Story Of An American Sniper

In February's Vanity Fair.

Very very cool.

(h/t Scott L.)

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On Obama's 'Partisan, Condescending' State Of The Union Speech

Marc Thiessen was lead writer on President Bush's last two SOTU speeches. He offered his critique of Obama's speech at The Corner and in today's WaPo.

Listening to President Obama's speech, I could not help wondering how different this night would have been had Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's bomb not malfunctioned. Four weeks ago our country was the target of a catastrophic terrorist attack. But for the grace of God, Northwest Flight 253 would have crashed into downtown Detroit, killing thousands. Yet just a month later, it is an afterthought for this president. His only mention of the failed attack was a passing reference that he was responding with "better airline security."

Worse, the president's brief discussion of terrorism focused not on what he was doing to defend the country but was, rather, a vigorous defense of himself. His first words on the subject were a chastisement of those who would dare criticize his handling of terrorism, declaring that "all of us love this country" and warning his Republican critics to "put aside the schoolyard taunts about who is tough." It's all about him. No acknowledgement of how close we came to disaster or praise for the brave passengers who subdued the terrorist. No, only this message for his critics: If you question the wisdom of telling a captured terrorist "you have the right to remain silent," you are really questioning the president's patriotism and engaging in childish taunts.

The fact is, the American people have real concerns about Obama's approach to terrorism. They do question the wisdom of eliminating CIA interrogations, closing Guantanamo Bay, bringing the terrorists held there to this country, putting Khalid Shiekh Mohammed and his cohorts on trial in civilian courts, and giving captured terrorists Miranda rights after 50 minutes of questioning. Instead of acknowledging these concerns, Obama dismissed them. It was strange, defensive, arrogant -- and un-presidential.

I'm also bothered that Iraq & Afghanistan get such short shrift from this President. I read a lot of military blogs and try and keep on top of what's happening in those places. One of the things that comes across a lot is how frustrated members of the military are with the fact that many Americans both don't know and don't seem to care about what's happening to them wherever they are.

Part of the reason for this has got to be the complete lack of attention given to them by President Obama and the Democrat party. And this was reflected in Obama's SOTU last night.

Ps. Yes, I am also annoyed by the arrogant, lecturing tilt of his head when he speaks.

UPDATE 2:34pm GMT: If you need a palate cleanser, here's President Ronald Reagan's SOTU in 1988. (via Orin Kerr @ The Volokh Conspiracy)

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Obama's Spending Spree

Remember back when Democrats used the deficit and the rhetoric of fiscal responsibility to pound on President Bush?

Like their late-found opposition to the Iraq War and the Patriot Act (etc.), that was an act of complete intellectual dishonesty.

Behold, Obama's fiscal responsibility:

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what hypocrisy looks like.

And no, Republicans & Democrats aren't just the same.

(via DrewM @ Ace, natch)

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Ian Fisher: Images Of A Young Soldier

Via Ace, the Denver Post followed Ian Fisher as he went from Army recruit, through basic training, to Iraq and home again.

Check it out.

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Harry Reid's Nuts 6

A report on the contraction, not the possessive.

This is turning from a sometime feature to a daily feature.

For Senator Reid, everything is about maximizing political gain. The best example of this was the delight Senator Reid took in American pre-Surge problems and the seats it would gain Democrats in the 2006 elections (for entertainment purposes, see this. Love Dennis Miller). This man is shameless. Absolutely shameless.

The latest example, via Glenn Thrush at Politico, is tamer, but of a piece with the Iraq example.

Q: How will U.S. Sen. (Edward) Kennedy's death affect things?

A: I think it's going to help us. He hasn't been around for some time. We're going to have a new chairman of that committee, it'll be, I don't know for sure, but I think Sen. (Chris) Dodd, (D-Conn.). He has a right to take it. Either him or (U.S. Sen. Tom) Harkin, (D-Iowa), whichever one wants it can have it. I think he (Kennedy) will be a help. He's an inspiration for us. That was the issue of his life and he didn't get it done.

This is also right in line with Rahm Emanuel's personal political philosophy that one ought never let a crisis go to waste. True leftist Democrats survey the political landscape and opportunistically take advantage of any crisis or mourning, sympathetic public.

