’08/12 Election

Withdrawing from Iraq to fight in Afghanistan? Hell-no!

'08/12 Election, US politics, War on Afghanistan, War on Iraq
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Obama says he wants to withdraw from Iraq by 2010 to concentrate on Afghanistan and send more troops there. Juan Cole comments on how awful this policy would be and where it comes from:

If the Afghanistan gambit is sincere, I don’t think it is good geostrategy. Afghanistan is far more unwinnable even than Iraq. If playing it up is politics, then it is dangerous politics. Presidents can become captive of their own record and end up having to commit to things because they made strong representations about them to the public.

I think Obama has a little bit of a tendency to try to fix his political problems by going overboard. Thus, he faces skepticism from Jewish American voters. So he made a Zionist speech in Boca. In the context of US politics, that is to be expected; he would not be any sort of politician, much less a phenomenon, if he did not try to reassure Jewish Americans about his commmitment to Israeli security, which is after all a worthy goal. But Obama went on to praise Zionist thinker Theodore Herzl, who started this nonsense about a people without a land for a land without a people. And then he gave away Jerusalem, undivided and permanently, to the Israelis in the middle of ongoing negotiations over its status between Israel and the Palestine Authority in the context of the Quartet, which the US government supports. Neither of those two things was necessary. It was overkill. And Obama now has some bridge building to do with the Arab and Muslim worlds if he becomes president, since Jerusalem is also dear to their hearts.

Search and destroy in Afghanistan is an even worse example of going overboard. My advice to his campaign team is to give more thought to how he can take a strong enough position on an issue to win on it, without giving away the whole store.

A good example of how much domestic concerns are driving US foreign policy, to a much greater extent than in other countries. Leftie bloggers have long noticed how much Democrats are “locked in” to supporting awful foreign policies out of fear for being seen as weak; this does seem to be another, particularly egrigious example of this tendency.

On the other hand, the War of Aghanistan has always been seen as a “good war” even by leftwing Americans and Obama isn’t the first Democratic heavyweight to criticise the War on Iraq because it’s a distraction from Aghanistan. I’m not sure Juan Cole is right in thinking Obama went overboard because he wanted to look more serious or tough, or whether Obama doesn’t genuinely believe in the fight against the Taliban. Neither position is likely to do much good of course.

The Measure of The Man

'08/12 Election, Merkins..., Sexuality, US politics, Women
Published on 1 Comment on The Measure of The Man

Having already abused his current wife in public (having handily divested himself of the previous Mrs. McCain to marry this one for her money) Republican candidate John McCain shows consistency in his attitude towards women:

The blog Rum, Romanism and Rebellion unearthed a 1986 newspaper article reporting an insensitive and sexist joke McCain was said to have made.

Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?’

Women’s groups slammed McCain at the time for making the joke; it remains to be seen how much its reemergence will hurt the Republicans’ ongoing attempts to woo women voters.

When the article first appeared, McCain’s campaign denied he had made the joke, but the reporter who wrote the article stands by the story.

More…

Well. That’ll go down well with the voters.

The New Republic Syndrome

'08/12 Election, Democratic (in)action, Pointlesss centrism, Sensible Liberals, US politics
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Glenn Greenwald on an old malady that still grips the Democratic Party:

The reason these posts are worth noting is because they so perfectly capture the mindset that needs to be undermined more than any other. It’s this mentality that has destroyed the concept of checks and limits in our political system; it’s why we have no real opposition party; and it’s why the history of the Democrats over the last seven years has been to ignore and then endorse one extremist Bush policy after the next. It’s because even as The New Republic Syndrome has been proven to be false and destructive over and over — even its practitioners have been forced to recognize that — it continues to be the guiding operating principle of the party’s leadership.

The defining beliefs of this Syndrome are depressingly familiar, and incomparably destructive: Anything other than tiny, marginal opposition to the Right’s agenda is un-Serious and radical. Objections to the demolition of core constitutional protections is shrill and hysterical. Protests against lawbreaking by our high government officials and corporations are disrespectful and disruptive. Challenging the Right’s national security premises is too scary and politically costly. Those campaigning against Democratic politicians who endorse and enable the worst aspects of Bush extremism are “nuts,” “need to have their heads examined,” and are “exactly the sorts of fanatics who tore the party apart in the late 1960s and early 1970s.” Those who oppose totally unprovoked and illegal wars are guilty of “abject pacifism.”

An excellent diagnosis, but Glenn still has gotten one thing wrong in his write-up. It’s not just that there are rightwing forces within the Democratic Party that paralyse its opposition to Bush, it’s that the party as a whole has decided early on that they won’t oppose Bush if that means moving leftwards, or giving their own leftwing more of a voice within the party. Instead, as I’ve said before, both here and at Wis[s]e Words they’ve contended themselves with waiting for the Republicans own fuckups to drive the voters back to them as the only existing alternative. Bush was able to do things, like declaring war on Iraq, or driving through social legislation that they themselves could never do but were largely sympathetic towards, so by waiting until the electorate was fed up with the Republicans, they can have their cake and eat it too.

S.A.t.S.Q: Obama edition

'08/12 Election, Wingnuts
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Today’s Short Answers to Stupid Questions comes courtesy of Roy Edroso, who quotes some hapless rightwinger incensed about Obama’s opting out of public financing asking:

I’m just not sure what to say about this. I shouldn’t be shocked, but somehow it does shock me to see how a candidate for POTUS can be so vapid, and yet still lead in every major poll currently.

Does Barack think we are stupid, or are we just stupid?

Yes.

This has been another installment of Short Answers to Stupid Questions.