Right Wing Nut House

Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute is the Czar of all the Wars here in the United States. You can be forgiven if you’ve never heard of him or from him. He is the most invisible of the President’s national security team.

His official title is “Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan.” You can see why with a handle like that, they decided to christen him “The War Czar.” But the kicker is in a description of his responsibilities:

In the newly created position, Lute will coordinate often disjointed military and civilian operations and manage the Washington side of the same troop increase he resisted before Bush announced the plan in January. Bush hopes an empowered aide working in the White House and answering directly to him will be able to cut through bureaucracy that has hindered efforts in Iraq.

The selection capped a difficult recruitment process for the White House, as its initial candidates rejected the job. At least five retired four-star generals approached by the White House or intermediaries refused to be considered. Lute, a three-star general now serving as chief operations officer on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in effect will jump over many superiors as he moves to the West Wing and assumes authority to deal directly with Cabinet secretaries and top commanders.

I never knew that it was “bureaucracy” that was hindering our war effort in Iraq. Is that shorthand for stupidity? Incompetence? Lack of planning? Myopia? Ideology supplanting military common sense?

Who would’ve known?

And the fact that 5 retired generals with nothing better to do decided to turn the job down does not give me a lot of confidence in the abilities of General Lute, although I’m sure he’s a competent enough fellow. He certainly can’t do anything to make things worse in Iraq. No one could.

Unable to cause too much mischief overseas, General Lute decided to make some headlines here at home.

Frequent tours for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed the all-volunteer force and made it worth considering a return to a military draft, President Bush’s new war adviser said Friday.

“I think it makes sense to certainly consider it,” Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”

“And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation’s security by one means or another,” said Lute, who is sometimes referred to as the “Iraq war czar.” It was his first interview since he was confirmed by the Senate in June.

President Nixon abolished the draft in 1973. Restoring it, Lute said, would be a “major policy shift” and Bush has made it clear that he doesn’t think it’s necessary.

“The president’s position is that the all-volunteer military meets the needs of the country and there is no discussion of a draft. Gen. Lute made that point as well,” National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

In the interview, Lute also said that “Today, the current means of the all-volunteer force is serving us exceptionally well.”

Obviously, anyone with half a brain (and judging by the number of lefty sites that have picked up on these comments, we can exclude them) knows full well that there is a better chance of a George Bush pictorial in Playgirl Magazine than there is for a draft. It isn’t going to happen in this war or any other war America will ever fight. For better or worse, our military will remain all volunteer, all the time. If Viet Nam taught us anything about domestic politics, it is that there will always be a sizable, vocal segment of young people who will refuse to be drafted for a variety of reasons, not always because they would refuse to defend America or her interests. This is the lay of the political landscape and I doubt even an invasion by a foreign power or powers would change it.

As for those with half a brain (or less), leave it to Kos himself to bring up the chickenhawk argument:

There’s only so much that war supporters are willing to do in their might and heroic struggle against Islamofacism. For example, they’re willing to endlessly talk macho. But they’re not willing to, you know, actually wear combat boots.

This clash of civilizations is only the Most Important Struggle Of Our Time as long as they don’t actually have to do anything about it. That’s for the poor shlubs who signed up to deal with.

So does Kos support a draft? In order to make his chickenhawk smear stick, he has to. He supports the idea of sending war supporters to Iraq so I guess he’s for a draft to accomplish that, right?

Watch the 26%ers, who support the occupation of Iraq from afar by buying car stickers, jump to agree with Bush and suggest Lute was a bad choice…while quietly checking out entry requirements for Canada.

As for us lefties? We’ll just smugly point out that a draft wouldn’t need even passing consideration if Bush hadn’t wasted all that time and all those resources, as well as exhausting the Army, by invading Iraq instead of concentrating on Afghanistan.

But we should “consider” a draft, right Cernig? Since you don’t come out against it, you must be for it.

