Editorial page columnist Bruce Ramsey in the Seattle Times:

Democrats are rebuking President Bush for saying in his speech to the Knesset, here, that to “negotiate with terrorists and radicals” is “appeasement.” The Democrats took it as a slap at Barack Obama. What bothers me is the continual reference to Hitler and his National Socialists, particularly the British and French accommodation at the Munich Conference of 1938.

What Hitler was demanding was not unreasonable. He wanted the German-speaking areas of Europe under German authority. He had just annexed Austria, which was German-speaking, without bloodshed. There were two more small pieces of Germanic territory: the free city of Danzig and the Sudetenland, a border area of what is now the Czech Republic. We live in an era when you do not change national borders for these sorts of reasons. But in 1938 it was different.

Shades of Marge Schott. What is the world coming to? HT: LGF

The lines between the candidates are becoming more sharply defined than ever, and the MSM are doing their part to shape the debate, without evident consciousness of their self-parody, in articles like this one, entitled “Obama criticizes McCain for ‘naive’ foreign policy.” Two years in the Senate apparently goes a long way towards gravitas these days. AP:

Barack Obama laid into John McCain on Friday for advancing a tough-guy foreign policy that he called “naive and irresponsible”…

Senator Obama added, speaking of President Bush and Senator McCain: “They aren’t telling you the truth. They are trying to fool you and scare you because they can’t win a foreign policy debate on the merits. But it’s not going to work. Not this time, not this year.” It will be a compelling — and disturbing — commentary on the state of mind of America in 2008 if the so-called “realist” Senator Obama is correct about “this time and this year.”

“America’s workers should build America’s defense,” announces the Clinton campaign commercial below. But nothing is quite as simple as it seems.

The Clinton campaign in Indiana is featuring an ad (via Gateway Pundit) of a plant that was closed in 2003. The jobs were outsourced to China, and Clinton blames the Bush administration. Run of the mill trade policy ad, you say. Not quite.

The Magnequench plant that was closed was not making waffle irons. The plant apparently manufactured 80% or more of the sintered NdFeB magnets that are used in the US military’s smart bomb guidance systems. Sounds sinister, yes? And an even better ad for the Clinton campaign. But it gets more complicated. All the transactions that resulted in ownership of the plant by Chinese interests occurred during the Clinton administration.

In 1995, according to ABC, “China National Non-Ferrous Metals…and San Huan New Material High-Tech Inc…joined with other interests to purchase the Anderson, Ind.-based Magnequench…The two Chinese companies were headed by the husbands of the first and second daughters of then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.” The 1995 transaction was approved by CFIUS, the responsible government agency. Then, in 2000, Magnequench bought the factory that appears in the campaign ad. So it would appear that if there is an issue about the transfer of sensitive technology to China, it occurred before George Bush was President, rendering some of Senator Clinton’s claims in the ad moot or ridiculous.

But is there a legitimate national security angle to the story in the first place? Former Magnequench vice president Andy Albers says no, via ABC. “‘Nothing was done by Magnequench that aided the Chinese military program or hurt the U.S. military program,’ says Albers, who adds that Clinton’s focus on his former company ‘concerns me because it doesn’t address the main issue, which is how to make U.S. companies more competitive globally at’s the question we should be asking, that’s what we should be addressing. We should not be twisting the truth about that this is a national security issue, because it’s not a national security issue, it’s about global competitiveness’.” Former counsel to Congressman Duncan Hunter, Jeff Green, agrees that the matter is not a national security issue: “‘I think it’s more accurate to say that all the technology and production of these Neo magnets comes from overseas,’ he says, including Japan, Finland, Germany and China.”

So either both the Bush and Clinton administrations are to blame, or neither one did anything wrong. It’s a bit hard to say at the moment, but it appears from the news reports that, on a micro level, the system apparently functioned normally, although there are dissenting voices on left and right alike. However, on a macro level, the picture looks a little different, and raises the question as to whether the procedures in place at the CFIUS arm of the Treasury Department are adequate in a world that changes rapidly. At first blush, they do not appear to be.

One obvious question: does CFIUS track purchases or consolidations that occur after it has approved the sale of a company? For example, there are apparently sources for the Neo magnets in Japan, Finland and Germany, as well as in China. But what if a Chinese company or companies were to subsequently purchase those operations in Japan, Finland, and Germany? Would we ever know? Before it was too late to do anything about it? How? The current transactional approach of CFIUS, even as modified by FINSA, looks sort of like Hart-Scott-Rodino procedures for defense related industries. CFIUS procedures do not seem to take into consideration certain plausible or likely future events which could render its decisions unwise in retrospect. This would appear to bear looking into.

Senator Obama criticized Senator Clinton’s position on attacking Iran in the wake of an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel. He did so on on MTP, according to AP:

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” Clinton said April 22 in an interview with ABC. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”…On “Meet the Press” Sunday, Obama said: “It’s not the language we need right now, and I think it’s language reflective of George Bush. We have had a foreign policy of bluster and saber rattling and tough talk and in the meantime have made a series strategic decisions that have actually strengthened Iran.”

No wonder Hamas endorsed this fellow.

Noemie Emery sees a changed Hillary Clinton and notes that she has apparently earned “An Exceedingly Strange New Respect” among some conservatives. We’ve noted the same phenomenon, but it doesn’t seem quite as strange to us. Excerpt of the Emery piece:

One observer once said that the main importance of PT-109 in the life of John Kennedy was that it was the only time in his life…when the power and wealth of his father couldn’t help him at all. Hillary in February 2008, after Obama’s stunning string of 10 victories, was like JFK in the water — everything she was used to relying on had proved to be useless…

After March 4, she suddenly seemed to look and sound different: She began to seem real. The shrillness was gone, and so was The Cackle, and so were the forced southern accents that once caused so many so much merriment. Hillary! — whoever that was — never really cohered as a character; her previous poses–the Perfect Wife, the Aggrieved Wife, the Empress-in-Waiting — were all unconvincing, but in her new role — the scrapper, forced to the wall, and hanging in there with ferocious and grim resolution — she is suddenly all of a piece. Along with her inner JFK, she has channeled her inner Robert F. Kennedy (going back to the days when he was still “ruthless”), along with her inner Margaret Thatcher — “No time to go wobbly” — along with echoes of the John McCain who clawed his way out of the grave only last winter, and the George W. Bush who just as tenaciously saved his Iraq policy…

It is a truism that liberals think people are formed by exterior forces around them and are helpless before them, while conservatives think individuals make their own destiny…Hillary may still be a nanny-state type in some of her policies, but in her own life she seems more and more of a Social Darwinian, refusing to lose, and insisting on shaping her destiny. If the fittest survive, she intends to be one of them…

It is no accident that it was just at this juncture that she began to rouse outrage in parts of what once was her base…what caused this display of intense irritation? She’s running a right-wing campaign. She’s running the classic Republican race against her opponent, running on toughness and use-of-force issues, the campaign that the elder George Bush ran against Michael Dukakis, that the younger George Bush waged in 2000 and then again against John Kerry, and that Ronald Reagan — “The Bear in the Forest” — ran against Jimmy Carter and Walter F. Mondale. And she’s doing it with much the same symbols.

