Free Frank Warner

Barack Obama, when would you withdraw troops from South Korea?

Barack Obama poorly defended his earlier statements that John McCain “wants a hundred-year occupation” in Iraq. He avoided apologizing for his deception, and accused McCain of failing to say when he’d declare “success” and bring the American troops home.

Here’s a question for Obama, whom I admire: When would he declare the U.S. presence in Europe, Japan and South Korea a “success” and bring those troops home? The answer would be revealing. I’d like to hear it.

McCain had said it would be “fine” if the U.S. stayed in Iraq 100 years, as long as the Americans were not being harmed while they were there. Both Obama and Hillary Clinton have twisted McCain’s statement to say McCain “wants” a century of “war” or “occupation.”

Not been clear. Today, Obama was asked generally to explain his statements about McCain and 100 years in Iraq:

“John McCain has said that we will stay there as long as it takes and if it takes another 100 years he’s up for that commitment and that implies that there is some criteria by which we would understand how long it takes. John McCain has not been clear about what exactly would lead him to decide it’s time to pullout.”

He argued that neither President Bush nor McCain have defined what success in Iraq would entail and that, according to Obama, implies that U.S. troops could remain in Iraq indefinitely.

All right then, Barack Obama, explain why or why not you’d leave U.S. troops in Europe, Japan and South Korea, and what conditions would allow the withdrawal of those troops.

What McCain said. McCain was asked Jan. 3 in New Hampshire about the prospect of the U.S. maintaining a presence in Iraq for another 50 years. He said it was possible Americans would be there even longer. “Make it 100 [years]” or “Maybe 100 [years],” he said. The exact words were hard to make out.

McCain said then:

“We’ve been in South Korea . . . we’ve been in Japan for 60 years,” he continued. “We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me. As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, that’s fine with me. I hope that would be fine with you, if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al-Qaeda is training, recruiting and equipping and motivating people every single day.”

We give an extra layer of security to democracies in Europe, Japan and South Korea. Why shouldn’t we do the same for Iraq? That’s a question Obama must answer.

Frank Warner

Muqtada al-Sadr cries uncle, begs for time to re-arm his killers

I love how Moktada al-Sadr claims he’s calling an Iraq “truce” when (1) he’s not there and (2) his lackeys in the illegal Mahdi militia are out of ammunition. It’s like yelling “Time out!” just before you’re caught in Tag. Hey, catch ’em!

Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki should offer to release the Sadrists whom the Iraqi Army has captured in the last six days, but only after Sadr goes unarmed to Falluja to apologize for sending his men out to kill innocent Sunni Arabs.

Frank Warner

Dith Pran, who survived Cambodia’s Killing Fields, dies

Dith Pran, who helped report on the Communist massacres of 1.7 million Cambodians after the U.S. withdrew forces from Southeast Asia in 1973, died today of pancreatic cancer.

Recall that it was Noam Chomsky who told the world to ignore the Killing Fields, which Pran documented with photographs and personal accounts. Chomsky claimed that the Khmer Rouge, the Communists under Pol Pot, had executed maybe a few thousand democrats -- at  most -- because they got in the way.

Pran exposed Chomsky’s accounts as lies, but Chomsky continues to tell the world that people enjoy being silenced, imprisoned and murdered, and never want to be freed from oppression. Pran saw what happens when self-absorbed big mouths cover up for tyranny.

Dead cry out. Said Pran:

“It is important for me that the new generation of Cambodians and Cambodian Americans become active and tell the world what happened to them and their families ... I want them never to forget the faces of their relatives and friends who were killed during that time. The dead are crying out for justice….

“The Jewish people’s search for justice did not end with the death of Hitler and the Cambodian people’s search for justice doesn’t end with Pol Pot.”

Pran knew there is no justice without freedom.

Frank Warner

Maliki says Sadr’s thugs are ‘worse than al-Qaida’

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has sent the Iraqi Army to duke it out with Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi “Army” in Basra. Sadr is no where to be seen. He’s letting his lackeys take all the risks.

What’s significant is that Maliki, who is a Shiite Arab, has declared Sadr’s mob, which also is Shiite Arab, “worse than al-Qaida.”

This bodes well for the Iraq’s new democratic government. Maliki is delivering the message that the law applies equally to Sunnis or Shiites, minority or majority. Do violence, and you will be punished, he is saying.

Sadr now has declared his militia must not surrender its weapons in the struggle to make him theocratic dictator of Iraq. Which is funny, because he probably is not in Iraq, but in Iran.

Frank Warner

Good advice for Hollywood: Tell a real Iraq war story

Conservative Jay Reding writes about the Iraq war movie that would be a hit. No, it wouldn’t be an anti-war movie. It wouldn’t be a pro-war movie either. It would be a war movie.

It’s a sad commentary on Hollywood today that one of the most relevant shows in terms of exploring this war is Battlestar Galactica in which the terrorists are inexplicably attractive, yet evil robot clones. In Galactica the military and the government are not a bunch of moustache-twirling villains, but are portrayed as three-dimensional characters dealing with an impossible situation. ... Hollywood can be relevant, at least in metaphorical form.