Actually, a draft might be just what this country needs to finally - finally get these lazy ass lefties off their fat behinds and get them in the streets so that they can put something on the line to end this war besides their hurt feelings when righty bloggers insult them. Their fathers and mothers (or older brothers and sisters) stopped a much larger war that was much more popular than the Iraq conflict (support for the Viet Nam war never fell below 50%). And they did it in a nation much less tolerant of dissent

I have made the point several times that it is ridiculous for the left to castigate Iraq war supporters for not putting their money where their mouths are when they themselves sit safely behind their monitors, allowing the war to go on. This is a war they claim to hate with a passion. A war that is ruining the country. A war that is leading to dictatorship. A war that is destroying our standing in the world. A war for oil or to satisfy the bloodlust of the President and Vice President. An evil, despicable, unnecessary, unjust, war started by evil, despicable men, right?

Holy Jesus! And the best you can do is sit in your parent’s basement writing not very clever slop about “chickenhawks?” Get up off your ample behinds and CONFRONT the “evil” if that is what you believe. How much courage does it take to talk a good game when you have the example of the Berrigans, David Sloane Coffin, Martin Luther King, and thousands like them who went to jail in order to stop a war.

Your ideological ancestors were getting clubbed over the head or hauled off to jail 35 years ago. But the best these anti-war “heroes” can do today is stay safely hunched over their keyboards, writing idiotic, exaggerated, diatribes against a president they hate while engaging in childish name calling. It is truly pathetic. And speaking as someone who marched against the Viet Nam War many times, getting a whiff of tear gas on more than one occasion (I was too much of a coward to get myself arrested back then), you make me sick.

General Lute is right that the military is near the breaking point. God knows our soldiers have given their all and then some and have been ill-served by both their civilian and military commanders. But there will not be a draft. And my advice to Lute is that he go back to his bureaucratic cubbyhole in the basement of the White House and keep his mouth shut.

Bill Ardolino of INDC Journal is planning on going to back to Iraq later this month to assess the surge and report in advance of General Petreaus and Ambassador Crocker’s appearance before Congress.

He will be embedded courtesy of Bill Roggio’s Public Multimedia and needs our help to to get there.

In case you are unfamiliar with Bill’s excellent work, follow the links in this post and then make a donation to support on line media efforts to tell the story in Iraq.

My latest column is up at Pajamas Media. This one is about the decison of South Carolina to move its primary up so that it can still be “First in the South” by beating Florida who themselves moved their primary to top South Carolina.

If this keeps up, we may have Christmas Caucuses in Iowa:

It has even been suggested that presidents be nominated the old fashioned way – at the party conventions. This is how they were chosen for the 150 years prior to the party reforms initiated in the 60s and 70s which were supposed to make the process more “inclusive” and “transparent.” We’ve got inclusiveness and transparency coming out of our ears and look where we are now – Santa Claus and Hillary Clinton coming down the chimney together. Have the reforms improved the quality of candidates? Some would argue that the old wise men of the two parties who used to meet in smoke filled rooms to choose a nominee got it right more often than not. A debatable point to be sure and not relevant when discussing a process that cries out for openness and as much democracy as this poor republic can handle.

We Americans, being inveterate tinkerers, experiment with this primary process every four years. But instead of fixing the machine, we’re like the guy who takes the entire gizmo apart and looks helplessly at the pile of junk on his workbench without a clue how to put it all back together. He tries gamely, hammering away trying to make parts fit together that have no relationship with one another. When he’s finished, there are always a few screws and nuts he somehow couldn’t find room for.

Global warming skeptics have had it rough recently. I don’t know about you but when Al Gore says that the debate over global warming is closed, we may as well shut down all the laboratories studying the problem and simply give in to the inevitable - that a bunch of Luddites and anti-industrial, anti-capitalist, anti-globalization nitwits should take control of the American economy and bring us into a new age of carbon free living while bringing back the horse and buggy and steam powered locomotives.

But something happened on the way to creating this nirvana, namely Steve McIntyre.

Mr. McIntyre is a saboteur, an apostate, a living, breathing monkey wrench who has thrown himself into the global warming Juggernaut and caused the entire machine to stop dead in its tracks:

Steve McIntyre posted this data from NASA’s newly published data set from Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) These numbers represent deviation from the mean temperature calculated from temperature measurement stations throughout the USA.

