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After so many years of fear and loathing, we had almost forgotten what it's like to feel good about our country. On Thursday night, that long-dormant emotion came rushing back, like an old dream that pops out of the deepest recesses of memory, suddenly as clear as light. "They said this day would never come," said Barack Obama, and yet here, right before us, was indisputable evidence that it had.
What felt good was not merely the improbable and historic political triumph of an African-American candidate carrying a state with a black population of under 3 percent. It was the palpable sense that our history was turning a page whether or not Mr. Obama or his doppelgänger in improbability, Mike Huckabee, end up in the White House. We could allow ourselves a big what-if: What if we could have an election that was not a referendum on either the Clinton or Bush presidencies? For the first time, we found ourselves on that long-awaited bridge to the 21st century, the one that was blown up in the ninth month of the new millennium's maiden year.
The former community organizer from Chicago and the former Baptist preacher from Arkansas have little in common in terms of political views. But as I wrote here a month ago, the author of "The Audacity of Hope" and the new man from Hope, Ark., are flip sides of the same coin. The slogan "change" - a brand now so broad and debased that both Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney appropriated it for their own campaigns - does not do justice to the fresh starts that Mr. Obama and Mr. Huckabee represent.
The two men are the youngest candidates in the entire field, the least angry and the least inclined to seek votes by saturation-bombing us with the post-9/11 arsenal of fear. They both radiate the kind of wit and joy (and, yes, hope) that can come only with self-confidence and a comfort in their own skins. They don't run from Americans who are not in their club. Mr. Obama had no problem winning over a conclave of white Christian conservatives at Rick Warren's megachurch in Orange County, Calif., even though he insisted on the necessity of condoms in fighting AIDS. Unlike the top-tier candidates in the G.O.P. presidential race, or the "compassionate conservative" president who refused for years to meet with the N.A.A.C.P., Mr. Huckabee showed up last fall for the PBS debate at the historically black Morgan State University and aced it.
The "they" who did not see the cultural power of these men, of course, includes not just the insular establishments of both their parties but the equally cloistered echo chamber of our political journalism's status quo. It would take a whole column to list all the much-repeated Beltway story lines that collapsed on Thursday night.
But some are worth recounting because they prove nearly as instructive as they are laughable. The Benazir Bhutto assassination was judged as a boon for Mrs. Clinton because it would knock the silly voters to their senses by reminding them it was no time to roll the dice with foreign-policy novices. Oprah Winfrey's Obama rallies were largely viewed as a routine celebrity endorsement, while Mr. Romney's address on "Faith in America" was judged as momentous as "Mission Accomplished." Only a week ago, Mr. Huckabee was literally laughed at by reporters for his "Howard Dean meltdown" at a press conference where he contradictorily exhibited and then disowned an attack ad on Mr. Romney.
The final Des Moines Register poll - Mr. Huckabee up by six points and Mr. Obama by seven - was greeted with near-universal skepticism. John Edwards and John McCain, we were reliably informed by those "on the ground," were surging in Iowa. Mr. Huckabee might have fatally insulted voters by ditching Iowa on the eve of the caucus to appear with Jay Leno. All those collegiate Obama enthusiasts, like the Dean brigades of the last Iowa political insurgency, were just too flighty to actually bother to caucus.
What was mostly forgotten in these errant narratives were the two largest elephants in the room: Iraq and George W. Bush. The conventional wisdom had it that both a tamped-down war and a lame-duck president were exiting so quickly from center stage that they were receding from the minds of voters. In truth, they were only receding from the minds of those covering those voters.
The continued political import of Iraq could be found in three different polls in the past six weeks - Pew, ABC News-Washington Post and Wall Street Journal-NBC News. They all showed the same phenomenon: the percentage of Americans who believe that the war is going well has risen strikingly in tandem with the diminution of violence - from 30 percent in February to 48 percent in November, for instance, in the Pew survey. Even so, these same polls show no change at all in the public's verdict on this misadventure or in President Bush's dismal overall approval rating. By the same margins as before (sometimes even slightly larger), a majority of Americans favor withdrawal no matter what happened during the "surge." In another poll (Gallup), a majority still call the war a mistake, a finding that has varied little since February 2006.
It's safe to assume that these same voters did not forget that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards enabled the Iraq fiasco. Or that Mr. Obama publicly opposed it. When Mrs. Clinton attacked Mr. Obama for his supposedly "irresponsible and frankly naíve" foreign policy ideas - seeking talks with enemies like Iran - she didn't diminish him so much as remind voters of her own irresponsibility and naíveté about Mr. Bush's Iraq scam in 2002.
In the Republican field, no candidate has less association with Iraq than Mr. Huckabee, a politically lucky and unintended consequence of his spectacular ignorance about foreign policy in general. When he finally did speak up in a newly published essay in Foreign Affairs, he condemned the Bush administration for its "arrogant bunker mentality" in its execution of the war. Mr. Romney, sensing an opening among the party faithful, loudly demanded that Mr. Huckabee "apologize to the president" for this insult. But Mr. Huckabee had the political savvy not to retreat, and in Iowa's final hours even Mr. Romney desperately reversed himself to slam Mr. Bush's mismanagement of Iraq.
