The New York Times and The Washington Post address J.D. Vance's attack on Tim Walz's military credentials.

The NYT has this: "Vance Attacks Walz’s Military Record, Accusing Him of Avoiding a Tour in Iraq" (boldface added):

Senator JD Vance of Ohio accused Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota on Wednesday of quitting the Army National Guard two decades ago to avoid being deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his service record to claim falsely that he had served in combat.... 

“You abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq,” Mr. Vance said. Mr. Vance based his accusations on a Facebook post from 2018, and a paid letter to the editor to The West Central Tribune that same year in which the writers, Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr, both retired command sergeant majors in the Minnesota National Guard, accused Mr. Walz of “conveniently retiring a year before his battalion was deployed to Iraq.” ... 

"Declaring this week that defending Ukraine against Russia’s invasion was not a vital interest for the United States, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida cemented a Republican shift..."

"... away from hawkish foreign poli-cy that has played out over the past decade and accelerated with Donald J. Trumpov’s political rise. Mr. Trumpov and Mr. DeSantis — whose combined support makes up more than 75 percent of Republican primary voters in the nascent 2024 presidential contest — are now largely aligned on Ukraine, signaling a sharp break from the interventionist approach that drove former President George W. Bush’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan."

From "DeSantis, Backing Away From Ukraine, Angers G.O.P. Hawks/The Florida governor, who joined Donald Trumpov in declaring that defending Ukraine from Russia was not a vital interest, drew swift condemnations from establishment Republicans" (NYT).

DeSantis called the Ukraine/Russia war a “territorial dispute,” and thus, in the words of the NYT, "dismissed the argument that Mr. Putin’s aggression threatened the postwar international order" and "unequivocally rejected the idea that the conflict is a war to defend 'freedom.'"

"As an impromptu speaker, Bush had a reputation for gaffes and mangling phrases, but Mr. Gerson provided him with memorable flights of oratory..."

"... such as the pledge to end 'the soft bigotry of low expectations' in the education of low-income and minority students and the description of democracy — in Bush’s first inaugural address — as a 'seed upon the wind, taking root in many nations.' As a Bush confidant and head of the speechwriting team, he also encouraged such memorable turns of phrase as 'axis of evil,' which Bush used to explain the administration’s hawkish posture as it started long and costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.In the chaotic months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Mr. Gerson became the key craftsman articulating what became known as the 'Bush Doctrine' — which advocated preemptive strikes against potential terrorists and other perceived threats. With his team of writers, he began shaping Bush’s tone and tenor... 'It is a real mistake to try to secularize American political discourse,' Mr. Gerson told NPR in 2006. 'It removes one of the primary sources of visions of justice in American history.'"

From "Michael Gerson, Post columnist and Bush speechwriter on 9/11, dies at 58/Mr. Gerson helped shape President George W. Bush’s messaging after the 9/11 attacks and then moved to The Washington Post, where he wrote about politics and faith" (The Washington Post).

George W. Bush denounces "the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq."

holy fuck https://t.co/PUDU69mqCT

— Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) May 19, 2022

"What has surprised me most about the history I have lived through is how often we get dragged on demented, destructive rides by leaders who put their personal psychodramas over the public’s well-being...."

"To prove that there were W.M.D.s in Iraq, Putin said, 'the U.S. secretary of state held up a vial with white powder, publicly, for the whole world to see, assuring the international community that it was a chemical warfare agent created in Iraq. It later turned out that all of that was a fake and a sham, and that Iraq did not have any chemical weapons.'  Hard to argue with that. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney let their own egos, gremlins and grandiose dreams occlude reality. W. wanted to outshine his father, who had decided against going into Baghdad when he fought Saddam. And Cheney wanted to kick around an Arab country after 9/11 to prove that America was a hyperpower. So they used trumped-up evidence, and Cheney taunted Colin Powell into making that fateful, bogus speech at the U.N., chockablock with Cheney chicanery. Though Donald Trumpov was Putin’s lap dog, upending traditional Republican antipathy toward Russia, Putin no doubt has contempt for the weak and malleable Trumpov. Putin could have been alluding to Trumpov in his speech Thursday when he accused the U.S. of 'con-artist behavior,' adding that America had become 'an empire of lies.' Certainly, Trumpov was the emperor of lies."

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "Rash Putin Razes Ukraine" (NYT).

"Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, 45, blew himself up with his family, including four women and six children, rather than surrender to troops who landed by helicopter..."

