Category Archives: 2008 President Election

CAMPAIGN 08: An inability to recognize ourselves in one another

Islamofascism’s ill political wind
By James Carroll, Boston Globe, January 21, 2008

In contrast to the way militant zealotries of other religions have been perceived, there is a broad conviction, especially among many conservative American Christians, that the inner logic of Islam and fascism go together. Political candidates appeal to those Christians by defining the ambition of Islamofascists in language that makes prior threats from, say, Hitler or Stalin seem benign. The point is that there is a deep religious prejudice at work, and when politicians adopt its code, they make it worse.

The Democrats gain little by shaping their rhetoric to appeal to the Republicans’ conservative religious base, but a readiness to denigrate Islam shows up on their side, too. In last week’s debate, moderator Brian Williams put to Barack Obama a question about Internet rumors that claim he is a Muslim. The tone of the question suggested that Obama was being accused of something heinous. He replied with a simple affirmation that he is a Christian. He did not then ask, “And what would be wrong if I were a Muslim?” Had he done so, it seems clear, he would have cost himself votes in the present climate. [complete article]

Obama reaches the mountaintop
By John Nichols, The Nation, January 21, 2008

… in his Sunday speech at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Barack Obama went to a higher ground — to that mountaintop that King occupied until his death on April 4, 1968, and that Bobby Kennedy stood for a brief and remarkable political moment that played out between April and June of that fateful year.

“Unity is the great need of the hour – the great need of this hour. Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it’s the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country,” Obama told a audience that hung on the every word of the most emotionally-effective orator to seek the presidency since Kennedy.

“I’m not talking about a budget deficit. I’m not talking about a trade deficit. I’m not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans,” explained Obama. “I’m talking about a moral deficit. I’m talking about an empathy deficit. I’m taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother’s keeper; we are our sister’s keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.” [complete article]

What does it mean to be the pro-Israel candidate?
By Gershom Gorenberg, The American Prospect, January 18, 2008

The main reason that Democratic candidates are less frightening to a progressive Israeli worrying about his country’s future, as my progressive friends in Washington remind me, is that the Democrats may be jiving. That is, because they are sensible folks otherwise, we can assume they don’t really mean this stuff. They even hide small hints of moderation in their rhetoric. The Republicans’ sincerity is truly scary.

I suggest that it’s time to talk about what “pro-Israel” should mean. Not because the discussion will change campaign rhetoric: The candidates will stick to cliches. But after the election, one will have to govern. Members of Congress will need to decide how to vote on the usual strident resolutions backed by AIPAC. Debate now on what it means to support Israel might mean that a year from now, elected leaders will be able to refer to publicly recognized ideas to justify acting more sensibly. [complete article]

CAMPAIGN 08 & EDITOR’S COMMENTS: Out with the old, in with the new

Just one more year! Good riddance to George W Bush
By Rupert Cornwell, The Independent, January 20, 2008

Arabia is the land of illusion and desert mirages. And as he jetted last week from kingdom to sheikdom, to be regaled with feasts and falcons, jewels and ornamental swords, George Bush might have imagined that all was well with his presidency. But this, his longest and most ambitious trip to the Middle East, will surely be remembered – if it is remembered at all – as a gaudy, irrelevant footnote to a presidency that has long since failed.

Today is a sombre milestone, marking the start of the last of Mr Bush’s eight years in the White House. This being a leap year, exactly 366 days remain until 20 January 2009, when his successor will be sworn into office. It is a time when incumbents look to their legacies. And for this President the view could scarcely be bleaker.

Is he the worst President in US history? Mr Bush faces stiff competition from the likes of James Buchanan, who watched as America slipped towards civil war, or Warren Harding with his corrupt administration, or Herbert Hoover, who failed to halt the slide into the Great Depression, or, more recently, Richard Nixon, the only President to be forced to resign. But in terms of dogmatism, incompetence, ignorance and divisiveness, Mr Bush surely compares with any of the above. [complete article]

Internal memo takes on Obama’s approach to Middle East
By Jennifer Siegel, The Forward, January 20, 2008

A confidential memo questioning Senator Barack Obama’s potential approach to Middle East policy was circulated earlier this month among staffers at a major American Jewish organization.

“The Senator’s interpretation of the NIE raises questions,” wrote Debra Feuer, a counsel for the American Jewish Committee, one day after the Illinois Democrat surged to victory in the Iowa caucus.

Referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she added that Obama “appears to believe the Israelis bear the burden of taking the risky steps for peace, and that the violence Israel has received in return does not shift that burden.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — God forbid the possibility that an American president might have the audacity to attempt an even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict!

