DebateGate

Iraq’s political and economic bullet
Filed under: General— site admin @ 4:34 pm
Several economists and economic development experts argue that land –specifically “land reform” – is key to ending Iraq’s complex civil conflict. Among them is Peter Schaefer. Schaefer served in Vietnam as an American military intelligence officer then in the mid-1970s became deeply involved in economic development analysis and property right issues. His is also a former adviser to Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto.

Vietnam sparked Schaefer’s interest in economic development. I spoke to him yesterday (March 2) on the phone. Pete told me: “I couldn’t get my mind around the fact that the Vietnamese people were so smart and industrious and yet they were just so damn poor. The (destructive effects of the) war didn’t answer that for me. Why would someone choose Mao over Jefferson?”

Schaefer concluded the Vietnamese Communists pursued a calculated land reform policy, one that leveraged Vietnamese villagers’ traditional recognition of property rights.

He also looked at World War Two. “One of the crucial pieces of what we did in Japan was to give property rights to peasants who didn’t have them,” Schaefer said. “That was fifty percent of the population, approximately. General MacArthur (on the advice of his staff) gave the peasants their land and almost overnight created middle class. It was a brilliant move.”

In the 1990s, Schafer noted, Peru turned the “land reform” tables on the Communists. Property right reform helped defeat Peru’s “Maoist” Shining Path guerrilla movement.

“The Third World is not populated by proletariats, it’s populated by entrepreneurs– successful small business people,” Schafer said. (And that is what I’ve seen in the time I’ve spent in developing nations.) He added: “If you are someone who is surviving and raising a family by taking a bunch of bananas from out the city and bringing it in (to sell) you are an entrepreneur. You understand business —by low sell high And if you come to them and say you want to extend credit to them they understand that.”

In Schafer’s view, property right reform gives Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government a very powerful political weapon, one that has war-winning potential.

Schafer supplied some fascinating evidence. According to Schafer, less than five percent of Iraq’s cultivatable agricultural land is “freehold” (owned with clear title). 95 percent of the cultivatable land in Iraq is therefore “dead” (illiquid) and cannot be used as security for a bank loan. “Iraqi farmers who lack clear title can’t get (bank) loans,” Schaefer said. That limits economic creativity, particularly in a population demonstrably successful at small business operations. Schafer believes that 95 percent of family homes in Iraq also lack clear, secure title.

“Prime Minister Maliki needs to go on television,” Schaefer advised, “and say “Citizens of Iraq, 95 percent of the property in this country is not legally in your name. You don’t have title to your own land or your own houses. We’re going to change that right now.””

This reform would launch a liberalizing political and economic revolution, with the democratic Iraqi government empowering the people of Iraq. For maximum payoff, Schafer said, Maliki’s government should support title reform with a mortgage program that provides wholesale money to banks and permits them to do mortgage lending for individual Iraqis, thus “jumpstarting” Iraq’s sclerotic banking system.

Property right reform also provides a political tool for assuaging sectarian and ethnic fears among Iraqi citizens, Schaefer said. Good title “means Iraqis can protect their houses with the law on their side.”

This is nation building at a subtle but fundamental level: moving from the rule of the gun to rule of law. Consider the case of Sunni Arabs who have abandoned property in Shia Arab neighborhoods. “Anyone who loses a home, but has solid title, will have legal recourse to regain (lost property) through the courts,” Schaefer said. The law becomes a non-violent option preferable to gang or militia-inspired retribution.

Schaefer thinks the Iraqi city of Kirkuk offers a perfect opportunity to link title reform to an economically-productive housing construction program. Saddam Hussein “Arabized” the city by forcing Kurds to move away. Now returning Kurds are evicting Arabs. Some 40,000 homes are in dispute. Schafer’s solution: Build 40,000 new homes in Kirkuk. “Displaced Kurds have a choice – their old home or a new one,” Schafer said. “They can have their former home once an Arab family moves into one of the new houses.” This defuses the ethnic clash and, Schafer noted, “the economic impact of the construction program will be enormous.”

I think I’ll post one of his quotes a second time, because it is so true:

“The Third World is not populated by proletariats, it’s populated by entrepreneurs– successful small business people.”
Yup.

http://austinbay.net/blog/?p=1650

Al Gore Inadvertently Breaches Airport Security

March 1, 2007 11:19 PM EST

 
 
 
Former vice president Al Gore was involved in a security breach at the Nashville Airport when an American Airlines employee led him and his entourage around security, a clear violation of policy.

