Obama travels the globe, and would that I had returned to this blog in time to cover its opening phases adequately. Suffice it to say that it has been appropriately heroic.

Here’s why: Like the heroes of old, Obama has demonstrated amazing bravery in visiting the places he has. Like the heroes of old, he has done so with an appreciation of the prestige those visits earn him and the nation he seeks to lead. Like the heroes of old, he has been fearless in who he confronts.

This is not immediately evident. But a full examination of the places he visited, and how, makes it clear:

First, Afghanistan. Obama’s decision to put Afghanistan first on his list of destinations reinforces his message that Afghanistan is the top priority in the war on terror.

Even critics of Obama’s Iraq policy have to admit this by following a simple train of logic: Afghanistan - or, more specifically, the Afghan/Pakistani border - is where bin Ladin is; bin Ladin is who we went to war to get; we need to make Afghanistan our priority to achieve the clearest objective of victory.

Obama visited Afghanistan first in order to invest the prestige of his trip in his foreign policy’s military priority.

Then came Iraq. Here Obama did something that is unbelievably, jaw-droppingly bold and significant - something only Petraeus and his agents have so far had the vision and guts to do.

I don’t mean his saying he came not to criticize Maliki but to listen to him. That was artful, sincere and correct, but it only demonstrated the man’s wisdom, not his, well, audacity.

I refer to Obama’s meeting with the men who were and are the hinge for the war in Iraq: He met with the warriors who turned the operational promise of the Surge into a strategic victory for the nation. He met with the terrorists.

Specifically, he met with the Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province. These leaders are the backbone of the “Awakening” - the sudden and ruthless uprising against al-Qaeda by their former base of support, the Sunni militia community.

Few in American, and virtually none in the media, care to state the significance of this event. It is often presented as a convenient backdrop to, or even a by-product of, the Surge. But looking at the raw economy of the Iraq war, the Awakening caused a shift of dozens of casualties per month being inflicted on us by the Sunni militias into dozens of casualties being inflicted on al-Qaeda, routing the Islamic extremists.

This is a tough pill to swallow for those who see war in sepia tones or action-movie terms: The notion that our worst enemy in Iraq was persuaded by Petraeus, in many ways directly in spite of the White House, to become our best ally - that as powerful as our troops are, they could not have achieved success without the terrorists on our side.

Look at the names made famous in the Iraq war history and it becomes evident: Fallujah, a stronghold of the Sunni nationalists. Haditha, a massacre hyped by the Sunni nationalists. Juba the Sniper, most notorious killer of Americans, a member of the same militias who rose up to scatter al-Qaeda to the hinterlands of Iraq.

Obama met with them, and so demonstrated he not only has the courage to meet with the most dangerous men in Iraq, he also recognizes they represent a critical power in the nation’s fragile future. That takes vision and guts. It got no press.

Then came Jordan, and the press conference at the Temple of Hercules. And this choice of venue showed the third aspect to Obama’s command of the heroic image so crucial to great leadership - that a great leader must appear great.

We see it throughout history - Alexander cutting the Gordian Knot, Caesar standing firm and alone to halt his routing forces at Dyrrachium - and in our modern times. I can understand those critical of Obama, who see his speaking from the awesome vista of a ruined Greek temple to the mortal hero who became a God as grandstanding. But I would remind them of the spiritual value of the Reagan era - the man who, not by his policies but by his prestige, led this country to believe in its greatness again after the bleak compromises of the 70s. He did this in ways both gaudy - lighting the Statue of Liberty with a laser - and grand - yelling out demands from the Berlin Wall. And while they could be dismissed by critics as crass, these actions nevertheless suggested an awareness, an appreciation, of greatness by our leader.

The rest of Obama’s trip has continued to evoke these appreciations, these commands of heroic qualities: He went to the West Wall, visited the Holocaust memorial, visited both the Palestinian hotbed of the West Bank and the leadership of Israel. These are evocative, powerful destinations, and visiting them to talk to people displayed a combination of audacity and modesty.

Even accusations of showmanship must recognize this - that while Obama may be travelling to places perfect for photo ops, he is also going to places that are dangerous, diverse, often forgotten, and always critical to our future in the region.

His latest destination, Berlin, is a model of this.

It is, most assuredly, going to be a pep rally for him. Europeans almost universally love Obama.

In a survey of some 6,200 people in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia, the senator from Illinois received 52 percent of the vote to just 15 percent for Republican Sen. John McCain.

