John McCain: worse than George W. Bush

There’s been a bit of chatter after John McCain’s saber-rattling in response to Russia’s invasion of neighboring Georgia; which prompted Josh Marshall, of Talking Points Memo, to underscore what this election is about:

Andrew Sullivan is right about this. This is something that transcends whatever immediate campaign tactics or even strategy Barack Obama may be pursuing. It goes beyond him. It goes beyond the Democrats. The whole country needs to wake up.

The foreign policy of the last seven-plus years has been an unmitigated disaster for the United States by virtually every measure. And John McCain would ramp up all the worst traits of the current administration. His instincts are always toward force and the people advising him come squarely from the Cheney wing of the current administration. In comparison to Bush he’s not just more of the same. There’s every reason to believe he’d be much worse.

The current situation in Georgia and his response should make clear to everyone how dangerous a president John McCain would be.

Juan Williams: ‘Sometimes I Just Want To Scream’

As I watched FauxNews this Sunday I couldn’t help but to blurt, Juan, you’re my hero. Here’s what prompted my reaction, via ThinkProgress.com:

After enduring years of posturing on Iraq by Fox’s Brit Hume and the National Review’s Bill Kristol on the Fox News Sunday roundtable, Juan Williams reached his limit. This morning, Williams said, “Sometimes I just want to scream. You guys have been going on since this thing began.”

Williams noted that Hume and Kristol “don’t give credit to people…who said from the start this is a mistake.” Instead, “now it’s everybody’s a surrender monkey or impatient or squeamish or weak.”

[...]

Transcript:

WILLIAMS: Squishy, impatient, you know, they’ll be in the land of milk and honey? What do you imagine, an American administration is coming in, Republican or Democrat, after President Bush that’s just going to lay down and run away like scared little —

HUME: It will not be phrased that way. Listen, Juan, it’s very simple.

WILLIAMS: This is really — sometimes i just want to scream. You guys have been going on since this thing began. I mean, you don’t give credit to people, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, Barbara Lee, people who said from the start this is a mistake. You put them down. Now it’s everybody’s a surrender monkey or impatient or squeamish or weak. Why can’t you say, hey, there’s a real problem in Iraq?

UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has a longer clip of the Fauxnews segment.

Jumping Off the Ship

From The Independent, of the UK:

Colin Powell
After telling the UN assembly in 2003 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, the former Secretary of State admitted in May 2004 the claims were "inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading".

Colonel Tim Collins
The Army colonel made a famous rousing speech to troops on the eve of battle. But in September 2005, he declared:

"History might notice the invasion has arguably acted as the best recruiting sergeant for al-Qa’ida ever."

Paul Bremer
The former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq admitted in January 2006:

"It [the invasion] was a much tougher job than I think I expected it to be… we really didn’t see the insurgency coming."

Zalmay Khalilzad
Contradicting the usually upbeat rhetoric, the US ambassador in Iraq said in March: "We have opened a Pandora’s box". And unless the violence abated, Iraq would "make Taliban Afghanistan look like child’s play".

Jack Straw
The former foreign secretary, one of the cheerleaders for the war, said in September: "The current situation is dire. I think many mistakes were made after the military action – there is no question about it – by the United States administration."

Gen Sir Richard Dannatt
The British General admitted in an interview in October: "I don’t say that the difficulties we are experiencing round the world are caused by our presence in Iraq but undoubtedly our presence in Iraq exacerbates [them]."

Richard Perle
Regarded as one of the intellectual godfathers of the war, Perle changed his tack in November, admitting that "huge mistakes were made" in the invasion of Iraq. "The levels of brutality we’ve seen are truly horrifying," he added.

Ken Adelman
Last month, the noted neoconservative said: "The national security team… turned out to be among the most incompetent in the post-war era. Not only did each of them have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly."

Donald Rumsfeld
A memo from the hardline former defence secretary revealed this week that he had been looking for a change of tactics. "In my view, it is time for a major adjustment… what US forces are doing in Iraq is not working well enough…"

Robert Gates
Yesterday, Mr Rumsfeld’s proposed successor was asked at a Senate hearing whether the US was winning the war in Iraq. "No, sir," he replied. And he warned that the situation could lead to a "regional conflagration".

The Bolton UN Resignation

Steve Clemons has been following the Bolton UN nomination, confirmation and, now, resignation very closely. Accordingly to Clemons here’s what the Bolton resignation means:

1. John Bolton’s resignation reflects a loss of ground by Jesse Helms’ inspired ‘pugnacious nationalists’. It is also a clear loss for Vice President Cheney and his loyal followers. Jim Lobe captures this quite well in a piece he has written tonight on Bolton.