We think that a number of Emery’s observations have merit. Senator Clinton is much improved as a speaker and a candidate from the Days of Coronation. Exhaustion, adrenalin, and desperation have a way of concentrating and revealing, indeed, even shaping a person’s core. Until these recent days, we had never heard Senator Clinton referred to as “one tough old broad.” Language aside, it was meant as a compliment.

Senator Clinton revealed something else about herself in April, and it has some significance: she is an incredibly rich woman, with $109 million in recent income, as well as the rest of the family business. It possibly eases some conservative minds to know that the Clintons have earned a fortune of several hundred million dollars (ill-gotten or not) and have quite a stake in the system. And inveighing against the “rich and powerful” can tend to be seen as party-line rhetoric once you’ve earned a checkbook that reaches nine figures. So the Hillary of today might seem safer than the Hillary of past decades to some conservatives.

Finally, it wasn’t so long ago that it was said that the “Clintons” were running for President, that a Hillary victory would be Bill’s third term. But that no longer seems so true, does it? If Hillary Clinton is elected President, it now seems more than likely that it will be Hillary, not Bill, who will be making the decisions. After all, she’s earned the damn thing, not him. That is a big change, perhaps the biggest of all (though of course it is much more worrisome when it comes to her actual policy views). Feeling that you’re not an interloper, that you’ve earned your place in life, is something that conservatives tend to respect quite a lot. Perhaps this new respect that Emery describes is not really “exceedingly strange”; Senator Clinton may well have earned it in the opinions of some conservatives — after all, you don’t have to hate your opponent to disagree with or vote against her.

The Financial Times has an interesting story on the Israeli raid of September 6 last year:

For months, the White House has maintained a shroud of secrecy around the September 6 Israeli strike on the facility, which Syria codenamed “al-Kibar”. The Central Intelligence Agency will on Thursday brief about 200 members of Congress on the mysterious incident. The US official told the Financial Times that North Korea started discussing ways to help Syria build a nuclear reactor in 1997. He said US intelligence believed construction work began in 2003.

The presentations to Congress would provide an ”eye popping, comprehensive briefing that will demonstrate how close Syria came to having a nuclear weapons making capability,” the official added. The CIA will show politicians a video that brings together a compilation of still images, including satellite imagery, ground imagery, and photographs taken inside the facility.

One photograph shows a North Korean nuclear scientist named Chon Chibu standing beside a person believed to be his Syrian counterpart. Mr Chon has worked at North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor, which produced the material for the bomb North Korea tested in 2006, and has dealt with US officials in the past. The US official said the date of the meeting was unclear, but said the vintage of a car that appears in the background suggests it was sometime after 2005.

The official said North Korea appeared to have provided the designs for the Syrian reactor, which he said was a “dead ringer” for Yongbyon…North Korea is also believed to have probably provided engineering and construction staff for the project…While US and Israeli intelligence suggests Syria was very close to completing the physical reactor, they have no evidence that Syria had obtained plutonium to feed into the reactor.

The last point is odd. It was reported last year that Israel obtained nuclear fuel prior to the raid and presented it to the US as evidence of what was happening in Syria. Questions: what role does or did Iran have in the Syrian project? What is the meaning of the talk of a Syria and Israel peace deal in the light of these disclosures?

The Washington Post has an op-ed from Mahmoud al-Zahar, a founder of Hamas. It contains the following clarifying statement, just in case you harbored any doubt about the group’s objectives:

A “peace process” with Palestinians cannot take even its first tiny step until Israel first withdraws to the borders of 1967; dismantles all settlements; removes all soldiers from Gaza and the West Bank; repudiates its illegal annexation of Jerusalem; releases all prisoners; and ends its blockade of our international borders, our coastline and our airspace permanently. This would provide the starting point for just negotiations and would lay the groundwork for the return of millions of refugees.

The op-ed is unusual for a number of reasons. One of these is that it is the subject of a denunciation in an editorial in the Post the same day. The Post says, referring to Jimmy Carter, but in a way, also to itself: “it is one thing to communicate pragmatically, and quite another to publicly and unconditionally grant recognition and political sanction to a leader or a group that advocates terrorism, mass murder or the extinction of another state. That is what Mr. Carter is doing by lending what is left of his prestige to an avowed terrorist such as Khaled Meshal — or Mahmoud al-Zahar.” But isn’t that what the Post just did too? HT: LGF

The AP reports on some of the interchanges between the Democratic contenders for President during the debate yesterday:

In a 90-minute debate, both rivals pledged not to raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000, and said they would respond forcefully if Iran obtains nuclear weapons and uses them against Israel. “An attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation by the United States,” said Clinton. Obama said, “The U.S. would take appropriate action.”

Senator Clinton’s answer seems clear enough. But what about Senator Obama? What would constitute “appropriate action”? Food for thought, perhaps, given some of Senator Obama’s support from Hamas.

Michael Yon:

I may well have spent more time embedded with combat units in Iraq than any other journalist alive. I have seen this war – and our part in it – at its brutal worst. And I say the transformation over the last 14 months is little short of miraculous.

The change goes far beyond the statistical decline in casualties or incidents of violence. A young Iraqi translator, wounded in battle and fearing death, asked an American commander to bury his heart in America. Iraqi special forces units took to the streets to track down terrorists who killed American soldiers. The U.S. military is the most respected institution in Iraq, and many Iraqi boys dream of becoming American soldiers. Yes, young Iraqi boys know about “GoArmy.com.”…our soldiers under the Petraeus strategy got off their big bases and out of their tanks and deeper into the neighborhoods, American values began to win the war.

Iraqis came to respect American soldiers as warriors who would protect them from terror gangs. But Iraqis also discovered that these great warriors are even happier helping rebuild a clinic, school or a neighborhood. They learned that the American soldier is not only the most dangerous enemy in the world, but one of the best friends a neighborhood can have.

An Iraqi:

“My dear, brave American soldier, you noble individual who traversed land and sea in order to write the story of Iraqi freedom for the first time in its modern history - you believed, in accordance with logic, self-evident truths, and rational thought, that a people who had been subjected to repression, starvation, and killing would dance for joy, and would thank Allah who sent you to them as a liberating angel…they would strew flowers and break out in songs of joy that would smash the chains of slavery, ignominy, and humiliation.

“Not even a writer of surrealistic or the absurd would have imagined that the Iraqi people would revolt against their liberator and would rush ardently back to a new bondage of a different kind - that of the religious cleric, the tribal sheikh, and the gang leader. It was unthinkable that the people would go against logic, rational thought, and self-evident truths, in a mad rush towards the abyss and total ruin. My beloved, brave American soldier, we apologize to you…

HT: Ace

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, whom we’ve noted with great approval in the past, has spoken out again:

Sistani spoke through Jalal el Din al Saghier, a senior leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a rival political party to the Sadrist movement. Saghier was clear that Sistani did not sanction the Mahdi Army and called for it to disarm. “Sistani has a clear opinion in this regard; the law is the only authority in the country,” Saghier told Voices of Iraq, indicating Sistani supports Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and the government in the effort to sideline the Mahdi Army. “Sistani asked the Mahdi army to give in weapons to the government.”