According to the new data published by NASA, 1998 is no longer the hottest year ever. 1934 is.

Four of the top 10 years of US CONUS high temperature deviations are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900. (World rankings of temperature are calculated separately.)

McIntyre had discovered a slight error in NASA’s temperature calculations - enough to skew the results considerably and throw the global warming worshippers for a loop. In fact, since many advocates treat global warming more as a religion than science, McIntyre’s discovery would be like finding out that Jesus Christ never lived or that Moses never got the Ten Commandments from God.

Now, lest I be accused of denying other evidence for climate change - namely the rise in CO2 and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere whose measurements have spiked in the last 100 years and are at levels rarely seen in the last millions of years - I will state flatly that the data Mr. McIntyre has forced NASA to change only alters the debate over how serious the problem is and not whether the problem exists. In short, the alterations in climate data simply proves a point global warming skeptics have been making for more than a decade; that more research is needed before we crash the economies of the industrialized world in order to satisfy those whose agenda is more political than scientific.

Steve McIntyre will go down in history as perhaps the man who saved the global warming debate. By showing the true believers that they can be wrong, he has reminded the scientific community about their obligations to discovering the truth regardless of where it leads. And that goes for skeptics and believers alike.

McIntyre is, judging by his bio, a brilliant mathematician and has authored or co-authored several papers on temperature change. He is a confirmed skeptic about climate models that show a precipitous rise in temperature over the last 1000 years. He was one of the most vocal critics of the so-called “hockey stick” graph that showed a stable temperature record for most of the last 1,000 years until the 20th century which revealed a steep rise in temperatures in North America - a debate that rages in the scientific community to this day.

McIntyre is not employed as a climate scientist nor does he receive any funds for his research. His expertise is in running mineral companies, a job that he thinks has prepared him well for his research into temperature models as he explains in his bio.

In short, he is a citizen-scientist with no ax to grind save seeking the facts and holding scientists to a high and rigorous standard of research. What he has done is nothing less than bringing the debate over global warming back into the realm of science - for the moment anyway.

Consider the history of another controversial theory; the origins of the universe. For decades, cosmologists believed in the “Steady State Theory” as the best explanation for the creation of the universe. Those who disagreed with it were given short shrift and dismissed as cranks. Then a new theory arose in the 1960’s that challenged the primacy of the Steady State idea of the universe - an elegant mathematical construct we commonly call “The Big Bang” theory. Slowly, instruments became available that were able to supply observational proof for the Big Bang to go along with the complex mathematics until today, few cosmologists subscribe to the Steady State theory - even though it was gospel less than 50 years ago.

The reason cosmologists were able to change their thinking was the compelling nature of the observational data that matched up almost perfectly with the mathematical proofs. Even those scientists who had a heavy intellectual investment in seeing that the Steady State theory remain gospel were forced to alter their own theories in order to acknowledge the facts at hand.

McIntyre’s work will do something similar; it will force those scientists with a vested interest in seeing their theories about global warming validated by their peers to alter their models to reflect the new data. Those scientists who truly seek the facts about global warming will swallow their pride and perhaps come to new conclusions. Those scientists more interested in riding the global warming gravy train will denounce and obfuscate McIntyre’s work, hoping politicians like Al Gore come to their rescue by loudly proclaiming that the debate is still “closed.”

And we, the lay public who know next to nothing about the many scientific disciplines that are engaged in climate study, must ourselves keep a more open mind in order to decide the right course of action for the future. If nothing else, McIntyre has shown once again that scientists are as fallible as the rest of us.

Perhaps the scientists themselves need to be reminded of that from time to time.

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category is “NEA Also Confused About SCOTUS Decision Regarding Race & Schooling” by The Colossus of Rhodey. Finishing second was yours truly for “Whose Freedom? What Is Speech?”

Finishing on top in the non Council category was “Baghdad Raid Night” by Michael Totten.

If you would like to participate in the weekly Watchers Vote, go here and follow instructions.

They all invoke his name with a reverence that the down to earth Reagan would probably have found amusing if he were alive. They identify their policies with his. They promise to emulate his strength, his purposefulness. They all promise to be true to his legacy.

