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wo things the Palin pick says about McCain, and four three things it doesn't
Posted by: Bryan Pick
Jim Vandehei and John Harris at Politico have another piece out in the same vein as "5 things Biden pick says about Obama", about McCain's selection of Sarah Palin.
The first two are saying the same thing:
1. He's desperate. [...] Politicians, even "mavericks" like McCain, play it safe when they think they are winning - or see an easy path to winning. They roll the dice only when they know that the risks of conventionality are greater than the risks of boldness.
[...]
2. He's willing to gamble - bigtime. Let's face it: This is not the pick of a self-confident candidate.
Okay, let's hear it: who would have been a better pick? Who would have really been a safer pick, given McCain's narrative and history? Who would have come without baggage, who would have reinforced McCain's message, who could have reached both to the base and the swing states at the same time?
3. He's worried about the political implications of his age. Like a driver overcorrecting out of a swerve, he chooses someone who is two years younger than the youthful Obama, and 28 years younger than he is. (He turned 72 Friday.) The father-daughter comparison was inevitable when they appeared next to each other.
If he was worried about the political implications of his age, why would he select an obvious contrast to stand by his side? This is like saying Obama is worried about the political implications of his skin color, since he selected Biden for VP.
4. He's not worried about the actuarial implications of the age issue. He thinks he's in fine fettle, and Palin wouldn't be performing the only constitutional duty of a vice president, which is standing by in case a president dies or becomes incapacitated.
Err, the vice president also serves as the President of the Senate these days. But this is otherwise a fair point.
At least, until Vandehei and Harris expand on their point to say:
McCain has made a mockery out of his campaign's longtime contention that Barack Obama is too dangerously inexperienced to be commander in chief.
McCain played a deeper game, is all - not much deeper, but one step ahead of Politico. With this pick, he invited the Democrats to make that argument because the only way to use that against McCain's VP pick is to open their own Presidential candidate up to the same criticism - which only reinforces McCain's existing narrative against Obama. If Palin, after ten years of elected office, two years of governing a state Obama wants to challenge, and shaking up the establishment, is dangerously inexperienced, Obama is definitely not ready to lead on Day One. After all, it's an open question whether Palin will be called to serve as President any time in the next four to eight years if McCain is elected. It's a certainty that Obama will have to be ready on January 20 if he is elected. And every American who isn't already invested in Obama can do that math.
5. He's worried about his conservative base. If he had room to maneuver, there were lots of people McCain could have selected who would have represented a break from Washington politics as usual. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman comes to mind (and it certainly came to McCain's throughout the process). He had no such room. GOP stalwarts were furious over trial balloons about the possibility of choosing a supporter of abortion rights, including the possibility that he would reach out to his friend.
Leaving aside for a minute that it's incongruous to argue that Palin has no national experience and then say that she doesn't represent a break from Washington as usual, this is in part a fair point. As I pointed out in my post yesterday, her background and bearing are definitely playing well with the base (which has increasingly needed shoring-up in the Mountain West and in some parts of the South), but they also bring something to the Rust Belt battleground.
6. At the end of the day, McCain is still McCain. People may find him a refreshing maverick, or an erratic egotist. In either event, he marches to his own beat.
That he does. But I repeat: this was audacity, not recklessness. It completely captured the news cycle and gave his campaign some much-needed initiative, to put Barack Obama on the defensive just as he was coming out of his rock-show convention with his fists up.
Five of the points (I'm being generous by not calling it six) the Politico tried to make were about McCain being "worried" in some fashion or another. But anyone looking at the scrambling response from the Democrats yesterday can see who was worried, who was on the defensive, who was struggling to put together a narrative.
If you take away tax breaks for company that use out of country labor, what would the effect be?
They will be forced to hire American workers at wages 5-10 times higher than in say China. Prices will go up and/or profits will go down
IF they take the bait and hire American with tax incentives, we Americans will in effect be subsidizing those companies anyway and will end up paying for the subsidies in the long run
It's just another form of welfare and distorts the marketplace
We complain when european countries subsidize their own industries and impose tariffs, but this would do the same thing
It's the same as imposing a profits tax on oil companies- the end result would be less exploration and higher gas taxes
It's just the typical dem class warfare meme. Using populist ideology to solve economic problems that aren't there is ridiculous
Hysterical
By using those standards, Obama isn't close to being qualified for the top job
Downplaying her experience won't work. Al least she has had some executive experience- Barry's had none
He's been in the Senate for 3 years and for 2 of those he's been running for president
Plus, shes' running for the second spot where she might be in charge and Barry will be in charge from day one
Her brief career has seen tangible results whereas barry has none
I really hope the dems keep up with the experience meme, it will come back to bite them big time
Amy Holmes & Sarah Palin [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
From a pro-life friend:
Thanks to Amy Holmes for the excellent commentary on how conservative pro-choice and pro-life women actually work together on so many issues and have a mutual respect for each other and limited government. As a pro-life woman, the thing about this that drives me crazy is that the real issue is who decides – unelected judges or the American people through their elected representatives. If Roe v. Wade were overturned not a whole lot would change as to legality – so Chris Matthews’ hysteria about Sarah Palin would BAN ABORTION FOR ALL WOMEN AT ANY TIME EVEN RAPE AND INCEST – is so over the top crazy. All conservatives would do is have judges who would not feel the need to legislate from the bench.
Once the legislators had at the issue – they would end up where the people are and that would probably be a bit right of where we are now – stricter bans on late term abortion, more parental involvement, more waiting periods or advisements. Maybe Utah would limit more severely, but California would be wide open. The abortion industry wouldn’t quite be booming but it would be available. The only way more restrictions would be in place would be if hearts and minds were changed to a dramatic degree where the political class could survive. Thus, the job of pro-lifers will be Herculean efforts to change those hearts and minds if we want the laws changed. The democratic process would work and we wouldn’t have an almighty court that thinks they should be the arbiters on life and death issues. That is a result with which pro-choice and pro-lifers could pretty peacefully co-exist. It’s actually the reality in Europe where abortion is harder to get after 3 months and there are more health advisories in the first three. Ireland bans it but there aren’t women throwing themselves off towers – they get to London. The democratic process works pretty well when we let it.
08/30 12:59 PM
The Beauty of Sarah Palin
It's more than just skin deep
Posted by: Josh_Painter
Sunday, August 17, 2008 at 07:28PM
3 Comments
I'm not talking about the mere physical attractiveness of Alaska's governor, though she has been blessed with an abundance of that gift. Palin was a competitor in the 1984 Miss Alaska beauty pageant after being named Miss Wasilla earlier that year, where she also won Miss Congeniality honors.
No, what I'm dicussing here is beauty in the political sense - as in the beauty of what John McCain, if he's smart and willing to make a really bold move, could accomplish by naming Governor Palin as his running mate for the presidential election.
Those making the case for Palin as GOP VP nominee include Jack Kelly on Real Clear Politics, American Spectator's Thomas Cheplick, Bill Krtistol and Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard and Anchorage Daily News columnist William Ruger.
A number of bloggers have added their voices to the chorus in praise of Alaska's governor. Just a few examples can be found here, here and here.
There are websites devoted to promoting Palin for the Republican vice presidential nomination - Sarah Palin for America, Palin For VP, and Draft Sarah Palin for Vice President. There are even web ads made independently on her behalf. You can view them here, here and here.
There no need for me to echo all of the arguments made by those cited here for Sarah Palin. But I would like to add some perspective.
With energy and oil prices at the top of the nation's current domestic concerns, and with energy independence tied closely to national security at a time when Russia, America's old nemisis, is again on the rise, it is critical for McCain to have someone on his ticket who can speak with authority about energy. Palin demonstrates her command of the subject in this video clip from Glenn Beck's TV show.
Also, in one of the most under-reported news stories in recent weeks, Gov. Palin has accomplished a feat which has eluded the U.S. Congress for many years. She has pushed through the Alaska legislature a natural gas pipeline project which will bring new supply and price relief to the lower 48:
On Aug. 1, the same day the call for a vote on drilling began on the House floor, the Alaska state Senate approved a package of measures to license a new natural gas pipeline. House Bill 3001 lets Palin award the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act license to TransCanada Alaska, a pipeline builder that cast a winning bid of five.
The legislature had been trying for 30 years to authorize something like this and, up until now, had blown it. Palin got it through. Getting it off the ground, the state says, will be the biggest construction project in U.S. history.
Palin considers the $26 billion project her biggest accomplishment as governor. "It was not easy," she told IBD. "Alaska has been hoping and dreaming for a natural gas pipeline for decades. What it took was getting off the dime and creating a competitive market in Alaska."
The 1,715-mile gas line would stretch from Alaska's North Slope to Fairbanks and down to Alberta, Canada. Then it would take existing gas lines to Idaho. In 10 years, Palin says, the lower 48 states would receive 4.5 million cubic feet of natural gas a day. By 2030, according to Energy Department estimates, Alaska's annual natgas production would quintuple to 2 trillion cubic feet.
With the voters seeing nothing being done but congressional bickering on the energy front, Sarah Palin can point to this accomplishment to show that she's a "can do" leader on energy, something no other potential GOP vice presidential nominee can boast of right now. That's what the electorate is looking for, and this would make Palin a valuable asset to McCain's campaign.
But I've saved the best for last. The Democrats can hardly criticize Gov. Palin's resume as being too thin without calling attention to Obama's own limited experience. And that perhaps, is the real beauty of Sarah Palin.
Check out this video:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=836304396&play=1
She's very bright and articulate- thus giving her a big edge over Biden
She's taken on the repuib establishment in Alaska
She's gonna be the star of this election cycle
Also:
Petard, 1 each. Hoist when ready
Posted by: McQ
How soon we forget. Bill Clinton a few nights ago:
He recalled that 16 years ago "Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be commander in chief. Sound familiar? It didn't work in 1992 and it will not work in 2008."
Really? Well it doesn't mean that Democrats won't try:
Rep. Diana DeGette, today:
"The selection of Governor Palin is an insult to women. She has obviously been chosen to appeal to female voters, but she lacks both the experience and policy positions to serve as Vice-President of the United States."
"The announcement of Governor Palin's selection on John McCain's 72nd Birthday highlights the fact t hat the Vice-President must be qualified to step into the Presidency from Day One. Sarah Palin is a 2-year governor with zero foreign policy experience whose former position was mayor of a town of 9,000."
Rahm Emanuel:
"After trying to make experience the issue of this campaign, John McCain celebrated his 72nd birthday by appointing a former small town mayor and brand new Governor as his Vice Presidential nominee. Is this really who the Republican Party wants to be one heartbeat away from the Presidency? Given Sarah Palin's lack of experience on every front and on nearly every issue, this Vice Presidential pick doesn't show judgement: it shows political panic."
The Obama Campaign:
"Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies - that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same," said Bill Burton, Obama campaign spokesman.
So, which is it? Experience is important? Or it isn't important? Apparently the Democrats now think it is. If so, Gov. Palin has more experience at the bottom of the Republican ticket than Barack Obama has at the top of the Democrat ticket.
