David Broder Gets Worse

Even the most dense of Washington political journalists is taking note of the American people's objection to more war from the Obama administration.

The Dean of the American political journalism, David S. Broder, has a piece out, though of course Broder being Broder manages to miss the point.

To Broder, the cheerleader of George W. Bush and Karl Rove, the ideological "left" needs to learn from the new president as he has learned to prolong the wars going so well. Unmentioned are the lies Bush and the neocons told the world with Broder in tow.

Writes Broder the banal:

In every instance, Obama heeded the advice of his uniformed and civilian defense leaders and in each case but Afghanistan, he abandoned a position he had taken as the Democratic presidential candidate.

The predictable result has been the first sustained outcry from the left, angry denunciations from leaders of constituencies that had been early supporters. They feel betrayed as they watch him continuing, with minor modifications, the policies and practices of his Republican predecessor. ...

Ever since Vietnam, the prevailing ideology of grass-roots Democratic activists has been hostile to American military actions and skeptical of the military itself. Iowa, where the Democratic nomination process begins, is famously tilted toward a pacifist view of war. Throughout the primaries, the pressures push forward candidates who do not challenge that mind-set. ...

Obama's liberal critics are right. He is a different man now. He has learned what it means to be commander in chief.

Peace and non-intervention are ideologies for Broder. More war and following the dictates of the neocons (whom Broder tries to align with the military) is what being president really means.

And Democrats need (like George W. Bush?) to become more acquainted with the military to really understand foreign policy and war, no mention of the chicken hawk neocons again.

It's all going so well in Iraq and Afghanistan and Obama just needs to listen and learn to become commander in chief and things will get even better.

And those lying chicken hawks, the $trillions in war costs, the 100,000s of innocents dead, and the constant pissing on the veterans.

That's just the griping left and the Defeatocrats that don't know better.

Listen to the wise men like Broder, Cheney and Bush who saved us from weapons of mass destruction being flown over America in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) from the "Iraqi dictator (who) must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons," as George Bush assured us in the Oct. 7, 2002 speech in Cincinnati.

That was part of the freedom agenda that Broder applauded and cheerleaded without irony or ridicule.

War Without End

The Huffington Post has it dead-on: a war without end.

Though the majority of the American people have long since said "no" to a war without end in Iraq, there is a question to be posed to the people that has not: Are you willing to kill innocent Iraqis and kill and maim 1,000s more American troops to institute a client oil state?

If Iraq were merely exporting nuts and dates and not oil, we would not be there.

Do you really believe this is about democracy, or weapons of mass destruction, or 9/11, or fighting them there and not here, or what's the latest one now? Who cares, declare victory and bring the troops home.

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Iraq Speech Won't Work

This speech will be a political failure, and for that reason alone, I will watch and have a glass of red cab. and revel in the ineffectual show of this man whom I genuinely despise.

The great, radical pacifist A.J. Muste once said, "If I can't love Hitler, I can't love anyone."

I understand what Muste was saying and he was right, but schadenfreude (pleasure in another's misfortune) will be the course of this evening.

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Nixon's Killer '68 Speech on War We Should Echo

Via Buzzflash:

Go to Buzzflash and hit the arrow icon next to "Play."

"An unpopular president [Johnson] was prosecuting an unpopular war, which was despised by more than half the American people. His political opponent [Nixon, although Nixon actually ran against Humphrey, Johnson's Vice-President] knew that the best way to take him down - and ultimately to take down his entire Party - was to simply say out loud what everybody knew to be true. To call out the President. To declare him and his war a failure. To call on the American people for truth and honesty in government, and an end to war. Here's a quick clip composite, sent along to us by a listener (I'm sorry, I don't remember whom) a year or so ago, of Richard Nixon at the 1968 Republican National Convention..."

-- Thom Hartmann
Go to Buzzflash and hit the arrow icon next to "Play."

The Times blasts Petraeus

Editorial
Empty Calories
For months, President Bush has been promising an honest accounting of the situation in Iraq, a fresh look at the war strategy and a new plan for how to extricate the United States from the death spiral of the Iraqi civil war. The nation got none of that yesterday from the Congressional testimony by Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. It got more excuses for delaying serious decisions for many more months, keeping the war going into 2008 and probably well beyond.

It was just another of the broken promises and false claims of success that we’ve heard from Mr. Bush for years, from shock and awe, to bouquets of roses, to mission accomplished and, most recently, to a major escalation that was supposed to buy Iraqi leaders time to unify their nation. We hope Congress is not fooled by the silver stars, charts and rhetoric of yesterday’s hearing. Even if the so-called surge had created breathing room, Iraq’s sectarian leaders show neither the ability nor the intent to take advantage of it.

The headline out of General Petraeus’s testimony was a prediction that the United States should be able to reduce its forces from 160,000 to 130,000 by next summer. That sounds like a big number, but it would only bring American troops to the level that were in Iraq when Mr. Bush announced his “surge” last January. And it’s the rough equivalent of dropping an object and taking credit for gravity. The military does not have the troops to sustain these high levels without further weakening the overstretched Army and denying soldiers their 15 months of home leave before going back to war.

The general claimed a significant and steady decline in killings and deaths in the past three months, but even he admitted that the number of attacks is still too high. Recent independent studies are much more skeptical about the decrease in violence. The main success General Petraeus cited was in the previously all-but-lost Anbar Province where local sheiks, having decided that they hate Al Qaeda more than they hate the United States, have joined forces with American troops to combat insurgents. That development — which may be ephemeral — was not a goal of the surge and surprised American officials. To claim it as a success of the troop buildup is, to be generous, disingenuous.

The chief objective of the surge was to reduce violence enough that political leaders in Iraq could learn to work together, build a viable government and take decisions to improve Iraqi society, including sharing oil resources. Congress set benchmarks that Mr. Bush accepted. But after independent investigators last week said that Baghdad had failed to meet most of those markers, Mr. Crocker dismissed them. The biggest achievement he had to trumpet was a communiqué in which Iraqi leaders promised to talk more.

General Petraeus admitted success in Iraq would be neither quick nor easy. Mr. Crocker claimed that success is attainable, but made no guarantee. With that much wiggle room in the prognosis, one would think American leaders would start looking at serious alternative strategies — like the early, prudent withdrawal of troops that we favor. The American people deserve more than what the general and the diplomat offered them yesterday.

For that matter, they deserve more than what was offered by Representative Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. When protesters interrupted the hearing, Mr. Skelton ordered them removed from the room, which is understandable. But then he said that they would be prosecuted. That seemed like an unnecessarily authoritarian response to people who just wanted to be heard.

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