Among the Republican candidates, Mr. Huckabee is also as culturally un-Bush as you can get. He constantly reminds voters that he did not go to an Ivy League school and that his plain values derived from a bona fide blue-collar upbringing, as opposed to, say, clearing brush on a vacation "ranch" bought with oil money attained with family connections. "People are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid them off," he told Mr. Leno, in a nifty reminder of Mr. Romney's corporate history as a Bush-style, Harvard-minted M.B.A.
It's such populist Huckabee sentiments that are already driving the Republican empire to strike back. The party that has milked religious conservatives for votes for two decades is traumatized by the prospect that one of that ilk might actually become its standard-bearer. Especially if the candidate in question is a preacher who bashes Wall Street and hedge-fund managers and threatens to take a Christian attitude toward those too poor to benefit from the Bush tax cuts.
No wonder the long list of party mandarins eager to take down Mr. Huckabee includes Rush Limbaugh, Robert Novak, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and National Review. Dan Bartlett, the former close Bush adviser, has snickered at Mr. Huckabee's presumably low-rent last name. Fred Barnes was reduced to incoherent babbling when a noticeably gloomy Fox News announced Mr. Huckabee's victory Thursday night.
But if, as the new narrative has it, Mr. McCain will ride to the party's rescue, the Republicans' relief may be short-lived. He is their most experienced and principled horse, but he's also the oldest and the most encumbered by Bush and Iraq baggage. The NBC News analyst Chuck Todd may be on to something when he half-jokingly suggested last week that there was a 5 percent chance that the G.O.P. may have to find a nominee not yet in the race.
Mr. Obama is in a far better position in his more-or-less ideologically united party than Mr. Huckabee is among Republicans, but, of course, he could lose for a myriad of reasons. Mr. Obama could make some world-class mistakes; the Clinton machine could land some attacks more devastating than its withering critique of his kindergarten paper.
But if Clinton operatives know how to go negative, they don't have the positive balance of a 21st-century message. Iowa confirmed that the message the campaign has used to date - experience - is D.O.A. in post-Bush America. It was fascinating to watch that realization sink in on Thursday night. In her concession speech, Mrs. Clinton had her husband, the most tangible totem of her experience, standing right beside her, yet she didn't mention him or so much as acknowledge him.
Even before that tableau was swept away by the sight of the Obama family all but dancing across the stage in celebration, it looked like the passing of an era.
Frank Rich is a regular columnist for The New York Times.
© 2007 The New York Times
50 Comments so far
Show AllRICH M -- ditto, great response. Thank you.
Namaste … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … … … … … … … … … …
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RichM,
You are right, about Yugoslavia.
Rich M,
you're so full of it. If NATO had not intervened in 1999 how many people would have died because of Milosevic's machinations? How many people had to die to at the hands of paramilitaries and Milosevic's army before you would be willing to call it genocide?
My arguments are based on realism. Your arguments are based on rewriting history to fit a certain narrative.
You say "Yet you are citing material from HRW which merely establishes that some Serbs committed war crimes. This kind of argument is on a par with apologists for the Iraq War, who accuse antiwar people of "supporting Saddam." "
Do you really believe that analogy? :) That's ridiculous. As I posted before, Saddam is not worth defending. (Neither is Milosevic or the Taliban). However, I am a realist:
"Is ending genocide in the Balkans more important than ending genocide somewhere else? No. Was it more practical to intervene in the Balkans in the 1990s than in Iraq in 2003-2009 given the assets of the states participating in the coalition, our relations with states neighboring the conflict zone, and the logistical-space of the area in which American soliders would operate? Yes."
Intervention through NATO in Southeastern Europe has brought increased stability to not just the former republics of Yugoslavia, but to the entire region which was impacted by emigration out of the conflict zones. Clinton was right to act to prevent another Bosnia. He acted with the full support of the Serbia's neighbors before Kosovo became another Bosnia. Get real.
Our honest disagreement is that I see the merits of the United States engaging the 21st century internetted world versus isolating ourselves from it. The Taliban, Saddam, and Milosevic are all alike in that they push or pushed militant ethnically exclusive forms of political ideology, were not elected, and committed genocide.
Where their situations differ is in who their neighbors are or were, logistical geography, and in who opposed them. In addition, they differ signficantly as regimes in that the Taliban harbored Al Qaeda. The United States should never surrender people to genocide. That it happens is because of either lack of political will to intervene to stop it or because it is realistically impossible to act alone to stop it. However, we should always oppose it, and be realistic about how politics actually works in towns across world.
It's the same situation everywhere in the world. One group acts, the other doesn't. The group that acts takes power. How you can think that the Taliban is not pressuring Pakistani politics is beyond me. If we don't act, the Taliban will. Get real.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1650518,00.html
I'm not against political Islam. I'm against antidemocratic political ideology. I'm for rule of law. I'm against rules written by antidemocratic ideologies.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1628168,00.html
This is great! Frank Rich, former New York times drama critic who somehow managed to move up to Op-Ed writer, who served as a loyal ass-licker for George W during the 2000 campaign, so dazzled and so uplifted by GWB's jokes, back-slapping, and nicknames for reporters -- is now casting doubt upon Senator Clinton while massaging his newfound social conscience by prostrating himself before the Obama altar! His tongue must be sore from having it up Obama's you-know-what for so long. Not to worry, though, the Times health plan will probably give better coverage than anything Old Barack could muster!
