOP foreign policy theme in 2016 will be "Obama lost China" or the "Obama-Clinton Administration" lost Iraq. It is historically inaccurate, but that probably won't matter; the groundwork has been laid. Thanks, Barack.

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The Man Who Won't Go Away

The Playboy interview of Dick Cheney begins

Dick Cheney likes lattes. Seated in his favorite brown-leather chair in the sunlit study of his home in McLean, Virginia, the former vice president of the United States can toss back two of the warm java blasts in an hour. They come from a stainless-steel machine in the kitchen and a slender, mustachioed housekeeper named Gus, who serves them in custom-ordered white Starbucks cups outfitted with cardboard Starbucks sleeves.

Digby comments "Why would anyone want to pretend they're drinking Starbucks when they're drinking a latte made in their own kitchen?"  Personally, I wonder why Dick needs a pool boy to serve the lattes. In either case, Digby is right to conclude "should be fun."

And the fun begins almost immediately, when the former vice-president contends

I think with respect to the situation in Iraq, his precipitous withdrawal and refusal to leave any stay-behind forces, to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqis, was a huge mistake; we are paying a price for it now.... 

I don’t think he ever bought into the notion that we’re at war, in terms of a war on terrorism; I think he always wanted to treat it as a law-enforcement problem. 

Those drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia must be the President's version of the Miranda warning.  Admittedly, President Obama did not sign a Status of Forces Agreement with Baghdad. But George W. Bush did- and it required all USA soldiers to be out of Iraq by December 31, 2011. In the press conference announcing the pact, President Bush maintained it

provides American troops and Defense Department officials with authorizations and protections to continue supporting Iraq's democracy once the U.N. mandate expires at the end of this year. This agreement respects the sovereignty and the authority of Iraq's democracy. The agreement lays out a framework for the withdrawal of American forces in Iraq -- a withdrawal that is possible because of the success of the surge.

Bush imagined that in the withdrawal it would lead to, "we are leaving the next President with a stable foundation for the future, and an approach that can enjoy broad bipartisan support at home."

Declaring victory in a war- or success of a surge- does not make it so.  The Obama Administration balked at signing its own agreement because American soldiers were specifically denied legal immunity by the Iraqi government.

Cheney follows the Iraq myth with another myth, referring to Obama's "apology tour, when he went to Cairo in the summer of 2009."  When Mitt Romney attacked Obama during campaign '08, it wasn't true, as CNN's Fact Check, factcheck.org, and Politifact all concluded. It is no more true now, and restating a myth doesn't make it any more accurate.

During this imagined apology tour, President Obama- according to Cheney- "said the U.S. overreacted to the events of 9/11."  Bush's V.P., Charles Krauthammer, and others believe the USA did not overreact to the events of 9/11. But that does not make it so, and we don't have to consider the debacle of the Iraq War and the upsurge in terrorist activity it spurred to know we overreacted.

Cheney himself should know best. After the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, he camped out for weeks a few miles north of Camp David at what has become known in American lore as the "undisclosed location." It is nothing of the sort, but rather in a complex of buildings ("Site R") inside Raven Rock Mountain Complex at Raven Rock Military Reservation in Liberty Township, Adams County (near Blue Ridge Summit in Franklin County, Pa.) in south-central Pennsylvania, a few miles north of Camp David, Maryland (location below).  Yet, the Vice-President's location was strictly confidential at the time because... well, because we surely did not overreact to the events of 9/11.

The Playboy interview is worthwhile if only to get a glimpse of the humor exhibited by the former Vice-President when he claims

I came to town in 1968, and I have never seen people I have known in some cases for a quarter of a century—foreign leaders, especially in the Middle East—who are so terribly frustrated, angry, frightened. “Whatever happened to the United States?” There’s a conviction they can’t count on us, that our word doesn’t mean anything.