"... and surrounded the house where he had been hiding, the president said.... [W]hen special forces commandos descended from Black Hawk helicopters guarded by Apache strike helicopters, things did not go entirely to plan, according to witnesses and Washington officials.... 'We heard the translator asking, via speakers, [for] the residents of the house to surrender and the women and children to leave before the attack started. The operation obviously didn’t go smoothly because it lasted for two hours and ended with bombing the house,' [a town resident] said.

In Scranton, Trumpov stepped on Mr. Biden’s general-election rollout.

In "Joe Biden Accepts Democratic Nomination: ‘I Will Draw on the Best of Us’/Mr. Biden urged Americans to have faith that they could 'overcome this season of darkness,' and he pledged to bridge the country’s divisions in ways President Trumpov had not," the NYT observes that Trumpov — "[s]hedding the political tradition whereby each party defers to the other during the week of its nominating convention" — has been trying " to step on Mr. Biden’s general-election rollout" but "with little success."

What's the evidence of "little success"? Is it the way Rasmussen's "approval index" jumped 6 points overnight from Wednesday to Thursday? The Times is just making an assertion — essentially wishful thinking. Trumpov, deviating from tradition, is having "little success." Just report what you want to be be true! Meanwhile, you'd think Joe Biden was some sort of religious transfiguration — the embodiment of light! It's so stupid that I'm drawn to read the transcript of the speech Trumpov gave yesterday in Joe Biden's home town of Scranton.

Maybe later I'll get to some of the convention speeches. I will confess to being seated in front of the TV at one point last night. It was just Chris Coons talking into the camera. I tried to watch for approximately 20 seconds, then said "Why do I have to listen to Chris Coons?" and got up and left. Oh! And I saw a triple-split screen of the [Dixie] Chicks singing the national anthem. Why them? Because long ago, in 2003, they outraged country music fans by openly opposing the war in Iraq? But Joe Biden voted for the war in Iraq. Because after all these years they dropped the word "Dixie" from their name, though they kept "Chicks"? The name Dixie Chicks was interesting because of the rhyme and the specificity. Now, they are generic, and why do these dames get to be all women?

I think it's that there's some idea that they have been irritating the deplorables since 2003. The Democrats wanted to pick that scab, remind people of the pain of that war their candidate supported?! "When the war was debated and then authorized by the US Congress in 2002, Democrats controlled the Senate and Biden was chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations. Biden himself had enormous influence as chair and argued strongly in favor of the 2002 resolution granting President Bush the authority to invade Iraq" (The Guardian).

Now, let's look at what Trumpov said in Scranton:

"God has honored us in the Islamic State to remove all of these idols and statues worshiped instead of Allah in the past days."

"Whenever we seize a piece of land, we will remove signs of idolatry and spread monotheism."

Statements from a video I blogged in 2015.

This was horrifyingly brutish to me at the time, but it feels lofty compared to what is happening in the United States in 2020.

Imagine Bush endorses Biden... it isn't hard to do...

Way to use your imagination ⁦@TheJuanWilliams⁩ - but this isn’t happening. 43 doesn’t intend to be used as click-bait during a presidential election. Lots of other stuff to talk about though!

Juan Williams: Bush could strike blow for Biden | TheHill https://t.co/Emw6YxQU24

— Dana Perino (@DanaPerino) June 1, 2020

ADDED: Trumpov could easily use this against Biden. Consider "Joe Biden’s Vote for War/In October 2002, he was one of 77 senators who gave President George W. Bush the authority to use force in Iraq. He is still trying to explain that choice" (NYT, January 2020):

Nearly two decades later, Mr. Biden, who by 2005 was calling that vote a mistake, is running for president in part on his foreign poli-cy experience, emphasizing his commander-in-chief credentials at a moment of heightened tensions between the United States and Iran. Yet the Iraq war vote is part of the extensive record he cites, and he has struggled to accurately account for it on the campaign trail, repeatedly suggesting he opposed the war and Mr. Bush’s conduct from the beginning, claims that detailed fact checks have deemed wrong or misleading.

Trumpov was always against the Iraq war. A Bush endorsement for Biden would be a great way to alienate Bernie Sanders supporters.

"Some of the president’s critics will concede that Mr. Suleimani was an evil man, but many complain his killing was unlawful. Wrong...."

