Category: US election 2008

Non-US citizens: What do you want from the next US president?

I’ve always been happy that Just World News has attracted a considerable readership, and numerous contributions to the Comments boards, from outside the United States. The policies of the US have a disproportionately strong effect on the situation and wellbeing of that 95% of global humanity who are not US citizens, but y’all “out there” outside the bounds of our citizenship don’t get to vote in our election here next Tuesday.
So I’d like to invite all of you who are not US citizens to submit a comment here in which you tell the next US president what your top requests of him are. Also describe how US policy has been affecting– and continues to affect– your family, your community, or your country,including some concrete examples, if possible.
Please try to keep your comment to within 300 words, and tell us where you’re from.
(If you haven’t commented before, the easiest way is to go to the archived version of for this post, scroll down to the bottom of the page, fill out the ‘Name’ and ‘Email’ boxes there– the one for ‘URL’ is optional. Type your comment in the box provided. You can insert hyperlinks if you know how to. Then, type in the verification code in the box beneath that one and click on ‘Post’. It may take a minute or two for the comment to be published on the page.)
I hope as many as possible of you will send in your requests. Also, send this post on to as many other non-Americans as you can, who you think would be interested in having their voices heard, too!
Once these comments come rolling in I plan to write a series of posts here in which I pick out some of the main themes– and I have a number of other ideas of ways to get these “Messages from the disenfranchised 95% of humanity” heard in the US discourse over the weeks ahead. (If any of you US-citizen readers have some good ideas of how we can all do this, please let me know!)
Finally, know that the comments, like everything that’s on the blog here, will be published on it under a ‘Creative Commons’ license. This means, basically, that anyone is free to republish what is published here with due attribution, and a hyperlink— provided they do not do so for profit. If anyone wants to use the comments for potentially profit-making purposes, they need to negotiate a specific agreement to do so.
So send ’em in!

    Update Sunday morning, Nov.2: Thanks to everyone who’s commented so far. Tomorrow morning I’ll put some of the comments submitted into a main post (with attribution to the authors), and I’ll try to distribute that as widely as possible inside the US. I may make one or more other compilations later in the week. So carry on sending this post to your friends in the non-US world, and keep the comments coming in. And commenters, please put in what country you’re from. Thanks!

Syria raid, additional notes

I see that Pat Lang is speculating that the raid might have been some kind of rogue operation on the part of the US Special Forces Command.
I certainly respect the Colonel’s lengthy experience on such matters, but I still find it hard to believe that that even the Special Ops boys would be foolhardy enough to go into a whole new, very sensitive national jurisdiction (country) without getting political clearance at the very highest level… and also without coordinating closely with, and getting the permission of, the commanders operating in that very same locality, in this case the commanders in Western Iraq and in Iraq, nationwide. The all-Iraq commander is now the bellicose Gen. Ray Odierno.
Lang writes of the Special Ops Forces that they,

    are exclusively focused on hunting down terrorist people and support group[s] world-wide. Rumsfeld made them largely independent of the regular military chain of command. They amount to a global SWAT team. They develop their own targeting intelligence and make their own plans. The amount of control that the local US joint commander has over them is not very clear. They are not noted for a great deal of insight into geopolitical niceties.
    – General Odierno, the man who replaced Petraeus in Iraq, is not famous for nuanced reactions to frustrating situations.

So his argument is that the American kill team was either acting independent of the Iraq command, or doing so with Odierno’s support. For my part I still don’t see them transgressing the Syrian border in this extremely blatant (and lethal) way without getting clearance from the very highest levels in Washington: the President himself.
After all the public (and doubtless also private) discussion over whether and how to mount similar kinds of operations inside Pakistan– where the presumed targets of such raids include Osama Bin Laden and his highest lieutenants, i.e. targets of the very highest ‘value’ to the US— no-one in the military, not even Ray Odierno or the commanders of the Special Ops Command, can be foolish enough to think that such an operation can or should ever be mounted without getting the highest imaginable clearance from Washington.
(After reading 2/3 of Gellman’s book on Cheney, I would say it would be Cheney calling the shots in this matter, and then delivering the ‘presidential’ decision, pre-made, to GWB on a plate.)
As it happens, the NYT reported today that,

    The White House has backed away from using American commandos for further ground raids into Pakistan after furious complaints from its government, relying instead on an intensifying campaign of airstrikes by the Central Intelligence Agency against militants in the Pakistani mountains.

