From the WSJ Opinion Archives
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United
in Surrender?
"House Democratic leaders predict they will have enough votes to pass legislation
requiring U.S. troops to begin leaving Iraq by October 1 and send it on
to President Bush for his promised veto," the Associated Press reports.
The vote is expected today. Assuming it passes--and the last
time the House voted to surrender, it was by a thin 218-212 margin--the
Senate will follow suit tomorrow. The president will then veto the bill, Congress
will sustain the veto, and we'll be back where we started.
Democrats may prove unified enough to pass this doomed legislation on a near-party-line vote, but that unity is a facade that barely conceals a deep confusion and division. The Dems are driven by two distinct impulses: ideology and opportunism. Ideologues want American defeat for its own sake, while opportunists hope to gain politically from a "Republican" war gone bad.
An example of an ideological Democrat is Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. He voted against the war and has been a consistent opponent of it. Whatever you may think of his position--and we don't think much of it--you do have to credit him with a degree of integrity. Other ideologues are Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi.
An example of an opportunist is Harry Reid of Nevada, leader of the Senate Democrats. As blogger Don Surber notes, "Reid voted for this war, when that was popular. Now that it is unpopular, he seeks to shrug it as if it were last year's hot new dance craze." There's something fascinating yet repellent about Reid's candor in acknowledging that all he cares about is politics, as in this report from CQ Today earlier this month:
"We are going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war," the Nevada Democrat predicted at a news conference.
Sitting next to him was the man charged with making that happen: Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Charles E. Schumer of New York.
"The war in Iraq is a lead weight attached to their ankle," Schumer warned, predicting that congressional Democrats will pick up additional Republican votes for Democratic initiatives as the 2008 elections approach.
"We will break them, because they are looking extinction in the eye," Schumer declared, making no attempt to hide his glee.
Schumer, who also voted for the war, is another opportunist, as is his New York sidekick, Hillary Clinton. There's no reason to think any of these people believe in anything vis-à-vis Iraq.
This taxonomy doubtless is overly simplistic, so we'll introduce a hybrid category just to give it a bit more nuance: John Kerry* was an opportunist before he was an ideologue. That is, just as he pretended to be proud of his Vietnam service because he thought it would help him win the White House, in 2002-04 he supported the war, in varying degrees, for the same reason. Now that he has scaled back his ambition, he is free to express his yearning for surrender.
Here's the problem: Although the ideological impulse and the opportunistic one have converged for the moment, there is no reason to assume that this convergence will prove stable. As Kerry learned and Mrs. Clinton may be learning, trying to lead by following fickle public opinion is a fool's game. The public may well turn against the Democrats when it becomes clear that their claims to "support the troops" are empty.
The Politico reports that some of Reid's colleagues already are uncomfortable with his increasingly belligerent defeatism:
Statements such as Reid's--while delighting those who have turned against the war--provided Republicans an opportunity to shift focus from the merits of President Bush's Iraq war strategy to the level of support from Democrats for the troops.
"I understand what he was trying to say," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), although she acknowledged that Reid's comments had caused a political problem for Democrats. "I think it was more a problem of tone rather than of substance." . . .
None of almost a dozen Democrats contacted by The Politico said they agreed with Reid's statement. Instead, they support what they believed was his overall theme: The war cannot be won militarily, and the president must adjust his strategy. They just wouldn't have said it as Reid did.
"Not at this point in time," said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.). "But Harry knows a lot more than I do" about the progress of the war.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said he "would have focused on the mission and transforming the strategy."
Some launched into Clintonesque explanations.
"I think it depends entirely on what your definition of 'lost' means. That sounded familiar, didn't it?" former senator John Edwards, a Democratic presidential candidate, said to laughter on Ed Schultz's radio talk show Monday. "What I mean is, I don't think there is winning or losing in Iraq. There is certainly no military victory if it's used in that regard. The only way there can be security and peace on the ground in Iraq is for there to be a political solution."
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) deflected the question, saying that the war was never defined and that his 2002 vote should not have been construed as a green light to invade Iraq.
When asked what troops were doing in Iraq, Harkin said: "That is a good question. I don't know what they're engaged in, what they are trying to do. Our military is being abused, abused by this administration. Abused."
Abused, I telllya. Abused! Just in case you're keeping score, Feinstein, Edwards and Harkin all voted for the war; Reed voted against it; and Tester was not yet in Congress.
All of this would be even more amusing if the stakes weren't so high. As Surber puts it, "I find it interesting that the left is so concerned about carbon footprints. What about humanitarian footprints? What sort of tree do you plant as penance for turning your back on 24 million people?"
