JustOneMinute

The Surge Started Before The Surge? Well...

McCain actually makes some sense - the "surge", understood as a matter of a new tactical doctrine for waging a counter-insurgency, could well have preceded the troop surge.

Obvious quibble - when folks first talked up "the surge" the word "surge" really did refer specifically to more troops.  However, Kagan's early work certainly emphasized both more troops (including more troops in Anbar, contra Clark) and a change in tactics.

Folks who were deeply immersed in the issues, participants and tactical doctrines will know what McCain meant.  Others, not so much.

Better Rebuttals, Please

David Weigel of Reason stews over the latest on the Baby Barack birth certificate mystery - apparently someone has dredged up a contemporaneous birth announcement in Hawaii, which certainly is consistent with the notion that he was born there, rather than borne there.  Yet questions remain!

And Mr. Weigel mocks those questions thusly:

The idea of Obama's family collaborating to create a false biography for him is, in itself, hilarious. How did those 1961 dinner table conversations go, do they think? "If we don't create a false story, and fast, our half-African son of an 18-year old mother will have no chance at becoming president!"

Har de har.  But seriously, folks - I can think of three reasons in five seconds, all of which would have been perfectly likely to have occurred to Obama's proud mama back in 1961:

1.  Simple patriotism/nationalism - Obama's mom wanted her son to be an American like her.

2.  Common sense - US citizenship was highly likely to be more valuable than Kenyan citizenship.

3.  Legal protection in the possibly-foreseeable event of a custody dispute.   Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama's mother, may have contemplated the following rather ghastly scenario: Suppose Mr. Obama took his black son, a native of Kenya, back to Kenya to be raised by his family.  Suppose it became clear in court that the child's parents were not in fact married.  How much success might Ms. Dunham anticipate in battling in the Kenyan courts for the right to take a Kenyan citizen back to America to be raised by white folks?  Isn't it dimly possible that Ms. Dunham wanted to secure her custody of the child by assuring his US citizenship?  Or is that just ha-ha ridiculous?  Mr. Obama did in fact leave for Harvard a couple of years later, so it is not impossible that Ms. Dunham sensed she was not in a solid long-term relationship.

I am not advocating for any of the outre birth certificate scenarios.  But I am advocating for better rebuttals.

HMMM:  OK, here is Captain Ed:

Unless someone wants to argue that the Advertiser decided to participate in a conspiracy at Obama’s birth in 1961 to provide false citizenship on the off-chance that an infant from a union of a Kenyan father and a teenage mother would run for President, then I’d say the “mystery” is over.

See above - the teenage mom may have had plenty of timely reasons to promote the notion of her child's eligibility for US citizenship having nothing to do with her son's Presidential prospects.  That said, the idea that a bum birth certificate is going to swing this election is, well, interesting in an "out there" way.

And I say that as a guy who couldn't find any interest in Obama's failed efforts at education reform while working in conjunction with unrepentant Weatherman Bill Ayers (although we found a pulse at Fox).   The world at large does not want to know these things about our next President.

Klein v. Klein

While splashing about in the tank for Obama Joe Klein penned this on July 23:

The reality is that neither Barack Obama nor Nouri al-Maliki nor most anybody else believes that the Iraq war can be "lost" at this point.

Who knew that Obama's view of Iraq was so bouyant?  Not readers of TIME, who were told this by Joe Klein waaaay back on July 20:

For McCain, the first priority remains a stable Iraqi nation-state, and he is willing to risk ever more American blood and treasure over the coming years in that quest. For Obama, the first priority is an exit from the country, and he is willing to risk civil chaos in Iraq and a loss of American influence in the region.

So over the last three days, Obama has gone from being willing to accept an Iraqi civil war to believing that the war cannot be "lost".  Three days abroad make all the difference!

But I remain puzzled - would Barack consider a civil war a "loss"?  Would Maliki?  Or is Klein just blowing smoke?

Defending Joe Klein (Kinda; Then I Flip-Flop And Attack Viciously)

Joe Klein of TIME goes well over the top in defending The One from a nearly reasonable observation by John McCain:

John McCain said this today in Rochester, New Hampshire:

This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.

This is the ninth presidential campaign I've covered. I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad.

