Chestnuts, fire, Iraq

As advertised, the main strength of John Kerry’s alternate plan for dealing with Iraq is that it wouldn’t be George Bush who executes it. While there are some who would immediately scoff at this, it’s important to remember that many of the moves that the Bush administration made belatedly and with great reluctance, such as engaging the United Nations, had been advocated by Kerry some time ago. Had Bush moved as quickly and pragmatically as Kerry might have, the situation in Iraq might not be quite as dire as it is now. Still, that’s the past; here in the present, some critics are taking Kerry to task for a lack of specifics in his Iraq strategy. One of them, Billmon of Whiskey Bar fame, takes issue with a particular in Kerry’s Thursday night speech:

Interestingly, given his ultra cautious stance, I thought Kerry when a bit out on a limb when he argued that none of our allies (current and former) are going to want to help out in Iraq until Bush has been dumped. There’s always the chance the administration will manage to cobble together a Muslim mercenary force, or bribe the Russians into renting us some troops before the election. Which would pretty much cut Kerry’s Iraq “plan” off at the knees. Why hire a new guy to do what the old guy is already doing?

I don’t think I see what Billmon’s seeing here. The recently-publicized Saudi trial balloon proposing an army of Muslims assembled from as-yet-unnamed nations (though not Saudi Arabia, to be sure) is laughable. Iraq has already nixed the idea of such a force including soldiers from any neighboring nations. That leaves American ally Jordan, whose leader has already volunteered soldiers for such a purpose. But a proposed list of other nations - Malaysia, Algeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Morocco - doesn’t leave you feeling confident. This idea is as chimerical as the original “coalition of the willing” (read: “the bullied, the bribed, and the British”), and promises to be even less effective. The insurgents wreaking such havoc in Iraq will have no qualms about attacking Muslim forces allied with us, and each of these Muslim states knows it. As for Russia: if Vladimir Putin has expressed anything remotely like willingness to throw soldiers into Iraq, it’s the first I’ve heard of it.

So much for the idea of anybody else pulling American chestnuts out of the Iraqi fire.

I have an idea of what Kerry’s not saying when he talks about Iraq; it’s the big thing that nobody much is talking about. It’s the endgame. It’s the near-certainty that Iraq’s future is theocratic. Bush cannot admit it, having committed blood and treasure to the outcome of an democratic city on a hill. Kerry could never admit it as a candidate. But that’s the future: ready or not, like it or not. The only question is how rough the road will be on the way there, and how the expectations of the American public can be adjusted to that coming reality. Somehow, Kerry must walk the fine line between honoring the lives Bush sacrificed for an illusory goal, and working with the hard facts of an Iraq that was never really ours to control.

P.S. - Matt Yglesias and Kevin Drum have noted Kerry’s Iraq endgame quandary as well, with similar thoughts on the subject.

St. Louis American quiet on gay marriage ban

I find myself visiting the American website more and more often these days. Originally I just wanted its take on the active school board situation, but I’m using it more often now as a counter to the news and views espoused by the P-D. So I browsed the site today and read the paper’s endorsements for the upcoming primary. It’s not an extensive list: the races for governor, 3rd Congressional District, and City Circuit Attorney are discussed at some length, as is the Rockaway Beach casino-driven Constitutional Amendment 1. Terse endorsements are given for a handful of other contests. Glaringly absent, however, is any mention of the other constitutional issue on the ballot: the so-called “sanctity of marriage” amendment designed to ban gay men and lesbians from marriage. It’s an odd omission, considering that the American published an editorial advising the GOP and George Bush to “soften their divisive attacks” on gays. Mark Wilson wrote that piece, and a later editorial expressing his hopes for a “devastating defeat” for Amendment 2.

Good for Wilson. I’ll read his stuff any day. But he’s just one writer. Where is the paper’s official endorsement of a no vote on this push to embed bigotry in the state’s constitution? On this issue, who speaks for the American?

Odds & ends

Minor items for a rainy Friday. To my everlasting chagrin, I realized that I never finished my survey of the campaign websites for the Democrats running for state rep in the 64th District. My apologies; time just got away from me, and Primary Day is just around the bend. I’m going to try to wrap that up this weekend for completion’s sake, if nothing else. This reminds me that, like other good citizens, I should check out the P-D Voters Guide and make sure I know all of the players and issues before stepping into the big booth.

Whatever else you do on Primary Day, vote no on Constitutional Amendment 2, the gay marriage ban. Constitutions aren’t meant for hurting people.