Wretchard has more.

With General Petraeus scheduled to testify before Congress shortly, Iraq has been experiencing a crescendo of attacks in part as a display for the American media. While radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr declared victory of course, Austin Bay points out that that was not the case (and Bruce Kesler has more on that). Following are some observations by an American colonel in Baghdad, via Instapundit:

From watching the news, you know Maliki moved to Basrah in a show of force. He made lots of blustery statements about what he was going to do to the Jayesh al Mahdi (JAM). The Baghdad arm of JAM, headquartered in Sadr City, responded with a little fireworks of their own in Maliki’s absence. In hindsight, Mr Maliki may have overplayed a bit, and some feel he lost credibility in the process. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, General Petraeus quietly and deftly encouraged the central government of Iraq to:

(a) concentrate not on JAM, but on the criminal element within JAM. “Anyone on the street with a weapon is a criminal.” This effectively divided the JAM members. Next,
(b) focus on the humanitarian element of the operation. Pushing much-needed food and water to trapped inhabitants encouraged even more JAM members to stay home and take care of family members. Finally,
(c) show that fighting is not going to solve the needs of Iraq.

By addressing the essential services issues and bringing central government people to the provincial sessions to address concerns, people see their government taking an active role in solving the problem.

The effect was that Moqtada al Sadr got to make a point, Maliki demonstrated his resolve, the Iraqi Army and Police showed themselves to be capable and professional, and there’s a sense of a better day coming in Basrah. Without the strong response of the central Government, the militia-led uprising could have very easily led to further lawlessness, mayhem, and devastation. The Coalition trained and helped equip and arm the Iraqi Army. The surge allowed us to clear and hold areas long enough to bring violence levels down, so the government could start focusing on essential services. If anything, the surge came too late because people have been without services for far too long.

There is obviously progress in Iraq, and it is just as obvious that Iraq needs the continuing presence of a steady hand that General Petraeus and the US military provide. If Senator Obama is serious about the detailed plan he has proposed for withdrawing troops (and of course he may simply be pandering to the base), the people of Iraq have a problem, as does the US itself.

The other day Senator Obama criticized John McCain’s position on Iraq as follows: “Success comes to be defined as the ability to maintain a flawed policy indefinitely.” Bret Stephens raised some questions for the Illinois senator in the WSJ: “here are questions for Mr. Obama: Could there be something worse than the indefinite maintenance of a flawed policy? What if, following a U.S. withdrawal, Iraq collapsed into chaos? What if U.S. embassy personnel have to be helicoptered to safety from the roof of the Baghdad embassy? It’s not as if this hasn’t happened before.” Just so. And of course the Viet Cong did not have the global ambitions of our current adversaries.

Steven Erlanger has a rather remarkable piece in the NYT that illustrates well the intractability and multi-generational nature of the Israel-Palestine conflict:

In the Katib Wilayat mosque one recent Friday, the imam was discussing the wiliness of the Jew. “Jews are a people who cannot be trusted,” Imam Yousif al-Zahar of Hamas told the faithful. “They have been traitors to all agreements — go back to history. Their fate is their vanishing. Look what they are doing to us.” At Al Omari mosque, the imam cursed the Jews and the “Crusaders,” or Christians, and the Danes, for reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. He referred to Jews as “the brothers of apes and pigs,” while the Hamas television station, Al Aksa, praises suicide bombing and holy war…

“If you take a sample on Friday, you’re bound to hear incitement against the Jews in the prayers and the imam’s sermon,” said Mkhaimer Abusada, a political scientist at Al Azhar University here. “He uses verses from the Koran to say how the Jews were the enemies of the prophet and didn’t keep their promises to the prophet 1,400 years ago.” Mr. Abusada is a Muslim and political independent. “You have young people, and everyone has to listen to the imam whether you believe him or not,” he said. “By saying the same thing over and over, you find a lot of people believing it, especially when he cites the Koran or hadith,” the sayings of the prophet…

in a column in the weekly Al Risalah, Sheik Yunus al-Astal, a Hamas legislator and imam, discussed a Koranic verse suggesting that “suffering by fire is the Jews’ destiny in this world and the next.” “The reason for the punishment of burning is that it is fitting retribution for what they have done,” Mr. Astal wrote on March 13. “But the urgent question is, is it possible that they will have the punishment of burning in this world, before the great punishment” of hell? Many religious leaders believe so, he said, adding, “Therefore we are sure that the holocaust is still to come upon the Jews.” At the end, Mr. Marcus points out, Mr. Astal switches from “harik,” the ordinary word for burning, to “mahraka,” normally used to connote the Holocaust…

children’s program, “Tomorrow’s Pioneers,” has become infamous for its puppet characters — a kind of Mickey Mouse, a bee and a rabbit — who speak, like Assud the rabbit, of conquering the Jews to the young hostess, Saraa Barhoum, 11. “We will liberate Al Aksa mosque from the Zionists’ filth,” Assud said recently. “We will liberate Jaffa and Acre,” cities now in Israel proper. “We will liberate the whole homeland.”

The mouse, Farfour, was murdered by an Israeli interrogator and replaced by Nahoul, the bee, who died “a martyr’s death” from lack of health care because of Gaza’s closed borders. He has been supplanted by Assud, the rabbit, who vows “to get rid of the Jews, God willing, and I will eat them up, God willing.”

When Assud first made his appearance, he said to Saraa: “We are all martyrdom-seekers, are we not, Saraa?” She responded: “Of course we are. We are all ready to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of our homeland. We will sacrifice our souls and everything we own for the homeland.”…

The Prophet Muhammad made a temporary hudna, or truce, with the Jews about 1,400 years ago, so Hamas allows the idea. But no one in Hamas says he would make a peace treaty with Israel or permanently give up any part of British Mandate Palestine. “They talk of hudna, not of peace or reconciliation with Israel,” said Mr. Abusada, the political scientist. “They believe over time they will be strong enough to liberate all historic Palestine.”…

The chairman of the Palestinian Scholars League, and a Hamas legislator, Mr. Abu Ras is popularly called “Hamas’s mufti,” because he is ready to give religious sanction to Hamas political structures. Last month, he criticized Egypt for closing the Gaza border at Israel’s request. He complained, “We are besieged by the sons of Arabism and Islam, as well as by the brothers of apes and pigs.”…

“This is an open war with Israel, with each side trying to press the other,” he said. A war? “If it’s not a war, what is it?” he asked. Then he spoke of his son, who tried to volunteer to fight the Israelis at 17. “I convinced him to wait, he had no weapon, until 20,” Mr. Abu Ras said. “Now he’s a member of Qassam,” the Hamas military wing, “and an example for young people.”

Erlanger notes that “incitement against Israel and Jews was supposed to be banned under the 1993 Oslo accords and the 2003 ‘road map’ peace plan.” Doesn’t seem to be working out that way. (More on the debate regarding the road map here.)

