Ehud Barak and Joe Lieberman

This past weekend in synagogue, a friend and newcomer to the shul got her first “good Shabbos” from Sen. Joe Lieberman–and found herself just a bit flustered. But she is a conservative Republican and has spent most of her career around politicos, so what explains her reaction?

It’s true that Lieberman has become something of a celebrity in the practicing Jewish community for his status as a respected senator and Orthodox Jew–one who came quite close to serving as vice president (and who knows after that?). But there is more to Lieberman’s gravitas.

Most Jews I speak with who are politically conservative did not start out that way. If you were Jewish and conservative, chances are your family and friends were not. Back in Jersey, not a single one of my friends was a Republican–yet almost all of them voted for George W. Bush in 2004 and for John McCain in 2008. Why weren’t any of the registered Democrats I knew voting for Democrats?

I think part of the answer has to do with Lieberman’s standing among his fellow Democrats. Between 2000 (when Lieberman ran as Gore’s vice presidential candidate) and 2004, the party had clearly changed. Gore and Lieberman were both hawkish on defense and national security. But Gore soon became a cartoonish dove–just as most Democrats did–simply because the war in Iraq was unpopular.

In 2004, in the midst of two wars, the Democratic Party nominated for president John Kerry. This was a man who famously threw away his Vietnam service ribbons. And the difference in vice presidential nominees could not be starker. The party had traded down from Lieberman to John Edwards.

The party was expelling its last vestiges of foreign policy hawkishness. To Jews, this rang alarm bells. Isolationists and doves had endangered the fight against the Nazis in World War II before Roosevelt, a Democrat, finally got the U.S. involved. Jews suffered under communism, and could rely on Democrats from Harry Truman to Scoop Jackson to fight the good fight. Jews were threatened everywhere by anti-Semitism, and when the United Nations began institutionalizing the practice, the Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan came thundering to the defense of the Jewish community.

Lieberman’s ousting left many Democrats–Jews among them–with a party they did not recognize. But there is another reason for the anxiety among members of the Jewish community: Lieberman’s expulsion from the left mirrored a similar process taking place in Israel.

The Labor party, led by Ehud Barak, had become fragmented over the issue of security as well. Barak remained something of a hawk, as did many others in the party. But the Israeli populace became increasingly disenchanted with the peace process, which had yielded more and more bloodshed as it wore on. Israelis wanted to believe that the Palestinians wanted peace–or at least that enough of them did to swing the leadership in that direction. But when the truth became clear–that the Palestinians were not serious about peace, but were frighteningly serious about eliminating Israel and the Jewish people–the realists among the Israeli left acknowledged it.

So when Ariel Sharon led a move from the right to the center by creating the Kadima party, which would be willing to evacuate settlements in unprecedented numbers but would be tough on Israeli security, many Laborites couldn’t resist joining. And now it has happened again. Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, has left Labor, bringing with him four other members of the Knesset and governing coalition.

This is bad news for the Labor party, but excellent news for those who want to see realistic negotiations with the Palestinians as well as those who take the threat of Iran seriously. On the first, here is Evelyn Gordon:

“Like most such splits, this one stemmed partly from personal animosities. But it also had a substantive reason: as one member of the breakaway faction explained, the government will now be able to conduct peace talks ‘without a stopwatch,’ instead of under constant threat that a key coalition faction would quit if Israel didn’t capitulate to Palestinian demands.”

And on the issue of Iran, Aluf Benn clarified in Haaretz:

“Without Barak by his side, Netanyahu would find it hard to advance aggressive moves on the Iranian front. Netanyahu has no military record that grants him supreme defense authority, as Ariel Sharon had. Only Barak, with his ranks and medals, his seniority as a former prime minister, can give Netanyahu this kind of backing.”

The name of Barak’s new party? Atzmaut, meaning Independence. It was under that very same banner that Lieberman ran for his Senate seat in 2006, having been defeated in the Democratic primary by a self-financed sensation of the leftist blogs. It is quite a coincidence that Barak’s formation of Atzmaut came the same week Lieberman announced his retirement.

“What, after all, is a Democrat like me doing at a Republican convention like this,” Lieberman asked the crowd back in 2008, two days before John McCain accepted the Republican nomination for president. “Well, I’ll tell you what. I’m here to support John McCain because country matters more than party.”

