Blog Buzz: The Backstory Part II
Prisoners in Iraq (October 15)Matt Yglesias notes that Iceland's economy is
Biden Reactions, Russia Fallout (August 25)
Jen Rubin at Contentions thinks that Biden "makes the ticket more liberal without much added benefit," citing Fred Barnes' op-ed in the WSJ on the pick. Furthermore, adds Rubin, this time citing the Washington Post, Biden's votes on key foreign policy issues - like Iraq and NAFTA - are consistent with McCain's; this not only makes it harder to attack McCain for these positions, but also diminishes Senator Obama relative to his two more established colleagues.
Andrew Sullivan is happy about the pick. He thinks Obama has demonstrated "a serious, adult attitude toward the enormous burden that the next presidency will be, especially in foreign policy." Yet Michael Crowley at TNR's The Stump wonders how the pair's fairly different foreign policy views and experiences will mesh. As Crowley puts it, "Although Biden is no neocon hawk, over the years he's been quite comfortable with the use of force to achieve American goals." He wonders if this will come to a head over Darfur; Biden has been particularly hawkish about intervention there.
And Paul Mirengoff of Powerline thinks that, "Biden's performance on the Senate Judiciary Committee recommends him more highly for a spot on reality television than for the number two political job in the United States."
But it's not all Biden all the time. Some folks are still thinking about the Russia-Georgia situation. Kenneth Anderson argues that Russian expansionism needs to be "opposed and rolled back" and acknowledges that the prospects of an enlarged NATO assimilating Russia are now dead. Eugene Volokh comments on this pots at the Volokh Conspiracy, humbly suggesting that "while my instinctive sense in the Russian-Georgian conflict is that the Russians are in the wrong, I think it's important not to assume that therefore the Georgians are in the right, or ought to get what they want. And my sense is that the talk of letting Georgia into NATO is likely quite misguided…" He is quite sympathetic to Professor Anderson's claim that the Georgians not be allowed to govern Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Defending Poland, Admiring China (August 22)
Secretary Rice claims that the US is helping Poland with missile defense to protect it from threats like Iran and North Korea. Matt Yglesias says this is a ridiculous claim: "The countries that Poland worries about are Russia and Germany; the countries with substantial missile arsenals are the United States and Russia; the country that this would defend Poland against if it worked (which it doesn't) is Russia."
And Greg Pollowitz of National Review's Media Blog thinks Obama has said something ridiculous - that China's superior infrastructure is appealing to business. "Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now," he said. Pollowitz asks, "Does he have any earthly clue on just how the infrastructure was developed in China?" He mentions the two elderly women being sent to a "re-education camp," the collapse of the rail system during heavy snows last winter, and "the May 12 earthquake that hit in Sichuan that killed about 70,000 people, including many students killed in their government-built classrooms" before concluding, "maybe a message of be-like-China is not the best strategy."
Leading By Example? (August 21)
Senator Obama, talking Russia yesterday, said, "We've got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies… They can't charge into other countries. Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point."
This echoes what some in the Left blogosphere have been saying, as we documented below. But Obama's embrace of it has caused the Right to take notice all over again. As Abe Greenwald characterized it on Contentions, "Faced with a geopolitical challenge that demands unwavering Western fortitude and American stewardship, Barack Obama apologizes for the misuse of American strength and initiative."
But, he adds, "there was always a respectable argument that the U.S.'s invasion of Iraq would open the door for less trustworthy countries looking to justify aggression on pre-emptive grounds. It does not apply here, and in any case now is not the time for an American leader to air it." Jim Geraghty is less judicious in National Review Online's The Campaign Spot: "Some of us see some differences between a coalition of democracies invading a dictatorship and a dictator unilaterally invading a democracy."
Patriotism Games (August 20)
There's nothing like a little patriotism back-and-forth, is there? McCain has been using the line "I would rather lose an election than lose a war" for a while now. He expanded on it in his VFW speech Monday morning. Supporting the surge, he said, "was a clarifying moment. It was a moment when political self-interest and the national interest parted ways. For my part, with so much in the balance, it was an easy call."
Senator Obama responded soon after by calling on McCain to stop questioning his "character and patriotism." As Karen Tumulty of Time summarizes Obama's response, "McCain boasts of putting country first, Obama said, ‘but I have to say, it's not an example of putting country first when you say George Bush's economic policies have shown ‘great progress.'"
Powerline's John Hinderaker pounces: Obama Plays the Patriotism Card. He calls Obama a "whiner who is happy to dish out personal attacks, but thinks he should be entitled to some kind of immunity." On the other hand, Jonathan Cohn, at TNR's The Plank, approves of Obama's speech, calling it "precisely the kind of aggressive approach many observers (myself included) have been waiting, anxiously, for Obama to adopt."