My thoughts on the 2010 Election

It could have been worse:

Republicans could have nominated non-crazy people and won elections that they lost, like the Senate seats in Nevada, Delaware and Colorado;

Had they done that, they would have controlled the Senate and probably impeached and convicted Obama (of what, who knows/cares);

Republicans could have won the New York State Governor's race, after which a bunch of my coworkers would likely have been fired (state-funded jobs);

Rand Paul's supporters could have assaulted more random people than they actually did;

It could have been better:

If the stimulus had been larger, unemployment would have been lower, and general voter anger would have been lower;

If the Democrats had held their vote on the Bush tax cuts and allowed the GOP to paint themselves as the party of deficits and rich people, they might have squeeked a few of the tight races;

Young people could have bothered to vote this time, like they did in 2008.

I'm not really disappointed in the election results since it was pretty obvious what was coming. When you lower your expectations it's hard to be disappointed!

And one final point. What sane society would run elections for positions and then forbid the candidates from campaigning on the issues? My ballot had 5 spots for elected judges. However judges aren't allowed to say "I will favor longer prison sentences" or "I will find more people guilty", so I end up watching ads for Judge Pampiano that say "vote for me because I played Little League baseball after people said I was too small!" And that was a winning ad.

Obama + Gilbert & Sullivan

Via Rochester Turning:

President Obama

Barack Obama is now President, which is awesome. His job would be hard enough if he didn't have to clean up after one of the worst US Presidents in history. But in addition to cleaning up Bush's mess, the world is changing extremely rapidly, including in the international security realm. Michael Tanji was gracious enough to invite me to contribute to a book he edited and which is now available for purchase. So purchase away! The title is "Threats in the Age of Obama" and it's published by Nimble books.  My chapter specifically looks at how a rational person can become involved in terrorism, gang violence, etc. (i.e. it's not all about "the crazy Moozlims" or "thug culture").  Click "read more" to see the book cover.

From Politics & Soccer

Thoughts on the election

Obama won!  A few observations on the election:

A lot of people are saying "Look, now this really shows that any child can grow up to be President!"  Well, no.  At the same time as the U.S. elected a black man as President, a bunch of states voted for anti-gay laws.  And plenty of ignorant people were still under the impression that Obama is a Muslim and that that's a bad thing.  And Senator (soon to be former Senator) Dole in North Carolina attacked her challenger Kay Fagan by calling her an atheist - Hagan responded by calling it "slander".  There was no Colin Powell moment in that race where someone asked "why do you care if Fagan is an atheist?"  So yes, a black man won the presidency, showing we've progressed, but you probably still can't win the Presidency if you are openly atheist, openly gay, Muslim or Arab (see a poll from 2007).

A lot of people like Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan are saying this was a transformational election, that the Democrats are building a new coalition just like Reagan in 1980 and FDR in 1932.  Well, no.  The data shows that, compared to 2004, the Democrats just got a a plus 3% handicap in pretty much every state other than states who had their own officials runing (Arizona, Alaska, Massachusetts, Hawaii), and Appalachia and Southern states (hmm).

Stratfor highlights that, even though Obama won in an electoral landslide, the popular vote was relatively close.  One reason for that is going to be Obama losing a lot of areas in the South and Appalachia by much more than Kerry did 4 years ago as you can see on this map.  The obvious explanation is racist voters voting against a black person in those areas.  However you can see that almost no counties in North Carolina and Virginia swung in McCain's direction compared to 2004, however just across the state lines, counties right next to them voted much more heavily in favor of McCain than in 2004.  And Obama targeted North Carolina and especially Virginia, and didn't really target West Virginia and Tennessee.  So I think beyond racism, there is the lesson that if you target voters even in the sticks in Appalachia, they will vote for you in greater numbers than otherwise (vindicating Howard Dean's 50 state strategy).

Basically, I don't think too much has changed in terms of electoral politics.  This election didn't show that we all united, it just showed that a mere 3% more of us reject Republican rule after one of the worst presidencies in history and instead will vote for a black guy if he promises to cut taxes and seems like a generally likeable fellow.

Campaigning in Pennsylvania

Yesterday my wife and I went down to Erie, Pennsylvania, along with her parents and 3 other friends, and we campaigned for Obama.

