Barack Obama may be able to get the troops out of Iraq in 16 months mostly because George W. Bush’s surge did so well.  Via Instapundit:

"THE WAR IS OVER AND WE WON:" Michael Yon just phoned from Baghdad, and reports that things are much better than he had expected, and he had expected things to be good. "There’s nothing going on. I’m with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I’m with haven’t fired their weapons on this tour and they’ve been here eight months. And the place we’re at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there’s nothing going on. I’ve been walking my feet off and haven’t seen anything. I’ve been asking Iraqis, ‘do you think the violence will kick up again,’ but even the Iraqi journalists are sounding optimistic now and they’re usually dour." There’s a little bit of violence here and there, but nothing that’s a threat to the general situation. Plus, not only the Iraqi Army, but even the National Police are well thought of by the populace. Training from U.S. toops [sic] has paid off, he says, in building a rapport.

If Obama had had his way, this wouldn’t have happened.  But if & when he has the troops home on or before April 2010, it will be because Dubya laid the foundation for it.

Work and family have kept me from posting much lately, and today is the last shot before Election Day.  So here are my thoughts about the main issues for this election and why I think John McCain stands on the correct side of each of them.

Abortion

Barack Obama’s answer to Rick Warren, that the question of when life begins was "above my pay grade", should disqualify him from consideration by anyone who is concerned about "the least of these".  Babies in the womb are arguably the least of the least of these, and while Obama claims he wouldn’t want to pick a point where life begins, it certainly doesn’t keep him from deciding where it ends.  It didn’t stop him from co-sponsoring the Freedom of Choice Act that would invalidate abortion laws nationwide, saying it would be "the first thing that I’d do".  In addition, the next President will likely be able to chose 1 or 2 Supreme Court justices, who may hear a case involving the FCA or other life and death matters.

Thus, if abortion matters to you, the only choice is John McCain.  And if you’re a Christian and abortion doesn’t matter to you, it should.

The Economy

Obama’s "spreading the wealth around" ideology, while not technically pure socialism, is certainly a shift in that direction.  As much as he insisted that he wasn’t penalizing someone for making it in America, he is.  If it was just for paying for the government we need, that would indeed be one thing, but wealth redistribution is not what the tax system was intended to do, and it is incredibly inefficient when shoehorned into doing it. 

As a Christian, I still don’t believe that when Jesus says that as individuals we should give to the poor, that didn’t mean that we should use the force of government to take from some to give directly to others.  I find that highly immoral.  I believe giving to the poor is a very good thing, something we are each individually commanded to do, but in no way do the ends justify the governmental, confiscatory means.

Right now, the economy is in a sad state, partly due to greed, partly due to a Democratic party that refused to see the signs.  The government has jumped in to help, with what could be argued as a "socialistic" means.  However, unlike other countries (Venezuela, anyone?), this is intended only as a stop-gap measure to get us past the current crisis.  Spreading the wealth around, and more and bigger government programs, are not the way to come out of it.  Creating more wealth and more opportunities are the way to bring ourselves out of this, and to ease poverty, and a vote for John McCain will help do that.  One main way to do this is…

Taxes

…lower taxes.  Both candidates say they want to lower taxes.  However, the income threshold where Obama would like to lower taxes itself keeps getting lower.  It started at $250,000, then $200,000, then Joe Biden talked about lower taxes for the middle class making less than $150,000.  So we don’t really know where the line is drawn.  And further, if a President Obama gets a filibuster-proof Congress, he’s not likely to veto whatever they come up with, and they’re not bound by his campaign promises.  Raising taxes in a down economy is deadly.

John McCain realizes this, and wants to lower taxes for everybody, including those who are rich enough to start small businesses and who create the lion’s share of the jobs in this country.  Class warfare rhetoric may sound good (and when all’s said and done, "spread the wealth" is class warfare), but if you penalize those who create jobs, you won’t get as many new jobs.  Simple.  In a down economy, the last people you want to penalize are the job-creators.  John McCain’s tax policy will get us out of this down economy sooner.

