Beginner's Luck

In the Post, Eugene Robinson provides a good read on the “luck” of Barack Obama and the growing crankiness and desperation of John McCain. A brief excerpt:

If the grouching and grumbling continue, a campaign that once promised to be a referendum on Barack Obama's experience threatens to become a referendum on John McCain's temperament. At the moment, one of the candidates is acting presidentially and one isn't.

McCain's crankiness toward Obama reminds me of something the French writer Jean Cocteau once said: "Of course I believe in luck. How otherwise to explain the success of those you dislike?"

The McCain Drift

In this week’s TIME, Joe Klein explores John McCain’s foreign policy frustrations. As the campaign rolls on, not only do the differences in ideology between the candidates become more apparent but so do their differences in temperament and their approach to addressing the complex issues of today. Their recent back-and-forth on national security issues has been a perfect case in point. McCain, who has always spoken of the responsibility of candidates in electoral politics to raise the level of discourse above the petty partisanship and personal attacks we’ve become accustomed to, has quickly thrown all scruples out the window by questioning Barack Obama’s patriotism. We knew the Republicans would make that assertion sooner or later but we didn’t realize it would come straight from McCain and so early in the election. Perhaps it stems from a growing frustration that he no longer has the upper hand in the ongoing debate over America’s national security priorities. Klein:

"I had the courage and the judgment to say that I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war," John McCain said during a Rochester, N.H., town meeting on July 22. "It seems to me that Senator Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign." It was a remarkable statement, as intemperate a personal attack as I've ever heard a major-party candidate make in a presidential campaign, the sort of thing that no potential President of the United States should ever be caught saying. (A prudent candidate has aides sling that sort of mud.) It was also inevitable.

You could see McCain's frustration building as Barack Obama traipsed elegantly through the Middle East while the pillars of McCain's bellicose regional policy crumbled in his wake. It wasn't only that the Iraqi government seemed to take Obama's side in the debate over when U.S. forces should leave (sooner rather than later). McCain was being undermined in Washington as well, by his old pal George W. Bush, who seemed to take Obama's side in the debate about whether to talk to Iran. Bush sent a ranking U.S. diplomat to negotiate with the Iranians on nuclear issues — and also let it be known that a U.S. Interests Section could soon be established in Tehran, the first U.S. diplomatic presence on Iranian soil since the 1979 hostage crisis.

In the end, both Obama and McCain seemed to have a piece of the truth about Iraq, but Obama's truth was larger and more strategic. Obama had been right about the war in the first place. It was a disastrous idea, a phenomenal waste of lives and American credibility that diverted focus from our real enemy, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And Obama was right about the war now: the progress in Iraq was enabling a quicker withdrawal — a plan already hinted at by Bush. And Obama was right about the future: the Iraqis don't want long-term U.S. bases on their territory, a McCain keystone and the source of his infamous comment about staying in Iraq for 100 years. McCain's piece of the truth was tactical: he was right about the surge and right about the brilliance of David Petraeus' battle plan, which had helped quiet down Iraq. McCain was justifiably infuriated that Obama wouldn't acknowledge that success - indeed, Obama seemed to understand that he was pushing McCain's buttons, hoping perhaps to elicit McCain's Vesuvian temper, and in Rochester the eruption occurred.

Ultimately, the one-time maverick’s downfall will be traced to his steady embrace of a neoconservative foreign policy ideology. In Klein’s words, that would be best defined as “unilateral bellicosity cloaked in the utopian rhetoric of freedom and democracy.” This drift has led McCain to become more myopic and less adaptable to changing circumstances - and yes, more Bush-like. As Klein contends, "McCain has straitjacketed himself in an ideology focused more on enemies (real and imagined) than on opportunities."

Wrong About Small Towns

A few months back, a "Letter to Barack Obama" was published in the Hays Daily News in Hays, Kansas. The premise of the author, Will Manly, was that Barack Obama was wrong about the honest, hard-working folks in small town America. More glaring than the absurdity of Manly's "supporting evidence" was his utter disregard for doing what he said small-town Americans do best - independent thinking. Instead, he falls back on the outworn slogans and character attacks that have become all too common in "journalism" today. Below is his letter followed by an appropriate response:

Dear Barack Obama: You’re Wrong About Small Towns

I grew to like you over the last year. I've always thought of you as dangerously naive at best. Eloquent, gifted, genuine, yes. But dangerously naive at best.I couldn't vote for you -- but not because of your funny name or your lunatic pastor. I couldn't vote for you because you say we should raise taxes (even on the rich, who I'm convinced already pay too much), and because you say we should abandon Iraq (which I'm convinced would be surrendering a war we must win), and because you don't respect the Second Amendment (which I'm convinced should disqualify any politician from any office).

Still, I've liked your message of unity and your ability to inspire. And, since your rise I've hunted, quite frantically, for young conservative leaders with your talent. (To my relief, I found Bobby Jindal.) And I've long said if you beat Hillary Clinton, you will have done your country a tremendous service. But anymore I'm having a harder and harder time rooting for you.

