Dave Kelley, This election is over IF. . . .

If the national media accurately reports the Nuri al-Maliki statements backing Senator Barack Obama’s 16-month timeline for American troop withdrawals from Iraq in full and in context, this presidential election is over. Barack Obama will be the next president as the main pillar of the McCain campaign, national security cred based on experience, collapses. The cool, calm, thoughtful academician will have bested the volatile, intemperate, ill-informed neo-con military man. The country will have chosen a John Kennedy over a Curtis LeMay, former head of the Air Force, perhaps remembering JFK’s famous explanation: “IF you have to go, you want LeMay in the lead bomber. But you never want LeMay deciding whether or not you have to go." Voters will have decided that they didn’t want the fingers of John McCain on the button. Hell, he has already promised to deliver more wars seeing them as inevitable and with him as president they probably are. The words of Republican Senator from Mississippi Thad Cochran may fuel that concern: "The thought of his (McCain) being president sends a cold chill down my spine,. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me." Non-party members have come up with even more critical comments and examples of his notorious temper. But, of course, he was only 50-years old at the time and now has ironed out his anger management problems: “goose-fraba.” The country will have decided that the man who helped get us into Iraq and was promising a 100-year occupation was not the commander in chief they wanted in this complex world. The country will have found worrisome the judgment of a former soldier who still couldn’t bring himself to admit that the decision to wage the war in Iraq was THE tragic mistake, not the way we waged it. That the country did not need another leader lacking curiousity or analytical skills. That his record of graduating next to last at Annapolis after earning the nickname “McNasty” in high school or his current confusion over the most basic facts about the Shia, Social Security, taxes or an exit strategy for Iraq were troubling. Others will have been turned away by the cowboy posturing. They will be nervous about giving leadership to “little men” who are “sometimes moved by fear and pride.” The frat boy challenges and incessant talk of losing and retreating when the United States is not in danger will no longer produce the fear it once did. Incidentally, the previous quotes came from a letter of Jacqueline Kennedy to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The full quote is: "The danger which troubled my husband was that war might be started not so much by the big men as by the little ones.  While big men know the need for self-control and restraint, little men are sometimes moved more by fear and pride." John McCain is hardly noted for his self-control and restraint and that should worry all of us. The bullying, swaggering arrogance that we have seen in the Bush-McCain foreign policy will continue our downward slide around the world. Many will have thought out that McCain’s failure to clearly explain an exit strategy for what it is. An admission that he saw our soldiers there forever. If he gave actual parameters he could be challenged on them later. Better to give a non-answer than to give a clear answer. McCain’s contention that we can’t leave while there is violence and don’t need to leave if there is no violence will be exposed for what it is - permanent occupation. The McCain-Bush-GOP ridicule for timelines as embracing defeat has now been directly repudiated by the Iraqi government in the Reuters story: “Iraqi PM backs Obama troop exit plan.” Reuters quotes the Iraqi prime minister telling a German magazine that: "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes." In a fight to save his life – political amongst others - the Iraqi prime minister clearly recognized the growing hostility that an occupying force creates. "Whoever is thinking about the shorter term is closer to reality,” noted Maliki. “Artificially extending the stay of U.S. troops would cause problems." With most Iraqis believing it is OK to kill American occupiers McCain must now tell the Iraqis that American generals on the ground will determine when we leave. That should go over well in Iraq and around the world. And I don’t need to travel to Iraq to hear military propaganda from the people who lied to us about the death of Pat Tillman and the rescue of Jessica Lyncy to know that. While Democrats should be elated, they must also be concerned and committed to seeing the media do its job. Allowing the Bush administration to label the timelines as “time horizons” and “aspirational goals” will be akin to allowing them to call an escalation to the war a “surge.” Keep in mind that in the two weeks before the Iraq War CBS, ABC, NBC and PBS fed the American people 393 “experts” on the Iraq War with only three representing the anti-war point of view. The bizarre McCain analogy that Iraq could be like Korea or Germany with long occupations has been thoroughly discredited by academicians but is still repeated by McCain and spokespeople as though there was any parallel. Again, John McCain has demonstrated that his true experience in foreign affairs is the experience of being consistently wrong. The McCain and GOP spin on this repudiation of their 100-year occupation and the apparent Iranian win will be fascinating to watch – and ultimately unsuccessful. The smaller McCain pillar: “Obama will raise your taxes” has been wobbling. (See HuffingtonPost article “They Lying ” by Jared Bernstein.)  