"There are no exceptions. Everyone must go through security," airport spokesperson Lynn Lowrance said.

Wednesday at the Nashville Airport, Gore arrived with two others and airport. Sgt. Gary Glover with airport police waited for his arrival and to go through security.

"He made his way to security, waiting for him to come through the check area, then he saw him pop up past security in a sterile area," Lowrance said.

Gore and his group bypassed the metal detectors, a blatant security breach. Lowrance said an American Airlines employee took Gore around security directly to the gate.

"Everyone who comes through this public airport terminal must be screened, so it's a breach of rules. It's serious," Lowrance said.

The airline employee took Gore down an elevator and then through a secure door. She ran her security card through the electronic lock a total of three times to let Gore and his two colleagues pass through the turnstile one at a time.

Airport police quickly caught up with them and Gore willingly went through security.

It was unknown if the former vice president requested the special treatment or it was offered and he accepted, but it did violate airport policy.

Late Thursday afternoon, a spokesperson for Al Gore said he did not request any special treatment to get around security.

Airport officials said the former vice president made no complaints when confronted. He and his two friends willingly went back through the security system.

Airport police think this may have been a case of the employee simply being too accommodating. Her name was not released. She was cited for a breach of rules, and will be required to retake an airport security class.

Airport police said the incident goes to show just how closely they monitor passenger security.

A person being escorted by an armed federal officer is the only person allowed to bypass security.

http://www.newschannel5.com/global/story.asp?s=6165069&ClientType=Printable

George Soros Buys Halliburton Stock
In a delicious irony, Foreign Policy magazine editor Mike Boyer reports at the magazine's blog FP Passport that SEC documents reveal that George Soros bought 1.9 million shares of Halliburton stock in the fourth quarter of 2006.

Soros gave more than $20 million to "527" organizations in the 2004 election, many of which used anti-Halliburton bashing as a rallying cry for the anti-war Left.

Writes Boyer: (via Boozhy and Andrew Sullivan)

Normally, I'm willing to overlook the hypocrisy of the liberal elite. If Al Gore and his Hollywood cronies want to fly around on gas-guzzling, atmosphere-polluting private jets while railing against global climate change, I'm willing to overlook it.

But the latest move by globe trotting, hyper-liberal billionaire George Soros borders on being too much.... Soros, of course, is the dean of Democratic money giving. And Halliburton, of course, is the company that embodies everything the Democrats see as evil. Dick Cheney is its former chief, for goodness' sake.
How can you not laugh at this development? The possibilities for amusement are wonderful...

Update: George Soros' fund, Soros Fund Management LLC, owns the shares.

http://www.theneweditor.com/index.php?/archives/5332-George-Soros-Buys-Halliburton-Stock.html

ON THE TRAIL
It's Not One Campaign

By Chuck Todd, NationalJournal.com
© National Journal Group Inc.
Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2007

"It's just so early" has become a pretty common refrain in response to the fast start of the 2008 presidential campaign.

But it's really not that early at all. The starting line moved up because the finish line moved first; the front-loaded primary calendar that has most states voting on or before Feb. 5, 2008, is forcing the campaign to switch into gear now.


 This cycle is different. It has two distinct "elections," and candidates who recognize that and stop worrying about the general might benefit more than they realize.
 
 

 
 
 

The '08 presidential race should be viewed as two distinct campaigns. Previous primary campaigns have bled seamlessly into the general, which in turn has made the election cycle feel never-ending. For instance, the 2004 campaign, which started full-bore in March 2003, was a solid 20-month continuous campaign because it was all about the general election. The Democratic primary focused on Bush and beating Bush, so the looming general election shone brightly on the party.

This cycle is different. It has two distinct "elections," and candidates who recognize that and stop worrying about the general might benefit more than they realize.

Of the "Big Six" presidential candidates, John Edwards (D), John McCain (R) and Mitt Romney (R) are running predominantly primary campaigns.

For Edwards and McCain, who both are still in fairly good standing with the general electorate, this makes perfect sense. It's the old Nixonian adage: Run to the base in the primaries and to the center for the general. Edwards, thanks to his Southern accent, and McCain, thanks to his 2000 campaign, have established the perception of "electability."

Romney's gambit is a bit trickier, because he isn't well-established nationally, and his move to the right leaves him vulnerable to the "flip-flopper" tag. It's harder for him to claim he's "evolved" rather than just pandering.