Permalink | Comments ( 17 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 ) | Category: Elections
QandO
Look at them, trying to put out the fire.
Posted by: Bryan Pick
It's hard not to notice the contrasts. Even before Obama picked Biden, Republicans were begging Obama to choose him. When Biden was selected, there were already several parallel narratives showing that he was, among other things, more exercised about a McCain candidacy than an Obama candidacy. And it was plain as day that his comparatively long experience in the Senate - extremely long, actually - would be unflattering beside Obama's. Biden has eight times as much experience as the man at the top of his ticket. Woof. And so Republicans simply derided the choice, chattered a bit about what it means about Obama - all conspicuously at odds with his carefully-built narrative - and moved on.
Then, on the day after Obama's self-consciously historic acceptance speech, John McCain announced that he had selected Sarah Palin to be his running mate.
Whoosh. The air went right out of the Democrats' lungs. When it started to come back, in little gasps, it was full of concern. They spent the rest of the day trying to wave their hands at what is readily apparent:
She's a woman. You know, on the ticket.
So? So? Women won't vote for her! Ignore all the women who are saying otherwise. Give them a little credit: they think like we do. This is just a crass attempt at playing identity politics.
Democrats wouldn't know anything about that, would they?
She's been a far more able agent of change in the last few years in Alaska than Obama has been from the United States Senate. It would be fair to say she's kicked some ass.
She's untested on the national level! Very little experience, you see.
She has more executive experience than the entire Democratic ticket combined. Which isn't that hard, admittedly...
But that's in Alaska!
Yes, Alaska, between Canada and Russia. Alaska, a third the size of the continental United States, lots of fossil fuels, tough guys on fishing boats. The state Obama's been spending money in, hoping for an upset. That Alaska.
You still don't understand. Somebody with that little experience, only a heartbeat away from the presidency?
Oh come on. (Hat tip to Xrlq:) "We can't have a woefully underqualified person one heartbeat away from the Presidency! We need a woefully underqualified person to be President right away!!"
Don't you see, she's more of the same from the Republicans!
You've been saying that repeatedly. But she sure tore into a lot of Republicans in her own state, and when they went down for corruption, the rank-and-file GOP sure were glad to have their maverick.
She's in cahoots with Big Oil!
You could have fooled them.
She's under investigation!
So she is. Just wait 'til you see the guy on the other side of that investigation. (Hat tip to commenter tom scott)
With her background and bearing, she combines the best of the South, the Mountain West and the Midwest. She'll secure the segments of the base that have been wary of McCain and still appeal to moderates in the crucial Rust Belt battleground. In a season in which conservatives have been openly talking about voting against Obama (and maybe not even doing that much) rather than for McCain, she's a breath of fresh air.
And this is an absolutely key point: when Biden was picked, millions of Democrats were either thinking or openly talking about who they would have rather had as the VP nominee. Today, you're seeing none of that from Republicans. With the kind of audacity McCain displayed, conservatives all over are applauding the fact that he neither went with the "safe picks" (like Pawlenty or Romney) nor gave away the farm with the Lieberman Option. She seems, in immediate retrospect, like an obvious choice, and that's reflecting very well on McCain himself. People on both sides of the partisan divide are seeing him in a new light: to opponents as perhaps more dangerous than they had expected, and to allies as a candidate to get energized about. He finally exists in the media independently of his opponent, which translates into initiative.
The McCain campaign just stole a lot of wind from Obama's sails, at a time when Obama's looking for a bump to crow about. Jon pointed out at The Next Right that the news cycle has been entirely captured by McCain-Palin. Purely anecdotally, I'm seeing a lot of increased interest in his campaign in itself, rather than only as it relates to Obama's, and yes, a lot of that is coming from women. This is a game-changer, and don't let anyone (never mind the transparently panicked Democrats) tell you otherwise.
Permalink | Comments ( 2 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 ) | Category: Elections
QandO
Flailing around
Posted by: McQ
Oliver Willis asks on Twitter:
"How many qualified and tested Republican women did McCain pass over for Sarah Palin? "
About as many as the Democrats passed over to pick Barack Obama, Oliver. Why?
That, btw, is the new line of attack by the Dems. Barbara Boxers says:
The Vice President is a heartbeat away from becoming President, so to choose someone with not one hour's worth of experience on national issues is a dangerous choice.
If John McCain thought that choosing Sarah Palin would attract Hillary Clinton voters, he is badly mistaken. The only similarity between her and Hillary Clinton is that they are both women. On the issues, they could not be further apart.
Senator McCain had so many other options if he wanted to put a women on his ticket, such as Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison or Senator Olympia Snowe - they would have been an appropriate choice compared to this dangerous choice. In addition, Sarah Palin is under investigation by the Alaska state legislature which makes this more incomprehensible.
Shucks Ms. Boxer, have Hutchinson or Snowe ever governed a state?
Yeah, I didn't think so.
And about the Hillary voters? Check this out.
Permalink | Comments ( 19 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 ) | Category: Education
QandO
Funny stuff
Posted by: McQ
I mentioned how irony-impaired the Obama campaign seems to be earlier. Here's official proof:
"Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies - that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same," said Bill Burton, Obama campaign spokesman.
So if the Obama campaign chooses to show disrepect to Gov. Palin, is it fair to call Obama "the former state senator"?
And this caused me to chuckle:
Ms. Palin came as a surprise not only to many Republicans and journalists, but also to the Obama team. The campaign has been busily preparing TV commercials to run against Mitt Romney - with aides gleefully watching hours of footage of Romney-McCain exchanges from the primary - but far little opposition research had been prepared about the Alaska governor. And aides said no commercials were ready to be immediately released, which the McCain campaign did when Mr. Biden was chosen.
The takeoff of the Democratic campaign plane was delayed for about 30 minutes, so aides were busily trying to learn all they could about the Palin pick.
The secrecy surrounding the pick was pretty complete.
By the way, didn't Obama give a speech last night?
How can you tell the Dems are panicked? - Rahm Emanuel's statement tells it all:
"After trying to make experience the issue of this campaign, John McCain celebrated his 72nd birthday by appointing a former small town mayor and brand new Governor as his Vice Presidential nominee. Is this really who the Republican Party wants to be one heartbeat away from the Presidency? Given Sarah Palin's lack of experience on every front and on nearly every issue, this Vice Presidential pick doesn't show judgement: it shows political panic."
Speaking of judgement, Bryan mentioned in a comment earlier:
[A]nd the Democrats stuffed a young heartbeat directly between experience and the presidency.
Funny stuff.
Permalink | Comments ( 8 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 ) | Category: Elections
QandO
Palin: If she can stand the heat, she could be fun
Posted by: McQ
Let's see how this breaks out.
Foreign policy and national security are the forte of the executive. The Democrats have nominated a presidential candidate with no experience in either area. The Republicans have nominated a vice presidential candidate with no experience in either area.
Which makes more sense to you?
Under the topic of change, the Democrats nominate two US male Senators, one who is the consummate Washington insider and claim to be outsiders who are going to change Washington. The Republicans nominate a Senator with the reputation of a maverick and the Governor of Alaska with a similar rep who, btw, is female, to take on Washington.
Which sounds more like change to you?
On the subject of experience, the Democrats nominate a man who has been a community organizer, State Senator and, for 147 days, a US Senator to be President. The Republicans nominate as VP a woman who has run a town and run a state for a lot longer than Obama has been in the Senate.
In terms of "what have you done and what have you run" who has the edge?
If Palin can handle being thrust into the limelight as suddenly has she has, given her speech today, she is going to be fun and, I think, she could very well re-energize the right at a very critical time in the election cycle.
Permalink | Comments ( 23 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 ) | Category: Elections
Of course even you aren't stupid enough not to realize that the " job well done " ad was before Barry spoke and was congratulating him on his nomination
Just wait till next week when McCain picks apart the specifics of Barry's speech biy by bit
McBush???
YUOu do realize that McCain voted against Bush's energy bill and tax cuts, no??
Oh yeah and Barry voted for both
Barry voted party line 97% of the time
McCain has produced legislation- campaign finance reform- the gang of 14 compromise on nominations- tha greatly irritated Bush and conservatives
But, just bot on Peggy
PS
Alos funny how he again talked about looking forward to debate while he refused MCCains challenge for 10 town hall style debates
Being Governor of a state is executive experience. Something Obama doesn't have.
His 4 years in the Senate includes the last 2 where he's been running for President
Choosing Palin would cause the Hillary crowds collective head to explode. They're hard wired to value only gender- ow they'll have to vote against a woman
The funnyb thing is that McCain voted against the Bush energy bill- saying it was a boondoggle for the oil companies and also voted against the tax cuts
Barry boy voted for both
In the next week at the convention and after in targeted ads, this speech will be torn apart and the bump he gets will dissapear
Well, the GDP- by definition what determines a recession- disagrees
Other than the fac that it suits your political biases, waht do you base that on??
Two Nations [Victor Davis Hanson]
This Democratic propensity to plead poverty and oppression to highlight one's own success -- along with the therapeutic anecdote -- finally becomes numbing. Obama, who gained his education and found opportunity in the awful Reagan and Bush I years, lives in a mansion, has prep school and Ivy League degrees, made several millions of dollars last year, and was the offspring of two PhD candidates -- and is thus a firsthand witness to America's greed and unfairness?
If Obama were to win, no one would infer from the desolation he described in America, that he may well inherit an economy, in a downturn, that just grew at 3.3 in the last quarter, an unemployment rate of 5.7%, and record levels of exportation, one that did not go into recession with $140 a barrel oil, with more students in college than at any time in its history and more than any other nation in the world, with a war in Iraq nearly won, and both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein gone and replaced with constitutional governments -- and Europe, whether in France, Germany, or Italy, with strong pro-American leadership.
No one would infer that after our enemies blew a 16-acre crater in New York and attacked the Pentagon -- and promised lots more to come -- we have not been hit since, but in contrast, al Qaeda's leaders are either in hiding, scattered, imprisoned, or killed, with bin Laden and the tactic of suicide bombing with record low levels of support in the Middle East.
His bottom line: our enemies are winning, AK-47s are ubiquitous in our streets, our economy is in depression, and gay people can't visit their dying partners in our hospitals. In short, "Hope and Change" has became gloom and doom and there is something for everybody from government to save us.
------
Surreal Obama [Victor Davis Hanson]
It was quite strange to see his enormous televised image shining through a Greek temple, as if he were Zeus speaking through the naos, giving us divine guidance on everything from turning off the television to ensuring we all go to college to promising an end to global warming and disease -- with fire and lightning from Olympus in the background.
08/28 11:51 PM
Foreign Policy Insanity [Victor Davis Hanson]
Obama will invade Pakistan, as he earlier promised, to get bin Laden? He thinks that his own call for withdrawal on a mandatory timetable that would have abandoned Iraq by March 2008 -- not the Petraeus surge and change in tactics, have led to the chance to reduce the American presence in Iraq? And he wants to debate John McCain on all that? In town meetings?
