Over to You, Vladimir

Being Time's Person of the Year is no barrel of laughs, it comes with a lot of headaches.

For the whole year, last year's mylar cover has been sitting next to the computer screen as a taunt to Time's designation of me "for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game."

That's the kind of pressure you're facing, comrade, as the newsweekly praises your accomplishments, salutes your longevity and calls you an "elected emperor" who will be the "longest-serving statesman among the great powers, long after such leaders as Bush and Tony Blair have faded from the scene."

For a guy who has never sent an e-mail in his life and whose father was Stalin's cook, you've done very well, but believe you me, that kind of talk can unnerve anybody, even someone with your Tsar's stare. If you look back at some of the other cover people, remember what happened to Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Newt Gingrich. It's not exactly the Sports Illustrated cover jinx, but...

Now the crown is yours. Serving the Time correspondent a "dinner of lobster-and-shiitake-mushroom salad, 'crab fingers with hot sauce' and impressive vintages of Puligny-Montrachet and a Chilean Cabernet" was a good start.

Last year's winners salute you as they go back to their keyboards, stuffed with fast food, relaxed and ready to face a new year of solving the world's problems without all that pressure.

Losing the Anti-War War

Evidence that the Iraq narrative has turned is everywhere.

“Victory Is Within Reach in Iraq,” a Wall Street Journal headline enthuses this weekend, claiming that “highly respected officers including the commander of Special Forces in Iraq, Gen. Stanley McCrystal, reportedly feel it is justified by the facts on the ground.”

The Washington Post reports “The Next Challenge in Iraq,” quoting Adm. William Fallon, head of the U.S. Central Command:

"I look at the numbers, and I say the success that General Petraeus and the guys have made is amazing. But how do we leverage that to get the Iraqi government to take decisions that will provide enduring security? How do we help them take advantage of this?"

The Los Angeles Times cites, “Tough going for antiwar Republicans,” reporting that “Despite months of pressure, no more than eight Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate have backed any measure that mandates a troop withdrawal. And GOP strategists predict that is unlikely to change.”

How much our situation in Iraq has changed is highly debatable, but the battle is Washington seems to be lost. What do Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi do now?

Bush’s stubbornness and their own ineffectual legislative maneuvering have put them in a bind. To persist in railing against the war may only feed charges that they are “defeatist.” To back off efforts to get us out of Iraq will enrage those who gave them control of Congress to do just that.

In coming months, they will undoubtedly concentrate on domestic issues--health insurance, housing, tax reform--to persuade voters that Democrats can get something done.

Meanwhile, the dying in Iraq goes on. The numbers may be slightly smaller, but the blood is just as real as it was before Americans lost hope of stopping it anytime soon.

Organized Disbelief

The bad news for devout individualists is that even the forces of Atheism are getting organized.

Today’s Washington Post has two reports on the trend: “In America, Nonbelievers Find Strength in Numbers” and “In Europe and U.S., Nonbelievers Are Increasingly Vocal.”

Understandably, jihadists and George W. Bush have alarmed multitudes with the consequences of religious fervor, but “a legion of the godless rising up against the forces of religiosity in American society,” as the Post puts it, may not be much comfort to those who believe literally in the First Amendment.

With Christopher Hitchens’ best-selling screed and Bill Maher’s rants against the Ten Commandments, it’s getting harder to hold onto some public space against irrationality of all kinds.

Atheists of the world, unite? And do what?

Will Bush's Victory Lap Backfire?

During his six-hour stay in a well-fortified air field in Anbar, the President may well have exacerbated sectarian tension in a way that will produce what Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called “squirting” of attacks to Shiite areas of Iraq.

"We had a good frank discussion," Bush said after his meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and top leaders today, which translates as pressure to make progress in coming to terms with Sunnis in Iraq’s central government.

At the same time, the President promised more aid to Sunni tribal leaders who have only recently turned against car-bombing insurgents from Saudi Arabia for their own reasons, certainly not out of friendship for the U. S.

But as always, Bush may be out of his depth in the quagmire of sectarian hatred. “Mr. Maliki,” the New York Times reported, “has been deeply worried about the outreach to Sunni tribes, which has included American support for setting up armed neighborhood watch groups in Anbar and other Sunni areas.”

A political scientist funded by the Defense Department, Robert Pape, who has studied suicide attacks over the past 25 years, now predicts Shiite action against Americans soon. "We're heading toward the cocktail of conditions that favor suicide terrorism from the Shia," he says.

