Tag Archive for ‘Iraq’ at Blog P.I.

Tag Archive for 'Iraq'

Hate is a Strong Word

Published by William Beutler on December 11, 2007 in George W. Bush, Instapundit, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Netroots, Polling and Rhetoric. Closed

Via Digg this morning, I came across a provocatively-titled story:

The Troops Hate Bush And Want Out of Iraq.

The article, number two in all categories for the moment, turns out to be a brief jeremiad by Firedoglake contributor Blue Texan. The full title there is

The Troops Hate Bush And Want Out of Iraq. Will Glenn Reynolds And Michelle Malkin Still “Support” Them?

and it quotes from a poll-driven Los Angeles Times story, as summarized by Blue Texan:

*Nearly six out of every 10 military families disapprove of Bush’s job performance and the way he has run the war.

*Among those families with soldiers, sailors and Marines who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, 60% say that the war in Iraq was not worth the cost.

*Nearly seven in 10 favor a withdrawal within the coming year or “right away.”

There are a few things wrong with this. Most importantly — and misleadingly — the LAT poll did not exclusively query members of the U.S. military. The fine print says:

Included are 631 military family members and 152 respondents who are serving or have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, or who have family members who have done so. … The margin of sampling error for all adults is plus or minus 3 percentage points; for military families, it is 4 percentage points; for military families who served in Iraq, it is 8 percentage points. For certain sub-groups, the error margin may be somewhat higher.

My emphasis, of course.

Now, I’m not trying to spin this poll around the other way and say these are good numbers for Bush; they’re not. Even if just half of military families disapprove of the president, that speaks poorly of his leadership. I am not even saying that family members think that Iraq was a good idea or would support a war that continues indefinitely. Nobody wants to keep large numbers of troops there longer than necessary.

What I am saying, however, is that the poll is far from definitive, with an MoE north of 8 percent in the critical group, and it certainly shouldn’t be mistaken for a poll of “the troops.” Even taken at face value, the results are more nuanced than Blue Texan — or even the LAT — make it sound. If you combine “bring home within the next year” and “Stay as long as it takes,” you likewise get around 70 percent. Considering the reduced violence in Iraq since the so-called surge, withdrawal upon an acceptable situation and withdrawal in a year are not mutually exclusive. That may or not be not be realistic, but it’s not unreasonable to think that may be what some meant. Not that Blue Texan was keeping an open mind about it.

Nor do I think Blue Texan read it all that closely; the FDL post actually seems more of a screed against conservative bloggers activists than Bush or even the war:

One of the most disgraceful tactics of the pro-Bush right is the way they’ve exploited the troops politically. … And they’re still doing it. Loyal ~~Troop~~ Bush Supporter Glenn Reynolds, who’s practically made a career linking to garbage like this, just called the TV ad promoting Freedom’s Watch — a right-wing partisan neocon slush fund — a “pro-troops” ad.

Watch the Freedom’s Watch ad for yourself; it is unequivocally a pro-troops advertisement, free of any political content. It does not mention Iraq or Afghanistan, only that some members are away from their families right now — but this is true of those merely stationed abroad in Europe or East Asia. Heck, the organization might even be a “right-wing partisan neocon slush fund” — the wording is all subjectively negative — but it doesn’t change the ad’s content.

And that subjectivity betrays the fact that in fact Blue Texan is the one politicizing the troops, and from the boggled mindset that considers a yellow ribbon on the back of a city vehicle a partisan political statement. One wonders if they believe that personally thanking a member of the armed forces for their service while the Iraq war continues is also a de facto expression of support for the Republican party. Even if not, one wonders why they would willingly cede so much ground.

But even without any poll analysis, Blue Texan loses all credibility — and the anti-war netroots reveal their arrogance — with the extreme rhetoric. Hate is a strong word. The LAT poll most certainly shows disappointment and disapproval of President Bush and the war, but at no point did this poll — or any other one that I’ve seen — ask whether they “hate” Bush or the war.

Since the Iraq war turned unpopular, anti-war bloggers have been claiming that the American public agrees whole-heartedly with them. This opinion surely led to their surprise at John Kerry’s loss in 2004. This probably also explains much of their frustration now that Democrats control Congress but can’t end the war. They might be less distressed if they didn’t think the American public was in lockstep with their thinking.

I’d really like a respectable pollster to ask the question: “Do you hate President Bush?” Pollsters usually stick to cautious wording like “right track/wrong direction” and “approve/disapprove” — which makes it possible to compare questions over time — but just once, I wish they would measure the extent of this disapproval.

