Monthly Archives: December 2009

War and Peace in a Complicated World

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obama child statue copyA child shall lead them

After President Obama made his ill-advised announcement that he will begin reversing the coming surge in Afghanistan just 18 months from now, I wrote that “he’ll have plenty of time between now and July 2011 to figure out how to explain, if necessary, that the withdrawal must be delayed.”

In Kabul today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates got an early start on walking back that commitment:

“While we hope to transfer power in July 2011, we will have a large number of forces here for some time beyond that,” Gates told the group at Kabul International Airport. “This is the first time in Afghan history when foreign forces are here to help, and we intend to be your partner for a long time.”

Meanwhile, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize nine days after announcing an escalation of what is now Mr. Obama’s War, the president made the best of a bizarre situation by acknowledging the obvious:

Compared to some of the giants of history who have received this prize — Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela — my accomplishments are slight.

And in Jakarta, Indonesians marked the occasion by unveiling a statue of the Obama Child, swaddled in T-shirt and shorts, embarking on his earthly ministry with the predestined Nobel medallion draped around his neck.

Photo: AFP/Getty

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Not All Deaths Are Created Equal

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cliff mayI’ve blogged before about FDD Update, the outstanding weekly newsletter of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.  This week’s edition is especially rich with clear-eyed thinking on the global struggle against Islamic fascism.

I could post about several entries, but I’ll confine myself to excerpting Cliff May’s takedown of a drivelous U.S./Muslim body count comparison:

[Stephen] Walt concludes: “[T]he United States has killed nearly 30 Muslims for every American lost. The real ratio is probably much higher, and a reasonable upper bound for Muslim fatalities (based mostly on higher estimates of ‘excess deaths’ in Iraq due to the sanctions regime and the post-2003 occupation) is well over one million, equivalent to over 100 Muslim fatalities for every American lost.”

He quotes an unnamed “prominent English journalist” who, he says, has articulated his point “quite simply.” “If the United States wants to improve its image in the Islamic world,” he said, “it should stop killing Muslims.”

Moral relativism is hardly uncommon in today’s political discourse, but refusing to differentiate between American troops trying to feed starving Somalis and Somali terrorists trying to stop the feeding program really does take the cake, so to speak.

It’s also revealing that Walt neglects to ask how many Muslims have been killed by Saddam Hussein, by al-Qaeda, by Iranian proxy death squads in Iraq, by the Taliban, and by other radical Muslim groups.

There is no recognition by Walt that in recent years Americans have sacrificed lives and treasure to save Muslims from tyranny and carnage in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan — and, yes, Muslims were killed in the process because in each of these cases, except Bosnia and Kosovo, Muslims communities were threatened by radical Muslim groups or regimes.

Read the whole thing.

Photo of Cliff May from FDD website

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Witnessing a Step Toward Marriage Equality in NJ

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kirk-nina trenton lobbying copyThe Web Goddess and I journeyed to Trenton yesterday in support of marriage equality for same-sex couples.  (The picture makes me look fatter than I am.)

Pictured in the background is our priest, Father Bernie Poppe.  A Senate committee approved the bill, which is to be voted on by the full Senate on Thursday.

My account of yesterday’s events is at Maplewood Patch.  My previous blog post on this matter has touched off a lively debate in the comments.

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Lobbying for Marriage Equality in New Jersey

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gaypridemarchT-blue copyThe Web Goddess and I are headed to Trenton Monday morning to lobby for pending legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage in New Jersey.  We’ll be car-pooling with friends both gay and straight from St. George’s Episcopal Church.

I’m covering the event for Maplewood Patch, a charter member of the Maplewood BlogolopolisTM.  Patch already has my preview story posted.

I’ll be wearing the snazzy T-shirt at left, designed by the Web Goddess of course, and available from Cafe Press.

This week is the last chance for at least four years to establish marriage equality legislatively in New Jersey.  If the state Senate Judiciary Committee votes the bill out of committee Monday, the full Senate is likely to vote on Thursday.  Democratic Governor Jon Corzine has said he would sign the bill.  Republican Governor-elect Chris Christie has said he would veto it.  At the committee hearing, the Right Reverend Mark M. Beckwith, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark and the Web Goddess’s boss, will be testifying in favor of the bill.

I Still Prefer the Chicago Politician to the Obamessiah

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obamamessiahWriting in the Washington Post, Dana Milbank discusses the downward trend in President Obama’s approval rating among liberals — a decline that seems likely to accelerate now that he has announced an escalation in what shall henceforward be known as Mr. Obama’s War.  The disillusionment…

… was bound to happen eventually. Obama had become to his youthful supporters a vessel for all of their liberal hopes. They saw him as a transformational figure who would end war, save the Earth from global warming, restore the economy — and still be home for dinner. They lashed out at anybody who dared to suggest that Obama was just another politician, subject to calculation, expediency and vanity like all the rest.

