Hewitt Blog

I am cautiously optimistic that there will be a Republican YouTube debate. CNN is now working to reschedule the debate, and Governor Romney says that he’d be open to participating in a rescheduled debate. Mayor Giuliani expressed support for a date change as early as last Friday, and in fact says he enjoyed the format. Both candidates are fully on board with the idea that a scheduling conflict is no reason to pass up this unique opportunity to speak the American people.

SavetheDebate.com will continue to keep the pressure on. As Ronald Reagan said, “Trust but verify.” We’ll continue to hold the candidates’ feet to the fire until all the candidates are confirmed to attend the first Internet-driven Republican debate. And then we’ll turn to the next phase of our effort: taking the lead in driving intelligent, quality questions for the candidates from grassroots Republicans online and off.

Please keep visiting SavetheDebate.com to sign the petition and catch our roundup of all the great media coverage this weekend.

 

In my post earlier this morning, I referred to the Brookings Institution as a "hard left" organization. This was simply incorrect, and I apologize. "Left leaning" would have been much more accurate.

Sorry about that.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com  

There are two interesting things on the Internets today. And the day is still young!

As many early-risers including Hugh have already noted, the New York Times ran a potentially seismic op-ed piece today by Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the hard left Brookings Institution. The authors have just returned from a trip to Iraq, and they saw what everyone else has seen – noteworthy progress:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference…

How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.

By all means, read the whole thing. If the left has lost Brookings…I will monitor left wing Blogistan today for posts explaining why O’Hanlon and Pollack are in fact neo-con chickenhawk hacks and always have been.

One of the key takeaways from their report is that David Petraeus is doing an outstanding job. If you think that fact will inhibit the left’s attempts to minimize and marginalize him, you haven’t been paying attention the left over the past five years.

Over at The American Prospect’s blog, the kids that had the good sense to go to work for TAP and not The New Republic are having a little conversation about the allegedly rocky relationship between Petraeus and Nouri Al-Maliki. TAPper Robert Farley, responding to a suggestion elsewhere that the Bush administration will pull Petraeus from Iraq because of his and Al-Maliki’s differences, writes:

Eh... Nouri Al-Maliki looks a lot more like Ngo Dinh Diem to me than Chiang Kai Shek. Indeed, he bears even more resemblance to the endless series of jokers, like Nguyen Cao Ky, who "ruled" South Vietnam at one point or another during the war. The Bush administration and its neoconservative allies have invested too much of their prestige in Petraeus to let someone as tangential to the war effort as the Prime Minister of Iraq get in the way. Remember, Petraeus is the Ulysses S. Grant to Bush's Lincoln, the Creighton Abrams to Bush's... Nixon? Anyway, he's not going anywhere.

What I find most noteworthy about that paragraph is how it evidences the casual disdain for Petraeus that has now become de rigeur for the left. Attacking Petraeus has quickly and almost silently become a core part of the left’s anti-war agenda.

As I said last week, this is a dangerous game for the left. When their Senators begin playing it in September, they’ll find out just how dangerous.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

 

From Michael O'Hanlon's and Kenneth Pollack's op-ed in today's New York Times (HT: RealClearPolitics):

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

Read the whole thing.

I will cover conditions in Iraq on today's program with the Times' John Burns.

UPDATE: Tigerhawk and The Belmont Club comment. 

Posted by Generalissimo

Almost 27 years ago, in one of the more improbable moments in sports, a scrappy group of college kids in Lake Placid did the unthinkable, which was beat the Russian team, a team that was bigger, stronger, and much more experienced than the United States squad. But it turned out to be much more than a hockey game, although not many people at the time realized the impact of it.

As detailed in the very fine documentary Do You Believe in Miracles? The Story of the 1980 U.S. Hockey Team, the United States was at the height of the Cold War in 1980, had just suffered through four years of near-ruinous Jimmy Carter economics, and a foreign policy that had no answer for the Iran hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The country was, by and large, in a funk. Hockey had never been as big across the country as baseball, basketball and football, but seeing our kids take on the dreaded Soviet squad, beating them, and then going on to win the gold medal had an effect on our national psyche. It was a shot in the arm of national pride that was one of those intangible elements that helped us transition from the malaise of the 70’s to the prosperity of the 80’s under Ronald Reagan. We can only hope that what took place earlier today in Jakarta will give Iraq the same shot in the arm it so desperately needs.

