I’ll try not to begin my endorsement of Senator John McCain with the hero’s epic that seems to physically trail the man wherever he goes. It’s become such a commonplace that to contribute another McCain hagiography spotted with "brave," "proud," and "strong" is to mindlessly shortcut your way into dismissing the Senator’s achievements. Besides, at this point anyone unaware of John McCain’s service is beyond my reach.

So. In 2002, John McCain turned in the most successful comedic turn of any politician ever to do Saturday Night Live. Which only has to mean he wasn’t painful to watch. In fact, his “McCain Sings Streisand” sketch was damned funny and he seemed to put some genuine effort into his John Ashcroft imitation. When (portraying the Attorney General) he said, “We've got some really great stuff in the works. There's one plan that would make the Arabic language – or anything that sounds like it – illegal," McCain demonstrated at least two kinds of—yes—bravery that had disappeared amongst politicians by 2002: the bravery to wildly criticize a member of your own party, and the bravery to be perceived as politically incorrect.

Humor, confrontation, and risky allusions are the vibrant stuff of youth—are they not? Yet the sixtyish-and-under candidates blow scripted one-liners and speak of pacifying enemies, while the man who’s supposedly too old for the White House sets the “bomb Iran” question to the Beach Boys.

And I like it. Everyone in the world tells you not to sweat the small stuff and then goes off to catastrophize the minute nonsense of their lives. At this stage of his career, all that needs tastefully to be observed about John McCain’s record is that no living American is better equipped to discriminate between the small stuff and the big stuff. The Senator spots the difference effortlessly while rest of the pack won’t even acknowledge there is one. Jokes, song parodies – small stuff. War, terror, freedom, victory – big stuff.

In talking about McCain’s heroism, one doesn’t need to mention Vietnam. Simply consider Iraq. Senator McCain has the distinction on Capital Hill of being both the most energetic supporter of the Iraq War and the first, most vocal critic of the Rumsfeld strategy. He actually believed in the importance of the cause, and therefore the necessity of victory. A liberated state is not a goal to be scrapped when things go wrong; it’s a principle worthy of unwavering stamina and ingenuity. It’s easy to spew bromides about bringing the troops home, but much harder to take the risk of a new strategy. As Senator McCain has recently pointed out, while the frontrunners boast about being “agents of change,” no other candidate can rightfully claim agency in the life-saving (and nation-saving) changes brought about by the troop surge in Iraq.

In taking my cue from the Senator, I’ve expanded my list of small stuff. The McCain-Feingold finance reform, dissent on the Bush tax cuts, and certain details of immigration reform all fall under that heading. John McCain shares my idea of the big stuff and he has my vote.

 

The Sierra Leone political activist Zainab Bangura recently said, “People say China is a sleeping giant, but it’s wide awake. It’s the elephant creeping up behind us. Only, it’s so big we can scarcely see it moving.”

That the editorial staff of the International Herald Tribune failed to see the elephant squat across the cover of their print publication this morning is an inexcusable disgrace. The paper ran this morbid headline “Hunger outpaces UN efforts in Darfur” right next to this cheery one “Chinese products change lives for neighbors” without the slightest hint of connection, let alone irony. Anyone who pays attention to world affairs for a living should know that the why? raised by the first headline is directly answered by the second one.

The five-years-and-counting genocide in Darfur owes its longevity (and apparently recent up-tick in child malnutrition) to the protective interest of Chinese capitalism. Every UN effort at intervention has faced either a de-clawing at Chinese insistence or the threat of a Chinese veto. This covers five Security Council resolutions aimed at disarming the Khartoum regime, imposing sanctions on them, or sending forces into the region to protect civilians. Consider Resolution 1706, for example, which:

authorized more than 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers and civilian police to protect civilians and humanitarian workers in Darfur. China abstained, and would have vetoed the measure had language not been inserted that “invited” the consent of the Khartoum regime. The National Islamic Front declined the “invitation” and refused to accept the U.N. peacekeeping force.

China’s motivation in all this can’t get any more basic: they have astronomically lucrative oil deals with the Sudanese government. These asymmetrical contracts permit China to suck the country dry of reserves claimed as their exclusive property in exchange for their promised veto. What’s more is that the oil relationship has fostered a secondary arrangement whereby the Sudanese government has contracted Chinese companies (many state-subsidized) to build bridges, roads and other infrastructure that facilitate the extraction and export of their purchased oil. Most sickening is that China’s not merely content to protect their death squad business partners in the UN; they also sell them the very weapons used in the ongoing slaughter. (At one time I could have sworn there was an army of Americans for whom “No Blood For Oil” seemed a mission statement. I’ve yet to see them or their placards swarm Union Square for an anti-China rally.)

