“Judging from Gen. David Petraeus’ Senate testimony today, our military commitment to Iraq is open-ended and unconditional…Their unwavering stance amounted to this: Further pullouts might trigger defeat; the costs of defeat are too horrible to ponder; therefore, we shouldn’t ponder further pullouts.” Slate‘s Fred Kaplan takes the measure of yesterday’s Petraeus hearings, and the performances of Senators Obama [transcript | video], Clinton and McCain respectively. “Near the end of the afternoon, Sen. Barack Obama, the Democrats’ likely presidential nominee but a junior member of the foreign relations committee, finally got his turn to ask questions — and he homed in on one of the administration’s key conceptual failures…’I’m trying to get to an end point,’ he said. ‘That’s what all of us are trying to do.’ This is what many critics and thoughtful supporters of the war have been trying to do for five years now. The Bush administration hasn’t addressed the issue. And, ultimately, neither did Petraeus or Crocker today.”
Category: World at Large
Worst. Team. Ever.
“When the venerable Donnie Walsh arrived on Wednesday as the Knicks’ fourth president in seven years, he supplanted the least-loved incumbent since LBJ. During the four years and change of the Isiah Thomas era, the team lost more than 60 percent of its games, a ratio that got worse after Thomas added the title of head coach in 2006. Over that span, the Knicks have amassed the largest payroll (peaking at more than $160 million with luxury tax) and the third-worst record in the National Basketball Association. Never has so much been spent for so little in the world of sports. They’ve been called the worst team in the history of pro basketball, but they’re really much worse than that. These Knicks are worse than the fire-sale ’41 Phillies or the expansion ’62 Mets or the ’76 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who were perfect in their winlessness. They’re the worst of the worst because of how they’ve lost, in petulance and complacency — and with management that bulldozed any critic it could not ignore.“
But how do you really feel? New York Mag‘s Jeff Coplon comes not to praise the Isiah-era Knickerbockers but to bury them, once and for all. The piece, entitled “Absolutely, Positively the Worst Team in the History of Professional Sports,” is both exhaustive and withering in detail, and well worth a read, if you’re of the rubber-necking persuasion.
Also, in basketball news, it looks like I got a B+ this year in bracketology. Thanks mainly to picking Kansas to win it all (a lucky guess, basically), my bracket scored in the 89th percentile overall.
Remembering Rankin.
“Remember, Jeannette Rankin was elected before women could vote. So who says men don’t vote for a woman?” Resorting to a blatant gender pitch once more, Sen. Clinton name-drops Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, the nation’s first female representative. (She also took hold of the recent Kinsley meme: “‘Do you realize how much longer it takes for me to get ready than my opponents?” Clinton said. ‘I think I should get points for what I do, plus having to spend so much time getting ready.'”)
Just to set the record straight, Jeannette Rankin was a committed pacifist who not only led the “Jeannette Rankin Brigade” to protest the Vietnam War late in her life, but voted against American entry into both World Wars (and was the only person to vote against entry into WWII.) So, their common womanhood aside, I think it’s safe to say Rankin would be thoroughly disgusted by Clinton’s record on Iraq and Iran, and might well roundly reject the comparison.
The Clintons’ Colombian Connection.
“The meeting was an error in judgment that will not be repeated, and I am sorry for it.” Clinton consigliere and inveterate torturer of reason Mark Penn gets into trouble for playing both sides of a Colombian trade deal, is forced to apologize, and subsequently gets sacked by the nation in question. If only Sen. Clinton had followed Colombia’s example months ago, she might still have a shot at the presidency right now.
In related news, Al Giordano of Rural Votes explains why Colombian president Alvaro Uribe is rooting against Obama, and why that speaks strongly in the Illinois Senator’s favor. “The Uribe regime, after all, continues a chummy friendship with Bill Clinton, granting him the government’s ‘Colombia Is Passion’ Award last June. That, during the same 2007 spring when former vice president Al Gore cancelled his appearance at a Miami environmental conference because he did not want to share a podium with Uribe, the hemisphere’s poster boy for state-sponsored terrorism, narco-trafficking, and assassinations of opposition political, labor and social movement leaders.“
Heeeeeere’s Donnie.