When Barak announced the split from Labor and the founding of Atzmaut, here’s what he said: “The top priority will be first and foremost the state, then the party, and only at the end, us.”

If this, as some commentators have suggested, spells the effective end of the Labor party, it should be mourned with sincerity. It has produced true leaders–commanders worthy of their ranks–and guided Israel through its tumultuous and virtuous youth.

It is by no means the end of the Democratic Party, but it does represent the end of the party as many of us knew it. That, too, is unfortunate.

Robert Kagan wrote a Washington Post column in 2006 about Lieberman called “The Last Honest Man.” He wrote that unlike pretty much everyone else on the left–and a number of those on the right–Lieberman didn’t pretend he was fooled into supporting the war in Iraq; he didn’t lie about what he really meant or make excuses for his principles. And for that he was about to lose the Democratic primary. Kagan wrote:

“At least he will be able to sleep at night. And he can take some solace in knowing that history, at least an honest history, will be kinder to him than was his own party.”

Lieberman’s varied political positions rankled Democrats and Republicans simultaneously. Though he caucused with the Democrats, he was unlike them in far too many important ways for there not be a void when he exits. With the wipeout of many of the more moderate Blue Dog Democrats in this year’s midterm elections, and now with Lieberman leaving, the Democratic Party becomes a singled-minded creature.

That is the difference that Lieberman made–that is the difference principled statesmen always make. And it is the reason even Republicans enjoy getting a “good Shabbos” from Joe Lieberman.

Click here to purchase Decision Points

George W. Bush’s memoir Decision Points is a surprisingly good read—not that I expected it to be terrible, as Bush-haters probably do. (I rate his presidency middling, better than his father’s, and better than any Democrat’s since at least JFK’s.)

Given the sharp turn our nation has taken leftward—and downward—the memoir made me feel ridiculously nostalgic.

The chapter titles are short, punchy, to-the-point. You can practically hear W reciting them into his mini-tape recorder: “Quitting.” “Running.” “Personnel.” “Stem Cells.”

That would be “Quitting” as in drinking, and “Running” for political offices including governor of Texas and the presidency. “Personnel” relates Bush’s decision-making process for nominating and/or firing staffers Dick Cheney, James Baker and Ted Olson (lawyers in Bush v. Gore,) Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Bob Gates, Andrew Card, John Roberts, Harriet Miers, and Samuel Alito.

Not surprisingly, the longest chapter is “Iraq,” which outlines Bush’s decision to invade the country and take out Saddam Hussein. Bush lays out the case for his decision to attack clearly, logically, and unimpeachably, including the overwhelming global consensus that Hussein was producing weapons of mass destruction. Bush chronicles the support he received from steadfast allies Tony Blair, John Howard, and José Maria Avnar, and the backstabbing he encountered from treacherous weasels Gerhard Schroeder, Jacques Chirac, and Vladimir Putin.

The facts Bush provides on the lead-up to the Iraq War remind us that claims he “rushed to war,” “went it alone,” and had no plans for postwar Iraq are the fevered delusions of leftist lunatics. (Just reading about the U.S.’s efforts to rope Security Council members into approving United Nations resolutions to deal with Hussein “diplomatically,” I grew six inches of facial hair.)

“Leading” describes Bush’s leadership on a variety of issues, including No Child Left Behind and the regrettable Medicare prescription drug benefit, as well as his heartbreaking second-term failure to pass Social Security reform and his (mostly solid) immigration reform.

Three chapters are stinkers; fortunately, they come near the end. “Lazarus Effect” brags how generous Bush was with taxpayer money in starting an AIDS prevention program in Africa that constituted a drop in the bucket because it did nothing to address the corruption in Africa’s tyrannical regimes. Bizarre revelation: Upon landing in Tanzania, Bush writes:

“[A] cluster of women danced to the festive beat of drums and horns. As one rotated to the music, I saw my photo stretched across her backside.”

