I ask this because behind all of the misleading rhetoric, half-truths and unkept promises, the problem with the “turn the corner” language for most people is that the corner keeps receding out of view.  Suppose that “turning the corner,” so to speak, achieved nothing and simply prolonged the agony of roaming aimlessly through a maze without end?  What if you could “turn” a hundred “corners” and still be no closer to “victory”?  Could we admit at that point that it was time to bring our people home and stop wasting their lives in vain attempts at angular maneuvers?

Iraq’s top Sunni official has set a deadline of next week for pulling his entire bloc out of the government….Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi made his comments in an interview with CNN. He said if key amendments to the Iraq Constitution are not made by May 15, he will step down and pull his 44 Sunni politicians out of the 275-member Iraqi parliament.

“If the constitution is not subject to major changes, definitely, I will tell my constituency frankly that I have made the mistake of my life when I put my endorsement to that national accord,” he said.

Specifically, he wants guarantees in the constitution that the country won’t be split into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish federal states that he says will disadvantage Sunnis. ~CNN

How that’s three-state, one-country “political solution” looking now, Samnesty?

Now, it’s perfectly natural to want a charismatic presidential candidate. The trouble is that Republicans seem to have completely lost sight of the difference between the apparent and the real. The reductio ad absurdum of this trend is the burgeoning candidacy of TV star Fred Thompson, who plays the part of a tough prosecutor and alpha male on “Law & Order.”

Robert Novak recently noted, approvingly, that “[s]ophisticated social conservative activists” are flocking to Thompson. “Their appreciation of him,” wrote Novak, “stems not from his eight years as a U.S. senator from Tennessee but his actor’s role as district attorney of Manhattan on Law & Order [bold mine-DL].'” If this is how sophisticated social conservative activists make their political judgments, I’d hate to see the unsophisticated ones. ~Jonathan Chait

That is what has continued to puzzle me about the rise of Giuliani and the would-be rise of Fred Thompson.  Each time someone points out all the obvious flaws with both of them, there will be some pundit ready with the retort: “You underestimate how serious and responsible the voters are.  They have balanced all of the relevant concerns and are choosing the best candidates.”  How has it ever been the measure of sophistication, intelligence or political cunning to rally around a former mayor and an actor who has been out of office for five years as your best hopes for winning a national election?  When Giuliani continued to hold the lead in the polls, a thousand pundits (okay, more like a couple dozen) emerged from the woodwork to declare the “death of the litmus test” and to opine on the sophisticated and debonair savoir-faire of social cons.  “They’re not just a bunch of backwoods yahoos–they can read and everything!” someone might have said. 

Then came along someone whom people had not just seen on TV, but someone whom they had seen playing a role in a television show.  The Republican Party was saved!  At last, we had found an acceptable replacement for a former district attorney–we had a guy who played a district attorney on television!  As I wrote about the rush to Giuliani some months ago:

This is the height of unserious, celebrity-driven voter preferences.  This shows these voters to be not the complex, priority-balancing realists of pundit legend, but easily-led (yes, I really do want to use that word) and gullible people who will chant the name of any politician if they have heard it often enough in a positive context.  God help us, but many of these people may have concluded that Giuliani is their guy simply because they have seen him on TV more often than they have seen the others.  Yes, I do think it is that bad. 

Not only is it that bad, it is now a point of pride with Republicans that they are flocking to Fred Thompson because of his television career.  In New Hampshire, it appears that Romney has temporarily pulled into the lead.  Why?  Probably because he appeared on national television in the debate last week and was declared the effective winner by the chattering classes.  For the majority of people who are not paying attention, it is as if the Oracle has spoken: Romney won the debate, so we must now chase after the latest hot commodity. 

The GOP has become a hostage to its own superficial symbolically-driven electoral appeals.  It has become so addicted to mere symbolism that its members can scarcely see past the hype around telegenic media personalities.  For them, being a telegenic media personality is not just an advantage–it is the candidacy.

