On Earmark Spending, Obama Talks the Talk

Here is the definition of an earmark from the Office of Management and Budget:

OMB defines earmarks as funds provided by the Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents Executive Branch merit-based or competitive allocation processes, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to manage critical aspects of the funds allocation process.

In their debate on Friday, John McCain said that Barack Obama had requested $932 million in earmark spending during his short time in office. Barack Obama responded by saying that he requested no earmark spending last year. What amazes me is the lack of reaction in the mainstream media to this informative exchange between the two candidates.

Remember the kerfuffle over Palin's opposition to the "Bridge to Nowhere?" Many in the mainstream media went far out their way to make sure all readers understood that Palin opposed this earmark (championed by Alaska's Republican Senator Ted Stevens) only after it had become politically expedient to do so. That's fine, but it overlooks two important facts: (1) her choice was to oppose a powerful Republican in her own state while killing the unpopular bridge or to seek the good graces of that powerful politician while supporting the unpopular bridge (she killed it), and (2) both Barack Obama and Joe Biden had an opportunity to vote against the unpopular bridge but opted to vote in favor of it instead (as CNN finally got around to pointing out). So, bash Palin all you want (I have no problem with that), but just tell the whole story when you do. The media tends not to do that, and that's my problem.

Which brings to my main point today. I went to Obama's web site (here and here) and added up his earmark requests for years 2005 through 2007 (which were requests for fiscal years 2006 through 2008). Obama says he made no such requests in 2008 (for fiscal year 2009), so that value is zero. I come up with a total of $973 million, which is slightly higher than the value mentioned by McCain in Friday's debate. Thus, you should treat these numbers as approximate until I double-check my math. But my main point will not change at all when any slight errors are corrected, and my main point should be obvious to you when you look at the chart I have created:


Let me ask you a question: is Obama someone who shows evidence of having fought against earmark spending, or did the upward trend in his prior requests simply fall off a cliff when it became politically expedient to stop making such requests? This question is directed mainly at those in the media and those on the left who joyously savaged Sarah Palin for killing the "Bridge to Nowhere" only because it was politically convenient for her to do so. Can you imagine what the media would be doing to John McCain if his record also wreaked of political opportunism, as Barack Obama's record obviously does?

Speaking of John McCain, what's his record with respect to earmark requests? As best I can tell, over his long career, he has requested $15 million in earmark spending. In other words, in 3 short years, Obama has requested more than 60 times what McCain has requested throughout his much longer career.

Walking the walk vs. talking the talk. Obama has become a master of talking the talk. What I don't understand is why people are not more interested in comparing what he says vs. what he does. It is what he has done in the past that tells you the kind of president he will be. The mere fact that he has perfected the art of telling you what you want to hear is nowhere near as informative.

Just Words

An odd but seemingly undeniable phenomenon is that the more people believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction, the more inclined they are to vote for Barack Obama. In recent days, the financial crisis has caused a record number of people to say that the country is on the wrong track, with only 11% saying that we are moving in the right direction. At the same time, Obama has moved back into a 5% lead in the polls over John McCain.

On the one hand, this makes great sense. After all, the country has been in the hands of the Republicans for 8 years and it is heading in the wrong direction. Why not give the other party a try for a while? The problem with this reflexive attitude is that the choice is between Barack Obama in John McCain (not between some Democrat and some Republican). Strip away words spoken during the presidential campaign and ask yourself: what is it about this person that suggests that he is prepared to effectively address the economy and handle national security? It seems almost silly to ask that question about John McCain. You might not like what he has done in the past, but you know what he has fought for and fought against because he has a long track record, one that is not at all hidden from view. That makes it pretty clear what he will fight for and fight against if he becomes our next president (and how effectively he will do that).

Can the same be said of Barack Obama? With regard to his political and administrative experience, Obama was a community organizer (whatever that is) from 1985 to 1987, he was chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995 to 1999 (where he engaged in some top secret effort to enhance education is Chicago), he became a state senator in 1996 (much of it top secret because he misplaced his personal records), and he became a US Senator in 2004, when his popular Republican opponent was eliminated from the race because his divorce records were opened to public scrutiny. Since becoming a US Senator, he has been mostly running for president.

When you ignore his words and look at his record, what suggests to you that he has the skills needed to work effectively with Republicans even when it goes against the interests of powerful Democrats (which he can do, according to his words)? What suggests to you that he has what it takes to correct problems with the US economy? What indicates to you that he has the foreign policy wisdom to effectively deal with a resurgent Russia, an ever-resurgent China, the conflict in Afghanistan, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict? There is just nothing there save for one anti-war speech that he gave in 2002 in which he adopted the far left rhetoric of a Code Pink activist (referring to Karl Rove as a "political hack" and calling the invasion of Iraq a "dumb war," as if it would be utterly brilliant to have Saddam Hussein racing against the mullahs of Iran to develop a nuclear bomb right now).

Despite our lack of knowledge about Obama (save for the words he has spoken while running for president), the media has exhibited a staggering lack of interest in probing his past. By contrast, they are maniacally probing every detail of Sarah Palin's life, as this comical "AP Investigation" reveals:

When Palin needed to sell her house during her last year as Wasilla mayor, she got the city to sign off on a special zoning exception - and did so without keeping a promise to remove a potential fire hazard.

She gladly accepted gifts from merchants: A free "awesome facial" she raved about in a thank-you note to a spa. The "absolutely gorgeous flowers" she received from a welding supply store. Even fresh salmon to take home.

Well, that does it! A facial? Time to throw her under the bus. Meanwhile, Stanley Kurtz does the lonely work of investigating the trivial details of issues that are of vastly less important than Sarah Palin's "awesome facial," such as:

WHAT exactly does a "community organizer" do? Barack Obama's rise has left many Americans asking themselves that question. Here's a big part of the answer: Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit.

In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes - and thereby force financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers.

In other words, community organizers help to undermine the US economy by pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama has spent years training and funding the organizers who do it.

Utterly and completely irrelevant. The AP should ignore this and delve much more deeply into those "absolutely gorgeous flowers" that Sarah Palin received. Were they roses? Tulips? These are the sorts of things I must know -- and that every voter must know -- in order to cast a wise vote in just a few short weeks. What the heck is Stanley Kurtz doing wasting his time investigating Barack Obama's community organizing years? After the all, the country is moving in the wrong direction, and the Pavlovian reflex to vote against the party in power under those conditions is fully intact. Who needs information about the man who might become the next president of the United States? We already have his words, and that's good enough for the American people. Their only information need to do with the bottom of ticket on the Republican side, and they need to know what those flowers were (and, perhaps, what ingredients were used in that facial).

As you can probably tell, I agree with Tony Blankley, who says:

The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight-out propagandists for the Obama campaign.

While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08, for the first time, the major media consciously are covering for one candidate for president and consciously are knifing the other. This is no longer journalism; it is simply propaganda.

This might seem like outrageous propaganda to you, but the American public sees it this way as well, as suggested by this poll from July:

Monday, July 21, 2008

The idea that reporters are trying to help Obama win in November has grown by five percentage points over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey, taken just before the new controversy involving the New York Times erupted, found that 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help the Democrat with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago.

Just 14% believe most reporters will try to help McCain win, little changed from 13% a month ago. Just one voter in four (24%) believes that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage.

Here is a chart that summarizes these results:



We also had this poll asking about the media's stance towards Sarah Palin:

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Over half of U.S. voters (51%) think reporters are trying to hurt Sarah Palin with their news coverage, and 24% say those stories make them more likely to vote for Republican presidential candidate John McCain in November.
...
In the new survey, although 85% say they are following news stories about Palin at least somewhat closely, just five percent (5%) think reporters are trying to help her with their coverage, while 35% believe reporters are providing unbiased coverage.
...
Among unaffiliated voters, 49% say reporters are trying to hurt Palin, while 32% say their coverage is unbiased. Only five percent (5%) say reporters are trying to help her.

And here is a chart summarizing these results:



The media is in the tank for Barack Obama, and that's the simple explanation for why mainstream media reporters are maniacally investigating the flowers that Sarah Palin received during her years as mayor of Wasilla while studiously ignoring what Barack Obama did during his years as a community organizer and as chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. It's a very strange feeling to watch this play out before one's very eyes.

UPDATE: As if to underscore a main point of today's post, Glenn Reynolds shares a message he received today:

A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS: "Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working." I asked permission to reprint without attribution and it was granted.

The MSM is in the tank for O? Get out.

Obama is Dangerously Naive

Either that, or he is deliberately deceptive. I hope it is the latter.

This does not mean that his performance in last night's debate was politically ineffective. Never forget that in presidential debates, as amazing as it might seem, style is what mostly matters to the American people. Stylistically, Obama did a fine job of creating the impression that he is someone other than his long history suggests he is. And that's good for him. Substantively, however, McCain simply cleaned Obama's clock and showed that the junior senator from Illinois is dangerously unprepared to be our next commander in chief. I wish that mattered to the viewing audience, but history suggests that it will not. To most Americans, it's all about style. Thus, we probably won't see any major shift in the polls as a result of last night's debate, and I cannot even predict the direction of any minor shift that might occur.

Overall, it was a fine debate, and both did well in terms of achieving their political objectives. And the moderator (Jim Lehrer) was simply outstanding.

Although it does not matter all that much to the voting public, substance does matter to me, so that's what I'll focus on. On the Iraq war, Obama was at his best when he said:

And so John likes -- John, you like to pretend like the war started in 2007. You talk about the surge. The war started in 2003, and at the time when the war started, you said it was going to be quick and easy. You said we knew where the weapons of mass destruction were. You were wrong.

This made me wonder if Obama believed that the Iraqis did not have WMDs or if he instead believed that we should not invade even though he thought they did. Based on the one anti-war speech that might catapult him all the way to the presidency, I conclude that Obama thought that Iraq had WMDs:

Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

And Saddam Hussein is the man who would be in charge today had we not invaded. Under that scenario, he would not be sitting on his hands watching his mortal enemy -- Iran -- develop a nuclear bomb. Obviously, after our troops were gone, Saddam would get on with developing the WMDs that he wanted the world to believe that he already possessed. Perhaps ensuring that this scenario became a reality reflects profoundly excellent judgment on Obama's part, but that's not obvious to me. Still, it is clearly debatable, and the fact that Obama opposed the invasion is certainly not what makes him dangerously naive.

The whole problem with Obama's judgment is that he thought made great sense, once Osama bin Laden decided to make Iraq the central front in the war on terror, to accept defeat in Iraq. That is, after opposing the invasion, Obama's next big idea was to withdraw our troops and hand al Qaeda the glorious victory it sought in Iraq. Fortunately, and no thanks to Obama, al Qaeda has been crushed in Iraq, and their reputation throughout the Muslim world has been greatly diminished, not enhanced. Thus, I was surprised to hear Obama say this:

And I wish I had been wrong for the sake of the country and they had been right, but that's not the case. We've spent over $600 billion so far, soon to be $1 trillion. We have lost over 4,000 lives. We have seen 30,000 wounded, and most importantly, from a strategic national security perspective, al Qaeda is resurgent, stronger now than at any time since 2001.

He was apparently referring to this article:

Government report: Al Qaeda strongest since September 11, 2001

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Al Qaeda is the strongest it has been since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a new U.S. government analysis concludes, according to a senior government official who has seen it.

Some unnamed senior government official who says he has seen the report makes this claim, and that's good enough for Obama. It gives him cover to make a misleading claim, but it is a seriously flawed assessment because it glosses over a critical detail: what would al Qaeda's position be today had we abandoned Iraq at the height of al-Qaeda-induced sectarian violence there (as Obama proposed that we do)? Obviously, they would be very much stronger than they are today. Also, al Qaeda's strength, whatever it might be, derives from its safe havens in Pakistan, which was also noted in the article:

"We actually see the al Qaeda central being resurgent in their role in planning operations," John Kringen, head of the CIA's intelligence directorate, testified at the hearing Wednesday. "They seem to be fairly well settled into the safe haven in the ungoverned spaces of Pakistan there. We see more training. We see more money. We see more communications."

Thomas Fingar, deputy director of national intelligence, told lawmakers that al Qaeda leaders hiding in Pakistan are able to maintain relationships "with affiliates throughout the Middle East, North and East Africa and Europe."

And this fact brings up the complete non sequitur that an enthralled media allows Obama to get away with every time (and will do so again now): Because al Qaeda's safe havens are inside Pakistan, how will withdrawing our troops from Iraq and sending them to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban serve to defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan? There is no reasonable answer to this question, which is why Obama constantly blurs the critical distinction between Afghanistan (where the Taliban are fighting with the help of some al Qaeda field commanders) and Pakistan (where al Qaeda's leaders are and where al Qaeda has established those safe havens). Only by blurring that distinction can one create the false impression that pulling troops from Iraq and sending them to Afghanistan is a way to directly confront a resurgent al Qaeda. From the debate last night, watch Obama make this misleading move:

OBAMA: Well, this is an area where Senator McCain and I have a fundamental difference because I think the first question is whether we should have gone into the war in the first place.

Now six years ago, I stood up and opposed this war at a time when it was politically risky to do so because I said that not only did we not know how much it was going to cost, what our exit strategy might be, how it would affect our relationships around the world, and whether our intelligence was sound, but also because we hadn't finished the job in Afghanistan.

We hadn't caught bin Laden. We hadn't put al Qaeda to rest, and as a consequence, I thought that it was going to be a distraction. Now Senator McCain and President Bush had a very different judgment.
...
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates himself acknowledges the war on terrorism started in Afghanistan and it needs to end there.

But we can't do it if we are not willing to give Iraq back its country. Now, what I've said is we should end this war responsibly. We should do it in phases. But in 16 months we should be able to reduce our combat troops, put -- provide some relief to military families and our troops and bolster our efforts in Afghanistan so that we can capture and kill bin Laden and crush al Qaeda.

That's the misleading move. Completely, 100% misleading. Let me emphasize the key point, one that is not debatable: because there are no al Qaeda safe havens in Afghanistan, sending more troops to Afghanistan will not help us to capture and kill bin Laden and crush al Qaeda (because bin Laden and al Qaeda's safe havens are inside Pakistan). There is nothing complicated about this.

Let me further illustrate how cleverly deceiving Obama can be:

And right now, the commanders in Afghanistan, as well as Admiral Mullen, have acknowledged that we don't have enough troops to deal with Afghanistan because we still have more troops in Iraq than we did before the surge.

All true. The Taliban are fighting more effectively these days, and I assume that's because they now have some al Qaeda field commanders helping them out. Defeating them is a priority, and we need more troops to do that, but this has nothing to do with capturing and killing bin Laden and crushing al Qaeda in Pakistan. That's the point that no one appreciates (not Barack Obama or those who are enthralled by the man).

Here's more:

So I would send two to three additional brigades to Afghanistan. Now, keep in mind that we have four times the number of troops in Iraq, where nobody had anything to do with 9/11 before we went in, where, in fact, there was no al Qaeda before we went in, but we have four times more troops there than we do in Afghanistan.

But how is that going to help you to kill Osama bin Laden (in Pakistan) and crush their safe havens (in Pakistan)? He does not say because he wants Americans to believe that Afghanistan is where al Qaeda is resurgent.

Obama does mention Pakistan as well, and does say that al Qaeda is there, but it is his attempt to create the false impression that al Qaeda is resurgent in Afghanistan that I object to. He needs to create that false impression so that it will seem to make sense to say that sending more troops to Afghanistan will help to kill bin Laden and crush al Qaeda.

I have never seen any mainstream media reporter address this glaringly obvious problem with Obama's reasoning, so I assume that reporters are as ignorant of the relevant facts as Barack Obama appears to be. The one exception, and it is an important one, is the editorial board of the Washington Post. In an editorial two months ago, they said about Obama:

He insists that Afghanistan is "the central front" for the United States, along with the border areas of Pakistan. But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama's antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

As they point out, "...there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered." Glaringly obvious, but top secret (except for on this blog and in that one single editorial). Creepy.

Murder Rates Around the World (and in Iraq)

To get a sense of the current level of violence in Iraq, I estimated the number of violent deaths there over the last 3 months (June, July and August) using the figures from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. As I noted here, multiplying their civilian casualty figures by 1.5 provides a good estimate of the total number of casualties that will eventually be recorded by Iraq Body Count (a site that offers the most complete database available). Using this method, I estimate that Iraq has seen an average of 545 violent deaths per month in June, July and August.

The population of Iraq is estimated to be 28,221,180. Other estimates put the number a bit lower (especially because quite a few refugees are still in neighboring countries). Using a population figure of 27 million and an estimated annual violent death rate of 6540 (i.e., 545 times 12), the per capita violent death rate comes to about 24 per 100,000 per year. How does that figure compare to annual per capita murder rates around the world?

This Wikipedia article provides an estimate of murder rates in many countries of the world. It also shows this useful map:


As you can see, quite a few countries have really high murder rates (shown in dark blue). A number of countries in Africa have unknown murder rates. My guess is that the murder rates in these countries are pretty high, but I don't know how high. As such, I'll just compare Iraq to the countries that have known (or estimated) murder rates.

Where does Iraq fall if we use the level of violence over the last 3 months as a valid the estimate of the baseline level of violence there? Using the data from the Wikipedia article, I constructed this chart to illustrate the answer (the figure for Iraq is in red):


Some countries, like Colombia, Venezuela, and South Africa have much higher violent death rates than Iraq. Mexico and Brazil have comparable murder rates.

The Wikipedia article shows Iraq to have the highest violent death rate in the world, but that's because they use the 2007 estimate (reasonably enough). In 2007, Iraq was an extremely violent place. The figure for Iraq for all of 2008 will be a little higher than the figure I used above, but it will still be vastly lower than the 2007 figure. For the last 3 months, my estimate for Iraq is about 24 killed per 100,000 per year. For all of 2008, the figure is likely to come in around 35 (roughly the same as Colombia). That's because violence has been declining throughout 2008, so a higher violent death rate was evident earlier in the year. Thus, the annual figure will be higher than the figure obtained using only the last 3 months. Still, it won't be vastly different from what I show in the chart above.

You might not believe that the level of violence in Iraq over the last 3 months is indicative of its baseline rate. That is, you might believe that violence will spiral out of control again. I don't (because al Qaeda has been so thoroughly suppressed and is now so hated there), but only time will tell. For now, Iraq is a violent place, but it is a lot less violent than a number of other countries. It's also about as violent as America is for blacks, according to the Department of Justice:


Iraq is a violent place even with 150,000 American troops there helping to keep the peace. But how violent a place is it? The figures presented in this post help to put the number in perspective.

