When discussing foreign policy in the context of this election it seems to have been narrowed down to when we will leave Iraq, with a little bit of what to do about Afghanistan on the side. What is missing here, is obviously how we got into the Iraq in the first place. Who beat the drums? This was the single worst foreign policy decision in decades, since Vietnam, yet we never go back and question who wholeheartedly supported that decision, and who didn't.
That is the purpose of this video, not looking backwards, but looking at what a hawkish McCain presidency would mean for our future foreign policy. This isn't just staying in Iraq for years and years, or decades, it is about his extreme hawkishness, his open desire to create a conflict with Iran, and other nations. Just like Bush he is a "shoot first and ask questions later" kind of "leader". He uses the military as a crutch. He doesn't know the first thing of diplomacy, and he doesn't even know how to effectively use the military, nor does he appreciate the human and economic consequences of military action. Yet with his temper and warlust he will likely be even more dangerous than Bush or Cheney.
I almost never agree with Pat Buchanan, but on this I think he knows what he is talking about. This is a hardcore Republican telling us that John McCain will make Dick Cheney look like Gandhi.
Anyway, this video gives you a little bit of an idea about the very real consequences of having a man like McCain with his finger on the trigger:
Today Obama gave a big foreign policy speech, complete with a history lesson, in which he laid out his vision of a strong foreign policy founded on peace and diplomacy. Give it a watch:
There is something disconcerting about having a president, or a presidential nominee, who relishes the thought of killing citizens of foreign countries, largely their civilians, and even finds it appropriate to joke about them dying. That is what we have now in John McCain.
We all remember his "Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran" song, which highlighted how nonchalantly McCain views using the military, and indiscriminately killing human beings, especially civilians, who would no doubt wind up terrorized, if not dead, from McCain's bomb bomb bombing of Iran. It is pretty sick that someone who wants to be the "leader of the free world" seems to think bombing is the answer for everything. But let's see what bomb bomb bombing really looks like:
Is this a joke?
Is this funny?
Are you laughing yet??
McCain continued with his joking about the deaths of Iranian civilians yesterday. When asked about the fact that US exports to Iran have increased during the last 8 years, mainly from cigarette sales, McCain said, "Maybe that's a way of killing them."
After his wife, Cindy, poked him in the back, he added, "I meant that as a joke."
Yeah, funny joke. Explain to me again, how someone who wants to be president of the United States (repeatedly) joking about the deaths of citizens of a foreign country is a joke? How is that funny? I must have missed something. Is that the kind of thing McCain thinks represents presidential behavior?? And given that our biggest foreign policy challenges in coming years will be in the Middle East, how is it constructive for someone who wants to be the next president to already be wishing for the deaths of Iranians? Is that supposed to improve our relations with Iran? Is that supposed to fight anti-Americanism and extremism in the Middle East??
Let's face it, McCain is not presidential material, he isn't even fit for Congress. McCain is an braindead frat boy with a temper, who just happened to be the son of an admiral so he got his career spoon fed to him. He clearly isn't fit to be president, he clearly doesn't have the maturity to be president, even at 72. He is more reckless than Bush, which is an amazing feat. And the best part is that this was the best the Republicans had to offer. He is their finest.
Last night Representative Dennis Kucinich stood on the floor of the House for nearly five hours reading 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. Kucinich has been the biggest advocate for justice in Congress, tirelessly pursuing impeachment against Bush and Cheney for their many crimes over the past 7 years.
Dennis Kucinich, Pure Rockstar
Last year he introduced articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney, but the measure was killed by congressional Republicans. Unfortunately this will probably meet a similar fate. Despite the fact books have been written laying out the case for impeachment, and everyone knows it is deserved, there is no political will for it. What people don't understand is that this is far bigger than Bush. This is about accountability, checks and balances, the rule of law. No one is above the law, yet this administration has for years operated under the assumption that they can say and do anything with absolute impunity, and Congress hasn't objected, not even a slap on the wrist.
Here are Kucinich's 35 articles of impeachment against Bush:
Article I Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq
Article II Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression
Article III Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War
Article IV Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States
Article V Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression
Article VI Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of HJRes. 114
Article VII Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War.
Article VIII Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter
Article IX Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor
Article X Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes
Article XI Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq
Article XII Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation's Natural Resources
Article XIII Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other Countries
Article XIV Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency
Article XV Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in Iraq
Article XVI Reckless Misspending and Waste of U.S. Tax Dollars in Connection With Iraq and US Contractors
Article XVII Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives
Article XVIII Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy
Article XIX Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to "Black Sites" Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture
Article XX Imprisoning Children
Article XXI Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian Government
Article XXIV Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment
Article XXV Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens
Article XXVI Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements
Article XXVII Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former Employees Not to Comply
Article XXVIII Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration of Justice
Article XXIX Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965
Article XXX Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy Medicare
Article XXXI Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil Emergency
Article XXXII Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically Undermining Efforts to Address Global Climate Change
Article XXXIII Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist Attacks in the US, Prior to 911.
Article XXXIV Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001
Article XXXV Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders
Now juxtapose all that with what Bill Clinton was impeached on December 19, 1998 for: Lying about cheating on his wife.
Isn't it amazing how far we have come in less than a decade. Just 10 years ago we were appalled by a president lying about his personal business, and now a president commits all of the crimes above (and I'm certain many more), leading to the loss of over a million lives, to say nothing of the other innumerable consequences, and Congress has no spine, no one (but Kucinich) really protests, no one bats an eyelash, no one thinks it is a big deal!
And the scary part is that if Bush leaves office without impeachment, without prosecution, without any consequences, it will set a disastrous precedent, which will essentially show to every future president that they can commit at least as many crimes as Bush, without having to worry about any consequences, and they can most likely commit many more crimes, and escape with little more than a censure (slap on the wrist) from Congress.
Or maybe that is just for Republicans. Perhaps Republicans are just very willing to use impeachment as a political game, while Democrats aren't even willing to use it in a textbook example of why impeachment was created. I don't even know which is worse.
If the nearly 5 hours of video becomes available, I'll post it.
Update: Rep. Robert Wexler supports impeachment:
Our effort to hold the Bush/Cheney Administration accountable has taken another dramatic step forward. Last night, Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced the first Articles of Impeachment ever to be introduced against President Bush. It includes, in total, thirty-five Articles detailing this Administration's blatant abuse of power. Today, I enthusiastically co-sponsored this vitally important bill.
I am grateful for Dennis' leadership on this issue and for the steadfast support that countless Americans have given to both of our efforts to redeem our government and expose the crimes of Bush and Cheney.
