Completely missing the point

[bascule]

Michael Ramirez is my new favorite political cartoonist:

 

 

As I understand it, Obama wants to go after "Al Qaeda"... in Afghanistan. You know, the people who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks.

 

He thinks the war in Iraq has diverted attention from this group.

 

McCain and the conservative blogosphere retort: "But Al Qaeda is already in Iraq lolz! U are teh stupeed"

 

If the BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares" is to be believed, Al Qaeda (bin Laden's loosely organized militant Islamicist organization) assumed the name after US media began reporting that as their name. In other words, they chose the name to fuel media coverage and speculation.

 

That's exactly what "Al Qaeda in Iraq" did. Are you a terrorist cell who wants to get some publicity? Just call yourself Al Qaeda! Instant media coverage.

 

For someone who's opinion is "I want to go after the people who attacked us on 9/11, something Bush hasn't been doing," Obama's sure getting attacked a lot...

[iNow]

For someone who's opinion is "I want to go after the people who attacked us on 9/11, something Bush hasn't been doing," Obama's sure getting attacked a lot...

 

Well, don't the same people who are attacking him have a consistent precendent when it comes to inappropriate targetting and failed strategy?

 

Damn it! We've been attacked by a bunch of Saudis, and their leader is in Afghanistan. Let's invade Iraq for the next 5 years at a cost of 8 billion dollars a month.

 

 

Oh yeah... Obama needs attacking too...

 

 

We, as a culture (warning - US centric) are imbred and retarded. Those who are the most imbred and retarded, on average, seem to have the most children. A family of 9 under educated (home schooled) religious fundies certainly will dominate over a family of zero (which is appropriate) for most scientists, or 1 for those who have been fortunate enough to find emotional and intellectual connection with a reproductively viable member of the opposite sex. [/rant]

[Pangloss]

I agree with the above two posts. Ramirez is an ideologue (but we knew this already), and this kind of deliberate misinterpretation is not conducive to the forward progress of society.

 

But I have to point out that these sentiments are unfortunately not uncommon, and aren't only coming from the far right. I had a friend tell me the other day, who's never voted anything other than Democrat in his life, that Obama "scares him more than Hillary". I'm not joking around when I criticize the way Obama's been pandering to "movement" rhetoric. He's filling baseball stadiums with worshipers, not informing voters what he plans to do, and that's somewhat contrary to the American way. It's not going to play in the general election, and it's barely working in the primaries -- I imagine it's part of the reason for Clinton's successes tonight in Ohio and Texas. Even Tiny Fey on Saturday Night Live took a shot at him last week, complaining about people who will "do whatever Oprah tells them to do".

 

Much of that criticism is, well as iNow so eloquently put it, "inbred and retarded" -- people poorly expressing some fears they probably shouldn't have to begin with. This is no local parish preacher plucked off the streets, he's a serious, vetted politician, with a perfectly valid record to stand on. He should be criticized and questioned, absolutely, as any politician should, but the fear-mongering is just ridiculous and isn't even a step above the racism it's obviously proxying for some.

 

But I think he's playing into it by not being more specific on the issues and by pandering to electoral groups, and I think he would have been better served to stand on his positions and really BE the "candidate for change", even if he ended up telling some voters things they didn't really want to hear.

[bascule]

I'm not joking around when I criticize the way Obama's been pandering to "movement" rhetoric. He's filling baseball stadiums with worshipers, not informing voters what he plans to do

 

The way I see it, Obama is trying to make a nuanced point, i.e. we should go after the people who attacked us on 9/11 (in Afghanistan), not some people in Iraq who happen to go by the same name for publicity's sake. And, McCain and posse retort with: the people who attacked us on 9/11 are in Iraq too!

 

But they're not, and you'd have to be f*cking retarded to believe that crock of sh*t. Unfortunately, this message gets lost on mainstream America after years of Bush brainwashing, and meanwhile people accuse Obama of being all charisma and no substance, like our friend Michael Ramirez:

 

 

But perhaps the reality is: Obama is a man of substance whose points have to be analyzed at a higher level than mainstream political punditry.

[iNow]

Part of the attack on Obama plays directly into the hands of the McCain bid for president.

 

Nothing has united the Republican party more than their hatred of Hillary. Hence, if they assist Hillary in winning the Democratic candidacy, they do better as well.