Heck, the netroots themselves have paid for their own polls before. Why not ask? Probably because they know the answer would be disappoint them. They might even hate it. But it would also save them some trouble.

An Op-Ed We Just Might Blog

Published by William Beutler on July 30, 2007 in 9/11 Attacks, Blog Fights, Charts and Graphs, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Middle East, National Security, Terrorism and Tough Crowd. 2 Comments

Memeorandum is not my homepage, although it might as well be — if you want to know what’s going on in the political blogosphere right now, it beats the pants off Technorati or Google’s BlogSearch. Normally here I’d say something about its impressive signal-to-noise ratio, but the fact is, there’s no noise. (On sister site Techmeme once, I saw a weeks-old story linked once. Once.)

It’s good enough that I tend to think that just by eyeballing it you can tell how big a particular story is. If that’s the case, then the Michael O’Hanlon/Kenneth Pollack op-ed in today’s New York Times may be the most talked-about newspaper article this year, at least:

Michael O'Hanlon-Kenneth Pollack opinion piece in the NYT, "A War We Just Might Win"

Unlike many, perhaps most, stories listed by Memeorandum this one attracted attention from both the pro-war/conservative/righty bloggers as well as the anti-war/progressive/lefty bloggers. If you’ve read the op-ed, it’s not hard to see why. O’Hanlon and Pollack both supported the Iraq war at the outset — the latter expressly advocating it in an influential book — but changed their minds as the war continued and the rebuilding project went awry. Nowadays the right is grateful for any sign that the war might be winnable, especially if it comes from Democratic-aligned intellectuals, especially if it runs on the New York Times’ left-leaning op-ed page. Meanwhile, the left has at least as much invested in ending the very same war that the right wishes to continue, in discrediting Pollack and O’Hanlon’s work, by pointing out inconsistencies and oversights, not to mention disputing their anti-war credentials.

It is not, however, an even split.

So who wins this battle of wills? Well, if you trust Memeorandum creator Gabe Rivera’s secret sauce, and you trust my count (I’ve included the complete breakdown after the jump, if you’re feeling argumentative), and we focus on this iteration of the page (there were others), several more large blogs of the right hopped on this story than blogs of the left tried to burst it like a bubble: 37 to 18, with 10 online newspaper items and non-aligned bloggers making up the oft-overlooked third leg of the blogospheric debate. Still, take this with a grain of salt — The Huffington Post has more traffic than many of these blogs put together, while righty traffic leader Instapundit linked it approvingly, but as usual offered too little commentary to make the cut. And in the course of writing this, I have seen more than a few perfectly major blogs not linked here — but I still think it’s a pretty good representation.

If there’s nothing else to be said here, it’s a fitting story to capture (political) blogosphere-wide attention — the rightosphere came to be after 9/11 and to support war on terrorism, of which Iraq is consdidered a piece, while the leftosphere was built around opposition to the invasion, and frustration with moderate liberals who supported it — like, say, Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon.

Continue reading ‘An Op-Ed We Just Might Blog’

Bring the Noises Off

Published by William Beutler on June 25, 2007 in Asymmetrical Media, Blogs vs. MSM, Democrats, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere and Netroots. Closed

Headline at Center for American Progress’ Think Progress blog, June 21:

The ‘Fairness Doctrine’ Myth: Right Wing Falsely Claims Progressives Want To Resurrect Mandatory Balance

Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Fox News Sunday, June 24:

WALLACE: So would you revive the fairness doctrine?

FEINSTEIN: Well, I’m looking at it, as a matter of fact, Chris, because I think there ought to be an opportunity to present the other side. And unfortunately, talk radio is overwhelmingly one way.

Zing!

When I saw that TP headline last week, I was more than a little dubious. After all, Dennis Kucinich is an outspoken fan of the dead regulation, as are certain quarters of the leftosphere. But little did I expect that this absurd claim would be proved “false” (a favorite word of TP and Media Matters) by such a prominent Democrat, not to mention one known primarily as a moderate.

It reminds me of a brief controversy from earlier this month, where The Politico’s John Bresnahan reported that Harry Reid had called outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace “incompetent.” Bloggers from the call didn’t remember it, accused Bresnahan of making the whole thing up, and when it turned out he hadn’t, they weren’t especially contrite about it.

What’s interesting about all this is that in both cases, prominent representatives of the liberal netroots strenuously denied something that was not only true but arguably even helpful to their side, simply because a political adversary had stated it. In both cases they went overboard, creating more negative press for themselves than if they’d just left it alone.