The Israel lobby has to tread a fine line in going after Obama. Of course, AIPAC-friendly Clinton is the Democratic candidate of choice, but the lobby needs to hedge its bets. Candidate Obama, who is not AIPAC-unfriendly, could become an unfriendly president to a lobby he saw as being intent on keeping him out of the White House. There’s a stunning irony in the AJC referencing Ali Abunimah’s comments about Obama when Ali himself regards Obama as having shifted to the AIPAC camp. I guess in the eyes of the lobby, it is unforgivable that anyone should ever express any degree of sympathy with the Palestinians.

Hillary, Barack, experience
By Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, January 20, 2008

The Democrats with the greatest Washington expertise — Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson — have already been driven from the race. And the presidential candidate left standing with the greatest experience by far is Mr. McCain; if Mrs. Clinton believes that’s the criterion for selecting the next president, she might consider backing him. [complete article]

Obama’s age gap: is it race?
By Dick Meyer, CBS, January 19, 2008

Now that Democrats have voted or caucused in three states in three different parts of the country, it appears there is one crucial voting bloc that will not support Barack Obama: older Americans.

Obama was able to overcome a consistent age gap in Iowa because of an unusually high turnout by young voters who supported him overwhelmingly. And he may be able to carry South Carolina, where roughly half the Democratic primary voters are expected to be African-American.

But Obama’s weak performance so far among older voters substantially increases the odds against him scoring big victories in the slew of states voting on February 5th, “Super Duper Tuesday.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — If old America isn’t ready for Obama, what’s young America supposed to do? Wait long enough until it too becomes set in its ways?

War, meet the 2008 campaign
By Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, January 20, 2008

The American officers I met were hardly of one mind on how to proceed in Iraq, but they were grappling with decisions on how to try to stabilize a traumatized country with a hard-headed sense that although there have been significant gains, a long and difficult job still lies ahead — a core assumption that has frequently been missing on the campaign trail.

The politicians, on the other hand, seemed more intent on addressing public impatience with an open-ended commitment in Iraq, either by promising prompt withdrawal (the Democrats) or by suggesting that victory may be near (the Republicans).

Anthony Cordesman, a military specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who regularly visits Iraq, put it this way: “You have to grade all the candidates between a D-minus and an F-plus. The Republicans are talking about this as if we have won and as if Iraq is the center of the war on terrorism, rather than Afghanistan and Pakistan and a host of movements in 50 other countries.

“The Democrats talk about this as if the only problem is to withdraw and the difference is over how quickly to do it.” [complete article]

Winning ugly
By Michael Tomasky, The Guardian, January 19, 2008

Well, it wasn’t big and it sure wasn’t pretty – in fact it was downright ugly – but Hillary Clinton’s win in Nevada gives her an advantage now over Barack Obama in the Democratic contest.

The effect of the result is perhaps most easily grasped by envisioning the counterfactual. Let’s say Obama had won. In that case, the media would have been full of reports about how the underdog (which he assuredly is) had regained momentum, had knocked the powerful Clinton machine back on its heels a second time, and seemed primed to win next Saturday’s match-up in South Carolina. In that state, and in the 22 states voting on February 5, sit hundreds or thousands of political operatives who, if Obama had won, would be on the phone with one another right now asking if they should go ahead and get with Obama, emboldening one another to buck the mighty Clintons. But now Clinton has held that effect off – at least for a week, perhaps for more, perhaps for good. [complete article]

Leading Democrats to Bill Clinton: pipe down
By Jonathan Alter, Newsweek, January 28, 2008

Prominent Democrats are upset with the aggressive role that Bill Clinton is playing in the 2008 campaign, a role they believe is inappropriate for a former president and the titular head of the Democratic Party. In recent weeks, Sen. Edward Kennedy and Rep. Rahm Emanuel, both currently neutral in the Democratic contest, have told their old friend heatedly on the phone that he needs to change his tone and stop attacking Sen. Barack Obama, according to two sources familiar with the conversations who asked for anonymity because of their sensitive nature. Clinton, Kennedy and Emanuel all declined to comment. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — At what point does loyal support for one’s spouse turn into a passion for a vicarious (and maybe not so vicarious) third term?

EDITORIAL: Fake friendly-fire

Richard Cohen’s Farrakhan test
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 15, 2008

Anticipation of the “swiftboating” of Barak Obama is a partially misplaced fear in as much as it focuses on the likelihood of delightfully crude attacks of the kind Karl Rove could be expected to craft. Much more insidious is the form of attack — a kind of fake friendly-fire — that comes from commentators like Richard Cohen.

“It’s important to state right off that nothing in Obama’s record suggests he harbors anti-Semitic views,” says Cohen in the Washington Post. Though Cohen professes “admiration” for Obama, he says, “I wonder about his mettle.”

