Susan Rice, the most “qualified” Barack Obama adviser, was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe moments ago explaining how Barack Obama’s “timetable” to retreat from Iraq is not the same as a “fixed deadline”.

Say what?

So, if you intend to leave Iraq 16 months from today, then – barring a rift in the space-time continuum – you are expecting to depart on a particular day, 16 months from now.  We get a new detail, too – Obama wanted to pull out of Iraq so that more troops could go to Afghanistan. Considering that he chairs a subcommittee with oversight authority over NATO forces in the Afghan theater. and has yet to hold a single hearing on the topic, this line of rationale reeks of disbelief. That Obama was willing to lose a country that functions as the lynchpin of Middle Eastern stability in order to stabilize the Afghanistan government is small comfort.

Susan Rice also poo-pooed Henry Kissinger’s editorial

in The Washington Post today which, in a fittingly diplomatic way, described Obama’s position on Iraq as asinine

Establishing a deadline is the surest way to undermine the hopeful prospects. It will encourage largely defeated internal groups to go underground until a world more congenial to their survival arises with the departure of American forces. Al-Qaeda will have a deadline against which to plan a full-scale resumption of operations. And it will give Iran an incentive to strengthen its supporters in the Shiite community for the period after the American withdrawal. Establishing a fixed deadline would also dissipate assets needed for the diplomatic endgame.

No matter what Rice says, saying we will leave Iraq in 16 months means…we will leave Iraq in 16 months. Kissinger’s analysis is not rocket science – one does not have to have spent decades in diplomatic circles to understand it. It is logically very simple. Most worrisome is that Barack Obama seems completely unable to comprehend it. The only explanation that makes any sense of Obama’s Iraq position is the McCain camp’s retort that he is willing to lose a war to win an election. Indeed, he is steadfast in it.

The only thing more ridiculous than Obama’s ideas is the way his surrogates have to defend them.

He will speak to the most despicable heads of state without qualification. He believes that Iran is not the USSR, so therefore, we should have tea.

Well, the Soviets were the biggest of enemies. Relatively speaking, just because the Soviet Union no longer exists, it does not follow that we should put Iran in their place. The policy of an American president ought not be to promote distasteful regimes to points of prominence because there is no one worse. The Soviets had an aura of self preservation about them – Islamic fundamentalists suffer no such illusions. Islamists’ place is an eternity that cares not if major Western cities are nuked. Barack Obama wants to chat, at the highest level, making the presidency of our country no more valuable than a wannabe caliphate that makes its women wear head scarves in the 110 degree heat. He will kick sand and ride a camel, and in the process, embarrass us all.

Obama is a foreign policy disaster waiting to happen. He claims he will not speak to Hamas until they denounce their stance on Israel’s destruction. Even then, he should not be the one talking to them. He doesn’t get that.

Here is what he actually is. He is a senator that defeated Alan Keyes, imported from Maryland, to take the place of a governor candidate disqualified because he wanted to have kinky sex with his wife. Barack Obama is qualified to be a community leader in northern Illinois, most unprepared for anything much more than that. His mentor hates America, and his wife on only likes her country if her husband is elected to lead it. He hasn’t disagreed with any of it, any more than required by the punditry (which is deficient enough, if you ask me).

For all the Democrats’ pronouncements on the purposes of diplomacy, their current standard bearer seems to have zero understanding as to the world as it exists today. The American people are smarter than this. Barack Obama’s beliefs run counter to those that founded our country. His foreign policy would violate every studied and established rule of negotiation diplomacy ever established. He is dangerous. He must not win.

Iraq will award contracts to 41 foreign oil firms in a bid to boost production that could give multinationals a potentially lucrative foothold in huge but underdeveloped oil fields, an official said on Sunday.”We chose 35 companies of international standard, according to their finances, environment and experience, and we granted them permission to extract oil,” oil ministry spokesman Asim Jihad told AFP.

Six other state-owned oil firms from Algeria, Angola, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam will also be awarded extraction deals, Jihad said.