Think Progress would certainly be right if they merely argued that conservative bloggers talk about the fairness doctrine coming back more than progressive bloggers, but arguing that “progressives” have no interest in using the doctrine as a weapon against right-wing talk radio just won’t fly. And as James Joyner asked at the time, what part of the Democrats’ Senate leader calling a Bush appointee “incompetent” did they not like?

The key difference is that Think Progress tried to maintain a position that most observers knew was not true, then dropped the subject. Bresnahan’s critics, on the other hand, defended a point most probably didn’t know for sure and then, unwilling to end on a retraction, changed the terms of debate instead.

I don’t have a full case to make about what it all means, but it is interesting that here in the span of two weeks we have two examples of the left’s own noise machine being unsure of exactly what sound to make.

Weekend Update

Published by William Beutler on February 10, 2007 in Blogs vs. MSM, Entertainment, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere and Newspapers. Closed

The Iraq war-supporting and -opposing halves of the political blogosphere don’t agree on much, but one thing they do have in common is an abiding mistrust (or distrust) of the mainstream media, especially when the subject is Iraq.

This lack of trust often begets outright derision, sometimes even overt attempts at and references to comedic entertainment. Today, as juxtaposed at Memeorandum, the Washington Post takes a whack from the right and the New York Times takes one from the left:

Neo-Neocon, on Walter Pincus and R. Jeffrey Smith’s “Official’s Key Report On Iraq Is Faulted”:

A Tiny Revolution, on Michael R. Gordon’s “Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says”:

There’s some mild irony here — the editorial division of the New York Times has mostly opposed the Iraq war, while the Washington Post’s editorial page has mostly supported it. Of course, today’s complaints are directed at the ostensibly impartial news division. Editorial editors may have their fans, but among partisans, the straight news reporter has no advocates.

Republicans For McCain?

Published by William Beutler on January 21, 2007 in George W. Bush, Hotline, Independents, John McCain, Polling, Republicans and White House '08. 3 Comments

Last Thursday at MyDD, Jonathan Singer compared registered voters’ attitudes toward President Bush, John McCain and the planned Iraq “surge” in the latest poll from Diageo/Hotline/Financial Dynamics [PDF]. His conclusion:

Independents are actually less likely to support escalation if it is framed as McCain doctrine than they are if it is framed as President Bush’s. They are the only partisan group to do so. Even Democrats are slightly more likely to support the increase in troops if it is listed as McCain’s plan than they are if it is listed as Bush’s. … In case you needed confirmation that the number of Independents supporting John McCain is decreasing rapidly, this may be it.

Well, maybe. I am sympathetic to the view that McCain will not command the kind of support from Indies that he enjoyed in 2000, but the margins are not wide enough to warrant such a conclusion, and the commenters seem to agree. But as we’ll see below, there is another story to be interpreted from this question, one which confounds my own expectations.

Below I have reproduced the charts Singer relied upon, with the sole difference being that I have Turnerized the table frames we’ll be discussing:

Do you favor or oppose President Bush’s proposed strategy of increasing the number of American troops in Iraq by as many as 20,000 troops over then next few months?

	Total	Republicans	Independents	Democrats
Strongly favor	17	31	23	3
Somewhat favor	15	26	12	7
Somewhat oppose	9	10	12	7
Strongly oppose	53	25	49	79
Neither favor nor oppose (not read)	4	6	3	2
Don’t know/refused (not read)	2	2	1	1

Do you favor or oppose Senator John McCain’s proposed strategy of increasing the number of American troops in Iraq by as many as 20,000 troops over then next few months?

	Total	Republicans	Independents	Democrats
Strongly favor	21	34	24	9
Somewhat favor	16	32	6	9
Somewhat oppose	10	9	15	7
Strongly oppose	44	16	34	70
Neither favor nor oppose (not read)	4	4	10	1
Don’t know/refused (not read)	6	6	10	4

If we combine the strongly/somewhats across the board and account for the opinion-deficient, we find Republicans supporting Bush on the issue 57-35-8, whereas Independents oppose his plan 35-61-4. For McCain, the same question yields 66-27-10 Republican support and 30-49-20 opposition from Independents. The numbers themselves should be taken with a grain of salt, but the patterns are notable.

First of all, the poll confirms others showing that the surge is unpopular, and even among Republicans support is lukewarm. Another conclusion from the above tables is relatively unsurprising: Republicans support Bush more than Independents do.

Putting aside Singer’s point for the moment, there is one more conclusion left unaddressed: Republicans support the surge when associated with McCain over Bush — and by a 9-point margin.