So says the man who asserted Sadaam Hussein has "reconstituted nuclear weapons;" that, though we knew otherwise, 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met with an Iraqi spy in Prague; and that American forces "will be greeted as liberators" by Iraqis.

On a positive note, Dick Cheney has remained consistent, weaving the same old fabrications into a narrative that long ago was proven false.






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Rice Bows Out. California Wins.

At first, Condoleezza Rice appears humble.  Amid considerable criticism of Rutgers University's decision to give a platform to one of the architects of Gulf War II, Ms. Condoleezza graciously decided not to give the commencement speech in spring 2014 at New Jersey's state university. Now according to Politico 

It is a testament to the dormant state of California’s once mighty Republican dynasty that the only GOP candidate either party gives a shot at capturing Barbara Boxer’s Senate seat upon her retirement next year is the one who is resolutely refusing to run: former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Last week, Rice topped a statewide Field Poll of 18 potential candidates, drawing the support of 49 percent of likely voters, compared with 46 percent for state Attorney General Kamala Harris, the only declared Democratic candidate so far. That sparked a fresh flurry of speculation about a Rice candidacy — and the latest emphatic denial from her chief of staff that she has any interest in the race.

Evidently, unless her arm is twisted, the woman affectionately called "Condi" (isn't that sweet!) will not be running for a US Senate seat from California.

Wise decision, that, not to relinquish what little credibility is still attached to the former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State.  On January 10, 2003 Secretary Rice gravely warned "there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." She played a leading role in trying, largely successfully, to convince voters of the likelihood that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program. But it's not only that Rice was grotesquely wrong about Saddam Hussein's intentions. In March, 2013 the newspaper of the University of Texas-Austin reported

Two days before the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, a conflict that resulted in the deaths of 4,488 U.S. soldiers and thousands of civilians, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed her support for the war and the ouster of former President Saddam Hussein.

“I would have overthrown Saddam Hussein again,” Rice said to a packed house at the Lady Bird Johnson Auditorium on Monday.

No, Ms. Rice, you did not overthrow Saddam Hussein- the American military overthrew him, Then you and the other propagandists, and architects, of an arguably unprecedented American foreign policy fiasco thoroughly botched the aftermath (Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson with Lawrence O'Donnell in 2013, video below),

The adventure itself was based on false pretenses, and the reconstruction of Iraq suffered because of the rush to war and the blithering incompetence of the Administration, Condoleezza Rice included.

ISIL probably never would have arisen without the Bush's Administration invasion of Iraq. But even before we were alerted to this newest threat in the Middle East, at the time of the Rutgers commencement controversy, Juan Cole summarized 

As for Iraq, she left it a broken country, with hundreds of thousands dead, 2 million displaced abroad, 4 million displaced internally, likely 400,000 badly wounded, where car bombings and sniping still take some 800 lives a month and where radical Sunni al-Qaeda affiliates have established themselves and Iran-linked radical Shiite militias have free play. She hinted around at an al-Qaeda link to Iraq before she invaded it, but there was none. She brought al-Qaeda to Iraq and it has killed far more Iraqis than the 3000 Americans whose lives it took on September 11. Iraq never had anything at all to do with al-Qaeda, but she made it a scapegoat so as to get at its petroleum resources.

Yet, Ms. Rice still claims the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was strategically beneficial to the United States,  She is either delusional, lying, or less aware of foreign policy than your typical dogcatcher, who fulfills one of a many jobs- including US Senator- Condoleezza Rice shouldn't be trusted to perform.

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But Of Course, "No Boots On The Ground"

No one knows what the next two years of Republican control of the House and the Senate will bring.  "No one," however, is not Repub Senator Kelly Ayotte (photo from AP) of New Hampshire, who on October 5, 2014 maintained on Fox News Sunday

I think we have a problem where the president’s foreign policy is being trapped by his campaign rhetoric. I’m very fearful as we look at the current military strategy that it is surrounding the November elections and he won’t have the resolve to follow through with what needs to be done in a sustained effort to destroy ISIS, and we’re about to repeat the same thing with Afghanistan.