2. Bolton’s resignation also hurts Condoleezza Rice in the short term because while she had to "manage" him more frequently than she liked — often sending Undersecretary for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns to manage the most fragile diplomatic agendas — Rice now has NO Deputy Secretary of State, and will soon face in January NO Counselor and NO Ambassador to the United Nations.

Losing Robert Zoellick, Philip Zelikow and John Bolton is an awful lot to lose without having clear successsors in place and ready to go. The already stretched thin Secretary of State will be stretched even thinner with Bolton’s departure.

3. On the good side, if the White House and State Department get their mutual acts together, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is ‘likely’ to expedite at lightning speed reasonable, even partly controversial, nominees to both Bolton’s UN position and to the Deputy Secretary position. This Bolton Battle won’t be replayed soon. I think the incoming Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden will bend over backwards to help Rice get a full team back in place at State as fast as possible.

4. This has not been picked up by the press, but I believe that the theatrical dimensions of the Bolton resignation were designed to make it look like the President was giving up something he really, really wanted in order to encourage Dems to ‘de-complexify’ the confirmation process of Defense Secretary nominee Robert Gates. Watch for Dems who previously opposed Gates or had serious concerns about his Iran Contra involvement to ratchet down their concerns.

The President’s dropping of Bolton may very well be designed to facilitate a fast confirmation process for Gates.

5. Who will succeed Bolton is unclear. I have written about Jim Leach in the past — as well as many others including Paula Dobriansky and Zalmay Khalilzad.

I think Dobriansky has a strong chance of getting the job as she is respected around DC, is acceptable to both Rice and Cheney, and is not a complete rejection of John Bolton’s views. She is neocon-friendly if not a true neoconservative, and she manages diplomacy and achieving America’s diplomatic objectives well.

Jim Leach could also be extraordinary — and Khalilzad could be an important asset there too as a Muslim envoy from America to an institution representing the nations of the world. He is also a well-experienced strategist and diplomat.

There are other choices I won’t list here tonight as I think that these three are all qualified and realistic choices given the fact that George W. Bush is going to make the appointment.

6. Finally, it is important to remember that the Bolton Battle was not a true partisan struggle. It was one in which many Republicans covertly supported leading Democrats in the process — and on the other side, some Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Ben Nelson openly advocated Bolton’s confirmation.

Bolton did not get confirmed because of the failure of the White House to either unite the Republican caucus behind Bolton or to select a candidate that was easier for the whole Republican caucus in the Senate to accept. Republicans with a conscience stopped Bolton’s confirmation process, with support from the Democrats who were in the minority.

A Message from Andrew Sullivan

From Andrew Sullivan to his former colleagues in the American right:

Both National Review and the Weekly Standard aim for the Baker-Hamilton Group this week. But when you examine what the Kristol-Kagan team sees as the alternative to a gradual retreat from the South and Anbar into Kurdistan, you can’t help wondering how serious they really are.

[...]

The attempt to belittle the efforts of Baker-Hamilton is therefore pure positioning. In Margaret Thatcher’s phrase, there is tragically no alternative to some sort of retrenchment and retreat right now. I agree we need an effort to expand the military by several divisions. That was Al Gore’s position in 2000, by the way, the candidate the Weekly Standard hounded as insane and weak. It was Kerry’s position in 2004, another candidate the WS smeared as Jane Fonda in drag. Maybe a period of retrenchment and rebuilding of US forces could mean a new offensive in a year or so. But the idea that it can be accomplished swiftly enough now to make a difference in a "country" that has already disintegrated into Hobbesian hell is pure fantasy and Bill Kristol and Bob Kagan must know it.

[...]

It’s over, guys. Your beloved Bush administration botched this so badly it’s irrecoverable. You enabled them. You never fully took them on when it would have counted – and you trashed those of us who did. You knew this before the 2004 election and still cynically played the anti-Kerry card for all it was worth, telling yourselves you could sway Rummy after the election. Well, you couldn’t and you didn’t. Your policy was sabotaged by a defense secretary who never believed in it and by a president too weak and out-of-it to rein him in. Get over yourselves and recognize that this dream has died. And we have to fight the nightmare we now face rather than pretend your dream is still even on life-support. That’s the patriotic responsibility at this point. And no, I’m not impugning your patriotism. I’m asking you to place it before your shattered dreams.