Obama: Supernatural

Conservatives and other denizens of the right, among which I count myself, are prone to mocking Obama as "the One", ala Keanu Reeves in the Matrix or something. They call him Obamamessiah and stuff like that.

All I got to say is, don't front. Because Obama has demonstrated his preternatural powers for all, and you better recognize. When did he make this demonstration? During the primaries, he predicted the future with keen accuracy:

Fast forward to the present:

Hillary laughed at the Obamamessiah. Now she does his bidding.

Soooo, mock the "One" at your peril. His powers are real.

Hillary Clinton's Unpaid Bills

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Disclosure reports show Clinton still deeply in debt « - Blogs from CNN.com


A commenter on this article said what I was thinking as I read it...

"Hillary cannot even deal with her own debt and she thinks she can run a country? And now her supporters are blaming her inability to clear her debt on Obama?"

Open Thread. Let' er rip.

First Lady Shows Solidarity With Democratic Women

The First Lady demonstrates why she is as well liked as her husband the President is reviled with words of support and understanding for Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton. I think its a nice show of solidarity with women, the more laudable for being extended to women on the other side of the political divide. A show of class from the First Lady, encouraging us all to heed our better natures.

Post Mortem Thoughts

Abe, commenting on 3 A.M. For Feminism by Michelle Goldberg

"All this belies the fact that--as you point out--almost none of this actually has to do with anything Obama did other than BEATING HILLARY. What we're really seeing is what happens when the entitlement of feminist identity politics gets into a conflict with the facts: That somebody has to win, and that somebody is the person who has the most delegates. As soon as feminism hits facts, either we have to scrap feminism or we have to scrap reality. Clinton's diehards chose to scrap the latter. What amazes me is the latent racism inherent in all the assumptions made by Clinton supporters. Countless times I've heard Clinton supporters proclaim Obama to be lazy, shiftless, and unworthy while Hillary was "hardworking" and "brilliant". I'll start kissing Clintonian rear end as soon as Clinton supporters get off this sexist-racist "Hillary is so much smarter" meme and start acknowledging that the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review and a man who managed to ascend so quickly from state politics all the way to being the nominee of the Democratic Party is someone who is clearly nothing short of a genius. Start giving my guy some credit and I'll stop harping on the now-proven incompetence of your own candidate."

Posted by Kathleen Duffy

"Seriously, it's not that she is a woman. It's that she is Hillary Clinton. I'm a feminist, age 56. I wanted to vote for her. She kept stabbing me in the heart by campaigning like a republican, talking down to me, and pandering with the gas tax holiday. As for the pundits, I agree that some of the coverage was HORRENDOUSLY sexist. But if she had run a better campaign, she would have won handily in spite of some bad coverage. The people are fairer than the pundits."

Clinton Concedes

Hillary Clinton regained a measure of my respect today in conceding the nomination battle and pledging her support for Barack Obama's candidacy. While it did not stir me as Al Gore's concession speech did in 2000, it was complete in its terms. Her speech was conciliatory, emphatic and clear.

It was obvious that it cost her something personally. At several points in the speech, her voice appeared to catch and she was clearly fighting mightily not to cry. I appreciate that she did it, that it was emotional and I'm sure infinitely hard for her to stand down. With today's speech, she brings this nomination battle to a close and cedes the election spotlight to the democratic nominee - Barack Obama.

I do not think it is an overreach to say that because of Hillary Clinton, there will be a woman president in the country's near term future. She has without a doubt set a precedent and blazed a trail that will make the path for a future woman candidate so much easier because of the pioneering work that Clinton has done. She will be to the first woman president what Jesse is to Barack, an important precursor that sets the stage. I think its safe to say that she blazed the trail for women a bit further. For her accomplishments, the Season applauds her. Well fought, Senator.

Obama at War: McCain to his Front, HIllary on his Flank

Obama has triumphed in the nomination struggle, but danger abounds as McCain and the GOP pivot to confront him head on and he maintains a watchful eye with Hillary on his flank. Dick Morris spells out why.

Hillary's End Game and a Comment on the Bitter Taylor Marsh Crowd

Last night, Obama clinched the democratic nomination. With the superdelegates flocking to him in great numbers, several abandoning their support of Clinton in the process, and the party leadership openly acknowledging him as the presumptive nominee, Obama spoke to the nation.

But one voice notably absent in recognizing Obama as the presumptive nominee was that of his chief rival, Hillary Clinton. In her speech last night, she neither conceded the nomination nor suspended her campaign. Hours before, after several rounds of campaign message anarchy, she leaked to the media her supposed willingness to serve as Obama's vice president. However, in her speech last night, she said she was making no decisions and would confer with party leaders. And today, at AIPAC, in a speech she delivered immediately following Obama, she did not acknowledge him as the nominee and delivered remarks very much as though she remainded an active candidate.

Sophia Nelson, editor in chief of Political Intersection, observes:

"I am at a profound loss as to why it is the Senator Clinton has now made two public appearances since last night and she has YET to 1.) concede the democratic primary to Senator Obama, 2.) to acknowledge the history and historic nature of his becoming the presumptive democratic nominee (as he did acknowledge her last night for her historic candidacy and breaking down barriers for women) and 3. to give her resounding support for Senator Obama against John McCain in the fall.
.....I have no idea what Hillary is thinking and why she is not being more cautious and respectful of someone who is likely our next President of the United States."

Indeed, this is the question on the minds of many. The answer is manifest. Hillary is still running and she is gaming not for the VP spot, but the top spot. Were this not so, she would have acknowledged Obama as the nominee, pledged to support him and begun taking affirmative steps to unify the party. She is doing exactly the opposite, engaging in active psyops with seemingly conciliatory statements , while refusing to concede the nomination. She intends to maintain strategic ambiguity for as long as she is permitted to do so and hold open an option to challenge Obama in Denver based on her popular vote metric.

This is a massive show of disrespect to the party's presumptive nominee, one which grows more egregious the longer she carries it out, even as Obama has extended every grace to her, as I suspect he will continue to publicly do, as he did during his AIPAC speech.

Sophia's commentary continues: "Hillary will be Obama's first test of strength and resolve. If he cannot stand up to her, how can he stand up to the tyrants and villains of the world?"

This is absolutely correct. As irksome as I find it, Obama will have to use a great deal of political deftness in finishing off Hillary in order to prevent the party from fracturing irretrievably and deeply eroding Hillary's demographics. How the party responds now will be key. How long will they tolerate her continuing to undercut the nominee with tactics designed to supplant him even now with an end run at the convention or at a minimum preserve her leverage for a fall back VP spot?

