Surprise! The legislature again passed marriage equality last night and the state senate is going to vote today. Marriage could be legal for all New Yorkers by the end of this week. The last I checked, there were not enough votes in the Senate. I wonder if a few Republicans will surprise us.
(hat tip: Taegan)
As always, Marc Lynch's analysis of Obama's speech is worth reading:
[W]hen things don't go their way, will they really follow through on their promises to draw down? Few people believe that. And if they don't believe it, then the mechanism of pressure doesn't operate. So it seems to me that the best way for skeptics such as myself to help this strategy to succeed is to keep a sharp focus on the proposed mechanisms of change, demanding evidence that they are actually happening, and to hold the administration to its pledges to maintaining a clear time horizon and to avoiding the iron logic of serial escalations of a failing enterprise.
Amen. And will do.
Fred Kaplan homes in on the central point of contention, and confusion, in Obama's speech – the July 2011 date:
Critics say that this sends the wrong signal to the Afghan people; that if they think we're leaving in less than two years, they won't trust us to protect them in the first place; and that, in any case, the Taliban will simply lie low and "wait us out." This complaint misreads the policy. The key word in Obama's speech was that in July 2011, the United States will "begin" to transfer responsibility for security to the Afghan forces. The pace of this transfer—how quickly we will continue to withdraw and at what point we'll get out altogether—will be determined by "conditions on the ground." (Obama may not have underscored this phrase, but in a background press briefing earlier in the day, "senior officials" emphasized it strongly; one predicted that it would be the most misunderstood and misreported part of the speech.)
I think this strategy is doomed. But then I think any strategy that does not pledge to colonize Afghanistan, pour trillions of dollars into it and stay for a century is doomed. So why do I end up this morning feeling rather similar to my colleague, Jim Fallows, who 
financed by opium – is simply unhinged. It means an empire in the Muslim world for the rest of our lives. And the idea that permanent Western occupation of Muslim lands will decrease Jihadist terror is so insane only Dick Cheney could still believe it.
This war is already eight years' old and will soon have lasted longer than Vietnam. Its rationale today is very different than what it was in 2001 – 2002. Al Qaeda is based in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. The US, thanks to Bush and the recession, is bankrupt and facing a long and brutal period of high unemployment and soon huge cuts in entitlements or big tax hikes.
Our enemy already knows that the US cannot sustain neo-imperial control of a vast inhospitable country on the other side of the planet for more than a decade. And if the US were to do so, it would be becoming the imperial power the neocons and the Islamists truly want. What Obama was saying last night is that he is determined to return America to normal, to unplug this vast attempt at global control in Muslim countries that Bush and Cheney unleashed. He is trying to unwind the empire, not expand it.
How best to unwind the empire? By giving McChrystal what he wants and giving him a couple of years to deliver tangible results. If McChrystal delivers, fantastic. I will do a ritual self-flagellation and bow down to the man with no body-fat and a close relationship with 33 Kagans of various generations and genders. If McChrystal does his best and we still get nowhere, Obama will have demonstrated – not argued, demonstrated – that withdrawal is the least worst option.
The far right will accuse him of weakness – but they will do that anyway. All he need do is remind Americans of what the far right version of "strength" is: engaging an enemy on his own turf, sustaining an insurgency by our very presence, draining the Treasury of trillions, sacrificing more young men and women to shore up one of the most corrupt governments on earth, and basically returning to Bush-Cheney land. And that will be a very telling argument in 2012: do we want to go back to Cheneyism? To torture and endless occupation and a third war with a Muslim nation, Iran?
On reflection, Obama was saying something quite simple: one more try, guys. We owe it to those who have sacrificed already to try and finish the job. He has given the effort the full resources it needs at a time of real scarcity. He has given COIN doctrine one more chance to prove itself. He has put Petraeus and McChrystal and the 45 Kagans on notice: prove your case. And in this, I think Obama has found a middle balance that reflects where a lot of us are on this and that also offers a good faith chance for progress – with a good sense exit ramp after a reasonable length of time.
The final piece of the puzzle strikes me as this: the big ramp up in CIA activity in Pakistan. This is the second channel, the one Obama barely mentioned last night. It may be the more important one. My sense is that Obama wants to get bin Laden. Well, of course he does. Which president wouldn't? But the international and domestic impact of such a coup is hard to overstate and Obama's sense of how it would transform him and the entire dynamic of the terror war is typically cunning. I see the Afghan effort as one last chance to get al Qaeda's leadership, to bring justice to the 9/11 perpetrators, while hoping, in the medium term, to tamp down the raw civilizational conflict that empowers them.