First came your wife's comment about being proud of America for the first time -- conveniently, right after you started winning primaries. Then came your own words about your grandmother, who is just a "typical white person" -- a racist, or at least someone with racist tendencies. (I'm a "typical white person," I suppose, and I'm no racist. In fact, little makes me angrier than when it's insinuated I am.)

Sometimes people say things they don't really mean. But this is a pattern. Last week, we heard your comments about small-town America. Someone at a San Francisco fundraiser asked you why it's so hard for Democrats to win in rural areas. You said:

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them ... So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them ..."

Is that a minority? HEY CLETUS, GET THE GUN! (If only we had a job to go to, some time in the last 25 years ...) Here's a thought: Maybe gun rights voters know gun control laws kill people and steal freedom. Here's a thought: Maybe some of us have moral objections to an immigration system that forces rule-followers to wait decades for legal status, and rewards border-violators with amnesty. Here's a thought: Maybe some Americans cling to their church because their pastor is a nice person, because they find love there, because there they have something they can believe in. Here's a thought: Maybe, just maybe, us simpletons in small towns find it harder to be bigoted than all o' y'all cityfolk. Maybe, in small towns, where everybody knows your name -- and how hard you work, if you pay your taxes, how well you treat your neighbors, how often you volunteer in the community, and whether or not you're a good parent -- people see the content of your character, so they don't give a hoot about the color of your skin. (But I grew up in a small town where about a third of the population is of a different race than me. What do I know?) And here's my favorite thought of all: Maybe small-town folks are -- really -- capable of thinking. All on our own.

You're wrong about why small-town Americans don't vote for Democrats. We don't vote for Democrats because we're self-reliant so we don't like the government trying to "solve" everything for us. And because you tell your rich friends in San Francisco that we're dumb. And because, each election, whichever one of you is running for president traipses all over the country telling us you have all the answers, that you're the one on our side, that you understand and respect our way of life.

But each time, a little bit here and there slips out -- and by the end of the campaign, we can tell what you think about us. And we manage to learn who you really are. And we see you're just a horse's ass.

The response:

Dear Will Manly: You’re Wrong About Small Towns

As a product of a small Midwestern town, your headline - "Dear Barack: You're Wrong About Small Towns" – immediately drew my attention. Curious as to what valuable insight (possibly a thoughtful point or two) you were going to provide, I read on. I should have known better.

Barack Obama is dangerously naïve you say. That's interesting. We've all heard the "experience question" raised repeatedly about Obama but the cries about his naïveté appeared to be fading away as the campaign moved on. The reasons were obvious to most because his achievements belie any sense of naiveté. You don't run a historic campaign that inspires millions to register and vote for the first time by being naïve about public policy or, as important, about what lies in the hearts and minds of the American people. And you don't beat a candidate like Hillary Clinton – arguably the most formidable presidential candidate not to gain her party's nomination – by being naïve about the political and electoral process. Quite the opposite actually. As Obama has often said, you shouldn't confuse hope with naïveté. If he was as naïve as you say, he'd be sitting on the sidelines jockeying for airtime with folks who have fallen by the political wayside long ago. (By the way, if Rumsfeld and Cheney represent the merits of “experience” against “naïveté,” than perhaps Republicans should find another argument).

But since I thought that maybe you had clairvoyance, some amazing life experience or perspective on public service and government that could show us all the light, I read on.

You then said that “rich” people pay too much in taxes. Given the current excesses of corporate welfare and considering the impact of the Bush tax cuts (which Senator McCain opposed when he was a "maverick" because he said they gave too much to wealthy Americans at the expense of the middle class), that seemed an odd statement. After all, those making over a million dollars a year have seen their tax rates drop further than any other income group under the Bush Administration. Folks in the middle class, many of whom live in small towns in rural Kansas, haven’t had it nearly as good under the Bush-McCain economic policies. They are the ones who have repeatedly been told to sacrifice. I doubt many of them, struggling to make ends meet by balancing the rising costs of health care, gas prices and paying for their kids' education, shed too many tears for the “rich” folks you champion. You didn't mention Barack Obama's proposal to provide significant tax relief for those small town, middle class Americans, though I'm sure it was just an oversight. Contrary to your belief, Senator Obama is convinced that the middle class are the folks stuck paying too much in taxes. I think that most Americans would agree with him.

Despite my growing weariness with your line of reasoning, I read on.

Next, you stated that Barack Obama wants to “surrender” before “victory” can be achieved in Iraq. I'm not sure how you define either of those terms, but I'll play along.