“Freedom Agenda” boasts about Bush’s push for a two-state Israeli-Palestinian solution over the objections of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell, and his support for free elections for Palestinians who ended up voting Hamas into power. “Financial Crisis” justifies Bush’s backing of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and automobile industry bailout. It’s not surprising that the “moderate,” “bipartisan” activity outlined in these three chapters was concentrated in Bush’s final two years, after the disastrous political events of 2005 (including the outcry over his response to Hurricane Katrina.)

As voters headed to the polls yesterday to decide how many allies the current president will have in Congress come January, some have started to contemplate the reputation of his predecessor. Former President George W. Bush’s memoir Decision Points will be released next week, leading the Daily Beast’s Bryan Curtis to take a look at ex-Bush personnel’s efforts to rehabilitate their boss:

[T]o hear Bushies tell it, a number of things have changed since then that might sway America. One, Barack Obama is now the one with the slumping ratings. “People respect the fact that [Bush has] stayed off the radar screen and out of President Obama’s business,” said Mark McKinnon, a former advisor. “They have also watched Obama come down to earth and know that even Superman would have a tough time being president these days.” An October CNN poll found Obama and Bush nearly tied—47 percent to 45 percent, respectively—on the question of who has been a better president.

Indeed, when you blame the status quo predominantly on one guy and promise that your election will be remembered as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,” and things don’t get better after all, it’s gonna occur to people that maybe America’s problems can’t be reduced to a single scapegoat after all.

Second, the Bushies say that despite his campaign promises, Obama’s administration has not fully repudiated Bush, on issues from the closing of Guantanamo Bay to military tribunals. That has made Bush’s positions look better in retrospect. “President Obama has started out in a different place, very different than President Bush,” Gutierrez said. “As he has faced reality, reality has pushed him into the Bush position.” Tuesday’s results, Perino suggested, would finally show the Democrats that Bush-bashing, their favorite sport in the last two election cycles, was obsolete. So maybe America would stop hearing a chorus of negativity about W.

There may be something to this—someone’s bound to notice when you continue numerous policies you once pledged to end—but I’m not inclined to think it’s as big a factor in Bush’s image rehabilitation, because Gitmo and military tribunals weren’t huge factors in Bush’s declining popularity to begin with.

It looks like the new history-rewriting movie Fair Game, starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, isn’t enough to satisfy Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame’s quest to stay relevant. In a fawning, uncritical retrospective on their “victimization” at the hands of the Bush Administration for the Daily Beast, Lloyd Grove writes that the only spy the Left ever liked (well, the only American one, anyway) and her husband are disappointed with Barack Obama for not continuing the persecution of his predecessor:

Plame told me she agrees with her husband’s critique of the Obama administration, especially of the Obama Justice Department’s support of the Bushies’ successful attempt, partly on national-security grounds, to throw out their lawsuit against former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, political guru Karl Rove and former vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby for leaking Plame’s secret identity as a CIA employee.

“I think it’s fair to say that in general, the [judicial] bench always shows deference to the government’s claims of national security at each and every turn,” Plame told me.

“But in my own case,” she added, “I think it is incumbent upon the bench at least to thoroughly investigate those claims and not just say ‘Oh, national security—oh, OK!’”

This, in a case in which government officials arguably breached national security themselves in order to get back at a political adversary.

“How ironic!” Plame said.

Oh, and Karl Rove’s media gigs are a national calamity, too:

I asked Wilson—who memorably declared that Rove should have been “frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs” for his role in leaking Plame’s name to Novak—what he makes of Rove’s current prominence as a pundit and strategist, a near-constant presence on Fox News and the godfather of the American Crossroads political money machine.

“Well, obviously, I’m appalled by it,” he told me. “I think that what he has effectively been able to do is take his fear-and-smear strategy and torturous approach to American politics and incorporate it. I don’t think that bodes well for the American body politic or the fairness of the way we conduct our discussions in the public square.”

That the Wilsons can so brazenly cast their opponents as monsters while claiming the moral high ground for themselves is possible only because journalism is all-but dead in America. The truth is, they’re the ones who should be ashamed to show their faces in public.

I knew my recent Ron Paul-bashing post would get the Paulites into a tizzy—they’ve been as charming as ever in the comments, and now Wesley Messamore at Young Americans for Liberty, an activist group started by young Paul drones, is taking shots at me for my “specious and empty charges” against the demented one. But did he score any hits? Not really.

