In the real world, we call such people delusional

Tom Friedman couldn’t quite bring himself to utter the D-word this weekend when describing the debacle we call George Bush’s foreign policy on the Russert show, but that’s what he meant. Emphasis mine.

MR. RUSSERT: Let’s talk about the Bush administration and a quote from your column on Friday. And here’s what Tom Friedman wrote: “America should be galvanizing the forces of order - Europe, Russia, China and India - into a coalition against these trends. But we can’t. Why? In part, it’s because our president and our secretary of state, although they speak with great moral clarity, have no moral authority. That’s been shattered by their performance in Iraq.

“The world hates George Bush more than any U.S. president in my lifetime. He is radioactive - and so caught up in his own ideological bubble that he is incapable of imagining or forging alternative strategies.” Pretty strong.

It would have been much stronger if this documented, dedicated cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq - now full of rueful reflection, or something - had put it more plainly: American foreign policy, devised and driven by Bush and his cohorts, was (1) founded on a delusion and (2) is now foundering on the shoals of reality. It would also have taken less time to say.

(Hat tip to scribes at Martini Republic.)

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East

Returning to the well of regret

Apparently, if you’re the prime minister of Israel, you can issue essentially the same apology for killing women and children in Qana…

“I would like to express my deep sorrow at the death of innocent civilians,” the sources quoted Mr Olmert as telling Cabinet ministers at their weekly meeting.

…as you used when you blew UN observers all to hell…

“The prime minister expressed Israel’s deep regret over the mistaken killing of four U.N. peacekeepers,” Olmert said in a statement released by his office.

…without having to actually change your behavior:

Israel continued to attack targets in Lebanon even after agreeing to a 48-hour halt to its broad bombing campaign in the face of an outcry over the air raid on Sunday that left dozens of Lebanese civilians dead.

The well of regret runs deep indeed.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Lebanon, Hezbollah

Quiet Friday

The world at large can take care of itself today, I think. Bending my thoughts instead toward the weekend. No big plans just yet. A nap would be nice.

Two-thirds of Britons demand that Tony Blair be replaced by Hugh Grant

Well, not exactly. But that many Britons do want their actual prime minister to show just a bit of spine in his relationship to George Bush:

When Prime Minister Tony Blair visits Washington on Friday, he will find himself in a familiar position — a statesman abroad, and assailed at home as what his harshest critics call America’s “poodle.” [...]

In two opinion surveys this week, one in The Guardian on Tuesday, the other in today’s Daily Telegraph, a majority of Britons polled said that he should show more independence from the United States — mimicking the “Love Actually” moment from the movie of that name starring Hugh Grant as a British prime minister who breaks publicly with an American president. The findings of the latest survey “will increase pressure on Mr. Blair to call for an immediate cease-fire” when he meets President Bush on Friday, the Daily Telegraph said.

The damning thing about this is that Blair was far ahead of the curve compared to Bush on the vital need for the United States to play an even-handed role in Israeli-Palestinian relations, even as the UK was co-opted into the mistaken invasion of Iraq. In a real sense, Blair advocated handling the hard thing first, the most important element in any Middle East solution. But Bush didn’t budge, Blair gave in, and we are where we are today.

It will be interesting indeed to hear what Blair has to say to Bush on this latest pilgrimage to Washington. Don’t expect any open microphones, though.

Technorati Tags: Tony Blair

Jim Talent, not-so-proud Republican

Jim, where’s the love?

I was reading the latest dispatch from Kommander Kos, a post making merry with the efforts made by Republican Congressman Tom Reynolds of New York to conceal his own party affiliation. Why, according to Markos, you can’t find Reynolds actually calling himself a Republican anywhere on his official website. Once I got a good chuckle out of that, I wondered if I knew of a similarly diffident GOP candidate closer to home, an incumbent so uncomfortable with being called a Republican that he’d avoid labeling himself as such on his own website.

It turns out that there is such a shy Republican close to home. You know him as Jim Talent.

Don’t bother trying to find Talent describing himself as a Republican on those pages; he stays well away from owning up to it. You will find this claim…

Missourians elected Senator Talent to the Senate in November 2002 where he has worked with Republicans and Democrats to pass critical legislation for Missouri.

…but this makes it sound as though Talent is a member of some obscure third party, neither Republican nor Democrat. Joe Lieberman’s new party, maybe. Who knows?

Maybe Talent will tell us someday.

