And if he's right?

What does it mean for our immediate and longer-term future?

James Fallows wonders whether the ISG report is the Iraq War's Walter Cronkite moment:


2) There is a very good chance that the Iraq Study Group will be remembered as the Walter Cronkite of this war. As the oldest one-third or so of Americans can remember directly, and as others have heard, Walter Cronkite himself had a huge impact on domestic support for the Vietnam war. Cronkite was then the anchor of the CBS Evening News. The CBS Evening News was then something “everybody” watched or knew about. Cronkite traveled to Vietnam after the Tet offensive in early 1968, and broadcast on his return his conclusion that, while the U.S. had not “lost” in Vietnam, it could not expect to “win.” In a mere 500 words, he crystalized or catalyzed a broader American sense that American strategy was not working. The transcript of his commentary, here, stands up better than most things said and thought in 1968 (yes, notwithstanding the later analysis that Tet was a battlefield defeat, though a strategic victory, for the Vietcong and North Vietnamese). And passages like this one could be pasted right into the Iraq Study Group report:

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest that we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.

Cronkite did not change America’s view of Vietnam by himself. Political campaigns were raging at that same time, and within six weeks Lyndon Johnson would, in effect, abdicate by saying that he would not run for re-election. The Iraq Study Group will not change America’s view of the Iraq war by itself. The political shifts of the last six months, and the election results last month, play an enormous part. But Cronkite’s broadcast is remembered because it legitimized a change in view; and I suspect that the Study Group’s report will be remembered in the same way.

Don't Ever leave!

Please...

Sore Losers

With one last gesture, outgoing Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney 'sticks it to the man'...or at least tries:

In what was likely her final legislative act in Congress, outgoing Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney announced a bill Friday to impeach President Bush.

The legislation has no chance of passing and serves as a symbolic parting shot not only at Bush but also at Democratic leaders. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has made clear that she will not entertain proposals to sanction Bush and has warned the liberal wing of her party against making political hay of impeachment.

McKinney, a Democrat who drew national headlines in March when she struck a Capitol police officer, has long insisted that Bush was never legitimately elected. In introducing her legislation in the final hours of the current Congress, she said Bush had violated his oath of office to defend the Constitution and the nation's laws.

Now that's moonbattery. Or is it?

Welcome to the Club

TM highlights a light-bulb moment in the NY Times yesterday:

The NY Times talked to some generals about the military component of the ISG pla, which means they went one step further than Messrs. Baker and Hamilton...

Ouch. But even the Times it seems couldn't ignore the ignorable: And the Times is not impressed:

The study contains all the ingredients of a Washington compromise. What is less apparent is a detailed and convincing military strategy that is likely to work in Iraq.

And not much has changed...

From the 1984 GOP convention:


They said that saving Grenada from terror and totalitarianism was the wrong thing to do - they didn't blame Cuba or the communists for threatening American students and murdering Grenadians - they blamed the United States instead.

But then, somehow, they always blame America first.

When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the "blame America first crowd" didn't blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.
But then, they always blame America first.

When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn't blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.

But then, they always blame America first.

When Marxist dictators shoot their way to power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago.

But then, they always blame America first.

The American people know better.

Former US Ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick.
1926-2006

The always-and-ever Gracious Howard Dean

A mini-2000. Are we going to walk around Sarasota with divining rods to guess at how people really voted? And as for Howard, well...:

Republican Vern Buchanan might be the official winner in a messy Sarasota-area congressional race, but Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean says the Democratic-controlled Congress should not seat Buchanan without another election.

"Absolutely not," Dean said in a taped Political Connections interview scheduled to air Sunday on Bay News 9. "You cannot seat someone if you don't have an election that's valid.

"This election is not valid. There are 18,000 people who may have voted, and we don't know what happened to their votes," Dean said. "You can bet that if the Republicans were 500 votes short they'd be calling for a new election, and they'd be right."

On Wednesday, Democrat Christine Jennings said she will ask the U.S. House to take the extreme measure of conducting its own investigation into the election.