I guess that means we need Vietnamese companies to drill in ANWR, then, since we won’t let our own.

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In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda – greatly weakening its effectiveness. But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

Actually, the Iraqi government is starting to, albeit not as quickly as any of us would prefer. To be so sophisticated and worldly, Democrats of late tend to view historically slow moving events through microwave-quick glasses. A responsible commander-in-chief would be advocated a military expansion right now.

Unlike many of the hard line lefties out there, Barack Obama is at least no longer in denial that the situation in Iraq is improving. However, his response has been puzzling. Because there is progress, but not fast enough progress, we must then throw the baby out with the bathwater? (okay, bad metaphor – we already know Barack Obama doesn’t mind throwing out babies).

His positions aren’t evolving – they are regressing into a muddled mess.

Not that all is good in Iraq – no serious minded individual believes that. But the seeming unwillingness by many to recognize any progress at all in a very difficult region and context demonstrates, in my view, an exceptional lack of seriousness. The media can’t take off the Vietnam-era glasses long enough to care to get it right. This web effort is a move in the right direction.

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Three Iraqi soldiers threw themselves on a suicide attacker wearing an explosives vest at an Army Day celebration Sunday – an act of heroism the U.S.

said likely prevented many more deaths. Iraqi police said at least 11 people were killed in the blast, the deadliest in a series of bombings in Baghdad.

…

These martyrs gave their lives so that others might live,” said Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a U.S. military spokesman.

If this is the quality of character of the individuals now signing up to join the Iraqi military, things will be getting much better a lot quicker.

MANY Americans and Iraqis feel that 2007 was the year the war in Iraq turned around: the “surge” strategy has pacified large sections of the country; previously hostile factions like those of the cleric Moktada al-Sadr and the sheiks in Anbar Province have dropped their opposition or even sided with American and government forces; and the number of insurgent attacks has dropped steadily. Still, numbers don’t lie: for those in uniform, 2007 was the deadliest year since the invasion.

First, there is a tell. We know we’re dealing with a liberal anti-war advocate because she starts her thought with the word “feel”. That needs to be edited.

Second, the aggregate number, no matter what the subject, is secondary to where the numbers are going. A true look at the data shows amazing improvement since May, 2007, when 126 American fatalities were reported. Following a monthly linear trend down, in December, 2007, 23 American soldiers lost their lives.

New York City averaged 41 murders a month in 2007. Los Angeles averaged 28. If the trend continues (and seven months of data is instructive that it will), there will be twenty-one states more dangerous to Americans than Iraq in 2008. That comparison sounds like a more compelling, truth telling factoid to me.

Yes, 2007 was a record year for American fatalities in Iraq, but both the Times and someone pursuing an advanced degree at an elite American university know that that’s not the story.

UPDATE Proof that The New York Times understands the concept of statistical trends, at least when blaming Republicans for economic troubles

On Friday, the Labor Department reported that employment in December had buckled as well. Over all, a meager 18,000 jobs were created. Even worse, hiring in the private sector contracted by 13,000 jobs, a harbinger of recession. The figures are subject to change, but job growth has been slowing since June, making a big upward correction unlikely. The unemployment rate, which is not subject to revision, also jumped in December, rising to 5 percent. As recently as last March, unemployment was only 4.4 percent. Such a big swing in such a short time also suggests a recession.

Take note of this instructive subject lesson on the distinctions between convenient truths and inconvenient truths.

Of the 21 fatalities this month, 14 have been combat related. Since the surge, even Iraqi security force fatalities are signficantly down. al Qaeda is disbanding, and American, Iraqi and coalition losses are shrinking. Hopefully, with increasingly more breathing room, the Iraqi politicians can produce some statesmen, and establish a working federal government.

The most impressive part of the new information coming out of Iraq is the utter and nearly total defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq, and even more encouraging, that American officials are convinced that al Qaeda, not sectarian violence, is presently the main concern in the country. Iraq is not in the midst of a civil war. It is not Vietnam. In fact, the dissimilarities have been there since the beginning. Unless, of course, you were a bit slow on the uptake, and part of the Democrat leadership. Harry Reid, circa February, 2007

After months of heated rhetoric slamming President Bush’s Iraq policy, the Senate’s top Democrat moved into new terrain by declaring the Iraq war a worse blunder than Vietnam.

