Bringing Afghanistan Home

The pre-game coverage of the President's speech at West Point tomorrow night is on track as White House spinners emphasize that he will "give a clear sense of both the time frame for action and how the war will eventually wind down.”

Translated, this means that a 48-year-old man named Barack Obama will tell Americans how and why he is sending some 30,000 men and women, most of them younger than he is, to a place thousands of miles from home where they will kill people they don't know and where unknown others will be trying to kill them.

A gifted orator, the President will try to explain what lies behind the polysyllables of "deployment," "security" and "multinational strategy" and show that what some are calling "Obama's Surge" is part of "a necessary war" on behalf of us all.

He won't succeed. How could he? How could anyone? Except for those who are lost in some ideological wasteland, the President will be talking to and about thousands of sovereign souls, each humanly connected to many others, who will never be the same again after he says those words and signs orders to carry them out.

Before the Obama address, we should hear a voice that speaks for them as does Erik Malmstrom, a 29-year-old graduate student who went to Afghanistan three years ago after volunteering for service in 2002 "out of a sense of civic duty," "attracted to the challenge of serving in wartime and leading men in combat."

He came back after surviving roadside bomb attacks, ambushes and confusing fire fights that led to the sudden and inexplicable deaths of comrades in arms. After returning, he crisscrossed the country visiting the families of the fallen to deliver memorial plaques signed by survivors, stand at gravesides, leaf through albums of childhood photos and watch lighthearted home movies.

"I spent much of the time sobbing uncontrollably," Erik Malmstrom recalls and now he says, "I am overridden with conflicting emotions. I am indescribably proud of my service, but can never feel good about it. I did the best I could with an impossible situation, but left behind what has become one of the most violent and unstable valleys in Afghanistan.

"I am thankful for my friendships with the families of my fallen soldiers, but wish that it didn’t take tragedy to bring us together. Coping has not become any easier. My experience changed me forever in ways that I am still trying to understand."

Tomorrow will undoubtedly bring responses to the President from politicians his age and older. The voices we should be hearing are those of Erik Malmstrom and others like him.

Fingers-in-the-Dikes Presidency

Nobody seems to be blinking as the world economy bursts another seam, in Dubai this time, accentuating again how much Barack Obama's tenure in the White House has been like a montage of the little Dutch boy racing from dike to dike trying to hold off disasters--on Wall Street and Main Street, in Detroit, Afghanistan, the ozone layer, wherever.

Watery images are on Peggy Noonan's mind as she observes that the President is now "leaking support" in "two core constituencies, Washington's Democratic-journalistic establishment, and what might still be called the foreign-policy establishment."

But Noonan may be missing the point. Obama I is looking more and more like the Year of the Flood, with a President trying to hold back rising tides on all fronts in the kind of world not ideally suited to his political style as a transformational leader on big issues rather than a first responder to one emergency after another.

But the President has been scrambling for quick fixes, and some observers are declaring partial successes, as Jacob Weisberg does in Slate, crediting him with the best first year since FDR and citing "mounting evidence that the $787 billion economic stimulus he signed in February—-combined with the bank bailout package—-prevented an economic depression."

Be that as it may, next month Obama's acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize will remind us that the fabled boy with his finger in the dike was Hans Brinker, who also competed for the Silver Skates and, through his good works, went on to become a successful healer.

Then again, for skeptics, there is another way to go, by joining the editor of Newsweek in urging Dick Cheney to run against Obama in 2012. As the waters keep rising, the former Veep could go back to doing what he did so well for eight years, shrugging and denying it all.

Bush's War Crimes Trial

What is as close as we're going to get to a calling-to-account for the former Decider and his puppet Tony Blair for thousands of deaths in Iraq is unfolding, largely out of American media sight, before a panel of British nobles.

The Chilcot inquiry is hearing from such witnesses as the then-Ambassador to the UN that he threatened to quit in the runup to the Iraq invasion over bulldozing from the Bush-Cheney White House.