Ayotte then was asked by host Chris Wallace  whether she was “suggesting that after the November election and acting tough and talking tough, that he will pull back from confronting ISIS.” Ayotte responded “I’m very concerned about that, Chris, and his resolve in this regard.”

President Obama may retreat from Iraq if and when he finds his policy is not yielding favorable results. But for now, according to the Associated Press' Lolita C. Baldor,

Congress members returning to Capitol Hill next week will face a debate over President Barack Obama’s new $5.6 billion plan to expand the U.S. mission in Iraq and send up to 1,500 more American troops to the war-torn nation.

Obama authorized the deployment of advisory teams and trainers to bolster struggling Iraqi forces across the country, including into Iraq’s western Anbar province where fighting with Islamic State militants has been fierce. His decision comes just three days after bruising midterm elections for his Democratic Party.

But the deployments hinge on whether Obama can get the funding approved in Congress’ lame-duck session, so that advisers can begin deploying to Iraq, particularly to Anbar where Sunni tribes have persistently requested help.

Obama’s plan could boost the total number of American troops in Iraq to 3,100. There are currently about 1,400 U.S. troops there, out of the 1,600 previously authorized.

It's highly unlikely anyone will question the soft prediction Ayotte made only last month, now blown to smithereeens.  Obama may retreat from his policy if and when he finds it is not producing the dividends he hopes.  But the New Hampshire senator is not of the Crazy Cruz Caucus and is held in relatively high esteem by the media. Additionally, as part of the McCain-Graham-Ayotte trio, she is the beneficiary of conventional (and slightly bizarre) wisdom of the Middle East.

Senator McCain, as we all know, ranks the surge- more specifically and accurately termed the Anbar Awakening- as the greatest and most decisive military victory since D-Day.  That faith is not to be questioned, as reflected in the following:

Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the military will set up several sites across Iraq to train nine Iraqi Army brigades and three peshmerga brigades, which are made up of Iraqi Kurdish forces. The military will also establish two operations centers where small advisory teams can work with Iraqi forces at the headquarters and brigade levels.

Kirby said one of those centers will be in Anbar province, where U.S. troops fought al-Qaida extremists in brutal fighting in 2004 to 2007, costing more than 1,000 American lives and 9,000 Iraqi lives, mainly in the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

He added that the U.S. also is considering training of some of the Sunni tribes. In 2007, Sunni Arab tribes in Anbar joined forces with Americans – in what was called the Anbar Awakening – and dealt a blow against the insurgents that many credit with turning the tide in that conflict.

We are to be comforted that the "blow against the insurgents" produced by the surge in Iraq "turned the tide in that conflict." Let us then turn our attention to the 1700 additional American soldiers who may be sent there, obviously to secure the peace, stability, and democratic government fostered by the surge.





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Rove Wanted Chemical Weapons Dead And Buried. Very Wise Politics.

Pun intended: Rush Limbaugh's claim that the chemical weapons which were reported this week to have been found several years ago in Iraq constitute a smoking gun in the hands of Sadaam Hussein is a crock of manure.

Rush concedes

The weapons of mass destruction The Daily Beast is talking about is not the same weapons that both Republicans and Democrats and every intelligence service in the world claimed were being manufactured by Saddam, 1998-2003.  These are not the WMD we're talking about.  These were basically chemical weapons that are prior to 1991.

But then he contends

It doesn't matter.  They were found in 2004.  They were discovered by US troops in 2004 and they show that Saddam was investing and manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. 

They show that Saddam was in violation of all of those UN resolutions.  He was in violation of the first Gulf War ceasefire.  And Saddam's violation of the first Gulf War ceasefire, including shooting at our planes, was enough on its own to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq....

It could have spelled out exactly who Saddam Hussein was for anybody who didn't want to believe it. It could have spelled out exactly why Saddam had to be targeted.  It would have spelled out and made clear why Saddam Hussein had to go.  