Two Visions of Iraq

As I have noted before, Democrats and virtually all reporters in the mainstream media (plus conservative commentator George Will) mistakenly assert that the whole purpose of the troop surge was to promote political reconciliation in Iraq. The next point made by these same people, which also increasingly mistaken, is that no such progress is evident. Therefore, Bush's mission in Iraq has failed. Here is Barack Obama weighing in on the subject:

The Problem

Inadequate Security and Political Progress in Iraq: Since the surge began, more than 1,000 American troops have died, and despite the improved security situation, the Iraqi government has not stepped forward to lead the Iraqi people and to reach the genuine political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge. Our troops have heroically helped reduce civilian casualties in Iraq to early 2006 levels. This is a testament to our military’s hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics, and enormous sacrifice by our troops and military families. It is also a consequence of the decision of many Sunnis to turn against al Qaeda in Iraq, and a lull in Shia militia activity. But the absence of genuine political accommodation in Iraq is a direct result of President Bush’s failure to hold the Iraqi government accountable.

Political reconciliation was not the primary purpose of the troop surge. I know this because I have read the speech in which the man who ordered the troop surge explained its purpose in a televised speech to the nation that was watched by millions (but apparently missed by Democrats and reporters in the mainstream media). More on that in a moment. Even if the primary purpose of the troop surge was not to promote political reconciliation, it is true that Bush briefly noted in his speech that now would be a good time for Iraqi leaders to make some progress on the political front. In that regard, two new stories are worth noting. First, there was this news from yesterday:

Iraq approves provincial elections law

BAGHDAD - Iraq's parliament overwhelmingly approved a provincial elections law Wednesday, overcoming months of deadlock and boosting U.S.-backed national reconciliation efforts.

But the lawmakers acknowledged the delay in passing the legislation would make it difficult for the electoral commission to organize the vote and pushed back the deadline for it to be held until Jan. 31, 2009.

Second, there was this recent development:

Iraqi government to gain control of anti-al Qaeda councils

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. military will transfer control of Sunni Awakening groups to the Iraqi government next month, a U.S. military spokesman said Thursday in Baghdad.

Also known as the Sons of Iraq, awakening councils are primarily a Sunni movement composed of former insurgents or sympathizers who have turned against al Qaeda.
...
"The government of Iraq and coalition forces have agreed in principle to transfer all 100,000 Sons of Iraq," Maj. John Hall said. "The transfer will start with the Baghdad province, with the other provinces following at a later date."

I wonder if Obama will update his web page to take note of these political developments? Probably not. In addition, the mainstream media is likely to quickly forget about these developments as well because, as Joe Lieberman says, such stories do not fit the narrative of defeat in Iraq.

Then again, to my utter amazement, even the New York Times seems to be taking note of progress in Iraq:

Back in Iraq, Jarred by the Calm
...
Abu Nawas Park — I didn’t recognize that, either. By the time I had left the country in August 2006, the two-mile stretch of riverside park was a grim, spooky, deserted place, a symbol for the dying city that Baghdad had become.

These days, the same park is filled with people: families with children, women in jeans, women walking alone. Even the nighttime, when Iraqis used to cower inside their homes, no longer scares them. I can hear their laughter wafting from the park. At sundown the other day, I had to weave my way through perhaps 2,000 people. It was an astonishing, beautiful scene — impossible, incomprehensible, only months ago.

When I left Baghdad two years ago, the nation’s social fabric seemed too shredded to ever come together again. The very worst had lost its power to shock. To return now is to be jarred in the oddest way possible: by the normal, by the pleasant, even by hope. The questions are jarring, too. Is it really different now? Is this something like peace or victory? And, if so, for whom: the Americans or the Iraqis?

Both, obviously. This is old news, but what was particularly amazing to me was that an article in the New York Times -- a paper that has long denied the transparently obvious role of al Qaeda in Iraq -- actually mentioned this factor and -- incredibly -- got the story exactly right:

At its most basic level, General Odierno explained, the premise of this “surge” was that ordinary Iraqis didn’t want the violence. That is, that the chaos in Iraq was being driven by small groups of killers, principally those of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who, by murdering Shiite civilians in huge car and suicide bomb attacks, were driving ordinary Iraqis into the arms of Shiite deaths squads and the Mahdi Army. If that dynamic could be broken, ordinary Iraqis would stop relying on militias to protect them. Something approaching normalcy might return.
...
And so they did, with a series of offensives against the Qaeda insurgents in and around Baghdad in 2007 and then, earlier this year, in Basra and in Baghdad against the Mahdi Army. Along the way, the Americans got a huge break: The leaders of Iraq’s large Sunni tribes, which had included many insurgents, decided to stop opposing the Americans and join them against Al Qaeda. The Americans, seizing the opportunities, agreed to put many of the tribesmen, including many former insurgents, on the payroll.

The Sunni Awakening, as it is called, cascaded through Sunni areas across Iraq.

Just amazing. Why the New York Times spent months trying to characterize the violence in Iraq as a mere "civil war" having little or nothing to do with the war on terror will always remain a mystery, but it's nice to see them finally catching up with reality.

All of this brings me back to the whole purpose of the troop surge, as clearly explained by George Bush in a speech to the nation in January of 2007. Note how closely his vision fits with what actually happened less than 2 years later. Note also that, in his speech, Bush does not fail to mention al Qaeda. In fact, the whole purpose of the troop surge was to defeat al Qaeda in Iraq (which is precisely what happened and is the main reason why Iraq is so peaceful now). Here is the relevant part of speech:

As we make these changes, we will continue to pursue al Qaeda and foreign fighters. Al Qaeda is still active in Iraq. Its home base is Anbar Province. Al Qaeda has helped make Anbar the most violent area of Iraq outside the capital. A captured al Qaeda document describes the terrorists' plan to infiltrate and seize control of the province. This would bring al Qaeda closer to its goals of taking down Iraq's democracy, building a radical Islamic empire, and launching new attacks on the United States at home and abroad.

Our military forces in Anbar are killing and capturing al Qaeda leaders, and they are protecting the local population. Recently, local tribal leaders have begun to show their willingness to take on al Qaeda. And as a result, our commanders believe we have an opportunity to deal a serious blow to the terrorists. So I have given orders to increase American forces in Anbar Province by 4,000 troops. These troops will work with Iraqi and tribal forces to keep up the pressure on the terrorists. America's men and women in uniform took away al Qaeda's safe haven in Afghanistan -- and we will not allow them to re-establish it in Iraq.

That was the "whole purpose" of the troop surge according to the man who ordered it. Just as planned, the surge took advantage of the Sunni Awakening and did not allow al Qaeda to achieve its goals in Iraq.

In his speech, Bush devoted a few sentences to political reconciliation as well:

I've made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people -- and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act. The Prime Minister understands this.
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Most of Iraq's Sunni and Shia want to live together in peace -- and reducing the violence in Baghdad will help make reconciliation possible.
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A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

Thus, Bush did not minimize the importance of political reconciliation even though it was not the "whole purpose" of the troop surge. Anyone who refers to the whole purpose of the surge without mentioning al Qaeda in Iraq does not know what they are talking about.

Well, as of today, things are working out exactly as Bush envisioned when he ordered the surge against the wishes of Barack Obama, who proposed that we withdraw our troops instead (despite the fact that almost 3000 civilians were dying every month). The New York Times agreed with Obama's plan, and here was their rosy vision of what was likely to happen had we followed the Obama plan:

The Road Home

July 8, 2007

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.
...
Whatever his cause was, it is lost.
...
Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave. There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power grabs. Perhaps most important, the invasion has created a new stronghold from which terrorist activity could proliferate.

That was the likely outcome of the plan endorsed by Barack Obama and liberals everywhere. Compare that vision to the vision offered by George Bush when he explained the purpose of the troop surge to the nation. Then compare Bush's vision to what is actually happening on the ground and ask yourself whose plan al Qaeda would have preferred.

Casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan

I am glad that Democrats like Barack Obama think that it is important to win our fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan, but I am bothered by the fact that virtually all Democrats pretend that al Qaeda is resurgent there (and has found safe haven there) because we "took our eye off the ball" when we invaded al-Qaeda-free Iraq in 2003. In fact, unlike the U.S., al Qaeda abandoned Afghanistan to resist the American-led invasion of Iraq. That's the part of the story that no Democrat seems able to comprehend. Al Qaeda not only came to Iraq, they deliberately ignited the hellacious increase in sectarian violence that prompted virtually all Democrats, including Barack Obama, to propose giving up the fight (which they misleadingly called a "civil war"). Now, the Democrats have a new misleading argument, which is that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda are resurgent in Afghanistan, and they make this argument by repeatedly blurring the absolutely critical distinction between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They do so by referring to an area "between Afghanistan and Pakistan" or by claiming that al Qaeda is resurgent "along the Afghanistan-Pakistan" border. This is misleading because virtually everyone agrees that al Qaeda's leaders (and high-ranking officials of the Taliban) are 100% inside Pakistan. This matters because our troops are not welcome in Pakistan, so any troops we take from Iraq to help in the fight against the Taliban will, at best, take on the few low-level al Qaeda field commanders who are helping to make the Taliban better fighters. By pretending otherwise, Obama and his like-minded Democratic allies make it seem as if sending troops to Afghanistan will help us to "finish the fight" against Osama bin Laden (who, in all likelihood, is completely inside Pakistan).

In any case, because everyone will be focusing more on Afghanistan in the coming months and years, I thought it might be useful to compare recent casualty trends in Iraq and Afghanistan. One country is quieting down while the other heats up. Still, violence in Afghanistan is nothing compared to what we saw in Iraq. Lets take a look at overall casualties first. For Iraq, these numbers come from Iraq Body Count because that source provides the most complete database. The figure for 2008 is a projection that assumes that casualties will continue to accumulate at the rate they have accumulated so far in 2008. For Afghanistan, the numbers come from various counts provided by the AP that I linked to here. Again, the 2008 figure that I show in the chart below is a projected figure. I do not really know how complete the AP counts are, but they are all we have. Here is the chart that compares overall casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2005 to 2008:


In Iraq, most the casualties were civilians. In Afghanistan, most of the casualties are Taliban. The number of people killed in Iraq far exceeds the number killed in Afghanistan, but the two are becoming more similar now that things are becoming relatively quiet in Iraq.

A similar story emereges from a comparison of coalition force casualties in Iraq (mostly U.S.) and Afghanistan (NATO, with about half being U.S.). I got these figures from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count:


Again, the 2008 figures are projected values based on the number killed so far this year. As you can see, there really is no comparison in the level of violence in these two countries, though they are similar now that violence in Iraq has dropped to relatively low levels.

If the AP figures are accurate, the numbers suggest that while NATO casualties have increased this year, overall casualties in Afghanistan (mostly Taliban) have come down somewhat. That might reflect the fact that, in 2008, al Qaeda has been re-engaging the fight in Afghanistan by having some of their field commanders lend an assist to the otherwise hapless Taliban.

I assume it's clear to everyone that we must prevail in Afghanistan. Allowing it to become a failed state is a nonstarter because we've seen the consequences of that before. The Taliban cannot prevail if NATO does not lose its will, and because even the Democrats support our cause there, I see no chance of a Taliban victory there. But what should we do about al Qaeda in Pakistan? That's the question, and it seems to me that we are going about that fight in the only way that we can (i.e., encouraging Pakistan to launch offensives against militants in the border region and using pilotless Predator drones to target al Qaeda leadership from the skies). I hope that John McCain and Barack Obama explain their views on this when they meet in Friday night's debate.

"The superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan"

Here is Joe Biden exhibiting some bravado and acting as if he has a clear understanding of the relationship between al Qaeda and Afghanistan:

"Ladies and gentlemen, where are we now? Where are we now?" Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said to the National Guard Association today, talking about the war in Afghanistan.

"If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden said. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
...
Biden said he would ask Palin about "The superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan where my helicopter was forced down...John McCain wants to know where Bin Laden and the gates of Hell are? I can tell him where. That's where Al Qaeda is. That's where Bin Laden is. It's not in the country of Iraq."

Bin Laden is where your helicopter went down in the mountains of Afghanistan? Or is he across the border in Pakistan? This is important to get straight because there is a world of difference between the two. For starters, we have 50,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan and about zero in Pakistan. In addition, Pakistan's new president (Ali Asif Zardari) has this to say:

Zardari said the Pakistani military was well-equipped and experienced in conducting operations in the mountainous areas where U.S. officials insist that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is hiding. All they need, he said, is information and logistical support.

Signaling his willingness to face off with Bush over the critical issue, Zardari did not disavow a reported order issued to his military last week to open fire if U.S. troops launched another air or ground raid across the Afghan border.

“Our orders are they (Pakistani forces) are not to allow any intrusion of anybody in Pakistan," he said. "If the American troops are coming in without letting us know, without Pakistani permission, they are violating the United Nations charter.”

Asked if U.S. personnel would be confronted militarily, he replied, “Whatever it takes.”

Thus, not only do we have zero NATO soldiers in Pakistan, the Pakistani army seems ready to fire on any U.S. soldiers who cross into Pakistan in pursuit of al Qaeda targets. In light of this, I wish some reporter would just take a map like the one below, present it to Joe Biden, and say "please tell me where they are:"


Are al Qaeda's leaders here, where your helicopter landed in Afghanistan, or there, in Pakistan? If the latter, what do you actually propose to do about it?

And about that "superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan," what the heck is that, anyway? It sounds like he is talking about the Taliban, who use Pakistan as a safe haven and then cross the border to fight in Afghanistan. But I don't think anyone believes that Osama bin Laden is on that highway (nor are al Qaeda's suicide bombers, because they are busy in Pakistan). Instead, many Taliban use that superhighway, plus a few al Qaeda field commanders who offer them guidance and direction. What does that have to do with capturing Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking al Qaeda operatives (all of whom are thought to be inside Pakistan)? Perhaps Joe Biden thinks they are in Afghanistan. Or maybe he thinks they are hiding "between" Afghanistan and Pakistan (even though no such place exists). I wish some reporter would ask him to clarify.

Casualties in Afghanistan

Most of what I know about our war against al Qaeda in Iraq came from a detailed analysis of casualties, especially casualties from suicide bombers (my analysis here, for example, goes far beyond what you'd ever learn from a reporter). I cannot be certain that an analysis of casualties in Afghanistan would yield similar insights, but I recently realized that I know very little about them. Thus, before expressing any strong opinions about what we should do in that country, I thought I would inquire into the matter. In this post, I present the details of how I arrived at my estimates of casualties in Afghanistan from 2005 through 2008. If you want to skip the details and just see the end result, jump to the chart at the end of this post.

Tracking casualties in Iraq is relatively easy because several web sites are devoted to the issue. Tracking casualties in Afghanistan is harder because no such resources are available. However, the AP maintains casualty counts that they sometimes refer to in their articles, and I found this Wikipedia article that also covers the issue. News stories that refer to casualties in Afghanistan often specify a casualty figure and then sometimes mention that most of casualties are militants. Here is one from 2005:

Afghan News 10/16-17/2005 – Bulletin #1208
Compiled by the Embassy of Afghanistan in Canada

Officials blamed the bombing on the Taliban, who are mostly active in southern and eastern parts of the country where some 1,200 people -- mostly militants, but also more than 50 U.S. soldiers -- have been killed in Taliban-linked attacks this year.

That story was published in October of 2005, and I used the figure of 1200 casualties to project an annual total of 1515.

Here is a story from July of 2006:

Over 40 Militants Killed in Afghanistan; Karzai Orders Probe into Violence

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Widespread violence across southern Afghanistan has killed about 800 people, mostly militants, since May, according to an Associated Press tally of coalition and Afghan figures.

Here is another from August of that year:

Afghanistan Violence Heats Up

1 NATO-led Coalition Soldier Dead; Police Kill 10 Suspected Taliban

KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 27, 2006

Afghanistan is experiencing its worst violence since the late-2001 ouster of the Taliban regime for hosting al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. More than 1,600 people, mostly militants, have died in the past four months, according to an Associated Press tally of violent incidents reported by U.S., NATO and Afghan officials.

And here is one more from October of 2006:

Saturday, October 7, 2006

Afghanistan five years later: poverty, violence, misery

By Fisnik Abrashi and Jason Straziuso

The Associated Press

More than 3,000 people, mostly militants, have been killed nationwide in 2006, according to an Associated Press count. The tally, also including Afghan security forces, officials and civilians, is about 1,500 more than the toll for all of 2005.

From these stories, I estimate about 4000 total casualties for all of 2006.

In July of 2007, there was this:

33 Militants Killed in Afghanistan

By NOOR KHAN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, July 3, 2007; 5:04 AM

Southern Afghanistan has seen fierce fighting in the last several weeks. More than 2,900 people _ mostly militants _ have been killed in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan this year, according to an Associated Press tally of numbers provided by Western and Afghan officials.

In September of 2007, another story had this to say:

20 militants, 5 private security guards killed in clashes in Afghanistan

By FISNIK ABRASHI | Associated Press Writer
10:09 AM CDT, September 12, 2008

More than 4,100 people, mostly militants, have died this year in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press.

And in late 2007, we have this story:

Deaths mark grim Afghan, Iraq milestones
(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-11-11 09:38

More than 5,800 people, mostly militants, have died due to insurgency-related violence this year, also a record, according to an AP count based on figures from Western and Afghan officials.

Stories like these allow one to extrapolate the number of casualties for the whole year, but they do not offer much help in sorting them out into Taliban, civilian, and Afghan security casualties. Other stories are more helpful in that regard:

Emboldened Taliban Reflected In More Attacks, Greater Reach

U.S., Afghan Officials Disagree With Analysts' Notion of a Major Resurgence

By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 25, 2007; A11

Hakim said an estimated 600 civilians were killed in the first half of the year in conflict-related incidents. A report by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, the security advisory group, tabulated 678 conflict-related deaths in the same period -- 347 caused by insurgents, 331 by coalition forces.

Extrapolating from the figures in this story, we can estimate that between 1200 and 1356 civilian deaths occurred in 2007. From the other stories, I estimate total casualties for 2007 to be 6724. Thus, using the higher figure for civilian deaths (1356), one estimate would be that about 20% of overall casualties in Afghanistan are civilians. This is very different from Iraq, where the vast majority of casualties were civilians. That's because in Iraq, but not in Afghanistan, al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army both targeted civilians (though the Mahdi Army targeted Sunni males of fighting age because of their support for al Qaeda, and many of those casualties would probably stretch the definition of "civilian" pretty far).

The Wikipedia article I mentioned earlier gives these figures for 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 (these are just various snippets from that article):

Total casualties (2005)

An estimated 1,700 people were killed in 2005 according to an Associated Press count, including civilians, insurgents and security forces members.[11][12] Some 600 policemen were killed between Hamid Karzai's election as president of Afghanistan in early December of 2004 and mid-May 2005.[13]

Total casualties (2006)

A report by Human Rights Watch said that 4,400 Afghans had been killed in 2006, more than 1,000 of them civilians. Some 2,077 militants were killed in Coalition operations between September 1 and December 13.[23]

An Associated Press tally based on reports from Afghan, NATO and coalition officials puts the overall death toll slightly lower, at about 4,000, most of them militants.[24]

More than 1,900 people were killed in the first eight months of the year by the end of August.[25]


Total casualties (2007)

More than 7,700 people were killed in 2007, including: 1,019 Afghan policemen[83]; 4,478 militants[84]; 1,980 civilians[85] and 232 foreign soldiers[86].

