This week's National Journal poll of leading political bloggers find over 90% of Left-wing and Right-wing bloggers being either "less encouraged" or having "no change" in their hopes for bipartisanship in Washington. (And the "no change" people never had much hope in the first place.) I was among the tiny minority that was "more encouraged," although not because I think that Obama's current course is going to attract Republican support. Rather, "The opposition of some Blue Dogs to the House version of the 'stimulus' (actually just a long-term spending spree, not a short-term stimulus) raises hope that more and more centrist Democrats will join in bipartisan opposition to irresponsible and overreaching measures pushed by Pelosi/Obama."
Should the U.S. send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan? About 2/3 of the Right and 1/3 of the Left thought so. My view: "President Bush led us to victory in Iraq. Let's hope President Obama does the same in Afghanistan." I do agree with bloggers who suggested that "more troops" is not the only issue; improved strategy and tactics are also important.
Left/Right bloggers pessimistic on bipartisanship, split on Afghanistan surge:
Only 7 House Democrats were willing to vote against over 1000 pages of pork they hadn't even read (down from 11 for the first time).
I don't see where your hope for increased bipartisanship is coming from.
Probably the same reason, after achieving victory, so many people were wary of withdrawing Union troops from the South after the Civil War or from Germany and Japan after World War II. Just because victory is won does not mean it cannot be undone by those who were just defeated.
I think the bipartisanship is actually working in the opposite direction. While all House Republicans, all but three Senate Republicans, and a whopping 7 House Democrats opposed the Porkapalooza Bill today, there seems to be overwhelming support on both sides for “doing something” – they just disagree on the particulars. I still think that we’d be better off if the government didn’t try to “prime the pump” and let the market correction work its way through the system.
The "surge" in the sense of using more troops worked in Iraq because it was part of an overall strategy, not because "more troops" automatically wins wars. Just sending more of our people to Afghanistan, without a plan, won't achieve anything. And nobody has a plan. President Obama's biggest foreign-policy mistake so far was insisting that Afghanistan was the centerpiece of the war on terror (or whatever we're calling it now). He did this, I suppose, because Bush was identified with Iraq, so that line let Obama talk tough while looking different from Bush. Now that he's in charge, he seems to be stuck with it. Too bad. This is Vietnam, except there isn't anybody remotely as civilized as the North Vietnamese to come in and take over.
They tried that with Lehman Bros. Then LEH went bk, which caused the Reserve Fund (the original money market fund) to "break the buck" and caused a run on money funds, which had to sell many of their holdings to meet redemptions, which led to the freezing up of the commercial paper market, which, in turn, led to some of the biggest corporations in the US to the brink of bankruptcy.
I don't think that was the correct approach.
I must say, it is a somewhat unbalanced view of "bipartisanship" that necessitates only that Democrats move to the right.
Oooh, SNAP!
By the way, 'pork' seems to be somewhat in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps we could agree on an operational defintion of 'pork': whatever is added to a bill, costs money, and could not, possibly, serve the aims of the legislation.
How's that? Notice, the last criterion is 'could not, possibly, serve the aims of the legislation' - not 'isn't what I think would work better,' nor 'offends my partisan code,' nor 'does not advance the interests of my constituents [geographical or financial].'
... and specifically, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You have to have rational objectives before you can evaluate the success or failure of a mission, and the simple truth is: we don't -- it's the strategic equivalent of heroin addiction.
Another perverse consequence of our insistence on creating thriving black markets and incentives for corruption around the world.
False. The commercial paper market "froze" for about one day. There was never a significant raise in CP interest rates (or their spread over Fed Funds) for industrial and commercial businesses. The only CP market with persistent trouble was bank paper--which sort of makes sense.
The Reserve Fund caused a psychological panic because people considered it the most safe, most conservative. Later when it became apparent substantial holdings of LB paper was the cause, people were shocked. The fund had actually been extremely speculative, but was scrubbing their books to look safe before every quarterly report--there was no fraud though, they did make a very quiet change to their prospectus which enabled their speculation.
John Taylor, the Stanford University economist behind the famous "Taylor Rule" has pulled together a fairly good presentation showing that the bank CP markets were destabilized following Paulson's TARP plan.
One of Taylors's Papers on this Subject
Re "let the market correction work its way through the system", better to call Spiderman. Equally fictional but more entertaining.
The recession won't turn around until the banks who took $$ are liquidated and the creditors/shareholders take a loss. This would cause all existing mortgages to be sold at market value ($0 is possible if there are no lenders) the prices would be back to where they were prior to the manipulation by treasury &fed reserve.