I believe Obama has demonstrated he is up to the task. He beat her at the outside game and demonstrated that his inside game is equally strong against even this most consummate of insiders with his clearly favorable outcome at the Rules & Bylaws committee meeting. So I believe he and Michelle are more than capable of facing down this continuing challenge from Hillary and Bill. They are America's new political powerhouse couple. Thus far Team Obama has beaten Team Clinton and I believe they have done so without engaging in the wholesale tactics of smear and fear or displaying open and complete disrespect.

Speaking of open disrespect, I've kept an open eye on the Taylor Marsh blog through the primary campaign because I like to read viewpoints that challenge my own view of things. Other perspectives help to assess whats going on. But as this primary fight has worn on, I have increasingly found myself losing respect for the level of commentary coming out of this blog and basically now ascribe her to the dedicated Obama haters camp of people who have lost the ability to be fair in anyway to Obama. I suppose she might read my blog and conclude that I am equally as biased towards her candidate. Unfortunately for her, I'm right and she's wrong.

I was very curious to see how this crowd would handle defeat at the hands of Obama and this post is a clear indication of what the dominant response will be: BITTER BILE & SOUR GRAPES complaints that the process was unfair and undemocratic. While the democratic primary process clearly has its own share of perverseness, Taylor Marsh nor the crowd she represents would be making any of these vociferous complaints if Hillary had wrapped this thing on Super Tuesday. When they were not being beaten in the race for delegates, the rules were fine. When they began losing, when it became clear that they had tragically miscalculated in relying on a Super Tuesday strategy to win and took a beating in caucus states, losing the chance to make up the delegate lead, THEN they wanted to change the rules. They want the metric to be the popular vote, because they couldn't get the delegates. Simple as that. No matter how much they want to deny it or cover it up, the basic fact is that if Hillary can't win playing by the rules, then its okay to win by changing the rules in the middle of the game.

As a prime example of the most virulent of Obama haters (critics is inaccurate, as an honest critic would demonstrate a higher level of fairness and credibility) Taylor Marsh has engaged in a nasty level of vitriol and encouraged the Obama haters in race baiting in my view (Note: I am NOT and do NOT accuse her of being a racist). They have continually posted the most demeaning and hatefully toned ranting against Obama I have seen anywhere, alongside and often copiously more prevalent than any relevant, honest criticism. She has considered every tactic and action by Clinton as a fair game attack. She was profiled in the Washington Post, and the story observes her watching Obama's speech on clinching the nomination:

"On the TV screen, Obama paused from his talk of moving toward victory to praise Hillary Clinton’s "courage, her commitment and her perseverance."

"He better do this," Marshall said. "He better do a lot of this."

When Phleger spoke of a sense of entitlement in his pandering disparagement of Hillary Clinton, he was appropriately rebuked by Obama and others for the manner in which he rendered his comments, which were inappropriate in tone, phrasing, timing and place. However, Harriet Christian and in my view, Taylor Marsh, in the above comment, certainly display the type of entitlement attitude which does in fact exist and which Phleger so inappropriately referred to.

Obama has rendered gracious comment after gracious comment of late, but Hillary Clinton has returned all of that thus far with disrespect. Taylor Marsh and her comrade in arms Harriet Christian I'm sure, both feel that Obama should essentially genuflect, bow and scrape before Hillary and by extension, them, the Clinton demographic. He must extend her every courtesy, while she kicks dirt in his face. They demand respect, nay fealty even, while giving none in return. That is entitlement, and Taylor Marsh is guilty of it.

There Can Be Only One

Talking About Trinity & Entitlement

Father Phleger touched off a new installment of Trinity church controversy with his political rhetoric, illustrating his "sermon" point about "white entitlement" with a sarcastic bit of theater at Hillary Clinton's expense. He was playing to a packed house and the crowd was feeling him. He was however decidedly not felt by many in America, and SheCodes , writer of the esteemed blog Black Women Vote expressed it this way:

"I find what Father Phleger did contemptible, and not in the same category as Jeremiah Wright's sermons AT ALL. Father Phleger pretended to have mystical knowledge of Hillary Clinton's inner thoughts, and used his clerical position to cast aspersions and heap dislike on her from it. It was childish, mean spirited, and unnecessary. It does not matter that many people agree with him. Once the priest put that collar on, he had a duty not to play loose with his opinions about specific people. When the priest claimed to know what Hillary Clinton is thinking, many people accepted that as a word from God. This is not only patently wrong, but dangerous."

I agree with all of the above, particularly the branding of these theatrics as unnecessary, but it isn't what I found the most objectionable. What irked me more was the pastoral indulgence of this camaraderie of victimhood, particularly in a megachurch where one might expect to find your fair share of the talented tenth among the congregation. Its easy to fall into the trap of believing that sermons at Trinity are heavily politicized and disconnected from scripture based on the media portrayals, and I want to be careful to avoid such an assumption, which is most likely incorrect. However, it is clear that the socio-political opinions of the Trinity leadership pertaining to race are a currency regularly traded from the pulpit. Its an unhelpful, ill advised indulgence to pander to this defeatist mindset in the church. Obama's run is exposing these cathartic rituals to the light of day.

On the other hand, this has the sound of entitlement and privilege that they were talking about.

Harriet Christian came to the Rules and Bylaws to support her candidate, Hillary Clinton. And when her candidate was defeated, unjustly in her eyes, her raw emotion spilled over. Her words were interesting and for those of the Trinity viewpoint, certainly had to come as confirmation of their outlook. She said, the Democrats threw away the election for an inadequate black male, referencing his supposed lack of experience presumably. Fair enough. But she followed that with the statement he wouldn't be running if a white woman had not been running. Curious. Would she say this same statement applied to Dodd, and Biden and Edwards and Kucinich? I actually felt a pang of compassion for her as she bitterly exclaimed that she came to the meeting a 2nd class citizen and now she was nothing. I wondered, would she would be less bitter, feel less worthless, if Hillary had lost to a white man? But in her words and demeanor certainly there was this thing that Phleger referred to, a sense of entitlement wrongly frustrated. Perhaps this sense of entitlement is most strongly represented in women like Harriet, white women of the same age and generation as Hillary Clinton, for whom Hillary represents a dream and aspiration every bit as thrilling and compelling as the narrative Barack is writing for black America as I write these words. Will the wrath of Harriet and those like her be Barack's undoing? Time will tell.

Assassination Gaffe?

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right?" she said. "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."