Total casualties (2008)

In the first six months of 2008, more than 2,100 people were killed[122], including 698 civilians[123]. 502 militants were killed by March 14.[124] In June of 2008 alone 613 people died in insurgent violence, including: 473 militants, 34 civilians and 44 Afghan security forces.[122][125] 72 Afghan policemen were killed during the month of April.[126]

The UN said in June, 2008 that nearly 700 Afghan civilians had been killed during the year, about two-thirds in attacks by militants and about 255 in military operations. [127]

In July another 260 civilians were killed and the overall death toll for the year rose to 2,700 dead.[128]

Some of these figures seem too high. For example, if 7700 people really were killed in 2007, then violence has dropped off considerably in 2008 (because only 2100 people were killed in the first 6 months of 2008).

In any case, I considered all of this information to arrive at estimates of casualties in Afghanistan for 2005 through 2008 (with the 2008 figures being a projected result based on casualties so far this year). I mainly used counts from the AP, then I assumed that 25% were civilian casualties and 13% were Afghan security force casualties. I also obtained casualty totals for NATO soldiers from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (here). Putting all of that information together, I generated this chart:


As you can see, violence has increased over the last few years, and most of the casualties (by far) were inflicted on the Taliban. More than 4000 Taliban were killed in 2007, and the number will likely exceed 3500 this year. NATO casualties are far lower, but they have increased from about 130 in 2005 to about 300 in 2008, with about half being U.S. casualties (again, the 2008 figure is a projected value). I estimate that about 12 Taliban militants are killed for every NATO soldier that is killed. Even so, the Taliban were somewhat more deadly in 2008 than 2007, and this may reflect the help they are now receiving from al Qaeda field commanders. The Taliban are relentless, but they are not particularly competent. No one would ever say that about al Qaeda.

The numbers shown in this chart are ballpark estimates, and they represent my first attempt to get a handle on casualties in Afghanistan. I'll have more to say about them, but, for now, I just want to get these figures into a post that I can refer to (and update) down the line.

UPDATE: I just noticed this story, which suggests that my numbers for casualties among Afghan security forces are a bit low:

720 Afghan police killed in last 6 months, as militants increase attacks

By Associated Press

September 16, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) _ Insurgent attacks have killed around 720 Afghan police in the last six months as militants have increased the pace of bombings and ambushes, an official said Tuesday.

Most of the police deaths have come from frontal attacks by militants, said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary. The 720 deaths happened during the first six months of the Afghan calendar.

In 2008, militants killed about 925 police — meaning the pace of attacks this year has spiked.
...
More than 4,100 people — mostly militants — have died in insurgency related violence this year, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from Afghan and Western officials.

Also, I noticed this story:

KABUL - About 720 police have been killed in attacks by Taliban-led insurgents since March across Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday. In all, 1,119 policemen were killed the previous year.

So, 1,119 Afghan police killed last year and 925 so far this year. These are higher numbers than I show in my chart, so my next chart will use these figures (and reduce estimated Taliban casualties by several hundred).

Al Qaeda in Afghanistan

My passionate views on how to prosecute the war on terror did not start with the invasion of Iraq. I was not 100% sure that the invasion was the right thing to do, though I did support it after it became clear Saddam Hussein was simply not going to cooperate with UN inspectors (which convinced me that he had WMDs -- that being the only apparent reason for his lack of cooperation). Only much later did I learn that what I regarded as the most damning evidence against him (namely, his refusal to fully cooperate despite 200,000 troops amassed on his border) was a calculated maneuver designed to be just barely enough cooperation to keep US troops out while keeping the Iranians guessing as to whether or not Iraq really had WMDs. Amazingly, Saddam feared an invasion from Iran more than he feared an invasion by the US and Britain (I discussed all this and presented the relevant evidence here and here). Had we not invaded, the world today would be 100% sure that Saddam possessed WMDs because, as I later came to realize, he felt that he could not afford to allow the world to know that, in truth, he had none. He'd also be once again actively pursuing WMDs because he felt strongly that he needed them.

Anyway, that's old news. My passionate support for our efforts in Iraq (as opposed to my initial, somewhat uncertain support) arose when I realized that al Qaeda had "taken its eye off the ball" in Afghanistan and concentrated all of its efforts on bringing down the elected government of Iraq and evicting American forces from that country. It was a shocking revelation to me because (a) it was easy to figure out on your own if you dug into the details and (b) the mainstream media and the Democrats eerily minimized the role of al Qaeda (as if any such claim along those lines was a transparently dishonest effort to justify a foolish invasion that had nothing at all to do with the war on terror). Instead, according to them, the once ever-worsening conflict in Iraq was best understood as a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis, who hate each other. All the while, they argued that the real central front in the war on terror was back in Afghanistan, where al Qaeda was resurgent. To this day, I remain almost in awe of the fact that the mainstream media and the Democrats can work in unison over a long period of time and in a way that gets the story all wrong -- either through a shared lack of understanding or as part of a deliberate effort to push a partisan view that they fully realize is weak and contrary to most evidence. Equally amazing to me is the fact that, now that the war in Iraq is effectively over, Democrats and the mainstream media act as if they have acknowledged the key role played by al Qaeda all along. They do this when they strive to minimize the role played by the troop surge in winning that war and claim that our apparent victory is instead due to the Sunni Tribes turning against al Qaeda in Iraq. But if al Qaeda was a virtual non-factor in the rising tide of violence in Iraq, why would it matter if the Sunnis turned against them?

In any case, while working overtime to minimize the role played by al Qaeda in Iraq, Democrats and the mainstream media pushed the completely erroneous notion that al Qaeda was resurgent in Afghanistan, having supposedly reestablished safe havens there because we "took our eye off the ball." In fact, as I explained in detail yesterday, al Qaeda has established safe havens and training camps that are completely inside Pakistan. Moreover, suicide bombings and simultaneous car bombings -- the hallmark of attacks by al Qaeda throughout the world -- are really quite rare in Afghanistan (and they have been all along). Thus, the idea that al Qaeda is resurgent in Afghanistan while not being active in Iraq (where suicide bombings and simultaneous car bombings were once the order of the day) is simply preposterous.

With al Qaeda's declining fortunes in Iraq comes a renewed threat that this wretched terrorist organization will now make Afghanistan its central front in the war on terror. Whereas Osama bin Laden withdrew resources and finances from the Taliban shortly after the US invasion of Iraq (described here), it seems that he began to once again offer more help for the Taliban last year:

Jul 6, 2007

Al-Qaeda's new talent in Afghanistan

By Michael Scheuer

Al-Qaeda's late-May naming of Mustafa Ahmed Muhammad Uthman Abu al-Yazid as the "general leader" of the group's activities in Afghanistan shows that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri believe that helping the Taliban win the Afghan war is a top priority.

It also suggests that the al-Qaeda chieftains think the path to victory in Afghanistan is set solidly enough that Abu al-Yazid can manage the organization's Afghan affairs while the group turns to other aspects of the jihad outside Afghanistan.
...
The appointment of Abu al-Yazid underscores the importance to al-Qaeda of re-establishing a Taliban government in Afghanistan. As an al-Qaeda founder and a member of its Shura Council, Abu al-Yazid brings great prestige to the group's support for the Taliban, and - like bin Laden and Zawahiri before him - he pledged personal allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar as the "Commander of the Faithful" in his first Al-Sahab interview.

Mustafa Abu Yazid is the general leader of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. He is almost certainly in a safe haven in Pakistan, and his efforts have not been to organize suicide bombings and car bombings (as al Qaeda in Iraq has done). Instead, he seems to be offering tactical advice for the Taliban in their fight against NATO troops. And, as I noted yesterday, there are now some al Qaeda field commanders in Afghanistan working with the Taliban (and a few of these commanders have been killed in Afghanistan in recent months).

Yazid may have been involved in the assassination of Banazir Bhutto last year, as noted in this article:

U.S. Checking al Qaeda Claim of Killing Bhutto

December 27, 2007 11:47 AM

While al Qaeda is considered by the U.S. to be a likely suspect in the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Banazir Bhutto, U.S. intelligence officials say they cannot confirm an initial claim of responsibility for the attack, supposedly from an al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan.

An obscure Italian Web site said Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, al Qaeda's commander in Afghanistan, told its reporter in a phone call, "We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahedeen."

It said the decision to assassinate Bhutto was made by al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al Zawahri in October. Before joining Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Zawahri was imprisoned in Egypt for his role in the assassination of then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

Bhutto was killed by a suicide bomber, and I find his claim credible.

Last month, it was reported that Mustafa Abu Yazid was killed during Pakistan's recent offensive against Islamic militants in Pakistan's tribal borderlands:

Senior Al Qaeda figure dead, officials say

Mustafa Abu Yazid, aka Abu Saeed Masri, oversaw Al Qaeda operations in Afghanistan. He is said to have been killed in fighting near the Afghan border.

By Zulfiqar Ali and Laura King, Special to The Times

August 13, 2008

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN -- A senior Al Qaeda figure died this week in fighting in Pakistan's tribal borderlands, a Pakistani security official and other sources said Tuesday.

Abu Saeed Masri, also known as Mustafa Abu Yazid, was believed to have been a close associate of Al Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman Zawahiri, and to have played a prominent role in the organization's overall structure.

Yazid, who was in charge of Al Qaeda's operations in Afghanistan, was reported to have been killed in the Bajaur tribal area along the Pakistani-Afghan frontier. The region has long provided a haven for Islamic militants, including some senior Al Qaeda leaders. Zawahiri is thought to have a base in the area.
...
Most Al Qaeda figures killed in the semiautonomous Pakistani tribal areas have been killed by U.S. aerial drones or in other targeted strikes. But the fighting in the last week in Bajaur has involved primarily the Pakistani military.

I'm not sure it's true that Yazid was killed, though. Yesterday, for example, we had this news:

(CNN) -- In a video marking the seventh anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, al Qaeda's top leader in Afghanistan vows more "large-scale" attacks against the United States and its allies.

In another segment, the personal adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Omar says al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is alive and well. Al Qaeda leaders featured on the video promise more violence against their enemies.

"We inform the forces of the Cross and their apostate agents that the Mujahedeen's policy in the coming stage, God permitting, is going to be more major, large-scale attacks like the Kandahar prison operation, the Nuristan raid, the Sarobi ambush and Khost airport operation in which approximately 50 Americans and 100 apostates were killed and four helicopters were hit and destroyed," Mustafa Abu al-Yazid says.

I don't really know when this video was made, so I suppose it's possible that Yazid really was killed in August and that the video was made before that.

In any case, while al Qaeda made Iraq its central front in the war on terror (and took it's eye off the ball in Afghanistan), it is investing some effort now in Afghanistan. The effort does not appear to be huge and does not seem to involve its standard fare (suicide bombings and simultaneous car bombings). Instead, al Qaeda commanders are helping the otherwise hapless Taliban to be more effective in their fight against NATO troops. I can't help but wonder, though, where all those foreign suicide bombers who were once headed to Iraq are going now. And I don't know why they are not yet being used in greater numbers in Afghanistan now that al Qaeda's major effort over the last 5 years (namely, the war in Iraq) has utterly failed -- right under the noses of but completely unnoticed by Democrats and the mainstream media.

In any case, with the defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq and the corresponding damage to al Qaeda's once-vaunted reputation throughout the Muslim world, I don't fear an Obama presidency as much as I otherwise might. He seemed as badly misinformed about the war on terror as your average journalist (having once suggested that our troops are doing little more than baby sitting a civil war in Iraq), but he is committed to the war in Afghanistan. It is, I believe, a fairly artificial commitment that goes against every instinct in his body, but he is in too deep to allow al Qaeda to win that war in the way that he was once prepared to let al Qaeda win the war in Iraq.

UPDATE: Call me crazy, but I'm thinking al Qaeda just did this:

Deadly blast targets Marriott Hotel in Islamabad

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- A car bomb detonated Saturday night in the heart of Islamabad, killing at least 34 people, police said, and shattering windows more than two miles away.

At least 200 people were injured in the attack in Pakistan's capital, policed said.
...
Police described the 8 p.m. blast as a car bomb.

UPDATE II: This report from al Jazeera makes the al Qaeda connection impossible to miss:

Reports said a suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into the entrance of the hotel.
...
Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent reporting from Islamabad, said it is "probably the most powerful explosion [in Pakistan] in recent times".

"Fires are still raging and no one knows how many people have been kileld in the explosion."

He said ambulances were still arriving at the scene, indicating that there "must be high casualties indeed".

"Whoever is responsible for this attack chose his target carefully. A very professionaly carried out job," said Hyder.

Talat Masood, a military analyst, told Al Jazeera that the attack was "well-planned and co-ordinated".
...
The Islamabad bombing came on the heels of another which left at least eight Pakistani soldiers dead in a suicide attack on a military convoy in the country's northwest tribal region.

The attack took place as the troops passed through North Waziristan on Saturday, a security official said.

"Eight soldiers have died and some 12 others were injured," the official said, adding the death toll may increase.
...
North Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan, is a sanctuary for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters and has been the scene of fierce battles and suicide attacks over the past several years.

A large number of Arab and Central Asian fighters linked to al-Qaeda are reported to be hiding near the town of Mir Ali, the site of Saturday's attack, officials said.

Pakistan's new government has committed itself to the US-led campaign against the fighters even though the campaign is unpopular throughout the country.

I guess al Qaeda's suicide bombers are being diverted from Iraq (where al Qaeda's cause is now hopeless) to Pakistan instead of Afghanistan. The suicide bombers who carried out these attacks in Pakistan are not the hapless Taliban suicide bombers who typically succeed in killing no one but themselves. These suicide bombers are the extremely deadly variety once used by al Qaeda in Iraq and now used by al Qaeda in Pakistan.

UPDATE III: Someone has taken note of the obvious:

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast. But Pakistan has faced a wave of militant violence in recent weeks following army-led offensives against insurgents in its border regions. The method carried out in the blast also "bears all the hallmarks of an attack by al-Qaida," one senior terrorism official told NBC News.

No kidding. And my larger point is that, over the last 5 years, amost no attacks in Afghanistan would be characterized as bearing "all the hallmarks of an attack by al-Qaida." And that's because al Qaeda's suicide bombers and their car bomb experts have been working to advance the cause of radical Islam in Iraq (unbeknownst to Barack Obama and reporters in the mainstream media, who actually believed that they were just watching a civil war).

Chasing al Qaeda "Between" Afghanistan and Pakistan

Katie Couric asked Barack Obama a question that he answered in a way that either reflects a misunderstanding on Obama's part about the war on terror or reflects a cynical attempt to capitalize on the limited understanding of most Americans. Either way, it is not a "gaffe" because Obama's answer reflects his consistently stated position:

Katie Couric: Why do you think there has not been another terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11? And as president, how would you prevent that from happening again?

Barack Obama: Well … I think that the initial invasion into Afghanistan disrupted al Qaeda. And that was the right thing to do. I mean, we had to knock out those safe havens. And that, I think, weakened them.

We did some work in strengthening our homeland security apparatus here. Obviously, the average person knows that when they go to the airport, because they are goin' through taking off their shoes … all that.

The problem is when we got distracted by Iraq. We gave al Qaeda time to reconstitute itself. And we now know, based on all the intelligence available to us that they, in fact, have set up safe havens back in Afghanistan, the hills between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are now carrying out very aggressive actions against U.S. troops in Afghanistan and they are training to attack the United States once again. So now, my hope obviously is that we continue to prevent them from being able to move at all out of those safe havens. But our intelligence indicates … that the danger, the likelihood, of a potential attack is significantly higher now. And that has been an enormous mistake that I intend to correct when I'm president of the United States.

Al Qaeda is in the hills between Afghanistan and Pakistan? There are no hills "between" Afghanistan and Pakistan. Instead, there is a border that separates these two countries, and that border runs through a mountainous region. The critical point that Obama is glossing over is that al Qaeda is entirely on the Pakistani side of that border. They have not set up "safe havens back in Afghanistan" or in the hills "between Afghanistan and Pakistan." Instead, they have set up safe havens back in Pakistan. There is a world of difference between a safe haven in Afghanistan and a safe haven in Pakistan. For starters, unlike a safe haven in Pakistan, a so-called "safe haven" in Afghanistan would be very unsafe for al Qaeda. We can send troops to Afghanistan (in fact, 50,000 NATO troops are there right now), but we can't really send any to Pakistan. Thus, the idea that we should fight al Qaeda by withdrawing troops from Iraq and sending them to Afghanistan makes no sense at all. If Obama wants to withdraw troops from Iraq so they can be used elsewhere, then he should be man enough to acknowledge that he believes it is more important for our troops to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan than it is to fight al Qaeda in Iraq. On top of that, he should specifically describe how he thinks that those extra troops can effectively target al Qaeda's leaders, because those leaders are fully inside Pakistan. Not only are they fully inside Pakistan, the Pakistani government now says that its army will fire on any US soldier who crosses the border. That being the case, does Obama still believe that US special forces should march right into Pakistan if actionable intelligence identifies the possible whereabouts of Osama bin Laden? Obama avoids all of these complications by simply pretending that there is a region "between Afghanistan and Pakistan." There isn't, and infatuated reporters do not seem to realize it (so they don't ask him to elaborate).

Let me show you again where al Qaeda's leaders are. For years now, South Waziristan has been thought to be the hiding place of Osama bin laden and other high-ranking al Qaeda officials:

4 March 2004

Waziristan: Bin Laden's hiding place?

There is growing world attention on the remote Pakistani tribal region of South Waziristan as efforts continue to locate Osama Bin Laden and other key al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects.

Here is a map showing where South Waziristan is (circled in blue):


As you can see, South Waziristan is not "between Afghanistan and Pakistan." Instead, it is completely inside Pakistan. That's precisely why the U.S. uses pilotless drones instead of special forces to target al Qaeda's leaders there. And if you have been paying attention, you know that over the last year or so these drones have killed quite a number of mid- to high-level al Qaeda operatives inside Pakistan and have killed precisely zero al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. None have been killed in Afghanistan because none are there.

Obama and like-minded Democrats pretend that al Qaeda is in Afghanistan (by blurring the distinction between Afghanistan and Pakistan) because it offers a way to justify pulling our troops from Iraq and sending them to Afghanistan to fight al Qaeda (as if "Afghanistan in the central front in the war on terror"). But this notion makes no sense at all if al Qaeda's leaders and fighters are inside Pakistan, which they are. In 2001, al Qaeda was in Afghanistan. Now, they're not. Thus, sending more troops to Afgnaistan to "finish the fight" against al Qaeda is a nonsensical idea, yet it is an idea that Obama repeatedly endorses.