What a load of cr*p! How stupid do you have to be to write for the NYT? If Ronald McDonald and Gumby were running Frank Rich would probably say they were a breath of fresh air too. Yuk!
doug (1:11 am & 1:12 am) - I said at 10:10 pm that there was "no genocide in Kosovo." Your Wikipedia article on Bosnia has precisely nothing to do with Kosovo. But the Wikipedia article on Kosovo says,
Some critics have accused the coalition of leading a war in Kosovo under the false pretense of genocide...President Clinton..and his administration, were accused of inflating the number of Kosovar Albanians killed by Serbians...Secretary of Defense William Cohen...claimed, "We've now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing...They may have been murdered." Clinton...spoke of "at least 100,000 (Kosovar Albanians) missing". Later,.... Clinton also claimed...that "NATO stopped deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide." Clinton compared the events of Kosovo to the Holocaust....The New York Times reported, "On April 19, the State Department said that up to 500,000 Kosovar Albanians were missing and feared dead."
In fact, though, the number of civilians murdered turned out to be in the range of a few thousand. The discussion in the Wiki article about "casualties" is not as well done as I've seen elsewhere, but does mention various post-war inquiries done by groups like the Red Cross, ICTY, & the Lancet medical journal. None of the estimates cited there are over 10-12,000 deaths; some are only 3-4000.
In other words, the numbers the US was throwing around to justify NATO's bombing, like 100,000 to 500,000, replete with comparisons to the Holocaust -- this was all utter baloney, just like Bush's claims of "WMD." This was precisely my point, above.
I also did not say, above, that the Milosevic admin was filled with sweet innocent angels. Yet you are citing material from HRW which merely establishes that some Serbs committed war crimes. This kind of argument is on a par with apologists for the Iraq War, who accuse antiwar people of "supporting Saddam."
As for your 2nd post -- Are you asking me if I see potential for instability in Pakistan? (Yes, I do.) Are you asking whether I favor calling for Pakistan's Supreme Court justices to be reinstated? (Sure.) Are you asking if I support "pressuring the Pakistani government to get tough on Taliban elements"? (No, I don't. We should get out of the business of pressuring anybody. We have no right to tell anyone else what to do; no right to be overthrowing governments anywhere; & no right to be installing our own puppets anywhere by military force.)
- By the way (since you seem so gung-ho for using military force to go after the Taliban): the very fact that the Taliban has major influence in that region is itself largely due to US machinations in the past. In fact, much of this was the brainchild of Obama's foreign policy adviser, Brzezinski!
Yo, Rich, go back to criticizing Broadway shows.
My compliments to RichM, AdeleTheCzech, and other sassy, astute responders to this quality progressive news and commentary digest, CommonDreams.
I'm dismayed, but not surprised, that Mr Edwards's remonstrances to rein in an out of control capitalist establishment is probably falling on deaf ears. I have no illusions about Mr Obama emerging as a bona fide agent of renewal on the other side of this coming election should he win. MORE conciliation with the likes of Exxon, McDonnell Douglas, or Kaiser Permanente has the stench of death about it to this reader. Death of a democracy.
What does a progressive citizen do in the face of 1, 4, 8 more years of rot?
anniesee
As you can see, the 'fix is in' for the upcoming election. I watched the debate Saturday night, first with the Republicans, then the Democrats. I tied Richardson and Edwards for first place and tied Obama and Clinton for last place.
Barn Burner
We'll see what happens in the fall.
Once you figure out whether the context for American intervention is 'noble' or not do yourself a favor and put down the Foucalt novel you're reading about how 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter' and read the news or a book about a foreign country and their internal politics. Your purely literary critique of American foreign policy is admirable to a point: the point when bullets start flying and we as a nation are asked to choose a side in a country armed with nuclear weapons and the second largest Muslim population in the world neighboring Afghanistan and the world's second largest population, India. Can you not see the potential chain of instability? Of course the United States needs to take positions on certain aspects of Pakistani politics.
I organized against the Iraq War in 2002. It's obvious it was about oil. The same way that it's obvious Pakistan is in a power crisis. And it's obvious it's about the future of common law institutions and democracy in Pakistan. Pakistan is not like Saudi Arabia, it is not ruled by a monarchy and the Wahhabist version of the Koran does not decide everything. Which is exactly why we in the United States should be calling for the reinstatement of the Supreme Court justices Musharraf dismissed, calling for internationally monitored elections, and pressuring the Pakistani government to get tough on Taliban elements on their side of the border. It's obvious you have to do more than use military force, but I don't think it's unreasonable to bring Osama bin Laden to justice because he lives in the mountains somewhere anymore than it is to bring Milosevic to justice in the Netherlands.
These are positions on which most of the members of the United Nations are united.
http://www.un.org/Docs/scres/2001/sc2001.htm
Rich M,
most people stop digging their own ditch, but feel free to explain to me why a convicted war criminal was not a cynical politician who used genocide for political advantage. Reading WSWS articles that struggle to frame the post-genocide peacekeeping mission as a NATO land grab are not going to erase the facts of genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the complicity of the Milosevic administration in working with paramilitaries to bring it about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Genocide
"In 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found General Krstic guilty of genocide for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, thereby making it the first ever legally determined act of genocide by an international tribunal."
http://hrw.org/reports/2006/milosevic1206/
"This 76-page report examines key evidence introduced at trial, the most comprehensive account to date of the conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. The report finds that the trial revealed how leaders in Belgrade and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia financed the wars; how they provided material to Croatian and Bosnian Serbs; and how they created administrative and personnel structures to support the Croatian Serb and Bosnian Serb armies. The report traces the mechanisms, some of which were previously secret, by which Belgrade fueled the conflicts."