I guess I should just be glad that Senator Reid is just as willing to capitalize on the death of one of his own--consistency!--as he was on the deaths of American soldiers.

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Don't Forget About Iraq

The Surge bought us success & peace in Iraq which our current President & Congressional Democratic leadership both denied AND actively worked against.

This much is undeniable.

Now that hard-fought peace & security has been won, the worry is that Obama might abandon Iraq and seize defeat from the jaws of victory. As Michael Yon explains, these gains are reversible.

Today Iraq is succeeding, but as Generals Petraeus or Odierno might say, the situation remains fragile and reversible.

Whereas the Bush-war ended in a new if messy democracy, this year we could see an Obama-war begin; the new President has sent a clear signal that we intend to mostly abandon Iraq during this crucial transition period. Today, the progress is obvious. But if Iraq descends back into chaos, the Obama-war, a newborn war, will not be a result of U.S. aggression, but of limp leadership intent on fulfilling campaign promises that were misinformed to begin with.

Ignore me, if you like; Michael Yon has spent more time on the ground in Iraq than any other journalist in the world.

If Iraq regresses, Obama may try to blame generals or his predecessor, but he will have no one to blame but himself and perhaps his advisers and some idiot members of his constituency who made him promise to withdraw, regardless of conditions on the ground.


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Brits With Backbone

Between time spent at Cambridge & UCL on my MA, I've listened to a lot of liberal elites. They have the same opinions on, well, everything, as the liberal elites in the US.

My flatmates are among what I believe/hope to be a silent majority of Brits in this country who are, you know, sane when it comes to their politics. They love their country & respect the troops who defend their freedom.

I'm not going to repeat the whole story, Ace has got it covered, but there was a Welcome Home parade yesterday for British troops returning from Iraq. The usual, useful idiots--al Qaeda in Iraq & Taliban apologists--were out to embarrass themselves as they tried to shame the troops.

Mission decidedly not accomplished.

Anyway, I wanted to post video footage of the Brits in the street--the ones out to welcome home their heroes--shouting the "protesters" out of the public square. This is the usually silent majority I referred to above.

Note: As with any link to Ace, the usual language warnings apply. Additionally, there may be cursing in the vid, I can't tell; their accents make it hard for me to discern 4-letter words from ones we don't find offensive, but funny. Given the inflamed emotions, I'd imagine a few of the former were thrown around. You've been warned.




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Thank You, President Bush (UPDATED)

Thank you, President Bush, for keeping us safe.

On 11 September 2001, I watched the news reports and listened to every last pundit say that terrorist attacks were the new reality. The question was not if, but when. Thank you, President Bush, for outlining and executing 7.5 years of policy that have protected America from further terrorist attack.

I think 70% of Americans (those who disapproved of President Bush in the last poll) are wrong. I think that future, fair-minded historians will re-evaluate Bush 43 and find a good and successful presidency.

His was a presidency marked, not by political expedience, as was that of his predecessor, but by one question: What's best for the country? President Bush is a good, honest, kind man. I believe he was right about Iraq. Iraq was the great test of his presidency.

He could have cut and run as the entire Democrat left and some on the right advocated, but he did not. And in so doing, by staying and fighting and finding a way, he spared untold millions of lives and through the instrumentality of an unparalleled fighting force, created a stable, peaceful, democratic friend and ally in the Middle East.

President Bush supported many good causes. He was a friend to Israel and a friend to the oppressed in Cuba & China and anywhere that felt the boot of tyranny. He brought attention and care to Africa--more than any President or any leader of any nation before him. Africa loves George W. Bush. On the life issues--stem cells and abortion--he was a right good defender of the defenseless.

I am overwhelmingly grateful to President Bush and proud to have had him as my President.

21 January 1:26pm BST:


Found at Little Green Footballs, add your thanks to President Bush to this long list. I was #11,737.

Given that his #1 responsibility was to keep us safe, I'd say, hell yeah, Mission Accomplished.


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Harry Reid's Nuts 3

A report on the contraction, not the possessive.

I've kind of neglected this feature over the last few months. Not for lack of material, but for lack of interest. Even when Reid said or did something ridiculous (on a fairly regular basis), I just couldn't seem to find the motivation to post anything about it.