“The UK’s attempt to reconstitute a consensus," says Sir Jeremy Greenstock, "had only a slim prospect of success, made slimmer by the recognition by anyone else following events closely that the United States was not proactively supportive of the UK’s efforts and seemed to be preparing for conflict whatever the UK decided to do."

The ambassador's testimony follows that of British intelligence officials that right after 9/11 in 2001 they were asked to draw up an Iraq "options" paper, including regime change.

"We dismissed it at the time because it had no basis in law," says the then-head of the Middle East department at the Foreign Office, noting that ""there was no increased appetite among UK ministers for military action in Iraq."

A former policy director at the Ministry of Defence adds that, in those days, the issue of regime change in Iraq was like "the dog that did not bark. It grizzled, but it did not bark."

But Bush's Neo-Con dogs of war, "hell bent" on the invasion, were barking loud enough to be heard on both sides of the Atlantic, and their call for overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his non-existent WMDs was drowning out all dissenters.

The Chilcot hearings are big news in Britain but back here, what with Thanksgiving and the White House gate-crashers, the could-have-been-avoided deaths of more than 4000 Americans in Iraq may seem like yesterday's news.

George W. Bush is only figuratively in the dock, but a British investigator who campaigned for the inquiry calls it "a final opportunity to scrutinize the war...our last chance to get to the truth."

As we prepare to do more killing and dying in Afghanistan, it may be a truth we should be looking at very closely.

Hug a Terrorist for the Holidays

That photo of the Vice-President with his arms around a couple of grinning White House gate-crashers last night will do nicely as a symbol for Americans as they count their blessings, real and imagined, on this day.

While so many are getting their meals at homeless shelters, the headlines are devoted to the reality-show aspirants who breached the most secure location in the nation, decked out in finery and hair-styling that could have paid for hundreds of Thanksgiving dinners.

Economic absurdity aside, how are we to take the President's speech next week telling how much more American blood and treasure will be spent in Afghanistan to guarantee our domestic safety when two unauthorized strangers can walk into his own house undeterred and have Joe Biden give them a hug?

Loathsome as they are, Tareq and Michaele Salahi may have done Americans a favor by dramatizing in tabloid terms just how illusory the idea of homeland security may be in an age when there are not enough eyes to watch every rathole in every location, high and low.

If the terrorists show up in evening wear next time, who will stop them?

Update: The uninvited guests were allowed to enter, says a Secret Service spokesman, because "our procedure wasn't followed" at one security checkpoint, an explanation that rivals the explanation of Gen. Buck Turgidson in the movie, "Dr. Strangelove," about the failure to stop American and Soviet bombers heading for a doomsday confrontation, "I don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir."

If the Salahis had been terrorists carrying vials of anthrax, the Secret Service might today be setting up new checkpoints to protect President Nancy Pelosi or Robert Byrd from the next wave of "Desperate Housewives" wannabes.

Best Leftover Turkey Recipe Ever

From years of editing women's magazines and tasting test-kitchen results thereof, herewith a way with leftover turkey that will keep you from cursing the oversized bird you bought.

TURKEY TETRAZZINI

Ingredients: 3/4 cup butter or margarine, 3/4 cup flour, salt, 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg, 1 quart milk, 2 cups undiluted chicken broth, 4 egg yolks, 1 cup heavy cream, 1/2 cup sherry, 1 pound thin spaghetti, 6 cups leftover turkey cut into cubes, 1 cup fresh or canned sliced mushrooms, 8 oz sharp Cheddar grated (2 cups).

Sauce: Melt butter in large pan, remove from heat. Stir in flour, nutmeg and salt until smooth. Gradually add milk and broth, stirring constantly. Boil 2 minutes until slightly thick.

In small bowl, beat egg yolks and cream. Beat in a little of the sauce, pour back into pan over low heat, stirring until hot but not to a boil. Stir in sherry.

Boil spaghetti, drain and return to kettle. Add 2 cups sauce and toss together. Divide in half and put into two 12-by-8-by-2 baking dishes, push back toward edges. Add 2 cups sauce to turkey and mushrooms, mix well and spoon half into center of each dish.