It was boilerplate dem class warfare nonsense
It could have been ( and has been for 40 years ) by every dem pol running for public office
Try and read and comprehend:
Don't you ever get tired of being wrong?
Are y9ou gonna come down on the Aclu now?
Asa Eslocker: An Update
Earlier on FishbowlDC: "ABC News Producer Arrested in Denver"
We've learned that ABC News' associate producer Asa Eslocker has been advised by his lawyers not to speak about the events of yesterday, when he was arrested for filming outside the Brown Palace Hotel.
We've also learned that the hotel today admitted that, no, they don't own the sidewalk, thereby making their arrest of Eslocker all the more suspect.
A memo from Eslocker's lawyers, as well as notes from the ACLU and Reporters Without Borders after the jump...
From Eslocker's lawyers:
Mr. Eslocker is innocent of all three crimes with which he's been charged. He and his ABC News crew were standing on public sidewalks covering an event of public significance and performing a press function protected by the First Amendment.
Frankly, we are outraged at the conduct of the individual officers. Their interactions with Mr. Eslocker are captured on tape. Mr. Eslocker was acting courteously and trying to determine where he and his news crew could stand on public sidewalks to report on an event involving some of this nations leader's -- an event that the public has a right to know about. Even the Brown Palace hotel has now acknowledged that the sidewalks are public property.
The case is now in the hands of the Denver City's Attorney's office, which has a well deserved reputation of acting reasonably and fairly. We are confident that when that office has had the opportunity to review the evidence, including our video tapes, it will decide to dismiss all charges against Mr. Eslocker.
The ACLU has put out the following release:
Following news reports and a video showing Denver law enforcement agents ordering a reporter off a public sidewalk and pushing him into the street and later arresting him, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Colorado called for renewed protection of the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and a free press.
The following can be attributed to Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union:
"The physical removal of ABC reporter Asa Eslocker from public property and his subsequent arrest are a blatant assault on the First Amendment. Arresting a reporter for simply doing his job is both unconstitutional and un-American. That free speech is curtailed during the Democratic Convention underscores the need for continued protection of civil liberties, regardless of the party in power."
Reporters Without Borders:
Reporters Without Borders condemns the arrest of ABC News producer Asa Eslocker on August 27th in downtown Denver and calls on the Denver Police Department to drop all charges against the reporter.
Eslocker had been photographing high-ranking political officials in town for the Democratic National Convention for a story he was preparing on corporate donors and lobbyists. A video posted on ABC News's website shows a Denver sheriff's officer asking Eslocker to move from in front of the Brown Palace Hotel and then pushing him into oncoming traffic after he did not immediately comply. According to ABC News, Denver Police arrived two hours later and arrested Eslocker.
"The use of unnecessary force and the arrest of a journalist who was reporting an important political story is deeply troubling and unacceptable," Reporters Without Borders said. "The attempts at intimidation that were evident in the captured images of Eslocker's arrest simply because he refused to leave a shared, publicly used space reflect negatively on the Denver police and sheriff's departments' commitment to uphold a journalist's right to gather important news."
I agree, that nonsense is outrageous
So Much For the Recession
The economy grew at a robust 3.3% rate in the second quarter, putting to rest any suggestion that we are, or soon will be, in a recession.
It's worth noting that the growth was fueled largely by exports, which will be curtailed if Obama is elected and the Democrats adopt protectionist policies.
In politics, though, it's perception that counts, not reality, and it appears that workers' job market confidence may be slipping, even as new claims for unemployment benefits continue to drop.
I was talking about you specifically ( and seabass ), asshat
For the exact same action commited against a liberal you'd be whining like a stuck pig
ANd please spare me the long list of repub moral failures- it could be countered with a list jsut as long about the dems
I was talking about YOUR lack of consistent ethics
So Much For the Recession
The economy grew at a robust 3.3% rate in the second quarter, putting to rest any suggestion that we are, or soon will be, in a recession.
It's worth noting that the growth was fueled largely by exports, which will be curtailed if Obama is elected and the Democrats adopt protectionist policies.
In politics, though, it's perception that counts, not reality, and it appears that workers' job market confidence may be slipping, even as new claims for unemployment benefits continue to drop.
Effective but deceptive
Posted by: McQ
B
ill Clinton's speech last night was vintage Clinton. And there is no question that to those will not dig under his words, it was effective. But it was vintage in another way as well - it was quite deceptive.
For instance:
He recalled that 16 years ago "Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be commander in chief. Sound familiar? It didn't work in 1992 . and it will not work in 2008."
Of course the rap against Obama isn't he's "too young" as Clinton would have you believe, but that he is too inexperienced. When Clinton ran, he had been a governor of a state for over 10 years. So he literally had 10 times the executive experience Obama so clearly lacks.
There is no comparison between a governor of 10 years and a community organizer with a couple of years in the Senate.
But it was a nice try at reframing the argument against Obama in an attempt to neutralize it. For those able to think independently, it didn't work, however.
The rest, from both he and Biden, was mostly declaration and assertion:
Earlier, former president Bill Clinton put aside divisions of the primary season and delivered an enthusiastic endorsement, saying "Barack Obama is ready to be president of the United States."
Clinton said Obama's heritage and experience give him "a unique capacity to lead our increasingly diverse nation" and restore its leadership in the world.
"He has the intelligence and curiosity every successful president needs," the former president said. "His policies on the economy, taxes, health care and energy are far superior to the Republican alternatives. . The long, hard primary tested and strengthened him.
He's ready because of his "heritage"? "Curiosity"? "Intelligence"? Clinton just described 100 million people - and probably half of them have executive experience.
Obama's resume is so thin that his most ardent backers (and even those who aren't quite as ardent as they pretend to be) are reduced to "heritage, curiosity and intelligence" as major qualifications for the office.
Accomplishments? Not yet - but if you like potential, elect him president and let him try out his first executive job in the White House. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Yep, according to the liberals relative morality, thuggish behavior is OK if it's used against anyone trying to question actions of the left
You're bias is showing
HE was there- on a public sidewalk - doing his job\
Are you really naive enought to believe that the arrest wasn't politically motivated
Amazing the persistent hyprocrisy of the liberals
This is hysterical
UFB
Too good to check: Barackopolis brought to you by Britney Spears' designers
posted at 1:30 pm on August 28, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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As if the Temple of the One had not embarrassed the Democrats enough, the New York Times discovers that it links Barack Obama and Britney Spears -- again. Team Obama complained when John McCain's "Celebrity" ad compared Obama and Spears to define Obama as a celebrity without any substance. So why did they turn to the Spears team to design their Greek temple of a set?
Democrats will kneel before the "Temple of Obama" tonight.
As if a Rocky Mountain coronation were not lofty enough, Barack Obama will aim for Mount Olympus when he accepts his party's nomination atop an enormous, Greek-columned stage - built by the same cheesy set team that put together Britney Spears' last tour. …
"We've done Britney's sets and a whole bunch of rock shows, but this was far more elaborate and complicated and we had to do it in far less time," said Allen, of RDA Entertainment.
Who gets more temperamental? Allen: "I better not answer that."
The ads just write themselves …
And then we have an earlier connection to Spears, one that ironically hinted at the cult of celebrity. This is from May 2007:
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that before presidential hopeful Barack Obama gave a speech Tuesday night at the Plant Zero art gallery in Richmond, VA, his people asked for a painting of Spears, 25, to be covered.
The piece is a 6 by 10 foot reproduction of Brit's infamous panty-less car exit, called "Snake Charmer" (and it can be yours for just $5,000!). The artist, Jamie Boling, told the Times-Dispatch that the painting "depicts this culture's preoccupation with celebrity." We're guessing the Obama campaign had a different interpretation, adopting the parlance of Ms. Spears' driver that fateful night, Paris Hilton, in order to deem the piece a "not hot" speech backdrop.
I'd say that Boling has another subject for his celebrity-mania motif.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air managemen
OF course the landscape is completely diferent
Kerry was running against an incumbent
THe mood in the country is entirely different- dems are way ahead in almost all races except for the top ticket
That's the news- dems all over the country are surging ahead and Barry is backsliding as people get to know aht an empty ( designer ) suit he is
Video: A new McCain spokesman for Obama's unreadiness
posted at 8:05 am on August 28, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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John McCain went to the vault from the Democratic primaries and found a treasure trove of comments from Democrats on the unreadiness of Barack Obama to lead the nation. It includes the comments we've seen before from Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, but adds Chris Dodd and others -- including perhaps the most effective spokesman:
You know, I am a believer in … in knowing what you're doing when you apply for a job. Uh, and I think that … if I were seriously to consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now, before having served a day in the Senate. Now there may be some people who are comfortable doing that, but I am not one of those people. -- Barack Obama, 2004
This spot thus far is only a web video, but I would expect to see more of that last clip featured in McCain ads in the general campaign. They want to make the case that Obama isn't just asking himself to leave his comfort zone, but the entire nation. He did end up beginning his run for the White House very early in his first year in the Senate, before he had an idea how to do the job he had just won for himself, let alone learn anything about military strategy and tactics, foreign policy, or executive leadership.
Presidential candidates get lots of criticism about policy stances during primaries that can be replayed as negative ads by their opponents. This, however, is different. It underscores Obama's unreadiness, his unqualified status to assume the highest office in the country -- and Obama himself makes that case.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air managemen
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/08/28/video-a-new-mccain-spokesman-for-obamas-unreadiness/
Letme guess and say this doesn't bother you at all
ABC News Reporter Handcuffed, Jailed for Reporting on Democrat Ties to Lobbyists
Posted by: Leon H. Wolf
Thursday, August 28, 2008 at 09:00AM
2 Comments
In the fevered imaginations of modern American liberals, Republicans (in particular, George W. Bush) have been hard at work these last 8 years silencing dissent, blackholing the press, and shipping everyone who disagrees with them off to Gitmo. Of course, this notion is ludicrous. One need look no farther than the editors and publishers of the New York Times, who today walk the streets as free men (publishing self-laudatory books about their heroic exploits) despite publishing news stories on at least two highly classified Bush administration intelligence-gathering programs.
Over the course of the last two weeks, I hope the media have caught on to a simple, basic fact: no American politician in the last generation has been more willing to utilize intimidation and abuse of the Court system to silence and intimidate his political opponents and critics than Barack Obama. As noted yesterday, Obama and his legal advisor have a long history of threatening his political opponents with jail time for criticizing him based on spurious interpretations of election finance law. Currently, they have not once but twice sought to have the Department of Justice criminally prosecute the producer and financier of the factually accurate ad tying Obama to terrorist Bill Ayers. As noted by one of the commenters to that piece, Obama's entire political career has been littered with foes who mysteriously found themselves either "disqualified" from being on the ballot due to Obama's machinations or discredited and scandalized due to information contained in sealed court documents (e.g., divorce records).
