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The conservative approach to US foreign policy, especially in the Mid-East, has been a sort of ‘Malign Stability’.  Until George W Bush, that is.  Paul Berman writes about this on a Lebanese news site, the Daily Star, among other places.

Berman’s central points are that the Bush administrations policies in Iraq have been a sort of bungled Liberalism;  Not conservatism.  And that the so-called Left has bungled the analysis, the criticism, and the history.  I think Berman is correct.  Bush won the war against Saddam but bungled the occupation.  Bush was also very unlucky and far too slow to adjust to changes.  Terribly stubborn.

It was the Left that said “Let the inspections work”, which we now know was folly.  And large parts of the Left were taken in by the canard that half a million Iraqi children had died of the sanctions.  This we can see is impossible, as the signs of starvation would have been all over the country if that were true.

Saddam Hussein, the Ba’ath Party, and al-Queda can all be fairly called fascist.  And the ‘Code Pink’ sort of anti-Bush movement objectively functions, in the international realm, as fascist helpers.  Domestically, the anti-war movement functions as the attack dog of the Democratic Party, performing the role that Bob Barr, among others, did against the Bill Clinton administration.  Most of the Left would reverse the roles and impeach GW Bush if they could.  It’s an extension of the politics of personal destruction, where the success of the party (either party, really) is more important than the success of the nation.

This has created a desire for unity and a post-divisive public.  Obama wants to step into this opportunity, but his past has caught up with him, and he is as divisive as any of them.  He needs a new tack, and he has the time to find one.

The worse things go in Iraq the better it is for the Democratic Party.  If the Iraq expedition ends in total chaos, an al-Queda victory, a Balkanization, the Democrats sweep to victory.  If there ever was a time that politics ended at the waters edge, that time ended with the scurrilous impeachment of Bill Clinton.  So the Republicans really have no grounds to complain.  But the problems in Iraq did not originate in the anti-Bush movement, they originated in Bush and in Iraq.

The habit of domestic warfare is very damaging and will come back at you.  And it will come back to the next President as well.  You watch.  If Bill Clinton and George Bush were both unable to withstand the opposition attack machine, what chance has the next President?

McCain can honestly claim to have been smart on Iraq, pushing for the change in tactics and strategy known as ‘The Surge’, a return to counter-insurgency, earlier than GW Bush.  Much earlier.  But this is one item in a large field.  But the economy is likely to be larger than the Iraq war in the upcoming election, and McCain’s support of voodoo economics is dumb; it hurts his chances and could damage the economy.  McCain also lacks the style and panache that appeals to a people who want a post-conflict domestic scene.

Counter-insurgency is a double-edged sword.  The Israeli Army specialized in counter-insurgency, but found that they were unprepared for “old-fashioned” land war against Hezbollah.  The same could befall the US Army, if it were to shift from Iraq into a land war against Iran.

Neither the Left nor the Right has fully come to terms with the fact that the current enemies of the West are right-wing, rather than left-wing;  Or that there are 8 or 9 times as many Muslims as there are Russians (not that they are really the same thing).

The population of Russia is about half that of the US.  And the population of Iran is about half that of Russia.  But if Iran can expand it’s sphere of influence to include more people and more oil, they can make a great deal of trouble.  And it’s clear they want to.  The malign stability of Iran is spreading it’s malignancy beyond it’s borders.

The world keeps on changing.

I have recieved a memo from Blog Central that, however insignificant this blog may be, I am nevertheless legally obligated to hold forth on the Obama-Wright controversy. Not one to ignore The Law, here goes:

First off, the whole thing is about blackness and race. And the most obvious point is that neither of these two gentlemen are exactly the blackest of public figures. Here, if the technology is willing, is an image of the Very Wright Reverend:

Thanks to the generosity of the BBC for that image. Feel free to click the link. (later, after you’ve read this page).

I’ve seen darker Puerto Ricans. Heck, I’ve seen darker Jews. So much for the concept of “The Black Man Speaking for Himself.”

I have a point to make about this. I’m not just carping about color; If I, or any other white or medium-dark guy, were to find myself the leader of some black church, I might indeed be tempted to take the most Radical Black position I could find; To keep down the doubts, which must be rumbling just below the surface. So, what’s the craziest idea you can find these days?

Well, the same government that can’t think its way into a paper bag is obviously totally incapable of inventing AIDS. They can barely spell it. They probably think it has a silent ‘P’, or something. Is there anybody out there who doesn’t know this? Anybody?