The assassination references by Hillary Clinton in South Dakota are pretty well trodden ground at this point and it seems to me that the storm is passing over for her because the majority of the MSM is lacking in the stones to really press the point. Most of the commentators and pundits are giving Hillary a pass and pretty much refusing to really assert that her comments were intended to be suggestive of the assassination of Obama as a potential event justifying her remaining in the race. Hell, Kennedy family members and Obama himself have extended her grace (which they would never have gotten were the roles reversed) I might agree if this were the only time she has made such reference. However, as Olberman points out in his rant (see our featured video), this is not the only time she has referenced that event. At least twice before she had done so. She referenced the assassination explicitly in comments to Time magazine on March 6th for example. Each time she has made this purportedly "timeline" reference, she has pointedly alluded to the assassination event, sometimes using the word, sometimes not, as was the case with her remarks at a Washington fundraiser on May 7th and again later the same day at an event in Shepherdstown West Virginia (see Olbermans video for the quotes). Pundits and others have said its clearly an allusion to timeline, which is true, but all of the prior comments have also clearly alluded to the assassination as well. Every time. She has pointedly made the allusion in a very similar way each time, which says to me its a talking point and suggests that she is intentionally trying to allude to this, to suggest obliquely that such an outcome could befall Obama and that is a rationale for her continued campaigning for the nomination. Because of the other times noted above when she has made these allusions and they way they are artfully constructed to suggest both the timeline issue and remind the listener of the assassination event at the same time, I do not regard the reference as benign. I believe she WAS engaging in this sort of subliminal messaging.

What is perhaps the bigger issue here is that whether or not you think she was actually doing such a thing intentionally, I think there are few people that don't believe she is perfectly capable of doing it. Either way you slice it, it does not say anything good about her character, her candidacy or her campaign tactics.

What Does Not Kill You Makes You Stronger

Rush Limbaugh opined at one point that "we need Obama bloodied up". He and the republicans gleefully watched the struggle for nomination domination between Obama and Clinton, seeing it as an on the cheap dissection of Obama for the republicans. Clinton has certainly given it her all. However, Obama has weathered the storm. The bitter gaffe, the Wright mess, the PA loss, the massive defeats in KY and VA, yet Obama is still standing, attracting superdelegates daily with the gravitational pull of a new sun. He has been bloodied, but is unbowed and even now trains his sights on his ultimate opponent, McCain. Unlike his primary battle with Clinton where he has labored under the handicap of highly measured response, he is free to unleash the full ferocity and power of his oratory. Its quite possible that this will go down in history as a singular example of "be careful what you wish for, you might get it.

Message Delivered

North Carolina Black Vote
Obama - 91%
Clinton - 6%

Indiana Black Vote
Obama - 92%
Clinton - 8%


The Clinton campaign has persistently argued that Obama is not electable because he cannot win with blue collar white voters. Consistently and deliberately ignored in this discussion amongst the pundits, many bloggers and the Taylor Marsh Obama Haters faction is a simple fact: Democrats don't win national elections without the black vote. Period. Full Stop. Everyone has been focusing on the Wright distraction and how Obama supposedly can't get white voter support, while explicitly avoiding a serious discussion of the reverse problem for Clinton, who is losing the black vote by increasingly larger margins. Even tonight, the talking heads are still avoiding a serious discussion of the implication of this fact for Clinton and for the Democratic Party. Clinton supporters and surrogates and the Obama haters like Taylor Marsh are wont to say that Obama has a question mark with the democratic party's base of white lunchbucket voters, as though black voters are not one of THE most critical and reliable elements of the democratic base. As though our participation is incidental, inconsequential in comparison to the lunch bucket white voter, and it is not. Unlike these blue collar white voters, who might abandon the party for McCain if they are discomfited by the racialized attack themes against Obama, black voters have loyally voted with the democratic party at a high percentage. Mishandling such a loyal voting bloc would be a fatal mistake.

Tonight, black voters delivered a very clear message to the Democratic Party about Hillary Clinton's electability and the electability of democratic candidates around the country potentially sharing a ticket with her. She can't win in November without the black vote and she doesn't have it. I blogged earlier today about Black America's nuclear option, the withholding of our vote. The black vote performance for Obama in Indiana and North Carolina put that deterrent on full display for the super delegates. They ignore it at their peril.

Black America's Nuclear Option

The Clinton campaign has signaled that they intend to use the so-called nuclear option:

"With at least 50 percent of the Democratic Party’s 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee committed to Clinton, her backers could — when the committee meets at the end of this month — try to ram through a decision to seat the disputed 210-member Florida and 156-member Michigan delegations. Such a decision would give Clinton an estimated 55 or more delegates than Obama, according to Clinton campaign operatives"

This would fall into the category of activity that charlatan Sharpton effectively labeled "stacking the deck" during the SOBU. If they are successful in winning Indiana, they will no doubt feel emboldened to forge ahead with this contentious move.

The Clinton campaign's MAD strategy to win the nomination has relied on attack themes fueled by racial innuendo and stereotyping for their potency and a triangulation tactic that positions her politically between McCain and Obama, enabling her to attack Obama as the republicans would. Given that Clinton's standing with black voters has plummeted and remains in free fall since South Carolina, where they successfully tagged Obama as the "black candidate" in the minds of the electorate, the logic behind this approach is crystal clear. They will racially swiftboat Obama, and push to seat Florida and Michigan. The working assumption is that they will restore their standing with black voters in time for the general election, despite his lead in every primary metric.

In our view, the Clintons have used racial themes to power their effort to destroy Obama's electability. Their methodology, born of desperation as they struggled to beat back Obama's challenge is now clearly revealed; appeal to the so-called Reagan Democrats. The demographic of that voting bloc are blue collar white voters. The democratic party coalition has for years tenuously held together a coalition that included these lunch bucket democrats and minorities, a demographic coalition within which economic competition creates an ongoing tension, which Hillary has clearly pivoted to exploit. As the Nation noted in a recent article,

"In the name of demonstrating her superior "electability," she and her surrogates have invoked the racist and sexist playbook of the right--in which swaggering macho cowboys are entrusted to defend the country--seeking to define Obama as too black, too foreign, too different to be President at a moment of high anxiety about national security. This subtly but distinctly racialized political strategy did not create the media feeding frenzy around the Rev. Jeremiah Wright that is now weighing Obama down, but it has positioned Clinton to take advantage of the opportunities the controversy has presented. "

If Clinton is permitted to secure the nomination in this manner by the superdelegates and the party leadership, Black America must be prepared to use its own nuclear option, namely the withholding of the black vote in the general election from Hillary Clinton. The rationale for doing so is compelling and simple; a price must be paid for using race baiting tactics in order to derail a viable black candidate; if not, any future democratic black candidates can expect to have the same tactics trained on them from within the democratic party, a party, and pointedly, a candidate, that has received the consistent and overwhelming support of black voters. Democrats do not win national elections without the support of the black vote. Period. Full Stop. To reward the Clintons or any democratic candidate with our general election votes after such cynical exploitation of racial bias and prejudice is to reveal ourselves as a voting bloc of fools who's sensibilities need not be respected nor deferred to.