Everyone knew who Sadaam Hussein was and everyone then and since has acknowledged it.  There was no prominent domestic supporter- or apologist- of the Iraqi president. We knew from the time of Iraq-Iran War, recognized Hussein's policy of genocide against the Kurds, and realized that he had at one time stockpiled chemical and biological weapons (photograph below depicting result of an actual weapon of mass destruction, in Hiroshima, from Nuclear Darkness).

We understood, further, that U.S. and British intelligence services had reported that the dictator probably had an active chemical and/or biological weapons program, though it was not fully understood that the intelligence had been twisted by the Administration to justify the war it was determined to launch. It was known- though under emphasized- that Mohamed ElBaradei shortly before the invasion had testified that the International Atomic Energy Agency had found no nuclear weapons activity in Iraq.

The existence of an evil dictator, though, is not enough to justify starting a war, notwithstanding Rush Limbaugh's perspective.   Additionally, Limbaugh distorts the story out of all proportion. He says

And Saddam was thumbing his nose at the UN.  But for a chance to destroy the Republican Party, the Bush administration, and maybe even parts of the military for a while? "To hell with the UN! We'll destroy the Republican Party," and they did....

Look at all that turned out to have been accurate about this.  If I'm a member of the Democrat Party all during this, I have to be really scratching my head, saying, "Why are these guys shutting up?  Why are we getting away with this?  Why are they letting us get away with lying about them and this war every day?" And after a while you stop asking and you just keep piling the lies on top of one another. 

What we're told here is, the active theory was, "Well, that's 2003, 2004, 2005.  We lost that battle. We didn't find any weapons of mass destruction then, and it just won't work to tell everybody we have now, 'cause they won't believe us and they'll think we're lying. Better to let sleeping dogs lie and just move on to the next news story."  Those five years drove me nuts, too.  Not insane with rage, but disbelief that the news was so filled with lies and so filled with distortions every day, with not one day of reality.

Rove kept quiet not because he was worried "they won't believe us and they'll think we're lying." He suppressed the story because his boss, GW Bush otherwise would have been routed in the upcoming election.   Honesty had little to do with it. Two days before Eli Lake's story in The Daily Beast, CJ Shivers of The New York Times had reported

The discoveries of these chemical weapons did not support the government’s invasion rationale. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush insisted that Mr. Hussein was hiding an active weapons of mass destruction program, in defiance of international will and at the world’s risk. United Nations inspectors said they could not find evidence for these claims.

Then, during the long occupation, American troops began encountering old chemical munitions in hidden caches and roadside bombs. Typically 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets, they were remnants of an arms program Iraq had rushed into production in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

All had been manufactured before 1991, participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area, according to those who collected the majority of them.

The weapons would not, could not, have been used against the "homeland," the USA.  Nor could they, would they, have been successfully deployed against the Kurds or any of Hussein's enemies. Worse still,

In case after case, participants said, analysis of these warheads and shells reaffirmed intelligence failures. First, the American government did not find what it had been looking for at the war’s outset, then it failed to prepare its troops and medical corps for the aged weapons it did find.

It was American soldiers, albeit to a limited degree, who were endangered by the mustard gas or residual sarin the US government denied existed.  And now, the unearthed weapons present a threat to the region they may not have if the Bush Administration not effectively shut down the weapons inspection regime prior to the war. Shivers continues

As Iraq has been shaken anew by violence, and past security gains have collapsed amid Sunni-Shiite bloodletting and the rise of the Islamic State, this long-hidden chronicle illuminates the persistent risks of the country’s abandoned chemical weapons.

Many chemical weapons incidents clustered around the ruins of the Muthanna State Establishment, the center of Iraqi chemical agent production in the 1980s.

