August 6, 2008
War is Over. We Won. (Bernie Quigley)
The war is over before it’s begun, said Gordon Gekko in the movie “Wall Street,” quoting Sun Sun Tzu’s famous phrase from The Art of War. It should be noted that as per the Taoist arc of ascending and descending power that Sun Tzu describes, war is likewise already well over before the end is acknowledged. I felt it mid-spring in 1968, a few hundred miles to the left of Quang Tri where the battle of Khe Sanh was blazing. Others did too. I felt it again on Nov. 8, 2006, when Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of Defense.
Bret Stephens, who writes the Global View column for The Wall Street Journal, made that claim yesterday. He says the war in Iraq is over and he bet Francis Fukuyama $100 that it is.
“The war in Iraq is over. We've won,” writes Stephens. > Read More
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What's This July 22, 2008
The Story Behind the Obama World Tour (John Feehery)
Looking at the entirely predictable pictures from the Obama World Tour, which show a triumphant Barack Obama greeting the troops, agreeing with the Iraqis, and pretty much being loved by everybody, you would think that the junior senator from Illinois has hit nothing but home runs on this trip.
The media would agree with that analysis.
On ABC World News, political analyst George Stephanopoulos said, "Halfway through the trip, it's going about as well as it can possibly go" for Obama, who has "hit all his marks." Under the headline "For Obama, A First Step Is Not A Misstep," The New York Times reports in a front-page analysis that the Iraqi move is "providing Mr. Obama with a potentially powerful political boost on a day he spent in Iraq working to fortify his credibility as a wartime leader." The Washington Post says that "as political theater, the events of the past few days have played unfailingly in the Democrat's favor." > Read More
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What's This Obama Gains Support in Iraq (Bill Press)
What a coup!
Barack Obama may not yet have won the election, but it looks like he’s already won the war.
From the very beginning, Obama opposed the war in Iraq. Not only that, he proposed a plan to get out of Iraq by starting to bring American troops home as soon as he arrived in the White House, and then continuing to bring them home one or two brigades a month, with a goal of getting all troops out of Iraq within 16 months. > Read More
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What's This July 21, 2008
Energy, Economy Next for Obama (A.B. Stoddard)
The Hill's A.B. Stoddard answers viewer questions about presidential polling, the impact of the Green and Libertarian party candidates, and Obama's focus after his trip to Iraq.
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What's This Confessions of an Anti-Iraq War Democrat: Memories of a Purple Finger (Lanny Davis)
I remember the exact moment I had my first serious doubts about whether I was 100 percent right that the U.S. preemptive invasion of Iraq and the take-out of Saddam Hussein was a serious mistake.
I had been strongly opposed to the U.S. intervention from the start. I felt this way even though I believed (as did most everyone, including the intelligence community) that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and even though I thought that Saddam was a murderous, genocidal thug and the world would be better off — and the U.S. safer — with him dead.
However, I reasoned, the WMD inspectors were back in and we had Saddam surrounded — thanks to George Bush, to whom, by the way, we Democrats did not give sufficient credit at the time. > Read More
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What's This July 17, 2008
Iraq — Why Obama Has Gotten it Right from the Very Beginning (Peter Fenn)
It is hard to believe that the McCain attack dogs are nipping at Obama’s heels on the battle against terrorism.
First, Obama had it right when he opposed the war while McCain was claiming that we would be greeted as liberators and would bring peace to the Middle East in short order.
Second, Obama’s speech this week was totally on point when he reminded his audience that all the money, lost lives and harm caused to the real fight against al Qaeda constitutes one of the worst foreign policy blunders we have engaged in over the last 50 years. > Read More
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What's This Foundations and NGOs on the Rise (Kathy Kemper)
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) made one last important point when he came to my IFE/INFO Public Policy forum: Foundations and NGOs will take on a greater leadership role in foreign policy since they're not "captive" to the constraints that stifle governments.
Take Bill Gates's recent decision to leave Microsoft to pursue philanthropy full-time. His foundation has single-handedly raised the profile of global health challenges in the developing world. As of last year, it had a $38.7 billion endowment, a figure that's greater than the GDP of many small countries. Or take someone like Bono, who has worked with big-time NGOs like Oxfam to bring poverty to the fore of the world's conscience. Fifty-six percent of Americans think that the presidential candidates aren't spending enough time talking about poverty, and they believe that it's an issue that goes beyond party lines. > Read More
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What's This July 14, 2008
Upending Torture: Start a Truth Commission (Bernie Quigley)
Here in northern New England, the newspaper editors who for the first time in the 800-year history of the English-speaking people proposed on our op-ed pages that torture be a rational tool of diplomacy have in most places been relegated to the night desk.
But down the mountain, down there in the vast heartland, the actual torture buffs and advocates who wrote the stories before they went to the syndicates; the agents and fellow travelers who have breached the faith of the American fabric and condition as it has never been breached before have found their way out of what were once considered venerable journals like The National Review to the most important newspapers and magazines in the country. And just a few months back the discussion of torture in papers like The New York Times and the LA Times was as common as hep-B and herpes duplex and as American as apple pie. It is welcome now that major newspaper columnists like Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times now are beginning to ask for Truth Commissions to investigate allegations of torture. > Read More
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What's This July 10, 2008
No Time for Obama’s Smooth-Talking (Bob Franken)
Here's the problem, Sen. Obama: Your sly efforts to scale back and gently reassure skittish voters that you won't bring radical change come at a time when our country desperately needs radical change.
While, of course, you represent the possibility of historic racial progress, your campaign was based on an ideal even more fundamental.
You have convinced restless millions that the time has come for our country to go in different directions … REALLY different directions. All you accomplish by glossing over what we have to do is play into the hands of those who don't want to do anything. > Read More
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What's This July 2, 2008
How Bush, Cheney and McCain Let bin Laden Escape (Brent Budowsky)
If Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) believes his prediction of a terrorist attack within a year, he is admitting the Bush-McCain policies have created these dangers and we should answer him with this:
It all began when the CIA briefed George W. Bush about the danger of Osama bin Laden flying planes into buildings and Bush reacted with arrogance, ignorance and contempt and did nothing.
It then continued throughout a six-year obsession with the Iraq war that let bin Laden off the hook at Tora Bora and tied down the American military in a war that should never have been fought, that prevented our winning the war that was necessary. > Read More
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