Sprinkle grated cheese, cover with foil and refrigerate 1 hour or even overnight. Preheat oven to 350F and bake, covered, 45 minutes. Spoon reheated leftover sauce over each serving. You can refreeze and have leftover leftovers.

Somewhat calorific, but then again, so are the bread and mayonnaise for turkey sandwiches, which won't taste nearly this good.

Obama: War and Peace

Next week Barack Obama will announce he is sending tens of thousands more troops to fight in Afghanistan as he prepares ten days later to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway.

This juxtaposition raises questions about the "new climate in international politics" for which the Nobel Committee has cited him, observing, "Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts."

But such instruments will not work against those committed to fight a Holy War to the death, and the President now says he "will finish the job" of what he deems "a necessary war" with some yet-to-be-disclosed combination of diplomatic and civilian efforts as well as military force.

When he tells the American people exactly how next Tuesday night, he will be facing a public that is deeply divided about the war. No matter how skillfully Barack Obama explains his decision, an older generation will be thinking of Lyndon Johnson and the war in Vietnam.

Bill Moyers, who worked in the White House back then, speaks for all of us:

"(O)nce again we're fighting in remote provinces against an enemy who can bleed us slowly and wait us out, because he will still be there when we are gone.

"Once again, we are caught between warring factions in a country where other foreign powers fail before us. Once again, every setback brings a call for more troops, although no one can say how long they will be there or what it means to win. Once again, the government we are trying to help is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent.

"And once again, a President pushing for critical change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he's got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart.

"And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on. And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision.

"We will never know what would have happened if Lyndon Johnson had said no to more war. We know what happened because he said yes."

LBJ never won a Nobel Peace Prize and left office a broken man. In a new century, Barack Obama can learn much from his fate and write a different ending to the story.

Trade Health Care for More Stimulus?

The weekend "victory" in the Senate has Pyrrhic written all over it as 2000 pages of proposed legislation is on its way to being held hostage by the likes of Joe Lieberman, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson et al. What we have now is an abortion of a bill that will only get worse as the back-alley bargaining goes on.

Here's a radical idea for the President of Change: Take most of it off the table until after next year's elections and put your full weight behind another stimulus that would speed up economic recovery, create jobs and shove it down the throats of Republicans who are using the incoherence of health care reform to confuse Americans who are terrified about the economy.

"Most economists I talk to," Paul Krugman writes today, "believe that the big risk to recovery comes from the inadequacy of government efforts: the stimulus was too small, and it will fade out next year, while high unemployment is undermining both consumer and business confidence.

"Now, it’s politically difficult for the Obama administration to enact a full-scale second stimulus. Still, he should be trying to push through as much aid to the economy as possible. And remember, Mr. Obama has the bully pulpit; it’s his job to persuade America to do what needs to be done."

It would take political guts for the President, after all his talk about the urgency of health care reform, to take most of it off the table temporarily and put the effort and money into turning the economy around.

Settle for passing the noncontroversial elements now--i.e., no cutoffs for preexisting conditions--and move on to a full-scale assault on what is really worrying Americans.

Democrats who have to face the voters in less than a year should be able to unite and help him get something meaningful done.

Update: Joe Lieberman, dubbed by Joe Klein, "the Senator from Aetna," is digging in on the public option, in what the Wall Street Journal calls his "trademark sonorous baritone" but others would call a weasely whine, promising to filibuster against the public option. Harry Reid may buy him off before the final vote, but it's saddening to see a pivotal role being played by someone rejected by his own party's voters in the last election. Is this the way to get health care reform?

Saving JFK

The day is here again, November 22nd. It's been 46 years now and, for those well over that age, no less painful with the passage of time.

His death was the first of a president in our living rooms--the motorcade, the rifle shots, the disarray in Dallas, the dazed swearing-in of his successor that night, the on-camera murder of the assassin two days later and then the funeral with our eyes and hearts transfixed by the beautiful young widow and two small children.