Interestingly, the website of his opponent, Claire McCaskill, at least hosts a graphic ad soliciting donations for her campaign “to help Democrats win on ‘06.” Talent won’t go even that far in identifying with his “fellow” Republicans.

Addendum: Greetings, Kossacks! Let’s give Talent and the GOP the “angry” answer they deserve. Send Claire some support via ActBlue.

Technorati Tags: Jim Talent

Failing a drug test is one thing; disappointing your mom is another

Tour de France winner Floyd Landis fails drug test; victory now thrown into question; further tests pending.

Hard to know what’s worse for Landis: the resultant public scandal and damage to the reputation caused by this news, or the fact that your mom essentially threw you to the wolves:

Arlene Landis, his mother, said Thursday that she wouldn’t blame her son if he was taking medication to treat the pain in his injured hip, but “if it’s something worse than that, then he doesn’t deserve to win.”

“I didn’t talk to him since that hit the fan, but I’m keeping things even keel until I know what the facts are,” she told The Associated Press in a phone interview from her home in Farmersville, Pennsylvania. “I know that this is a temptation to every rider but I’m not going to jump to conclusions … It disappoints me.”

Ouch.

Update: Landis denies drug use. He also says this:

The A sample from the urine test to which he submitted after Stage 17 shows “an unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone.” Landis told me he “can’t be hopeful” that the B sample will be any different than the A. “I’m a realist,” he said.

Landis says that an elevated level of testosterone is different from a positive test. He says this is a fairly common problem among pro cyclists. He’s retaining the services of a Spanish doctor named Luis Hernandez, who has helped other riders shown by tests to have elevated levels of testosterone. “In hundreds of cases,” Landis told me, “no one’s ever lost one.”

He also wishes reporters would leave his mother out of it.

Technorati Tags: Tour de France

“What did we invade here for?”

As George Bush prepares to funnel more troops into the war for Baghdad, some American soldiers already there ask pointed questions and make trenchant observations.

Spec. Joshua Steffey:

Steffey said he wished “somebody would explain to us, ‘Hey, this is what we’re working for.’ ” With a stream of expletives, he said he could not care less “if Iraq’s free” or “if they’re a democracy.”

“The first time somebody you know dies, the first thing you ask yourself is, ‘Well, what did he die for?’ “

Sgt. Christopher Dugger:

“We’re trained as an Army to fight and destroy the enemy and then take over,” added Dugger, 26, of Reno, Nev. “But I don’t think we’re trained enough to push along a country, and that’s what we’re actually doing out here.”

Spec. David Fulcher:

“I mean, if you compare the casualty count from this war to, say, World War II, you know obviously it doesn’t even compare,” Fulcher said. “But World War II, the big picture was clear — you know you’re fighting because somebody was trying to take over the world, basically. This is like, what did we invade here for?”

“How did it become, ‘Well, now we have to rebuild this place from the ground up’?” Fulcher asked.

The architects of the invasion and occupation of Iraq often throw up soldiers like these as human shields against criticism of delusional goals, botched strategies, incompetent planning, and a war that should never have been launched in the first place. But any comparison of those politicians to the men and women sent to fight and ordered to hold and stabilize an entire country is an insult to those troops. The vast majority of American soldiers are doing what soldiers at their best always do: their duty, to the best of their ability. When such soldiers ask the kinds of questions and express the kind of frustration we hear now out of Baghdad, it should shame us all. We sent them, after all…though to what end, only God knows.

“It’s frustrating, but we are definitely a help to these people,” [Dugger] said. “I’m out here with the guys that I know so well, and I couldn’t picture myself being anywhere else.”

If the Vulcans in the White House had an ounce of the integrity of Sgt. Dugger and his troops, even now I would feel somewhat better about America in Iraq. But then, if they had such integrity, America probably wouldn’t be there.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

Time gives Condi a failing grade on Lebanon

Not very good at her job

Dr. Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, gets an old-fashioned schooling from Time’s Tony Karon (who knows a little about the Middle East) over her utter failure of a diplomatic mission to the Lebanese:

Her case was hardly helped when she explained that the violence that has already killed more than 400 Lebanese and turned more than a half million into refugees represents the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.” Phrases like that — and her rejection of the call for an immediate cease-fire on the grounds that “whatever we do, we have to be certain that we’re pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old Middle East” — carry a revolutionary ring that scares the hell out of America’s allies in the region. It was revolutionaries like Lenin and Mao, after all, who rationalized violence and suffering as the wages of progress, in the way a doctor might rationalize surgery — painful, bloody, even risking the life of the patient, but ultimately necessary. Social engineering is not surgery, however, and its victims find little comfort in the homilies of its authors.

