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John McCain And The Neo-Con’s: Those Who Deserve “Scorn And Disdain”

With the U.S. war in Iraq coming to its overdue end, it’s worth noting those who got the policy wrong — and continue to ignore the error of their ways.

This week, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), arguably Congress’ biggest cheerleader of this tragedy, delivered a lengthy tirade condemning President Obama for ending the conflict and bringing U.S. troops home, arguing, among other things, “All I will say is that, for three years, the president has been harvesting the successes of the very strategy that he consistently dismissed as a failure.”

That’s actually backwards. Obama didn’t dismiss the Status of Forces Agreement reached between the Bush administration and Iraqi officials in 2008; the Status of Forces Agreement reflected exactly what Obama was proposing at the time. Officials in both countries completely rejected the course McCain recommended at the time, and as we now know, that was the right move. It’s curious that McCain would forget this relevant detail.*

In any case, the bitter Republican senator added, “I believe history will judge this president’s leadership with the scorn and disdain it deserves.”

It’s not exactly surprising that good news and the end of a war would leave McCain in such a sour mood. In August, when Obama helped topple the Gadhafi regime in Libya, McCain thanked the British and French, but ignored the role of U.S. troops, and whined about Obama’s “failure” to run the mission the way McCain wanted.

But when it comes to Iraq in particular, it’s rather amazing McCain feels comfortable addressing the subject at all. I’m reminded of a Frank Rich column from a while back, noting McCain’s record of being consistently wrong about what’s alleged to be his signature issue.

To appreciate this crowd’s spotless record of failure, consider its noisiest standard-bearer, John McCain. He made every wrong judgment call that could be made after 9/11. It’s not just that he echoed the Bush administration’s constant innuendos that Iraq collaborated with Al Qaeda’s attack on America. Or that he hyped the faulty W.M.D. evidence to the hysterical extreme of fingering Iraq for the anthrax attacks in Washington. Or that he promised we would win the Iraq war “easily.” Or that he predicted that the Sunnis and the Shiites would “probably get along” in post-Saddam Iraq because there was “not a history of clashes” between them.

What’s more mortifying still is that McCain was just as wrong about Afghanistan and Pakistan. He routinely minimized or dismissed the growing threats in both countries over the past six years, lest they draw American resources away from his pet crusade in Iraq.

The smart move for McCain would be to quietly slink away, hoping desperately that Americans forget how spectacularly wrong he was about a bloody, brutal war. The fact that this guy instead has the temerity to pop off publicly about how outraged he is that U.S. troops are coming home is nothing short of pathetic.

Someone in this debate deserves scorn and disdain, but it’s not the president.

 

By: Steve Benen, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 18, 2011

December 21, 2011 Posted by | Foreign Policy, Neo-Cons | , , , , , | 1 Comment

“Ring, Ring”: Which Candidate Should Answer That 3 A.M. Phone Call?

It’s late at night when the phone rings at the White House:

Kim Jong Il, the ruthless oddball dictator of nuclear-armed North Korea, is dead. His apparent successor is his 20-something son, about whom practically nothing is known. South Korean officials have rushed to put the nation’s military forces on high alert.

Do we want Mitt Romney answering that phone call?

Newt Gingrich?

We learned Sunday night what happens when Barack Obama is on the receiving end of unsettling news from one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints. There’s a round of consultation with allies, a carefully worded official statement, an assessment of the status of diplomatic efforts to defuse North Korea’s nuclear program — in other words, a cautious and measured response.

Implicit in Obama’s actions is the recognition that nothing a U.S. president says or does at this moment is likely to influence North Korean events in a positive way. Intemperate words or deeds, however, could be destabilizing at a moment of sudden transition. This is no moment to apply sharp pressure to a hermetically sealed, supremely paranoid regime that considers itself perpetually besieged and happens to possess nuclear weapons.

The White House was particularly concerned about how Kim’s son — Kim Jong Eun, the “Great Successor” who may have already assumed power — would react to anything seen as a provocation. The young, inexperienced leader might believe he had to make a show of belligerence to prove himself. Aggressive action could prompt a sharp South Korean reaction, and suddenly a situation could become a crisis.

All this is lost on Romney, who came out guns blazing with what sounded like a call for regime change.

“Kim Jong Il was a ruthless tyrant who lived a life of luxury while the North Korean people starved,” Romney said in a statement. “He recklessly pursued nuclear weapons, sold nuclear and missile technology to other rogue regimes, and committed acts of military aggression against our ally South Korea. He will not be missed.”