To be sure, more troops are in needed in Afghanistan because the Taliban have become more active of late, and al Qaeda may become more active there now that they have been decimated in Iraq. But the point is that al Qaeda's safe havens (i.e., the safe havens that Barack Obama refers to) are totally and completely inside Pakistan. Pretending otherwise might be politically expedient, but it is not otherwise helpful.

Very few people appreciate the fact that al Qaeda's suicide bombers have not been active in Afghanistan (at all) from 2003 right up through the present day. Instead, people believe that (a) we didn't finish the fight against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, (b) al Qaeda is resurgent in Afghanistan, (c) our troops were doing nothing more than baby sitting a civil war in Iraq, and (d) al Qaeda in Iraq was either a myth or was a minor force (the importance of which was greatly exaggerated by neocon war mongers). This is all wrong, and it is not debatable.

While al Qaeda's suicide bombers have not been active in Afghanistan for the last 5 years (at all), they have killed nearly 10,000 people in Iraq. Yet your average American thinks that al Qaeda is resurgent in Afghanistan because we "took our eye off the ball" in 2003 with our misbegotten adventure in Iraq. If so, al Qaeda did too:

Newsweek | Bin Laden's Iraq Plans

By Sami Yousafzai, Ron Moreau and Michael Hirsh
Newsweek

Monday 15 December 2003

During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, three senior Qaeda representatives allegedly held a secret meeting in Afghanistan with two top Taliban commanders.
...
At that meeting, according to Taliban sources, Osama bin Laden's men officially broke some bad news to emissaries from Mullah Mohammed Omar, the elusive leader of Afghanistan's ousted fundamentalist regime. Their message: Al Qaeda would be diverting a large number of fighters from the anti-U.S. insurgency in Afghanistan to Iraq. Al Qaeda also planned to reduce by half its $3 million monthly contribution to Afghan jihadi outfits.

All this was on the orders of bin Laden himself, the sources said.

All subsequent evidence suggests that this is exactly what al Qeda did in the ensuing years. The best evidence comes from an analysis of casualty statistics. If al Qaeda has been resurgent in Afghanistan, it should show up in casualties caused by suicide bombers (al Qaeda's primary method of attack). Casualty statistics from suicide bombings in Iraq are fairly easy to obtain because both the U.S. military and the anti-war web site Iraq Body Count keep track of the statistics. It takes a little work to extract deaths in Iraq due to suicide bombings from their database, but anyone can do it. It is harder to get the corresponding statistics from Afghanistan, but I cobbled them together from many different sources (e.g., news stories, like this one, and this one, and this one, as well as various reports on the fighting in that country, like this one and this one). I used many more sources as well and believe that I identified every major suicide bombing attack in Afghanistan that has been reported by the media. I surely missed very minor attacks that killed one or two people, but I don't believe that I missed any major attack involving, say, more than 20 people killed. Thus, although the numbers for Afghanistan might be a little low, I believe they are pretty accurate. Here's the story through the early part of 2008:




Get the picture? The suicide bombers in Iraq are almost all foreigners sent to Iraq (not to Afghanistan) by al Qaeda. This chart from the New York Times shows where they come from:


And, as I said, these foreign suicide bombers were not a minor force in Iraq. Instead, they killed 10,000 people and deliberately ignited the sectarian violence that killed many thousands more.

What about the suicide bombers of Afghanistan? As you can see from my chart of above, they have killed vastly fewer people in Afghanistan over the years. Moreover, those killers are not the foreign al Qaeda A Team. Instead, the suicide bombers of Afghanistan are hapless Taliban fighters from across the border in Pakistan, as this pdf report from the UN explains:

Tom Koenigs,
Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan
Kabul, 06 September 2007
...
While Afghanistan’s first suicide attack occurred on 9 September, 2001, the tactic remained rare until 2005. Since then, the suicide attack has become increasingly commonplace in the Afghan theatre. While suicide attackers elsewhere in the world tend not to be poor and uneducated, Afghanistan’s attackers appear to be young, uneducated and often drawn from madaris across the border in Pakistan. They are also - fortunately - relatively inept at this tactic, managing to kill only themselves in many instances.
...
Employed by the Taliban as a military technique, suicide bombing –paradoxically – has had little military success in Afghanistan. While 76 percent of all suicide missions target international and Afghan military, the greatest impact of suicide bombings has been on civilian bystanders and the Afghan people as a whole. A total of 183 Afghans – 121 of whom were civilians – were killed in suicide bombings in the first half of 2007.

In light of all of this, do you really believe that al Qaeda is resurgent in Afghanistan? Do you think Afghanistan is the central front in the war on terror? Do you think that pulling troops from Iraq and sending them to Afghanistan is a way to effectively confront al Qaeda? If so, you are as clueless as Barack Obama appears to be. That's fine with me because you are not about to become commander-in-chief of the US military. But Barack Obama might, and that's much more alarming to me than the fact that ice is melting in arctic.

UPDATE: This story suggests that al Qaeda has field commanders in Afghansitan now that are assisting the Taliban, and one of those field commanders was just killed (I found this link here):

Al-Qaeda concedes loss of top commander in Farah

Janullah Hashimzada - Sep 1, 2008 - 11:40

PESHAWAR (PAN): Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, led by Mustafa Muhammad Abu Yazid, has conceded the loss of a top military commander in the conflict-devastated Central Asian country.

Commander Abu Gharib al-Makki, hailing from Saudi Arabia's holy city of Makkah, was killed in fighting with US-led coalition and Afghan troops, the organisation said in a statement sent to Pajhwok Afghan News.

The real name of the slain insurgent was Kamal Saleem Atiya Fazli al-Fazli. The military commander was killed in Farah province 48 hours ago, according to the al-Qaeda statement that gave no further details of the operation.

Abu Yazid praised al-Makki as a brave commander and asked his family to pray for him and not to wait anymore for his return. The al-Qaeda in Afghanistan chief vowed to take revenge on US and Afghan forces.

During the last two months, nine al-Qaeda militants have been killed in southern and southeastern Afghanistan, where insurgent-linked violence has spiked considerably.

Abdullah Shami was killed in Paktia, Abu Sulaiman Alataibi in Zabul and Abu Khabab al-Misri killed in Wana (headquarters of South Waziristan Agency) in a missile attack by US drones.

Having been routed in Iraq, al Qaeda seems more dedicated to helping the Taliban these days than they have been in the past. Al Qaeda may be coming now, but the point is that they "took their eye off the ball" and ignored Afghanistan for years in order to fight America in Iraq. That's what Barack Obama appears to have missed (and it explains why he has consistently argued for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq -- not realizing that such a move would be conceding defeat to al Qaeda in Iraq).

UPDATE II: Via Instapundit, we have this article echoing much of what I have argued for a long time now (including today):

Qaeda’s Defeat In Iraq

Michael J. Totten - 09.19.2008 - 6:12 PM

Senator Barack Obama’s answer to Katie Couric’s question a few days ago about why he thinks there have been no terrorist attacks on American soil since September 11, 2001, was bizarre.
...
The U.S. and NATO have never let up in Afghanistan. At no time were American resources redeployed from Afghanistan to Iraq.

Obama could, perhaps, argue that fewer resources were available for the fight in Afghanistan because of the war in Iraq. That would be true. But that’s also true of Al Qaeda’s resources. They also deployed manpower and material to Iraq that otherwise could have been sent to Afghanistan.

The Al Qaeda leadership emphatically has not agreed with Obama that Iraq is a distraction. It has been their main event for years.
...
The war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq can plausibly be described as a distraction from the war against Al Qaeda. But the war against Al Qaeda in Iraq cannot possibly be accurately described as a distraction from the war against Al Qaeda.

Nicely said.

A "Clarification" from the Washington Post

Anne Kornblut's truly embarrassing anti-Palin hit piece that appeared on page 1 of the Washington Post preposterously attempted to link Palin's comments about her son's departure to Iraq to the idea that Saddam Hussein was connected to the attacks of 9/11. The story was hastily revised, and today the Post issued this "clarification:"

A Sept. 12 Page One article quoted Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin as telling a brigade of Iraq-bound soldiers that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans." The report linked Palin's comments with the idea that Saddam Hussein was connected to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, said Palin was referring to al-Qaeda in Iraq, a terror group that formed after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and claims to be allied with the global al-Qaeda organization.

Now there's a wild theory that an ace reporter for the Washington Post can be forgiven for not having considered. I mean, the idea that al Qaeda in Iraq might be connected to the global al Qaeda organization is a top secret notion that only readers of, say, the Washington Post might be aware of:

Papers Paint New Portrait of Iraq's Foreign Insurgents

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 21, 2008; A01

The extent of al-Qaeda in Iraq's ties to the wider al-Qaeda network has long been a subject of debate within the U.S. intelligence community and military. Although its membership is overwhelmingly Iraqi, it has been led by foreigners with direct ties to al-Qaeda central, which has been based in Pakistan since being driven from Afghanistan in 2001.

Al Qaeda in Iraq has been led by foreigners with direct ties to al-Qaeda central? Get out.

The membership of al Qaeda in Iraq may be "overwhelmingly Iraqi," but not only are its leaders foreigners, its suicide bombers are as well (and they have killed more than 10,000 people in Iraq). Thus, beyond any reasonable doubt, the suicide bombers were funneled into Iraq with the help of al Qaeda's global organization. The fact that the suicide bombers themselves are also foreigners would only be known by readers of, say, the Washington Post, so Kornblut can certainly be forgiven for not being aware of this:

'Martyrs' In Iraq Mostly Saudis
Web Sites Track Suicide Bombings

By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 15, 2005; Page A01

Who are the suicide bombers of Iraq? By the radicals' account, they are an internationalist brigade of Arabs, with the largest share in the online lists from Saudi Arabia and a significant minority from other countries on Iraq's borders, such as Syria and Kuwait. The roster of the dead on just one extremist Web site reviewed by The Washington Post runs to nearly 250 names...
...
Many of the Arabs, according to the postings, were drawn to fight in Iraq under the banner of al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the group run by Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi that has taken credit for a gruesome series of beheadings, kidnappings and suicide attacks -- many of them filmed and then disseminated on the Internet in a convergence between the electronic jihad and the real-life war.

Palin was named as McCain's running mate less than 3 weeks ago, but already the New York Times and, now, the Washington Post have been forced to back off their heated rush-to-judgment "news" reports. It's a sad spectacle.

UPDATE: At Powerline, Paul Mirengoff brings us this roundup of extremely fair and balanced headlines from yesterday's Washington Post:

Today, the Washington Post's news section ran the following headlines relating to the presidential campaign:

"McCain Embraces Regulation After Many Years of Opposition"

"McCain Able to Skirt Limits of Federal Financing"

"McCain BlackBerry Easily Connects With Gore Internet"

"Palin Exaggerates Alaska's Energy Role"

The Post has no headlines or stories about Obama. It probably recognizes that, as John noted today, Obama is a spent force in any positive sense, and that the best it can do for him now is to remove the spotlight while amping up the attacks on McCain.

The story about McCain "embracing regulation after many years of opposition" appears on page 1. Author Michael Shear, who has emerged as a top anti-McCain hatchet man for the Post (he also wrote the silly BlackBerry piece), makes no mention of the fact that in 2005, McCain cosponsored the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act, the strongest legislation introduced up to that time to control Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

At first, I thought that that the Blackberry story might not be anti-McCain, but then I realized it was a story designed to connect McCain with the supposed claim that he invented the Blackberry (in the same way that Gore was skewered for supposedly claiming that he invented the internet).

In fairness to the Washington Post, today's paper carries this story about how Obama exaggerated his role in the economic stimulus package:

Obama Exaggerates His Influence on Stimulus Plan
...
Barack Obama can fairly claim to have outlined an economic stimulus plan in January, parts of which were similar to the package eventually adopted by Congress and signed into law by President Bush. But the junior senator from Illinois is exaggerating his influence, and his role in the process of legislative give-and-take, to say that his ideas "formed the basis" of the final package.

In today's Washington Post, there are no hysterical anti-Palin articles that will later need to be corrected (not that I can find, anyway). Let's give credit where credit is due.

Predator Drones vs. US Troops in Pakistan

A few days ago, I reviewed the positions of Barack Obama, John McCain, and George Bush on the question of whether or not US troops should cross the border into Pakistan -- against the wishes of the Pakistani government -- to pursue high-level al Qaeda operatives if intelligence reports indicated that such a raid might succeed. Obama clearly endorsed the idea, whereas McCain declared it to be naive. Bush once seemed to briefly endorse the idea as well, but his actual policy over the last few years has been to rely almost exclusively on attacks by pilotless drones (an approach that seems to have the tacit approval of Pakistan). The only exception that I am aware of is the recent special forces operation into Pakistan that has elicited loud objections from Pakistan, and that raid was not even designed to target al Qaeda leaders so far as I can tell:

The presidential order, first reported by the New York Times, was issued over the summer to give new authority to U.S. special operations forces to target suspected terrorists in the dangerous area along the Afghanistan border, a former intelligence official said. More recently, the administration secretly gave conventional ground troops new authority to pursue militants across the Afghan border into Pakistan, the former official said.

The "rules of engagement" have been loosened, allowing troops to conduct border attacks without being fired on first if they witness attacks coming from the region, the former official said. That would include artillery, rockets and mortar fire from the Pakistan side of the border.

A U.S. official familiar with South Asia said the new rules were adopted in response to increasing frustration with Pakistani counterterrorism cooperation.

Engaging militants inside Pakistan who are firing from just across the border is not the same as pursuing high-value al Qaeda operatives based on intelligence reports identifying their location inside Pakistan. The distinction might not be critical from Pakistan's point of view (they oppose US troops crossing the border, period), but it does matter with respect to the policy that Obama advocated and that McCain criticized. Should we act on such intelligence using US troops? That's the question.

Pakistan now says that its army will fire on US soldiers if they cross the border again:

Pakistan: GIs on cross-border raids will be shot

Zardari says he doubts U.S. will attempt any more special-forces operations

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan's military has ordered its forces to open fire if U.S. troops launch another air or ground raid across the Afghan border, an army spokesman said Tuesday.

In light of this development, a reporter (or a moderator at one of the upcoming presidential debates) should ask Barack Obama is he still supports the idea of sending US troops into Pakistan if intelligence reports identify the possible location of Osama bin Laden. That is, would he support a commando raid knowing that the Pakistani army might inflict casualties on those US forces or that US forces might have to inflict casualties on the Pakistani army in self defense? Would he take the risk of alienating a crucial ally in the war on terror knowing full well that actionable intelligence often turns out to be wrong (even when intelligence officials have high confidence that they are right)?

Nothing good will come from armed conflict between US forces and Pakistani forces, and the need for US troops is reduced to the extent that Pakistan is seriously confronting militants in the border region:

300,000 flee as jihadis attacked

Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent | August 18, 2008

ISLAMABAD: A human tide of more than 300,000 civilians has fled the al-Qa'ida badlands, amid indications that the fighting there has reached unprecedented levels, with the Pakistani army using massive firepower to attack jihadi militant strongholds.

Helicopter gunships, fixed-wing strike aircraft, tanks and heavy artillery have been used in the onslaught that followed the visit last month by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to Washington, where he was berated for Pakistan's failure to wipe out the militants.

The offensive runs counter to perceptions that Pakistan's new civilian Government is "soft" on Islamic extremism.
...
Pakistani television showed thousands of civilians caught in the crossfire streaming out of the Bajaur, Mohmand and Kurrum agencies during the fighting estimated to have killed more than 500 militants. Tens of thousands of people are camping on the perimeter of Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province, and some have reached Rawalpindi, the garrison city adjoining Islamabad.

New security tsar Rehman Malik, the architect of the get-tough policy against the militants who have over-run the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, said at least 220,000 civilians had been displaced. But welfare agencies said the figure was probably well in excess of 300,000.
...
In a speech to the National Assembly on Saturday, Mr Gilani declared the Government was determined to re-establish control in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. "We will establish the writ of the Government at all costs (as) a parallel government cannot be tolerated," he said.

This recent development has been coupled with an accelerated schedule of attacks by Predator drones:

Higher-tech Predators targeting Pakistan

The U.S. drone aircraft involved in strikes against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants across the border have enhanced tracking ability.

By Greg Miller and Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
September 12, 2008

WASHINGTON -- As part of an escalating offensive against extremist targets in Pakistan, the United States is deploying Predator aircraft equipped with sophisticated new surveillance systems that were instrumental in crippling the insurgency in Iraq, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials.

The use of the specially equipped drones comes amid a fundamental shift in U.S. strategy in the area. After years of deferring to Pakistani authorities, the Bush administration is turning toward unilateral American military operations -- a gambit that could increase pressure on Islamic militants but risks alienating a country that has been a key counter-terrorism ally.

In an indication of the priority being given to the Pakistan campaign, U.S. officials said the specially equipped aircraft were being pulled from other theaters to augment aerial patrols above the tribal belt along Afghanistan's eastern border.

Pakistan's government has found itself caught between Washington's demands for action and the unpopularity of the U.S. campaign, which has included half a dozen Predator strikes and a ground raid in the last few weeks.

And this story links the Pakistani offensive with the increased use of attacks by Predator drones:

America ramps up the hunt for bin Laden

Peter Goodspeed, National Post

Thursday, September 11, 2008

The hunt for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's top terrorists has gone into overdrive in Pakistan's wild and desolate northwest frontier.

On Monday, two U. S. Predator drone aircraft attacked the base of a top Taliban commander in the North Waziristan tribal area. They killed between 14 and 20 people, four of whom have been identified as mid-level al-Qaeda operatives.
...
The attack, the fourth this month inside Pakistan by unmanned American drones and U. S. Special Forces, may mark an aggressive new U. S. strategy.
...
The latest U. S. raids and attacks inside Pakistan may, in fact, be an attempt to follow up on new opportunities presented by last month's Pakistani military offensive against the Taliban in the Bajaur region, where bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are believed to have been hiding since 2002.

More than 300,000 people fled the tribal area north of Peshawar last month when Pakistan's army attacked jihadi militant strongholds using helicopter gunships, fixed-wing aircraft, tanks and heavy artillery.

The United States could be attempting to track al-Qaeda leaders who were displaced from Bajaur by the fighting.

With the Pakistani army apparently engaged in a full-scale offensive against Taliban and al Qaeda militants in the border region, and with the Predator drone attacks becoming increasingly frequent (and increasingly effective), the value added from commando raids by US forces that will be met with armed resistance by the Pakistani army is not at all clear to me. But perhaps someone will think to ask Obama to clarify his position on the matter. So long as Pakistan is cooperating in other ways (by launching an offensive and giving tacit approval for attacks from pilotless drones), then I'd keep US forces inside Afghanistan until such time as the Pakistani government signs on to cross-border raids.

