Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Believe it or not, there are Democrats whose most ardent hope is that Bush will come to his senses and end the war in Iraq before the next presidential election. One can almost hear the sweat pouring off their foreheads splashing on the floor of the U.S. Senate. That hope, somewhat unrealistic considering Bush’s adamantine refusal to withdraw the troops, is in its death throws after General David Petraeus’ report to congress. The Petraeus report did not go down well with the ardent anti-war crowd huddled in the bunkers over at MoveOn.org, who accused the general of “Betrayal (rhymes, sort of, with Petraeus) or the anti-war harridans over at DailyKos, Impeach Bush Central. Our own Sen. Chris Dodd is one of the principal leaders of the Movement To Get Bush To Put His Head In A Noose And Pull The Trap Door. It’s not working. The man is stubborn and has no yen for self destruction. The Democrat, anti-war take on Bush is that he bumbled into the presidency fraudulently (the environmentally...

According to the New York Times, not generally regarded as kind to moderate Democrats or lingering fanatics who do not wish to see Iraq dismembered by theological oppressors in Syria and Iran, Hillary Clinton is moving cautiously towards a position on Iraq that is likely to get her into Dutch with the kind of people who think Joe Lieberman has cloven hooves and a tail. Clinton told the Times in a half hour interview on March 13th that, were she elected president, she would “keep a reduced military force (in Iraq) to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military.” In the interview, the Times' reporter thought, “Mrs. Clinton articulated a more nuanced position than the one she has provided at her campaign events, where she has backed the goal of ‘bringing the troops home.’ She said in the interview that there were ‘remaining vital national security interests in Iraq ‘that would require a continuing deployment of American troops.’”...

There are two kinds of realists, Christopher Hitchens reminds us in a suburb analytical piece printed in Slate magazine, an on-line publication: real realists and fake realists. “Many people write as if the sectarian warfare in Iraq was caused by coalition intervention. But it is surely obvious that the struggle for mastery has been going on for some time and was only masked by the apparently iron unity imposed under Baathist rule. That rule was itself the dictatorship of a tribal Tikriti minority of the Sunni minority and constituted a veneer over the divisions beneath, as well as an incitement to their perpetuation. The Kurds had already withdrawn themselves from this divide-and-rule system by the time the coalition forces arrived, while Shiite grievances against the state were decades old and had been hugely intensified by Saddam's cruelty. Nothing was going to stop their explosion, and if Saddam Hussein's regime had been permitted to run its course and to devolve (if one ca...

According to a report in the Hartford Courant, US Sen. Chris Dodd “could back a temporary increase in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq - but only if that surge was for a very short period and specifically helped end American involvement.” Should anyone be worried that Dodd’s position may not please progressives in the Democrat Party who together worked to oust Sen. Joe Lieberman from the senate, largely because of his support for the war, they need not trouble themselves too much; Dodd’s “support” of the introduction of new troops into Iraq is heavily conditioned. In the Courant report, Dodd laid down two conditions that must be met to assure his support: 1) Before new troops are introduced, the two warring religious sects, the Shias and Sunnis, must sit down and recognize that they have an obligation to come together as a people; and 2) The troops must be “needed” to “get the job done.” "Show me, Dodd said, “some demonstrable evidence that they're coming together as a people...

The "blanket bit" in this interview with Christopher Hitchens is hilarious and helps to explain why there will always be an England. Bitterly critical of the CIA, it is also a manual in how get yourself a file in the CIA, the FBI and whatever comgressional committee is charged with overseeing international sleuthery. Australian Broadcasting Corporation Broadcast: 11/09/2006 Reporter: Tony Jones Tony Jones speaks with the prolific writer and outspoken commentator Christopher Hitchens about the New York attacks and their implications. TONY JONES: Well just a year after September 11, the prolific writer and outspoken commentator Christopher Hitchens joined me on the roof of a building overlooking Ground Zero to talk about the New York attacks and their implications. Now, five years after the event that changed the world, we invited him to join us again - this time from our Washington studio. Christopher Hitchens thanks for being there. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Thanks for having me...

About 2,000 Democrats showed up at the Palace Theatre in Waterbury to cheer on ex-President Bill Clinton and re-welcome in the Age of Aquarius. Fleetwood Mac’s hypnotic verse “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow,” Clinton’s signature song, filled the air, and the revelers certainly were focusing on tomorrow. Recent poll figures show Ned Lamont edging Senator Joe Lieberman among likely Democrat voters, which betokens a tomorrow unwelcome by former Democrat Leadership Council presidents Clinton and Lieberman. The DLC’ers are moderate Democrats; the insurgents now laying claim to Lieberman’s senate seat are, shall we say, immoderate. A Hartford reporter covering the event wrote, “The former president said no Democrat should be held responsible for the war in Iraq, the issue that polls say is driving Democrats away from Lieberman and to his anti-war challenger, Ned Lamont.” Not exactly: In Clinton case, one has learned to pay attention to fine print qualifiers. Any assertion boldly made by ...