This support is especially strong in France. 65% polled there favor him; only 8% favor McCain. The biggest support committee in Europe is in France with over 2,000 members on staff, and the papers overwhelming laud him, expressing not just preference, but genuine excitement.

“For the French establishment, Obama represents a new chapter in the Western alliance … For ethnic minorities he embodies the equality of opportunity they crave.”

Thus Obama represents not only inspiration for the hopeful among the African-Americans, but people of color the world over. In a nation like France, where 10% of the population is of African or Arab origin, that has significant appeal.

But it is in Germany that Obama has the most profound support - 67% to 6% over McCain, and papers across their political spectrum hailing him as the salvation for American foreign relations.

It is expected that hundreds of thousands of Germans will flock to see him speak at another heroic location today: The Victory Column. Obama will be capitalizing on the genuine adoration many Europeans feel for America; the desire to see it restored to an ally, rather than a solitary and sullen adversary. This will be a grand photo-op given his international support.

Most importantly to Americans, it restores a measure of grandeur to the Presidency and to the nation. It invests heroic qualities like courage, compassion and majesty to the station.

By doing these great things, Obama is not just telling the world he can be great - he is reminding it how great America is.

Here it is, the Victory Column Speech.

I will never forget that it was John “Let The Eagle Soar” Ashcroft’s Justice Department that spent taxpayer dollars on covering up Lady Justice’s bosoms. Yet more and more these days, Ashcroft is also being indelibly identified as a man who stood by his principles against torture and warrantless spying in an administration that was scrambling for these and other perversions.

An article yesterday revealed that Ashcroft had made a list of five candidates to lead the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel in 2003 - an office responsible for overseeing the legality of DoJ deeds - only to have the White House shoot down his candidates and insist on appointing a chief architect of pro-torture, pro-warrantless spying policy.

In an angry phone call hours after Ashcroft’s list reached the White House, President Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., quickly dismissed the candidates, all Republican lawyers with impeccable credentials, the sources said. He and White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales insisted that Ashcroft promote John Yoo, a onetime OLC deputy who had worked closely with Gonzales and vice presidential adviser David S. Addington to draft memos supporting a controversial warrantless wiretapping plan and detainee questioning techniques.

Ashcroft’s response, despite ailing health and an uphill battle, was to dig in his heels. He fought hard for a compromise candidate, Jack Goldsmith by name. And it was Goldsmith who went on to help expose and undo a lot of the grim deeds of the Gonzales-Yoo policies.

This has brought an interesting distinction to light for me. This distinction is one that I anticipated to develop after the Bush administration, but considering how long and eventful the administration has been, I suppose it was crafted rapidly. It is the distinction that even among the cliquish Neo-Conservatives, as in practically any group, there are moral true believers and there are self-serving hypocrites.

John Ashcroft is, apparently, a man that does indeed walk the walk. He surely has a few skeletons in his closet, but by all indications he struggled to stick by the Constitution, even when the agenda of his cohorts was pulling hard in a dangerous new direction. He may have wanted to chip away at civil rights progress - there is no painting him as other than a staunch enemy to the ACLU, pro-choice movements and drug users - but apparently believed in his gut that there were certain lines America did not cross.

I would imagine in Ashcroft’s clean-cut, picket-fence America, they may have locked up the hippies, but they did not torture.

On one level, I’m happy to hear it. It’s nice when someone with dramatically opposing views turns out to have fought the kind of fight I’d want fought.

On the other, it strikes me as an eviscerating tragedy that because a fanatical social conservative doesn’t sink so low as to okay sexual assault as a means of interrogation, he stands out as an exceptional hero in an administration the greatest country in the world has lived under for eight of its most critical years.

Obama has come out with an ad explaining how he identifies the threats we face and how he would go about solving them.

Let’s do the list:

One, he identifies the threat of cyber-attacks and loose nukes are critical.

This is good because neither of these topics are discussed much in the news, if at all. They are, however, threats we’ve backburned due to the GWOT. That he brings them up is important to me, as it makes me think he’s actually thought this through better than his pollsters.

Two, he recognizes the immediate solution to the terrorist problem depends on better alliances. As much as we may not like the UN and NATO and such, the reality of warfare is that unless you’re ready to pay a cataclysmically stiff price, it’s not a “go it alone” affair. Even the Romans needed allies in every major conflict they fought. Grumble about inadequate sanctions all one wants, but Iran would not be ascendant like it is now if we had listened to our allies in ‘03.

