Mission Not Accomplished

A little more than a decade ago our nation blundered into one of the biggest foreign policy disasters in its history. In a place where Marcus Licinius Crassus  and Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus (Julian The Apostate) came to grief the United States of America found out that the waters of Babylon are still just as treacherous as they were in ancient times.

While the Iraqis did not manage to turn George W. Bush into a wall decoration like they did to Publius Licinius Valerianus Augustus (Valerian) they did make The Shrub a by-word for gross incompetence.

But it take a village to make a village idiot. George W. Bush had a lot of help in making the mess in Mesopotamia. The nifty Neocon idea of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and installing “freeeeedom!” had its roots all the way back in the reign of Bubba. It was the Big Dog that made it official U.S. Policy that Saddam be show the door.

President William Jefferson Clinton never did put a “sell by” date on the idea of regime change in Iraq, making the notion more of a wish than a serious consideration. In the wink and nod game that was Oil For Food, Saddam’s family made out like the bandits they were, and the Iraq people got stuck with the bill. The regime did not change, Saddam was still there-- larger than life and twice as ugly.

Still, in the U.S., the damage was already done. The official policy of the U.S. was regime change. The policy laid on the table like a loaded gun in a Chekov play; and wouldn’t you know there was just the political actor more than willing to use that gun.

That man was not Incurious George, the upwardly failing Scion of George H. Bush, but Richard V. Cheney, the other dry drunk in the Administration. A man whose sole purpose in life seems to be to prove the cliche that “Truth is stranger than fiction,” Cheney’s fingerprints can be found all over the Iraq invasion.

Cheney was a NeoCon in good standing and has a huge chip on his shoulder going all the way back to the Nixon Administration. Being a big fan of the Imperial Presidency Cheney was itching to restore the overarching power of the executive and had found his sock puppet in that endeavor; Bush the Younger.

Cheney proceeded to set up WHIG, the White House Iraq Iraq Group, a cabal/conspiracy to find a casus belli for war with Iraq. By cherry picking raw intelligence Cheney was able first convince Bush and then the nation that the Mushroom Cloud was coming to a neighborhood near you if Saddam was not put to bed and pronto.

Thanks to Osama bin Laden and his unhappy campers toasting marshmallows in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, Cheney and Bush had the set up they needed, the 9/11/01  Terrorist Attack on the U.S. In a rush of hyper-patriotism, anger, and desire for revenge the U.S. Public was sold a bill of goods: the Iraq War.

If one can be dispassionate about such things, one can admire the evil genius of Cheney and Bush. Cheney created the policy and Bush sold it. Give The Shrub his due, the man played hardball politics like no other man in office of President since LBJ. He placed the feckless Democratic opposition in a no-win political vice and kept tightening it. Even bright, dedicated Senators who should have know better, yes Hillary Clinton I am talking to you, voted for the war. The dereliction of duty by the Legislative branch was both nauseating and utterly predictable. Bush was riding sky-high polls and the 4th branch of government, the check that was supposed to be the Media, was AWOL or worse a 5th columnist collaborator in the rush for war.

A few words on the press. The abject failure of the press to do its job, to apply even a soupçon of skepticism to the Bush Administration’s talking points was appalling. They also saw those sky-high Bush approval ratings and had no stomach to do their job, to act as a seawall to the jingoistic tsunami that Bush was creating. Instead, for ratings, they decided to join the flag waving and the general blood-lust of the moment. Thus was paper-thin evidence like the aluminum tubes , Yellow-cake uranium from Africa, and mobile Anthrax Labs given a pass. Stories that would not pass muster in a Bond film, that is in fiction, were treated as infallible doctrine handed down by the deity and the host of angles.

But a strange thing happened on the way to be showered with flowers and kissed by a grateful Iraqi people; the whole thing went to hell in hand basket. The unwarranted and reckless rush to war turned sour. Shock and Awe did not turn the natives into pliant supplicants to our Imperial will. The coalition of the Willing was found wanting. There were not enough troops on the ground for a proper occupation, and it only got worse from there.

The outright waste and theft allowed by Paul Brener’s house of horrors, otherwise known as the Coalition Provisional Authority, was a case study in how not to rebuild a nation. Lead by a hodgepodge group of NeoCon goof-balls and Libertarian Wing-nuts, the CPA was Grover Nordquist’s wet-dream of government drowned in a bathtub. It was glorious, right up to point when the IEDs started exploding. To this day Iraqis still fear the things that go boom in the night, and the afternoon, and the morning. To this day the Iraqi still suffer from a lack of government, living in a twilight Mad Max land where the gun and the bomb are law.

The government is still a shambolic mess. The Kurds have gone their way, the Sunni Triangle is still a hot mess, and the Shias are divided amongst themselves. In the middle of the maelstrom is the U.S., still not really gone. The more obvious symbols of U.S. Hegemony gone horrible wrong are gone, the hundreds of thousands of U.S. military are gone, but don’t be fooled, 17,000 diplomats are still hunkered down in the world’s biggest embassy. There also are some 5,000 mercenaries, oops sorry “Security Contractors”, running around, hell for leather, in the land of the two rivers adding to fun and frolics.

So forget all that nonsense about how Obama has ended the war. The withdrawal was negotiated by Bush, with a end date certain. Obama tried to weasel out of that by changing the SOFA, but in a rare display of independence the Iraqi government said “no.” Obama continues to run that Embassy of 17,000 personal, and to hire those, cough, cough, “Contractors.”  We are no longer waist deep in the gore of Iraq, but we are still at least ankle deep if not shin deep. Happy tenth anniversary, mission still not accomplished.

David Takes A Dive

Just a few days ago General David Petraeus went from hero of the age to flawed mortal. The immediate source of this transition was a woman. I know, surprise, surprise. Suddenly there was no shortage of hagiographers putting on sack cloth and covering their heads with ashes. The Moron Media got suckered again-- big surprise.

Forgive me for being so cynical, but I was never buying what Dave The Dolt was selling.  For me the man was just another careerist hack in a brass hat. A little harsh you might say? Well gentle reader, sometimes harshness is called for when far too many people buy into a dog and pony show.

Understand one thing, Generals are people too. They are just as grand and just as flawed as any other member of the genius Homo Sapiens Sapiens. More to the point, they are politicians through-and-through; with all that entails.

Maybe you have to serve in the military to truly understand this. Maybe you need to ask an important question to a flag officer and get a mealy-mouth dodge of an answer. Maybe you have to suffer through Micky Mouse procedures a brass hat has imposed due to some pet peeve of theirs to get it.

There is a reason the Enlisted refer to some Flag Officers as Ticket Punchers. The Enlisted know the symptoms. They know the apple polishers looking for the next step up. Petraeus was such a man. He was a kiss up, a man looking for the next step up, and willing to do anything to get that next promotion. To rise to the top he told people what they wanted to hear. He found a way to support dodgy policy.

Understand that Davy’s can do spirit was not unusual. If you serve in the military you take on a results orientated mindset; you find a way to accomplish things. Petraeus found a way for our military to effectively occupy a foreign land; he never asked why such an occupation was necessary in the first place; he never questioned grand strategy. What David did was simply tactics, and fairly simple tactics at that.

The “Surge” was nothing more than a math exercise; a numbers game. But that game revealed what a fraud the man was. Move On was right, David did Betray Us. He betrayed the nation to get an extra star on his shoulder. He betrayed us by aiding and abetting George Bush’s war of lies by adding one more bright and shining lie.

Let me explain. Petraeus big idea is nothing more than a math exercise. You take the basic numbers, plug them in, and get a result of boots on the ground. It is very simple stuff. The first number is the population of the nation you want to occupy. In this case the number was for Iraq. The second number is the number of counterinsurgents needed to keep the first number in line. Petraeus math, COIN math, is 20 to 25 counterinsurgents for 1,000 population. Thus, take the population of Iraq, twenty five million, divide by one thousand then multiply by say 23. That gives you a force compliment of roughly 575,000 to do the job.

And there gentle reader, is the rub. Even with the surge, boots on the ground never reached the near half million men mark. Dave The Dolt betrayed his own grand theory, he shredded the Field Manual he created, to curry favor with the worst president of the modern era-- George W. Bush.

Petraeus killed his own program in the crib, he starved it to death. All the other ideas attached to his program were moot because he never had sufficient reliable counterinsurgents on the ground. But that did not stop him for taking credit for the lucky stroke of the Sunni Awakening. It also did not stop taking him for taking credit for the “stability” brought about be ethnic cleansing.

