The Dish

Ambers has a really shrewd take on the hearings today. "Local solutions"? But that’s only faintly achievable at the expense of an occupation far beyond our current plans and resources. If McCain wants to make that essentially imperial/protectorate argument, then he should make it – and commit more money, more troops and more honesty to the effort.

The Economist has a really interesting analysis of the differences in culture and politics. But this gets harder to specify. Ahem:

("Left" and "right" are harder to locate than they were: here "left" implies a big-state, secular, socially liberal, internationalist and green outlook; right, the reverse.)

Bush Republicans are big-state and internationalist. Does that make them left? Libertarians are secular and small-state. Where does that leave them? I’d be mainly "left" on this count, along with many British Tories, except for big-state politics. "Harder to locate than they were" is an understatement. It may help to abando these labels for a while, especially across countries, until they actually mean something again.

"I’m trying to get to an endpoint. That’s what all of us are trying to get to," – Barack Obama, today. He meant Iraq, not the primary campaign.

 
The above graphic is from a Harvard study on Iran’s blogosphere. Intelfusion has details.

(Hat tip: zenpundit) 

Another take:

The US press went wild for this supposed report that Muqtada al-Sadr said he would dissolve his militia if Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani ordered it. Folks, he always says that when there is a controversy. (He said the same thing in spring, 2004). He says it because he knows it makes him look reasonable to the Shiite public. He says it because he knows that the grand ayatollahs are not going to touch the matter with a ten foot pole. They are not so foolish as to take responsibility for dissolving a militia that they had nothing to do with creating. And that is probably the real meaning of this CNN report that they ‘refused’ when asked. I doubt the grand ayatollahs in Najaf actively commanded Muqtada to keep his militia. They just declined to get drawn in.

The bright side is laid out here. All I can say at this point is: I know what I don’t know. As Shiite-vs-Shiite tensions mount, the myriad wars and proxy wars that are now "Iraq" get more and more complex and hard to read. One reason, of course, is the US presence. We muffle the actual power-structure in Iraq with troops and money, like snowfall on a landscape. We see some big shapes at times, but it’s hard to know what lies beneath. It’s a gamble either way, it seems to me, and anyone who tells you otherwise has an agenda. Until we have another president, I don’t see much practical alternative to leaving it to Petraeus and Crocker, closely monitored.

From Atlanta, an experiment:

Hewitt throws in the kitchen sink:

[The Democratic Party] is about to nominate the pupil of Jeremiah Wright and the pal of Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers who has the politics of Bobby Rush.

It would be helpful if Hewitt were to provide a guide to what he thinks "right" and "left" now are. Hewitt has supported a party that has added $32 trillion to our future unfunded debt in seven years. Is that right or left? Hewitt supports an open-ended project of nation-building in the middle of the Arab Muslim world, after five years of occupation. Is that now right or left? Bonus: more Obama-hate here.

The Miami Herald’s Jim Morin hits a home run:

Hitch’s column yesterday cast a wide net in impugning today’s black civil rights leaders. I’m no big fan of many either. Hitch also denigrates three men whom Obama once described as spiritual mentors:

In April 2004, Barack Obama told a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times that he had three spiritual mentors or counselors: Jeremiah Wright, James Meeks, and Father Michael Pfleger—for a change of pace, a white Catholic preacher who has a close personal feeling for the man he calls (as does Obama) Minister Farrakhan.

I had heard of Pfleger, asked someone who knows the Chicago archdiocese and looked him up. Here’s his Wiki profile. That he has once called Farrakhan "Minister" is not an exhaustive summary of his career. My source’s summary: "a crazy person who’s done a lot of great things." Sounds about right. From anti-drug crusades to picketing Jerry Springer and accusing a basketball league of racism to three-hour-long jam-packed Sunday masses, Pfleger is pretty sui generis, and has indeed invited Farrakhan to his church. He has also invited Angelou, and Daley and Tutu among countless others, and has views that would endear him to Bill O’Reilly on some issues. Here’s a story from 1998 on his work in the National Catholic Reporter. Here’s a brief look at the history of the parish. Pfleger’s a white man who has built the biggest African-American Catholic parish in Chicago. In 2002, Cardinal Francis George, while praising Pfleger’s work as "wonderful", tried to reassign him to another parish. The parishioners were having none of it. From the National Catholic Reporter:

"I want to remain at St. Sabina," Pfleger told NCR. "When you look at the miserable job the church has done in the black community, and you see here a place that’s financially strong, a school with 570 students and a waiting list, why would you not want to duplicate it instead of dismantle it?" He cited parish-sponsored projects including a senior apartment building, an employment service, a youth center, a retreat center and construction plans for 45 new homes. The church’s rousing liturgies, which often last three hours or more, draw from the entire metropolitan area. "Look at the successful black [Protestant] congregations in this city and you will see longevity of leadership," Pfleger said. "That’s how you build respect and develop relationships."

On Feb. 17 Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu made a visit to St. Sabina where he was welcomed by an overflow crowd that stretched down the street. He came, he said, because of the persistence of the parish’s leadership. "They don’t know the word no," said Tutu.

Yes, Hitch is right here:

If Obama were to be read a list of the positions that his clerical supporters take on everything from Judaism to sodomy, he would be in the smooth and silky business of "distancing" from now until November.

But that is the point, surely. What Pfleger, Wright and Meeks disagree on – gay dignity and equality spring to mind – can be dissected. (Meeks is repellent in his views on gays and Jews; Wright remarkably inclusive in ways no one has any interest in bringing up). But what they obviously share, and what Obama clearly refers to, is an impulse to bring Christianity to the black, urban poor, an attraction to the prophetic tradition in African-American Christianity, and a socially activist agenda. It’s not my Christianity, it probably has its share of crackpots, but it does very good things in many blighted, urban neighborhoods, and it has saved souls. If I were looking for a way to criticize today’s civil rights leaders, I could find a few more quickly than a priest like Pfleger or a preacher like Wright (Meeks – well, Hitch is not imagining things).

An interactive Pulitzer Center website of photography and poetry that brings to life the struggle against this damned virus that continues every day on every continent. It’s called Live Hope Love. The poem "Faith" stirs mine. The photos are by Joshua Cogan.