The statement continued, “His death represents an opportunity for America to work with our friends to turn North Korea off the treacherous course it is on and ensure security in the region. America must show leadership at this time. The North Korean people are suffering through a long and brutal national nightmare. I hope the death of Kim Jong Il hastens its end.”

Well, that’s what we all hope. But dancing on the dictator’s grave is hardly presidential. How can anyone be certain what approach is most likely to lead to reform in North Korea until we know more about the Great Successor? Or until we can ascertain who now controls the nuclear weapons?

Romney is eager to show that he would somehow be tougher than Obama in foreign policy — a high bar, given Obama’s record of killing Osama bin Laden and helping orchestrate the demise of Moammar Gaddafi. It’s possible that Romney understands what his responsibility would be if he faced a similar circumstance as president. But if you take his words seriously, the former Massachusetts governor sounds like a dangerous hothead.

That’s nothing compared to Gingrich, whose past statements about North Korea have been shot from the hip.

In 2009, Gingrich said the United States should have used force to prevent North Korea from testing a new long-range missile. “There are three or four techniques that could have been used, from unconventional forces to standoff capabilities, to say, ‘We’re not going to tolerate a North Korean missile launch, period,’” he said.

No, there are not any “standoff capabilities” that could have been used, at least not without starting a nuclear war. Gingrich has expressed his enthusiasm for a laser-beam weapon that the Pentagon tried to develop, but that program was radically scaled back. We could have just destroyed the missile on its launch pad, perhaps with a cruise missile strike, but the North Koreans might well have responded by destroying Seoul.

One of Gingrich’s worries is that North Korean scientists will be the first in the world to work out how a nuclear device can be used to create a massive electromagnetic pulse — and fry electronic circuits from Malibu to Maine. Would somebody please cancel the man’s subscription to Popular Science?

During the 2008 campaign, Hillary Clinton famously asked whether Obama was ready for the 3 a.m. phone call about a foreign crisis. Kim’s death reminds us that it’s always 3 a.m. somewhere in the world.

December 20, 2011 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Iraq War Is Over… Lesson For Progressives: “Yes We Can”

Sometime in the next 15 days, the last American troops will leave Iraq — and the War that began almost nine years ago will finally come to an end.

Today, President Obama addresses some of those returning troops at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.  The big difference between those troops and many others who have returned from the War in Iraq, is that none of them will be deployed on yet another tour to Mosul or Kirkuk or Baghdad — or any of the other Iraqi cities that became so familiar to Americans over the last decade.

The end of the War in Iraq is a major event in American history, since in many ways, that War was the defining historic event for an entire generation of Americans.

There are those who would minimize the importance of the final withdrawal of our troops from Iraq by pointing to the unfinished business of the War in Afghanistan, or the use of civilian contractors.  Those are important issues, but they should not diminish the extraordinary significance of the fact that the Iraq War has come to an end.

Most importantly, Progressives — and all of those who fought for a decade to prevent and then to end the Iraq War — should take a moment to celebrate the fact that they have won a critical, historic battle.

There is a lot of cynicism in America — a sense that it doesn’t matter what you do — that ordinary people can’t really have an impact on the big decisions and big institutions of our society.  The end of the War in Iraq shows that the cynics are wrong.

What began in 2002 as an effort to avert the war in Iraq, grew to a chorus of millions who changed the political landscape and who kept fighting until all of our troops came home.  That movement elected a president who promised to end the war — a president who this week has kept that promise.

In September 2002 — a year after 9/11 — President George Bush began what he and his aides called a “marketing program” to convince Americans that our country should invade Iraq.  That campaign ultimately included some of the most egregious lies ever told by an American president.

Bush told Americans that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  His Secretary of State warned that we could not wait for a “smoking gun” to prove these allegations, because it might prove to be a “mushroom cloud.”

Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, argued that Iraq was the central front in the “War on Terror” — even though there was never one shred of evidence that Iraq supported the 9/11 terrorists or had anything whatsoever to do with Al Qaeda. Bush and Cheney actually said — with a straight face — that “If we weren’t fighting them in Iraq, we could be fighting them in the United States.”

Much of the nation — newly traumatized by the 9/11 attacks — supported the president.  And of course, who could imagine that a president would simply fabricate the rationale for a war?