Republican candidates for President vie with each other on the stump and during the debates to prove which one of them deserves to wear the mantle of successor to Reagan because not to do so - to reject the icon and strike out on your own - would be suicidal. As one wag put it, it would be “like asking the Vatican to give up St. Peter.”

Indeed, there is almost a religious element to this Reagan worship in the Republican party. And the fact that true believers in the former President’s legend will make up a large percentage of primary voters means that it is simply a given that GOP presidential candidates must pay lip service to the Reagan legacy in order to have a chance at the prize.

And it isn’t just Reagan’s legacy to which these candidates pay homage. All the major players find it necessary to adopt the Reagan agenda of lower taxes, smaller government, and a strong national defense as their Ur issues. This despite the fact that most Americans - thanks to the Reagan revolution - pay little or nothing in taxes already and the GOP Congress spent an entire decade making hash out of the idea of “smaller government,” going on a spending spree that, as John McCain will eagerly tell you, “gives drunken sailors a bad name.”

No matter. Ronald Reagan’s presence in the Republican party still overshadows all who seek to lead the GOP. And this raises an interesting question: Is it time for Republicans to move beyond the memory and legend of Reagan and re-invent the party and re-tool conservatism to more realistically reflect the times in which we live?

The Cold War is over. Ruinously high marginal tax rates are a thing of the past. The language of debate over the size of the federal government has been permanently altered to the point that even Democrats hesitate to advocate Washington-only solutions to social problems like health insurance. Welfare reform has changed the way we look at entitlements, although real reform of the welfare state has not been attempted in any serious way.

In short, the issues and conditions that gave rise to Ronald Reagan either no longer exist or have already been changed to reflect the success of the revolution he initiated. And yet Republicans keep pushing issues like “tax reform” despite the fact that, according to The Tax Foundation, a whopping 52 million American households paid no income tax whatsoever in 2005. That’s up from around 30 million in 2000.

Today’s debate over taxes has been reduced to elimination of the death tax or making the Bush tax cuts permanent - important issues to be sure but hardly the across the board cut in rates that seemed so radical back in 1980. There are various schemes to completely overhaul the tax system - as there has been in every presidential election since the end of World War II. But outside of The Fair Tax proposal that seems to be picking up a little steam in the grassroots, there is not much chance any proposals to abolish the IRS or impose a flat tax will see the light of day in Congress.

And while the need for a strong defense is more vital than ever, we are already spending nearly half a trillion dollars to defend this nation - not including emergency appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan. There is little room for the 30% increases in spending advocated by Reagan back in 1980. Nor is there a need for those kind of increases. It is a different military today, asked to perform a very different mission. Rather than massive increases in spending, most defense experts are looking at targeted increases in the size of the army, of Special Forces, and other areas vital in fighting the War on Terror. In other words, the kind of bold, world altering changes that Reagan managed in the 1980’s are neither possible nor necessary.

And what of reducing the role and shrinking the size of government? In an age where the political pendulum is swinging back toward the center rather than reaching its apex on the right, in order to get elected, Republicans are going to have to stress more efficient government while addressing the growing concerns of the American people with such non-Reaganesque issues as health care, child and elder care, and other middle class quality of life matters. There are conservative alternatives to federal funding of these programs and Republicans ignore these issues at their peril.

The Democrats faced a similar dilemma back in the 1960’s and 70’s with the haunting presence of Franklin Roosevelt hanging over the party. The perceived commitment of FDR to the less fortunate among us allowed the Democrats to invoke his name while opening the floodgates of government spending on social programs. The debate back then was not whether a program for the poor should be passed but rather how much we should be spending to fund it. And the party continued that kind of suicidal rhetoric well into the 1980’s until the Reagan revolution squelched it for good.

Might the Republicans be in similar danger with their reliance on the Reagan legacy to win elections and run the government? The Reagan leadership personae has moved from fond memory into the realms of myth and legend. This makes us forget certain inconvenient truths about those years such as huge deficits and the leadership failures brought to light in the Iran-Contra imbroglio. There is much good to take away from that time. But how much of the good can be transported to the present and grafted on to the current Republican party and the ideological movement that is conservatism?