It's true that Senator Obama wants to begin a redeployment of U.S. combat forces from Iraq to address more grave threats elsewhere, such as a reconstituted Taliban and resurgent al-Qaeda. Other than you and John McCain, I doubt there are many who feel otherwise. In fact, just this week the President acknowledged that a general timeline for troop withdrawal would be included in a pending bilateral security agreement between U.S. and Iraqi governments. The alternative is a permanent presence in a sovereign nation whose elected leaders have been increasingly insistent upon our departure. Senior military officials have repeatedly warned that the current pace of operations in Iraq and the reduced readiness of U.S. military forces is limiting our ability to respond to threats to our security and crises that may (and likely will) emerge both at home and around the world. Regardless, Senator McCain insisted that we had to stay in Iraq because things were going poorly. Now he insists that we have to stay because progress has been made. Which is it?

On the other hand, Senator Obama, who has always said that we must be as careful in our redeployment of troops from Iraq as we were careless in our deployment of those troops in the first place, wants to rebuild our military and take the fight back to those who brought 9/11 to our doorstep. As troops are drawn down in Iraq in consultation with Commanders on the ground, we will be more capable of confronting the enemy that our intelligence agencies tell us is the greatest real threat to our security - the enemy that grows more lethal by the day in the mountains along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. You may recall that Senator McCain said that the Iraq war was a war of necessity because Saddam posed a real and immediate threat to us all. McCain also mentioned this war would quickly come to a conclusion because the Iraqi people would welcome us with open arms. That was in 2003. As we enter into the sixth year of the war (a war that has lasted longer than World War II), McCain's comments and his judgment appear naïve, maybe even dangerously so. Do you agree?

Next, you point out that Barack Obama has no respect for the Constitution, especially the Second Amendment. Given the reckless disregard of the Constitution by the current bunch in the White House, I thought this was also an interesting point to raise. As a former professor of Constitutional law, I'm sure that Obama's alleged disdain for that sacred document is apparent when he cites his beliefs that communities should be allowed to protect their citizens as they see fit and that urban areas like Chicago may see the issue of sensible and reasonable gun control differently than the folks of Ellis County. Hardly. You never mentioned that Obama has repeatedly said that the Second Amendment is an individual right but I’m sure that was yet another oversight. I read on.

And then your article quickly devolved…any hope that you were going to make reasonable points or come to reasonable judgments was quickly thrown out the window. I’m sure that pulling quotes out of context and attacking a candidate for what you perceive as the underlying meaning of those words is enjoyable for you. And I know how easy it can be to build a straw man and then tear it down. It's much easier than debating the true merits of policy differences, but it’s an interesting approach nonetheless for a columnist who places such a premium on “thinking.”

As a columnist, I would hope that you would take the "bitter” comments in their proper context and, just maybe, try to raise the level of discourse in this campaign by delving in to the meaning of Senator Obama’s words. How have small town Americans fared under the Bush-McCain economic policies? Not well. Are they better off today than they were eight years ago? Absolutely not. Would those Americans of whom Senator Obama spoke be better off economically under Democratic Party policies? Absolutely, they wouldn't be stuck paying for tax cuts for those more affluent while at the same time remaining ineligible for the services provided to those less affluent. Is it true that rural America would be better off under Democratic Party policies? Absolutely, those communities would see dramatic investments in priorities such as rural health and education programs, Community Development Block Grants, Rural Business Opportunity Grants, local law enforcement, and enhanced services, access and outreach for rural veterans.
And yes, while many voters base their decisions on purely economic issues, many others vote according to the issues about which they feel most passionately – including gun rights. Barack Obama understands that and as he has stated repeatedly, he respects that. The differences between us matter far less than the many traits and values that bind us as Americans. That is why Barack Obama speaks of the importance of coming together to make real change for America. It sounds like common sense but it’s something that’s been terribly lacking over the past 8 years under the Bush Administration. Americans are sick of politics as usual and they are ready to move on. They are ready for the change that Barack Obama can bring. He knows that Americans, yes even those from small towns like you and I, are capable of thinking for themselves. As he has said, “people don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. They know we can do better.” He has challenged us to look at elections in a different way by raising the level of political discourse and making us feel pride and inspiration in our elected leadership again. He has allowed us to realize that hope and pragmatism are not opposing virtues.

Back to your article…since the finish line was within sight, I read on. You next made the point that small towns do not vote for Democrats because they don’t like big government. I thought that was interesting considering that Bill Clinton and Al Gore (the only two-term Democratic Administration in over 60 years) actually scaled down the federal government to its smallest level since LBJ’s “Great Society” programs of the 1960s. You also didn’t mention that President Bush has overseen the greatest expansion of the federal government since, you guessed it, LBJ’s “Great Society” programs of the 1960s. But I’m sure your mischaracterization of this issue was simply an oversight – yet again.

When you speak of Senator Obama’s “rich friends”, I assume you’re trying to make the case that Obama is the candidate beholden to the wealthy. When you take a look at the backgrounds of Senator Obama and Senator McCain, the policies they have proposed, and their lists of donors, you’ll see that the record clearly speaks for itself. And it’s not even close. Barack Obama is the candidate who turned down lucrative offers after law school to become a community organizer in Chicago, seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods. Only recently was he able to pay off his student loans. During this campaign, he has championed a moderate rate increase on the wealthiest Americans to provide health care and access to higher education for middle class taxpayers. He has also received small dollar (under $25) donations from well-over a million donors - far more than any other candidate in U.S. history. John McCain is the candidate who has served in Congress for over 26 years and recently married into wealth. He is also the candidate who has championed corporate welfare and recently flip-flopped on President Bush’s tax cuts which disproportionately benefit the wealthy – the very people who serve as the backbone of his fundraising efforts. Unfortunately, reality contradicts you once again.