Given that he's now saying outrageous things about Iraq, like, he had anything at all to do with the success there, I couldn't help myself.



Of course, Ace says it best:

This is the spin that we all knew was coming. Indeed, we've already seen it a dozen times, but not from Harry "The War is Lost, the Surge Has Failed" Reid. The claim, of course, is that by arguing for surrender and defeat, the liberal defeatists were actually arguing for a change in strategy that would result in victory.

Bear in mind, this is especially galling coming from him, as he did not merely say the war is lost. He also was a prime opponent of the surge, arguing it could never work. And then, when the surge began, he said it was doomed. And then, even when it succeeded, he declared the surge a failure.

And now that the surge is so obviously a victory that even he can't deny it, he says You're welcome. I did that.

Whatever else you may believe about Iraq, the myth that Democrats had anything whatsoever to do with the positive outcome, ought not enter into the realm of the remotely possible.

And that's one of the great disappointments: They could have been constructive. They could have worked with people like John McCain, who called for something approximating The Surge at least 2 years ahead of The Surge.

But they didn't. They played politics with the war, called it "lost," accused our troops of all sorts of bad things--terrorizing women and kids, for instance--and on and on. Now that things are hunky dory, they--Harry Reid in the forefront--want to take credit for the very thing, against which, they actively worked.


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Obama: 'I Didn't Really Mean It' (UPDATED)

About complete withdrawal from Iraq, that is.

Which, as you readers already know, pleases me a great deal. I'm glad to see the airy rhetoric of Obama's many inane campaign promises (rubber) hit the proverbial road. As us realists always knew, those sorts of ridiculous promises were never going to work for real.

On the campaign trail, Senator Barack Obama offered a pledge that electrified and motivated his liberal base, vowing to “end the war” in Iraq.

But as he moves closer to the White House, President-elect Obama is making clearer than ever that tens of thousands of American troops will be left behind in Iraq, even if he can make good on his campaign promise to pull all combat forces out within 16 months.

“I said that I would remove our combat troops from Iraq in 16 months, with the understanding that it might be necessary — likely to be necessary — to maintain a residual force to provide potential training, logistical support, to protect our civilians in Iraq,” Mr. Obama said this week as he introduced his national security team.

Publicly at least, Mr. Obama has not set a firm number for that “residual force,” a phrase certain to become central to the debate on the way ahead in Iraq, though one of his national security advisers, Richard Danzig, said during the campaign that it could amount to 30,000 to 55,000 troops. Nor has Mr. Obama laid out any timetable beyond 16 months for troop drawdowns, or suggested when he believes a time might come for a declaration that the war is over.

In the meantime, military planners are drawing up tentative schedules aimed at meeting both Mr. Obama’s goal for withdrawing combat troops, with a target of May 2010, and the Dec. 31, 2011, date for sending the rest of American troops home that is spelled out in the new agreement between the United States and the Iraqi government.

That status-of-forces agreement remains subject to change, by mutual agreement, and Army planners acknowledge privately that they are examining projections that could see the number of Americans hovering between 30,000 and 50,000 — and some say as high as 70,000 — for a substantial time even beyond 2011.

Like Ace, I wonder what his supporters will say now to excuse his betrayal of what was the most important issue to them during this campaign: The complete and total withdrawal of American "occupying" forces from Iraq.

Obamaniacs, commence tying yourselves in nuanced knots.

(h/t Hot Air & Ace)

UPDATED 2:28pm BST: Typically, I'm content to just mention some point about how Obama's not living up to his promise, make a snarky comment, and leave it at that. Fortunately, people like Ryan D. at Pendulum Politics exist to actually look at the substance of the situation.


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'It's The Ideology (And The Demographics), Stupid'

(with apologies to James Carville)

Mark Steyn's take on the Mumbai attacks and how they fit in to the broader picture is a must read. Sure, he pounds the demographics drum, again, but it's an important part of the advance of jihadism as an ideology:

[...] we’re in danger of missing the forest for the trees. The forest is the ideology. It’s the ideology that determines whether you can find enough young hotshot guys in the neighborhood willing to strap on a suicide belt or (rather more promising as a long-term career) at least grab an AK and shoot up a hotel lobby. Or, if active terrorists are a bit thin on the ground, whether you can count at least on some degree of broader support on the ground. You’re sitting in some distant foreign capital but you’re minded to pull off a Bombay-style operation in, say, Amsterdam or Manchester or Toronto. Where would you start? Easy. You know the radical mosques, and the other ideological-front organizations. You’ve already made landfall.