From Iraq it was an easy step up to Afghanistan. Politician that he was, Davy was able to dodge the blame for our woes in the Graveyard Of Empires. We Surged again, and again that effort was doomed by the maths inherent in the project. To actually occupy the badlands of Hindu Kush you need right around a million troops. That would be hard to do as active duty strength is around 561,000 and total reserves are around 205,000. You could do it if you committed every last active duty member, every last reserve, and every last National Guard member. That would give you around one million one hundred thousand people. Of course there would be the small problem of who would be keeping the Pentagon running and all that.

But that small niggle was for some other bright and chipper lad to figure out. David was off to DC to run the CIA. And it was here that Dave The Dolt finally Peter Principled in to a brick wall. That brick wall was known as Benghazi. Granted Petraeus had a lot of help in screwing the pooch in Libya. He had Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as his help mates.

The Hamlet of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue mulled over what to do with the clown prince of the Maghreb, Muammar Gaddafi, after he went off the rails one last time. With the threat of whole scale slaughter being a real and present danger, and all that lovely oil in the ground, Barry had to do something. Still, Obama mulled, and hemmed and hawed and was finally shoved into action by NATO.

Yet with all that mental effort deployed, not a soul considered an answer to the question “what comes after Gaddafi?” With the bitter end of Muammar, the US was blundering around the landscape without a plan or a clue. Chief among the blind leading the blind was Dave The Dolt. Exactly how Petraeus managed to miss a terrorist act aborning on 9/11 in the shifting hot political sands of Libya is a question that is just beginning to be asked.

I have my own theories and they have everything to do with the oxymoron of Military Intelligence. Having Petraeus run the CIA was the final triumph of Military Intelligence over civilian intelligence. We don’t really have a functional intelligence organization any more. We have a dis-organization that is radically skewed in favor of the military and one set of results. We have an intelligence structure that lacks any real intelligence; that is stupid to the bone.

I have been harsh on David Petraeus. I have been cruel. I have been mean-spirited. I have been all these things because he represents everything that is wrong with our elites. He was and is a ticket punching mediocrity, an empty suite with a great PR operation. He was and is a mindless technocrat with no real soul and no real clues. He was a willing servant of a interventionist and hegemonistic policy that no longer serves the true interest of the United States.

That policy is a brainless and immoral affair. It weakens the nation. It involves us in pointless, no win conflicts that slowly hollow out the nation. It is a policy that continues mainly on force of habit and an unwillingness to accept the new post-modern, post Cold War reality. It is a policy of a political and economic elite that is rotten to the core. Anyone who serves that elite deserves all the derision that one can muster.

Blind Man’s Bluff.

Or how to have people forget about Osama Bin Laden in one easy step.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17930131

Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng says he gave up his refuge in the US embassy in Beijing after Chinese authorities made threats to family members.

He initially appeared to accept assurances of a safe future with his family, but later said he feared for them and now wanted to leave China.

The US said it had no knowledge of Chinese threats and that Mr Chen had at no point asked for asylum.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Beijing for high-level talks.

[Break]

Well, Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are neck deep in it now. Leave it to the Middle Kingdom to utterly screw up your day.

It all began less than a week ago when Chen Guangcheng managed to escape from house arrest in China. How does a legally blind man manage to evade the security state that is modern day China? Well gentle reader, that is the question now racking great minds in both Beijing and Washington. There have been some very odd and extremely murky goings on in the People’s Republic of late.

Take for instance the precipitous fall of Bo Xilai in Chongqing. (Older individuals may remember this city as Chungking, the WWII capital of China) God knows the leaders of China would love you to take Mr Bo far, far, far away and perhaps bury him with Jimmy Hoffa. The tangled tale of Bo Xilai, his wife, the murder of a British business man, and some high level phone tapping reads like the bastard child of a  Charley Chan movie and a John le Carré novel.

{Break}

( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17752064 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17673505 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17690925 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17390723 )

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This has much to do about the ten year refresh the CPC is about to undergo. Being China, and China still being a Communist State, there are many guesses about who is doing what to whom plus where the “real” power lays. Somewhere in Foggy Bottom, some poor, benighted souls are trying to unravel that mystery on way too much coffee and far too little sleep.

Enter our blind protagonist escaping under the watchful gaze of Chinese State security. He had help from friends of course; but still, somewhere in the corridors of power in China, heads are rolling.

So where else would this epic mess finally end up than the confines of the U.S. Consulate? You just knew that once Chen Guangcheng had flown the coop, he would end up in the lap of Barack Obama. Extra bonus for this happen right during some very critical, and very dicy negotiations, by Team Obama with Team Middle Kingdom. Nothing quite like a very large box of agitated, extremely poisonous, scorpions and pit vipers dumped in one’s lap in the middle of tense negotiations to queer the “No Drama Obama” presidential meme is there?

Neither Obama nor Clinton have exactly covered themselves with glory in this exercise. At day six it clearly looks like Obama and his SoS tried a quick and dirty solution that then exploded in their faces like a trick cigar.

We now have Chen Guangcheng making some serious allegations about how the deal was done, and State playing defense on those charges. Obama does not need this one day after his Afghanistan announcement. As Mitt Romney would say “I’m trying to get reelected here, for Pete’s sake!”

Did Team Obama sell out the Chinese dissident so they could then move on to “the real business at hand” ? The answer depends how you feel about Obama. My bias toward Obama makes me say “yes, it is entirely possible Obama shafted / pressured Chen Guangcheng.”  It’s not like Obama is some great Civil Libertarian. It is not like Obama is going to stand on principle. No Drama Obama is going to find a compromise that gets the negotiations back on track with China; business is business,  there are “big” issues of trade, and security arrangements, that need to be resolved.

I am being cynical here? Of course I am. My opinion about Obama, ever since his FISA cave all the way back in 2008, is that he is just another soulless, hack politician. My opinion is that Obama is a empty suite with no real agenda other than his political aggrandizement. Obama won’t even protect the human rights of his own citizens, why the hell would he give a tinker’s damn about some blind dissident in China?

Thanks to that attitude Obama is up against it now. His cynical treatment of Chen Guangcheng has just boomeranged badly. If Obama folds on the Chinese dissident now, he raises the old canard of Democrats being “weak” on National Security. One year and a day after OBL became fish bait; Obama has managed to look feckless and weak with the Chinese; Mission Accomplished?

Obama now has to find a way to get Chen Guangcheng and family out of China; this is the only way this incident goes away. This is no longer about Human Rights, nor any other high minded considerations. No gentle reader, this about Obama getting reelected. Chen and company come to the U.S.A. or Obama and family go back to Chicago; no middle ground. Tawdry stuff I know, but politics is always about tawdry considerations.

The Message and The Messenger

Forgive me for beating this dead horse, but I am not quite done with the spectacular fall of Johnny Reid "John" Edwards. As the only politician who had the guts to talk about the reality of our two Americas, one for the hyper rich elite, the other for the rest of us, I miss him to the point of night sweats. Not being able to see into the mans heart, I cannot guess to his sincerity on this subject. Was One America all smoke and mirrors; like Hope and Change?

Oddly enough there are plenty of commentators on the inter-webs that have been gifted with the talent to X-ray into the soul of Edwards. Oddly enough they all proclaim his concern for the working class a fraud. And this is just the beginning of their spittle-flecked ramblings about the man. By the time these good people are done with their discourse about Johnny-Boy you are forced to conclude that he is the spawn of Satan or at least a lesser demon of Hell.

This level of hostility to a failed politician is odd, even for a Democrat. Edwards gets slammed for his metrosexual good looks, the fact that he was a trail lawyer before entering politics, and his populist messaging. Even now, when he has performed the most epic political face plant of last twenty years, and perhaps more, some people cannot let go. Why?

It must be that, for all his faults, and for whatever reason, Edwards hit a nerve.That Populist message of his was hitting a little too close for comfort, it was hitting a nerve. People whose politics are invested in increasing the economic divide, in increasing the gap between the economic winners and losers, cannot spare the vitriol when it comes to Edwards. It is vitally important for them that Edwards failings as a human being, which were legion, be attached to his ideology. 

The idea of One America, that we are our brothers keeper, that economic justice is necessary for America to stay America, is an anathema to Edwards haters. It is never sufficient for these people to just attack Edwards, or his moral failings. It is essential to prove that Edwards was never serious about One America in first place. It is essential that One America was never a serious proposal, period. 

