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WEDNESDAY,  JULY 21,  2010

THE APOLOGY DERBY – AT 7:47 P.M. ET:  We can feel a legitimate sense of revulsion at the apology derby going on regarding Shirley Sherrod.  For those who've been on Mars the last few days, Shirley Sherrod is a Department of Agriculture officer who spoke before the NAACP and recounted her experiences with a white farmer.  At the start of the story, it appeared that she'd said and did racist things.  Later, the story turned out to be about racial reconciliation.

Initial reports of Sherrod's remarks stressed her seemingly anti-white comments.  She was ordered to resign by the Agriculture Department, apparently under pressure from a White House sensitive to charges of reverse racism.  The NAACP even denounced her.

When the full text of Sherrod's remarks surfaced, everyone went into damage-control mode, and the apologies started flowing.  Now the White House has apologized, and Sherrod will presumably be offered either her old job back, or a new one with Agriculture.

Garbage.

Yes, there was some early misinterpretation of her remarks, and the great Andrew Breitbart, who showed the edited video given to him, might have jumped the gun in publishing it.  But there are some facts here that need to come out:

1.  No matter what the intent of Sherrod's story, some of the language she used was inappropriate.  When she reported taking the white farmer to a lawyer "of his own kind,"
she was using language we just don't countenance today.  While that's probably not a cause for dismissal, it is a cause for reprimand.

2.  The NAACP says it was "snookered" by Fox News into denouncing Sherrod, but the record shows that the president of the organization was in attendance during her entire speech.  Presumably, he didn't think the "racial reconciliation" bit was all that important.

3.  Sherrod has made comments since her dismissal that are tasteless and require reprimand, like her comment to the ultra-liberal "Media Matters" that Fox News, which had carried the story, wants to see blacks returned to their original status in America, a blatant lie.

Once again we see the double standard at work.  Sherrod is African-American.  She may well have been wronged by an initial interpretation of her remarks.  But now the apologies flow.

Where, though, are the apologies to the tea partiers, who were accused of racism by that same NAACP just last week?  Where is the apology from Congressman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, who accused the tea partiers of taking off the white sheets and putting on the tea party hats?  Where is the apology from media types and racial agitators who accused tea party members of shouting racial epithets at black members of Congress, when tapes of the incident in question show no such thing?

Where are those apologies?

The Rev. Jesse Jackson naturally weighed in, demanding an "apology" for Ms. Sherrod.  But it was Rev. Jackson who rushed down to Durham, North Carolina, to pour fuel on the fire when three white lacrosse players from Duke University were wrongly accused of raping an African-American exotic dancer.  When the truth came out, there was no apology from Rev. Jackson.

If Ms. Sherrod was wronged, she deserves to be made whole.  But our friends on the left might reflect on the racial politics now being played in order to energize the Democratic base.  And they might learn that apologies must sometimes be made by their self-righteous crowd, which tosses out terms like "racism" and "fascist" a little too freely.

July 21, 2010       Permalink

THE CONFIRMING POLL – AT 7:22 P.M. ET:  A recent poll, ironically by a polling organization that tilts Democratic, reported that President Obama would lose the 2012 election (if held today) against any Republican.  Now the respected Quinnipiac poll confirms the findings, and extends them:

President Obama's standing with American voters is so low that the latest Quinnipiac University poll indicates Obama would lose an election to "an unnamed Republican" -- meaning any GOP opponent -- by 39 to 36 percent.

The poll shows Obama's job approval hitting a new low, 44 percent approval to 48 percent disapproval. That is the president's worst net score ever, according to Quinnipiac.

The most drastic news for the president politically: His approval with the critical independent voters is dismal.

By a stunning 52 percent to 38 percent, independent voters disapprove of Obama. And by 37 to 27 percent, independents say they would vote for a Republican contender in 2012.

Overall, by a 48 percent to 40 percent margin, American voters say that President Obama does not deserve to be reelected in 2012.