The two who are attempting to run the same campaign, both in the primary and the general, are Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. Strategists for both have likely calculated that their pasts or biographies have given them permanent liberal bona fides. The thing they have to worry about is being viewed as polarizing liberals in the general -- so both are trying to run toward the middle now. Clinton is doing it via foreign policy and her husband, and Obama is doing it rhetorically, because his record certainly puts him squarely in the liberal column.

The candidate who's having it both ways, for now, is Rudy Giuliani (R). The former New York City mayor is busy courting conservatives but has yet to fully pander. His "strict constructionist" rhetoric about judges, however, indicates that he may begin a full-fledged conservative pander at some point, and he can do it without losing the center. Like McCain and Edwards, Giuliani has deep-rooted moderate credentials for a general election. Three things will always allow him to be perceived as a moderate: geography (outside of the Buckleys, have you ever met a conservative who lived in New York City?), gay rights and abortion.

As much as I like to be a backseat driver when it comes to campaign strategies, the decisions by the current Big Six to go down the primary/general roads they've chosen make sense for each one.

If Clinton moves too far to the left in the primaries, she'll become the stereotype conservatives have made her out to be for years and thus be unelectable in the general. Edwards tried the electable card last time and it didn't work, so he needs to find true believers if he's going to overcome the Clinton-Obama juggernaut. McCain and Romney can't become the strong general election candidates many believe they'll be without winning the nomination first. Obama's biggest liability is experience, so the more he acts presidential, the better for him in the long run. And then there's Giuliani, who is walking the tightrope as well as anyone right now.

The thing that keeps me awake at night is not the length of the primary season, but the length of the general this cycle. Assuming the '08 general campaign does start on Feb. 6 (the day after Tsunami Tuesday), the two de facto nominees will be in place for nine months, setting up the longest general election in this country's history, which presents all sorts of pitfalls and opportunities.

Among the pitfalls will be voter fatigue, and the biggest potential beneficiary of this byproduct would be a viable third-party candidate. It's an open secret in New York City circles that Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) is at least open to the idea. But there are some scenarios where Bloomy would have no shot, including one in which New Yorkers Clinton and Giuliani are the two major-party nominees. A Bloomberg candidacy might also be hopeless if non-polarizing figures like Obama or McCain end up on top. But a different combination would confuse things. For instance, a Clinton vs. McCain general could easily give rise to a third-party candidate simply out of fatigue over the two front-runners. Remember how disenchanted the public became with Bush vs. Gore in October 2000? Both were on the national scene (Bush via his last name and Gore via his job) for more than a decade. Clinton vs. McCain would be a similar setup.

Another stumbling block is that for nine months, the country will have three presidents: the actual president and the two major-party nominees. No matter your persuasion, it's hard to see how that can be good for the country. Think Bush is a lame duck now? Imagine how lame he'll look when there are two presidents-in-waiting trying to look presidential on any given day. This will be an especially big problem for the eventual GOP nominee who will want to both show distance from Bush and at the same time show deference. The eventual Democratic nominee, on the other hand, is going to love playing the GOP nominee off of the president, and the press will eat that up -- which will make for a Republican public relations challenge that has never been seen before. How the Bush White House and the eventual GOP nominee get along is going to go a long way in determining whether the Republicans have a decent shot at winning a third straight presidential election.

As for opportunities, it depends on the nominees. A few of them could be using the time to create a shadow government (something I've advocated in previous columns, including one in 2004 during the March-to-conventions lull). If a nominee is perceived as lacking experience (see Obama), putting together a team of senior Cabinet appointees could show a campaign ready to hit the ground running. More importantly, publicly putting together a shadow government will keep the media busy and allow that candidate to dominate the message fight. Imagine a nominee unveiling his candidate for secretary of education during Education Week. It certainly would force the media to pay more attention. The downside, of course, is if a potential nominee doesn't vet, but there's risk in every facet of presidential politics.

Another opportunity the long general will provide is more time to recalibrate. Romney, McCain and Edwards are all running very primary-centric campaigns right now. Giuliani will likely join them in this regard very soon. A nine-month campaign allows a long time for transformation. The public expects it and is usually fairly forgiving of it. But let me offer one caveat: This "authenticity" trait seems to be one the public is craving more and more, and recalibrating candidates could be punished. Still, history has shown that these types (including Bush, Clinton and Reagan) tend to get rewarded.

http://nationaljournal.com/todd.htm#

Why His Haters Can’t Do Without George W. Bush
2/20/2007 8:46 PM
Destroying a president is not much of a strategy to win a war, but it's all the Democrats have….The important thing is to "keep hate alive." If hate worked in '06, maybe it will work again in '08, when the stakes will be considerably higher. — Wesley Pruden


It’s tempting to say it has been a very long time since America has witnessed animosity toward an incumbent president comparable to the hard left’s malice toward George W. Bush. But in reality it hasn’t been that long at all.

