EVENING UPDATE,  MARCH 7,  2008

POWER LOSES POWER

Samantha Power, Pulitzer-prize-winning author, Harvard hanger-on, and all-around loon, has resigned from the Obama campaign after calling Hillary Clinton a monster.  It may be true, of course, but when has that ever been a factor in the imagery of politics?  The Obamans just felt it wasn't a nice thing to say.  Mother would never approve:

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Barack Obama adviser resigned Friday after calling rival Hillary Rodham Clinton "a monster."

Samantha Power, an unpaid foreign policy adviser and Harvard professor, announced her resignation in a statement provided by the Obama campaign in which she expressed "deep regret."

"Last Monday, I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor and purpose of the Obama campaign," she said. "And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months."

Power's interview Monday was published Friday in a Scottish newspaper, even though she tried to keep it from appearing in print.

"She is a monster, too—that is off the record—she is stooping to anything," The Scotsman quoted her as saying.

Don't you just love it?  She calls Hillary a monster, then talks about "my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton."  Does this mean she admires monsters?  How about crocodiles?  Anyone here know how to play this game?

It's amusing, though, that the self-righteous crowd who asked for and got Power's head, are the same people who have no issue with colleagues who call President Bush a fascist, liar, warmonger, child killer, ignoramus, and inattentive son.  I guess "monster" has some connotation that we enlisted men don't quite understand.  I'm glad Power is gone, though.  Had she done well in the campaign she might have gotten a top job in an Obama administration, without even undergoing therapy.  Now she'll return to Harvard, which has good counselors.

FAIRNESS TO OBAMA

We try to be fair here at Urgent Agenda.  I've never believed in hatred in politics.  I recall that Hubert Humphrey, consummate liberal, and Barry Goldwater, ace of conservatives, were the closest of friends.  That's the way it should be.  People who disagree with us are our opponents, not our enemies.  Our enemies are living in caves and plotting to blow us up, not defeat us at the polls.

So, I thought you'd want to read a very fair-minded piece on Barack Obama.  Martin Peretz gives us his view of both Obama's good points in foreign policy, and the things that Peretz finds disturbing:

So what are Mr. Obama's inclinations in foreign policy? Listening to him carefully, I find his saber-rattling about American counterterrorism within Pakistan's borders not at all out of keeping with his larger thinking about the challenges beyond our borders. Put briefly, I would say that he is as tough as he is reasonable.

"This is the wild frontier of our globalized world," Mr. Obama has said of the territory spanning Pakistan and Afghanistan. "There are tribes that see borders as nothing more than lines on a map, and governments as forces that come and go. There are blood ties deeper than alliances of convenience, and pockets of extremism that follow religion to violence." No naïveté there.

And...

I do not doubt that a military response to al Qaeda's new entrenchments in northwest Pakistan may one day demand something larger than a drone and its missiles. And I have no reason to believe that a President Obama would be inhibited from meeting the demands of that day.

What about the conflict between Israel and Palestine? Many Americans in the policy and opinion elites blindly believe Israel is at fault. This does not appear to be Mr. Obama's belief.

He has made clear again and again that it is not diplomatic ingenuity or American pressure on the Jewish state that is needed to temper the conflict and end it. It is, rather, a transformation in the tempestuous minds of the Palestinian polity, to accept finally the Jewish presence and sovereignty in the land. The Israeli body politic long ago acceded to the idea of a Palestinian state, as Mr. Obama points out again and again.

And the things that worry Peretz?

My own qualms about Mr. Obama reflect his enchantment with negotiation. So far he has not allowed that there are conflicts in which negotiation is ipso facto futile, and conflicts in which there may be strategic consequences from the cult of talk. Talking certainly didn't work with Hitler and Stalin, although Western leaders actually negotiated with these tyrants face-to-face. Our partners in those evil days traduced every agreement they made. The same was true of diplomacy with Yasser Arafat.

Mr. Obama says he would be open to a session with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And Mr. Obama's Karen Hughes, Samantha Power, says, "we need to get in a room with him -- if only to convey grave displeasure about his tactics, regionally and internationally."

Maybe. But the president of the United States has many ways to communicate his opinion of a foreign leader. And when Mr. Ahmadinejad begs to differ, or expresses to the American president his low view of him, or walks out of the room, what then? Not military action, certainly, but the diplomatic option will have been squandered.

Finally...

So Barack Obama's belief in the power of speech worries me in the realm of foreign affairs. But otherwise he has won my confidence. Unlike the isolationists in the guise of idealists, or the cheerleaders for violence who pretend to be pacifists and populists, Mr. Obama is a patriot of the old cadence and the old convictions, and not easily pushed around. If he is elected president, he will disappoint many of his supporters, and surprise many of his detractors.