And then comes the last line of your editorial…did you really just call the Democratic nominee for President of the United States a horse’s ass? That line actually should have gone at the beginning of your rants so that readers would have an earlier indication of your true integrity as a columnist. There are those who seek to educate and inform readers, and there are those that go for the cheap one-liners and engage in politics as usual. The former perform a service for the public. The latter are just pawns for career politicians, spinsters and talking heads.

Perhaps someday you will come to see presidential elections for what they should be. Maybe you will work to ensure that they more reflect the best in us (the politics of hope), not the worst in us (the politics of cynicism). You have a choice whether or not to contribute to that. Unfortunately, given your words, it’s clear that your choice has already been made.

As John F. Kennedy once said “The times are too grave, the challenges too urgent, the stakes too high to permit the customary passions of political debate. We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through the darkness to a safe and sane future.” I understand your approach but I do not respect it. After all, the approach you have chosen is much easier than thinking - and what responsibly-minded columnist would want to do that? I guess folks like you will just leave the thinking to us naïve, small-town hope-mongers.

The Surge

In the USA Today, Joe Biden explores John McCain’s tunnel vision on Iraq and his assertion that the surge accomplished absolutely everything we could have dreamed.

Recent events have demonstrated clearly that Barack Obama's judgment on Iraq is right. Now, it's time to heed that judgment so that we can successfully end the war while refocusing on the fight in Afghanistan. Sen. Obama has said repeatedly that there have been significant gains in lowering the levels of violence in Iraq. These gains have come from the heroic sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, as well as the success of the Sunni tribes in fighting al-Qaeda, and the cease-fire that has been respected by Shiite militias.

But the stated purpose of the surge was to help bring about the political progress and economic development necessary for long-term stability in Iraq. That progress still lags. That is why we must welcome the growing consensus in both the USA and Iraq for a timeline that will allow the responsible redeployment of our combat brigades out of Iraq. I agree with Sen. Obama and the prime minister of Iraq that we can safely redeploy all our combat brigades out of Iraq in 2010, with a residual force to fight terrorists, train Iraqis and protect our personnel.

This redeployment is absolutely necessary if we hope to restore our military strength and finish the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal areas. This is the central front in the war on terror. This is where the 9/11 attacks were planned and where terrorists could be plotting against America today.

With the Taliban and al-Qaeda on the rise and violence more severe than at any time since the beginning of the war, we must free up more resources in order to succeed. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledges, we can do so only if we redeploy our forces from Iraq. Success in Iraq must not be defined by staying in Iraq indefinitely; success is leaving Iraq to an Iraqi government that is reconciling its differences and taking responsibility for its future.

It's time to encourage the Iraqi government to stand up on its own while we refocus on the war in Afghanistan and the broad range of national security challenges we face. Barack Obama is profoundly right that the next president must be more than Commander in chief for Iraq - he must meet challenges to America's security around the world.

Unbalanced Priorities

Earlier in the week, the Times took a skeptical look at John McCain’s nonsensical “balanced-budget” talk.

This has been a week in which the stock markets lurched sickeningly downward. The treasury secretary had to swat away rumors that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the pillars of the mortgage business, may be crumbling. Oil prices spiked, again. Airlines cut schedules and raised prices, again. And the best that could be said about one of the nation’s biggest companies, General Electric, was that it didn’t do worse in the second quarter than Wall Street had expected.

All of that made it more clear than ever why this nation desperately needs the next president to have a clear-eyed vision for the economy - and the federal budget in particular. And yet, the biggest news that Senator John McCain made last week was his renewal of a pledge to balance the federal budget by 2013. How? Who knows? Mr. McCain’s main campaign promises, if fulfilled, would lead to huge budget deficits. Extending the Bush tax cuts, enacting more tax cuts of his own and staying the course in Iraq would cost hundreds of billions of dollars more, every year, than the small bore spending cuts he has specified. Mr. McCain cannot balance the budget on a crusade against pork and a one-year freeze in a sliver of federal spending. Either he has a secret plan to balance the budget or he’s blowing smoke.

It is safe to assume there is no secret plan. To balance the budget in the face of ever-increasing tax cuts would require untenable near-term cuts in Medicare, one of the biggest drivers of budget imbalance. That, in turn, would harm elderly Americans, arguably Mr. McCain’s most important constituency. Do not misunderstand our argument. Controlling Medicare costs is essential to restoring budget health. But no politician, least of all Mr. McCain, is simply going to slash the life out of the program. Even reform of Social Security, which Mr. McCain has also promised and which also must occur to restore long-term fiscal balance, would not right the budget anytime soon. Any feasible reform (not that Mr. McCain has one) would have to phase in over decades.