In reading the flow of bile pouring forth from Edwards-phobs, the presumption of free market uber alles is never far from the surface. The lock-step dedication to economic laissez faire notions favored by libertarian propeller-heads is not hard to discern. It is not necessary for one to be a Ayn Rand loving, Tea Party mau-mauing, ditto-head to dislike Edwards. It is not necessary to be dye-in-the-wool Right-Wing Republican troll, but it certainly helps.

Maybe I’m projecting here, but it seems if you just scratch the surface, you will find genuine fear from political conservatives that Edwards’ ideas might just catch on. What will the right-wing fear mongers do if the working class actually starts acting as a cohesive class? What to do if Joe and Jane Six-Pack stop being distracted by social issues, and start following the money? What happens if the working class, and the middle class, focus on Bill Clinton’s message of, “ its the economy stupid?”

As Amanda Marcotte pointed out, the real danger that Edwards presented to the status quo was that his liberal populism was a direct counter to the conservative populism that is running rampant over the political landscape. Much of the beat-down Edwards is getting is to ensure there is no challenge to the triumph of conservative populism / TEA Party extremism. That way the concentration of wealth can continue unabated, and Social Conservatives can get their Authoritarianism on. 

So wither the message now? With Edwards down and out for the count, is there any politician of note willing to pick up the amor that Johnny-Boy left scattered about after he fell off the cliff? Is there anyone out there? Anthony Wiener? Oops, I see that he has small problem with his twitter account and is not available for the foreseeable future. Anyone else? Perhaps a member of the fairer sex, as all the male progressive politicians seem to have problems with their little heads short-circuiting their big heads? 

As the Edwards saga plays out, I keep reevaluating who he was and what he did. His candidacy did get both Barack Hopey-Change Obama and Our Most Sacred Lady of the Tastefully Appointed Pant-Suite to get serious about health care reform. But seeing how Idiot Big Ears botched the actual enactment of that program, I can’t say I’m that thrilled with the results. We wanted Health Care reform. What we got was Health Insurance reform. We got something to the right of Dick Nixon’s bright idea back in the 1970’s and called it “progress.” We got a Republican idea in good standing, that the Elephants then demanded be repealed immediately. Still without Edwards' prodding, we might not have even gotten this soup sandwich of “reform.”

I cannot blame Edwards for the epically corrupt way D.C. does business these days. Any politician in the Presidency would have an uphill climb to counter the dirty way D.C. conducts its affairs. My problem with Obama is the man does not even try to counter the dirty deeds done dirt cheep business model, he just goes with flow, further enabling and entrenching the corruption. It may be good politics, but it is rotten policy. 

Still, who knows what betrayals Edwards would have envisioned if he had managed to keep his monster in his pants, and gained the top prize? How much of the Populist Edwards was a construction? More to the point,  how much of it was a construction of Elizabeth Edwards? With Edwards in re-elect mode, and his wife no longer present, what compromises would Edwards envision? Having been badly burned by the reality of Edwards, and his epic narcism, I am unwilling to give him too much latitude as how he would have behaved in this mythical present construction. Even for a supporter like me, Edwards’ stock is in the dirt, and not likely to come back up.

Edwards the messenger may no longer carry much weight, but that does not go for the message. For this nation to succeed, for it to truly climb out of the hole it has dug itself, there has to be some politician willing carry that message, that idea, of One America. The continued hollowing out of the middle class is dangerous to Democracy. It is ultimately dangerous to the very people who are carrying it out. I am not saying this as a dyed-in-the-wool, peace-love-and-granola, hippy-dippy, commie-pinko, bleeding-heart lefty, but as a student of history. If we continue on the path we are on, revolution is inevitable. I’m not talking in the hackneyed sense that the yammering elites of the media class are want to talk, not one bit. I am talking in the historical sense, in the sense of the French or Mexican Revolutions, where lots of people ended up seriously and prematurely dead. In a nation where there is one gun for almost every person, the violence, if it gets to that point, will be stupefying. 

It won’t be the mythical class war that right-wing pundits love to yammer about, but the real deal--which is a much uglier thing. The rural, right-wing, racist yahoos that run the Republican Party these days may be all for this, theoretically. They might be all gung-ho for the big get even, for the all-out race war of their fantasy; right up to the point where the reality of the situation comes right up to their faces, and literally guts them. As they slowly bleed out, they might reconsider what a bad idea this was; but maybe not. The unbearable pain of evisceration does have a tendency to block out all other thoughts that are not connected to central theme of ,“Sweet Jesus, stop the pain!”

Unlike the right wingers, I am not willing for the nation to devolve into the dystopia of out-right class war. I have read enough history to know that revolution is never what you think it will be. Revolutions, by their nature, are chaotic. The losses that flow from revolutions never justify the gains. Real revolution, is horror, and pain, and dislocation, and utter madness. Only fools and ideologues ( which is pretty much the same thing) root for violent revolution.

Unfortunately we seem to be chock-a-block with willing fools these days. Far too many are far too willing to indulge in tribalism, to my way or the highway, to eliminationism, to bigotry, to homophobia, to immigrant bashing, to misogyny, to all types of petty hatreds. 

For them, the unity John Edwards proposed is blasphemy. For them, there is only Social Darwinism. For them, there are only winners and losers. For them, it is winner take all, and screw everyone else, especially if the else is not a white male. In there love of the mythical John Galt, they have no end of hatred for the real John Edwards. There seems to be no shortage of little men and little women who are willing accomplices in the plutocrats grand design to turn  99% of the population into destitute surfs. Economic slavery is ok by these minions, as long as they get to be overseers on the plantation. 

I have no idea how the politics of fear, division and corruption will rule this nation. I have no idea how long the populace will continue to trade illusionary security for real freedom. I don't even know if Johnny Reid Edwards would have even attempted to change this process once he gained the White House. Before he became a populist, Edwards was a very solid DLC donkey of the South. 

It was this supposed Southern Connection that was to be Edwards strength. Mudcat Sanders was more than willing to blather on to anyone who showed any interest how Edwards was the man to bring back the Bubba vote. I never had much faith in that narrative. My biased guess is that Dixie will not come back into play for the Donkeys until present demographic changes further play out. 

Edwards supposed strength may never had existed in the first place. Far too many of the people, especially in the South, were far too willing to buy into the meme of Edwards being a sissy "Breck Girl" and ignore his economic message. They appeared to more than willing to go whole hog for the big fat lie of the $400.00 haircut. 

The real problem here is that the politics of personality, the politics of celebrity, has drowned out all other considerations. John Edwards, light-weight, self-indulgent, narcissist that he proved to be, really was a the wrong man to move forward the message of left-progressive economic populism. But then who would be viable candidate? Any man or woman who qualifies to run as a serious candidate for President will always have mountains of baggage that the trolls can rummage through. 

And even if there is nothing there, the right will just make crap up. Republicans have perfected the dark art of the bald-face lie. Every Democratic nominee since McGovern has had to deal with utter bunk charges; with deep, dark, obvious lies during their campaign. The election of Barack Obama has only made this awful situation worse. In this regard we are own worst enemy. As long as we treat our electoral process with the same lack of seriousness we treat American Idol, we will continue to have clown-car elections. 

The petty politics of personal deconstruction will continue as long as we continue to treat our elections the same way we used to treat runs for high school student council. We have to separate the message from the messenger. We have to treat our elections with the seriousness they deserve. 

Decison On The Shores Of Tripoli

The inevitable has occurred, a military action against Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi.  As I write these words the news-lines crackle with breaking information on the latest bit of Libyan military infrastructure being reduced to rubble. Today it is a command center, who knows what tomorrow will bring. I wonder if anyone other than the Libyans are truly paying attention.

The progression of the events in Libya has been very predictable. When Tunisia and then Egypt overthrew there corrupt leaders, Libya was pre-ordained to be the next big thing. Gaddafi has misruled Libya with an iron hand for over forty years; he was going to be challenged.

That challenge was not going to go down well with Muammar. The man is the sin qua non of egomaniacal, self-absorbed, tin-pot dictators. Such personalities do not respond well to a challenge to their prerogatives. Gaddafi cried havoc and lest loose the dogs of civil war.

At first Gaddafi’s fortunes did not look so good.The rebels looked like they were rolling up the regime as town after town fell to their forces. But Gaddafi was abel to use mercenaries plus airpower, and the situation reversed. The use of air power by the Libyan government forces was especially savage.