Now comes this latest. What with all the brouhaha going on in Denver this week, the Democrats took the opportunity to woo some fatcats and lobbyists in nearby but comparatively secluded Boulder, CO. ABC News sent a crew down to Boulder to see who would attend. The end result wasn't so great for the ABC News crew:
DENVER -- Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel.
Police on the scene refused to tell ABC lawyers the charges against the producer, Asa Eslocker, who works with the ABC News investigative unit.
A cigar-smoking Denver police sergeant, accompanied by a team of five other officers, first put his hands on Eslocker's neck, then twisted the producer's arm behind him to put on handcuffs.
You can read the whole thing for yourself, and ABC's got video as well. So what do you think, media? How do you fancy the prospects of an Obama Presidency now? It's been a pretty good run for you this last 8 years, the way you've made a cottage industry of exploiting leaks in the Bush administration and shining the harsh glare of truth on the war (until the truth became "we're winning," of course, but I'm not telling you how to do your job). Ironically, the only reporter sent to jail during that time was sent for refusing to reveal a source that would have potentially implicated the administration. How do you want to spend the next 8 years? Are you ready to start worrying that if you cover the wrong story, some redneck cigar-smoking (gasp) sherriff is going to handcuff you, throw you in the back of a patrol car, and not even tell you what the charges are?
The evidence is piling up that this would be life in an Obama Presidency. The question is whether you're interested in continuing to help create it.
UPDATE: With apologies, it appears that the arrest actually took place in Denver. I have no idea why the Boulder police are involved in this story at all.
Obama camp responds to criticism of "temple" stage by … attacking McCain's wealth
posted at 6:43 pm on August 27, 2008 by Allahpundit
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Just in case you were wondering if McCain's the only candidate willing to use the same meme over and over in increasingly ridiculous contexts to deflect criticism.
On the flight from Billings, Montana, to Denver, Colo., Obama senior strategist David Axelrod responded to the criticism.
"I know that Sen McCain and his people have been shooting barbs about the ‘opulence' of our convention from the mountaintop at Sedona at the McCain estate. I don't think it warrants a response."
Well, no, it's not that the setting is "opulent," it's that it's a manifestation of the olympian mythology surrounding The One. (Replete with Greek chorus!) As I write this, the tu quoque is already being made, with Ben Smith dutifully reporting that George Bush spoke before practically the same backdrop in 2004. Judge for yourself. The columns are fewer, set far back, and (apparently) lacking the frieze in Obama's set, suggesting to my jaded wingnut eye not so much an actual building as something "stately" an unimaginative set designer decided to toss in there to fill out the space between the flags. Regardless, though, if it's true that Obama's getting a harder time about this than would other politicians if they used the same set, it's only because the scenery plays into his own image as something more grandiose and timeless than a mere presidential candidate. Seeing Joe Biden on that stage would feel absurd; with Obama, it'll feel like psychology.
Even Democrats think it's a mistake. But to the extent Bush's set does glancingly resemble Obama's, I'll happily concede the left's point: Yes indeed, it certainly is embarrassing to make fun of the opposing party's nominee over something your own nominee four years ago was just as guilty of. Exit question: How many hundreds of millions of dollars will be onstage tonight? By my tally, just one.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section
McCain camp gleefully mocks 'temple of Obama'
A
Republicans, who mock Barack Obama as a self-appointed divine savior, gleefully pounced Thursday on pictures of the set for his big convention speech, which appears to resemble a temple.
The Democratic presidential candidate will accept the party White House banner before a more than 70,000-strong crowd at an outdoor football stadium here late Thursday.
Pictures and an aerial film footage of the set being constructed for the speech show a curved backdrop with creamy, gray column-like structures, which could suggest Washington architecture, or a classical structure, like a Greek or Roman temple.
Republicans sent out an edition of their "Audacity Watch" email newsletter which they use to point out perceived examples of hubris by the Obama campaign, titled "The Temple of Obama."
McCain also featured the structure on a blog on his website.
The McCain campaign has issued a flurry of campaign commercials mercilessly ribbing the Democratic candidate over his elevated rhetorical style, and mocked Obama over a White House-style lecturn he once used.
In one ad, titled "The One" Obama is depicted as a quasi-religious figure who "anointed" himself to lead the world.
"Can you see the light?" the hard-hitting negative ad asked, following up on a McCain theme that the Illinois Democrat is arrogant, transfixed by his own celebrity and not yet ready to lead.
"It shall be known, that in 2008, the world will be blessed," said the narrator of the minute-long web video sent to McCain supporters in a fundraising appeal.
"They will call him, 'The One,'" the advertisement said, using a sarcastic tone and stark religious imagery.
The ad features moments from Obama's soaring speeches, taken out of context, to frame an image of a candidate McCain supporters say presumptuously acted as though he was already president during an international tour last month.
A previous furore raged over the previous McCain attack, ad, which compared Obama to troubled popular culture divas Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, and mocked his global celebrity.
There was no immediate comment from the Obama campaign.
Gee, and Biden's 65
Isn't that old Peggy
Don't you realize that agism is every bit as awful and repugnant as sexism and racism
You don't have to worry because Bot's never age right peggy?
Idiot
Why settle for Decider when he's already the Messiah?
He's gonna make the seas rise and the Earth heal itself don't ya know?
The Greek columns he's making for his speech are hilarious ( Toga Tog Toga )
Doens't Barry understand that his polls are sinking because he's coming across as an elitist egomaniac?
His speeches in Germany in front of monuments only caused his polls to go down and now he's recreating the same thing here
McCain v Barry fight video:
Please provide a link to anyone who has gone through that process because they made a political ad that the Bushes didn't like ( except for in yourn paranoid fantasies )?
TIA
The benefits have far outweighed the abuses
WHy can't you libs just even try and have some ethics and condemn abusive bahavior when the left does it?
Some Inconvenient Truths
Posted by: McQ
Just when gathered Democrats were about to convince the nation that they live in a miserable place and in miserable conditions, the Census Bureau has to report this:
.Income. Median household income rose to $50,233 in 2007 after adjusting for inflation. That's $665 more than a year earlier but still below the peak of 1999. Income in black households rose for the first time since 1999.
.Poverty. The poverty rate remained stable at 12.5% of households.
.Equality. The top one-fifth of households took home slightly less of the nation's income in 2007. The middle and lower-middle class gained the most.
.Insurance. The number of people without health insurance dropped 1.3 million to 45.7 million. The uninsured fell to 15.3% from 15.8%. The primary reason for decline: More people, especially children, are covered by government-sponsored insurance.
*sigh*
How in the world can a party preach gloom and doom when stats like that are published right in the middle of their pitch?
Barack Obama Really, Really Wants His Critics Thrown in Jail.
There's a funny side to this story, and a not-so-funny side.
Posted by: Leon H. Wolf
Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 07:42AM
2 Comments
Barack Obama really, really does not like it when you point out that his political career was launched in the home of unrepentant (although incompetent) terrorist Bill Ayers. He dislikes it so much, he wants to have the people who are doing it thrown in jail.
Seriously.
Yeah, apparently, the Democrats are still absolutely obsessed with the narrative about how Kerry lost the election because he didn't respond to the Swifties quickly enough. I had always assumed, when I heard this narrative, that by "respond," they meant "argue that the ads were erroneous." It turns out that they actually meant, "try go get the people who created and funded the ads thrown in jail." Well, I guess that's one way to go about it.
Note that this is not an idle threat. The Politico notes that this is the second time that Obama's campaign has sent a letter to the DoJ demanding that the DoJ do something. The first letter was not a mere publicity stunt: they really think their attackers belong in prison and they will continue pushing for that. And apparently it's a pattern for Obama's chief legal guy:
It's worth noting that this isn't the first time Bauer has called for criminal investigations and prosecutions into the donors to independent groups critical of Obama, including one supporting John Edwards and another supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton. His words did have the effect of scaring their donors and consultants, but haven't yet appeared to result in any prosecution.
Now for the funny part of the story: the Politico indicates that the Justice Department is politely telling the Obama campaign to go pound sand by pointedly refusing to comment.
Now for the not-so-funny part of the story: if Obama is elected President, the Department of Justice won't be able to respond with nothing more than a pointed "no comment" when he asks them to investigate his political opponents for daring to criticize him.
The Truth About Russia in Georgia
I Am Georgia Stop Russia.jpg
TBILISI, GEORGIA – Virtually everyone believes Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili foolishly provoked a Russian invasion on August 7, 2008, when he sent troops into the breakaway district of South Ossetia. “The warfare began Aug. 7 when Georgia launched a barrage targeting South Ossetia,” the Associated Press reported over the weekend in typical fashion.
Virtually everyone is wrong. Georgia didn't start it on August 7, nor on any other date. The South Ossetian militia started it on August 6 when its fighters fired on Georgian peacekeepers and Georgian villages with weapons banned by the agreement hammered out between the two sides in 1994. At the same time, the Russian military sent its invasion force bearing down on Georgia from the north side of the Caucasus Mountains on the Russian side of the border through the Roki tunnel and into Georgia. This happened before Saakashvili sent additional troops to South Ossetia and allegedly started the war.
Regional expert, German native, and former European Commission official Patrick Worms was recently hired by the Georgian government as a media advisor, and he explained to me exactly what happened when I met him in downtown Tbilisi. You should always be careful with the version of events told by someone on government payroll even when the government is friendly as democratic as Georgia's. I was lucky, though, that another regional expert, author and academic Thomas Goltz, was present during Worms' briefing to me and signed off on it as completely accurate aside from one tiny quibble.
Goltz has been writing about the Caucasus region for almost 20 years, and he isn't on Georgian government payroll. He earns his living from the University of Montana and from the sales of his books Azerbaijan Diary, Georgia Diary and Chechnya Diary. Goltz experienced these three Caucasus republics at their absolute worst, and he knows the players and the events better than just about anyone. Every journalist in Tbilisi seeks him out as the old hand who knows more than the rest of us put together, and he wanted to hear Patrick Worms' spiel to reporters in part to ensure its accuracy.
“You,” Worms said to Goltz just before he started to flesh out the real story to me, “are going to be bored because I'm going to give some back story that you know better than I do.”
“Go,” Goltz said. “Go.”
The back story began at least as early as the time of the Soviet Union. I turned on my digital voice recorder so I wouldn't miss anything that was said.
Patrick Worms Map Tbilisi.jpg
Patrick Worms
“A key tool that the Soviet Union used to keep its empire together,” Worms said to me, “was pitting ethnic groups against one another. They did this extremely skillfully in the sense that they never generated ethnic wars within their own territory. But when the Soviet Union collapsed it became an essential Russian policy to weaken the states on its periphery by activating the ethnic fuses they planted.