I will now expand my efforts to secure impeachment hearings in the Judiciary Committee for these new Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush.
Many of the charges against President Bush are well known – and would shock the conscience of everyday Americans if only the national media would be willing to report on these stark facts.
The Articles present a stunning narrative of offenses that have go well beyond previous crimes committed by any US chief executive. In fact no President or Vice President in history has done more to undermine our constitution.
These charges are broad, with 35 separate allegations including the deliberate lies regarding WMDs that led us to war and the approval of illegal wiretapping of American citizens. The Articles also include new allegations of high crimes – including the explicit approval for high Administration officials to violate treaties and US law banning the use of torture.
The Democratic Party gained a majority in the House and Senate due in large part to our promises to end the corruption of the Republican majority and to hold the Administration accountable to the law. This courageous bill is a crucial step towards fulfilling this promise, but – like the Articles against Cheney – they require your support to convince Democrats and open-minded Republicans to support this bold but necessary action.
Time is running out so we must work together to spread the message and apply pressure.
First, please encourage your friends and family members to sign up at WexlerWantsHearings.com – as it will allow us to keep in touch with you and speak to a wider audience. If you haven't yet put in your phone and address, please sign up again, as we will be doing telephone town halls in the near future.
Second, call your representative and urge them to support Impeachment hearings.
Finally, contact newspapers, news stations, and your favorite bloggers and urge them to report on this movement. We need to keep Impeachment a significant news story until the Democratic leadership sees the value in it.
McClellan Agrees to Testify:
I was pleased to inform you yesterday that Judiciary Committee Chairman Conyers met my call to have Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan testify under oath. I am thrilled to inform you that McClellan has agreed to testify on June 20th at 10AM. This will be the first step in what we hope will be ongoing and deepening examinations of the stark evidence and charges against both President Bush and Vice President Cheney.
Thank you for your continued passion and advocacy. Your support means so much to me.
We all know John McCain doesn't know much about what is going on in Iraq or Iran, or Cuba, or America, or anywhere else. Sadly enough though, he apparently doesn't even know what is going on in the Senate, where is supposedly works. Even worse, McCain doesn't know what is going on in the Senate, concerning big changes in US foreign policy, toward Iran, which he has been attacking Obama over. Oh, and the big legislation he doesn't know about? It just happens to be Obama's legislation. Here is the scoop from the Huffington Post:
That trip-up [McCain's Katrina lie earlier today], however, was mild in compared to the gaffe that happened earlier in the day, when McCain acknowledged he was not aware that Obama had introduced a bill that called for international divestment from Iran.
Reporter: Are you familiar with his disinvestment bill?
McCain: No, I am not familiar with it at all. I do not know if it passed the senate or had any hearing or anything else. I had, so, literally thousands and thousands pieces of legislation are proposed every year. I know what he did. He voted against the Iranian revolutionary guard being declared a terrorist organization.*
The admission could prove damaging for a variety of reasons. For starters, Obama's bill, which passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives, is currently being held up in the Senate by Republican Sen. Richard Shelby. More significantly, two McCain surrogates, Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Rep. Eric Cantor, are co-sponsors of Obama's measure despite, on Wednesday, ripping the Illinois Democrat for not having the experience to deal with Iran.
Hm, so Obama supposedly doesn't know anything about Iraq, but he is actually leading on US foreign policy toward Iran, and McCain is the one who doesn't know anything about it, even though it is being considered by the place he supposedly works. Although, it makes sense that he wouldn't be aware of what is going on there, since he has managed to miss more votes during this campaign than any other candidate, this despite the fact his nomination was wrapped up months earlier than the Democrats.
I'm obviously going to need to come up with a term to encompass all of McCain's gaffes/lies/ignorance, because he essentially messes up at least once a day.
*Note: Obama's opposition to the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, which labeled Iran's Revolutionary Guard (part of its official military) as a terrorist organization is actually a good thing. Using the rationale McCain employed in supporting that amendment, the United States military would be a terrorist organization, indeed it would be a MUCH MUCH MUCH bigger terrorist organization that Iran (they actually have no evidence of Iran committing any acts of terrorism, or even aggression), or al-Qaeda, or any other terrorist organization in the world. The same goes for Israel's military. The precedent it sets is incredibly dangerous, and reckless.
I wrote a few days ago about some comments John McCain made about Iraq while he was trying to paint Obama as uninformed about Iraq because he hadn’t been there in person for a year or so. In his comments, ironically, he exposed (yet again) how ignorant he is when it comes to the facts on the ground. In this occasion he stated that we have already drawn down troop levels in Iraq to pre-surge numbers, even though everyone who is even casually following the situation in Iraq knows that we still have 25,000 more American troops in Iraq than we did before the surge. Yeah, that’s what we call an amateur mistake, and it kind of shreds his argument about knowing so much more than everyone else because he took a few photo-op strolls in Iraq under (very) heavy guard. A few days ago Obama nailed McCain over this, but I didn’t have a chance to write about it because I was busy following the DNC R&B Committee meeting, so here it is:
He's been proposing a joint trip to Iraq that's nothing more than a political stunt. He's even been using it to raise a few dollars for his campaign. But it seems like Senator McCain's a lot more interested in my travel plans than the facts, because yesterday - in his continued effort to put the best light on a failed policy - he stood up in Wisconsin and said, "We have drawn down to pre-surge levels" in Iraq.
"That's not true, and anyone running for Commander-in-Chief should know better. As the saying goes, you're entitled to your own view, but not your own facts. We've got around 150,000 troops in Iraq - 20,000 more than we had before the surge. We have plans to get down to around 140,000 later this summer - that's still more troops than we had in Iraq before the surge. And today, Senator McCain refused to correct his mistake. Just like George Bush, when he was presented with the truth, he just dug in and refused to admit his mistake. His campaign said it amounts to "nitpicking."
"Well I don't think tens of thousands of American troops amounts to nitpicking. Tell that to the young men and women who are serving bravely and brilliantly under our flag. Tell that to the families who have seen their loved ones fight tour after tour after tour of duty in a war that should've never been authorized and never been waged.
Ouch. And then later Obama hit him on this again, not so much the not knowing the basic facts about Iraq part, but on the fact that when McCain was called on his "gaffe" (to put it charitably), he kept running with it, refusing to admit his mistake (sound familiar?):
We all misspeak sometimes. I've done it myself. So on such a basic, factual error, you'd think that Senator McCain would just admit that he made a mistake and move on. But he couldn't do that. Instead, he dug in. And the disturbing thing is that we've seen this movie before -- a leader who pursues the wrong course, who is unwilling to change course, who ignores the evidence. Now, just like George Bush, John McCain refused to admit that he made a mistake. And that's exactly the kind of leadership that we've had through more than five years of fighting a war that should've never been authorized, and should've never been waged.
