I watched the debate tonight with most of my children gathered around my computer and some speakers plugged in so we could all hear it. Between frequent questions from different children wanting information about some of the answers (and there were some topics I didn’t want them to hear too much about), the phone ringing, dinner preparation, etc., I missed some of it, so I can’t write a good synopsis. I did appreciate that it opened with prayer and that the focus seemed to be bringing honor to God, though I believe many Christians are misguided about how that works out in government. I can understand why the four “top” candidates were no-shows, though I think they are cowards and foolish for not appearing in a place where the very important Christian voting base is strongly represented.

I had never heard Huckabee, the hero of many religious conservatives, before, and I was impressed by his humor and sincerity, but not wowed by either as I know that he has not been known for his fiscal restraint as governor of Arkansas. What did stand out to me in what I saw was that all of the candidates, while very likeminded with most of us Christian paleoconservatives, have no compunctions about using the power of the federal government to further their conservative agenda, even if the Constitution does not allow it. Poor Ron Paul came across like a broken record with his repeated assertions that if the Constitution does not allow it, then the federal government shouldn’t do it. He made a very good point that when you start messing around with granting power to the government for your “good” cause, then it might just come back to bite you when you are not in power. Duh. But did they get it? Some of them seemed downright peeved that he would dare to say such a thing to them.

I think he was talking about how wrong it is to have hate crimes legislation when Huckabee said that he was against anything that would weaken our commitment to the Constitution. That was shortly after he strongly stated his support for our unconstitutional, undeclared war. The poll of the attendees gave Huckabee an overwhelming declaration of victory for the event.

Alan Keyes rambled, John Cox came across as a know-it-all used car salesman (Pieter tells me he’s only raised $20,000 in a couple of months), Brownback showed his true colors as far as his pro-amnesty/pro-guest worker position goes. I’d like Tancredo as a candidate if he wasn’t so pro-war.

Some of the questions were disappointing, showing how much religious conservatives don’t understand the limited scope of powers the federal government ought to have. It seems like even the “right” side believes the president is really a king with super powers to transform the nation and make the world safe from evil.

Jessie Paine liveblogged the debate, and he has a synopsis of it here. I would be interested in hearing anyone else’s thoughts about the candidates in the debate this evening.

“Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?”

So what exactly has changed since Rumsfeld penned these words in 2003? It is virtually accepted that the military “surge” in Iraq is working. After all, GOP candidates (with the exception of Ron Paul) all say so, as does the president. Oh, and don’t forget those libs O’Hanlon and Pollack. The same narrative of success spun by GOP politicos and the White House is also regurgitated by an ever compliant media.

Can someone explain why we should believe these fellas? Isn’t it entirely likely that they are cherry-picking data to support their cause? It certainly would not be the first time.

For example, at the heart of administration claims is the assertion that violence in Iraq is down. As I wrote last month, the claim doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. There are numerous reports that civilian casualties are rising, and even those likely undercount the reality on the ground.

Likewise, conflicting data is frequently produced by different tentacles of the regime. The General Accounting Office, using methodology adopted by the CIA and DIA, published a bleak assessment of the security situation in Iraq.

The GAO was clearly pressured by the Pentagon and made several changes to the report, but still concluded that “Iraq had failed to meet all but two of nine security goals Congress had set as part of a list of 18 benchmarks of progress.”

Speaking to the issue of disparate numbers related to violence in Iraq, Comptroller General David Walker told Congress, “Let’s just say that there are several different sources within the administration on violence, and those sources do not agree.”

One intelligence analyst put it this way: “Depending on which numbers you pick you get a different outcome. If a bullet went through the back of the head, it’s sectarian. If it went through the front, it’s criminal.”

Moreover, military statistics do not include violence created by the escalating warfare between rival Shiite militias in southern Iraq or attacks by Sunni tribesmen aligned with the U. S.

During congressional testimony Walker said, “The primary difference between us and the military is whether or not violence has been reduced with regard to sectarian violence…It is unclear whether sectarian violence in Iraq has decreased — a key security benchmark…We could not get comfortable with (the military’s) methodology for determining what’s sectarian versus nonsectarian violence.”

In short, don’t believe everything you’re hearing about the military success of the surge. The situation is always more complicated than the state will admit.

But even if there is some military success, the political situation continues to disintegrate, and daily life for Iraqis remains extremely difficult. Nearly half the cabinet ministers have withdrawn support for Maliki’s government.

Walker accurately calls the Iraqi government “dysfunctional”: “Given the fact that significant progress has not been made in improving the living conditions of the Iraqis on a day-to-day basis with regard to things that all citizens care about — safe streets, clean water, reliable electricity, a variety of other basic things. I think you’d have to say it’s dysfunctional — the government is dysfunctional.”

Those we’re helping don’t appear to think things are getting better either. Obviously they aren’t watching Fox News. In a recent poll, nearly 70% of Iraqis believe security has deteriorated in the area covered by the US military surge and 60% see attacks on US-led forces as justified. The number rises to 93% among Sunni Muslims. That’s what I call winning hearts and minds.

But back to the question posed by Rumsfeld: Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?

I believe the answer is demonstrably “NO.” Robert Pape and Micheal Shuer have argued that our policies are largely at the root of the global Islamic insurgency. Speaking of suicide bombers, Pape says, “The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland.” In short, the rotten fruit produced by an interventionist foreign policy is largely the reason for, and not the solution to, our problems in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Separate analyses by the Saudis and Israelis found that the overwhelming majority of foreign fighters in Iraq became radicalized by the war itself.

