Both are now in poor political shape, with contradictory strategies for rehabbing their fortunes. The president is saddled with an approval rating bumping along in the 20s. Each day he is served another platter of contemptuous stories about “the worst presidency of modern times”, the lack of any enduring “legacy”, the approaching Democratic landslide that will put the Republicans in the wilderness for at least two terms...

The White House made no serious attempt to upend Obama’s trip to Iraq or excessively ridicule the harmonies from the Democratic candidate and Iraqi prime minister Maliki on schedules for U.S. withdrawal. Indeed noises that could be construed as acceptance of an accelerated schedule emanated from the White House... As final testimony to the huge disaster for the McCain campaign of Obama’s trip to Iraq, the floundering Republican candidate managed to shoehorn himself into talk about a rate of withdrawal from Iraq a good deal brisker than the 100 years of occupation he was talking about, or even the 2013 deadline he subsequently settled on. [More] . . read more

George Bush came to office in 2001 promising a new era of integrity, civility and "compassionate conservatism," an era of humble American foreign policy, and a bi-partisan approach to government. What did we actually get? Once in office, this chameleon president almost immediately set out to embroil the country in a major war in the Middle East against the nation of Iraq. The game plan was laid out at the president's first National Security Council meeting... It's hard to escape the conclusion that the Bush/Cheney administration, at a minimum, wanted an attack on American soil, and a national disaster that would put the country on a war footing.

Surveying at the appalling wreckage left after eight years of the Bush administration, it is hard to recognize the country that he started out with in 2001. A once proud nation-one that only a few years ago was admired around the world and that now is viewed as a pariah and a rogue state-today trembles before a handful of turbaned fanatics holed up in caves in the Hindu Kush, its trillion-dollar high-tech military colossus fought to a standstill in Iraq and Afghanistan by a few thousand brave men and women armed with RPGs, antique AK-47s and home-made roadside bombs...

Forget all the nonsense about Barack Obama being a closet Muslim. We already have our Manchurian Candidate in the White House, and he has largely accomplished what he was programmed to do: destroy the country. [More] . . read more

In his first assertion, Senator McCain is claiming credit where credit is not due. In his second, that we are winning in Iraq, he fails to understand what “winning” means in a Fourth Generation conflict. The current reduction in violence in Iraq does not mean we are winning. Nor does al Qaeda’s incipient defeat mean we are winning. We win only if a state re-emerges, the state we destroyed by our invasion. A reduction in violence and the defeat of al Qaeda are necessary preconditions for the re-emergence of a state, but they are not sufficient to ensure it...

So McCain is wrong on both counts. The fact that a Presidential candidate is fundamentally wrong on so important a subject as the war in Iraq is disturbing. More disturbing is the nature of the errors. Both represent carryovers of Bush administration practices. [More] . . read more

We need to learn the painful lessons of the Iraq War if we're going to secure this country and renew America's leadership. The first thing we have to understand is what happened in Iraq. Because there are two ways to look at this. The first way is to say that Iraq is a disaster because of George Bush's mismanagement. Or because of the arrogance and incompetence of Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld in prosecuting the war. Or because Iraq's Prime Minister just hasn't been up to the job.

But I take a different view. I think the problem isn't just how we've fought the war - it's that we fought the war in the first place. Because the truth is, the war in Iraq should never have been authorized, and it should never have been waged. The Iraq War had nothing to do with al Qaeda or 9/11. It was based on exaggerated fears and unconvincing intelligence. And it has left America less safe, and less respected around the world.  . . read more

I cannot think of one ‘legitimate war’ which does not involve the personification of evil in its protagonist – think Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Franco, Chiang Kai-shek, Hirohito, Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein. Equally, I cannot think of one war without an evil leader which is justified.

Think Vietnam, Iraq (post Hussein), Afghanistan, Tibet and Suez. The increase in US troops in Afghanistan is a huge tactical and moral error. There is no visible enemy, no evil figurehead. A

nd for its perpetrator to get a Nobel Peace Prize must be a satirical use of the word ‘peace.’

I am uncomfortable with what Ms Gillard has to say.  . . read more

He will be accused of being an appeaser to the Nazis and of being a Nazi and of a hater of America and of a hater of democracy and everything else which they can create. The senator from Illinois is going to need every last ounce of the “composure” that even conservative commentators like David Brooks are recognising as a special quality. He will face the full force of Hell and even all those atheists should say “May God help him”.

And the senator from New York should concede so that Barack can be given the official security that he now really needs.  . . read more

For whom? How many orphans have we created? How many widows? How many people who weep and cry every night while trying to fall asleep on straw mats? I estimate on the basis of a UN study of refugees in Syria that as many as 600,000 or 700,000 Baghdadis were ethnically cleansed from the capital under the nose of the American troops implementing the surge. There is an old Chinese proverb, "Children throw stones at frogs in jest, but the frogs die in earnest."

Bush has gutted American civil liberties, and turned us into a hateful nation of spies, torturers, bigots, and colonialists occupying someone else's country... Surveying civilian deaths in Iraq is like walking through Lincoln, Nebraska, after it was hit by a neutron bomb, with everyone dead. Everyone. [More] . . read more

Act Two: Josef Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, traveled to Washington where he was received by George Bush at the White House. Three more years have passed, and the country of Iraq is in chaos, its civilization shattered. More than a million Iraqis are dead while 4,500,000 have been forced to flee their homes, most saying they will never be able to return... George Bush and the pope met privately before issuing a joint statement in which they “reaffirmed their total rejection of terrorism as well as the manipulation of religion to justify immoral and violent acts against innocents.” During their personal meeting George Bush presented the pope a crystal cross. The pope accepted it.

Act Three: [Last Wednesday] Barack Obama assured Americans that when it comes to Iran he “will take no options off the table,” a position he shares with the Bush administration and the other presidential candidates. [More] . . read more

The success of ‘the Surge’ is becoming almost received wisdom in the U.S. This is strange since, if the U.S. strategy did win such an important victory, why do America generals need more soldiers, currently 147,000 of them, in Iraq than they did before ‘the Surge’ started? But belief in this so-called victory is in keeping with the American tradition of seeing everything that happens in Iraq as being the result of actions by the U.S. alone. The complex political landscape of Iraq is ignored.

U.S. commentators have never quite taken on board that there are not one but three wars being fought out in the country since 2003: the first is the war of resistance against the American occupation by insurgents from the Sunni Arab community. The second is the battle between the Sunni and Shia communities as to who should rule the Iraqi state in succession to Saddam Hussein. The third conflict is a proxy war between the U.S. and Iran to decide who should be the predominant foreign power in Iraq. The real, though exaggerated, fall in violence in Iraq over the last year is a consequence of developments in all three of these wars, but they do not necessarily have much to do with ‘the Surge’. [More] . . read more