We don't need more leaders who can't admit they've made a mistake, even when it's about something as fundamental as how many young Americans are serving in harm's way.
Of course there is much more to this than a random factual error, this is part of a much much larger pattern of McCain being unable to get basic facts about Iraq, Iran and the Middle East right, despite basing his campaign around his "experience" and ability to lead. And to do it right in the middle of a speech attacking his much more knowledgeable opponent on not knowing what is happening on the ground in Iraq. That’s just the definition of irony.
Of course McCain has also been attacking Obama for breaking with Bush’s policy of ignoring unfriendly foreign leaders and hoping they will just vanish in a cloud of pixie dust (read: get nuclear weapons like North Korea did while Bush completely ignored them). It turns out that the public agrees with Obama on this one, with two-thirds of Americans favoring direct negotiations with hostile foreign leaders. Apparently the American public has been paying attention to the last seven years, and don’t want the same mistakes made for another 4 to 8 years.
Retired Air Force General Tony McPeak also doesn’t think very highly of McCain’s supposed Commander-in-Chief street cred:
It doesn't take very long to uncover national security issues that McCain is weak on...For McCain to think he has a monopoly on virtue in the national security issue is going to be shown a pretty flimsy idea very quickly.
[McCain is] wrong about Iraq, and he's wrong in the past and wrong about his ideas going forward. And that's the biggest single national security issue on the table.
[McCain] supported the intervention to begin with. Then of course he attacked the execution and he was justified in doing so. But the idea that this was a good concept, poorly executed, won't stand the test of examination.
Now, it was poorly executed, so he was right about that. But the concept itself was fatally flawed. So he was wrong there. And his idea that all we have to do is execute better and this will turn into a big victory for us is wrong.
So he's going to have to carry the weight, the tonnage of bad judgment on that particular issue.
Some people in the Democratic Party have felt a little uneasy for the last week or so because they think McCain has been setting the topic of debate on foreign policy and national security, and they think Democrats are stronger if they drive the focus to the economy, but in reality even though Obama and McCain are battling on what is supposedly McCain’s turf, on McCain’s terms, Obama is still tearing him up. It isn’t even a fair fight.
Update: The Huffington Post has a good catch today. John McCain has referred to Rudy "9/11" Giuliani as his "strong right arm" on the war on terror, yet Giuliani has never been to Iraq, or Iran, or anywhere else in the "Axis of Evil". Yet he is still apparently McCain's qualified "strong right arm". Weird.
If we know anything about McCain, it is that he doesn't understand foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East (and particularly particularly in Iraq), and he loves lying to the public about the war. We saw this beautifully executed during his own "mission accomplished" tour around a Baghdad market a little over a year ago, where he boasted about the security gains saying that Americans weren't getting the "full picture" about the amazing success of our war in Iraq:
Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told CNN that that President Bush’s escalation in Iraq is going so well, "General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed humvee." On Monday, he told radio host Bill Bennett that there "are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today."
Republican Congressman Mike Pence, who accompanied McCain on his love stroll, backed him up saying that the Baghdad market was just "like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime."
And McCain and his entourage took an open-air stroll around the market to prove the point.
Only the Americans weren't getting the "full picture" from his little photo op. That is, unless the last time you went on a casual stroll through a farmers' market in Indiana you arrived in a convoy of armored vehicles, wearing a flak jacket, and accompanied by 100 heavily armed American troops, while sharpshooters provided cover from rooftops and three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache gunships circled above providing additional cover. I know that's how I usually walk through a safe farmers' market, but I have to admit it gets kind of annoying when I want to listen to the hippie playing the guitar but I can't hear him because of the roar of gunships overhead. But yes, apparently McCain's "armor free" stroll is what is passing for "straight talk" nowadays.
Oh, and it also turns out that Gen. Petraeus doesn't go on joyrides around the city in unarmed vehicles either:
John Roberts rebutted McCain’s assertions, stating, "I checked with General Petraeus’s people overnight and they said he never goes out in anything less than an up-armored humvee." He added that a new report by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey "said no Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat reporter could walk the streets of Baghdad without heavily armed protection."
So much for John "facts on the ground" McCain.
Petraeus wasn't the only one to disagree with McCain's whitewashed, ultra-rosy crackhead fantasy version of the situation on the ground in Iraq, apparently the Iraqis, who live it every day of their lives weren't so cheerful about the whole charade:
Several merchants said Monday that the Americans' visit might have only made the market a more inviting target for insurgents. "Every time the government announces anything -- that the electricity is good or the water supply is good -- the insurgents come to attack it immediately," said Abu Samer, 49, who would give only his nickname out of concern for his safety.
But even though he was fearful of a revenge attack, he said, he could not afford to stay away from the market. This was his livelihood. "We can never anticipate when they will attack," he said, his voice heavy with gloomy resignation. "This is not a new worry."
Yes, the Iraqis lives were put in danger by McCain's little propaganda stunt, but why should he care, he will be whisked away back to the Green Zone by his multi-billion dollar armored security force. The Iraqis, not so lucky:
21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital. The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress.
Now you tell me, who knows the conditions on the ground better, McCain, who got us into this catastrophe in the first place, or the Iraqis, who were executed for trying to earn enough money to feed their families, and were unfortunately visited by the angel of death?
Not to be outdone by himself when it comes to being a lying asshole, McCain again boasted about his superior knowledge of our awesome successes in Iraq, despite the nearly 1000 American soldiers who have died since his last propaganda stunt, by pulling another: accusing Obama of not knowing how great things are in Iraq, and challenging him to go on an open-air market stroll with him to prove his point. I think we know how this one goes. (Perhaps McCain has finally realized that the only way he will become president is if Obama is assassinated, which seems to be the conventional wisdom for Obama's opponents lately)
Doesn't it seem weird though that you apparently can't understand the situation in Iraq without walking around Baghdad, yet McCain can know exactly what is going on in the mind of Ahmadinejad and know enough to be a tireless advocate of bombing the hell out of Iran, all without setting a single foot inside Iran? And apparently he also knows what is best for Cuba (a policy that has failed for 50 years) without actually setting foot in Cuba. And apparently he knew the best way to save New Orleans from Katrina, without being there, because he was eating birthday cake with Bush while the citizens of New Orleans were dying. It is weird that Iraq has some special magical phenomenon about it that prevents anyone from understanding what is going on there without going on a heavily armed photo op in a Baghdad market, while in all these other situations he knows everything despite never getting anywhere near the place in question. Oh, but apparently the armed photo ops don't make you any more knowledgeable when it comes to understanding the basic dynamics of the sectarian violence in Iraq, you know, that whole Sunni vs Shia thing that McCain has so much trouble with. Or having a passing knowledge of combat operations within Iraq. Oh well, details details.