Third, and most importantly, he points out the strategic solution to global terrorism:

Energy independence. I know it’ll cause heartbreak in Houston - which is why the White House is talking about offshore drilling and ordering the Saudis to open the spigots full blast, rather than trying to wean us from oil - but it’s got to be done. All that money and favor goes right from the pump and into the pockets of the Islamic nations.

What’s more, the reason gas is so bloody expensive is that China needs it more than we do, and is paying top price for it. Thus, if we had an economy and infrastructure based on non-petrofuel energy, China would be stuck with the oil problem and we’d be riding high on the value of a new technology. And believe me, that tech is going to be worth buckets when the rising stars among the developing nations - India, China, the Middle East - realize they may have heaps of petro-industrial wealth, but zilch resources like water, food and energy.

It may sound weird, but the weapon of the 21st century is going to be conservation.

Obama gets that.

These last three days, I have been busy writing about the climax of another war, while a war just as riddled with tribal loyalties and imperial interests reeled out of balance. I refer, of course, to the events in Afghanistan.

Barack Obama, with typical foresight, wrote this Monday about the critical status of Afghanistan. In an Op-Ed piece describing his strategic vision for America’s ongoing conflicts, Obama repeated his belief that forces in Iraq must be reduced and our efforts in Afghanistan bolstered.

Senator Barack Obama is proposing that the United States deploy about 10,000 more troops to battle resurgent forces in Afghanistan, a plan intended to shift the American military focus from the Iraq war to the marked rise in violence from the Taliban.

As if underscoring his point, events in Afghanistan turned gruesome that day, as a vicious Taliban assault hit a US Army outpost in the east of the war zone. The attack not only killed nine Americans and wounded over a dozen more, we lost the ground. For the first time in recent memory, we had to withdraw from the outpost.

That wasn’t the most of it.

Elsewhere in the frontier region, NATO launched artillery and helicopter strikes in Pakistan after coming under insurgent rocket fire, officials said.

To clarify that statement, yes, you read it right: Insurgent rocket fire from Pakistan. If ever there was proof that McCain’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward counter-insurgency operations in Pakistan was intellectually and morally bankrupt, you have it right there. Something has to be done about the fact that our enemy’s base is in a nominal ally’s country, whether that ally likes it or not.

In order to overcome a dumb media, ignorant of anything beyond magazine covers this week, Obama then gave a speech on global security, emphasizing the dire circumstances our troops are all too conscious of abroad.

It was typical Obama: The vision thing, with guts and insight.

The response from the other side was typical McCain. Rather than explaining how on earth he would take the fight to the enemy, McCain took the fight to Obama. He criticized him for everything from inflexibility to inexperience, apparently missing the irony that despite all his considerable experience, he is, unlike his opponent, yet to propose any actual solutions.

Joe Biden laid into McCain in reply.

The speech was a bravura delivery of Biden tour de force, calling the idiocy of the ignorant Iraq-centric strategy to task. As soon as it’s posted in video format, it’s going up on the blog. For now, here’s a small cup of Joe, no cream, certainly no sugar:

President Bush and Sen. McCain lump all the threats together,” said Biden. “Al Qaeda, the Shia militia, listen to them speak. Listen to my friend Joe Lieberman, and he really is a friend, listen to them speak. Find me a distinction that they make. As a consequence of this profound confusion they make profound mistakes. The idea that al Qaeda will cooperate with the philistine, a guy who in fact used to run the country in Iraq, the guy who did away with the caliphate… is completely contrary to anything that the now-dead leader of Iraq had in mind. It’s dangerous. How can we run a sound foreign policy without understanding these decisions? How can we talk about a Shiite-dominated nation cooperating with a Sunni dominated Wahabi sect of Islam as if they had anything in common? Yet listen to my friends, listen to the president, listen to Joe Lieberman, listen to John McCain. Ladies and gentlemen, if they can’t define the enemy we are fighting it is very difficult to define whether we have won or lost.”

It certainly gets the blood going. I can only hope “No Drama Obama” signs on this firebreather.

With a briar patch like Afghanistan waiting us over the horizon past the Iraq mire, we’ll need all the truth to power we can get.

Recently, McCain took a bold and ambiguous stance on Social Security, stating that the current tax-based system was a “disgrace.”

I was not quite sure what he meant, really. Beyond treating me to a really fetching photo of the Senator, McCain’s Web site didn’t help much. It has no entry on Social Security.