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/kosovo/
"Individuals who committed war crimes and crimes against humanity continue to hold high positions in the Serbian government and police force, and the Yugoslav army. HRW's 593-page report, "Under Orders: War Crimes in Kosovo," uses statistical methods and comprehensive field research to document the torture, killings, rapes, and forced expulsions of Kosovar Albanians committed by forces under the command of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and his inner circle of political and military leaders between March 24 and June 12, 1999, the period of NATO's air campaign against Yugoslavia."
Sibel Edmonds, the former FBI translator who has been under a Bush administration gag order for the past 5 years, has now begun to disclose some of the classified information she has been prohibited from revealing.
In the article, just filed tonight, Edmonds reveals details overheard on wiretaps she translated during her time at the FBI, just after 9/11. Her disclosures to the Times reveal a maze of nuclear black market espionage involving U.S. Defense and State Department officials, that resulted in the sale and propagation of nuclear secrets to Turkish and Israeli interests. In turn, that information was then sold to Pakistan and used by A.Q. Kahn for development of nuclear weapons. The secrets were subsequently proliferated to Iran, Libya, North Korea, and potentially al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden, just weeks prior to September 11th, 2001.
In late October, Edmonds had told The BRAD BLOG she was prepared to reveal the information to any major U.S. broadcast media outlet, after feeling that she had exhausted all efforts to see the disturbing information properly investigated by U.S. Government agencies. She had, in fact, spent years in classified interviews with high-ranking officials from the FBI, DoJ, 9/11 Commission and both houses of the U.S. Congress, in hopes of seeing accountability brought concerning the issues of national security, which the DoJ's own Inspector General had described as "credible," "serious," and "warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review by the FBI."
Despite broken promises for hearings on her case by U.S. Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA), support from Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Patrick Leahy (D-MI), and a number of mainstream exposés several years ago detailing aspects of her story before she was willing to break her unprecedented "States Secrets Privilege" gag order, none of the American broadcast media outlets took her up on her offer.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.ece
heavyrunner
In america, if you have even one drop of "black blood" in you, you are a nigger. See Puddinghead Wilson.
The Taliban also destroyed the Buddhas of Bamyan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamyan), which had survived about 14 centuries of conflicts. This demonstrates the genuine volatile mix that risks materializing today when radical religion, tribal/identity politics and modern firepower combine. The three middle-eastern religions, well before the Crusades, all seem to have consistently led people to destructive acts.
It would be nice to think that there was some sort of noble motive in Bush's actions there, but then the subject of oil comes up. Bush Sr. didn't oppose the monarch in Kuwait -- he restored him to power. Bush Jr. didn't go after Saudi Arabia because most of the 9/11 terrorists were supposedly Saudi, quite the contrary. Halliburton didn't come back to the US after being based largely in the tax-free Caymans -- it went to Dubai. And the second-largest recipient of US foreign aid (after Israel of course) is another Islamic country: Egypt.
No, there's something today that's thicker than even religious extremism -- and it's not oil. It's sheer greed and lust for power. It overrides all else, including -- unfortunately -- the sheer love of freedom.
I understand that alcohol is forbidden in strict Islam. I can guess with some degree of certainty that if anyone (whether Islam or a modern-day resurgence of Probihition) tried outlawing beer in the US, the gesture would be greeted with firepower.
Obama's mother is white. His father Kenyan. So he is as much white as he is black . . .
dougnwagner Wrote: The Taliban outlawed music, girls schools, and required women to wear head-to-toe coverings among other things like chopping people's hands off for stealing), is going to oppose them when they try to just take power with the barrel of a gun and enforce an archaic and ethnically-exclusive form of Islam......
dougnwagner, what you described is Islam as practiced in the Middle East. Islam light is what we see in the U.S. and U.K. In every Country excluding maybe Jordan where I have not been, koranic law is the only law of the land. If you get in an auto accident it is settled by Koranic law, if you kill someone you suffer koranic law. Sharia and Koranic law are not unique to Iran, Iraq or Afghanistan but is alive and well in our so called ally Saudi Arabia. This of course is a little off subject but when one looks at the ignorance of the voter, the politician and the military about the Middle East one could title it "they are ignorant of today, tomorrow and yesterday.
RichM - As always, you have nailed it. The problem is that most people can't see what isn't shown. Fox News and the other MSM distort by simply not reporting, just as this article so well demonstrates and as you have so well pointed out. The Fox talking heads can actually talk for hours without saying a single lie; the lie is what is not said. They have never reported that the invasion and occupation of Iraq violates the UN Charter, that Bush violated his oath of office, and so on. Instead, they accurately report on missing young women, fires in California, etc., and their viewers think they have been told everything they need to know. Obviously, you know this already but the Americans who still support Bush do not know this. It takes intelligence to see what is missing, and it may well be that the ignorant outnumber the perceptive.
misanthrope (9:30 pm) - Thanks!
doug (8:34 pm) - Your version of events is purely the MSM version, swallowed whole. For instance, you accept the notion that "Milosevic was responsible for genocide in Kosovo" & that "today there is peace in those nations because of NATO intervention." Actually, there was no "genocide" in Kosovo. Some killing occurred, but only some of it was Milosevic's fault. The word "genocide" was immense & dishonest hyperbole. It was used at the time, precisely as "WMD" was used in 2003: it was a pretext, dishonestly concocted by the Western press, to justify armed intervention. The intervention's real goals had nothing to do with the stated pretext -- neither in Kosovo, nor in Iraq.