Get Your Obama On!

The Field Blog contributes and we adapt the following from their Boot Camp for Chicken Littles

There is the psychology of the winner and the syndrome of the loser. Rules for engaging in political struggle.

1. Any time you cite a “national tracking poll” as supposed evidence of your candidate’s chances of victory disappearing, you must make 25 get-out-the-vote phone calls on that candidate’s behalf. (Don’t ask me how to do that: consult the web page of your candidate for instructions!)

2. Any time you fret aloud about your candidate losing an upcoming primary or caucus, and worry about alleged grave consequences (in the face of the facts that all remaining candidates have lost some contests and yet they march on), you must make 50 calls to voters in every state you mention.

3. Any time you complain aloud about what your candidate’s campaign or staff is not doing you must give at least $10 to that candidate, to make it possible for them to do more.

4. Any time you ask me what you ought to be doing you must give $10 to support the work of The Political Season.

5. If I take the time to provide you with an answer, you must raise $100 from your friends and neighbors to support this blog!

The Betrayal of Black America by Jeremiah Wright

I observed with anger and sadness the spectacle of Jeremiah Wrights comments in the question and answer session at the National Press Club and the subsequent repudiation of those comments by Obama in a press conference that clearly marked the end of a 20 year relationship between these two men.

I was angered by the reckless, flippant and self indulgent manner in which Wright responded to questions at the National Press Club. He treated the opportunity to speak on the world stage as though he were in the pulpit before a friendly crowd of Christian congregants who would understand his antics. After weeks of being vilified as a racist, small minded preacher trapped in the past, Wright proceeds to confirm the hyperbole with his comments. He was the perfect illustration of the adage, better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt. I heard one commentator describe his performance as vaudevillian. Throwing up the Q sign, tossing out nonsensical opinionated quips like the government creating AIDs in the black community and in general making an ass of himself. It was a very self indulgent performance and now we learn that he has a book coming out later this summer in which no doubt he will liberally bash Obama with unflattering stories from their 20 year association. It promises to be a traitorous hit job. I'm angered by a man of God who now stoops to vapid self aggrandizement in order to wreak what history will regard as a small revenge on the senator for the vilification he endured for Obama's sake, though not at Obama's hand. Black America will not reward him for his actions. Indeed even his own former church members are expressing disappointment at his antics. As I seek to put Wright into some perspective, to understand the basis of his behavior at the Press Club, I can't help but think he suffered from a deficiency of vision. Had he only been able to endure, to hold his peace, come November he might have looked up and found himself the friend of the leader of the free world.

Watching Barack's press conference to respond to Wright, I felt sadness to be witness to what was clearly the end of a 20 year friendship. I was sad for Barack that once again he was being forced, pushed and compelled not only by events but by Wright himself to create distance, to disown this time not only his comments but indeed the man himself. It is a measure of Barack Obama the man that he did not disown Wright initially and even now, has been measured in his response. He did not vilify Wright as others have done. He was specific in singling out Wrights comments and how they were not consonant with his views. Even as he separated from Wright, he did so with grace and with restraint, remarking that perhaps he did not know Rev. Wright as well as he thought, that the man who performed at the Press Club was not the man he met 20 years ago. I imagine that as he watched the replay of the Press Club comments, he may very well have thought to himself that he was watching a stranger, this supposed friend of his now knowingly savaging his campaign without any regard. It was evident that he didn't want to cast his friend away, but also equally evident that Wright had already thrown Obama overboard.

On the eve of the South Carolina primary, we predicted that the destruction of Obama's campaign had begun by the purposeful tagging of him in the mind of the white electorate by the Clintons as the black candidate. The judgment of history, certainly of black history, will regard Wright as the primary enabler of Obama's defeat. With his ill considered remarks and reckless antics, he has provided an easy excuse and rationale to the white working class electorate to withhold their support from Obama. A once sympathetic black America will not reward Wright for his role in that.