So I resort to the latest comments he made to CNN, quoted by the LA Times, just recently:

“I want young workers to be able to, if they choose, to take part of their own money, which is their taxes, and put it in an account which has their name on it…”

As with much of his economic policy, it is not quite clear how McCain intends to use this idea to make Social Security solvent. Would it be tied to the market via the accounts? Would it be another form of government 401k?

There is no telling. No doubt, as with the Clinton campaign before him, McCain’s campaign thinks it’s better that way.

In case there was any question, let me immediately clarify that this is my Saturday morning puff piece.

First, the sad news. I nearly didn’t report on this, but since it involves NASCAR and so defines “puff piece,” I had to throw it up here.

Obama will not, apparently, be sponsoring a NASCAR racing team.

BAM’s choice of drivers and car brands might have been a little too sticky politically for the Obama camp.

I think he missed one hell of a checkered flag by doing this. Nothing dispels the specter of elitism like sponsoring a group of men driving a machine around and around in a circle at reckless speeds - the Roman emperors knew it; Obama should have wised to it. But so be it.

See if I care.

But next up, McCain released a new commercial. I watched it and, I must say, I really like it.

My enjoyment has three aspects. First, it reminds me of the “old warhorse McCain” that I favored in 2000 - a guy who was genuinely distressed by sleazy politics and attack ads, rather than reliant on them. Second, it will offend some of the anti-immigration crowd; at least the ones who are in it for largely racial reasons.

Lastly, I love when the Hispanic-American military tradition is highlighted.

In my ongoing - potentially life-long - diatribe against the media’s unforgiveable mishandling of news, I present the latest installment of stories that should have been sources of shock and dismay at the McCain candidacy, were it not for the almost total lack of coverage.

If you have been tuning in to the news this week, you would know that squeamishness over Obama abounds. From criticism over his allowing his children to be interviewed, to criticism over his regreting interview given the media’s take on it, to the incessant handwringing about the fragility of his public support, to at last the prattling about Jesse Jackson’s off-color, on-mic comments, it’s all bad Obama, all the time.

Meanwhile, McCain is talking about things that actually matter - insofar as they should put anybody with any sense in a position of anxious dread over the possibility of his election.

Credit to the compilation of this list of alarming statements from McCain goes to Max Bergmann, whose excellent piece covers ten of them in detail.

In Bergmann’s order, the incidents are:

* McCain calls social security an “absolute disgrace.” Not the threat to social security; social security:

“Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that’s a disgrace. It’s an absolute disgrace and it’s got to be fixed.”

That should take care of the senior vote … if anyone was listening.

* Top McCain campaign economic advisor Phil Gramm said the effects of the recession were all “mental,” and that Americans are complaining because we’ve become a nation of “whiners.”

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy.

So gas prices, food prices, foreclosure problems; they’re all just mental. Good to hear Gramm’s got solutions for them: Namely, “cheer up.”

This should be a big wake-up call to the illusion that typifies recent GOP economic policies: Economic growth does not necessarily mean everybody profits, only that the rich profit.

* McCain on Iraq: First, permanent bases are the way to go. Next, he claims Maliki didn’t really say what he said. Then, he admits to it, but says dismissively, “Prime Minister Maliki is a politician.”

Meaning, I suppose, that Maliki was just telling the Iraqi people what they want to hear. Well, if the Iraqi people want to hear we’re going to leave, and Iraq is a democracy, and we will respect Iraq’s wishes, what’s McCain’s support for permanent bases and dismissal of a timetable about?

This should bankrupt McCain’s claim to moral foreign policy, but hey, what’s so important about that? Let’s talk about Obama flip-flopping on interviewing his kids.

* McCain claims he’s going to eliminate the defecit within his Presidency. The media transmits this obediently. They do not call this into question by pointing out that other parts of his economic proposals include:

“…a) cut individual and corporate taxes even further, b) extend the Bush tax cuts and c) massively increase defense spending on manpower (200,000 more troops) and d) maintain a long-term sizable military presence in Iraq.”

Nobody asks how he intends to pull off this magic trick. Why worry? More importantly, Obama is losing a little support among Progressives, so he is expected to not kick McCain’s ass as badly in fundraising this month - now there’s a story.

* McCain made a hallmark of his defecit reduction plan “achieving victory in Iraq” - he’s going to use the money we are borrowing for the war to pay down the money we are borrowing.

This should have raised questions about either his honesty or his sanity. Oh well. Got to be objective!

* Speaking of utter mendacity, McCain announced 300 economists had signed a letter supporting his economic agenda, save that they really didn’t.