It’s missing the point to get into debates about whether this is the “Deccan Mujahideen” or the ISI or al-Qaeda or Lashkar-e-Taiba. That’s a reductive argument. It could be all or none of them. The ideology has been so successfully seeded around the world that nobody needs a memo from corporate HQ to act: There are so many of these subgroups and individuals that they intersect across the planet in a million different ways. It’s not the Cold War, with a small network of deep sleepers being directly controlled by Moscow. There are no membership cards, only an ideology. That’s what has radicalized hitherto moderate Muslim communities from Indonesia to the Central Asian stans to Yorkshire, and co-opted what started out as more or less conventional nationalist struggles in the Caucasus and the Balkans into mere tentacles of the global jihad.

[...]

This isn’t law enforcement but an ideological assault — and we’re fighting the symptoms not the cause. Islamic imperialists want an Islamic society, not just in Palestine and Kashmir but in the Netherlands and Britain, too. Their chances of getting it will be determined by the ideology’s advance among the general Muslim population, and the general Muslim population’s demographic advance among everybody else.

So Bush is history, and we have a new president who promises to heal the planet, and yet the jihadists don’t seem to have got the Obama message that there are no enemies, just friends we haven’t yet held talks without preconditions with. This isn’t about repudiating the Bush years, or withdrawing from Iraq, or even liquidating Israel. It’s bigger than that. And if you don’t have a strategy for beating back the ideology, you’ll lose.

(emphasis added)

This is the ideological challenge: Making "moderate" Islam (broadly speaking, the ones who don't use violent means to achieve a worldwide caliphate) more appealing than radical (is there any other kind) jihadism (aka, Islamofascism or whatever other word you like to use).

Look, whatever you may have originally thunk about Iraq, it is quickly shaping into exactly the type of pluralist, muslim, moderate state President Bush always hoped it would be. Sure, Obama will take credit when that happens, but still, Iraq will be there as an example to the rest of the Middle East (and world, for that matter).

Democracy allows for Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds and Christians to all get along.


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Happy Victory In Iraq Day

Congratulations and thank you to our men and women in uniform.

Two years ago this fall, things looked pretty bad. Iraq was falling apart, our troops were playing whack-a-mole with the insurgents, Sunnis and Shiites were resuming their blood feud. For a reminded of how bad it was, read my post from two years ago. You'll note that Joe Lieberman figures prominently.

Though the hard fighting may be done, Iraq still needs our support. A hasty withdrawal, or cessation of Iraqi troop-training--pretty much anything that ignores the advice of GI Joe General Petraeus--could endanger hard-won gains in that country.

I guess that's why this is my biggest Hope for Obama: That he listens to and takes the advice of good generals like Petraeus & Odierno.

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Michael Yon On The Way Forward

Let me be clear: I'm joining in the celebration of 22 November as VI-Day (Victory in Iraq) not because I want to give whoever more fodder with which to ridicule those of us who want to win, but because I want to celebrate the accomplishments and sacrifice of our men and women in the military.

What they have achieved in Iraq is an incredible feat of arms. It ought to be celebrated. If, indeed, it works out that Barack Obama is able to withdraw on any timeline whatsoever and that withdrawal does not result in chaos and a failed state, it will have been because of what our military accomplished in Iraq.

I've said this before, but I repeat it again now: If you want to know what's really going on in Iraq and now, Afghanistan, you had better be reading Michael Yon. He doesn't do drive-by reporting, just visiting combat zones a few times a year, he is fully immersed, living in country and filing regular reports. He is funded and supported by the voluntary donations of his readers (in fact, this would be a good place to donate). He is not a cheerleader, but tells it like it is. His reporting is indespensible and, as far as I can tell, can't be had anywhere else.

