Of all of the things to catch up with in the political cosmos, I’m going to be bringing my blog back to life with a spirited discussion about the Kurds.

“Why the Kurds?” you ask.  Because, out of the entire deck making up the house of cards of global politics, the Kurds are the card that could send the whole thing crashing down.  Not the situation in Afghanistan; that’s a sticky wicket we won’t be batting out of soon.  Not the turbulence of retrenching rogue states like North Korea and the Russian Commonwealth; those bad boys can be bought off or it’ll come to blows way down the line.  Not even the global economic crisis - on that point, I assure you we’re heading south in the months to come, and the best we can hope for is a parachute.

But the Kurds could topple the whole mess even faster.  They are the weakest link.  And while everything else is sliding down, it is the Kurds who can pitch us over the edge in the months to come.

The reason why, is because the Kurds have long been the red-headed step child of the Gulf region.  Allies against Saddam by virtue of necessity, they went back to doctrine-based in-fighting as soon as the statue fell in Baghdad. They have since resisted any form of democratic control - from the Iraqi capitol or from the possibility of local parliaments. Now that elections have taken place, the Kurds stand to be as marginalized a party in politics as they were ethnically.

This leaves them ready, willing and able to do what they’re used to - take up arms and seize back their scrap of land from the Iraqi state, our ostensible ally.  Things could turn into a shooting war very soon.

So what? Well, it wouldn’t just be an internal conflict.  Iraq isn’t the only nation that the Kurds seek to draw into a firefight.  The Kurdish claim to space extends over two other states the USA definitely doesn’t want caught in this tug of war - one because it’s an ally; the other because it’s as close to a sworn enemy as America gets these days: Turkey and Iran.

Israel may be the US media sweetheart of the Middle East, but it’s Turkey that bends whenever the US asks an ally in the region to grab ankles. Though we couldn’t sign them up for full access rights when the Coalition of the Willing was preparing to tangle with Saddam, Turkey allows us everything from military bases to political crackdowns.  The few lines in the sand they draw and mean it involve their dealings with ethic minorities inside their borders - most significantly, these days, the Kurds who’re trading bullets and bombs with them over the southeast end of their country.

Iran is also locked in skirmishes with Kurds from time to time.  And Iran would be none too keen on having to grapple with the USA - or a US ally - in the Kurdish-run regions of its state.

The likelihood goes grim, and it goes like this: The Kurds resist the Iraqi capitol.  The Iraqis respond with military force.  In order to do so, they need to attack into Iran and Turkey.  Iran and Turkey mobilize in kind.

The result is a super-sized Charlie-Foxtrot in a state where the US was just beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  It means having to talk at the same table with Turkey and Iran.  It means a possibility of permanent instability in Iraq’s north.

So, no, it doesn’t mean you’ll be bankrupt.  It doesn’t mean global nuclear warfare.  But it does mean that yet another flashpoint could flare up in a big way, at a time when the US desperately needs a way out.

For the better part of the last month, I have been simply stunned by the change that the American electorate brought into being. I have been beyond commentary. I’ve just been admiring.

America, there is no overstating how profound the choice of Obama was. It means so much in terms of civil rights, meritocracy and decency in political discourse. But most significantly are two changes that will be taking place with such rapidity and intensity, we will soon hardly recognize our world.

One is the impact on America’s body politic – an impact that will, after generations of division, bring us together. This may sound simplistic, but you can see it happening already: Obama has, through his choices of advisors and vision for legislation, begun to dispel the notion of an opposition party. Now there are two parties, cooperating, and the fringe that clings bitterly to the politics of the past.

A recent NPR interview with a Republican strategist spoke directly to this phenomenon: The strategist talked about how Obama has co-opted many of the issues of the Right. Among them are reducing wasteful spending in government, defending gun rights, reducing abortions and taking a new, effective stance against terrorism and greater threats to American security. The strategist lamented this, given that these priorities of policy demands that Republicans either hold to their values and work with the administration, or take a more “conservative” stance socially in order to distinguish themselves.

We’ve seen it happening over the last month. Moderate conservatives such as those I’ve identified here on the blog are speaking with cautious favorability of the promise of Obama’s leadership. Meanwhile, staunch conservatives such as Norquist and Dobson are retrenching, trying to drum their flagging base into a more fervent condition with the old, campaign tropes of Obama being some manner of nebulous, foreign threat. The latter perception will not last long, and the former will find leaner numbers as people are clearly put off by the militant social conservatism of the far Right.

Perhaps the most corrosive element to the efforts of the Right to distinguish themselves as a firm opposition is the fact that Obama has seized upon some of the best talent of the middle. On the middle-right, we see figures like General Brent Scowcroft, Bush I’s NSA, and men like Paul Volker and General James Jones being brought in to be principal advisors to Obama. Secretary of Defense Gates being a holdover underscores this prevailing attitude of the Obama administration – that pragmatism and merit trumps political alignment.