Rush Limbaugh on the SuperDelegates Dillemma

Rush articulates a position on the black response to a stolen nomination that black America dares not permit the Democratic party to fool itself about. May 1, 2008 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, for those of you who are Democrat superdelegates; may I have your attention, please? As you know, I addressed your fear yesterday, and I know how you people are thinking. You're in the depths of fear over what to do now, because it's clear that you, the superdelegates, are going to decide who is your party's nominee; and in the process, you are going to be committing political murder against one of these candidates. You alone are going to decide, and it used to be six months ago you were proud to be able to do this because you were operating from the context of confidence and inevitability. It was like a slam dunk. Now you're operating from fear, and incorrect decisions are made during times of crisis and fear. And the greatest fear that you superdelegates have... I mean, you can see the trend lines here. You know what's happening. The bloom is off the rose. The messiah, it has turned out, cannot walk on water. Mrs. Clinton's been hanging in there. She has got the testicle lockbox, and it's opening and shutting on schedule. You can see the trend lines, but you're scared to death to take this away from Obama because he leads in delegates; and you're really frightened that you are going to lose the black vote, perhaps permanently, if you take away the nomination. It must be apparent to you that Senator Obama will not lead you to victory. You have to know this. But you fear that denying him support will create a permanent fissure between black voters and Democrats. No Democrat has the courage to examine this flawed premise. It is up to me to advise and address you superdelegates to consider some facts. President John Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy wiretapped Dr. King. Black voters stayed with Democrats. Democrats stood in the schoolhouse doors vowing, "Segregation forever!" Democrats voted against landmark civil rights legislation; Republicans passed it. Blacks stayed with Democrats. Bull Connor was a Democrat. Blacks stayed with Democrats. Democrats created the welfare state, destroying millions of black families. Blacks stayed with Democrats. Democrats bent over forward for the teachers unions, ruining public education for generations of black kids; leaving them unequipped to participate as equals in American society. Yet! Black voters stayed with Democrats. Democrats urged the early release of criminals to further prey on law-abiding black citizens. Blacks stayed with Democrats. Democrats threw blacks under the bus during the immigration debate. After Rosa Parks finally moved to the front of the bus, Democrats threw blacks under it during the immigration debate because Hispanics are now the largest minority voting bloc. Blacks stayed with Democrats. Democrats have not supported blacks achieving power. Carl McCall was running for governor of New York, and was denied funds from Terry McAuliffe at the Democrat National Committee. This audience contributed to McCall's campaign. Civil rights icon Maynard Jackson wanted to be head honcho of the Democrat National Convention. He was denied. Blacks stayed with Democrats. Earlier this year in Selma, Alabama, Mrs. Clinton shows up; mocks the way black people speak. Her husband, Bill Clinton, the reputed "first black president," shows up in South Carolina and plays not the race card, but a whole deck of race cards! (doing Clinton impression) "Obama? Ha! Of course he gonna win. I mean, it's like Jesse Jackson. I mean, he's the black guy." Blacks stayed with Democrats. You superdelegates in the Democrat Party, you're worried about denying Obama the nomination because you fear that your black voters will abandon you permanently? Come, come! Review your history with me once again. You Democrats have already done far worse to black voters than yanking the nomination away from Barack Obama. Have no fear, superdelegates. Be confident. Blacks will stay with you. So will Jesse Jackson, so will Al Sharpton, and you can have them.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: We'll start in Canoga Park, California. Hi Fred. It's great to have you with us, sir. CALLER: Hi, Rush. I think you're a racist. RUSH: Well, that's refreshing. Why, Fred? CALLER: Well, I -- I think you're insinuating that blacks are too stupid to have a learning curve. RUSH: No, I think you're inferring that. CALLER: No, I think you're saying it. RUSH: I'm not. You're inferring it. I'm not implying anything. I stated facts. CALLER: You're saying that -- RUSH: All these things happened, and Democrats continued to get the votes of the majority of black voters. It's just their political allegiance. It's not a comment on race or intelligence. CALLER: Well, you're saying there's nothing the Democrats can do that -- that'll stop the -- the blacks from voting for them, that the blacks are too stupid to even vote in their own best interests. RUSH: No, no, no, no. I didn't say that! You're putting words in my mouth. CALLER: Oh, you didn't say that? You didn't say that blacks keep voting for stuff that's not in their own best interests and that they can't learn? RUSH: I didn't say that. I did not say that. This is a classic illustration. You heard what you wanted to hear based on your own biases and prejudices. I simply recited some facts for you. These are not arguable. These things I said are not arguable. Now, you want to talk about why blacks continue to vote for Democrats despite this? I'll be glad to tell you about that. CALLER: Yes, let's -- let's hear the Rush psychology. RUSH: For 50 years, black people in this country have been told by elected Democrats that Republicans and conservatives are racists, sexists, bigots, and homophobes; that they have no desire for them to become equal or progress economically -- and then you couple that with ministers like Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright reinforcing what other black leaders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson do, and it all becomes very simple. They have been scared to death. Black voters have been told for 50 years that their lives will be ruined if they vote for Republicans, because Republicans don't care about them. When you vote out of fear, it's the same thing the Democrats have done with elderly people, our seasoned citizens and Social Security. It's almost predictable that every election cycle, the Democrats, somebody, will predict or tell old people -- with phone calls, robophone calls, push polling or even blatantly out in the open -- senior citizens that Republicans want to take back their Social Security. I remember in 1988. I was in Sacramento, California, and Alan Cranston (the Senator from California then) was telling people on television out there, Republicans wanted to kick senior citizens out of their homes if Reagan was reelected. Now, if you're a senior citizen and you don't pay a whole lot of attention and you hear that and you're a Democrat and you have party loyalty going into this and you hear Cranston say that, and all you have is your Social Security; you're not going to take the chance that Cranston's wrong, because if he's telling you, "He's in the Senate. Why, he's a powerful man. He's a United States senator!" If he's telling you that Republicans will kick you out of your house or take your Social Security away, you're not going to take the chance that he's wrong. It's the same thing with the black population here. For 50 years they have been lied to. They have been made to live in fear of Republicans. It's gotten to the point here, Fred -- this is undeniable. Black people in this country who have achieved great things without going through the Democrat Party civil rights prescriptions to do so -- and I can give you a host of names if you want -- are routinely savaged and destroyed or at least attempts are made to destroy them, as Uncle Toms. For example, Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele. There are a number of highly accomplished black people who have become Republicans, and they are held out as traitors. How can you explain it otherwise when young black kids are told in school if they learn to do well on tests, they're being "too white"? Who's telling them this? It isn't us. It's the Democrat Party and its agents. All I'm trying to do is make it easy for the superdelegates, here. They know they got a problem. The problem is that Obama cannot win. But they are afraid to pull the nomination from him because he's getting 80% of the black vote; and they think the black vote will not show up in November and vote Democrat, and I'm simply trying to tell them that there's a 50-year history of showing that they have done far worse. I mean, what worse can you do than destroy the black family with welfare, that didn't work, and took the place of the father and the husband? What more can you do to black people than destroy their family? And Democrats still vote for them. I have said on this program for countless years, countless times: If it were me, and I've been holding out hope and listening to the promises of a political party for 50 years -- and after all those 50 years I'm still complaining and whining about same circumstances I was in 50 years ago -- I'd begin to question my vote. "Wait a minute. You know, you guys keep promising these things, and nothing ever happens. You keep blaming the Republicans for my problems. You promise you're going to fix 'em, and then you forget us after the election. I think you're taking us for granted." I would start to question it. But that hasn't happened. It has not happened. The Democrat Party is perceived in the minds of 80 to 90% of the black population, as its only hope. This is the result of fear that's been instilled. So, this little litany of things I said to try to assure the superdelegates that they could do what they want without any fear whatsoever, blacks will leave them; is unarguable. It's pure, 100% fact.

Armegeddon in Denver

Clinton's win in Pennsylvania has now set the stage for the Clinton end game to wrench from Obama's grasp the Democratic nomination, despite a lead in pledged delegates, popular vote, states won and money raised. Absent a brilliant political move by Obama on the level of his race speech (I don't put it past him, he's a brilliant politician) I don't see him avoiding this fate. His race is a political impediment now and becomes moreso with each day. Clinton is pressing themes that use the dissonance of his racial heritage in the minds of white voters to add potency to her argument that he is not electable.

Clinton will not concede, nor will the supers force her out, and the fact that they will not and have not is proof positive that her strategy is working. She does not have to get their endorsement now to win. She merely has to deny Obama their endorsement and keep them on the sidelines, delaying their public commitment. Her very presence as a continuing candidate after the end of the primaries in June implicitly calls his electability into question. To win now, Obama must strike a mortal blow somewhere in these remaining contests and damage her so badly that her campaign collapses. He's playing the resource card to full effect, stressing and straining her campaign. She may have raised $2.5 million in 2 hours following the PA win, but her comeback story has not yet ignited a small donor base as large as his. There is danger that his donor base growth could stop expanding and indeed even contract if pessimism about his run takes hold from the attrition of her scorched earth strategy. Its another reason he must find a way to knee cap her. However, this is the Clintons we're talking about. He is unlikely to be able to achieve such a blow and they are unlikely to make a critical enough mistake that he can exploit.