Since June, the compound has been held by the Islamic State, the world’s most radical and violent jihadist group. In a letter sent to the United Nations this summer, the Iraqi government said that about 2,500 corroded chemical rockets remained on the grounds, and that Iraqi officials had witnessed intruders looting equipment before militants shut down the surveillance cameras.

During his rant, the man who continually derides Democrats as "low information voters" charged Newsweek is "a bumbling, leftist operation."  Presumably corrected by his producer during the commercial break, he returned to admit "yes, yes, yes. I know Eli Lake is a solid conservative." Limbaugh now knows Lake is a foreign policy analyst rather than left-wing activist, but he still doesn't understand that if it hadn't been for Karl Rove burying the chemical weapons story, he would have spent less time the following four years defending George W. Bush than condemning President Kerry.



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We May Have That Itch Again

In a recent NBC News/The Wall Street Journal poll, 1283 registered voters were surveyed on a variety of issues.  The most interesting and evidently important question was

If it were determined by the military commanders that the best way to defeat the ISIS army was to use American military troops on the ground, would you be in favor of this decision or would be in opposition to this decision, or do you really not have an opinion one way or the other?

The results were, at first glance, stunning:

In favor of American military troops on the ground …………….. 45
Opposed to American military forces on the ground…………… 37
No opinion either way…………………………..………………….. 16
Not sure……………………………………………………………. 2

This would seem to be an extraordinary result, a finding that most Americans with an opinion, if it became U.S. policy, would support American soldiers yet again being sent into combat- and that without the inevitable groundwork which policymakers and others would lay.

But upon further reflection, one ought not to be surprised. The pollsters skewed the results in the direction of a favorable response in two ways.  Although not the obvious takeaway, using ISIS as an adjective- "ISIS army"- rather than as a noun ("ISIS") adds an element previously unknown.  Is ISIS an "army" in any conventional sense? No one (else) has suggested it is, and we Americans are accustomed to defeating an army rather than getting bogged down fighting terrorists, an elusive bunch.

More obviously, there is no more effective way to prompt an affirmative response than to precede the question with the predicate "if it were determined by the military commanders that the best way to defeat..."

Americans have a difficult time questioning the uniform (suggesting that if Colin Powell had ever run for President and somehow been nominated by the GOP, he would have been extremely difficult to beat, even though he is evidently a con man or a sucker).  It is as if pollsters last year had asked "Do you support a cut in food stamp benefits, even though it would leave millions of children hungry?" That would be an interesting poll- with predictable results.

But on another level, the question does have basis in reality.  Already, there have been military men suggesting that ISIS cannot be defeated without soldiers on the ground.  And if the President were to announce that Americans were being sent to the Middle East to fight, surely he would claim the support of the brass, which would present a united front to the public. Nervous Nellies (nervous nellies?) would not be tolerated, lest they would go the way of General McChrystal. (The military is still subservient to the civilian branch of government, at least in theory.)

Nonetheless, there still is a disquieting impulse among the populace to do it all over again.  Reacting generally to the war footing, rather than specifically to this survey, Digby comments

And frankly, I'm almost as disgusted that the American people continue to be thrilled at the prospect of kicking ass over some trumped up threat --- and yes, I do believe that a whole lot of us are anxious to get back to the business of ass-kicking. It's much more exciting than thinking about the wealthy elites stealing more and more of your meager earnings. But it's a dangerous and nasty way to entertain ourselves out of a nasty malaise.

And in memory of simpler, less complicated,  times, here is Tom Paxton in 1980 singing about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a resulting Olympic boycott:








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We'll Back Him Up Until We Can Push Him Off The Cliff.

In his latest column about President Obama's new Mideast policy, Charles Krauthammer does what he does best- blaming President Obama- writing

... What was the Islamic State thinking? We know it is sophisticated in its use of modern media. But what was the logic of propagating to the world videos of its beheadings of two Americans (and subsequently a Briton) -- sure to inflame public opinion?

... It was an easily sprung trap to provoke America into entering the Mesopotamian war.