It seems that several people in Congress are guilty of violating their oath of office, and treason. Our unjustified wars in the middle east, the debt spent each month. It would be nice to get back to the Constitution, but it judging from body language, the Emanuel/Obama Twins (One coaches the other, cause they make similar pauses.)
Perhaps our Democratic Missionary will rub off, and we'll be invaded in the name of democracy... and establish a more perfect union.
Has anyone else noticed that Nancy Pelosi rarely fulfills the Speaker of the house roll, who speaks and is spoken to.
What does victory mean?
What's winnable in Iraq?
You people toss these words around like they actually mean something -- what is it??
Achieving all of our national goals:
1) Remove predatory Baathist regime and bring them to justice. Check.
2) Remove al Qaeda and the other jihadi organizations brought in by Saddam starting in 1993. Check.
3) Stop Iraqi WMD programs. Check.
4) Establish a pro American Iraqi democracy. Check with a purple finger.
The United States and the new elected Iraqi government have decisively won the Iraq War. The last Iraqi elections were an enormous victory where everyone participated and the Iraqi people rejected Iranian meddling.
Iraq has a very bright future courtesy of the United States. All Obama needs to do is ensure the remainder of the handover is done responsibly at a measured pace to ensure al Qaeda and Iran are not able to reconstitute in Iraq.
Even the left recognizes, if they are too bitter to admit, that the Iraq War has been won and are now concentrating on losing in Afghanistan.
Did you write 2 and 3 with a straight face?
But when Saddam hired Osama-"The Professor" Bin-Laden and his Al-Queda warrior-monks to take out the World Trade center on 9-11 in a dastardly pre-emptive strike against the well known superhero group Coalition of the Awesome, he had gone too far.
The innumerable robot-army of Iraq seemed unstoppable, but soon proved no match for the combined might of The Coalition. A mere 3 months after "Mustache Crisis" began Saddam was deposed with a well-placed punch from Coalition leader The Real American.
The grateful people of Iraqistan changed their country's name to Fredonia, and forever dedicated themselves to peace, democracy and purple fingers.
So you see, everything Bart says is true, to him.
It seemed the adventure was over. But wait, whatever happened to the WMDs? And what are these mysterious barrels being loaded into trucks in Syria, under the care of the mysterious "Soroso?" Whatever happened to Saddam's Changeling Scarab and Baathisto-Beam, and who is this new super-popular politician Obama?
It seems our heroes aren't out of the woods yet!
I compiled the extensive evidence and history of Saddam's alliance with al Qaeda and other jihadi groups here.
You can find a partial compilation of the evidence of Saddam's ongoing prewar nuclear weapons program here.
Well, either the left moves right, or the right move left, or both move inward. David thinks that it's more likely that the former will happen than the latter two. In fact, he says so in the OP. What's unbalanced about that view?
Hitler's not coming back from the dead, and neither is Hussein.
I was a corporal. As such I was qualifed to lead a fire team, supervise people cleaning a bathroom or waxing a floor, and to work as a crew chief.
Officers at the general officer level have completed many years of training within the military, they have at least a masters and most doctoral level education in academia, they have commanded troops at all levels and served as staff officers at almost every position and level.
They are the ones who judgment counts, not mine, not a law professor, not even a president. Obama can decide to not listen to them, which is a mistake. If there is disagreement among them including at the Joint Chiefs level, then he should be the tie breaker.
However, my opinion, and that of the other posters here, really means nothing. To the extent that the lawyers here can write well, that is worse because it lends credit to our ignorance.
Even fooling around with the word "surge" is troublesome, since it evokes the final strategy at the end of the Third War of Iraq.
Elements of successful modern counterinsurgency may well work in both places, but the overall strategy will never be comparable.
If you have a comment about spelling, typos, or format errors, please e-mail the poster directly rather than posting a comment.
Comment Policy: We reserve the right to edit or delete comments, and in extreme cases to ban commenters, at our discretion. Comments must be relevant and civil (and, especially, free of name-calling). We think of comment threads like dinner parties at our homes. If you make the party unpleasant for us or for others, we'd rather you went elsewhere. We're happy to see a wide range of viewpoints, but we want all of them to be expressed as politely as possible.
We realize that such a comment policy can never be evenly enforced, because we can't possibly monitor every comment equally well. Hundreds of comments are posted every day here, and we don't read them all. Those we read, we read with different degrees of attention, and in different moods. We try to be fair, but we make no promises.
And remember, it's a big Internet. If you think we were mistaken in removing your post (or, in extreme cases, in removing you) -- or if you prefer a more free-for-all approach -- there are surely plenty of ways you can still get your views out.