The Dish

Same old, same old.

"In a move that’s sure to be seen as controversial, Hillary has contacted the NCAA Board of Directors to argue that Memphis is actually better qualified to be National Champion.

Ms. Clinton stated that Memphis, while losing the game, had actually shown more ability to act like a National Champion on Day One. She argued that Memphis had passed every test during the game, including scoring more points than Kansas for 38 minutes. For 38 minutes they had shown the experience necessary to be National Champion. ‘Just because some team comes along in the last minute and scores more points than the other guy doesn’t mean they’re necessarily able to be National Champion on Day One,’" – DPolitico.

Even Fox News thinks the "intelligent design" movie sucks.

The latest Obama fundraising gambit online.

Josh Marshall comments on the GOP trying to distance McCain from his 100 years comment:

Here’s why Republicans are scared to death of this. No one wants to be in Iraq 100 years from now, even if McCain stipulates to the fantasy that Iraqis will be happy having us occupy their country forever and that the place will become like Finland. And none of our soldiers will ever get killed there and it won’t cost any money. If that’s the explanation for why we shouldn’t be concerned that he’s happy to stay in Iraq for a century, that just tells people that McCain is living in a fantasy world.

Dave Wiegel earlier this week:

The wiggle room comes when McCain says he’s okay with the 100 years "as long as our soldiers are not being wounded or maimed or killed." And that’s where McCain’s defenders have chosen to stand and fight. See, McCain doesn’t want to fight a hot war for 100 years. He wants to have a base there until the Middle East stops producing threats to the U.S. To say otherwise is "an attack on McCain’s character," as Michael Goldfarb puts it in that Weekly Standard link.

That’s a dodge, though. It assumes that 1) there is nothing controversial about building permanent bases in Iraq, 2) that maintaining those bases would be completely positive effects on the region, and that 3) there’s nothing wrong with a potential president telling the world we’ll be in Iraq forever. Not much room for realpolitik there, eh? It’s unfair to distort what McCain says, but it’s wrong to portray this as harmless straight talk.

My own view is that McCain’s comment, in its most benign formulation, misses the key element here: Islam. One reader helpfully pointed out that occupied Japan also had a fiercely proud populace revolted by foreign troops. Sure: but it had been defeated as a unitary state and its Emperor (which we wisely retained) gave the occcupiers sanction. No such unitary state exists in Iraq; and Islam forbids the rule of infidels in its own heartlands – and Iraq has central religious importance for its various shrines and religious centers in the Muslim mind. Secularism has been in decline for a couple of decades. There is no way an Arab Muslim country will tolerate Western troops permanently based on their land – without constant war and threat of war. To believe otherwise is to engage in a "holiday from reality." We’ve done enough of that.

The future of a permanently occupied Iraq is less likely to be Japan than the West Bank. And the deeper we are stuck there, the more our predicament will become the awful, morally corrosive, soul-sapping experience of the occupying Israelis.

Matt airs his confusion over the GOP viewing Iraq as not only a success but as a winning issue. Americans aren’t that dumb.

The Dish has been a bit patchy today. I’m still trying to get over this flu. Seems to be lifting a little, happily. I want to apologize to people in Oklahoma City and Madison for being too sick to go give a couple of lectures the last two nights. I hate to cancel. Had no choice. I’ll re-schedule.

Phillip Carter was underwhelmed by the hearings:

Petraeus and Crocker overplayed their hand. They overstated the threat posed by al-Qaeda in Iraq in an effort to justify the mission — a mindset that has generated a deeply flawed strategy. They also overplayed the surge’s success — downplaying or discounting factors that likely did more to create today’s improved security conditions. While their "Anaconda" strategy looks cool on a PowerPoint slide, it confuses the issues of control and influence, putting too much stock in America’s ability to engineer success in Iraq. And, perhaps most tellingly, the two men made the case for perseverance without placing Iraq in the context of vital U.S. national interests, offering only apocalyptic predictions of what would happen if we don’t stay the course.

But that was their carefully prescribed task. I don’t fault them. They’re not responsible for overall strategy. At one point last year, I was worried that Petraeus was being used politically. I was wrong. He’s been a magnificent general, in a near-impossible situation. Ditto Crocker. Along with Patrick Fitzgerald, they strike me as among the most impressive public servants of our time.

In Afghanistan growing wheat is now more cost efficient than growing heroin.

This Monday piece by Trudy Rubin stands up well with some sensible analysis on Iraq:

We don’t know whether a large U.S. troop presence can produce long-awaited political reconciliation or a functional Iraqi government. Iraqis will have ten more months to work on this conundrum before the next U.S. administration takes office. Within that time there will be provincial elections, and Maliki might even be dumped by Iraqi legislators.

We do know – as the Basra affair showed – that Iran is crucial to any Iraq solution. And here is where the next president will have an opportunity to try something different – with Iran.

Distinguishing between what we can affect and what we cannot is the key. Iran has leverage whatever happens, whether we leave or stay and regardless of how we stay. They know it; we know it; at some point, someone will have to talk – and talk big – with power brokers in Tehran. That will be partly what this election will be about; and what it should be about.