UPDATE: Yet another drone strike today:

Pakistan: Suspected U.S. missile strike kills 6

Attack targets militant stronghold near Afghan border, officials say

Wed., Sept. 17, 2008

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan - A suspected U.S. missile strike killed at least six people Wednesday, hours after the top U.S. military officer told Pakistani leaders that America respected Pakistan's sovereignty amid a furor over American strikes into Pakistan's northwest.

Two Pakistani intelligence officials told The Associated Press that several missiles hit a compound in the South Waziristan tribal region early Wednesday evening. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak openly to the media.

The officials said the target was a base for Taliban militants and Hezb-i-Islami, another group fighting U.S. and government troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

They said informants in the area had reported that six people were dead and three more injured. Their identities were not immediately clear.

The officials said an unmanned drone of the type used by the CIA and U.S. forces in Afghanistan was heard in the area shortly before the attack.

My guess is that the the top U.S. military officer who told Pakistani leaders that America respected Pakistan's sovereignty was referring to the fact that US forces would no longer cross the border to conduct attacks against the Taliban. My further guess is that everyone (except the Taliban and al Qaeda) agrees that attacks by pilotless drones are OK.

Corrections to Casualty Data

Today, I take a break from the political hoopla to write a reference post on a topic that has long held my interest, namely, casualties in Iraq. Now that those casualties have dropped to very low levels, tracking them will likely be of less interest than it was before. But I'm going to track them anyway. Because I try to be serious about tracking casualties, I periodically review the accuracy of my analyses, and that's all I'm doing today. In particular, I am checking on the validity of the corrections I make to data taken from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (ICCC). ICCC provides civilian casualty data here, but, in my view, some of their raw numbers need to be corrected. I make various minor corrections (e.g., not including counts from mass graves filled with victims who were killed long ago, perhaps even during the Saddam Hussein era), but the 5 major corrections I routinely make are these:

1. August, 2005: remove 1000 victims of a stampede

2. August 2006: remove 1763 casualties

3. September, 2006: remove 2298 casualties

4. February, 2007: remove 1278 casualties

5. March, 2007: remove 1088 casualties

The first correction is not made because of any mistake in the ICCC methodology. I remove those numbers only because those deaths do not help one to track the intensity of hostilities between the warring factions. But the other 4 corrections are made to correct for errors in the ICCC counts. In each of those months, ICCC deviated from their normal methodology by just adding in a huge number of casualties based on a single statement from some official, like this from September of 2006: "A total of 2,667 civilians in Baghdad died violent deaths during September, two senior Health Ministry officials told The Associated Press this week [2,667 - 707 previously recorded = 1960]." I take out those extra 1960 casualties. That same month, ICCC uncharacteristically reported a morgue total of 338 from Karbala. I take those out, too. The reason I subtract these casualties is that ICCC did not use this method of adding to their casualty totals in any other months (other than these 4). If you are going to use ICCC to track casualty trends, as I do, the methodology needs to remain constant. By making these corrections, I ensure that the methodology is held constant.

Iraq Body Count (IBC) is a different casualty tracking site that is much more complete but is also much slower than ICCC. That is, their monthly casualty totals are higher, but their database is incomplete for the most recent months. Thus, you can't use their site to see what happened last month in Iraq, as you can with the ICCC database. That's why I usually use ICCC. Still, even though the IBC numbers are always higher than the ICCC numbers, the two counts should correlate very highly if they are tracking the same trends. To see if that is true, I plotted monthly totals from the IBC database against the uncorrected monthly totals from the ICCC database for March 2005 through July 2008:


Each point on this chart represents one month. Pick a point and look down to the horizontal axis to find its value from the ICCC database, and then look left to the vertical axis to find its value from the IBC database. The IBC numbers are always higher, but the values should nevertheless trace out an approximately straight line if they are tracking the same trends. For the most part, they do, except for 4 conspicuous months (which are circled in red). The correlation between these two sets of numbers is .77, which is pretty good, but those 4 outlying points suggests that something is wrong with this picture. What 4 months do those values represent? As it turns out, they are the 4 monthly totals that I always correct by subtracting off the extra casualties in the ICCC database (corrections 2 through 5 above). When I use my corrected values instead of the raw ICCC values for those 4 months, here is what the chart looks like:


The correlation increases to .89, and, except for random noise, the points trace out the approximate straight line that they should trace out. You'd expect these two sets of numbers to be correlated because they both tend to rely on media reports. Still, the disagreement evident for those 4 outlying months suggest that those numbers are in need of correction. As I see it, this analysis validates the corrections that I always make to the ICCC data. As such, I'll keep making those corrections.

A line fit throught the values in this chart (not shown) has a slope of about 1.5, which means that you can take any monthly estimate from the (corrected) ICCC database and multiply it by 1.5 to get a pretty good estimate of the number of violent deaths that will eventually be recorded in the more complete IBC database. Last month (i.e., August of 2008), for example, there were 226 deaths recorded in the ICCC database. That suggests that the IBC database will eventually record about 336 violent deaths in this nation of 27 million. This is a number worth thinking about, but I'll save that for another post. Today, I am just trying to validate my analyses of casualties in Iraq.

Finally, here is a chart showing monthly casualties totals from the IBC database, going all the way back to the beginning of the war:


The black bar represents the month in which al Qaeda bombed the Golden Mosque, and the red bars represent the months of the troop surge. The most recent month is July, and that count is likely incomplete (the final total will probably be closer to 500). The August total is not available yet, but, as I said, it will likely come in at well below 400 based on the ICCC total for that month. This chart just shows what we already know to be true, which is that the troop surge has been more successful than even the most wild-eyed optimist would have predicted a year ago (which, almost to the day, is when General "Betrayus" was testifying before Congress).

How Perceptions of the Race Have Changed

Presidential polls remain close, and there is no predicting the outcome of this election with 4 debates still to come (one of which will involve Biden vs. Palin), but nowhere is it more evident that a fundamental change has taken place than in the prediction markets, where people put down their hard-earned money to predict the eventual winner. Throughout all of August, the bettors put Obama's chances of winning at about 60%, with McCain stuck at about 40%. Palin was introduced to the world on August 29, but the bettors did not instantly change their position in response (despite her electrifying effect on the Republican base). Instead, a new market was introduced in which people could place bets on how long Palin would last before withdrawing from the race. However, after she withstood the initial (and furious) anti-Palin spasm by the mainstream media and then survived her interview with Charlie Gibson largely unscathed, sentiments changed. Here is what the betting looks like in the month of September (data downloaded from Intrade):


As you can see, for days after the Palin announcement at the end of August, the bettors remained unmoved. But things began to shift slightly on September 6, and by September 11 McCain had taken the lead (which he still holds today).

To see how remarkable this shift in perception really is, take at look at the betting on these two candidates going back to the beginning of the year:


The green arrow marks the day that Obama became the odds on favorite to win. On February 9, he had recently moved ahead of McCain and he had just surpassed Hillary Clinton as well (whose numbers are not shown on the chart). Although things were close for a little while (the the wake of the Jeremiah Wright scandal and news of Obama's asociation with William Ayers, I suppose), Obama remained the odds on favorite for no less than 215 days in a row. In July, the bettors became amazingly confident that Obama would win. At one point, his lead over McCain approached 70/30. For 4 straight months (May, June, July and August), his lead was substantial. But all of sudden, perceptions have changed.

If Charles Krauthammer is right, Obama will have a hard time regaining his once exalted status because it was built on promise and style instead of substance:

Charles Krauthammer: Obama couldn't soar forever in such thin air

The Democrats are in a panic. In a presidential race that is impossible to lose, they are behind. Obama devotees are frantically giving advice. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman tells him to "start slamming down some phones." Feminist author Camille Paglia suggests, "be boring!"
...
But Palin is not just a problem for Obama. She is also a symptom of what ails him. Before Palin, Obama was the ultimate celebrity candidate. No presidential nominee in living memory had the gap between adulation and achievement been so great. Which is why John McCain's Paris Hilton ads struck such a nerve. Obama's meteoric rise was based not on issues -- there was not a dime's worth of difference between him and Hillary Clinton on issues -- but on narrative, on eloquence, on charisma.
...
It was inevitable. Obama had managed to stay aloft for four full years. But no one can levitate forever.

No one can levitate forever, but I guess that time will tell if Obama can re-levitate after having dropped from such dizzying heights.

One More Thought on the "Bridge to Nowhere"

The "Bridge to Nowhere" discussion belongs to a bygone news cycle, I suppose, but I did want to throw in one additional observation about it. A standard argument on the left is that Palin killed the bridge only after it became politically convenient for her to do so (therefore, it does not count).

In March of 2007, however, the New York Times published this article (which I learned about here):

Alaskan Bridge Projects Resist Earmarks Purge

Long after Congress removed about $450 million in budget earmarks for two bridges in the Alaskan exurbs, the fight over whether to build them is not dead.
...
When Congress removed the earmarks for the bridges in 2005, it still gave the state the money, but it allowed Alaskan officials to decide how to spend it. The state reserved about $200 million for the proposed bridges, far less than the construction costs but enough to show that there was serious intent to complete the projects. Some environmental and planning work has already been done.

Supporters of one of the bridges, the Knik Arm Crossing, are expected to get the proposal included in Anchorage’s long-range city transportation plan in April.
...
Regardless of the ridicule about the bridges as a pork-barrel binge, there are political facts that have kept hope alive for those who believe the projects are necessary for Alaska to grow economically.

To direct the federal financing to other projects, for example, would require action by Gov. Sarah Palin, a Republican, and the State Legislature. It would also mean undoing the work of the powerful Congressional delegation, led by Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Don Young, both Republicans, who secured the money for the bridges.

As you can see, Palin's choice was:

A. to go ahead with a project that was widely criticized in order to please powerful Republicans in her state (Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Don Young)

B. to undo the work of those powerful Republicans in order to please everyone outside of her state

Can you imagine what the left and the media would be saying today had she chosen option A? They'd be hysterical over the fact that she is the kind of politician that Barack Obama is (i.e., the kind of politician who invariably goes along with the powerful interests of his own party). Although the media forgives Obama for that sin, they'd be savaging Palin for a similar crime. Thus, those who are unwilling to credit her for her decision to kill the bridge to nowhere do not have a credible position on this matter. Either decision could be (and definitely would be) criticized for having been made on the basis of political convenience.

In the end, having once supported the bridge herself, Palin went against powerful forces in her own party and chose option B. The New York Times made it clear that killing the bridge would (a) require action by Palin that (b) went against powerful Republicans in her state. To the left, though, her claim that she killed the bridge is an outright lie. Haven't they been reading the New York Times?

Would Withdrawing US Troops have led to Political Reconciliation in Iraq?

My prediction is that whereas the New York Times will eventually endorse Barack Obama, the Washington Post will endorse John McCain. The latter prediction is made with less confidence, of course, but I base it on their scathing (and obviously valid) criticisms of Barack Obama, like this:

He insists that Afghanistan is "the central front" for the United States, along with the border areas of Pakistan. But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama's antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

It is also hard for me to imagine the editors endorsing Obama after making this cogent criticism of the man:

Barely acknowledging the reduction in violence, the Democratic candidates insist that U.S. troops are, as Ms. Clinton put it, "babysitting a civil war." In fact, the surge forestalled an incipient civil war, and U.S. commanders and diplomats in Iraq don't hesitate to say that if American forces withdrew now, sectarian conflict would probably explode in its full fury, causing bloodshed on a far greater scale than ever before and posing grave threats to U.S. security.

BOTH Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton propose withdrawing U.S. troops at the most rapid pace the Pentagon says is possible -- one brigade a month. In the 16 months or so it would take to remove those forces, they envision the near-miraculous accomplishment of every political goal the Bush administration has aimed at for five years, from the establishment of a stable government to agreement by Iraq's neighbors to support it. They suppose that the knowledge that American forces were leaving would inspire these accords. In fact, it more likely would cause all sides to discount U.S. influence and prepare to violently seize the space left by the departing Americans.

With equal implausibility, the Democratic candidates say they would leave limited U.S. forces behind to prevent al-Qaeda from establishing bases. They assume that an Iraqi government that had just been abandoned by the United States would consent to the continued presence of American forces on its territory. In all, Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama speak as if they have no understanding of Iraqi leaders, whom they propose to treat as willing puppets.

The idea that the withdrawal of US forces at the height of al-Qaeda-induced sectarian violence would finally induce the warring factions to reconcile is the issue I focus on today. It speaks to the much-vaunted judgment of Barack Obama, and his judgment on the issue is, by far, the main reason why I would not consider voting for him (even if Jacob Weisberg will think of me as a racist). Would the withdrawal of US forces at the height of violence have led to peace and harmony in Iraq? That's the question.

The editors of the New York Times agree with the editors of the Washington Post that the withdrawal of US troops would not have achieved that outcome, but, like Barack Obama, they favored withdrawing our troops anyway:

The Road Home

July 8, 2007

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.
...
While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs — after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.
...
Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave. There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power grabs. Perhaps most important, the invasion has created a new stronghold from which terrorist activity could proliferate.

The administration, the Democratic-controlled Congress, the United Nations and America’s allies must try to mitigate those outcomes — and they may fail. But Americans must be equally honest about the fact that keeping troops in Iraq will only make things worse.
...
One of Mr. Bush’s arguments against withdrawal is that it would lead to civil war. That war is raging, right now, and it may take years to burn out. Iraq may fragment into separate Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite republics, and American troops are not going to stop that from happening.

It is possible, we suppose, that announcing a firm withdrawal date might finally focus Iraq’s political leaders and neighboring governments on reality. Ideally, it could spur Iraqi politicians to take the steps toward national reconciliation that they have endlessly discussed but refused to act on.

But it is foolish to count on that, as some Democratic proponents of withdrawal have done.

As you can see, except for acknowledging its inhumane consequences, Barack Obama and the editors of the New York Times are in complete agreement about what to do about Iraq (i.e., withdraw our troops, the innocent people of Iraq be damned).

On his web site, Barack Obama simply asserted the fantasy that even the editors of the New York Times would endorse (and the editors of the Washington Post clearly reject):

Since 2002, and now, as a U.S. Senator, Senator Obama has continued to critique the Administration's mishandling of this war, and believes that while our troops have done an outstanding job in Iraq, there can be no military solution to what is inherently a political conflict between Iraq's warring factions. The only hope to end this burgeoning civil war is for Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds to come together and resolve their differences, and that's why Senator Obama agrees with the Iraq Study Group's conclusion that we must begin a phased redeployment of American troops to signal to the government and people of Iraq that ours is not an open-ended commitment.

[note: the current text on his web site is different, so you'll just have to trust me that this is what it said previously...UPDATE: a reader sends this link to the old text]. That is, he really seems to be suggesting that the withdrawal of US forces during the height of sectarian violence induced by al Qaeda's suicide bombers would bring peace and tranquility to Iraq. My problem with this claim is that it is never backed by any substantive analysis. It is merely an assertion, as if making an assertion is making an argument. "Foolish" is the word that the editors of the New York Times use to characterize this way of thinking. Obama refers to the Iraq Study Group to support his preposterous notion, which seems to offer some analytical backing for his claim, but he seems not to have actually read their report:

Iraq is vital to regional and even global stability, and is critical to U.S. interests...It has the world’s second-largest known oil reserves. It is now a base of operations for international terrorism, including al Qaeda.
...
A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq’s government and a humanitarian catastrophe...Al Qaeda could win a propaganda victory and expand its base of operations.
...
As one Iraqi official told us, “Al Qaeda is now a franchise in Iraq, like McDonald’s.” Left unchecked, al Qaeda in Iraq could continue to incite violence between Sunnis and Shia. A chaotic Iraq could provide a still stronger base of operations for terrorists who seek to act regionally or even globally. Al Qaeda will portray any failure by the United States in Iraq as a significant victory that will be featured prominently as they recruit for their cause in the region and around the world. Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy to Osama bin Laden, has declared Iraq a focus for al Qaeda: they will seek to expel the Americans and then spread “the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq.” A senior European official told us that failure in Iraq could incite terrorist attacks within his country.
...
A premature American departure from Iraq would almost certainly produce greater sectarian violence and further deterioration of conditions, leading to a number of the adverse consequences outlined above. The near-term results would be a significant power vacuum, greater human suffering, regional destabilization, and a threat to the global economy. Al Qaeda would depict our withdrawal as a historic victory. If we leave and Iraq descends into chaos, the long-range consequences could eventually require the United States to return.

Does that sound like an endorsement of the idea than the withdrawal of US troops during the height of violence would lead to peace and harmony among the various factions in Iraq? The relevant National Intelligence Estimate made the same point:

If such a rapid withdrawal were to take place, we judge that the ISF would be unlikely to survive as a non-sectarian national institution; neighboring countries—invited by Iraqi factions or unilaterally—might intervene openly in the conflict; massive civilian casualties and forced population displacement would be probable; AQI [i.e., al Qaeda in Iraq] would attempt to use parts of the country—particularly al-Anbar province—to plan increased attacks in and outside of Iraq; and spiraling violence and political disarray in Iraq, along with Kurdish moves to control Kirkuk and strengthen autonomy, could prompt Turkey to launch a military incursion.

The Iraq Study Group, The National Intelligence Estimate, common sense, and the editors of both the fairly liberal Washington Post and the ultra-liberal New York Times all agree that the withdrawal of US forces at the height of al-Qeada-induced sectarian violence in Iraq would have likely precipitated a humanitarian catastrophe. Yet Barack Obama simply asserts otherwise to justify his seemingly inhumane proposal to withdraw our forces back in January of 2007 (which is when the troop surge was just getting underway).

It is reasonable for Obama to have opposed the invasion of Iraq. Many sensible people were on that side of the argument (though I'm not sure that history will judge that position to be the correct one if Iraq continues on its current path). But to have proposed withdrawing our troops at a time when 3000 civilians a month were dying in Iraq based on the flimsy theory that our departure would scare the warring sectarian factions into finally reconciling their differences (as if 3000 dead per month were not scary enough) reveals the virtual absence of (not the presence of) sound judgment. If you support Barack Obama for president, my question to you is this: do you really believe that violence in Iraq would have abated had we withdrawn our troops at the height of sectarian violence (despite all evidence to the contrary), or do you support the man even though his plan for Iraq, had it been put into action, almost certainly would have led to a horrific humanitarian catastrophe and a strategic disaster for the United States?

Community Organizing

I really do not know much about what Barack Obama did during his community organizing days, but I can't help but think that this is how people will feel about it by election day:

A senior aide to one of the most powerful Democrats in the House of Representatives voiced the fears of many: "Palin doesn't just play to the Republican base. She has much broader appeal."

