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Below is John Hagee's speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in 2007. Listen to the rousing reception. He's been repeatedly been honored for supporting Israel. The question is: how do Jews feel about Hagee now that they have heard that Hagee believes Hitler was sent by God to drive Jews to Israel in order to fulfill Biblical prophecy that will result in Jesus's return. Here are the first signs that Jews are reconsidering their love.
The New York Times Magazine published an interesting piece this week about how Sen. John McCain's Vietnam experience has shaped his Iraq policy. But it left out a highly salient factor: His father.
Sen. McCain told the reporter, Matt Bai, that we could have won in Vietnam had we realized that in 1968 a new strategy launched by Gen. Creighton Abrams had begun to be effective. The Times piece neglects to mention that Gen. Abrams reported to the commander-in-chief, Pacific Command or CINCPAC - who, from 1968-1972, was Adm. John Sidney McCain, Sen. McCain's father. "The war," Sen. McCain wrote of his father, "was his responsibility."
It's overly simplistic to conclude that Sen. McCain would take a path just because it's what his father would have done. But listen to how Sen. McCain describes his father's views about Vietnam and it's not hard to hear echoes of how he analyzes Iraq.
First, according to Sen. McCain, the policy pursued by Abrams and his father - for instance, the bombing of the port of Haiphong and the invasion of Cambodia -- was turning things around. "For the rest of his life," Sen. McCain writes in "Faith of Our Fathers," "he believed that had he been allowed to wage total war against the enemy, fully employing strategic airpower... he could have brought the war to a successful conclusion."
Second, President Nixon's decision to use military success to sue for peace was misguided. "In our anxiety to get out of the war, we signed a very bad deal," Adm. McCain believed, according to his son. This was, he said, the inevitable result of deciding that the goal was getting out, rather than winning.
Third, it's clear that both McCain senior and his son believed that the loss came not from bad judgment but from flagging "resolve," a concept he invokes often in "Faith of Our Fathers." Whenever Henry Kissinger suspected that Mr. Nixon's "resolve" was wavering, he'd call in John McCain. The South Vietnamese failed in part because they lacked "adequate resolve." As the American people "grew ever more impatient," even Mr. Nixon after his landslide "did not possess enough political strength to oppose the people's will."
Sen. McCain has not concluded that the will of the people should therefore be ignored. Far from it. "No other national endeavor requires as much unshakable resolve as war. If the government and the nation lack that resolve, it is criminal to expect men in the field to carry it alone."
Finally, Sen. McCain's father seemed to believe that antiwar efforts primarily reflected a lack of concern for the soldiers, not a difference in judgment about the wisdom of the war. "He was puzzled and troubled by widespread and mounting congressional opposition to the war. Likewise, he was astonished at the breadth of opposition among the American people.... He believed something had gone badly wrong in a country that did not, by his lights, stand behind the men it had sent into harm's way to fight for it." Under that formulation, only those who advocate keeping soldiers in combat truly want to "support our troops."
In a nutshell, Sen. McCain's father believed that the Vietnam War had started to turn, thanks to a surge of aggressive new tactics, and that it could have been won if not for waning political resolve, the lack of which amounted to a betrayal of the soldiers. Sound familiar? Viewed in this context, Sen. McCain's comments that we need to stay in Iraq as long as it takes make sense; it fits his sense of history and his sense of honor. Whether it seems like sound policy may depend on whether one believes the Vietnam War could have been won if we'd just stayed longer and fought more resolutely.
I'm not suggesting that Sen. McCain wants to vindicate his father or pick up where dad left off (though those who believe that such intra-family dynamics influenced George W. Bush may cringe at the thought of another foreign policy influenced by Oedipal urges.) But Sen. McCain clearly admired his father's wisdom, sense of duty and analysis. I can't help but wonder whether Sen. McCain feels that wavering in his "resolve" over Iraq would mean a betrayal not only of his principles, and the troops, but also the lessons taught him by his father.
Reptrinted from The Wall Street Journal Online.
It’s true Oregon has an unusually high percentage of people who say they’re unaffiliated or not religious, and Obama did very well with that group (a point emphasized by William Schneider last night on CNN). One imagines a massive movement of tree hugging Wiccans and Taoists flooding the polls. But the novelty of that can obscure a few other interesting points about the religious breakdown in Oregon.
First, Obama did just as well among the religious as he did among the irreligious. Among weekly churchgoers, Obama won 57% to 42%, almost exactly the same results as among those who never went to church (58% to 42%)
Second, for the first time since Maryland, he won the Catholic vote in a major state. He had lost 70%-30% in Pennsylvania, narrowed the gap to 59%-41% in Indiana and last night won Catholics 51%-49%.
Third, he won Protestants who attend church weekly, 54%-45%. Since the exit pollsters don’t ask about the evangelical vote in Democratic primaries -- because everyone knows there's no such thing as a Democratic evangelical -- we don’t know for sure whether part of his appeal was to evangelicals. But, according to the Pew Religion Forum’s Religious Landscape Survey, Oregon has more evangelical Christians than the national average. More evidence that Obama may do well among evangelicals in the fall?
In the past few primaries, pollsters have spliced the numbers so we could see to what extent white voters said race was an important factor in their vote. Below, the first number is the percent of white voters who said race was important; the second number is Obama’s margin of victory or defeat:
Oregon: 7% -- Obama +16
North Carolina: 8% -- Obama +14
Indiana: 10% -- Obama -2
Kentucky: 18% -- Obama -35
West Virginia: 21% -- Obama -41
The more white voters who think the candidate’s race matters, the better Clinton does. Sometimes it's not that complicated.
So based on the results yesterday, we can see that Hillary Clinton wins among working class, less educated, whites, union members, Catholics, the economically suffering and rural voters, and Barack Obama wins among affluent, well educated, independent and African Americans.
Oh, except for the fact that in Oregon, Obama won….
Whites (Obama 57%, Clinton 43%)
Voters with less than $50,000 in income (Obama 53%, Clinton 46%)
People with no college degree (Obama 51%, Clinton 48%)
Union households (Obama 62%, Clinton 37%)
Catholics (Obama 51%, 49%)
People who attend church weekly or more (Obama 57%, Clinton 42%)
Rural voters (Obama 52%, Clinton 46%)
Voters who said the recession has affected them "a great deal" (Obama 55%, Clinton 45%)
Other than that, the stereotype is entirely true.
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