“…good many of those economists don’t actually support the whole of McCain’s economic agenda. And at least one doesn’t even support McCain for president.”

This goes virtually unmentioned in the mainstream. McCain may lie, but Obama has apologized - what’s more important?

* McCain then implies he wants to kill Iranians by making a joke about how we should export more cigarettes to them. The press reports this as a moment of humor.

* McCain denies he said he was no expert on economics, when in fact it’s well-documented.

* McCain then distorts his record on Vet benefits, and gets upbraided for it by a Vietnam vet. This takes place, like the previous clip, on the only network approaching responsibility in reporting - MSNBC.

* McCain says there’s a glimmer of hope in improving relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan lately. Blogger Pat Barry points out how incorrect this is:

Just what “glimmer” is McCain talking about?? Maybe he’s referring to President Karzai’s remarks last month, which threatened military action in Pakistan if cross-border attacks persisted? Or maybe McCain is talking about Afghanistan’s allegations that Pakistan’s ISI was involved in a recent assassination attempt on Karzai? Maybe in McCain’s world you could call that a silver-lining, but in reality-land I’d call it something else.

This is so out of touch, so false-confident, it’s downright insulting. And considering the parties involved, it is dangerous - dangerous to believe it and let that situation continue to spiral, and dangerous to act like it and use it as an excuse to underfund and ignore the troops we send in there.

* The coup de grace comes today from a blog on ABC, mentioning that McCain lied to people in Pittsburgh about having resisted NVA interrogation by telling them the names of the Steelers offensive line rather than his squadron’s names. It was actually the Packers, as he’s written about before.

Maybe this story will stick. It has all the elements of a Hillary-in-Bosnia story: It’s basically lying about human interest fluff; it is contradicted by public record; it sounds dumb enough to be interesting.

I doubt it, though.

And that’s the tragedy of our times: Not that we want for political leadership, or that we’re divided as a nation, or that it’s so hard to figure out the truth.

There are good political leaders. We can come together over common ground. The truth is available with a few key strokes.

The tragedy is that the people who control the information we exchange - who literally decide what most people hear and what they do not - feed on the contrary.

They tear down, they foment division, they obscure the notion of truth, they prop up weak liars like McCain has made himself out to be and ignore actual issues for the sake of tabloid, fast-food news service.

They do this, and if our politicians pander to it, it is because the media not only lets them, but demands it of them.

After reading all of the above, I am certain McCain would be a disaster if elected. Yet I am even more worried, more despondent, given that no matter which candidate is elected, we will never truly be able to change the channel.

I don’t much like Christopher Hitchens. I do like the study of torture.

Those interests are joined in this video, wherein he subjects himself to waterboarding to highlight the agonies of our detainees:

If that does not put you off your appetite for human discomfort, another fine bit of journalism on torture is below.

This is an article by Naomi Wolf about the sexualization of torture. Its thesis, in a nutshell, is that since sexual torture was not explicitly forbidden prior to the Bush administration, officials saw it as a loophole to exploit.

The result, Abu Ghraib and the gruesome stories of nude, male bondage coming out of Gitmo.

Iran conducted a highly visible test of mid-range and long-range ballistic missiles today; many reacted by declaring it proof that they’re crazy, when in fact it’s proof that they’re not.

…even as Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials have dismissed the possibility of attack, Tehran has stepped up its warnings of retaliation if the Americans—or Israelis—do launch military action, including threats to hit Israel and U.S. Gulf bases with missiles and stop oil traffic from the Gulf.

Think about it: For the last five years, Iran has literally had a gun pressed into its guts - a gun in the form of the most powerful military in the world. And over the last year or so, the person pressing that gun into their guts has been yelling about “obliterating” them or “eliminating” them, while another assailant - Israel - makes similar demonstrations of force.

So there you are, you’re Iran; you’re the guy in the dark alley with someone pointing a potential murder weapon at your head and promising your days are numbered … and you have a gun too.

And today, Iran just showed its gun. After having Israel conduct war games and John Bolton suggest that Bush would make sure we’re good and entangled in a military solution to Iran’s nuclear program before he left office, Iran has responded by saying, “I can hurt you too. Back off.”

It doesn’t make it look any safer. Hopefully, it makes it look saner.

Obama’s response has been to urge the President to actually address this with direct talks with Iran, just like in the good old Cold War days, rather than getting half-hearted Europeans and State Department water carriers to handle it.