Waveflux now has a search form up and running. It’s just like a Magic 8 ball, only without the mysterious blue liquid inside. Some minor text tweaking to be done, but don’t let that stop you from using it. Along those lines, I realize that I should organize the site archives for easier access. A project for next week, I think. It’s all about making life easier for you, the loyal reader.

Oh, here’s an odd bit which you may have seen. M and I saw one of these on a car bumper a few days ago:

You can buy one for yourself.

If Cheney is a natural fit for Voldemort, what does that leave for Bush? I’m thinking Professor Quirrell.

The cost of politicizing national security

Back to Kevin Drum for the moral of Bush’s “July surprise.” From the Los Angeles Times:

Another U.S. counterterrorism official said Ghailani’s capture would have been even more significant if not publicized so quickly.

“He’s been on the run since 1998 so you have five years of critical intelligence that can be mined: where he has been, who he has been with, how his operations worked,” said the counterterrorism official.

“Now, anything that he was involved in is being shredded, burned and, thrown in a river. Those things are all going away as we speak,” the official added. “We have to assume anyone affiliated with this guy is on the run . . . when usually, we can get great stuff as long as we can keep it quiet.”

Several U.S. officials said it was unclear why Pakistan publicized the arrest….

The reason why - and its consequence - is clear enough to intelligence officials, and it should be to the rest of us. When the security of the nation becomes a chip in a game of political poker, it costs us all. It’s also clear enough that the Bush administration cannot be trusted with the fight against terrorism.

Pakistan delivers for Bush, as ordered

Josh Marshall tells the story:

Just-in-time production?

See CNN’s Breaking News Alert: “Security forces have captured a high-level al Qaeda operative in a raid in central Pakistan, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said.”

Then, after you see that, remember that we noted in May and then The New Republic reported out extensively early this month, that this White House has been telling the Pakistanis for months that they wanted to see a big-time al Qaida leader - hopefully bin Laden - produced during the Democratic convention.

The notable among the newly incarcerated is one Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, wanted by the FBI for his suspected role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Not exactly a household name to many Americans, but over two hundred people died in those bombings. If Ghailani is in fact responsible for those deaths, his capture is good news indeed. Such good news that you have to wonder the announcement of his capture was delayed by four days.

Or, given the Bush administration’s penchant for gaming the system and politicizing national security, maybe you don’t wonder at all.

There are three points of interest here:

• The initial story that the Pentagon had ordered up a “July surprise” actually made its way into the mainstream press. Will the networks and major newspapers dare to draw the line connecting that story and today’s announcement? Or will they assume that most people won’t care overly much, and so take the easy route of avoiding the story?
• Between the noise from the Democratic convention and the relative obscurity of Ghailani, the White House may not get the level of favorable publicity it had hoped for. So far as I can tell, the media is responding with a bit of a yawn. There’s always tomorrow, but if a story like this doesn’t work its way into public consciousness in the initial news cycle (to use an outmoded term), it loses currency. Which means it loses potency.
• According to the initial leak, the White House wanted the announcement of the capture or killing of a “high value target” on July 26, 27, or 28 - or during the first three days of the Democratic convention. A wiseacre posting at Political Animal claimed that the fact that Pakistan was a day late obviously undermined any notion of conspiracy. Funny as that was, it brings up an intriguing possibility. Given new prisoner Ghailani’s no-name status, was the decision made to delay the announcement until even after the first three days, pushing it as close to the hour of Kerry’s speech as practicable?

This administration. Just when you think it can’t sink any lower, it finds a way to surprise you.

The searchers

I noticed an annoying side effect of migrating my blog, one that I probably should have predicted. I exported all of my entries into a text file for easy and complete uploading to the new blog setup, just like the MT demigods suggest. However, the ID numbers of several of the entries seem to have been changed in the process. The internal order of the site is still consistent, but now some of these ID numbers no longer match up with the cached info in Google. So those folks searching for a given topic and seeing a Waveflux entry on that topic may follow the Google link only to find a different entry altogether. I imagine that this problem will be solved as Google updates itself; the entries and their new ID info should be dutifully noted by the search engine, and life should be fine again. Still, a good host should work to solve these problems.

All this is by way of saying that I’ve gotten off my duff and have started making use of the public search facility that MT makes available. It’s working just fine, but I need to edit the template so that the page looks like it actually belongs to this site. I hope to have it up by tomorrow. That way, the visitor who’s been searching here (several times) for that one picture of Maria Sharapova can find it and get on with life.

The Manchurian substitute

No, I don’t mean Denzel Washington for Frank Sinatra. I’m talking about villains.