We are so inured now to TV wakes with old news clips and talking heads that it's hard to imagine how hard and how deeply John F. Kennedy's assassination struck a nation that had been moved by his youth, wit and optimism, all gone in an eyeblink and shown over and over again in slow motion.

The pain went so deep that, as a magazine editor, I published an article by a psychiatrist telling how he and his patients talked of practically nothing else in the days and weeks that followed, how JFK's death had taken over their psyches and became entangled with their inner lives.

For months after that Friday, I would awake from sweat dreams of the motorcade, book depository, silent screams, slow-motion lunges at a relentless assassin, saving JFK at the last moment.

Such rescue fantasies came naturally to generations marked by the central image of "Catcher in the Rye": children "standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff--I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them."

Holden Caulfield couldn't save JFK, and neither could we, but every November 22nd, those dreams come back to haunt us.

The Weirdest Washington Game

After ten months in office, Barack Obama must feel he has been in a long surreal tennis match with nobody on the other side of the net.

In the stands is a chorus of Republicans yelling "Out!" at everything he serves, while jeering that he is moving too fast on the economy and too slowly on Afghanistan.

On the other side, Democrats are weakly cheering him on but spending much of their energy fighting one another to position themselves for their own contests next year.

What does the scoreboard show? Economists are giving the President some points, tentatively concluding that "with roughly a quarter of the stimulus money out the door after nine months, the accumulation of hard data and real-life experience has allowed more dispassionate analysts to reach a consensus that the stimulus package, messy as it is, is working."

On the Wall Street bailout, resident New York Times pundits score him both ways. Paul Krugman concludes "government officials made no serious attempt to extract concessions from bankers, even though these bankers received huge benefits from the rescue. And more than money was lost. By making what was in effect a multibillion-dollar gift to Wall Street, policy makers undermined their own credibility--and put the broader economy at risk."

The same day, David Brooks disagrees, saying "the evidence of the past eight months suggests that [Treasury Secretary Tim] Geithner was mostly right and his critics were mostly wrong. The financial sector is in much better shape than it was then. TARP money is being repaid, and the debate now is what to do with the billions that were never needed."

With all this confused cheering and jeering, it should be no surprise that the public is losing heart with the Gallup Poll showing the President's approval ratings slipping below 50 percent for the first time.

But there is some optimism in the air. Peggy Noonan observes that "the mood of this Thanksgiving looks to be different. An unofficial poll of a dozen friends yields two themes: 'We're still here,' and 'I am so grateful.'"

Meanwhile, the President is back from Asia and still swatting away at the nation's problems, hoping someone will join him for a better game.

Sexual Politics of Health Care

As Harry Reid pressures holiday-homebound Democrats to vote for a start of the Senate health care debate, Republican resisters have found a new weapon to use against the bill--a sudden deep concern about how it might threaten women's bodies.

Seizing on a quasi-government task force's report this week recommending that annual mammograms start at 50 rather than 40, the GOP has gone into full outrage mode.

"This is how rationing begins," warns Rep. Marsha Blackburn. "This is the little toe in the edge of the water. This is when you start getting a bureaucrat between you and your physician."

Never mind that Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius immediately made it clear that the US Preventive Services Task Force “is an outside independent panel of doctors and scientists who make recommendations” and who neither “set federal policy” nor “determine what services are covered by the federal government.”

“The task force has presented some new evidence for consideration,” she noted, “but our policies remain unchanged. Indeed, I would be very surprised if any private insurance company changed its mammography coverage decisions as a result of this action.”

In fact, the recommendation has provided a starting point, as it was intended to do, for debate of the issue, rather than a mandate, and has met heavy resistance from physicians and patients as well as the American Cancer Society.

But the Republican opposition is doing its thing again. Just as it converted voluntary end-of-life discussions into death panels, the know-nothings are trying to turn a scientific finding into a mandate to frighten American women.

The GOP elephant these days is looking more and more like the three monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil but speak it at every possible turn.

Oprah's Kissoff

Now that she has smooched you-know-who this week, the talented Ms. Winfrey is ready to end the talk show that made her a billionaire and start the next phase of her life as a media mogul with a cable channel aptly named OWN.