In this AP report today, Pauline Jelinek made clear that back in July it was “President Bush” (read, President Cheney-Bush) who back in July made the decision allowing ground raids into Pakistan. The US Special Ops Command then launched only one documented ground raid there pursuant to that decision. That was on Sept 3. Pakistan’s newly elected president, Asif Ali Zardari, a strong US ally, immediately became apoplectic, and sent his national security adviser to Washington to protest in the strongest possible terms…
So my surmise is still certainly, as I noted earlier, that it must have taken a “presidential” decision in Washington to permit yesterday’s ground attack against Syria to take place.
—
And a note about the Government of Iraq’s role in the affair. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh has been quoted by Reuters as saying,

    the attack was launched against “terrorist groups operating from Syria against Iraq,” including one which had killed 13 police recruits in an Iraqi border village.
    “Iraq had asked Syria to hand over this group, which uses Syria as a base for its terrorist activities,” Dabbagh said.

This Reuters report (datelined from Damascus, but also using reporting from Baghdad and other capitals) notes that Dabbagh “did not say who had carried out the raid inside Syria.” He also did not say who had authorized the carrying out of the raid.
Did his bosses in the Iraqi political leadership get to sign off on it before it was executed?
I highly doubt that.
Actually, it is sometimes a little unclear who Dabbagh works for. In the past he has sometimes seemed to be a loyal mouth-piece for his Iraqi political bosses, and sometimes to be a bit of a cat’s-paw for the Americans.
If the Americans did conduct this raid without the clear, antecedent permission of the Iraqi government, then this is precisely the kind of rogue US military operation, using Iraqi territory to attack other countries, that the Iraqi government has been seeking to prohibit under the terms of the still-unsigned SOFA.
McClatchy Baghdad’s correspondent Sahar writes:

    Unilateral job? Joint American – Iraqi job? Does it really matter?
    Is Iraq going to become a launching pad for blatant American aggressions upon targets in neighbouring countries?
    The Status of Forces Agreement is still in a no-man’s-land; doesn’t the U.S. want the Iraqi people to support it?
    If they do, they’re certainly not going about it the right way.

—-
As regular readers here are probably aware, all the highest-level officials in the present Iraqi government– but not, perhaps, spokesman al-Dabbagh– have warm relations with Syria. (And also, by the way, with Iran.)
That same Reuters report linked to above tells us that,

    Syrian Interior Minister Bassam Abdel Majeed said last week that his country “refuses to be a launching pad for threats against Iraq.”

And Josh Landis this morning gave some recent assessments from Centcom commander Gen. Petraeus about the general (though not total) effectiveness of the measures Syria has been taking along the country’s long border with Iraq.
The Reuters report says this about Syria’s early diplomatic responses to yesterday’s attack:

    [Syrian ambassador in London Sami al-]Khiyami said Syrian authorities were still awaiting word on the raid from the United States before deciding how to respond and whether to complain to the U.N. Security Council.
    … Syria’s foreign ministry summoned the U.S. charge d’affaires in Damascus on Sunday to protest. Syria has also urged the Iraqi government to carry out an immediate inquiry into the attack.
    Russia condemned the assault. “It is obvious that such unilateral military actions have a sharply negative effect on the situation in the region, and widen the seat of dangerous armed tension,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
    The Arab League also denounced the raid and called for an investigation.

So Syria’s diplomatic response is churning into action. It is doubtless slowed to a great extent by the extremely stingy amount of investment the government has put into the basic infrastructure of diplomacy (phones, computers, broad cadre of diplomats all around the world, etc) for the last half century. But it is happening.
As I noted earlier, the Asads are cautious and patient in their response to international crises.
But that’s no guarantee at all that Cheney-Bush won’t continue to try to provoke them.
Calling Bob Gates! Bob, you definitely need to put a straitjacket on that dangerous man, Dick Cheney.