His 10 November report talks about the success in Iraq but also warns President-elect Obama about the many challenges that we face in Afghanistan. Like everything he writes, it's a good read.

The Iraq war is over. Barring the unforeseen, the darkest days are behind, though we are still losing soldiers to low-level fighting with enemies that are true “dead-enders.” Last month we lost seven Americans in combat in Iraq. Peace, however, is not upon us. Another thirty or so Iraqis died today in suicide attacks. Nobody suffers more at the hands of Islamic terrorists than other Muslims.

A new President will soon begin to make critical decisions about Iraq and Afghanistan, the economic crisis at home, and countless other matters. While the Iraq war began, then boiled and finally cooled before President-elect Obama will be sworn into office on January 20th, 2009, the Afghanistan-Pakistan spectacle is just getting started. He was always a fierce opponent of our involvement in Iraq. And, as with so many Democrats in the Senate, he argued frequently, during the campaign, that we should have been focused on Afghanistan all along, because it is the real incubator of the international terrorist threat. Timing being everything, our new President will get his wish. Afghanistan now moves to center stage. The conflicts in Afghanistan and between Afghanistan and Pakistan have the simmering potential to overshadow anything we’ve seen in Iraq.

Click to read the rest of what Yon "hopes" Obama understands.

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Stephen Hadley, Awesome American

In the week-long run-up to VI-Day (Victory in Iraq Day), I'll be posting good articles related to the success of our troops, The Surge, and those who supported The Surge against the Democrat and public opinion tide.

One of the people to include in the pantheon was Stephen Hadley.

[...] one fact trumps everything else: Without this good man's courage and persistence, there would have been no surge.

I don't think I am talking out of school to mention facts that have been recorded in newspaper articles and books as different as Bing West's "The Strongest Tribe" and Bob Woodward's "The War Within." The surge story begins back in 2006, when al Qaeda finally succeeded in setting the Shia and Sunni at each others' throats. That October, with Baghdad consumed by sectarian fires, Mr. Hadley tasked William Luti to come up with a new way forward.

Mr. Luti was then serving in the National Security Council (NSC) as special assistant for defense policy and strategy. A retired Navy captain who had commanded an amphibious ready group that included thousands of Marines, he was familiar with war planning. The briefing that he came up with was called "Changing the Dynamics: Surge and Fight, Create Breathing Space and Then Accelerate the Transition." You know it as "the surge."

The difficulty for these two men was that outside their colleagues in the NSC and West Wing, few wanted to hear about sending more American troops to Iraq. The Democrats wanted out and were declaring the war lost. Some Republicans were joining in. The Iraq Study Group offered a face-saving out, and many in the Defense and State departments wanted to take it. The American public was weary.

By having Mr. Luti draw up the concept for a surge, Mr. Hadley ensured that when options were presented to the president, one of them would be to fight. In Mr. Luti's strategic conception, securing the population became the top priority. In public, advocates like retired Army Gen. Jack Keane and military strategist Fred Kagan did yeoman's work to press the case for a surge. But within the White House decision-making process, it was almost this simple: No Steve Hadley, no surge -- and no success.

What can this possibly mean for Mr. Obama? The answer is plenty. Many things have changed since he first came out against this war. For one thing, he is now the president-elect instead of an opposition voice in the Senate -- which means he now bears the responsibility for how the war turns out. For another, back when he first called for U.S. troops to be withdrawn, President Bush's victory talk was treated as a joke. It is no longer a joke.

As Gens. David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno are keen to remind us, the gains in Iraq are fragile and reversible. But they are nevertheless real. And that means that if Mr. Obama is not careful, he could be the president who loses Iraq.

It need not turn out that way. At bottom, Mr. Obama's war stance boils down to reducing our presence in Iraq and increasing our presence in Afghanistan. The success of the surge permits him [Obama] to carry out this strategy from a position of strength. In fact, the security pact just approved by Iraq's cabinet suggests that Mr. Obama is now in a position to achieve most of his Iraq aims without jeopardizing the hard-won gains our troops have made -- provided he keeps his word to listen to our commanders on the ground.

(per usual, emphasis added)

What a difference 2 years makes.