The War

The war on terror has multiple fronts, and one was Iraq.  It still could return to being one if we do what we did in Vietnam and leave too early.  Iraq is out of the news, and not because the election has pushed it off the front page; if there was bad news coming from there, the media would most certainly highlight it.  No, Iraq isn’t news because it’s going so well and Al Qaeda is losing.  In addition, contrary to most predictions 7 years ago, there has not been another successful terrorist attack in this country.

This is because we confronted evil where it was.  We took the fight to them; we didn’t wait for them to drop another building or kill thousands others.  Saddam Hussein was ignoring the conditions of the cease-fire without consequences, and was supporting terrorism both actively (e.g. subsidizing the families of Palestinian terrorists) and passively (turning a blind eye to terrorist training camps within his borders). 

The war was right, and we’re winning it.  Criticize the prosecution of it, especially early on, and I’ll agree with you, but overall it’s getting rid of the bad guys and keeping them away from us.  John McCain has been on the right side of each of these decisions and Barack Obama has been on the wrong side. 

Experience

Having been a community organizer, and being a Senator for 140 days before running for President is not the amount of experience required for the notional leader of the free world.  Especially when that community organization is filled with experiences like helping a 60s radical terrorist run an "educational" program that doesn’t appreciably increase education, but makes sure kids buck every authority in their path.  Barack Obama is as green as they come.  Supporting him precisely because of his brand of experience is to be incredibly naive. 

John McCain has a long history of working with both parties; something Democrats used to say that they valued.  But when a Republican who values bipartisanship campaigns for President, suddenly that doesn’t seem as important to them.  This week.  I don’t support every position that McCain has taken while making overtures to the Democrats, but I respect the fact that he makes that effort.  If you support bipartisanship, you should support John McCain.

Healthcare

Obama’s plan, while giving lip-service to choice, markets and keeping your current plan, will make it financially untenable for employers to keep whatever their current plan is and toss people into the government-run one.  He fakes to the right in the campaign, but he’ll cut to the left without you even noticing.  And once we socialize a little of the healthcare system, it’s nigh impossible to reign it back in once the cost overruns and ultimate lack of choices become apparent.  The entitlement mentality will expand and sink its claws into this area as well.  It’ll be a case of tweaking this and modifying that until…well, until Canadians don’t have any place to go to get the healthcare they need.

McCain’s plan keeps the market in place and doesn’t undermine it.  That’s true choice; giving you new ones without destroying the current ones.  If you’re pro-choice (in healthcare), vote for John McCain.

Sarah Palin

OK. she’s not technically an issue in the campaign, but I had to bring her up.  Democrats have laughed at her credentials — actual executive experience, true to her principles both in her public and personal lives, and the way she worked her way up herself in the world — even though they claim to value those principles, especially in a woman.  Turns out it’s all lip service.  Someone who exhibits the best in politics, and someone who lives up to so many ideals that people wish more politicians would have, was dismissed or demonized by the Left.  Seems they only value these characteristics in other Democrats.

While this attitude striped the veneer off many Democrats’ real motives, it highlighted what good choices John McCain will make as President.  If you truly value those ideals in any candidate for any office, John McCain is your man.  (And Sarah Palin is most definitely your woman.)

It’s almost Election Day, but before you vote, please consider the issues that really matter to you.  Not the sound bites or the slogans; the substance.  On many of the big issues of the day, and especially for Christians, I believe John McCain is the best choice for President.

See you on the other side.

Jesse Jackson, not a spokesman for Obama but one who certainly believes he knows what’s coming, spoke about key foreign policy changes he sees in an Obama administration.

He promised "fundamental changes" in US foreign policy – saying America must "heal wounds" it has caused to other nations, revive its alliances and apologize for the "arrogance of the Bush administration."

The most important change would occur in the Middle East, where "decades of putting Israel’s interests first" would end.