Pape points out that our troop buildup in Iraq, which has begun to target Shiite groups such as Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army as well as Sunni insurgents, will cause increasing numbers of Shiites to see Americans the way many Sunnis do--as occupiers, rather than liberators.

In Iraq, the choices always seem to involve frying pans and fires.

Iraq's Battle of the Bulge

In December 1944, when World War II seemed all but over, the Germans launched a furious last-ditch offensive to try to change the outcome. It lasted a month, cost many lives but failed.

That memory comes back today as proponents of the war in Iraq now mount their attack on the widely held belief that all is lost there.

In a New York Times OpEd, titled “A War We Might Just Win,” Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack claim: “We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily ‘victory’ but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.”

Their first-hand report on signs of improvement seems from this distance to be based more on hope and optimism than hard reality, but it deserves a hearing.

Meanwhile Gen. David Petraeus is working hard to dispute last week’s reports from many sources that Prime Minister al-Maliki wants him out: "He and I have truly had frank conversations but he has never yelled or stood up. This is really, really hard stuff, and occasionally people agree to disagree."

We are in half-full-or-half-empty terrain here. Those of us who love our country but hate the war and see it through the glass darkly can only hope some of this is true.

But it will take a lot more to persuade us to bear the continuing loss of American lives because, as the Brookings Institution warriors put it, “there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.”

Bush, Cheney et al have begun their Battle of the Bulge, but Congress should have the good sense and guts to see a last-gasp counterattack for what it is.

Not Doing It for the Money

For those who wonder if public service would attract better people if it paid more, there is sobering news from the economic journal TV Guide.

Last year Oprah Winfrey earned $260 million, more than twice as much as Bush, Cheney, Congress, the Supreme Court and governors of all 50 states combined. As public servants struggle along on their six-figure pittances, voters might give a thought to how poorly they are paid.

During the Presidential campaign, we learned that John Edwards earned $479,512 from his part-time job with a hedge fund, and yet here he is working so hard to get a position that pays less than that for long hours and much more stress.

Policy wonks who study the latest figures should look for an explanation for the fact that Simon Cowell ($45 million), Judge Judy ($30 million) and Katie Couric ($15 million) earn more than the headliners of all three Federal branches combined.

Meanwhile, taxpayers can take comfort in knowing that they are getting such good government at bargain prices.

The Ghost Trial of Bush and Cheney

Sen. Patrick Leahy yesterday issued subpoenas to Karl Rove and his helper, Scott Jennings, to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee with what amounts to a prosecutor’s opening statement.

Whether or not the two Presidential aides take the stand, they will be tried as surrogates for the Bush-Cheney White House over the next months with the American public in the jury box.

Leahy, a former prosecutor, summed up the charges: “The veil of secrecy this Administration has pulled over the White House is unprecedented and damaging to the tradition of open government by and for the people that has been a hallmark of the Republic.”

Those who see the current Senate process as a counterpart of the 1970s Watergate hearings will find evidence in Leahy’s assertion, “Not since the darkest days of the Nixon Administration have we seen efforts to corrupt federal law enforcement for partisan political gain and such efforts to avoid accountability.”

Reviewing the case against Rove in the U.S. Attorney firings, Leahy claimed that “evidence points to his role and the role of those in his office in removing or trying to remove prosecutors not considered sufficiently loyal to Republican electoral prospects. Such manipulation shows corruption of federal law enforcement for partisan political purposes.”

To underscore Bush’s “stonewalling,” Leahy cited 74 instances of Presidential advisors testifying before Congress since World War II, adding that, during the Clinton years, White House aides were “routinely subpoenaed for documents or to appear before Congress.”

He broadened his case about the lawlessness of the current Administration by noting “political briefings at over 20 government agencies, including briefings attended by Justice Department officials” and the revelation this week that U.S. ambassadors were similarly drawn into domestic politics.

As Leahy launched the case against Bush and Cheney, the committee’s senior Republican, Arlen Specter, was hitching a ride on Air Force One and telling reporters that while he hoped “to reach an accommodation” with the White House on the subpoenas, “I don’t see it now.”

As in the time of Watergate, the American public will be listening and making up its mind about the innocence or guilt of its White House employees.

Waste Removal

CNN reports: Doctors removed five small polyps from President Bush's colon on Saturday, and "none appeared worrisome," a White House spokesman said.