Ann Althouse has a lovely takedown of Klein, I am scoring Q&O second, but will cheerfully consider other nominees.

Now, I think Joe Klein is out to lunch, but here is where I am guessing he is coming from.  First, he is taking McCain's comment personally - without even checking, I'll bet that Klein opposed the surge and does not consider himself to have been seeking defeat. [That was an easy money bet].

So the rest of my guess - let's give Barack specifically and Defeatocrats generally the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were rooting hard for the war in Iraq to succeed and only regretfully came to the conclusion that their opposition had been vindicated by Iraq's seeming collapse into near-civil war (or actual civil war, per pre-updated Barack) in 2006.  (Let me note that I knew some anti-war libs that were so triumphantly vindicated that one might almost have suspected they were pleased to see the Great Imperialist get its come-uppance while providing an object lesson to the world on the importance of Giving Peace a Chance.  But let me not presume they were actually glad to have been right, and I have no doubt they were sincere in their horror at the human cost.)

So Barack and other Dems leaders swept into power with regrets, never having hoped to see Bush's war go sour.  In that sense, and if you believe that, it would be outrageous to say that Barack "would rather lose a war".  Of course he wanted the US to win, but since we had, as of 2006, manifestly lost, the key mission, as he explained in 2007 and 2008 speeches, was "ending the war", not winning it.  And to suggest that Barack (and by extension, Joe Klein) wanted us to lose has outraged Joe Klein.  All Barack and Joe wanted was a recognition of Bush's failure and an end to a seemingly useless US involvement.

Well, that is my guess as to the source of Klein's outrage.  A quick read of his June 2008 piece acknowledging the surge's success is interesting - it sounds identical to Barack's current talking points about the importance of other political factors, our exhausted military, Iraq as a distraction, and so on.  Victory was not an option!  No wonder Klein is peeved  - his position overlaps almost perfectly with the target of McCain's criticism.

NOW DEFEAT IS NOT AN OPTION:  Klein provides a laugher in an update:

The reality is that neither Barack Obama nor Nouri al-Maliki nor most anybody else believes that the Iraq war can be "lost" at this point. The reality is that no matter who is elected President, we are looking at a residual U.S. force of 30-50,000 by 2011 (a year ahead of the previous schedule).

Does "most anybody else" include General Petraeus, who, per Barack himself, wants a flexible, reality-based withdrawal schedule?  This idea that Messr. "We Can't Win" has become Mr. Victory Is Ours is rich.

BURIED LEAD:  Has TIME or any other outlet reported Obama's buoyant view of the situation in Iraq?  And how come Obama keeps describing his plan to "end" the war, rather than to win it?  As of July 20 (I know, three long days ago) Joe Klein was presenting this:

For McCain, the first priority remains a stable Iraqi nation-state, and he is willing to risk ever more American blood and treasure over the coming years in that quest. For Obama, the first priority is an exit from the country, and he is willing to risk civil chaos in Iraq and a loss of American influence in the region.

Maybe I am not clear what Mr. Klein means by "defeat".  Would a civil war be a defeat in Obama's view?  How doe sMaliki feel about that?

BONUS SNARK:  Joe Klein last April:

Few people believe that the Sunni Awakening movement—the insurgents who flipped to our side after a fling with al-Qaeda—would stay peaceful if the U.S. military weren't there as a buffer between them and the Shi'ites.

That was then.  Now, the Awakening is one more fortuitous turn of events.

One Day More

I don't think people swing by here for breaking news from the financial markets, but as of 7:38 on a Wednesday morning both the dollar and the Dow have saddled up their comeback ponies.  The dollar is at 1.5709 on the Euro FX futures and the Dow futures are up 53 to 11617 (S&P up 6.5 to 1280.70).  The Brent (127.44) and natural gas futures are down (Crude is flat, but I am guessing it is not trading).  So it's all good. 

My Bold Prediction - the markets want to believe.  Stocks go up, financials rally, and so does the dollar.  Let's see how that looks at the end of August.