Reagan stands a silent sentinel over the modern GOP still evoking powerful emotions and loyalty among conservatives. Perhaps it is time to carefully place his legacy and memory in our national treasure chest, taking them out on occasion to examine them for the lessons we can learn rather than pushing that legacy front and center in a futile attempt to recapture the power and the glory of days long gone and a time that will never come again.

UPDATE

Several emailers have made the excellent point that taxes, reducing the size of government, and national defense are not just Reagan issues but Republican issues as well.

I fully acknowledge that. However, the point I was trying to make is that those issues should be reframed - perhaps receive a new coat of paint - that would more accurately reflect the realities of 21st century America.

Barry Bonds has broken Hank Aaron’s all time home run record. That’s why I am not going to write about him or the record 756th home run he hit.

Nope. I am not going to write about Barry Bonds. I am not going to write about his steroid use, his mistresses, his scowling, brutish treatment of fans, the media and even some of his teammates.

I am not going to write about his tax problems, brought on by his unreported cash income from signing balls, bats, and anything that isn’t nailed down in a ballpark.

I am not going to write about his personal trainer Greg Anderson, languishing in jail on a contempt charge because he refuses to testify against Bonds and confirm that he and Victor Conte of BALCO helped Bonds bulk up.

I am not going to write about Barry Bonds because Barry Bonds is a cheat, a scoundrel, a woman abuser, and a tax dodge.

He is also the greatest baseball hitter who ever lived. But that’s another story for another day. For now, I think we should all boycott Barry Bonds coverage.

Do not read any articles about Barry Bonds.

Do not watch any TV shows about Barry Bonds.

Do not listen to radio programs talking about Barry Bonds.

This is why I am not writing about him. Giving Barry Bonds publicity of any kind will only encourage him.

My friend Richard Baehr of The American Thinker writes an article in which he makes one of the best cases I’ve yet seen to not think, dream, read, or watch anything about Barry Bonds:

There is no other player among the baseball greats whose career took a sudden and dramatic turn for the better at age 35 and over. All of the single season records highlighted above occurred from 2001 to 2004 when Bonds was between 36 to 40 years old. During those 4 years, Bond put up numbers never before matched in baseball history. A career .290 hitter, Bonds batted .328, .370, .341, and .362. A hitter whose highest single season slugging percentage had been .688 recorded the following slugging percentages: .863, .799, .749, and .812. Bonds’ on base percentage, never before higher than .461, rose to these season marks: .515, .582, .529, and .609. As for the OPS or SLOB, Bonds’ single season high had been 1.135 before 2001. His figures for the four seasons were :1.378, 1.381, 1.278 and 1.421.

Bonds SLOB or OPS (slugging percentage + on base percentage) numbers are ungodly. He obviously made a deal with Satan to be able to hit so well. This is another reason not to write about him; he is evil.

Contrast the personae of Barry Bonds with that of the man whose record he broke. There are few athletes in the history of sport who have exhibited more class, more courage, more humanity from the time they first stepped on the field to the day they hung them up than Henry Louis Aaron.

And Aaron has continued to be one of the finest gentleman in sports during his front office stints with the Atlanta Braves. He could have taken the easy way and not paid any attention to Barry Bonds. He could have refused to acknowledge Bonds accomplishment.

No one would have thought any less of Aaron if he had expressed his displeasure with Bonds’ cheating by ignoring him. But there he was, up on the big screen at AT&T Park graciously congratulating him. But what must he have been thinking? Whatever it was, the classy Aaron will keep it to himself.

Barry Bonds was the best player in baseball before he took steroids. I would have written about him back then. During the 1990’s, he was a three time Most Valuable Player, the most complete athlete in the Majors. He could do it all - run, throw, hit, hit for power, hit to the opposite field, and steal bases. He was a one man wrecking crew of a hitter who opponents feared facing with the game on the line.