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Success In Iraq (UPDATED, x3 & Bumped)

Most everyone I know wrote off Iraq sometime in 2006 or 2007. I'll admit, it was rough going and things looked bleak--especially in summer and fall 2006 ahead of The Surge.

But General David Petraeus and his #2, Ray Odierno and all the many brave soldiers in their command executed the principles of The Surge masterfully, with the result being that Iraqis (and Americans) can begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. As I've mentioned numerous times before, John McCain deserves a lot of credit for supporting it early, consistently, and to his detriment.

George W. Bush deserves the lion's share of the credit. He could have succumbed to his Democrat critics and pulled out of Iraq, leaving American military and domestic morale in a shambles and handicapping our influence for at least a generation. But he didn't.

My suspicion is that in 40 years, fair-minded historians will treat W's presidency with far greater equanimity than either today's opinion polls or pundits. I would guess that even many of his more sober critics would probably admit that they agree.

Thanks to Branden B. for the tip: Click the link and view a solemn reminder of some of the costs of victory in Iraq. The WSJ graphic shows the coalition troop losses over the course of the war. Best of all is the "biography" option which allows you to click on the dots (which represents soldiers who died) and read a short biography.

My fear (shared by many) and probably the greatest danger, is that Barack Obama will seize defeat from the jaws of victory by pulling coalition forces out of Iraq before Iraqis are able to defend themselves from interior and exterior threats. They are on the path to that goal, but they are not there yet.

To leave before they are ready would waste the sacrifice and work of thousands of brave American and coalition soldiers and would amount to the single greatest American defeat since the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese. It would be an unmitigated disaster that would destabilize the entire region.

UPDATE 11:50pm BST: Steve M. writes:

Sometimes in life we have to finish a job that was started by someone else or in error, but it must be finished in order to not marginalize, minimize, or totally negate the sacrifice of others.

Sorry, but I spent two years living in South America under a dictatorship and watched people suffer from the autrocities of oppression. Regardless of whether this was to fight the war on terror (which I believe it was, but our liberal friends have no concept of how to bring an unseen enemy out of the shadows to fight), or to keep control of oil, it can and has created a country where people have the freedom to choose their direction. Who are we to say they aren't worth that effort. What if we were the ones oppressed, wouldn't we welcome the restoration of our liberties? Or would we refuse the help because it was too hard and continue suffering?

UPDATE 18 November 2:54am BST: More good news from Iraq, this coming from General McCaffrey's AAR:

THE BOTTOM LINE:

a. The United States is now clearly in the end game in Iraq to successfully achieve what should be our principle objectives:

• The withdrawal of the majority of our US ground combat forces in Iraq in the coming 36 months.

• Leaving behind an operative civil state and effective Iraqi security forces.

• An Iraqi state which is not in open civil war among the Shia, the Sunnis, and the Kurds.

• And an Iraqi nation which is not at war with its six neighboring states.

b. The security situation is clearly still subject to sudden outrage at any moment by Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) or to degradation because of provocative behavior by the Maliki government. However, the bottom line is a dramatic and growing momentum for economic and security stability which is unlikely to be reversible. I would not characterize the situation as fragile. It is just beyond the tipping point.

• Daily attacks hit a high of 180+ in July of 2007--- they are now down to 20+ per day.

• Civilian deaths dropped from 3700 per month in Dec 2006 --- to 400 + in October 2008.

• US military deaths dropped from 110 in May of 2007---to 10 in October 2008.

• Iraqi Security Forces KIA dropped from 310 in June 2007--- to 50 in October 2008.)

Like his denunciation of Nafta, I hope Obama's promise to 'withdraw, regardless of conditions on the ground,' was just empty primary campaign boilerplate, designed to get the anti-war moonbat wing of the Democrat party on board, and not, you know, his grown-up position.

(thanks to Ace)

UPDATE 18 November 1:38pm BST: VICTORY IN IRAQ DAY: Alright, folks, this Saturday is Victory In Iraq Day. The day in which we celebrate the triumph of the American military over its many foes in Iraq and the establishment of a free democracy in the Middle East--by my count, the 2nd such democracy in that part of the world.

As you'll read when you click the link: don't expect the media, or either the outgoing (just trying to keep his head down) or incoming (didn't think it was possible, owes early success to our struggles there) Presidents.