A Disgruntled WaPo (Ongoing)

The WaPo editors take The One to task for his denial of reality in Iraq:

THE INITIAL MEDIA coverage of Barack Obama's visit to Iraq suggested that the Democratic candidate found agreement with his plan to withdraw all U.S. combat forces on a 16-month timetable. So it seems worthwhile to point out that, by Mr. Obama's own account, neither U.S. commanders nor Iraq's principal political leaders actually support his strategy.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the architect of the dramatic turnaround in U.S. fortunes, "does not want a timetable," Mr. Obama reported with welcome candor during a news conference yesterday [link]...

raqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has a history of tailoring his public statements for political purposes, made headlines by saying he would support a withdrawal of American forces by 2010. But an Iraqi government statement made clear that Mr. Maliki's timetable would extend at least seven months beyond Mr. Obama's. More significant, it would be "a timetable which Iraqis set" -- not the Washington-imposed schedule that Mr. Obama has in mind. It would also be conditioned on the readiness of Iraqi forces, the same linkage that Gen. Petraeus seeks. As Mr. Obama put it, Mr. Maliki "wants some flexibility in terms of how that's carried out."

Other Iraqi leaders were more directly critical. As Mr. Obama acknowledged, Sunni leaders in Anbar province told him that American troops are essential to maintaining the peace among Iraq's rival sects and said they were worried about a rapid drawdown.

Well, at least he admitted all this.

Mr. Obama's response is that, as president, he would have to weigh Iraq's needs against those of Afghanistan and the U.S. economy. He says that because Iraq is "a distraction" from more important problems, U.S. resources devoted to it must be curtailed. Yet he also says his aim is to "succeed in leaving Iraq to a sovereign government that can take responsibility for its own future."

Peace with honor at a price you can afford.  Catchy?

The WaPo's Big Finish:

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

 

The Anbar Awakening And The Surge

Mark Hemingway of The Corner notes Obama's disconnect between the presence of US troops and the Anbar Awakening (with a follow up).

Fred Kagan, intellectual godfather of the surge, presumably has an axe to grind.  Notwithstanding, he wrote this in Sept 2007 in the Weekly Standard:

The change in U.S. strategy announced in January 2007 and the surge of forces over the ensuing months did not create this shift in Anbar, but accelerated its development.

And in an NRO spot from Sept 2007 he offered more detail:

The tribal leaders in Anbar began to turn against al Qaeda in Iraq last year, largely due to unspeakable atrocities committed by the terrorists against their own hosts. Many analysts and observers have seized upon this fact to argue that the movement in Anbar had nothing to do with the surge, began before the surge did, and would continue even without the surge. This argument is invalid. Anbari tribal leaders did begin to turn against AQI in their areas last year before the surge began, but not before Colonel Sean MacFarland began to apply in Ramadi the tactics and techniques that are the basis of the current strategy in Baghdad. His soldiers and Marines fought tenaciously to establish a foothold in Anbar’s capital, which was then a terrorist stronghold, and thereby demonstrated to the local leaders that they could count on American support as they began to fight their erstwhile allies. Even so, the movement proceeded slowly and fitfully for most of 2006 and, indeed, into 2007. But when Colonel John Charlton’s brigade relieved MacFarland’s in Ramadi and was joined by two additional Marine battalions (part of the surge) elsewhere in Anbar, the “awakening” began to accelerate very rapidly. At the start of 2007 there were only a handful of Anbaris in the local security forces. By the summer there were over 14,000. Before the surge, Ramadi was one of the most dangerous cities in Iraq; now it is possible for Americans to walk through its market with limited security details and without body armor. David Kilcullen describes the relationship between the surge and the movement very well in his Small Wars Journal posting [link], and I have also addressed the issue in detail in a recent Weekly Standard article . The fact is that neither the surge nor the turn of the tribal leaders would in itself have been enough to turn Anbar around — both were necessary, and will remain so for some time.

Or we could look to George Bush, from his Jan 2007 speech announcing the surge:

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

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

This doesn't seem to be as complicated as Barack needs to make it - for a variety of reasons the Sunni tribes had turned against Al Qaeda and US support helped them run AQI out of Anbar.  One reason for the surge was that additional troops in Anbar seemed highly likely to make a difference - the Anbar Aqwakening created an opportunity and US troops exploited it.  The notion that the Awakening would have been just as effective without US troops seems odd.