We were given lists of Obama supporters and went door to door reminding them to vote, telling them where their polling places were, what they needed to bring, etc. Between my wife and I, we knocked on a couple hundred doors, and talked to dozens of people. We only got two McCain supporters (both hers) and one racist (mine).*  I talked to one old lady who was angry that the person that called her from the Obama campaign was a black girl, so she hung up on her.  Then she got even more angry when she mistakenly got a letter in the mail saying "thanks for your $150 pledge".  She said it made her not want to vote, but I talked her down from the ledge (hopefully).

My wife's parents did run in to some McCain campaigners, but nothing interesting happened.

The Rochester paper had an article today about some other supporters who also went down to Pennsylvania and Ohio. Of course, as Yglesias notes, the only reason we had to go down to Pennsylvania to find people who's Presidential votes mattered is because of our screwy electoral system.

My thought as we were driving back was, after all this talk about change, what will his brand be in 2012?  My guess is something like "steadiness," or "I am not a total airhead like my challenger."  If Palin runs in 2012, would we have a sequel to Larry Flynt's Nailin Paylin?

*Apparently plenty of racists are supporting Obama for President over McCain.

Change? Experience? Character?

I started this post three weeks ago and then got lazy. I figured with the convention this week it'd be a good time to do a political post though.

This election it seems that the themes each campaign has chosen correspond to their own weaknesses. John McCain is running on "experience" despite the fact that he's never held any executive or managerial position in his life. McCain's also running on character and "putting America first," despite his temper tantrums and slime-slinging campaign ads, and the fact that his chief of staff was recently a paid agent of a foreign government.

Barack Obama is running on change, and in the primary most of the positions he laid out clearly were a break from the status quo. However since then he's bought in to three major establishment ideas: immunity for telecom companies that aided the government in illegal domestic intelligence collection; the prioritizing of Israel's short-term security over that of the Middle East as a whole; and the selection of Joe Biden as his VP pick (not a bad pick, but not exactly about "change"). His staff selection also is filled with experienced Washington people - and while you definitely need some experience so you can figure out how the place works, filling your Senate staff with Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle staffers doesn't exactly signal that you want to transform American politics.

John McCain's primary argument is that he's experienced and Obama's a novice who will mess everything up. A look at their campaigns suggests otherwise. Obama's been called "Machiavellian" due to his ruthlessly efficient campaign. Disputes within his office (and I'm assuming they exist) do not end up on the front page of the Washington Post or New York Times the way they do in McCain's campaign and the way they did in Hillary Clinton's. He has raised money hand over fist. His ground operations were by all accounts much better than those of his rivals. He's laying the groundwork for his reelection campaign in 2012 even before he's elected.

Contrast that to McCain's campaign, which is so disorganized he doesn't even know his own positions on key issues like birth control or climate change. He cycles through different cliques of advisers - does he want to be "the original maverick"? Or does he want Karl Rove's proteges to bring him evangelical votes? The answer changes every few months. After a series of attack ads against Obama, defenders of McCain were arguing that McCain was such an 'honorable' guy that his campaign would only put those ads out if McCain wasn't totally in control. It takes a special kind of campaign to reduce the candidate's five years in a torture cell to a farce.

McCain's character and integrity has been a sacred cow in the national press corps - despite reversing practically all of his political positions to win the Republican nomination, cheating on his first wife, his involvement in a corruption scandal, his repeated attempts to portray Obama as un-American, and various other failings of character.

Perhaps some campaigns decide to attack other candidates along certain lines in order to take the focus off their own failings. By attacking the other candidate's character or change credentials, maybe they hope they won't have to defend their own. I can't figure the exact reasoning but it definitely makes for a surreal campaign.

As an addendum, all this talking head crap on TV about a divided Democratic party is stupid. The Democratic party is divided over personalities, which can be much more easily mended than being divided over substance. The GOP on the other hand is divided over substance and the entire direction of party, which threatens to split the entire party in a national realignment.

Break radio silence

Brief updates:

My fiance and I are now married.

We went on a honeymoon to Alaska:
We got a kitten and named her Oomi, short for Oomingmak, the Eskimo word for Musk Ox, of which we saw some in Alaska. Oomingmak means "bearded one" - Oomi has some white fur where a beard might be. Check out her attack the blinds at the bottom of the post.

I am now back at work, but going to this conference next week.