The beef about U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman is that he is out of touch with his constituents concerning the war in Iraq. The beefing comes mostly from bloggers who support Ned Lamont’s attempt to oust Lieberman in a Democrat primary, a few Democrat town committees that have drafted official rebukes, and a sizable chunk of Connecticut voters. President George Bush’s flagging poll numbers in Connecticut suggest a broad dissatisfaction with the Iraq war. The anti-Iraq war contingent received an assist from an unlikely quarter recently when the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported that Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House that progressives love to hate, leapt off the burning deck, telling students at the University of South Dakota, "It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003. We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it." Gingrich did not suggest a time table for the rug pull. Fox news, the TV station progressives love to...

The whole gang was there at the Carpenters Union Hall in Hartford's South End to wish Sen. Joe Lieberman a happy 64th birthday and to banish the ghost that for nearly a month had been haunting the Democrat Party. The ghost’s name is Ned Lamont, a Greenwich millionaire, anti-war enthusiast and possible primary opponent. Weeks earlier, supposing some difference between the two Democrat senators on the Iraq war, the Hartford Courant began to arrange the “debate” shown on Fox News’ “Between the Lines.” The differences between the two senators, as it turned out, were slight. Both agreed that the United States had entered the war on faulty premises, largely owing to bad intelligence and false assumptions. Weapons of mass destruction – what Aristotle might have called the proximate cause of the war – were nowhere to be found. Some have suggested that Iraqi chemical weapons had been shuttled off to Syria prior to the invasion. Others have suggested that Saddam Hussein was intent on deceivi...

“The White House insists that all is going swimmingly in Iraq,” according to the editorial page editor of a local paper. No one in the White House ever has made such a claim. Polls show “popular disgust at the continued killings of civilians” in Iraq, and “an inability to suppress the insurgency in Iraq is finally beginning to disturb members of the U.S. Congress.” The word “finally” suggests the editorial writer had been disgusted long before congress tardily came to its senses. But disgust is a double edged sword: It moves some people to increase their resolve, especially when faced by the horrific crimes against humanity committed by what the writer is pleased to call "the insurgency." Others lose courage. The “insurgents," many of them Saudis, are surging into Iraq from outside the country. The border between Iraq and Syria is particularly porous. “Growing talk” among supporters of the president – Connecticut Rep. John Larson is not one of them -- that Bush needs “an...

"What we did during the last 30 days was a tribute to our ancestors. I know they are looking at us from heaven and they are applauding." -- Viktor Yushchenko Several years ago, I was contacted by a Ukrainian in New Britain, Connecticut who wanted to send me a film on the 1932-33 famine in that country. He asked me to view the film and let him know if I could think of any reason why it should not be shown in the United States. The film, " Harvest of Despair ," had been widely shown in Canada. That was my first exposure to the greatest man made disaster ever recorded, and the first time in history that famine on such a scale was used as an instrument of war and oppression. I was stunned by "Harvest of Despair." The film contained footage of both the famine in 1932-33 and an earlier famine that had been stopped in its tracks by Lenin, who had imported food into the stricken areas. The 32-33 famine -- the Ukrainians call it the Holodomor, roughly translated...

It’s doubtful that the average American thinks very much about his own past, let alone the past of his nation’ recent presidents. Most Americans are forward looking; something they have in common with tempest tossed immigrants newly arrived in the land of milk and honey. During his first campaign against the current president’s father, former president Bill Clinton was careful not to dwell too much on his dubious past: It took awhile for that past to catch him up with the fleet footed Clinton and grab him by the throat. Clinton’s first campaign was grounded firmly in the insubstantial future. The past belongs to history and may be, especially to those who have lived in it, a twilight shrouded, dangerous terrain. The future belongs to the imagination and is made of “frogs and snails and puppy dog’s tails.” As boys -- who will be boys -- enter their maturity, their pasts, so the poem tells us, are transmuted to “sighs and leers, and crocodile tears.” If John Kerry didn’t get himself a ro...

One question not seriously pursued during the presidential debates concerns the perfidy of trusted allies with respect to the United Nation’s Food for Oil program. In the future, how would presidential candidates John Kerry or George Bush prevent rogue states such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq from turning UN Oil for Food programs into Oil for Weapons programs? The Oil for Food program was designed to ease social conditions in Iraq by permitting Saddam’s government to buy food and supplies for the country he methodically plundered. But the program was early on subverted by Saddam through a voucher system that rewarded state officials in various countries for political favors. According to a story featured in the “Washington Times,” Patrick Kennedy, a representative to the United Nations for management and reform, told the House Government Reform subcommittee on national security, emerging threats and international relations that some member states had “resisted” efforts to put an end to bri...