In recent Congressional testimony, Brookings scholar Daniel Benjamin also argued that the war has created more terrorists. “The invasion of Iraq gave the jihadists an unmistakable boost,” said Benjamin. “Terrorism is about advancing a narrative and persuading a targeted audience to believe it [and we] have too often lent inadvertent confirmation to the terrorists’ narrative” through ill-thought policies.

Changing tactics will not rescue American policy in Iraq. Moving 30,000 soldiers here or turning over security to Iraqis there is largely window dressing. The “strategy” from the outset was the problem. The delusion, as Bruce Fein writes, “that Kurds, Shi’ites and Sunnis would embrace American style democracy after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by spontaneous combustion” is at the heart of our failure. The worship of a false god, democracy, has led to this.

I’ve written the first of what I hope will be a number of posts relating to lessons learned in our families first year of homeschooling.  I didn’t think Backwater Report a place to post those personal musings, so if you’re interested, please visit my blog. 

Unable to sleep the other night, I flipped to a repeat of the Faux News New Hampshire GOP food-fight as a means of inducing slumber. Instead, my blood pressure soared as I endured the smugness of Fox News journalists and the smarmy ignorance of our would-be emperors.

With the noble exception of Dr. Paul, these mighty warriors want to take the fight to the “Islamo-Fascists.” Here is a sampling of the tough talk from swaggering presidential wannabes in the thrall of the War Party:

Sam Brownback—“I think you’re going to need a long-term U.S. presence in, I think, particularly in the Kurdish region in the north and the Sunni region in the west, that you’re going to have a long-term — invited by those governments, and you’re going to need it to assure the Turks that the Kurds aren’t going to pull out and to assure the Kurds that the Turks aren’t going to come in. I think that’s what you have to do in looking at the reality.”

Mike Huckabee—“We have to continue the surge. And let me explain why, Chris. When I was a little kid, if I went into a store with my mother, she had a simple rule for me. If I picked something off the shelf of the store and I broke it, I bought it.

I learned don’t pick something off the shelf I can’t afford to buy.

Well, what we did in Iraq, we essentially broke it. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can to try to fix it before we just turn away because something is at stake.”

John McCain—“It’s working because we’ve got a great general. We’ve got a good strategy. Anbar province: Things have improved… are succeeding, and the great debate is not whether it’s apparently working or not. The great debate is going to take place on the floor of the United States Senate, the middle of this month. And it’s going to be whether we set a date for withdrawal, which will be a date for surrender, or whether we will let this surge continue and succeed.”

Duncan Hunter—“We’ve got 129 battalions in the Iraqi army that we’re training up. We’re training them up, we are getting them into the fight. When those Iraqi battalions are battle-hardened and they start to rotate into the positions on the battlefield, displacing American forces, the American forces can then rotate out, come back to the U.S. or go to other places in Central Command. That’s the right way to win; it’s called victory. That’s how we leave Iraq.. if you think we’re going to be there for a long time, you don’t understand the determination of the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Army. We’re going to turn it over.”

Tom Tancredo—“But let me get back to a central point here, and that is why we’re there and, in fact, with whom we are at war. The war is not actually in Iraq; the war is with radical Islam. That’s who we are at war with — (applause) — and we have to understand it. Iraq is a battlefield in that war.”

Mitt Romney—“This is not about broken pottery, and it’s also not about just getting out because we made a mistake. This is a global conflict going on. Radical, violent jihad. This effort ranges from Indonesia, Nigeria, and through Europe and into America, and this battlefield of Iraq is a place where we have to be successful because the consequences of what will happen on this global battlefield are enormous. And that’s why it’s so important for us to be successful with the surge, and I agree, it looks successful. I certainly hope it’s going to be fully successful. And as we are able to do that, we’re going to see ourselves able to continue in our efforts to overwhelm jihad.”

I’m perfectly willing to concede that we have an Islamic problem, but “victory” will only be achieved through defensive means. As Serge Trifkovic has written, “The victory will not come by conquering Mecca for Americans but by disengaging America from Mecca and by excluding Mecca from America. Eliminating the risk is impossible. Managing it wisely, resolutely, and permanently is something attainable.”

The goal should be insulation from sources of disorder. That implies first and foremost sealing our borders. But it also must mean a change in foreign policy, disengaging from the Middle East and extricating ourselves from the suffocating impact of The Lobby.

Non-state actors like al-Qaeda thrive under conditions of instability and disorder, the very conditions we have created in Iraq. Creating a permanent presence in Iraq via huge embassies and military bases simply breeds instability by making the creation of legitimate Iraqi institutions impossible.

What is disturbing is that after four years of this nonsense, most of the GOP is still committed to the enterprise and seems eager to spread the disorder and destruction throughout the rest of the Middle East.

Among presidential aspirants, Ron Paul is the only principled non-interventionist. During Wednesday’s debate, Paul identified the Neocons as the problem and with deftness and precision put the issue into perspective. “I am less safe, the American people are less safe for this. It’s the policy that is wrong. Tactical movements and shifting troops around and taking in 30 more and reducing by five, totally irrelevant. We need a new foreign policy that said we ought to mind our own business, bring our troops home, defend this country, defend our borders.”