Peacekeeper Poster Tbilisi.jpg
A poster on a wall in Tbilisi, Georgia
“They tried that in a number of countries. They tried it in the Baltic states, but the fuses were defused. Nothing much happened. They tried it in Ukraine. It has not happened yet, but it's getting hotter. They tried it in Moldova. There it worked, and now we have Transnitria. They tried it in Armenia and Azerbaijan and it went beyond their wildest dreams and we ended up with a massive, massive war. And they tried it in two territories in Georgia, which I'll talk about in a minute. They didn't try it in Central Asia because basically all the presidents of the newly independent countries were the former heads of the communist parties and they said we're still following your line, Kremlin, we haven't changed very much.”
Nagorno-Karabakh Map2.JPG
He's right about the massive war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, though few outside the region know much about it. Armenians and Azeris very thoroughly transferred Azeris and Armenians “back” to their respective mother countries after the Soviet Union collapsed through pogroms, massacres, and ethnic-cleansing. Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled savage communal warfare in terror. The Armenian military still occupies the ethnic-Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh region in southwestern Azerbaijan. It's another so-called “frozen conflict” in the Caucasus region waiting to thaw. Moscow takes the Armenian side and could blow up Nagorno-Karabakh, and subsequently all of Azerbaijan, at any time. After hearing the strident Azeri point of view on the conflict for a week before I arrived in Georgia, I'd say that particular ethnic-nationalist fuse is about one millimeter in length.
“Now the story starts really in 1992 when this fuse was lit in Georgia,” Worms said. “Now, there's two territories. There's Abkhazia which has clearly defined administrative borders, and there's South Ossetia that doesn't. Before the troubles started, Abkhazia was an extremely ethnically mixed area: about 60 percent Georgian, 20 percent Abkhaz, and 20 percent assorted others – Greeks, Estonians, Armenians, Jews, what have you. In Ossetia it was a completely integrated and completely mixed Ossetian-Georgian population. The Ossetians and the Georgians have never been apart in the sense that they were living in their own little villages and doing their own little things. There has been inter-marriage and a sense of common understanding going back to distant history. The Georgians will tell you about King Tamar – that's a woman, but they called her a king – and she was married to an Ossetian. So the fuse was lit and two wars start, one in Abkhazia and one in South Ossetia.”
Georgia Map.jpg
Georgia
South Ossetia is inside Georgia, while North Ossetia is inside Russia.
“The fuse was not just lit in Moscow,” he said. “It was also lit in Tbilisi. There was a guy in charge here, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a little bit like [Serbian Nationalist war criminal in Bosnia Radovan] Karadzic. He was a poet. He was an intellectual. But he was one of these guys who veered off into ethnic exclusivism. He made stupid declarations like Georgia is only for the Georgians. If you're running a multi-ethnic country, that is really not a clever thing to say. The central control of the state was extremely weak. The Russians were trying to make things worse. There was a civil war between Georgians and Tbilisi. But they key thing is that here there were militias, Georgian militias, and some of them pretty nasty.”
Thomas Goltz Briefing Tbilisi.jpg
Thomas Goltz
Thomas Goltz then interjected his only critique of Patrick Worms' explanation of events that led to this war. “It started in 1991,” he said, “but it went into 1992 and 1993, as well.” Then he turned to me. “This guy, [Zviad] Gamsakhurdia, was driven from power from across the street. They bombed this place.” He meant the Marriott Hotel. We stood in the lobby where Worms had set up his media relations operation. “There's a horrible picture in my Georgia book of this facade.”
“Of this building?” I said.
Marriot Tbilisi.jpg
Marriot Hotel (right), Tbilisi, Georgia
“Yeah,” Goltz said. “That was December 1991. He fled in December 1991.”
“Where did he go?” I said.
“To Chechnya,” Goltz said. “Of course. He led the government in exile until he came back in 1993 then died obscurely in the mountains, of suicide some people say, others say cancer. Then he was buried in Grozny.” He turned then again to Patrick Worms. “1991,” he said. “Not 1992.”
“1991,” Worms said. “Okay.”
So aside from that quibble, everything else Worms said to me was vouched for as accurate by the man who literally wrote the book on this conflict from the point of view of both academic and witness.
“So in 1991,” Worms said, “things here explode. And basically it gets pretty nasty. Thomas can tell you what happened. Read his book, it's worth it. And by the time the dust settles, there are between 20,000 and 30,000 dead. Many atrocities committed by both sides, but mostly – at least that's what the Georgians say – by the Abkhaz. And the end result is everybody gets kicked out. Everybody who is not Abkhaz or Russian gets kicked out. That's about 400,000 people. 250,000 of those still live as Internally Displaced Persons within Georgia. As for the rest: the Greeks have gone back to Greece, the Armenians to Armenia, some Abkhaz to Turkey, etc.
Abkhazia Map.jpg
Abkhazia (upper left)
“When it's over,” he said, “you've got two bits of Abkhazia which are not ethnic Abkhazia. You've got Gali district which is filled with ethnic Georgians. And you've got the Kodori Gorge which is filled with another bunch of Georgians. So there the end result was a classic case of ethnic-cleansing, but the world didn't pay much attention because it was happening at the same time as the Yugoslav wars. Ossetia was different. Ossetia also had a war that started about the same time, and it was also pretty nasty, but it never quite succeeded in generating a consolidated bit of territory that Ossetians could keep their own. When the dust settled there, you ended up with a patchwork of Georgian and Ossetian villages. Before the war, Ossetians and Georgians lived together in the same villages. After the war they lived in separate villages. But there were still contacts. People were talking, people were trading. It wasn't quite as nasty as it was in Abkhazia.
South Ossetia Map.JPG
“Now fast forward to the Rose Revolution,” he said.
The Rose Revolution was a popular bloodless revolution that brought Georgia's current president Mikheil Saakashvili to power and replaced the old man of Georgian politics Eduard Shevardnadze who basically ran the country Soviet-style.
“The first thing that Misha [Mikheil Saakashvili] did was try to poke his finger in [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's eyes as many times as possible,” Worms said, “most notably by wanting to join NATO. The West, in my view, mishandled this situation. America gave the wrong signals. So did Europe.”
“Can you elaborate on that a bit?” I said.
“I will,” he said. “But basically the encouragement was given despite stronger and stronger Russian signals that a Georgian accession to NATO would not be tolerated. Fast forward to 2008, to this year, to the meeting of NATO heads of state that took place in Bucharest, Romania, where Georgia was promised eventual membership of the organization but was refused what it really wanted, which was the so-called Membership Action Plan. The Membership Action Plan is the bureaucratic tool NATO uses to prepare countries for membership. And this despite the fact that military experts will tell you that the Georgian Army, which had been reformed root and branch with American support, was now in better shape and more able to meet NATO aspirations than the armies of Albania and Macedonia which got offered membership at the same meeting.
Night Shot Tbilisi 3.jpg
Tbilisi, Georgia
“Just a little bit of back story again, in July of 2007 Russia withdrew from the Conventional Forces Treaty in Europe. This is a Soviet era treaty that dictates where NATO and the Warsaw Pact can keep their conventional armor around their territories. Russia started moving a lot of materiel south. After Bucharest, provocations started. Russian provocations started, and they were mostly in Abkhazia.
“One provocation was to use the Russian media to launch shrill accusations that the Georgian army was in Kodori preparing for an invasion of Abkhazia. Now if you go up there – I took a bunch of journalists up there a few times – when you get to the actual checkpoint you have a wall of crumbling rock, a wooden bridge, another wall of crumbling rock, a raging torrent, and a steep mountainside filled with woods. It's not possible to invade out or invade in unless you've got air support. Which is why the Abkhaz were never able to kick these Georgians out. They just kept that bit of territory.”
He paused and looked over at Thomas Goltz as though he was bracing for a critique.
“I'm just doing what I've done already,” he said, “but this time I'm getting advice from an expert on how I'm doing.”
Thomas Goltz silently nodded.
Walls and Church Tbilisi.jpg
Tbilisi, Georgia
“Kodori provocations,” Worms continued, “and other provocations. First the Russians had a peacekeeping base under a 1994 agreement that allowed them to keep the peace in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia. They added paratroopers, crack paratroopers, with modern weaponry there. That doesn't sound a lot like peacekeeping. A further provocation: they start shooting unmanned Georgian aircraft drones out the sky. One of them was caught on camera by the drone as it was about to be destroyed. The United Nations confirmed that it was a Russian plane that did this. It probably took off from an airbase that the Russians were supposed to have vacated a few years ago, but they never let the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] in to check.
“The next provocation: On April 16 Putin signs a presidential decree recognizing the documents of Abkhazians and South Ossetians in Russia and vice versa. This effectively integrates these two territories into Russia's legal space. The Georgians were furious. So you have all these provocations mounting and mounting and mounting. Meanwhile, as of July, various air corps start moving from the rest of Russia to get closer to the Caucasus. These are obscure details, but they are available.
Stop Russia Tbilisi.jpg
A poster on a wall in Tbilisi, Georgia
“Starting in mid July the Russians launched the biggest military exercise in the North Caucasus that they've held since the Chechnya war. That exercise never stopped. It just turned into a war. They had all their elite troops there, all their armor there, all their stuff there. Everyone still foolishly thought the action was going to be in Abkhazia or in Chechnya, which is still not as peaceful as they'd like it to be.
“The Georgians had their crack troops in Iraq. So what was left at their central base in Gori? Not very much. Just Soviet era equipment and not their best troops. They didn't place troops on the border with Abkhazia because they didn't want to provoke the Abkhaz. They were expecting an attempt on Kodori, but the gorge is in such a way that unless they're going to use massive air support – which the Abkhaz don't have – it's impossible to take that place. Otherwise they would have done it already.
“So fast forward to early August. You have a town, Tskhinvali, which is Ossetian, and a bunch of Georgian villages surrounding it in a crescent shape. There are peacekeepers there. Both Russian peacekeepers and Georgian peacekeepers under a 1994 accord. The Ossetians were dug in in the town, and the Georgians were in the forests and the fields between the town and the villages. The Ossetians start provoking and provoking and provoking by shelling Georgian positions and Georgian villages around there. And it's a classic tit for tat thing. You shell, I shell back. The Georgians offered repeated ceasefires, which the Ossetians broke.
Friendliness Poster Tbilisi.jpg
A poster on a wall in Tbilisi, Georgia
“On August 3, the head of the local administration says he's evacuating his civilians. You also need to know one thing: you may be wondering what these areas live off, especially in Ossetia, there's no industry there. Georgia is poor, but Ossetia is poorer. It's basically a smuggler's paradise. There was a sting operation that netted three kilograms of highly enriched uranium. There are fake hundred dollar bills to the tune of at least 50 million dollars that have been printed. [South Ossetian “President” Eduard] Kokoity himself is a former wrestler and a former bodyguard who was promoted to the presidency by powerful Ossetian families as their puppet. What does that mean in practice? It means that if you are a young man, you have no choice. You can either live in absolute misery, or you can take the government's dime and join the militia. It happened in both territories.
“On top of that, for the last four years the Russians have been dishing out passports to anyone who asks in those areas. All you have to do is present your Ossetian or Abkhaz papers and a photo and you get a Russian passport on the spot. If you live in Moscow and try to get a Russian passport, you have the normal procedure to follow, and it takes years. So suddenly you have a lot of Ossetian militiamen and Abkhaz militiamen with Russian passports in effect paid by Russian subsidies.