Just a month after Bush launched his campaign to get support for war with Iraq, State Senator Barack Obama was invited to speak to a rally in Chicago’s Federal Building Plaza.  There he stated firmly and unequivocally his opposition to the invasion of Iraq.  At the time, that position was unpopular — particularly for a politician with ambitions for higher office.   But the organizers of the rally did not have to coax Obama to take his tough stand.  Obama was eager to be part of the nascent movement that opposed the potential War in Iraq.

When he ran for United States Senate two years later, Obama continued his strong opposition to the Iraq War.  And there can be little doubt that he became the Democratic nominee for President in 2008 in large measure because of his consistent, principled opposition to the War.

In his campaign for president, Barack Obama promised to end the War in Iraq.  Now he has kept that promise.

When he took office there were nearly 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.  Within the next two weeks there will be none.

The Republicans that started the War — Neo-cons like Dick Cheney, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — as well as the major Republican Presidential candidates — have all spoken out against the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.  They have made clear that they would never have signed the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government that set up a time-table for withdrawal, had they not intended to change it. Obama’s Republican opponent, John McCain, has been particularly outspoken in his opposition. McCain, after all, once said that he had no objection to American troops remaining in Iraq for a hundred years.

It is virtually certain that had John McCain become president, our War in Iraq would have continued for years to come.  After all, one of the major Neo-Con goals for the war was a permanent base of operations in Iraq.

But President Obama and the movement against the Iraq War have decisively won the battle for public opinion. Last month’s ABC/Washington Post poll found that 78% of Americans support Obama’s decision to leave Iraq at the end of the year.

In the end, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stieglitz believes the War will have cost America over $3 trillion — including the cost of rehabilitation and care for the tens of thousands of soldiers who were wounded in Iraq.

Whatever the final figure, most Americans have a profound belief that it is time to use the funds we save by ending the Iraq War to rebuild America and the American economy.

Every dollar that went to fight the Iraq War was a dollar that did not go to repair a highway, build a mass transit system, educate a child or invest in new sources of energy.

Everyday Americans, and economists of every stripe, understand clearly that one of the principal forces that converted the budget surpluses of the Clinton Administration into the largest deficit in American history was Bush’s decision to launch extravagantly expensive wars at the same time he cut taxes for the wealthy.

And everyday people understand that the end of the War in Iraq — and ultimately the end of our engagement in Afghanistan — will, contrary to Republican doctrine, strengthen America.

The War in Iraq was used by terrorists worldwide to stoke hatred for our country and to recruit young people to their ranks.  It sapped our country of trillions of dollars, stretched our military to the breaking point, caused popular support for America to plummet around the globe and dealt a powerful blow to America’s moral authority.

Most Americans realize that the decision to launch the War in Iraq was one of the biggest foreign policy disasters in modern American history.

But there is also a deep well of respect and support for the million men and women — both military and civilian — whose sacrifice allowed a hopeful outcome to be salvaged from a disastrous series of decisions by the Bush Administration.

Progressives must be resolute in preventing Republicans from using cuts in the benefits or care for returning warriors to pay for their tax breaks for millionaires.

And Progressives should do something else as well. While we recognize there is much to be done — let’s take a moment to celebrate an historic success.  The end of the Iraq War demonstrates that “Yes We Can!” is more than a campaign slogan.  It reminds us once again that everyday people can successfully organize to change history.

 

By: Robert Creamer, Published in The Huffingto Post, December 14, 2011

December 14, 2011 Posted by | Foreign Policy | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Dick Cheney Urges “A Quick Airstrike” Against Iran

Once again, CNN philanthropist journalist Erin Burnett has used her show to give voice to the voiceless, to seek out the powerless to offer opinion on the day’s news. She debuted her show “OutFront” in early October by mocking Occupy Wall Street and defending the industry that destroyed the economy.

On Monday night Burnett gave a platform to a man almost as loathed as his Wall Street buddies, former Vice President Dick Cheney. And Cheney, predictably but contemptibly, took the opportunity to bash President Obama for not authorizing “a quick airstrike” to retrieve a predator drone that was recently downed in Iran.

Cheney told Burnett:

The right response to that would have been to go in immediately after it had gone down and destroy it. You can do that from the air. You can do that with a quick airstrike, and in effect make it impossible for them to benefit from having captured that drone. I was told that the president had three options on his desk. He rejected all of them. […]

They all involved sending somebody in to try to recover it, or if you can’t do that, admittedly that would be a difficult operation, you certainly could have gone in and destroyed it on the ground with an airstrike. But he didn’t take any of the options. He asked for them to return it. And they aren’t going to do that.