MORE ON A SCARY SITUATION:  I certainly hope this is not a fair characterization of Obama's sense of the history (but I bet it is); Jim Geraghty quotes ABC News' Rick Moran:

Moran's close of the story: “And so, when pressed, Barack Obama says that he still would have opposed the surge but said he didn’t anticipate what people here call the Iraqi surge uprising against Al Qaeda and Shi’ite extremists. He said he didn’t anticipate that, but he is insisting that he is focusing forward on what needs to be done — setting that timetable for withdrawal.”

Obama didn't "anticipate" the Iraqi surge, part of which was the Anbar Awakening?  My goodness, the Anbar Awakening was already underway when Barack delivered his surrender speech in opposition to Bush's surge in Jan 2007.  The generic lib talking point is that the Anbar Awakening would have spread and grown even without the US surge - is Barack now saying he didn't expect that to happen either?  That is actually a semi-sensible view, since over on the right we agree that the addition of US troops supplemented and complemented the Iraqi surge.  It's sort of like working with an ally.  Obama's Jan 2007 withdrawal plan, with US combat troops out by March 31 2008 almost surely would have undermined the Iraqi surge, so maybe that's what he means when he says he didn't anticipate its success.

Or maybe he was just flat wrong.   Nahhhh...

LEFT UNSAID:  That's not the surge I knew.

 

When Is A Withdrawal Not A Withdrawal?

Obama has always talked about withdrawing US combat troops from Iraq and leaving behind a residual force to train Iraqis and target Al Qaeda in Iraq (without combating them, I guess).  However, I have never heard him give the residual force as much emphasis as he did during his interview with Katie Couric, currently of CBS News.

Couric: ... Prime Minister Maliki on the same page when it comes to a troop withdrawal by 2010. Why do you believe that the Iraqi security forces, which have taken so long to get up to speed, will be equipped to protect the country at that point?
Obama: Well, keep in mind that, and I can't speak for Prime Minister Maliki now, but under my proposal, you'd still have U.S. forces with a capable counterterrorism operation in the region. You would still be training Iraqi security forces. We'd still be providing logistical support. We would still provide protection for our diplomatic corps and other civilians as well as our forces on the ground.
So we would still have the capacity to help promote effective actions by the Iraqi security forces. And, in fact, we're already starting to see more and more of those forces take the lead in actions where we're playing more of an advisory role. The key is for us to not inhibit the Iraqis from taking that kind of responsibility on.

That's not the withdrawal I knew.  By way of comparison, here is how the residual force was described when Obama laid out his plan to "end the war" (or anyway, end US involvement) in his recent national security speech:

To achieve that success, I will give our military a new mission on my first day in office: ending this war. Let me be clear: we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 – one year after Iraqi Security Forces will be prepared to stand up; two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, we’ll keep a residual force to perform specific missions in Iraq: targeting any remnants of al Qaeda; protecting our service members and diplomats; and training and supporting Iraq’s Security Forces, so long as the Iraqis make political progress.

The balance of the Couric interview is bafflegab and Obamafuscation as The One tries to explain why he still does not back the surge:

Couric: But talking microcosmically, did the surge, the addition of 30,000 additional troops ... help the situation in Iraq?
Obama: Katie, as … you've asked me three different times, and I have said repeatedly that there is no doubt that our troops helped to reduce violence. There's no doubt.
Couric: But yet you're saying … given what you know now, you still wouldn't support it … so I'm just trying to understand this.
Obama: Because … it's pretty straightforward. By us putting $10 billion to $12 billion a month, $200 billion, that's money that could have gone into Afghanistan. Those additional troops could have gone into Afghanistan. That money also could have been used to shore up a declining economic situation in the United States. That money could have been applied to having a serious energy security plan so that we were reducing our demand on oil, which is helping to fund the insurgents in many countries. So those are all factors that would be taken into consideration in my decision-- to deal with a specific tactic or strategy inside of Iraq.

Couric: And I really don't mean to belabor this, Senator, because I'm really, I'm trying … to figure out your position. Do you think the level of security in Iraq …
Obama: Yes.
Couric … would exist today without the surge?
Obama: Katie, I have no idea what would have happened had we applied my approach, which was to put more pressure on the Iraqis to arrive at a political reconciliation. So this is all hypotheticals. What I can say is that there's no doubt that our U.S. troops have contributed to a reduction of violence in Iraq. I said that, not just today, not just yesterday, but I've said that previously. What that doesn't change is that we've got to have a different strategic approach if we're going to make America as safe as possible.