Which leads us to conclude that Mr. McCain is merely talking the balanced-budget talk. Mr. McCain and his advisers must know that his numbers do not add up. But adding up is not their point. Their point is to perpetuate the fantasy that Americans can have ever bigger tax cuts and a balanced federal budget. They cannot. The unbalanced budgets of the Reagan years and two Bush presidencies are proof.

No one - not presidents, not members of Congress, not the voters - has ever been willing, and rightly so, to starve government to the point that would make never-ending tax cuts affordable. But feeding the fantasy is easier than presenting tough choices, and it worked for Mr. McCain’s Republican predecessors. Following in those footsteps does not, however, make a good case for his candidacy. Americans face hardship in the years to come. The demands of a tanking economy, coming on top of years of unmet needs - for health care, infrastructure repair and alternative energy, to name a few - will require the next president to spend more and to raise taxes to support that spending. A blanket commitment to cutting tax cuts while balancing the budget precludes sensible discussion of how to do that.

Longer term, the challenge is perhaps even more daunting. Saving more is ultimately the only way to dig out of the budget hole that the nation is in. That will be painful, because higher government savings, done properly, means higher taxes and restrained spending. Candidates for president do not like to be pessimistic, or even candid, really, about the economy. But a leader who wants to steer the nation through tough times should not spend the campaign telling Americans they can have it all.

America's Leadership

Obama at the Hate

In the Times, Christoph Peters explores some of the issues surrounding a possible appearance by Barack Obama at the Brandenburg Gate, the chief of which is push-back from Germany’s “ever-meddling” Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, has made known her displeasure at the possibility that Barack Obama might use an appearance before the Brandenburg Gate here to present himself to the world as a politician of balance and integrity. Such an event would doubtless be heavy with symbolism as well as heavily attended, and one should always be wary meddling in another nation’s elections.

Yet Chancellor Merkel’s reaction seems quite odd when you consider that in 2003 she herself, as the new and internationally all-but-unknown leader of the German opposition, sought to take her place on the world stage — and scored a public relations coup — by writing an article for The Washington Post in which she assured George W. Bush of her support for the Iraq war.

As a result of that article, she was sharply criticized in Germany, where she was seen to have violated political etiquette. We can only speculate about her reasoning, both in 2003 and now. However, her current position can have nothing to do with a desire to remain neutral in the American presidential campaign. Quite the contrary: Apart from the fact that conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have closer ties with one another than with the liberal forces in their respective countries, the chancellor seems to feel an instinctive sympathy, perhaps rooted in her having grown up in East Germany, for such staunchly right-wing and rather gruff figures of American politics as George W. Bush and John McCain.

Many politicians in former Eastern bloc countries share this sympathy. The Iron Curtain, they feel, was not torn apart by attempts at reconciliation and rapprochement like the ones by Richard Nixon and Willy Brandt in the early 1970s, and most certainly not by the values propagated by the 1968 protest movement, but by the policy and rhetoric of strength with which Ronald Reagan confronted the Soviet Union. The fear of being threatened by the “evil empire” still runs deep in those who lived under Soviet domination, and that fear may well be connected with a longing for the “strong, good” leader who will provide protection.

Without this psychological explanation, Ms. Merkel’s public displeasure at the chance that the very popular Mr. Obama might make an appearance in Berlin is as hard to fathom now as her support for President Bush and his Iraq war was in 2003, when the overwhelming majority of Germans opposed the invasion.

A Seat at the Table

When speaking to the Israeli Knesset a few months ago, President Bush inferred that Barack Obama was dangerously naïve and that his willingness to explore diplomacy with Iran was equivalent to the European appeasement of Adolph Hitler in 1938. But, as reported this week, in a small victory for pragmatism, the Administration is steadily reversing course – choosing to follow a path more in line with Obama than John McCain.

The Bush administration is considering establishing an American diplomatic presence in Iran for the first time since relations were severed during the 444-day occupation of the American Embassy in Tehran nearly three decades ago, European and American officials said on Thursday.

The idea would be to establish a so-called interests section, rather than a fully staffed embassy, with American diplomats who could issue visas to Iranians seeking to visit the United States. But the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under diplomatic rules, cautioned that the idea had not been approved by the White House and could be delayed or blocked by opposition within the administration.

The proposal comes as the White House is adopting new tactics in dealing with Iran. With six months left in office, Mr. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appear to be looking for new ways to reach out to the Iranian people as the administration tries to bring a peaceful resolution to the impasse over Iran’s nuclear program.

The Times opines on the decision:

We welcome the news that President Bush has decided to send one of his top diplomats to talks on Iran’s nuclear program. That is quite a change from just a few months ago when Mr. Bush denounced as appeasement any effort to talk to “terrorists and radicals.”