Though Jennings has filed a lawsuit asking for a revote, a little-known provision in the U.S. Constitution gives the House the final decision on who sits in its chamber.

Her decision could set the stage for a volatile political showdown at the start of the new Democrat-led Congress. Though Democratic leaders, include incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, say all options are on the table, others privately say they hope to avoid the partisan warfare.

Fun with lists

Extreme Mortman gives us the funniest 10 political moments of 2006. Personally speaking, I can't get enough of #6:

6) Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson sue for “gross invasion of privacy.” Makes sense. After all, a cornerstone of the Wilson-Plame family is the sacrosanct value of privacy. They really hate publicity.

I'm thinking this should become the only entry under "opportunist" in the dictionary.

Refi?

Why refinance the house when I can just blow it all up and start over!

This thing has been going on for two months and I'm about to reach my limit. One more thing I have to do or wait for somebody else to putz around and somebody's gettin' an earful...

Blind Spot

I've wanted to post this since I first saw it on Monday. Bill Roggio is back in Iraq and on Sunday posted a running commentary on his trip in-country. Note the constant theme as he talks to Army privates, specialists and officers:

Somebody isn't doing their job very well, if at all.

Unusual Holiday Happenings

Most years, the most exciting part of getting the Christmas tree home is untangling the light strand(s) and fighting with the tree strand. Here's something that doesn't happen, well for the most part, ever:

A small bat, hidden among the branches, hitched a ride on the tree and soon found itself in Kearns' Cypress Ridge home after a short trip Sunday from Holloway's Christmas Tree Farm in Nipomo.

While stringing lights on the tree branches, Kearns said she felt a sharp pinch and noticed a wound on her arm, but she assumed it was from a sharp pine needle.But the next morning, Kearns noticed a “strange, brown lump” on her living room wall.

“It took me a few minutes to register that that's something that shouldn't be there,” Kearns said. “It was very strange-looking.”

Kearns' husband quickly realized it was a bat and called the San Luis Obispo County Division of Animal Control, but not before the family took a peek at their unwanted guest.

“It was hanging upside down, with its wings tucked under it so they were barely visible,” Kearns said. “He had a little monster face with his fangs showing.”

The No-Clothes Caucus

Saying Hugh doesn't like the report is understating things a bit:

It totals 96 pages, not counting its introductory letter from Secretary Baker and Congressman Hamilton, the executive summary, and the many appendices, which includes such helpful information as the fact that the ISG talked to 15 senators (not one of whom was elected for the first time since 9/11, creating a generation bias in the interviews, one which appears replicated in the 10 House members interviewed.,) and that of the 21 foreign officials interviewed, only David Abramovich, the Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was consulted from the state most threatened by the Iranian mullahs and Syrian thugs the ISG demands the US appeal to.

Incredibly, the ISG did not consult with anyone from the democratic government of Lebanon, even as the ISG urges us to reach an understanding with Syria.

Of the 43 "former officials and experts" consulted --including Mark Danner of the New York Review of Books, Thomas Friedman, Leslie Gelb, Sandy Berger, Anthony Lake, Ken Pollack, Thomas Ricks, and George Will-- the ISG did not find it necessary to talk with, say, Victor Davis Hanson, Lawrence Wright, Robert Kaplan, Mark Steyn, Michael Ledeen, Reuel Marc Gerecht, or Christopher Hitchens. The ISG did talk with Bill Kristol. I wonder how long that sit down lasted?

The report combines an almost limitless condescension towards the "Iraqi sovereign government," even going so far as to lay out a timetable for its exact legislative program for the next six months, with a cavalier indifference to the Syrian death squads operating in Lebanon, and the certain nature of the Iranian regime --still, on this very day, hosting the anti-Holocaust conference.

Throwing in with Hugh, several other right-minded thinkers and bloggers:

Joining the Emperor Has No Clothes Coalition:

Paul Mirengoff of Powerline

Rick Moran

The editors of NationalReview.com.