So the statement is clearer now than ever: Obama wants the people of quality, the people with ideas, not political hacks. Even his appointment of various Clinton operatives suggests this – he wants the people, like Rahm Emmanuel, who can produce results.  Above all, 

Politics as we knew it in the spin-heavy, partisan, mercenary ways of the last twenty years is over.

Secondly, the major change will be in the globe. And unlike the post-partisan attitudes of the administration’s public veneer, this is a change that only the select that voted for Obama will be able to take credit for.

For yes, Obama’s politics will be one of unity, but it was the moment of his election – and that alone – that inspires the rest of the globe’s change.

That instant proved to the rest of the globe that America will no longer be taking a turn for the regressive. In the moment of electing Obama, a vast percentage of the electorate declared that America is still a nation of firsts in civil liberties.

We are now first in a man of color leading a major Western Empire. We stood for a first when it came to embracing a multi-cultural man. And we were first to confront the greatest ill of our past – slavery – by appointing a black man as our President.

This is no mean achievement: For the last eight years, the world has been waiting for us to seize the reins of progressiveness that we had led the charge with for the last century. Recognize, America, that in the era of World War II, we stood for grand values that inspired populations across the globe:

We stood for being prudent while still supporting the unfortunates in our society, as with the New Deal. We stood for placing the protection of the minority over the demagoguery of the majority, as with the civil rights movement. We led the globe in international organizations that helped the needy and could intervene if necessary in a crisis, as with the UN and NATO. And above all, we stood for the ideal that all men were created equal.

Now, electing the colored child of a single mother from the lower middle class, those that cast a vote for Obama have reminded the globe that we are still the champions of those values – those values that, above our prosperity and our custodianship, the world held dear.

We declared the era of state-sanctioned torture is over. The era of profligate corporate welfare at the expense of the masses is over. Isolationism and adherence to regressive international ideas, is over.

But this message was spoken only by those who voted for Obama – that is the honor that his supporters alone bear. For even though the opposition can support or curtail the events of the future, they cannot claim to be party to the awesome statement in favor of civil rights and global liberty that Obama represents.

They fought it; some hard, some casually and some tacitly, but all of them were opposition to it. They are numbered among those that fought the best of history – the judges who voted for segregation on the Supreme Court during Brown v. Board of Education; among the supporters of poor Goldwater who stood for separate facilities being allowed as States Rights; among those who passed Constitutional reforms against interracial marriage.

In light of this separation, I will be changing the title and mission of this blog. With an administration that I clearly favor in power, there is no playing the moderate. I chose my side in this election, and though I chose it because it was biparistan – even post-partisan – I will not pretend to not be aligned. I made my choice and chose to stand for liberty and progress.

I welcome those that stood against it, against the greatest values to ever inspire the globe, to work with me in this new time of unity.

I was ardent for change. I fought ardently against those who fought against it. I will be ardent to enact it the only way we can – together.

Since 8:00pm PST on November 4th, 2008, my mind has been preoccupied with a certain soaring sensation. Considering its hard to be lyrical or profound while flying, I’ve yet to produce a fitting denouement to the awesome, world-altering events of Barack Obama’s victory in the Presidential race.

In nod to this happy incapacity, and in fun-loving spirit, I present the kind of weirdo video that gets spread around the Internets for your brief viewing enjoyment:

To paraphrase Nixon, “If the President’s dog does it, it’s not illegal.”

I suspect - and hope - Barney lives to be deceptively benign-looking another day.

This is neither the crest of the wave, its source or its break, but the view from here is glorious all the same:

Unnoticed under the fireworks and fanfare of the election, a significant military development lit up the Middle East desert in a brief, surgically-shaped flash: The United States military attacked Syria.

Official media in Damascus reported earlier that the helicopter-borne troops from Iraq launched an assault on a building site in Al-Sukkiraya village, which lies just eight kilometres (five miles) from the border on the Euphrates river and close to the Iraqi town of Al-Qaim, a stronghold of Al-Qaeda and other insurgents.

Despite the hundreds of civilians who turned out for funereal processions and anti-American chanting the day after the assault, I see this assault into Syria as a good thing. The Global War on Terror demands a certain fluidity when borders are concerned, with one crucial caveat: We can’t use so much force that the nation whose sovereignty we violated actually begins to go into war mode against us. As strapped for cash, grunts and allies as we are, we can’t afford Syria beginning to shift into a massive anti-American paramilitary campaign, let alone slapping down a declaration of capital-W “War.”

But just as war is defined as “diplomacy by other means,” diplomacy is an important instrument of war. And so, just as we have to recognize the permeability of borders in a global war against a non-state actor like Al-Qaeda, we have to recognize that there are too legitimate militaries on either side of each border.

This operation underscores the unilateralism - the go-it-alone approach - of the Bush administration. Duplicitous as they are distrustful, they pour billions of our tax dollars into military aid for nations like Pakistan and Egypt, while using the other hand to slip SpecFor in through the back door for off-the-books strikes like the one on October 27th. This has to change.

Fortunately for America’s future as a military hegemon, we have a powerful change agent: General Petraeus.

