In light of President Obama’s announcement tonight that, at last, combat operations in Iraq are over, it will be interesting going forward to see what, if any, insurgent uprisings or attacks will occur against Iraqi security forces now that the U.S. presence inside the nation have been severely pared back. Some have already occurred after the much ballyhooed drawback from a couple weeks ago.

Credit: Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press

Here’s a snippet from Obama’s speech tonight:

Ending this war is not only in Iraq’s interest – it is in our own. The United States has paid a huge price to put the future of Iraq in the hands of its people. We have sent our young men and women to make enormous sacrifices in Iraq, and spent vast resources abroad at a time of tight budgets at home. We have persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people – a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization. Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it is time to turn the page.

A New York Times editorial tonight framed the moment thusly:

Mr. Obama graciously said it was time to put disagreements over Iraq behind us, but it is important not to forget how much damage Mr. Bush caused by misleading Americans about exotic weapons, about American troops being greeted with open arms, about creating a model democracy in Baghdad.

That is why it was so important that Mr. Obama candidly said the United States is not free of this conflict; American troops will see more bloodshed. We hope he follows through on his vow to work with Iraq’s government after the withdrawal of combat troops.

There was no victory to declare last night, and Mr. Obama was right not to try. If victory was ever possible in this war, it has not been won, and America still faces the daunting challenges of the other war, in Afghanistan.

Any declaration of victory was fleeting because terms for what that might look like were never established. In some respects, I am with Christopher Hitchens in believing that we had the right to invade because of Saddam Hussein’s gross negligence for human life and solidarity. He was a monster; we can’t escape that point. But I think the false pretext (the presence of WMDs) under which we were led to believe that the war was a valuable endeavor is the gravest point on this issue. And however bat-crazy insane a national leader may be, I don’t believe it’s America’s job to police and/or jettison every one of them. For, there are many. Thankfully, less than in prior generations, but still many.

We can still count this as a historic day. Any time we can break free of one less entanglement as a nation is a good day in my view. Now, I would hope focus continues to hone sharply onto where it should have lied all along. That is, on Afghanistan or Pakistan or wherever bin Laden may be hidin’.

[Caption: Credit: Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press; Steve Baskis, 24, who lost his sight as a United States Army specialist serving in Iraq, listened to Mr. Obama's address at his home in Glen Ellyn, Ill.]

Now, thanks to this article from The Daily Beast‘s Reihan Salam, we have comparisons of Glenn Beck to Malcolm X? In the words of Sheila Broflovski from South Park: what? What? WHAT?

That’s, according to Salam, Beck is a white version of X. Here’s Salam:

Whereas Malcom X embraced militant black separatism, Beck marries a stridently emotional style with political views that wouldn’t have been out of place at a 1950s Elks Lodge event. But like Malcolm X, Beck terrifies mainstream liberals, who see something sinister in his inexplicable ways. And just as Malcolm X mellowed in his old age, embracing a more traditional interpretation of Islam shortly before his death, Beck seems to be self-consciously moving past the politicized anger that defined his program for much of the past two years towards a heavy emphasis on spiritual uplift for his people.

I think this is a fairly ridiculous claim (See title). For one, as Salam claims, if Beck is attempting to enact some sort of spiritual awakening, he would be no different than the throngs of fervently religious — that’s not to mean terribly moral — politicians and evangelicals since the days of the Moral Majority and later, the Christian Coalition.

Second, Salam claims that Beck’s audience is mostly old and white. While that is true to some degree, it’s been fairly well-established that a number of black people follow the Tea Party’s credo, as well as quite intelligent young white people. Here’s some data from Gallup.

Also, Malcolm X’s followers, so far as I’m aware, were young black militants.

Salam also says:

Instead of accepting or embracing this transformation, a large and growing number of white Americans are, knowingly or otherwise, taking a page from minority protest movements of the past by asserting themselves and demanding recognition from political and cultural elites. Many on the left find this sense of anger and alienation risible, seeing in this movement of “are-nots,” as opposed to “have-nots,” a class of ignoramuses duped by Fox News into acting against their supposed economic interests.