Remember what his partisan defenders called the "inquisition" against Bill Clinton? Try this on for size: The left’s monolithic crusade against anything and everything Bush is more than similar; it’s identical to the worst of the hard right’s take-no-prisoners offensive against Bill and Hillary. (Who can forget the oft-repeated claim that the Clintons ordered White House counsel Vince Foster murdered?)

True, the personalities are different. So are the political issues and circumstances of the two administrations. Still, the emotional dynamics can be viewed as interchangeable — with one important exception. Serious conservatives of the 1990s rolled their eyes at the Vince Foster allegation; whereas today's progressive movement takes as an article of faith that Bush/Cheney masterminded the September 11 attacks.

Bush’s enemies reject this analysis, of course. By viewing their vendetta as different in kind from what they considered unfair attacks against Clinton, Bush haters are able to insist that their destructive quest is motivated by the highest of principles. As opposed to driven by group psychological dynamics of the most primeval kind.

To consider that possibility might tempt them to look in mirror — never a good idea when maintaining your team’s identity as righteous and pure depends upon attributing abject evil to your opponents. Also, "owning your projections" is not a terribly useful strategy in the reflection-free zone of 24/7 cable news, which requires polarized contenders whose fingers of blame always point away from themselves.

No, it is indispensable to find a scapegoat who personifies everything that’s wrong, bad, evil; someone who does so monolithically. Only when that person is banished can order, integrity, and goodness be restored to the kingdom.

Enter George W. Bush, the “identified patient” of the left.

I first encountered this phrase at a seminar led by Carl Whitaker, an early pioneer in family therapy, or systems-oriented therapy. Like most psychologists schooled in psychodynamic methods, Whitaker had begun his career talking with individual patients about their personal problems, life challenges, goals; their “issues.”

Over time, Whitaker noticed that his patients had something in common. They all talked a lot about people with names like Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, Grandpa and Grandma. Whitaker got the curious idea that it might be useful to invite as many of these actual people into the therapy room at the same time, to speak for themselves and describe the family drama, tragedy, or comedy as they saw it.

Since each patient was actualy part of a “family system” with traditions, norms, rituals, and rules — spoken as well as unspoken — why not create a therapeutic framework in which the actual system could be observed in real time and space? As Whitaker began conducting multigenerational family therapy, he noticed dynamics that hadn’t been apparent with the “one patient in a room at a time” framework.

In particular: Assembled families tended to identify a particular member of the family unit as the primary source of the family’s problems!

Whitaker soon realized that this "identified patient,” or I.P. (drug-dealing son or slacker daughter; dad who drinks too much or mom who constantly complains) acted as a stand-in for some other problem that the family refused to address. Moreover, he discovered that by serving as the family’s “symptom bearer,” the I.P. permitted the other members of the family to continue their own dysfunctional behaviors.

Such a deal: one person gets to be “it,” the others get to be righteous. Sound anything like family gatherings you’ve attended?

Early on, Whitaker figured out that anything resembling family health could only be achieved by strategically taking the onus off the I.P. Not because he or she was a saint, but because no one else in the room was. Using methods sometimes indistinguishable from mischief, including making paradoxical remarks that (not always gently) nudged participants from their fixed perspectives, Whitaker became quite skilled at shifting the family’s collective gaze from the identified patients to the family system per se. He did so by expanding the symptoms.

For instance, during sessions when someone in the family pointed to the identified patient, Whitaker refused to talk about the identified patient. At such moments he sometimes literally put his arm around the scapegoat’s shoulder and said playfully said, “Hey, these folks have really got it in for you.”

To say the least, this had the effect of distributing anxiety more equally among all family members.

This way of “perturbing” the system’s existing dynamics generally led families to behave in more intelligent, flexible, adaptive ways. The family got healthier to the extent that everybody realized their role in the “Don’t blame me” racket and took responsibility for their role in maintaining the family’s fixations.

Concerning George W. Bush, how clear does it need to be? With the fervor of castle-storming villagers and witch burners of ages past, today’s impeachment-now zealots have transformed the president into their very own “identified patient.” The hard left’s demonizing of Bush has the convenient effect (secondary or primary, you tell me) of disguising their true political agenda: slash defense spending, disable the military, annex American sovereignty to some putative global authority, restore confiscatory taxation, implement a European-style welfare state, open the borders to Mexico, continue class warfare and bitter sectarian rivalry in the name of “diversity.” This is the short list.

