Obama Wimp Factor at the UN

The President spoke to a contentious body of politicians today, asking them to stop bickering and start working together, and was greeted with applause. No one yelled "You lie!"

The United Nations, as critics will be quick to point out, is not the US Congress, and this attitude was summed up in a UK Telegraph headline even before the speech: "The UN loves Barack Obama because he is weak."

The postmortems will follow that line. "Obama," Fox News reports, "just put Israel 'on the chopping block,' said former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton."

Never mind what the President actually said: "To break the old patterns, to break the cycle of insecurity and despair, all of us must say publicly what we would acknowledge in private. The United States does Israel no favors when we fail to couple an unwavering commitment to its security with an insistence that Israel respect the legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians. And nations within this body do the Palestinians no favors when they choose vitriolic attacks against Israel over constructive willingness to recognize Israel's legitimacy and its right to exist in peace and security."

Overall, the President proposed "four pillars" as "fundamental to the future that we want for our children"-- nuclear disarmament, Middle East peace, environmental renewal and economic growth, while warning North Korea and Iran "must be held accountable" if they continue to pursue nuclear weapons.

"The world," he said, "must stand together to demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise, and that treaties will be enforced. We must insist that the future does not belong to fear."

In distancing himself from the Bush era of going it alone in global affairs, President Obama opened himself once again to partisan attacks under the time-honored Wimp Factor, that Democrats are not macho enough to protect America from foreign threats.

Tellingly, as the President spoke in Manhattan, debate was going on in Washington over Afghanistan policy, with reports of a proposal by Vice-President Biden to reduce American forces and concentrate on rooting out Al Qaeda there and in Pakistan with targeted actions.

In the coming days, Congressional Republicans will be attacking the White House for not doing enough in Kabul while they try to block progress on health care for Americans in Washington.

Death in the Neo-Con Family

Another member of the Axis of Evil expired today in the explosion of a North Korean nuclear cooling tower, and Washington mourners are taking it hard. Dick Cheney, inconsolable, has retreated into stony silence but John Bolton, voluble as ever, is carrying on about the "shameful" loss of another Neo-Con offspring.

The Vice President, grief-stricken at the terrorism de-listing of North Korea, reportedly left a meeting of foreign-policy experts after being asked about the news.

“I’m not going to be the one to announce this decision,” Cheney said, pointing at himself before departing. “You need to address your interest in this to the State Department.”

With Evil on life support in Iraq, the loss of another Conservative whipping boy leaves only Iran as a survivor of the triplets born during President Bush's State of the Union speech in January 2002.

If Israel makes good on Bolton's prediction of an attack on Tehran after our November elections, the Bush Administration may leave office in January childless, sloganwise.

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?

An Outbreak of Civility

Everybody got the memo, except Charlie Rangel who was still bashing Barack Obama yesterday afternoon, but by nightfall in Las Vegas, it was all sweetness and light at the Democratic round table (debate would be too harsh a word for what Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards did for two hours).

For this news cycle at least, the politics of personal destruction gave way to earnest discussion of how to repair the Bush damage to America at home and around the world.

Something important must have happened to Sen. Clinton when she was 25 because she kept referring to her 35 years of experience as a qualification for the Presidency, while John Edwards kept reminding us how "personal" all the issues were for him and Barack Obama spoke often about bringing people together.

Compared to the headlines of the past week, it was all touchy-feely and rather restful.

Turning to the writerless Daily Show, the new civility was evident there too as the usually cantankerous John Bolton stopped Jon Stewart in his tracks by agreeing with him about Middle East policy while plugging his new book.

It won't last, but for the time being, it's a nice (forgive the cliché) change.

Nuts-and-Bolton on Iran

As most thinking Americans breathe a sigh of relief over the NIE report on Iran, John Bolton on the editorial page of the Washington Post, that island of insanity in a screw-loose world, is here to preserve our patriotic paranoia.

The thing has flaws, and who are these spooks to tell us what the stuff they gather means? "Too much of the intelligence community," Bolton writes, "is engaging in policy formulation rather than 'intelligence' analysis, and too many in Congress and the media are happy about it."