Finally, we were surprised to learn — perhaps we shouldn’t have been — that Erlanger’s article appeared four months after his transfer from Jerusalem to Paris. It’s hard not to be reminded of Eason Jordan.

Barack Obama filled out a questionnaire on his views in 1996. His campaign denied that the views expressed were his, but it turns out that Obama was interviewed on the questionnaire, and amended it the next day, in his own handwriting. The two versions of the questionnaire, “provided to Politico with assistance from political sources opposed to Obama’s presidential campaign”, seem to add up to something less than honesty on the part of the Senator:

Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortion — positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image he’s projected during his presidential campaign. The evidence comes from an amended version of an Illinois voter group’s detailed questionnaire, filed under his name during his 1996 bid for a state Senate seat.

Late last year, in response to a Politico story about Obama’s answers to the original questionnaire, his aides said he “never saw or approved” the questionnaire. They asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who “unintentionally mischaracterize(d) his position.”

But a Politico examination determined that Obama was actually interviewed about the issues on the questionnaire by the liberal Chicago non-profit group that issued it. And it found that Obama - the day after sitting for the interview - filed an amended version of the questionnaire, which appears to contain Obama’s own handwritten notes adding to one answer…

Both versions of the 1996 questionnaires provide answers his presidential campaign disavows to questions about whether Obama supports capital punishment and state legislation to “ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.” He responded simply “No” and “Yes,” respectively, to those questions on both questionnaires. But a fact sheet provided by his campaign flatly denies Obama ever held those views…

One of the interesting elements of this story is that the questionnaire was initially reported back in December 2007, but had no impact. Now perhaps, after the Wright affair and the simple passage of time, it might. We’ll see what’s next in the “scandalous information” promised to us last November by “political sources opposed to Obama’s presidential campaign.”

UPDATE

Speaking of “scandalous information,” there is also Christopher Hitchens on a certain trip to Bosnia previously mentioned in this space.

James Ceaser, who spends quite a bit of time thinking about ideology and political parties, has a number of interesting observations on the 2008 election. He notes that the candidates of each party may be tied to a tired ideology, but is doing nothing to alter it to the circumstances of today.

Since Ronald Reagan ran for the presidency 28 years ago, all of the presidential elections have been fought within the same ideological framework. Candidates have come and gone, party fortunes have risen and fallen, and the world order has undergone a complete transformation; but the basic structure of the debate between liberalism and conservatism has remained unchanged. During the past two elections, the two camps have dug in, solidifying and consolidating their positions. The result has been an era of strong polarization accompanied by the political equivalent of trench warfare.

Electoral analysts from across the political spectrum have begun to argue that this structure is ready to crumble–a prognosis that seems about half right. There is now strong evidence that significant segments of the electorate are no longer much concerned with the old liberal-conservative divide. In Michael Barone’s words, “we have entered a period of open-field politics” in which voters are moving around and “there are no familiar landmarks.” This diagnosis applies especially to younger and newer voters, for whom Ronald Reagan is a distant figure from another age. The change is sufficiently large that most campaign strategists, Karl Rove among them, have counseled abandoning the 2004 battle plan of appealing chiefly to a committed base, and adopting instead a strategy that tries to appeal to those at the margin who are less tightly moored. Nonetheless, it is not true that the ideological edifice inherited from the Reagan era is in immediate danger of collapse. It remains intact–no alternative ideological way of thinking having yet been offered as a viable replacement.

From this perspective, the most noteworthy aspect of the current campaign is surely something that has not taken place. Neither party will select a candidate who has campaigned on the basis of a call to alter or reconfigure the party’s ideological position…

The absence of new thematic thinking certainly does not mean that ideological controversy will disappear. Just the opposite may be true. In the general election, each party’s candidate will be pushed by the opposition to defend a version of the existing party philosophy, perhaps even more faithfully for not having a philosophical platform of his (or her) own. Much time, of course, still remains before the fall campaign to develop new themes, but leopards do not easily change their spots, and dramatic changes in the contenders’ ideological thinking are unlikely at this point.

If a new turn in thinking is not what the candidates bring to the table, there is something else they do offer: themselves. All three of the candidates stand out dramatically in relation to their party, especially as non-incumbents. (Elections involving a sitting president inevitably have a strong emphasis on him personally, if only because the opposition may focus obsessively, as in 1996 and 2004, on what it cannot abide in his mannerisms and character.) What experts dryly call the “personal factor,” meaning the voters’ evaluation of the candidates’ individual attributes and style, seems certain to play a much larger role than usual in the upcoming election. The choice of the person, as Alexander Hamilton envisaged, will loom large.

Let’s add Michael Barone to the mix and see what we get: “Most people’s views of the world are shaped by the times in which they came of age. That’s why we speak of a baby boom generation or a Generation X. But some people miss out on the formative experiences of most of their peers. That’s the case, I think, with the Republicans’ certain nominee and the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. John McCain missed the 1960s. Barack Obama missed the 1980s.”

Interestingly, America’s problems today are somewhat like the needs of the 60’s and the 80’s. We believe that there is a need for a new American optimism about the future, but the prerequisite for that is a renewed sense that Americans can be and are in control of more of their nation’s destiny. Our unnecessary overdependence on foreign oil is one issue that is not seriously confronted by the political establishment. As well, Americans want to shop at Wal-Mart, where almost everything comes from China, but they justifiably worry that their job may go overseas. Neither of these issues is solved by a deranged populism, but both of them should be confronted.

Moreover, the mission (never coherently stated nor put to a vote) that has formed “the heart of the Bush presidency” — reforming the alien politico-religious structure of far off foreign lands — has surely not contributed to a sense that America is in very good control of its destiny.

Finally, the US would appear to be in a somewhat different position than it was in the last century. When FDR was elected, Americans numbered 122 million and were over 6% of the planet’s relatively tiny population. Now the population of this crowded world is almost 7 billion, and the relative US share of its population has fallen by almost a third to the 4% range. Americans are awash in a sea of other humans, and, if they are not going to run this big world, they at least want to control what goes on within their own borders. From control of the country’s borders, to better control of economic sovereignty, there are data that show that a majority of Americans want sensible measures that enhance an American sense of better control of the country’s destiny. We’ll have to see who, if any of the above, can rise to these challenges.

UPDATE

We’d support the Victor Davis Hanson 10 Point Platform as an excellent approach for the next administration. (HT: GS)

Senator Obama sometimes seems to go back and forth a little in his positions on Iraq, but this speech in Wyoming seemed clear enough:

I was opposed to this war in 2002. If it has been up to me we would have never been in this war. It was because of George Bush with an assist from Hillary Clinton and John McCain that we entered into this war…A war that should have never been authorized, a war that should have never been waged. I’ve been against it 2002, 2003, 2004, 5, 6, 7, 8. And I will bring this war to an end in 2009.

Questions: (a) will it really matter to Obama’s suppoorters if he carries through on the statement above, or finds that the “mess” he encounters in January 2009 requires a longer time commitment; (b) does the Hastert district loss, and the continuing fad of our times, mean that a majority of voters really do just want “change,” without caring too much (for the moment) what that “change” really is? (c) Does a majority of voters just want to be disengaged for a while from all the awfulness of the world — whether that is practical or not — and worry about the details later?