The reason why most of the Iraq War movies have failed is that they constantly try to be “message” movies. War is bad. Halliburton is bad. Bush is bad. Cheney is really, really bad. …

If anyone wants to make a truly great war movie, here’s what they need to do. Don’t try to give us a “message.” Don’t try to push an agenda. Just tell a story. You know, the thing that Hollywood is supposed to do well? You don’t have to create some scathing indictment of war—if you just show war it indicts itself. Saving Private Ryan is one of the greatest war movies ever made because it never flinches from showing the horrors of war. It’s not a “pro-war” movie, nor is it an “anti-war” movie. It’s just a movie about war. You don’t need to create the character of Col. Evil McHitler who secretly sells the organs of Iraqi children to Halliburton to be used to grease oil drills to expose the horrors of war. War is itself horrible, and by creating all these silly little contrivances Hollywood doesn’t add to their message, they detract from it. …

Hollywood is supposed to be good at telling stories. Yet they are nowhere near as good as the men and women who have served in Iraq in understanding what this war is really about. For all Hollywood’s obsession with their own “bravery” none are so bold as to let the truly brave tell their own stories. Hollywood isn’t brave enough to create a movie told from the Iraqi perspective that depicts the systematic brutalization of the Hussein regime followed by the uncertainty and chaos. For all Hollywood’s bravery, few in Hollywood are so brave as to make a movie in which al-Qaeda is the enemies. It’s safe to indict your own government. We live in a free society. A film that indicts al-Qaeda could get you killed. So much for bravery.

Read the whole thing.

Frank Warner

McCain’s strategist explains why he’ll step down if Democrats nominate Obama

Mark McKinnon, chief media strategist for Sen. John McCain, confirmed to National Journal today that he admires Sen. Barack Obama enough that he’ll leave the McCain presidential campaign if the Democrats nominate Obama.

McKinnon disagrees with Obama over winning the Iraq war, but otherwise he sees something fundamentally responsible and hopeful about Obama’s candidacy.

National Journal: So you’ve said that you will leave the McCain campaign if Obama is the nominee. Does that still hold and why?

McKinnon: Yeah. Well, this goes back to a memo that I wrote to the campaign when I came aboard more than a year and a half ago, and I simply let them know that I had spent time with Obama and read his book and I like the guy. I think he has strong character and a fascinating life story, and I disagree with him fundamentally on issues like Iraq and trade and a number of others. But I just flashed forward to the improbable scenario, at that time seemingly improbable, that John McCain and Barack Obama might face off against one other. And I just told them at the time that I thought that I would be uncomfortable being on the front lines -- being as aggressive as you need to be in a presidential campaign -- and not only that I would be uncomfortable, but that it would be bad for the campaign, and that if that circumstance were to come to be, that I would just take a step to the sidelines and continue to support John McCain 100 percent and be No. 1 fan and cheerleader. But just kind of take myself out of the front lines.

Q: So you are still going to do that?

McKinnon: I’m a man of my word.

Q: And it’s because, what, you don't want to run negative ads against Obama?

McKinnon: Yeah.

Q: Or is there also a concern on your part that you don't want to run ads against Obama, the first African-American candidate to have this kind of a chance? Is that a factor as well?

McKinnon: I suppose that is in part, but it’s more just that I like and admire the guy. I’ve come to a point in my life where I think character is important. I think he has great character. Again, I think he's really wrong on fundamental issues, but yeah, I just don’t want to -- you know, I kind of want to put my guns down. It’s just a matter of degrees, and like I said, I don’t think I’m the best person to have in that slot for the campaign. So it would just be better for me to step to the sidelines.

Q: So if Hillary Clinton were the nominee, you would stay, presumably. So give us a preview of how you would not hold back if she were the nominee. What would be the campaign that you'd run against her?

McKinnon: Well, you know, I think that fundamentally she represents an extension of the Clinton legacy, which this country is just tired of. They are tired of the Clinton-style politics, and we’ve seen it manifest itself over the course of this campaign. And I have a lot of Democratic friends who like and respect Senator Clinton, but they don’t want another extension of the Clinton administration for another four or eight years. And again, on some fundamental issues I think there’s a great departure between her and Senator McCain, so that’s where it sits.

I agree with McKinnon. I just hope Obama takes note of the expectations of millions of independent voters like us. We want a break from the old political power structure, and we want problems solved. For many of us, that means we expect him to protect and consolidate democracy’s victory in Iraq.

Frank Warner

Bill Roggio, the ‘pro-soldier’ journalist with the facts

Bill Roggio of The Long War Journal has returned from Iraq just in time to see the publication of an in-depth profile of Roggio himself in the Columbia Journalism Review.