 

Republicans would rather fight Hillary, so maybe they're attacking Obama now to help her out in the primaries.

[john5746]

That's exactly what "Al Qaeda in Iraq" did. Are you a terrorist cell who wants to get some publicity? Just call yourself Al Qaeda! Instant media coverage.

 

For someone who's opinion is "I want to go after the people who attacked us on 9/11, something Bush hasn't been doing," Obama's sure getting attacked a lot...

 

So it isn't a Global war on terror? It's only Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Didn't they take out some high ranking Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq?

 

The way I see it, Obama is trying to make a nuanced point, i.e. we should go after the people who attacked us on 9/11 (in Afghanistan), not some people in Iraq who happen to go by the same name for publicity's sake. And, McCain and posse retort with: the people who attacked us on 9/11 are in Iraq too!....

 

But perhaps the reality is: Obama is a man of substance whose points have to be analyzed at a higher level than mainstream political punditry.

 

Obama's main seperation from the other candidates is:

 

1) He didn't vote to allow Bush to use force against a dictator who most thought possessed WMD. Nevermind that Obama wasn't faced with that actual vote and nevermind that Saddam proved that the threat of force was more than necessary to have inspections - he bluffed all the way to the end. Having the threat of force was the right thing to do, invading before finishing the inspections was the mistake. Clinton is a dumbass for not making this argument clear, she loses.

Basically, if we have intelligence that Iran has several nukes on long range missles, will Obama ask for any military authorization? Is it different when he asks for it?

 

2) Obama is a great speaker and an African American. He also seems to work well with others. This is what truly seperates him from the rest, IMO and it is an important difference.

 

Since Obama is a good speaker, I think he should be able to say what he means. I thought the exact same thing from his exchange with McCain. The media played it up as Obama winning the exchange, but I think Obama lost. He said he would go after Al Qaeda if they get a foothold there. He did not deny that they are currently there, only that it was Bush's fault. That ain't gonna fly as President. He needs to deal with the problems he inherits, not continue to whine about how they came about.

 

The media, especially NBC has been so biased against Hillary that it initially turned me off to Obama. I finally realized that and I support Obama over Hillary now, but really because of style. Style is important - as Reagan demonstrated. I am one of those moderates that McCain and Obama will be fighting for in the general election. Currently, McCain has the better of the fight, IMO. Obama is trying to paint McCain as another Bush, which doesn't work. McCain is painting Obama as very liberal, which does work, but can be fixed during the general election. Both have crossover appeal, although McCain has a better history of that - because he has a history! Both are perceived as weak on the economy. Both are perceived as moderate on immigration. It is obvious to me that McCain will try to surround himself with Reagan republicans, Obama will have lots of pressure to bring in minorities and fresh faces.

[doG]

Why does anyone think we're in Iraq to go after Al-Qaeda in Iraq anyhow? We're in Iraq because of Saddam Hussein. Once that was over Islamic Fundamentalists saw an opportunity to bring the fight to Iraq and the new Iraqi government asked us to stay. The ongoing battle in Iraq has never had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks. At present it is nothing more than an attempt to keep Islamic Fundamentalists from turning Iraq into another Afghanistan. It is an effort that I'm tired of paying for and I do support an accelerated departure from Iraq but we need to get rid of the spin that is diverting us from discussing the truth of the matter.

[iNow]

Why does anyone think we're in Iraq to go after Al-Qaeda in Iraq anyhow? We're in Iraq because of Saddam Hussein.

 

The evidence seems to contradict your claim, and that doesn't seem like a fair estimation. Were you comment true, we'd have left after December 30, 2006.

[doG]

The evidence seems to contradict your claim, and that doesn't seem like a fair estimation. Were you comment true, we'd have left after December 30, 2006.

 

So you're saying the original invasion of Iraq was motivated by Al-Qaeda being in Iraq? Can you support that. And you're saying that we would have denied Iraq's requests for us to remain there or that they never made such a request if my comment were true? Can you support that too?

[ParanoiA]

Obama is awesome. To me, he's the epitome of our shallow republic. He has proved that you don't have to say anything, stand on anything - that you can simply use sugar language of "change" and "hope" and "working together" and, my all time favorite, "reaching across party lines". Same ole, same ole...and just like every presidential election, we act like it's the first time we've ever heard it.