McCain urged for a missile shield. I think that is completely without merit if it’s done like the Bush administration has handled the shield - namely, breaking all treaties pertaining to it and sparking an arms race before the thing is even able to protect us. Considering I expect no less from McCain, and that his plan doesn’t even begin to address the root of the problem of Iran, it’s no shock I think Obama has the better solution.

Iran needs to be talked to; convinced to put the gun down and back away from the podium of scary talk. Not threatened further by a gun that, in the case of our missile shield program, isn’t even loaded.

That, after all, would be crazy.

It’s rare that I find an article of analysis so insightful that it sobers me right up and impels me to devote some prose to heaping laurels on it, but that’s just what Tony Sachs’ piece on Obama and the liberal movement demands I do.

I highly recommend you read the whole piece. It’s a work of sagely genius, marked by a rare divorce of candor from sentimentalism - it covers our recent electoral history without the kind of quasi-nostalgic partisan distortion so common to pundits. And the thesis it shamlessly proposes is that as much as the libs may cross their fingers, a leftie revolution just ain’t in the cards.

George Bush and his administration have made a hash of conservative ideology just as LBJ set back liberal orthodoxy. However, this is still largely a country of gun-toting, abortion-hating, God-fearing haters of tax-and-spending, welfare-queen liberals. Barack Obama, being an intelligent politician, realizes this.

He’s dead right for saying so, and so falls into a slim minority amidst the swamp of the deliberately dumb. For as much as our fatuous mainstream media and the callous GOP mercenaries at the National Journal might misdiagnose Obama’s record as through-and-through liberal, they’re only doing so to pick a fight.

The truth is that the Democratic nominee is not toppling any temple walls of conservatism - he’s not our Reagan, policy-wise; he’s our Nixon. Nixon, the dead-on brilliant, centrist leader who bombed the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia while promoting affirmative action because he knew it was what was rationally demanded.

As Sachs says, 2008 is for the left what 1968 was for the right: A chance to exploit the crash of the other side in order to put a braintrust, not a true believer ideologue, in office. You wouldn’t know this from the dozens of sobby screeds literally littering the punditry on TV and computer screens - the last week has seen a piece on “Obama’s shift to the center may alienate…” featured on Yahoo’s homepage daily - but it’s the truth.

I have long supported Obama because, unlike most analysts who either find no value in admitting it or are too thick to recognize it, the guy is more intelligent than he is ideological. But right now, the press is giving itself a hernia trying to push this “alienation” crap until everyone buys into it, laying into Obama’s hamstrings like a latter-day McGovern.

I, and Sachs, hope and trust that Obama’s canniness and charisma will carry the day despite it.

Some have said this approach caused Al Gore’s loss in 2000 and John Kerry’s loss in 2004. But they were lousy, uncharismatic campaigners. Obama is exciting even when he’s pissing off the progressive wing of his party.

That could be his saving grace: Even when you don’t bathe him in blood or scandal, the guy’s exciting. He’s got Nixon’s real politick with Reagan’s charm. Despite how the progressives may pule, Obama could just end up a voice for the Bush-era’s silent majority.

Provided he can shout down the talking heads, that is.

Two events that summon the increasingly common specter of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and veterans struck the news yesterday.

The first was that a storied soldier, Pfc. Joseph Dwyer, apparently killed himself after violently grappling with PTSD.

After breaking down the door to Dwyer’s home, officers found him surrounded by empty cans of aerosol-gas dusters and prescription pills.

The Army medic was featured in a famous photo of him carrying an Iraqi child to safety. What was not so well publicized was the inability of the military to help Dwyer, even after several incidents where his mental distress inspired him to blaze away with a pistol and drive off the road. The system wouldn’t commit him, the VA couldn’t help him, and the result was one becoming all too common.

A RAND study put this familiar catastrophe in proper context earlier this year.

Nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan — 300,000 in all — report symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder or major depression…

Just 53 percent of service members with PTSD or depression sought help from a provider over the past year, and of those who sought care, roughly half got minimally adequate treatment.

Meanwhile, the Army is trying to control the message that filmmakers are putting out there on the subject of PTSD.

That may sound sinister to some, but there’s nothing like censorship about it. The deal is that the military will swap assistance like loaned equipment and technical advisement in exchange for having input on what goes in the script.

Some films, like Paul Haggis’ exploration of PTSD, “In the Valley of Elah,” don’t find enough common ground of message for the military to lend a hand. But some, like Tim Robbins’ upcoming film, “The Lucky Ones,” still manage to tackle tough subjects like PTSD and remain linked with the Army.

