Pushing Back

President Bush appears to be pushing back against the Baker group rather forcefully today in Jordan. According to the Washington Post (which cheerfully acknowledges the groups leaky way of doing business), Bush stated, flatly, that, "This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever."

AMMAN, Jordan, Nov. 30 — President Bush delivered a staunch endorsement of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki Thursday morning and dismissed called for U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq as unrealistic, following a summit meeting in which the two leaders discussed speeding up the turnover of security responsibilities. "He's the right guy for Iraq," Bush said an a news conference in the Jordanian capital, as he stood next to a somewhat stiff and unsmiling Iraqi premier. At the Pentagon, meanwhile, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff announced plans to shift more U.S. troops to Baghdad in an effort to quell rising sectarian violence there.

In Amman, Bush sought to pre-empt the growing clamor to draft plans to withdraw the more than 140,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq, most notably by a high-level commission headed by former Secretary of State James C. Baker III and former Indiana Rep. Lee H. Hamilton. Although he was not asked directly about the panel's recommendations, which will be made next week but were partially leaked to news reporters late Wednesday, Bush seemed to have the group in mind when he said, "This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever."

Bush has a track record of changing policies on a dime, such as when he ousted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld only days after saying he would stay until the end of his term. But his comments today, coupled with other statements in the past few days, seemed to set firm lines on Iraq beyond which the president will not be pushed, despite growing discontent with his policy at home.

These include no major troop withdrawals, no partition of the country, no direct talks with Iran and Syria as part of a broader diplomatic effort in the region and continued strong support for Maliki–despite a leaked memo from National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley questioning whether the current government has the capacity and will to crack down on private militias responsible for much of the violence gripping Baghdad and beyond.

You are seeing the so-called professionals way of doing business in Washington on full display here. Leak after leak after leak in an attempt to force public opinion into a certain form. The problem with this cynical business is that you only see what the leakers want you to see, not the full context or the dissenting opinions.

But the president appears to understand what the "realists" do not. You cannot simply talk to the very people who are stirring the problems up in Iraq and pretend they are just nice folks there to help. That old, Cold War realpolitik is more than a little to blame for the situation in the Middle East today. Going right back to it will not solve the problem. It will just bring back the bad old days again.

Demagogue Elect

George Will takes aim at the boorish behavior of Jim Webb at a White House reception for new lawmakers. I read about this and came to the same conclusion. As Will points out, Webb was insufferably rude for no other real reason than to stoke his own, already over sized, ego. But wait, there's more:

Wednesday's Post reported that at a White House reception for newly elected members of Congress, Webb "tried to avoid President Bush," refusing to pass through the reception line or have his picture taken with the president. When Bush asked Webb, whose son is a Marine in Iraq, "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "I'd like to get them [sic] out of Iraq." When the president again asked "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "That's between me and my boy." Webb told The Post:

"I'm not particularly interested in having a picture of me and George W. Bush on my wall. No offense to the institution of the presidency, and I'm certainly looking forward to working with him and his administration. [But] leaders do some symbolic things to try to convey who they are and what the message is."

Webb certainly has conveyed what he is: a boor. Never mind the patent disrespect for the presidency. Webb's more gross offense was calculated rudeness toward another human being — one who, disregarding many hard things Webb had said about him during the campaign, asked a civil and caring question, as one parent to another. When — if ever — Webb grows weary of admiring his new grandeur as a "leader" who carefully calibrates the "symbolic things" he does to convey messages, he might consider this: In a republic, people decline to be led by leaders who are insufferably full of themselves.

The speculation in the original story was that Webb might be a bit more than just difficult to work with in the Senate. He may also find his abrasiveness might cause him problems with getting things accomplished. Will takes him to task for another bit of hyperbolic rhetoric as well:

In his novels and his political commentary, Webb has been a writer of genuine distinction, using language with care and precision. But just days after winning an election, he was turning out slapdash prose that would be rejected by a reasonably demanding high school teacher.