“This war is a serious situation. It involves the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country,” Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, told CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.”

“So we should take everything seriously. We find ourselves in a very deep hole and we need to find a way to dig out of it.”

Asked whether he considers it a worse blunder than Vietnam, Reid responded, “Yes.”

Comparisons to Vietnam are nothing new, but a “worse than” designation from a top lawmaker is.

Reid never supported the surge, by the way.

When Iraq’s government is stable and fully functioning, Joe Lieberman will be the only Democrat to thank. And for a time, even he was kicked to the curb.

As a side note to the topic of winning in Iraq, do you really want to vote for “abandon the world, now” Ron Paul? Or, for that matter, the apologizing Mike Huckabee, who wants to further destabilize Pakistan, and now fears a Pakistani immigrant invasion?

Foreign policy is too important in 2008 to not occupy billing number one on everyone’s political radar – well, it’s always too important, actually. It’s the lack of a foreign policy as the discussion de jour in the nineties that has exacerbated some problems in the 2000s.  Even with Paul and Huckabee, and Obama, it’s not the lack of foreign policy experience that bothers me about them, but more so an apparent lack of judgment.

The Times acknowledged to The Post on Wednesday that the going rate for such an ad would be $181,692.

But a spokesman for MoveOn told The Post that the group paid just $65,000.

Amid a firestorm of criticism yesterday, the Times seemed confused about the proper ad rate.

Earlier in the day, the paper’s spokeswoman said MoveOn had received a discount and confirmed to Reuters the normal rate was “about $181,000.” But later, the same spokeswoman told The Associated Press that the proper rate for such an ad is about $65,000.

Saying he wanted to place an advocacy group ad similar to MoveOn’s, a Post re porter who contacted the Times without identifying himself was told earlier this week that the rate was about $167,000.

“We do not distinguish the advertising rates based on the political content of the ad,” spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said, confirming that the normal rate was “around $181,000.”

Of course you don’t. That’s why MoveOn.org received somewhere between a 61% and 64% discount on its “aid and comfort to the enemy” ad attacking the commanding general in Iraq for not adopting its fabricated version of complete disaster in the Middle East.

Of course, the Times, being the upstanding bellwether of responsible and fair journalism that it is, will certainly offer the same discount rate to Freedom’s Watch. Or not. We will certainly see. There is no debate that the price for the ad that was sold to MoveOn.org was $65,000.00. The real fun will be watching the debacle when the Times explains in its answer to a certain shareholders’ derivative suit why it has cut its ad rates by 60% at a time of self-described declining circulation.

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]]> http://moorethoughts.com/2007/09/14/far-removed-from-doubt/feed/ 2 http://moorethoughts.com/2007/07/08/wave-the-wand-and-poof-it-away/ http://moorethoughts.com/2007/07/08/wave-the-wand-and-poof-it-away/#comments Sun, 08 Jul 2007 19:41:55 +0000 Nathan Moore http://moorethoughts.com/2007/07/08/wave-the-wand-and-poof-it-away/ The New York Times editorial staff has outdone themselves this time, call for the full and immediate withdrawal of American forces from Iraq, the consequences be damned – or, in this case, simply wished away absent any critical thought.

Much like our local Gannett affiliate, the Times opinioneers often live in a delightful world where fairies, gnomes and Teletubbies are each courted equally for their vote. Toon Town never had it so good.

Adding to the amusement, while the editors consider Iraq an unmitigated disaster, the front page of the Week in Review discusses how successful American and Iraqi forces have been in using both diplomacy and force to quell the unrest in Anbar Province, most specifically in the former deadliest city in Iraq, Ramadi

Until only a few months ago, the Central Street bazaar was enemy territory, watched over by American machine-gunners in sandbagged bunkers on the roof of the governor’s building across the road. Ramadi was Iraq’s most dangerous city, and the area around the building the most deadly place in Ramadi. Now, a pact between local tribal sheiks and American commanders has sent thousands of young Iraqis from Anbar Province into the fight against extremists linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The deal has all but ended the fighting in Ramadi and recast the city as a symbol of hope that the tide of the war may yet be reversed to favor the Americans and their Iraqi allies.