Yet it seems more plausible that Fox News is following its audience rather than leading it — that this anger and alienation has existed for years, and has only now found a decidedly unconventional tribune in the form of Glenn Beck. Though this is a class with economic grievances, it seems more concerned with psychic injuries — with a profound sense of disempowerment in the face of centralized political power.

It is true that FOX News is following its audience rather than the other way around, for that’s what it means to be populist. And if Beck is anything, he’s a populist. Solutions to complex problems, as President Obama well knew prior to taking office, but well understood after taking the oath, are rarely popular, and more times than not, decidedly unpopular. And we can, I think, be thankful that within the framework of our free, democratic society, that some politicians have the guts (And I don’t exclude George W. Bush in some cases) to do that which isn’t necessarily popular for the common good. For the general public, more often than not, neither knows what it wants or what is best. It’s quite easy for Beck to lap at the trough of the popular movement of the day, one he helped create, but he’s no Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr., or any other transcendent leader. He’s a charismatic, very successful capitalist. That’s about it.

I was glad to learn yesterday from Sarah Palin that it’s actually the conservatives who are the victims of the liberals, the government and nasty critics, not necessarily the actual homeless, downtrodden, unemployed and uninsured folks in this country, for what do they matter when Reps can seize upon yet another opportunity to rail against their political nemeses? In defending Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s recent and multiple uses of the word, “nigger” — a use that I, as it happens, mostly defended as well — (That is, I defended her freedom to use the word in an honest debate about language. I obviously don’t defend her berating attitude toward the caller, nor her obnoxiousness in saying the word over and over just to irritate the caller.) — Palin even frames a recent Facebook post thusly: “Defending the Fight to Cast off a Conservative’s ‘Shackles’.”

Palin’s choice of the word “shackles” is enlightening as much as it is ironic and offensive, since “shackles” is often used in speaking of slavery, and the central issue here is about Schlessinger’s use of the word “nigger,” but I doubt Palin is far-sighted enough to catch the nuance. Also, speaking of modern conservatives in any analogous context alongside slaves is laughable, in the best case, and utterly contemptible, in the worst.

And here is a recent Twitter post by Palin:

Dr.Laura:don’t retreat…reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence”isn’t American,not fair”)

Now, commentators on cable news shows this afternoon (Aug. 19) were conjecturing over what Palin might have meant by the word “reload!”

The Rev. Al Sharpton, for instance, thought “reload!” meant that Palin was advocating the continued use of questionable and derogatory language to egg on black folks. I’m not quite with him there. Actually, I’m convinced that Palin didn’t really know what she meant by “reload!” other than some very ambiguous, big-feeling, neoconservative woman-power term to encourage Schlessinger to fight a good fight, whatever that might mean. Again, Palin knows not.

Post script: While I’m at it, Palin also in a separate Facebook post said she was “traveling with Greta Van Susteren to Alaska’s North Slope and ANWR to discuss how developing our resources can contribute to America’s energy independence, security, job growth, and economic stability.”

Traveling with? That’s peculiar. And any guesses as to where Susteran works? The answer is obvious and foxy. See previous post.

You know, the good folks over at News Corp. and FOX News really do a terrible job at concealing their unbelievably obvious bias toward the (once) Grand Old Party, almost as terrible a job as they do presenting the news in a fair and balanced format.

According to this report from The New York Times and many others, New Corp. has passed along a contribution in the amount of $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which is one of three amounts over a million given to the Republican group in the last quarter. The largest donation to its Democratic counterpart, as it happens, was $500,000 from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

According to News Corp. spokesman Jack Horner,

News Corp. has always believed in the power of free markets, and organizations like the R.G.A., which have a pro-business agenda, support our priorities at this most critical time for our economy.

Horner also said the gift would bear no impact on the newsgathering side of the company (They gather news?). Horner, seemingly anticipating the waves of criticism said, “There is a strict wall between business and editorial.”

Sure there is. I suppose that’s why there is no mention on FOX News’ website about the contribution. Only one of three largest contributions to the group this quarter and not a sentence on the donation? Enlightening.