* By popular demand: He promised 815 days ago to release his military records.
Cutting
Off Their Nose for News to Spite Their Face
A photo caption with a New York Times article about the Iraq debate has an interesting
tidbit:
Vice President Dick Cheney took the unusual step of seeking out reporters to rebut Senator Harry Reid, who accused the president of being in "a state of denial" about Iraq.
As the accompanying story notes, Cheney was on Capitol Hill yesterday. One has to wonder why reporters weren't seeking him out. Where were they, in the press room reading the Puffington Host?
What
Would We Do Without Analyses?
"Analysis: Veto Won't End Iraq Dispute"--headline, Associated Press,
April 24
No
Blood for Thought!
"Iraqi Oil: More Plentiful Than Thought"--headline, Time.com, April 24
Stand
Up and Be Labeled a Terrorist
"A federal judge has withdrawn a highly publicized ruling she issued last
year declaring that President Bush acted unconstitutionally when he designated
27 groups and individuals as terrorists in 2001," the New York Sun reports:
Reconsidering the issue at the government's request, Judge Audrey Collins of Los Angeles concluded that American supporters of Kurdish and Tamil separatist groups lack standing to challenge the terrorist designations, which applied to Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and others linked to militant Islam.
"Plaintiffs have pointed to no instance of their being issued a specific threat or warning that . . . they would be designated," the judge wrote in a 16-page order Friday. "Plaintiffs' fear of designation is ultimately based on speculation. Accordingly, plaintiffs cannot establish a genuine and immediate threat that they will be designated by the President."
We noted the earlier ruling in November. What's odd about this is that the plaintiffs apparently have no fear of announcing in open court that they fear designation as terrorists. If they really feared it, you'd think they'd be lying low. This is similar to the plaintiffs in the wiretapping case last year, who made declarations to the effect that they had various ties to terrorists, and who claimed in the case that their civil liberties were under siege. If civil liberties were really under siege, people wouldn't be openly confessing their ties to enemies of the country.
Class
Act
"Hillary Clinton invoked Harriet Tubman at a mega-fund-raiser [Monday]
night, telling young supporters she'd fight to 'take back the White House' just
as the escaped slave fought to free others," New York's Daily News reports:
"This reminds me of one of my favorite American heroines, Harriet Tubman," the senator told 1,800 cheering supporters. . . .
"She made it to freedom after having been a slave and she got to New York and she could have been so happy . . . but she kept going back down South to bring other freed slaves to freedom.
"And she used to say, 'No matter what happens, keep going,' " Hillary Clinton said. "So we're going to keep going until we take back the White House!"
As the News's Michael McAuliff charitably puts it in a blog entry, something is "a little off" in Mrs. Clinton's likening her own quest for power to Tubman's efforts at manumission. Really, how narcissistic can one get?
Getting
Religion
"Religious Group Attacks Religion in U.S. Healthcare," reads a Reuters
headline:
A coalition of religious leaders took on the Catholic Church, the U.S. Supreme Court and the Bush administration on Tuesday with a plea to take religion out of health care in the United States.
They said last week's Supreme Court decision outlawing [sic] a certain type of abortion demonstrated that religious belief was interfering with personal rights and the U.S. health care system in general.
The group, calling itself the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, said it planned to submit its proposals to other church groups and lobby Congress and state legislators. . . .
"They are imposing their points of view," Barbara Kavadias, director of field services for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, told reporters in a telephone briefing.
She noted that the five Supreme Court justices on the majority in the 5-4 decision were all Catholic men--Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Anthony Kennedy, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia. . . .
The group also complained about Catholic-owned hospitals that refuse to sterilize women who ask for it, refuse to let doctors perform abortions and do not provide contraception.
So what kind of "religious group" is this? Reuters describes it:
The group includes ordained Protestant ministers, a Jewish activist, an expert on women's reproductive rights and several physicians.
That is, Reuters is describing this essentially secular liberal outfit as "religious" because it includes a few left-wing clergymen. Given the nature of the group's complaints, wouldn't it be more accurate to call it an "anti-Catholic coalition"?
Along similar lines, the New York Times editorializes in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage in New York:
Religious groups, particularly the Catholic Church, are likely to be the bill's most outspoken opponents. It should be clear that these religious institutions have the right to refuse to marry anyone within their own religious houses. But they should not be allowed to dictate who can and cannot be married by the state.
No, dictating who can and cannot be married by the state is the job of New York Times editorialists.