As always with Obama, look a little deeper. He has made the very best of a very bad situation. And he is playing a long game for a win or a necessary withdrawal or both. I retain all my doubts; but I give him and Gates and McChrystal and Clinton and the troops all my support for the two years ahead. This much he and they deserve.
One more try, guys.
"I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place," – pre-Kristolized Sarah Palin, March 1, 2007.
"Talk of an exit date also risks sending the wrong message. We should be in Afghanistan to win, not to set a timetable for withdrawal that signals a lack of resolve to our friends, and lets our enemies believe they can wait us out," – Kristolized Sarah Palin, last night.
A reader writes:
As I was watching the President’s speech and post-speech coverage last night, two thoughts really struck me. The first is that Obama strikes me as a President who is utterly serious about making what he thinks is the best decision. It seemed very apparent to me that this Afghanistan situation is something he looked at from every angle, and like it or not, is making what he believes is the best decision possible. Like you, I’m not sure I agree with him, and also like you, I will support the troops, give Obama the benefit of the doubt for now, and then want to see him held accountable for what he’s laid forth. I wanted Obama to be President because I thought he had the best judgment, and on this, I admire the fact he’s proposing something that is clearly not popular (especially with his base), because he thinks It’s the right thing to do.
The second thought occurred to me after watching the post-speech coverage on CBS. They had on John McCain.
McCain, who was so glib in attacking Obama during the campaign for offering nothing but platitudes, said he didn’t agree with Obama’s approach because it “emboldens our enemies” and “we have to stay until we win.” Well, those are helpful guideposts, and basically what the strategy has been in our two wars for the last eight years that has pretty much gotten us nowhere. I then got to thinking about McCain and his choice of running mate, Sarah Palin. I thought about what it would be like if she were President and having to determine a policy and give a speech in a situation similar to Obama’s. That thought literally caused me to shudder. And the fact that McCain chose Palin as a running mate, and a sub-segment of the current Republican party believes she actually has the chops to hold the highest office in the land shows the type of judgment that will not allow a left-leaning moderate like me to even consider voting for a Republican anytime soon.
The only honorable position for a man like McCain who unleashed Palin on the country is to resign. Someone who was prepared to see her as commander-in-chief at a moment's notice, after no vetting of her past or character, has no business being on television discussing foreign policy let alone the Senate. He's a deeply unserious man.
Unless you pay for them. It's hard out there for an Alaskan.
Andrew Sprung notices an interesting pair of parallel quotes:
“That’s exactly why we thought a timetable was so important,” Mr. Obama said. “Because in the absence of a time frame, if the view in Afghanistan is this is an open-ended commitment or an indefinite commitment, then I think we have very little leverage” over the Afghan leader. (Barack Obama, 12/09)
“Demands in the U.S. Congress for a timeline to withdraw American troops from Iraq are constructive because they exert pressure on Iraq’s leaders to forge compromises….the strong feelings expressed in the Congress about the timetable probably has had a positive impact . . . in terms of communicating to the Iraqis that this is not an open-ended commitment.” (Bob Gates, 4/07)
Of course, the Iraqis still have not agreed on a national election even as a very hard deadline for US withdrawal approaches.
A visual demonstration of what’s really been going on. The final verse is what the president is now proposing:
James Joyner hasn't given up on the GOP yet:
Are the inmates running the asylum in the Republican Party? I don’t think we’re there yet, although there are days when I have my doubts. But right now I’m willing to chalk it up to a combination of a political climate that’s been hyper-polarized for years, making the out party seem insane. (Recall Jane’s Law: “The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.”) Add to that dire economic times and a 24/7/365 Twitter environment where crazy thoughts can get amplified and seem more prevalent than they are, and you have a recipe for this sort of thing.
My sense is that things will swing back in the other direction fairly soon because that’s what has always happened in the past. But, while I don’t think it’ll happen, it’s not entirely inconceivable that Sarah Palin will be the 2012 Republican nominee. In which case, I’ll look for other options. Until then, the only thing I can do is point out the crazies and argue for a saner path.
The pattern with these things, I'm afraid, is that they don't swing back soon. They swing back in the end – but only after the delusions of the ideologues have been destroyed the only way they truly can be, by repeated drubbings at the polls. Yes, what happened to the Labour party in the 1980s and the Tory party after 1997 are my most vivid examples of this – it took both parties more than a decade and several leaders before they became capable of governing again. Or think of the Democrats in the 1970s and 1980s.
My fear is that the combination of an insane party, a very populist and potentially economically disastrous few years, and deepening polarization could lead to a very alarming outcome. Resentment is a powerful force; and Palin is nuts enough to ride it.
The Dish 