Stupid Presidents

Let's talk about Iran. I get angry every time I hear more news about the Administration's position. To me, the policy should be easy. The goal is to weaken their radical president. The best way to do that is to give no public indication that they are a strong nation while making every attempt to point out the country's weak economy. Our President though does the opposite, he talks about how much of a threat Iran is, and rarely mentions Ahmadinijad's poor leadership.

If I can say one thing about our President, it is that he is good at creating / inventing an enemy. He just made a statement that Iran is supplying arms to Iraq. Granted, this isn't something I contest. But his goal is to give the impression that if we fail in Iraq, it is because of Iran, not a poorly managed war. In the meantime, his actions are making Iran stronger, and giving them more influence in the region. Also, all this tough talk makes me worried that me might lead us into another war or even skirmish with Iran. And I am obviously not the only one since it seems like everyday the secretary of defense has to repeat that we are not going to attack Iran.

North Korea

I think this is very good news regarding North Korea. I don't know yet where most of the credit belongs (maybe with Secretary Rice?), although it looks like there were bilateral talks - interesting.

Sometimes I Am Wrong

Okay, so just after I finish bashing Hillary's position on the war, I read this ($), by David Brooks. Maybe I was wrong about her; her position does seem to be exactly how I would want a leader to have looked at the situation. Here are some highlights from the column:

If they went back and read what Senator Clinton was saying before the war, they’d be surprised, as I was, by her approach. And they’d learn something, as I did, about what kind of president she would make.

The Iraq war debate began in earnest in September 2002. At that point Clinton was saying in public what Colin Powell was saying in private: emphasizing the need to work through the U.N. and build a broad coalition to enforce inspections.

She delivered her Senate resolution speech on Oct. 10. It was Clintonian in character. On the one hand, she rejected the Bush policy of pre-emptive war. On the other hand, she also rejected the view that the international community “should only resort to force if and when the United Nations Security Council approves it.” Drawing on the lessons of Bosnia, she said sometimes the world had to act, even if the big powers couldn’t agree.

I have a feeling that my opinions on the candidates will be changing a lot over the next year or so.

Blizter v. Cheney

Wolf Blitzer had the following exchange in an interview with Vice President Cheney recently:

BLITZER: We're out of time, but a couple of issues I want to raise with you. Your daughter, Mary. She's pregnant. All of us are happy. She's going to have a baby, you're going to have another grandchild. Some of the -- some critics, though, are suggesting -- for example, a statement from someone representing Focus on the Family, "Mary Cheney's pregnancy raises the question of what's best for children. Just because it's possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father doesn't mean it's best for the child." Do you want to respond to that?

CHENEY: No, I don't.

BLITZER: She's, obviously, a good daughter...

CHENEY: I'm delighted -- I'm delighted I'm about to have a sixth grandchild, Wolf. And obviously I think the world of both my daughters and all of my grandchildren. And I think, frankly, you're out of line with that question.

BLITZER: I think all of us appreciate...

CHENEY: I think you're out of line.

BLITZER: ...your daughters. No, we like your daughters. Believe me, I'm very, very sympathetic to Liz and to Mary. I like them both. That was just a question that's come up, and it's a responsible, fair question.

CHENEY: I just fundamentally disagree with you.

BLITZER: I want to congratulate you on having another grandchild.

Apparently, this whole interview was pretty contentious. But it is this last exchange that really struck me. I never really had a good feeling after the number of times I have seen Cheney confronted on this issue. It isn't that I don't see why people bring this up. The hope is that since Cheney obviously loves his daughter, he will want to defend her, and her lifestyle, against the ignorant comments coming from the far right.

Even though I understand that, I still don't think it is right the way to handle it. In my opinion, the fight to give same sex individuals and couples the same rights as heterosexual couples is fundamentally about respect for the individual and their choices and lifestyles. By thrusting Mary Cheney into the spotlight, in the hopes that a big name conservative will do battle with the religious right, is unfair to her, and I think goes against the spirit behind our goals. Instead, whether she gets involved should be her choice, just like who she chooses to share her life with should also be her choice. If she were to enter the arena, and do battle with far-right conservatives, we would all rally behind her. But since she seems to not want that battle, we should respect that and respect her privacy.

On the Primaries

There are some good articles on the main Democratic contenders for 2008. This one is pretty critical of Barak Obama, but at least it isn't talking about stupid electability issues like what his name rhymes with, whether president of Harvard Law Review is exactly the same as President of the United States, and his admitted drug usage. Basically it says he is running on a message of hope, without really talking about specific policy issues. I am in the process of reading his book; I'll see if he has actually outlined policies in that book.

Also, in this article, Hillary Clinton tried to defend her Iraq War vote by saying she wouldn't have supported it if she had the intelligence information she has now. This might fly with some people, but it doesn't work for me. We had all the information we needed to vote against the war. The weapons inspectors hadn't found anything, there was not a strong link between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and we were still trying to secure Afghanistan when we launched the war in Iraq. On top of that, the vote didn't restrict Bush at all, so you can't say you didn't know Bush would go to war without coming back to Congress.

This is the thing about Hillary Clinton that doesn't sit right with me. She seems like she is always trying to have it both ways. Granted, she isn't the only one. John Kerry was like that too. But the fact is, she made a decision to support the war and she needs to account for that. Either she still thinks it was a good idea, or she doesn't and needs to take responsibility for that (which could be hard since she probably supported the war because it was popular - not because it was necessary).

All of this makes me wish they cover Bill Richardson's campaign more.

Trouble with Iran

The situation with Iran is scaring me. My first thought about Bush's decision to send two (now three) carrier groups to the waters near Iran was that it is a false sign of strength. It was impossible for me to think that we would actually attack Iran, since we can't send in ground troops, and they could respond by invading Iraq. But I am again realizing that Bush is capable of something this stupid. Here is a quote from a Newsweek article:

Some view the spiraling attacks as a strand in a worrisome pattern. At least one former White House official contends that some Bush advisers secretly want an excuse to attack Iran. "They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for," says Hillary Mann, the administration's former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs.

Of course, the administration denies this - and hopefully this is untrue. My guess is that the administration is going to try to play up our failure as the result of Sunni insurgents battling Iranian puppets. Although both groups have some responsibility, in the end, the blame still rests on Bush. From the beginning, he tried to do this with too few troops, and only now has realized his blunder. The Sunni insurgency could have died before it go off the ground if we had fought the war right.