If only there were a medical procedure to excise worrisome growths on the body politic, like Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove... But the President would have be sedated for that, too, and there's no telling what Cheney would do then.

Harry Reid, the Un-Lyndon Johnson

Before he became President and lost a war, Lyndon Johnson was the most effective Senate majority leader in history. Today’s Democrats, trying to stop another war, could use his skills.

To put it kindly, Harry Reid is no LBJ. In six months as majority leader, he has consistently misspoken and mismanaged Democratic efforts to win over enough Republicans to change policy in Iraq, culminating in this week’s disastrous all-nighter.

It takes a unique set of mismanagement skills to help propel the Democratic-controlled Congress to lower approval ratings than Bush. To be fair, Reid has had to navigate differences about how to end the war in his own party and the ambivalence of Republicans who want to stay loyal to their President but fear for their electoral skins next November. Even so, his performance has been dismal.

In April, David Broder in the Washington Post called Reid “the Democrats’ Gonzales” for his gaffes, and liberal bloggers gang-tackled the venerable columnist. Three months later, Reid, looking more like Bush’s Brownie of FEMA fame, is turning out to be the polar opposite of Lyndon Johnson.

In 1966, Robert Novak of Valerie Plame fame was co-author of a book that described Johnson’s ways as a majority leader who worked with a Republican President, Eisenhower, to pass the first civil rights bill of the century. LBJ, knowing where every Senator stood on every issue and what it would take to win him over, would then go into action:

“The Treatment could last ten minutes or four hours...Its tone could be supplication, accusation, cajolery, exuberance, scorn, tears, complaint and the hint of threat...Interjections from the target were rare. Johnson anticipated them before they could be spoken. He moved in close, his face a scant millimeter from his target, his eyes widening and narrowing, his eyebrows rising and falling. From his pockets poured clippings, memos, statistics. Mimicry, humor, and the genius of analogy made The Treatment an almost hypnotic experience and rendered the target stunned and helpless.”

No one expects Reid to be another LBJ, but some semblance of parliamentary and negotiating skills would go a long way toward building some real legislative pressure to end this miserable war. Then, if Democrats win next year, they will need effective leadership to start undoing the damage Bush has done. They can do better than Harry Reid.

Illegal Laughing Matter

Warning: There is a little-known provision of the Patriot Act that makes it a federal crime to commit rectal jokes directed at the Chief Executive.

After reading the following dispatch from Reuters, bloggers should therefore proceed with utmost caution before attempting analogies of what doctors will do to the President this weekend with what he has been doing to the rest of the country for six years.

Likewise, anatomical references to what the Vice President may be covering for the President this weekend, as he always does, will be subject to prosecutorial scrutiny:

“President George W. Bush will undergo what aides described as a routine colonoscopy on Saturday at the Camp David presidential retreat.

“White House spokesman Tony Snow said that during the time that Bush is under anesthesia, he would delegate power to Vice President Dick Cheney.”

Will Terrorists Pick Our Next President?

In the terrorism-expert business, there is no profit in forecasting there won’t be an attack on the Homeland “soon.” No one will remember a negative and give you credit, and, on the other hand, the definition of “soon” is expandable.

So it’s no surprise that not only do the N.I.E. researchers, Homeland Security Director Chertoff and other less sensitive-gutted authorities on the government payroll but the all rented experts on TV agree about the imminence of an attack in this country. Where’s the news in not predicting one?

The more interesting question is what the terrorists may be thinking. Assuming a modicum of brains to go with their mad hatred, if the object is to sow fear and confusion in our society, what political outcome in ’08 best suits their purposes? And what could they do to help bring it about?

Since 9/11, George W. Bush has been collaborating with Osama bin Laden in destroying the traditional trust Americans have had in their government and in one another. Would Al Qaeda like more of the same?

If so, Giuliani is their man. His campaign, based on images of Rudy in the rubble, is following Karl Rove’s game plan for 2004. Any attack that rekindles 9/11 fears would help America’s Mayor get to the White House.

But if terrorists prefer, for whatever reasons, to see Clinton or Obama in the Oval Office, holding off on homeland attacks would help. It may all depend on their reaction to the Republican gas bags. If they take them at all seriously, Al Qaeda leaders might prefer a Democratic President who wouldn’t break American laws to get at them.