Like the would-be VP but for much longer and in a far different way, Oprah has been a phenomenon, rising from the depths of poverty to become an American icon with empathy, intelligence and enthusiasm, an Everywoman in constant battles to control her emotional life as well as her weight, educate herself and her audiences with a book club, overcome all obstacles in a world still dominated by men.

Her embrace of Barack Obama last year was the climax of a career that went well beyond race, giving a rhetorically gifted but emotionally standoffish candidate just the touch of humanity needed to connect with her constituency, to say nothing of the $3 million and more she raised for him.

Trading her celebrity at 55 to become a mostly behind-the-scenes Rupert Murdoch, Oprah leaves more than two decades of what has been called "a talk show as group therapy session" for millions

As in her ratings coup this week, Ms. Winfrey has occasionally stooped to conquer--i.e., her promotion of the cultural embarrassment known as Dr. Phil.

But as a fiery New York mayor of my childhood Fiorello LaGuardia used to say, "When I make a mistake, it's a beaut."

Byrd: An American Life

Tomorrow, he turns 92 after passing another milestone yesterday as the longest-serving member of Congress in history, almost 57 years.

With such longevity, Sen. Robert Byrd embodies almost a century of American history that transformed a nation of backwaters dotted by big cities into a metropolitan sprawl with access to 24/7 knowledge about the whole world.

Byrd, a self-made man if there ever was one, started as a gas jockey and butcher in West Virginia during World War II, who discovered a taste and talent for politics by joining the Ku Klux Klan at the age of 24 and rising to the position of Exalted Cyclops.

His worldview then is reflected in a 1944 letter: "I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

Jump-cut to May 2008, and here is Sen. Robert Byrd endorsing an African-American candidate as "a shining young statesman, who possesses the personal temperament and courage necessary to extricate our country from this costly misadventure in Iraq, and to lead our nation at this challenging time in history. Barack Obama is a noble-hearted patriot and humble Christian, and he has my full faith and support."

In his journey from benighted to Obama, Byrd's finest hour came on the eve of the Iraq invasion in 2002 when he warned:

"Why are we being hounded into action on a resolution that turns over to President Bush the Congress's Constitutional power to declare war? This resolution would authorize the president to use the military forces of this nation wherever, whenever and however he determines, and for as long as he determines, if he can somehow make a connection to Iraq. It is a blank check."

Today, plagued by the ills of old age, Robert Byrd is third in line of presidential succession behind Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.

Happy Birthday, Senator, on a milestone in a remarkable American Life.

The Last Palin Post

Now that John McCain has finally spoken out to defend his campaign staff and Andrew Sullivan has gone dark to analyze "Going Rogue," it's time for serious people (including President Obama) to stop talking about the book they don't intend to read.

Sarah Palin's media megaphone has gotten so loud that her running mate (he was at the top of the ticket, wasn't he?) has finally stepped up to defend his campaign staff from the torture they have been undergoing at her hands.

After trying to pass off the book as "background noise," McCain now defends them gingerly: "There's been a lot of dust flying around in the last few days and I just wanted to mention that I have the highest regard for Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace and the rest of the team...and I appreciated all the hard work and everything they did to help the campaign."

The POW metaphor seems to have occurred to McCain as he says, ""Campaigns are high-pressure situations. The only more high-pressure situation that I've been in is combat and prison."

Some of his fellow prisoners are more vocal in breaking out of Palin's web of lies as Nicolle Wallace brands her story about the Katie Couric interview "fiction," just as Schmidt has done previously about other claims in the book.

Here, the rest will be silence and deference to Andrew Sullivan who is going through the torture of actually reading what Palin's ghost wrote.

Update: Sullivan gives up, too: "The lies and truths and half-truths and the facts and non-facts are all blurred together in a pious puree of such ghastly prose that, in the end, the book can only really be read as a some kind of chapter in a cheap nineteenth century edition of 'Lives of the Saints.' But as autobiography."

Sayonara, Sarah!