Lots of stuff happening over in Mali and Niger re: the Tuareg rebellion, but no time to write on it. Al Jazeera has got a reporter in there and put out a few stories on it. Still ignored by the American press. On request I put up some stuff over at www.counterinsurgencylibrary.org, including a copy of my thesis (available as a pdf here) if you would like to read it.

Another blogger that just broke radio silence is Pat - go read his post about his idea of creating a money stream to politicians that can be turned off when they do bad stuff, like Obama voting for amnesty for telecom companies that broke the law. It would be easy to implement and effective at showing politicians that people actually care about issues that the media ignores.

I will get back to blogging once I figure out where to fit it in my schedule.

Now for Oomi!

Obama's VP - how about Clark

At lunch last week with a former professor of mine, we agreed that Obama should consider Wes Clark as a Vice Presidential nominee.

The benefits of Wes Clark as Obama's running mate:

• Perceived (perceptions > reality) national security experience balances Obama's inexperience
• Close ties with the Clintons help bridge the gap between the Obama people and the Clinton people
• Isn't associated with Washington politics, keeping the "change" theme going
  
• Clark's background as a poor white boy from Arkansas might help makes inroads on the bigot vote, especially if McCain picks Bobby Jindal (Brown '91!) as his VP, who is Indian
  
• Beloved by media types like Bill O'Reilly and CNN
  

The benefits of Wes Clark as Obama's actual VP:

• Very smart
• Experience with messy wars in Bosnia and Kosovo
• Knows a lot of the Pentagon people already
• Hasn't been slamming Obama in public - although he endorsed Clinton for President, he hasn't done any negative campaigning and has put most of his energy into targeted Congressional races and specific bills
• Isn't Dick Cheney
  

Another potential VP for Obama I'd like to see is Senator Jim Webb.

Obama's speech on race

I never did a "part 3" of my look at Obama's speech on race (here are parts one and two) because I've been a bit stretched for time (comps, thesis, job hunt, other preparations...). So because I don't have enough time to write anything myself, here are my brief thoughts and some excerpts from other people's reactions to the speech that I think are interesting.

First, my own brief thoughts. First, the speech was brilliant in that it targeted Democrat superdelegates, the only people who can deny Obama the Democratic nomination, and the media class, those who have the largest impact on his general election campaign against McCain. The speech slyly attacked the media for focusing attention on the issue, and also slyly admonished sheltered white people who found the atmosphere in a black Christian church "jarring to the untrained ear."

Polls now show that the whole Rev. Wright flap hurt Obama minimally if at all (a far cry from being analogous to a "hooker in a trunk"). Of course there is always the possibility that this will increase the Bradley effect as voters might not feel comfortable telling a pollster that they don't want to vote for Obama because his pastor is a scary black man. We'll know in November.

As always, the reactions of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert shouldn't be missed.

My usual criticism of Obama's speeches, that he doesn't provide any concrete policy proposals and instead buries them in his website for policy wonks to find, doesn't really apply to this speech. It's not like you can pass an anti-racism law or something.

Now for other people's thoughts.

Hullabaloo:

And sadly, those who do that fighting are often considered to be "unamerican" and "unpatriotic" because by demanding that America change, they are making a case that America is not perfect. For the chauvinist, nationalist, exceptionalist right, (and the mindbogglingly provincial thinkers in the village) that is something you are not allowed to admit.

Brown professor Glenn Loury:

Wright's error, Obama tells us, is that Wright's view of America is static, ignoring how things have changed -- so much so that one of his own parishioners now stands on the threshold of being elected to the highest office in the land. As a (more or less) angry black man of Jeremiah Wright's approximate generation (I graduated high school in 1965), and while offering no brief for Wright himself and no defense of the remarks that have created this firestorm, I nevertheless find that argument very patronizing. I know, just as Wright surely knows, that things have changed a great deal. I also know that, as I write this, one million young black men are under the physical control of the state; a third of black children live in poverty, and, the Southside of Chicago, with more than one-half million black residents, is one of the most massive, racially segregated urban enclaves ever to have been created in the history of the modern world... These things are a reflection of social, cultural, economic and political forces deeply enmeshed in the structure of American society. They are not merely the consequence of attitudes embraced by some more or less well-meaning but benighted black and white persons -- attitudes which can be thrown-off if only we were to become determined, under the inspiring and inspired leadership of the junior senator from Illinois, to work together to solve our common problems, etc.