Why?

Because they're sure we will lose....

They count on Barack Obama quitting the Iraq/Syria campaign just as he quit Iraq and Libya in 2011 and is in the process of leaving Afghanistan now. And this goes beyond Obama. They see a post-9/11 pattern: America experiences shock and outrage and demands action. Then, seeing no quick resolution, it tires and seeks out leaders who will order the retreat. In Obama, they found the quintessential such leader....

Steve M. does what he does best, skewering conservative columnists, remarking

"The quintessential such leader"! So ISIS has calculated that Obama is a big wuss -- but not quite enough of a big wuss to shrink from the fightaltogether if provoked, just enough to start the fight, get embroiled in it,then quit, just the way he's done in, oh, say, the fight against Al Qaeda, in which ... um ... he's killed the leader and some top subordinates, thus helping to create precisely the competition for the title of Earth's Baddest Jihadist Group that ISIS is currently trying to win.

Oh, and Obama is so uniquely and predictably feckless that ISIS can count on him not to give in to pressure to widen the war, and to cut and run before another U.S. president (maybe even a Republican!) can fight ISIS more effectively (because who could possibly fight ISIS lesseffectively?). It just isn't possible, according to ISIS, that Obama will hold the line, or even score some victories, then hand the war off to an able successor, even though he'll be president for only two more years. ISIS is counting on Obama to pursue the fight to exactly the extent that maximizes ISIS's glory, and then to withdraw exactly when the fight can't be rapidly escalated by whoever succeeds him, all because Obama is such a uniquely terrible American leader. 

Why, it almost seems as if ISIS thinks exactly the way Charles Krauthammer and his Fox News buddies think. Odd how that works.

Shortly before Obama took office, President Bush negotiated with Iraq a Status of Forces Agreement which would have had all American soldiers out of Iraq by the end of 2011. His successor wanted to keep a small residual force, but that fell through when Baghdad refused Obama's condition that American soldiers be given immunity from prosecution. But the right simply can't (or refuses to) get its arms around the idea that the Iraq War had not been won before Barack Obama lost the war and became The Great Appeaser.

Still, sixteen paragraphs through the seventeen paragraph column, one is surprised that the ever-hawkish Krauthammer apparently opposes further U.S. military action.   He refuses to join the GOP "they're coming to get us chorus," noting

the Islamic State’s principal fight is intramural. It seeks to supersede and supplant its jihadi rivals — from al-Qaeda in Pakistan, to Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, to the various franchises throughout North Africa — to emerge as champion of the one true jihad.

He realizes even "The strategy is simple: Draw in the world’s great superpower, create the ultimate foil and thus instantly achieve supreme stature in radical Islam as America’s nemesis."

He maintains "Obama's 'broad coalition' remains a fantasy" because

It’s more a coalition of the unwilling. Turkey denied us the use of its air bases. The Sunni Arab states are reluctant to do anything militarily significant. And not a single country has volunteered combat troops. Hardly a surprise, given that Obama has repeatedly ruled that out for the U.S. itself.

He might have added that even Iraq premier Haidar al-Abidi, a Shiite Muslim who would be pleased if the Sunni ISIL were eliminated, is lukewarm about the coalition.  Al-Abidi had definitively ruled out American soldiers and asserts "The only contribution the American forces or the international coalition is going to help us with is from the sky.   We are not giving any blank check to the international coalition to hit any target in Iraq."

But by the end, Krauthammer goes off the rails, remarking

Testifying on Wednesday to the Senate, Kerry declared that the Islamic State “must be defeated. Period. End of story.” Not the most wisely crafted of declarations: The punctuational emphasis carries unfortunate echoes of Obama’s promise about health care plans and the word “must” carries similar echoes of Obama’s assertions that Bashar al-Assad had to go.