What Cohen is doing with his Obama and anti-Semitism association is playing with the same line of deceit that George Bush and Dick Cheney like to use in linking Saddam Hussein and 9/11. Bring the terms into close proximity and then bounce them back and forth between sentences. If someone asks, “Are you suggesting that Saddam was responsible for 9/11?” or, “Are you implying that Barak Obama does not object to anti-Semitism?”, then the swift response is, “I said no such thing.” But after the denial comes the repetition. It’s a coward’s line of attack.

It’s one thing to make a provocative argument and stir up debate, but Cohen’s commentary, far from being an appeal to reason is a blatant effort to poison a political process. He is doing what so many a political operative does which is to look at the audience he hopes to influence and then try and pick out all its weaknesses — its fear, suspicion, bigotry and ignorance. These he sees as a valuable pool of resources that can be exploited to further his political agenda. But do you really think, Mr. Cohen, that we need another presidency that rests on a foundation of fear and ignorance?

OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Faith talk on the campaign trail

Is religion a threat to democracy?
By Ira Chernus, TomDispatch, January 14, 2008

It’s a presidential campaign like no other. The candidates have been falling all over each other in their rush to declare the depth and sincerity of their religious faith. The pundits have been just as eager to raise questions that seem obvious and important: Should we let religious beliefs influence the making of law and public policy? If so, in what way and to what extent? Those questions, however, assume that candidates bring the subject of faith into the political arena largely to justify — or turn up the heat under — their policy positions. In fact, faith talk often has little to do with candidates’ stands on the issues. There’s something else going on here.

Look at the TV ad that brought Mike Huckabee out of obscurity in Iowa, the one that identified him as a “Christian Leader” who proclaims: “Faith doesn’t just influence me. It really defines me.” That ad did indeed mention a couple of actual political issues — the usual suspects, abortion and gay marriage — but only in passing. Then Huckabee followed up with a red sweater-themed Christmas ad that actively encouraged voters to ignore the issues. We’re all tired of politics, the kindly pastor indicated. Let’s just drop all the policy stuff and talk about Christmas — and Christ.

Ads like his aren’t meant to argue policy. They aim to create an image — in this case, of a good Christian with a steady moral compass who sticks to his principles. At a deeper level, faith-talk ads work hard to turn the candidate — whatever candidate — into a bulwark of solidity, a symbol of certainty; their goal is to offer assurance that the basic rules for living remain fixed, objective truths, as true as religion. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — In his introduction to Ira Chernus’ piece, Tom Engelhardt writes:

… the “change” candidates of 2008, wielding the “C” word for an audience “fired up” for… well, you know what, so just shout it out… must themselves swear that they are “consistent” in their positions, that, in short, they do not change. The one thing these candidates of change can’t go out in public and say is something like: “Well, that was 2002, but in the intervening years, I’ve done a lot of thinking, had new experiences, grown, matured… changed, and so has my position on [you fill in the issue].”

This makes me think of a line from Gandhi: “My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me at a given moment.”

To say otherwise is to say: My understanding of the world is impervious to the effect of experience. What I thought yesterday, I will think tomorrow. I am incapable of having a fresh thought. My brain has stopped working. I want to become the next president.

ANALYSIS: Bush will hand his successor a fait accompli on Iraq

Bush shakes up ’08 Iraq debate
By Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, January 12, 2008

Camp Arifjan in the desert kingdom of Kuwait, America’s depot to the Iraq war, feels about as far away as you can get from South Carolina, Super Tuesday and the election-year squabbles back home. And George W. Bush, who is currently midway through his six-nation tour of the Mideast, is doing a good job of distancing himself from the politics of 2008. But as Bush rallied U.S. troops at the base here on Saturday with a “Hoo-ah” and conferred with his Iraq dream team, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, he indicated that he was setting in motion policies that could dramatically affect the presidential race–and any decisions the next president makes in 2009.

In remarks to the traveling press, delivered from the Third Army operation command center here, Bush said that negotiations were about to begin on a long-term strategic partnership with the Iraqi government modeled on the accords the United States has with Kuwait and many other countries. Crocker, who flew in from Baghdad with Petraeus to meet with the president, elaborated: “We’re putting our team together now, making preparations in Washington,” he told reporters. “The Iraqis are doing the same. And in the few weeks ahead, we would expect to get together to start this negotiating process.” The target date for concluding the agreement is July, says Gen. Doug Lute, Bush’s Iraq coordinator in the White House–in other words, just in time for the Democratic and Republican national conventions. [complete article]

Vanishing act
By Noah Feldman, New York Times, January 13, 2008

What if the United States were at war during a presidential election — and none of the candidates wanted to talk about it? Iraq has become the great disappearing issue of the early primary season, and if nothing fundamental changes on the ground there — a probable result of current policy — the war may disappear even more completely in the new year.