As the savagery became better known, Western powers mood started shifting. Intervention into the civil war in Libya became more and more of a talking point. Finally the dread words were spoken, “No Fly Zone.”  This was a solution looking for a problem. No Fly Zones were used in Bosnia and in Iraq to very mixed results.

Still the elites of many Western Nations loved No Fly. It is part of the very long term relationship that these nations have with air power. The promise of Air Power, to be able to achieve military results without all that dangerous and dirty mucking about with boots on the ground has been a dream since Billy Mitchell. The dogma of precision bombing as cure all has been around for a very long time. Too bad the realities of air power have never matched the promise.

This is because the term “precision bombing” has always been an oxymoron. Even today, with super precise guided missiles, far too many innocents get blown up with the bad guys. This has been most notable with our war on terror in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Those drone flights have killed more than their share of women, children and other uninvolved civilians whist taking out the supposed bad guys. The blow back for this wonton killing has not even started. The civilian deaths have scotched the hearts and minds strategy the US military is trying to pursue.

In Libya, the assault by over one hundred Tomahawk missies has queered our supposed reason for intervention. Not that the humanitarian rational for No Fly ever made real sense, but now the contradiction  is made explicit. We are now killing civilians to protect them from their government. Whose bright idea was this?

The bright idea came right out of the political swamps of the Potomac. The first eminence grise to introduce the idea of No Fly to the unwashed masses was Senator John Kerry. The Senior Senator from Massachusetts has been a foreign policy talking head for ages. If you want to know want to know what the foreign policy Brahmins of the US are thinking, just tune in to their oracle. If you do tune in to the head Ent , make sure that you have consumed large quantities of coffee. The lugubrious way that Kerry makes his talking points is a sure cure for insomnia.

After Kerry, the rest of the NeoCon chorus added their voices to the tune of No Fly. The last to sing around the campfire was Our Most Sacred Lady of the Tastefully Appointed Pants Suite. It was like watching a revival, every one seemed so enthusiastic for No Fly, but no one, not a soul, looks to have paused to think out why they might be so happy. Every face was glowing with the warm notion of redemption, every one was willing to join the sacred cause, and grubby realities were not allowed to enter into the revival.
It really does not appear that anyone has thought through this policy. D.C. has been seized by a “do something” missionary zeal. No one has checked to see if the heathens are interested in conversion. No one has done a scintilla of war gaming, or any other kind of reflective thinking at all.  It is all a jumble of romanticism, moralism, interventionism,  and blind mucking about. No one has bothered to think whether any National Interests may be involved here. No one has thought about the long game. Average U.S. citizens plan out their Summer vacations better than the chattering class of DC has planed out their options in Libya.

The worst man of the muddled DC lot has to be Obama. The man flipped in the space of twenty four hours. And when he went for the No Fly, he just did it. He did not even bother to explain his motivations to Congress nor the American People in any real fashion. He did not bother to even launch a bogus PR campaign like the Shrub did. No, he declared No Fly, and then popped off for 18 rounds of golf, with a side order of a South American junket. Cavalier does not even begin to cover his behavior in the last 48 hours.

All hail the Unitary Executive. Bow your head you grubby peasants, Obama as commander in chief can do whatever he pleases, that is the message being delivered. If this was the Shrub, “Progressives” would be marching on DC in a New York minute. But not so much with Obama in the driver’s seat, eh? No wonder Barry does not take his left seriously. Some stalwarts are up in arms it is true, but the entire Congressional Democratic delegation, both House and Senate, should be marching to the White House with torches and pitchforks.

I missed that visual. I missed it because it never happened. We have entered our third war of choice in the Islamic world and the second war of choice in the Arab world, and no Congress critter of note has uttered a peep. How about the great defenders of the Constitution the TEA Party Patriots, are they up in arms like they were in their opposition to “Obamacare?” Sorry, no dice, they seem preoccupied with immigrant and Muslim bashing, the Constitution is just going to have to defend itself. What about the great unwashed masses? Sorry, American Idol is on, and they have March Madness brackets and betting pools to manage. No time to worry about the incursion into Libya. The silence is deafening, the odd political dog has barked, but most of commentary has either been supportive or is indulging in other obsessions.

Does anyone care that Obama has now committed the U.S. to another bout of regime change? Has anyone noted the terrible logic that leads the US to take out Gaddafi sooner or later? Is anyone, other than a few brave souls, noting the blatant hypocrisy of the explanation of why we are intervening in Libya’s civil war? Our nation is hooked on the drug of intervention and no one, no one at all, is offering an intervention.

No other explanation seems to make sense. We are intervening just to intervene. We have the military to intervene, so we will take yet another hit of the Wilsonian crack pipe. We will make the world safe for, what? Democracy? Motherhood? A free Hot lunch for Orphans? I have absolutely no clue; other than we are making the world safe for further US interventions, in far off lands, where no National Security Interest what-so-ever exists. We just keep intervening in the hope we will have another feel-good moment like when the Berlin wall fell, or when Gulf War I concluded.

I have no idea what Obama and the Chattering class will do if the Libyan crap shoot comes up snake eyes. I do know that Obama is for a dime, in for a dollar. There is no way Barry can get out of the corner he has painted himself into. The run-up to 2012 has now begun in earnest. There is no way the Republicans do not eat Obama alive if he tries to cut and run in Libya. I thought that Obama was smarter than this, but apparently not. He has tied himself to the mast of No Fly, and unlike Farragut in Mobile the mines he is sailing the ship of state through look to be fully functional. Mr Hope and Change is a bad place, and he has no one but himself to blame.

Musings On the "Graveyard Of Empires"

The more one looks at Afghanistan the more the jarring similarities with our effort in South-East Asia occur. Case in point: the farcical election result just voided out in our client state.

Granted Karzai is not yet as hopeless as the Thieu-Ky government that ran the operatically corrupt South Vietnamese government in the last days of that nations existence. But Karzai is starting to look a lot like Ngô Đình Diệm without Madam Nhu. Karzai is so incompetent he can't even properly steal an election.

Granted his opponent had his own special problems starting with his unimaginative parents. One wonders if the twice named Abdulla has the chops to run the epic mess that is Afghanistan.

One wonders if Obama is on a fool’s mission. The Bush Administrations neglect of Afghanistan to pursue its Neoconservative dreams in Iraq may have left the U.S. in a no-win position. It may be too late for any kind of successful operation in Afghanistan.

Our failure in South-East Asia began with a very sensible middle-road approach to the conflict, choosing neither to fully escalate nor get out of Vietnam. Johnson especially died the death of a thousand cuts because he could never decide to fish or cut bait. LBJ proved that the only thing one finds in the middle of the road is squished armadillos.

There is a way to "win" in Afghanistan. It is to really take the ideas of Petraeus to heart and go all in. It means a commitment of five hundred million troops for ten to twenty years to fully pacify Afghanistan. That is the Petraeus math. This is what is required to really and fully do it right. This is the real cost of Nation Building and security in Afghanistan.

We are dealing with the detritus of Bush Jr's attempt to one up his dad. We are dealing with the results of Bush Jr's go-it-alone foreign policy. The comparison to Poppy Bush's Coalition in the First Gulf War to the Son's Coalition in the Second speaks volumes about the Son's recklessness and incompetence. Poppy Bush would have easily gathered the forces required to run down Bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Poppy Bush would have probably scotched the original 9/11 plot before it occurred.

For his own reasons Obama has decided to attempt to salvage the Afghanistan situation. Maybe he really does believe that Afghanistan is still the "good war." Maybe he is pursuing more cynical Realpolitik goals. Maybe he mainly fears the Domestic political blow-back if he pulls the plug on Afghanistan.

Ever since Carter flubbed the Desert One rescue Democrats have been branded as weak on defense. Conventional wisdom has decreed that Democrats have to prove their mettle and must be properly belligerent in their foreign dealings. Hillary Clinton has definitely taken this particular idea to heart. The former first lady's reputation as a hawk may have cost her the nomination during the primaries.

Not to be too dire but we are dealing with an epically failed state that has been in a state of constant war for thirty years and counting. Mullah Omar and his grumpy cast of characters were able to seize the reigns of power because the populous of Afghanistan wanted order imposed in the worst possible way. Little did they know that they would get just that--order imposed in the worst possible way. The Taliban tried to impose a reactionary Islamic theocracy on the land. No need to delineate how badly that worked out for the people of Afghanistan.

