Spinning the Iraq war

The War On Terror began in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. The first major engagement of this war was the invasion of Afghanistan a few months later. Afghanistan was governed by the Taliban, a hard-line fundamentalist Islamic government, and it harbored multiple Al-Qaeda training camps. It was the safe haven of their leader, Osama Bin-Laden, and we believed that the overthrow of this government, the destruction of the camps and the capture of Bin-Laden were imperative to winning the War On Terror. Our allies, and most of the rest of the world agreed. While one can argue about the ultimate success of that action, the reasons behind it were clear and it carried a sense of moral correctness. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a different matter altogether.
The argument for invading Iraq initially did not center upon the threat of Al-Qaeda, rather it involved the belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). There was good reason to believe this as Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons during its long war with Iran and against the Kurds in the north of Iraq following it. Most of the world opposed invading Iraq, however, because they felt that UN inspections had not been given sufficient time to find them. The US and a few of its allies decided to press on without the backing of the UN, and Iraq was invaded in the spring of 2003.
Iraq was defeated relatively easily by our strike force of just over 100,000 troops, but the stated objective of finding and eliminating WMDs was a bit more elusive. After extensive searching, only a few left over pre-war chemical weapons were found, but nothing of the large stockpiles of chemical, biological, and even nuclear weapons that were believed to exist were located. The principal justification for the invasion had been found to be untrue, so the White House had to re-spin the rationale for the war.
Re-spinning the war to be about fighting terrorists rather than finding WMDs turned out to be relatively easy to do. The strike force had been too small to completely secure Iraq’s borders. Worse still, with the surrender of the Iraq military many of its ammunition and weapon caches were left unguarded. This proved to be a volatile combination as Islamic fighters poured over the unprotected borders and along with local Iraqi insurgents, seized many of these unguarded weapons. The result? Iraq was awash in terrorist activities and the White House could now frame the conflict as part of the War on Terror.
The Iraq war continues, and over 4000 of our brave troops have given their lives. Over 150,000 Iraqis have also died, and our successes against the insurgents and terrorists are questionable at best. To make matters worse, no one seems to have a viable exit strategy. Is this really what we envisioned that the War On Terror.

Can the fight for the democratic nomination deal the party a knockout blow?

The 2008 presidential election is a historic one for our country, and the battle for the Democratic Party’s nomination is a big reason for that. Whether the party nominates Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama, we will achieve an important milestone in American politics: the nominee will be the first woman or the first African-American nominated by a major political party for our nation’s presidency. Either of these possibilities are an exciting prospect, but the hard fought nature of this campaign and its effects on the nominee’s chances in the fall, may not lead to a Democratic win.
The most obvious problems for the Democrats with the extended nomination fight are money and time. Both candidates are spending large amounts of both in their attempt to win enough delegates to ensure the nomination. This money and time would be better spent against Republican Party nominee John McCain, who has had the luxury of a relatively short road to his win. McCain is now able to focus his efforts on building his war chest for the election in November, and can even take a few shots at the Democrats while they fight amongst themselves.
While perhaps less obvious, the bigger danger to the Democrats may be the divisions that this drawn out contest could potentially leave behind. A party can generally unite after a particularly tough campaign, but this election battle has a peculiar twist. There are not enough delegates up for grabs in the remaining Democratic primaries, so neither candidate has the possibility of locking up the nomination prior to the convention. When this situation arises, the party’s so-called “superdelegates” will decide the election. These superdelegates are members of the party elite, and not surprisingly, are mostly white. If they give the nod to Clinton, then African-American voters may well feel disenfranchised. While it’s exceedingly unlikely that this sense of disappointment will cause black voters to choose McCain, it is a distinct possibility that it could keep some away from the polls. In a presidential race that is likely to be close, the Democrats do not need any of their core members staying home on election day.
Given the current political climate, the Democrats have their best chance since Bill Clinton of winning the White House, but they will still face a tough fight from the Republicans and John McCain. With this long, bloody contest for their party’s nomination, the Democrats may have unwittingly landed the first blow to themselves.