The reasons for Iraq’s political eclipse begin with the unfortunate fact that candidates strive to create feel-good associations, and the war is a certain downer. The film studios could barely get a Middle East movie to break even in the past 12 months (“In the Valley of Elah,” anyone?), and the political image makers have apparently taken note. [complete article]

OPINION: Foreign policy after Bush

Cornered in square one
By Steven Weber and Bruce W. Jentleson, Los Angeles Times, January 13, 2008

… the next president will not be starting from an international position similar to the one Bush inherited no matter how successful the administration is in undoing the damage of its failed policies. A once internationally weak and democratizing Russia has become an autocratic and provocative petro-state. China’s economy is more than twice the size of what it was in 2000, and its global influence has correspondingly risen. And a new generation of jihadists, no less committed to violence, is eager to continue the anti-America campaign.

The GOP candidates who would build on Bush’s old approach to foreign policy clearly don’t get how the world has changed. But neither do Democrats who stress reversing what Bush has done. No one should feel vindicated by the Bush administration’s reversals, because defining the future of U.S. foreign policy in terms of the past would be as big a mistake for the next president as it was for Bush.

When you are a great power, a lost decade does not simply leave you back where you started. It leaves you far behind. Our presidential candidates had better plan to do more than simply reboot the system and start over, as though the clock had stopped in January 2001. [complete article]

OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: If the GWOT were gone

The $100 barrel of oil vs. the Global War on Terror
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, January 8, 2008

Opinion polls indicate that, in this electoral season, terrorism is no longer at, or even near, the top of the American agenda of worries. Right now, it tends to fall far down lists of “the most important issue to face this country” (though significantly higher among Republicans than Democrats or independents). Nonetheless, don’t for a second think that the subject isn’t lodged deep in national consciousness. When asked recently by the pollsters of CNN/Opinion Research Corporation: “How worried are you that you or someone in your family will become a victim of terrorism,” a striking 39% of Americans were either “very worried” or “somewhat worried”; another 33% registered as “not too worried.” These figures might seem reasonable in New York City, but nationally? As the Democratic debate Saturday indicated, the politics of security and fear have been deeply implanted in our midst, as well as in media and political consciousness. Even candidates who proclaim themselves against “the politics of fear” (and many don’t) are repeatedly forced to take care of fear’s rhetorical business.

Imagining how a new president and a new administration might begin to make their way out of this mindset, out of a preoccupation guaranteed to solve no problems and exacerbate many, is almost as hard as imagining a world without al-Qaeda. After all, this particular obsession has been built into our institutions, from Guantanamo to the Department of Homeland Security. It’s had the time to sink its roots into fertile soil; it now has its own industries, lobbying groups, profit centers. Unbuilding it will be a formidable task indeed. Here, then — a year early — is a Bush legacy that no new president is likely to reverse soon.

Ask yourself honestly: Can you imagine a future America without a Department of Homeland Security? Can you imagine a new administration ending the global lockdown that has become synonymous with Americanism?

The Bush administration will go, but the job it’s done on us won’t. That is the sad truth of our presidential campaign moment. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — That we acquire “the wisdom of insecurity” is one of our needs in these times. In the current populist rhetoric, fear is being contrasted with hope. But along with hope we also need courage. To be courageous is to take risks and see the limits of security. Whether the Bush legacy is so entrenched that it cannot be reversed by the next president will have a great deal to do with who puts the next president into office. This is what makes this election in so many ways, a generational watershed. The young see in risk, opportunity, while for the older generation, there, lurks danger. Yet like it or not, the older generation eventually has no choice but to resign itself to the fact that those it deems too inexperienced will necessarily be the ones who shape the future.

Why we both love and hate America
By Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star, January 9, 2008

Immediately after the 9/11 attacks against the United States, President George W. Bush and many other perplexed, angry and often ignorant Americans asked a question: “Why do they hate us?” Then they made a statement: “You’re either with us or against us.” This week, those Americans who are actually interested in answering the question and exploring the validity of the statement have a very good opportunity to grasp precisely why most people around the world admire the US but also detest many aspects of its foreign policy. This revelatory moment comprises two simultaneous events this week: the competitive American party primaries, and Bush’s journey to the Middle East. The contrast between the two events is substantial, and very revealing of the best and worst of American political culture. [complete article]

EDITORIAL: What makes Obama unbeatable

What makes Obama unbeatable
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 8, 2008

Barak Obama’s message is deceptively simple:

It’s not about me; it’s about you.

That’s a hard idea for the worldly-wise commentator to swallow because it sounds too glib. Even so, it is a message that resonates with Obama’s audience because he possesses that rarest of political commodities: authenticity.

To the cynical eye, Obama embodies the superficiality of American presidential politics. He is seen as the kind of candidate that Hollywood would dream up if concocting a modern-day JFK: good-looking; brimming with confidence and charisma; multicultural; a black man who sounds like a white man — the perfect star for an all-American blockbuster. As an icon, he makes the perfect contrast to Mitt Romney who, as Michael Kinsley wrote the other day, “radiates conventionality, with his ‘Leave-It-to-Beaver’-and-then-some family and his good looks straight out of ‘Mad Men,’ the TV series about Madison Avenue in the early 1960s.”