On the other hand, if they find hard-line campaign rhetoric laughable, another Republican to extend Bush’s incompetence and impotence to hurt them might just be the ticket for bin Laden et al.

The terrorists no doubt will go about their business their own way for their own reasons, but what they do in the next year will nonetheless have a profound effect on our elections.

That may be the saddest commentary of all on our post-9/11 world.

Bill Clinton Nemesis Gives Up on Bush

The billionaire who funded Bill Clinton’s impeachment has had enough of George W. Bush. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, owned by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, yesterday called continuing the war in Iraq a "prescription for American suicide."

The editorial also noted: "And quite frankly, during last Thursday's news conference, when George Bush started blathering about 'sometimes the decisions you make and the consequences don't enable you to be loved,' we had to question his mental stability."

Scaife, who seems to take his politics personally, spent millions investigating Clinton’s sex life. Will he make the same investment in checking out Bush’s mental health?

Killers in Iraq: The Saudi Connection

Almost half of the insurgents American troops are fighting in Iraq came from our staunch ally, Saudi Arabia.

According to U.S. military figures just published in the Los Angeles Times, “About 45 percent of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15 percent are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10 percent are from North Africa.”

The Saudi government knows that and says it is doing everything possible to prevent Sunni extremists from migrating to the killing fields of Iraq. But is it?

The signals are getting decidedly mixed. Until recently, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was ambassador to Washington until 2005, had Bush and Cheney eating out of his hand. But then last month, his uncle, King Abdullah told Arab heads of state that Americans in Iraq were “an illegal foreign occupation.”

“Saudi frustration,” the New York Times reported this weekend, “has mounted over the past four years, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated. King Abdullah was angry that the Bush administration ignored his advice against de-Baathification and the disbanding of the Iraqi military.”

Now questions arise: How hard are the Saudis trying to stem the tide of their Sunni jihadists into Iraq? To what extent is exporting troublemakers in their domestic interest and part of an unspoken policy? How much pressure are they putting on the Bush Administration to stay in Iraq by threatening to support Sunni fighters against Iran-backed Shiites if we leave? Behind it all, how much of American policy is driven by placating the Saudis to ensure the continuing flow of their oil to which we are addicted?

In the Middle East, keeping up with your friends can be as exhausting as fighting your enemies. Pakistan is another example. Stay tuned.

Out-of-Iraq Shell Games

After years of blundering, the proprietors and enablers of this misbegotten war seem determined to end it the way they began it and waged it--with lies, evasions and cowardice.

The opinion polls show growing public impatience, but the politicians keep playing the same old games.

President Bush is being bubbled around the country to puff out his chest for groups of businessmen and proclaim, "Troop levels will be decided by our commanders on the ground, not by political figures in Washington, D.C."

Faithful Sen. Chuck Grassley, who does not have to face voters next year, tells wavering Republican colleagues who do that they should wait to hear from Gen, Petraeus since they confirmed him by such an overwhelming margin.

But in Baghdad, Petraeus is telling reporters, "We're still at the harder-before-it-gets-easier point” and reiterating, as he has be doing from the start of the Surge, that any solution in Iraq has to be political, not military.

So, as we watch their hands carefully, we have no idea of what, if anything, is under which shell. Does the political have to get better before the military can? Or is it the other way around? Or do both have to improve at the same time? Or are they making it up as they go?

In the Senate, multiple shell games are being played, with Democrats devising different formulas to cut funding or withdraw troops or rescind the 2002 war resolution, while Republicans look for ways to be in favor of ending the war but not just yet or not in any way that might come back to haunt them.

Before the month is out, dozens more of our young people will have died in Iraq and billions of dollars more gone down the drain while, in Washington, they will still be playing these games.

How long do they think they can keep snookering us? Even at carnivals, they sometimes give the suckers an even break.

Colin Powell: Shooting the Wounded

Murray Kempton, a great journalist of the century past, once wrote, “There is a certain kind of politician who stays safely in the hills during a battle and then comes down and shoots the wounded.”

It’s painful to apply this to Colin Powell. I admire him in so many ways, but there is no other way to describe what he is doing now. Long after his speaking out or resigning could have made a difference, he is now telling us how hard he tried to persuade George W. Bush not to invade Iraq.

“I tried to avoid this war,” Powell told the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado this week. “I took him through the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers.”

Now it’s too late. “The civil war will ultimately be resolved by a test of arms,” he said. “It’s not going to be pretty to watch, but I don’t know any way to avoid it. It is happening now.”