If you watched last night's debate, you saw a question posed to the 4 Dem candidates on foreign policy. This question was, to paraphrase, "Given that President Bush's surge has apparently worked, which of you 4 is now prepared to admit you were wrong (to criticize Bush's policy)?"
Well, in fact, it's not the case that the "surge has worked." There are other reasons why the number of US troop deaths has lessened in the last few months. Nonetheless, the US media treats it as "fact" that "the surge has worked." Your belief in Milosevic's genocide, and in Balkan peace today "because of NATO intervention," is exactly like the questioner last night who truly believes that "the surge has worked."
As far as the need to "take out terrorists" -- that's bunk. I'm not a Ron Paul supporter, but his explanation of why the "terrorists" bother us is quite good. (Howard Zinn's is better.)
The following sentence of yours catches my eye, & explains why you are duped by the likes of Obama: "...one American politician's hypocrisy does not make everyone who does believe in human rights and democratic government as rationales for using military force in their turn hypocrites." (I gather the "one politician" there is Bush, right?)
- Actually, in American politics, the whole strategy for getting liberals (like you) to go along with the use of military force, is to convince them that it's only being undertaken in the name of human rights and democracy. This strategy has a long history. And invariably -- without a single exception -- the "noble pretext" is a lie. US military action is NEVER undertaken for such lofty "noble" purposes.
peaceman - I don't really care who you vote for but your vote is NOT wasted.
Zoya earlier posted that the two major parties are not going to allow a Huckabee vs. Obama Presidential race and are scurrying to fix that possibility.
I agree. I don't know much about Hucabee but he has the religious right behind him and may get some wind in his sails from the Iowa win. Obama is a kettle of different fish, Obama has the imagination of the young, he is a true orator and he connects with people of every ilk. As it was said earlier in this thread Obama is not "black" as is Sharpton, Rice and Clarence Thomas yet is not an Uncle Tom - he had made himself an instrument of hope as did JFK.
Having said all that I would rather see Kucinich in office or (holding my nose) Edwards but I have to admit that this skinny kid with a funny name is on a roll
RichM,
Thanks for hanging in there and telling it like it is. You'd think that after two stolen presidential elections and the farce of 2006, people (especially Common Dreamers) wouldn't fall so easily for the same old bait and switch.
peaceman
Kucinich would always be my first choice - but the media is preventing him from taking part in debates, Texas is refusing to put him on their ballot because he won't sign the part of the oath that he'll support whichever candidate is nominated. It's just not going to happen - not this time around anyway.
After watching the Republican debate in NH yesterday, I'm more convinced than ever that we need to make sure a Democrat - any Democrat from the remaining line-up is elected next November.
The alternative is unthinkable.
Edwards is the nearest to Kucinich, as I see it, and he has plenty of fighting spirit, which will be needed. (I don't understand why DK asked supporters to go to Obama's side in Iowa. )
FYI: Pakistan has nuclear weapons and the Taliban harbor Al Qaeda's leadership. We should support democracy abroad, especially in countries that use the same institutions we do- Supreme Court, common law. Most of Pakistan is moderate, but the same army that has supported Musharraf supported the Taliban through the 90s.
Al Qaeda are terrorists who have attacked the United States over many years. What happens if you ignore Pakistan? What happens if you ignore capturing Al Qaeda leadership? What happens if you allow the Taliban to enlarge their base of operations? What happens if you allow the Taliban to retake Afghanistan? To take over more of Pakistan?
You don't know, you think you do, but you don't. Of course "we need to take out the terrorists and the world's most deadly weapons."
You need to simply ask yourself more serious questions about foreign policy than your posts imply you do. For example, Who elected Musharraf and the Taliban to run Afghanistan and Pakistan? Of course any political grouping with enough guns and minimal investments in twentieth century modernity, (The Taliban outlawed music, girls schools, and required women to wear head-to-toe coverings among other things like chopping people's hands off for stealing), is going to oppose them when they try to just take power with the barrel of a gun and enforce an archaic and ethnically-exclusive form of Islam on everybody who is Afghan.
Who elected Milosevic to run Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Bosnia? FYI, the Green Party of Germany voted to authorize Germany to participate in NATO operations in Kosovo in 1999. Kosovo is 90% Albanian. Milosevic was responsible for genocide in Kosovo and Bosnia and today there is peace in those nations because of NATO intervention. Intervention through NATO in Southeastern Europe has brought increased stability to not just the former republics of Yugoslavia, but to the entire region which was impacted by emigration out of the conflict zones. Is ending genocide in the Balkans more important than ending genocide somewhere else? No. Was it more practical to intervene in the Balkans in the 1990s than in Iraq in 2003-2009(dread :( ) given the assets of the states participating in the coalition, our relations with states neighboring the conflict zone, and the logistical-space of the area in which American soliders would operate? Yes.
Furthermore, one American politician's hypocrisy does not make everyone who does believe in human rights and democratic government as rationales for using military force in their turn hypocrites. This is the principal weakness of your general analysis. Every situation is different.
doug - Your Obama quote at 7:58 merely underscores Obama's support of the "War on Terror" concept. He says "..we need to take out the terrorists and the world's most deadly weapons."