To win, Clinton merely has to survive the primary season with an intact campaign. That gets her to the convention, and her presence there is a defacto rejection by the party of Obama as nominee. The supers are not going to kill off her campaign before June, which actually means they are not going to do it at all. They have essentially bought Clinton's argument that Obama's electability is suspect and are preserving the option to throw Obama's nomination under the bus at the convention. That is all the opening that Clinton requires.

The talk of a brokered convention is a fantasy and indeed it is a fantasy because it represents the best case scenario to be achieved in a confrontation between the Obama and Clinton camps at the convention. A brokered convention would mean that the defeat of Obama's nomination run by racial swiftboating would be achieved in some way that is palatable to Obama and his supporters and the democratic party electorate at large in a circumstance where Obama leads in delegates, popular vote, states won and money raised. Not...gonna....happen.

The more likely manner in which the convention will be described is fratricidal, because at the convention, what is there going to be to broker besides humiliation? Obama will lead in delegates, probably still lead in popular vote, states won and he'll still be crushing Clinton in the money race. But the party is going to come to him and say, you should take the VP spot. For the good of the party. No one should doubt his response is going to be some variation of "go f**k yourself".

Clinton is playing a game of chicken with the party. My advice to Obama in Denver this August when this scenario plays itself out? Play a little chicken with the party too. Obama should tell them that if they deny him the nomination when he leads in every metric, that he will leave the party and run as an independent, taking the black vote with him. Blacks will want an alternative and Obama should give it to them. He has the campaign machine and the money to do so. The democrats don't win the White House without the black vote. Period. Full Stop.

Permitting the destruction of Obama's historic run in this manner WILL suppress the black vote, as they withhold their votes from Clinton and permit her to crash and burn in November. Sharpton will protest in the streets of Denver, Hillary's black supporters will be vilified and the Democrats will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Its going to be jaw droppingly ugly political history in motion in August, because in the minds of reasonable black Americans this scenario would not be possible if Barack were a white candidate.

If Obama Were White......Our PA, IN, NC Prediction and the Clinton Convention Endgame

Another media hit job, I mean, debate has come and gone, another event in the slow motion destruction of the Obama campaign. On the eve of the South Carolina primary, with Obama poised to win by a wide margin, I predicted that we had seen the beginning of the defeat of the Obama campaign. I said then "the Clinton campaign has succeeded in two things. 1. making Obama a "black" candidate in the minds of white voters and 2. diminishing Obama's stature, bringing him down, in the eyes of voters, to the level of typical politicians, to frankly, their level."

I have watched the continuing battle with great hope that Obama would be able to shatter the trick box of race he has been put into, but I remain doubtful that he can do so. Clinton is pressing coded "themes" that all play upon Obama's black identity for their potency and her campaign is merely a preview of the republicans. His comments framing small town Pennsylvanians as bitter towards the government used to assert he is an elitist, code for "uppity negro". The fierce criticisms of America made by his pastor ascribed to him, framing him as an "angry black man", a natural predicate characteristic which when coupled with the non issue of not wearing a lapel flag pin, damns him as unpatriotic as well.

Following the Philadelphia debate, Clinton is again actively baiting him, using his criticism of the poor performance of the moderators of the ABC debate to paint him as weak, untested and unprepared for the fight, trying to goad him into an overreaction or ill advised attacks and with some success. Once again, as she did in the runup to Texas, she seeks to lure him onto her ground, the close combat of the politics of personal destruction, a black art of which she is a dark aficionado, employing the lessons she learned at the hands of her republican tormentors so well.

Obama did not want this to be about race. Now, race is the dominant subtext and its influence and presence in this nomination battle can't be ignored. So lets go there for a moment. Ferraro said Obama would not be where he was if he was white. I think I may agree with Ferraro. Because I'm starting to wonder "if Obama were white, would he already be the nominee by now?". Leading in delegates....leading in popular vote...leading in number of states won....leading in the money race....but he is still questionable as the nominee?

If he where white, would the party sit by while Clinton is permitted to bloody him up for the general election, even though she cannot achieve the needed numbers of delegates even if you assume the most favorable outcome for her in all the remaining contests? It is a fact that the only way she can achieve the nomination is to politically destroy Obama, either directly or by pouncing on a misstep he makes. The democratic party could end this , but they have chosen not to do so, leaving Obama to twist. Despite protestations that we will have a nominee by June, I think not. Clinton has made it clear she does not intend to withdraw, and frankly, its the only route she can go if she is determined to win. She intends to fight in every remaining contest and take the battle all the way to Denver, where it will become a knife fight on the convention floor. The Clintons know how to play this game, and so far they have managed to intimidate the rest of the democratic party into going along with this mad scheme.

And truly, this way lays madness for the democrats. Because if Clinton is permitted to carry out her tactics of attacking Obama all the way to the convention, damaging him enough to beguile the supers to give her their support for the nomination, blacks will walk away from the party in large numbers in November. Some will stay and vote with Clinton, but most will stay home. It does not require all of us to stay home in order for the dems election hopes to be sunk. Democrats don't win without the black vote. Period, full stop.

Bloggers (like me) will be screaming from the rooftops in that scenario that if blacks give their vote to Hillary after winning the nomination dirty, you are suckers and unworthy of respect. Lets also be clear. The VP spot on the ticket for Obama in that scenario won't do, even if she were to sincerely offer it. I and most of the black community would lose all respect for Obama were he to take it and consider it to be a very foolish thing for him to do. So here is the other racial subtext; is the democratic party risking losing the black vote, its most dependable, reliable voting bloc without which it does not win, because they just don't think we'll walk away, even after a slap in the face like Hillary stealing the nomination? Because they perhaps think blacks will get over any indignity? I suppose Hillary assumes that she'll lure blacks back into the fold with the promise of electoral bribes in the form of government programs and positions in her government for those blacks who stood with her. Its worked in the past, why not now?

I believe all such thinking to be quite erroneous. With blacks supporting Obama at 80% and above, the idea that they will simply turn off their allegiance to his run after the Clinton's finish their Tonya Harding routine is simply silly. Apparently the dems are willing to risk it and too intimidated by the Clinton machine to shut it down. The Clintons are betting the farm on winning this game of political chicken with the party. They figure, "hey, it will be a little ugly, but we will get all the Negroes back on the plantation by November, or at least enough of them, so don't worry". Thats the game they are playing. Its a scorched earth, bare knuckles, anything we can get away with fight.