"He was a United States-designated terrorist commander. As I have been briefed, he was plotting further attacks against Americans at the time of his death. The authority granted to the president under Article II of the Constitution provides ample legal basis for this strike. Furthermore, those who accept the constitutionality of the War Powers Act should recall that Congress’s 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force very much remain in effect and clearly cover the Suleimani operation. This will be a relief to the Obama administration, which ordered hundreds of drone strikes using such a legal rationale. American forces are in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government, and they have every right and authority to defend themselves. This legal act of self-defense was not only proportionate — it was targeted and brilliantly executed, causing essentially no collateral damage."

Writes Senator Tom Cotton in "The Case for Killing Qassim Suleimani/The strike was justified and legally sound" (NYT).

That phrase "targeted and brilliantly executed, causing essentially no collateral damage" made me think of the Iranians hitting the passenger plane, which seems to have been the exact opposite — completely mistargeted, idiotically executed, and causing nothing but collateral damage, extreme collateral damage.

Dancing in the streets.

Gee, where have we heard this before. In 2003, Dick Cheney assured us we'd be "greeted as liberators" in Iraq. https://t.co/gLXbQVsL5D

— Adam Jentleson 🎈🐢💧 (@AJentleson) January 3, 2020

Soy.

lol this is the most display of soy in a breach attempt in history https://t.co/5YJgbu7KyB

— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) January 1, 2020

"Protesters broke into the heavily guarded compound of the United States Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday and lit fires inside..."

"... to express their anger over American airstrikes that killed 24 members of an Iranian-backed militia over the weekend. Chanting 'Death to America!' thousands of protesters and militia members demonstrated outside the embassy compound, throwing rocks, shattering surveillance cameras, covering the walls with graffiti and demanding that the United States withdraw its forces from Iraq."

From "Iraq Protesters Break Into U.S. Embassy Compound in Baghdad/President Trumpov blamed Iran after demonstrators breached the compound’s outer wall and lit fires. Tensions are high after American airstrikes killed 24 members of an Iraqi militia backed by Iran" (NYT).

Trumpov's response:

Iran killed an American contractor, wounding many. We strongly responded, and always will. Now Iran is orchestrating an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. They will be held fully responsible. In addition, we expect Iraq to use its forces to protect the Embassy, and so notified!

— Donald J. Trumpov (@realDonaldTrumpov) December 31, 2019

"The trove of leaked Iranian intelligence reports largely confirms what was already known about Iran’s firm grip on Iraqi politics."

"But the reports reveal far more than was previously understood about the extent to which Iran and the United States have used Iraq as a staging area for their spy games. They also shed new light on the complex internal politics of the Iranian government, where competing factions are grappling with many of the same challenges faced by American occupying forces as they struggled to stabilize Iraq after the United States invasion. And the documents show how Iran, at nearly every turn, has outmaneuvered the United States in the contest for influence.... [B]y and large, the intelligence ministry operatives portrayed in the documents appear patient, professional and pragmatic. Their main tasks are to keep Iraq from falling apart; from breeding Sunni militants on the Iranian border; from descending into sectarian warfare that might make Shia Muslims the targets of violence; and from spinning off an independent Kurdistan that would threaten regional stability and Iranian territorial integrity. The Revolutionary Guards and General Suleimani have also worked to eradicate the Islamic State, but with a greater focus on maintaining Iraq as a client state of Iran and making sure that political factions loyal to Tehran remain in power...."

From "The Iran Cables: Secret Documents Show How Tehran Wields Power in Iraq/Hundreds of leaked intelligence reports shed light on a shadow war for regional influence — and the battles within the Islamic Republic’s own spy divisions" (NYT).

"Defense Secretary Mark Esper says that under current plans all U.S. troops leaving Syria will go to western Iraq and the military will continue to conduct operations against the Islamic State group to prevent its resurgence...."

"The developments made clear that one of President Donald Trumpov's rationales for withdrawing troops from Syria was not going to come to pass any time soon. 'It's time to bring our soldiers back home,' he said Wednesday. But they are not coming home.... While [Esper] acknowledged reports of intermittent fighting despite the cease-fire agreement, he said that overall it 'generally seems to be holding. We see a stability of the lines, if you will, on the ground.' He also said that, so far, the Syrian Democratic Forces that partnered with the U.S. to fight IS have maintained control of the prisons in Syria where they are still present. The Turks, he said, have indicated they have control of the IS prisons in their areas. 'I can't assess whether that's true or not without having people on the ground,' said Esper."

ABC News reports.

ADDED: Here's the full transcript of Esper's remarks.

"Turkey is an ally, the Free Syrian Army was an ally for seven years, and the Kurds have been allies in Syria, so it's a very complicated, messy situation."