The aide said that her repeated mockery of Mr Obama's boasts about his time as a community organiser in Chicago are "the most effective criticisms of Barack Obama we have yet seen." He said: "Americans in small and medium size towns don't know what the hell a community organiser is. Real Americans graduate from high school or college and get a job that pays a wage. Campus radicals go off and organise a community."

In fact, until I learn more about it, I guess I'm one those so-called "real Americans" who shares this impression.

Bob Herbert Should Feel Sorry for Himself, not Palin

Bob Herbert, an obviously liberal columnist for the New York Times, is incredulous that Sarah Palin apparently did not know what Charlie Gibson was referring to when he asked her about the Bush Doctrine:

The Bush doctrine, which flung open the doors to the catastrophe in Iraq, was such a fundamental aspect of the administration’s foreign policy that it staggers the imagination that we could have someone no further than a whisper away from the White House who doesn’t even know what it is.

I doubt that Herbert knows what the Bush Doctrine is either (and he does not take the risk of providing a definition -- as if it is glaringly obvious that he could do that if he so desired), and his over-the-top reaction to Palin's micro-gaffe seems like a calculated effort to breath life into the initial hope among many on the left that this misstep would finally convince everyone to vote for Barack Obama. It won't because it is a micro-gaffe. It is a micro-gaffe because Palin understands Bush's world view but simply may not have known that different people refer to different aspects of that world view as "the Bush Doctrine." Knowing Bush's world view, but not knowing the name that various people use for different aspects of it is not going to convince people to rush out and vote for the former community organizer.

The fact that Herbert is swinging (and missing) at every hint of a problem for Palin comes into sharp focus when he says:

I feel for Ms. Palin’s son who has been shipped off to the war in Iraq. But at his deployment ceremony, which was on the same day as the Charlie Gibson interview, Sept. 11, she told the audience of soldiers that they would be fighting “the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”

Was she deliberately falsifying history, or does she still not know that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?

Herbert should save his pity for himself. To anyone with at least a smidgen of knowledge, it is clear that Palin was not deliberately falsifying history and that she was not referring to anything remotely related to the question of whether Iraq and Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the Sept. 11 attacks. That's only what you'd think if you responded to her comments with a liberal reflex instead of responding after a moment's reflection. The Washington Post made the same error and then quickly corrected their article to acknowledge that al Qaeda is in Iraq now (and that's who her son is going off to confront). Bill Kristol discussed the matter here, and so did I (in vastly greater detail, here).

Being uninformed about the basics of al Qaeda in Iraq probably explains Herbert's ultimate consternation:

The likes of John McCain and George W. Bush can do the craziest, most irresponsible things imaginable, and it only seems to help them politically.

Barack Obama, by contrast, would have "responsibly" pulled our troops out of Iraq during the height of sectarian violence, which even the editors of the New York Times understood would produce the following:

July 8, 2007

When Congress returns this week, extricating American troops from the war should be at the top of its agenda...Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave. There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power grabs. Perhaps most important, the invasion has created a new stronghold from which terrorist activity could proliferate.

I wonder if the now undeniably successful troop surge that John McCain has long championed is one of those crazy, irresponsible things that Bob Herbert is referring to?

Obama's Experience vs. Palin's Experience

The initial reaction to McCain's selection of Sarah Palin was that it eliminated McCain's advantage with respect to the experience needed to successfully serve as president of the United States. Everyone agrees that McCain has more experience than Obama, but now that Palin is on the ticket, that advantage is neutralized. Even the incomparable Charles Krauthammer reacted that way:

The Palin selection completely undercuts the argument about Obama's inexperience and readiness to lead -- on the theory that because Palin is a maverick and a corruption fighter, she bolsters McCain's claim to be the reformer in this campaign. In her rollout today, Palin spoke a lot about change. McCain is now trying to steal "change" from Obama, a contest McCain will lose in an overwhelmingly Democratic year with an overwhelmingly unpopular incumbent Republican administration. At the same time, he's weakening his strong suit -- readiness vs. unreadiness.

The McCain campaign is reveling in the fact that Palin is a game changer. But why a game changer when you’ve been gaining? To gratuitously undercut the remarkably successful "Is he ready to lead" line of attack seems near suicidal.

An alternative interpretation is that any focus on Palin's lack of experience only further highlight's Barack Obama's lack of experience. In this regard, the results of a new AP poll were interesting to me (and to many others who have already commented on it). Here is a snapshot of the most interesting question:


As you can see, almost everyone has formed an opinion about whether or not John McCain and Barack Obama have the experience needed to successfully serve as president (and McCain's advantage is huge). Fewer people have formed an opinion about Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. Between those two, Biden has the obvious advantage. However, the most interesting comparison is between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. Because more people have formed an opinion about Obama, he leads Palin on both the "does have the right type of experience" and "does not have the right type of experience" dimensions. To correct for differences in the proportion of people who have formed an opinion, I computed the percentage of people who believe that each candidate has the necessary experience based only on those who have formed an opinion. You can see in above table, for example, that just under 50% of those who have an opinion about Barack Obama believe that he has the necessary experience. But just over 50% of those who have an opinion about Sarah Palin believe that she has the necessary experience. Here is a chart of the results when computed that way:


As you can see, by a hair, Barack Obama is seen as the least experienced among the 4 candidates. We can't say for sure that it will remain that way as more people get to know Sarah Palin, but after watching her performance with Charlie Gibson, my guess is that her numbers will improve somewhat as her exposure increases. By November, I suspect that Obama's numbers will be about where they are and that Palin's will more clearly exceed his (even without making any corrections for the number of people who have formed an opinion). If so, then the selection of Palin will not have taken the experience issue off the table. Instead, it will have put a magnifying glass on the fact that the man at the top of the Democratic ticket, who happens to be among the most liberal members of the senate, is the least experienced among the presidential and vice-presidential candidates in the race.

Had Palin's numbers looked the worst by far, then Krauthammer's instant analysis would have almost certainly turned out to be correct. Perhaps Palin's numbers will sink as more people get to know, but, as I said, I predict that the opposite will happen. If it does, then Obama's lack of experience will become even more conspicuous than it is now. Odds are, that's going to matter.

The Washington Post Needs Remedial Education on the Issue of al Qaeda in Iraq

Take a look at this story in today's Washington Post:

Palin Links Iraq to 9/11, A View Discarded by Bush

By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 12, 2008; Page A01

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska, Sept. 11 -- Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

The idea that Iraq shared responsibility with al-Qaeda for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself.

I think that reporters who are allowed to write page 1 stories for the Washington Post should be required to think more deeply than Kornblut is apparently able to do. The opening two sentences of this article are completely unrelated to each other. Kornblut may not have noticed, but al Qaeda (yes, the very same al Qaeda that attacked us on 9/11) came to Iraq in the aftermath of our invasion. In particular, Osama bin Laden (yes, the very same Osama bin Laden who ordered the attacks of 9/11) directed al Qaeda's foreign suicide bombers to be diverted from Afghanistan to fight the Americans in Iraq shortly after Saddam Hussein was removed from power. Those foreign suicide bombers have killed more than 10,000 people in Iraq, and their attacks were specifically designed to goad the Shiite militias into killing Sunnis. Al Qaeda in Iraq has been greatly weakened (thanks to the troop surge and to the Sunni Awakening), but they still kill innocent Shiites as part of their nefarious plan to incite sectarian violence. In light of this, it should be obvious to everyone that Sarah Palin's son will, in fact, work to "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans." This is true even though Saddam Hussein was not involved in the attacks of 9/11. And, contrary to the headline associated with Kornblut's article, this is Bush's view (not a view that Bush has discarded).

Kornblut seems to be unaware of al Qaeda's malicious campaign in Iraq, so, in the second sentence of her article, she preposterously interprets Palin's comment to mean that Track Palin (Sarah's son) will head out to fight against Iraqis who supposedly worked with al Qaeda to carry out the attacks of 9/11. She doesn't seem to realize that he is instead going off to fight al Qaeda itself (in Iraq). In light of her egregious and embarrassing error, I feel compelled to provide her with some remedial education on this topic, which I hope will prevent her from making this mistake again:

Late in 2003, Osama bin Laden had some bad news for the Taliban, according to this article in Newsweek:

Newsweek | Bin Laden's Iraq Plans

By Sami Yousafzai, Ron Moreau and Michael Hirsh
Newsweek

Monday 15 December 2003

During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, three senior Qaeda representatives allegedly held a secret meeting in Afghanistan with two top Taliban commanders.
...
At that meeting, according to Taliban sources, Osama bin Laden's men officially broke some bad news to emissaries from Mullah Mohammed Omar, the elusive leader of Afghanistan's ousted fundamentalist regime. Their message: Al Qaeda would be diverting a large number of fighters from the anti-U.S. insurgency in Afghanistan to Iraq. Al Qaeda also planned to reduce by half its $3 million monthly contribution to Afghan jihadi outfits.

All this was on the orders of bin Laden himself, the sources said.

Those "fighters" who were diverted to Iraq consisted of a small army of foreign suicide bombers. About 1 year later, Osama bin Laden weighed in again:

A second Bin Laden tape, released on December 27, 2004, underscored Al Qaeda's interest in Iraq and support for the ongoing insurgency. In this recording, Bin Laden personally welcomed and endorsed Jordanian-born terrorist leader Abu Musab Al Zarqawi as an Al Qaeda affiliate and leader of Al Qaeda operations in Iraq.19 Bin Laden identified the insurgency in Iraq as "a golden and unique opportunity" for jihadists to engage and defeat the United States, and he characterized the insurgency in Iraq as the central battle in a "Third World War, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation."20 Describing Baghdad as "the capital of the caliphate," Bin Laden asserted that "jihad in Palestine and Iraq today is a duty for the people of the two countries" and other Muslims.

On a tactical level, Bin Laden has encouraged Islamist insurgents in Iraq to work with "Socialist" groups (Baathists) and compared cooperation between Islamists and Baathists to Arab and Persian collaboration against the Byzantine empire in the 7th and 8th centuries.

The suicide bombers that bin Laden used in Iraq were not "homegrown." Instead, almost every one of them came from a foreign Muslim country, as this chart from the New York Times reveals:


The point here is that these killers were not part of a spontaneous civil war that erupted between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq. Far from it.

What have these al Qaeda suicide bombers done over the years since coming to Iraq? They've done this:

Suicide bomber is al-Qaida's deadliest weapon

BAGHDAD - The suicide bombers who have killed 10,000 people in Iraq, including hundreds of American troops, usually are alienated young men from large families who are desperate to stand out from the crowd and make their mark, according to a U.S. military study.

And why have they been killing thousands of innocent people? Al Qaeda's first leader in Iraq (Zarqawi) spelled it all out quite clearly in a letter that was intercepted long ago (but the significance of which became clear only much later):

The Shi'a in our opinion, these are the key to change. Targeting and striking their religious, political, and military symbols, will make them show their rage against the Sunnis and bear their inner vengeance. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis who are fearful of destruction and death at the hands of these Sabeans, i.e., the Shi'a.
...
Some people will say, that this will be a reckless and irresponsible action that will bring the Islamic nation to a battle for which the Islamic nation is unprepared. Souls will perish and blood will be spilled...This is what we want. Then, the Sunni will have no choice but to support us in many of the Sunni regions.
...
As far as the Shi'a, we will undertake suicide operations and use car bombs to harm them.

Get the picture? Al Qaeda decided to send its foreign suicide bombers to Iraq to relentlessly slaughter innocent Shiites so that the Shiites would retaliate against the Sunnis (which they eventually did). Zarqawi thought that this would force the Sunnis to turn to al Qaeda for protection, but it didn't quite work out that way. Instead, the Sunnis eventually turned to the Americans for protection, and George Bush capitalized on this development by ordering the troop surge (at a time when Barack Obama introduced a bill to withdraw our troops). Now, al Qaeda in Iraq is on the ropes, but they have not been completely finished off.

Kornblut is apparently unaware of what al Qaeda has been doing in Iraq for the last 5 years, so it doesn't make sense to her that Sarah Palin's son could be going off to Iraq to fight those who attacked us on 9/11. Because of that gap in her knowledge, Kornblut figures that Palin must be accusing Saddam Hussein of having been complicit in the attacks of 9/11.

Why did this top reporter for the Washington Post make such an elementary error? Here, I can only speculate. For years, I've documented the eerie code of silence on the part of Democrats when it comes to the issue of al Qaeda in Iraq. Almost without exception, Democrats argued that what was happening in Iraq had nothing to do with al Qaeda but was instead a civil war owing to centuries of enmity between Shiites and Sunnis. And, as Barack Obama put it, American troops should not be used to "baby sit a civil war." This line of argument never did seem honest to me because these Democrats had all been briefed by General Petraeus, so they knew better. Still, they refused to mention al Qaeda, as if 10,000 casualties caused by al Qaeda's suicide bombers is so utterly insignificant that one could reasonably analyze the situation in Iraq while making no mention of it whatsoever. I suspect that Kornblut learned everything she knows about Iraq by listening to these Democrats. In that regard, she is like the rest of the mainstream media, which has long worked overtime to deny the role of al Qaeda in Iraq:

Media Derides Bush Focus On Al Qaeda

July 25, 2007

To considerable skepticism from the media and Hill Democrats, President Bush yesterday made the case that Al Qaeda In Iraq and the terror network that attacked the US on 9/11 are closely connected.
...
The AP says Bush presented his case "in broad strokes," and goes on to assert that despite Bush's argument, "Al Qaeda had no active cells in Iraq when the US invaded in March 2003, and its operation" in Iraq "is much larger now than before the war, US intelligence officers say." UPI runs a similar, brief dispatch on Bush's comments yesterday. MSNBC's Hardball called Bush's speech "one of the most provocative...of his presidency." He spoke "about al Qaeda, the terrorist organization that attacked America on 9/11. Today...Bush said that some group -- the same group, is making its stand not in Pakistan but in Iraq." The Washington Post also casts doubt on Bush's conclusions, noting "Democrats and others" instead believe "al-Qaeda is not running the war" in Iraq, "but is instead benefiting from it."
...
The New York Times says Democrats "accused Mr. Bush of overstating" the ties between Bin Laden and Al Qaeda in Iraq "to provide a basis for continuing the American presence in Iraq." The Los Angeles Times notes Sen. John Kerry called Bush's case "a phony argument," and said that 'the principal threat' in Iraq is not Al Qaeda but a civil war that pits Sunni against Shiite and an Iraqi government that is not joining the fight."

Who was sending all of those foreign suicide bombers to Iraq if not al Qaeda? No one in the mainstream media ever tries to answer that question. I hope that my post today will help Kornblut to appreciate the obvious answer (which, in turn, will help her to better understand what Sarah Palin was talking about).

UPDATE: Bill Kristol pounces on this article and makes essentially the same point, albeit much more succinctly than I do.

UPDATE II: Yikes! I learn here that the article has already been changed! The original second paragraph said:

The idea that Iraq shared responsibility with al-Qaeda for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. On any other day, Palin's statement would almost certainly have drawn a sharp rebuke from Democrats, but both parties had declared a halt to partisan activities to mark Thursday's anniversary."

Here is the new second paragraph:

The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. But it is widely agreed that militants allied with al-Qaeda have taken root in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.

Well, OK then. But doesn't this make the headline look a bit ridiculous? Yikes! The headline has now been changed to "Palin Links Iraq to Sept. 11 In Talk to Troops in Alaska."

What explains the original version of the story? And I wonder which version will appear in print?

UPDATE III: My local paper carries the Washington Post story today. It contains the terribly flawed original paragraph, not the much improved revised version that I presented above. The headline says "Palin Links Iraq and 9/11, faces tough questions," which is not as bad as the original.

Bush and Obama on Invading Pakistan

A while ago, Barack Obama made news by apparently suggesting that US troops should invade Pakistan:

"I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges," Obama said last Wednesday , "but let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf will not act, we will."

Obama's mention of an "al Qaeda leadership meeting" refers to a classified military operation planned in early 2005 to kill al Qaeda leaders including Osama bin Laden's top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri in Pakistan's tribal regions. First reported in The New York Times earlier this month, the mission was "aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials."

Here is a story about that planned 2005 operation:

WASHINGTON: A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in the tribal areas of Pakistan was aborted at the last minute after top officials in the Bush administration decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.

The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group's operations.

But the mission was called off after Donald Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected the 11th-hour appeal of Porter Goss, then the director of central intelligence, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.

Obama was approvingly referring to this kind of operation -- a limited special forces strike against high-level al Qaeda and Taliban targets (apparently without the approval of the government of Pakistan). This is not exactly saying that U.S. forces should invade Pakistan, which is how I initially interpreted it. Many criticized Obama for advocating action of this kind, even Joe Biden:

Aug. 23, 2008

When Obama gave a speech saying he’d send troops into Pakistan if he had actionable intelligence and the Pakistani government was unwilling to act, Biden told NPR that “It’s a well-intentioned notion he has, but it’s a very naive way of thinking how you’re going to conduct foreign policy,” adding of his then-rival, in a remark Republicans are sure to revive: “Having talking points on foreign policy doesn’t get you there.”

McCain also criticized Obama as being naive:

"The best idea is not to broadcast what you're going to do, that's naive," said McCain, who also questioned the very notion of "bombing Pakistan without their permission."

Perhaps it is naive, but it seems fair to say that it is the same position that Bush holds:

CNN NEWSROOM

Blitzer and President Bush; Hungary Havoc; Al Qaeda In Iraq

Aired September 21, 2006 - 10:00 ET

WOLF BLITZER, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): With New York's scarred skyline behind us, President Bush made it clear he still wants Osama bin Laden dead or alive. And he says he'd order U.S. forces to go inside Pakistan to get him and other top al Qaeda leaders.

If you had good actionable intelligence in Pakistan where they were, would you give the order to kill him or capture him?

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Absolutely.

BLITZER: And go into Pakistan?

BUSH: Absolutely.

BLITZER: Even though the Pakistanis say that's their sovereign territory?

BUSH: Absolutely. We would take the action necessary to bring him to justice.

All of this seems relevant again because of this story from Yesterday's New York Times:

Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan

WASHINGTON — President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.
...
American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission.
...
A second senior American official said that the Pakistani government had privately assented to the general concept of limited ground assaults by Special Operations forces against significant militant targets, but that it did not approve each mission.
...
According to two American officials briefed on the raid, it involved more than two dozen members of the Navy Seals who spent several hours on the ground and killed about two dozen suspected Qaeda fighters in what now appeared to have been a planned attack against militants who had been conducting attacks against an American forward operating base across the border in Afghanistan.

So, it seems that this attack (a) was not directed at high-level targets and (b) may have been conducted with the permission of the government of Pakistan (despite their crying foul afterwards).