To the outside world, Obama represents a passionate yearning for America to redeem itself — for an end to the nightmare of the Bush era; for reconciliation and forgiveness; for the hope that the United States will once again resume an honored place within the community of nations.

To his supporters and an increasing number of other Americans, Obama has captured the hope that he can reclaim the possibility of government of the people, by the people, for the people.

In the world of a televised presidential contest, the primaries bear a disquieting resemblance to so many other TV games of elimination. Who’s going to get the prize? Who’s going to get bumped off the stage? Who scored points and who took the hard hits? As a game contestant, Obama’s performance has been mixed — but this isn’t why he’s winning.

He’s winning because whereas his opponents appear to be promoting themselves, he conveys a compelling sense that he’s rooting for America. This is quintessential populism but the unique distinction that Obama lends this is that his appeal to the collective is credible.

September 11 brought Americans together, but this was a unity forged through fear. It was the solidarity that comes from facing a common enemy. It was not and could never be sustainable. It was from its inception, ripe for abuse.

The unity that Obama has tapped into and is eager to cultivate comes from recognizing a common purpose and collective interests. It’s not about for-us-or-against-us; it’s about us.

While American democracy might be cursed by a poorly informed electorate — especially in the arena of international affairs — America’s voters are not lacking in the canniness that judges character and ultimately makes democracy work.

For many months, Hillary Clinton’s popularity was sustained as much by the expectation that her nomination was a foregone conclusion, as it was by her political acumen. But as soon as Obama upturned the equation, the zeitgeist shifted.

The prosaic questions facing the voters used to be, which among these candidates is capable of winning the election, of guiding the country in the right direction, and “appears presidential”?

The question then became, is it possible that the United States could have a president who actually places the country and not him or herself at the center of their vision of leadership?

Clinton said of herself when interviewed on CNN today, “I am so other-oriented,” yet as sincere as she might be in making that claim, she is running a campaign in which she places herself squarely at the center. In contrast, Obama puts the country first, yet if this was merely for rhetorical effect, it could as easily be imitated — just as the campaign theme of “change” has of late been universally adopted. What cannot be mimicked is authenticity.

When Obama says, “we are one nation; we are one people; and our time for change has come,” this resonates with his audience not simply because they like the message, but because they hear in this declaration the voice of a genuine catalyst for something much larger than himself.

FEATURES: The next president’s foreign policy challenges

The Democratic foreign policy wars
By Ari Berman, The Nation, January 21, 2008

At the Des Moines Register presidential debate in December, Barack Obama was asked how voters could expect him to provide a “break from the past” when many of his top foreign policy advisers were holdovers from the Clinton Administration. Obama gracefully parried the challenge by saying he was willing to take good advice from several previous administrations, not just Bill Clinton’s. But the question did reflect a common suspicion that despite all his talk about providing “change,” the Obama campaign’s differences with Hillary Clinton on foreign policy may be more stylistic than substantive.

It’s true that a number of Obama’s key advisers–like former National Security Adviser Tony Lake, former Assistant Secretary of State Susan Rice and former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig–held prominent positions under Bill Clinton. At the same time, Obama’s team includes some of the most forward-thinking members of the Democratic foreign policy establishment–like Joseph Cirincione and Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress, the party’s leading experts on nonproliferation and defense issues, respectively, along with former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and Carter Administration National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Added to the mix are fresh faces who were at times critical of the Clinton Administration, like Harvard professor Samantha Power, author of “A Problem From Hell”, a widely acclaimed history of US responses to genocide. These names suggest that Obama may be more open to challenging old Washington assumptions and crafting new approaches. [complete article]

Trouble ahead
By Strobe Talbott, Financial Times, January 5, 2008

When taking the oath of office on January 20 2009, the next president of the United States will be assuming responsibility for the most difficult, dangerous and complex set of foreign-policy challenges ever to face a newcomer to the White House. Whatever is then happening in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Arab-Israel peace process, it is safe to predict that George W. Bush will, in each case, be passing on to his successor either a daunting piece of unfinished business or a full-blown crisis.

Moreover, in dealing with that morass, the US will need help from a world where its reputation is scraping bottom, from an enfeebled United Nations and from allies whose confidence in America’s stewardship of its own power and their interests has been profoundly shaken. Although Bush has been making an effort to mend fences, and hopes to score some diplomatic points in his final year as president, his bungled occupation of Iraq and his swaggering disregard for international institutions and opinion during his first term still rankle around the world. Many of his fellow leaders are counting the days until he steps down (381 from today). [complete article]

OPINION: Hopes on the rise

How Obama’s message found its mark
By John Dickerson, Slate, January 3, 2008

The big question of Barack Obama’s campaign has always been whether his high-flying rhetoric could ever produce real results. Sure, he could create crowds visible from space, but during the summer—when his polls flattened and his backers got nervous—political elites wondered whether he had peaked. He was the girl you dated, not the girl you married, plenty of political analysts told me.