More Twisted Than Terrorist

The more we learn about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the thinner the line stretches between ideology and mental illness, and the more troubling is the question of why, surrounded by psychiatrists, his potential for violence was not sufficiently recognized to remove him from his position as a healer of trauma victims.

Today brings a report that "military superiors repeatedly ignored or rebuffed his efforts to open criminal prosecutions of soldiers he claimed had confessed to 'war crimes' during psychiatric counseling," an unmistakable sign, if true, of Hasan's own disturbance, an eagerness to breach doctor-patient confidentiality to serve his own pathology.

“If there was a failure to take appropriate action before the shootings, there must be accountability,” President Obama has said, and there is increasing evidence that Hasan's erratic behavior was noted and then disregarded as far back as his service at Walter Reed Hospital.

A psychiatrist who worked with him there gave this account to a reporter: "From the beginning--and Hasan was there for four years--the medical staff was very worried about this guy...He did not do a good job as a psychiatrist in training, was repeatedly warned, you better shape up, or, you know, you're going to be in trouble. Did badly in his classes, seemed disinterested...

"(H)e was very proud and upfront about being Muslim...and nobody minded that. But he seemed almost belligerent about being Muslim, and he gave a lecture one day that really freaked a lot of doctors out."

The picture that is emerging of Nidal Malik Hasan is that of a deeply troubled, sexually repressed loner who was seen frequenting a local strip club for $50 lap dances rather than an Islamic martyr hoping to be rewarded with 72 virgins for his actions.

Why didn't the mental-health experts all around him do something about it?

Palin's POWs

Four decades after being tortured in a North Vietnamese prison camp, John McCain is trapped in a slow drip of accusations from Sarah Palin as she embarks on weeks of media ubiquity to promote her aptly titled, "Going Rogue."

A New York Times review notes that "the most sustained and vehement barbs in this book are directed not at Democrats or liberals or the press, but at the McCain campaign. The very campaign that plucked her out of Alaska, anointed her the Republican vice-presidential nominee and made her one of the most talked about women on the planet--someone who could command a reported $5 million for writing this book."

Good soldier that he is, when asked if the book has become "a nuisance," McCain responds no, "It's the usual background noise."

But his former staff members are not so stoic, his campaign manager calling the book "self-serving and revisionist...fiction" as Palin blames everyone but herself for the fiascoes that revealed her inexperience and ignorance, no matter how hard they tried to disguise it.

Now they and McCain are Palin's media prisoners as she preens with Oprah, Barbara Walters and Limbaugh and in personal appearances in small cities all over the map, carefully avoiding the metropolitan areas she disdained during the campaign.

As a "publicity saint," Palin can override all criticism, as she does with the AP's fact-checking of "familiar claims from the 2008 presidential campaign that haven’t become any truer over time."

On her Facebook page, Palin swats such away criticism: "We've heard 11 writers are engaged in this opposition research, er, 'fact checking' research! Imagine that--11 AP reporters dedicating time and resources to tearing up the book, instead of using the time and resources to 'fact check' what's going on with Sheik Mohammed's trial, Pelosi's health care takeover costs, Hasan's associations, etc. Amazing."

What's truly amazing is that, in a time that cries out for serious political discussion, the media will be prisoners of Palin as she sashays around the country as a superstar of being "well-known for her well-knowness."

The Birth of Death Panels

A long-time Congressman offers a lesson today about how politics and the media collude to distort rational discussion.

In an Op Ed, Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon explains how his bipartisan proposal to have Medicare pay for voluntary end-of-life discussions morphed into death panels:

"I found it perverse that Medicare would pay for almost any medical procedure, yet not reimburse doctors for having a thoughtful conversation to prepare patients and families for the delicate, complex and emotionally demanding decisions surrounding the end of life. So when I was working on the health care bill, I included language directing Medicare to cover a voluntary discussion with a doctor once every five years about living wills, power of attorney and end-of-life treatment preferences...