The Asylum

For the most interesting commentary offered here, we have mil-blogger TF Boggs with an interesting under-30 take on the whole thing:

What the group desperately needed was at least one their members to have been in the military and had recent experience in Iraq. The problem with having an entire panel with no one under the age of 67 is that none of them could possibly know what the situation is actually like on the ground in Iraq. Now I concede that it is possible to have a good understanding of things as they stand in Iraq but unless you interact with the people of Iraq and spend a year or years of your life on ground you cannot possibly have a complete picture of the situation.

We cannot appease our enemies and we cannot continue to cut and run when the going gets tough. As it stands in the world right now our enemies view America as a country full of queasy people who are inclined to cut and run when things take a turn for the worse. Just as the Tet Offensive was the victory that led to our failure in Vietnam our victories in Iraq now are leading to our failure in the Middle East. How many more times must we fight to fail? I feel like all of my efforts (30 months of deployment time) and the efforts of all my brothers in arms are all for naught. I thought old people were supposed to be more patient than a 24 year old but apparently I have more patience for our victory to unfold in Iraq than 99.9 percent of Americans. Iraq isn’t fast food-you can’t have what you want and have it now. To completely change a country for the first time in it’s entire history takes time, and when I say time I don’t mean 4 years.

And that's what kills me most about the recycled 30-something year old diplomacy being peddled in some of the ISG recommendations; we've decided that roughly 3,000 KIA is too many in pursuit of something both in the short-term interests of 25 million Iraqis and the long-term interest of most of the Western world and that 3 1/2 years is too much to invest in such an important effort. We're willing to chuck it all down the hole because we're tired.

As to the specific suggestions about engagement with Iran and Syria, I'm left to wonder--still--how people think we'll extract any meaningful or real help without giving away the farm. At the risk of bad-analogy making, you don't invite the fox into the henhouse. Well, if you want to keep any of your chickens that is.

Funniest commentary of the day goes to Jules Crittenden in these remarks about this morning's press-conference:

Hubris and arrogance from the Iraq Study Group, the committee tasked with producing a horse that has given us a camel. Excerpts. Best question so far from the press conference: You guys went to Iraq and didn't even leave the Green Zone. Why should the president listen to you instead of all his other advisors. Another good one, where's the word victory?

So when it's all said and done...what of the report? Answered in a broad and over-generalized sort of way, pitch the thing and develop a strategy that wins the political battles in Iraq while summoning the will to kill the bad guys and bring security to the most violent parts of the country. All easier said than done of course. But you get the idea.

Drowning in Half-Truths

At Powerline, the resignation of Kenneth Stein, Professor at Emory University, from the Carter Center:

This note is to inform you that yesterday, I sent letters to President Jimmy Carter, Emory University President Jim Wagner, and Dr. John Hardman, Executive Director of the Carter Center resigning my position, effectively immediately, as Middle East Fellow of the Carter Center of Emory University. This ends my 23 year association with an institution that in some small way I helped shape and develop. My joint academic position in Emory College in the History and Political Science Departments, and, as Director of the Emory Institute for the Study of Modern Israel remains unchanged.

Many still believe that I have an active association with the Center and, act as an adviser to President Carter, neither is the case. President Carter has intermittently continued to come to the Arab-Israeli Conflict class I teach in Emory College. He gives undergraduate students a fine first hand recollection of the Begin-Sadat negotiations of the late 1970s. Since I left the Center physically thirteen years ago, the Middle East program of the Center has waned as has my status as a Carter Center Fellow. For the record, I had nothing to do with the research, preparation, writing, or review of President Carter's recent publication. Any material which he used from the book we did together in 1984, The Blood of Abraham, he used unilaterally.

President Carter's book on the Middle East, a title too inflammatory to even print, is not based on unvarnished analyses; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments. Aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book. Being a former President does not give one a unique privilege to invent information or to unpack it with cuts, deftly slanted to provide a particular outlook. Having little access to Arabic and Hebrew sources, I believe, clearly handicapped his understanding and analyses of how history has unfolded over the last decade. Falsehoods, if repeated often enough become meta-truths, and they then can become the erroneous baseline for shaping and reinforcing attitudes and for policy-making. The history and interpretation of the Arab-Israeli conflict is already drowning in half-truths, suppositions, and self-serving myths; more are not necessary. In due course, I shall detail these points and reflect on their origins.