Not any more. In the campaign’s first test, Obama has beaten two tough opponents by a healthy margin. For a candidate promising to create a movement—an “army for change,” as he calls it—a victory like this not only helps his political prospects in the upcoming primaries. It substantiates a key element of the theory of his candidacy, that he can mobilize people behind a movement. [complete article]

OPINION: Turning east

Dealing with the dragon
By Paul Krugman, New York Times, January 4, 2008

On both Wednesday and Thursday, the price of oil briefly hit $100 a barrel. The new record made headlines, as well it should have. But what does it mean, aside from the obvious point that the economy is under extra pressure?

Well, one thing it means is that we’re having the wrong discussion about foreign policy.

Almost all the foreign policy talk in this presidential campaign has been motivated, one way or another, by 9/11 and the war in Iraq. Yet it’s a very good bet that the biggest foreign policy issues for the next president will involve the Far East rather than the Middle East. In particular, the crucial questions are likely to involve the consequences of China’s economic growth. [complete article]

FEATURE & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Guiliani’s war dreams

Declaring forever war
By Michael C. Desch, The American, January 14, 2008

Like most Americans, I knew little about Rudolph Giuliani, save that he had been the very successful mayor of New York City catapulted to iconic status for his cool-headed demeanor after the Sept. 11 attacks. I was curious about where he stood as a presidential candidate, so in April 2007, I joined nearly 3,000 other Texas A&M faculty and students to hear him speak.

After saying some nice things about his host, President George H.W. Bush, Rudy launched into a stemwinder about the “war on Islamic fundamentalist terrorism” that basically repudiated everything the former president stood for in his foreign policy. Moreover, in the space of 40 minutes, Giuliani never once mentioned Osama bin Laden, the man who masterminded the attack on his city.

I was so appalled by the mayor’s simplistic message that terrorists were attacking us because they “oppose our freedom and … want to impose their ideology on us” that I ignored protocol and challenged him during the Q&A. To the accompaniment of hisses from the rabidly pro-Rudy students, I reminded the mayor that Islamic fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and elsewhere in the Middle East have taken our side against al-Qaeda at various times. Like the students, Hizzonor was not amused, and I got five minutes of unvarnished Rudy chiding me for just not getting it.

To the cheers of the partisan crowd, Giuliani argued that my “failure to see the connection between Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups [was] a recipe for disaster.” In his view, the campaign of radical Islamic terrorism began back in the 1960s and 1970s and included things like the Black September attack upon Israeli Olympic athletes at Munich in 1972. He ridiculed my call to disaggregate the terrorist threat, saying it ignored the fact that Yasir Arafat, whom, he lamented, we helped win the Nobel Prize, was responsible for “slaughtering 29 Americans” over the years. I learned later that Giuliani was so annoyed by my hectoring that he complained about it at the reception after the talk. He was reportedly shocked to learn that I was not some lefty professor but a member of the faculty at the Bush School. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Guiliani might still be pinning all his hopes on Florida, but after winning just 3% of the Republican vote in Iowa, he’s starting to look less dangerous and more of a crank. While the candidate was smiling off his miserable performance, John Podhoretz made the farcical claim that the “result in Iowa could not have been better for Giuliani tactically.” How many more such tactical successes can Guiliani suffer before it destroys his campaign?

OPINION: Obama’s moment

The two earthquakes
By David Brooks, New York Times, January 4, 2008

Iowa won’t settle the race, but the rest of the primary season is going to be colored by the glow of this result. Whatever their political affiliations, Americans are going to feel good about the Obama victory, which is a story of youth, possibility and unity through diversity — the primordial themes of the American experience.

And Americans are not going to want to see this stopped. When an African-American man is leading a juggernaut to the White House, do you want to be the one to stand up and say No? [complete article]

See also, Judge him by his laws (Charles Peters).

NEWS, ANALYSIS & INTERVIEW: America’s attention shifting away from Iraq

On campaign trail, domestic issues now outweigh Iraq
By Adam Nagourney, New York Times, January 3, 2008

The Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are navigating a far different set of issues as they approach the Iowa caucuses on Thursday than when they first started campaigning here a year ago, and that is likely to change even more as the campaigns move to New Hampshire and across the country.

Even though polls show that Iowa Democrats still consider the war in Iraq the top issue facing the country, the war is becoming a less defining issue among Democrats nationally, and it has moved to the back of the stage in the rush of campaign rallies, town hall meetings and speeches that are bringing the caucus competition to an end. Instead, candidates are being asked about, and are increasingly talking about, the mortgage crisis, rising gas costs, health care, immigration, the environment and taxes.