The Asian Cup is a sixteen team soccer tournament, and for the last couple of years, was dominated by the Saudis. Iraq’s entry was not regarded as having much of a chance considering the sectarian violence and al Qaeda terrorism running rampant in the country, to the level that Iraq’s team couldn’t even practice in Iraq. They certainly weren’t expected to get to the finals, let alone beat the two-time defending Cup champion Saudis. But Iraq, for the first time in their history, can now hoist an international sport trophy. Iraq the Model has the pictures, and more importantly, the sense of what Iraqis, by and large, are feeling tonight.

We may not know if, or how much, a win like this may help unify Iraq for some time, but it’s hard to believe at this point that it can hurt. The Iraqi team consisted of Shiia, Sunni and Kurdish players, and a lot of what we have seen and heard today from Iraqis as they celebrated was that tonight, they aren’t ‘insert sect here,’ they’re Iraqis. Let’s hope that nationalism seed planted today takes root. Naturally, there were instances of rioting, shooting guns in the air, and other signs of the ugly side of high-profile sporting wins that some will try and use to taint the team’s accomplishment with, but tonight, hope is alive in Iraq, something that has been rare to come by since the rise of the insurgency.

Each member of the Iraqi team has felt personally the impact of the sectarian violence and Islamic terrorism. Yet their perseverance and determination to rise to the level they did should be a model for all Iraqis to end the sectarian violence and realize that every sect has more to gain by a unified Iraq than they do continuing to wage battles against each other, often times ignited by foreign elements from al Qaeda and Iran.

Can the political leaders from the three major camps in the fledgling Iraqi government process use this occasion to work together and finally form a fully-functional government? Who knows. But unlike two days ago, when the prospects of Iraq coming together anytime soon were bleak at best, thanks to a team of unlikely Iraqi soccer players, there is now something to add into the equation – hope.

 

Hugh and Dean think that online advantage is tied to macro atmospherics more than it is to specific online tactics. They'll be surprised to know that by and large, I agree. I wrote a piece on just this matter two weeks ago titled, "Message vs. Tactics Online." My position: message matters more -- and we probably won't be in a position to remedy our position online until Hillary Clinton is the opponent.

Needless to say, I think this a disagreement about more than tactics. It is about a basic responsiveness and willingness to answer questions. If our candidates believe themselves too haughty to answer an oddball question or two, that makes it less likely they'll listen to us on immigration, spending, and the war. Why? Because at some level, they think they're above certain forms of criticism. They think they always know best.

I also think it's a question of whether they'll be savvy enough to channel the flood of grassroots support that will arrive on their doorstep on February 6 of next year. Will they welcome them in with open arms, or set up elaborate rules and restrictions governing their interaction with the campaign and the candidate? Young volunteers like Josh Hersh and Ann Marie Curling are literally begging their candidates to get more engaged online -- because that makes it easier for them to recruit more volunteers and build an on-the-ground infrastructure to elect them.

On the message front, I don't believe the Republican campaigns are as volunteer-centric as they could be right now, and that isn't helping Republican enthusiasm any. When campaigns define themselves in the press in terms of insider terms like electability, money raised, and cash-on-hand, they shouldn't be surprised when volunteers stay away. When Republican candidates prioritize high-dollar fundraisers with 50 or 100 people over a debate watched by 2 to 3 million people, not even thinking of the online fundraising bump the debate could generate, that sends a message that the grassroots don't matter to them.

For all its riches, the Bush campaign was never like this. The volunteer goals were just as important as the money goals. And we had some pretty fired-up volunteers, largely because of the political environment, but also because of the body language of the campaign was welcoming and open.

The immigration example Hugh uses is a case-in-point of failing to capitalize on enthusiasm for the long term. That was a huge victory for talk radio and the Rightroots. But what do we have to show for it? Where is the million person email list of volunteers recruited during the immigration battle that we can activate again and again on the war, earmarks, and electing conservative candidates in '08? It's not true that the conservative base isn't energized on anything. They were energized on immigration, but because of a basic lack of online savviness or willingness to put the Web first, that energy has dissipated. That's in marked contrast to the MoveOn model, wherein they continue to bank activists on fight after fight, using them to mobilize them for the next battle.

Dean is right that you can't have tactical success without enthusiasm. But getting the tactics right is essential to channeling the enthusiasm. To some extent, Kerry blew it by not having a rational spending plan for all his extra riches. Howard Dean flooded Iowa with orange hats. So Democrats don't have this stuff down pat yet, something Obama has been especially cognizant of. But I do think they are closer to mustering the necessary combination of enthusiasm and tactics than we are.