The decade I spent at the Carter Center (1983-1993) as the first permanent Executive Director and as the first Fellow were intellectually enriching for Emory as an institution, the general public, the interns who learned with us, and for me professionally. Setting standards for rigorous interchange and careful analyses spilled out to the other programs that shaped the Center's early years. There was mutual respect for all views; we carefully avoided polemics or special pleading. This book does not hold to those standards. My continued association with the Center leaves the impression that I am sanctioning a series of egregious errors and polemical conclusions which appeared in President Carter's book. I can not allow that impression to stand.

Through Emory College, I have continued my professional commitment to inform students and the general public about the history and politics of Israel, the Middle East, and American policies toward the region. I have tried to remain true to a life-time devotion to scholarly excellence based upon unvarnished analyses and intellectual integrity. I hold fast to the notion that academic settings and those in positions of influence must teach and not preach. Through Emory College, in public lectures, and in OPED writings, I have adhered to the strong belief that history must presented in context, and understood the way it was, not the way we wish it to be.

In closing, let me thank you for your friendship, past and continuing support for ISMI, and to Emory College. Let me also wish you and your loved ones a happy holiday season, and a healthy and productive new year.
As ever,Ken

Dr. Kenneth W. Stein,

Professor of Contemporary Middle Eastern History, Political Science,and Israeli Studies,Director, Middle East Research Program andEmory Institute for the Study of Modern Israel

Atlanta, Georgia

Jimmy's still got it after all these years!

We have a Wall!

We have a wall!

Take the same approach

It appears that someone is in fact trying:

Thanks to a reporter at The New York Times, the controversy is not likely to go away. Tom Zeller said "it is important to find out if this really happened in order to separate the hyperbole from the merely horrible."

In other words, Zeller seems unconvinced that the story reported by AP of six Sunnis being horribly burned ever actually took place. Zeller also noted in a separate post on his blog that a Times colleague in Iraq was unable to verify the story and in fact cast serious doubt on its legitimacy. A Time magazine correspondent also was unable to confirm the story, describing the burnings as “alleged.”

Remember two years ago when bloggers raised questions about a "60 Minutes" segment led by CBS News Anchor Dan Rather? The segment was based on documents provided under strange circumstances by a mysterious source who has never been identified. Rather said the documents suggested President Bush received favored treatment by the National Guard in order to avoid service in Vietnam.

Within hours of the “60 Minutes” broadcast, however, bloggers were uncovering persuasive evidence that the documents were almost certainly forgeries. CBS convened an investigation by former AP President Lou Boccardi and former U.S. Attorney-General Dick Thornburgh. Boccardi and Thornburgh were unable to verify the documents. Rather retired.

It's time for AP to take the same sort of approach to resolve the Captain Jamil Hussein controversy. But there is one big difference between the present issue and the Dan Rather/"60 Minutes" ordeal - AP provides news to virtually every daily newspaper in America. AP is a cornerstone of the mainstream media. If AP's credibilty is harmed, every news organization that uses its products also suffers.

Thus, AP should ask the American Society of Newspaper Editors to oversee the appointment and conduct of an independent panel of respected journalists and outside evidentiary experts to determine the truth behind Captain Jamil Hussein and all other sources similarly in doubt.

To allow this controversy to continue to fester without taking decisive actions to resolve it to everybody's satisfaction could be disastrous for journalists everywhere.

Simply Put

The death of Malachi Ritscher appears most noteworthy because of it's anonymity and the fact that it went unrecognized for 5 days. I guess that's fitting, given that the man's self-immolation was designed as some sort of grand protest against the War in Iraq:

Malachi Ritscher envisioned his death as one full of purpose. He carefully planned the details, mailed a copy of his apartment key to a friend, created to-do lists for his family. On his Web site, the 52-year-old experimental musician who'd fought with depression even penned his obituary.