Night Shot Tbilisi 1.jpg
Tbilisi, Georgia
“So back to the 3rd of August. Kokoity announces women and children should leave. As it later turned out, he made all the civilians leave who were not fighting or did not have fighting capabilities. On the same day, irregulars – Ingush, Chechen, Ossetians, and Cossacks – start coming in and spreading out into the countryside but don't do anything. They just sit and wait. On the 6th of August the shelling intensifies from Ossetian positions. And for the first time since the war finished in 1992, they are using 120mm guns.”
“Can I stop you for a second?” I said. I was still under the impression that the war began on August 7 and that Georgian President Saakashvili started it when he sent troops into South Ossetia's capital Tskhinvali. What was all this about the Ossetian violence on August 6 and before?
He raised his hand as if to say stop.
“That was the formal start of the war,” he said. “Because of the peace agreement they had, nobody was allowed to have guns bigger than 80mm. Okay, so that's the formal start of the war. It wasn't the attack on Tskhinvali. Now stop me.”
“Okay,” I said. “All the reports I've read say Saakashvili started the war.”
“I'm not yet on the 7th,” he said. “I'm on the 6th.”
“Okay,” I said. He had given this explanation to reporters before, and he knew exactly what I was thinking.
“Saakashvili is accused of starting this war on the 7th,” he said.
“Right,” I said. “But that sounds like complete bs to me if what you say is true.”
Thomas Goltz nodded.
*
I later met wounded Georgian soldiers in a Tbilisi hospital who confirmed what Patrick Worms had told me about what happened when the war actually started. I felt apprehensive about meeting wounded soldiers. Would they really want to talk to someone in the media or would they rather spend their time healing in peace?
My translator spoke to some of the doctors in the hospital who directed us to Georgian soldiers and a civilian who were wounded in South Ossetia and felt okay enough to speak to a foreign reporter.
Kaha Bragadze.jpg
Kaha Bragadze
“Every day and every hour the Russian side lied,” Georgian soldier Kaha Bragadze said. “It must be stopped. If not today, then maybe tomorrow. My troops were in our village, Avnevi. On the 6th of August they blew up our troops' four-wheel-drives, our pickups. They blew them up. Also in this village – it was August 5th or 6th, I can't remember – they started bombing us with shells. Two soldiers died that day, our peacekeepers. The Ossetians had a good position on the hill. They could see all our positions and our villages, and they started bombing. They went to the top of the hill, bombed us, then went down. We couldn't see who was shooting at us.”
Kaha Bragadze Leg.jpg
Kaha Bragadze's leg wounded by shrapnel from a Russian air strike
“Which day was this?” I said. “The 5th or the 6th?”
“I don't remember,” he said. “But it started that day from that place when two Georgians were killed.”
“Were they just bombing you the peacekeepers,” I said, “or also civilians and villages?”
“Before they started bombing us they took all the civilians out of their villages,” he said. “Then they started damaging our villages – houses, a gas pipe, roads, yards. They killed our animals. They evacuated their villages, then bombed our villages.”
Another Georgian soldier, Giorgi Khosiashvili, concurred
Giorgi Khosiashvili.jpg
Giorgi Khosiashvili
“I was a peace keeper as well,” he said, “but in another village. I was fired upon on August 6th. On the 5th of August they started shooting. They blew up our peacekeeping trucks. They put a bomb on the road and when they were driving they were blown up. They also mined the roads used by civilians. On the 6th of August they started bombing Avnevi. And at this time they took the civilians out of Tskhinvali and sent them to North Ossetia [inside Russia].”
“I saw this on TV,” said Alex, my translator. “They took the civilians, kids, women, and put them on the bus and sent them to North Ossetia.”
A civilian man, Koba Mindiashvili, shared the hospital room with the Georgian soldiers. He, too, was in South Ossetia where he lived outside Tskhinvali.
Koba Mindiashvili.jpg
Koba Mindiashvili
“When they started bombing my village,” he said, “I was running away and the soldiers wounded me. They robbed me and shot me in the leg with a Kalashnikov. I don't know if it was Russians or Ossetians. They took my car, took my gold chain, and shot me.”
“They didn't care if it was a house or a military camp,” Giorgi Khosiashvili said. “They bombed everything.”
“You actually saw this for yourself?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “I saw it. It was the Russian military airplanes. If they knew it was a Georgian village, they bombed all the houses. Many civilians were killed from this bombing.”
“It was Russians or Ossetians who did this?” I said.
“It was Russians,” he said. “The Ossetians don't have any jets.”
*
Back at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Tbilisi, Patrick Worms continued fleshing out the rest of the story. “Let me tell you what happened on the 7th,” he said. “On the 6th, while this is going on, the integration minister who was until a few months ago an NGO guy and who believes in soft power things, tried to go there and meet the separatist leadership. The meeting doesn't happen for farcical reasons. The shelling intensifies during the night and there is, again, tit for tat, but this time with weapons coming from the South Ossetian side which are not allowed under the agreement. By that time, the Georgians were seriously worried. All their armor that was near Abkhazia starts moving, but they are tanks, they don't have tank transporters, so they move slowly. They don't make it back in time. On the 7th, this continues. That afternoon, the president announces a unilateral ceasefire, a different one from the previous ones. It means I stop firing first, and if you fire, I still won't fire back. That holds until the next part of the story.
Peace Vigil Tbilisi.jpg
Peace vigil, Tbilisi, Georgia
“On the evening of the 7th, the Ossetians launch an all-out barrage focused on Georgian villages, not on Georgian positions. Remember, these Georgian villages inside South Ossetia – the Georgians have mostly evacuated those villages, and three of them are completely pulverized. That evening, the 7th, the president gets information that a large Russian column is on the move. Later that evening, somebody sees those vehicles emerging from the Roki tunnel [into Georgia from Russia]. Then a little bit later, somebody else sees them. That's three confirmations. It was time to act.
“What they had in the area was peacekeeping stuff, not stuff for fighting a war. They had to stop that column, and they had to stop it for two reasons. It's a pretty steep valley. If they could stop the Russians there, they would be stuck in the tunnel and they couldn't send the rest of their army through. So they did two things. The first thing they did, and it happened at roughly the same time, they tried to get through [South Ossetian capital] Tskhinvali, and that's when everybody says Saakashvili started the war. It wasn't about taking Ossetia back, it was about fighting their way through that town to get onto that road to slow the Russian advance. The second thing they did, they dropped a team of paratroopers to destroy a bridge. They got wiped out, but first they managed to destroy the bridge and about 15 Russian vehicles.
“The Georgians will tell you that they estimate that these two actions together slowed the Russian advance by 24 to 48 hours. That is what the world considered to be Misha's game. And you know why the world considers that? Because here in South Ossetia was the head of the peacekeeping troops. He hasn't been in Iraq, he's a peace keeper What have they been told for the last four years? They lived in a failed state, then there was the Rose Revolution – it wasn't perfect but, damn, now there's electricity, there's jobs, roads have been fixed – and what the Georgians have had drummed into them is that Georgia is now a constitutional state, a state of law and order. And everybody here knows that Ossetia is a gangster's smuggler's paradise. The whole world knows it, but here they know it particularly well. The peacekeepers had a military objective, and the first rule of warfare when you're talking to the media is not to reveal to your enemy what you're going to do. So they weren't going to blather into a microphone and say well, actually, I'm trying to go through Tskhinvali in order to stop the Russians. So what did he say instead? I'm here to restore constitutional order in South Ossetia. And that's it. With that, Georgia lost the propaganda war and the world believes Saakashvili started it. And the rest of the story...you know.”
Night Shot Tbilisi 2.jpg
Tbilisi, Georgia
“Let me make a couple of comments,” Goltz said.
“That,” Worms said, “to the best of my knowledge, is all true.”
“Let's just start at the ass end,” Goltz said to me. “This is your first time to the lands of the former Soviet Union?”
“Yes,” I said.
“The restoration of constitutional order,” he said, “may sound just like a rhetorical flourish with no echo in the American mindset. What it means in the post-Soviet mindset is what Boris Yeltsin was doing in Chechnya. This was the stupidest phrase this guy possibly could have used. That's why people want to lynch him.”
Goltz was referring to the head of the Georgian peacekeeping forces in South Ossetia. He turned then to Patrick Worms. “Your presentation was deliciously comprehensive. Perhaps it was...we'll ask our new friend Michael...too much information out of the gate to absorb.”
“I absorbed it,” I said.
“Okay,” Goltz said.
“Am I making any mistakes?” Worms said to Goltz. “Am I forgetting anything?”
“Well,” Goltz said, “there are some details that I would chip in. Who are the Ossetians and where do they live? This is the question that has been lost in all of the static from this story. This autonomy [South Ossetia] is an autonomous district, as opposed to an autonomous republic, with about 60,000 people max. So, where are the rest of the Ossetians? Guess where they live? Tbilisi. Here. There. Everywhere. There are more Ossetians – take a look around this lobby. You will find Ossetians here. Of those Ossetians who are theoretically citizens of the Republic of Georgia, 60,000 live there and around 40,000 live here.”
Cross Outside Tbilisi.jpg
A roadside cross outside Tbilisi, Georgia
“What do they think about all this?” I said.
“They're scared as shit,” Goltz said.
“Are they on the side of those who live in South Ossetia?” I said.
“No,” he said. “One of them is Georgia's Minister of Defense. Georgia is a multi-ethnic republic. And the whole point of the Ossetian ethnic question is this: South Ossetia is part of Georgia.”
“Are reporters receptive to what you're saying?” I said to Worms.
“Everyone is receptive,” he said. “Everyone, regardless of nationality, even those who love Georgia, genuinely thought Saakashvili started it.”
“That's what I thought,” I said. “That's what everyone has been writing.”
Putin Hopscotch Tbilisi.jpg
Vladimir Putin's face used for hopscotch, Tbilisi, Georgia
“Yes,” he said. “Absolutely. We've been trying to tell the world about this for months. If you go back and look at the archives you'll see plenty of calls from the Georgian government saying they're really worried. Even some Russian commentators agree that this is exactly what happened. Don't forget, they sent in a lot of irregulars, Chechens, Cossacks, Ossetians, Ingush – basically thugs. Not normal Chechens or Ingush – thugs. Thugs out for a holiday. Many Western camera crews were robbed at gunpoint ten meters from Russian tanks while Russian commanders just stood there smoking their cigarettes while the irregulars...that happened to a Turkish TV crew. They're lucky to still be alive. Some of the Georgians were picked up by the irregulars. If they happened to be female, they got raped. If they happened to be male, they got shot immediately, sometimes tortured. Injured people we have in hospitals who managed to get out have had arms chopped off, eyes gouged out, and their tongues ripped out.”
Putin Sidewalk Georgia Flag Tbilisi.jpg
Vladimir Putin
Russian rules of engagement, so to speak, go down harder than communism. And the Soviet era habits of disinformation are alive and well.