Save the date and celebrate it. Thank members of the military wherever you see them for their hard work and sacrifice.


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They Called Ohio (UPDATED)

With Ohio being called for Obama, we can pretty much conclude that this thing is over. I can't remember seeing a single scenario that had McCain losing Ohio, but winning the election.

Keep an eye on the Senate. Republicans need to maintain the filibuster in order to stonewall radical liberal change in this country. Some of the worst kind would be single-payer, so called "universal" or government administered health care and "card check" unionization. These things are bad and only a Republican filibuster can keep us from them.

One other thing to keep an eye on is the popular vote. I still don't believe this is a "sea change" election in which the political orientation of this country has changed. A relatively close popular vote would confirm that.

I'm going to keep banging this drum until people get it into their heads: The Amazing thing about this election is how well John McCain has done despite the many things stacked against him: Bush, general dislike of Republicans for past corruption issues (see 2006), credit crisis/economic issues, Iraq (though diminished), Democrat GOTV & new voter registration, did I mention Bush?, voter identification--on all these things, Republicans have been at a disadvantage. Despite it all, McCain has done well.

Look, folks, you want to talk about a party without ideas? How about this: The policies we have heard about most from Obama are conservative issues. Tax cuts for 95% of Americans. Yeah, that idea is straight out of the conservative playbook. And it has gotten more play than almost anything else. Obama has also run as fiscally responsible, with promises to balance the budget. Yup, that one too is also a conservative policy. He even had the audacity to attack John McCains economically sound health care plan by calling it a net increase in taxes. Does that sound conservative or liberal to you?

Where are all these "new ideas" that have propelled Obama to victory? Anyone? Anyone? He has even adopted a hawkish position in support of Israel and on Afghanistan and Pakistan. On Pakistan, in particular, he out-hawked John McCain.

Now, I'm not saying that I believe that he actually believes or will hold to these positions, but they are the ones on which he has campaigned and which brought him this win.

Going forward, it is important that conservatives and Republicans draw the right conclusions and learn the right lessons from this loss. A wrong conclusion would be to say that Sarah Palin was the cause. This will be the clarion call of liberals and "moderate" Republicans. Because they don't like her. Don't believe them. She's part of the reason it's as close as it is. Without her, no one would be GOTV'ing.

UPDATE 4:14am BST: One bit of good news, it looks like Republicans will maintain their Senate filibuster. Assuming Democrats don't blow up long-standing Senate rules, this should keep them from adopting radical things like card-check unionization and government health care.

A simple thing like the filibuster means we don't have to rely on President Obama to moderate Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi--a scary proposition, indeed.


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"Dear Mr. Obama" MUST WATCH

I first posted this back on 12 September. The BBC reports that since it first debuted the end of August, "Dear Mr. Obama" has become the YouTube video of the campaign.

With good reason. It is powerful. Watch it again and send it to your friends.




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"Some Things Are More Important Than The Economy"

Many soldiers who have fought in Iraq and many parents of soldiers who have died in Iraq fear that if Obama is elected, he will follow through on repeated campaign promises to immediately exit Iraq, leaving it to al Qaeda , whom we've already beaten, and making the loss of so many American lives worth nothing.

Byron York reports on meeting a person from each of these groups--a soldier and a parent of a fallen Marine.

Warning: This article is powerful and compelling. You must read it.

At John McCain’s rallies these days, the talk is of taxes and Joe the Plumber and the financial crisis and mortgage relief and an end to wasteful federal spending. Those are all perfectly fine things for a campaign to emphasize; polls show voters of all stripes are overwhelmingly concerned about the economy. But at McCain’s events, you’ll also find people who’ve come for another reason, one that is slipping in the polls of voters’ concerns but is deeply personal to them: the war in Iraq.

“I just gave John McCain my Purple Heart,” Marine Sgt. Jack Eubanks told me a few minutes after McCain finished a speech at a campaign rally in Woodbridge, Virginia Saturday. “I said, ‘I want to give this to you, sir, as a reminder that we want you to keep your promise to bring us home in victory and honor, so it will mean something.’"