That’s China, but what about the rest of the UN? From the first Tribune story: “For the first time since 2004, the malnutrition rate, a gauge of the population's overall distress, has crossed what UN officials consider to be the emergency threshold.” A non-stop massacre has been running longer than the television series Lost and the UN just decided that it’s an emergency. The story goes on, “As a result, people in Darfur are beginning to lose hope, and that may be another factor taking a toll on their health, several aid officials said.” That reminds me of a line from Jimmy Breslin’s comic mobster novel, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight: "He died of natural causes as his heart stopped suddenly when six men stuck knives into it."

What does this have to do with China’s “life-changing” products? The knives that China’s stuck into Darfur contribute to what’s known as the “China Price.” This is the low, low manufacturing cost China’s able to maintain and use to lure foreign investment. According to Business Week, “In general, it means 30% to 50% less than what you can possibly make something for in the U.S.” Obtaining their natural resources from countries that others refuse to patronize is one of the many unscrupulous ways that China keeps costs down. This contributes to their ability to sell cheap goods to their neighbors. From the second Tribune story:

Cheap Chinese products are flooding China's southern neighbors and consumers in Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia are laying out the welcome mat.

The products are transforming the lives of some of the poorest people in Asia, whose worldly possessions only a few years ago typically consisted of not much more than a set or two of clothes, cooking utensils and a thatch-roofed house built by hand.

The article is positively celebratory. It does allow this: “The enthusiasm for Chinese goods here is tempered by one commonly heard complaint: maintenance problems.” Well, there are a few more complaints. Aside from the Darfur genocide, here’s what else goes into the production of cheap Chinese goods: industrial slavery, intellectual piracy, environmental catastrophe, and an absolute disregard for health and safety standards.

China is indeed awake. As for the staff of The International Herald Tribune –it’s hard to say. The paper is a hodgepodge of international stories, and is presented as a resource for the global community. In that way it’s sort of the United Nations of newspapers. Which explains everything.

The right wing, imperialist-sympathizing, Texas oil-funded, British political magazine, The New Statesman, has just published a piece on global warming in which the author, David Whitehouse, states:

For the past decade the world has not warmed. Global warming has stopped. It’s not a viewpoint or a skeptic’s inaccuracy. It’s an observational fact. Clearly the world of the past 30 years is warmer than the previous decades and there is abundant evidence (in the northern hemisphere at least) that the world is responding to those elevated temperatures. But the evidence shows that global warming as such has ceased.

For those who missed the sarcasm, The New Statesman is anything but right wing. Their interest in the threat of global warming could only be journalistic. Whitehouse holds a doctorate in astrophysics, and is the former on-line science editor of the BBC—which, as far as I know, gives him two more scientific credentials than Al Gore. So, when he explains:

[W]e are led to the conclusion that either the hypothesis of carbon dioxide induced global warming holds but its effects are being modified in what seems to be an improbable though not impossible way, or, and this really is heresy according to some, the working hypothesis does not stand the test of data,

You’d think people would listen. Why, then, is it a certainty that they won’t?

For starters, the anti-Western trend in left wing thought is all-encompassing. The West, so the story goes, has exploited everything it could get its hands on in order to feed its rapacious capitalist machine. The victims include all non-Westerners and, now, the planet itself. This is a very attractive approach for those looking to make a quick judgment along history’s good guy-bad guy lines. Why not? After all, it’s not without some merit. It’s easy to point to the slave trade and colonial rule, and make a sound moral determination in the non-West’s favor. Deeper digging produces some compelling counter-arguments, but if you’re looking for a go-to stance then “the West is evil” is a lay-up. In regards to global warming, the logic proceeds as follows: atmospheric warming is caused by CO2 emissions; CO2 emissions are the result of industrialization; industry is synonymous with the West. Thus, global warming is caused by the West, (the U.S. in particular.)

This is tailor-made for an anti-U.S. institution like the United Nations. It’s also compelling stuff for universities, where anti-Western doctrine, and climate data, are generated. (This should get interesting, as China is about to surpass the U.S. as an emissions offender and there are virtually no checks on Chinese industrial pollution.) Out of concern for their careers, university researchers are scared to speak up against standard global warming theories.

The other engine driving the global warming scam is none-other than the evil lifeblood of industry itself: American capitalism. Al Gore and co. are fond of saying that when Americans find a model allowing them to make CO2 reduction profitable, they’ll lead the way in more considerate use of the planet. As it turns out, American marketers are far ahead of Al Gore. They’ve found that model. An article in the American Thinker has some interesting data comparing the countries that signed onto the lauded Kyoto treaty on emissions reductions to the U.S., who didn't sign:

* Emissions worldwide increased 18 percent.

* Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21 percent.

* Emissions from non-signers increased 10 percent.

* Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6 percent.

Clearly, something other than a commitment to international treaties has landed the U.S. in the 6.6 category. A few weeks ago, I read this off the label on my Poland Spring bottle:

The lightest 1⁄2 liter bottle ever produced*, the new, 100% recyclable Poland Spring Eco-Shape™ bottle is not only less impactful on the environment, it’s purposely designed to be easy to carry and hold. And because it’s lighter, it requires less energy to make – resulting in a reduction of CO2 emissions.

What thrilling news. I had been so guilt-wracked (not to mention physically burdened) drinking Poland Spring in the past. The company has tapped into the decision making process that most well-meaning people adopt when out shopping. If there’s a regular bottle and a “less impactful” bottle next to it, shoppers will opt for the one that eases their conscience. It’s the same process that drives the casual thinker to choose non-West over West. “Why not?” And it’s a marketing phenomenon with millions, if not billions, behind it. The earth can’t afford to stop warming. Too much money’s riding on that mercury.

A year ago, I was touring the Fox News newsroom (Fox News!) when my host told me with pride that they would soon be upgrading everything there to the most state-of-the-art environment-friendly equipment. Why not?

Here’s why not. Because, as a letter sent to the UN Secretary General, and signed by 100 prominent scientists, stated, “Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity’s real and pressing problems."

Problems even more real and pressing than how to satisfy our anti-Western self-righteousness. Or how to assuage our own Western guilt by choosing a different bottle of water at the supermarket.

So, the planet cools while global warming fear mongers tell the corporations they despise exactly how best to get their dollar. Meanwhile, money and research that could be put towards the relief of a thousand genuine problems goes down the drain.

There’s another casualty of the climate madness: the integrity of scientific methodology and debate. People say, “most scientists now agree . . .” having forgotten that consensus of opinion is not a valid factor in scientific determination. Or at least it wasn’t. Now, a show of hands is all it takes to determine that “the debate is over.” This, unlike climate change, is catastrophic. As Whitehouse puts it, “[T]he wish to know exactly what is going on is independent of politics and scientists must never bend their desire for knowledge to any political cause, however noble.”

Whew! At least he didn’t say “any financial cause, however profitable.” It's Christmas, after all.

Time magazine ranked General Petraeus fourth runner up for the publication’s 2007 “Person of The Year”. Given the General’s clear insight into media politics, one suspects he was probably surprised to find out he was being considered at all. Given his humble resolve, it’s almost certain he would have found the ridiculous title an embarrassment. After all, Time has bestowed the honor (that they’re quick to insist isn’t an honor) upon both Adolf Hitler (from the January 1939 edition: “He lifted the nation from post-War defeatism. Under the swastika Germany was unified. His was no ordinary dictatorship, but rather one of great energy and magnificent planning.”) And Joseph Stalin (from the January 1940 edition: “Despite the disastrous purges, despite the low opinion that J. Stalin & Co. held of human life, Soviet Russia had definitely gained some measure of respect for its apparent righteousness in foreign affairs.”)

Looking over those quotes, I think it’s safe to say that while the title isn’t explicitly an honor, the non-honoree is treated with no small measure of reverence. Which we know General Petraeus has yet to command from the MSM.

Given that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was much more Time-friendly, it’s worth reviewing the accomplishments of a man who does deserve an honor that is, in fact, an honor.

By the time David Petraeus took over command of the Iraq War, columnists and politicians had long exhausted the blunder pages of their thesauri. Lawlessness was the order of the day. Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was years into their campaign of exploiting Sunni-Shia strife. They’d managed to provoke an apparent state of multiple civil wars, the dousing of which seemed obscenely out of the U.S. military’s reach.

Petraeus knew that what looked like civil war was, in fact, AQI’s cynically devised plan to foment sectarian bloodshed. Al Qaeda car bombings and mosque bombings were carried out in hopes of retaliation that would, of their own momentum, go on to tear the country apart. Instead of taking sides in a fictitious civil war, he employed a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy as unprecedented as it was brave. U.S. soldiers would no longer stay barricaded in heavily fortified bases. Instead they operated out of regional outposts in the heart of hot spots, and shared patrol duties with Iraqis. Additionally, forces leaned on AQI hideouts simultaneously so that insurgents couldn’t simply pack up and check in at the next jihad flophouse. These strategic measures, not the simple up-tick in troops, lay at the heart of the surge. Just as the media (and many lawmakers) failed to grasp that, they now fail to see that Iraqi political progress, found lacking when measured from the top-down, is well underway if measured from the bottom-up. Local leaders, both Sunni and Shia, are renouncing the sectarian violence that once gripped their country. Sunni’s are turning against AQI and Shia against Mahdi Army type militiamen in order to bring stability to Iraq.