The notable thing about his introduction is that he repeatedly parrots the very straw man I called out at the beginning of the original post, by asserting that Paul’s critics don’t care about reducing the size and scope of government, respecting taxpayers, protecting gun rights, or supporting the right to life…without offering a shred of evidence for any of it. You think Wesley made any effort to ascertain what I, or anyone else at NRB, actually think about conservatism, compromise, or other GOP politicians before brazenly impugning our principles? Me neither.

Supporting limited government doesn’t mean anyone who votes the right way on certain issues is automatically worth supporting, nor does it mean a politician cannot have failings in other areas that are severe enough to disqualify him from serious consideration. We simply believe that chronically lying about national security and exploiting conspiratorial demagoguery rise to that level.

Failed Rebuttal #8:

Calvin ignores the fact that Ron Paul doesn’t at all treat the issue as directly deducible from the Founding Fathers a priori.

Oh yes he does. In the post, I linked to Paul claiming the Founders were libertarians generally, and in particular arguing that he “advocate[s] the same foreign policy the Founding Fathers would,” disingenuously asking “by what superior wisdom have we now declared Jefferson, Washington, and Madison to be ‘unrealistic and dangerous’? Why do we insist on throwing away their most considered warnings?”

Ron Paul makes a formidable and detailed case for a better foreign policy in the Middle East on the basis of contemporary evidence from the region, often including facts and reports from Washington’s own defense establishment to support his assertions.

Paul’s use of contemporary facts is frequently false and misleading. Wesley can find several of them clearly linked in the post, but here’s another example that illustrates just how low Paul’s disregard for truth will go. Here’s why he’s against pardoning Scooter Libby:

I saw him as orchestrating some very vicious lies, he didn’t get convicted on the misinformation that was given to get us into war. So he was behind all that, and this was incidental to this, because they were covering up and hiding from it, and he lied about it, and that’s what he got convicted of, but I think the most serious crime was his participation in trying to bend the intelligence to get us to support the war.

No, he got convicted of “misstating when he first heard a certain piece of information, namely the identity of Joe Wilson’s wife,” with no real reason to believe Libby was deliberately lying, despite the fact that on Patrick Fitzgerald’s “essential charge as special prosecutor — find and punish who had leaked Valerie Plame’s name — he had nothing”:

Fitzgerald knew the leaker from the very beginning. It was not Libby but Richard Armitage. He also knew that the “leak” by the State Department’s No. 2 official — a fierce bureaucratic opponent of the White House, especially the vice president’s office — was an innocent offhand disclosure made to explain how the CIA had improbably chosen Wilson for a WMD mission. (He was recommended by his CIA wife.)

This was known months before Paul opined on Libby. If Paul has ever admitted that any of his public statements regarding any aspect of the War on Terror have been inaccurate, I’m all ears.

As for whether or not Libby was part of a campaign to distort intelligence to send America to war, a.) that campaign didn’t happen: the overwhelming intelligence consensus prior to the war—comprised of members of both parties, multiple administrations, and even several foreign governments and the United Nations—indicated that Saddam Hussein was a threat, and two separate post-war investigations have found no evidence of efforts to distort or politicize intelligence findings; and b.) that’s not what Libby was charged with. Mister Law and Liberty himself isn’t really saying he’d let a man rot in prison on a bum rap just to punish him for an entirely separate offense a jury didn’t even consider…is he?

Failed Rebuttal #7:

The undeniable historical truth is that Abraham Lincoln did expand and permanently enshrine Federal power in an unprecedented way. Before his administration, the Federal government was properly understood as subordinate to the states. After Lincoln, the unhistorical, unconstitutional, and un-American opposite of this arrangement has been the paradigm in American government.

Whenever a Paulite uses the word “undeniable,” you can be sure they mean the exact opposite. The Founders wanted far greater state autonomy, and a far more limited federal scope, than what progressivism has inflicted upon the nation, but it’s something else entirely to claim it all started with Lincoln. Government grew during the Civil War, but it shrunk afterward:

Newsbusters has published a memo written by Associated Press “Standards Editor” Tom Kent. Kent sent the note to staffers in order to explain to them how they’re supposed to cover the war in Iraq. His main point? Don’t repeat the Obama administration’s talking point that combat operations have ended. At least 4,500 American troops continue fighting along side the Iraqi army and they’ll continue doing so for the foreseeable future.