“You also have to remember the propaganda campaign that came out,” he said. “Human Rights Watch is accusing the Russian authorities of being indirectly responsible for the massive ethnic cleansing of Georgians that happened in South Ossetia. The Ossetians are claiming that the Georgians killed 2,000 people in Tskhinvali, but when Human Rights Watch got in there a few days ago and talked to the hospital director, he had received 44 bodies. There was nobody left in that town. Plus it's the oldest law of warfare: have your guns in populated areas, and when the enemy responds, show the world your dead women and children.
“Right,” I said. “That goes on a lot where I usually work, in the Middle East.”
“Yes,” he said. “That's exactly what the Russians were doing.”
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Posted by Michael J. Totten at August 26, 2008 6:34
Michelle Obama’s Two Americas
At the convention, a new and radically different message from the candidate’s wife.
By Byron York
Denver — Near the end of Michelle Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention Monday night, I got an e-mail from a friend who had been with me at another speech by Mrs. Obama, in Charlotte, North Carolina, last May, on the eve of that state’s primary. “This isn’t the Michelle we know,” my friend said. And indeed, Mrs. Obama’s speech to the delegates here in Denver was worlds away from her address in Charlotte.
In Denver, Michelle Obama described America as a place of hope, a place where people find success during the course of “improbable journeys.” In Charlotte, her America was a dark and ugly place, where people who work hard are knocked down by sinister forces — a place where even young children burst into tears when they realize the deck is stacked against them.
’
In Denver, Mrs. Obama said, “My piece of the American Dream is a blessing hard won by those who came before me.” Those forebears, she explained, were “driven by the same conviction that drove my dad to get up an hour early each day to painstakingly dress himself for work — the same conviction that drives the men and women I’ve met all across this country…That’s why I love this country.”
In Charlotte, Mrs. Obama said, “We’re still living in a time and in a nation where the bar is set, right?…You start working hard and sacrificing and you think you’re getting close to that bar, you’re working and you’re struggling, and then what happens? They raise the bar…keep it just out of reach.”
Had something changed in the last few months? In the early primaries, Mrs. Obama often gave complaining speeches. It was in late February that she said the now-famous words, “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.” In other speeches, she grumbled — sometimes at length — about having to pay back her college loans. And she, as much as her husband, was associated with the anti-American rants of Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
The images began to accumulate. By the later months of the Democratic primary race, when her husband was stumbling to victory after a powerful stretch of wins in February, Mrs. Obama’s approval ratings began to slip. She was still not widely known at the time, but it seemed the more voters got to know her, the more they began to have reservations about her.
In May, the Pew Research Center found that 22 percent of people polled had an unfavorable opinion of Mrs. Obama. In July, an Associated Press poll showed that she had a 35 percent unfavorable rating — versus a 30 percent favorable figure. A couple of weeks ago, a the Rasmussen polling organization found that 43 percent of voters had an unfavorable impression of Mrs. Obama. (Of them, Rasmussen said, 24 percent said they had a very unfavorable view of her.)
The numbers were simply terrible for a candidate’s wife — not all that different from Hillary Clinton’s numbers, even though the former First Lady has been in the spotlight for much longer and was a candidate in her own right.
More recent polls have had slightly better news for Mrs. Obama. A few days ago, a Washington Post/ABC News poll showed her with a 30-percent unfavorable rating and a favorable rating that had inched up to 51 percent. Still, Mrs. Obama’s unfavorable numbers remain significant — and well above those of the Republican would-be First Lady, Cindy McCain.
So here in Denver Mrs. Obama had a job to do. It wasn’t just to introduce Americans to the Obama family or show another side of her husband’s personality. It was to rehabilitate herself, to take the edge of anger and resentment from her public pronouncements and embrace a wholesome, country-loving, American-Dream-living image. And that’s what her speech at the convention was about.
Rollback Russian Expansionism
By J.R. Dunn
The only thing novel about the humiliation of Georgia is that the entity that carried it out is called "Russia" instead of the "Soviet Union".
It has happened many times before. In Czechoslovakia in 1948. In Berlin the same year. In Poland and East Germany in 1953. In Hungary in 1956. In Czechoslovakia again in 1968. In Afghanistan in 1979.
We have a lot of experience in dealing with this kind of outlaw behavior. We know what works and what does not. There is no mystery here, and no secrets. To learn how to deal with a newly belligerent Russia, we need only look at the Cold War.
It required several years for the West to get up to speed in dealing with Soviet aggression following WW II. FDR had given away the store at Yalta, allowing the Soviets a permanent and unchecked presence in Europe. He would have done more if allowed to -- he was willing to give the Italian navy to the USSR until it was pointed out that Italy in 1945 was an ally of the United States. Nevertheless, Stalin was already condemning his former "allies" before 1945 had ended. (Correcting the notion that the U.S. and the Soviet Union were "allies" in any real sense is long overdue. An "ally" shares at least some of the same war aims. The U.S. and UK were "allies". The Soviets were "co-belligerents", fighting alongside the U.S. without sharing any postwar goals.)
George Kennan's famous "long telegram", an accurate appraisal of the Soviet Union's plans and behavior (later published as an article in Foreign Affairs) sounded the original warning as early as February 1946. But official response was offhand at best. Under the "Truman Doctrine", the U.S. took a few steps, taking over some of Britain's imperial responsibilities, providing support to Greece and Turkey, and instituting the Marshall Plan, but with little sense of necessary urgency. Then in 1948 the Czechoslovakian coup and the Berlin Blockade began to concentrate people's minds. This was followed by the success of Mao's communists in China and the explosion of the first Soviet A-bomb in the summer of 1949, five years before anyone in the West believed possible.
These setbacks were instrumental in bringing about the change in strategy exemplified by NSC-68, the national security paper written by Paul Nitze. Generally referred to as "containment", the new strategy involved full-scale rearmament by the U.S, the foundation of NATO, and the restoring of West German status as a military power. (Kennan had already begun turning against his early conclusions and was to remain a critic of a forward Cold War policy for the rest of his long life.)
Containment was to remain the basis of Western actions in the Cold War for decades. While it secured the future of a free Western Europe, the policy had a number of serious shortcomings. The Soviets were able to find methods of undercutting it through subversion and sponsorship of proxy wars of "national liberation", carried out in large part by local communist parties backed with Soviet financing and weaponry. By the late 1950s, much of Africa and Asia had been set ablaze. After 1960, Castro's regime in Cuba dedicated itself to the same mission in Latin America.
Containment also provided too much room for second thoughts in the West. In the early 70s, Henry Kissinger, operating as adviser and later secretary of state to Richard M. Nixon, attempted to create an international settlement modeled on the Congress of Vienna under the name "detente", in which the status quo would be frozen under guarantees from each side. It was a heroic vision, and might have worked, had Soviet ideological imperatives not immediately undermined it.
Lesser figures such as Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter also played roles in wrecking containment. Johnson enmeshed the U.S. in an unwinnable war in Vietnam which allowed the Soviets to carry on as they wished elsewhere. He also oversaw the dismantlement of much of the American military machine (in order to finance his "Great Society" welfare state), enabling the Soviets to catch up and then surpass the U.S. in military capability. Carter attempted a policy of open appeasement, which got the response it always gets. By the late 1970s, the containment strategy was a hollow shell. The Soviets, well aware of this, acted without regard for the U.S. in dealing with the Solidarity movement in Poland and the outright invasion of Afghanistan
Containment's major flaw was that it was essentially a reactive policy, leaving the initiative to the Soviets. A more active policy appeared with the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
Reagan loathed communism (American communists had actually threatened his family during Reagan's term as a union president in the late 40s), and was convinced that the West had been effectively propping up the bankrupt system for decades. He publicly predicted that communism was destined for "the dustbin of history". But not content to simply watch, on taking office he embarked on an aggressive strategy that has been termed "rollback".
By the early 1980s, the USSR was seriously overextended on a number of fronts, facing near-revolt in its European satellites, a draining guerilla war in Afghanistan, and the economic strain of supporting numerous client states. Reversing the USSR's own strategy, Reagan funded and armed opposition forces throughout the Soviet empire. In Poland, Solidarity was provided financial support through underground conduits. The Afghan Mujahideen were given intelligence and advanced weapons. At the same time, Reagan began a long-overdue rehabilitation of American military power, reinstating several weapons systems canceled by the Carter administration.
None of this comprised a direct challenge to which the USSR could openly respond. Instead the Soviets turned to large-scale propaganda campaigns and such efforts as the nuclear freeze movement of the early 1980s, with no great success.
Reagan's hole card was the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) a visionary program intended to lay the basis for a defensive system capable of "rendering nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete". Although SDI was derided and dismissed in the U.S., the Soviets were simply terrified. They had no doubt that American technology could accomplish exactly what Reagan had called for. And without nuclear weapons, the USSR, in Vladimir Bukovsky's words, would become the equivalent of Bulgaria.
The Cold War reached its climax in October 1986 at Reykjavik, where Soviet reform leader Mikhail Gorbachev offered Reagan any concession he desired as long as he would junk SDI. Against the advice of his cabinet, Reagan walked out. The concessions came in any case, the Soviets having little choice at that point. Three years later the Berlin Wall, the most blatant testimony to state brutality in modern history, came down, the Iron Curtain dissipated into air, with the USSR itself soon to follow.
The ailing Reagan lived to witness the full success of his foreign policy, the most effective since that of James K. Polk. No other president apart from these two can be said to have set distinct goals in international relations and accomplished all of them.
But the U.S. has a habit of throwing away its victories, and the Cold War is no exception. Under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, policy vis-avis Russia lost impetus and direction. It was assumed that Russia would muddle its way to democracy, but little effort was made to guide the post-Soviet government or support internal efforts. In the early 90s, the Democratic National Committee sent a small group to Moscow to offer advice (this in itself told me that trouble was coming.), but that was the extent of Western assistance.
It wasn't long before reactionary elements, particularly those surrounding the KGB (There's no point in using the post-Soviet term. The organization has changed its name regularly since being established as the Cheka in December 1917. It remains the same outlaw group.), stepped in. No sooner had their picked candidate Vladimir Putin taken control than a low-key war against democratic and opposition elements began. Murders of political activists and reporters across the Russian Federation and even overseas became common practice.
In 2005, Ukrainian presidential candidate Victor Yushchenko was poisoned with dioxin in a attempt to derail his presidential bid. A year later, regime critic and former Russian intelligence agent Aleksandr Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive polonium 210 in London. To these attempts we can add relentless guerilla and intelligence activity against the former Soviet states, both democratic and otherwise.
The invasion of Georgia was simply the public formalization of all these efforts. As during the early years of the Cold War, hostilities have in fact been in progress for quite some time.
The Cold War and its aftermath present us with three methods of responding (overlooking Carter's policy of appeasement, which will find no supporters apart from the political fringes): containment, rollback, and drift. The policy of drift which marked the Bush 41 and Clinton administrations has been abandoned today under pressure of events, leaving us with a neat choice of two: containment and rollback.