…Petraeus proposed visiting Syria shortly after taking over as the top U.S. commander for the Middle East.

The idea was swiftly rejected by Bush administration officials at the White House, State Department and the Pentagon.

Petraeus is, as I’ve mentioned, the Pompey Magnus of our times - a cunning general, as superb in organizing as in personal glory, who realizes that war doesn’t mean an end to the “carrot and stick” approach of diplomacy; just bigger sticks and carrots. He bought off the Big Bad in Iraq - the Sunni militias - and so won them to our side; he out-manuevered the pro-Ayatollah Iraqi regime and swept their Iran-backed security forces out of power; he’s seen to the isolation of al-Q in Iraq.

Now he has his sights set on getting the Syrians on the right team and playing hard for our “big win,” looking to get Syria policing its own borders along with us, rather than against us. And with a man as persistent as Petraeus, there’s hope for the future despite the lock-down of the present Administration.

Petraeus would likely find a more receptive audience for his approach in an Obama administration, given Barack Obama’s views on the need to engage America’s enemies.

So keep those fingers crossed even tighter for an Obama victory three days from now, dear reader. Not only would it mean the views of most prudent economists and strategists will be vindicated, rather than quashed as under a McCain-Palin rule.  It would mean that our best General, our best hope to untangle the gory agonies we trod into overseas, would be listened to rather than used as a showpiece.

I was intending to write on the US raids in Syria today, exploring the implications and extolling the boldness of American armed forces.  Then Christmas came early.  My favorite center-right magazine, the aptly named The Economist, endorsed Obama.

I was a bit surprised, I admit.  The flagship issue of The Economist is globalization, and they worried about the potential protectionism of an Obama presidency.  But as the article indicates, the qualities of competency and integrity trumped any one issue in this race.  I post it here, in entirety, for your benefit:

It’s time

Oct 30th 2008
From The Economist print edition

America should take a chance and make Barack Obama the next leader of the free world

AP

IT IS impossible to forecast how important any presidency will be. Back in 2000 America stood tall as the undisputed superpower, at peace with a generally admiring world. The main argument was over what to do with the federal government’s huge budget surplus. Nobody foresaw the seismic events of the next eight years. When Americans go to the polls next week the mood will be very different. The United States is unhappy, divided and foundering both at home and abroad. Its self-belief and values are under attack.

For all the shortcomings of the campaign, both John McCain and Barack Obama offer hope of national redemption. Now America has to choose between them. The Economist does not have a vote, but if it did, it would cast it for Mr Obama. We do so wholeheartedly: the Democratic candidate has clearly shown that he offers the better chance of restoring America’s self-confidence. But we acknowledge it is a gamble. Given Mr Obama’s inexperience, the lack of clarity about some of his beliefs and the prospect of a stridently Democratic Congress, voting for him is a risk. Yet it is one America should take, given the steep road ahead.

Thinking about 2009 and 2017

The immediate focus, which has dominated the campaign, looks daunting enough: repairing America’s economy and its international reputation. The financial crisis is far from finished. The United States is at the start of a painful recession. Some form of further fiscal stimulus is needed, though estimates of the budget deficit next year already spiral above $1 trillion. Some 50m Americans have negligible health-care cover. Abroad, even though troops are dying in two countries, the cack-handed way in which George Bush has prosecuted his war on terror has left America less feared by its enemies and less admired by its friends than it once was.

Yet there are also longer-term challenges, worth stressing if only because they have been so ignored on the campaign. Jump forward to 2017, when the next president will hope to relinquish office. A combination of demography and the rising costs of America’s huge entitlement programmes—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—will be starting to bankrupt the country. Abroad a greater task is already evident: welding the new emerging powers to the West. That is not just a matter of handling the rise of India and China, drawing them into global efforts, such as curbs on climate change; it means reselling economic and political freedom to a world that too quickly associates American capitalism with Lehman Brothers and American justice with Guantánamo Bay. This will take patience, fortitude, salesmanship and strategy.

At the beginning of this election year, there were strong arguments against putting another Republican in the White House. A spell in opposition seemed apt punishment for the incompetence, cronyism and extremism of the Bush presidency. Conservative America also needs to recover its vim. Somehow Ronald Reagan’s party of western individualism and limited government has ended up not just increasing the size of the state but turning it into a tool of southern-fried moralism.

The selection of Mr McCain as the Republicans’ candidate was a powerful reason to reconsider. Mr McCain has his faults: he is an instinctive politician, quick to judge and with a sharp temper. And his age has long been a concern (how many global companies in distress would bring in a new 72-year-old boss?). Yet he has bravely taken unpopular positions—for free trade, immigration reform, the surge in Iraq, tackling climate change and campaign-finance reform. A western Republican in the Reagan mould, he has a long record of working with both Democrats and America’s allies.