As for U.S. involvement, it also goes too far to say that the U.S. part in the conflict in Iraq is over. President Obama said Monday night that “the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country.”

However, 50,000 American troops remain in country. Our own reporting on the ground confirms that some of these troops, especially some 4,500 special operations forces, continue to be directly engaged in military operations. These troops are accompanying Iraqi soldiers into battle with militant groups and may well fire and be fired on.

… Our stories about Iraq should make clear that U.S. troops remain involved in combat operations alongside Iraqi forces, although U.S. officials say the American combat mission has formally ended.

Most interesting about this matter is that while Kent is basically saying Obama’s lying about the situation in Iraq, few if any news outlets are willing to challenge the president’s statements on this matter – publicly at least.

Couldn’t have anything to do with their political leanings, right?

Has the man gone blind?

How many Democrats does James Carville represent?  Carville was one of the key advisers to President Clinton, and has since been seen as a spokesman for the Democratic Party.  He is now claiming America lost in Iraq.  Is that what most Dems believe?

Watch Carville claim America lost the Iraq war while talking about Charles Krauthammer on CNN:

“Krauthammer…is a right-wing guy who thought it was a very nifty idea to invade Iraq, and I think actually thinks we won that war.” – James Carville

What was that James?  You honestly believe that the American soldier lost to the Iraqis?  That’s not exactly the feeling I got from President Obama a few days ago when he announced the end to the Iraq War:

The Americans who have served in Iraq completed every mission they were given. They defeated a regime that had terrorized its people. Together with Iraqis and coalition partners who made huge sacrifices of their own, our troops fought block by block to help Iraq seize the chance for a better future. They shifted tactics to protect the Iraqi people; trained Iraqi Security Forces; and took out terrorist leaders. Because of our troops and civilians -and because of the resilience of the Iraqi people – Iraq has the opportunity to embrace a new destiny, even though many challenges remain.

If that isn’t Obama’s version of “mission accomplished” I don’t know what is.

I’d love to see a poll of politicians on the left side of the aisle to see if they agree with Carville or the president.  And how do the proponents of us losing think we actually lost?  What military battle did we lose?  What army defeated ours?  What leader is in power over there?  The only Hussein I know in power is here in the states and his first name is Barack.

We won.  We defeated the Iraqi military swiftly.  And after struggling in a fight against insurgents, President Bush promoted a military surge that turned the tide back in our favor.  We completed the task.  We, as Obama said, “defeated the regime” and “completed every mission”.  In others words, we won the war.

Of course, Carville has long been confused on what’s happening in Iraq.  Just recently he claimed America spent 3 trillion dollars on the war, and gave Dems the lie that the war was the reason for our deficit problems.  The facts actually show that the Iraq war has cost just over 700 billion – far less than Obama’s spending.  Check out this chart:

It is time for Carville and other Democrats to stop using the Iraq War in their blame game.  Stop lying about who won and how much it cost.  Stop holding the war liable for every ill your party has brought to our country.  Stop calling our soldiers losers and trying to rewrite history.  The war is over, it did not kill our deficit, and oh yeah – we won.

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Paul Cooper is a husband and father above all else.  With a wife and 2 daughters he could use a dog, but sadly he only owns a cat – a female cat no less.  Paul is also a pastor, blogger, and business owner.  Find him on  Twitter.

Brian Haig is a New York Times Bestselling author. He has written eight books including his latest, The Capitol Game. He previously served in the military as Special Assistant to the Commander-in-Chief of the United Nations Command in Korea, and then for four years as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. NewsReal Blog had the pleasure of interviewing him.

NewsRealBlog: What is the plot of The Capitol Game?