Whatever our policy ends up being we must realize two things. One is that the Taliban and other aspects on the ground in Afghanistan are merely symptoms of a people and culture that are profoundly broken. The second thing we must realize is there are limits to what we can do to make the Afghans whole.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Edward Moore Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009)

Lyndon Johnson is quoted as saying that in the Senate there are show horses and work horses.  What he never noted is that sometime an individual senator could shift between the two types.

Ted Kennedy started out as the very definition of a light weight. His only seeming qualification being that he was the baby brother of the President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.  As the Kennedys were running the state of Massachusetts as their personal fiefdom, this was sufficient for Teddy to win his brother’s seat.

In the early sixties, the Kennedy brothers formed a triple political threat. By the end of the decade, only the baby brother remained. First JFK, then RFK, were gunned down by marginal characters in an almost offhand manner. The nation has never come to grips the way both Kennedys lost their lives. The nation avoids the essential fact that our politicians are easy targets for lone wolves bearing a grudge and who have access to small arms.

After 1968 Ted found himself the Pater Familias of the Kennedy clan. He took on the  responsibility for raising both JFK’s and RFK’s small children. He also took on the political legacy of his dead brothers. It was a heavy burden and Ted Kennedy struggled very publicly with it. One year after RFK’s death, Ted showed the darker side of the Kennedy gene pool’s legacy. He proved himself every bit as reckless as his brother Jack by piloting his limo off the Chappaquiddick Bridge. In that car was a young woman Mary Jo Kopechne. The details of that accident were never adequately explained by Ted Kennedy nor by his lawyers.  The only agreed on facts is that the car ended up in the water along with a very dead Mary Jo. It is also agreed that Ted’s reporting of the accident was seriously delayed by at least ten hours.  There is a small cottage industry that speculates on what “really” happened at Chappaquiddick: the specific relationship of Ted to Mary Jo, why Ted decided to lawyer up before confessing to the accident, and what kind of condition then Junior Senator might have been in on that night.  Legally, Ted plead to leaving the scene of an accident. Personally and politically the liability was much, much larger. Mary Jo’s incorporeal frame followed Edward Moore Kennedy to the grave and beyond. Her name is forever linked to his.

In a way, the rest of Kennedy’s career can be seen as a type of penance for his carelessness on that night. He became a more serious political personality after Chappaquiddick.  Still the full transformation required one more act of political self-flagellation. That is the best way to view Ted’s manic run against Jimmy Carter.

The campaign against Carter positively invites amateur psychoanalysis. It started out as a train wreck and ended in self-immolation. Ted started out with a disastrous interview on CBS and went downhill from there. Ted only hit his stride when his chances for the nomination had evaporated. He won some meaningless late primaries and then went to the convention with the crackpot plan of separating the President of the United States from his pledged delegates.  Carter’s team easily quashed Ted’s quixotic plan with   ruthless efficiency.  Still Ted’s petulant behavior at the convention added further disarray to an already fractured party.

Ted sat out the election licking his wounds and Carter failed to live up to his initials of J.C. by being unable to provide the political miracle that his candidacy required.  Enter Ronald Wilson Regan and the long dark night for liberalism.  For the next thirty years Ted Kennedy was fighting a rear-guard action.

For twelve years Ted Kennedy did battle against Regan-Bush and the forces of reaction. He became the consummate insider, working the angles, finding allies in the oddest of places, pulling off minor and major miracles in the era of “Government is the Problem” like SCHIP. Even with the election of a Democratic President Ted Kennedy still had an up-hill struggle; the ideology of Regan still ruled D.C. While Bill Clinton claimed to be a “New Democrat” he actually more resembled a much older type of Democrat from the Gilded Age: the “Bourbon Democrat.”  Bill Clinton’s term of office had more in common with Grover Cleveland than FDR.  The parallels between Clinton’s and Cleveland’s second term are especially unnerving.

If the “Big Dog” was a bit smaller than advertised Kennedy had his hands full with dealing with the un-dynamic duo of George W. Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney. Bush was the consummate ideological reactionary.  Bush’s mission was nothing less than the full dismantling not only of the legacy of the 60’s but also of the New Deal.  Along the way Bush shredded the 4^th Amendment, the separation of church and state, and our nation’s long-standing moral guiding principles.

Once again Kennedy was the road-block, the voice of Liberal consciousness calling out in the wilderness. He was spot on about the error of the Iraq war and much else. Still his leadership example was ignored by his more timorous Democratic colleges. John Kerry, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton all voted for the Iraq War.  Any one of those future candidates had to do was read the unedited CIA report to discover that Bush’s Cassis Belli was supported by a swamp of lies. One can not prove that Kerry, Clinton and Edward were looking at Bush’s stratospheric approval ratings or listening to the clamorous din of the Corporate Media advocating a rating-boosting conflict but one would have good reason to suspect. Kennedy was having none of it.

It is, however, Ted’s last political act that will be the most controversial. Ted Kennedy’s full-throated support of Barack Obama is the most perilous legacy that the Liberal Lion leaves behind.  Hard core, dead ender, PUMA, Clintonistas are still furious about Ted’s support of the Junior Senator from Illinois’ run.  Some are still muttering about how this was Kennedy’s revenge for Hillary’s supposed slight of JFK’s contribution to the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The discussion of that particular bit US History is best left to another place and time. In a primary process that was only decided by some one hundred delegates, it is impossible to really determine what pushed Obama over the top. What effect if any did Kennedy’s support have in the critical month of February? Who really did Hillary in? A “back-stabbing” Ted Kennedy or an incompetent Mark Penn?  One thing for sure political scientists and historians not yet born will be making their bones on these questions and others for decades to come.

For good or ill Ted Kennedy’s final legacy is now linked to the legacy of Barack Obama. If Obama turns out to be nothing more than a very clever technocrat that exploited the justified revulsion against Bush-Cheney’s eight years of incompetence and misrule, then Ted Kennedy turns into just another person who had the wool pulled over their eyes.  Is Obama nothing more than yet another iteration of a Blue Dog Democrat, the spiritual heirs of the Bourbon Democrats? Is Obama in short a fraud? Or is Obama one of those rare politicians who spring up every forty years or so; a man who changes the very rules of the political game? The answer to that question will determine the final coda of Edward Moore Kennedy’s legacy.

In the long view though Kennedy’s legacy is secure, his near half century of  public service will be a beacon shining out long after lesser lights have faded. The rise, fall and subsequent rise of Ted Kennedy is a story we will tell ourselves for generations yet to come. Each generation will add to the myth, each generation will find its own meaning to this uniquely American life. The story of Edward Moore Kennedy has not ended; it has barely begun.

Mourning For John Edwards

The epic fall from grace that John Edwards has incurred has gotten worse. Only Lucifer has fallen further and faster or so it seems. The former Senator from North Carolina and almost Vice President of the United States (only a few thousand stolen votes in Ohio made the difference) is no longer a player in national politics. Edwards could not even get elected dog catcher running against a convicted child molester truth be told. Words like narcissist,” “craven,” “heartless,” and “egotistical” are attached to the mention of his name.Iam quite sure that people like Taylor Marsh have even more pungent and unprintable opinions of the man that they offer in private.

Ms. Marsh reflections on the man are particularly germane because of the two hats she brings to the evaluation. Not only is she a jaundiced and sharp observer of the political landscape but she also a self-taught expert in relationships. With ten years of real world interviews with real world people Ms. Marsh has a better handle on the real life vagaries of relationship dynamics than many people sporting fancy degrees and writing in professional journals. Thus when she paints John Edwards as an epic heal you can trust the description.

Still Edwards is not the first testosterone poisoned individual to skate on very thin ice. Many men in and out of government have let their baser passions and their lizard brain fog the more noble aspects of their personality. We can gape at the shear self-destructive, "what the hell was he thinking about?", aspect of their behavior but we can not deny that this is a story that has been repeated many times. JFK was much more reckless with his dalliances and in the White House at that. JFK was fortunate that he operated in a much more male-centric world. No president today could get away with the multiple affairs JFK had in office (and with a mob mall at that.)

Still Edwards should have known the type of fishbowl he was swimming in. Our celebrity driven culture now makes infidelity next to impossible for the glitterati to hide. Celebrity magazines and tabloid newspapers are constantly on the prowl for the smallest piece of gossip or the barest of hints of impropriety. John Edwards was a flat out fool thinking that the National Enquirer would not eventually get the goods on him. He only had to look at the recent history of Bill Clinton’s dalliance with Ms Lewinski to understand how the tabloid and Corporate Media now operate.

