Gator90 makes an argument here that’s worth responding to:

For every word written or spoken about the influence of Cuban-Americans or Armenian-Americans on U.S. politics & policy, (insert gigantic number) are written & spoken about the influence of Jewish Americans. [...] Which is not to say that Jews shouldn’t be singled out in this respect. Perhaps they should. (There are certainly valid reasons to think that U.S. policy in the Middle East is more important than the Cuba Embargo or silly resolutions about century-old stuff.) But let’s not pretend that they are not singled out. Of course they are, which is why “The Cuba Lobby” and “The Armenia Lobby” are not exactly rocketing up the best-seller lists.

I think this is wrong. The reason The Cuba Lobby and US Foreign Policy isn’t flying off the shelves is that it would be so ridiculously banal to write a book with the thesis that the Cuban exile community centered in South Florida is the dominant influence on America’s Cuba policy. People say this all the time, in mainstream publications, and nobody bats an eye because it’s obviously true. Similarly, all accounts of US policy toward Azerbaijan in the 1990s or congressional attitudes toward the genocide resolution highlight the dominant role played by Armenian-American political pressure in these initiatives. You might write a book or an article about the issue (the Caucuses, Cuba, etc.) but you wouldn’t write something with the thesis “there’s an influential Cuba Lobby” because that’s dull and obvious.

Reading the Clinton/Tomasky interview, Greg Sargent rather enthusiastically notes that in it “she vows as President to conduct a systematic review of the ways in which the Bush administration has hoarded executive power — a review, she claims, that could actually cause her to relinquis some of those powers.” David Kurtz follows through on the TPM homepage: “Hillary Clinton promises a systematic review of the Bush administration’s executive power grab if elected–with an eye toward relinquishing some of those powers.”

I think this isn’t the best reading of what happened. Mike shrewdly asked her “what specific powers might you relinquish as president, or renegotiate with Congress – for example the power to declare a US citizen an enemy combatant?” and Clinton . . . didn’t come up with anything. Instead, she vaguely replied:

Well, I think it is clear that the power grab undertaken by the Bush-Cheney administration has gone much further than any other president and has been sustained for longer. Other presidents, like Lincoln, have had to take on extraordinary powers but would later go to the Congress for either ratification or rejection. But when you take the view that they’re not extraordinary powers, but they’re inherent powers that reside in the office and therefore you have neither obligation to request permission nor to ask for ratification, we’re in a new territory here. And I think that I’m gonna have to review everything they’ve done because I’ve been on the receiving end of that. There were a lot of actions which they took that were clearly beyond any power the Congress would have granted or that in my view that was inherent in the constitution. There were other actions they’ve taken which could have obtained congressional authorization but they deliberately chose not to pursue it as a matter of principle.

Basically, she’s telling liberals she’ll roll back executive power but she’s not committing herself to doing anything in particular. Basically, as Charlie Savage wrote for our October issue, I wouldn’t count on any future administration voluntarily relinquishing the powers Bush has seized. Maybe some future congress will take power back, but people don’t do that kind of thing voluntarily. That’s what Clinton’s telling us.

Ross’s explanation of why the GOP is addicted to war:

As in the Cold War, foreign-policy hawkishness has become the glue holding the fragile GOP coalition together, even as Iraq has made foreign policy a general-election liability for the Right, instead of the asset it was in the Reagan years. Which is one way to explain the weird aftermath of the ’06 debacle, in which social conservatives and fiscal conservatives each blamed one another for the defeat, when it was perfectly clear that the Iraq War had more to do the party’s degringolade than the corruption of the small-government movement or the excesses of the religious right.

Maybe. But I’ll say this. I get the sense that Republicans think that while Iraq may now be a bad issue for their party, that things like unconstitutional surveillance, arbitrary and indefinite detention, and routine torture are big-time winning issues for the GOP. So they like the hawkish posture, even if Iraq’s been a problem. That’s how it seems to me.

