Post-Convention Dump: Obama-Biden

Obama's speech was cleverly crafted. By using the refrain "We are a better country than this" Obama succeeded in pointing out what is wrong with America, thanks to Bush, without running down the country and exposing himself to charges of being unpatriotic or unsupportive of America (i.e. a “nattering nabob of negativism,” to borrow the late unlamented Spiro Agnew’s phrase). Instead, Obama took the high ground by extolling American ideals tagging Bush/McCain with the failures to live up to them. That’s intelligent political oratory.

He also pre-empted Republican Swift-boating tactics by praising McCain’s sacrifice and patriotism, then declaring "we are all patriots" and that the issues were too momentous to allow the politics of character assassination (my phrase) to prevail. (Not that that will discourage Rove & Co. from doing their mischief.)

His clever turn of phrase -- “ownership society” means “you’re on your own” -- then led into a list of ways in which the administration fails to be supportive of the legitimate needs of the people.

One tack Obama and the Democrats have overlooked is the fact that the nation’s hunger for change will only be satisfied by electing a Democrat president, given the seeming inevitability of the election of a Democratic majority in Congress. To elect a Republican president and a Democratic Congress will only result in a legislative stalemate negating any possibility of meaningful change — unless, of course, the Democrats achieve a veto-proof majority. Obama can make this point indirectly by impressing voters with the urgency of electing Democrat members of Congress to give him the working majority he needs to effect change. Making the case for a united government should be a powerful argument swaying those who genuinely want change but may be wavering on Obama.

Two issues likely to become millstones around Obama’s neck are Afghanistan and Georgia, where he has unwisely cast down markers. As it was for the 19th-Century British and 20th century Soviets, Afghanistan will prove to be a bottomless quagmire for three reasons: the enemy, the terrain and the situation. The enemy being local, having nowhere else to go, and motivated by religious zeal, is therefore endowed with staying power which the NATO forces lack — a similar situation to that in Vietnam (except that political, rather than religious ideology was the enemy’s motivating factor). The terrain is abysmally inhospitable to foreign invaders: barren and mountainous with poor roads, negating the advantages of mechanized mobility, thereby forcing the occupiers, in effect, to dismount and meet the enemy on his turf and terms. In such circumstances, as in Vietnam, victory goes to the side with the greatest numbers, and the Afghan insurgents either have or soon will have numerical advantage. (Blinded by hubris, U.S. governments never seem to learn the basics about the enemy and the terrain.) The situation is untenable, inasmuch as Americans and Europeans are funding the enemy with drug money, in effect pulling themselves down by their bootstraps. Moreover, there is nothing to be gained from beating down the Taliban in Afghanistan. Satisfying the urge for revenge because the Taliban provided al Qaida with a base from which to launch the 9/11 attack is no basis for expending the kind of blood and treasure the U.S. is wasting in Afghanistan. Furthermore, it is absurd to attempt to deny al Qaida a base of operations by occupying Afghanistan. Al Qaida has a comfortable base of operations in neighboring Pakistan which is purported to be a U.S. ally in the “war against terrorism.” (See my July 24, 2008 post: "'The Right War' in Afghanistan?")

In Georgia, no amount of bluster can obscure the fact that the U.S. holds a losing hand. For obvious reasons the U.S. is in no position to exert military power against the Russians operating in their back yard. Meaningful economic sanctions are out of the question, given European dependence on Russian oil and gas. We have no moral authority with which to challenge the Russians, given that what we are doing in Iraq is a thousand times worse that what the Russians are doing in Georgia. Moreover, as Mikhail Gorbachev sensibly pointed out in a recent NYT Op-Ed piece, the Russians have two reasonable causes for action: 1) Georgia provoked the crisis by shelling Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, a city populated largely by Russian citizens and sympathizers, and 2) the Russians have been repeatedly provoked by the West, notably in the independence of Kosovo, the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, the “unending” eastward expansion of NATO and the placement of U.S. defensive missiles near Russia’s borders.

In short, a mixed review.