If only the real John McCain had been running

That, however, was Senator McCain; the Candidate McCain of the past six months has too often seemed the victim of political sorcery, his good features magically inverted, his bad ones exaggerated. The fiscal conservative who once tackled Mr Bush over his unaffordable tax cuts now proposes not just to keep the cuts, but to deepen them. The man who denounced the religious right as “agents of intolerance” now embraces theocratic culture warriors. The campaigner against ethanol subsidies (who had a better record on global warming than most Democrats) came out in favour of a petrol-tax holiday. It has not all disappeared: his support for free trade has never wavered. Yet rather than heading towards the centre after he won the nomination, Mr McCain moved to the right.

Meanwhile his temperament, always perhaps his weak spot, has been found wanting. Sometimes the seat-of-the-pants method still works: his gut reaction over Georgia—to warn Russia off immediately—was the right one. Yet on the great issue of the campaign, the financial crisis, he has seemed all at sea, emitting panic and indecision. Mr McCain has never been particularly interested in economics, but, unlike Mr Obama, he has made little effort to catch up or to bring in good advisers (Doug Holtz-Eakin being the impressive exception).

The choice of Sarah Palin epitomised the sloppiness. It is not just that she is an unconvincing stand-in, nor even that she seems to have been chosen partly for her views on divisive social issues, notably abortion. Mr McCain made his most important appointment having met her just twice.

Ironically, given that he first won over so many independents by speaking his mind, the case for Mr McCain comes down to a piece of artifice: vote for him on the assumption that he does not believe a word of what he has been saying. Once he reaches the White House, runs this argument, he will put Mrs Palin back in her box, throw away his unrealistic tax plan and begin negotiations with the Democratic Congress. That is plausible; but it is a long way from the convincing case that Mr McCain could have made. Had he become president in 2000 instead of Mr Bush, the world might have had fewer problems. But this time it is beset by problems, and Mr McCain has not proved that he knows how to deal with them.

Is Mr Obama any better? Most of the hoopla about him has been about what he is, rather than what he would do. His identity is not as irrelevant as it sounds. Merely by becoming president, he would dispel many of the myths built up about America: it would be far harder for the spreaders of hate in the Islamic world to denounce the Great Satan if it were led by a black man whose middle name is Hussein; and far harder for autocrats around the world to claim that American democracy is a sham. America’s allies would rally to him: the global electoral college on our website shows a landslide in his favour. At home he would salve, if not close, the ugly racial wound left by America’s history and lessen the tendency of American blacks to blame all their problems on racism.

So Mr Obama’s star quality will be useful to him as president. But that alone is not enough to earn him the job. Charisma will not fix Medicare nor deal with Iran. Can he govern well? Two doubts present themselves: his lack of executive experience; and the suspicion that he is too far to the left.

There is no getting around the fact that Mr Obama’s résumé is thin for the world’s biggest job. But the exceptionally assured way in which he has run his campaign is a considerable comfort. It is not just that he has more than held his own against Mr McCain in the debates. A man who started with no money and few supporters has out-thought, out-organised and outfought the two mightiest machines in American politics—the Clintons and the conservative right.

Political fire, far from rattling Mr Obama, seems to bring out the best in him: the furore about his (admittedly ghastly) preacher prompted one of the most thoughtful speeches of the campaign. On the financial crisis his performance has been as assured as Mr McCain’s has been febrile. He seems a quick learner and has built up an impressive team of advisers, drawing in seasoned hands like Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. Of course, Mr Obama will make mistakes; but this is a man who listens, learns and manages well.

It is hard too nowadays to depict him as soft when it comes to dealing with America’s enemies. Part of Mr Obama’s original appeal to the Democratic left was his keenness to get American troops out of Iraq; but since the primaries he has moved to the centre, pragmatically saying the troops will leave only when the conditions are right. His determination to focus American power on Afghanistan, Pakistan and proliferation was prescient. He is keener to talk to Iran than Mr McCain is— but that makes sense, providing certain conditions are met.

Our main doubts about Mr Obama have to do with the damage a muddle-headed Democratic Congress might try to do to the economy. Despite the protectionist rhetoric that still sometimes seeps into his speeches, Mr Obama would not sponsor a China-bashing bill. But what happens if one appears out of Congress? Worryingly, he has a poor record of defying his party’s baronies, especially the unions. His advisers insist that Mr Obama is too clever to usher in a new age of over-regulation, that he will stop such nonsense getting out of Congress, that he is a political chameleon who would move to the centre in Washington. But the risk remains that on economic matters the centre that Mr Obama moves to would be that of his party, not that of the country as a whole.

He has earned it

So Mr Obama in that respect is a gamble. But the same goes for Mr McCain on at least as many counts, not least the possibility of President Palin. And this cannot be another election where the choice is based merely on fear. In terms of painting a brighter future for America and the world, Mr Obama has produced the more compelling and detailed portrait. He has campaigned with more style, intelligence and discipline than his opponent. Whether he can fulfil his immense potential remains to be seen. But Mr Obama deserves the presidency.

As a political junkie, I’ve been put into the equivalent of a K-hole by this last week of politics. Between the high hopes and the dire stakes, my veins are pumping pure, pixelated China White.