That's bunk. The "terrorists" are not really a serious problem for the US, and they don't need to be "taken out." They are a contrived problem -- not a real problem. The whole WoT concept is just an pretext. Under its cover, US military power can be projected into central Asia, the Middle East, & wherever else it's convenient. It's basically just like the Cold War -- a national theme, pounded home every day by the political establishment, to keep the US population terrified. This creates the appearance of "justification" for continuously sending US forces all over the world, supposedly fighting some vital & necessary fight -- but in reality merely re-organizing other countries' governments & economies so that they function in the interest of US multinationals.
I can't believe what I'm reading on these threads by you folks, many of whom I've come to admire and learn from since Common Dreams started the comments section, and knowing none of you personally, I felt a comraderie and indicated such a feeling several times over the last few months. Too many of you are falling for the MSM game plan and we will lose again. Keep the masses squabbling with each other over Obama, Edwards, and Clinton. Prior to a few days ago, I took a hiatus from the computer and my last posting was on the 20th of December, not that it means anything, which it probably doesn't. But after Iowa, almost every die-hard Kucinich supporter on CD who have been extolling him, myself included, as "the only hope left for America" or words to that effect, discarded him and what he represents. I can clearly see why the left fails so often.
I read what bigjoe31 and RichM have suggested and was not surprised. From day one, the invisable government has instructed MSM to focus on Clinton and Obama in order to mold American opinion on who's electable and who isn't. They'll take either one to do their bidding. The public falls for it everytime.
To add insult to injury, Iowans set a new record for a presidential primary turnout with 18% of registered voters? Where were the other 82% ?
I'll take the ridicule after November's election by those who tell me I wasted my vote again.
I can read, Kagan doesn't tell me anything.
"The American people are not the problem in this country - they are the answer. And it's time we had a President who acted like that."
At least Obama backs it up.
http://fairvote.org/?page=1755
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Funding_Accountability_and_Transparency_Act_of_2006
Edwards and Clinton voted for the Iraq War. It is the passing of an era. Great article!
"Of the 22 senators who reported reading the full NIE, eight are Republicans and 14 are Democrats. All but one Democrat on the 17-person Intelligence Committee in 2002 recalled reading the NIE: Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) told a campaign-trail audience earlier this month that he had, but later recanted. Edwards voted to authorize war."
"Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, one of the senators who read the report and a staunch critic of the war, said the findings were "enough to have me vote against going to war in Iraq."
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/few-senators-read-iraq-nie-report-2007-06-19.html
'What I knew before the invasion' by Senator Bob Graham D-Florida
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/18/AR2005111802397.html
For those of you who didn't check out bigjoe31's link above (5:09 pm), it's to a Washington Post article by the leading neocon Robert Kagan, a signer of the infamous PNAC documents. He ***loves*** Obama.
And check out this WaPo article: Obama Top Fundraiser on Wall Street
What do you suppose it means, to have a "Don't Worry, Be Happy" candidate making vague empty promises of "change," who's strongly backed by Wall Street and loved by a signer of PNAC? (Oh, by the way, Obama's advisors include Zbigniew Brzezinksi.)
sjc_1
I agree.
As I remind myself (with help of below article) of all Obama's hawkish pronouncements - how could DK throw support behind this man?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/27/AR2007042702027_pf.html
Kucinich has enormous, documented support of voters, yet big media refuses to cover his campaign in a serious manner and does its best to exclude him from debate forums, which it opens only to candidates acceptable to its owners. This is just more of the violent activity which has come to typify the ruling class of this country. And this is activity which begets violence: if the people are prevented from using legal means of political action, they must resort to other means, or live as slaves.
CORPORATE NEOCONPROMI$E? --THE AUDACITY OF "NOPE"
From Katrina to Hillbilly Armor, Re-written Bankruptcy Law, No-Bid CONtrax from Defense to Big Pharma, Tax breaks for OIL, Off-shore-Loop-Holer Corporate War-&-Welfare, 'Proprietarriest' GOP-owned Touch-Screen Voting "Machinery" & generally 'Joined-@-the-Hip-o'-the-Viceberg '$undry $eisures' of Gran Malfeasance:
the Neroic Measures of the Fiddle Class could hardly be more, how2say-- "IN OUR FACE".
What a pity then, in so needing a True Warrior, that Obama pollutes his otherwise impressive offering to the Presidency with his itchy urge to 'make NICE'. Edwards gets it, what FDR meant in 'welcoming' the 'hatred' of wealth, secrecy, & scam-empowered 'BullyInc'. Here the Working & Middle Class have the snot beat out of them thru two stolen terms of Bushelzebub and that's all he can come up with?
We-wouldn't-dream-of-FORCING-you-to-'time-out'-with-GREED-MANAGEMENT-therapy, etc. BUT: it would be shockin' AWESOME if you could maybe not use your actual 'fi$t'? in your extreme 'neo-capitalist rendition($)? because, as you see, you've "tended to" (in effect) "break the victim's nose, loo$en the teeth, blacken the eyes". (WAIT! --Please--don't-take-offense at the blunt assessment of injury! --none whatsoever was intended!)...