Bizarre - was it only yesterday that Barack was telling Terry Moran of ABC News that "hindsight is 20/20"?  Yet now, even with hindsight, he can't figure out if the surge was a good idea.  Still, The One makes a great and widely overlooked point.  Personally, I have always wondered whether Thomas Edison's invention of the lightbulb was a good idea - if he had applied his research in a different direction, he might have been able to come up with a cure for influenza and saved millions of lives in the 1918 pandemic.  I'll never know, just as Barack will never know whether the surge was the best possible idea in the best of all possible worlds.  FWIW, here is Obama's surrender speech on the floor of the Senate from January 2007.

This is a comedy classic:

Couric: Two more questions. You said not too long ago that Jerusalem should remain undivided. And then you backtracked on that statement. Does that play into the argument that some believe that someone more experienced would not have made that kind of mistake?
Obama: Well…if you look at what happened, there was no shift in policy or backtracking in policy. We just had phrased it poorly in the speech. That has happened and will happen to every politician. You're not always gonna hit your mark in terms of how you phrase your policies.

The policy hadn't changed - people just had to understand to ignore the words coming out of his mouth!

Our next President.

 

Gloat Alert Set To Red

As Mickey Kaus almost said, "You can't drill your way out of this problem".  John Edwards seems to have been caught shortening the VP short list.

I Agree With Jonah Goldberg (Who Agrees With Me)

From Mr. Goldberg's latest in today's LA Times:

It's understandable why so many Republicans see the surge as an ideal political battleground. Outside foreign policy, McCain's standing with the GOP base is often shaky. The party doesn't have a lot of policy wins to brag about. And Obama doesn't have much of a record to attack. Also, many hawks -- often called neoconservatives -- see the surge as vindication that they were right about the feasibility of the invasion of Iraq from the beginning. It was President Bush's bungling that was wrong, they say, not the war itself.

Whatever the merits of all that, there's a problem. As political analysis, it's nonsense.

...But the tragic Catch-22 for the Arizona senator is that the more the surge succeeds, the more politically advantageous it is for Obama.

Voters don't care about the surge; they care about the war. Americans want it to be over -- and in a way they can be proud of.

And torn from the pages of JOM from last Saturday:

Obama opposed the war in Iraq and the surge.  McCain supported the concept of the liberation of Iraq but was an early critic of the troop levels and tactics adopted by Bush and Rumsfeld and an early proponent of the surge.  On that scorecard, McCain is an easy winner.

But will voters care?  A segment of the far left will never abandon their notion that Iraq is Bush's lost war and will continue to insist that US troops be brought home post-haste, thereby "ending" the war (as if "no US involvement" equals "no war"; how is that working in Darfur?).

But if the current greatly reduced level of casualties can be sustained and the Iraqi government continues to show signs of credibility, most people will shift their attention elsewhere.  And if the emerging Washington consensus is that US troops should remain in Iraq to preserve the fragile progress, well, I have no doubt Barack will get behind that conventional wisdom. 

Which means voters will not be presented with a clear choice between a candidate committed to achieving victory in Iraq and a candidate committed to declaring Bush's war to be a defeat.  Instead, we will have a choice between a candidate who would have avoided Bush's mess and a candidate who would have been better at cleaning it up.  That debate will fascinate historians and pundits but no one else.  [Liz Sidoti of the AP has more on this blurriness].

If anyone can think of an issue that is working for McCain, don't be shy.  I think that in the public's perception McCain comes in second on the economy, ties on Iraq at best and maybe has a slight edge in overall "Commander-in-Chiefiness".  Not enough to win.

President Obama

An FT article tells us to ignore those misleading Gallup horse-race polls and focus on the big picture - Obama wins this easily:

Alan Abramowitz, a politics scholar at Emory University, has shown that summer head-to-head polls convey almost no information about the forthcoming election. (Subsequent head-to-head polls are not much better.) Instead, he has a simple “electoral barometer” that weighs together the approval rating of the incumbent president, the economy’s economic growth rate and whether the president’s party has controlled the White House for two terms (the “time for a change” factor). This laughably simple metric has correctly forecast the winner of the popular vote in 14 out of 15 postwar presidential elections.