In their discussion last week on American Francophobia, Peter and Jonah missed the greatest reason for why Americans ought be skeptical of French foreign policy: not necessarily because of French delusions of grandeur or attempts to place themselves as the benevolent alternative to American hegemony, but because the French foreign policy establishment is still nakedly imperialistic in its outlook. It has not moved past the nineteenth century [bold mine-DL]. Indeed, French foreign policy elites refer to Africa as “le pré carré,” or “backyard.” ~James Kirchick

It isn’t at all clear that “naked imperialism” would merit much condemnation from at least one of those two, except on the principle that what counts as imperialism for other states counts as “leadership” for our government and the two are therefore incomparable.  This last item is the least damning part of what is an otherwise correct description of French foreign policy.  Calling this or that region “the backyard” may be a lousy way to think of one’s neighbouring countries and/or continents (I think it is), but I would wager that a sizeable number of Americans, perhaps a majority, views Latin America in exactly the same way.  Of course, many of our policies towards certain parts of Latin America are forms of imperialism that aren’t wearing much, if they are wearing anything at all, but that is a problem with the policies and not so much with the attitude.  (Yes, you can say that the policies would be less likely if the attitude didn’t exist, but it is hardly the thing that clinches the argument.)  This is not to praise French policy, which in Rwanda was obviously grossly negligent and criminal, but to remind everyone that they are hardly any more guilty than many of their competitors.  I tend to resist the widespread urge to sit in judgement of the French, not because the French are so great, but because those who would be their judges are not, at least on the level of government, doing any better than they are and in many cases are doing far worse. 

Mr. Kirchick says that France’s foreign policy establishment has not yet left the 19th century.  In truth, neither have we, except that we only entered the Europeans’ 19th century at the very end of the actual 19th century with respect to overseas colonies.  For instance, the Phillipines gained independence in 1945, Algeria in 1962–they saved their brutal anti-independence counterinsurgency for the end, while we made sure to get ours in right away.  Unlike the French, we are back in the Phillipines in some real military capacity after a relatively brief departure from our naval base at Subo Bay.  The current Filipino government is as reliable a lackey to Washington as any hegemon could want–Paris can only dream of having such extensive control over the foreign policy of a former colony that is not a complete basketcase (see Cote d’Ivoire). 

France insists on tying itself to rather nasty regimes around Africa and the Near East because the wars of independence and the rest of the decolonisation process reduced France to a lesser power than it had been in centuries (albeit a lesser power that acquired nukes).  It may not be desirable, and it may be quite ugly, but the French elites can at least make more plausible, albeit morally dubious, arguments that they are serving their national interest than can our political class.  There should, of course, be no illusions about what any other state is trying to do.  What we should avoid are those illusions that tell us that their conduct of foreign affairs is necessarily or obviously our business, unless there is some clear reason to think that it is.  (This is why, incidentally, I cannot understand why Western papers are getting so excited about the Estonia-Russia business, except to perpetuate anti-Russian hysteria among their readers.) 

One important point is that Americans should always be skeptical of any government’s foreign policy, including their own government’s foreign policy.  These policies are not being carried out to bring about the unity and brotherhood of man, after all.  These policies are being carried out to advance this or that nation’s interests first and foremost (it’s an interesting idea that we might want to try out for a little while), and this involves wielding power.  If France is wielding its power abroad, it very well may be pursuing goals contrary to the interests of the United States.  In my estimation, the true national interests of the two nations do not routinely or irreconcilably conflict and seem to converge at many points, which is why it still makes sense to regard France as an ally and a valuable one at that.  Something that troubles some interventionists greatly is the idea that allies are sovereign states that may act according to their own lights.  Sometimes allies go wrong and Washington should try to guide them away from the precipice, just as we would hope they would do for us and sometimes have done for us (in their own interests, obviously) when our government has gone a bit funny in the head.

For decades, the French supported the Hutu regime even when it became Nazi-like in its racial nationalism. It may be difficult for Americans to comprehend such imperialistic motivations, but the main reason for French support of Hutu power was that the Hutu are Francophone and the Tutsis Anglophonic, and that the latter group was aided by the former British colony of Uganda. ~James Kirchick

It may be difficult for Americans to comprehend such imperialistic motivations….Perhaps, though I daresay that the apparently numerous Churchill-idolising American fans of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 (which, at least according to its critics, is not much more than a rather lengthy volume that repeatedly says in various ways, “Yay, go Anglophones!”) understand Paris’ support for Francophones in Africa just fine.  The odd people who have been propagating the idea of the Anglosphere, which I find totally uninteresting in almost every possible way, probably also understand this connection, though they pretend that Anglospherism is more than glorified Anglophonism (it’s about values!).  I wonder: what do Anglospherists think of this new history volume?  Excited?  Embarrassed? 