The shift suggests that economic anxiety may be at least matching national security as a factor driving the 2008 presidential contest as the voting begins. [complete article]

Edwards calls for quick end to Iraq training
By Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, January 2, 2008

John Edwards says that if elected president he would withdraw the American troops who are training the Iraqi army and police as part of a broader plan to remove virtually all American forces within 10 months.

Mr. Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina who is waging a populist campaign for the Democratic nomination, said that extending the American training effort in Iraq into the next presidency would require the deployment of tens of thousands of troops to provide logistical support and protect the advisers.

“To me, that is a continuation of the occupation of Iraq,” he said in a 40-minute interview on Sunday aboard his campaign bus as it rumbled through western Iowa. [complete article]

Attacker bombs pro-U.S. Sunnis in Iraq
By Solomon Moore, New York Times, January 3, 2008

A suicide bomber in turbulent Diyala Province detonated an explosive vest on Wednesday at a checkpoint operated by armed Sunni Arab tribesmen who have turned against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and pledged support to the United States military.

The bomber emerged from behind a fruit stand near the checkpoint in downtown Baquba, leapt onto the hood of a BMW and detonated the explosives, killing Abu Sadjat, a local tribal chief who had just left a meeting with American military officials. The Iraqi police said the blast killed at least six Iraqis and wounded 22 others. [complete article]

Seven questions: Gen. David Petraeus on winding down the surge
Foreign Policy interview with Gen. David Petraeus, January, 2008

Foreign Policy: These days when you speak about the surge, you always highlight positive developments but you also appear very cautious. What are your concerns?

Gen. David Petraeus: We are trying to be cautious as we describe the progress that is taking place in Iraq. It has been substantial. We have seen a consistent reduction in the level of violence—a reduction of 60 percent since June, really to a level not seen since the spring of 2005. There has been a corresponding reduction in the loss of civilian lives, Iraqi, and coalition force casualties. Having said all that, it is a fragile achievement, and there are a number of concerns that we do have. We feel as if we’ve knocked al Qaeda to the canvas, but we know that, like any boxer, they can come back up off that canvas and lend a big, right-hand punch. We also have concerns about the militias and the elements of the [Mahdi Army] militia that have not been honoring Moqtada al-Sadr’s cease-fire pledge.

FP: Based on the experience of the British, who as they draw down are leaving a lot of instability behind them in southern Iraq, how can you can be confident going forward as U.S. forces withdraw?

DP: We have already begun a reduction, and we’ll reduce another number over the course of the next seven months. We do that with a reasonable degree of confidence because our surge is taking place and the Iraqi surge is taking place as well, and it amplifies what we have done. In fact, the Iraqis have formed 160,000 police, soldiers, border police, and other security force elements during the past year. To be sure, there’s an uneven nature to their quality, to their capability, and to their level of training and equipping, but they’re significant in quantity. And quantity does mean quality in counterinsurgency operations, because you’ve got to secure so many infrastructures against the terrorist and insurgent and militia elements. We think that what we have been handing over has been winnowed down in terms of the nature of the problem in a way that they can handle it. And only when they can handle it we will have this transfer. [complete article]

OPINION: Threatening Muslims

Giuliani campaign’s Muslim fallout
By James Ridgeway, The Guardian, December 31, 2007

Traveling around New Hampshire last week, the GuardianFilms team dropped in on a Rudy Giuliani house party. With cameras running we caught one of Giuliani’s New Hampshire state leaders as he derided and even threatened Muslims. The story turned out to have some resonance, winding its way from Guardian Unlimited, through the liberal blogosphere and into the US mainstream media before becoming an embarrassment for the Giuliani campaign.

At Manchester mayor Frank Guinta’s house party John Deady blended in with the mostly white, professional crowd. A retired military intelligence officer and state co-chair of Veterans for Rudy, he has been active in Republican politics for decades. He was eager to share his enthusiasm for Giuliani and what he saw as Rudy’s no-nonsense, get tough approach to America’s legions of enemies around the world, particularly the Muslims.

He has got, I believe, the knowledge and the judgment to attack one of the most difficult problems in current history, and that is the rise of the Muslims. Make no mistake about it; this hasn’t happened for a thousand years. These people are very, very dedicated. They’re also very smart in their own way, and we need to keep the feet to the fire and keep pressing these people until we defeat them or chase them back to their caves, or, in other words, get rid of them.