Attack on Syria: White House misjudgments

Without a doubt, last night’s attack by heliborne US forces against a farm compound inside Syria must have been authorized by the President or Vice-President himself. Josh Landis has provided more than enough evidence to prove that.
So the question is Why? That is, why undertake this very evidently provocative act that constitutes, actually, an act of war against Syria instead of continuing the longstanding and generally very productive policy of working quietly with Syria to stanch the flow of anti-US militants into Iraq?
Was this intended to be– or to provoke– the last-minute, electorally related “October surprise” that many Obama supporters have been warning against? … That is, a “nice” (from the point of view of Cheney and McCain) little national-security crisis designed to change the subject in the US and get people lining up behind McCain instead of Obama?
I had thought, and wrote earlier, that it was already too late for such an October surprise to be successful. We are now just eight days from the election. Perhaps we are still at the outer edge of when– in the estimation of the McCheneys of this world– such a crisis might be “politically advantageous.”
If so, their judgment is deeply flawed on two counts.

    1. First, and most important, a raid of this dimension– a handful of helicopters, going against one farm compound, and killing a reported eight people, all described as civilians and described as including four children– is not on its own going to provide or provoke the kind of security crisis that would make waves inside the US. For that to happen, the raid would have had to provoke a strong Syrian response.
    But the Syrians have not responded, and are not about to respond, in any way that is violent or otherwise escalates tensions.
    I’ve been studying the behavior of this Baathist regime in Syria closely for 34 years now. They have steely nerves. They are just about impossible to “provoke,” at any point that they judge a harsh response is not in their interest. They are quite ready to absorb material and human losses without making any kind of harsh response, and even to suffer repeated episodes of political humiliation from among their highly nationalistic political base, as they do so.
    They are not about to over-react.
    This stymies any McCheneyist plan for an October surprise.
    2. But the idea of initiating some kind of security-related “October surprise” also, imho, represents a serious misread of US public opinion. A clear majority of US opinion is now clearly very angry over many aspects of the Bush-Cheney years, with the financial/economic crisis now top of the list of their (our) concerns. The US electorate might have been distractable with foreign military adventures for much of the past eight years. (I’m reading Bart Gellman’s masterly study of the Cheney vice-presidency. He sketches out what could be a convincing case that just about all of Cheney’s actions– in the realm of foreign affairs as well as economic affairs– have been directed centrally at increasing the powers of the presidency. Disturbing to think that at one level Cheney was simply “using” the whole of the GWOT and the foreign military projects just for that… )
    But I think the scales have now fallen from the eyes of enough of the US electorate, regarding the lying and very damaging manipulations that have marked the Bush-Cheney years, that no additional military/security escalation anywhere could swing opinion back behind McCain.

So once again, in these two respects, the folks in the White House have seriously misjudged the world that exists outside their bubble. This is certainly the case if their intention was that yesterday’s raid would lead to a Syrian over-reaction that would then provide the excuse for further US escalations.
The Syrian government is deliberately responding only through strong diplomatic protests.
The American provokers may, of course, have a slightly longer-term project in mind– perhaps one in which a whole series of US raids into Syria, which are not “answered” by a response from the Syrian government that is “strong” enough to satisfy the country’s hardliners, could lead to rising anti-government unrest inside Syria?
And then– ?
But the Asad government has many additional things it can do, at the purely diplomatic level, to respond to even a lengthy campaign of provocation of this nature. Personally, I’m surprised they haven’t yet registered a strong protest with the Security Council. But that is always an option. And once the topic of this raid– or any follow-ons– gets taken up by the Security Council, Syria has a much stronger base of political support there than it did back in the 1990s or the late 1980s.
Also, if yesterday’s raid is indeed followed by a number of similar raids and the Syrians start seriously downgrading the cooperation they’ve been giving the US forces in Iraq until now, then the US military and Secdef Bob Gates will certainly start acting to rein in the Cheneyites.
But we also have a time of dangerous political uncertainty inside Israel these days. Maybe Olmert and Linvi would like to “wag the dog” with regard to Syria, even if they don’t want to attack Iran?
Nothing can be ruled out in the three months of uncertainty and political transition that lie ahead– within both Israel and the US. The outlook might be particularly risky if Obama wins the election and Cheney decides he wants to pursue a Samson-like option in some portion of the Middle East.
But as for this escalation– or indeed, any other– “saving” next week’s election for McCheney? No, for that I think it is already ways too late.