Anthony Cordesman has been for some time a particularly sharp critic of President Bush on Iraq and democratization. (Here are some examples from two years ago: “we need to be much more honest with what we’re doing…What we should have been able to avoid are the mistakes we continued to make in 2004 and 2005…We keep talking about democracy. Well I think Athens, in its history as a pure democracy, had about thirty good years and about two hundred really bad ones.”) Cordesman is considerably more upbeat today, but warns that the process towards America’s ultimate goal will not be easy or quick. Cordesman’s WaPo piece is entitled “Two winnable wars”:

The military situations in Iraq and Afghanistan are very different. The United States and its allies are winning virtually every tactical clash in both countries. In Iraq, however, al-Qaeda is clearly losing in every province. It is being reduced to a losing struggle for control of Nineveh and Mosul. There is a very real prospect of coalition forces bringing a reasonable degree of security …

What the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have in common is that it will take a major and consistent U.S. effort throughout the next administration at least to win either war. Any American political debate that ignores or denies the fact that these are long wars is dishonest and will ensure defeat. There are good reasons that the briefing slides in U.S. military and aid presentations for both battlefields don’t end in 2008 or with some aid compact that expires in 2009. They go well beyond 2012 and often to 2020.

If the next president, Congress and the American people cannot face this reality, we will lose. Years of false promises about the speed with which we can create effective army, police and criminal justice capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot disguise the fact that mature, effective local forces and structures will not be available until 2012 and probably well beyond. This does not mean that U.S. and allied force levels cannot be cut over time, but a serious military and advisory presence will probably be needed for at least that long, and rushed reductions in forces or providing inadequate forces will lead to a collapse at the military level.

The most serious problems, however, are governance and development. Both countries face critical internal divisions and levels of poverty and unemployment that will require patience. These troubles can be worked out, but only over a period of years. Both central governments are corrupt and ineffective, and they cannot bring development and services without years of additional aid at far higher levels than the Bush administration now budgets. Blaming weak governments or trying to rush them into effective action by threatening to leave will undercut them long before they are strong enough to act.

Any American political leader who cannot face these realities, now or in the future, will ensure defeat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Any Congress that insists on instant victory or success will do the same. We either need long-term commitments, effective long-term resources and strategic patience — or we do not need enemies. We will defeat ourselves.

Cordesman, a professor now and former aide to Senator McCain, would appear to be describing the difference between victory and defeat as a domestic political choice. Is that actually true?

Some knowledgeable observers think that Senator Obama’s policy regarding Iraq, should he become President, would be little different from that of a President McCain. Maybe that’s true, but it is hard to entirely credit that view, given the centrality of the anti-war stance to the Obama campaign, as well as the Senator’s clear statement that he will have all the combat troops out of Iraq in 16 months. We understand that reality often trumps campaign promises, but the Cordesman piece establishes one very bright line in the general election campaign that is now nearly underway.

From Senator Obama’s website comes his plan for Iraq. He says he will “remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.” The web page also contains some rather odd misstatements of fact regarding the Senator’s biography:

Barack Obama’s Plan — Judgment You Can Trust

As a candidate for the United States Senate in 2002, Obama put his political career on the line to oppose going to war in Iraq, and warned of “an occupation of undetermined length, with undetermined costs, and undetermined consequences.” Obama has been a consistent, principled and vocal opponent of the war in Iraq.

* In 2003 and 2004, he spoke out against the war on the campaign trail;
* In 2005, he called for a phased withdrawal of our troops;
* In 2006, he called for a timetable to remove our troops, a political solution within Iraq, and aggressive diplomacy with all of Iraq’s neighbors;
* In January 2007, he introduced legislation in the Senate to remove all of our combat troops from Iraq by March 2008.
* In September 2007, he laid out a detailed plan for how he will end the war as president.

Bringing Our Troops Home

Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.

Whatever the merits or demerits of Senator Obama’s plan, he was not, as his web biography indicates, “a candidate for the United States Senate in 2002.” He was a candidate for the Illinois state senate in that year.

As for the statement that the Senator “put his political career on the line to oppose going to war in Iraq,” Thomas Edsall wrote at the Huffington Post: “In 2002, Obama was a state senator representing one of the most liberal districts in Illinois encompassing Chicago’s lake front, Hyde Park, the University of Chicago and African American neighborhoods in the southern half of the district.” That would clearly look like an anti-war district. Furthermore, at least one source says that Obama ran unopposed in the 2002 election. It is hard to put your political career too much on the line when you run unopposed.

Others have noticed the factual problems with the statements above and attributed them to Obama’s trying to stretch a thin resume into something more than it is. We don’t know about that. It is certainly true that Obama started thinking about a run for the US Senate in 2002, and announced it in 2003. Why the writer gilded the lily is something of a mystery.

It is possible that Senator Obama committed an unforced error in the Democratic debate in Texas last night. He said this:

I’ve heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon — supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition, they didn’t have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief. Now, that’s a consequence of bad judgment. And you know, the question is, on the critical issues that we face right now, who’s going to show the judgment to lead?

The Pentagon has cast doubt on Obama’s comments. The conservative blogosphere has chimed in with more extensive and colorful refutations of the Senator’s comments (here, here, here, and here, for example).

The issue of the veracity of the comments is as of this writing unsettled. Jake Tapper of ABC says he has spoken to the source and finds him credible; however, Senator John Warner apparently has doubts about the alleged 2003 incident; he has asked Obama to provide the “essential facts” of the incident in order to establish what actually happened and determine the proper accountability for this possible lapse in military procedures. (We have to say from reading commentaries from military men that the name “Scott Beauchamp” somehow comes to mind in this matter.)

If there are irregularities in the account Obama presented, this would appear to be a significant opportunity for Hillary Clinton. Senator Clinton has raised several trivial charges against Senator Obama, with negligible impact. This possible error by Obama is of a different order entirely. Mrs. Clinton portrays herself as realistic about our dangerous world and ready on Day One to be Commander in Chief. This gaffe by Obama, if it is one, would appear to be a perfect opportunity for Senator Clinton, displaying Senator Obama’s naiveté if he got all his facts bungled, or some dishonesty, if he or someone associated with his staff made important elements of the incident up.

Senator Obama himself opened the door to harsh criticism of his comments, if they were wrong. He said, speaking of the “captain” who found his platoon without ammunition: “the question is, on the critical issues that we face right now, who’s going to show the judgment to lead?” Senator Obama himself raised the issue of judgment in military matters, and it would be quite a negative thing if he had made an utter hash of it. So we will have to see whether this incident provides an opportunity for Senator Clinton to level a serious criticism at her opponent — and of course whether or not the infatuation with the Democratic Messiah is still so profound that no one may care.