But it does raise a legitimate question: if we have actionable intelligence on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, should the president order a special forces operation to nab him (or kill him) even if the government of Pakistan does not approve? Obama and Bush say yes, but McCain seems to say no. To me, it's a tough call because actionable intelligence is often wrong. Thus, such a policy has a high chance of killing the wrong people and eliciting strong opposition from an essential ally in the war on terror. Using Predator drones may be less effective, but that approach also elicits less blowback when the mission fails to hit the intended target (in part becasue the Pakistani government has aproved the use of attacks by drones). So the issue really boils down to this: when you have actionable intelligence on the whereabouts of high level al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and you have the permission of the government of Pakistan to use drones but not troops, do you prefer the use of Predator drones or the use of U.S. special forces? From what I can tell, Obama (and Bush) would send in the troops, but McCain might not (instead, I surmise that he'd go with the Predator drone).

Europe to America: Elect Barack Obama or Else

As I illustrated the other day, polls show that the world wants America to elect Barack Obama:


Gordon Brown (Prime Minister of Great Britain) is among those pulling for Obama:

Gordon Brown triggers row with John McCain by 'backing' Barack Obama

The Prime Minister heaped praise on Mr Obama and the Democrats in a magazine article, saying they were "generating the ideas to help people through more difficult times."
...
The article appeared in the Parliamentary Monitor magazine and was intended to set out Mr Brown's plans to overhaul Labour policies ahead of the party's annual conference this month.

In the article, Mr Brown drew attention to policies to help deal with the economic downturn. He said: "Around the world, it is progressive politicians who are grappling with these challenges. In the electrifying US Presidential campaign, it is the Democrats who are generating the ideas to help people through more difficult times.

"To help prevent people from losing their home, Barack Obama has proposed a Foreclosure Prevention Fund to increase emergency pre-foreclosure counselling, and help families facing repossession."

No mention is made of Mr McCain or his proposed policies in the article.

In the Guardian, a columnist named Jonathan Freedland argues that America had better elect Barack Obama or else:

The world's verdict will be harsh if the US rejects the man it yearns for

The feeling is familiar. I had it four years ago and four years before that: a sinking feeling in the stomach. It's a kind of physical pessimism which says: "It's happening again. The Democrats are about to lose an election they should win - and it could not matter more."
...
But what of the rest of the world? This is the reaction I fear most. For Obama has stirred an excitement around the globe unmatched by any American politician in living memory. Polling in Germany, France, Britain and Russia shows that Obama would win by whopping majorities, with the pattern repeated in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. If November 4 were a global ballot, Obama would win it handsomely. If the free world could choose its leader, it would be Barack Obama.
...
If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift.

Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration. But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh start the world is yearning for.
...
Of course I know that even to mention Obama's support around the world is to hurt him. Incredibly, that large Berlin crowd damaged Obama at home, branding him the "candidate of Europe" and making him seem less of a patriotic American. But what does that say about today's America, that the world's esteem is now unwanted? If Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us - and, make no mistake, we shall hear it.

And what are the rest of you going to do exactly? In response to America's suffering international image over the last 5 years, Europeans have elected one relatively conservative, pro-American leader after another (while telling pollsters how much they dislike America). We have Sarkozy in France, Merkel in Germany, Berlusconi in Italy, and the last elected Prime Minister of Great Britain was Tony Blair (and my guess is that Gordon Brown will not survive their next election). When Europeans have a chance to put their money where their mouth is, they generally choose not to vote for the anti-American candidate.

Is that what is going to change if America fails to elect Barack Obama? I doubt it, but perhaps we'll see.

I really do wish Europeans would tell pollsters that they respect America, but I don't think that Americans should choose their president just to get them to say nicer things about Americans in opinion polls. In fact, if you gave me the following choice, I'd definitely choose option 2:

1. Europeans tell pollsters they like America, but they elect anti-American leaders anyway

2. Europeans tell pollsters they dislike America, but they elect pro-American leaders anyway

I am guessing that option 2 will again prevail if John McCain wins in November.

Europeans telling pollsters that they dislike America is as inconsequential as Americans telling pollsters they dislike the French. Thus, choosing an American president to influence the inconsequential opinions of Europeans would be as irrational as it would be for the French to choose their president to influence the inconsequential opinions of Americans.

The "Bridge to Nowhere" Kerfuffle

Democrats are attacking Palin over her claim that she killed the infamous "bridge to nowhere." The argument is that she was in favor of the bridge while campaigning for governor (which is true) and then later opposed it only because, by the time she was in a position to actually do something about it (i.e., when she was governor), it had become politically convenient to oppose it (because, by that time, the proposal to fund the bridge was the focus of public outrage). Thus, her actions reflect political opportunism, not a principled stand against wasteful earmark spending. Obama himself recently weighed in on the subject:

“I know the governor of Alaska has been, you know, saying she is change,” Obama said at a town hall meeting here. “And that is great. She is a skillful politician. But when you [have] been taking all these earmarks when it is convenient and then suddenly you are the champion anti-earmark person.

“That is not change, come on,” Obama continued. “I mean, words mean something. You can’t just make stuff up. You can’t just make stuff up. We have a choice to make and the choice is clear.”

To say that Palin is making stuff up is to accuse her of lying. An Obama spokesperson was very direct in making that accusation:

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton went even further Monday, calling the assertion a flat out "lie."

“Despite being discredited over and over again by numerous news organizations, the McCain campaign continues to repeat the lie that Sarah Palin stopped the Bridge to Nowhere," Burton said. "McCain and Palin will say or do anything to make people believe that they will change something besides the person sitting in the Oval Office."

Here is how Factcheck.org puts it:

It’s true that she did eventually nix the project. But the bridge was nearly dead already – Congress had removed the earmark, giving the requested money to the state but not marking it for any specific use. Palin unplugged its life support, declaring in 2007 that the funds would not be used for the Gravina bridge.

It seems rather bold to claim that Palin is flat out lying merely because she did not tell the whole story of her truthful role in killing the project.

As Glenn Reynolds observed, Barack Obama and Joe Biden also had a chance to kill the bridge to nowhere by voting against it in the Senate. But they didn't:

Obama and Biden Voted for Bridge to Nowhere

Now that Alaska is front and center in the news again, it is a good time to catch up on a favorite story, The Bridge to Nowhere, using the Washington Post US Congress Votes Database.

Though Gov. Palin originally supported the earmark spending on the Ketchikan bridge (“to nowhere), she eventually killed the project, chosing to spend Federal money on other infrasturcture programs.

However, Sen. Biden and Sen. Obama voted for funding the Bridge, even when given a second chance by Sen. Tom Coburn, who proposed shifting earmark funds to Katrina relief.

Sen. McCain did not vote on the Coburn Amendment, though he is on record as opposing the Ketchikan bridge earmark.

I looked up the amendment that Obama and Biden voted against, and I found it here (click on the "Page: S11625" link). In essence, it said:

(1) in subparagraph (A)(ii), by striking "for the construction of a bridge joining the Island of Gravina to the community of Ketchikan in Alaska" and inserting "for the reconstruction of the Twin Spans Bridge connecting New Orleans, Louisiana, and Slidell, Louisiana";

That is, the amendment was designed to redirect funds intended for the "bridge to nowhere" to the reconstruction of a bridge that had been damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Here are some of Coburn's comments:

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I have offered a second-degree amendment that deals with a subject that has been on everyone's mind. It has been in every newspaper in the country. It is about almost $500 million for bridges in the State of Alaska that, although they may be needed, are priorities, as we have discussed today, that are very low on the totem pole in terms of the needs of the country.
...
In October 1939, 1 month after Hitler invaded Poland, Roosevelt wrote Harold Smith, his budget director, ordering him to hold budgets for all Government programs at the present level and below if at all possible. The next month he told him the administration would not undertake any new projects, even laudable ones. He told reporters that the next year his policy would be to cut nonmilitary programs to the bone. He kept his word. Between 1939 and 1942 spending for nondefense programs was cut by 22 percent. Everyone realized that no matter how popular or deeply entrenched the program, the Nation's priorities had to change.

I believe we find ourselves as a nation at that point in time again. With the catastrophe we have seen to our gulf coast, with the war in Iraq, with the energy crisis, and with the budget deficit, it is time for us to change our priorities.

The second-degree amendment does not save the amount of money I wanted it to save, but it does save $75 million, and it takes that $75 million and sends it to the Lake Pontchartrain Bridge. It eliminates two bridges that should be very low priority in terms of the infrastructure of this country. All the money that is not taken from those bridges can be reprogrammed, portions of it can be reprogrammed to the State of Alaska for things they and their elected representatives would deem might be more important.

So, like Palin, Obama and Biden had a chance to do something about the "bridge to nowhere" after public outrage had reached a fevered pitch. Unlike Palin (who finally killed it off, according to factcheck.org), Obama and Biden voted to keep it alive.

Now consider what Obama said yesterday:

Well, how about Gov. Palin? She's you know, an up and comer from Alaska. She - they're starting to run an ad now saying she opposed the bridge to nowhere. Well now, let's get the facts clear here. When she was mayor, she hired a Washington lobbyist to get earmarks - pork barrel spending - all the things that John McCain says is bad, she lobbied to get! And got a whole lot of it. When it came to the bridge to nowhere, she was for it until everybody started raising a fuss about it and she started running for governor and then suddenly she was against it!

You remember that? For it before you were against it? I mean you can't just make stuff up. You can't just recreate yourself. You can't just reinvent yourself. The American people aren't stupid.

No, the American people are not stupid. And they might soon wonder if Obama is still in favor of the bridge to nowhere or if he is now against it. If he is against it now, and if he regards himself as an authentic agent of change, his own words are more applicable to him than they are to Palin: "For it before you were against it? I mean you can't just make stuff up. You can't just recreate yourself. You can't just reinvent yourself. The American people aren't stupid."

No, they're not.

Palin's First Gaffe?

I don't think so. Over at the Huffington Post, a headline blares that Sarah Palin has made her first major gaffe of the campaign:


The story explains:

Gov. Sarah Palin made her first potentially major gaffe during her time on the national scene while discussing the developments of the perilous housing market this past weekend.

Speaking before voters in Colorado Springs, the Republican vice presidential nominee claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." The companies, as McClatchy reported, "aren't taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization."

Economists and analysts pounced on the misstatement, which came before the government had spent funds bailing the two entities out, saying it demonstrated a lack of understanding about one of the key economic issues likely to face the next administration.

"You would like to think that someone who is going to be vice president and conceivable president would know what Fannie and Freddie do," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "These are huge institutions and they are absolutely central to our country's mortgage debt. To not have a clue what they do doesn't speak well for her, I'd say."
...
Even conservative analysts acknowledged that the statement simply did not hold true.

"Heretofore, if the treasury had a balance sheet there would have been a liability but there was never a taxpayer payment before [the bailout]," said Gerald P. O'Driscoll, an economist with the Cato Institute. "[Fannie and Freddie] were not taxpayer funded. They had taxpayer guarantee, which is worth something, especially in the stock market..."

Sarah Palin will make a gaffe (they all do), but I don't think this one qualifies. A 1996 report from the Congressional Budget Office explains:

The Federal Costs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

The housing government-sponsored enterprises are able to claim that they impose no cost on taxpayers only because the subsidies they receive--so far, at least--are in noncash benefits rather than cash. Actual costs of the GSEs to the government, however, are no less real than if the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation were granted free use of federal buildings, land, and personnel. If sold competitively, the benefits the federal government provides to the housing GSEs would command billions of dollars. That forgone annual income is the cost of the housing GSEs to taxpayers and the government. When the housing GSEs do indeed acknowledge receiving benefits, they suggest that the services they provide to the government and to the public are of at least equal value.
...
Government-sponsored enterprises are costly to the government and taxpayers in that they receive a benefit for which others would pay a substantial sum. In addition, the GSEs are retaining a substantial share of that benefit for management and shareholders rather than passing it through to home buyers. That conclusion holds for a variety of estimating methods and assumptions. If one measures the costs of the GSEs as the annual change in the value of the government's credit enhancement and the annual return on previously invested capital, then the average annual cost to the government--though highly volatile--averaged $7.8 billion per year during the 1993-1995 period. If measured as the estimated funding cost advantage that the GSEs receive, the benefit is currently worth $6.5 billion annually.

In other words, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do cost the taxpayers money, and this is true even though you won't find a line item in the federal budget sending funds their way.

I can understand why many on the left are eager to pounce on a Palin gaffe, but they should probably wait until she actually makes one (lest they appear over eager).

The World Wants Barack Obama

You already know this, but it is nevertheless interesting to see these results from the Pew Global Attitudes Survey:


The French in particular seem to be desperately hoping for an Obama victory this November. This seems a little odd to me because, not so long ago, the French had a chance to put their money where their mouth is by choosing Obama-clone Ségolène Royal as their president. Instead, they elected Nicolas Sarkozy (a comparatively conservative, pro-American leader). Royal seems to be a doctrinaire liberal according to this Wikipedia entry:

Economics

Royal stated as part of her 100-point platform that if elected, she would raise the lowest state pensions by five percent, increase the monthly minimum wage to €1,500 ($2,250), raise benefits of handicapped citizens, implement state-paid rental deposits for the poorest citizens, and guarantee a job or job training to every student within six months of graduation. She pledged to abolish a flexible work contract for small companies. She pledged free contraception for all young women and a €10,000 interest-free loan for all young people.[18] She did not directly address whether additional taxes would need to be raised to fund these programs, stating that they can be paid for by cutting waste in government.[19]


Environment

During her tenure as Minister for the Environment, 1992-1993, Royal campaigned actively and successfully for the Law on the treatment and recycling of refuse..., the Law to preserve the countryside..., a Save our countrysides, savour their products campaign to provide proper labelling for the products of 100 local areas.., and the Law against noise pollution... She provided compensation for people adversely affected by airport noise.[20]


Education

During her tenure as Minister-delegate for the Family, Children, and the Handicapped, 2000-2002,[20] Royal was active in the re-launch of the Priority Education Zones program..., the creation of a government student lunch program, the implementation of language instruction as a priority in primary schools, the creation of a national home-tutoring program...,[21] and the creation of programs for parental involvement in schools, "la Semaine des parents à l'école", and national campaigns for the elections of parent-representatives...In January 2006 she criticized secondary school teachers (workers of state public service) who give private lessons outside of school hours, saying that they should spend more time in school.

And here is her view on the American election:

After the 2008 Super Tuesday primaries in the U.S., Royal said that she would have voted for Barack Obama.

Instead of choosing the French Obama to lead their country, the French hope that we choose the American Obama to lead our country.

McCain Seeks to Coopt Obama's Mantle of "Change"

It now seems clear that Joe Trippi's insightful analysis of McCain's forthcoming strategy was right on the money:

The McCain/Palin duo will challenge Barack Obama's claim of "a new kind of politics" and chastise Obama and Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee, Joe Biden, for their "silence" in taking on corruption in their own party in Illinois, Delaware and Washington, DC.

The McCain campaign intends to claim that "more of the same" in Washington means Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and will make the argument that if you want to "shake things up" then McCain and his reform minded running mate from Alaska will get the job done.

Obama has been running on the mantle of "change" for a long time, and this move by McCain seems almost too audacious to be true. But it is true. I wondered where McCain might have gotten the idea, and then I remembered the 2000 Republican presidential primaries. Back then, McCain won the New Hampshire primary and instantly emerged as Bush's principal opponent. McCain was pushing a message of "reform," and it resonated with the voters of New Hampshire. In light of the results in New Hampshire, the upcoming South Carolina primary was seen as a must-win state for both candidates. Much happened in that primary, and people mostly recall the many "dirty tricks" that were used against McCain by shadowy conservative groups. But what I remember the most was my incredulous reaction to Bush's audacious attempt to coopt McCain's message of reform. At the time, I was a standard liberal, but I kind of liked McCain anyway. Some years before, I had encountered McCain's impossible-to-believe story of honor and courage during his years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. I was amazed not only buy the story itself but also by the fact that I had never heard about it before. In addition, McCain was clearly not a hard-core conservative, and that appealed to my liberal sensibilities. Not only did I like McCain, I hated Bush. All of that may explain why I have a crystal clear memory of Bush's audacious and seemingly preposterous attempt to simply abscond with McCain's message of reform in TV ads like this:

"Reformer with Results"

30 sec. TV spot run in MI, SC and VA starting Feb. 9, 2000.

[Music] Male Announcer: As governor, he took on the education establishment and demanded high standards, phonics, and charter schools.
Female Announcer: He fought trial lawyers over lawsuit abuse and beat them.

Male Announcer: While Washington was deadlocked, he passed a patient’s bill of rights.

Female Announcer: He challenged the status quo and reformed welfare, strengthened juvenile justice laws and cut taxes 3 billion dollars. Governor George W. Bush.

Male Announcer: A reformer with results. He will restore integrity and values to the White House.

I was absolutely aghast, but I later realized that it probably contributed to the outcome of the South Carolina primary:

02/19/00: George W. Bush defeated John McCain in the South Carolina GOP primary. Bush drew 53 percent of the vote to McCain's 42 percent. Conservative radio announcer Alan Keyes ran third with 5 percent of the vote.

Perhaps stealing your opponent's mantra is just politics 101. But I only remember it happening in particularly audacious fashion once before. Back then, McCain was on the losing end of that maneuver. This time, he is using to his own advantage. It might just work, and, if it does, it will be yet another sign one candidate (John McCain) is experienced in the ways of the world, whereas the other (Barack Obama) is still in school (taking Politics 101).

Obama's Position on the Troop Surge is Giving Me Whiplash

Barack Obama has a new position on the effectiveness of the troop surge in Iraq. He also claims that this new position is not new in that he has "already said" that the surge has succeeded in reducing violence beyond our wildest dreams:

September 4, 2008

“I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,” Obama said while refusing to retract his initial opposition to the surge. “I’ve already said it’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”

However, he added, the country has not had enough “political reconciliation” and Iraqis still have not taken responsibility for their country.

The fact that Obama has finally gotten in touch with the glaringly obvious effectiveness of the troop surge does not seem particularly newsworthy to me (except, perhaps, as a check on his sanity). If he had said that the sky is blue, that would not be particularly newsworthy either.

What is newsworthy (to me, anyway) is the relationship between what he is saying now and what he has said all along. I have put his past comments in the context of casualties in Iraq. This is a chart that is worth keeping in mind whenever the discussion of the troop surge comes up:


Obama likes to talk about his "judgment" in opposing the war in Iraq. But if he is going to use that as the big test of his wisdom, you also have to consider his judgment with respect to the troop surge in Iraq. As indicated in the chart, Obama introduced a bill to withdraw U.S. forces even though sectarian violence was at its very height:

Obama Bill Sets Date For Troop Withdrawal

Candidate Goes Further Than Rivals

January 31, 2007

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, one of the most prominent Democrats in the 2008 presidential field, proposed for the first time setting a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq, as part of a broader plan aimed at bolstering the freshman senator's foreign policy credentials.

Obama's legislation, offered on the Senate floor last night, would remove all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008.