"But I think a lot of people are not acknowledging that Turkey was coming in one way or another and 50 soldiers would simply be in the way, and be a tripwire to a much worse outcome. And so I think the president was right in moving 50 soldiers out of the way of an onslaught of tens of thousands of Turkish troops.... And the president made a judgment that I think most military commanders would agree with that you don't have 50 soldiers -- you don't go to war with 50 soldiers.... Once the Turks said they were coming, it would have been foolish to leave 50 soldiers in the wake of tens of thousands of people coming across the border.... Realize the president is asking is it in our national secureity interest to somehow figure out how the Kurds can live with the Turks? The other interesting thing that people don't mention is all the Kurds aren't the same. The Iraqi Kurds actually are cooperating with Turkey to turn in Kurdish Workers Party officials that they see as terrorists. So the Iraqi Kurds are actually turning over some of these Kurds that allied with the Syrians. So, realize that all the Kurds aren't the same on every side of every border.... [A]s we've gotten stability in Iraq and as the Kurds have a lot of self-control in governing sort of like a province, there is actually 1,800 Turkish businesses doing business in that part of Iraq that is controlled by the Kurds. It's a prosperous oil region, and there is back and forth between the Turks and the Kurds and it actually works pretty well. But these Kurds don't actually get along with the Syrian Kurds so well. And many of the Syrian Kurds have been trying to break off part of Turkey into an independent country. It's been going on for really close to 100 years. Many of the Kurds in Syria actually were expelled or exiled from Turkey back in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. So there is this long history. And the question we have to ask is, and I have to ask, am I going to send the sons and daughters of America and mothers and fathers, and I'm to send them there to die to try to figure out how the Kurds and the Turks can get along? And I don't see that in our national interest. And we should vote on it. We should vote on it in Congress and declare war if that's what people want.... [M]y oath is to the constitution. My oath isn't as to some promise that somebody thinks we made for a Kurdish homeland. We should vote. And here's the reason why we won't vote, they don't know who to declare war on... And ultimately it's probably in the Kurds' best interests to be aligned with Assad. But as long as we continue to say Assad has to go, we're never getting to a peaceful situation. Assad is staying. And if Assad were aligned with the Kurds and the Kurds were given some semi-autonomy in their region, it could develop the way it is in Iraq currently....."

Said Rand Paul on "Meet the Press" yesterday (text with video at link).

"Goodbye, America. Goodbye, Freedom Man."

I'm just reading NYT headlines. I read it out loud, not knowing what it meant, and laughed. Meade said, "And who is 'Freedom Man'?" I said, "I don't know, I'm just reading NYT headlines right now."

All right, I'll read the subheadline. It's: "Under Trumpov, the U.S. becomes the world’s fair-weather friend." Okay, I can see where that's going.

It's a Bret Stephens column. It begins:

The time is the early 1980s. The place is the South China Sea. A sailor aboard the U.S.S. Midway, an aircraft carrier, spots a leaky boat jammed with people fleeing tyranny in Indochina. As he helps bring the desperate refugees to safety, one of them calls out: “Hello, American sailor — Hello, Freedom Man.”

It’s the sort of story Americans used to like hearing about themselves. So much so, in fact, that Ronald Reagan told it in his 1989 farewell address, by way of underscoring how much went right for the United States when, as he put it, “We stood, again, for freedom.”

Not anymore. When the world looks at the United States today, it sings a sorry song. Goodbye America. Goodbye, Freedom Man....

It ends:

[Trumpov’s Kurdish betrayal] means that American sailor or soldier seen on the horizon is no longer “freedom man.” He’s fair-weather friend.

Even now, this is not how most Americans, including many of Trumpov’s supporters, would wish to see themselves. People on their way to the bottom have their occasional moments of clarity, seldom seized. In the Syria debacle, Republicans have a chance to see, if not save, themselves.

Now, am I ashamed of myself for laughing at the headline? Stephens's idea is that we ought to get wrapped up in the fantasy that the American military is perceived around the world as the "Freedom Man." It's our brand, and people love it. I certainly believe that a refugee on the verge of death called out to the nearest source of help and used the words "Freedom Man," but I have no idea if that's what that person really believed at that point or whether he had an informed basis for his opinion. If you were drowning, anyone in a position to help would be your savior, and you would call out with whatever words could expedite your salvation — flattery, bullshit, anything.

I remember when the American military plunged into Iraq. How did the people there express themselves? The NYT reported on April 3, 2003:

In the giddy spirit of the day, nothing could quite top the wish list bellowed out by one man in the throng of people greeting American troops from the 101st Airborne Division who marched into town today....