‘Bipartisan’ group urges US escalation vs. Iran

I think it is too late now for the ‘bomb Iran’ networks that are deeply dug into various portions of the US political elite to launch an ‘October surprise,’ i.e. a military action against Iran designed to escalate tensions in the Gulf region– and also, crucially, toincrease the climate of fear within the US in a way that would push voters to rally round John McCain.
However, it is not too late for an ‘inter-regnum surprise’, that is, a military attack against Iran designed to escalate tensions in the Gulf region to the point that that region and the whole world system become a chaotic stew of catastrophe that would then be handed to President-elect Barack Obama to deal with, come January..
I am relying mainly on Defense Secretary Bob Gates to prevent that from occurring, even if some of the dark forces in the Vice-President’s office– or their close friends in Israel– might be tempted to push toward it. But at this point I’d have to say that the ‘inter-regnum surprise’ looks unlikely, too.
But the pathologically Iranophobic forces in the US elite remain busy looking for ever-new ways to whip up tensions against Iran and to prepare US opinion for the launching of a war against it. Last May, Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt of WINEP published their little study trying to claim– quite counter-factually– that a war against Iran would not after all be terribly damaging to the US forces so widely deployed in the region.
And today, a new group called the Bipartisan Policy Center has come out with a report urging the new administration to step up all forms of pressure on Iran, including preparations for a military attack against it (pp.xiii and xiv):

    There are two aspects to the military option: boosting our diplomatic leverage leading up to and during negotiations, and preparing for kinetic action [the fancy new term for ‘combat’]. For either objective, the United States will need to augment its military presence in the region. This should commence the first day the new President enters office, especially as the Islamic Republic and its proxies might seek to test the new administration…
    While current deployments are placing a strain on U.S. military assets, the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan offers distinct advantages in any possible confrontation with Iran…
    If all other approaches—diplomatic, economic, financial, non-kinetic—fail to produce the desired objective, the new President will have to weigh the risks of failure to set back Iran’s nuclear program sufficiently against the risks of a military strike. We believe a military strike is a feasible option and must remain a last resort to retard Iran’s nuclear development, even if it is unlikely to solve all our challenges and will certainly create new ones… No matter how much the next president may wish a military strike not be necessary, it is prudent that he begin augmenting the military lever, including continuing the contingency planning that we have to assume is already happening, from his first day in office.

The new study is significant as much for the line-up of people standing behind it as for its bullying, hawkish content. The study is issued “in the name of” a task force whose eleven members include Dennis Ross, the perennially pro-Israeli eminence grise in US politics who notably succeeded during eight years as Pres. Clinton’s chief adviser on Arab-Israeli affairs in winning eight more years for Israel’s pro-settlement activists to continue their work. (He did this by systematically blocking all signs of movement on the Palestinian-Israeli negotiating track.)
Dennis has greasily been positioning himself for high office in a future Democratic administration. After being a strong Hillary backer, as soon as her campaign folded he signed on with Obama’s campaign, where he’s been hard at work elbowing aside anyone else who might compete with him for the candidate’s ear.
The “task force” was co-chaired by former Senators Chuck Robb (Dem) and Dan Coats (GOP), who also published this linked op-ed in the WaPo today. Another member was Steve Rademaker, spouse of the ardently pro-Likud Danielle Pletka.
So what kind of bird, you might ask, is this new “Bipartisan Policy Center”? It seems to have been cobbled together earlier this year. Its founder and president is listed as Jason S. Grumet, who must surely be the same Jason Grumet who’s been a leading adviser to Obama on climate and energy matters for some time now. Since 2002, Grumet has been the Executive Director of the non-governmental and determinedly bipartisan “National Commission on Energy Policy”, whose office is right next to that of the BPC on Washington’s I Street. Actually, the two organizations seem incestuously linked in a number of ways.
To me, it looks as though Grumet, who may or may not understand a whole lot about Middle east policy and strategic affairs, may have gotten bamboozled by Dennis Ross or others into running this “task force” with its determinedly alarmist and hawkish findings. The “findings” of the task force were, in fact, most likely determined not by the eleven former high-level officials who were task force “members”, but by the people put in to staff and support the task force in its work. These included “consultants” Kenneth Katzmann and Michael Rubin (who actually wrote the whole report) and “project director” Michael Makovsky. Jim Lobe gives us some background about these individuals here.
I hope that despite the involvement of Grumet and Ross in the work of this task force, Barack Obama is also listening to a much broader spectrum of views on what to do about Iran. Just going along with these bullying and escalatory recommendations would rapidly lead him to a dangerous dead end.