Brian Haig: A small, insignificant company on the edge of bankruptcy has discovered an alchemist’s dream; a miraculous polymer, that when coated on any vehicle, is the equivalent of 30 inches of steel. With bloody conflicts surging in Iraq and Afghanistan, the polymer promises to save thousands of lives and change the course of both wars. The Capitol Group, one of the country’s largest and most powerful corporations is enlisted by Jack Wiley, a Wall Street investment banker, to take over the smaller company that developed the polymer and then get a fat government contract. After the Pentagon’s investigative service starts to ask questions the Capitol Group find themselves embroiled in a tremendous scandal.

NRB: Was there a point you were trying to get across?

Haig: I was hoping to give you a sense of the tragedy that was occurring in Iraq. In Iraq it took six to seven years to field combat vehicles that gave our soldiers a much higher chance of survival against the insurgent’s principal battlefield weapon, IED’s, or roadside bombs. It’s tragic.

NRB: It seemed that in just a few pages the readers was able to connect with one of the book’s characters, Captain Bill Forrest. Was that your intention?

Haig: The bomb issue was a critical issue. To bring it home, I wanted the readers to associate the tragedy of the Iraq War with somebody. Compare Iraq to World War II. In WWII it took only three years for America to field three entire generations of tanks for an army of 9 to 10 million. In Iraq we had a considerably smaller army and it took 6 to 7 years to field adequate protective combat vehicles.

NRB: There was a great quote in the book: “A week without sweat or explosions is more than you can imagine.” Can you elaborate for those of us sitting in the comforts of our homes?

Haig: When you are in a place like Iraq or Afghanistan where the temperature is 115 to 120 degrees and you are wearing heavy combat gear the soldiers are required to wear; you are carrying 60 to 80 pounds on your frame; and you are covered in body armour that doesn’t breathe well it is physically miserable every day. It wears on you a lot. When you see an Iraqi campaign medal on a soldier’s chest, whether they saw a shot fired or not, understand how much he or she suffered just by being there.

It sometimes seems like Barack Obama’s heart is more in reshaping America’s domestic landscape than foreign policy, but the presidency being an all-or-nothing deal, the White House yesterday unveiled a new comprehensive national security strategy, “A Blueprint for Pursuing the World We Seek.”  At the Daily Beast, foreign affairs analyst Leslie H. Gelb has some positive things to say about the strategy, but on the whole finds it wanting:

In many ways, the document correctly stresses that America’s strength abroad depends on its economic vitality at home. But other than a one-time stimulus package, what is Mr. Obama planning to do to resuscitate the American economy? There’s no indication of the hard choices ahead needed to reduce yearly deficits and the absolutely overwhelming trillions of dollars in prospective total governmental debt. Hilariously, Mr. Obama reportedly phoned the prime minister of Spain the other day to tell HIM to reduce HIS deficit. If restoring the American economy is so essential—and it is—the man in the White House has to take the toughest possible steps to restore the economy and reestablish his and America’s credibility on these matters.

Absolutely right.  The problem, however, is that in order for Obama to reestablish his economic credibility, he would essentially have to convert from the leftist he is into a conservative.  One of the chief engines driving modern left-wing thought is unwillingness to trust individuals and states to solve their own problems, or to let them suffer the consequences of failure.  There is no problem government can bear to leave alone, and that government must be the federal one.  Further, there’s no reason to think anyone in the Obama Administration or their supporters are at all concerned about their staggering fiscal irresponsibility.  In his latest column, which gives even more reasons to doubt 44’s fiscal seriousness, Mark Steyn explains the mindset:

In any advanced society, there will be a certain number of dysfunctional citizens either unable or unwilling to do what is necessary to support themselves and their dependents. What to do about such people? Ignore the problem? Attempt to fix it? The former nags at the liberal guilt complex, while the latter is way too much like hard work: the modern progressive has no urge to emulate those Victorian social reformers who tramped the streets of English provincial cities looking for fallen women to rescue. All he wants to do is ensure that the fallen women don’t fall anywhere near him.

Gelb continues:

As for Mr. Obama’s strategic desire to build cooperation with nations around the world and get international institutions effectively on Washington’s side, forget about it—at least in any short or medium term. Most nations don’t do a damn thing and aren’t prepared to sacrifice a penny to what they see as “an American cause.” No amount of American niceness and understanding will change that. Our NATO allies have done the minimum in Afghanistan and will do less in the future. The U.N. Security Council has become virtually moribund. Just gaze upon its deficiencies in the current crisis with North Korea.