We still must separate John Edwards the egomaniacal, narcissistic, shallow man from the personality he projected, no matter how false, on the campaign trail. Edwards was the most progressive of the candidates running. He consistently pushed both Clinton and Obama on important issues. Edwards was first out of the gate on health care, on social justice, on the need to control corporate greed. His theme of One America was a much needed bit of truth telling to the rest of the nation. Only Edwards was willing to continuously mention the bitter truth about the other America. By opening his campaign in New Orleans Edwards attempted to be the candidate of forgotten America. Only Edwards seemed willing to talk about the losers in our capitalist system. Only he seemed concerned about the plight of the poor.

It is only now that the economy has cratered and many Americans are fearful that they may join the growing ranks of the dispossessed that Edwards political message seems prescient. Unfortunately the message has gotten confused with the messenger. Edwards’ betrayal of his marriage while hurtful to Elizabeth pales next to the betrayal of the populist message he represented. There is no progressive counter weight to Terrible Tim Geithner; there is no strong counter-weight against the Chicago School mafia running the economic show at the White House. Because there is no political heavy-weight to run opposition against Wall Street Obama appears to be conceding to every wish and desire of the incompetent greed-heads that tanked our economy. It appears that there will be a massive transfer of wealth from those who can’t afford it, the tax payers, to those who do not deserve it, the Wall Street bankers. There is no one out there who can call halt to the reverse Robin Hood policy that Obama has rubber stamped.

There were only two politicians who could have at least served as a speed bump to this run away vehicle. One was Elliot Spitzer, the bet noir of Wall Street. The other was John Edwards. It is interesting that both men have fallen due to their sexual peccadilloes. With either of these men being a strong and viable candidate for future office the Obama bailout program may have taken a much different form. With Edwards lurking on his left, Obama would have to at least offered his former opponent an olive branch appointment in his administration. A strong anti-corporatist voice, a credible populist alternative candidate in 2012 would have forced Obama to at least be conciliatory to his left flank. Right now he gives only the slightest of nods to his main progressive critic Paul Krugman.

More often than not Obama is more than willing to slight Krugman’s opinions. Krugman can be safely ignored because his just an op-ed writer in the New York Times. If Krugman’s critique were coming from a viable populist politician, a politician with Edwards’ former credibility, Obama would not be so quick to dismiss the criticism out of hand. Edwards political fall and self-emollition leaves a gaping hole in the populist progressive movement. With Obama’s natural proclivity to compromise, there is no strong voice to move the reforms that will actually help blue collar America. Hillary Clinton, once the blue collar mama and champion of “hard working” Americans has been co-opted by the President by her selection as SoS. She is doing stellar work as America’s face to the world but she now must keep quite about any disagreements she may have about Obama’s economic proposals.

Thus it is not John Edwards per se that is missed but the voice that he took up in his attempt to win the highest office in the land. Perhaps that voice was a complete fraud. Perhaps it was just another of John Edwards serial seductions. Edwards have provided more than enough data to prove the cynical supposition that he is nothing more than a dissembling, slick, amoral charmer who was (and is) only driven by an oversized ego. He has shown himself to be absolutely untrustworthy, a greasy, ambulance chasing shyster of a man who only has a passing relationship with the truth. That he would betray his wife in the way and at the time that he did makes him a particularly odious person, a snake in the grass, pond scum.

There is a small silver lining in the story of John Edwards and it is this: never underestimate the ability of a slick and legally trained conman to fool you. Edwards fooled many people from political professionals to ordinary voters. Many people other than his wife failed to get the measure of the man. He was able to con even his wife into believing that his ego-driven pursuit of the presidency actually served some higher purpose. Not only was Elizabeth betrayed but so too were millions of Americans who deeply believed in his populist message, in the idea of One America, of a more perfect union. We wonder how to work ourselves out of the crater his fall created. We wonder how we can overcome the setback to populist progressivism that Edwards caused. We worry about the well earned cynicism the next left/liberal golden boy (or girl) may engender. Edwards’ collapse only accelerates our willingness to ignore the needs and desires of the working class. It provides yet another excuse to disregard the lower classes. It leaves the less fortunate even less engaged in the political process. It only accelerates the trend in the USA toward plutocracy and oligarchy. It is a tragedy that the man that Edwards portrayed in his campaign had no relation to the real man. We need that man who talked about One America more now than ever. We needed a prince, we got a horny toad.

The Lady in the Pant-Suite Gets a Shot. Pt 2

Hillary Rodham Clinton is now the officially the nominee for Secretary of State. It took quite a bit of what the Brits call jiggery-pokery on all sides of the equation. There are reports that Ms Clinton parlayed a Obama request for help at State to an announcement of her nomination to State, not exactly what Obama had in mind. There was perhaps some push-back by the Obama team on the Big Dogs extra-curricular activities. Bill was basically required to place his manhood in a blind trust by the Obama transition team. Still, it all worked out in the end and we now have a beautiful photo op. with a smiling Hillary and a beaming Barack. All the cutlery has been safely locked away in a vault at an undisclosed location; both Hillary and Barack can pat each other on the back without worrying about stilettos being delivered into the ribcage.

With Biden and Hillary on his team plus the further coloring in National Security team Obama is to borrow a phrase ready from day one. Hillary does present instant gravitas that must be recognized by friend and foe alike. Our allies are heartened whilst the mullahs in Iran are most likely not getting a restful nights sleep. Deep in his cave Osama is ordering up several donkey-loads of Ambien.

The only flies in this particular ointment are one, the nomination process and two, the current administration. Right now the only active Hillary haters are trolling around at Daily Kos but the right-wing noise machine and parts of the MSM still are lurking in a deep sulk. Will Chris Matthews be able to contain himself? What about the vast right-wing conspiracy that helped initiate the impeachment of Bill Clinton? Some jackass will bring up Vince Foster and Whitewater and the Blue Dress one more time; old obsessions never die they just get more ingrained.

The Obama team has done its best to keep the Clinton Haters at bay. Bill Clinton has had his plumage several trimmed back. Obama has ensured that Big Bill does not so much as pass gas without White House approval. In exchange Hillary gets access to Barack and gets a guarantee that she will not become Obama's Colin Powell. She will have a real role to play at State. As Obama will be heavily engaged in rescuing the economy and other domestic chores expect Hillary to take the foreign policy ball and run with it. Obama will set the tone and the general outlines, Hillary will provide the nuts and bolts.

The real question with Hillary remains, is she what she claims to be? One of the reasons she barely lost her primary run was her inability to make the hard decisions. She let her campaign team drift and squabble. Her run lacked discipline. There was no message control, the campaign leaked like sieve. In the bright lights of State Hillary can not afford to go off track or off message. She has a huge bureaucracy to control or have have spin out of control. State is several sizes larger than her presidential campaign , she has to establish control early and often. She can not allow the indiscipline of her campaign to infect her role at State. Did Hillary finally learn the real lesson of Mark Penn, that of cutting off your losses early? Hillary never really did deal with Penn in the ruthless way that was required. She let personal loyalty overrule practical considerations. Her Achilles heal was just the opposite of what was advertised. Neither of the Clintons were as ruthless as advertised. A colder more calculating person would have shot Penn out of a Canon right after Hillary's near death experience in New Hampshire.

Did Clinton learn to modulate her sense of loyalty? Can she make the hard choices at the right time? She can stick to her guns in certain instances-- it was incredibly difficult for her to acknowledge that her run for the president was lost. She played her run to last possible second and perhaps beyond. Can she show the same fortitude when an old loyalist needs to be cut loose? Has she learned the hard calculus of when to cut her losses? At State she is going to make some very hard calls. She can not equivocate and she can not let old loyalties interfere. Obama has already put a marker out for her; Bill Clinton has got to be controlled. As loyal as she is to her husband, she has to understand there is a greater loyalty to the president and the Nation. She really does have to control her first instinct which is to protect her husband.