On the off chance you’re feeling the same, I thought I’d share this soothing session between Obama and Charlie Gibson. It displays the earnest, visionary bi-partisanship and prudence that drew me to Obama’s campaign nearly two years ago.

McCain’s appearance on ‘Meet the Press’ was a pleasant Sunday morning experience, akin to tea and crumpets. The genial affair was like one would visualize an after-dinner political chat between the kindly uncle and the wound-too-tight uncle.

Geniality took a sharp dive, of course, when McCain felt the heat on his feet. As soon as Brokaw brought up the perks and tax adjustments of his plan, McCain decided instead to insult Obama’s.

In classic form, he lied at every turn - so many turns it felt like ‘Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.’

Obama would fine small businesses on health care. Lie. Obama would fine people with children who don’t get health care for them. Big lie. Obama voted to raise taxes. Little lie; at least a substantial and slanderous crimping of the truth. Obama loves raising them taxes. Lie.

This kind of soiled the air, and Brokaw was not afraid to wade into the muck. As soon as McCain floated out his quavering jab about “spreading the wealth around,” Brokaw threw right back into his face two facts that wiped the color right out of it:

One, Reagan raised taxes during a recession, and scholars believe it saved the economy. And two, McCain’s own plan “spreads the wealth around” plenty, with massive nationalization plans, buying of failed mortgages and bailouts that would have Lenin winking approvingly right back at Sarah Palin.

McCain just continued to lustily beat the red baiting drum. But I think any creature with higher brain function and an honest heart got the point - by his own definition, he’s as much a Commie, if not more, than Obama.

Of course, the real point is that such characterizations are almost as insipid as they are unhelpful. Socialism - get your gasps out of your system, as I’ll be saying it alot - is a vital part of our nation. It been since Das Kapital and similar tomes inspired people to such radical movements as:

Public fire departments. Public education. Public law enforcement. Public roads.

And of course, the huge elephant in the room is that every medicare, medicaid, social security, disability or unemployment recipient has Karl Marx as the Godfather of their livelihood. If it hadn’t been for hordes of unwashed and fiery-headed intellectuals marching in the streets against the billy clubs and mercenaries of the 19th and early 20th century rich, the state wouldn’t be dropping so much as a penny for the sake of the wounded, the helpless or the elderly.

So McCain’s snide remarks are dumb, and a barb in the shoe of any path to policy in this nation - whether to the left or the right. Without giving due humility and appreciation to the contributions of the state to the free market and society, nobody can think in the appropriate terms to run a country.

For the road we walk was paved by revolutionaries and all manner of unsavory characters. And even if we had a flat tax and paid for the barest of our entitlement programs, we would still be “spreading the wealth around.”

We are guided with that honesty, or, like John McCain, we’re getting in the way.

I’ll just say this, to begin:

The notion of equivalence in all instances is not only a political danger, but a grave moral one.

I’ll leave the rest to Rick Sanchez:

Alexander, so frustrated by the incessant rebellion in the people of Sogdiana, sank into dark dreams of conspiracy, butchered friends for the sake of his paranoia, and finally slouched his unstoppable army off to the south in search of conquests that might stay conquered.

Not much has changed in Sogdiana, save for the name. It is still factious, conniving, bleak, arduous and ruthless. It just happens to be called ‘Afghanistan’ these days.

Afghanistan is miserable for America. There is a myth that Afghanistan was “the good war,” and that we bestowed some noble gift of liberty on its people by invading. That myth is rapidly withering on the cold slopes of the Hindu Kush.

Women’s rights are appalling - the reports of women only taking their burkhas off for the western media’s cameras were largely true, and the “bee-keeper suit” is still going strong. Suicide, honor-killing and punitive gang rapes are not only common, they are stronger than ever due to the lawlessness and poverty caused by America’s half-hearted war against the Taliban.

A particularly nefarious byproduct of the war was the re-emergence of the Afghanistan opium market. Virtually annihilated by the funless Taliban, our new regime has turned a blind eye to poppy cultivation, and Afghanistan is back on top of the world for drug production.

Afghanistan dominates the drug market, with the highest production of opium in the world–93 percent–and ranks last in terms of human development.

Human development isn’t helped by the fact that many rural Afghans - and Afghanistan is mostly rural - have to take out loans to buy poppy crops to plant, and the only people handing out loans for that high-yield, high-profit harvest are the drug lords. The farmers have nothing to use as collateral, save their daughters. So when the US comes along and napalms a poppy field, it usually directly leads to some pre-adolescent girl being sent to a life of sex slavery under a drug lord.

Now the family can only wait for the 45-year-old drugrunner to come back for his prize. [10 year old] Khalida wanted to be a teacher someday, but that has become impossible. “It’s my fate,” the child says.

Even without the element of loans involved, the abduction of children for sex slavery or organ harvesting has become epidemic.

Toppling the law and order that had been suppressing such activities has had little return for America. After all, we’ve spent the last seven years putting the most hazardous country in the world on a back burner. What did we think would happen when we refused to go into the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan after bin Ladin?