This is no small feat. And it was done by using ingenuous tactics combined with effective force. More interesting is a rather gloomy, and now incorrect, Marine assessment of Ramadi from just last year

Ramadi, which lies on the edge of a desert that reaches west from the city to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, had a population of 400,000 in Saddam Hussein’s time. That was before the insurgents — a patchwork of Al Qaeda-linked militants, die-hard loyalists of Saddam Hussein’s ruling Baath Party and other resistance groups fighting to oust American forces from Iraq — coalesced in a terror campaign that turned much of the city into a ghost town, and much of Anbar into a cauldron for American troops. Last year, a leaked Marine intelligence report conceded that the war in Anbar was effectively lost, and that it was on course to becoming the seat of the Islamic militants’ plans to establish a new caliphate in Iraq.

Now back to the call for withdrawal.

The Times’ editors want an ample dessert to accompany their din call for surrender. Broken down into easy-to-refute sections, the editorial blasts Bush for failure, yet sets up a roster of haughty goals unattainable without a significant troop presence in Iraq. For instance, the Times wants us out, yet still demands that the Turks stay out of Kurdistan, that Iran’s influence be checked among the Shiites in the south, that al Qaeda not be given refuge to train anywhere in the country, and that those who allied with the Americans be protected. How this is to be done without an effective military ground presence is apparently left up to the gnomes. Though in fairness one solution is presented – work closer with the United Nations.

That must come from the Teletubby wing of the ideological Left. They are of European origin, after all.

I daresay that the opinion leaders at the world’s paper of record are nothing short of naive. Tucked between the Hudson and the Atlantic, they toil away, devising a world recognizable only to them and the self-proclaimed elite who buy into such rank nonsense. And then in an effort toward self-validation, offer pronouncements as to how they would make their world work better. Of course, this is a completely useless exercise. A make-believe world where you concoct your own rules and offer your own pronouncements does no one anywhere much good, except those who buy into the hype, who receive the benefit of a feel-good ideological fix. Meanwhile, the real world demands real solutions. Whiny, thoughtless editorial pieces only work to make those solutions harder to find.

UPDATE More water to douse on the Times’ fire.

UPDATE UPDATE And of course, Turkey would never interfere with Kurdistan.

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]]> http://moorethoughts.com/2007/07/08/wave-the-wand-and-poof-it-away/feed/ 3 http://moorethoughts.com/2007/05/30/fear-inc/ http://moorethoughts.com/2007/05/30/fear-inc/#comments Wed, 30 May 2007 14:35:48 +0000 Nathan Moore http://moorethoughts.com/2007/05/30/fear-inc/ The Tennessean runs a story today on Gore’s message, which follows on what I thought was a perceptive opinion piece by David Brooks in The New York Times a couple days prior (well, not everyone thought it perceptive).

Al Gore’s newest (s)creed comes in the form of a lament. Moving on from the gospel of environmental disaster, which causes the otherwise anti-religious among us to throw their hands to the heavens and shake with the spirit of Gaea, we are implored to now look to the American political tragedy

“There is a crack in the foundation of our democracy,” the former Tennessee senator said.

That crack, he said, is caused by the replacement of reasoned dialogue with manipulative appeals to emotion.

We have nothing to fear but Al Gore himself – and the Democrats say that Republicans peddle the emotion. Having read a number of excerpts from the book, I cannot help but flashback to college, where reading the tedious writing of overeducated academics was a daily requirement. Having moved beyond that phase of life, I see no reason to be so masochistic – especially since we’re talking only about a self proclaimed academic, who so gloriously flunked out of divinity school, couldn’t finish law school, and who (funny enough) received a “D” in natural sciences at Harvard with an overall “C” average.