According to The Times report,

In an e-mail to reporters, the Democratic National Committee said the donation showed that Fox News’ well-known mantra, “Fair and Balanced,” had been “rendered utterly meaningless.” Hari Sevugan, a D.N.C. spokesman, added that Fox News’ political coverage “should have a disclaimer for what it truly is — partisan propaganda.”

And when New York Times attempted to find a story on FOX’s site?

While many news organizations reported Tuesday on the $1 million gift, a late-afternoon search of Fox News’ Web site produced no mention of it.

A search at midnight on Wednesday by me produced no mention of it either.¹

1. http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/search?q=news+corp+$1+million+GOP [↩]

I thought this column provided an on-target look at President Obama’s recent statements in favor of building the now-notorious Ground Zero mosque near the 9/11 site. In it, The Daily Beast contributor Mark McKinnon said Obama’s speech displayed much-needed leadership on this issue, as if to say, “Here is what I think, let’s give the Islamic community our good graces, and let’s move on to more pressing concerns:”

… President Obama knows two important things: (1) Al Qaeda wants the world to believe that America is at war with Islam, and if an American president stands up in support of a mosque near the 9/11 site, then that narrative loses force; and (2) religious tolerance is the hallmark of American history and we can’t conveniently reject that heritage just because the issue may be emotional and painful.

George. W. Bush’s gifted speech writer Mike Gerson, as usual, weighs in eloquently:

“An enormously complex and emotional issue—but ultimately the right thing to do. A president is president for every citizen, including every Muslim citizen. Obama is correct that the way to marginalize radicalism is to respect the best traditions of Islam and protect the religious liberty of Muslim Americans. It is radicals who imagine an American war on Islam. But our conflict is with the radicals alone.”

And New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg lays out the case succinctly:

“The simple fact is, this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship, and the government has no right whatsoever to deny that right. And if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution.¹

More spinelessly, and with an election coming up, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, after backing construction last week, indicated that he was now against it, saying the mosque should be built elsewhere, which was possibly a response to this from Republican challenger Sharron Angle:

As the Majority Leader, Harry Reid is usually President Obama’s mouthpiece in the U.S. Senate, and yet he remains silent on this issue. Reid has a responsibility to stand up and say no to the mosque at Ground Zero or once again side with President Obama, this time against the families of 9/11 victims. America is waiting.²³

1. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-15/obamas-bold-leadership-on-the-ground-zero-mosque/?cid=hp:mainpromo2 [↩]
2. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/republicans-seize-ground-mosque-campaign-issue/story?id=11411490 [↩]
3. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38729272/ns/politics/ [↩]

Anyone who reads this blog well knows by now that I make no exceptions when it comes to holding leaders, folks in the media and others accountable for their words or actions. While my overall inclination is toward a certain ideology that generally puts caring for people above amassing wealth, from Democrats to Republicans to Independents, everyone’s feet is held to the fire here.

Credit: The Associated Press

I think John McCain is one of the most well-respected leaders in Washington, and it has been because of his willingness to work with folks on both sides of the aisle to get things done on the Hill. That, and he’s also one of the most pragmatic, clear thinking among his Republican brethren.

But nothing gets me charged more than exposing outright deceptiveness for what it is, and it can come from the left as much as from the right.

Yesterday, I came across this story from The Daily Beast, which claimed that McCain said on a radio show that he would not work with Democrats and reach across the aisle on the issue of immigration reform.

The originally linked story is from Think Progress, which, it’s no secret, is a progressive website, that probably, just as much as conservative ones, attempts to prop up its messages by begging, borrowing, stealing or by whatever other means to A) trash the opposing sides and B) advance its agenda.

This is a contemptible approach, in my view, no matter what side of the aisle you side with, and it’s a dangerous method for democracy as we know it. Let’s take the McCain case. Regarding the issue of immigration reform, a caller asked, and this is pasted straight from Think Progress’s article:

I would like to ask Sen. McCain if he will make a promise on the air now that if we reelect him, he will not reach across the aisle, especially with Lindsey Graham, for comprehensive immigration reform. Will you not do that for the time you’re in office. (I deleted the unnecessarily bold text where Think Progress claimed McCain wouldn’t reach across the aisle. Text is text. Bolding it doesn’t make it anymore important.)