The only exception is 1968, when the barometer (calibrated to range between +100 and –100) gave Hubert Humphrey a wafer-thin advantage of +2; he lost, with a popular vote deficit of less than 1 percentage point.

More from Prof. Abramowitz from this May 29 article, including a table showing his barometer and results for the different elections.  Let me test my (laughable) HTML skills:

Table 1. Electoral Barometer Readings and Election Results since World War II

Barometer Reading		Year		Election Result		Popular Vote Margin
82.5		1964		Won		22.6%
73.0		1972		Won		23.2%
71.0		1956		Won		15.4%
51.5		1984		Won		18.2%
43.5		1996		Won		8.5%
22.0		2000		Won*		0.5%
13.0		2004		Won		2.5%
9.0		1988		Won		7.7%
4.5		1948		Won		4.5%
2.0		1968		Lost		-0.7%
-5.0		1960		Lost		-0.2%
-5.0		1976		Lost		-2.1%
-22.5		1992		Lost		-5.6%
-49.5		1952		Lost		-10.9%
-66.0		1980		Lost		-9.7%

Hey, don't knock "Copy/Paste"!

Based on current values McCain is at -60, so this election should not be competitive.

Folks may remember Ray Fair who has been doing this for a while - the Fair model did predict the Bush 2004 victory, but overestimated the margin.   His model does not use the incumbent's approval rating but uses economic variables and incumbency.

So since you asked, the current Fair prediction is that McCain will garner 47.8% of the two-party vote.  Not an epic blowout, but still a loss.  And since Fair mis-overestimated the Republican margin last time around (and the Clinton margin in 1992) I will bet the under on his projected McCain result.

Dan Drezner says this means the end of punditry as we know it; McQ of Q&O tells us that

What [FT writer] Crook is arguing is that it really doesn't matter who is running for which party - if the three conditions are in a certain alignment, a blue dog could run and win. Or a red one.

I disagree - these models are based on a history in which each party made a serious effort to put forward its best candidate and run a solid campaign, although folks who remember The Duke and John Kerry may not believe this.  If the Dems had put forward a sufficiently awful and gaffe prone candidate, they might have found a way to lose this, so pundits do have something to chew on as events unfold.  That said, the Dems don't seem to have made that mistake, so they remain heavily favored.

However!  If the NY Yankees (or even the Red Sox) took the field against a AAA ball club they would be heavily favored.  But they would still have to take the field and play the game, and they couldn't just send out nine guys in pin stripes.

The Price Of Victory

McCain was right about the surge, Obama was wrong, and now Obama is the one getting a boost from our current success in Iraq.  We have been there before!

Winston Churchill lost the general election in May of 1945 despite a personal approval rating of 83%.  The BBC explains that he had focused on leading the nation rather than his own Conservative party.

And closer to home, Bush 41 won in Iraq and lost to Bill Clinton eighteen months later, his approval rating down from the low 90's.

McCain can be yet another kinda-conservative running under the conservative banner to be right about a war but lose anyway.

THUNDER FROM THE RIGHT:  Need a cup of coffee?  Donald Douglas has it.  [Now he does; link fixed.]

Maliki Endorses Withdrawal - Snares For All

Iraqi Prime Minister endorsed a withdrawal plan associated with Obama, creating problems for both candidates.  McCain does not benefit from seeing his opponent's plan endorsed by the iraqi PM.  Obama can't tie himself too tightly to Maliki, or he loses running room later if Maliki changes his mind or cites changed circumstances.  AllahPundit at Hot Air has the original and revised quotes; first, as originally reported:

SPIEGEL: Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the US troops will finally leave Iraq?

Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we’re concerned. US presidential candidate Barack Obama is right when he talks about 16 months. Assuming that positive developments continue, this is about the same time period that corresponds to our wishes.

The revised version deletes any reference to continued improvements in security:

Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we’re concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.

Mystifying but not unusual - in an article last week describing the domestic political pressures faced by Maliki the BBC reported that the Iraqi press office was doctoring Maliki's quotes to make him seem more pro-withdrawal.   