So all of that being said, here's our prediction for NC, IN and PA. Hillary will win PA tomorrow and she will do so by a margin of 9%-15%. Energized by that win, she will have enough momentum and fund raising to continue to draw Obama missteps with her attacks and his off message reaction. She will lose in NC, but she will manage to squeak out a narrow win in Indiana. She will continue to eke out small spurts of momentum in the primary contests to follow and thereby sow fear, uncertainty and doubt among the supers, making them stay their hand before the convention. The Democratic leadership will not prevent this battle from going to the convention because they are both too intimidated by the Clinton machine and too timid to risk the potential alienation of blue collar white voters. If Hillary is not forced to concede the nomination battle by either campaign losses or orchestrated pressure from the democratic party to withdraw before the last primary contests in June, its over.

The nomination fight will go to the convention. Obama has already lost.

Kool-Aid Drinker vs. Cynical Black Man

I have a narrative going back and forth in my head about the nomination fight, how race plays into it and what may be its ultimate result. Its a rhetorical civil war represented in my mind by two personas. The indefatigably optimistic but ungraciously denominated Kool-Aid Drinker and the world weary Cynical Black Man. Its an inner dialogue about Obama and Wright that if you could hear it, might sound something like this:

Kool-Aid Drinker: Obama gave a moving, intelligent and persuasive speech in response to the controversy ignited by the selected fiery snippets of his pastor Jeremiah Wright. Obama's speech openly challenged Americans, as few politicians ever have, to go beyond the sound bite, to re-engage our minds and hearts with each other on this most uncomfortable and bitter subject of race in America. He changed the tone of the controversy. It was brilliant. It was uplifting.

Cynical Black Man: It changed nothing. Played endlessly on cable and the web, those soundbites have been used to caricature in the minds of white voters a pastor, his church and the black community as embittered haters of America, permanently locked in a cycle of victimization and resentment. Obama has now been successfully labeled as the "black" candidate with an accompanying stigma. That labeling damages him. He's run a campaign that tried very hard to help voters see him through the prism of candidate first, racial identity second. The Wright episode has been used to tie him permanently to white perception and resentment of blacks as unpatriotic whiners who prefer playing on white guilt for handouts to earning their way in America.

Kool-Aid Drinker: No, that speech really made people stop and think. Even conservatives like Huckabee said it was a great speech. That speech has got people talking and thinking about race in a deeper way. He's opened up a space for black and white and brown to talk to each other about the issue of race that did not exist before. He's helped move the conversation about race to a slightly higher level within the broad body politic. This speech was different.

Cynical Black Man: His speech showed that nothing is different. His speech was him telling America "I'm not an angry black man like Wright". His speech was saying to America "look, you know I've done everything I can to keep my blackness from scaring you or bothering you in any way. Now this Wright mess has gone and reminded you of the fact you have been working hard to ignore, which is I'm black. I'm asking you to go back to ignoring my racial identity." Now he's been tagged with the dominant white perception of blacks in America, a perception in which Condi and Colin are considered exceptions to the rule of Sharpton and Jesse. The speech is the political equivalent of the way that if I'm on a dark street and find myself walking behind a white women, I do things to ease her mind like staying in her eyeline so that she can always see me, or making a little more noise than neccesary so she can be aware of my movements, to prevent her from being fearful of me. Obama's speech is his way of doing that for the white electorate.

Coming soon: Kool-Aid & Cynic: The Comic Strip

Iraq: 5 Years Later

By George Friedman (Honorary Political Season Contributor)
Five years have now passed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney, in Iraq with Sen. John McCain — the presumptive Republican nominee for president — summarized the five years by saying, “If you reflect back on those five years, it’s been a difficult, challenging, but nonetheless successful endeavor. We’ve come a long way in five years, and it’s been well worth the effort.” Democratic presidential aspirant Sen. Hillary Clinton called the war a failure.

It is the role of political leaders to make such declarations, not ours. Nevertheless, after five years, it is a moment to reflect less on where we are and more on where we are going. As we have argued in the past, the actual distinctions between McCain’s position at one end (reduce forces in Iraq only as conditions permit) and Barack Obama’s position (reduce them over 16 months unless al Qaeda is shown to be in Iraq) are in practice much less distinct than either believes. Rhetoric aside — and this is a political season — there is in fact a general, but hardly universal, belief that goes as follows: The invasion of Iraq probably was a mistake, and certainly its execution was disastrous. But a unilateral and precipitous withdrawal by the United States at this point would not be in anyone’s interest. The debate is over whether the invasion was a mistake in the first place, while the divisions over ongoing policy are much less real than apparent.

Stratfor tries not to get involved in this sort of debate. Our role is to try to predict what nations and leaders will do, and to explain their reasoning and the forces that impel them to behave as they do. Many times, this analysis gets confused with advocacy. But our goal actually is to try to understand what is happening, why it is happening and what will happen next. We note the consensus. We neither approve nor disapprove of it as a company. As individuals, we all have opinions. Opinions are cheap and everyone gets to have one for free. But we ask that our staff check them — along with their personal ideologies — at the door. Our opinions focus not on what ought to happen, but rather on what we think will happen — and here we are passionate.

Public Justifications and Private Motivations

We have lived with the Iraq war for more than five years. It was our view in early 2002 that a U.S. invasion of Iraq was inevitable. We did not believe the invasion had anything to do with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) — which with others we believed were under development in Iraq. The motivation for the war, as we wrote, had to do with forcing Saudi Arabia to become more cooperative in the fight against al Qaeda by demonstrating that the United States actually was prepared to go to extreme measures. The United States invaded to change the psychology of the region, which had a low regard for American power. It also invaded to occupy the most strategic country in the Middle East, one that bordered seven other key countries.

Our view was that the Bush administration would go to war in Iraq not because it saw it as a great idea, but because its options were to go on the defensive against al Qaeda and wait for the next attack or take the best of a bad lot of offensive actions. The second option consisted of trying to create what we called the “coalition of the coerced,” Islamic countries prepared to cooperate in the covert war against al Qaeda. Fighting in Afghanistan was merely a holding action that alone would solve nothing. So lacking good options, the administration chose the best of a bad lot.

The administration certainly lied about its reasons for going into Iraq. But then FDR certainly lied about planning for involvement in World War II, John Kennedy lied about whether he had traded missiles in Turkey for missiles in Cuba and so on. Leaders cannot conduct foreign policy without deception, and frequently the people they deceive are their own publics. This is simply the way things are.

We believed at the time of the invasion that it might prove to be much more difficult and dangerous than proponents expected. Our concern was not about a guerrilla war. Instead, it was about how Saddam Hussein would make a stand in Baghdad, a city of 5 million, forcing the United States into a Stalingrad-style urban meat grinder. That didn’t happen. We underestimated Iraqi thinking. Knowing they could not fight a conventional war against the Americans, they opted instead to decline conventional combat and move to guerrilla warfare instead. We did not expect that.

