Office of the Independent Blogger

We all know how I feel about the Iraq War — I believe it would be wrong and immoral to abandon the state of Iraq before their government and their military have solidified unless (until) we are asked to leave. To tell you the truth, I am hopeful that the progress we have made will continue for the benefit of their people and eventual peace in our time. I believe it would be a waste of our soldiers’ lives and the country’s resources to leave before the changes that have been made in democracy and economics, with our assistance and presence, harden. That is all I have to say about this tonight, but my thoughts and my wishes are for that part of the world.

In other news, Osama bin Laden hates the European Union and Saudi Arabia. Every time bin Laden speaks I worry that there will be an al-Qaeda attack somewhere, as al-Qaeda attacks are often predated by communications such as these, but I don’t worry about it too much. It’s just something I’m conscious of.

More important, more immediate although not necessarily, is the news from Tibet, going on for a little while now, that they are rebelling against Chinese control of their nation. I support them wholeheartedly, and while I do not believe they will receive freedom immediately I am pleased to note that they will in time with their vocal opposition to the treatment given them. Dictatorships do not fall without opposition, and opposition always hastens the collapse of empire that would stand for decades otherwise. Here is quite a fascinating article about the media blackout in China on Tibet, and it leaves me shaking my head. I wish we lived in a perfect world.

Barack Obama’s friends pose a great vulnerability to his candidacy for the Presidency, from Jeremiah Wright to Bernadine Dohrn to Tony Rezko. Any student of politics worth his salt will tell you that friends rarely make a candidate what he is (in this century and the last, at least) but they can break you, although they don’t always do. I’m not sure that a black candidate can survive a racially insensitive (and seemingly racist) pastor who “God Damn[s] America,” Weather Underground Sixties Terrorists or Chicago slumlords, but Barack Obama made a go of it today and gave an intellectually impressive, impassioned (if at times hollow) speech defending himself and giving a long overview of racial hysterics in America. Toward the end, he refuses to denounce Jeremiah Wright, quit his Church and hang him out to dry, which is gutsy but likely idiotic. I think Slate magazine’s Mickey Kaus analyzed it best here, noting that it was unfortunate to begin the speech on the subject of slavery and then pointing out a couple of intellectual flaws as well. His supporters won’t care, just like they’re not troubled by his pretending to have been born from “Bloody Sunday,” but I imagine like Kaus does that the speech won’t resonate all that well with white, middle-class, non-college educated voters.

His best course would have been, as Dan Savage advises those who have a rough boyfriend, to “Dump the Motherfucking Asshole.” I don’t believe that not DTMFA’ing Wright will destroy him, but it is a significant hurdle that his campaign must jump over and I am not entirely sure that he will be able to. Intellectuals, pseduointellectuals and college students are not the typical voting class, and I am not sure that this speech will resonate with them. I do give Obama points for his courage in standing up for his friend and for daring to challenge it head-on instead of hoping it goes away, but I’m not sure he’s handled it in a manner that will be politically advantageous.

Dick Cheney was in Iraq today, and I have found the articles that I have read on his visit to be quite encouraging. Excerpts from the AP account:

At a news conference with U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, Cheney said that given the nearly 4,000 U.S. troop deaths and billions of dollars spent on the war, it is very important that “we not quit before the job is done.” Cheney credited reductions in violence to President Bush’s decision to deploy an additional 30,000 troops to the war zone. He said one of Bush’s considerations in whether to draw back more than the 30,000 before he leaves office will be whether the U.S. can continue on a track toward political reconciliation and stability in Iraq.

“It would be a mistake now to be so eager to draw down the force that we risk putting the outcome in jeopardy […] And I don’t think we’ll do that. It’s good to be back in Iraq,” Cheney said after an hour-long meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Cheney, who was in Iraq 10 months ago, said the Iraqis have made legislative advances that would be vital to the country’s future. He also said there was no question but there had been a dramatic improvement in security. Al-Maliki, speaking through an interpreter, also cited security improvements and said he and the vice president had talked about negotiations under way to spell out the legal basis for the presence of U.S. troops on Iraqi territory and to establish the legal rights and obligations of the troops, the so-called “status of forces agreement.”

[…] “There is still a lot of difficult work that must be done,” Cheney said after sitting down with Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and one of the most powerful politicians in the country. “But as we move forward, the Iraqi people should know that they will have the unwavering support of President Bush and the United States in consolidating their democracy[…]”

Oman was scheduled to be the first stop on Cheney’s 10-day trip to the Mideast, but on Sunday night, he left Air Force Two parked on a tarmac in England and boarded a C-17 for the final five and a half hours of the 13-hour flight to the Iraqi capital. The future of Iraq will be discussed in his closed-door talks with leaders of Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Palestinians and Turkey. Cheney’s discussions at each stop also will touch on Iran’s nuclear program and its desire for greater influence in the region, high oil prices and the pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal that President Bush wants to see before he leaves office.