Obama on Iraq, Afghanistan

Time magazine’s Joe Klein has the transcript of his new interview with Obama up on the web. Obama gives his description of the meeting he had in Iraq with Petraeus back in August, summing it up with this: “I would say it was between spirited and agreeable.”
Klein asked Obama if he thought that conditions in Iraq today are “good enough” for the US to leave Iraq. Obama replied:

    I don’t think it’s quite good enough yet because I think we have to do a little more training. We’ve got to build up the logistical capacity. I think the possibilities of ethnic strife breaking out again are still present, precisely because the political system has not stabilized itself yet. But I do believe that we are at a point now where we can start drawing down troops. I think we can time a process where the drawing down of troops parallel to building up the capacity in Iraq and the Sofa agreement that just, the Sofa that was just put forward I think reflects that reality.

Nothing there about keeping troops in Iraq for “anti-terrorist” ops, which is interesting. But keeping troops there for “training” is still quite different from committing to a full and speedy withdrawal.
I continue to find this idea that the US– under any president– is nowadays in any position to impose its own “conditions” on the government in Baghdad quite hilarious. Of course, Gates continues to try to do that.
Klein asked a slightly inflammatory question about the missions of US troops operating in Afghanistan near Pakistan’s border.
Obama replied:

    Here’s my attitude. Number 1 we can’t have our troops remain sitting ducks. We should, under our coalition mandate we are in Afghanistan at the invitation of the afghan government. We’re there legally, under international watch. When those troops are attacked, they have a right to defend themselves. Period. Now I think that the most critical task that we have in Afghanistan is to not only strengthen the Afghan government, it’s military capacity, it’s ability to deliver services to its people, its capacity to work with the agricultural sector there to replace the poppy crop. But it’s to also work through a viable strategy for Pakistan. My sense is that [Zardari] has already been willing to step out and commit himself in a pretty difficult situation to work with the United States to root out militant terrorists.
    So, building a different relationship with the Pakistani government, the Pakistani military, the ISI. Working with Pakistan, this government to deliver for its people so it gains legitimacy, in all regions of the country. Working with Pakistan and India to try to resolve, and Kashmir, crisis in a serious way. Those are all critical tasks for the next administration. Kashmir in particular is an interesting situation where that is obviously a potential tar pit diplomatically. But, for us to devote serious diplomatic resources to get a special envoy in there, to figure out a plausible approach, and essentially make the argument to the Indians, you guys are on the brink of being an economic superpower, why do you want to keep on messing with this? To make the argument to the Pakistanis, look at India and what they are doing, why do you want to keep … being bogged down with this particularly at a time where the biggest threat now is coming from the Afghan boarder? I think there is a moment where potentially we could get their attention. It won’t be easy, but it’s important.

I find this interesting because it shows Obama’s trying to think and act like a big-picture geo-strategist rather than a provincial, US-bound politician, even if he does so only highly imperfectly. The main imperfection, throughout the whole discussion of both Iraq and Afghanistan, is that he’s continuing to refer to these challenges as ones that the US alone has to deal with. What a sad– and actually quite counter-productive– mindset!
Klein asked whether “we” should be talking to the Taliban. Obama said the possibility of dealing with some of them “should be explored.” He also seemed to be promising/threatening longer terms of duty for the US troops deployed to Afghanistan:

    My impression is that those who have a chance to stay there a little bit longer and develop clear understanding of the formidable complexities are going to achieve a lot more than simply us rotating in folks on a rapid rotation and I think that people on the ground tend to agree with me on that.