Roggio, a former soldier, just spent a month in Iraq (his fourth embed), where he came up with several scoops, including stories on the Iraqi Army relieving a neglectful battalion commander from his post in Mosul and, days later, a suicide attack that killed 13 soldiers in that same Iraqi battalion.

Here are some observations by Paul McLeary in Columbia Journalism Review, “Blogging the Long War”:

What sets LWJ apart, Roggio insists, is his focus on reporting. … He has been ahead of the coverage curve on the occasional significant story—he predicted, for instance, the truce between the Pakistani government and the Taliban in North Waziristan nine months before it happened, and he identified Al Qaeda camps in North and South Waziristan long before the mainstream press started paying much attention to the fighting between the Pakistani government and the Taliban.

His story from December 2007 on the “ratlines” many American military officials say Iran was using to move supplies and weapons into Iraq is an interesting illustration of both the kind of journalistic work The Long War Journal can produce and its limited ability to influence the broader news agenda. As a work of investigative reporting, it had all the elements an editor at a mainstream publication would want: an important, undercovered story, a confident point of view, and sources the reporter trusts. It was accompanied by a multimedia presentation detailing the routes from Iran to Iraq, including purported “distribution hubs” inside Iraq. I can’t help but think that if the story had appeared under, say, Seymour Hersh’s byline, it would have received major play. It had U.S. military officials providing intelligence—albeit anonymously—that pointed to what they said was a major smuggling ring from Iran to Iraq. As it was, the piece got virtually zero pick-up in the mainstream press. …

Roggio takes that job seriously. What you won’t find on The Long War Journal, at least not overtly, is politics. That’s by design. “I’m trying to create an environment where readers can get away from the political pointing that I think we see in a lot of news reporting,” Roggio says. “I just want to explain what is happening in the theater, without the politics.” …

Having read The Long War Journal for several years, I can comfortably say that while Roggio is pro-soldier—he wants the U.S. military to succeed at its job in Iraq and Afghanistan—he does, in fact, work hard at playing it straight politically; he tries to describe and explain the tactics of the mission, whether they are working or not. …

Andrew Cochran, the founder of the nonpartisan Counterterrorism Blog, says simply that “Bill wants to win. I don’t know if he’s necessarily pro-Bush.”

An eye to victory. We’re fortunate to have reporters like Roggio with the courage and dedication to go get the full story on Iraq, Afghanistan and the other battlegrounds, and the experience to know what he is looking at when he gets there.

Yes, I’d say Roggio wants a democratic victory. Who doesn’t? Those who have seen the destructive power of oppression understand best that freedom is the only path to a long peace.

Frank Warner

Pat Nixon’s visit to the Vietnam war zone

First lady Pat Nixon also visited a war zone back in July 1969, right around when Apollo 11 was preparing to take Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins to the moon. She flew into Vietnam in a helicopter with bulletproof mats on the floor.

Frank Warner

John Adams: ‘Support the army with faith in what they do’

I’ve been watching the impressive HBO series, “John Adams,” which finally fills me in on the important, but generally overlooked role of America’s second president.

I was struck by this statement by Adams, about the rag-tag American army fighting the British:

“We must support them with guns and leadership and faith in what they do.”

I just wonder if America did that with Iraq, where our troops only now are sealing the victory of freedom. Our troops got the guns. The leadership was shaky, but adequate. But what happened to the “faith in what they do”?

Of little faith. How was it that so many of the people who voted in October 2002 for the liberation of Iraq -- not just removing WMDs but removing tyranny and replacing it with freedom -- showed almost no faith in the cause as soon as the invasion began?

Check the record in 2003, especially among leading Democrats. Rare was the comment that, “Democracy must be victorious.” With their eyes on the 2004 presidential election, the top Democrats were far too interested with finding fault with the commander in chief, and distancing themselves from the troops and “what they do.”

The Democrats’ moral retreat early in Operation Iraqi Freedom was an exercise in the most contemptible cynicism. In 2004, they deserved their second straight electoral humiliation.

What they do. It was John Adams who also said:

“I must study politics and war that our sons have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy … in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture.”

All democratic leaders should study those words.

Frank Warner

Hillary’s deception

Hillary Clinton told her story of scurrying off an aircraft, ducking under sniper fire in Bosnia, so often that anyone paying even a little attention to politics heard it.

She told the story again last week:

“I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia,” she said. “I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”

It was the special vignette that gave her foreign-policy cred.

Calm on the tarmac. Now we know it didn’t happen. We have CBS News video of first lady Clinton and daughter Chelsea getting off the aircraft in Tuzla, Bosnia, on March 25, 1996, taking their time, with people smiling and waving in a greeting ceremony on the tarmac, and no gunfire.

Why does this remind me of that 2004 Democratic National Convention film that showed bullets hitting the water near John Kerry’s swift boat?

When you hear Clinton’s words, “I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia,” it’s hard not to think of Kerry repeatedly telling us how “Christmas in Cambodia 1968” was “seared in my mind” -- and yet he had no Christmas in Cambodia.

Frank Warner