Neo-Con Sacrifices for Their Country

This is about as ad hominem as it gets, but in today's New York Times, William Kristol is huffing about a MoveOn ad that "boldly embraces a vision of a selfish and infantilized America, suggesting that military service and sacrifice are unnecessary and deplorable relics of the past. And the sole responsibility of others."

He finds the commercial featuring a mother refusing to make her baby available for John McCain's hundred-year Iraq war "unapologetic in its selfishness, and barely disguised in its disdain for those who have chosen to serve."

Such posturing is particularly galling from a charter member of the Neo-Cons who, when other people's sons were dying in Vietnam, were too busy getting into post-Harvard politics, as Kristol was, or hiding out by pulling family National Guard strings a la George W Bush or getting multiple deferments, as Dick Cheney did, or otherwise choosing not to serve, as only the most fire-breathing of them all, John Bolton, has had the honesty to admit.

"I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy," Bolton wrote in the 25th reunion book of his graduation from Yale about his decision to join the National Guard and go to law school.

Talking about service, Kristol's one-year stint with the Times expires in January just before the Bush Administration does. Haven't they all sacrificed for their country long enough?

The McCain Makeover

The Righteous Republican cosmeticians have started to work their magic and, as in the women's magazines I used to edit, a natural-looking person may end up resembling an aging tart. To borrow from Gloria Steinem, McCain would do better to brush them off and say, "This is what seventy and self-possessed looks like, get used to it."

The first ad is a tipoff, harking back to those days at the Hanoi Hilton over a quarter of a century ago, echoing his advice to fellow prisoners: "Keep that faith. Keep your courage. Stick together. Stay strong. Do not yield. Stand up. We're Americans. And we'll never surrender."

We're all prisoners of George W. Bush in Iraq now, and it may not be in McCain's best interests to remind us that he wants to keep us there, if not for a hundred years, until some of the troops there are his age now.

Today William Kristol is advising the candidate who admits he doesn't know much about the economy to offer "a broad reform agenda--education reform, health insurance reform, tax reform, government reform, Wall Street reform. He could start by outlining an up-to-date, capitalism-friendly and transparency-requiring approach to regulating the credit markets."

Biography isn't enough, Kristol reminds McCain. You have to start doing a George Bush impersonation, throwing out all kinds of voter bait that you can sweep aside when you get into the White House.

By the time Conservatives finish remaking McCain, his nonagenarian mother won't recognize him and, if he looks in the mirror, neither will he.

Mission Creep in the Middle East

John McCain's hyperbole about keeping troops in Iraq for a hundred years is alarmingly echoed in a Washington Post OpEd by one of the saner foreign policy experts on the Washington scene.

"What the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have in common," Anthony Cordesman writes, "is that it will take a major and consistent U.S. effort throughout the next administration at least to win either war.

"Any American political debate that ignores or denies the fact that these are long wars is dishonest and will ensure defeat. There are good reasons that the briefing slides in U.S. military and aid presentations for both battlefields don't end in 2008 or with some aid compact that expires in 2009. They go well beyond 2012 and often to 2020."

Only seven months ago, Cordesman was pointing out that some recent advances in Iraq were the result of “sheer luck,” such as Sunni tribesmen turning against Al Qaeda insurgents and quoting a U.S. official as describing our situation as "three dimensional chess in the dark while someone is shooting at you."

Rejecting the extremes of staying the course or immediate withdrawal, Cordesman made a case then for phasing down troop levels starting early this year. Now, another trip to Iraq and Afghanistan has persuaded him that "these are wars that can still be won" if we stay another decade or more.

Does the word quagmire ring a bell? In 1968, Richard Nixon promised to end the war in Vietnam and stayed another five years before accepting a humiliating defeat.

Now, once again, we are testing our will in places thousands of miles away against antagonists who are willing to do anything for as long it takes to get control of their own territory.

We started out to remove Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, a mission that has morphed into policing the entire Middle East, with Pakistan and Iran next on the horizon. Can Cordesman and John McCain explain how we do that without breaking our military and busting the budget?

Yesterday vs. Tomorrow

John McCain says it's too soon for Barack Obama, Obama claims it's too late for McCain and Hillary Clinton is still insisting, against all odds, that the time is just right for her.

Last night, McCain posed the question, "(W)ill we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested invading our ally, Pakistan, and sitting down without pre-conditions or clear purpose with enemies who support terrorists and are intent on destabilizing the world by acquiring nuclear weapons?"

In doing so, he personified yesterday's politics by distorting Obama's statements about Pakistan and negotiating with America's enemies beyond recognition.

Last night, Obama said, "I revere and honor John McCain's service to this country. He is a genuine American hero. But when he embraces George Bush's failed economic policies, when he says that he is willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq, then he represents the policies of yesterday. And we want to be the party of tomorrow. And I'm looking forward to having that debate with John McCain."

Despite another devastating loss in the Wisconsin primary, Hillary Clinton was still holding herself out as the candidate who is in touch with today's realities.

"(Y)ou'll find at HillaryClinton.com all of my positions, everything that I have been working on, because I know what's happening in America," she told a rally in Youngstown, Ohio. "People are struggling...They cannot afford four more years of a president who just doesn't see or hear them at all. They need a president ready on day one to be commander-in-chief, ready to manage our economy, and ready to beat the Republicans in November."

But, after last night's results, it appears the choice will be between Obama and McCain, separated by decades in age and light years apart in their view of the world.