Well, the British were on the Northwest Frontier for many long decades– and they still, as Obama noted– failed to “win” in Afghanistan. So I’m unsure how long he wants the US grunts to stay in Afghanistan? And I am completely unconvinced that he has any credible formula for how the US can “win” there.
Memo to Obama: There is no way the US, on its own or with the help of the NATO can “win” in Afghanistan. Bring in the UN!

The world– voting Obama

So “three guys from Iceland” have done something a lot more useful and interesting than set up financial derivatives to drive their country into bankruptcy. (Sorry, guys, I couldn’t the resist the reference. Also yes, I do understand that Icelandic men do many things other than engage in advanced casino capitalism.)
Long story short: These guys set up this site, which invites everyone around the world to register their own preference as between John McCain and Barack Obama. (HT: Massoud.)
Right now, the results are: Obama 87.4%, with 273,7087 votes, and McCain 12.6% with 39,330 votes. Voters have participated from 197 countries.
Pass this on! Vote!
In the country-by-country results, McCain has done ways best in the FYR of Macedonia, where he got 89.1% of votes cast. Then, there’s Burkina Faso, where he got two of the four votes cast.
Otherwise the world looks blue– including, a few countries tally 100% for Obama.
So maybe McCain would like a nice vacation after Nov. 4th in FYROM, where he can bask in the love…

Bachman-Palin Overdrive (BPO)

Rookie Congressperson Michele Bachman is making quite a Palin-esque name for herself. On Thursday, Palin in North Carolina foolishly gushed over how she loved appearing in “pro-American” parts of the country.. A day later on MSNBC, Bachman one-upped Palin in calling for an investigation of legislative colleagues who, like Senator Obama, are somehow “anti-American.”
Bachman is from Minnesota. Joe McCarthy was from Wisconsin. :-} Sam Stein makes the “un-American” connections and provides the video evidence over at Huffington Post.
Bachman today tried to tone down her outrageous blather. She ought to; if she survives her re-election, she could face censure in the House.
Two years ago, when Bachman was running for Congress, she had this to say about her campaign before a Minnesota Church:

God then called me to run for the United States Congress, and I thought “What in the world will that be for?”… Who in their right mind would spend 2 years to run for a job that lasts 2 years? You’d have to be absolutely a fool to do that. You are now looking at a fool for Christ. This is a fool for Christ…..

22 years ago, Bachman graduated from the Oral Roberts University Law School. (back before it closed and Pat Robertson bought it) Among the ORU law professors there then was one Anita Hill. (think Clarence Thomas).
I’ve got nothing against people of faith and convictions entering the public square – I welcome it. Ironically, Bachman first entered politics as a campaign worker for a Baptist Sunday School teacher then running for President — one Jimmy Carter.
Carter’s campaign book, “Why Not the Best,” might be worth re-reading in evangelical circles. Instead of invoking the mindless martyr-seeking business about being “foolish” for one’s faith, why not try a really daring concept — say, as in aiming to be “brilliant for Christ,” a “light” into the darkness?
*****
Update: A Minnesota publisher friend in Bachman’s district has kindly alerted me that Bachman’s opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg, is a Methodist minister by background. Trailing until recently, Bachman’s MSNBC gaffes have done wonders for his campaign coffers. (see comments for more)

Thunder on the Right: Noonan, Buckley, etc.