Josh Marshall is cautiously enthused but expects a Maliki walk-back (And here it is!  Per CNN, he was mistranslated.)  From Marshall:

McCain may also say that his 'surge' strategy is what made all this possible. But fundamentally that's not a point Obama is arguing. The debate is about whether or not to leave. And on that count, Maliki has now placed McCain is an extremely precarious position.

Well, yes - Obama was right like a stopped clock on withdrawing troops, and was obviously wrong a year ago when he dismissed the prospects of a successful surge and called for withdrawals then.  But as I had said yesterday, good new from Iraq is bad news for McCain.  Obama can now make the same argument Bush's defenders have made for years - regardless of how we got here, the key question is what do we do going forward.  There will come a day when withdrawing our troops will be the right way to demonstrate our success in Iraq.  If Obama is lucky, and despite his lack of support for the effort, that day may have arrived.

As to snares - obviously, (see Marc Ambinder) McCain will want to trumpet the fact that his judgment on the surge was better.  One might think that the man who advocated the plan that put us in a position to win in Iraq is the better man to see that plan through to victory, in preference to the man who insisted that the war was lost and the surge will fail.  But I don't think the public will see it that way - they will see that Obama wants to get out and the Iraqi PM agrees with him.

The snare for Obama is obvious (too obvious to have been noted by Marshall or others) - if Obama wraps himself in Maliki's endorsement today he becomes Maliki's prisoner if circumstances have changed after Obama and Maliki have gotten past their domestic elections.  What will Obama do if Maliki announces next spring that the security situation he had always cited is now too precarious for a quick US withdrawal?

Honestly, once Obama is elected I don't think he will care.

As to Maliki, he has his domestic political issues, as well as a desire to be seen as a tough guy.  His security forces have recently won surprising victories in several Iraqi cities - should he announce to the world that he can't do this without being propped up by the US?  An interesting question McCain might want to push - is Obama the better man to listen to what Maliki is saying in private, which is probably quite different?

Coverage in the Times and WaPo is pretty muted.  The Times, 3rd paragraph:

As the American presidential campaign unfolded across borders and time zones, Mr. Obama received support from an unexpected corner: Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, told a German magazine that he endorsed the Obama plan to withdraw most American troops in a gradual timeline of 16 months.

A Big Skip, then:

But Republicans were carefully watching Mr. Obama’s trip, which is rare in its profile and scope for a presidential candidate. The White House also made clear Saturday that it was monitoring Mr. Obama’s travels; it accidentally sent e-mail to a broad list of reporters with the news report that the Iraqi prime minister supported Mr. Obama’s proposed 16-month timeline for withdrawing combat troops from Iraq.

In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine in Germany that was released on Saturday, Mr. Maliki said he was not endorsing Mr. Obama’s candidacy, but called his proposal “the right timeframe for a withdrawal.”

The magazine interview was far from helpful to the McCain campaign, and aides to Mr. McCain sought to clarify Mr. Maliki’s remarks.

“John McCain believes withdrawal must be based on conditions on the ground,” Mr. McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, said in a statement. “Prime Minister Maliki has repeatedly affirmed the same view, and did so again today. Timing is not as important as whether we leave with victory and honor.”

The WaPo seems to have taken their time - they have all that but also include the "mistranslation" walkback and a  cautious reaction from Susan Rice of the Obama campaign:

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh later issued a statement saying that Maliki's remarks had been misinterpreted and mistranslated, adding that the Spiegel article did not accurately convey his view of Obama's timetable. Dabbagh's statement did not elaborate on the prime minister's position.

Obama had no comment on the interview, but according to foreign policy adviser Susan Rice, he "welcomes Prime Minister Maliki's support for a 16 month timeline." She called Maliki's comments "an important opportunity to transition to Iraqi responsibility, while restoring our military and increasing our commitment to finish the fight in Afghanistan."

McCain senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann offered a different interpretation of Maliki's comments. "The difference between John McCain and Barack Obama is that Barack Obama advocates an unconditional withdrawal that ignores the facts on the ground and the advice of our top military commanders," he said. "John McCain believes withdrawal must be based on conditions on the ground. Prime Minister Maliki has repeatedly affirmed the same view, and did so again today.