But he was never a feared slugger. Bonds’ hits were screaming line drives that made it past the infielders before they could react. His homers were also of the line drive variety, the ball tending to find gaps in the outfield rather than make it over the fence. Only after he put on all that muscle did his home runs take on the rubric of majesty; towering fly balls that reveal the true power hitter. And now, he is one of the immortals, a deathless presence hovering over the sport for years, his achievement always stained by his own arrogant belief that the rules weren’t for him.

No, I won’t write about Barry Bonds. Tomorrow. Today, I, like anyone else who loves baseball, can’t think about anything else.

The idea is seductive to the left. Bring the troops home from Iraq in dignified retreat, patting ourselves on the back that we did the best we could while that country explodes in sectarian conflict. Bravely, we take the blame before the world, say three our fathers, three hail Mary’s, and go about the business of turning America into a bastion of democratic socialism.

The only problem is, it isn’t even remotely possible:

These are unpleasant realities for a nation that prefers all of its solutions to be simple and short. The reality is, however, that even if the US does withdraw from Iraq, it cannot disengage from it. The US will have to be deeply involved in trying to influence events in Iraq indefinitely into the future, regardless of whether it does so from the inside or the outside. It will face major risks and military problems regardless of the approach it takes, and it will face continuing strategic, political, and moral challenges.

Anthony Cordesman went to Iraq recently. His travelling companions were none other than Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack - the Brookings Boys whose Op-Ed in the New York Times entitled “We Maybe Could Be, Just Might Possibly, Conceivably, Perchance Win This Thing (Depending On The Breaks)” was touted as “proof” that not only was the surge working (a fact confirmed by even some of the most jaundiced observers of Iraq who have come back from there recently) but that its success could lead to “sustainable stability” in Iraq and a sort of “victory.”

Now there’s a rallying cry for you; “Remember Sustainable Stability!” Or perhaps “Onward to Sustainable Stability!”

At any rate, Cordesman is one of those hard eyed military men who works for think tanks as kind of the “Warmonger in Residence.” He doesn’t have quite the take on the Iraqi situation that O’Hanlon and Pollack brought back. In fact, it is quite a bit more pessimistic (which is bringing huge sighs of relief to some on the left this morning)

From my perspective, the US now has only uncertain, high risk options in Iraq. It cannot dictate Iraq’s future, only influence it, and this presents serious problems at a time when the Iraqi political process has failed to move forward in reaching either a new consensus or some form of peaceful coexistence. It is Iraqis that will shape Iraq’s ability or inability to rise above its current sectarian and ethnic conflicts, to redefine Iraq’s politics and methods of governance, establish some level of stability and security, and move towards a path of economic recovery and development. So far, Iraq’s national government has failed to act at the rate necessary to move the country forward or give American military action political meaning.

Gee…where have I heard that before?

If I were an anti-war lefty, I’d hold off on embracing this report too vigorously. Yes, it may offer some counterpoints to the O’Hanlon-Pollack piece. But you’re not going to like this:

The US has some 160,000 military personnel in Iraq and a matching or greater number of civilians and contractors. It has between 140,000 and 200,000 metric tons of valuable equipment and supplies, and some 15,000-20,000 military vehicles and major weapons. It is dispersed in many of Iraqi’s cities and now in many forward operating bases.

This does not mean that the US cannot leave quickly. It can rush out quickly by destroying or abandoning much of its supplies and equipment, and simply removing its personnel and contractors (and some unknown amount of Iraqis who bet their lives and families on a continued US effort). The more equipment and facilities (and Iraqis) it destroys or abandons, the quicker it can move. Under these conditions, the US could rush out in as little as a few weeks and no more than a few months.

A secure withdrawal that removed all US stocks and equipment and phased out US bases, however, would take some 9-12 months or longer [estimates of this vary but if it was 10,000 military plus 10,000 civilians and all equipment each month in Kuwait, that would likely take 16 months minimum; 2 years is what many military experts think would be a rapid, but deliberate pace].

So if, as many of you propose, we leave Iraq in 90 days, it would be Saigon, 1975 times ten. Not only military stocks but what becomes of the $20 billion in aid projects? Or the new US embassy being built there?