The man who was too disagreeable to be confirmed as US Ambassador to the UN, Scooter Libby's defender, who lectured Jon Stewart with fake news about Lincoln on the Daily Show, who has been out-Cheneying the Neo-Cons in pushing Bush to attack Iran, that John Bolton wants us to know that the NIE is rash in its "psychological assessment of the mullahs' motives and objectives" based on "internally contradictory and insufficiently supported" data, is being suckered by disinformation from Iran and relies too much on "the latest hot tidbit" from its spies.

Moreover, Bolton reveals, many are "not intelligence professionals but refugees from the State Department" who had "relatively benign views of Iran's nuclear intentions five and six years ago, now...writing those views as if they were received wisdom from on high."

Bolton, who has been hearing voices from on high much longer, outranks them all and is just the clear-sighted expert to set us straight.

John Bolton vs. George W. Bush

The man with the white walrus mustache is back in Washington after a European tour of touting war with Iran. He has a new book to promote and a new cause--rallying Republican Congressmen to oppose the nuclear agreement with North Korea by that left-wing softie, George W. Bush.

Last week he met with 42 GOP Neanderthals at the invitation of Iowa Rep. Steve King, whose main legislative goal is to abolish the income tax, and argued that “North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons voluntarily, and that it is only a matter of time before their cheating is exposed, at which point one hopes that Bush will repudiate this charade.”

Bolton’s new book is titled “Surrender Is Not an Option,” reflecting the unyielding bellicosity of the man who calls himself a Goldwater conservative, as opposed to those parvenu Neo-Cons he considers “liberals who’d been mugged by reality.”

If he had his way, Bolton would solve all our world problems by bombing and invading, in contrast to his youthful aversion to warfare.

"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. "I considered the war in Vietnam already lost."

Unlike the war in Iraq today and whatever new ones he can instigate tomorrow.

North Korea Without Nukes or Nuttiness?

From both sides of the ideological divide, Americans who pay attention to politics are in uncharted territory with the seeming remission of North Korea from the madness of Kim Jong-il.

After almost seven years of disdain for diplomacy, the Administration now needs judgment and skills that may have atrophied in a politicized State Department. Critics on their part will have to put aside reflexive Bush distrust and do some actual thinking about what is in the best interests of the U.S.

North Korea’s agreement this week to disclose nuclear programs and disable facilities in exchange for fuel oil or economic aid calls for a post-axis of evil policy.

It won’t be easy to get beyond slogans and do the diplomatic scut work of detailed tradeoffs, verification and policing that the Clinton experience showed are vital in dealing with one of the world’s most unreliable and capricious regimes.

Karl Rove is gone, but Dick Cheney’s warlike gnomes will still be an obstacle. John Bolton, their link to the outside world, has already decried agreements to take North Korea off the U.S. terrorism list and that of “enemy” nations forbidden from trading with us, warning that without “final” verification of nuclear disarmament, “the president will have embarrassed his administration in history.”

From the other direction, Democrats are wary too, with Rep. Edward Markey warning against being too trusting about removing sanctions against North Korea.

Although logic has never been his strong suit, Bush himself will have to reconcile cozying up with North Korea while threatening war with Iran. In public this week, he held up the former as an example to the latter of what would be possible if Iran agreed first to stop nuclear enrichment. Ahmadinejad won’t be leaping at the chance.

But as he enters a final year of lame-duckness, the most relentlessly warlike of recent presidents has the chance to undo a small fraction of the international damage done during his tenure. Will he take it, and will his friends and foes help him do it?

Cheney's New, Improved War

The Vice-President of the United States is packaging his attack on Iran.

Unfazed by the disaster in Iraq, Cheney’s Neo-Cons are “rolling out” a “new product” exactly as they did in 2002 and, as then, over the resistance of the State Department.

The New York Times reports “Condoleezza Rice has been arguing for a continuation of a diplomatic approach, while officials in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office have advocated a much tougher view. They seek to isolate and contain Iran, and to include greater consideration of a military strike.”

In the Washington Post, retired Gen. Wesley Clark writes, “Think another war can't happen? Think again. Unchastened by the Iraq fiasco, hawks in Vice President Cheney's office have been pushing the use of force...And what would we do with Iran after the bombs stopped falling? We certainly could not occupy the nation with the limited ground forces we have left.”