I’m glad he points this out—of all the dishonest memes peddled about the War on Terror during the Bush years, one of the most maddening was the charge of Bush “going it alone” and disrespecting the wishes of the international community.  Never mind that Operation: Iraqi Freedom was hardly unilateral.  Never mind that the United Nations is a hotbed of corruption, incompetence and perverse values.  Never mind that a fair bit of the opposition to US policy was rooted in selfish motives. Yes, the US should attempt to cooperate in good faith with foreign nations, but any serious foreign policy also has to recognize both that majority international opinion can be wrong, and that sometimes our “allies” are the ones acting in bad faith.

Gelb deems the outline little more than a “bureaucratic collection of politically approved thoughts,” though he insists that it at least show that Team Obama takes the world’s dangers seriously.  At the Heritage Foundation, James Carafano is less impressed:

Part Two is an overwhelming desire to substitute soft power for hard power. The problem is that soft power – like diplomacy – is not a substitute for hard power. Obama has already given us an object lesson in how this really works with the New START treaty. The US gave the Russians everything they wanted and in return got nothing other than ensuring Russia will be a dominant nuclear power for the next half century while the US nuclear deterrent continues to atrophy.

Part Three of the strategy is living in the world of wishful thinking. It emphasizes engagement and cooperation. But the strategy has no strategy for when the other side chooses not to cooperate as in the case of Iran. The US opted to engage Iran. Iran opted to make parodies about US foreign policy.

For a plan on “Pursuing the World We Seek,” Obama’s foreign policy seems awfully content to let the global status quo push America around…

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Hailing from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Calvin Freiburger is a political science major at Hillsdale College.  He also writes for the Hillsdale Forum and his personal website, Calvin Freiburger Online.

“Don’t spend money you don’t have” and “distinguish between essentials and frills” are lessons just about everybody learns at some point in their lives, whether from a basic economics course or from one’s parents explaining that a credit card is not magic.

Why, then, can’t Congress and the White House figure it out?

At the Daily Beast, Peter Beinart writes about how the dilemma facing us in Iraq: if the US military sticks to its current withdrawal schedule, Iraq’s fledgling democracy will likely collapse before long, but we can’t afford to stay any longer:

The coming months could be particularly treacherous. Last time Iraq held a national election, it took parliament five months to approve a new government. As Thomas Ricks of the Center for a New American Security has pointed out, Obama drew up his withdrawal plan on the assumption that Iraq would hold elections in late 2009, and thus, that it would have a government in place by the time U.S. troops began leaving in droves. But because that election is only being held now, Iraq may be virtually government-less when U.S. troops head for the exits this summer. In such an environment, the potential for chaos is real. And the greater the prospect of chaos, the greater the potential for a coup, something Britain’s ambassador in Iraq recently warned about. Few Iraqi strongmen would attempt one with close to 100,000 U.S. troops peering over their shoulder. But the faster those numbers dwindle, the greater the danger becomes.

[...]

Defense spending, which has grown 9 percent per year over the last decade, now comprises well over 50 percent of U.S. discretionary spending. Unless some president reins that in, there’s no real chance of getting U.S. debt under control, let alone making the domestic investments necessary to compete with China. But curtailing defense spending in wartime is virtually impossible. (It’s no surprise that historically, it’s during wars that the U.S. has gone deepest into debt.) In January, Obama announced a three-year freeze on discretionary spending, but exempted defense altogether.

Hmm, if only there were other vast sums of money the federal government was spending that could be reduced…

Curiously, it doesn’t seem to occur to Beinart to cut from anywhere other than defense, which, while costly, is far from unusually high from a historical standpoint, especially considering that we’re at war – one of the things the federal government actually is supposed to spend money on. But of course, there are alternatives.  For one thing, Uncle Sam could reconsider the wisdom of massive, trillion-dollar boondoggles in the name of “stimulus,” or of bailing out everyone under the sun. We could recognize that we just can’t afford a government takeover of healthcare right now. Heck, if we really wanted to get serious about fiscal discipline and doing something about debt, we could take a look at Social Security, Medicare, entitlement spending, earmarks…I could go on and on, but you get the point.