So John Kerry is unwise, even a fool.  Barack Obama is incompetent and a dissembler.  But- wait for it- we have to support their policy.  Even then, in contrast to nearly his entire argument, Krauthammer cannot bring himself to opposing, or even expressing ambivalence about, the Administration's plan. He  concludes- even as he takes a shot at the President-

Nonetheless, Kerry’s statement remains true for strategic and even moral reasons. But especially because when the enemy deliberately draws you into combat, it is all the more imperative to show the world that he made a big mistake.

The problem is not only that Krauthammer and his Fox News buddies think as ISIL thinks.  It is also, as Steve M. clearly understands, that the GOP will not give credit to President Obama even when they agree with his policy.

Speaking out of turn, Republican Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia (who has wanted a vote to authorize military action; photograph from the AP) captured the essence of his Party's desire to have it both ways when he admitted

A lot of people would like to stay on the sideline and say, 'Just bomb the place and tell us about it later.'   It’s an election year. A lot of Democrats don’t know how it would play in their party, and Republicans don’t want to change anything. We like the path we’re on now. We can denounce it if it goes bad, and praise it if it goes well and ask what took him so long.

There is insufficient profile in courage in either party but especially in the GOP, annoyed Obama has refused to employ triumphalist rhetoric.  They so badly want a war from a President who gained office partly by pledging to wind down the Iraq debacle. "See, I told you so" can be emotionally gratifying. They won't oppose the war, but won't give Obama credit, either, an easy transition (or no transition at all) for a Party which decided to obstruct the President and his agenda before he even took office.



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This Is The Story And They're Sticking To It

With the announcement of President Obama's strategy for dismantling ISIL, the time has come to congratulate the President of the United States. So take a bow, John McCain.

Two weeks ago, Peter Beinart set out to analyze Barack Obama's foreign policy and recognized the President (photo, Larry Downing/Reuters) has

proven ferocious about using military force to kill suspected terrorists. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, he’s basically adopted the policy Joe Biden proposed at the start of his administration: Don’t focus on fighting the Taliban on the ground, since they don’t really threaten the United States. Just bomb the hell out al-Qaeda from the air. Compared with George W. Bush, he’s dramatically expanded drone strikes, even though they’re unilateral, legally dubious, and morally disturbing. And as promised, he sent special forces to kill Osama bin Laden without Pakistan’s permission, even though his vice president and secretary of defense feared the risks were too high.

When it comes to the Middle East, in other words, Obama is neither a dove nor a hawk. He’s a fierce minimalist. George W. Bush defined the War on Terror so broadly that in anti-terrorism’s name he spent vast quantities of blood and treasure fighting people who had no capacity or desire to attack the United States. ...

Understanding Obama’s fierce minimalism helps explain the evolution of his policy toward Syria and Iraq. For years, hawks pushed him to bomb Assad and arm Syria’s rebels. They also urged him to keep more U.S. troops in Iraq to stabilize the country and maintain American leverage there. Obama refused because these efforts—which would have cost money and incurred risks—weren’t directly aimed at fighting terrorism. But now that ISIS has developed a safe haven in Iraq and Syria, amassed lots of weapons and money, killed an American journalist, recruited Westerners, and threatened terrorism against the United States, Obama’s gone from dove to hawk. He’s launched air strikes in Iraq and may expand them to Syria. As the Center for American Progress’s Brian Katulis has noted, the Obama administration is also trying to strengthen regional actors who may be able to weaken ISIS. But the administration is doing all this to prevent ISIS from killing Americans, not to put Syria back together again. Yes, there’s a humanitarian overlay to Obama’s anti-ISIS campaign: He’s authorized air strikes to save Yazidis at risk of slaughter. But the core of his military effort in Iraq and Syria, and throughout the greater Middle East, is narrow but aggressive anti-terrorism.

President Obama, Beinart realized, "is doing all this to prevent ISIS from killing Americans, not to put Syria back together again (because) the core of his military effort in Iraq and Syria, and throughout the greater Middle East, is narrow but aggressive anti-terrorism."