My first substantive post on this blog dealt with this very issue.  But in my case, I welcomed the emerging evidence that Obama is a politician, not a messiah.  I still do.

From that July 2008 post:

My biggest concern with Obama was the very thing that endeared him to many others — the idea that he was “not a politician,” or was “a new kind of politician.” I never believed that to be the case… but enough people believed it that I had to consider the possibility. The idea of a president who is not a politician is scary. It’s like the idea of a Supreme Court justice who’s not a lawyer. There’s no law against it, and it might even work out OK. But it makes no more sense to put a non-politician in the country’s top political job than it would to put a non-lawyer in the top legal job.

It ain’t always pretty and it ain’t always fair, but politics is the mechanism through which our country is governed.  How many times have you heard variants of “So-and-so is just doing that for political reasons,” with the word “political” spat out as a term of contempt.  But another way to say “doing something for political reasons” is “representing one’s constituents.”

As with any politician, Obama’s constituency is far from monolithic.  But he had a large cadre of supporters who bought into the Obamessiah myth, and it was inevitable that they eventually would feel betrayed.  As he positions himself for re-election, his twin goals will be to convince enough of the former true believers that he is still the best option available, while doing what needs to be done to stabilize Afghanistan and defeat the jihadists.

There’s a tension between those two goals, as we can see in the announcement of the new strategy for Mr. Obama’s War.  His ill-advised announcement of a date certain for beginning to reverse the coming surge is a face-saving fig leaf for the true believers.  Fortunately, he’ll have plenty of time between now and July 2011 to figure out how to explain, if necessary, that the withdrawal must be delayed.

But in the meantime, sounding a tentative trumpet is not the way to rally the troops and win a war.

Not Quite the Clarion Call I Had in Mind, But…

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White House photo of the announcement at West Point

… I like the fact that Obama said he would expedite the deployment of the additional troops to Afghanistan.

I went to bed annoyed about the wishy-washyness of what David Ignatius has labeled the “surge, then leave” strategy — why commit to a July 2011 date to begin drawing down the troops?  The administration can’t even predict how many Americans will accept free money to buy a new car. What makes them think  they can predict that the country will be stable enough to start leaving in 18 months — in a situation where the enemy gets a vote?

But this morning I remembered that with Guantanamo, Obama has already proven his ability to abandon a silly deadline.  Once the troops are deployed, the boots on the ground will be real.  The withdrawal date will be a goal.

It’s Mr. Obama’s war now.

(White House photo of the announcement at West Point)

Dumbest Headline of the Day, as the Afghanistan Speech Looms

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zelizer

Zelizer

“Obama Faces Risk of Wartime Presidency” — so reads the headline on a CNN commentary by Princeton professor Julian Zelizer.  I have no quarrel with most of it — the professor provides a useful and balanced review of how “war sucks the political oxygen out of almost any presidency,” citing LBJ and the Great Society, Truman’s long-forgotten domestic agenda, et cetera.  But the headline…

Authors (except for bloggers!) normally don’t get to write their own headlines, and I was inclined to cut the good professor some slack, but a variation of the jaw-dropping headline is in his text as well.  With his anticipated decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, Zelizer writes, “Obama inches closer to becoming a wartime president.”

Gracious.  At the risk of belaboring the gob-smackingly obvious, Mr. Obama became a wartime president on January 20.  If you don’t want to be a wartime president, don’t run for the office while America is prosecuting an Iraq WAR, an Afghanistan WAR, and a broader Global WAR on Terrorism (although they seem to have redefined that one out of existence).

The true risk, and the reason some of us favored John McCain for the role of Commander-in-Chief, is that Obama and many Democrats seem intent on convincing us that America is NOT at war.  This is why the indefensible decision to treat Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as a criminal, rather than as an enemy, is so appalling.

I’ll necessarily be away from the television tonight when the president lays out his plan for Afghanistan, but I’m setting the DVR to record, and I suspect I’ll watch it before my head hits the pillow tonight.  Earlier in his term, President Obama showed at least an occasional ability to put pragmatism ahead of partisanship when it comes to foreign policy.  I’m clinging to the hope that he will begin to do so again tonight, regarding the conflict he rightly called “a war of necessity.”

I’m not so much worried about the number of troops.  If Obama authorizes 30,000 instead of the 40,000 that his hand-picked general requested, I don’t see that as a half measure — it’s quite a bit more than half.  What I’m looking for tonight is a sense of commitment to victory.

Step up tonight, Mr. President.  The troops are counting on you.  America is counting on you.

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