The former vice president has been insulting Obama  since Inauguration Day, insisting his policies will make the country “less safe.” Two months into his administration, Cheney charged that the new president “is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack.” He’s accused Obama of “half measures” and “dithering” on foreign policy. And more than once he’s criticized the president for not taking a tougher stance on Iran.

Even after Obama authorized the successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden, who Bush and Cheney essentially let run free thanks to their discretionary war with Iraq, Cheney wasn’t happy. “I still am concerned about the fact that I think a lot of the techniques that we had used to keep the country safe for more than seven years are no longer available. That they’ve been sort of taken off the table, if you will.”

So Cheney’s carping is nothing new. But suggesting that the president launch “a quick airstrike” to retrieve the downed drone is ridiculous, even for Cheney. There’s no such thing. Cheney has to know that any new U.S. incursion, following on the drone discovery, would sharply escalate tension with Iran, and to do that to recover a drone isn’t at all worth the risk.

It was left to CBS Early Show co-anchor Rebecca Jarvis this morning to ask the follow-up question Burnett did not: “Would not, though, an airstrike on Iran have potentially led us into a war with them?”  Cheney replied:

Well, if you look at what Iran has done over the years, they’ve been the prime backers of Hezbollah, of Hamas, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 that cost us 241 American lives. These were Iranian-supported ventures. It’s not as though they haven’t already committed acts that some people would say come close to being acts of war.

For us to go in and take out the drone that crashed would have been, I think, a fairly simple operation, and it would have denied them the value of the intelligence they can collect by having that aircraft,” he said. “But the administrative basically limited itself to saying, ‘Please give it back,’ and the Iranians said no.

ThinkProgress made a good catch: When a U.S. spy plane ventured into Chinese airspace in April 2001 and crashed with a Chinese fighter jet, the Bush-Cheney administration wound up apologizing in order to get 11 soldiers released from Chinese custody.  They didn’t send in “a quick airstrike.”

For the record, Cheney sounded bullish on Newt Gingrich in 2012, though he hasn’t endorsed anyone formally. “I wouldn’t underestimate him,” Cheney said, praising Gingrich’s political skills. “The thing I remember about Newt, we came to Congress together at the same time, ’78, and when Newt showed up, he said, ‘We can become the majority. We can take back the House of Representatives. We hadn’t had the House since the 1940s. And initially, none of us believed it, but he was persistent. And he was tenacious. He kept it up and kept it up and kept it up. And finally by ’94, he’s the newly elected speaker of the House of Representatives with a Republican majority.”

Cheney declined to describe the way Gingrich crashed and burned in the years that followed. You’ve got to count that among the nicest things anyone who’s worked with Gingrich has said about him during the whole campaign. Stay tuned.

 

By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon.com, December 13, 2011

December 14, 2011 Posted by | Iran | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Running Scared: Romney Now Says Obama Is a Socialist

In a speech today (excerpts of which have already been released by his campaign), Mitt Romney accuses President Obama of trying to create complete economic equality:

“President Obama is replacing our merit-based, opportunity-based society with an entitlement society,” Romney is expected to say. “In an entitlement society, everyone is handed the same rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to others. And the only people to enjoy truly disproportionate rewards are the people who do the redistributing — the government.”

Really? Obama’s plan is for everybody in society to have the same rewards? So, under Obama’s plan, I get to have the same stuff that Mitt Romney has?

This accusation is approximately as accurate as claiming that the Republican party wants to pass laws forbidding poor people from making more money. Yet this absurd claim is so common nobody even thinks to challenge it anymore. Even the most intellectually acclaimed Republicans, figures like Paul Ryan and American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks, routinely assert that Democrats are plotting to create full equality of outcome.

Obviously, not even the most left-wing Democrat proposes anything of the sort. The actual Democratic platform is to impose a slightly more progressive tax code, close to what prevailed under the Clinton administration, and to finance some basic public provisions while doing very little to stop rampant rise in income inequality. The right’s inability to argue against that actual program, continuing instead to pretend that they’re arguing against a world in which nobody can have more money than anybody else, is deeply revealing of its lack of confidence in its own argument.

 

By: Jonathan Chait, Daily Intel, December 7, 2011

December 9, 2011 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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