That's why Obama, roughly ten days after Beinart's piece ran, announced he wants to conduct air strikes against ISIL; deploy noncombat soldiers to Iraq and increase military assistance; and mobilize the international community to take measures including cutting off funding.

So what is he doing saying this?

Abroad, American leadership is the one constant in an uncertain world. It is America that has the capacity and the will to mobilize the world against terrorists. It is America that has rallied the world against Russian aggression, and in support of the Ukrainian peoples’ right to determine their own destiny. It is America — our scientists, our doctors, our know-how — that can help contain and cure the outbreak of Ebola. It is America that helped remove and destroy Syria’s declared chemical weapons so they cannot pose a threat to the Syrian people — or the world — again. And it is America that is helping Muslim communities around the world not just in the fight against terrorism, but in the fight for opportunity, tolerance, and a more hopeful future.

A President aware of the limitations of a nation, even a superpower, in a world in which combatants are numerous and dispersed suggests America must attack evil everywhere, to make a million flowers bloom.  Russian aggression against Ukraine, Syrian chemical weapons production, the Ebola virus, Muslim communities around the world- wherever there is a problem, the US can solve it.  If not us, who?

Though few individuals have better enunciated the neocon perspective. one person has done so. In January, 2013, John McCain told President Obama's choice for Defense Secretary, who opposed the surge in Iraq, "I think history has already made a judgment about the surge, sir, and you’re on the wrong side of it."  In October, he and buddy Lindsey Graham wrote

Whatever the Bush administration got wrong about Iraq, it got one very important thing right: The recognition in early 2007 that the conflict needed a different strategy, more troops and other resources, and different military leadership in the country. This strategy, known as "the Surge," helped create the political and security conditions upon which the Iraqi people could build.

More significantly, they added "as the Bush administration left office, Iraq was at long last heading in a more promising direction (but) unfortunately, the Obama administration signaled a very different approach to Iraq when it took office in January 2009."

In June, wrote Kevin Baron, he declared "every hour the options become fewer and fewer as ISIS, the most radical terrorist group alive, sweeps across Iraq."  He called on the President to fire his entire national security team and "criticized Obama for declaring the Iraq war over and withdrawing troops before attaining 'victory.'"

Just a couple of weeks ago, he and his buddy, still convinced Obama snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq, recommended in an op-ed in The New York Times that the President arm the Syrian rebels and send non-combat soldiers to Iraq and Syria.   "George W. Bush," they wrote, "changed course in Iraq and saved America from defeat."

Congratulations, Senator McCain. President Obama is now determined not to be another Harry S Truman, who suffered the"Who Lost China" rhetoric.  Wikipedia explains

The "loss of China" refers, in U.S. political discourse, to the Communist Party take over mainland China from the Nationalists in 1949, and therefore the "loss of China to communism." The "loss of China" was portrayed by critics of the Truman Administration as an "avoidable catastrophe." It led to a "rancorous and divisive debate" and the issue was exploited by the Republicans at the polls in 1952.  It also played a large role in the rise of Joseph McCarthy, who, with his allies, sought scapegoats for that "loss," targeting notably Owen Lattimore, an influential scholar of Central Asia.

We laugh- laugh! because Republicans have hurled charges, directly and indirectly, at President Obama because of his origins and refusal to blame Islam for the behavior of Muslims.  But they have taken their toll on the man who once believed the Iraq war was the wrong conflict at the wrong time. Policy makers have become captives of the sunk cost fallacy and decided that the investment already made in the nation of Iraq compels the nation to make a further investment.  As long as a glimmer of hope remains that victory can be snatched from the jaws of defeat, President Obama is determined that he not be the one fingered for "losing Iraq."

It is a sad state of affairs. But given the apparent support for action- action! among lawmakers and policy wonks, it is evidently more acceptable than conceding that our recent history demonstrates that application of military might no longer guarantees success.

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