McCain’s reply as recorded by Think Progress:

Yes ma’am. … I am promising that I will try to address the issue of immigration in a way that is best for the United States of America.

Now, when reading this for the first time, I thought the “…” was a little puzzling. I thought: “Was the ‘Yes ma’am’ just an acknowledgment that he would, indeed, not reach across the aisle or, and more plausibly, simply an acknowledgment that McCain heard and understood the lady’s question? From listening to the actual audio, it appears to be the latter. And did you notice the little chuckle McCain made after the woman was done with her question? This leads me to believe that he didn’t necessarily take the lady’s query terribly seriously and was merely attempting to come up with a reasonable response without outright disagreeing with her. Here is the audio:

I’m not confident that he agreed to that particular promise from this obviously right-winger. As for his part, Lindsey Graham, a senator from my home state of South Carolina, has very admirably reached out to folks on the other side of the aisle, as has McCain, to try to come to a consensus on numerous issues, immigration not the least of them.

After his long years of service of trying to work with Democrats and other leaders to get stuff done in Washington, I highly doubt that just because his state has adopted a new immigration bill, that he would decide out of the blue to turn into a rabid partisan crank. Partisanship, after all, is one component of politics that folks hate about Washington. That makes sense for a logical reason: partisanship (unless there’s a supermajority) rarely succeeds in getting anything done. And its folks like McCain and Graham who carrying the torch of the centrist, which, at least in some small part, bolsters my faith in the process.

The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno.

Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel. — Paul Krugman

***

In a literally and figuratively dark column today, The New York Times’ Paul Krugman made the case that American politicians’ inept and, in the case of centrist Democrats and Republicans, failed approach to keeping our local and state infrastructure sustainable has already set us on a gloomy path to fall well behind other modern countries. As he said,

Emerging nations are making huge efforts to upgrade their roads, their ports and their schools. Yet in America we’re going backward.

Krugman makes the case the decades of antigovernment talk has gotten us here,

rhetoric that has convinced many voters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted, that the public sector can’t do anything right.

And I don’t see signs of this type of nonsense letting up. In fact, with the advent of the Tea Party, the ones doing the spewing are probably energizing their frightened, quivering masses even more. My adopted state of Georgia provides a telling a case. Crippled by continued and seemingly endless cuts to state agency budgets, local and state offices can barely do their jobs. Late last month, already trimmed agency budgets in Georgia received a 4 percent cut on top of what has already been slashed. The cuts didn’t affect K-12 schools (although prior cuts have) but were handed down to other agencies, including colleges. The same centrist Democrats and Republicans were in a position to make up for at least some of the shortfalls in Washington by passing along an added $375 million of stimulus money to assist some 30 states, including Georgia. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

But conservative Democrats and Republicans in Congress stalled the funding, arguing that it added to the burgeoning federal deficit. Lawmakers such as U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) say they can only support it if there are offsetting spending cuts.

“Our national debt has now surpassed $13 trillion and we cannot continue spending at this alarming rate,” Isakson said. “This is a painful debate, but it is a necessary debate.”

These types of politicians have shown again and again that it’s not people that they care about (Actually, they care much less for certain people than others and hold still others in contempt for their lifestyles or choices) but protecting their rich interests, rich backers or ignorant constituents who vote along the party lines or for whoever says the word “god” the most, and this seems to be the case regardless of how soulless and spineless its representatives have become. Here’s Krugman again:

The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud — to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.

So the end result of the long campaign against government is that we’ve taken a disastrously wrong turn. America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere.

Well, the man did pen a song titled, “If I Was President,” but I think Wyclef Jean meant president of the United States, not president of Haiti at the time. He may, however, soon be the actual president of the latter. He, indeed, has confirmed that he was running for president of the earthquake-quaked nation, saying today that he was “compelled” to stop making music for a period and make a run for the top position. Here is The New York Times’ account of the story:

Credit: Peter Hapak for TIME

Wyclef Jean, a Haitian-American hip-hop artist who left his homeland for Brooklyn at the age of 9, confirmed Wednesday that he planned to run for president of this earthquake-battered country.