The biggest secret the US government ever had was the invention of the Atomic Bomb. The Soviets and probably several others were able to figure out the US was working on it, simply by reading the normal publications in the science of physics. A whole section of the best researchers suddenly went silent, and whole topics were simply not written about. This wasn’t censorship, it was simply that the best scientists in certain areas had all been spirited away into the secrecy of the Manhattan Project.

The point is that Big Science leave tracks. The way that the government gets things done these days is by hiring private industry. Eventually, somebody knows. And people don’t study medicine and biology to learn how to kill people. They mostly study this stuff to learn how to heal people. A few are after the big bucks, for sure. So what do these guys put on their resumes after they’ve spent 10 or 15 years working on a doomsday weapon? Military Virologist? And what company gets the credit for this? Lockheed wants the world to know it makes the best stealth technology. Likewise Boeing. Who gets the prize for this?

And what President ordered this fiasco? Nixon? After Nixon we had Ford and Carter. Were they all in on it together? By the time Reagan was President, the virus was already spreading. On the other hand, according to this old CNN article, AIDS began around 1959, and probably some years before that. Are we supposed to believe that FDR started this research? Eisenhower? Who? And, above all, why?

To utterly beat this poor Dead Horse to death, I must point out that it has been known for just centuries that infections do not understand the Color Line. They cross it at a whim. Or less. And if you want to commit genocide with a deadly virus that spreads as a venereal disease you had better have very good information as to who is connecting to who. And who isn’t. Are we to believe that the politicians did not understand that people will lie about sex? That these same evil politicians did not know about the very existence of prostitution? Are we talking about the same politicians?

The whole line of unreasoning is simply a Failure to Think.

Now, if the Wright Reverend really did have rocks in his head, he would have an excuse. But, sadly, that is not the case. And he doesn’t have apples neither. It doesn’t work that way.

Oh, oh, Obama! I haven’t mentioned Obama. He’ll get blamed for all of this. That’s the way politics works. Like I said, they tried to get Nixon for his dog. They’ll work on Obama for his preacher. Poor Obama sat in the pews for 20 years and didn’t hear a thing. Or will he say he never went to church at all? That’ll go over big. Sleep with dogs and you wake up with fleas, I guess. Like Nixon’s dog, Obama needed a leg up, a connection to the Black Voters. But now he’s climbing for the next rung, reaching for the bigger gold ring, and he has to either sink with Wright or throw him overboard. Man Overboard!

Stolen from elsewhere the web:

“We in Denmark cannot figure out why you are even bothering to hold an election. “On one side, you have a b*tch who is a lawyer, married to a lawyer, and a lawyer who is married to a b*tch who is a lawyer. “On the other side, you have a true war hero married to a woman with a huge chest who owns a beer distributorship. “Is there a contest here?”

This, of course, is totally without foundation, irrelevant, slanderous, and hilarious.

Really, though, does the fact that McCain is not a lawyer help him legislate, or perhaps, administrate? Does the fact that the other guys are lawyers help them? It should, but does it?

And I’m sure that if one were to get to know them, they are very nice ladies.

The US Republican Party, or a “Helper” has put together a pretty good “High-road” ad on Iraq. But I’m not sure it will help McCain unless re-edited. Right now it’s a pretty good ad for GW Bush. Who, as it turns out, is not actually running. But it’s the best thing they have.

In the future, I expect to see “low-road” ads about Barack’s father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., being a communist. But not a Muslim! I suppose one’s nearly as good as another; Politically speaking. Muslim, Communist, hardly different.

His father, of course, may not be relevant. But in one of Nixon’s campaigns they investigated his dog, so a father can’t be far behind. If they’d gotten the goods on the dog, though, we might have been spared the trauma of Watergate…

And there are murmurings about a McCain-Rice ticket. Condi Rice is a good double whammy against both the gender-identity politics of Hillary and the race-identity politics of Obama. Maybe McCain-Rice will face off against a Gore-Obama team.

But those tricky Republicans could still pull a rabbit out of the hat: What if they ran Powell-Rice against Obama-Hillary? Nary a white man in the bunch.

And is there any law that says Joe Lieberman can’t be a vice-Presidential candidate on both tickets?

The trifecta would be a black Jewish woman (or is it Black Jewish Woman?). But the only place to find them is in Israel, and they aren’t eligible to be President. Of the US, anyway.