Never mind Webb's careless and absurd assertion that the nation's incessantly discussed wealth gap is "the least debated" issue in American politics.

And never mind his use of the word "literally," although even with private schools and a large share of the nation's wealth, the "top tier" — whatever cohort he intends to denote by that phrase; he is suddenly too inflamed by social injustice to tarry over the task of defining his terms — does not "literally" live in another country.

We'll see how Webb does soon enough. But he is off to a graceless start.

UPDATE: Bingo. I think we have a winner here. Ann Althouse says that the problem with Webb is that he is thinking, and acting out, as if he were the hero in his own little novel. In other words, he has set himself as the Hero Senator character in a little novel he has perking along in his head.

Ordinarily, in all sorts of social and political situations, people try to figure out how other people usually act and to stick to the convention and proceed smoothly along. This is nice enough, but rather boring. In a novel, a conventional social situation tends to be a set up for our hero to do something that shakes things up. The ordinary characters are aghast. They condemn the bad behavior of the protaganist, and we readers, in our armchairs, know how right he is. Of course, a novelist who concocts scenes like that is himself utterly conventional.

I don't think Webb has quickly picked up the Washington style. I think he's got the novelist's style, and he's his own hero Senator in a novel about Washington. And, what immense fun this is going to be!

I think that fits it exactly.

Anschluss?

Something to think about. Or have nightmares about, depending on whether or not you actually have a good working knowledge of history.  

TEHRAN, Iran - Iraq's president said Wednesday he had reached a security agreement with Iran, which the United States accuses of fueling the chaos in the war-torn country. Iran's president called on countries to stop backing "terrorists" in Iraq and for the Americans to withdraw.

Tehran is believed to back some of the Shiite militias blamed in the vicious sectarian killings that have thrown the country into chaos. The United States has said the Iraqi government should press Iran to stop interfering in its affairs in a bid to calm the violence.

Presidents Jalal Talabani of Iraq and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran held talks Wednesday hours before U.S. President George W. Bush was due to meet with the Iraqi prime minister in Jordan in talks aimed at finding a solution to Iraq's spiraling bloodshed.

Talabani gave no details on the security agreement with Iran, and Ahmadinejad made no mention of any deal at a joint press conference in Tehran.

"We discussed in the fields of security, economy, oil and industry. Our agreement was complete," Talabani told reporters. "This visit was 100 percent successful. Its result will appear soon."

Sweet dreams, folks.

The events of March 12, 1938, marked the culmination of historical cross-national pressures to unify the German populations of Austria and Germany under one nation. However, the 1938 Anschluss, regardless of its popularity, was enacted by Germany. Earlier, Hitlerian Germany had provided support for the Austrian National Socialist Party in its bid to seize power from Austria's Austrofascist leadership. Fully devoted to remaining independent but amidst growing pressures, the chancellor of Austria, Kurt Schuschnigg, tried to hold a plebiscite.

Although he expected Austria to vote in favour of maintaining autonomy, a well-planned internal overthrow by the Austrian Nazi Party of Austria's state institutions in Vienna took place on March 11, prior to the vote. With power quickly transferred over to Germany, the Wehrmacht troops entered Austria to enforce the Anschluss. The Nazis held a plebiscite within the following month, where they received 99.73% of the vote. No fighting ever took place and the strongest voices against the annexation, particularly Fascist Italy, France and the United Kingdom: the Stresa Front, were powerless or, in case of Italy, appeased. The Allies were, on paper, committed to upholding the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which specifically prohibited the union of Austria and Germany.

Nevertheless, the Anschluss was among the first major steps in Adolf Hitler's long-desired creation of an empire including German-speaking lands and territories Germany had lost after World War I. Already prior to the 1938, the Rhineland was retaken and the Saar region was returned to Germany after fifteen years of occupation (see: Treaty of Versailles). After the Anschluss, the predominantly German Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia was taken, with the rest of the country becoming a protectorate to Germany in 1939. That same year, Memelland was returned from Lithuania, the final event and antecedent before the invasion of Poland, prompting World War II.