In more Indiana related news, it seems to be official: Word is the Knicks will announce Donnie Walsh as the new team president later today, meaning, at long last, the beginning of the end for the Isiah era. Given the depths of our current situation, I’m still not sold at all on the notion that Walsh can turn things around for the Knickerbockers by next season. But, since the most involving Knick-related activity around of late has been toying with David Lee’s hair, I’d think pretty much anything he does would be a step in the right direction.
A Survivor Finds Peace.
The Blow-up in Basra.
“It’s not a case of good vs. evil. It’s just another crevice in the widening earthquake called Iraq.” As violence flares up in Iraq once more, Slate‘s Fred Kaplan summarizes the current situation: “[I]t is ‘a power struggle’ between rival ‘Shiite party mafias’ for control of the oil-rich south and other Shiite sections of the country. Both sides in this struggle are essentially militias. Both sides have ties to Iran. And as for protecting ‘the Iraqi people,’ the side backed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (and by U.S. air power) has, ironically, less support — at least in many Shiite areas, including Basra — than the side that he (and we) are attacking.“
4,000 lost.
“President Bush believes that every life is precious, and he spends time every day thinking about those who’ve lost their lives on the battlefield.” And well he should: Following soon after our fifth anniversary in Iraq, a roadside bomb kills four soldiers on Easter Sunday, and the American death toll in Iraq reaches 4000, 3863 of which were killed after Dubya’s declaration of “Mission Accomplished” in May 2003.
I said when the death toll hit 2,000 in October 2005 that “ [t]wo thousand US men and women have been killed in the line of duty, and this blatantly amateurish administration still has no plan either to win or to disengage from a conflict they orchestrated, other than ‘stay the course.’” Two and half years and 2000 lives later, it’s sadly still true. Worse still, Dubya’s heir apparent, John McCain, now advocates extending this administration’s catastrophic incompetence into another presidential term. This is not a good idea.
Five Years Later: The Desert Quagmire.
“Five years have gone by since that fateful decision. This war has now lasted longer than World War I, World War II, or the Civil War. Nearly four thousand Americans have given their lives. Thousands more have been wounded. Even under the best case scenarios, this war will cost American taxpayers well over a trillion dollars. And where are we for all of this sacrifice? We are less safe and less able to shape events abroad. We are divided at home, and our alliances around the world have been strained. The threats of a new century have roiled the waters of peace and stability, and yet America remains anchored in Iraq.“
— Sen. Barack Obama, 3/19/08. (Photo by Sgt. Luis R. Agostini, via here.)
The Security Gap | McCain’s Brain Drain.
“Senator Clinton says that she and Senator McCain have passed a ‘Commander in Chief test’ – not because of the judgments they’ve made, but because of the years they’ve spent in Washington. She made a similar argument when she said her vote for war was based on her experience at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. But here is the stark reality: there is a security gap in this country – a gap between the rhetoric of those who claim to be tough on national security, and the reality of growing insecurity caused by their decisions. A gap between Washington experience, and the wisdom of Washington’s judgments. A gap between the rhetoric of those who tout their support for our troops, and the overburdened state of our military…We have a security gap when candidates say they will follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, but refuse to follow him where he actually is.“
On the fifth anniversary of the war, Sen. Obama delivers a speech on Iraq and national security in Fayetteville, NC, and takes time to poke McCain for his apparent and frightening misunderstanding of Mideast affairs. “Just yesterday, we heard Sen. McCain confuse Sunni and Shiite, Iran and Al Qaeda. Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no Al Qaeda ties. Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America’s enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades.” Really, McCain’s oft-repeated error smacks of Dubya-level incompetence, and would be all over the news today if we were in general election mode, rather than collectively continuing to assuage Sen. Clinton’s vanity, by assuming she still has a chance. For shame.