It is very late in the game, but we hope this means that Mr. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are learning the lessons of seven years of failed foreign policies built almost completely on isolating (or attacking) America’s adversaries. There is little chance of solving major international problems so long as this country refuses even to have a seat at the table.

We also hope it means that Vice President Dick Cheney and his crew have given up their dangerous fantasy of bombing away Iran’s nuclear ambitions - or at least have been overruled by the president. It has been two years since the United Nations ordered Iran to stop enriching uranium. Tehran continues to defy that order, and its scientists are getting ever closer to mastering a process that is the hardest part of building a nuclear weapon.

The United States and other major powers (Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia) have tried to use a mixture of incentives and sanctions to get Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. But neither the rewards nor the punishments have been especially persuasive. China and Russia, which have strong economic ties to Iran, have blocked tough sanctions, while the Bush administration has not made a credible offer of improved relations and security guarantees and had refused to sit down at the negotiating table.

Mr. Bush’s decision to send William Burns (Ms. Rice’s third in command and a well-respected former ambassador to Russia) to join the European Union’s foreign policy chief and other top diplomats in talks with Iran makes any incentives package look more credible. It also shifts the diplomatic pressure back to Tehran. And it will make it harder for Beijing and Moscow to resist imposing a new round of sanctions if Iran remains obstinate.

Washington could do even better - with the Iranian people, international opinion and possibly Iran’s leaders - if it followed up with an offer to open an interests section in Tehran.The administration is grudgingly asserting this is a “one-time-only” deal and that Mr. Burns will not negotiate with the Iranians or hold separate meetings with them. We welcome Mr. Bush’s willingness to try diplomacy for a change. But he might do even better if he didn’t trumpet his ambivalence quite so loudly.

A New Strategy for a New World

"This must be the moment when we answer the call of history. For eight years, we have paid the price for a foreign policy that lectures without listening; that divides us from one another - and from the world - instead of calling us to a common purpose; that focuses on our tactics in fighting a war without end in Iraq instead of forging a new strategy to face down the true threats that we face. We cannot afford four more years of a strategy that is out of balance and out of step with this defining moment.

None of this will be easy, but we have faced great odds before. When General Marshall first spoke about the plan that would bear his name, the rubble of Berlin had not yet been built into a wall. But Marshall knew that even the fiercest of adversaries could forge bonds of friendship founded in freedom. He had the confidence to know that the purpose and pragmatism of the American people could outlast any foe. Today, the dangers and divisions that came with the dawn of the Cold War have receded. Now, the defeat of the threats of the past has been replaced by the transnational threats of today. We know what is needed. We know what can best be done. We know what must done. Now it falls to us to act with the same sense of purpose and pragmatism as an earlier generation, to join with friends and partners to lead the world anew."

The Iraq Debate

As debate over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan begin to take center stage in the election, the differences between the two strategies championed by each candidate become more and more obvious. The centerpiece of the McCain strategy is a rigid adherence to the Bush doctrine. The centerpiece of the Obama strategy (who has sought to clarify his policies prior to his upcoming trip to Europe and the Middle East) is to draw down troops in Iraq and take the fight back to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Obama: "By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe. As should have been apparent to President Bush and Sen. McCain, the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was. Our troops and our NATO allies are performing heroically in Afghanistan, but I have argued for years that we lack the resources to finish the job because of our commitment to Iraq. I will make the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be. This is a war that we have to win."

As we've seen and will undoubtedly continue to see throughout the course of this campaign, the McCain response to any foreign policy challenge will be 1) to tout his military service as the trump card that makes him an unquestioned expert on military strategy, and 2) to remind the world that Barack Obama is a weak defeatist who would rather surrender than fight the tough war that needs to be fought.

McCain: "Sen. Obama will tell you we can't win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq. In fact, he has it exactly backward. It is precisely the success of the surge in Iraq that shows us the way to succeed in Afghanistan. I know how to win wars. And if I'm elected president, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory.”

While we should be encouraged that McCain even acknowledged the challenges that confront us in Afghanistan, most of his comments don’t carry much water. “Obama will tell you we can’t win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq?” What is McCain’s definition of winning and losing? Apparently winning consists of being bogged down in an open-ended war that is costing us thousands of lives and billions from our treasury and not is making us safer. In fact, it’s making us less safe because it’s degrading our military to almost unprecedented levels and preventing us from focusing on our true threats. Meanwhile, to McCain, losing apparently consists of confronting our true enemies and doing what is in the best security interests of our nation.

“The success of the surge in Iraq shows us the way to succeed in Iraq.” Actually, the surge in Iraq shows us why we’re losing in Afghanistan. Despite having al-Qaeda on the ropes, U.S. Commanders in Afghanistan have always played second fiddle to their counterparts in Iraq in respect to the focus and the resources required to accomplish their mission. And McCain is always quick to cite the tremendous success of the surge in Iraq but fails to mention the events beyond our patrol that significantly contributed to the decline in violence as well as the fact that the underlying goal of the surge – long-term political reconciliation by Iraqi leaders – has never been achieved.