Come to think of it, France’s support for the Hutus was and is fairly easy to understand, since sharing a common language with the rulers of another country provides an automatic way in for spreading your influence.  That is part of the reason why colonialists who are actually intent on maintaining their control of another country learn the local languages, make sure the local elites understand theirs and attempt to introduce their culture by way of language.  The one good defense against the charge of colonialism over the Iraq war is the profound disinterest the government has shown in supporting programs for Arabic speakers and actively recruiting people to learn and study Arabic and Arab cultures.  The “empire of bases” doesn’t need any well-staffed colonial administration full of fluent speakers of the native languages–it will happily use other countries’ lands, but it won’t be bothered with the day-to-day affairs of the dependency.  That would be meddling in their internal affairs and therefore wrong!

This is all nonsense, according to senior White House officials. They say that Bush isn’t delusional at all and that history will vindicate him, just as it vindicated Lincoln and Truman. ~U.S. News and World Report

But “history” didn’t vindicate them and doesn’t vindicate anybody.  Progressive nationalist historians and historians inclined towards an internationalist perspective in foreign policy have worked at vindicating them ever since their terms ended, and for some reason otherwise intelligent people live their entire lives believing that Lincoln was a successful chief executive and Truman was a great leader of men.  Measured by the standard of whether they left their country better than when they took office, both must be counted as miserable failures, among the worst five to have ever held power in this county (Wilson, FDR and LBJ being the other top contenders).  As much as I dislike Mr. Bush and pretty much all of his works, he is actually not even in their league in terms of the damage he has wrought on this country.  A mediocrity in everything, even his flirtation with tyranny, with which these other men had torrid and passionate affairs, has been unimpressive.   

Truman’s and Acheson’s failure in blundering into the Korean War and then Truman’s failing to win it have not been “vindicated” by anyone–the continued division of Korea along a heavily armed border to this day marks one of the lasting legacies of the Truman Administration (even though, yes, the armistice was signed under Eisenhower).  God forbid that 55 years from now we have a division posted in Kurdistan to guard the border with Greater Iran–such might be Mr. Bush’s “vindication.”  Perhaps by then President Sasha Obama, her popularity plummeting thanks to our continued involvement in the Second Nigerian War, will find herself in some difficulty when she compares herself to that paragon of bold leadership, George W. Bush. 

Had Truman run and somehow been re-elected, despite the most abysmal approval ratings in the history of the modern Presidency, it is somewhat questionable whether South Korea would have survived at all.  Had Adlai Stevenson been elected, it is questionable whether we could have held Japan (I exaggerate a little).  Does anyone actually want to be compared with Truman?  Why?

This entire debate is a bit surreal to me, since my test of “great President” is a President who actually follows his oath of office and obeys the Constitution, which Lincoln and Truman were great ones for violating all the time.  Setting aside such quaint notions for a moment so that we can speak in a lingo more familiar to modern helots, Lincoln and Truman did have certain “accomplishments” after a fashion that have certainly been lasting, and so they may be said to have been “great men in history” who shape events.  Lincoln destroyed the constitutional republican Union of states, and Truman permanently and probably fatally subverted the republican nature of our government by committing us to international adventures for what now seems to be perpetuity.  Caesar helped to kill the Roman Republic, but he might at least argue that his hand was forced and he could also claim that he at least won his military engagements.  Pity the empire whose Caesars are men named Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman.  Mr. Bush can only dream to achieve anything as lasting or permanent.  A failure to the end, his Presidency will not even fundamentally change the structures of government that he received from his predecessor.  As much as he is personally ridiculed and despised, he is really not much more than a placeholder President, a cipher, a nonentity.  It is because of this that his profound sense of self-importance and mission is especially disturbing, since even the Lord who chose to make those halting of speech into prophets is not this cruelly ironic.  Sometimes Presidents leave office in disgrace because they were thoroughly bad Presidents through and through, in the sense that they were just really bad at their jobs.  If he is anyone, Mr. Bush is Carter, not Truman.

“They were the ones who said ‘Make the ’96 election about nothing except V-Chips and school uniforms,'” says a former Clinton adviser. ~The Nation

The “they” in this case were Dick Morris and Mark Penn, who now serves as pollster and chief strategist for HRC.  This remark would tell us everything we need to know about Penn, if we didn’t already know who he was: he is someone who has  made his name on manipulating the public and preventing the representation of tens of millions of people through the worthless, “triangulated” centrist policy prescriptions that he has helped advance.  As the quote above indicates, he belongs to the school that says elections should be as vapid and irrelevant as possible.  He represents, in short, everything I despise about American politics and the political class.