Okay, fair enough.  It's well stated, and we'll consider it.

 
ANOTHER MONSTER, AILING

My great Iranian friend, Banafsheh Band-Bonazzi, alerts me to a piece by Iran expert Ken Timmerman, reporting that rotund Iraqi madman, Muqtada al-Sadr, is gravely ill in a Tehran hospital:

Firebrand Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is being treated by foreign doctors in a Tehran clinic for a potentially life-threatening illness, sources in Baghdad told Newsmax on Friday.

The Iraqi cleric, who ordered his Iranian-backed “Mahdi Army” last August to refrain from terrorist attacks against U.S. or coalition forces for six months, has angered hard-line supporters who want to resume terrorist attacks, the sources said.

Muqtada al-Sadr is the last remaining scion of a much-revered family of Iraqi Shiite clerics, and is a distant relative of former Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami.

His Mahdi Army has received significant military and financial support from Iran and became a driving force in the early “resistance” to the international coalition that liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Sadr’s Iranian backers pushed him to declare a ceasefire last August, as part of an Iranian strategy to lull the United States into believing that the “surge” of U.S. troops was having a permanent impact on the Iraqi domestic political scene.

But Sadr’s hard-line supporters, who maintain separate lines of support to the Quds force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, were angry with the ceasefire, and have continued to use Iranian-supplied IEDs in terrorist attacks against U.S. and coalition forces.

Great bunch of guys.  Maybe Samantha Power can get a gig advising them.

If al-Sadr goes to that special place where he can check out the 72 virgins, his movement in Iraq might be thoroughly destabilized.  I don't know whether we should pray for him to live or die.  Just pray for justice.  The Creator will make the decision.

RIGHT NEXT DOOR

Iraq is still a battleground, as we saw with this week's terror attack in Baghdad.  But we're moving ahead.  Excellent military writer Ralph Peters examines the key role of Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, who's returned from Iraq, where he commanded day-to-day operations.  What lessons did the general learn from his experience?

"First, you have to empower your subordinates. That means you have to underwrite the risks involved," to take the heat when they make mistakes. The general sees this as crucial to our 21st-century Army.

"Second, as a senior leader, you have to trust your instincts . . . you never stop learning and you have to adapt to the changing situation . . . but trust your instincts."

"Third, you have to get out and touch it, feel it, see it." You can't manage a war or a counterinsurgency effort from an office. Nothing substitutes for the sense of reality you get from walking the streets with soldiers and Marines.

You know, those are pretty good lessons for life itself, certainly for life inside any organization that wants to soar.  And Odierno learned a great deal about American soldiers:

"They are compassionate. They genuinely care - not just about each other, but about Iraqis, too. I saw it again and again. They are compassionate young men and women."

Any surprises about our soldiers? "They've surprised me with their resilience. . . They continue to re-enlist, continue to perform. . . Both leaders and soldiers have shown incredible resilience in the way they've adapted" to the changing situation in Iraq. "And I realized how much we can trust our soldiers."

Remember that.  Read the whole article.  It's worth it.

WHO APPOINTS JUDGES CONTROLS THE NATION

Finally, another, but enraging, militarily related story.  It teaches us the importance of judges, and those who choose them.  There's this "anti-war" judge out in California.  Hates the military.  Hates recruiters.  I wonder what else and who else she hates.  And there's this kid, a foster child, who dreams of being a Marine.  And the two met in a courtroom.  Well, read on:

SIMI VALLEY - Shawn Sage long dreamed of joining the military, and watching "Full Metal Jacket" last year really sold him on becoming a Marine.

But last fall, a Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner dashed the foster teen's hopes of early enlistment for Marine sniper duty, plus a potential $10,000 signing bonus.

In denying the Royal High School student delayed entry into the Marine Corps, Children's Court Commissioner Marilyn Mackel reportedly told Sage and a recruiter that she didn't approve of the Iraq war, didn't trust recruiters and didn't support the military.

"The judge said she didn't support the Iraq war for any reason why we're over there," said Marine recruiter Sgt. Guillermo Medrano of the Simi Valley USMC recruiting office.

"She just said all recruiters were the same - that they `all tap dance and tell me what I want to hear.' She said she didn't want him to fight in it."

Sage, 17, said he begged for Mackel's permission.

"Foster children shouldn't be denied (an) ability to enlist in the service just because they're foster kids," he said. "Foster kids shouldn't have to go to court to gain approval to serve one's country."

Foster child?  No, he's America's child.  And he's a kid we can look on with pride.  I hope someone finds a way to make him a Marine.

And I'll be back tomorrow.

Posted on March 7, 2008.