Hillary has a very full plate in front of her. As noted earlier she and Obama have to wait some fifty odd days for the Present administration to get the hell out of Dodge. There is still a chance that the Dark Lord of the Sith ,Dick Cheney, might still managed to further screw up the foreign policy of the United States. Dead eye Dick might still be beavering away at the levers of powers to affect policy decisions. Fortunately for the republic the main leaver Cheney is yanking on seems to be out of service. George W. Bush has gone into a sort of Catatonia of late; unable to motivate himself to do anything other than turkey pardoning. It is still a sad day for our Nation that we have to rely on the "pragmatism" of Condoleezza Rice to keep us out of catastrophe. We won't be truly safe or at least less endangered until we have team Obama in full control.

There is an old Chinese proverb "be careful what you wish for, you might just get it." Hillary wanted State. Her protest to the contrary were so much eye-wash. Her role at State will either make or break her. She will either soar like an eagle or crash and burn in spectacular fashion. There really is no middle ground for either of the Clintons you get either diamonds or rust from them. "Average" or "mediocre" is just not in the Clinton vocabulary. She has the stage; she has if not her hearts desire a close approximation of that desire. She has always wanted to make her mark; her ambition is both obvious and justified. Few politicians of either gender has brought as much talent, intelligence,passion, and desire to the political scene. Other than the man who narrowly defeated her; there is no politician who has Hillary's skill set. As a pure political animal she is sue generis . At State these qualities will come in handy. The only real question is the Administrative skill set. Ready from day one? Let's hope so. If she is not it will become quickly and painfully obvious. There is no do-over for this role, no super-delegates to plead her case to. She is operating without a net. She stands or fails on her own merits. While there is no way to actually know her mind about this or any situation one suspects that she is happy to accpet the challenge. May she excell at the position and do herself and her nation proud.

Hillary Made Obama a Better Candidate

By LANNY J. DAVIS

The anti-Hillary Clinton pundits were sounding the theme a few months ago that by staying in the presidential race through June 3, the former first lady was a divisive force that would irreparably harm Barack Obama's chances of capturing the White House.

But now Mrs. Clinton's decision to stay in the race until the last primary has been vindicated. Mr. Obama is a stronger candidate today thanks to Mrs. Clinton's pursuit of the Democratic nomination. And, far from being polarizing, she has helped bring the party together more than at any time in recent memory.

We know this from Mr. Obama himself. Because she didn't quit until after the primaries were over, his grassroots organization grew stronger across the nation, his fundraising network became more extensive, and his TV and radio advertising from the late fall of 2007 to June 2008 increased favorable recognition of him in many states. These things made him a stronger general election candidate.

We also know that Mr. Obama became a better candidate over time as he was tested, and retested, in the key head-to-head debates with Mrs. Clinton. These debates made him more prepared and effective when he squared off against Sen. John McCain than he otherwise would have been.

There are two other claims anti-Hillary pundits repeated about the damage Mrs. Clinton was supposedly doing to the party that have now been repudiated. The first is that she hurt Mr. Obama by attacking him for being inexperienced, and for his connections to Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers. Not only have these criticisms been proven false, but the opposite turns out to be the case.

More At The Wall Street Journal

Bummer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton puts the chances of her running for president again at near zero — slightly higher than the chances she gives for becoming Senate majority leader or a Supreme Court justice.

In an interview aired Tuesday on "Fox & Friends" on the Fox News Channel, Clinton, D-N.Y., was asked the chances, on a scale of 1 to 10, that she would be the next majority leader in the Senate.

"Oh, probably zero," she said. "I'm not seeking any other position than to be the best senator from New York that I can be."

Being nominated to the Supreme Court?

"Zero," Clinton said. "I have no interest in doing that."

Running for president again?

"Probably close to zero," she said. "There's an old saying: Bloom where you're planted."

Will the Real Bill Clinton Please Shut Up?

If anyone really wants to know why Hillary was not considered for the V.P. slot the latest eruption from Mount Bill Clinton is exhibit ZZZ. We are well past exhibit A or B and just about to ad yet another letter to the log. Will some one please duct tape this man’s mouth before he sticks his foot in it again?

We are well past being a petulant looser and now deep in the territory of self-destructive narcissism. His latest not-so-subtitle blast at Barack Obama provided yet more unwanted drama at the convention. Flash back to his tepid support previously given and there is a pattern.

Bill Clinton is way past licking his own wounds here, he has moved on to the political equivalent of gnawing off his own leg. It is quite the spectacle and must feature prominently in the wet-dreams of the Traditional media. Nothing better to sell those corn flakes then a prominent man making a base fool of himself is there? Unfortunately he is also dragging his wife down with him. Hillary has got to snap Bill out of this petulant sulk. It is now her political career on the line. If she can not control her own husband how can she be trusted to control anything else?

The Obama team has been generous to the point of night sweats to team Clinton. All their generosity has not flipped Bill over to their cause. Hillary got her roll call, she got her speech, she even got Michigan and Florida fully seated. Bill got his speech and on his favorite topic: himself. He now gets to talk about how wonderful his presidency was; he gets to talk up his economic achievements. Truth be told it is a good story; but it is still all about Bill and his bottomless need for confirmation. The end game of Bill’s “last run” is getting needlessly fraught with drama. One wonders if Bill wrapped too much of his own ego into Hillary’s campaign. One wonders if Bill was only really campaigning for himself; for his own agenda and needs.

Bill’s ugly side really came out in the post South Carolina debacle. The stinging rejection he received from the African-American community sent him in an emotional tail-spin that was unnerving to watch. He careened and careered around the political stage crashing into all manner of malapropisms. He literally got sent down to minor leagues of the campaign circuit. A former president was doing appearances that would normally be relegated to his daughter or even a third tier functionary. Even in these little cul-de-sacs of American politics he managed to get in trouble. He was wildly off message in an unflattering self-pitying way. Bill Clinton did not just burn bridges to core constituencies, he napalmed them.

In the end, Bill was no longer an asset for his wife; he was just one more albatross hung around her neck. As Hillary already had a stunning collection of the sea bird draped around her, this was not a good thing. There was Mark Penn, there was Patti Solis-Doyle, there was her February crash-and-burn in the caucuses, and there was her empty war chest. She ran, she worked the line, she spoke herself horse; she staid viable long after lesser politicians would have hooked off the political stage. One thing for sure; Hillary can accessorize with the best of them. It takes real talent to look good with a necklace of dingy, dirty, squawking sea-birds draped around the neck of your pantsuits. It takes even more talent when one of those nasty birds is your own husband.

It is a good thing that Barack Obama is such an even-tempered man. A lesser politician would have yanked Bill’s speech or at least slapped him down. A lesser man would have politically back-slapped Bill Clinton into next month for his comments. There was no excuse for the former president’s behavior. Bill Clinton, of all people, knows what he is supposed to do. He knows the drill, he is supposed to get happily behind Barack Obama and join the mirthful Corus. This display of pique does Barack no good, it does Hillary no good, it does the party no good, and in the end it does him no good. Once upon a time there was a masterful politician that re-invented himself from the ashes of defeat. He raised Phoenix like from the political fever swamps of Arkansas and beat a scion of Republican privilege. He not only survived but flourished in Republican dominated Washington D.C. He beat the system and even bested a tawdry sex scandal. That political professional is long gone. He has been replaced by a bitter, self-pitying jackass who needs a time-out.

HRC on Party Unity

Faithless Delegates - or how PUMA wins the battle and loses the election

Guest post by Patrick Mckinnion
--------------------------------

So, the primaries are over. At this time Sen. Obama is the presumed nominee, based on pledged delegates and pledged super delegates. Let's look at the figures, as provided by Real Clear Politics

Sen. Obama got 1766.5 pledged delegates out of 3434, and Sen. Clinton got 1639.5. Sen. Obama got 463 super-delegates out of 823, and Sen. Clinton got 257. This means Sen. Obama got 333 total delegates (127 pledged delegates and 206 super-delegates) more than Sen. Clinton. As such, under normal circumstances, he is the de-facto nominee for the Democratic party, which means the party infrastructure is working to support him as is normal for a de-facto nominee.

The only three ways this changes are:

1) The unthinkable happening, i.e. the assassination of Sen. Obama
2) Sen. Obama withdrawing from the race due to medical or personal reasons.
3) A "faithless delegate" situation in which the will of the voters is questioned or overthrown.

The third choice is what "The Denver Group" and some of the PUMA-types are hoping for. In some of their boards, they're already claiming many delegates have done just that and "flipped" to Sen. Clinton. So, let's say, for the sake of argument, that they flip 334 or more delegates, switching the presumptive nominee from Sen. Obama to Sen. Clinton. PUMA and the Denver Group get their wish. They cheer, believing their faith and the rightness of their cause have led the day, and that the Democratic party will now unify behind the chosen nominee, Sen. Hillary Clinton.