The record reveals containment to be a clear failure. It was both expensive and complex. It locked the West into a rigid pattern of behavior easily manipulated by the USSR and its clients. It required a high degree of commitment over the long term, a commitment that not even its chief adherents were able to be maintain. Its sole advantage was that it relatively risk-free in the short term, although this benefit vanished after the Soviets learned to play the angles.
Rollback, on the other hand, was an astonishing success, so unexpected and unprecedented that many have still not come to terms with it. By the1980s, it was accepted throughout the West, in political, academic, diplomatic, and business circles, that the USSR was a permanent fact of history, and would remain so into the foreseeable future. Only Reagan and a small circle of advisors believed otherwise. Reagan's immense success is a clear refutation of any thesis of impersonal "historical forces". Rollback appears to be the sole workable method of dealing with a belligerent autocracy of the type represented by Russia.
How can it be adapted to the present situation? By taking the Reagan effort as a blueprint. Reagan applied relentless pressure -- military, financial, and political -- on Soviet weak points. No attempt was made to challenge the Soviets directly. At the same time, accepted means of support for the Soviet regime -- agricultural credits, industrial exchanges, technological and scientific collaboration -- were curtailed. There was no easing of pressure in the short term, nor were any negotiations offered. At the same time the Soviets were allowed a clear path of retreat. Rollback was a rational strategy, punishing bad behavior and rewarding rational decisions -- but only after these had been demonstrated in concrete.
Consideration must be made of Russian fears, and each of those fears made a reality. If Russia fears encirclement, she should be encircled. If Russia fears military inferiority, that inferiority should be clearly established. If Russia fears American technology, that technology should be unleashed.
A serious defensive league of former Soviet states, including Central Europe, the Baltics, Ukraine, and the Caucasian and Central Asian states, should be formed under the quiet sponsorship of the U.S. The mutually defensive purpose of this pact should be emphasized, with the threat remaining unnamed. Low-key exercises and consultations between militaries should be carried out, with select officers sent to the U.S. for further training.
The fact that many of these countries are political and territorial rivals is scarcely relevant at this point. Such questions must be set aside in light of national survival. American diplomats should take the lead here.
Revocation of easements and allowances given the Russians -- such as the use of the Sebastopol navy base -- should be brought to the table. The Ukraine has already placed limitations on the use of the base (and been answered with Russian threats). This is a good start that needs to be taken further. Sebastopol is not a Guantanamo or Gibraltar situation, a base in a remote area easily isolated from contact with the host nation. Sebastopol is a major Ukrainian city. Methods of making life unpleasant for the Russians are myriad, and include strikes, shutting down utilities for "repair" or "maintenance", and other forms of harassment. Sebastopol is a Russian weak point, and they need to be made aware of this quickly and repeatedly. (A friendly visit by U.S. 6th Fleet units to our Ukrainian friends should also be put on the calendar, perhaps combined with Black Sea exercises with Ukrainian naval forces. Such a visit has already occurred in Georgia.)
Russian "peacekeepers" are illegal occupiers in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and life ought to be made hot for them. There is technically no difference between the invasion and occupation of portions of Georgia and the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Particular attention should be paid to the Ossetian and Abkhazian "irregulars" who followed Russian troops into Georgia. It was they who carried out the majority of executions, rapes, and looting. Georgia was treated with almost the same level of brutality as Nazi Germany during the Soviet advance of 1945. The Russian "irregulars" are war criminals, and ought to be dealt with as such.
The final factor in Reagan's winning strategy, the Strategic Defense Initiative, has its equivalent in the National Missile Defense system now being extended to cover Europe. This system, which is a lineal descendant of SDI, drives the Russians to distraction for the simple reason that they can't duplicate it. The proposed placement of missiles in Poland is a evidently a major source of Russian belligerence. (The Poles, who had been dawdling over negotiations, signed an agreement immediately upon the invasion of Georgia. So much for Putin's strategic "brilliance".) Much can be done with this system. The Ukrainians have offered use of two radar sites. They should be taken up on it, and discussions concerning the potential support roles of other post-Soviet states should be opened.
The Russians truly believe that American technology is a magic box that when tapped, pours forth all sorts of miracles. Playing on this fear paid dividends during the 80s. There is no reason why it won't work again. (One element that should not be overlooked is the fact that the Navy's Aegis system has been upgraded to fill the anti-ballistic missile role. Perhaps those ships visiting Sebastopol could be Aegis destroyers?)
That's what rollback would look like in the 21st century. No aggression, no revanchism, simply unending and consistent pressure intended to modify Russian behavior to match international norms. The more Russia misbehaves, the more trouble she will see.
Russia is nowhere near as powerful as the Soviet Union. It's reported that Putin had to transfer an entire army from Central Russia to do the job in Georgia -- the forces in the Caucasus simply weren't up to it. Similarly, post-invasion bluster about the Russian navy acquiring a half-dozen aircraft carriers is completely empty. Such a naval program would challenge even the U.S., with all its resources. And it happens that the sole shipyard capable of such a project is located... in the Ukraine.
This is the reason -- and the only reason -- why the Russians are rattling nuclear weapons (and at Poland, no less). Their hand is weak, and they know it. The current Russian elite is comprised not of ideologues but hustlers, who very much want to live to enjoy power and riches. Actual use of nuclear weapons is the last thing on their minds.
Nor is Russia is anywhere near as economically robust as it seems. Recent reports indicate that the country's oil wealth is based on redrilling already exploited sites. Little in the way of new exploration has been carried out and is not likely to happen without outside investment. Russia's oil bubble may be ready to burst. (This brings up a related aspect of the rollback strategy: yet another reason for the U.S. to begin offshore drilling and building nuclear plants. Russia is flexing its muscles thanks in large part to funding gained from recent oil hikes. Cut the income, and we'll at the same time cut the impulse to shake up the international system.)
The long-term goal of any rollback strategy would be the same as that of the original Reagan effort: to bring about the establishment of a free and democratic Russia. The collapse of Russia into renewed autocracy is a tragedy of historical dimensions, particularly when so much was possible. We were told to avoid triumphalism, not to encourage a legal cleansing of the former Soviet state, to allow party members and KGB officers to go about their business. So there was no lustration, no exposure of the regime's crimes as in the central European states. We -- and the people of Georgia -- are paying the price for that now. Like 18th-century Prussia, "an army with a state", Russia today has become a secret police with a state.
The KGB must be considered a criminal organization and targeted as such. We can start by identifying its officers and agents worldwide, along with their activities, contacts, and so on. The KGB is as much a terror group as Al-Queda, and deserve no better treatment.
The rollback strategy worked in the 1980s. There is no reason why it can't work today. Ignorance of history may guarantee repetition, but how much worse when we overlook what we know?
And oh, no more looking into people's souls. That just causes trouble.
J.R. Dunn is conulting editor of American Thinker.
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The Worst Political Ad Ever? [Shannen Coffin]
I don't have an encyclopedic recall of every Presidential ad ever run, but I would have to think that Obama's new Bill Ayers ad (hat tip to Politico via our own Jim Geraghty, who provides us just about every useful insight possible on the race) would have to rank up there (or down there) as one of the worst Presidential political ad ever made. It apparently is a response to a harsh and quite effective ad by a 529 group that highlighted the Obama-Bill Ayers connection. Obama's response ad only reinforces the connection. It starts with: "Why is John McCain talking about the Sixties?" Well, McCain wasn't talking about anything; it was an unrelated (but supportive) group. "Why is McCain trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers?" asks the ad? As Jim points out, this seems to be the first time Obama has described his seemingly close associate as a radical. The ad explains that Obama "denounced Ayers' crime." Whether that is true or not, his recent association with Ayers is not addressed. And again, Obama suggests that it is somehow relevant that the crimes were committed when he was just eight years old. As I recall, Charles Manson was committing crimes in the same time frame, but are any Presidential candidates jumping on the Manson express? The ad then segues, quite roughly, into a sound bite critique of McCain's Iraq policies, taxes and jobs, something that very few viewers will remember about the ad. More will remember that they need to look more into the Bill Ayers association, especially since other Obama associates have proved nutty. Finally, the ad ends with a photo of McCain with President Bush. Is that the ultimate expression of moral equivalence, comparing the President's association with McCain with Obama's association with a well known domestic terrorist?
08/25 09:45 PM
Energy Policy for the Ignorant
As we've often said, the Democrats prey on ignorance. Often they know better and are being cynical; sometimes it's because they are ignorant themselves. A shocking example of the latter case was revealed yesterday when Nancy Pelosi appeared on Meet the Press. Mrs. Pelosi declared herself a major advocate of natural gas as an energy source, but then revealed that she is ignorant of the fact that natural gas is a fossil fuel.
This wasn't just a slip of the tongue; Pelosi repeated the error several times. From the transcript of her appearance:
BROKAW: Well, I think most people understand that, but at the same time, if we work our way off carbon-based fuels, in the meantime, this is not going to happen overnight.
PELOSI: No, it isn't, but you could -- again, you could reduce the price at the pump immediately with (inaudible). You can have a transition with natural gas. You can have a transition with natural gas. That is cheap, abundant and clean compared to fossil fuels.
***
PELOSI: I'm -- I'm investing in something I believe in. I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels.
***
PELOSI: Well, that's not -- that is the marketplace. The fact is, the supply of natural gas is so big, and you do need a transition if you're going to go from fossil fuels, as you say, you can't do it overnight, but you must transition.
These investments in wind, in solar and biofuels and focus on natural gas, these are the real alternatives.
So it's beyond dispute: Nancy Pelosi really does not understand that natural gas is a fossil fuel. This is truly shocking. Pelosi is one of the principal people responsible for setting the nation's energy policy. In the House of Representatives, she has blocked exploration and development of natural gas resources as well as other fossil fuels, thereby raising the price of gasoline at the pump and energy costs across the board. And she has wielded this immense power while being ignorant of the most basic facts about energy. She is not qualified to carry on an intelligent conversation about energy, let alone set the nation's energy policy.
The folks at the Institute for Energy Research have prepared a primer on energy for Mrs. Pelosi's benefit:
Natural gas is colorless, odorless fossil fuel that is prized for its cleanliness and its many uses - including energy. It is produced in much the same way as oil – by drilling for it – and is often produced in conjunction with oil.
Pelosi's ignorance is deadly; she says she is a big booster of natural gas, but she literally fails to understand that to get natural gas we have to drill for it, onshore and off. Hence this exchange yesterday:
BROKAW: Sounds like we’re going to have offshore drilling.
PELOSI: No, no, no.
Nancy Pelosi's ignorance is costing every American money, impairing our economy, depriving us of untold hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs, and endangering our national security. One wonders how long voters will be willing to put up with Democratic control of Congress.
You should hang on the same gallows as Hussein did. With any luck you will
Wonder if he got a PM about the quality of his posts??
We really need to know what the standards are here