Barbarians at the gate

From Robin Wright in the New Yorker, a warning about the Islamic State that concentrates the mind:

There is a broader danger. The direct American presence may galvanize more jihadis to the Islamic State. There was no Al Qaeda presence in Iraq until after the United States deployed troops in 2003, an act that fuelled Al Qaeda’s local appeal, on territorial, political, and religious grounds. In Iraq and Syria, ISIS is now estimated to have between ten thousand and twenty thousand fighters, including a couple of thousand with Western passports and a hundred or so from the United States.

As the United States confronts ISIS, the dangers that Americans will be targeted at home grow. Last month, the F.B.I.’s director, James B. Comey, said that the domestic threat emanating from ISIS “keeps me up at night,” that ISISwas a potential “launching ground” for attacks of the kind that occurred on September 11, 2001. The Attorney General, Eric H. Holder, Jr., told ABC News that ISIS, particularly its American jihadis, “gives us really extreme, extreme concern. . . . In some ways, it’s more frightening than anything I think I’ve seen as Attorney General.”

Dear John, please fact-check: footnote to the NYT's McCain op-ed rejection

Footnote to the NYT's rejection of a McCain op-ed on grounds that it contains no new information and fails to articulate "how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq" (per Drudge Report): McCain's piece also contains an obvious distortion of an alleged distortion. It's here:

[Obama] makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

"All he has said" indeed. In his interview with Spiegel, notwithstanding after-the-fact protestation, Maliki did indeed endorse "the Obama timetable." Here's what he said, according to Spiegel:

US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.

After Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, cried "mistranslation," The New York Times obtained an audio recording and reported:

The following is a direct translatioPublish Postn from the Arabic of Mr. Maliki’s comments by The Times: “Obama’s remarks that — if he takes office — in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq.”

That sound rather like what Obama has said. A little "refinement," anyone?

Arguably, the Times' op-ed editor David Shipley did McCain a favor by rejecting the draft. Odd choice, to self-publish it as a reject rather than take the challenge to define victory -- and do a bit of fact-checking.

McCain gets ugly

John McCain is ugly in attack mode. In last night's debate, he kept insisting that Romney had advocated a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq, using a Romney statement that signified the opposite. Was he deliberately distorting Romney's words, or is he just stupid?

When Romney denounced McCain's claim that he had advocated timetables as a lie, McCain said:

Well, of course, he said he wanted a timetable...April was a very interesting year (sic) in 2007. That's when Harry Reid said the war is lost and we've got to get out. And the buzzword was "timetables, timetables."Governor, the right answer to that question was "no," not what you said, and that was we don't want to have them lay in the weeds until we leave and Maliki and the president should enter into some kind of agreement for, quote, "timetables."

Anderson Cooper read Romney's actual statement:

COOPER: So, Senator McCain, the quote is from Governor Romney on GMA that you've been quoting. The actual quote is, "Well, there's no question that the president and Prime Minister al-Maliki have to have a series of timetables and milestones"...

MCCAIN: Timetables and milestones.

COOPER: ... "that they speak about, but those shouldn't be for public pronouncement. You don't want the enemy to understand how long they have to wait in the weeds until you're going to be gone."

MCCAIN: You don't have to...

COOPER: He does not say he is supporting a withdrawal.

MCCAIN: ... wait until the enemy lays in the weeds until we leave. That means that we were leaving.

Obviously, Romney said the opposite, that if there were a timetable for troop withdrawal, "the enemy" would understand how long to wait in the weeds before attacking. McCain here sounds like Bush in 2000, dismissing Gore's clear exposure of the false premises behind his proposed tax cuts as "fuzzy math"over and over. (Like Gore confronting Bush, Romney did not quite know how to deal with such mulishness. While Romney did make clear that the "timetables and milestones" he had referred to were not for troop withdrawal, he never managed to spit out that his "wait in the weeds" comment was a rationale for not having a timetable.)

I have admired McCain for taking stands against torture and punitive approaches to illegal immigration. I even sent him money late last year because I regard his Republican opponents as dangers to the future of democracy, given their support of torture, suspension of habeas, and Bush's insanely overreaching assertions of the powers of the commander in chief. But my impression from several debates is that McCain is just not that bright. He is capable of taking a principled stand, and on some fronts his judgment is clear enough to recognize dangers to democracy and indeed to the planet, e.g., destruction of civil liberties, a corrupting campaign finance system, global warming. But that head-down repeat-my-mantra stubbornness in the face of a clear refutation of of what he's saying at the moment suggests a Bush-like lack of mental dexterity. His confession that he doesn't understand economics was real straight talk but not particularly reassuring. Then there's the poor grades he got at West Point that he likes to joke about. It's not uncommon for bright people to get bad grades. But it's more common for not-so-bright people to get them.