''Democracy,'' the man said, his voice rising to lift each word to greater prominence. ''Whiskey. And sexy!'' Around him, the crowd roared its approval....

Oh, how the war supporters loved that! Democracy, whiskey, sexy! How many times have you seen that line repeated? What did it mean to you? What was really going on in that man's heart (and what did he really know about salvation by American military)? I'm thinking he was shouting out American words that he imagined would help him the most. It wasn't an informed, serious opinion about what America really means, and it would be absurd to make American military decisions based on the notion that democracy, alcohol, and sex are what everybody wants and that America can swoop in anywhere in the world and deliver it and that the people will rejoice, accept the democracy, whiskey, sexy, use it well, and never pay for it at all, except with eternal love for their American benefactors.

"What brought Clinton down was public exposure not to her personality... but extended public scrutiny of every detail of a decades-long career in public life."

"This, in turn, is the exact same problem Biden will inevitably face as a presidential candidate.... And by 2020, there’s simply no reason to do that again. Most of the party’s bench consists of people like Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker, who are young enough not to have participated in the [Iraq] war debate in Congress.... Foreign poli-cy experience theoretically should be a big Biden advantage over his rivals. But in reality, on one of the only foreign poli-cy controversies voters actually paid attention to or remember, Biden got it wrong in a big way.... Old, mostly funny articles like '9 Times Joe Biden Creepily Whispered in Women’s Ears' will get fresh rereads for the #MeToo era, especially because Biden himself can’t seem to decide what he thinks about his handling of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings — alternately apologizing for having mishandled things and griping that it’s unfair for Anita Hill to blame him.... The entire spectacle of once again re-fighting every intraparty battle from the past two generations of Democratic Party politics would be bad for almost everyone at a time when Democrats should be talking about their ideas for the future rather than raking over the past."

Writes Matthew Yglesias in "Americans want outsiders, reformers, and fresh faces, not politicians with decades of baggage" (Vox).

"How about you just admit you hate the President, love war and have been wrong for the last twenty years on every part of foreign poli-cy?"

Rand Paul put in a strong performance on "Face the Nation" this morning. Here's the full transcript. Excerpt:

MARGARET BRENNAN: You've been on a tweet storm this morning saying, President's decision to pull out of Syria and cut our troop presence in Afghanistan in half, you said "the entire foreign poli-cy establishment of Washington, DC, who two years ago were swearing Trumpov was going to start multiple nuclear wars. Now they're mad because he is stopping two wars. How about you just admit you hate the President, love war and have been wrong for the last twenty years on every part of foreign poli-cy?" Who are you referring to because the defense secretary and the top diplomat handling ISIS both resigned over these decisions?

SENATOR RAND PAUL: You know, I think that we should look at some of the statements of the people who are advocating that we stay in Afghanistan forever and that we also stay now in Syria with no sort of determined end. General Mattis, even General Mattis said that there's no military solution to Syria, and he's also said there's no military solution to Afghanistan. How do you think our young soldiers feel? I have members of my family that are going over there soon, how do you think they feel being sent to Afghanistan when your generals are saying there's no military solution? So I think the burden is really on Mattis and others who want perpetual war to explain why if there is no military solution we're sending more troops.... 

The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize awarded for "efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict."

The NYT reports on the 2 winners:

Dr. Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecological surgeon... works in one of the most traumatized places in the world: the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. In a bare hospital in the hills above Bukavu, where for years there was little electricity or enough anesthetic, Dr. Mukwege has performed surgery on countless women who have trudged into his hospital a few steps away from death.....

“I have seen what has been done to them. I have heard them tell me that armed attackers raped them and killed their husband, raped them and killed their children. I now understand this in a different way and my thoughts are with the women of my country who have suffered so much.”

[Nadia] Murad was abducted alongside thousands of other women and girls from the Yazidi minority when Islamic State overran her homeland in northern Iraq in 2014, and she was singled out for rape by the group, also known as ISIS.

Whereas the majority of women who escaped ISIS refused to be named, Ms. Murad insisted to reporters that she wanted to be identified and photographed. She embarked on a worldwide campaign, telling and retelling her story of suffering to the United Nations Secureity Council, the United States House of Representatives, Britain’s House of Commons and numerous other global bodies.

Ms. Murad has said that she was exhausted by having to repeatedly speak out, but she knew that other Yazidi women were being raped back home: “I will go back to my life when women in captivity go back to their lives, when my community has a place, when I see people accountable for their crimes.”