Al-Qaeda is stronger than ever in Pakistan, in terms of organization, recruitment abroad and funding, and is pouring money into. Across the virtually nonexistent border, their Taliban forays control half the country.

This permeation of the Afghan society allows them to employ a nifty new tactic: Using our air strikes to commit their terror bombings. Given that we rely on Afghan militia intelligence to direct our Special Forces air strikes, the Taliban has been masquerading as friendly militias, or using proxies, to call in air strikes on civilians - usually on groups comprised largely of children.

…the Afghan interior ministry issued a statement declaring that “76 people, all civilians and most of them women and children were martyred… 19 women, 7 men and the rest children all under 15 years of age”.

So, the end result of the usual cost-cutting, over-reaching, debt-dependent philosophy of the administration in Afghanistan?

We have success, but it’s only anecdotal.  Our Special Forces can still succeed at narrowly defined missions, just not affect the overall battlefield.  Kabul may be under siege, but it’s getting wealthier.  On the other side of the scales, however, is catastrophe:

Worse treatment of women than ever. Rampant lawlessness and poverty leading to the most depraved practices against children. An al-Qaeda stronger and more global than before 9/11.

The conclusion I draw from this is that occupying Afghanistan is not something to be done by halves.

You don’t just stick an oil company good old boy in power, stifle the press and call it done. You don’t let your enemy have safe haven while underfunding the shoe-string forces you leave in place - just enough hold back the flood. Above all, you don’t stay longer than you have to.

You get the job done, make sure it’s done, and get out. If you stay at the table too long, the house will win. It always wins.

Just ask Alexander.  Just ask the U.S.S.R.

Looking at the factors going into this election, Obama supporters find themselves in a curious position:

We have every proven reason to worry, and every theoretical reason to be optimistic.

What I mean by this, is that every factor Obama depends on for success has, in the past, been proven to fail: The youth vote, the minority vote, new Democrat registrants - they dropped the ball in 2000 and downright fumbled in 2004. No matter the grassroots organizing, the celebrity endorsements, Democrats have failed by relying on those on the margins of the establishment. The elite knows how to get out Rove’s vaunted “base.”

But this year, we’re promised by polling data and registrations, that a flood of activity in the key Democratic Party constituencies has been seen: Perception of the candidates aligns for Obama. Registration aligns for Obama. Public fundraising - meaning from private individuals, rather than Political Action Committees or lobbyists; a gauge of general support - is vastly for Obama. Key demographics, especially youth and minorities, are strong for Obama.

All the pieces are set up, but will they all come into play like they need to when need be? Or will they fail to appear, like before?

Over the last few days, that question has been put into play. Astoundingly, the omens for strong Obama support have been tested and triumphed. Those tests have been in early voting.

Early voting is traditionally dominated by Republicans, by a lean but consistent margin. This year, however, Democrats have been taking over this crucial voting population. By a ratios ranging from a 6-point spread to a whopping 3 to 2 in places like Florida, and even higher in Nevada, early voters are going Democratic. In short, the early vote is turning out to be a battleground landslide for Obama.

This is an even bigger boost than the theories above might have hoped for. Why? Because no one had predicted that the early voter bloc - a largely older, whiter population - would be going so powerfully for Obama. The very demographics he is thought to be weakest in, he is pulling remarkable levels of proven support from.

Obama supporters should, of course, run this race as if we need to sprint just to secure a photo finish. In order for this momentum to continue, let alone be consummated, everyone will have to sign up for phone trees, write e-mails to friends and donate - not just the engaged; everyone.

Still, there is now some amazing developments suggesting that all that hard work might not, for the first time in eight years, be in vain.

Today, McCain received the endorsement every American candidate cringes from: Al-Qaeda’s.

On a password-protected Web site, behind encrypted protection, a message in Arabic urged those that knew of this secret extremist enclave on the ‘net to do what they could in supporting McCain’s presidential bid. This included terrorist attacks which, they noted, would vastly increase McCain’s chance of winning, as he would be seen by the American people as a better instrument of vengeance than Obama.

“It will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against Al Qaeda,” said the posting, attributed to Muhammad Haafid, a longtime contributor to the password-protected site. “Al Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America.”

This is not nearly so significant to the race as a statement as the underlying strategy of it is. It underscores the principle that every guerrilla fighter understands and that many Americans tragically ignore or fail to grasp: That an Empire is not defeated by decisive battle, but by being drained to death.

And this is key when facing an opponent like al-Qaeda, if one seeks to actually achieve victory, and not just look like it: Your enemy wants you to fight them with all that you have; to get hysterical, compromise values, make shaky alliances, tie up vast numbers of troops on inconclusive missions and, above all, spend. Spending without the cash to support it is what cuts the throat of empires - not military defeat in the field.

It has been the same through history. Let’s blow dust off the books and look at the all time greats - the empires that not only hold a candle to America in scope and resources, but surpass it in longevity.