Violently Opposed to Violence
Reuters has a couple of amusing photos from a mass gathering in the Palestinian
territories. This
one shows a guy brandishing a rifle in his right hand and shaking his left
fist. At least one more rifle is visible among the crowd walking behind him.
This
one shows another guy, holding a rocket-propelled-grenade launcher. Both
photos have the same caption:
Palestinians attend a demonstration against violence in Gaza April 23, 2007.
We've often noted that many so-called pacifists seem to have a taste for tumult, but only in Palestinistan would a peace protester carry an RPG launcher. Or should we say only in Reuterville?
The
Wet Look
On Monday
we noted that Yale had responded to the Virginia Tech massacre by banning realistic-looking
weapons from drama students' stage productions. On Tuesday
we noted that the university had repealed the ban. Now, a little background
on the administrator who enacted the ban, from the November 1997 issue of Yale
Alumni Magazine:
Tap Night for Yale's singing groups has always been a volatile affair. Pranksters routinely padlock gates, lob water balloons, and kidnap promising candidates in their quest to impede the progress of singing groups in pursuit of choice freshmen. But last year, things went unusually smoothly, perhaps because of the presence of a slight, well-coiffed grandmother walking the quad with an enormous Super Soaker water gun (confiscated from a student) and a "make-my-day" expression. She was Betty Trachtenberg, the Yale College Dean of Student Affairs.
A Super Soaker is a decidedly unrealistic-looking weapon, so one cannot accuse Trachtenberg of hypocrisy. But there is no denying that she is deeply silly.
Its
Inhabitants Are Easygoing and Sociable, but May Also Be Indecisive and Changeable
"Earth-Like Planet Discovered in Libra"--headline, NPR Web site, April 25
At
Least a Hockey Game Didn't Break Out
"9 Arrested After Brawl Breaks Out at Fights"--headline, News Journal
(Wilmington, Del.), April 24
Don't
Try This at Home
"Catapult Boy Is Eaten After Taunting Crocodile in Pen"--headline,
Times (London), April 23
News
You Can Use
"Cocktails & Clothes Aid Women"--headline, Arizona Republic, April 24
Bottom Stories of the Day
- "Miss Buffalo 2007 Crowned"--headline, WGRZ-TV
Web site (Buffalo, N.Y.), April 23
- "Hamas Declares End to Ceasefire"--headline, Financial
Times, April 24
- "Jesse Jackson Visits to Speak About Race"--headline, San
Francisco Chronicle, April 24
- "Roger Ebert to Attend Film Festival"--headline, Associated
Press, April 25
- "Idaho: Indian Murals Left Alone"--headline, New York Times, April 25
In
Your Heart, You Know He's Trite
"Giving, service and compassion are recurrent themes on the campaign trail
for Sen. Barack Obama," reports the Chicago Tribune, "but the Democratic
presidential contender has only recently dug deep into his own pockets to support
charitable causes":
Obama has enjoyed a robust household income throughout his political career in the Illinois Senate and the U.S. Senate. But for most of that time he has reported comparatively little by national standards in charitable contributions on his tax returns, records released by Obama show. . . .
On their just-filed 2006 tax return, Obama and his wife, a hospital administrator, reported taxable income of $983,626 and claimed deductions for $60,307 in charitable donations. In 2005 they earned a combined $1.65 million and gave away about $77,300.
In 2002, the year before Obama launched his campaign for U.S. Senate, the Obamas reported income of $259,394, ranking them in the top 2 percent of U.S. households, according to Census Bureau statistics. That year the Obamas claimed $1,050 in deductions for gifts to charity, or 0.4 percent of their income. The average U.S. household totaled $1,872 in gifts to charity in 2002, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.
What accounts for the 5,643% increase in the Obamas' donations between 2002 and 2006? Could it be that Barack was pondering a presidential run and didn't want to look like Al Gore, whose contributions in 1998 were in the triple figures?
Ask a question like that, and you begin to see why Obama feels so threatened by cynicism.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Daniel Goldstein, Anne McCaughey, Bruce Goldman, Scott Miller, David Cincotta, Ed Lasky, Ian Suares, Keith Rayburn, Michael Segal, Doug Miller, Michael Aracic, Dave Huber, David Shapero, Matthew du Mee, James Chen, E.B.S. Hirsch, John Williamson, Deane Hartley, Max Koss, Doug Black, Grant Dorfman, Michael Lieber and Gerald Mays. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Democrats are taking ownership of a defeat in Iraq.
- Pete du Pont: Don Quixote tilted at windmills. We can use them to increase our energy supply.
- Amy Finnerty: Both fiction and journalism are fertile territory for Martin Amis.