Mr. Jean, 40, said in an interview on Wednesday night that he felt compelled by the urgency of Haiti’s situation to interrupt his life as a musician and make a bid for the presidency in the Nov. 28 election.

“You can either live trying to do something or die having done nothing,” he said, adding that he did not want history to remember him as “somebody who, after the devastation of the country that he claimed he loved so much, just kept singing more songs.”

Mr. Jean, the son of a Nazarene minister, described his candidacy as a calling.

“I’m not running for president so much as I’m being drafted,” he said, speaking by telephone from New Jersey. “The youth, in their mind if I don’t come and put a perspective to things, they feel there’s no future for the country, and I have to agree with them.”

Since the earthquake, which killed as many as 300,000 people according to some estimates, Jean’s Yélé Haiti Foundation has drummed up some $9.1 million to help Haiti.

And of his song, “If I Was President,” the tune, according to The Times:

underscored the need for elected officials to seize the moment, he said. It talks about a president who “gets elected on Friday, assassinated on Saturday, buried on Sunday” — and then the country goes “back to work on Monday.”

Here is a live performance of the song:

Interestingly, Time’s NewsFeed conjured up a “mixtape” on some popular Jean lyrics, which may shed light on the singer’s potential platform as head of a nation.

Afghan War Diary

I downloaded and unpacked the entire 90,000-plus reports recently released from WikiLeaks and will attempt to touch on some of them as I sift through the debris.

Here is a snippet from the introductory text of the recently released documents, followed by a table, which I created showing the type of reports released and the number of each type of report. The documents are the most extensive release of its kind while the related war is still taking place. The following text and table should be quite revealing. More to come.

The Afghan War Diary is the most significant archive about the reality of war to have ever been released during the course of a war. The deaths of tens of thousands is normally only a statistic but the archive reveals the locations and the key events behind each most of these deaths. We hope its release will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and provide the raw ingredients necessary to change its course.
…

The material shows that cover-ups start on the ground. When reporting their own activities US Units are inclined to classify civilian kills as insurgent kills, downplay the number of people killed or otherwise make excuses for themselves. The reports, when made about other US Military units are more likely to be truthful, but still down play criticism. Conversely, when reporting on the actions of non-US ISAF forces the reports tend to be frank or critical and when reporting on the Taliban or other rebel groups, bad behavior is described in comprehensive detail. The behavior of the Afghan Army and Afghan authorities are also frequently described.

The reports come from US Army with the exception most Special Forces activities. The reports do not generally cover top-secret operations or European and other ISAF Forces operations. However when a combined operation involving regular Army units occurs, details of Army partners are often revealed. For example a number of bloody operations carried out by Task Force 373, a secret US Special Forces assassination unit, are exposed in the Diary — including a raid that lead to the death of seven children.

Here is the table showing how the reports break down by report type:

Afghan War Diary

Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange; Credit: Axel Martens

Here is a detailed look by The New York Times of documents released Sunday by WikiLeaks, that seemingly show the war in Afghanistan isn’t necessarily panning out as well as we were led to believe.

And here the entire set of documents, dubbed the Afghan War Diary, spanning the years 2004-2010.

I’ll probably write more on the actual content once I review it, but if you didn’t catch the owner of Wikileaks’ recent interview with Der Spiegel, it’s a must read. Here’s the link.

During the interview, Julian Assange had this to say when asked why he founded WikiLeaks, rather than pursuing other endeavors:

We all only live once. So we are obligated to make good use of the time that we have and to do something that is meaningful and satisfying. This is something that I find meaningful and satisfying. That is my temperament. I enjoy creating systems on a grand scale, and I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable. And I enjoy crushing bastards. So it is enjoyable work.

He enjoys “helping people” and “crushing bastards,” huh? How can one not love some journalistic Männlichkeitswahn such as that?