It is a clear lie unless the audience is made up of people earning more than $250,000 a year. Historically, the most successful GOP economic deception that it is impossible to shift taxes onto those with the assets to pay them is no longer playing very well. Count on the GOP continuing their war on the middle class. Of course, don’t expect them to inform voters that the average family of four will see some $40,000 spent on the optional war in Iraq in their name. Or that the annual military budget will cost that same family (after you study where the money is hidden) over $15,000 a year. All this to become less safe, free and prosperous. A GOP trifecta. The interest carrying charges for just the GOP borrowings for the past seven and a half years on an accrual basis and also considering the impact of the trade inbalances will run about $3,000 a month for that typical family of four. And the GOP believes they have established a sustainable economy and should be rehired? The ones who have killed every financial and consumer cop on the beat so their friends can make billions want eight more years! Note not the whining but the screams that emanate from the privileged when the possibility of shifting taxes to those with the money to pay them comes up. Remember that the first income taxes were not levied on income below about $88,000 in today’s dollars. After the muffled scream of horror there is always the perfunctory threat: “We will stop working 24-7 to create jobs if you force the tax rates back to those of the 1990s.” The president insisted such moves would stall the economy. Next, perhaps he will tell us that such moves would stop the robust increase in median family income over his term. The threat that the economic elites will take their capital and go home to spite the rest of us no longer quite cuts it. Always remember the GOP mantra: the poor will work harder when we keep the minimum wage at starvation levels but the rich become disheartened when their tax rates move up into the high 30% range. They become disconsolate that the lower classes do not recognize the valuable service they provide in allowing others to work for them. Sometimes they withdraw from society – even the countryclub. Some begin screaming “class war” and “the economics of envy” when commentators dare note the extreme good health of the middle class during the 1940s and 1950s when the top marginal tax rate was above 90%. Of course, they will try to recycle the threat but it just sort of falls flat. The GOP always recycles their KISS propaganda just like they do their felons. That’s why they are so much fun to debate. Once their talking points are dismantled they go into a meltdown of euphemisms. Logic flees and they return to the Pavlovian emotional frames they have paid billions to seed into the public. “They don’t want to win the war, they are going to raise your taxes, they are going to make your kids marry gay, they hate America, they want all fetuses aborted, they have made us less safe by not using the military more to show the world who is boss. They,of course, are those damn liberals and all Democrats are liberals and every new Democrat running is the most liberal in the country. Once a well-financed framing deception (i.e. war on terror, surge…) has taken hold in the public Republicans are just so damn reluctant to give it up. These are people who like high ROI (return on investment). Like Duncan Hunter explaining that those other countries who allow gays in the military don’t have tough soldiers like we do. You know those cowardly and weak Israelis and those emasculated Germans. Perhaps the long German history of pacifism has something to do with his contempt. But back to Iraq and the coming collapse of the McCain campaign – if the press is professional. Yeah, I know that is a big request for the corporate media considering the lapdog status in leading up to the war. Perhaps, Stephen Colbert’s loving lampooning of the DC press corps at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner has finally been taken to heart by Richard Cohen and others. If the corporate media does its job, McCain will be confronted with five foreign policy issues over the rest of the campaign that will take the gloss over the security cred myth: The decision to go to war was the greatest policy blunder of the government in the last 40 years. If McCain will not admit the obvious, Obama must say: “The reason John McCain is promising more wars is that he has not learned from the mistakes of Iraq. No American president should send our heroic kids off to die for their country until he or she has the courage to face our adversaries in tough negotiations bluntly telling them: you have a choice. You can talk honestly and productively with me or escalate our disagreements.” Clearly, no country on earth can successfully meet the U.S. on the field of battle – and they know it. To promote testosterone challenges with words like “losing” or “running away” when our enemies own no airplanes, ships or even artillery pieces is crass militarism. Don’t manufacture straw men of false pride to keep younh men and women dying in a needless – and illegal – war. The escalation of the war merely postponed our departure while more soldiers died. It was a holding pattern