John McCain's proposal is nothing more than a political stunt, and we don't need any more 'Mission Accomplished' banners or walks through Baghdad markets to know that Iraq's leaders have not made the political progress that was the stated purpose of the surge. The American people don't want any more false promises of progress, they deserve a real debate about a war that has overstretched our military, and cost us thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars without making us safer.
Ouch, you had that coming McCain, yet you walked right into it.
McCain shot back with Bush's trademark constipated "mission accomplished" spin:
To say that we've failed in Iraq and that we're not succeeding does not comport with the facts on the ground. So we've got to show him the facts on the ground.
Yes, the same BS Bush has been feeding us for over 5 years now, and the same BS McCain has promised at least 5 more years of if elected president. Funny it should take so long to get out if everything was going so well.
What does all his experience get us? What do all those visits [to Iraq] get us?
The fact that he goes to Iraq and gets a tour apparently does little to provoke the kinds of questions that should be asked, and what Sen. Obama has been asking since the beginning. So it is not a question of longevity in government. It is a question of judgment, it is a question of a willingness to challenge policies that have failed. And he seems just dug in.
On the day after the former White House press secretary conceded that the Bush administration used deception and propaganda to take us to war, it seems odd that Senator McCain, who bought the flawed rationale for war so readily, would be lecturing others on their depth of understanding about Iraq. Senator Obama challenged the President's rationale for the war from the start, warning that it would divert resources from Afghanistan and the pursuit of Al Qaeda and mire us in an endless civil war.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Now that was something that Hillary could have never said, because she ate up Bush's crap just like McCain. Hopefully by this point people are starting to see why Obama being against the war from the beginning was such a big deal?
Update: John McCain gets basic (common knowledge) facts about Iraq wrong again, and then claims Mosul is now "quiet", while the same day Mosul is rocked by three suicide bombings. Another typical day of lies (or perhaps just total incompetence) for McCain:
Speaking about Iraq at a townhall event on Thursday evening in Greensdale, Wisconsin, Sen. John McCain declared, "I can tell you that it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr city are quiet and it's long and it's hard and it's tough and there will be setbacks..." (Video is below.)
McCain was wrong on two points. First, U.S. forces have not returned to pre-surge levels. Before the surge, there were 130,000 troops in Iraq; even if the scheduled troop reductions are carried out as planned, there will still be 140,000 troops in Iraq in August.
Moreover, McCain's claim that Mosul is "quiet" was disproved earlier today in grim fashion. Three suicide bombings -- two in Mosul and another in a surrounding town -- left 30 Iraqis dead and more than two dozen injured, according to press reports.
Update #2: Kerry hits McCain over not knowing how many troops are in Iraq, while McCain's aides say it was a mistake, and McCain himself says he said something he didn't:
It is very disturbing to have John McCain continue to raise questions about what he knows and what he bases his judgments on. If you don't know the number of troops, it is difficult to make a judgment as to whether they are overextended. ... It raises serious questions about his comprehension of this challenge.
Update #3: Oh yes, and on his most recent trip to Iraq McCain didn't visit that market, he wanted to, but was told it wasn't safe for Americans, and that it was now controlled by Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi army. Yay for the surge, apparently security is getting WORSE, not better!
Moira Whelan over at the Huffington Postpoints out McCain's latest foreign policy gaffe--well, not so much a gaffe as yet another sign he doesn't know what he is talking about when it comes to many things, especially foreign policy:
Yesterday, in his big non-proliferation speech, McCain took his gaffes to a new level. He actually invented 20 years of negotiations between the United States and Tehran. In his speech, McCain said:
"Today, some people seem to think they've discovered a brand new cause, something no one before them ever thought of. Many believe all we need to do to end the nuclear programs of hostile governments is have our president talk with leaders in Pyongyang and Tehran, as if we haven't tried talking to these governments repeatedly over the past two decades."
McCain has clearly forgotten what Max Bergmann points out: The stated policy of the United States since April 7, 1980 has been that we don't talk to the Iranians. Never has the United States had communications, or tried to have communications, with the Iranian government on their nuclear program. Iran's nuclear communications have been limited to working through the European Union (led by France and Germany, countries John McCain has referred to as "vacuous" and "posturing").
This is why I love that McCain has it in his head that attacking Obama on foreign policy is a smart strategy, when every single day he does it he highlights more of his ignorance, and more of how closely he clings to Bush's failed policies. Obama loves it too, which is why he has repeated said that the foreign policy debate is one he is happy to have with McCain.
And again, these aren't just isolated examples of ineptitude, all of these taken together paint a crystal clear picture of what kind of failed leader McCain intends to be.
Taken with his other many gaffes on Iran (repeated Sunni/Shia screw up, the use of Khamenei and Ahmajinedad interchangeably) there should be real questions about whether McCain has any knowledge of US-Iranian relations. Given that this one was in his prepared text, it also makes you wonder what his foreign policy team actually knows about Iran. For a man running for President on his foreign policy aptitude such confusion should sound alarm bells.
It says something when McCain is setting off more alarm bells during his campaign than Bush did during the 2000 campaign when it comes to ignorance. The question is, when will the media start doing their job with McCain?
American politicians generally make a point of not attacking fellow Americans while overseas on diplomatic trips. In fact it is quite frowned upon, for obvious reasons, pretty unusual and taboo. Well leave it to Bush to not rest on tradition. While delivering an address yesterday before the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, commemorating the 60th anniversary of Israel, President Bush said that Sen. Barack Obama and Democrats favor a policy of appeasement toward terrorists, simply because Obama, like many foreign policy experts, believes that diplomacy is a sign on strength, and we can only make progress if we will engage our enemies as well as our allies. CNN reported that Bush compared Obama to "other U.S. leaders back in the run-up to World War II who appeased the Nazis" for his willingness to actually talk to leaders we disagree with (something Bush has strongly opposed for almost 8 years, and look how great that worked out). Bush wasn’t the first person to attack Obama for this, that honor goes to Hillary Clinton, in what was basically the first negative attack of the Democratic primary (fittingly it came from her), when Obama first stated that he would be willing to meet with foreign leaders who don’t agree with us, and Hillary attacked him as naïve and inexperienced, even though his position made absolute sense. Obama didn’t back down, and many foreign policy experts agreed with Obama’s policy of strength through diplomacy. Hillary eventually quieted her attacks on that topic after it became obvious she was on the wrong side of that argument, but Bush apparently thought it was a good one (not the first or the last time Hillary and Republicans will share talking points), so he fired this off yesterday in front of the Israeli Parliament:
Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.