Colin Powell just endorsed Obama for President. George W. Bush’s former Secretary of State says he was concerned by the intense negativity of the McCain campaign and by the Sarah Palin factor. He also gives a hoot about America’s “place in the world.” Deeming Obama a “transformational figure,” he anticipated he will be well suited to “reach out to the world.” Very Jeffersonian observation.
Powell follows a growing list of disenchanted voices on the “right” who have been been issuing pointed broadsides against their presumed side in 2008 politics. Consider recent stunning examples:
1. Peggy Noonan, former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, in her latest Wall Street Journal column, Palin’s Failin’, excoriates this year’s discourse in a thinly veiled condemnation of the Republican strategy:

“More than ever on the campaign trail, the candidates are dropping their G’s. Hardworkin’ families are strainin’ and tryin’a get ahead. It’s not only Sarah Palin but Mr. McCain, too, occasionally Mr. Obama, and, of course, George W. Bush when he darts out like the bird in a cuckoo clock to tell us we are in crisis. All of the candidates say “mom and dad”: “our moms and dads who are struggling. This is Mr. Bush’s former communications adviser Karen Hughes’s contribution to our democratic life, that you cannot speak like an adult in politics now, that’s too austere and detached, snobby. No one can say mothers and fathers, it’s all now the faux down-home, patronizing—and infantilizing—moms and dads. Do politicians ever remember that in a nation obsessed with politics, our children—sorry, our kids—look to political figures for a model as to how adults sound?

Noonan lamely claims McCain won the third debate, but then launches into a devastating assessment of his running mate:

“[W]e have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office…. She doesn’t think aloud. She just . . . says things…. [S]he has spent her time throwing out tinny lines to crowds she doesn’t, really, understand. This is not a leader, this is a follower, and she follows what she imagines is the base, which is in fact a vast and broken-hearted thing whose pain she cannot, actually, imagine….”

I hazard noting that while Palin revels in being a “hockey mom,” she ends up sounding all-too “hokey.”

“In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It’s no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism.”

2. Meanwhile, at The National Review, the once conservative “bible” founded by the late William F. Buckley, the earth has split open. First, columnist Kathleen Parker was so horrified by Palin (“If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself”) that she urged her to save face for McCain and withdraw from the ticket.

Continue reading “Thunder on the Right: Noonan, Buckley, etc.”

McCain was slurring Arabs

Kudos to Josh Marshall and CNN who now have video from in front of Gayle Quinnell, the Minnesota woman who at a McCain event last Friday said she was scared of Barack Obama because “he’s an Arab.”
Earlier video (and audio) of her was taken only from the back and there was uncertainty whether she said, “because he’s an Arab terrorist.”
She did not use the T-word. She based her fear only on the claim (quite unfounded, as it happens) that “he’s an Arab.”
McCain, you recall, immediately grabbed the mic from Quinnell and said, “No, ma’am, no ma’am. He’s a decent family man.”
Like an “Arab” can’t be a decent family man?
This is personal for me. Two of my children are ethnically half Arab and fwiw bear Arab names. In September 2001 my daughter Leila was living in Michigan. After 9/11 she became quite alarmed at the amount of anti-Arab venom that was pouring out of many radio stations around there.
What kind of sick assumptions is McCain operating on when, on hearing the word “Arab”, he says, “No, ma’am, he’s a decent family man?”
A little more understandable if what he had heard was “Arab terrorist.” But he can’t have heard that because Quinnell didn’t say it.
Jim Zogby, the Lebanese-American head of the Arab-American Institute was one of those quick to respond to McCain’s slur. Also, the Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini yesterday published this opinion piece in the WaPo, noting the ethnic/religious incitement involved in the constant evocation by McCain supporters of Obama’s middle name, which happens to be very similar to Hosseini’s family name.
Fwiw, Hosseini is most likely himself a Muslim, but not Arab, while Zogby is Arab but not Muslim.
We need a clear apology from John McCain to everyone of Arab heritage and everyone who cares about maintaining a decent texture in American society.
.

Vile hate: Pres. Bush also needs to speak & act on it

It is now not enough that McCain and Palin should speak out against the wave of vile ethnic & religious hatred that is sweeping through some portions of the Republican Party (as I wrote here.) The President needs to speak out against it most forcefully, too.
He should also call in the Attorney General and announce the creation of a special Justice Department task force to monitor the rising wave of race hate and prepare prosecutions if they should be required.
Right after 9/11, one of the very laudable things Pres. Bush did was to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to send a loud leadership message that the horrible events of that day should not be used an excuse to turn against Muslims, Arabs, or others.
We are now in a situation of no lesser risk. Bush– and McCain, Palin, and possibly others– should all send the same message again.