[…] Security has improved markedly since last summer when the last of the five Army brigades arrived in Iraq to complete the military buildup, but Iraqi politicians are still in gridlock. Cheney advisers say the vice president will highlight the reduction in violence and praise the fragile Iraqi government for passing some legislation aimed at national unity. In short, Cheney will compare and contrast Iraq before and after the increase in troops. He’ll tell Iraqi leaders that they are on the right track and have made strides, but that now is the time to do more. The Iraqis do not yet have a law for sharing the nation’s oil wealth among the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, a law that the Bush administration believes will trigger multinational energy companies to invest in exploration and production in Iraq.

Also unfinished is a plan for new provincial elections. Iraq’s presidential council, which must give its nod to laws passed by the Iraqi parliament, rejected a plan for new elections last month, shipping it back to the legislature.

As everyone who reads me knows, I believe in the Iraq War and think this is about right. I dearly hope to see a free Iraq and a freer Middle East, in time, as I believe in democratic exceptionalism and the democratic peace theory as well as the righteousness of liberal government through the consent of the governed.

Am preparing for sleep, with MSNBC’s Locked Up series on. It was on a commercial break a minute ago and the last one was an in-house ad for their station. It ended with Chris Matthews saying, “America is optimism” (assuming I heard him correctly; I know I heard “is optimism”) and then “LOCKED UP” appears on the screen in big yellow text as the show re-starts.

Wonder who thought that would be a good juxtaposition. I suppose they justify it by noting that nobody besides me is watching!

It’s late and I have had a long day. I’d like to give you a nice and detailed perspective on Barack Obama’s pastor but I’m going to spare us a dissertation when it can be summarized in one word: bad. It is bad for the Obama campaign that he spent twenty years at Wright’s Church on the Southside of Chicago and it will be a political embarrassment from here on out: “if he was there for twenty years, why didn’t he leave sooner, if he was so disgusted by the hatespeech?” It’s not a campaign sinker, on its face — or at least not until something really bad comes out from that Church — but it is a negative and an embarrassment. What I really want to talk about, however, is a myth found here:

It was a decision that only President Bush had the power to make: At about 9 a.m. on March 19, 2003, in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing of the White House, he gave the “execute order” to begin Operation Iraqi Freedom, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Now, five years later, the consequences of that act will soon be beyond Bush’s grasp. In 10 months, they’ll land on the desk of his successor. Thanks in part to the Iraq war, the next U.S. president — Republican or Democrat, black or white, man or woman — will take office with America’s power, prestige and popularity in decline, according to bipartisan reports, polls and foreign observers.

The United States is still, by far, the strongest nation in the world, overall, and the only remaining Superpower. It will be this way for several years, so the idea that we have lost our power or are significantly losing power is a flawed bit of conventional wisdom and nothing more. You know who has lost power, prestige and influence? George W. Bush. The next American President will not, and to tell you the truth, Bush has plenty of power and influence still, especially abroad, but not in his own country anymore or with regard to Iraq. There’s this idea out there that America is sinking into the quagmire of Iraq but that is not true for the nation — only the sitting President, and that is only temporary. America is quite influential and powerful, still, with much criticism from leaders around the world coming for domestic consumption and without conviction. That the next President is going to rebuild our relationship with the world is absurd. Even after our bitter disagreements in Europe over Iraq, for instance, we are still working hand-in-hand with Germany and France, to name a couple of key “rivals,” on economic and national issues such as, say, Iran.

It’s all well and good to talk about Old Glory fading, but the American state is doing well on an international level. We are not alone on this Earth, I promise.

I attended a poetry/short story reading at Hull House last night, featuring the great writer Luis Alberto Urrea, and after he read sections from one of his books (two of which I’ve read: The Hummingbird’s Daughter and The Devil’s Highway) he graciously spent some time with any and all people who wanted a few words. The young woman talking to him before I came over was sharing some of her family’s experiences in communist Cuba and mentioned that there were numerous reforms going on in Raul Castro’s Cuba. Urrea said, “Really?” and expressed surprise that this despot (widely believed to be very similar to his brother) would change anything. I said, People always assume that little despots are the same as bigger despots but there are often significant changes in transition between leaders in all systems of government. I’m surprised they’re opening up to their people, technologically, because information will be the death of their communism. I had to go shortly thereafter but thanked him for the time and the young woman remained to have a chat. Today, I did all the things I typically do on a Saturday morning and afternoon and now I’m getting ready to head out and about, but before I do I want to link you to this article, about press groups calling for journalists’ to be freed in Cuba and this article, about the effect reform should have on that nation. I’d post excerpts but it is too good, and ultimately too short, to justify that. Go check it out.