While the Obama administration has time to turn around its low approval ratings before its next election, the poll is likely to sound alarm bells on Capitol Hill where many members of Congress will be up for reelection in November. Midterm elections tend to be a referendum on the party in power.

Voters apparently have a "pox on both their houses" mentality when it comes to Congress, giving both Republican and Democratic members very low marks. But that may be little consolation to Democrats on the ballot in November, because respondents said by a 43 to 38 percent margin that they would vote for a generic Republican over a generic Democrat for Congress.

COMMENT:  If Republicans, as we begin the main election campaign after Labor Day, can come up with a public program, a new Contract with America, it could ignite discontented voters even further and create the conditions for a historic transfer of power.

And I hope the GOP concentrates more attention on the Senate.  Recent statements by some Republican senators suggest that they have given up on recapturing the Senate, and would be content with getting close.  Well, there's no prize for close.  We need a majority to block reckless Supreme Court nominees.  Elena Kagan, a fine woman but a troublesome nominee, is about to put on the robes, and all because the GOP doesn't have the power to stop her.  Yes, we want to take back the House.  But the Senate is even more critical.

July 21, 2010      Permalink

TALKATIVE, ISN'T SHE? – AT 9:05 A.M. ET:  Speaking of cultural elites (see post just below), no one is more in that category than Mary Frances Berry, former head of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and now professor of something called American social thought and history at the very Ivy League University of Pennsylvania. 

Berry has a record of certified wackiness, but this quote will undoubtedly endear her to her fellows in the faculty lounge.  From The Politico:

Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.

COMMENT:  Oh my, oh my.  Will any liberal newspaper condemn such a statement? 

Please notice the way in which the race card has been pulled from the deck recently, and used.  The most prominent example was the NAACP's description of tea partiers as racists.  The objective, apparently, is to energize and scare the base.

And, of course, we have the administration's assault on Arizona, designed to attract the Hispanic vote.  (I wonder how many Hispanic-Americans will buy the argument.) 

Some of the main elements of the Obama coalition in 2008 were blacks, Hispanics, and the young.  Well, the strategy for appealing to blacks and Hispanics has become clear, but what about the young?  I suspect the Dems will tell young voters that, under Republicans, they'll have to grow up.  That might produce a Democratic landslide.

July 21, 2010      Permalink

HANSON NAILS IT – AT 8:43 A.M. ET:  The invaluable Victor Davis Hanson turns his attention to defining a cultural elite.  I think he makes some excellent points in a must-read article, for the cultural elites are running the show, and don't think very much of we mere mortals. 

But just who are these people?  I've defined them here as individuals who'd put their College Board scores on their gravestones.  I think that's a good place to start.  Hanson:

So what is a cultural elite?

It is a sloppy term that might include the academic class in the university that educates our children in college. The upper echelons that run government departments constitute part of this cultural elite. So does an entertainment cadre that oversees television and Hollywood. Corporate managers are elites as well.

There is no racial, regional, religious, or tribal commonality. One shared allegiance perhaps is to higher education that certifies the cultural elite by diplomas of all sorts from a “good school,” as well as a respectable salary and a nice home with appurtenances. The good life of the elite is defined by both the absence of worry about necessities, and a certain status that accrues from properly recognized advanced education and sensitivity.

Well said.  Hanson then goes on to list the characteristics of the American cultural elite:

1) Untruth. One requisite to being a cultural elite, unfortunately, is a certain allegiance to untruth, to saying one thing and doing another. Consider the manifestations of falsity from ecology to race. Often exempt from worry over a weekly check, and distanced from the mechanics of how things work, the elite clamors for a green cap-and-trade revolution. It rejects compromise with a fossil fuel near future that would transition us in a half-century or so to renewable energy.

That said, it is hard to find cultural elites who live green lives. Most use their money at times to fly on jets or boat (like the president this weekend). As in the manner of the tastes of a John Edwards or Al Gore, the bigger and more impressive the home, the better to contemplate how lesser others use too much carbon-based power....