Beyond that, I can also say for a fact that that’s how it seems to an awful lot of Democrats. Talk to people on the Hill or people involved in messaging, and there’s just no confidence that they could win a big high-profile standoff with Bush on pretty much any issue related to terrorism. There’s a critical margin of members who just won’t back any position that can’t also attract substantial Republican backing to provide “cover.”

The good news out of Iraq is that “Iraqi officials said today that they would move to halt the activity of Kurdish rebels who have been striking across the border from northern Iraq, a promise delivered amid a flurry of international diplomatic efforts to prevent a widening conflict between the two countries.” The bad news, of course, is that Iraqi officials don’t have any practical authority over events in Kurdistan so this is all meaningless.

All throughout the article we’re hearing about commitments made by Maliki, calls to Maliki, meetings with Maliki, etc., etc., etc. But Maliki’s irrelevant!

Guardian America launches today at last, spearheaded by a great Mike Tomasky interview of Hillary Clinton, in which he bores down and asks her some really good questions. This exchange is particularly noteworthy:

Do you think that the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, or do you think they have specific geopolitical objectives?

Well, I believe that terrorism is a tool that has been utilized throughout history to achieve certain objectives. Some have been ideological, others territorial. There are personality-driven terroristic objectives. The bottom line is, you can’t lump all terrorists together. And I think we’ve got to do a much better job of clarifying what are the motivations, the raisons d’ªtre of terrorists. I mean, what the Tamil Tigers are fighting for in Sri Lanka, or the Basque separatists in Spain, or the insurgents in al-Anbar province may only be connected by tactics. They may not share all that much in terms of what is the philosophical or ideological underpinning. And I think one of our mistakes has been painting with such a broad brush, which has not been particularly helpful in understanding what it is we were up against when it comes to those who pursue terrorism for whichever ends they’re seeking.

It sounds like you’re saying it’s not particularly useful when Bush and others say terrorists hate us for our freedoms?

Well, some do. But is that a diagnosis? I don’t think it’s proven to be an effective one.

She seems to have the right answer here, at the end of the day, but she’s very cautious about saying it. I wonder about this. It would be fantastic, of course, to have a president in the White House with a less addled substantive understanding of these issues. At the same time, I think it’s necessary at some point to seize the whole conceptual framework that’s been dominating debate in this country since 9/11 by the horns and throw it to the ground. Obama and Edwards have both shown far more inclination to do this than has Clinton (in part, obviously, because the exigencies of the campaign have forced them to) which is an important consideration in their favor.

I’ve noted before that while I don’t know much about the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, it seems to have all the right enemies. Well, here comes Kate Sheppard with an article that explains it all and why it’s important that we ratify it.

James Fallows tried the other day to put debates over the clout of the “Israel lobby” into some context, noting the parallel power of the Cuban exile lobby and the recently demonstrated clout of Armenian emigres:

To observe these patterns, and warn against them (including the disastrous consequences of attacking Iran), is not to be anti-Armenian, anti-Orthodox, anti-Cuban, anti-Catholic, or anti-Semitic. Nor is it to deny that members of each lobby claim, and probably believe, that what they’re recommending is best for America too. But in these cases they’re wrong.

For his trouble, naturally, Commentary‘s Gabriel Schoenfeld responds by quoting Fallows in a way that elides all reference to Cubans and Armenians and then accuses Fallows of singling out the Jews: “But why is this game played only one way, with America€™s Jews the primary target?”

Um….

Fallows says he’s becoming “nostalgic for the comparative ‘honesty’ of the Chinese state media.”

It’s a little sad that, as a country, we’ve reached a point where the Center for American Progress feels the need to publish an “Islamofascism Awareness Week” Response Kit, but it led to a funny picture and it’s nowhere near as sad as the fact that we live in a country where there’s a serious “Islamofascism Awareness Week” campaign under way.