Jackson believes that, although "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" remain strong, they’ll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House.

First, let’s talk about "first", as in the US "putting Israel’s interests first".  First in front of whom, ours?  Hasn’t been that was so far.  First in front of the myriad countries in the Middle East who have been attacking, or supporting attacks on, Israel?  Well sure, but our alliance with a well-functioning democracy — the best in the region — against aggressor nations and gangs is, I would think, a good thing. 

I guess the main question would be; which country or countries would get boosted?  The Palestinians?  The folks who vote in terrorist organizations to run their government and lob rockets virtually daily into civilian Israeli towns?  The ones who, while living in Israel, get the right to vote and all?  The ones who, when given land for peace, use that land for launching attacks?  Yeah, apparently them.

Jackson is especially critical of President Bush’s approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

"Bush was so afraid of a snafu and of upsetting Israel that he gave the whole thing a miss," Jackson says. "Barack will change that," because, as long as the Palestinians haven’t seen justice, the Middle East will "remain a source of danger to us all."

If we’d just wipe Israel off the map, like Hamas wants, we’d all be much safer.  Yeah, right.

Second, about those alliances allegedly needing reviving.  I think Jackson has believed the media reports that we went into Iraq "unilaterally".  A browsing of Wikipedia will dispel that misnomer.  Granted, the US has had the vast majority of troops there, but we had more to contribute.  Much like the widow’s mite, it’s not so much the absolute amount contributed as it is the sort of sacrifice it may be.  You’ll find listed a number of countries freed from Soviet domination when we won the Cold War.  You’ll find quite a diverse collection of nationalities, all in support of the US and its policy in Iraq. 

You won’t find France on there.  That’s because they decided to work with Iraq, under the table and subverting the sanctions, for their own economic gain.  When the shooting started, however, they slinked away and waited it out.  Yeah, that’s the kind of country I want in my alliance.  Revive us today, indeed, Obama.

So our foreign policy may indeed look quite different than it does today, but that’s not necessarily a better thing.  Since the Iraq war, many countries (including, just last night, Canada and, interestingly, France) have shifted to the right politically.  Zaptero’s Spain tried appeasing terrorism by pulling out of Iraq after a change in administrations, but the Madrid bombings happened anyway.  The world has nudged slightly toward the right, and where it hasn’t, in hopes of avoiding confrontation, it’s been hounded by the bad guys anyway. 

The world is beginning to see what George W. Bush saw, but unfortunately the United States apparently doesn’t.

…in Chicago.

An estimated 123 people were shot and killed over the summer. That’s nearly double the number of soldiers killed in Iraq over the same time period.

Waiting for Obama to call for the troops police to pull out.  It’s lost, right?

I’ll lead off with that oxymoron for a post title and just point you to Eric Posner’s collection of quotes from the Times’ editorial staff on how the surge had failed, was failing, and would continue to fail, followed by the Times’ headline noting victory in Anbar province.  These huge milestones don’t just happen overnight.

Amid Labor Day festivities and (if you read the blogs) Palin kerfuffles, something dramatic happened on the Iraqi front.

The U.S. military has handed over security control of the western province of Anbar to Iraqi forces.

The province was once a hotbed of the Sunni Arab insurgency, and the scene of some of the bloodiest battles of the Iraq war.

The handover marks a major milestone in America’s strategy of turning security over to the Iraqis so U.S. troops can eventually go home.

In the ceremony Monday in the provincial capital of Ramadi, the top American commander in Anbar, Marine Maj. Gen. John Kelly, said Al Qaeda has not been entirely defeated in Anbar. But he said, "their end is near."

As Glenn Reynolds notes, a book he just got in the mail, "Losing Hurts Twice as Bad: The Four Stages to Moving Beyond Iraq", was probably pitched before the surge.  Now it’s just an embarrassment. 

Matthew Yglesias:

Watch in amazement as John McCain condemns Russia for having the temerity to cross an international boundary — “in the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.”