Deady wasn’t the only one with intense pro-Rudy sentiments at the party. Another supporter told us, “We are going to protect what is ours. If it means we’ve got to shoot you in the head then so be it. I think he’s the guy who can do that.” [complete article]

OPINION: In foreign policy, image is created through action, not branding

He could care less about Obama’s story
By Reza Aslan, Washington Post, December 30, 2007

Every time I hear about how Sen. Barack Obama is going to “re-brand” America’s image in the Middle East, I can’t help but think about Jimmy Carter’s toast.

When the idealistic Democrat came to Iran in 1977 to ring in the new year with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the country’s much-despised despot, throngs of young, hopeful Iranians lined the streets to welcome the new American president. After eight years of the Nixon and Ford administrations’ blind support for the shah’s brutal regime, Iranians thrilled to Carter’s promise to re-brand America’s image abroad by focusing on human rights. That call even let many moderate, middle-class Iranians dare to hope that they might ward off the popular revolution everyone knew was coming. But at that historic New Year’s dinner, Carter surprised everyone. In a shocking display of ignorance about the precarious political situation in Iran, he toasted the shah for transforming the country into “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.” With those words, Carter unwittingly lit the match of revolution.

It’s just this sort of blunder — naive, well-meaning, amateurish, convinced that everyone understands the goodness of U.S. intentions — that worries me again these days. That’s because a curious and dangerous consensus seems to be forming among the chattering classes, on both the left and the right, that what the United States needs in these troubling times is not knowledge and experience but a “fresh face” with an “intuitive sense of the world,” and that the mere act of electing Obama will put us on the path to winning the so-called war on terror. [complete article]

See also, America has a clear-cut choice: the candidates of hope or fear (Andrew Sullivan).

OPINION: Obama’s American revolution

Obama’s American revolution
By Dominique Moisi, The Guardian, December 24, 2007

Why is Obama so different from the other presidential candidates, and why could he make such a large difference internationally? After all, in foreign policy matters, the next president’s room for manoeuvre will be very small. He (or she) will have to stay in Iraq, engage in the Israel-Palestine conflict on the side of Israel, confront a tougher Russia, deal with an ever more ambitious China, and face the challenge of global warming.

If Obama can make a difference, it is not because of his policy choices, but because of what he is. The very moment he appears on the world’s television screens, victorious and smiling, America’s image and soft power would experience something like a Copernican revolution.

Think of the impression his election would make, not only in Africa but in Asia, the Middle East, and even Europe. With its rise to global supremacy, America had become the incarnation of the west, and the west was seen as white. Power in America shifted first from the east coast to the west coast, and then to the south. But if a shift across America’s racial divide is not truly revolutionary, then what is? [complete article]

NEWS & OPINION: Overcoming America’s fear of the world

The power of personality
By Fareed Zacharia, Newsweek, December 15, 2007

I never thought I’d be in this position. There’s a debate taking place about what matters most when making judgments about foreign policy— experience and expertise on the one hand, or personal identity on the other. And I find myself coming down on the side of identity.

Throughout the campaign, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been squabbling over who has the better qualifications to lead the world’s only superpower.

Hillary’s case is obvious and perfectly defensible. She’s been involved in foreign policy for eight years in the White House (though in a sideways fashion as First Lady) and then seven years as a senator. Most of the Democratic Party’s blue-chip foreign-policy advisers support her. Plus, she has Bill.

Obama’s argument is about more than identity. He was intelligent and prescient about the costs of the Iraq War. But he says that his judgment was formed by his experience as a boy with a Kenyan father—and later an Indonesian stepfather—who spent four years growing up in Indonesia, and who lived in the multicultural swirl of Hawaii.

I never thought I’d agree with Obama. I’ve spent my life acquiring formal expertise on foreign policy. I’ve got fancy degrees, have run research projects, taught in colleges and graduate schools, edited a foreign-affairs journal, advised politicians and businessmen, written columns and cover stories, and traveled hundreds of thousands of miles all over the world. I’ve never thought of my identity as any kind of qualification. I’ve never written an article that contains the phrase “As an Indian-American …” or “As a person of color …”

But when I think about what is truly distinctive about the way I look at the world, about the advantage that I may have over others in understanding foreign affairs, it is that I know what it means not to be an American. [complete article]

Strictures in U.S. prompt Arabs to study elsewhere
By Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post, December 20, 2007

A generation of Arab men who once attended college in the United States, and returned home to become leaders in the Middle East, increasingly is sending the next generation to schools elsewhere. This year, Australia overtook the United States as the top choice of citizens of the United Arab Emirates heading abroad for college, according to government figures here.

Ten percent fewer students in the Emirates elected to go to the United States in 2006 than in 2005, according to the New York-based Institute of International Education.

In neighboring Oman, the drop was 25 percent. Jordan, Kuwait and Lebanon recorded single-digit falls, continuing a trend begun amid the crackdowns on visas and security that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. [complete article]

FBI prepares vast database of biometrics
By Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, December 22, 2007

The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world’s largest computer database of peoples’ physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law. [complete article]