We can start with the Assyrians. They were unmatched in warfare, but mighty Ashurbanipal took it a few steps too far - he got involved in two wars at the same time, Babylonia and Elam, while spending like a mad fool at home on luxury goods and art. As soon as he “left office” by keeling over, his empire slid into economic decline until it was picked apart a few decades later. Ashurbanipal never lost a fight, but by pouring money into the shadow boxing in Egypt, Elam and Babylonia while not looking to his budget, he lost an empire 300 years old.

Then Rome, the classic example. Rome collapsed under its own weight - a bloated giant engaged in bigger and bigger spending projects, teetering on a foundation of abysmally unequal wealth and catastrophically uneducated, hopeless immigrant populations. It had been masterful at spreading economy, organization and opportunity; in its decline, it shunned education, shunned integration, and was constantly at war. Like the Assyrians, it seldom lost on the field, but ultimately crumbled by spending too much and getting too little in return.

Even a modern example is present: Britain. Britain won World War II, but lost its empire in the process of playing the bulwark against fascism in the West. It didn’t crumble because, ever the clever investor, it sold off its Empire in the nick of time. But winning World War I and World War II meant going all-in and losing its chips, leaving America and the USSR to run the table. A dominance of nearly two centuries came to a close gracefully, but to a close it came - thanks again to “victory.”

So when McCain talks of “victory” in the nebulous, bottomless terms he does, I cringe. I cringe not as an anti-war activist - I’m all for projecting our military might abroad to fulfill ends both selfless and selfish. But it’s because I love to be able to annihilate our enemies and throw our weight around politically that I deplore McCain’s comic book talk.

For that way, dear reader, lies collapse. With $1 trillion dollars paid into Iraq for no appreciable strategic gain, and Afghanistan going from a mere catastrophe into a full-blown apocalypse, we don’t need to just snarl, “All in” whenever our bet is called. We need to realize that in order to last as an Empire, we need to have a strategy that’s focused on lasting. And we need to realize just how fragile our dominance is - and what is a threat to it.

“Victory no matter what” while breaking the pipes of government revenue is a threat - a far, far greater threat than a planner who looks to cut losses in a losing venture.

It wasn’t the courtiers who counseled peace in Assyria that destroyed its unstoppable three-century reign - it was the “rah rah” crowd that cheered on a two-front war without end.

It wasn’t the Persians who destroyed Rome in some arrow-swarmed Armageddon in the desert; it was the Senators who kept chasing the Persians through the Iraqi desert with massive armies for decades, while raking in the ducats and leaving the “barbarian” immigrants to educate themselves.

It wasn’t the Axis that destroyed Britain; Britain sacrificed itself.

And in the end, it won’t be man with a prudent eye and a frugal time table that gives al-Qaeda a chance to exhaust us to death.

It’ll be the man who always says victory’s over the horizon, and leaves the record travel expenses to the credit card.

A lot of funny people aren’t finding a lot funny about these last, venomous throes of the election. Fortunately for the viewing public, they have excellent senses of humor about it.

John Stewart, for instance, doesn’t find it very funny at all that the McCain campaign decided to divide America into the “real,” “pro-Americans” of the small towns, and the rest of us. He devoted a show to the subject; one of his better ones.

And older comedians - from Danny DeVito to Carl Reiner - have put together a spot urging voters to get serious and embrace Obama.

On a yet more serious note, I offer another scaled-down installment of my study of the tectonic shift by GOP mainstays away from the deranged direction of the Party and toward Obama:

No less than 26 of the papers that endorsed Bush in 2004, have endorsed Obama this year - many of them conservative.

Not every GOP prominent is lumped with Limbaugh, sneering at Powell’s endorsement as “race patriotism” and swiveling spasmodically on policy positions. Just as we continue to see the violent bent of McCain’s loyalists spike higher, we see the moral and the moderates in their ranks showing spine.

A particular point of contention has been the infamous McCain “robocall” - the ones that claim Obama “works with” a murderous terrorist organization and threaten the annihilation of America’s democracy by a socialist regime.

McCain isn’t backing down on those; he says they’re true. But GOP officials in the states whose populations have had the calls inflicted on them - much to the dismay of parents, let me tell you - are neither support of the McCain camp’s claims of truth or their tone.

First to speak out were Maine’s two Senators - Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Collins resigned from McCain’s campaigns and Snowe, McCain’s co-chair, roundly condemned the tactics and urged the campaign to stop them.

“She feels they are regrettable and inappropriate, and these tactics should be suspended immediately,” said John Richter, Snowe’s chief of staff.

McCain replied by insisting he was “proud” of the campaign, which to me sounds either like a knock against his honesty or against his morality. GOP State Senator Barbara Lorman didn’t cotton to either, and responded by a step stronger than mere denunciation: She endorsed Obama.

“While my admiration for Senator Obama has grown with his positive approach to addressing the challenges facing our nation, my disappointment with the McCain campaigned has deepened. The negative tactics are inappropriate, downright dishonorable and have no place in the State of Wisconsin.”