And Pardon the 'Audacity' of this (forlorn?) HOPE: How 'bout you ju$t use the palm? or back of the hand? to 'bitch-$lap'? THAT way you can $till (essentially) have the Bully's Run of the Playing Field, but without necessitating these me$$y unseemly trips to the Emergency Room, etc.
Then maybe looking to Reagan's $hining City on the Hill one day will come the NEXT taken step--when SECOND HELPINGS of that Neoconvenient (GOPeteredPrinciple) Bottled Vegetable known as "ketchup" are ladled to burgeoning multitudes of the Working Poor's Wide-eyed Children as if the Supply were as bottomless as the compassion of the NAYSHUN ITSELF! and the 'More Fortunate' instinctively $tep OVER instead of ON the Downtrodden. Be Still, Our Beaten HEART. The AUDACITY OF HOPE!
Warriors--TRUE Warriors WANTED
I.e., CODE BLUE--HOMELAND DEMOCRACY SECURITY BREACH (What-We're-Up-Against:)--
--ON SCREEN:
http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2007/08/political_art_of_the_week.html
Sorry, I just can't see the party elite--both Democrat and Republican--standing for an Obama vs. Huck election. It wouldn't surprise me if Clinton and McCain got the nominations. Both parties are rushing to get this fix in.
AdeleThe Czech : And to all of the other posters who presumably bought their copy of NYT instead of reading it at the local library , you`re all as dumb as a post ; you don`t turn off the Frank-Rich drivel that`s a political version of dancing with the stars by discussing . You turn off the drivel from MSM by not buying the paper .
Read and apply instead the biography of Rosa Parks and others or do Americans only retain a dim recollection of Rosa's Stand ?
It's commendable but fruitless to preach to the converted via your keyboard ; preach to NYT directly and MSM generally by cancelling your subsriptions or is that too painful ?
Edwards is a candidate with a rare (for the Dems) combination of some substance and a degree of electability.
The others may have one or the other, but not both and most have neither.
Like Militant Liberal (2:02pm) I am hoping O-bomb-a and Shrill-a-ry will knock each other off and open things up for Edwards. I don't really trust him either but this is a tactical/practical position based on an old proverb about politics being the "art of the possible."
Kucinich is a waste of time and money and always has been. He spent more time in Iowa than some people who live there and was invisible in the Caucus. He polls in single digits everywhere. DK supporters: Throw your support to Edwards!
If it's any of the other Dems in Nov., I'll stick with the Greens.
And, sorry to say, but, culturally or even in appearance, Obama is not "black" in the sense of being rooted in the African-American experience, in the way the of other leaders like Jesse Jackson Sr. or Jr. or Rev. Sharpton, Cynthia Mckinney, or Barbara Lee.
We all know how well they did, or would do in a presidential bid, don't we?
The right wing controlled media are doing their best to push either a black or a woman to the Dem nomination. If they are successful, they will immediately turn all their swift-boating efforts on either candidate and drag them down in the mud until they are not recognizable as they have done to others.
I still hope Edwards gets the nomination and the presidency. He might be the first widowed president in recent years, but his heart and mind are in the right place for the future of this country.
AdeleTheCzech - your post came in while I was posting mine or I would have praised you as well as RichM in my former post. Is it only on CommonDreams that so many perceptive people congregate?
I'm still hoping that Obama and Clinton will destroy each other. I don't trust Edwards but I could stomach voting for him in November. If it's one of the other two, I'm defecting to the Green Party.
Beautiful, RichM! It's so gratifying when the reader response is so much more incisive than that of the essayist, no matter how skilled and celebrated he is. Thank you and keep it up.
Here on Long Island, I was tearing my hair out over yesterday's front page headline (over a photo of Obama): "Can Hillary Beat Him?" Hello? Edwards beat HILLARY, while spending far less than she did!
Now even Frank Rich has fallen for the Barack/Hillary dyad: "...of course, he could lose for a myriad of reasons. Mr. Obama could make some world-class mistakes; the Clinton machine could land some attacks more devastating than its withering critique of his kindergarten paper." Yes, Frank, or enough ordinary people could wise up and elect the guy who came in second in Iowa -- you remember him, right?
Actually, RichM, I don't consider Edwards' message inherently disconcerting or unpleasant. To my ear, it's like FINALLY someone is telling the truth about why even a Democratic-controlled Congress is passing bills giving subsidies to giant oil companies (and we could all add a number of bad bills to the list) -- candidates who are beholden to huge corporations, Wall St. and the banks. It's only disconcerting if you realize that Edwards is the one electable candidate committed to that fundamental change, and the MSM is trying desperately to keep him out of sight.
RichM...dead on!
Frank Rich's last phrase portrays the jubilantly dancing Obama family as: "it looked like the passing of an era."
- Unfolding here is the classic example of how the 2-party system acts to contain political dialogue within safe boundaries. There is to be no discussion of Bush & Cheney, their lies & crimes, torture, American militarism, corruption, Halliburton, Blackwater, & how government has been used to systematically loot the entire country on behalf of the corporate oligarchy.
Instead, faced with all this, we are to simply forget it & pretend it hasn't happened. The American way of dealing with serious problems is not only to banish the memory of these problems, "to wipe the slate clean" -- but to celebrate wiping the slate clean, and to portray it as a virtue.