Stratfor takes the position that on some international matters, including Iraq, it would not matter that much who gets elected president

There is no candidate arguing for the permanent stationing of more than 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. There are those who believe that political ends can and should be achieved in Iraq, and that the drawdown of forces should be keyed to achieving those ends. That is essentially the Bush policy. Then there are those who believe that the United States not only has failed to achieve its political goals but also, in fact, is not going to achieve them. Under this reasoning, the United States ought to be prepared to withdraw from Iraq on a timetable that is indifferent to the situation on the ground.

This has been Obama’s position to this point, and it distinguishes him from other candidates — including Clinton, who has been much less clear on what her policy going forward would be. But even Obama’s emphasis, if not his outright position, has shifted as a political resolution in Iraq has appeared more achievable. He remains committed to a withdrawal from Iraq, but he is not clear on the timeline. He calls for having all U.S. combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months, but qualifies his statement by saying that if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes against the group. Since al Qaeda is in fact building a base within Iraq, Obama’s commitment to having troops in Iraq is open-ended.

The shift in Obama’s emphasis — and this is the important point — means his position on Iraq is not really different from that of McCain, the most pro-Bush candidate. Events have bypassed the stance that the situation on the ground is hopeless, so even Obama’s position has tacked toward a phased withdrawal based on political evolutions.

It has long been said that presidential candidates make promises but do what they want if elected. In foreign policy, presidential candidates make promises and, if elected, do what they must to get re-elected. Assume that the situation in Iraq does not deteriorate dramatically, which is always a possibility, and assume a president is elected who would simply withdraw troops from Iraq. The withdrawal from Iraq obviously would increase Iranian power and presence in Iraq. That, in turn, would precipitate a crisis between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two powers with substantial differences dividing them. The United States would then face the question of whether to support the Saudis against Iran. Placing forces in Saudi Arabia is the last thing the Americans or the Saudis want. But there is one thing that the Americans want less: Iranian dominance of the Arabian Peninsula.

Any president who simply withdrew forces from Iraq without a political settlement would find himself or herself in an enormously difficult position. Indeed, such a president would find himself or herself in a politically untenable position…assuming Obama wins the nomination and the presidency, the likelihood of a rapid, unilateral withdrawal is minimal. The political cost of the consequences would be too high, and he wouldn’t be able to afford it.

Question: suppose Obama were elected, and it was partially on the strength of his seemingly firm commitment to withdraw from Iraq — what would happen to his popularity and his standing among his Democratic base if he failed to deliver on his apparently clear promise, assuming the Stratfor analysis is correct?

Dick Morris says that McCain can win the general election and Romney can’t. Period. We’re not taking a position on that. As for the primaries, McCain won the Florida contest fairly decisively, 36/31, over Romney. Jay Cost has some of the details:

McCain won voters for whom the economy is their top concern, 40% to 32%…Romney won voters who think the economy is healthy. McCain won voters who think the economy is sick…

McCain did well among many of the factions he lost, including Bush supporters. He lost them by just 4% last night. It was his 22-point victory among those who dislike Bush that is the noteworthy result.,,

McCain was perceived by more Floridians as the most electable, edging Romney out by 13 points on that quality…

Romney won voters who said that cutting taxes was the higher priority, 35% to 29%. McCain won those who said reducing the deficit was more important, 42% to 27%…

McCain won a decisive victory on the question of who is most qualified to be commander-in-chief, beating Romney by 18 points.

Though many on the conservative side have serious and deep problems with McCain, we can understand his weathered and gruff appeal to many. As one of our readers wrote, he’s like a tough but amiable guy who sits down with you in a bar to have a beer. Everything is all smiles until suddenly, for no reason, he picks up his glass and smashes it over your head. Maybe that’s what some people are looking for in a president in 2008.

A year ago, President Bush announced the surge. Fred Barnes described how he got to that decision. Here is what the NYT said on January 11, 2007, after the President announced the new strategy:

President Bush is not only inviting an epic clash with the Democrats who run Capitol Hill. He is ignoring the results of the November elections, rejecting the central thrust of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and flouting the advice of some of his own generals…In so doing, Mr. Bush is taking a calculated gamble that no matter how much hue and cry his new strategy may provoke, in the end the American people will give him more time to turn around the war in Iraq and Congress will not have the political nerve to thwart him by cutting off money for the war.

The plan, outlined by the president in stark, simple tones in a 20-minute speech from the White House library, is vintage George Bush — in the eyes of admirers, resolute and principled; in the eyes of critics, bull-headed, even delusional, about the prospects for success in Iraq…no American president has been able to prosecute a war indefinitely without the support of the American public. With polls showing fewer than 20 percent of Americans supporting increasing troop levels in Iraq, Mr. Bush and those Republicans who support him know that the new policy will be a tough sell.

Last night, amid the usual folderol, President Bush gave his final SOTU. He didn’t discuss the war in any detail until halfway through the 5500 word address. Some have criticized that. But we had a different take. In a year’s time, the President has changed from being beleaguered by Iraq to something quite different. The President’s relaxed and jovial demeanor was telling: this guy believes we won the war. This address seemed to be a “Mission Accomplished” speech without the swagger.

Mark Steyn reflects on the phony NYT crazed veterans story (and its sequel), and compares the cheapness of its anti-war sentiment to the famous 1933 Oxford Union resolution:

Seventy-five years ago, in February 1933, the Oxford Union passed a famous resolution, by an overwhelming margin, that “this House would under no circumstances fight for its King and country.” The Union was the world’s most famous debating society, in a great university of the dominant global power; its presidents have gone on to serve as prime ministers at home and overseas, from Gladstone in the 19th century all the way to Benazir Bhutto in the 1990s.

So the debate and its resolution sent a message to Britain’s enemies: As Churchill saw it, the vote was a “disgusting symptom” of the enervation of the ruling elites. Clifford May sees that same syndrome today around the Western world, but, in fact, it’s worse than that.

The Oxford debate took place a decade and a half after the worst carnage in human history. World War I cost the lives of some 20 million people. Do you remember in 2004 when Ted Koppel devoted one episode of “Nightline” to reading out the names of everyone killed in combat in Iraq? If he’d attempted a similar task with the British Empire’s war dead in 1919, the half-hour episode of “Nightline” would have had to be extended to 10 months – or longer if Ted took bathroom breaks. The war reached into the smallest English hamlet and culled a generation of young men. It swept through the glittering palaces, too: The brother of Queen Elizabeth (the mother of the present queen) was killed on the Western front in 1915.

It would be a statistical improbability to have been at that Oxford Union debate in 1933 and to have come from a home in which on some mantle or bureau there was not a photograph of a son or uncle or fiance forever young. It would be as if millions upon millions had been slaughtered in the first Gulf war, and, 15 years later, Harvard or Yale were debating whether we should do it all over again. In other words, we don’t have their excuse. Our war has one of the lowest fatality rates of any war ever…

Phoniness and cheap anti-war sentiment abound. Steyn notes another notorious study: “The Lancet reported that the Iraq war had killed over 650,000 civilians, over 90 percent victims of the U.S. military. That’s 500 civilians a day…Why aren’t there mass riots by Iraqi civilians protesting the daily bloodbath? Because it’s fake. It didn’t happen.”