That’s good news for McCain, for whom the big question has been whether he can actually win the nomination; Independents are supposed to be his natural constituency, while he is weak with registered Republicans. But Republican angst about Iraq is on the rise, and the rank-and-file will be looking for the candidate most able to reassert leadership on the war — and on this issue, he actually bests the Republican commander-in-chief. That sure can’t be bad news. However, it would be nice to see how McCain stacks up against the other Republicans. Alas, Romney is the only one tested (fav/unfav only) and across the board, 49% of everyone has never heard of him.

Singer’s conclusion is correct on the face of it: Independents support Bush more than McCain, or more appropriately, oppose him less. But his readers correctly note that while Indies know they don’t like Bush on Iraq, a statistically significant 20% have no particular opinion on the issue vs-à-vis McCain. That could mean they’re on the fence now, but are open to being persuaded by McCain.

Or maybe that McCain Googlebomb just needs a little more time?

A Sign of Things to Come

Published by Not Paul Begala on January 20, 2007 in Barack Obama, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, National Security and White House '08. 4 Comments

So Hillary is in. Campaign lore says that your announcement is the best day you have in a presidential campaign. All the rest is downhill until you win or lose.

And what else happens today that will be right next to her announcement in every major newspaper tomorrow? 13 soldiers killed in a helicopter crash. The Internet already reflects that reality:

As Kerry was haunted by his 2002 vote to authorize the war in the 2004 campaign, Hillary Clinton will be haunted by this war every single day. Obama said in 2002 that the war wasn’t the right thing to do, and while many anti-war bloggers haven’t made much of the fact, at least some have.

The war in Iraq and the events on the ground are constantly driving the Bush presidency. No matter how much he tries, he can’t escape it. Given how close 41 and 42 have become, it’s more than a little ironic that those same events will be driving her campaign for the presidency. Days like today are just a hint of what she will have to face every day of the primary, until she wins or drops out.

The Eschatology of Eschaton

Published by William Beutler on October 23, 2006 in Blog Fights, Instapundit and Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere. 1 Comment

What inspires this?

In case you didn't know, Atrios sucks. But, he's not alone. For example, Matt Stoller and PsiFighter37 and Oliver Willis and thereisnospoon suck too. Of course, Kos sucks. My Left Wing sucks. I suck too. Chris Bowers sucks not once but two times. Armando sucks. Meteor Blades sucks. And in case you are not sure, Steven D sucks too.

Apparently, it’s this thorough fisking of this post at Eschaton by the cleverly-named Philosoraptor, a self-proclaimed ex-Atriot, “Winston Smith.” Eschaton, the popular link-driven community blog written by Duncan “Atrios” Black has succumbed to

the RushLimbaughification of political discourse. Limbaugh is not–contrary to what some people think–stupid. He’s a man of about average intelligence. It’s not that he believes the moronic and vitriolic things he says–rather, he just lets loose with a stream-of- consciousness invective. You can hear in his voice that even he doesn’t believe much of what he’s saying. He isn’t stupid, he’s dishonest. He’s simply saying “liberals are bad” over and over again in as many different ways as he can think of, without regard for whether the sentences with which he expresses this sentiment are true or false.

And, he argues, the comment section only compounds the problem:

The most disheartening part of the entire Eschaton post in question is, as usual, the comments. Though Atrios himself begins his post by saying “well, this thought isn’t much,” his dittoheads shower the post with praise. You are so wise Atrios…you are so fantabulous Atrios…you are so keen Atrios… Such adulation would be a tad weird even if the post had been vaguely good. Given how awful it was, it’s downright spooky.

To his credit, Atrios actually seems more amused with the post than anything. On the other hand, his readers show up in the Philosoraptor comments, as they have done elsewhere recently, to say things like

wow. this blog DOES suck. now I’m pissed at atrios for sending me over here; I’ll never get the stink off.

and generally assist in proving his original point. Indeed, Mark Kleiman’s “In defense of Atrios” post actually concedes

Much of what Winston says about the decline of Eschaton seems to me (regrettably) sound. And the post Winston attacks could have been better written.

before mounting arguments in favor of John Wayne and Wesley Clark (serious).

Philosoraptor isn’t the first blogger to comment on Atrios’ wan blogging style, nor is he the first to make the Atrios-Instapundit comparison, though he does offer a key insight:

I’d say that Atrios used to be less partisan and foolish than Glenn Reynolds, but now I’d say he’s worse. What made the difference, if there is, in fact, a difference? Could it be because Atrios included comments and Reynolds didn’t? They both play to the crowd, but only Atrios has an adoring chorus hanging on his every word.