It’s just that if the remake takes place in and around the Desert Storm period, how does Manchuria factor into it?

Ah. I see. Not Manchuria as in China. Manchuria as in generically evil corporations.

It’s all clear to me now.

Why the Web is a good thing, #372

The ability to easily search for a piece of information and have at least even odds of finding it is the kind of culture-changing facility that once belonged to the realm of science fiction. But I find that it’s usually the unlooked-for discoveries, children of chance, that make the Web a pleasure. Such a find was this post, the product of a mind possessing the deadly combination of education, a wry bent, and free time.

Japanese officials detained well known evil genius Bobby Fischer on Tuesday [BBC] [NYT], and they have begun preparations to hovercar him back to the United States in a plexiglas box far from all metal objects. In 1992, Fischer played a match in Yugoslavia or Serbia or whatever it was called, and this ruined our plan to remove Milosevic from power by depriving him of crucial tourism revenue from chess spectators. Thanks to Fischer’s travels, military forces had to take action in Serbia instead. Ever since the 1992 match, the U.S. has been scouring the globe - searching, if you will - for Bobby Fischer.

I found that bit of whimsy while searching for this sober (and sobering) Atlantic piece on Fischer.

Migration complete, by the way

And if you can read this post, rejoice! The move to a new and better web host (that would be Total Choice Hosting, incidentally) is largely complete. There may be some domain name propagation that has yet to take place (waiting for nameservers to update records is profoundly irritating), but now, at least, I can actually post again. Hope you missed me as much as I missed you.

Obama, the day after

On the drive home from work yesterday, M and I listened to NPR’s Melissa Block interview Barack Obama on the eve of his address before the Dem convention. We’d heard of Obama, of course, even before the Jack and Jeri Ryan show derailed his Republican opposition for the open Senate seat in Illinois. Still, we don’t live in Illinois, and so this was the first time we’d had a chance to hear him speak. He was captivating. We were impressed by his blend of passion and reason, and by a sense of conviction that frankly surprised us both. We are not accustomed to sensing conviction in politicians. When the interview was over, M exclaimed, “Let’s make him president!” I felt the same way - just terribly impressed. And this was hours before Obama’s speech.

We had the schedule of convention events wrong and so missed his speech the first time around, but I was able to catch it online a couple of hours later. The visual feed was sluggish and lagged behind the audio, which came through loud and clear. This had an odd benefit in that I was forced to focus on what Obama actually said, as opposed to my being swept up in the emotion of the audience. All of the country is reacting to Obama’s performance with (to flog an overused phrase) shock and awe, rippling all along the political spectrum. Jeanne D’Arc at Body and Soul framed that reaction succinctly here:

Chills. It has been a long, long time since a political speech brought me to tears, but this one did it.

As I read other commentary around the Web today and listened to reactions from various media-types, I sensed that Obama tapped into a desire felt by a vast number of liberals and progressives: the desire to hear the case for compassion articulated with moral force and without apology. If Howard Dean invoked the latent and frustrated energy of many Democrats, then Obama gave that energy a needed and (again) moral purpose.

Circumstance forced me to focus on the words rather than the visual. Maybe this is why my reaction is a touch cooler than that of some others. I came away thinking that it was a good speech. A pretty good speech, considering that it offered many goals but no tools for reaching them. Still, that’s the nature of a sermon, and of keynote addresses. I don’t know that I can be clubbed into calling the speech better than the Sermon on the Mount (as seems to have happened to poor Kevin Drum). The odd thing is that I was more impressed listening to Obama in interviews aired just before the convention. He’s my age, forty-two years old (old for a wide receiver but not even in his prime as a politician), and yet there was something about him that seemed, well, old-school. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the figures of the 1960s civil rights movement. The sense of grave purpose from that period - the sense of mission - combined with a precise articulation.

The convention speech was good. But I have the feeling that he can do better. Much better. He will gain experience in his new job (and if I was head of the Illinois GOP organization, I wouldn’t bother trying to dredge up an opponent for Obama after last night), and that experience will inform his vision and goals. It should be interesting even to watch.

Before people rush out to print “Obama in 2012″ yard signs, it would be wise to recall what the man said of himself in an interview: he is a work in progress. We have an idea of what kind of senator he would like to be, but we have yet to see what kind of senator he will be. Obama’s great value right now is as a standard bearer for ideals that might easily have been abandoned, and as a beacon to African Americans who until now have been less than convinced of the virtues of the party. There is a lot of work to do, and the year 2012 will take care of itself.

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