And the convention explodes. Such a thing would be political suicide for ANYONE who got the nomination. I strongly doubt Sen. Clinton would even WANT to touch a nomination tainted in such a way. And I think Sen. Clinton knows this. I don't think she would accept the nomination under such circumstances, and it's becoming obvious she doesn't support such efforts. She is doing her part to help unify the party behind Sen. Obama, and deserves both honor and respect for that.

But assuming the delegates get flipped, and Sen. Clinton was convinced to accept the nomination per PUMA's demands. What then?

Implosion.

Right off the back, you have the very real anger of Sen. Obama's supporters, the vast majority of whom would have supported Sen. Clinton if she had won the primaries. This would smell of back room deals, and most of them would rightfully feel the nomination was stolen from Sen. Obama. Charges of racism would rear their ugly heads.

In effect, you would have a backlash that would be everything PUMA claims to be - a huge amount of very angry voters that would feel the election was stolen from them.

Let's look at the numbers. This is from a PEW research report from 10 July 2008 about support for the nominees.

In that report, PEW said:
69% of former Clinton supporters say they now back Obama.
17% said they would vote for McCain.
2% for someone else.
12% are undecided.

So that's up to 81% if Sen. Obama wins over the undecideds. If Sen. Clinton had won the primary, I suspect one would see similar or higher numbers. So that's campaign support for the nominee under the circumstances of a primary win.

But in a faithless delegate environment, toss those numbers out the window - 50% might be too high due to complete destruction of party unity and the perception that the primaries were overturned. And the effects on down-ticket races would be devastating - literally any elected official who switched their vote could find their chances of re-election impossible at best. A large number of voters would stay home in November, convinced their votes don't count. And they would be right in feeling that way. But it would ruin down-stream races.

"Party Unity My Ass" indeed. The party that would be unified would be the GOP.

So right off the back, the nominee would deal with a split party far, far worse than post-primaries.

Then would be a number of Sen. Clinton's voters in the primary that would reconsider their support. Remember, the PUMA types count for less than 10% of Sen. Clinton's voting block, Sen. Clinton would be looking at a situation that she wouldn't have the full number of people who voted for her in the primaries. And that's the loss from supporters. You know how PUMA likes to claim "17 - 18 million voters"?? Well, between 17-18 million voted for Sen. Obama. The majority of them who that would feel his nomination was stolen at the convention and withhold their votes. It's doubtful she could pull together enough independent and crossover votes to make up that loss. Remember, these are people that WOULD have voted for her if she won the primaries. And the loss of the Operation Chaos dittoheads, who would have never voted for Sen. Clinton in the General Election anyway.

So, loss of some initial supporter votes + loss of many Obama supporter votes.

Logistically, there would be no time for the new nominee to try and unify the party, behind the new nominee. There would be no time for fundraising, no time to put anything back together. DNC infrastructure that has been assembled since the primary would be disrupted and torn apart. It would not be surprising for any Obama supporter that helped pay down Sen. Clinton's campaign debt to ask for their money back, as well as asking the DNC for any donations back. The well of small dollar supporters would dry up, and it would take time they don't have to develop new funding sources. Many of her elected supporters will also pull away for fear it would bring them down as well.

Logically and financially, the Democratic party would be less than three months from election day, and be in complete and utter chaos. Not to mention financially broken.

Meanwhile, the GOP would be having a field day with stories about Democratic chaos, and stolen elections. The corporate and right-wing media would be dusting off and using the narrative that the Clintons will "lie, cheat and steal" to win. The GOP base would be energized, and many who would have sat out the race would come in to vote against Sen. Clinton. To a lot of independents, this would prove the GOP narrative that the Democratic party is without ethics or principals. The GOP would play the race card even more to try and paint the Democratic party as racist. Expect lines like "See, the voters chose an African-American to be their nominee, and it was stolen from him! Can any minority trust them now?" See many of the PUMA backers in the GOP create a PUMA-like movement to woo furious Obama supporters away from the Democratic party.

So, to recap, presidential race in disarray, with a strong negative effect on down-stream races. Major loss of voters, loss of finances, loss of logistical strength, and little to now time to recoup. You would not only hand the White House to McCain on a silver platter, the chances are very good you would hand the house and senate to the GOP as well.

Sen. Clinton isn't good enough to pull up from that disaster.

NOBODY is good enough to pull up from that disaster.

2008 would be a complete and total write-off for the Democratic party. Sen. Clinton's political career would be over, as would the careers of any elected official who flipped their delegate votes to her. It would take years for the DNC and the Democratic party to come back from such destruction, and you could write off key voting blocks for a long time to come. The GOP would be the winner and the country the loser.

PUMA has a large number of people who claim to be supporters of Sen. Clinton. The problem is they have such a blind, unreasoning hatred of Sen. Obama that they would rather destroy the Democratic party, the political future of the woman they claim to support, AND the country, if it means denying Sen. Obama the nomination - or the White House.

Originally Posted at Yes To Democracy all rights (and most wrongs) reserved.

Posted by Patrick McKinnion at 02:54 PM | Permalink

Clinton Support for Obama Unequivocal

BY TAYLOR MARSH

There’s "release" in DNC terms, then there’s "release" in that Clinton has asked her delegates to support Obama: "And she urged them to get behind Sen. Obama and to work just as hard to elect him president.-?? That’s the bottom line.

Clinton has endorsed and thrown her full support behind Barack Obama. That is clear and unequivocal. Any effort to diminish Hillary’s support for Obama is destructive to her. I can’t say it any plainer than that.

There is much spinning in the blogosphere right now about a conference call last night with Clinton delegates. The word "release" in a post I wrote this morning has brought emails with text run amok to my inbox. It’s counterproductive. Emailing me about a blog headline is ridiculous. I’ve talked to people this morning, as if I wouldn’t, and whether you approve of the word "release" is like talking about "conceding" or "suspending," it all means the same thing. Clinton is supporting Obama unequivocally and anything that hints otherwise does a disservice to her and what she wants to accomplish going forward.

If reporting or word comes in to change what I learned this morning I will post on it. Otherwise, the message is clear: Clinton is throwing her full support behind Barack Obama, which includes asking her delegates to support him as well. If you don’t like the word "release," well, pick another one. It’s a technicality in the political world right now.

Clinton is not running for the nomination anymore. Repeat three times. So why wouldn’t she ask her delegates to support the nominee? Besides, her power exists beyond them at this point.

Nothing in my years of politics makes me sadder to write. It’s the most difficult reality to face since Gore lost in 2000. But it’s a fact.

The other reality being missed by many Clinton supporters is that Hillary’s power no longer lies in delegates. Again, she has endorsed and backed Obama. Her power lies in people like me following her lead, which I’m doing without reservation, no matter how difficult the moment.

People who are not following her and who continue to push some notion that either Hillary wants, or it’s productive for her to "fight on in Denver," or hopes to get her name put in nomination, are not helping HRC at all. I’ve said it before, but evidently it’s not getting through. I know it’s difficult now, but anything that makes Hillary less of a uniter behind Obama hurts her. No one should be thinking about an act of God or political collapse, but even that wouldn’t require Hillary to need delegates to rise. She’d be the only one the Democratic Party would turn to and I’d be right there beside her. But that’s not going to happen. We have our nominee. It is Barack Obama.

Again, Hillary Clinton doesn’t need her delegates anymore since she’s not running for the nomination. Her power lies in her email list, the support she’s gotten over the last months, including all of us. We’re her power, not convention delegates.

One more time with feeling, "releasing" delegates isn’t the issue. Whether she used the word or not is a distraction, not some conspiracy against Hillary Clinton.

All this running around to try to forward some small headline that Hillary hasn’t "released" her delegates is counterproductive to the job at hand and ignores Hillary’s request. Again, if you don’t like the word "release," fine, don’t use it. But again, since it’s evidently not sticking, it’s like whether you use "concede" or "suspend" all this rhetoric is a technicality. The primary is over. Hillary has thrown her full support behind Barack Obama.

I’m following Hillary, because she’s the leader I trust most in the Democratic Party. That’s the best way to help Hillary. Follow her. That’s why her delegates will do as she asks and support Barack Obama.

It’s over... this time. Denial isn’t helpful... to Hillary. That’s all that matters to me.