In stark contrast to the Bush-McCain stubbornness and recklessness, Obama laid out his plan for Iraq earlier this week:

The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.

The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.

But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.

Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.

But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.

Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.

As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.

In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.

It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war.

Cartoon of the Day

Preparing the Battlefield

According to the Administration, the two primary reasons for the continued presence of over 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq is the ability to respond to the presence of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and to provide leverage against the growing threats posed by Iran. The irony of this policy seems completely lost on its proponents, who would like to forget that al-Qaeda was never in Iraq prior to the onset of the March 2003 invasion and that, as a consequence of that invasion, Iran now holds significantly more sway in not only Iraq but in the entire region (chiefly because the two historic checks on Iranian influence – Iraq and Afghanistan – have been substantially weakened).

The President and Vice President have long-vowed that through their tough actions (not their words because speaking to our enemies is a sign of weakness) they would curb the Iranian nuclear threat. In reality, Iran is much more powerful than it was when the President was inaugurated and it is much closer to realistically securing nuclear weapons than it was at that time. However, assuming that a reckless Administration doesn’t do anything drastic, and absent an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, the “Iranian question” appears left unsolved for the next President.

But according to information recently reported by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, our current clandestine military and intelligence activities within Iran may be far more substantial than we thought.

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees - the so-called Gang of Eight.

But not everyone in the Administration is on the same page and many are leery that these operations could precipitate an American military strike and an enlargement of hostilities.

Military and civilian leaders in the Pentagon share the White House’s concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but there is disagreement about whether a military strike is the right solution. Some Pentagon officials believe, as they have let Congress and the media know, that bombing Iran is not a viable response to the nuclear-proliferation issue, and that more diplomacy is necessary.

A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preemptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.” Gates’s comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates’s answer, the senator told me, was “Let’s just say that I’m here speaking for myself.” (A spokesman for Gates confirmed that he discussed the consequences of a strike at the meeting, but would not address what he said, other than to dispute the senator’s characterization.)

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose chairman is Admiral Mike Mullen, were “pushing back very hard” against White House pressure to undertake a military strike against Iran, the person familiar with the Finding told me. Similarly, a Pentagon consultant who is involved in the war on terror said that “at least ten senior flag and general officers, including combatant commanders”- the four-star officers who direct military operations around the world - “have weighed in on that issue.”

The most outspoken of those officers is Admiral William Fallon, who until recently was the head of U.S. Central Command, and thus in charge of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In March, Fallon resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran. For example, late last year he told the Financial Times that the “real objective” of U.S. policy was to change the Iranians’ behavior, and that “attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice.”

In what has become common practice for this Administration on national security issues, it stretches the bounds of executive authority at each and every step of the way – whether that means dismissing any legal checks or oversight of its decision-making power or conveniently bypassing the standard chain of command. Its engagement in Iran is no different.

The Democratic leadership’s agreement to commit hundreds of millions of dollars for more secret operations in Iran was remarkable, given the general concerns of officials like Gates, Fallon, and many others. “The oversight process has not kept pace - it’s been coopted” by the Administration, the person familiar with the contents of the Finding said. “The process is broken, and this is dangerous stuff we’re authorizing.” Senior Democrats in Congress told me that they had concerns about the possibility that their understanding of what the new operations entail differs from the White House’s.

Under the Bush Administration’s interpretation of the law, clandestine military activities, unlike covert C.I.A. operations, do not need to be depicted in a Finding, because the President has a constitutional right to command combat forces in the field without congressional interference. But the borders between operations are not always clear: in Iran, C.I.A. agents and regional assets have the language skills and the local knowledge to make contacts for the JSOC operatives, and have been working with them to direct personnel, material, and money into Iran from an obscure base in western Afghanistan. As a result, Congress has been given only a partial view of how the money it authorized may be used. One of JSOC’s task-force missions, the pursuit of “high-value targets,” was not directly addressed in the Finding. There is a growing realization among some legislators that the Bush Administration, in recent years, has conflated what is an intelligence operation and what is a military one in order to avoid fully informing Congress about what it is doing.

“This is a big deal,” the person familiar with the Finding said. “The C.I.A. needed the Finding to do its traditional stuff, but the Finding does not apply to JSOC. The President signed an Executive Order after September 11th giving the Pentagon license to do things that it had never been able to do before without notifying Congress. The claim was that the military was ‘preparing the battle space,’ and by using that term they were able to circumvent congressional oversight. Everything is justified in terms of fighting the global war on terror.” He added, “The Administration has been fuzzing the lines; there used to be a shade of gray”- between operations that had to be briefed to the senior congressional leadership and those which did not - “but now it’s a shade of mush.”