“It captures the nuance. It is not a broad brush stroke or just about PTSD” — post-traumatic stress disorder — [Army program director] Breasseale said. “They manage to tell a story that is familiar but different.”

This shows promise, in all regards. Increasing comity between the military and the public, even anti-war elements, suggests a mutual respect. Mutual respect can only lead to mutual understanding, and understanding is what our discarded, suffering soldiers afflicted by PTSD need first and foremost.

McCain has a glaringly stupid idea to balance the budget. The analysis of it, cogent and thorough, is here.

I will just synopsize here:

He’s going to take the borrowed money used on the war - which we’ll “win” in his first term, somehow maintaining an indefinite presence overseas while not spending any money on it - and use it to pay off the defecit. Yes, the borrowed money will be paying off our borrowed money.

Now here’s our favorite bi-partisan commentator, James Kotecki, to make that idea sound even funnier than it is:

The Presidential candidates have staked out their terrain on the war issue, and so much of America’s White House future depends on the course of events overseas.

For John McCain, a lot of his vaunted war cred requires things to continue to go well in Iraq, while Afghanistan remains a foul-tasting afterthought. For Obama, proof of his claim that being right is more important than being experienced at making mistakes has to be borne out by continued fumbling in Iraq coupled with growing military interest in Afghanistan.

It’s no shocker that I find McCain’s position the less tenable. The news is, however, giving him some notches on his belt. Tactically, Iraq’s not the crucible of chaos it was a year ago, and major efforts are being made by those Iraqis that stood up - the factious but currently firm coalition of government forces and the Awakening - to garotte what’s left of al-Qaeda.

[Al-Qaeda in Iraq] has been reduced to hit-and-run attacks, including one that killed two off-duty policemen yesterday, and sporadic bombings aimed at killing large numbers of officials and civilians.

This is big news. Al-Q with its spine broken is still a mean and desperate creature, but nullifying its effects on the map of Iraq seems a possibility. But bigger news is happening in the big picture, and could spell things seriously souring for McCain’s soaring talk of a “Korea-like” presence in the fertile crescent.

Namely, Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki said definitely today that he wanted just what the Democrats consistently call for - a timetable for withdrawal.

“One of the two basic topics is either to have a memorandum of understanding for the departure of forces or a memorandum of understanding to set a timetable for the presence of the forces, so that we know (their presence) will end in a specific time.”

Meaning, short of an official entry in his dayplanner, Maliki wants at least two things: One, for Americans to put it in writing that they’ll leave. And two, that critical elements of American operations in Iraq be manacled to Iraqi governance: Legal culpability and detentions.

This is not sunny news for the old soldier, McCain. He could, and rightly, note that the Iraqis are only able to flex such sovereignty because the US ignored the Congressional bleating for a timetable and surged instead. But voters will want this debacle over, and chances are they’ll hear a disparity between McCain’s line and what Baghdad will soon be banging its gavel for.

What’s more, the fewer bombs go off in Baghdad, the more the barrage in Afghanistan will be heard. Considering that’s Obama’s pole of concern, voters may hear prescience in his constant insistence that while sewing up the suppurating wound of Iraq is key to America’s future, Afghanistan needs to be cauterized - not just stuck under a band-aid and ignored by the administration and McCain.

Escalating events - from the Taliban assault last month to the horrific bombing in the capitol, Kabul today - bear this urgency out.

A car bomb ripped through the front wall of the Indian Embassy in central Kabul on Monday, killing 40 people in the deadliest attack in Afghanistan’s capital since the fall of the Taliban, officials said.

Voters will - media allowing - begin to take notice. If they do, they’ll ask questions along the lines of the one that comes immediately to mind when a hard look is taken at today’s bombing: “Why India’s embassy?”

The answer is, because India is the enemy of Pakistan. Quick math follows for those who know the integers involved: An enemy of Pakistan means an enemy of the Taliban, because Pakistan is the private friend of the Taliban. Pakistan is also the country that the US has given sole authority to go after the Taliban and al-Qaeda in their mountainous tribal area.

This all adds up to a typical Central Asian beartrap for the US. It also means points for Obama - not because it’s another Bush war circling the drain; or not just because - but because he’s long insisted that we not only need more forces in Afghanistan, but the will to use them across Pakistan’s border as well.

