Reuters: Obama beats Romney with vets

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Monday, May 14, 2012 - 11:49 AM

"If the election were held today, Obama would win the veteran vote by as much as seven points over Romney, higher than his margin in the general population," reports Margot Roosevelt of Reuters.

I have to say this surprised me. Reuters says veterans report being tired of our wars, are angry about the foolishness of invading Iraq, and worried by the situation with Iran. One says he likes how Obama handled Libya.

On the other hand, 37 percent of vets asked said they disapprove of the way Obama has handled the presidency, vs. just 27 who approve, and everyone else up in the air. So the poll numbers leave me a bit confused.

Mitt Romney is a Republican version of John Kerry, I think -- a rich politician from Massachusetts who doesn't really know who he is but (as James Carville has put it), was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.

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Aid to Obama? Another Israeli security official speaks out against attacking Iran

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Monday, April 30, 2012 - 10:25 AM

This time it was the former head of the Shin Bet, the internal security agency. Apparently it was the first time Yuval Diskin has spoken in public about the Iran issue.

These statements are more significant than they may seem, because they provide support to skeptics of the official Israeli position that Iran must be attacked soon. And so I think this eases election-year pressure on President Obama: All he has to say to hawkish critics is, What do you think you know that the chief of the Israeli defense forces and the former head of Shin Bet don't know?

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Berenson's 'The Shadow Patrol': A review

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - 10:07 AM

I read most of Alex Berenson's 'The Shadow Patrol' on a flight from Philadelphia to Manchester, England, across the Atlantic Sea.

It's the first "post-Osama" novel I've read, which gave it an extra fillip. He occasionally gets military stuff slightly wrong, which was a slight distraction.

Here are some of the lines I liked:

--"Terror and boredom, the twin poles of infantry duty." Yes, a familiar thought, but expressed quite succinctly here.

--The CIA view of the world. "We killed Osama. And no civilian casualties in the op. Not one. Ten years since 9/11 and no real attacks on American soil. Not even jerks with AKs lighting up a mall. We've kept our people safe."

--Pakistani duplicity. "Truths might be told in Quetta, but never on purpose."

--On the American public's lack of interest in our wars. "You go to a bar, guys buy you a round, ask about what you're doing. But if you tell them, their eyes glaze over. It's too far away, confusing. Plus they're ashamed about it because they're getting drunk in college, mommy and daddy paying the bills, and you're putting your butts on the line for them every day. They don't want to think about it."

--On today's American generals: "No one ever got stars on his collar by taking chances."

I'd also be interested in knowing if Joby Warrick thinks of the book. I will ask him.

Amazon

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Former regime element joins Obama team

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - 10:06 AM

Brett McGurk, who I ran into in the Green Zone when he was negotiating the SOFA with the government of Iraq, has been named U.S. ambassador to Iraq. This is good because he knows all the promises Maliki has made over the years, not just to the U.S. but to Kurds and others, and so might be able to better forestall the prime minister's various attempts to re-negotiate all his deals.

No word on whether he had to take an oath renouncing all support for the Bush administration.

Harvard University

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Romney endorses Obama: Yep, I’d do almost exactly what he is doing on Iran

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - 10:10 AM

That was my takeaway from Romney's op-ed article in yesterday's Washington Post on how he would handle Iran. The policy he recommends is extraordinarily close to what Obama is doing and saying.

The only difference I see is that Obama knows more about Iran than Romney does. Like history? "Ronald Reagan made it crystal clear that the Iranians would pay a very stiff price for continuing their criminal behavior," writes Gov. Romney. If I were a Republican, I wouldn't be recommending Reagan's handling of Iran as the model, unless the moderate Massachusetts millionaire wants to endorse giving Iran more weapons in exchange for the release of hostages, as of course the Reagan Administration did.

But the stupidest line in the article might be this one: "I will press for ever-tightening sanctions, acting with other countries if we can but alone if we must." Dude, how are sanctions gonna work if we impose them alone? They won't, so they must be imposed multilaterally. Which is what President Obama happens to be doing. I have to wonder who in the Romney campaign thought this article was a good idea.

Meanwhile, I suspect that one thing Republican hawks don't understand is the depth of opposition inside the military to attacking Iran. (Of course, back in 2002-03, lots of people in the military were against attacking Iraq-but the administration back then was all hot to trot, and did not want to be confused by facts.)

Here is what old Obama said yesterday at a press conference about all this:

When I see the casualness with which some of these folks talk about war, I'm reminded of the costs involved in war. I'm reminded that the decision that I have to make in terms of sending our young men and women into battle, and the impacts that has on their lives, the impact it has on our national security, the impact it has on our economy.

This is not a game. There's nothing casual about it. And when I see some of these folks who have a lot of bluster and a lot of big talk, but when you actually ask them specifically what they would do, it turns out they repeat the things that we've been doing over the last three years, it indicates to me that that's more about politics than actually trying to solve a difficult problem.

Now, the one thing that we have not done is we haven't launched a war. If some of these folks think that it's time to launch a war, they should say so. And they should explain to the American people exactly why they would do that and what the consequences would be. Everything else is just talk.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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Obama is on top on foreign policy issues, but unfortunately Americans don’t care

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Friday, January 27, 2012 - 9:34 AM

This is the first presidential election in many decades, I think, in which the Democrats have the upper hand in foreign policy and national security. I have only dim memories of the 1964 campaign, but I recalls Lyndon Johnson having an advantage over Barry Goldwater in that area. Hard to remember that now, in light of how badly LBJ handled the Vietnam War in the following four years.

Ironically, Obama is likely only to get a small boost in votes for this, because -- just a bit more than a decade after 9/11 -- Americans frankly don't give a damn about foreign policy, Scarlett. By a 81 to 9 percent margin, they care more about the economy. (Hey, imagine if we still had all the money spent on the Iraq war to spend on domestic infrastructure, which is crumbling…)

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Obama sings: Fulfilling the good book?

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - 9:33 AM

The other day President Obama did a pretty good one-line imitation of Al Green. As it happens, the next day, I read this in Judges 5:12: ". . . awake, awake, utter a song: arise, Barak."

I wonder if the hidden message is that he will oust Biden as his VP and replace him with Hillary.

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The weirdest recent foreign policy trend: Bushies telling Obama how to handle Iraq

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - 10:25 AM

The weirdest recent trend in foreign policy is the spate of former Bush Administration types berating President Obama for his handling of Iraq. Honestly, it feels to me like seeing Custer provide advice on how to handle American Indian tribes. Please, haven't you all helped enough already? (As for John Yoo advocating preemptive war with Iran -- that is clearly just him messing with us. Rick Santorum, too.)

Second weirdest trend: Attacks on Iraqi fortune tellers.

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