Publius:

He didn’t run and hide in Kerry/Daschle-esque cowardly fashion. He stood right up and said, “yes, he’s my friend.” He cast him as mired in the old world, to be sure, but he didn’t give into the Russert-style pressure to do some sort of Maoist confessional disavowing all association with the man. (I also thought it was savvy to preemptively ridicule the press if they continue obsessing about this story).

Wright, Hagee and Parsley

This is part two of my three part look at Obama and race. Part one on Reverend Wright's controversial statements.

A constant theme among a lot of liberal blogs even before the Rev. Wright media spectacle has been “why haven't the mainstream media paid attention to McCain's courting of hateful religious Right preachers?” McCain sought out Rev. John Hagee's endorsement to help counter his 2000 statement that powerful preachers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were "agents of intolerance." He sought out Rev. Rod Parsley's endorsement in order to help him win Ohio in the general election. Why has Obama's relationship with Rev. Wright been more newsworthy and controversial than McCain's relationship with the much more radical and hateful Hagee and Parsley?


On Technorati as of 4PM on March 18th, a search for "Obama and Wright" yields 8,129 results. A search for "McCain and Hagee" yields 1,274. A search for "McCain and Parsley" yields only 232 results. A Lexis-Nexis news search for "Obama and Wright" yielded 329 results for the previous two years, versus only 31 results for "McCain and Hagee" and 9 results for "McCain and Parsley" (some of which were in newspapers' Food sections...).

There are a few reasons. First, because Obama's relationship with Wright is personally close and much longer than McCain's relationship with either Hagee or Parsley. Secondly, because Reverend Wright comes off as a scary black man. The substance of Wright's controversial remarks may be less hateful than remarks by Hagee and Parsley, but the manner of delivery "jars" whites and brings up stereotypes of black nationalists and fears that Malcolm X will rise from the grave. Third, due to the religious Right's widespread influence, most members of the media are familiar with hateful statements coming from the likes of Falwell and Robertson, while they were surprised by the remarks and style of Rev. Wright, just as they were surprised by the poverty and resentment shown by Hurricane Katrina.

As for Hagee, from a quick scan of his Wikipedia entry we see that in his book Jersusalem Countdown, he wrote that Jews brought the Holocaust et al on themselves because of their “disobedience” to God. He said on NPR that New Orleans deserved to be destroyed by Hurricane Katrina because of its tolerance of gays. He also claimed on NPR that the faith of Islam is a military threat. Some Catholic groups (and this guy too) say he called the Catholic Church “the great whore” and “a false cult system”, although Hagee denies it.

Parsley is of a similar mold, but is even more anti-Muslim:

I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam... America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore.

With Hagee and Parsley's nuttiness firmly established, let's move on to the respective relationships.

Why is Obama close to Wright? Because of factors that have nothing to do with Wright's controversial political views. Obama joined Wright's church looking for a sense of community and seeking to identify with the people he represented in office. Hilzoy writes more on the connection between Obama and his church. Bottom line – it's not about politics, it's about community and identity.

Why is McCain close to Hagee and Parsley? Precisely because of their controversial political views. McCain sought out Hagee's endorsement for the political benefits, and McCain became close to Parsley in order to win Ohio in the general election. If McCain cozies up to hateful preachers purely because of their political power, shouldn't he be held accountable for the political views that give them that political power?

The sad thing is that McCain once possessed the courage to denounce hateful religious Right preachers like Hagee and Parsley. McCain made the decision to embrace these people not, I think, because he changed his mind about them, but because of his ambition to be President outweighs his moral sense.

Thoughts on Rev. Wright's comments

I mentioned in my last post that I was going to write up my thoughts on the Rev. Wright media feeding frenzy once I got around to it. Turns out I have more thoughts on the issue than I realized. I'll have three separate posts: the first on what I see as the core issues in the Rev. Wright debacle; the second on comparing Wright's relationship with Obama with McCain's underpublicized relationships with Hagee and Parsley, and the third on Obama's speech itself. Wright's remarks that have received the most airtime are his “God damn America” clip and the post-9/11 speech.