"Indeed, the majority of Congressional Republicans supported the similar provisions for terminally ill elderly patients that were part of the 2003 prescription drug bill. In the spring of 2008, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska issued a proclamation that stated the importance of end-of-life planning."

During debate, no one in Congress offered any objection until Betsy McCaughey, who had savaged Clinton health care, in a radio interview claimed that the provision would "absolutely require that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner."

That statement was labeled a "Pants on Fire falsehood" by the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Politifact, but Sarah Palin, a McCaughey clone, raised it to a higher level on her Facebook page with the warning that "my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’" while Rush Limbaugh chimed in and the Republicans in Congress all joined the attacks as if they had received their marching orders from on high.

The town hall flareups ensued, and the wall-to-wall coverage, Blumenauer says, "shows how the news media, after aiding and abetting falsehood, were unable to perform their traditional role of reporting the facts. By lavishing uncritical attention on the most exaggerated claims and extreme behavior, they unleashed something that the truth could not dispel."

The furor has subsided and health care reform is moving ahead, but the death panel fear surely lingers on in the public opinion polls that find Americans equally divided about the bills.

The Trouble with the 9/11 Trial

The attacks brought Americans together briefly, but the aftermath is still sowing division--as the decision of Attorney General Eric Holder to try five of the 9/11 terrorists in lower Manhattan brings conflict and confusion.

On the surface, it's hard to argue with Holder's logic: "After eight years of delay, those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September 11th will finally face justice. They will be brought to New York--to New York--to answer for their alleged crimes, in a courthouse just blocks away from where the twin towers once stood."

A New York Times editorial calls the decision "an enormous victory for the rule of law, a major milestone in Mr. Obama’s efforts to close the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and an important departure from Mr. Bush’s disregard for American courts and their proven ability to competently handle high-profile terror cases."

But the Wall Street Journal focuses on the fear of terrorist reprisal: "Coming soon to a civilian courtroom blocks from Ground Zero: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four other al Qaeda planners of 9/11. Be sure to get your tickets early, and don't forget to watch out for the truck-bomb barricades and rooftop snipers."

Beyond this conflict of idealistic symbolism and realistic fears, there are other uneasy questions:

How can such a trial possibly find an impartial jury?

How can it not be fairly called "a show trial" when the verdict is predetermined or, in the extremely unlikely event of acquittal, the defendants will face a backlog of other charges?

In an event designed to show American fairness and rule of law, how can it not also be a huge media showcase for the defendants' countercharges of torture and brutality?

In its way, the uproar over this trial may be a reflection of the larger conflict between Obama's hopes and his political antagonists' fears, but there is a case to be made for both sides.

In this instance, it's hard not to feel that there is something robotically correct about Eric Holder's decision that overrides legitimate doubts and fears.

He may feel he is using the Nuremberg trials of Nazis after World War II as a model, but there is a difference. They were held in a defeated country under secure military rule, and even then there was some American and Allied criticism of them as show trials.

The forthright Attorney General acknowledges he was influenced by his wife and "my brother, who's a retired Port Authority police officer...who lost friends and colleagues on 9/11 in the towers" and talked to survivors "about the symbolic significance of it."

Eric Holder wants to show the world that the rule of law can deal with those who kill innocent people for ideology, but he may be inviting another kind of symbolism--how the 9/11 attacks are still causing conflict and fear in America.

A Republican Obama?

In 2006, conservative columnist David Brooks fell in love politically with a young senator and wrote a column, "Run Barack Run." We all know how that worked out and now, in a column today, "Meet John Thune," Brooks reveals a new heartthrob from the other side of the Senate aisle.

"Thune," he writes, "is the junior senator from South Dakota, the man who beat Tom Daschle in an epic campaign five years ago. The first thing everybody knows about him is that he is tall (6 feet 4 inches), tanned (in a prairie, sun-chapped sort of way) and handsome (John McCain jokes that if he had Thune’s face he’d be president right now). If you wanted a Republican with the same general body type and athletic grace as Barack Obama, you’d pick Thune."