“We fought over there, and we want it to mean something,” Eubanks continued. “We don’t want to come back and it just be all for nothing.”

Eubanks, 22 years old, knows as much about the war as anyone. On October 3, 2005, he was in a Humvee on patrol near the Syrian border when an IED went off. “I was thrown from the vehicle, took some shrapnel, landed on my spine and mashed it up a little bit,” Eubanks told me in a remarkably good-humored way. He was injured much more than just a little; it took him eleven months to recover. And then — then he volunteered to go back. In August 2007, he was hurt again in a strangely similar way. “Hit by a mortar, thrown from a vehicle — the same situation,” Eubanks told me. Now, he’s teaching recruits at Marine Corps Base Quantico — and walking with a cane.

These days, as he ponders the war and the meaning it has for him — he says he saw remarkable progress in Iraq between his 2005 and 2007 tours — Eubanks’s overwhelming fear is that it might all be for naught. “I think Obama’s just going to pull everyone home as soon as he can, despite what’s going on over there,” he told me. “I just don’t want it to turn into another Vietnam or worse where everything we fought for, and all my buddies who died over there, it was just for nothing.” Eubanks believes McCain — he called McCain “so inspiring” and said he was in awe of the senator during their brief meeting — will prevent that from happening.

As I talked to Eubanks, just a few feet away a conversation — well, a pretty loud exchange of views — was wrapping up. It involved the now-famous Tito the Builder, who I wrote about a few days ago, and reporters who questioned Tito’s fervent support for McCain. Near the end of the conversation, a tall man joined in. “Obama’s not interested in change for the United States,” the man said. “He’s interested in himself.”

The subject of Iraq came up. “We are winning!” said Tito. “We are winning!”

“My son was over there,” the man added. “And all these guys came back and said the media was causing the hype that we were losing that war, and that was not true.” More debate followed.

Finally, the talk wound down, and the tall man walked away. I walked over and asked his name. He was Greg Medina, and he lived nearby in Woodbridge. His son had been to Iraq? “He was with 1/3,” Medina said, referring to the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment.

“We buried him two years to the day after he graduated from boot camp.”

Medina told me the story of his son, Brian, who was killed after being in Iraq less than two months, shot to death on November 12, 2004 in fierce house-to-house fighting in Fallujah. The day it happened, Greg had slept badly and had a vague and awful premonition in the hours before Marine officers knocked on his door to deliver the news. Brian was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Now, Medina, who himself served 20 years in the Navy, is filled with the dread that his son’s death will have no meaning. “My fear is that if Obama gets elected, everybody who went over there and died, died in vain because he’s just going to drag this country through the mud,” Medina told me. He knew that sounded a little harsh, so he added, “That’s my opinion.” And then he said: “Whoever wins, I wish them luck, obviously, because I live in this country, and I don’t want to see anything bad happen.”

Talking to Medina brought back a conversation I had with McCain back in October 2007 as we rode around Iowa in a campaign van. McCain was talking about how badly the Bush administration had mismanaged the war. “The thing that makes you almost cry is that one of the battles that will rank among the most courageous the Marines have ever fought is the battle of Fallujah,” McCain told me. “They lost 86 guys and several hundred wounded in the most bitter kind of house-to-house fighting. And you know what happened then? They left. They left. After sacrificing 86 of those brave young 19- and 20-year-olds, they left. I mean, it’s unconscionable.”

Brian Medina was one of those 20-year-olds killed in that fighting. Less than a year later, Jack Eubanks was blown out of his Humvee. Now, Eubanks and Greg Medina are counting on John McCain to keep his promise, should he become commander-in-chief. Some things are more important than the economy.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Guy Who Said Iraq Would Be A 'Cakewalk' Endorses Obama

I catch hell from my anti-Iraq war, liberal progressive friends all the time (or at least I used to, until The Surge became such a wild success) about the supposed statement that the war would be a "cakewalk," etc. They would smugly point out that it has been anything but.

So anyway, the guy who actually made that infamous statement--not Bush, not Cheney, not McCain--KEN ADELMAN, just announced that he's supporting Barack Obama.

Now that he's for Obama, all is forgiven. Whatever.

(h/t Ace)


If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

My Of Joe

(from Hot Air)


If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.