Any honest attempt to come to grips with what has happened is to be scorned as "bitterness" and "going negative." The Obama campaign is to be painted gloriously in the MSM as a "new beginning" precisely because it is a get-out-of-jail-free card for the corporate gangsters. // Edwards, on the other hand, who at least dares to speak the phrase "corporate power," is unacceptably "negative." In other words, he reminds people that there are real & systemic problems that must be confronted. This is a disconcerting & unpleasant message -- so, let's just forget it! Happy talk about "unity" and "America's greatness" is so much more soothing!!
The interaction between the MSM & the Democratic Party has already winnowed the field to a contest between Hillary & Obama -- whose policy ideas are virtually identical. And the process seems poised to nominate Obama -- purely because his "upbeat" style will more effectively absolve all the criminals who have destroyed our country & defiled its Constitution.
Our society is unable to face the truth about itself. MSM celebration of the "dancing Obamas", & the apparent success of his vacuous happy-talk is a stark illustration of this.
Rich M,
"There are those who offer up easy answers. They will assert that Iraq is George Bush's war, it's all his fault. Or that Iraq was botched by the arrogance and incompetence of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Or that we would have gotten Iraq right if we went in with more troops, or if we had a different proconsul instead of Paul Bremer, or if only there were a stronger Iraqi Prime Minister.
These are the easy answers. And like most easy answers, they are partially true. But they don't tell the whole truth, because they overlook a harder and more fundamental truth. The hard truth is that the war in Iraq is not about a catalog of many mistakes - it is about one big mistake. The war in Iraq should never have been fought…
Some seek to rewrite history. They argue that they weren't really voting for war, they were voting for inspectors, or for diplomacy. But the Congress, the Administration, the media, and the American people all understood what we were debating in the fall of 2002. This was a vote about whether or not to go to war. That's the truth as we all understood it then, and as we need to understand it now. And we need to ask those who voted for the war: how can you give the President a blank check and then act surprised when he cashes it?…
We thought we learned this lesson. After Vietnam, Congress swore it would never again be duped into war, and even wrote a new law — the War Powers Act — to ensure it would not repeat its mistakes. But no law can force a Congress to stand up to the President. No law can make Senators read the intelligence that showed the President was overstating the case for war. No law can give Congress a backbone if it refuses to stand up as the co-equal branch the Constitution made it.
That is why it is not enough to change parties. It is time to change our politics. We don't need another President who puts politics and loyalty over candor. We don't need another President who thinks big but doesn't feel the need to tell the American people what they think. We don't need another President who shuts the door on the American people when they make policy. The American people are not the problem in this country - they are the answer. And it's time we had a President who acted like that."- Barack Obama, probably the next President of the United States
http://www.barackobama.com/2007/10/02/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_27.php
Edwards has won me over in the last few days, but it's obvious that MSM is going to freeze him out now, just as they've done Kucinich.
This from Daily Kos is interesting but depressing.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/5/12286/27650/142/431084
"THE 2008 presidential field has already begun to sort itself into candidates willing to disclose the identities of their big financiers and those who balk at providing this critical information. On the side of real disclosure are three Democrats, Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) and former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, along with two Republicans, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and — in the latest addition to the ranks of openness — Mitt Romney. Officials of the former Massachusetts governor's campaign told us that Mr. Romney will report the names of his big bundlers, the fundraisers who collect donations from large numbers of people and who thereby help their candidate far beyond the maximum of $2,300 they are legally allowed to contribute directly. Declining to provide this information are Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards, and Republican Rudolph W. Giuliani."
"Mr. Edwards, alone among Democratic candidates in 2004 in refusing to disclose the names of his bundlers, is well aware of both the value and peril of bundlers; his campaign was fined $9,500 by the Federal Election Commission last year for accepting in-kind contributions and illegally reimbursed donations from one of its big 2004 bundlers."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701145.html
Edwards is not more anticorporate than Obama or a saint.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/us/politics/20ethics.html
http://www.whitehouseforsale.org
Edwards "Bundler" To Go To Prison
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/19/politics/washingtonpost/main3279132.shtml
dougnwagner (7:33 pm) - That speech is meaningless fluff. Lines like "The American people are not the problem in this country - they are the answer. And it's time we had a President who acted like that -- that's just feel-good BS. It means nothing when coming from a guy who votes for EVERY SINGLE war funding, supports the bogus "War on Terror", engages in saber-rattling about Iran, proposes expanding the size of the armed forces, & talks about sending US troops into Pakistan unilaterally.
If a leading neocon like Robert Kagan loves Obama, that should tell you something -- a lot more than pretty but empty words tell you.
Anniesee - you're absolutely right about the MSM freezing out Edwards. I heard TV talking heads today portraying the whole race as simply a choice between Hillary & Obama. They'd already forgotten that Edwards even exists.
As for Obama's views on foreign policy, if anything, Obama should be given points for being the only Democrat candidate who actually came out against supporting a military dictatorship as the cost of 'national security' back in August of 2007. He then rightfully and roundly criticized Musharraf and gave voice to the need for a 'democratic ally' in Pakistan, before it was at all clear that Bhutto would return. Unlike Iraq, Pakistan had a functioning democracy until Musharraf overthrew it.
"The United States is a democratic government, and democratic governments should work for democratic values across the globe. Pakistan is no exception."- Pakistan Supreme Court Justice Rana Bhagwandas
www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/world/asia/06pakistan.html
"When I am President, we will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists and the world's most deadly weapons; engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism; restoring our values; and securing a more resilient homeland. " - Barack Obama
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event&event_id=269510