Without General Petraeus, we’d be closing this year with a catastrophic defeat of U.S. forces in the heart of Mesopotamia. Instead we’ve driven civil society’s worst enemy from their most strategically valuable arena. The long-term effect of a loss in Iraq would have meant untold damage: to U.S. military prowess, to American soft power, to the cause of liberation in the Muslim world. A few days ago, Andrew Sullivan, still blind to coalition progress in Iraq, wrote that the U.S. needs a “humble foreign policy” going forward. Indeed, we would have one without Davis Petraeus. Instead, we now have this.

Yesterday on the Fox News channel Charles Krauthammer predicted General David Petraeus will someday be elected president of the United States. Hey, it’s not “Person of the Year,” but it doesn’t suck either.

Shaha Riza, the career-long proponent of Middle-East democracy, has been cleared of the nonsensical charge brought against her at the height of the loathsome World Bank power play that so delighted everyone this year. (That is, delighted everyone except the needy folks who would have benefited had Riza’s partner Paul Wolfowitz not been ousted from the charitable body.) And no one knows.

The “scandal’s” main event was the allegation that Wolfowitz, in his capacity as World Bank president, had broken bank rules and taken it upon himself to promote Riza, a bank employee, and give her a raise. With a truly chilling faith in counter-reality, almost everyone from the New York Times to heads of state refused to recognize the affair for what it was: a vengeful putsch against a proponent of the Iraq War. Wolfowitz made every dreary speck of correspondence between him and the bank a matter of public record, so that one can easily see that everything he did in regard to Riza’s promotion and raise was done not only with the bank’s consent, but usually on their recommendation as well.

Moving on.

Going with the “if you tell a big enough lie people will believe you” notion, bank officials heaped additional muck on Riza. This in the form of insinuation about a trip she made to work on Iraqi democracy and civil society in 2003. Then-bank President James Wolfensohn okayed Shaha Riza’a month-long unpaid trip to Iraq. Here’s The Wall Street Journal on what followed:

Thus did matters stand until the phony Wolfowitz scandal blew up this spring. On April 18, the Washington Post ran a story under the headline, "Defense Eyes Wolfowitz Friend's Contract." The same day, National Public Radio followed up with "Wolfowitz Faces New Allegations of Favoritism," quoting Ms. Riza's former supervisor, Jean-Louis Sarbib, saying the trip was "unusual and not terribly above board." Graeme Wheeler, a bank managing director, also included the trip among the reasons for his widely publicized demand at the time that Mr. Wolfowitz resign.

The very next day, however, Reuters reported that in 2005 the Pentagon's Inspector General had looked into Ms. Riza's trip and found there was "insufficient basis to warrant further investigation." The IG noted that Ms. Riza, who has long experience working with Arab reformers and is fluent in Arabic and Turkish, among other languages, was uniquely well qualified for the position. The New York Times confirmed the substance of the Reuters story on April 20, adding that the IG had found that then-Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz had "not exerted improper influence in Ms. Riza's hiring." Oddly, the Times chose to run this news under the misleading headline "Wolfowitz Backed Friend for Iraq Contract in '03.

Nonetheless, then Bank vice president for human resources Xavier Coll, hired a Canadian law firm to investigate the “approval process” for Riza's trip. The Journal adds, “Mr. Coll is known to readers of this page for the dishonest account he gave of his role in authorizing Ms. Riza's raise.”

Recently, the paper called and spoke to a bank representative. The investigation had been completed and they found "no basis to conclude misconduct occurred.” From the Journal: “The tab for this fishing expedition? The bank won't say, and Goodmans [the law firm] didn't return our calls. But a source estimates the cost to the bank runs north of $500,000.”

The organization charged with determining the most beneficial way in which to distribute aid to the world’s neediest burned half a million dollars on a side dish of slime just to ensure the purging of Paul Wolfowitz. I don’t know what’s most sickening: the self-satisfied relish with which the world’s least needy applauded this spectacle or the fact that Riza’s name was cleared in a media vacuum. Actually, neither. My vote goes to the pathetic paralytic state of despot-coddling the bank so easily resumed after Wolfowitz was gone.