Okay, so I’m going to ignore the fact that Bush just quoted Republican Senator William Edgar Borah there, and move on to point out that diplomacy, talking to your enemies, is not appeasement, and that is not what emboldened Hitler during the events running up to the start of the Second World War. This is something Republicans, ever fond of talking out their asses, don’t seem to understand, as Chris Matthews showed amazingly well last night when he put a right-wing radio host in his place after he spouted a bunch of ignorant nonsense:
That was probably one of the greatest things I’ve seen since:
Anyway, then, not surprisingly, McCain jumps on board:
Asked if he thought Mr. Obama was an appeaser — the Democratic candidate has said he would be willing to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran — Mr. McCain sidestepped and said, "I think that Barack Obama needs to explain why he wants to sit down and talk with a man who is the head of a government that is a state sponsor of terrorism, that is responsible for the killing of brave young Americans, that wants to wipe Israel off the map, who denies the Holocaust. That’s what I think Senator Obama ought to explain to the American people.'’
Now it cannot be denied that Ahmadinejad is an unsavory character, but the US government has offered no evidence that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism, or responsible for killing Americans. In 2007 the Republicans (and hawkish Democrats like Hillary) took the unprecedented step of labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a branch of a foreign government’s standing army (focused on homeland security and defense), a terrorist organization, again, with no evidence to back that up. But that doesn’t make it true, you still need facts to back that claim up, especially such a serious claim. And I have to say that if the use of force by militaries of sovereign countries can now be interpreted as terrorism (as it should, when they actually do harm, war is terrorism), the United States, and to a lesser extent Israel, would be the largest terrorist organizations operating in the world, by the logic of McCain, Bush, the Republicans and hawkish Democrats like Hillary. That is why their throwing around the term terrorism like that was unprecedented, and very unwise—which actually makes Hillary’s (and the Republican’s) positions on foreign policy extremely reckless, irresponsible and ignorant—not Obama’s.
Oh yeah, and then you have McCain two years ago, sounding more like Jimmy Carter than George Bush, saying that we need to negotiate with Hamas, because they represent the Palestinians and we have to deal with the realities of the situation if we want to solve anything, thus proving that the Clintons don’t have a monopoly on hypocrisy and doublespeak after all:
Q: "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?"
McCAIN: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that."
And then we had former Democrat Joe Lieberman, the GOP’s favorite puppet and McCain’s top cheerleader adding to the pile on against Obama:
President Bush got it exactly right today when he warned about the threat of Iran and its terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. It is imperative that we reject the flawed and naïve thinking that denies or dismisses the words of extremists and terrorists when they shout "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," and that holds that — if only we were to sit down and negotiate with these killers — they would cease to threaten us. It is critical to our national security that our commander-in-chief is able to distinguish between America’s friends and America’s enemies, and not confuse the two.
Again, we see that the preferred method of conflict resolution from conservatives is bloodshed before diplomacy. Why try to resolve conflicts peacefully when you can fight til the last one standing, which is essentially what they are all advocating. If they didn’t fight til the last man (or woman or child) was standing, then that would mean that at some point the fighting would end is a cease fire, and they would come together and talk to make peace, which is exactly what they are saying cannot happen. Ceasefires are tools of the weak for McCain and the rest of the hawks, so it wouldn’t make any sense to ever cease fighting, because if you eventually have to stop and make peace through diplomacy, there would have been absolutely no reason to not try diplomacy first, you know, before thousands or millions of civilians were slaughtered, maimed and displaced.
So Obama fired back at Bush, specifically on the issue of engagement with actual terrorists:
It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.
And then Obama’s Democratic posse, which has been coalescing around him since his wins in North Carolina and Indiana got his back, first Senator Biden, with color:
This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset . . . and make this kind of ridiculous statement.
He is the guy who has weakened us. He has increased the number of terrorists in the world. It is his policies that have produced this vulnerability that the U.S. has. It’s his [own] intelligence community [that] has pointed this out, not me.
Well said. Next, Speaker Pelosi went after Bush’s choice of venue, and took a shot at McCain:
We have a protocol, sort of a custom, informally around here that we don't criticize the president when he is on foreign soil. One would think that that would apply to the president that he would not criticize Americans when he is on foreign soil.
I think what the president said in that regard is beneath the dignity of the office of the president and unworthy of our representation at that observance in Israel.
I would hope that any serious person would disassociate himself from the president's remarks who aspires to leadership in our country.
And then Senator Kerry added his criticism:
What an irony to have the current president in Israel blasting Democrats from the Knesset when his policies have actually seen al-Qaeda get strengthened, they've seen al-Qaeda be reconstructed, they've seen Hezbollah get stronger, they've seen Hamas get stronger, Israel more threatened, Iran is stronger and Iraq is in chaos. This is a disgraceful statement by the president ... He ought to apologize to the American people for going to Israel and using the Knesset and the celebration of the 60th anniversary of a state and a people that we all support and that we're all proud of and using it for politics.
Then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:
Not surprisingly, the engineer of the worst foreign policy in our nation's history has fired yet another reckless and reprehensible round. More than seven years into his Presidency and in the sixth year of the directionless Iraq war, President Bush has yet to learn that his brand of divisive partisan rhetoric is precisely what has made America and our allies less secure. And for the President to make this statement before the government of our closest ally as it celebrates a remarkable milestone demeans this historic moment with partisan politics.
And Howard Dean rounds out the Democratic leadership by going after McCain:
On the same day John McCain is talking about putting partisanship aside, the President launched a cheap political attack while on a state visit honoring the 60th anniversary of Israel, one of America's greatest allies. Bush's outrageous comments are an embarrassment to our country, not based in fact and bring us no closer to our goal of ending terrorist attacks against Israel and bringing peace to the region. If John McCain is really serious about being a different kind of Republican, he'll denounce these remarks in the strongest terms possible.