What unites the phony stories of a crazed veteran epidemic, a homeless veteran surge, and the mass slaughter of Iraqi civilians is that they apparently are, in the minds of the media, stories too good to check. None of them can withstand a moment of serious reflection and a minute of Googling. But still they appear. Indeed, some speculate that this latest journalistic atrocity just might win a Pulitzer Prize.

The other day the NYT slandered the military, suggesting that returning veterans were disproportionately to become murderers, when precisely the opposite is true, as various statistics show, and as we discussed in some detail. Now AP joins the anti-military or anti-American chorus, asserting or implying that war causes homelessness among veterans:

Why does Johnny come marching homeless?…How is it that a nation that became so familiar with the archetypal homeless, combat-addled Vietnam veteran is now watching as more homeless veterans turn up from new wars? What lessons have we not learned? Who is failing these people? Or is homelessness an unavoidable byproduct of war, of young men and women who devote themselves to serving their country and then see things no man or woman should?…

most painfully, there was Vietnam: Tens of thousands of war-weary veterans, infamously rejected or forgotten by many of their own fellow citizens. Now it is happening again, in small but growing numbers. For now, about 1,500 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have been identified…

The homeless advocacy group that the AP story uses for its statistics says that there are on average of 3 million Americans who are homeless at some point in a given year, about 1% of the country. If 1500 recent veterans are among the homeless, that equates to something like 0.1-0.2% of the relevant population — far less than the national average calculated by the advocacy group. And this holds true even if the advocacy group is substantially overstating the problem of homelessness in the US.

So, just like the New York Times, the Associated Press gets the story precisely 180 degrees wrong. The story once again should be about how well the men and women of the armed forces do, not how poorly. But there’s as much chance of seeing such positive stories about America’s veterans as there is of seeing this tremendous military success trumpeted by our media.

Sonny boy:

Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the holocaust experience — a German burden that the Jews have not been able to shed. It is a very good example of a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends. The holocaust was the result of the warped mind of an individual who was able to influence his followers into doing something dreadful…The Jewish identity in the future appears bleak…We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the biggest players)…

Gramps:

“I am as certain as I am dictating these words that the stoniest German heart will melt [if only the Jews] adopt active non-violence. Human nature…unfailingly responds to the advances of love. I do not despair of his [Hitler's] responding to human suffering even though caused by him.”

They say all human traits are heritable. Maybe so.

A leading presidential candidate takes some personal credit for the success of the Surge. It was the anti-war movement that won the war! Of course! With logic like that, Gandhi should have won World War II single handed:

The point of the surge was to push the Iraqi government to make these tough choices. Now, if we put in 30,000 of our finest young men and women, who are going to go after the bad guys and quell violence in certain parts of Iraq, there’s no doubt that can be done. The partnerships that have been created by the tribal sheiks in Anbar province and elsewhere gave us an extra advantage. But that doesn’t in any way undermine the basic reality.

The point of the surge was to quickly move the Iraqi government and Iraqi people. That is only now beginning to happen, and I believe in large measure because the Iraqi government, they watch us, they listen to us. I know very well that they follow everything that I say. And my commitment to begin withdrawing our troops in January of 2009 is a big factor, as it is with Senator Obama, Senator Edwards, those of us on the Democratic side. It is a big factor in pushing the Iraqi government to finally do what they should have been doing all along.

How clever must be this candidate. It was all a ruse then last September when, in her questioning of that “serious individual” General Petraeus, she “came closer than any of her colleagues to calling the commander of the multinational forces in Iraq a liar” (NY Sun). When she called the evidence that the Surge was working merely “anecdotal” and said that accepting Petraeus’s report required “a willing suspension of disbelief”, she was being merely tactical — in order to influence those Iraqis who “follow everything I say.”

No doubt those legions of AQI who were killed in the Anbar Awakening were also following Senator Clinton’s instructions, and just dropped dead at her request. Or have we committed a faux pas that “undermines the basic reality” of the Senator’s self-serving spin on what brave Americans and brave Iraqis accomplished, often at the expense of their lives.

The NYT today used 6200 words in 140 paragraphs to make the point that War is Hell — but the newspaper failed utterly in the particulars of its argument, the gist of which was this:

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war.

Assuming that half a million Americans have served in and around Afghanistan and Iraq in the last five years (340,000 or so were deployed in 2003), the murder rate would be about 11 per 100,000 annually. This compares with a murder rate in the US overall of 27 per 100,000 for the relevant age group.

So the murder rate for servicemen, some of whom no doubt have been severely impacted by the stresses of combat, appears to be actually less than among their civilian cohort. Powerline makes the additional point that this continues to be true, even after adjusting for male/female differences in murder rates.

There is no purpose served by a fatuous hit piece like this. Even if it were true that war produced higher murder rates among ex-servicemen, so what? Must the US then abstain from military activities? Should we have not fought in wars from the Revolution through the Civil War and World Wars I and II?

We note that the Times produced a similarly gratuitous anti-military hit piece like this last year — this year’s piece argues that those coming out of the military are criminals; last year’s piece argued that those going into the military were criminals. Hard for the military to catch a break from the New York Times.

UPDATE

The rate is far lower if the figure of 1.6 million servicemen is correct.

After the US invaded Iraq in 2003, one of the first orders of business was a collective judgment on Baath Party members, who were dismissed en masse from their employment. In a somewhat messy compromise, the Iraqi parliament just passed a bill intended to make it easier for former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party to return to government jobs and collect their pensions. Washington Post:

When the U.S. military overthrew Hussein in 2003, the first order of business for the Coalition Provisional Authority was to disband the Baath Party that Hussein had fashioned into his personal empire over more than three decades in power.

CPA Order 1, or the “De-Baathification of Iraqi Society,” ordered members of the Baath Party’s top four echelons “removed from their positions and banned from future employment in the public sector.” The number of Baathists purged is in dispute, but Ali al-Lami, spokesman for the current de-Baathification commission, said 150,000 people were removed between May and September 2003.

Since early 2004, when the de-Baathification commission began its work overseeing who could come back, about 102,000 former Baathists have returned to their jobs, Lami said. Existing rules prohibit members from the top three levels from government work but allowed people on the fourth level to return in some circumstances, he said.

It remains unclear how many former Baath Party members would be eligible to return under the new legislation. Lami estimated that 3,500 people from the third-highest Baathist rank, or Shubah members, would be allowed to apply for pension payments but would still be kept from their jobs. About 13,000 people from the fourth rank, known as Firqa members, would be eligible to return, but he expected that many would not.

As with so many things in the fledgling attempt at self-government in Iraq, there will no doubt be conflict, perhaps violent, as implementation becomes the issue. Yet it is hard not to think this represents progress. We tend to agree with the prominent Shiite politician Humam Hamoudi, who said, “The most important thing about this new law is that it is an Iraqi law.”

We won’t bother to give you the context of this government inquisitor’s attempt to probe the mind of a magazine publisher to determine whether his inner being is acceptable to the state. The whole story is fairly chilling. For many years, the proper response of a publisher to the thought police would have been a three word interview (”go to hell”) but it appears that times are different now:

The performance of the grand inquisitor in the video, a “blandly unexceptional bureaucrat,” is, its way, Oscar-worthy and reminiscent of past films that cover similar ground. The government apparently thinks it is its business to enforce a regime where “tolerance means accepting and defending everyone’s values but your own.” More of the interview here and here. (Finally, Scott Johnson manages to work Alexis de Tocqueville into the discussion.)