He also said at the time (January 3, 2007) that the troop surge "makes absolutely no sense" and that the surge would only serve to make things worse: "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence...In fact, I think it will do the reverse."

Later, In July of 2007, he had this to say about the effectiveness of the troop surge:

July 20, 2007

"Here's what we know. The surge has not worked. And they said today, 'Well, even in September, we're going to need more time.' So we're going to kick this can all the way down to the next president, under the president's plan."

As recently as July of this year, he still insisted that he was right to oppose the surge even knowing what we know now:

July 21, 2008

Q: If you had to do it over again, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?

Obama: No. Because, keep in mind that —

Q: You wouldn’t?

Obama: Keep in mind, these kind of hypotheticals are very difficult. You know hindsight is 20/20. But I think that what I am absolutely convinced of is at that time we had to change the political debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one I just disagreed with.

That gives you a more complete picture of Barack Obama's judgement on the most important national security issue to face the nation in the last several years. John McCain's judgment was rather different:

April 15, 2007

"I am not guaranteeing that this succeeds,” said Mr. McCain, who has long argued that additional troops were needed. “I am just saying that I think it can. I believe it has a good shot."

Let's just keep all of this firmly in mind as we discuss the troop surge from here on out.

UPDATE: Sarah Palin, in a speech today:

"But just last night, Senator Obama finally broke, and brought himself to admit what all the rest of us have known for quite some time, and that’s thanks to the skill and valor of our troops, the surge in Iraq has succeeded," Palin said referring to an answer Obama gave to Fox News' Bill O'Reilly Thursday.

In his first appearance on "The O'Reilly factor" Obama said that the troop surge succeeded ‘beyond our wildest dreams.' "I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated, by the way, including President Bush and the other supporters," he told O'Reilly.

Palin took issue with Obama’s response and reminded voters that John McCain initially supported the troop surge.

"I guess when you turn out to be profoundly wrong on a vital national security issue, maybe it's comforting to pretend that everyone was wrong too. But I remember it a little differently. It seems to me there was one leader in Washington who did predict success, who refused to call retreat and risked his own career for the sake of the surge and victory in Iraq and ladies and gentlemen that man is standing right next to me. Senator John McCain," Palin said.

The anti-Palin Mainstream Media Feeding Frenzy Backfires

Like everyone with two eyes, two ears, and a functioning brain, I was simply blown away by Sarah Palin's performance last night. I don't really need to add much to the excellent commentary that is already out there, but I did want to briefly focus on Palin's frontal assault on the media:

And I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.

But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people.

I think that this is a useful strategy because it is clear to anyone who is paying attention that the media is in the tank for Barack Obama. Remember this poll from July?

Monday, July 21, 2008

The idea that reporters are trying to help Obama win in November has grown by five percentage points over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey, taken just before the new controversy involving the New York Times erupted, found that 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help the Democrat with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago.

Just 14% believe most reporters will try to help McCain win, little changed from 13% a month ago. Just one voter in four (24%) believes that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage.

Here is a chart that summarizes these results:


Today, we have a new poll asking about the media's stance towards Sarah Palin:

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Over half of U.S. voters (51%) think reporters are trying to hurt Sarah Palin with their news coverage, and 24% say those stories make them more likely to vote for Republican presidential candidate John McCain in November.
...
In the new survey, although 85% say they are following news stories about Palin at least somewhat closely, just five percent (5%) think reporters are trying to help her with their coverage, while 35% believe reporters are providing unbiased coverage.
...
Among unaffiliated voters, 49% say reporters are trying to hurt Palin, while 32% say their coverage is unbiased. Only five percent (5%) say reporters are trying to help her.

And here is a chart summarizing these results:


Either the American public is misguided, or the media is in love with Barack Obama. I don't think the American public is at all misguided on this particular issue, except, perhaps, for those 5% who actually believe that the media has been trying to help Sarah Palin. Then again, maybe it was all a ploy to ensure that Palin had an extremely large audience for her speech:

Palin Nabs Highest '08 Broadcast TV Convention Ratings

By Andrew Krukowski

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s speech during Wednesday night’s Republican National Convention bested Democratic speeches from Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and, in some cases, Barack Obama in preliminary ratings.

Speaking last night, along with former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Gov. Palin took in a 5.4 rating/8 share on NBC, according to preliminary overnight household data from Nielsen Media Research, measuring 55 markets across the United States.

In terms of this year’s conventions, the preliminary rating for NBC’s coverage last night is higher than any other night of the convention on the broadcast networks, including Sen. Obama’s nomination acceptance speech on Aug. 28.

However, the ratings are preliminary and are subject to change.

If that's what reporters were trying to achieve, good for them! More likely, this large audience was an unintentional side effect of the media's malicious anti-Palin feeding frenzy.

UPDATE: On a related note, Paul Mirengoff of Powerline makes these observations:

These were the headlines on the front page of the Washington Post last Friday, after Barack Obama's Denver oration:

Obama, Accepting Nomination, Draws Sharp Contrast Contrast With McCain -- 84,000 pack stadium to hear candidate close convention with policy specifics and pointed criticism of the Republicans

A Remarkable Event (bold in original) -- For the Descendants of King's Dream, a New Day Dawns

Witnesses To A Historic Moment (bold in original) -- At the Very Top of Invesco Field, Feeling More Than a Mile High

The Message That the Party Wanted to Hear

These are the Post's convention-related headlines today, after Sarah Palin's speech in St. Paul:

Palin Comes Out Fighting -- VP Candidate Dismisses Obama's Experience While Extolling Her Own

Striking Back at Critics, One by One

In a More Diverse America, A Mostly White Convention

In short:

Mean-spirited, boastful Republican candidate delivers ungracious address to out-of-touch crowd

UPDATE II: Roger Simon has an unintentionally hilarious article that comes to the defense of the media:

On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry.

We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked.

We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice?

Bad questions. Bad media. Bad.

Right. That's what everyone is complaining about. The mere asking of those questions. That's why the American public perceives an extreme Obama-loving bias on the part of the mainstream media. It has nothing at to do with the imbalance of coverage when it comes to Obama vs. Palin (see Paul Mirengoff's headline summary in the update above). It has nothing at all with the New York Times jumping on false allegations that Palin was associated with some fringe group in Alaska:

September 2, 2008, 10:32 pm

Alaska Party Official Says Palin Was Not a Member

By The New York Times

The chairwoman of an Alaskan political party that advocates a vote on the state’s secession from the union said Tuesday that she had been mistaken when she said Gov. Sarah Palin was a member of the group.

A front-page story in The New York Times on Tuesday and articles in other news media reported that Ms. Palin was a member of the Alaska Independence Party for two years in the 1990’s.

The information in the Times article was based on a statement issued Monday night by Lynette Clark, the party’s chairwoman, who said that Ms. Palin joined the party in 1994 and in 1996 changed her registration to Republican.

On Tuesday night, Ms. Clark said that her initial statement was incorrect and had been based on erroneous information provided by another member of the party whom she declined to identify. The McCain campaign also disputed the Times report, saying that Ms. Palin had been registered consistently as a Republican.

Nope. The complaints about the media derive solely from the fact that they ask tough questions. I think that's obvious.

McCain is Responsible for Both VP Choices

McCain initially attacked Obama by going straight for his most obvious weakness, which is that he does not have the experience to serve as commander in chief. McCain was getting some traction, so Obama parried by choosing Joe Biden as his running mate, a man of considerable experience (though he has apparently learned little from it). Thus, in a very real way, McCain dictated Obama's choice.

McCain then surprised everyone by choosing Palin. I suppose you could say that Obama dictated this move by opting not to go for Hillary Clinton as his VP, but it does not seem to me that McCain felt compelled to choose Palin for that reason. He chose Palin to shock the world (thereby taking Obama's big acceptance speech the night before out of the equation) and to rev up his base. That it did, and I never would have predicted that his choice would have such a dramatic impact. I also wold not have predicted the over-the-top reaction from the left (e.g., falsely claiming that Palin's new baby was not her own, falsely claiming that Palin was a member of some fringe group, etc.).

The immediate reaction -- mine included -- was that McCain's choice of Palin took the experience issue off the table. It seemed like it did, except now I'm not so sure. The more people compare the experience of the person at the bottom of the Republican ticket with the person at the top of the Democratic ticket, the more it favors the Republicans. Obama did not help himself with this response to a reporter who made that comparison:

“Well, my understanding is that Governor Palin’s town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We’ve got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute I think has been made clear over the last couple of years,” Obama said.

A fair point, except that he seems to have forgotten to consider Palin's experience as governor of Alaska. Now, perhaps in direct response, we'll see this from the McCain campaign:

“The McCain campaign will launch a television ad directly comparing Gov. Palin’s executive experience as a governor who oversees 24,000 state employees, 14 statewide cabinet agencies and a $10 billion budget to Barack Obama’s experience as a one-term junior senator from Illinois.”

So, we'll see how the experience issue plays out. The immediate reaction ("the experience issue has been taken off the table") is not always the right reaction. In fact, it almost never is.

With regard to where else the McCain campaign may go from here, the most interesting analysis was offered by Joe Trippi:

I have seen a lot of commentary on why John McCain's pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is a cynical and transparent ploy to bring disaffected women who supported Hillary Clinton to his cause - and why this ploy would fail.

But I don't think John McCain and the people around him are that stupid.

Something else in his speech introducing Palin as his choice caught my attention and I believe shines some light on the real reason McCain chose the Alaskan.

McCain said of this pick "I have found the right partner to help me stand up to those who value their privileges over their responsibilities, who put power over principle, and put their interests before your needs...I found someone with an outstanding reputation for standing up to special interests and entrenched bureaucracies; someone who has fought against corruption and the failed policies of the past."

The McCain campaign plans on making an assault on Barack Obama's strength as a change agent. And challenge, what the McCain campaign will describe as, Obama's weak or non-existent attacks on corruption within the Democratic party and other institutions throughout his career.

Like the Swiftboat attacks of 2004 on Senator John Kerry, a decorated Viet Nam Veteran -- this assault will be on what is now a strength of Barack Obama's -- his focus on changing a broken system in Washington.

To make this assault McCain picked in Palin someone who has taken on the corruption in the GOP in Alaska, turned against her own party's establishment, and fought for reform.

The McCain/Palin duo will challenge Barack Obama's claim of "a new kind of politics" and chastise Obama and Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee, Joe Biden, for their "silence" in taking on corruption in their own party in Illinois, Delaware and Washington, DC.

The McCain campaign intends to claim that "more of the same" in Washington means Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and will make the argument that if you want to "shake things up" then McCain and his reform minded running mate from Alaska will get the job done.

My initial reaction was that in picking Palin, McCain had taken away the argument that Barack Obama wasn't ready to be President. I now think my initial assessment on that score was wrong. Over time the McCain team will insinuate that if you think a first term Governor isn't ready for the number 2 slot, are your really sure that a first term Senator is ready for the number 1 spot?

Shifting the focus from Obama's perceived weakness to Obama's perceived strength seems to be what McCain has in mind. And as it has been from the beginning, my guess is that the McCain campaign will continue to drive the debate. I'm not sure it will be enough to win, but it is fascinating to watch.

One last observation: Jeff Jacoby just made a fascinating observation about this race and the role that the issue of abortion might play:

Ambiguities may muddle the 2008 campaign, but not when it comes to abortion. The next president and vice president will be the most pro-choice in US history. Or the most pro-life.

Sounds about right to me. Interesting times.

Betting on a Recession

Over at Intrade, you can see what bettors were thinking about the probability of a recession occurring in the U.S. in 2008. Early in the year, they put the odds at nearly 75%, but now it's down to a mere 9%:


I think it was Ronald Reagan who said that facts are stubborn things, and the facts have just not supported the idea that the economy was falling into a recession despite the mortgage crisis. GDP grew at 0.9% in the first quarter and at 3.3% in the second quarter. We might still fall into a recession, but the odds don't seem to favor it (and the bettors know that).

This story from CBS News back in April shows that the American public was thinking a lot like the bettors were:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday that a recession is possible, but 66 percent of those polled say the country is already in a recession - a number that is unchanged from two weeks ago.

Nope. No recession. Not yet anyway, and it does not seem terribly likely to happen before the end of the year. The bettors seem to know that, but I wonder if the American public has caught up with this?

It looks like the Bush legacy will not consist of failure in Iraq plus an economy mired in recession. Instead, on his watch, we will have won the war in Iraq, obliterated al Qaeda's reputation throughout the Muslim world (while obliterating much of al Qaeda itself), all while maintaining strong economic growth. You might think that he'll still get the "worst president ever" title, but I somehow doubt it.

UPDATE: While concerns about the U.S. economy falling into a recession are on the decline, the trend is going the opposite way for the major economies of Europe:




Well, at least the odds are less than 50/50 in each case. Let's hope the economies of Europe make it through the credit crisis unscathed (despite the apparently increasing fears that they won't).

Casualties in Iraq, August 2008

Good news or bad news, I've been bringing you the casualty-in-Iraq story every month for years now (it's amazing how time flies). Back when the news was bad, liberals loved that topic. But they don't love it anymore. Now that the news is good, conservatives are more interested in casualty data than they ever were before. I guess that makes sense, but I'd like to just toot my horn ever so slightly by pointing out that I have been steadily analyzing the casualty picture -- and learning a great deal from it -- through thick and thin. Nowadays, it's a lot more fun than it used to be, but I just want to be clear that my celebratory mood does not reflect a Johnny-come-lately approach to this issue.

One year ago, I brought you the casualty story for August of 2007. This was about 2 weeks before General Petraeus was to testify before Congress on the state of the surge. Because they never did pay attention to the casualty details, many on the left were firmly convinced that no progress was evident. Superficially, this was not an unreasonable interpretation because, superficially, the casualty story looked a lot like it did when the situation in Iraq was at its worst. Thus, if you care more about harming Republicans than you do about the truth of the matter, and if, in light of that noble objective, you choose to merely scratch the surface (knowing full well that most Americans will never dig deeper than that), then it made sense at the time to savage General Petraeus and to claim that the troop surge was failing. But because I pay attention to the details, I knew better. I knew better even though civilian casualties remained fairly high and even though al Qaeda had just succeeded in carrying out its most horrific attack on civilians in Iraq yet (an attack that killed 500 Yazidis on August 15, 2007). Here is what I said about that attack on September 2, 2007:

It might seem audacious of me to suggest that al Qaeda is having problems in a month that saw more civilians killed by al Qaeda terrorists than any other month of the war. But they are off their game, and they appear to be in real trouble.
...
Despite this "success," my claim is that al Qaeda is off its game. How could that be? Because al Qaeda terrorists slaughter innocent civilians for strategic reasons, not just because they hate them. This is always the case. In Spain, for example, the goal was to get the Socialist Party elected so they would withdraw troops from Iraq (thereby splitting the coalition). It worked like a charm. In Iraq, the goal is to provoke the Shiite militias into killing Sunnis. Why? Because sectarian conflict like that destabilizes the government and demoralizes Americans. In August, however, al Qaeda had difficulty attacking Shiites, so they settled for the Yazidis instead. The problem for al Qaeda is that this is not going to enrage the Shiite militias at all. Thus, this spectacular attack by al Qaeda is one of the few over the last 2 years that did not fit with Zarqawi's ingenious plan to destabilize Iraq.

The very next month, civilian casualties fell off a cliff, and it has gotten steadily better over time. In July of 2008, we saw one of the lowest civilian casualty figures yet. Amazingly, they just dropped another 30% in August (from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, with standard corrections to the data described here):


This is my standard annotated chart of civilian casualties in Iraq. The left likes to highlight Bush's ill-advised "Mission Accomplished" speech (i.e., prematurely celebrating victory), so it seems entirely fair of me to highlight ill-advised comments of the opposite nature from the left (i.e., prematurely celebrating defeat). On this chart, I have also highlighted in red the casualty figure from August of 2007. You can see why someone who was not paying attention to the details might have a hard time accepting the claim that the surge was succeeding. It clearly was, but you'd only know it if you were paying attention to the underlying dynamics.

What also seems fair to me is to present the following hypothetical chart illustrating what casualties might have looked like had Barack Obama succeeded in withdrawing our troops from Iraq at the height of sectarian violence:


The actual casualty figures are represented by the blue diamonds, whereas the hypothetical casualty figures are represented by the red squares. You might think it is outrageous of me to suggest that violence in Iraq would have spiraled out of control, but that would just be an example of you being silly. Even the editors of the New York Times knew what would likely happen if our troops were withdrawn back when sectarian violence was high, and they explained it to their readership:

July 8, 2007

Whatever his cause was, it is lost...When Congress returns this week, extricating American troops from the war should be at the top of its agenda...Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave. There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power grabs. Perhaps most important, the invasion has created a new stronghold from which terrorist activity could proliferate.

Even genocide? Get out.

Well, it seems that Bush's cause was not lost after all. Just look at the actual civilian casualty figures in my chart above. The same story emerges from an analysis of U.S. military casualties in Iraq:


There were 22 deaths last month, only 11 of which were from hostile fire. Here are casualties calculated on an annual basis (the most recent figure is in red because it is an annual projection based on casualties so far this year):


No matter how you slice it, the troop surge has been an almost unbelievable success. It is a truly historic turn of events, and I don't see how anyone could deny it. As such, I was really interested to hear Barack Obama's analysis of the effectiveness of the troop surge in his acceptance speech the other night. But here is all that he said about our recent efforts in Iraq:

For while Sen. McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats we face. When John McCain said we could just "muddle through" in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11 and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights. John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of hell — but he won't even go to the cave where he lives.

And today, as my call for a time frame to remove our troops from Iraq has been echoed by the Iraqi government and even the Bush administration, even after we learned that Iraq has a $79 billion surplus while we're wallowing in deficits, John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war.

That's not the judgment we need.

Nary a peep about the troop surge, which is just mind boggling to me (as if it is so utterly inconsequential as to not even warrant a single sentence in a long speech). Obama stood up and opposed the invasion (when it was politically safe for him to do so), but he might have pointed out that he also stood up and opposed the troop surge that has brought stability to Iraq by defeating al Qaeda's malicious anti-Shiite, civil-war-inducing, suicide-bombing campaign that killed more than 10,000 people. Unfortunately, Obama scarcely acknowledges the central role played by al Qaeda in Iraq and instead pretends that al Qaeda has been in Afghanistan all along. That's weird because, while al Qaeda's foot soldiers were in Iraq, their leaders have been inside Pakistan along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border (not inside Afghanistan). Thus, I'd like to know just exactly how Obama plans to "finish the fight" against them by sending more troops to Afghanistan. Then again, I'd also like to know how he plans to end our dependence on foreign oil in a mere 10 years without more drilling and without additional nuclear power plants. But that's just me, I guess.

There is no escaping the fact that when it mattered the most, Obama strongly supported abandoning Iraq to the wolves of al Qaeda. That's definitely not the judgment we need.