cynically developed to provide political cover for the GOP that “the war was not lost on my watch.” It is true that granting amnesty and bribes to those who previously killed our soldiers has temporarily reduced deaths to our soldiers. But ignoring what is happening on the ground in Iraq by only counting those numbers is misleading. Our presence is viewed by the Iraqis like a pressure cooker on the stove with a roaring flame under it. Their hatred and belief it is OK to kill our soldiers grows the longer we stay. Escalating the war has helped the three sides consolidate and arm themselves for the coming civil war. Nothing has been done to reduce the pressure building except to put on a tighter lid. That is not the definition of “winning.” The escalation is the eye of the storm and the hurricane has not passed. Staying in Iraq without clear timelines will cause too many young men and women to die. Current deaths are also lower because 15% of the population, some 4.5 million, has been displaced or left. The battle lines have been drawn and the sides are arming themselves with our money and training. Future wars should be fought to protect America, not as an easy way to promote policy. The Bush-McCain reliance on using American military power as the first solution to our perceived problems must be curbed. Iraq is a war that should never have been fought. And the war in Agghanistan that we were told years ago was won is now sliding out of control. Does that give you any confidence that you have been told the truth about the conflicts? Do you still agree with McCain and Bush that Iraq is central to the “war on terror?” A statement that can only be called delusional. Failure to recognize such a severe lapse in judgment indicates that similar failures will follow in the future. Congress and the President, not generals, determine the mission - when we go to war. Military experience is unrelated to making proper decisions about when to go to war. Is that clear? Isn’t that what General Wes Clark was trying to humbly suggest? Generals whether they be Curtis LeMay or David Petraeus should never tell the American public which wars should be fought. Iran has “won” the war in Iraq and throwing away more lives will not change the fact. The Bush administration with ample help from too any Dems and John McCain removed the greatest hindrance to the expansion of their power: Saddam Hussein. Israel is in a far more precarious spot with a Shia crescent spreading across the Middle East. Iraqi leaders now troop to Tehran for their blessing and consultations. In short John and George, you have made a terrible mess of things. Trying to divert the media into arguing over whether the surge “worked”, of course, with the only metric current American casualties misses the point. If you believe that current death totals tells the whole story I have some really good mortgage company stock you may be willing to buy. Redefining the mission every couple of months is getting stale. The fact is that we are now being told to leave Iraq by its elected officials. We will not have the permanent bases you have dreamed of and the oil contracts for friends are unlikely at best. Perhaps you will do better with your next war on Iran. But considering the 300 or so French Exocet and the Russian Moskit cruise missiles things will likely go far worse than in Iraq. Always remember that the same wonderful people who guaranteed you that there was “no doubt” but that Iraq had WMDs are now telling you that Iraq is getting much better. John McCain is allowed to fabricate stories about our generals traveling across Iraq in unarmed vehicles and his stroll through market places devoid of danger. He is furious that Barack Obama would make any statements about Iraq without having been there for several years. This from a man who sent our kids to die in a country where we did not even have one good clear source of intelligence. Nor, apparently did we want any for they would have provided objections that the Office of Special Plans would have to push away in the rush to folly. John McCain did not visit Iraq before sending people off to kill and die. Does he think that a trip to Iraq is a fact-finding mission? Does he seriously think that anything takes place but briefings by military people whose jobs are on the line? The hypocrisy – and ignorance - is overwhelming. Let’s see if the media free pass to John McCain continues with the press ignoring the “Get out of town soon” interview by Maliki. Dave Kelley has served as Dennis Kucinich’s chief issues and policy advisor in his presidential and congressional campaigns. An advisor to Progressive Democrats of America, he belongs to the American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries and specializes in economic and pension issues. Dave Kelley is a member of the Advisory Board of Planetary - USA.  Currently, he is working on a forthcoming book with Michael Hudson: Age of Deception – How the Financial Sector Destroyed the Middle Class. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Cell: 216 570-1080 Home 330 722-1301 Kucinich congressional campaign office 216 252-9000 Bookmark Email This Facebook del.icio.us Digg Furl Yahoo! My Web StumbleUpon Google Bookmarks Technorati reddit Comments (0) Subscribe to this comment's feed Write comment Name Email Website Title Comment smaller | bigger I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage. Write the displayed characters Add Comment