In the U.K., the Telegraph reports “Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran” and a senior intelligence officer warns “that public denunciation of Iranian meddling in Iraq--arming and training militants--would lead to cross border raids on Iranian training camps and bomb factories” to “provoke a major Iranian response, perhaps in the form of moves to cut off Gulf oil supplies, providing a trigger for air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities and even its armed forces.”

This follows a U.K. Times story about a speech by a conservative think tank expert saying “military planners were not preparing for ‘pinprick strikes’ against Iran’s nuclear facilities. ‘They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,’ he said.”

The President started the campaign rolling here with an echo of the warnings about Saddam’s WMD in a recent speech to the American Legion: “Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust...We will confront this danger before it is too late.”

Back in May, our bellicose former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton was telling the British, ”We must attack Iran before it gets the bomb” and that “senior White House officials” share his thinking.

So even before the Surge and in the face of public clamor to get out of Iraq, Cheney and his crowd were covertly planning a war against Iran.

About all this, Sen. Bernie Sanders has been warning: "We have got to put pressure on the mass media not to play the same craven role that they played in Iraq, where they essentially collapsed and became a megaphone for Bush's policies.”

He should be telling that to his Congressional colleagues and reminding them that another botched Bush war could create an unprecedented crisis for American democracy.

Rolling Out the Iran War

In 2002, Andrew Card, then Bush’s Chief of Staff, told the New York Times why the drumbeat for war against Iraq started in September: "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.”

It’s September again, this year’s product is war against Iran and the sales pitches have started.

“Iran’s pursuit of...nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust,” President Bush told war veterans last week. Promising to apply diplomatic pressures first (sound familiar?), he nonetheless vowed, “We will confront this danger before it is too late.”

In the U.K. Telegraph, a story is planted about war-gaming a blockade of Iran: “"The results were impressive. The policy recommendations eliminated virtually all of the negative outcomes."

Ever-faithful John Bolton, our unconfirmable former ambassador to the U.N. is telling Israelis via video hookup that President Bush “has made clear that a nuclear Iran is not acceptable."

Even Gen. Petraeus is not too busy surging in Iraq to observe the “malign involvement of the Iranian Quds force with the militia extremists that have been supported by them, trained, equipped, armed, funded and even in some cases directed.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, pointing out that the “Fox propaganda machine” is at work again on the Iran campaign, urges “the mass media not to play the same craven role that they played in Iraq, where they essentially collapsed and became a megaphone for Bush's policies."

In five years, it is clear the Bush-Cheney Administration has learned nothing. Have the American people and their media?

All at Sea in D.C. and Alaska

At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, Karl Rove’s aide, J. Scott Jennings, used a maritime metaphor in declining to answer questions:

"I hope that you can appreciate the difficulty of my situation," he said. "It makes Odysseus' voyage between Scylla and Charybdis seem like a pleasure cruise."

Very literary, but Sen. Pat Leahy, the Committee Chairman, was not charmed. "Mr. Jennings, I am not here to play games," he warned.

Jennings’ reference to a “pleasure cruise” may have been the final straw for Leahy’s frustration over not getting answers from the White House about the firing of the U.S. Attorneys.

But, while he and others in the political mainstream are sweltering in Washington, denizens of the Far Left and Hard Right are on actual pleasure cruises, enjoying temperate weather off the coast of Alaska.

Devotees of the Nation and the National Review are out there this week on separate but equal Holland America luxury ships, attending seminars and demonizing one another in first-class style at a cost topping out at $9489 for NR and $8657 for the Nation’s plebians.

Their schedules have been cunningly arranged to avert a possible Monitor-Merrimac kind of naval engagement, missing each other by a day in ports of calls such as Sitka, Juneau and Ketchikan.

Stars for the left-leaning sailors are Ralph Nader, actor-activist Richard Dreyfuss and former CBS news producer Mary Mapes, who was terminated after a to-do over a segment about George Bush’s National Guard service in 2004. Regaling the right are such charmers as John Bolton, Robert Bork and Dick Morris.

As they bloviate in cool comfort, no wonder that those like Leahy who are laboring in steamy Washington are getting a little testy. Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales and the whole Bush crew are still sailing along, untouched.