The way I see it, the uproar over Wright's remarks comes largely from sheltered white people who haven't previously been in black churches or been exposed to black preachers. On Point had two good shows, the first on Wright's remarks, and the second on Obama's speech. In the first, Dr. Dwight Hopkins explained a bit of the history of the black church tradition. Dr. Wright:

“the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, is full of prophetic condemnation and damnation of peoples and nations... so when Rev. Wright says 'God damn America', he's actually, and if you look at the clips, he says 'it's in the Bible, it's in the Bible,' it's actually in the Bible, the word “damn”, in the Old Testament it means condemnation and sacred judgment... it's damning a powerful country that has the resources to bring about peace, build friendship, and help the poor; instead it's gone to war and occupied a smaller nation.”

Wright's remarks were:“God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people...God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.” Wright is damning the American government in that he is condemning it for being racist. Previously in his sermon he preached about how "governments change, God does not change" - i.e. that America must change or else it is worthy of condemnation, or in the language of the Old Testament, damnation.

In the same way, Martin Luther King preached “We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world ... God has a way of even putting nations in their place. And if you don't stop your reckless course, [God will] rise up and break the backbone of your power.” Some of you might have heard that MLK has his own holiday named after him - he's not (anymore) seen as an anti-American figure.

Wright's quote of “America's chickens are coming home to roost” are taken out of context to portray Wright negatively. In context, it's apparent that Wright is quoting Edward Peck when he makes the comment "America's chickens are coming home to roost." This statement is the non-controversial (except to Rudy Giuliani) theory of blowback. This clip is a non-issue on substance, but is another instance of an angry black preacher that in Obama's words are “jarring to the untrained ear” - i.e. they frighten sheltered white people.

The bottom line is that Trinity Church is neither anti-American nor exceptional. Wright grew up in the sixties who seemingly hasn't moved on, but on substance, there is no controversy worthy of the media's obsession.

The remarks that bother me most from Wright are when he says “Hillary never had a cab whizz past her and not pick her up because her skin was the wrong color.” He emphasizes racism so much that he ignores the equally real sexism that women face especially in politics. A problem, yes, but not one that reflects on to Obama (unless he has some legacy of sexism that I don't know about).

I urge everyone who's been up in arms about this spectacle to watch the two videos of Wright in context - the longer, unclipped versions are here and here.

Hopefully this post has helped put in context Wright's remarks. Next up is the comparison between Wright, and Hagee and Parsley.

Obama - "A More Perfect Union"

Below the fold is the youtube of Obama's 40 minute speech on race in America. My thoughts on it and the whole Reverend Wright 'scandal' will follow in a separate post once I get around to writing it.

Derrick Ashong on Barack Obama

Via Ethan Zuckerman, here are a couple videos. The first is by some random guy interviewing another random guy outside a Clinton vs. Obama debate. The second is the interviewee's (turns out to be a Ghanaian immigrant, Derrick Ashong) response on YouTube. Videos beneath the cut.

Senator Joe Biden was reportedly amazed to find a second articulate black man.

My thoughts on the remaining candidates for 2008

Seems like CPAC every year lowers the political discourse into cheap name-calling, etc. Last year it was with a predictable Ann Coulter moment, this year with Mitt Romney's reprehensible "Democrats want to surrender to terrorists" concession speech (as usual Jon Stewart gives the best response). Here are my thoughts on the remaining candidates:

Barack Obama

• Pros: huge upside with his potential to rally the country around him and get new people involved in politics (which will come in handy during the coming recession and exit from Iraq). Good tech policy.
  
• Cons: so hyped that an Obama presidency would probably be a big disappointment no matter how successful he actually is. Poor health care plan. Inexperienced.

Hillary Clinton

• Pros: good health care plan. Smart and experienced. Two for one deal with Bill Clinton.
• Cons: half the country has an irrational hatred for her. Tries to pass stupid restrictions on video games. Political dynasties are bad (1981-2013 with either a Bush or Clinton in the White House).
  

John McCain:

• Pros: his nomination/election might see the implosion of the Republican party. Experienced. Surprisingly sane by the standards of today's GOP.
  
• Cons: trigger happy. Old. Opposes torture and suspension of habeus corpus, but caved in to Bush on the Military Commissions Act by allowing the President to define torture and exclude who retains their habeus corpus rights (rendering the Act meaningless).
  