So much for looks, although a Gary Cooper/Jimmy Stewart lookalike might visually be a better 2012 bet for the GOP than a stiff Mitt Romney or a pudding-faced Mike Huckabee.

But more than that, Brooks insists his new man is not ideologically scary, that "people like Thune offer Republicans a way to connect fiscal discipline with traditional small-town values, a way to tap into rising populism in a manner that is optimistic, uplifting and nice."

These days, few commentators are calling Barack Obama "nice," but it's cheering to remember when Brooks was saying about him: "He distrusts righteous anger and zeal. He does not demonize his opponents and tells audiences that he does not think George Bush is a bad man."

As a political casting director, Brooks has a record that deserves respect.

Obama vs Karzai Over Exit Strategy

Barack Obama is doing what George W. Bush failed to do in Iraq--looking for "where the off-ramps are," according to a White House official.

As the President starts a nine-day Asia trip, he leaves behind the message that his Afghanistan decision has been strongly influenced by Karl Eikenberry, the US ambassador who was once military commander there, whose doubts about Hamid Karzai are reflected in a White House statement:

"The President believes that we need to make clear to the Afghan government that our commitment is not open-ended. After years of substantial investments by the American people, governance in Afghanistan must improve in a reasonable period of time."

So begins the crucial battle there--Obama vs Karzai--to get Afghanistan out of its sinkhole of corruption and incompetence far enough to be able to stand on its own and allow US troops to withdraw in a foreseeable time.

Administration officials are reported to be pushing Karzai for a list of "deliverables" to prove that he is cracking down on corruption, including naming able technocrats to top cabinet positions rather than warlords who backed his re-election.

Cynics will claim that Obama does not have the leverage for this kind of arm-twisting--that we are stuck in Afghanistan and Karzai knows it. A former US ambassador there puts it this way:

“You know that scene in the movie ‘Blazing Saddles,’ when Cleavon Little holds the gun to his own head and threatens to shoot himself? The argument that we could pull out of Afghanistan if Karzai doesn’t do what we say is stupid. We couldn’t get the Pakistanis to fight if we leave Afghanistan; we couldn’t accomplish what we’ve set out to do. And Karzai knows that.”

Maybe so, but it's heartening to have a Commander-in-Chief searching this hard for an exit strategy before he commits tens of thousands of troops into harm's way.

There are rumors that the President may make a surprise trip to Kabul at the end of his Asia travels and confront Karzai face to face. If he does, he will have to do better in that battle than he has so far in the one with Republicans over health care.

At the end of his first year, Barack Obama is going to show us what kind of fighter he really is. Can Change come with brass knuckles?

Dumping Dobbs: Good News for News

CNN has struck a blow for journalism on cable TV by forcing Lou Dobbs to take his "advocacy" elsewhere.

Somewhere between the right-left divide of Fox News and MSNBC, the network has been comparatively fair-minded with the glaring exception of Dobbs, who occupied a unique spot of blowhard wrong-headedness on the political spectrum.

When I started blogging in 2006, my second post was headed "Is Lou Dobbs Running for Something?" and noted: "A long-time Republican, defender of Big Business, business-news entrepreneur himself, he is now a born-again populist, with just a trace of anti-immigration racism, but some may remember when he left CNN in 2000 in a huff after the network president wanted to cut away to live coverage of President Bill Clinton consoling parents at Columbine, which Dobbs argued was not newsworthy."

The following year, as his bloviating got worse, I chose him as "the world's worst journalist" over Bill O'Reilly for being "a rabble-rouser against illegal aliens, provoking more dissension over a serious national issue than any politician in sight--all in the name of journalism."

Soon afterward, the New York Times unmasked his hoax that illegal aliens were bringing leprosy to the US, observing that "The problem with Mr. Dobbs is that he mixes opinion and untruths."

Not long afterward I posted a pleading "Memo to CNN" that started: "Can’t you give Lou Dobbs tranquilizers and/or rabies shots to get him out of our faces?"

Two and a half years later, given a choice between converting to journalism or venting on talk radio, Lou Dobbs has opted for Limbaughland. Journalism will be much better off without him,