A Bigger Challenge Than Expected

That this was planned is obvious to us. On April 13, 2003, we noted what appeared to be an organized resistance group carrying out bombings. Organizing such attacks so quickly indicated to us that the operations were planned. Explosives and weapons had been hidden, command and control established, attacks and publicity coordinated. These things don’t just happen. Soon after the war, we recognized that the Sunnis in fact had planned a protracted war — just not a conventional one.

Our focus then turned to Washington. Washington had come into the war with a clear expectation that the destruction of the Iraqi army would give the United States a clean slate on which to redraw Iraqi society. Before the war was fought, comparisons were being drawn with the occupation of Japan. The beginnings of the guerrilla operation did not fit into these expectations, so U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the guerrillas as merely the remnants of the Iraqi army — criminals and “dead-enders” — in their last throes. We noted the gap between Washington’s perception of Iraq and what we thought was actually going on.

A perfect storm arose in this gulf. First, no WMD were found. We were as surprised by this as anybody. But for us, this was an intellectual exercise; for the administration, it meant the justification for the war — albeit not the real motive — was very publicly negated. Then, resistance in Iraq to the United States increased after the U.S. president declared final victory. And finally, attempts at redrawing Iraqi society as a symbol of American power in the Islamic world came apart, a combination of the guerrilla war and lack of preparation plus purging the Baathists. In sum, reshaping a society proved more daunting than expected just as the administration’s credibility cracked over the WMD issue.

A More Complex Game

By 2004, the United States had entered a new phase. Rather than simply allowing the Shia to create a national government, the United States began playing a complex and not always clear game of trying to bring the Sunnis into the political process while simultaneously waging war against them. The Iranians used their influence among the Shia to further destabilize the U.S. position. Having encouraged the United States to depose its enemy, Saddam Hussein, Tehran now wanted Washington to leave and allow Iran to dominate Iraq.

The United States couldn’t leave Iraq but had no strategy for staying. Stratfor’s view from 2004 was that the military option in Iraq had failed. The United States did not have the force to impose its will on the various parties in Iraq. The only solution was a political accommodation with Iran. We noted a range of conversations with Iran, but also noted that the Iranians were not convinced that they had to deal with the Americans. Given the military circumstance, the Americans would leave anyway and Iran would inherit Iraq.

Stratfor became more and more pessimistic about the American position in 2006, believing that no military solution was possible, and that a political solution — particularly following the Democratic victory in 2006 congressional elections — would further convince the Iranians to be intransigent. The deal that we had seen emerging over the summer of 2006 after the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, was collapsing.

The Surge

We were taken by surprise by U.S. President George W. Bush’s response to the elections. Rather than beginning a withdrawal, he initiated the surge. While the number of troops committed to Iraq was relatively small, and its military impact minimal, the psychological shock was enormous. The Iranian assumption about the withdrawal of U.S. forces collapsed, forcing Tehran to reconsider its position. An essential part of the surge — not fully visible at the beginning — was that it was more a political plan than a military one. While increased operations took place, the Americans reached out to the Sunni leadership, splitting them off from foreign jihadists and strengthening them against the Shia.

Coupled with increasingly bellicose threats against Iran, this created a sense of increasing concern in Tehran. The Iranians responded by taking Muqtada al-Sadr to Iran and fragmenting his army. This led to a dramatic decline in the civil war between Shia and Sunni and in turn led to the current decline in violence.

The war — or at least Stratfor’s view of it — thus went through four phases:

• Winter 2002-March 2003: The period that began with the run-up to invasion, in which the administration chose the best of a bad set of choices and then became overly optimistic about the war’s outcome.
• April 2003-Summer 2003: The period in which the insurgency developed and the administration failed to respond.
• Fall 2003-late 2006: The period in which the United States fought a multisided war with insufficient forces and a parallel political process that didn’t match the reality on the ground.
• Late 2006 to the present: The period known as the surge, in which military operations and political processes were aligned, leading to a working alliance with the Sunnis and the fragmentation of the Shia. This period included the Iranians restraining their Shiite supporters and the United States removing the threat of war against Iran through the National Intelligence Estimate.

The key moment in the war occurred between May 2003 and July 2003. This consisted of the U.S. failure to recognize that an insurgency in the Sunni community had begun and its delay in developing a rapid and effective response, creating the third phase — namely, the long, grueling period in which combat operations were launched, casualties were incurred and imposed, but the ability to move toward a resolution was completely absent. It is unclear whether a more prompt response by the Bush administration during the second period could have avoided the third period, but the second period certainly was the only point during which the war could have been brought under control.

The operation carried out under Gen. David Petraeus, combining military and political processes, has been a surprise, at least to us. Meanwhile, the U.S. rapprochement with the Sunnis that began quietly in Anbar province spiraled into something far more effective than we had imagined. It has been much more successful than we had imagined in part because we did not believe Washington was prepared for such a systematic and complex operation that was primarily political in nature. It is also unclear if the operation will succeed. Its future still depends on the actions of the Iraqi Shia, and these actions in turn depend on Iran.

The Endgame

We have been focused on the U.S.-Iranian talks for quite awhile. We continue to believe this is a critical piece in any endgame. The United States is now providing an alternative scenario designed to be utterly frightening to the Iranians. They are arming and training the Iranians’ mortal enemies: the Sunnis who led the war against Iran from 1980 to 1988. That rearming is getting very serious indeed. Sunni units outside the aegis of the Iraqi military are now some of the most heavily armed Iraqis in Anbar, thanks to the Sunni relationship with U.S. forces there. It should be remembered that the Sunnis ruled Iraq because the Iraqi Shia were fragmented, fighting among themselves and therefore weak. That underlying reality remains true. A cohesive Sunni community armed and backed by the American s will be a formidable force. That threat is the best way to bring the Iranians to the table.

The irony is that the war is now focused on empowering the very people the war was fought against: the Iraqi Sunnis. In a sense, it is at least a partial return to the status quo ante bellum. In that sense, one could argue the war was a massive mistake. At the same time, we constantly return to this question: We know what everyone would not have done in 2003; we are curious about what everyone would have done then. Afghanistan was an illusory option. The real choices were to try to block al Qaeda defensively or to coerce Islamic intelligence services to provide the United States with needed intelligence. By appearing to be a dangerous and uncontrolled power rampaging in the most strategic country in the region, the United States reshaped the political decisions countries like Saudi Arabia were making.

This all came at a price that few of us would have imagined five years ago. Cheney is saying it was worth it. Clinton is saying it was not. Stratfor’s view is that what happened had to happen given the lack of choices. But Rumsfeld’s unwillingness to recognize that a guerrilla war had broken out and provide more and appropriate forces to wage that war did not have to happen. There alone we think history might have changed. Perhaps.