That, of course, is the heritage of this land. The people who came to Jamestown 400 years ago may not have all been saints. But they were all pioneers. They crossed the broadest waters and dreamed the grandest dreams. Their spirit is the American spirit. It is why America surpassed our native England to become the world’s most powerful nation. ~Mitt Romney

Dreamed the grandest dreams?  The early settlers in Virginia were primarily looking for land and money.  Nothing to be ashamed of, these things, since these are what pretty much all settlers, pioneers and immigrants are interested in finding.  Occasionally you will have sectarians who want to carry out their mission in a new land, but for the most part you will have normal people.  It is this plain, down-to-earth history of people seeking to find a plot of land and tend it that tells us a lot more about most traditional Americans down through the centuries than talking about people “dreaming the grandest dreams.”  The New Englanders were more into dreaming, and look at all the trouble they–we–have managed to cause.  We would have done better to have even more sodbusters and even fewer dream-obsessed Yankee Puritans.  I say this as someone with a lot of New England Puritan and Yankee background. 

In any case, it’s nice to see that Romney’s Europhobic chauvinism extends also to the Mother Country, which is remarkable since the “American spirit” exhibited by the settlers at Jamestown was very much an “English spirit” and continued to be decidedly English or, if the last five defenders of the Union prefer, British.  Romney’s little remark is like something out of Hegelianism for Dummies: the American Geist has carried us along and caused us to triumph over all our adversaries. 

I have an alternative explanation for why the U.S. has outstripped the U.K. in world power: World Wars One and Two may have had a small part to play in dethroning England from global predominance.

Mike Suarez, 42, a friend of Fueyo’s and chairman of the Hillsborough County Democratic Executive Committee, pointed out what Obama did not say during his Tampa rally.

“If he were the quote-unquote traditional black candidate, he would have said something about Don Imus,” said Suarez, who has not yet decided upon a candidate. ~The Washington Post

Thank goodness Obama’s not like some “quote-unquote traditional black candidate” like this guy who spoke on the day of the Virginia Tech massacre:

There’s also another kind of violence though that we’re gonna have to think about. It’s not necessarily physical violence but that the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways. Last week, the big news, obviously, had to do with Imus and the verbal violence that was directed at young women who were role models for all of us, role models for my daughter [sic]. I spend, along with my wife, a lot of time making sure that my two young daughters, who are gorgeous and tall and I hope will get basketball scholarships, that they feel good about who they are and that they understand they can do whatever they can dream might be possible. And for them to be degraded, or to see someone who looks like them degraded, that’s a form of violence – it may be quiet, it may not surface to the same level of the tragedy we read about today and we mourn, but it is violence nonethesame.

Oh, hang on, that was Obama.  I guess what Mr. Suarez probably means is that a “quote-unquote traditional black candidate” would keep talking about Don Imus until our ears bled, whereas Obama only talks about him in earth-shatteringly inappropriate ways occasionally.  Right?

He agreed to a $28 million, one-year contract that will start when he is added to the major league roster for his first start, most likely in three to four weeks. Clemens will earn about $18.5 million under the deal, which will cost the Yankees approximately $7.4 million in additional luxury tax, meaning they are investing about $26 million in a seven-time Cy Young Award winner who will turn 45 in August. ~AP

As longtime readers of the blog will know, I am an Astros fan and have been since I was five years old.  When Clemens, a native Texan, came out of retirement in Houston a few years back, it was generally understood (at least publicly) that he was only doing this because playing in Houston afforded him a chance to play baseball while being able to spend more time with his family.  Apparently that was nothing more than a lot of PR garbage, and I should have realised as much at the time. 

Now he has turned his back on his hometown and gone to serve the dreadful Yankees, who are to the integrity of baseball what Dick Cheney is to responsible foreign policy.  Of course, it’s not hard to see why: any ballclub stupid enough to throw that much money at a 45-year old pitcher deserves to be taken to the cleaners, and forcing the Yankees to cough up $26 million for one year’s work (minus spring training!) from Clemens is the sort of karmic retribution that George Steinbrenner undoubtedly deserves but so rarely receives.  In that sense, I can appreciate what Clemens is doing, and I can take some pleasure knowing that the Yankees have unloaded enormous amounts of money to destroy the Astros’ rotation (they took Pettite before this) but will ultimately not benefit from the expense.