All that U.S. troops can do now, according to Powell, is put “a heavier lid on this pot of boiling sectarian stew.”

The time to have told us that was when Bush’s Neo-Cons were slicing and dicing the truth about Iraq and lighting the fire.

Our Own Tiny Axis of Evil

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Sen. Joe Lieberman achieves a rare feat in the history of puckering up to powerful backsides—-not only fronting for Bush and Cheney but blowing a kiss to the Journal’s soon-to-be-owner Rupert Murdoch with an OpEd urging Congress to “respond” to Iran’s “offensive against us throughout the Middle East.”

While the rest of our lawmakers, including endangered Republicans, are trying to disentangle from Iraq, Independent Joe, safely reelected last year after being repudiated in the Democratic primary, has a new mess for us to jump into in his favorite part of the world.

“The Iranian government, by its actions, has all but declared war on us and our allies in the Middle East,” he proclaims. “America now has a solemn responsibility to utilize the instruments of our national power to convince Tehran to change its behavior, including the immediate cessation of its training and equipping extremists who are killing our troops.”

This follows up on his chest-pounding last month on CBS’ Face the Nation that “we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq."

As a weakened President Ahmadinejad tries to cope with unrest in Iran, Lieberman keeps handing him rhetoric to unite his country against the threat of the Great Satan.

Way to go, Joe. You're getting to be a 97-pound gorilla. Do you have anything in mind for North Korea?

Madness, Theirs and Ours

At the end of "The Bridge on the River Kwai," after the carnage caused by fanaticism and misplaced loyalties, a dazed British doctor wanders among the bodies, repeating over and over, "Madness, madness."

That image can be the only response to the revelation now that an al Qaeda leader told a British cleric who lives in Iraq that "those who cure you will kill you."

Canon Andrew White, who heads Baghdad’s only Anglican parish, met him at a meeting about religious reconciliation held in Amman, the Jordanian capital: “He talked to me about how they were going to destroy British and Americans. He told me that the plans were already made and they would soon be destroying the British. He said the people who cure you would kill you.”

Looking back, the cleric says, "I met the Devil that day."

Canon White is too generous. If he exists, Satan would surely be more devilishly clever and competent than this band of insane thugs. As we face threats from their counterparts, madness is a more accurate diagnosis.

N.B. Six months ago, I used the "River Kwai" image in reaction to President Bush's proposed Surge. It still applies.

A Confessional Commutation

The President proved today that there is honor among thieves. His commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence is a confession of guilt on his own behalf and that of his Vice President.

New Low in Lieberspeak

The Senator who has made “Independent” a dirty word in Washington outdid himself today.

On ABC “This Week,” Joe Lieberman found unspeakable new ways to attack the Party that nurtured his political career and rejected him only after his cheerleading for George Bush in Iraq.

"The leading Democratic candidates for president,” he intoned, “are competing with each other to see which one can more quickly pull more of our troops out of Iraq, while our troops are there fighting and now succeeding with a lot on the line."

They are doing this, Lieberman says, to satisfy "vested interest groups within the left" and so he now inclines toward Giuliani and McCain for ’08.

The real test may come when Mike Bloomberg decides to run as an Independent. It was Bloomberg who saved Lieberman’s sorry hide last November with manpower and money, but loyal old Joe may forget that as easily as his pompous declarations that it was the idealism of John F. Kennedy that inspired him to go into politics.

Being kissed in public by George W. Bush, like being bitten by a vampire, is obviously a life-altering experience

Fancy Footwork for the G.O.P.

The elephant seems like an apt symbol for the Republican Party--a huge, noisy beast that tramples everyone and everything in its way.

But now there is evidence that the pachyderm is more sensitive than we knew, with delicate feelings and sensors in, of all places, its toes.

Scientist have discovered that they communicate “by vibrations transmitted through the ground to exquisitely sensitive elephant toes...The ground sounds travel a greater distance than airborne calls and may help keep herd members in touch with one another across a dozen or more miles.”

They can even distinguish whether such messages come from fellow herd members or strangers--a kind of "caller ID of the wild."

All this suggests new possibilities for their human counterparts. If Dick Lugar, John Warner and Mitch McConnell want to get through to Bush and Cheney about Iraq, they may want to have their next White House conference unshod and present them with a count of Congressional defectors that will knock their socks off.

That might keep the party on its toes for ’08.