My basic message here is that we can't take anything for granted, and we cannot cede one inch of ground to the Democrats. Just because the enthusiasm isn't there right now, that doesn't excuse us from doing our homework, or sending a dead-wrong message to the young grassroots activists who power our campaigns.
 

Michelle Malkin has a great round-up of links on the Iraqi national soccer team's big win over Saudi Arabia in the Asian Cup. 

Tomorrow I will air a long interview I conducted Friday with the New York Times' John Burns, who was in Baghdad. It will take up most of the first two hours of the program.

I first interviewed Burns in February, and this past Friday we covered many of the same subjects as we did almost six months ago, including conditions in Baghdad and the road ahead. We also cover the success to date of the surge and the political paralysis of the government, and whether a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops would deepen or dissolve that paralysis.

I also ask Burns about General Petraeus, and whether the anti-war extreme (led by Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Sullivan) is justified in smearing the general's reputation in advance of the September assessment:

HH: Now when General Petraeus returns in September to make his report, do you expect Petraeus to be completely candid with the American people about the good news and the bad news in Iraq?

JB: I think there’s no doubt that he’ll be candid. As a matter of fact, every time I’ve spoken to him about it, he talks about the need to be forthright, and as he puts it, he said we’re not going to be putting lipstick on a pig. I think that’s a fairly, that’s military jargon which most Americans will understand. David Petraeus is a man who’s had a remarkably distinguished military career, and he is very clear that he thinks his responsibilities lie not to the White House alone, but to the White House and the Congress conjointly, and through them to the American people. I don’t think that this is just a profession, a claim. I think he really intends that, and he’s been very careful not to make commitments at the moment as to what he’s going to say, though we may guess it. And I think he’s going to say that the surge is having its effects, it hasn’t turned the tide of the war, there’s been too little time for it, and I think he and Ambassador Crocker, who will be his partner in that September report, are going to say one thing very clearly, and that is a quick, early withdrawal of American troops of the kind that is being argued by Nancy Pelosi, for example, would very likely lead to catastrophic levels of violence here. And in that, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will be saying something which is pretty broadly shared by people who live and work here, I have to say. The removal of American troops would very likely, we believe from all indications, lead to much higher, and indeed potentially cataclysmic levels of violence, beyond anything we’ve seen to date.

HH: Mr. Burns, some anti-war critics have begun to attack General Petraeus as being not credible and not trustworthy for a variety of reasons, one he gave me an interview, he’s given other people interviews that they consider to be partisan, whatever. Do you believe he’ll be as trustworthy as anyone else speaking on the war?

JB: I do. I can only speak for my own personal experience, and there definitely was in the, in the Vietnam war, there was a failure of senior generals and the joint chiefs of staff to speak frankly about the Vietnam war early enough. There has definitely been some Pollyannaish character to the reporting of some of the generals here over the past three or four years, although in my own view, knowing virtually all of those generals, I don’t think that that was out of fealty to the White House or Mr. Rumsfeld. It’s a difficult and complex question which we really don’t have time to discuss here. But to speak of General Petraeus in particular, General Petraeus is 54 years old. Let’s look at this just simply as a matter of career, beyond the matter of principle on which I think we could also say we could expect him to make a forthright report. At 54, General Petraeus is a young four star general, who could expect to have as much as ten more years in the military. And he has every reason to give a forthright and frank report on this. And he says, and he says this insistently, that he will give a forthright, straightforward report, and if the people in Washington don’t like it, then they can find somebody else who will give his forthright, straightforward report. He is not without options on a personal basis, General Petraeus, and I think he, from everything I’ve learned from him, sees both a professional, in the first place, and personal imperative to state the truth as he sees it about this war.

The transcript of the interview will be posted here after it airs, and the audio will be available here.

 

The Taliban/al Qaeda have had a sanctuary since 2002 in the Waziristan region of Pakistan. That may be ending according to an article in the Times of London (HT: Powerline):

Last week soldiers sealed all the roads into Miran Shah, the provincial capital, occupied the hills around it and fired the first artillery salvo in what Musharraf’s many critics have called a war on his own people.

On Friday morning the army moved into parts of Miran Shah itself after militants blew up government buildings overnight. Most of the 60,000 townspeople are feared trapped, but hundreds of families have fled their mud homes in villages nearby and headed east for the sanctuary of Bannu, a town in the neighbouring North West Frontier province.

