It's a Civil War, Stupid

And yet liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald asks: "Is withdrawal -- whether incremental or total -- considered to be an 'extreme view' that the Washington 'centrists' have not only rejected but have excluded in advance even from consideration? That's what this article seems to suggest, and that would definitely be consistent with conventional Beltway wisdom -- that withdrawal is advocated only by the fringe radicals and far leftists (such as the individual whom Americans just knowingly installed as Speaker of the House). . . .

"If the Commission begins with the premise that we have to stay in Iraq and then only considers proposals for how to modify our strategy on the margins, that is anything but centrist. To the contrary, that is a close-minded -- and rather extremist -- commitment to the continuation of a war which most Americans have come to despise and want to see brought to an end."

White House in Motion

So what was Cheney trying to accomplish in Saudi Arabia this weekend? We can only guess.

The New York Times reports: "Vice President Dick Cheney traveled to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, on Saturday to discuss regional security issues with King Abdullah. . . .

"The meeting at the king's palace, which lasted for a few hours . . . touched on 'the whole range of events and developments on the regional and international scenes,' according to the Saudi Press Agency, particularly 'the Palestinian issue and the situation in Iraq.'

"Mr. Cheney left the country shortly after the meeting to return to the United States."

Donna Abu-Nasr writes for the Associated Press: "Before the meeting, a Saudi official said Cheney was expected to ask oil-rich Saudi Arabia to use its considerable influence with Iraq's Sunni Arab minority to promote reconciliation with Iraqi Shiites and Kurds."

William Douglas and Hannah Allam write for McClatchy Newspapers: "President Bush travels to Europe and the Middle East on Monday to seek help with the two biggest problems dogging his presidency: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"After a quick stop Monday in Estonia, Bush is to arrive in Riga, Latvia, for a two-day North American Treaty Organization meeting that will focus on the 26-nation alliance's struggle to secure Afghanistan against resurgent Taliban forces.

"From Riga, Bush is to fly Wednesday to Amman, Jordan, for a hastily arranged meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, where they'll discuss ways to speed the transfer of security to Iraqi control."

Checked Out?

Liberal blogger Josh Marshall writes: "Is it just me or has George W. Bush checked out of the stumbling national crisis we know as 'Iraq'? . . .

"The one thing that's been a constant over the last three and a half years is the president as the voice of American Iraq policy. Whether he's the author of it is another question entirely. But the voice and pitbull of it, always.

"And yet since the election he seems to have disappeared from the conversation entirely. Like he's just checked out. . . . Like it's not his problem any more."

White House Briefing reader Alicia Rasley writes: "I was struck, watching the Sunday talk shows, how irrelevant Bush seems to have become as far as the pundits and insiders are concerned.

"The commentators and their guests managed to talk about what the 'U.S' ought to do with Iraq ('we need to start dealing with the new realities on the ground') without ever mentioning Bush's name. . . .

"It is the weirdest thing. If Bush were really powerless, then, okay, ignore him. But not one of these plans are going to work without his agreeing to go along with it. And what no one is saying is: He hasn't done one sensible thing yet, so why would he agree to listen now?"

Where We Stand

Mark Danner writes in the New York Review of Books: "The election of November 7, 2006, marks the moment . . . when officials throughout the American government, not least the President himself, were forced to recognize and acknowledge a reality that much of the American public had discerned months or years before. The ideological canopy now has lifted."

But recognizing the problem does not mean there is a solution. And Danner, author of some of the most insightful writing about the Bush White House -- and its press corps -- remains fascinated by how we got here.

"[A]s the war's presumed ending -- constructed from carefully crafted images of triumph, of dictators' statues cast down and presidents striding forcefully across aircraft carrier decks -- has flickered and vanished, receding into the just-out-of-grasp future ('a decision for the next president,' the pre-election President Bush had said), the war's beginning has likewise melted away, the original rationale obscured in a darkening welter of shifting intelligence, ideological controversy, and conflicting claims, all of it hemmed in now on all sides by the mounting dead."

Danner's conclusion (though how he gets there is well worth the read): "Saddam Hussein and the autocracy he ruled were the product of a dysfunctional politics, not the cause of it. Reform of such a politics was always going to be a task of incalculable complexity. Faced with such complexity, and determined to have their war and their democratic revolution, the President and his counselors looked away. Confronted with great difficulties, their answer was to blind themselves to them and put their faith in ideology and hope -- in the dream of a welcoming landscape, magically transformed. The evangelical vision may have made the sense of threat after September 11 easier to bear but it did not change the risks and the reality on the ground. The result is that the wave of change the President and his officials were so determined to set in course by unleashing American military power may well turn out to be precisely the wave of Islamic radicalism that they had hoped to prevent."

One Year Later

Eric Lichtblau writes in the New York Times: "When President Bush went on national television one Saturday morning last December to acknowledge the existence of a secret wiretapping program outside the courts, the fallout was fierce and immediate. . . .

"Mr. Bush's opponents accused him of breaking the law, with a few even calling for his impeachment. His backers demanded that he be given express legal authority to do what he had done. Law professors talked, civil rights groups sued and a federal judge in Detroit declared the wiretapping program unconstitutional.

"But as Democrats prepare to take over on Capitol Hill, not much has really changed. For all the sound and fury in the last year, the National Security Agency's wiretapping program continues uninterrupted, with no definitive action by either Congress or the courts on what, if anything, to do about it, and little chance of a breakthrough in the lame-duck Congress."

Cheney spoke at some length about the program in a speech to the Federalist Society on Nov. 17. He argued that the "judicial branch has no business directing national security policy for this country."

Cheney said: "If an additional reason is needed for courts to show exceeding caution in national security affairs, it is this: They are unaccountable for the consequences of getting it wrong. The security of the country, and the strategies for its defense, are the province of the American people themselves. They exercise that control at the ballot box by voting us in or throwing us out. For courts to insert themselves into defense and security matters is to weaken the bond of accountability where it should be strongest --- in the area of national self preservation."

And, lest we forget: "The ultimate threat here isn't 19 men on airplanes; it's 19 men in the middle of one of our cities with a nuclear weapon."

How Much Is That Per Book?

Thomas M. DeFrank writes in the New York Daily News: "President Bush and his truest believers are about to launch their final campaign - an eye-popping, half-billion-dollar drive for the Bush presidential library.

"Eager to begin refurbishing his tattered legacy, the President hopes to raise $500 million to build his library and a think tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. . . .

"The half-billion target is double what Bush raised for his 2004 reelection and dwarfs the funding of other presidential libraries. But Bush partisans are determined to have a massive pile of endowment cash to spread the gospel of a presidency that for now gets poor marks from many scholars and a majority of Americans.

"The legacy-polishing centerpiece is an institute, which several Bush insiders called the Institute for Democracy. Patterned after Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Bush's institute will hire conservative scholars and 'give them money to write papers and books favorable to the President's policies,' one Bush insider said."

Cartoon Watch

Bob Geiger has a great roundup of recent political cartoons. Also see Tom Toles on negotiation, Bush-style.

Ever Optimistic

Victor Davis Hanson blogs for the National Review: "[T]here really will come a time, believe it or not, when a future American President baffled and paralyzed by the latest insanity from the Middle East -- whether an Iranian nuke or a Syrian invasion of Lebanon or another Middle East war or the usual assassination and killing of Americans -- will ask former president George Bush II for advice, as a then fawning media will look back to his past 'toughness' and 'determination' when under fire. That seems unhinged now, but it too will come to pass, as they say."