The AP reports that bureaucracies seem to move on a painfully slow schedule:

The hijacker-pilot who flew into the Pentagon, Hani Hanjour, had a total of four driver’s licenses and ID cards from three states. The DHS, which was created in response to the attacks, has created a slogan for REAL ID: “One driver, one license.”

By 2014, anyone seeking to board an airplane or enter a federal building would have to present a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license, with the notable exception of those more than 50 years old, Homeland Security officials said.

The over-50 exemption was created to give states more time to get everyone new licenses, and officials say the risk of someone in that age group being a terrorist, illegal immigrant or con artist is much less.

2014 is thirteen years after 9-11. It is longer than the ten years Hani Hnajour spent living in the United States, traveling all over the world to cell meetings and terrorist camps, and planning and executing his murder-suicide.

The AP reports on Iranians who charged US Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz, dropped make believe explosives and threatened “we’re coming at you and you’ll explode in a couple minutes”:

Iranian boats harassed and provoked three U.S. Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to explode the American vessels. U.S. forces were on the verge of firing on the Iranian boats in the early Sunday incident, when the boats — believed to be from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s navy — turned and moved away…There were no injuries but the official said there could have been, because the Iranian boats turned away “literally at the very moment that U.S. forces were preparing to open fire” in self defense….

The incident occurred at about 5 a.m. local time Sunday as Navy cruiser USS Port Royal, destroyer USS Hopper and frigate USS Ingraham were on their way into the Persian Gulf and passing through the strait — a major oil shipping route….Five small boats began charging the U.S. ships, dropping boxes in the water in front of the ships and forcing the U.S. ships to take evasive maneuvers…the Iranians radioed something like “we’re coming at you and you’ll explode in a couple minutes.”

This development, as well as others, certainly make it look as if there was no hidden deal that triggered the strange recent NIE.

WNBC reports the latest good news in commercial aviation:

Anti-missile systems will be put on several passenger planes flying in and out of John F. Kennedy Airport, U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials said Friday…Three of the anti-missile systems will be placed on American Airlines flights flying between JFK and airports in California, officials said. It is the first time passenger planes will be outfitted with the technology. Military jets have the equipment and there were recent tests on non-passenger cargo flights…

The program is a test to see if the anti-missile systems are effective in helping prevent a terrorist from using a shoulder-fired missile to shoot down a passenger jet. Shoulder fired missiles can be referred to as MANPADS, man portable air defense systems.

New cabin announcement: “In preparation for take off, please make sure that your seat is in its upright and locked position, your tray tables are stowed, and all electronic devices are in the off position, including iPods, cells phones and any devices that can remotely trigger MANPADS or other man portable air defense systems.” Feel better about flying now?

We predicted a while back that we could see some really novel and dumb initiatives in politics as the boomers (at last, thank God!) began to fade from prominence, trailing their own old, worn-out, and often dumb initiatives in their wake. Michael Barone has created a conceptual framework for this thought

In 1992 voters elected a 46-year-old Arkansas governor as president, and in the spring of that year, if the polls are to be believed, they were ready to elect a Texas billionaire whose governmental experience included serving as a junior naval officer and running a firm that provided computer services to local welfare departments. In 1976 voters elected a one-term former governor of Georgia who’d served as a state senator and a naval officer.

The metrically minded will see a common thread. Every 16 years–in 1976, 1992 and now in 2008–American voters have seemed less interested in experience and credentials and more interested in a new face unconnected to the current political establishment. What can explain this 16-year itch?

The first explanation is that voters are responding to public policy failures. The insiders have screwed up; let’s take a chance on an outsider. This fits 1976 very well. The foreign and defense policy experts of the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations gave us Vietnam. Richard Nixon gave us Watergate, and his successor Gerald Ford pardoned him. Nixon also gave us a juiced-up economy in time for the 1972 campaign, which resulted in inflation and stagnant economic growth–stagflation–in the ensuing years.

But public policy failure doesn’t fit 1992 or 2008 as closely. Yes, Ross Perot and Bill Clinton campaigned against “the worst economic recession” since the 1930s. But in fact the economy was growing throughout 1992, and the recession of 1990-91 was one of the mildest ever recorded. During the preceding four years the Soviet Union collapsed, and the U.S. and its allies won a crushing victory in the Gulf War.

Perhaps voters were upset about the tax increase that the Democratic Congress and George H.W. Bush, despite his “read my lips” pledge, colluded in. But the result was the election of a Democratic president and Congress who predictably raised taxes again…

For the past 14 years, voters have been almost precisely evenly divided between the two parties. Mr. Clinton was re-elected with 49% of the vote, Mr. Bush with 51%. For six years we had a Democratic president and a Republican Congress, a situation that changed in 2000 when Mr. Bush was elected by the narrowest of margins. For six years we had a Republican president and a Republican Congress (except for 18 months when Jim Jeffords gave Democrats a 51-49 Senate majority), a situation that was ended when voters chose, by a small but decisive margin, a Democratic Congress. We hear complaints from voters on all sides now about earmarks, pork-barrel spending and the scandals that resulted in part from longstanding one-party control.

Again the pattern: Voters make pretty much the same decisions time and again for 14 years. Then in the 16th year decide they are disgusted with the results.

Why 16 years? Political scientists like to come up with generalizations about voting behavior for all time. The problem is that we don’t have the same electorate over time. Political scientists have developed rules for predicting presidential elections based on macroeconomic trends at a time when most voters remembered the trauma of the Great Depression. Most voters today don’t and those rules no longer work.

One such rule predicted that Al Gore would get 56% of the vote in 2000, which was 8% off. Your barber or hairdresser could have come closer.My thought is that, over a period of 16 years, there is enough turnover in the electorate to stimulate an itch that produces a willingness to take a chance on something new…

The median-age voter in 1992 was born around 1947 (the same year as Dan Quayle and Hillary Clinton, one year after Messrs. Clinton and Bush, one year before Mr. Gore). These voters came of age in the culture wars of the 1960s. They experienced stagflation and gas lines of the 1970s, and the prosperity and foreign policy successes of the 1980s. Mr. Clinton persuaded these voters to take a chance on change by promising not to radically alter policy. They rebuked him when he tried to break that promise, then for 14 years remained closely divided along culture lines as if the ’60s never ended.

The median-age voter in 2008 was born around 1963, so he or she missed out on the culture wars of the ’60s, and on the economic disasters and foreign policy reverses of the 1970s. These voters have experienced low-inflation economic growth something like 95% of their adult lives–something true of no other generation in history. They are weary of the cultural polarization of our politics, relatively unconcerned about the downside risks of big government programs, and largely unaware of America’s historic foreign policy successes. They are ready, it seems, to take a chance on an outside-the-system candidate.

The idea of the “new”, whatever its universal appeal to youth, has always been a captivating concep