But of course we know he didn’t denounce them, he parroted them, and then his parrot in turn played the echo chamber. And amazingly enough, Hillary came to the defense of Obama and Democrats for a change, even though she was the first one to raise similar right-wing attacks:
President Bush’s comparison of any Democrat to Nazi appeasers is both offensive and outrageous on the face of it, especially in light of his failures in foreign policy. This is the kind of statement that has no place in any presidential address and certainly to use an important moment like the 60th anniversary celebration of Israel to make a political point seems terribly misplaced. Unfortunately, this is what we’ve come to expect from President Bush.
I applaud her for that, and for not adding "Obama isn’t a Nazi appeaser or terrorist, as far as I know" at the end.
In the end it was a good exchange, because it highlighted how very wrong the Republicans are on foreign policy, like everything else, and it was an occasion for the biggest show of Party unity from the Democrats in quite some time. If we keep our eye on the prize and everything in perspective, we can do some great things come November and beyond. All this gives me hope.
Note: Word on the street is that Obama will "respond forcefully" to Bush today in a speech.
Update: And here is Obama's response:
This is where it is a very good thing that our candidate didn't vote for the war, or vote for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment. He couldn't go after Bush, McCain and the Republicans nearly as effectively if he was complicit in their worst mistakes.
Update #2: McCain responds with his characteristic distortions:
Earlier today, Sen. Obama made a few remarks I would like to respond to. I welcome a debate about protecting America. No issue is more important. Sen. Obama claimed all I had to offer was the ‘naive and irresponsible belief’ that tough talk would cause Iran to give up its nuclear program. He should know better. I have some news for Sen. Obama: Talking, not even with soaring rhetoric, in unconditional meetings with the man who calls Israel a ‘stinking corpse’ and arms terrorists who kill Americans will not convince Iran to give up its nuclear program. It is reckless to suggest that unconditional meetings will advance our interests.
It would be a wonderful thing if we lived in a world where we don't have enemies. But that is not the world we live in, and until Sen. Obama understands that reality, the American people have every reason to doubt whether he has the strength, judgment and determination to keep us safe.
And Obama responds with a complete smackdown:
What's reckless is continuing the Bush-McCain foreign policy that has cost us thousands of lives and a trillion dollars in Iraq, strengthened Iran, enabled Hamas to take Gaza, took our eye off al Qaeda, failed to capture Osama bin Laden, failed to finish the job in Afghanistan, and left us less safe and less respected in the world. No amount of utterly predictable fear-mongering and tough talk can change the fact that John McCain is running to continue the most disastrous foreign policy in recent American history.
BAM!! I suggest McCain take the rest of the weekend off to recover from that verbal lashing. He'll need to be nice and rested for his next dose.
When Hillary committed to expanding a nuclear deterrence umbrella over not only Israel, but other allies in the Middle East, something that even Bush and the neocons haven't voiced support for, many people were shocked, yet the media made almost no mention of this fairly insane foreign policy statement. She basically said she would commit the US nuclear arsenal to attacking any country that used weapons of mass destruction against another country in the Middle East. The Middle East, just in case some are unaware, is a giant mess of conflicts. Hillary feels we should throw ourselves and our nuclear weapons right in the middle of it.
Then, just a few days later, she nonchalantly threatened to "totally obliterate" Iran (apparently not realizing that there are millions of innocent civilians in Iran) if the Iranian government nuked Israel. Just imagine, for a moment, if a terrorist group got a nuke from North Korea or a former Soviet republic, and detonated it in Israel. Suddenly there is panic, no one knows where it came from or who was responsible, but Israel assumes it was Iran, whether because they really think it was Iran, or because they want an excuse to annihilate Iran, so Hillary with her finger on the button launches nukes against Iran from submarines stationed in the Middle East. BOOM! Game over. There are countless ways mistakes can be made, and Hillary's willingness to "totally obliterate" Iran turns a bad situation into a nightmare scenario. And not to mention, Israel has its own nukes that it isn't supposed to have (notice, the US doesn't care that Israel have nukes, which only encourage its Arab neighbors to develop them to defend themselves, nor does the US seem to notice that its own bellicosity in the region only proves to Middle Eastern countries that they need a nuclear deterrence if they are to be safe from the US and its allies--just like North Korea is safe).
Anyway, all of these comments show two things: A) Hillary is nearly as hawkish as McCain and the neocons, and B) Hillary, despite all of her bragging about her superior experience, has very short-sighted and naive foreign policy ideas, just like Bush and the neocons. Anyway, at the time all this went down, I wanted to write a blog about it, but unfortunately other campaign coverage took up my time. Here is a repost of an article which mentions some of the reaction to her ignorant Republicanesque bellicosity:
AMERICANS have learned to take with a grain of salt much of the rhetoric in a campaign like the current Democratic donnybrook between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Still, there are some red lines that should never be crossed. Clinton did so Tuesday morning, the day of the Pennsylvania primary, when she told ABC's "Good Morning America" that, if she were president, she would "totally obliterate" Iran if Iran attacked Israel.
This foolish and dangerous threat was muted in domestic media coverage. But it reverberated in headlines around the world.
Responding with understatement to a question in the British House of Lords, the foreign minister responsible for Asia, Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, said of Clinton's implication of a mushroom cloud over Iran: "While it is reasonable to warn Iran of the consequences of it continuing to develop nuclear weapons and what those real consequences bring to its security, it is probably not prudent in today's world to threaten to obliterate any other country and in many cases civilians resident in such a country."
A less restrained reaction came from an editorial in the Saudi-based paper Arab News. Being neighbors of Iran, the Saudis and the other Gulf Arabs have the most to fear from Iran's nuclear program and its drive to become the dominant power in the Gulf.
But precisely because they are most at risk from Iran's regional ambitions, the Saudis want a carefully considered American approach to Iran, one that balances firmness and diplomatic engagement.
The Saudi paper called Clinton's nuclear threat "the foreign politics of the madhouse," saying, "it demonstrates the same doltish ignorance that has distinguished Bush's foreign relations."
The Saudis are not always sound advisers on American foreign policy. But they understand that Rambo rhetoric like Clinton's only plays into the hands of Iranian hard-liners who want to plow ahead with efforts to attain a nuclear weapons capability. They argue that Iran must have that capability in order to deter the United States from doing what Clinton threatened to do.
While Clinton has hammered Obama for supporting military strikes in Pakistan, her comments on Iran are much more far-reaching. She seems not to realize that she undermined Iranian reformists and pragmatists. The Iranian people have been more favorable to America than any other in the Gulf region or the Middle East.