And for many of the rest of you liberals, what does this information do to your carefully thought out and “practical” redeployment of troops under the Democratic plan in Congress? You know, the one where we’re out by March, 2008?

And for all my conservative friends who talk blithely of “victory” as if there is any strategy or tactics we can employ that will change the perception out there in the world that Iraq is nothing short of a defeat for the US, Cordesman has this:

It is important to note in this regard that while Americans are still concerned with finding ways to define “victory” in Iraq, virtually the entire world already perceives the US as having decisively lost. Every international opinion poll that measures international popular reactions to the US performance in the war – Oxford Analytica, Pew, ABC/BBC/ARD/USA Today, Gallup, etc. – sees the US as responsible for a war it cannot justify and which has caused immense Iraqi suffering. Virtually every internal poll of Iraqi opinion with any credibility — Oxford Analytica, ABC/BBC/ARD/USA Today, ORB, etc. – has produced similar results.

The US probably cannot entirely reverse these attitudes in Iraq, the region, allied states, and increasingly in America. It may well, however, be able to greatly ameliorate them over time. It seems likely that the US will ultimately be judged far more by how it leaves Iraq, and what it leaves behind, than how it entered Iraq. The global political image of the US – and its ability to use both “hard” and “soft” power in other areas in the future, depends on what the US does now even more than on what it has done in the past.

What you are advocating - even though noble and desired by all patriots - is simply not possible.

Time to rethink Iraq - for BOTH sides.

The situation cries out for a bi-partisan solution between Congress and the White House. In order for that to happen BOTH sides have to recognize that neither of them can achieve their goals. The Democratic left is not going to be able to cut and run from Iraq. The Republican right is not going to be able to stay indefinitely, endlessly engaged in a struggle against ghosts.

(Parenthetically, Middle East and military expert Doug Hanson, speaking on my radio show yesterday, put the number of insurgents and potential insurgents in Iraq at “several hundred thousand.” These are former Saddam loyalists who were placed where they are and given instructions just for this kind of scenario happening in Iraq today. What is blood boiling about this number is US intelligence has known since 2005 that we are facing hundreds of thousands of fighters and potential fighters while Rumsfeld was assuring Congress there weren’t more than 20,-25,000.

We can’t kill them all.)

We can’t leave precipitously and we can’t stay forever. What’s the solution? The situation doesn’t lend itself to the easy talking points of either side which is why both my right and left leaning readers and commenters will not be pleased. Believe me, I’d love to write a post on Iraq just once where only one side gave me hell. But the times and situation in Iraq demand a little bit more out of all of us.

The only way out of Iraq that least harms our national security interests (interests made very plain and spelled out in English by Cordesman in his report) and that would leave Iraq with a chance at peace is together. And after we leave, the hard part begins. Staying engaged also would demand a bi-partisan consensus with the acknowledgement by both sides that there may be certain circumstances where we would have to send troops back into Iraq to save it from external threats or other disasters.

Cordesman’s report forms the basis for a long term commitment to Iraq and its people. Do we have the political will to make it happen?

I can dream, can’t I?

Join me from 3:00 - 4:00 PM central time for “The Rick Moran Show” on Blog Talk Radio.

My special guest today is Doug Hanson, frequent contributor to the American Thinker whose article on Russia today is a must read.

We’ll be talking with Doug about that as well as Iraq and the Middle East.

Don’t miss it!

If you want to call in and ask Doug a question, (718) 664-9764 is the number.

Here’s a podcast of the show:

Michelle Malkin links to my last post on the Blogs and Beauchamp, showing her disagreement by linking to this eloquent, dignified post by Bryan at Hot Air on why, in fact, the Beauchamp story is considered very important by the military:

How important, in the grand scheme of the war, is the Scott Thomas Beauchamp story? By itself, it’s not all that important. But contrary to the opinions of those who can’t be bothered to care about it but nonetheless opine on it for whatever reason, and then mainly to downplay its importance, Beauchamp hasn’t happened all by itself and to those of us who served, its context and trajectory make it very important.