At 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 3 -- four days before an election caused a seismic shift in Washington politics -- Ritscher, a frequent anti-war protester, stood by an off-ramp in downtown Chicago near a statue of a giant flame, set up a video camera, doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire. "Here is the statement I want to make. ... "If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country."

The full AP story carried in many print editions, including ours, offered much detail about the man's struggles with depression and mental illness:

Mental health experts say virtually no suicides occur without some kind of a diagnosable mental illness. But Ritscher's family disagrees about whether he had severe mental problems.

In a statement, Ritscher's parents and siblings called him an intellectually gifted man who suffered from bouts of depression. They stopped short of saying he'd ever received a clinical diagnosis of mental illness.

"He believed in his actions, however extreme they were," his younger brother, Paul Ritscher, wrote online. "He believed they could help to open eyes, ears and hearts and to show everyone that a single man's actions, by taking such extreme personal responsibility, can perhaps affect change in the world."

His son, who shares the same name as his father, said his father was trying to cope with mental illness. Suicide seemed to be the next step, and the war was a way to give his death meaning.

"He was different people at different instances and so, so erratic. I loved him no doubt, but he was a very lonely and tragic man," said Ritscher, 35, who is estranged from the rest of the family. "The idea of being a martyr I'm sure was attractive. He could literally go out in a blaze of glory."

Simply put, healthy people in a right mind don't light themselves on fire. Even when they passionately believe in taking a stand for or against something.

Jennifer Diaz has it wrong. Mr. Ritscher is someone to be pitied, not admired. No cause, no "movement" won anything on November 3rd. No one struck a blow for anything that day.

Rather, a sick man made the most horrible of choices he could have that day and took his own life thinking somehow he made a grand statement in the process. No, this is isn't something to be cheered. Not politically nor any other way.

This was humanity at it's saddest.

Moonbattery indeed

So what is called when you take on a guy who's forgotten more history than you ever learned?

The Best of America's Youth

We stayed, yet again, on this most recent visit to Phoenix at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in the North Central part of town. It's a decent location and with a break on the rates, economical as well.

The most prominent guests for the weekend were the fine young men of the Lackawanna College football team. Turns out Lackawanna was in town to take on Glendale Community College in the Valley of the Sun Bowl on Saturday the 2nd. We didn't realize it at 12:30 in the morning when we checked in, that we were sharing a 3rd floor hallway with more than a few of these fine young men.

Turns out that Lackawanna's Head Coach Mark Duda has a roundabout tie to the Valley through a connection with the Cardinals organization: It will be a homecoming of sorts for Lackawanna College head coach Duda as he played defensive tackle for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1983 to 1988. A torn knee ended Duda's career and opportunity to continue his career with the Arizona Cardinals.

He also, as best we can tell, isn't interested in or lacks the ability to control his team. Over the course of the weekend we were advised that the team curfew was 11:30 PM, something that was observed only the night before the game, won by the visitors 17-16.

We arrived back to the hotel around 10:30 Saturday night and needn't have been told to understand that Lackawanna had won that afternoon. Their behavior over the course of the next five hours was testament to their joy and accomplishment.

Over the course of those five hours--and this is just in our hall, on our floor--we were treated to a rash of slamming doors, loud screams, hoots & hollers and at least one streaker. Each of the 4 times we asked for them to quiet down we were ignored. The two times we screamed at them to shut up and go to bed, we were told to calm down and go back to our room, that all was OK. Or better yet, the fine student-athlete we were speaking with didn't know who was making all the noise. Meanwhile, the hotel fared no better.

On the 3rd call to the front desk they agreed to send hotel security up to the floor to check out the situation, after which the noise died down for about 10 to 15 minutes and then resumed at it's former decibel levels. This happened againd after an additional two phone calls requesting the hotel to do something about the situation.