Michael Mukasey said something quite interesting today: don’t execute the 9/11 plotters because it would martyr them, provide a rallying point for Islamic fundamentalists and give them their wish of being in heaven with a whole lot of virgins (in less words). I think I agree, even though the truest exception I can make against the death penalty is terrorism (especially on the scale of 9/11), both because of the Islamic fundamentalist honor in execution and my own moral qualms about whether or not it is right to prove that killing is wrong by killing. I just thought I’d direct you to it, Dear Reader, and you can decide what you want (but that’s always true at the Office of the Independent Blogger!).

It’s been a busy evening and it will only get busier. I wish you a wonderful night and I’ll be back tomorrow, as usual.

Barack Obama’s campaign put out a hilarious response to Clinton campaign criticisms which you can read at USAToday, here. It is, as was once said of me, “scathingly brilliant” and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, though I would note, in the interest of intellectual honesty, that Obama’s declaration of victory in “fourteen of the last seventeen” states and his criticism of Hillary that she only thinks the states she’s won are important is fair enough but there are no caucuses in the general election and that is something Democrats should be aware of. The great silent majority of the general electorate won’t be impressed by good organizing and enthusiastic young supporters, even if it is possible that they’ll be wooed by his staffers’ ability to make a funny.

Slate magazine’s Trailhead has a good look at today’s “Pork” vote in the Senate, at which all three candidates were present, and I had to share it for the good humour and insight it holds:

To coincide with the vote, Obama’s campaign released all the earmarks he secured for Illinois in fiscal year 2007 and challenged Clinton to do the same. It’s the latest volley in the Obama campaign’s case that Clinton lacks transparency; they’ve been urging her to release her papers stored in the Clinton Presidential Library as well as her tax returns. However, the Associated Press points out that Obama has ignored requests for the same information related to his years as an Illinois state senator.

The funny thing is, you can barely call the earmarks issue a “debate” anymore, at least on the campaign trail. The candidates all agree! Sure, they can bicker over who opposed earmarks first and most vigorously. McCain sent out a memo today congratulating Democrats on their “new-found enthusiasm for suspending this practice for a year.” Obama’s transparency gambit is meant to make Clinton look soft on the issue. But in the end, they’re all anti-pork—a fact that could neuter what would otherwise be a strong weapon for McCain. Now if only they could vote on it.

You know, I almost want to watch Barack Obama campaign against John McCain because they genuinely can not stand one another and because they are both often hilarious. “New-found enthusiasm for suspending this practice for a year” is a delicious line as was his punch a few weeks ago about “al-Qaeda in Iraq [is in Iraq and it is called] al-Qaeda in Iraq.” Obama, on the other hand, has a good sarcastic sense of humour and it would amuse me to watch them duel even if I am certain that McCain would eat his lunch. That said, I don’t believe that Democrats, Obama or Clinton have an advantage or draw with McCain on ethics, campaign finance or pork-barrel spending as he is quite strong on these issues and they are tentatively positive but not associated with those reforms. Plus they are both quite vulnerable, and Obama might become moreso as the Rezko trial continues.

On another note, completely unrelated to politics: one of my cousins is dying of cancer, and she’s been quite ill lately. I’m worried for her, and I want to use this space to send all of my karma and love because I care more than I can say and it hurts very much to know that someone as wonderful as Marta is ill.

Due to a lack of a wide variety in significant political news today — fringe character Geraldine Ferraro is not important — this will be a brief post, but I would like to comment on the end of Admiral “Fox” Fallon’s career. Esquire magazine wrote a profile of this General who has been adamantly anti-invasion of Iran, anti-continuation of the Iraq War, and the General praises himself as the one man standing between Bush and another war. Now that he has been relieved of his duties, some people fear that the road has been cleared for a war with Iran. This is pure nonsense driven by a media hungry for a story, paranoids in need of a quick fix and a publicity hound’s grandiose sense of self. Here is a great piece by the inimitable Fred Kaplan on why he brought about his own demotion and how the likelihood of war with Iran is still incredibly low since Mr. Fallon is nowhere near the only man in the Administration opposed to such a war: Defense Secretary Gates and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs hold that position, and it is possible (in fact probable) that significant others in the White House and Pentagon think the same.

I have a busy day and night ahead of me, travelling to the Allstate Arena for a wrestling show with a good friend who came up to me yesterday and said, “What are you doing Tuesday night?” and I said, “Probably whatever it is you are about to propose.” It should be a good time, so allow me to leave you with two small notes: we will be kissing the Earth goodbye in 7 billion years, in case you needed a touch of depression in your life, and second (a political note): whatever happens in the primary today does not truly matter, so don’t fret over it. The campaign won’t be decided for awhile, and tonight the expected is likely to happen (an Obama victory). Anything but would be interesting but also, largely, inconsequential. Which reminds me: Spitzer is probably going to resign, in a no-duh sort of moment.