A presidential candidate who lightly commits to obliterating Iran - and, presumably, all the children, parents, and grandparents in Iran - should not be answering the White House phone at any time of day or night.
So this wouldn't seem that important to most people, and I'm sure most people will never know about this, but it is quite important nevertheless: Today J Street, a new progressive pro-Israel lobbying organization was officially launched, for the purpose of providing an alternative to the hardline rightwing neoconservative (and all powerful) AIPAC lobby, which we can thank in large part for our current situation in the Middle East. Here is their mission statement:
J Street is the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement.
J Street was founded to promote meaningful American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israel conflicts peacefully and diplomatically. We support a new direction for American policy in the Middle East and a broad public and policy debate about the U.S. role in the region.
J Street represents Americans, primarily but not exclusively Jewish, who support Israel and its desire for security as the Jewish homeland, as well as the right of the Palestinians to a sovereign state of their own - two states living side-by-side in peace and security. We believe ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in the best interests of Israel, the United States, the Palestinians, and the region as a whole.
J Street supports diplomatic solutions over military ones, including in Iran; multilateral over unilateral approaches to conflict resolution; and dialogue over confrontation with a wide range of countries and actors when conflicts do arise. For more on our policy positions, click here.
J Street will advocate forcefully in the policy process, in Congress, in the media, and in the Jewish community to make sure public officials and community leaders clearly see the depth and breadth of support for our views on Middle East policy among voters and supporters in their states and districts. We seek to complement the work of existing organizations and individuals that share our agenda. In our lobbying and advocacy efforts, we will enlist individual supporters of other efforts as partners.
And here is their introductory video:
I'm sure the progressive community, those who know about this at least, are cheering today, because we know all too well the ills AIPAC, and other rightwing pro-Israel groups, have wrought upon our foreign policy as well as our domestic discourse (or lack thereof). Christopher Hayes of The Nation also breathed a similar sign of relief today:
Israel policy is, of course, the area in which this dynamic has been most destructively evident. It's really remarkable that for the last two decades AIPAC has been allowed to arrogate to itself the role of speaking for American Jews on the topic of Israel, despite the fact its actual positions and staff are far, far to the right of your average Jewish American. Now J Street has, thankfully, joined the scene. As former NYC Corporate council Victor Kovner just put in on a press call introducing the organization, "It's long overdue."
It will probably be a hard haul for J Street, for just like previous attempts at challenging the rightwing dominance of AIPAC it will be met with stiff resistance by entrenched hardline interests. I guarantee some of these hardliners will even try to brand J Street and its supporters as anti-Semites, in order to demonize them, in the same way they try to demonize everyone else who so much as utters a criticism of their policies. How's that for democracy?
And yes, if any of these people are reading this, I too must be a rabid anti-Semite. How dare I speak?
The progressive community needs to give them all the help they need along the way. Don't let the "pro-Israel" label turn you off, because they aren't using it in the same despicable way the neocons and AIPAC use it. They are showing that AIPAC and the hardliners have absolutely no monopoly on supporting Israel, and they are showing that Israel is better served through peace and understanding.
I wish them the best of luck.
And please take the time to check out their site, sign up for their updates, let's give them the support they need to make a difference!
[The following is an excellent article from The Nation showing how the latest surge, in violence, has shown how powerless and incompetent both Bush and the US-backed government or al-Maliki really are. Also telling is the fact that McCain lied to some people today out on the campaign trail about what was going on in Iraq, although there is another possibility that is perhaps even more damning--that he really has no idea what is going on in Iraq. Read the article, I've bolded the parts pertaining to McCain's lie, and I'll bring it all together at the bottom:]
At the start of the military offensive launched last week into Basra by US-trained Iraqi army forces, President Bush called the action by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "a bold decision." He added: "I would say this is a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq."
That's true--but not in the way the President meant it. As the smoke clears over new rubble in Iraq's second city, at the heart of Iraq's oil region, it's apparent that the big winner of the Six-Day War in Basra are the forces of rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army faced down the Iraqi armed forces not only in Basra, but in Baghdad, as well as in Kut, Amarah, Nasiriyah, and Diwaniya, capitals of four key southern provinces. That leaves Sadr, an anti-American rabble rouser and nationalist who demands an end to the US occupation of Iraq, and who has grown increasingly close to Iran of late, in a far stronger position that he was a week ago. In Basra, he's the boss. An Iraqi reporter for the New York Times, who managed to get into Basra during the fighting, concluded that the thousands of Mahdi Army militiamen that control most of the city remained in charge. "There was nowhere the Mahdi either did not control or could not strike at will," he wrote.
The other big winner in the latest round of Shiite-vs.-Shiite civil war is Iran. For the past five years, Iran has built up enormous political, economic and military clout in Iraq, right under the noses of 170,000 surge-inflated US occupying forces. (For details, see my March 10 Nation article, "Is Iran Winning the Iraq War?") Iran has strong ties to Iraq's ruling Shiite alliance, which is dominated by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, whose militia, the Badr Corps, was armed, trained, financed and commanded by Iranians during two decades in exile in Iran. Since then, hedging its bets, Iran built a close relationship to Sadr's Mahdi Army as well, and Sadr himself has spent most of the time since the start of the US surge last January in Iran. In addition, Iran has armed and trained a loose collection of fighters that US military commanders call "Special Groups," paramilitary fighters who've kept up a steady drumbeat of attacks on American troops. Thus, it was no surprise when Hadi al-Ameri, the commander of the Badr Corps and a leading member of ISCI, traveled over the weekend to Iran's religious capital of Qom to negotiate the truce with Sadr that resulted in a shaky ceasefire in Basra.
That Sadr emerged victorious, and that Iran succeeded in brokering the deal that ended the fighting, is a double defeat for the United States. It is also a catastrophe for Maliki, and there is already speculation that his government could collapse. An ill-timed offensive, poorly prepared and poorly executed, resulted in an embarrassing defeat for Maliki.
Why was the offensive launched in the first place? By all accounts, Maliki, his faction of the ruling Islamic Dawa party, and ISCI intended to crush Sadr in Basra for reasons both political and strategic. Political, because Sadr's movement is positioned to register a massive win at the polls in Basra and throughout southern Iraq in provincial elections scheduled for October, an electoral defeat that would portend the end of the Dawa-ISCI regime. Strategic, because Basra is the economic engine of all of Iraq. The city controls Iraq's South Oil Company, which pumps and exports the vast majority of Iraq's oil--and for years Basra has been under the control of militias loyal to Sadr and to a Sadrist splinter party, the Fadhila (Virtue) party. By controlling the Oil Protection Force, a quasi-military force, and through its own militia, Fadhila is an important player in Basra, too, and Basra's governor is a Fadhilist. Though Fadhila has had its own clashes with Sadr's Mahdi Army, Fadhila kept its powder dry in the recent fighting, and there is no doubt that Fadhila is a bitter opponent of the Dawa-ISCI alliance. Last year, Maliki tried to oust the governor of Basra, Mohammed al-Waeli, who defied Maliki and refused to step down.