2)  Nature. The cultural elite class tends to romanticize nature, since it has little contact with it. Energy Secretary Steven Chu cheaply announces that California farms will dry up and blow away, with no clue how the tomatoes in his salad or the lamb chops on his plate are grown, cleaned, shipped — and land in his mouth...

3) Muscularity. An elite is often characterized as staying fit entirely by the workout, the gym, the jog — never by chain sawing, digging, climbing, or hammering. Yet here too arises contradiction. The elite, being largely progressive, champion the muscular classes to the degree they can stay distant from them. Having good abs by crunching is far different from having big arms by using a five-foot long pneumatic drill...

4) Gender. Here I am worried, as I have expressed previously, about the marked differences in the way our cultural elite express themselves. Hollywood offers an instructive example. Why can’t any of our actors talk like a Humphrey Bogart, Glenn Ford, Lee Marvin, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Bill Holden, or Gregory Peck? I’m not asking for Jack Palance or Fess Parker, just a normal male mainstream voice. I know there are Al Pacinos and Robert De Niros, but they too seem to fade before the new wave of DiCaprios. Elites talk (and probably sound) like the freedmen in Petronius’s Satyricon.

Today’s male’s voice is often far more feminine than that of 50 years ago.

Here I must comment.  I was around show business when the "changes" of the sixties and early seventies, and, boy, is Hanson right.  We went from John Wayne, whose skin really did resemble leather, to Dustin Hoffman and the cult of the boy-actor.  Need we mention Woody Allen.   

I mean, think Gary Cooper.  Then think Leonardo DiCaprio.  The women among our readership will understand.

5) Logic. There is little logic among the cultural elite, maybe because there is little omnipresent fear of job losses or the absence of money, and so arises a rather comfortable margin to indulge in nonsense.

Say it, brother, say it. 

This ad hoc meditation on cultural elitism was all prompted last week by listening to a poor white tree-trimmer lecture me on the various merits of his three different chain saws, while I was talking on the cell phone with a nasal-voiced, snotty Washington reporter — out here south of Fresno — but, in minutes, to be on the way to work at the antipode at Stanford.

Weirdly antithetical two worlds these that we have created.

Read the whole thing.  It's worth it.

July 21, 2010      Permalink

NOTHING TO SEE, FOLKS, NOTHING TO SEE – AT 8:17 A.M. ET:  One of the frustrations in dealing with failed terrorist attacks against the United States is that they're quickly forgotten, and we never quite understand the horror that could have occurred.

Consider the Times Square attempted bombing.  Apparently, had it come off, it could have been a major disaster.  From Fox:

Sources close to the investigation of failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad confirm to Fox News that the FBI tested a correctly constructed version of the explosive device.

Shahzad tried to detonate a car bomb in a Nissan Pathfinder on May 1, but the device fizzled and caused no injuries. But if the bomb had been detonated properly, it could have "killed in the thousands on the high end" and in the "hundreds on the low end," according to a source familiar with the investigation.

While the blast might have been more deadly than the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that claimed 169 lives, the force of the Times Square explosion would probably not have been as great. The impact of the explosion would have been felt both "upwards and outward," a source said.

A source close to law enforcement said "too many variables" make a precise damage estimate difficult to calculate adding that the bomb would "have caused a lot of damage." Although surrounding office buildings were mostly vacant on the Saturday evening of the planned attack, the high number of tourists on the street would have contributed to the number of causalities.

COMMENT:  It is inevitable that one of these terror operators will eventually get it right, just like Al Qaeda got 9-11 right.  And yet we seem so relaxed. 

I wonder, when the inevitable happens, whether the administration will give a name to the perpetrators, or just call them "misguided criminals."   I don't think we'll have to wait too long to find out.

July 21, 2010      Permalink

OBAMA'S DEFINITION OF GETTING TOUGH – AT 8:02 A.M. ET:  The United States is getting tough with North Korea.  The sound you hear is the North Koreans shivering in their boots.  Not really. 

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The Obama administration moved Wednesday to push new sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear weapons program, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates showed solidarity with South Korea during a visit to the area that separates it from the North.