We all recall, of course, John McCain’s outrage when the United States violated this rule back in 2003.

So James Taranto’s prediction has quickly come true.  Which got me wondering; how many dozen UN resolutions does it take before an invasion is OK by international standards, and how many resolutions was Russia enforcing when it invaded the Republic of Georgia?

Technorati Tags: Mathew Yglesias, John McCain, Russia, James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, United Nations, Republic of Georgia

James Taranto, writing for the Wall St. Journal, tried to anticipate an argument by anti-war types:

Here’s what’s going to happen next: Someone will argue that America lacks the "moral standing" to oppose Russian intervention in Georgia, because we intervened in Iraq "without U.N. approval." When the U.S. liberated Iraq, of course, it was acting to enforce the Security Council’s own resolutions. So America’s acting to overcome U.N. fecklessness will be invoked as an excuse for Russia’s unprovoked violation of another country’s sovereignty. U.N. idolatry runs counter to the U.N.’s own purported reason for existing.

As blogger TigerHawk notes, though, they may not ever make that argument because they won’t have much of anything to say.  After checking off the many groups that have nothing to say about it (and crediting the one that did), he concludes:

So far, at least, it is safe to conclude that these organizations are not so much anti-war as they are anti-American and anti-Israeli. It is useful to clear that up.

Since that post, two sites have said at least something about it.  Democracy Now has conducted an interview with a retired Air Force Colonel about the history in the region.  The Stop the War Coalition has an opinion piece that essentially states that Georgia is as much to blame for the conflict.  But there is still basically no real outrage.  Pretty much all quiet on the anti-war front.  And if the only wars that they are against, or even bother to work up a sweat about, are those involving the US or Israel, then I’d say they need to relabel themselves or lose their own moral authority.

Technorati Tags: moral authority, anti-war, Democracy Now, Stop the War Coalition, James Taranto, Best of the Web Today

If you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that a vote for the surge in Iraq and its strategy changes would dramatically reduce the amount of violence and deaths, giving the Iraqi government breathing room to get 15 of 18 benchmarks completed, would you vote for it?  If it was a certainty?

Obama wouldn’t have.  The man of Hope and Change(tm) would have kept the status quo.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is playing politics with the war and the lives of our soldiers.  Bailing out at all costs — big costs, to Iraq if not to us — is irresponsibility at its highest.  That’s not the kind of man I want as President.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Iraq surge

Not content to send mere reporters with Obama when he visits Iraq, all the Big Three network news organizations are going to send their anchors. Which, of course, they also did for McCain. Or not.

While Thursday’s New York Times reported that the anchors from all three network newscasts will be joining Barack Obama on his trip to Iraq, they showed no such interest in following John McCain during his visit to Iraq in March. During the week of March 16, McCain’s trip received only four full-length stories during the combined ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news program coverage. Three of those stories were on NBC’s “Nightly News,” one of which focused on McCain’s mistaken comment about Iran funding Al Qaeda in Iraq. ABC’s “World News” did only one full-length story on McCain’s Iraq trip, which mentioned the gaffe. The CBS “Evening News” was by far the worst, devoting only 31 words to the Republican nominee’s Iraq visit during the entire week of evening news coverage.

(Emphasis in original.) This is pointing out yet another disparity from the media regarding news coverage that the Times is now having to grudgingly recognize.

Even the Times article acknowledged that McCain’s Iraq trip received little coverage: “Senator John McCain’s trip to Iraq last March was a low-key affair: With a small retinue of reporters chasing him abroad…But the coverage also feeds into concerns in Mr. McCain’s campaign, and among Republicans in general, that the news media are imbalanced in their coverage of the candidates.”

Oh, but it’s not actually true that the media are ignoring McCain, it’s just that the fact “feeds into concerns” that there is a problem. Like I said, grudgingly.

And by the way, how much better must the security situation be in Iraq that the Big Three feel comfortable sending their top dogs to the field?

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, John McCain, liberal media bias