Of course, it’s easy to rationalize the risks of surgery when you expect other people to do all the bleeding.

More from Karon:

Rice’s midguided revolutionary rhetoric is only one of the mistakes the Secretary of State made on her ill-fated mission to the MIdeast. Some other lessons the Administration will need to absorb quickly from its crash course in Middle East diplomacy:

Diplomacy means not only talking about your adversaries, but also talking to them

Sometimes listening is as important as talking

In the Middle East, you’re judged by your position on Israel and the Palestinians (even Tony Blair understands this one…not that anyone listens to him)

Enlightened self-interest will determine Syria’s actions

Develop a Plan B

It is vitally important that Rice and her employer draw these desperately needed lessons. Tougher tests lie just ahead.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Lebanon, Hezbollah

And circling overhead, it’s Al Sharpton

One should fight like the devil the impulse to think well of Al Sharpton.

The Rev engaged in a little parachute protest here in Gatewayville yesterday, dropping in to rail at electric utility Ameren over the pase or power restoration following last weeks storms. Posing in front of Ameren’s HQ, Sharpton called for the utility to cut its rates, threatened future demonstrations if his demands weren’t met, and accused Ameren of restoring power to white neighborhoods ahead of black neighborhoods (a claim not supported by the numbers, according to local CBS affiliate KMOV).

Then he got back into his presumably air-conditioned BMW and drove away.

This on a day when an Ameren employee was killed while working to restore power in one area, and a contractor was severely burned working in another neighborhood - a predominantly black neighborhood, incidentally.

I’ll say this: Unless Sharpton shows up with a hard hat, a bucket truck, and a willingness to climb an electric pole, I don’t want to hear a goddamned word out of him about power outages. Not one word.

The quiet about-face in Iraq

The president of the United States, joined by the prime minister of Iraq, all but declared the much-touted six-week old “security crackdown” in Baghdad an utter failure yesterday. And well he should have: The casualties among Iraqi civilians and security forces over the past fifteen days totaled two hundred and twenty-eight (according to reports compiled by the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count), rivaling the 233 fatalities during the previous fortnight, and surpassing again the 154 slain during the first two weeks of the crackdown. The “new” strategy of relying on Iraqi forces with Americans in a supporting role has proven ineffective, to say the least.

Bush’s newest new strategy? More Americans. So much for rosy projections of dwindling US troop levels any time soon. Bush tried to put a brave face on the dour news, but came across as less than convincing:

“Obviously, the violence in Baghdad is still terrible, and therefore there needs to be more troops,” Bush said in a news conference with Maliki.

“Conditions change inside a country,” he added. “And the question is: Are we going to be facile enough to change with [them]?

Speaking of facile, Bush offered bland assurances that an improved security situation in other areas of Iraq would allow for shifting troops to Baghdad. Juan Cole has his doubts:

There is nothing obvious in this plan that would make you think it will succeed where other such plans have not. And, if they are moving US troops from someplace else to Baghdad, wherever they moved from would be in danger of falling into instability. This thing has become a shell game.

The big success story stressed by Bush and Maliki was the withdrawal of the British troops from the small Muthanna province in the south (pop. 500,000). Note that officials in the provincial capital, Samawa, complained that they weren’t ready to take over their own security, that there have been a series of police riots there, and that if there is any order it is imposed by the Badr Corps, an Iran-trained Shiite paramilitary. Maliki promised further withdrawals, and one can predict the same sorts of outcome.

In the meantime, you have to wonder how the American public (that is, that portion of the public that has not been paying especially close attention) will react when it realizes that, as Dan Froomkin points out today, we’re fighting a whole new war in Iraq:

It’s a historic admission: That job one for many American troops in Iraq is no longer fighting al-Qaeda terrorists, or even insurgents. Rather, it is trying to quell an incipient — if not already raging — sectarian civil war, with Baghdad as ground zero.

Arguably, that’s been the case for quite a while. But having the White House own up to it is a very big deal. [...]

How will people feel about our troops being sent into the crossfire between rival Muslim sects? That is not the war anyone signed up to fight.

Like it or not, it’s now the war we’ve got.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

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