Clinton announced the new measures — targeting the sale or purchase of arms and related goods used to fund the communist regime's nuclear activities, and the acquisition of luxury items to reward its elite — after she and Gates toured the heavily fortified border in a symbolic trip four months after the sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on the North.

The penalties are intended to further isolate the already hermetic North and persuade its leaders to return to talks aimed at getting it to abandon atomic weapons. The U.S. is also trying to forestall future provocative acts like the torpedoing of the Cheonan, which killed 46 South Korean sailors.

With specifics of the sanctions still being worked out, the more striking demonstration of U.S. resolve came when Clinton and Gates — in a first for America's top two cabinet members — together toured the demilitarized zone in the village of Panmunjom.

COMMENT:  Okay, but precisely what has been gained by sanctions on North Korea?  Nothing, really. Like Iran, the North Koreans shrug off sanctions and continue doing exactly what they were doing before.  The message we constantly send to the Northerners is that all they'll get when they misbehave is a slap on the wrist. 

The last major incident was the North's sinking of a South Korean warship.  The result?  A vaguely worded UN Security Council resolution that amounted to a dirty look.

The North may miscalculate and go too far next time, although "too far" seems to be a concept we're reluctant to define.

July 21,  2010     Permalink

TUESDAY,  JULY 20,  2010

THE EYES AND EARS OF THEMSELVES – AT 8:48 P.M. ET:  Journalists like to call themselves the eyes and ears of the public.  In fact, they're the eyes and ears of themselves, and no one else.  A major journalistic scandal was revealed yesterday by Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller.  Naturally, the response of the big media guys is silence.  But the documented report is stunning:

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.

The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

COMMENT:  Ah yes, call them racists.  It's the way the leftist game is played, and we're seeing it right now in the outlandish attacks on tea partiers.  Just call them racists.

Of course, if you dare criticize these "journalists" you may expect to be accused of 1) McCarthyism, 2) destroying their freedom of speech, 3) being under the thumb of the Israel lobby, and 4) fascism.

To me, this report, well documented, is a smoking gun.  It reveals, using actual documents, disgraceful behavior in journalism.  But will anything be done about it?  Are you serious?

To many on the left, they have a right to lie, a right to deceive.  They are "victims," after all, and they must deceive to survive.  Why, Joe McCarthy is coming from the grave to get them. 

I've seen this all my adult life.  I saw it in the leftist groups in college.  I saw it in the film and television industries.  "The truth," a leftist leader of the sixties said, "is what supports progressive causes."  And the left believes that.

July 20, 2010      Permalink

MY GAWD, IS THIS RACIAL PROFILING?  CALL OUT THE FBI, THE CIA, THE CAMPFIRE GIRLS – AT 8:16 P.M. ET:  This is an absolutely intriguing story about things happening down Mexico way.  But remember, we are all brothers.  From Fox:

A loose network of Mexican-American women, some of whom may be illegal immigrants, have been responsible for helping numerous Afghan military deserters go AWOL from an Air Force Base in Texas, FoxNews.com has learned.

Many of the Afghans, with the women's assistance, have made their way to Canada; the whereabouts of others remain unknown. Some of the men have been schooled by the women in how to move around the U.S. without any documentation.

Critical question:  Why would Mexican-American women, if that's who they are, want to help Afghans?  I want that question answered.

The Afghan deserters refer to the women as "BMWs" — Big Mexican Women — and they often are the first step in the Afghans' journey from Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, to Canada, a diplomatic official told FoxNews.com. He requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly during an ongoing investigation by U.S. and international authorities into who helped the Afghans leave the Defense Language Institute’s English Language Center at Lackland.

The official's account was supported by a source at the Defense Language Institute (DLI), who also requested anonymity. Foreign soldiers attend DLI to learn English before they receive specialized military training at various installations in the U.S.

COMMENT:  I label this speculation, but there have been reports of Islamic extremist activity in Latin America.  Could these women be part of a network, a coalition?  There'll be more to this story.