For the record, my downplaying of the importance of the story doesn’t mean that I believe it to be inconsequential. Nor, as Ace believes, does it mean that I am denigrating the efforts of those who brought elements of the story to light that eventually debunked Beauchamp’s claims. Why must everything in blogs be all or nothing? Is there no place where proportionality matters? A little nuance? A little deeper look at something rather than the raw, emotional primal scream of irrationality?

I read Ace’s post with a growing sense of perplexity. It’s impossible to respond to because he is criticizing what I was thinking while writing. He confidently ascribes motivations to me when he doesn’t know me from Adam and I doubt whether he’s read me in a year - maybe two. Maybe never.

Criticizing what I write is one thing. Criticizing what I believe is fair game. Smearing me for being reasonable? For having an original thought? Divining my “true” intent how? Does Ace have a window into my soul? Is he a mind reader? If you can read that post at Ace’s without scratching your head in wonderment at how someone who doesn’t know me, never met me, rarely, if ever, reads me can accuse me of all that perfidious thought, then perhaps you would be good enough to come back here and explain it to me. It is simply and literally, beyond belief.

Perplexing, indeed.

But Bryan’s points deserve a response.

There were few who stood up for the troops after Vietnam, but that’s a shame that shouldn’t be and won’t be repeated. The Beauchamp story comes down to a simple thing that most who never served in the military may not understand, and that’s the linked concepts of service and honor. It’s an honor to serve in the US military. With that honor comes responsibility not to besmirch the uniform or let down your comrades. Some obviously don’t live up to that honor. It’s up to the rest of us to protect that honor, keep its value high and keep the traditions of the service worthy of honor.

No, I have never served in the military. I have written in the past about my associations with soldiers and how they were different than most people I knew - especially when I was younger. Military people have a sense of duty and honor that that they have no problem wearing on their sleeve. They don’t brag about it. But they are obviously proud that they have a strict code by which they live their lives. I came to respect that aspect of my military friends enormously. In a very real way, I was jealous of that kind of commitment.

So it is not surprising that military bloggers would take the Beauchamp story personally. I understand and agree. I said in the post that it was important to debunk the claims of Beauchamp in order to undo the damage done to the military.

What more should I have said? And herein lies the concept of proportionality. Is it that I’m not sufficiently triumphant? Another MSM scalp nailed to the lodgepole so break out the drums and let’s party? Alright, allow me to express my pure joy at sticking it to TNR - they deserve the shellacking.

But no. It appears that because I point out that all of this amounts to a hill of beans outside Blogdom by making the ridiculous claims that it won’t win the war or mitigate the effect of Abu Ghraib all of a sudden, people want links to bloggers who actually make those claims? What? Where do I say any bloggers say those things? I am deliberately blowing out of proportion the effect of claiming Beauchamp’s scalp to illustrate the futility of taking it too seriously when contemplating the larger picture of the war and even fixing the black eye given to the military by TNR’s lies.

Yes it is important to the military folk that this is done. And for the reasons so eloquently written by Bryan. And yes it is important to debunk false claims on anything made by the media. I hope blogs will always do this.

But not surprisingly, no blogs or commenters below have addressed the thrust of my argument; that these blogswarms blow things out of proportion until the story takes on an importance far beyond anything having to do with the world outside of this cliquish little circle of blogs and blog readers. Is there another way to accomplish exactly the same thing without this happening? Is that such a ridiculous question?

Allow me to post Bryan’s summation:

Besides all of that, truth matters. “Fake but accurate” amounts to a lie, TNR. And in a post-modern war such as the one we’re fighting, and especially as we place more emphasis on the morality of our actions in war than on actually winning it by defeating the enemy, Beauchamp represents an informational attack on our ability to wage war. Words are weapons. Loss of morale leads to loss in war, by the way we fight wars now. Letting his smears stand has the potential of letting another toilet-Koran story to get out there into the infowar zone unchallenged. So again, stopping that from happening is just the right thing to do.

To read my post and say I disagree with any of that would mean you should be working on your cognitive skills, gentle readers. And if my lack of enthusiasm for this victory upsets you, I’m sorry. But there is no need for the kind of wild denunciations made by Ace nor some of your comments below which put words in my mouth and thoughts in my head that simply aren’t there.