Philosoraptor encourages Atrios to become more intellectually honest, although if one really wanted, the post could be construed as a suggestion that Atrios stick to what he’s good at: linking. It has been said many a time over the years that in the blogosphere the blogosphere is made up of “linkers” and “thinkers.”

One day soon I’ll construct a survey demonstrating the continuum between the bloggers who are mostly editors (Atrios and Instapundit being among them) and those who are mostly writers (Digby, Captain Ed). Though they each serve a purpose, linkers are frequently looked down upon by the thinkers, even as they sometimes depend upon them for traffic. Anyone could do what they do, except if you tried, nobody would read you, because they’re already reading them. So the Philosoraptor quote could also be construed as a bit of sour grapes (and Atrios’ fans have certainly been willing to suggest that).

Nevertheless, if you’re going to be a linker, you need to have an edge. What Atrios has instead is snark, and if one limits oneself to visiting Atrios no more than once a day, snark will do. Visit any more often than that, and chances are you just can’t get enough of Atrios, or you just can’t get enough of how full of it he is.

P.S. Can I quote a relevant piece of 1990s literary fiction for three posts in a row? Yes, I believe I can. Atrios explains that the name “Eschaton” comes from a chapter in David Foster Wallace’s 1996 heartbreaking work of staggering genius, “Infinite Jest,”

in which students at a private tennis academy play a complicated game called Eschaton. It’s a strange half-explained simulation of WWIII, sort of a Risk-like wargame played on tennis courts, with tennis ball bombardment representing nuclear bombardment. The game has arcane rules requiring a computer to compute the value of each “hit” based on position, trajectory, etc… In the passage the game eventually gets completely out of hand and the rules break down.

It’s a comic passage, all right:

Timmy Peterson takes a ball in the groin and goes down like a sack of refined flour. Everybody’s scooping up spent warheads and totally unrealistically refiring them. The fences shudder and sing as balls rain against them. Ingersoll now resembles some sort of animal that’s been run over in the road. … Nobody’s using tennis balls now anymore. Josh Gopnik punches LaMont Chu in the stomach, and Lamont Chu yells that he’s been punched in the stomach. Ann Kittenplan has Kieran McKenna in a headlock and is punching him repeatedly on top of the skull. … LaMont Chu is throwing up into the Indian Ocean. Todd Possalthwaite has his hands to his face and is shrieking something about his ‘doze.’

Hmm… sound like any blogs you know of?

Murder, She Blogged

Published by William Beutler on August 16, 2006 in Blogs vs. MSM, Cable News and Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere. 2 Comments

Or, as the case may be, didn’t.

In midday, when the arrest of a suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey case was breaking across the news networks, I wondered to what extent, if any, the political blogosphere would pick up on it. While it’s not a political story (even considering John Ramsey’s unsuccessful run for the Michigan state House in 2004), political bloggers are frequently current events bloggers, and this is nothing if not current.

In the mid-afternoon, I detected no response at all. Late in the evening, as this Memeorandum round-up shows, the only bloggers on the case are conservative bloggers. There’s Wizbang, there’s La Shawn Barber, there’s Sister Toldjah and there’s Hot Air.

Turning to Technorati, it seems that nobody on the left is covering it for its own sake, apart from Jeralyn Merritt, who also happens to be a Denver-based criminal justice attorney. Shakespeare’s Sister and a couple of Daily Kos diarists mention it, but only for the fact that cable news is talking about the arrest rather than whatever happened today in Iraq (not that they identify a particular news story being overlooked). Well, there is dKos diarist Ghost of Frank Zappa, who in a very short post admits: “I for one always thought it was the parents. I owe them an apology I guess.”

So what explains the disporportionate interest in the story? I don’t really know the answer. Is this because conservatives tend to be “law and order” types? Possibly. Conservative bloggers such as Dan Riehl and Scared Monkeys have been avid chroniclers of the Natalee Holloway disappearance, but there are no lefty bloggers I’m aware of who have paid much attention to that case at all.

Another possibility: I’ve always considered conservative bloggers to be a bit more of hobbyists than their liberal counterparts. The leftosphere is primarily animated by their animus to President Bush, the Iraq war, and these days, Joe Lieberman. Their eyes are always on the prize, whereas conservatives are more likely to blog for the sake of blogging. The rightosphere is also without a president to unseat, a Congress to win back, and a war to end — hence the irritation of the Kossacks with having a trifle such as this all over the TV news.

That said, I’m still not sure that explains the whole thing. Are liberal bloggers more serious? Are conservative bloggers more cosmopolitan? If you’ve another theory, do share.

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