This is one of the inherent problems of left-wing governance: not only is there a fundamentally distorted conception of what government is and is not for, not only do liberals have a complete disregard for barriers between public and private or federal and local, but they are dangerously impatient to see their dreams made into reality, and cannot bring themselves to leave behind that shiny new toy in the store window, even if the credit cards are maxed out and the landlord’s about to kick ‘em out of the apartment. They want the frills so much that they’ll sacrifice the essentials to get them.

That’s why Barack Obama’s rhetoric has been jam-packed with references to the time for talk being over. Indeed, take a look at the Congressional Budget Office’s latest debt predictions, then come back and tell me whether or not the people in charge take fiscal discipline seriously.

Unfortunately, both parties have been growing government and spending like there’s no tomorrow for so long, and America has gotten so used to the status quo, that no solution will be easy to implement. As John Hawkins recently wrote, a weaker military, serious tax increases and economic stagnation, and an overall decline in American power, might all be unavoidable, even if all of Capitol Hill were to have a miraculous conversion to conservatism tomorrow. The one thing we do know is that we can’t go on like this. Everybody knows it, but whether or not leaders will emerge who are willing to play grown-up and say “NO” to DC’s unruly kids is another matter entirely.

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Hailing from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Calvin Freiburger is a political science major at Hillsdale College.  He also blogs at the Hillsdale Forum and his personal website, Calvin Freiburger Online.

Fields of Fire may be the greatest novel ever written about the Vietnam War. However, because it is pro-American, pro-military, and pro-Marine, Hollywood won’t touch it.

I haven’t yet seen The Hurt Locker. My military friends who have seen the movie tell me it’s a decent, albeit unrealistic and over-the-top depiction of a military Explosives Ordinance Disposal (EOD) unit.

“The main guy’s a cowboy, who wouldn’t last one day in Iraq, assuming he ever got there,” said one Army friend, a senior non-commissioned officer. However, he told me, at least we’re the good guys.

Showing American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines as good guys is no small accomplishment in Hollywood these days, given the industry’s longstanding propensity to depict the United States as a malicious international villain. Still, it is asking too much of Hollywood to produce at least one great movie about today’s Iraq and Afghan wars?

Sadly, it probably is asking too much. Just ask Senator James Webb, Democrat from Virginia. The highly decorated Marine veteran of the Vietnam War published, in 1978, what is widely recognized as perhaps that war’s greatest novel, Fields of Fire.

Yet, Webb never succeeded in getting his novel made into a movie. But plenty of far less captivating stories — and certainly plenty more negative depictions of the Vietnam War and Vietnam vets — have made it to the silver screen.

What accounts for this discrepancy? Simple. Hollywood is highly politicized and can’t fathom supporting any of “the Bushs’ wars” — i.e., the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the Afghan War — nor the dreaded Vietnam War.

Hell, we might as well throw Harry Truman’s Korean War into the mix, too, since I can’t recall the last time Hollywood ever celebrated our Korean War vets.

You have to go back to World War II, in fact, to find an American war that Hollywood supports. Thus you have movies like Saving Private Ryan being made even in contemporary times. (Yes, 1998 is part and parcel of our contemporary culture — though at 12 years old, Saving Private Ryan is fast becoming part of our cultural past.)

But even World War II veterans get the full Hollywood treatment nowadays. Flags of Our Fathers, for instance, depicts our military veterans as the victims of a crass and shallow commercialized American culture.

Most American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, though, don’t think of themselves as victims; nor do most of our veterans. They think of themselves as good and decent people who have answered a higher calling: a calling to service, and a calling to honor.

Hollywood doesn’t have to like our servicemen and women; but can it not see the honor of their calling, the glory of their service, and the heroism of their sacrifice? Their stories deserve to be told. America’s stories deserve to be told.

Just ask Senator Webb, which shouldn’t be difficult. Webb’s a Democrat, after all, and he’s worked in Hollywood. Ask Webb whether the Marines who served with him in Vietnam have stories worth telling. But ask him after you’ve read his searing and unforgettable novel, Fields of Fire.

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John R. Guardiano is a writer and analyst in Arlington, Virginia. Follow him on Twitter.