This is how movements begin. People’s minds change because their hearts sicken with the ways things are, and they can no longer tolerate the abusive din they’re forced to live in. In essence, people are forced to change.

The first, the bravest, are beginning to emerge. And yet, this is a form of division - separating those who will not stomach assaults on patriotism, fear-mongering and disgusting lies from those who embrace them.

And since this last weekend, when Palin, Pfotenhauer and Bachmann all began talking about the “real America” in terms of contrast, their supporters have become even more bold and vicious.

Rather than denounce, they yell louder. The most recent rally in North Carolina opened with these words from Republican Representative Robin Hayes:

“liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God.”

In Virginia, McCain-Palin supporters tore up a 78-year-old African-American Baptist minister’s Obama lawn sign and replaced it with a Confederate flag, to show who the “real Americans” are.

And in North Carolina, where Obama was greeted with cries of “Socialist, socialist, socialist,” and told to get out by one woman, McCain-Palin supporters took it to another level.

They didn’t just hang him in effigy like in Ohio. They shot a bear cub to death in front of a university building, then pasted Obama’s name all over it.

…maintenance workers found the 75-pound bear cub shot to death in front of the school’s administration building at the entrance to campus. The Obama yard signs were stapled together and placed over the bear’s head.

So we are seeing a new kind of division in America. It is not the “pro-America” and “anti-America” that frames the minds of Palin and Bachmann.

It is between those Americans who speak, struggle, decide against what is wrong, and those who are “absolutely proud” of it - those who perpetuate it and commit it.

We heard which side McCain stands on. Now it just remains to hear from you on November 4th.

I just can’t find cause to promote John McCain. I was dared to by a friend, challenged to for the sake of more balance on a number of occasions, but it’s beyond me. I could do it as an intellectual exercise, like back in high school when you had to debate positions like keeping segregation legal, but not honestly.

I can, however, honestly compliment some of the people on his staff. Today, confronted with the rising tide of racial suspicion among the McCain crowd, McCain supporter Daniel Zubairi and some pro-McCain Muslims fought back. They and a couple of other outraged souls called to task a fellow supporter who was deriding Obama on the basis of the old “Manchurian Muslim” lie:

Good of him to stand up. The press, of course, took immediate attention.

The reaction by the McCain camp has been to shove Zubairi in front of the press as soon as they crammed him full of talking points.  It’s true love on the 24-hour channels - a party loyalist taking a stand for our nation’s proud legacy of diversity.

The media’s message: Some of the people on the fringe of the campaign deserve recognition for virtue. Not the tire-slashing, effigy-hanging, slur-yelling, voter-intimidating crowd, but this group.  They redeem, representing the McCain campaign’s beating heart.

Then again, do they?

Sure, they seem to shout down this particular pusher of the “Ayers-Islam-ACORN Axis”, but aren’t they putting their time, money and passion into a campaign that’s suggesting the very same thing - in oblique, if not direct, terms?

They are, we know from the McCain camp’s own statements, backing a run for the Presidency that insinuates no less than an active terrorist conspiracy with their opponent.

They do cheer for someone who just today characterized Obama’s 3% - gasp! - tax hike for the upper brackets as “socialism,” even when he’s as chock full of tax credits, tax breaks and big spending as the other guy.

From ACORN employees signing up “Mickey Mouse” to pad their paltry paychecks being cast as “threat to the very fabric of our Democracy,” to the callous admission that a “washed up old terrorist” has no real bearing on the race despite the campaign’s fixation on him, the McCain camp behavior has been nothing but a syringe of pure vitriol, shot right into the eyeball of the viewing public.

They peddle fear in place of logic, hate in place of hope, and deride any and everything about their opponent in the most grotesque of terms, turning what’s usually a rough-and-tumble process into an exploitation film.

So no, on second thought, I’m not sure praise is due.

Standing athwart the flood of poison and fighting with all you have to stop it - threatening withdrawal of support, calling for better conduct, struggling for even a glimmer of comity - that’s an earnest effort for virtue.

Tossing out a single gesture of moral rectitude, while otherwise slandering, inspiring fear and sowing confusion is something different. I see it all the time in corporate America.

It’s called CYA.

Too bitter by half?  Perhaps.  But not far-fetched.  Proof is on the tape.

The rabble-rouser in the red shirt is literally shoulder to shoulder with Zubairi for quite some time, able to sling it like he feels it.  This is clear through glimpses of Zubairi at the beginning of the footage:

So “Charlie CHANGE” up there goes on breathing fire about Islamo-Commies in ACORN-academia clothing, all under Zubairi’s silent sentinel.  Silent, that is, until the magic words are said by the Muslim girl:

“You know what?  You just changed my mind.”

And as she stalks off, seen below, time for Zubairi to step in like the cavalry with some righteous, press-friendly indignation.

In short, unless the Kurdish-American girl hadn’t been so incensed as to stalk off and cost McCain a vote, red shirt the anti-Bolshevik bigot would still be yelling “Fire” in the theater of many an explosive imagination, with Zubairi in loyal silence by his right hand.