But hey, he writes nearly as awkwardly as Bush speaks, and a Gore presidency would have required us all to wear solar panels on our backs by now, so I’m happy with the trade off.

Gore’s complaint seems to stem from the emotional “manipulation” of the public by the Bush administration over the Iraq war and the public’s reliance on broadcast media (as Brooks notes, doesn’t the Internet solve a lot of the problems Gore bemoans?). The former vice president’s inescapable conclusion is that no one rational could believe what conservatives believe. Because, as we now all know, the 9/11 attacks never actually happened, Saddam Hussein wasn’t responsible for a million deaths, and France and Russian didn’t maintain the same threat assessment the United States did. If only we would just skip away from the Middle East with a smile on our face. Without our interference the region would devolve back into the great and peaceful landscape it has always been. Perhaps even women will get the chance to vote by the next millennium. Or, if we’re lucky, men will, too.

Contrary to Gore’s assertion, the American public isn’t stupid. There’s a difference between dumb and busy. Yes, people get their information faster now – because they can, and because life has become more and more complex with each generation. Read Gore’s book in its entirety if you must – I’m going to stage a protest and watch some TV.

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]]> http://moorethoughts.com/2007/05/30/fear-inc/feed/ 0 http://moorethoughts.com/2007/05/28/support-the-troops-win-the-war/ http://moorethoughts.com/2007/05/28/support-the-troops-win-the-war/#comments Mon, 28 May 2007 15:06:14 +0000 Nathan Moore http://moorethoughts.com/2007/05/28/support-the-troops-win-the-war/ Today we honor those who have fought for us, and who have achieved the noblest calling in the form of the ultimate sacrifice, forever forgoing their own rights to enjoy life and liberty, and who have accepted a halt to their personal pursuit of happiness.

Or else, I suppose, those who today choose to stand upon the outer ramparts of civilization and stare down the worst of theocratic autocrats, who would create a caliphate which not only seek to imprison individuals through physical control, but to destroy the human spirit at its very core, have found in their dedication a more fulfilling and immediate happiness. That is something enviable.

For me and all those I call close, the tribute of the heart and mind to the American soldier is a very real one. It is real in that takes into account certain truths outside the colorful metaphors. What a soldier exists to do, it must be remembered, in fact his very dedication to the cause that will always be the United States of America, rests in the truth that he is to defeat and destroy the enemy wherever he is found. If he is not allowed to do that, his very existence is at most a depressing philosophical contradiction. That’s not even the real problem – the real problem is that there are pols who believe he is unable to do it – the perverse among us can with a straight face call that “supporting the troops”.

The public debate today is unfortunate, and the stakes of the 2008 election grow in importance every day. Even on the Republican side, there exists a sad candidate whose world is most compatible with a time where the world was still separated by the speed of a steamer or a headwind impaired zeppelin, and who has blamed this country for provoking 9/11. On the Democrat side, things are worse. If there is a candidate running for the Democrat nomination who believes that the American military’s might exceeds that of Upper Volta, I don’t know who it is. The most hawkish of the Democrats, Hillary Clinton, finally collapsed in a mass of capitulation to the MoveOn.org base of her party by voting to defund the troops this past week. How utterly contemptible.

Next year’s election decides more than the party in power – it will determine whether last century will in fact be the last American century. Supporting the troops always means winning the war. There are too many people who believe more in the hippy-mindset induced failure in Vietnam than in the American military that won two world wars. To the observant, the greater and unavoidable conflict between civilization and barbarism now set in the Middle East has not even been fought yet. If America’s Left held even a smidgen of the contempt for Islamist jihadists that they do for American Christians, the terms of the Democrats’ candidates’ debate would worry me much less. Unfortunately, those who would wish our military out of Iraq have no answer as to what to do when the region in its entirety collapses into the black hole of Islamic fundamentalism upon our exit.

Peace without victory is a mirage. What to do with the war is win it, at all costs. Making that commitment is the best thing we as a People can do this Memorial Day for our troops. Support the troops – win the war.

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