Maliki, miscalculating badly, flew to Basra last week from Baghdad to personally oversee the assault on Sadr's forces. In so doing, he staked his prestige on the offensive. If indeed it has failed, Maliki has lost face. That the ceasefire ending the fighting was worked out in Qom, Iran, and mediated by Tehran, is doubly embarrassing for him.
But it's far worse for the United States. President Bush strongly backed Maliki since the Battle of Basra started. According to Steve Hadley, the president's national security adviser, the decision to act in Basra was taken jointly between Washington and Baghdad. And US air power and even some ground units supported the floundering Iraqi forces, whose weakness and incompetence were revealed for all to see. After five years of massive US training and equipment, the Iraqi armed forces weren't even able to take control of Iraq's second-largest city.
Adding to Bush's utter humiliation, the Iranian-negotiated truce was mediated by the commander of the so-called Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Qassem Suleimani, who brought Sadr's representatives together with Hadi al-Ameri, the Badr Corps commander and the leading aide to Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the ISCI leader. The Quds Force, you will recall, was only last year designated as a "terrorist" entity by the US government. So President Bush's "defining moment" is this: the head of an Iranian "terrorist" force has brokered a deal between the two leading Shiite parties in Iraq, Sadr's movement and ISCI.
[Alright, so now let's see what McCain had to say today on his "I'm A Warrior" tour:
ERIDIAN, Miss. – As he launched a tour here designed to highlight his family’s long tradition of military service, Senator John McCain said Monday that he was surprised by the latest turn of events in America’s current war in Iraq.
[…]
"Maliki decided to take on this operation without consulting the Americans," Mr. McCain said on his campaign bus as it rolled through downtown Meridian, saying that the move showed independence but that he had expected the military to focus on Mosul.
"I just am surprised that he would take it on himself to go down and take charge of a military offensive,’’ he said. “I had not anticipated that he would do that."
Now notice how McCain uses the Iraqis as a scapegoat for the current botched military actions, saying the Iraqis acted independently and that we had nothing to do with it, even though we actually were involved in the decision to strike, as well as the planning and we even chipped in with some air strikes, reconnaissance and ground forces. Straight Talk Express? Not so much. Now the question is, was McCain purposely lying to the voters in order to deflect blame for the recent failures away from his new BFF Bush and his fellow Republicans? Or did he simply have no idea what was actually going on, and actually thought we had nothing to do with it, even though the press apparently knew? Now I really don't care, whether he is a liar or just incompetent, I don't want him and his "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" anywhere near our White House.]
Update: Ohh, there is also another lie (or act of incompetence) in his statement that I missed the first time around. This is more from his campaign tour statements earlier:
Asked if the Basra campaign had backfired, he said: "Apparently it was Sadr who asked for the ceasefire, declared a ceasefire. It wasn't Maliki. Very rarely do I see the winning side declare a ceasefire. So we'll see."
There's only one problem, the Iraqis were the ones that pursued the ceasefire. The Iraqis went crawling to the Iranians to have them call off al-Sadr. Details details. So again, was McCain lying in an attempt to spin Maliki's Basra campaign in a better light, or did he simply not know who actually pursued the cease fire?
Update (4/8): Ooops, McCain does it again. This time he confused Shiite and Sunni during the Petraeus hearing, again trying to pretend al-Qaeda is somehow tied to the Shia and the Iranians.
It turns out John McCain, Mr. "National Security" himself, doesn't even have the most basic understanding of what is going on in Iraq and the greater Middle East. While on a tour of the Middle East for the last couple days he has made repeated misstatements about Iran, al-Qaeda, and the feuding Sunni and Shiite religious factions:
"Today in Iraq, America and our allies stand on the precipice of winning a major victory against radical Islamic extremism. The security gains over the past year have been dramatic and undeniable. Al Qaeda and Shia extremists -- with support from external powers such as Iran -- are on the run but not defeated."
On Tuesday, the senator, appearing in Israel, made a nearly identical assertion that al-Qaeda was leaving Iraq to retool and regroup in Iran.
It was, he said, "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate."
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who was accompanying McCain on the trip, was forced to lean over and whisper in McCain's ear that it was Shiite extremists, not Sunni al-Qaeda, that was going to predominantly Shiite Iran.
Now I don't expect the average blue collar worker to understand the differences between Sunni and Shia, but considering it is virtually impossible to conduct foreign policy in the Middle East without understanding these basic dynamics it definitely calls into question the qualifications of John McCain.
Obama also called McCain on his ignorance:
Just yesterday, we heard Sen. McCain confuse Sunni and Shiite, Iran and Al Qaeda. Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no Al Qaeda ties. Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America's enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades.
Why do people keep calling it a "gaffe"? If he's stating something that's flatly wrong three times in two days, it's not a gaffe, it's a talking point.
All recent evidence has indicated that McCain has simply internalized the central Bush lesson of his war: if the facts are against your desired policy, make up new facts and continue on your way. A sufficient percentage of the population will believe it.
McCain didn't get where he is today by being stupid. He did get there, however, by being manipulative when the situation has warranted, by misrepresenting facts when they worked against him, and by knowing which wings of the Republican Party to cozy up to at which times. If he's completely misrepresenting one of the most fundamental facts of the war, there's two possibilities. The first is that he's dumb as a post. Possible, but unlikely.
The second is that, like Bush, he simply isn't interested in letting the facts get in the way of a good speech about the shocking, scary, I'm-holding-a-flashlight-under-my-chin-right now bugaboo of the moment. Since Iraq has turned out to be such a disaster, and since McCain supports Bush's bloody legacy, there's only one rationalization possible to explain why things aren't working out: it must all secretly be Iran's fault.
Third Bush term, indeed.
And yes, if this seems familiar, this is the same question that has repeatedly arisen when discussing Hillary's statements -- is she just ignorant of the truth, or is she purposely trying to deceive voters to get what she wants? Despite her incompetently run campaign, she isn't stupid, so I think it is safe to say both her and McCain (and all Republicans) have deception in common.