For my money, Eliot Spitzer (Governor of New York) was the most promising “young” politician in politics (sorry, Obama) until he effectively ended his political career today when he was caught cavorting with prostitutes in Washington — and he was paying a woman five thousand dollars for sex!

Is his career over? I think so, but if it isn’t over as in “resignation from the Governor’s Mansion” then it is over as a steady ascendancy. Poor Eliot Spitzer was busted by investigators using methods not unlike those used by him as Attorney General investigating fraud, and now he might be going to jail all because he was too foolish to understand that politicians, rockstars and athletes do not have to pay for sex. Where a good-looking man with a lot of power would get the idea to visit a whorehouse and bring them out to Washington is beyond me.

The Clintons are talking up the possibility of a Clinton-Obama ticket. I don’t believe the purpose of this chatter to be genuine or noble — I think the Clinton machine wants people to believe that they will give him the Vice Presidency and then they won’t, because there is definitely a clash between them and while that is not always a deciding factor — Ford did not want Dole, Reagan did not want Bush, for instance — it should be with a woman as vindictive and political as Hillary Clinton, althought those two characteristics might indeed insist that she’ll choose him for the sake of getting certain voters on board her campaign. For her to select him, genuinely, were she to win the nomination, would necessitate that her campaign and the party believes a Clinton/Obama ticket “almost unbeatable” as Bill Clinton put it, and I’m not sure that is the case. We would have a candidate who provides no new states to the balance and a high-negatives candidate at the top of the ticket; that isn’t to mention the fact that his potential for high-negatives would be added to the ticket, by which I mean that his ties to the Chicago slumlord, the “Muslim” allegations and his race would still be used and perhaps be more effective. People might picture him as a Manchurian candidate of sorts, and they’re already starting to do that. Another knock against this idea is that he’d overshadow her quite often on the campaign trail, which is always unacceptable to the nominee. Will either choose the other? I don’t think so, but they might, and if they do I do not believe it will be a positive for the campaign or the party. A Midwestern Governor, or a Southern leader, would be the ideal selection, but we should name a nominee before we talk about the Vice Presidency. I just thought I should make my notes on this new idea which I consider unrealistic and politically inadvisable, whatever Bill Clinton might say to the contrary.

Occasionally, Bill Maher’s television show pisses me off. It usually amuses me, even when I find myself in disagreement with the program, but last night’s show had an extraordinarily obnoxious moment that I just had to write about. Maher had a guest on who was talking about Paul Bremer’s alleged reputation as a “little Saddam” with the Iraqi people and he kept mentioning how much the Iraqi public hates the American presence in that country. I am not so sure that’s true because I’ve never seen anything empirical to suggest that the Iraqis do hate us completely and absolutely or even predominantly or even with a filibuster-proof majority. It’s possible, but when people go on and on about how definitive Iraqi disdain for us is it grates on my nerves. That wasn’t even the worst moment, however. That came when the terrible Joe Scarborough interjected that Bremer was “stupid,” not evil, and Maher retorted moronically, “I wanted to make the point that stupidity can kill more people than evil.” Yeah? When? When and where? On what scale? It’s just a ridiculous comment to make and I’m just sorry nobody called him on it.

In South America, cooler heads, common sense and Gregory Pratt’s prediction prevail:

South American presidents have reached an uneasy compromise to resolve a crisis triggered by Colombia’s military raid in Ecuador, stepping back from a week of insults, troop movements and talk of war. After an emotional debate at the 20-nation Rio Group summit in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, the presidents of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador offered one another stiff handshakes and joined other Latin American presidents in approving a declaration resolving to work for a peaceful end to the crisis.

The statement notes that Colombian president Alvaro Uribe apologised for the March 1 raid that killed 25 people including a senior rebel commander, and pledged not to violate another nation’s sovereignty again. But it also committed all the countries to fight threats to national stability from “irregular or criminal groups”, a clear reference to conservative Colombia’s accusation that its two left-wing neighbours have ties to Colombian rebels.

We were discussing this in my international relations class and I was even more forceful there on the subject. It was all saber-rattling in the heat of the moment and nothing more.

Barack Obama’s campaign manager is out accusing Hillary Clinton of being one of the most secretive politicians in America. Now they’re turning onto my criticism and praise of Clinton as “Richard Nixon with ovaries” except nobody else sees that as being a good thing, potentially. They also released Samantha Powers, one of the finest thinkers in politics today, because she foolishly referred to Hillary Clinton as “a monster.” This campaign is really heating up.