Where’s the Outrage?

Now, it order to be fair, I’m posting Senator John McCain’s article. This article is less of a thoughtful discussion and more of a “He’s wrong and I’m right” position paper. The New York Post published this article. I find this interesting. The crown jewel of the Murdoch empire would be the Wall Street Journal, but McCain’s article isn’t published there. Instead, it is published in the tabloid daily of the New York Post.

The New York Times has their response to NOT publishing McCain’s rant.

(Emphasis added is mine.)

GETTING IRAQ RIGHT
HOW TO KEEP PROGRESS GOING
By JOHN McCAIN

EDITORS’ NOTE: The New York Times wouldn’t print this oped from the GOP candidate.

AS he took command in Iraq in January 2007, Gen. David Petraeus called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80 percent to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation is full of hope - but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due mainly to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Sen. Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent.

“I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on Jan. 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Sen. Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted. Perhaps he’s unaware that the US embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.”

Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks:

* More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists.

* Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has found the will to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City - dispelling suspicions that he’s merely a sectarian leader.

The surge’s success hasn’t changed Sen. Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. [Read more →]

Tags: Election 2008, Iraq by ecthompson
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Senator John McCain is making a big deal over Senator Barack Obama getting published while his own article got rejected. I think that we have to look at Obama’s article and McCain’s article both. The investigation will be illuminating.

(Emphasis added is mine.)

My Plan for Iraq
By BARACK OBAMA
Published: July 14, 2008

CHICAGO — The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.

The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.

But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.

Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.

But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal. [Read more →]

Tags: Election 2008 by ecthompson
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Stephen Colbert remains one of the funniest men on TV. He lampoons John McCain in his own particular, peculiar way.

This is funny. Enjoy!

Tags: Election 2008, Iraq, The Colbert Report by ecthompson
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We’ve heard a lot about Libertarian presidential candidates in 2008, but the voting public does not want these people in power.

Congressman Ron Paul’s Republican primary campaign was a flop. Despite raising a lot of money from a core of true believers, Paul did not have nearly the success of outsider primary candidates Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988 or Pat Robertson in 1988.

Wedded to his government job, Paul did not run for President on a third party ticket in 2008. Instead, he is running for re-election to Congress in Texas.

Instead, Libertarians have nominated former Congressman Bob Barr ( photo above) of Georgia as their 2008 nominee. Losing a Republican primary in 2002 to keep his seat in the House, alleged Libertarian Barr is now looking for another government job at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

No Libertarian nominee has ever won more than 1.1% of the total vote in a Presidential election. And that was way back in 1980. Ed Clark was the Libertarian who delivered the 1.1% for the faithful.

Libertarianism is a philosophy that says, when all is said and done, that no person has any obligation to assist any other person. Even in individualist America, this view has been soundly rejected at the polls. In 2008, Barr will be yet another in a long line of Libertarian electoral non-entities.

Tags: Election 2008, Party Politics by Texas Liberal
6 Comments »

I don’t need to go to Iraq to understand that Kurds, Sunnis and Shia don’t like sharing the region. Just as you don’t have to go to Watts in Los Angles to know that it is an extremely dangerous neighborhood. I also don’t need to go to Iraq to understand that it was a mistake to invade that country in the first place. So, I really don’t follow Senator John McCain’s reasoning.

Now, given Maliki’s stated position that the Iraqi government is to have U.S. troops out of their country by 2010, McCain is stuck again. McCain has only a couple of positions as I see it.

From Huffington Post: “Prime Minister Maliki is the leader of a country and I’m confident he will act as the President and the Foreign Minister both told me in the last several days,” said the presumptive Republican nominee. “It will be directly related to the situation on the ground — just as they have always said. And since we are succeeding, I am convinced, as I have said before, we will withdraw with honor, not according to a set timetable.”

1) He states that the Iraqis really don’t know what’s going on. Rather, the U.S., like a protective mother, knows best. I just don’t see this going over with anybody.
2) McCain will try and play this will a little body-English saying that we want to withdraw as soon as possible. We agree that the end of 2010 is a goal if conditions on the ground support that goal.
3) He can pressure Admiral Mullen and General David Petraeus to say that conditions on the ground have improved enough to put a complete and total withdraw by the end of 2010.

Actually, all three of those positions are very lame but that is the best that McCain can do. He has painted himself into this corner. It is hard to see any easy way out.

Watch John McCain struggle through this interview on Iraq policy.

Tags: Afghanistan, Election 2008, Iraq by ecthompson
1 Comment »

The Iraqi’s have buckled under the pressure of the U.S. before. But now, with the Bush administration beginning to pack their bags, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki maybe growing a backbone. Iraqis maybe willing to stand up to the Bush administration because they know that there is going to be a ‘new sheriff in town’ (McCain or Obama). They may be looking at this time as an opportunity to take their country back.

From New York Times: Maliki spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, told reporters in Baghdad, “We cannot give any timetables or dates, but the Iraqi government believes the end of 2010 is the appropriate time for the withdrawal.”

But then there is Senator Barack Obama. Obama looks like he knows some foreign policy and that there isn’t a Iraqi-Pakistani border. There haven’t been any slip ups or gaffs. Instead, there has been a clear message that Barack Obama knows what he is doing.

Senator John McCain, however, seems to be trying to do anything for attention. Today, while golfing with the former President Bush, McCain stood firm on his stance regarding Iraq. He believes that Obama is wrong on Iraq now and has been wrong all along. Then McCain came up with a zinger: “When you win wars, troops come home.” McCain, in my humble opinion, continues to believe that you can ignore the will of the American people even when you are running for an election. I wonder how much he would pay attention after he was elected?

McCain has really run his campaign on the notion that he knows how to win wars. He knows what is going on in Iraq. He believes that staying the course is working and will continue to work. So, when the Iraqis basically agree with Obama, where does that leave McCain? Out in the cold looking for some new theme to his campaign?

Tags: Election 2008, Iraq by ecthompson
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