And do keep in mind the NY Times story from last week where an Iraqi general loved the concept of a US withdrawal but wondered it if was realistic:

In Iraq, Mixed Feelings About Obama and His Troop Proposal

By SABRINA TAVERNISE and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

BAGHDAD — A tough Iraqi general, a former special operations officer with a baritone voice and a barrel chest, melted into smiles when asked about Senator Barack Obama.

“Everyone in Iraq likes him,” said the general, Nassir al-Hiti. “I like him. He’s young. Very active. We would be very happy if he was elected president.”

But mention Mr. Obama’s plan for withdrawing American soldiers, and the general stiffens.

“Very difficult,” he said, shaking his head. “Any army would love to work without any help, but let me be honest: for now, we don’t have that ability.”

Thus in a few brisk sentences, the general summed up the conflicting emotions about Mr. Obama in Iraq, the place outside America with perhaps the most riding on its relationship with him.

There was, as Mr. Obama prepared to visit here, excitement over a man who is the anti-Bush in almost every way: a Democrat who opposed a war that many Iraqis feel devastated their nation. And many in the political elite recognize that Mr. Obama shares their hope for a more rapid withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.

But his support for troop withdrawal cuts both ways, reflecting a deep internal quandary in Iraq: for many middle-class Iraqis, affection for Mr. Obama is tempered by worry that his proposal could lead to chaos in a nation already devastated by war. Many Iraqis also acknowledge that security gains in recent months were achieved partly by the buildup of American troops, which Mr. Obama opposed and his presumptive Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, supported.

I suspect Maliki is hearing something similar from his generals.  Election politics all around.

MORE:  AllahPundit also notes other parts of the interview less likely to be trumpeted by the left, including this:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Prime Minister, the war and its consequences have cost more than 100,000 lives and caused great suffering in your country. Saddam Hussein and his regime are now part of the past. Was all of this worth the price?

Maliki: The casualties have been and continue to be enormous. But anyone who was familiar with the dictator’s nature and his intentions knows what could have been in store for us instead of this war. Saddam waged wars against Iran and Kuwait, and against Iraqis in the north and south of his own country, wars in which hundreds of thousands died. And he was capable of instigating even more wars. Yes, the casualties are great, but I see our struggle as an enormous effort to avoid other such wars in the future.

Boy, I Do Not Understand This

Steven Den Beste returns to post on his "least favorite subject", alternative energy.  Pat Tully of Stubborn Facts likes this bit enough to excerpt it:

In order for "alternate energy" to become feasible, it has to satisfy all of the following criteria:

1. It has to be huge (in terms of both energy and power)
2. It has to be reliable (not intermittent or unschedulable)
3. It has to be concentrated (not diffuse)
4. It has to be possible to utilize it efficiently
5. The capital investment and operating cost to utilize it has to be comparable to existing energy sources (per gigawatt, and per terajoule).

If it fails to satisfy any of those, then it can't scale enough to make any difference. Solar power fails #3, and currently it also fails #5. (It also partially fails #2, but there are ways to work around that.)

Now, I absolutely do not understand either (2) or (3) as requirement that must be cast in stone.  As an example (2) (reliable and predictable), consider the idea of solar panels on residential and commercial rooftops in California.  Output will be at a maximum on sunny days when, not by coincidence, electricity demand for air conditioners is at a peak.  Obviously, solar panels aren't much use at night but as a swing producer they could help Californians meet their energy goals during periods of peak demand.

And these rooftop panels are diffuse, not concentrated, contra point (3).  Now, if (3) is an educated opinion about the likely economics of diffuse power sources, fine.  But does (3) make any sense as an iron-clad rule?  Suppose I walk out of my garage with breakthrough technology for solar hot water heating that is cheap, easily installed and easily retro-fitted.  And because I am having a great day, I also roll out my enhanced solar panels that are cheap and easy to install and maintain on Everyman's rooftop.

I am not going to pretend that this would solve all of our nation's energy requirements.  But suppose it reduced the average homeowner's electric bill by 35% and his heating bill (hot water plus house) by 10%.  Only two serious objections (IMHO) come to mind - one would be the price of the installed technology, not the fact that the technology was diffuse; the other would be the possible impact on the rest of the power grid - at some point, there needs to be a back-up or swing producer available to step in on, for example, rainy days.

I am mystified.