I watched last week as some of the 80,000 troops deployed in Waziristan dug in alongside the highway outside Mirali, a small town 10 miles east of Miran Shah. Almost all the checkpoints on this stretch of narrow road were empty. Three lay in rubble because the militants had blown them up. No troops drove along the road. They shuttled to the nearby Afghan border by helicopter.

I have to agree with John Hinderaker's reaction: "It's always hard to evaluate these reports; we've heard similar things before. But if Musharraf is serious about going after the extremists hiding in Waziristan, it can only be a good thing."

I asked Tony Snow about Musharaff's efforts last week:

HH: Are you confident of the Musharraf regime’s stability? Or is there reason for us to start worrying about that regime going south?

TS: No, I’m not going to sit around and speculate about stability. Come on, Hugh. But I think what you can see is that the Musharraf government realizes that there is a concerted threat not merely at the Red Mosque, but there have been acts of violence throughout Pakistan. And what’s he doing? He’s doing a surge. There are a hundred thousand or so troops now on the border, and they’re going and they’re fighting hard. They’re not only taking casualties, but dishing out casualties.

HH: So you’re comfortable, you think the Bush administration believes that Pakistan is doing what it has to do?

TS: Well, look, I’m not going to try to give you a global view of…could they do more? Do they need to hit a different target? They’re doing what they need to do in terms of taking the fight to the enemy. And what we’ve said is you need some help, we’re there to help you.

If Musharraf has realized that Pakistan can't continue on half modern and half medieval, that will be a very good thing. Tony won't comment on the regime's stability, but it cannot be great if it is forced to allow a large swath of its land to be governed by the Taliban.

I am surprised we don't ever see Iran offer the proximity of a nuclear state imperiled by a radical Sunni insurgency as the rationale for its nuclear program. A Taliban Pakistan with nukes is a nightmare as great as a Mullah-led Iran with nukes. (For more on Iran's ambitions and stability, see last week's interview with Michael Rubin).

 

I am giving a speech in a couple of weeks at a Romney event in Orange County, California. It will be about the likely contours of the general election. If there are any genuine fence sitters out there --in either the primary or the general-- drop me an e-mail at hugh@hughhewitt.com and tell me what you are waiting to see or hear. (Spare me the anonymous comments, which like anonymous comments on blogs, are worth the paper they aren't written on.)

UPDATE: An example, from CH in South Carolina:

Hi Hugh,

I'm a Romney/Guliani fence sitter. I don't have any specific issues
with either candidate and could enthusiastically support either as
things stand right now. I think the challenge for each of them is to
keep public attention for such a long time without making a
disastrous gaffe. Trying too hard to find the exact issue that will
turn the tide now might be a recipe that disaster. I'd say keep
cool, stay on message and wait for opportunities that will arise.
Both of these guys are going after Dems and I like that.

I've seen Mitt twice in Spartanburg and he has been impressive. His
appearances here made him a top contender in my view. Prior to those
appearances I wouldn't have rated him as highly.

And this one:

Prof. Hewitt,

I've been registered as a Republican since my 18th birthday (I'm now
29), I've voted Republican in every gubernatorial and presidential
election since then. I'm on the fence when it comes to the GOP this
time - there's literally no one that I find appealing enough to vote
for, let alone support.

A few of my bona fides: I have a degree in Poli Sci from Long Beach
State (class of 2000) and a JD from Chapman (class of 2005, studied
Con Law under now Dean Eastman), I blog at cageymind.blogsome.com and
have a pretty strong libertarian streak.

I don't know what I am waiting for, specifically. As Justice Stewart
said, "I know it when I see it". Quite frankly, none of the
candidates have inspired me. We've heard constantly how "this is a
different type of war", but no candidate has shown any inclination
that he/she will actually take the time to rethink the methods that
we have used and fight this different type of war in a different
way. None have shown a commitment (in my eyes) to protecting civil
liberties while also prosecuting the war. None have shown much
respect for international law (and the countless treaties that we
were the driving cause behind during the Cold War). None have shown
much interest in doing anything but continuing the 50% 1 mentality
that has permeated DC in the last seven years, and instead attempt to
be a leader for the entire Republic.

I guess, what I am looking for is someone in the mold of T.
Roosevelt, F. Roosevelt, J. Kennedy, or R. Reagan. Unfortunately, I
don't see anyone who comes close. Just my thoughts.

KG
cageymind.blogsome.com