Ilan Goldenberg flags Bush talking an unusually strong brand of nonsense:

Out of such chaos in Iraq, the terrorist movement could emerge emboldened — with new recruits, new resources, and an even greater determination to dominate the region and harm America. An emboldened al Qaeda with access to Iraq’s oil resources could pursue its ambitions to acquire weapons of mass destruction to attack America and other free nations.

Ilan focused on the implausibility of al-Qaeda gaining control over Iraq’s oil fields (they’re not in the Sunni Arab parts of Iraq, among other things). I would also note that were this bizarre scenario to unfold, it would be pretty trivial for the U.S. military to capture or control any AQI-held oil fields — a poorly equipped guerilla force can’t defend a fixed position in the open.

On top of that, though, this business about al-Qaeda securing a recruiting boon from us leaving Iraq is bizarre. According to MNF-Iraq, the occupation of Iraq is the main fact driving recruits to join AQI. Absent the occupation, there’s no recruiting pitch. Pearl Harbor was a boon to U.S. military recruiting, VJ Day wasn’t. And what’s this business about them acquiring “an even greater determination to dominate the region and harm America.” Does Bush really think they lack determination now?

It’s striking how much of conservative thinking about national security these days centers around subjective factors — determination, emboldening, “claiming victory” — rather than on objective assessments. Objectively speaking, withdrawing from Iraq would cut off a major line of recruiting for al-Qaeda while simultaneously freeing up vast quantities of American manpower and other resources. How “bold” that makes al-Qaeda leaders feel (and you’ve got to figure these fuckers were pretty “emboldened’ already when they blew up the twin towers, right?) has nothing to do with anything.

Mike Tomasky:

The Republican Party has become, in short, a party of empire. The conservative movement is now a movement dedicated to American hegemonic dominion. And, given the lack of debate, both will likely remain that way for some time. These statements are true not only of the major presidential candidates, but of the vast majority of Republicans in Congress, most conservative foreign-policy think-tankers, and most high-level GOP operatives involved in policy-making. If the travesty that was our invasion of Iraq has not had the power to change these facts, it is difficult to imagine what set of circumstances could.

The context is a review of Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Anti-War Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism, but the paragraph has a kind of freestanding validity.

UPDATE: It’s been pointed out that I should have seized the opportunity to plug my book, Heads in the Sand, which explains why we need to understand the Bush administration’s policies as imperialism in its newest guise, and why Democrats need to stop giving-in to Bush-style policies and return to espousing the sort of liberal internationalism that’s guided the party and the country at its best for decades. Woo book!

McCain once again implies Iran is backing AQI!

Today’s Washington Post editorial on Iraq dedicated to slamming Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is really baffling. Their big point is that Democratic plans to withdraw troops from Iraq are somehow unrealistic or based on “fantasy” which seems to simply miss the contours of the argument. Expeditious departure of American forces from Iraq isn’t some counterintuitive plan to stabilize Iraq; rather, grounded in recognition that an open-ended U.S. military presence isn’t stabilizing Iraq either, it’s based on the strategic calculation that the nation’s resources and manpower should be deployed elsewhere.

That’s a point you could dispute, but Hiatt & co. don’t even acknowledge that this is the debate we’re having. You also get weird assertions like this “U.S. commanders and diplomats in Iraq don’t hesitate to say that if American forces withdrew now, sectarian conflict would probably explode in its full fury, causing bloodshed on a far greater scale than ever before and posing grave threats to U.S. security.” One gets weary of pointing this out, but over and over again we see withdrawal plans being judged by worst-case scenarios whereas staying scenarios are judged by best-case scenarios. The truth of the matter is that no matter what we do with the American military, the course of events in Iraq will ultimately be determined by decisions made by Iraqis. If we leave, they might choose poorly with disastrous results. But that can happen if we stay, too. Or they could choose well. The purpose of the surge was to use our military power to try to alter the decision-making of Iraqi leaders, but it hasn’t worked — there’s little-to-no evidence that us having 150,000 troops in Iraq is fundamentally affecting the political situation in a positive way.

The entire issue of Pakistan seems to have fallen off the radar once it turned out that Benazir Bhutto’s assassination wasn’t going to lead to a total breakdown over there. That was a good thing, but the lack of attention to Pakistan isn’t a good thing. So it was nice to see Barack Obama offer some remarks on the subject during yesterday’s Iraq speech:

The choice is not between Musharraf and Islamic extremists. As the recent legislative elections showed, there is a moderate majority of Pakistanis, and they are the people we need on our side to win the war against al Qaeda. That is why we should dramatically increase our support for the Pakistani people – for education, economic development, and democratic institutions. That child in Pakistan must know that we want a better life for him, that America is on his side, and that his interest in opportunity is our interest as well. That’s the promise that America must stand for.

This seems right to me. Making deals with the Musharrafs of the world, people who put themselves forward as the only alternative to radicalism, is a dangerous business. A dictator like that can’t actually afford to see the forces of radicalism go into eclipse; he needs them because they’re his whole rationale for attracting foreign support. Ultimately, that’s not a path that leads the country anywhere productive.

The column definitely has a more in sorrow than in anger tone to it, but it seems that John McCain’s Iraq antics have lost David Broder, who apparently was expecting McCain to indicate that there was some level of Iraqi political dysfunction he wouldn’t be prepared to tolerate as president.

In the real world, though, if your goal is an enduring American military presence in Iraq, you need political dysfunction. If Iraq were to emerge as a stable country with a government responsive to its citizens’ wishes, they’d tell the Americans to take a hike. Its sectarian tensions and instability that make the continued, unpopular presence of a huge number of American boots on the ground viable.