By blaming Bush for everything, his inquisitors keep America’s attention off that agenda — sensibly, since most of its tenets are opposed by a majority of Americans in today’s center-right political reality. Nancy Pelosi understands that Democrats captured congress by advocating a vague “new direction” that amplified the country’s ambivalence about Bush, especially his Iraq policy.


Pelosi means to stay with this approach until her party returns to the White House in 2009 — a possibility that Republicans can no longer hope to prevent simply by shouting “Hillary!” in the tone that conveys “Antichrist!”

None of this is to say that identified patients don’t bring real problems of their own; to the contrary. In addition to serving as a screen for the family’s distorted projections, and generally as catalyst for the family’s decision to seek help, family scapegoats invariably make their own contributions to the pathology of the system as a whole. Hence, the ease with which the rest of the family targets them in the first place. “Oh, we’d be fine as a family if it weren’t for the bad stuff Jimmy does.” Or the Susie’s meth habit, or Mom’s selfishness, or Dad’s recklessness.

Or George W. Bush. The president’s errors of judgment, policy, tone, substance, style, and tactics are legion; and therefore beyond the scope of this piece. I’ll simply say that the administration’s confusion of priorities in Iraq — the attempts to establish democracy before creating order and security — represents an incalculable strategic blunder. In the “family system” that is America’s body politic, George W. Bush has his own accounting to do for the stunning mismanagement of the Iraq war.

Just as paranoids sometimes often have real enemies, scapegoats often make mistakes that leave them deserving of criticism. No disagreement from me about that.

Still, given the current dynamics, I’m taking the side of the identified patient named Bush. From a "systems" perspective, I find it telling that so many of those who despise him are also people who clearly seek to hasten — many seem to welcome — American defeat in the Middle East. That is enough to get me to take the seat next to Bush, and whisper with a nudge, ““These guys really do seem to have it in for you.”

When a sometimes discouraging president is hated for coming late to the right policy — securing Baghdad with troop reinforcements — and when his haters are demagogues who anchor their political fortunes on the failure of that country’s fledgling democracy — hell, I’ll go with the latecomer any day. Give me a choice that’s hard.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/contribute/sn/persona?plckPersonaPage=PersonaBlogViewPost&plckUserId=keith_thompson&User=keith_thompson&plckPostId=Blog%3akeith_thompsonPost%3a2de50e90-1854-4e42-9eb3-fa202a761f6d

A Baghdad Homecoming
Here’s a quick snapshot of the Baghdad security crackdown, from my own family’s point of view. My story involves only a single household, but – so far – it has a happy ending. I don’t pretend that this one household’s story is a counterweight to all the misery and murder that the crackdown is intended to address, but it’s my profound hope that this story is – or soon will be --representative of many other such individual tales that will be told by many other Iraqi families.

One aspect of the security crackdown that has received little attention involves Baghdadis who have been driven from their homes as a result of sectarian conflict. According to a story in the Iraqi newspaper, Alsabaah [Arabic], the security plan will allow hundreds (and ultimately many more) of these families to return to their own houses. One such successful return involves my own relatives.

I’ve noted on this site in the past that I am a Shiite. But, as is the case with many Iraqis, mine is a mixed family of both Shiites and Sunnis. A few months ago, a Sunni relative who lived in a mixed neighborhood received a threat from Shiite thugs, many of whom have been engaged in the sectarian “cleansing” of Baghdad’s neighborhoods. The threat came in the form of a letter that informed the 70-year-old man and his wife that they were no longer welcome in the area, and that they had to leave immediately. In the envelope with the letter were bullets, obviously intended to frighten the elderly couple and to underline the seriousness of the threat.

The old man, who had lived in his modest house for at least 30 years, fled with his wife to the home of a sister.

By the way, this old couple had never been political in any way. Like most people, they had always lived quietly, avoiding conflict. They were well liked by those who actually knew them. Indeed, their immediate neighbors, including Shiites, pleaded with them not to leave. “We’ll protect you,” they told them. “Don’t go.” But the man’s wife was understandably shaken by the threat, and there was no question of staying.

They’re back in their own home now. The man called the other day to give us all the welcome news. The kind of thugs who had been terrorizing Sunnis, at least in my relatives’ part of town, have been forced to disperse as a result of the crackdown, and they no longer decide who can stay and who must go. My relatives were welcomed warmly by their old neighbors, who wanted to see this return as a sign of increasing normality.