[The 1986 Defense Reorganization Act (Goldwater-Nichols)] defined the chain of command from the President to the Secretary of Defense, through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and on to the various combatant commanders, who were put in charge of all aspects of military operations, including joint training and logistics. That authority, the act stated, was not to be shared with other echelons of command. But the Bush Administration, as part of its global war on terror, instituted new policies that undercut regional commanders-in-chief; for example, it gave Special Operations teams, at military commands around the world, the highest priority in terms of securing support and equipment. The degradation of the traditional chain of command in the past few years has been a point of tension between the White House and the uniformed military.

“The coherence of military strategy is being eroded because of undue civilian influence and direction of nonconventional military operations,” Sheehan said. “If you have small groups planning and conducting military operations outside the knowledge and control of the combatant commander, by default you can’t have a coherent military strategy. You end up with a disaster, like the reconstruction efforts in Iraq.”

The results of increased American clandestine activities appear more and more obvious to those inside and outside of Iran but, not surprisingly, they may not be inspiring the long-term affects ultimately intended by the Administration.

In recent months, according to the Iranian media, there has been a surge in violence in Iran; it is impossible at this early stage, however, to credit JSOC or C.I.A. activities, or to assess their impact on the Iranian leadership. The Iranian press reports are being carefully monitored by retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, who has taught strategy at the National War College and now conducts war games centered on Iran for the federal government, think tanks, and universities. The Iranian press “is very open in describing the killings going on inside the country,” Gardiner said. It is, he said, “a controlled press, which makes it more important that it publishes these things. We begin to see inside the government.” He added, “Hardly a day goes by now we don’t see a clash somewhere. There were three or four incidents over a recent weekend, and the Iranians are even naming the Revolutionary Guard officers who have been killed.”

Earlier this year, a militant Ahwazi group claimed to have assassinated a Revolutionary Guard colonel, and the Iranian government acknowledged that an explosion in a cultural center in Shiraz, in the southern part of the country, which killed at least twelve people and injured more than two hundred, had been a terrorist act and not, as it earlier insisted, an accident. It could not be learned whether there has been American involvement in any specific incident in Iran, but, according to Gardiner, the Iranians have begun publicly blaming the U.S., Great Britain, and, more recently, the C.I.A. for some incidents. The agency was involved in a coup in Iran in 1953, and its support for the unpopular regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi - who was overthrown in 1979 - was condemned for years by the ruling mullahs in Tehran, to great effect. “This is the ultimate for the Iranians—to blame the C.I.A.,” Gardiner said. “This is new, and it’s an escalation - a ratcheting up of tensions. It rallies support for the regime and shows the people that there is a continuing threat from the ‘Great Satan.’ ” In Gardiner’s view, the violence, rather than weakening Iran’s religious government, may generate support for it.

Perhaps the most dangerous and most perplexing aspect of these operations is the list of groups within Iran, mostly extremist terrorist groups, whom the U.S. has been funding and working in cooperation with. For an Administration hell-bent on labels and a world of black and white (good versus evil, you’re with us or you’re against us), it’s an interesting course to follow in waging a so-called “war on terrorism.”

Many of the activities may be being carried out by dissidents in Iran, and not by Americans in the field. One problem with “passing money” (to use the term of the person familiar with the Finding) in a covert setting is that it is hard to control where the money goes and whom it benefits. Nonetheless, the former senior intelligence official said, “We’ve got exposure, because of the transfer of our weapons and our communications gear. The Iranians will be able to make the argument that the opposition was inspired by the Americans. How many times have we tried this without asking the right questions? Is the risk worth it?” One possible consequence of these operations would be a violent Iranian crackdown on one of the dissident groups, which could give the Bush Administration a reason to intervene.

A strategy of using ethnic minorities to undermine Iran is flawed, according to Vali Nasr, who teaches international politics at Tufts University and is also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Just because Lebanon, Iraq, and Pakistan have ethnic problems, it does not mean that Iran is suffering from the same issue,” Nasr told me. “Iran is an old country - like France and Germany - and its citizens are just as nationalistic. The U.S. is overestimating ethnic tension in Iran.” The minority groups that the U.S. is reaching out to are either well integrated or small and marginal, without much influence on the government or much ability to present a political challenge, Nasr said. “You can always find some activist groups that will go and kill a policeman, but working with the minorities will backfire, and alienate the majority of the population.”

The Administration may have been willing to rely on dissident organizations in Iran even when there was reason to believe that the groups had operated against American interests in the past. The use of Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, told me. “The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda,” Baer told me. “These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers—in this case, it’s Shiite Iranians. The irony is that we’re once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties.” Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists.

One of the most active and violent anti-regime groups in Iran today is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People’s Resistance Movement, which describes itself as a resistance force fighting for the rights of Sunnis in Iran. “This is a vicious Salafi organization whose followers attended the same madrassas as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists,” Nasr told me. “They are suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and they are also thought to be tied to the drug culture.” The Jundallah took responsibility for the bombing of a busload of Revolutionary Guard soldiers in February, 2007. At least eleven Guard members were killed. According to Baer and to press reports, the Jundallah is among the groups in Iran that are benefiting from U.S. support.