On Tuesday night, President Obama's set to announce that he's sending additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan -- about 30,000 of them. Indeed, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that the president's already given the order, though for now GIbbs wouldn't say what the actual order was.
Michael Moore, however, wants to stop him. In an open letter published on his Web site Monday, Moore decried Obama's decision, saying he'll now be known as "the new war president." The director wrote:
Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.
It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).
Here's the thing, though: Obama wasn't exactly hiding his position on Afghanistan during the presidential campaign. The war there was often thought of as the "good war" on the left, at least in comparison to the one the Bush administration started when it invaded Iraq. And that meant refocusing resources on Afghanistan.
Still, while it's pretty clear that Moore's open letter won't change Obama's mind, and that Obama's likely to win a fight with Moore right now, it also appears that the floodgates are opening. With former President George W. Bush out of office, liberals are coming forward to oppose escalation in Afghanistan, and Moore won't be the last prominent figure from the left to slam Obama over it.
Let's get one thing out of the way quickly: It never mattered all that much, really, whether President Obama's approval rating, as measured by Gallup, was a percentage point or two below 50 percent. From a statistical perspective, in fact, it was impossible to say for sure that his rating had changed at all -- the swing was within the margin of error.
But Obama's numbers did fall below that magic 50 percent threshold, and that is important in some ways. It's symbolic, for one thing, and it could make Congressional Democrats shy away from him a bit.
Obama can rest a bit easier now, though, and so can anyone who'd started to feel shaky about supporting him on the basis of his numbers. The latest Gallup survey has him back above the 50 percent mark, with 51 percent of respondents now saying they approve of the job he's doing. It took him just 10 days to get back to positive territory.
For now, the Obama administration and Congress have won their battle to keep photos of detainee abuse under wraps. On Monday, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court's ruling that had ordered the photos released.
The high court's action was expected, because Congress had passed a new law that exempted the images from disclosure after Defense Secretary Robert Gates certified that their release could be harmful to U.S. troops currently in the field. President Obama had initially supported the idea of lifting the veil of secrecy over the photos, but reversed course.
After Obama and his administration began fighting to keep the images secret, there were reports in the British press that the photos showed U.S. soldiers raping prisoners. Salon's coverage of the story -- Mark Benjamin spoke with retired Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, the supposed source for that report, and proved it wrong -- can be read here and here.
The case is headed back to the lower court for further review.
When Osama bin Laden gave American troops the slip in the early days of the Afghanistan war, it seemed reasonable to give the benefit of the doubt to American military leadership. Tora Bora, the cave complex where the al-Qaida chief had been hiding, is situated in some of the most impassable mountain terrain on the planet. American troops had little experience in the region or local connections, and it was winter to boot. Though they won the battle, catching one particular guy in that kind of scenario was never going to be an easy job.
But a new report commissioned by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee shows that, in fact, the U.S. military may have had bin Laden in its grasp, and decided that dropping the net was too risky a proposition. The study, released Monday, is titled “Tora Bora revisited: how we failed to get Bin Laden and why it matters today.” According to the report, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld turned down requests for a larger American troop presence to block escape routes from Tora Bora.
Rumsfeld had emphasized a small American footprint in Afghanistan from the start of the war. He was famously besotted with the idea of warfare conducted by small, agile teams working with local allies and heavy air support. Accordingly, at Tora Bora, there were fewer than 100 American commandos on the scene. Although officials in Washington, including the president, had been told that the Afghan soldiers accompanying the Americans were tired, cold and not that invested in capturing bin Laden, requests for American reinforcements were denied.
The study contradicts the claim of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who said that it wasn’t conclusive at the time where the terrorist leader was. In fact, according to the report, bin Laden was clearly in reach at Tora Bora. Even he thought it was already over: Expecting to die, he wrote up a last will and testament.
Apparently, Rumsfeld was convinced that sending more troops would antagonize the local population, potentially causing an insurgent resistance. By November -- one month before the battles at Tora Bora took place -- American planners had also already begun shifting emphasis and attention to preparations for a war in Iraq.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has a problem, and that problem has a name -- Maurice Clemmons. Clemmons is currently a fugitive, suspected of shooting and killing four police officers. And Huckabee's the man who set him free.
In 1989, Clemmons -- then, at 17, still a minor -- was convicted of aggravated robbery and given a 95 year sentence. But in 2000, Huckabee commuted his sentence, making him eligible for parole; Clemmons reportedly violated that parole, and was sent back to prison, but was released for good in 2004. Now, Huckabee's presidential hopes may be tied to him.
In some sense, that's unfair. Governors often act on someone else's recommendation in a situation like this one -- Huckabee says that's what happened here -- and a certain percentage of recidivism is unavoidable. Huckabee may just be a victim, like Mike Dukakis was with Willie Horton, of circumstance.
However, this isn't the first time one of Huckabee's actions in this vein has come back to haunt him. And the first case can't really be written off to chance. When the then-governor commuted the sentence of convicted rapist Wayne DuMond, it was for political reasons -- opponents of former Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton believed that DuMond had been railroaded because his victim was a distant relative of Clinton's. DuMond went on to sexually assault and murder a woman.
It's almost a given at this point: Any time a Congressional Republican's commenting on the Democrats' healthcare reform bills, they'll likely bring up their length. Some will just mention the 2,074 pages in the Senate version, others will tally the amount of dollars spent per word, some will tell you it's longer than "War and Peace." It's a way to suggest that the bill is impenetrable, that Democrats are sneaking big changes into it -- and that it's bound to increase the size of the federal government, not to mention taxes.
Part of what they're saying is true -- the bill is quite long; the House's version is probably the longest produced in the past 10 years. But "War and Peace" is almost twice as wordy, and the Republicans have gotten pretty verbose recently, too.
The Associated Press noted Tuesday that the Senate bill comes in at 318,512 words, while the House's contains 319,145. "War and Peace," by contrast, ranges from 560,000 to 670,000. And when it was taken out of the legislative format and published in the Congressional Record, the Senate version took up only 209 pages.
OpenCongress.org also did some analysis of the measure, especially as compared to other legislation from the past 10 years. Turns out five of the ten longest bills in that period were written by Republicans.
In fact, while the House's healthcare reform proposal was the longest, a bill authored by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, was only 68 words behind. A 2005 appropriations bill sponsored by Rep. James Kolbe, R-Ariz., came in fourth at 296,111 words and one of the centerpieces of former President Bush's agenda, the No Child Left Behind Act, was sixth behind the strength of its 274,559 words. Minority Leader John Boehner, now spearheading the message that the Democrats' bills are too hefty, was the sponsor.
War Room is written and edited by Alex Koppelman, with contributions from Salon reporters around the country.
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