Will the thugs eventually come back? I don’t know; that will obviously depend on many events to come. And, yes, it’s true that bombs continue to explode among the city’s innocents, and that the murderers in Iraq are still asserting themselves. But for now, my relatives, their neighbors, and the piece of Baghdad of which they are a part can live in hope again.


http://iraqpundit.blogspot.com/2007/02/baghdad-homecoming.html

http://www.examiner.com/a-573127~Some_mull_idea_of_Sen__Bill_Clinton.html

Irreconcilable positions: support troops, oppose war
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist  |  February 18, 2007

WHAT DOES IT mean to support the troops but oppose the cause they fight for?

No loyal Colts fan rooted for Indianapolis to lose the Super Bowl. No investor buys 100 shares of Google in the hope that Google's stock will tank. No one who applauds firefighters for their courage and education wants a four-alarm blaze to burn out of control.

Yet there is no end of Americans who insist they "support" US troops in Iraq but want the war those troops are fighting to end in defeat. The two positions are irreconcilable. You cannot logically or honorably curse the war as an immoral neocon disaster or a Halliburton oil grab or "a fraud . . . cooked up in Texas," yet bless the troops who are waging it.

But logic and honor haven't stopped members of Congress from trying to square that circle. The nonbinding resolution they debated last week was a flagrant attempt to have it both ways. One of its two clauses professed to "support and protect" the forces serving "bravely and honorably" in Iraq. The other declared that Congress "disapproves" the surge in troops now underway -- a surge that General David Petraeus , the new military commander in Iraq, considers essential.

It was a disgraceful and dishonest resolution, and it must have done wonders for the insurgents' morale. Democrats hardly bothered to disguise that when they say they "support and protect" the troops, what they really intend is to undermine and endanger their mission. The Politico, a new Washington news site, reported Thursday that the strategy of "top House Democrats, working in concert with anti war groups," is to "pursue a slow-bleed strategy designed to gradually limit the administration's options." If they had the courage of their convictions, they would forthrightly defund the war, bring the troops home, and brave the political consequences. Instead they plan a more agonizing and drawn-out defeat -- slowly choking off the war by denying reinforcements, eventually leaving no alternative but retreat.

That is how those who oppose the war "support" the troops -- they "slow-bleed" them dry. Or they declare that the lives laid down by those troops were "wasted," as Senator Barack Obama did last Sunday. Obama later weaseled away from that characterization , but the gaffe had been made. And like most political gaffes, it exposed the speaker's true feelings.

And why wouldn't Obama feel that way? If an American serviceman dies in the course of a war that toppled a monstrous dictatorship, opened the door to decent Arab governance, and has become the central front in the struggle against radical Islam, his death is not in vain. It is the sacrifice of an American hero, the last full measure of devotion given in the cause of freedom. But if he dies in the course of a senseless and illegitimate invasion -- which appears to be Obama's view of Iraq -- then his life was wasted. If that's what you believe, Senator, why not say so?

Obama's is merely the latest in a series of senatorial comments that offer a glimpse of the left's anti military disdain.

Smart people who work hard become successful, John Kerry "joked" last fall, but uneducated sluggards "get stuck in Iraq." Osama bin Laden is beloved by Muslims for "building schools, building roads . . . building day-care facilities," Washington Senator Patty Murray explained in 2002, while Americans only show up to "bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan." Obama's Illinois colleague Dick Durbin took to the Senate floor to equate US military interrogators in Guantanamo Bay with "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags," and similar mass-murderers, such as "Pol Pot or others."

It goes without saying that many Democrats and liberals take a back seat to no one in their admiration and appreciation of the US military. But there is no denying that a notable current of antimilitary hostility runs through the left as well. Examples are endless: ROTC is banned on elite college campuses. San Francisco bars a historic battleship from its port. Signs at antiwar protests urge troops to "shoot their officers." An Ivy League professor prays for "a million Mogadishus." Michael Moore compares Iraqi insurgents who kill Americans to the Minutemen of Revolutionary New England.

America is a free country, but it is not the Michael Moores or the ROTC-banners or the senatorial loudmouths who keep it free. They merely enjoy the freedom that others are prepared to defend with their lives. It is the men and women who volunteer to wear the uniform to whom we owe our liberty. Surely they deserve better than pious claims of "support" from those who are working for their defeat.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/18/irreconcilable_positions_support_troops_oppose_war?mode=PF