 

There's nothing particularly wrong with Obama when compared to anyone else still in the race, he seems as bought and paid for as Bush junior. He's the equivalent of the "feel good" movie, embodied in a politician. It "feels good" to vote for Obama. Can't really criticize him since he has no record really to criticize. Can't figure out what he stands for since he won't say. And, he's better at that than any Clinton.

 

What I think would be interesting would be seeing him and Bill Clinton contesting for office. Obama may be slicker than Slick Willy himself and that would cool to watch them out "sugar" each other.

 

All that said, I trust him more than anybody else still in the race when it comes to chasing the *correct* enemy, OBL. They're all the same on Iraq, but I don't trust McCain to go after Osama. Nobody else is even talking about him and he's our number one enemy, in my mind. Bush junior and congress has failed us. They have not represented us. We wanted OBL. They gave us Iraq. Maybe Obama will give us OBL.

 

He is going to be the next president, no doubt in my mind at all.

[iNow]

So you're saying the original invasion of Iraq was motivated by Al-Qaeda being in Iraq?

 

Not at all. That would, in fact, be a strawman of my position (which was that your comment "We're in Iraq because of Saddam Hussein" seemed neither an accurate nor fair estimation of the actual situation).

 

 

 

He is going to be the next president, no doubt in my mind at all.

 

I hope so. My fellow citizens in Texas seem to have favored Hillary in the primary, and caucus votes are still being counted so we'll see... but it's far from over.

[ParanoiA]

I hope so. My fellow citizens in Texas seem to have favored Hillary in the primary, and caucus votes are still being counted so we'll see... but it's far from over.

 

Yeah, it might get close here and there, but after watching him route Hillary over and over again during a couple of their debates, I'm convinced this dude can route anybody. And he can do it without standing on a single polarized issue.

[doG]

Not at all. That would, in fact, be a strawman of my position (which was that your comment "We're in Iraq because of Saddam Hussein" seemed neither an accurate nor fair estimation of the actual situation).

 

Perhaps I didn't state my intended meaning well enough. To clarify, we went to Iraq because of Saddam. We remain in Iraq at the request of the Iraqi government because of the growth of terrorist elements there following Saddam being deposed. We are not there because of 9/11. We are there fighting a battle for the Iraqis that is not our battle to fight.

[Pangloss]

The way I see it, Obama is trying to make a nuanced point, i.e. we should go after the people who attacked us on 9/11 (in Afghanistan), not some people in Iraq who happen to go by the same name for publicity's sake. And, McCain and posse retort with: the people who attacked us on 9/11 are in Iraq too!

 

But perhaps the reality is: Obama is a man of substance whose points have to be analyzed at a higher level than mainstream political punditry.

 

I agree with your first point (and some of the hair-splitting going on in this thread is pointless, IMO), but Obama has also participated in the parsing and hair-splitting. I gave an example of this with an independent source (FactCheck) in another thread.

 

I know you just like the guy, and I'm not criticizing you personally, but there's a real danger in what you're doing above. If you raise him on a pedestal and pretend he can do no wrong, and don't recognize when he HAS done wrong, you're just setting yourself up for further partisanship and ultimate failure. It's the past 16 years, rinsed and repeated.

 

Criticizing and questioning Obama is not a sin, it's a requirement. The kind of parsing we're seeing here, the kind you're giving examples of, THAT I completely agree is wrong. But he needs to answer questions, like he did in this case, not participate in more partisan hackery.

 

Since Obama is a good speaker, I think he should be able to say what he means. I thought the exact same thing from his exchange with McCain. The media played it up as Obama winning the exchange, but I think Obama lost. He said he would go after Al Qaeda if they get a foothold there. He did not deny that they are currently there, only that it was Bush's fault. That ain't gonna fly as President. He needs to deal with the problems he inherits, not continue to whine about how they came about.

 

Exactly. At the end of that exchange he didn't answer the question, he hid behind a subject change. I do agree with bascule that he's making a subtle and important political point, but I also think he's avoiding another one, and he needs to stop doing that. That's business as usual, not change.