Now, back to Coach Duda. At one point--I think it was after I suggested to the front desk agent that the inmates were running the asylum and that perhaps he ought to involve team officials--we were advised that none of the coaching staff including the HC were on-site. That at 2 AM! The following morning we were advised that indeed some of the staff were in the building, something I would tend to believe after speaking with someone associated with the team who'd made several attempts to quell the noise on our floor.

Regardless though whether Duda was in the building or not, the evening's results speak for themselves. No one in authority stepped in and the at least a dozen members of the team itself spent half the night engaged in conduct unbecoming and ignoring the hotel's authority and that of it's own staff. It was a disgrace and all of it lays at the feet of the HC.

Had it been me and the roles reversed, guests would have complained the following morning not about the boorish behavior of my players but rather about me; about the loud screams and banging on walls to make the point that my guys need to shut up, get behind closed doors and settle down. Instead, we were left with one last image sure to epitomize the whole affair: One of the Falcons racing down the hall, screaming at the top of his lungs, wearing not even his jock-strap sometime after two-o'clock in the morning.

The usual stuff

While the retailer themselves is saying it isn't even much more than a pipe dream, we're already getting some of the usual rhetoric from most of the usual suspects:

The group, Central Coast Wal-Mart Watch, consists of Robert Cuthbert and a number of other residents concerned that the super center will hurt small businesses in the area and eventually be a poor economical choice for Lompoc.

Cuthbert, who recently lost a race for State Assembly, handed out a list of successful strategies that have helped across the country, including the following:

1)Educate consumers that Wal-Mart's “cheap goods” are products of grossly exploited labor from overseas, including child labor, underpaid workers, prisoner labor and slave labor in China.

2)Bring in small business owners whose livelihood is threatened by an uncaring international corporation.

3)Inform local officials that the Wal-Marts of the world only bring short-term tax windfalls, and then later mean a real economic decline.

4)Educate and ask that local labor leaders participate in our efforts.

5)Approach the city regarding city ordinances that limit the floor space of “big box” stores. A similar ordinance helped prevent Wal-Mart from putting a super center in Santa Maria last year.

Meanwhile, whats actually happening? Here's where things actually stand between the store and the city as of today:

City officials and a Wal-Mart representative agree that the giant discount chain's interest in Lompoc is in a preliminary “talking” stage.

They also agree that there will be a lot of talking before anything happens. And the talking will extend beyond the doors of Wal-Mart and of City Hall. The community will have its say.

“There are a lot of discussions that have to be had by community officials, organizations and company officials,” said Wal-Mart spokesman Kevin McCall, a senior manager of public affairs based in Los Angeles.

In a telephone interview last week, McCall said it would take several years to work through the city's development process. Wal-Mart has no timetable for its plans and hasn't filed an application - the first official step - and McCall couldn't say when that might happen.

That said, Wal-Mart is seriously interested in Lompoc, he added.

So while CCWMW is all fired up and ready to go, Wal-Mart has barely begun to get the ball rolling. The real story is not the when, or even the what:

Why?McCall's answer is brief, but to the point.

“Our store has been in Lompoc over 10 years. You hire people from within the community and you listen to your customers,” he said. “We have customers who have some limited shopping choices.”

This is a fight thats been going on in Atascadero for some time. The city there has been willing, to date anyway, to allow money that otherwise would stay inside the city limits to drive up to Paso Robles for spending at the Wal-Mart there.

Is Lompoc willing to continue seeing Lompoc dollars spent in Santa Maria, Santa Barbara and even San Luis Obispo as a result of the limited retail choices currently residing here in town?

OUCH!

For many Democrats, being an American is all about rights, not duties.

The Zinger of the Day, by Jack Kelly. HT to Dean Barnett.

First Order of Business

I've been out of blogging-range for several days. We returned last evening from Phoenix and a visit with friends there and so have been unable to write.

I did however, come back with lots of pictures, some of them even suitable for posting and at least a couple of interesting stories I may tell. The first order of business though is to find out where that other blogger managed to disappear to...