July 20, 2010      Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 7:24 A.M. ET:  Mr. Obama, set to meet Britain's prime minister (see post just below) brings with him a wealth of foreign policy wisdom and experience...not.  From Rick Richman at Contentions:

In the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, Walter Russell Mead reviews David Remnick’s biography of Barack Obama and notes that “students of foreign policy will be bemused and somewhat alarmed by the near-total absence of evidence in Remnick’s book that Obama ever showed any interest in foreign policy before running for president.” Mead writes that “to judge from this book, Obama spent little time dealing with foreign policy until he failed to get the Senate committee assignment he really wanted and was forced to make the best of an appointment to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.”

That's certainly reassuring in the nuclear age.  And...

The “ill-conceived war” was effectively won by virtue of the surge that Obama opposed. His “diplomacy, and strategy, and foresight” produced an outstretched hand to Iran and sanctions no one thinks will work, a “peace process” that cannot even get direct talks to start, and a Nobel Peace Prize he had insufficient modesty to reject. And it is all Bush’s fault, or the Republicans’, or the public’s expectations.

Students of foreign policy may be bemused and somewhat alarmed. But the American public, if the current polls are accurate, does not appear to be amused.

COMMENT:  Oh dear, oh dear, we do hope the visiting British PM doesn't read this.  We American hicks do want to make a good impression. 

The hilarity here is that Obama was presented to us by his sales department as a consummate whiz in foreign policy, a man who would reshape America's image in the world and usher in an age of everyone singing together while holding up Coke bottles.

Hasn't happened, has it?

July 20, 2010      Permalink

"WHAT!" EXCLAIMED BARACK, "ANOTHER ENGLISHMAN?" – AT 6:12 A.M. ET:  The president of the United States is about to host the new prime minister of a country for which Mr. Obama has a certain contempt – Great Britain.  Oh yes, it's America's most reliable ally, but what's that compared to a good, solid, left-wing grudge?  Look, it's the colonialism thing.  We'll never understand.

Britain's Evening Standard believes that David Cameron, the new PM, is in for some rough handling:

David Cameron distanced himself from BP today as he prepared to face American anger over the firm's oil leak disaster and its role in the release of the Locker bomber.

I hardly think the British prime minister can be blamed for the leak, but Obama may just try.  After all, Obama is the guy who waited four days to mosey up to a microphone to give some vague endorsement of democracy as Iranian demonstrators were being shot in the streets of Tehran.  He's got to show firmness with someone, so why not a someone who won't shoot back? 

With the Prime Minister flying out to Washington for his first White House meeting with Barack Obama, pressure grew for BP to clarify its involvement in the decision to free Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

Megrahi, who was convicted for the murder of 270 people on Pan Am 103 in December 1988, was released last year after a prisoner transfer deal with Libya was signed by former justice secretary Jack Straw.

But with BP under fire in the US, senators have also seized on claims that the prisoner deal was done in return for lucrative drilling rights handed to the oil giant by Tripoli.

Mr Straw, who could be forced to testify in front of a US investigation, has admitted that the BP deal “played a very big part” in his decision to agree the prisoner transfer plan in 2007.

That is an outrage, and it's entirely proper for Obama to bring it up.  But Cameron was not responsible, and it's critical that Obama try to repair the relationship with Britain, which he strained with his insulting treatment of former Prime Minister Brown, when he visited the White House. 

Mr Straw denies that Megrahi was discussed in the phone call, but critics believe there was no need for any explicit reference to the Libyan because he was the most important prisoner involved.

Today, Mr Cameron pointed out that the deals were done under Labour and that Megrahi was released by the SNP-led Scottish government last year.

Asked on BBC Breakfast whether the oil giant had lobbied for Megrahi's release, Mr Cameron said: “I have no idea what BP did, I am not responsible for BP. All I know is as leader of opposition I couldn't have been more clear that I thought the decision to release al-Megrahi was completely and utterly wrong.

“I'm interested in having a good, productive relationship with America. Yes, there will be lots of things we will be talking about, Afghanistan, BP, I'm sure the issue of al-Megrahi will be raised as well.”

