Antiwar.com Blog

We all know what makes presidents great, right?

Taking a partial cue from Jesse Walker, I’ll list my 10 worst presidents in American history. Bush Jr. and Clinton are barred from competition. The links make for good holiday reading if you’re off, and anyway, it’s been a while since I got the full rainbow of hate mail from right to center to left. In chronological order:

1. John Adams

2. Andrew Jackson (Make of this what you will.)

3. Abraham Lincoln (See the link to David R. Henderson above; for opposing views – what you might call damnation by tainted praise – see this and this. And no, I’m not a fan of Jefferson Davis, either.)

4. Theodore Roosevelt (And let’s not forget the man who gave us TR, William McKinley. Today’s warmongers haven’t.)

5. Woodrow Wilson

6. Franklin Roosevelt

7. Harry Truman (And see this.)

8. Lyndon Johnson

9. Richard Nixon

10. George W. Bush (So I broke the rules. Did you read the links above???)

Clark Stooksbury gets out front on what could be the hottest campaign since Irey ’06. Oh, wait…

Nearly everyone at Antiwar.com receives email that accuses us of not covering the good deeds down in Iraq. We “look only at the negative” or “ignore all the positive.” Financial blogger Barry Ritholtz found a similar email in his inbox recently. He writes of it:

I received an email this weekend.

It’s a photo of a US Servicement holding a little Iraqi girl.

The caption accompanying the photo was oh so very telling

“Why isn’t this all over the news? If he had done something wrong, it surely would be!”

I plan to use Ritholtz’s response from now on:

To answer the emailer’s question, it is not all over the newspapers because its not news. The good guys are supposed to do things like this. Its only news when the bad guys do this. […] No, my dear emailer, you have forgotten who we are and what we are all about. A good deed by a US serviceman is what WE DO ANYWAY. In case you didn’t know, we are the GOOD GUYS. If this not being in a newspaper is what upsets you, than you NO LONGER GET IT. This is what the United States is all about. This is what is expected of us. This is the standard we aspire to. This is who we are.

Arthur Silber reads David Brooks, and finds him saying the darnedest things:

Brooks then describes how “order” and “obedience” will save us individually, and society in general, from our own depravity. He also says:

“Iraq has revealed what human beings do without a strong order-imposing state.”

If the horrors of what we have done in Iraq were not so overwhelming, the ironies in that single sentence would be delicious. In one sense, I suppose this represents an improvement: it’s no longer simply that the “ungrateful” Iraqis are awful, and unable to appreciate the marvelous “gifts” we’ve bestowed on them. No, now it’s that all human beings are rotten. And I must admit I derive no small amount of enjoyment from seeing those who championed this criminal catastrophe – and who vilified everyone who opposed it as being “pro-Saddam” and “on the other side” – finally reduced to impliedly saying themselves that Iraq was better off with Saddam. (Many Iraqis have been saying this for some time.)

Read the rest.

TomDispatch brings you Roger Morris’ two-part history of Donald Rumsfeld: 1, 2.

The Secretary of State of the United States of America is shocked, angered and surprised that the Mahdi Army and Badr Corps milita men she hired won’t invade their own neighborhoods and kill themselves. From the AP:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Iraqi leaders Saturday that the Baghdad security operation needs to “rise above sectarianism” and noted that no U.S. or Iraqi forces have yet moved into the capital’s major Shiite militia stronghold, an Iraqi official said.

The official, who was familiar with the discussions, said Rice told Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that the initial stage of the crackdown, which began Wednesday, appeared to focus on Sunni areas and had left Sadr City, stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia, nearly untouched.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to release the information to the media.

He said Rice stopped short of accusing the Iraqis of displaying pro-Shiite bias in the operation and said it appeared that the security crackdown was going well.

Top Sunni politicians have also complained that Sunni neighborhoods have been targeted for raids and searches while Sadr City and other Shiite militia hideouts have been spared.

How can these people continue to accept our money, weapons and training in good conscience?

It’s just not right!