Mike Huckabee:

• hahahahahaha.

I voted via absentee ballot in Massachusetts for John Edwards primarily because of his anti-poverty platform, his health-care plan, and other domestic policy stuff. Unfortunately Edwards withdrew before my vote was counted. If I could re-vote, I'd probably vote for Obama. It's unfair to Hillary that two of my primary reasons against her are out of her control (media coverage/irrational hatred, and dynasty), but life isn't fair and no-one's entitled to the Presidency.

The biggest surprise? That I agree with TDAXP!

Obama's "New Kind of Politics"™

From Talking Points Memo (the guys who broke the attorney scandal, as well as forced Trent Lott to resign as Majority Leader):

We've just obtained an email that shows that the Obama campaign yesterday circulated a negative, and ultimately false, story about Bill Clinton...

Campaigns, of course, circulate negative stuff about each other all the time. This email is unusual in that it is flagging something potentially negative not about a primary rival but about the former President -- one who obviously isn't running in the Democratic primary and who remains popular with Dem primary voters.

One of the things I dislike about Obama is that he frequently uses Republican-friendly memes to criticize fellow Democrats. Kind of like when he said (paraphrasing) "Democrats are 'unserious' about national security, but I am different."
Just because a guy talks well doesn't mean he's trustworthy, or would make a good President.

Bunch of stuff

Here's a random assortment of stuff I never got around to posting about (had a busy week and won't be posting over the weekend).

How a Democrat Can Get My Vote: Advice from seven recent war veterans.

I don't have anything to add, but pretty interesting.

Andrew Sullivan - "Verscharfte Vernehmung."

Comparing current American interrogation policy with the interrogation policy of Nazi Germany. I am not completely sure whether it's absurd or not. The most important thing to remember when thinking about loosening regulations on interrogation policy, however, is

As time went on, historians have found that all the bureaucratic restrictions were eventually broken or abridged. Once you start torturing, it has a life of its own.

True pretty much across history, due to the psychological impact torture has on the torturer.

Rising to a New Generation of Global Challenges - Mitt Romney.

Renewing American Leadership - Barack Obama.

Notable only for their blandness and mediocrity.

DNI Inadvertently Reveals Key to Classified National Intel Budget - RJ Hillhouse.

The intel budget is $60 billion (for FY 2005), not $40-45 billion as previously thought. 70% of that money goes to private contractors.

Giuliani: Worse Than Bush - Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone

Yes, Rudy is smarter than Bush. But his political strength -- and he knows it -- comes from America's unrelenting passion for never bothering to take that extra step to figure shit out. If you think you know it all already, Rudy agrees with you. And if anyone tries to tell you differently, they're probably traitors, and Rudy, well, he'll keep an eye on 'em for you. Just like Bush, Rudy appeals to the couch-bound bully in all of us, and part of the allure of his campaign is the promise to put the Pentagon and the power of the White House at that bully's disposal.

...

The Paul incident went to the very heart of who Giuliani is as a politician. To the extent that conservatism in the Bush years has morphed into a celebration of mindless patriotism and the paranoid witch-hunting of liberals and other dissenters, Rudy seems the most anxious of any Republican candidate to take up that mantle. Like Bush, Rudy has repeatedly shown that he has no problem lumping his enemies in with "the terrorists" if that's what it takes to get over. When the 9/11 Commission raised criticisms of his fire department, for instance, Giuliani put the bipartisan panel in its place for daring to question his leadership. "Our anger," he declared, "should clearly be directed at one source and one source alone -- the terrorists who killed our loved ones."

Matt Taibbi is no Democratic Party apparatchik - I remember him being quite critical of John Kerry in 2004.
I recently got John Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience for my birthday. Hopefully I'll get around to it this summer (still working on The Shield of Achilles).

Possible Glimmer of Some (Modest) Hope in Iraq - Counterterrorism Blog.

The reason for optimism is that some Sunni tribes will go after Al Qaeda without American help. And in other news, other Sunni tribes are concluding cease fires with Al Qaeda (H/T John Robb).

Of course, Al Qaeda isn't really the biggest problem in Iraq - the problem is the total lack of state legitimacy. Hopefully I'll be co-authoring a paper this summer on reconciliation in Iraq as a path to state legitimacy. If we get it published I'll post a link on the blog.