COMMENT:  We will watch carefully to see whether Mr. Obama handles this visit with some style.  He recently played kissy-face with Prime Minister Netanyahu of another staunch ally, Israel, months after the president had insulted Netanyahu at the White House.  It's extraordinary to have to watch an American president patch up relations with our allies. I wish he'd been as tough on our enemies.

July 20, 2010      Permalink

KAGAN TO ADVANCE TODAY – AT 5:31 A.M. ET:  Elena Kagan, whose nomination to the Supreme Court is at best troubling, is expected to clear the Senate Judiciary Committee today, which will send her nomination on to the full Senate. 

As usual, the GOP is asleep, except for Sen. Pete Sessions.  Kagan is a poor choice.  Essentially an academic and political activist with very little real-world legal experience, she can be expected to toe the liberal party line.  She comes from my old neighborhood in Manhattan, and, believe me, I know the atmosphere.  Many wonderful people there, but some of them, and I fear Kagan is one of them, would put their college board scores on their tombstones. 

Byron York, in the Washington Examiner, explores a troubling episode in Kagan's past, when she literally rewrote the statement of medical doctors in order to advance her argument in favor of a presidential veto of  a bill banning partial-birth abortion.  It's part of her "we walk on water" syndrome.

"The problem for me, as a physician," wrote former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop in a letter urging senators to vote against Kagan, "is that she was willing to replace a medical statement with a political statement that was not supported by any existing medical data."

That's the troubling thing – politics above all.  Kagan is a politician.  She is not a judge.  She will find in the Constitution the language to support her political beliefs.

Kagan is not riding a wave of public support to confirmation. A recent Gallup poll found that just 44 percent of those surveyed support her nomination -- fewer than any high court candidate in recent memory. "If confirmed," Gallup concluded, "Kagan would be the first successful nominee in recent years whose nomination was backed by less than a majority of Americans in the final poll before the Senate confirmation vote."

COMMENT:  The view of the left has always been, "The public be damned."  They are not going to listen to people they consider lesser souls, people who didn't go to proper schools.

Kagan is a personable woman, very much liked by people who know her.  But her joining the Court will move this country one vote closer to a rewriting of our basic freedoms, for she seems to feel that this is both her role and the privilege accorded those of her class.

July 20, 2010      Permalink

BULL IN KABUL? – AT 5:28 A.M. ET:  What really is our policy in Afghanistan, and will divisions over it drive a wedge between Hillary "Oval Office" Clinton and Barack "I want to keep the job" Obama?  Fox News reports on Hillary's trip to Afghanistan:

KABUL — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday vowed the United States and its allies will stand by Afghanistan even as fears are growing about the course of the nearly 9-year-old war and the Obama administration plans to begin withdrawing American troops from the country next year.

Clinton acknowledged deepening opposition to international involvement in the conflict amid the rising death toll of foreign troops in the country. But she told an international conference on Afghanistan's future that the "world is with Afghanistan" and that the planned drawdown of U.S. forces was not a sign of flagging commitment.

"The July 2011 date captures both our sense of urgency and the strength of our resolve," she said of U.S. plans to accelerate the process of turning over security to Afghanistan's police and military. "The transition process is too important to push off indefinitely."

"But this date is the start of a new phase, not the end of our involvement," Clinton told the conference, which is being attended by senior officials from about 70 countries. "We have no intention of abandoning our long-term mission of achieving a stable, secure, peaceful Afghanistan."

COMMENT:   I have absolutely no idea what any of that means.  It's diplo-talk. 

But Afghanistan a year from now, when Obama promised his leftist lemmings that he'll start withdrawing troops, will be a major crisis point. We may make some progress by then, but it's hard to believe it will be dramatic progress.  At the same moment, Iran will be a year closer to the nuclear bomb, or might even have arrived. 

What will Obama do?  Just as intriguing, what will Hillary do?  A year from now, the 2012 election campaign will almost be upon us.

July 20,  2010    Permalink