 

----------

 

Let me just give a further example of what I'm talking about, from today's Wall Street Journal editorial page:

 

For all its indignation, the Obama campaign doesn't mind playing it both ways when convenient. One example is the Senator's own easy relationship with spending on his behalf by organized labor. According to the Federal Election Commission, the Service Employees International Union was spending some $1.4 million to support his candidacy in Ohio and Texas, including direct mail, phone-banking and union outlays to pay for "volunteers." Meanwhile, the Fund For America, another so-called 527 group funded by George Soros and the SEIU, is funneling $400,000 to groups buying ads to attack John McCain. What gives?

 

Mr. Obama had no trouble complaining when John Edwards was the beneficiary of such spending. In Iowa, an SEIU local threw a reported $750,000 into TV ads for Mr. Edwards, and Mr. Obama criticized what he called "huge, unregulated contributions from special interests." He insisted such efforts were "a way of getting around the campaign finance laws."

 

Source here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120467901019711993.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

 

But the WSJ went on to say this, in a separate editorial:

 

According to the exit polls, a mere 57% of Democrats in Ohio, and 52% in Texas, gave Mr. Obama credit for having a "clear plan for the country." The media have also only begun to explore the Senator's rise in the boiler room of Chicago politics, as with the fraud trial of his former fund raiser Tony Rezko that started this week. If he is the nominee, Mr. Obama will be stronger in the fall as a result of the greater scrutiny now.

 

Mrs. Clinton would bring her own weaknesses into the fall campaign, not least her implausibility as an agent of "change." We certainly understand the desire of many Democrats to be free at last from their codependency with both Clintons. But they should also make sure Mr. Obama isn't one more leap into the November unknown.

 

Source here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120468872575712799.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

 

As to the reasons why this is important, the WSJ adds the following excellent point:

 

Mr. Obama retained his narrow delegate lead after last night, and must still be considered the favorite. But that's all the more reason for Democrats to want to make him compete in more primaries. Democrats have a history of nominating candidates who come out of nowhere but turn out to have what the larger electorate decides are major liabilities. Think Michael Dukakis, or Jimmy Carter's near collapse after a 22-point lead in the summer of 1976.

 

Couldn't have put it better myself. Obama needs to continue to step up and raise the bar (like he mostly did here, with Bascule's example), not stoop and pander and trade blows and make two wrongs a right.

[bascule]

So it isn't a Global war on terror? It's only Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

 

The people who attacked us are there. They aren't in Iraq. Iraq is a diversion from getting those people.

 

Didn't they take out some high ranking Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq?

 

They've certainly taken out high ranking members of "Al Qaeda in Iraq"

 

Since Obama is a good speaker, I think he should be able to say what he means.

 

He says what he means, and in doing so leaves himself wide open for his points to be spun completely out of his favor. It's un-American and unpatriotic not to wear an American flag pin, don't you know.

[john5746]

The people who attacked us are there. They aren't in Iraq. Iraq is a diversion from getting those people.

 

They've certainly taken out high ranking members of "Al Qaeda in Iraq"

 

I want revenge as well, but the people who are planning to attack us in the future are probably not those who had direct participation in 9/11. Most of those are dead or captured. We are fighting a virus that spreads through a network, not on a stand-alone server. It is dumb to spend all your resources on one server, but it is also dumb to ignore the network as a real threat. Once you go in and take out the firewall and remove the anti-virus off a server, do you expect the virus to sit there and not grow and spread through the network?

 

I think you make a very valid point with Zarqawi, but I think they also captured Abu Shahid and killed Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who may have established Al Qaeda in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion. These guys were involved in overseas networking. They are not just concerned with Iraq.

 

A better answer for Obama would have been that after we pull out our troops, we would continue to support Iraq in their effort to fight terrorism. We would stress operational support, rather than sending troops right back into Iraq. I guess that wouldn't sound strong like Bush, but this guy doesn't want to be him, does he?

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/may/01/iraq.alqaida

 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070724-9.html

 

He says what he means, and in doing so leaves himself wide open for his points to be spun completely out of his favor. It's un-American and unpatriotic not to wear an American flag pin, don't you know.

 

Maybe Obama can get a little taste of how it feels to be a white republican being called racist because of a hurricane.

[Realitycheck]

I read this article a week or two ago which said that Hamid Karzai only controls 31% of Afghanistan! In this lawless land, who can ever hope to accomplish anything? Not that it wasn't worth pursuing, but since we were warring on terror, in general, Iraq looked like a prime, select target, WMD and all. FIND THESE WMD's, NOW!