The final geometry of the Presidential battle lines over the war is coming clear:

McCain is the guy with good tactical ideas - simple, surge-theory stuff; the kind of problems that can be solved by sledgehammers. But for all his bang, he’s weak on the buck - from crosstalk on the big picture in Iraq, to sweeping the toxic stain of Afghanistan under the carpet, McCain’s showing himself a nimwit when it comes to strategic investment of military force. That, or a namby-pamby, poll-driven double-talker who just talks the talk of permanent bases to sound like his pair swings lower than Obama’s.

Obama, on the other hand, knows there’s no sense in keeping one hand tied behind your back in a fight. If we’re putting blood and money into Afghanistan, we best see a return of peace, Pakistani borders be damned.

If proper reporting applies, the American voting public will see their military choices defined clearly: Between the guy who keeps focused on the daily polls and PAC reports, and the man who has his eyes on the grand scheme of our global war.

UPDATE:

Throughout my post, I repeatedly intoned statements along the line of “media willing,” “media wiling,” as though it were my version of “inshallah” (the ubiquitous “God willing” of devout Muslims).

The reason why comes from no respect for the media. Rather, a furious disrespect. Today’s news media has been catastrophically insipid when it comes to covering anything political. A new video on the media’s treatment of Obama’s war stance by stranahan.com amusingly points this out:

A recent poll by CNN as to “whether the Founding Fathers would be proud how America turned out” shows that the vast majority of polled Americans continue to be stupid.

According to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, 69 percent of adult Americans who responded to a poll June 26-29 said the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed by the way the nation has turned out overall.

In the same poll, a majority of those polled said that they themselves were plenty proud of this great land of ours, in a desperate attempt to escape the scorn irreparably heaped on Michelle Obama:

Sixty-one percent said they were extremely proud to be Americans; another 28 percent said they were very proud.

Well just cue Lee Greenwood, then.

This poll joins the poll showing that one third of Americans believe federal agents participated in the 9/11 attacks and the poll showing a third of Americans choosing Reagan, Clinton or Kennedy as our greatest President ever in proving the alarming brainlessness of the polled public. It reminds us that no matter how ill-informed we think ourselves to be, the people whose opinions steer the course of the political winds are far, far dumber.

It also makes someone like myself, fan of history and of wig-wearing warrior men with enlightened ideals, ponder what exactly the polling base thinks would have so offended Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Franklin.

Would it have been the enormous prosperity? Perhaps the adherence to liberal democracy despite Civil War, global war and fierce internal strife? Maybe it would have been that their philosophies and works became an example to the world as to how to conduct government in a way not only most humane, but most efficient, inspiring revolutions in developed countries and former colonies alike.

I doubt the reasons that sprang to mind for me would have been the first into the mind of those polled. Likely something like, “lack of proud Americans” would have been the top of the list, followed by “all the immigrants” as to the guesses at the Founding Fathers grievances.

My own take, looking at their writing, would be that all of them - save maybe that currently hep John Adams character - would have been a bit troubled by the expansion of the Executive’s powers. The notion that the President was capable of running the law, a standing military force and the coffers of the nation would make them scared. From there, they would split.

Jefferson would get a big “told ya so” from Washington on the Domestic Spying debate going on, since Jefferson actually tried a domestic spying thing of his own, and Washington suggested doing away with the Executive powers after he split.

Washington would also be off on a limb by himself with his opinions about political parties - he hated them, while Jefferson, Hamilton and Franklin were very keen indeed on them. He also hated the idea of America deploying forces overseas, and was a fierce proponent of states rights who saw nothing wrong with hemp cultivation and slave ownership.

Jefferson was more iffy on the slave ownership - at least in writing - but knew where he stood on the economy and hemp cultivation: He was in favor of doing all he could to make the Federal government into one big agri-business subsidy source.

In sum, I think the Founding Fathers would only be irked about America given that it doesn’t more closely resemble the vision of Ron Paul or John Edwards. BET would certainly confuse them, as would the IRS and Air Force, what with all those flying machines, but they’d get over that.

But overall, I think the Founding Fathers would be torn between two poles:

The first, a shocked and gratifying pride that their little experiment, stretching from Maine to the Carolinas in a thin strip of coast, has turned into the most profitable, dynamic and inspiring political movement ever to sweep the globe.

And the second, a concern over how alarmingly stupid most polled Americans are.

Note: This article is in no way an endorsement of the Ron Paul candidacy. It is an endorsement of the theory that George Washington would endorse the Ron Paul candidacy - 7% of Americans who believe Washington was our greatest President, take notice.

This blog endorses Obama, who I think would make most Founding Fathers just shake their heads and chuckle in stupefaction for a good long while.