An acceptable level of violence?

The president acutally said this yesterday, during a speech to the Associated General Contractors of America in Washington:

And the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not, no violence. There are parts of our own country that have got a certain level of violence to it. But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives. And that’s what we’re trying to achieve.

It’s received some press coverage — though not nearly enough. Violence, he is saying, is OK. It will be there. It is a fact of life.
There is violence in East St. Louis and Newark and Trenton — and that’s just the way it is, this president says. “Success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives.”
Comfortable? Acceptable? Humans are remarkably adaptive and will find ways to get along no matter what the circumstances. So the Iraqis live through the violence and find ways to make due — same as those Americans who are stuck in drug-scarred neighborhoods. That doesn’t make it right.
Then, this is pretty standard from a president who has shown little compassion for America’s cities, who pretty much ignored New Orleans in the days immediately after the hurricane hit, who has only visited New York for fundraisers and photo-ops (and a political convention), who rarely ventures outside of his comfort zone.
In many ways, this comment is like Sen. John McCain’s stroll through the Baghdad market — or like Bush I’s attempt to buy socks during the 1992 presidential campaign — another example of how out of touch the president and his administration is.
It also is another example of the president’s shifting rationale for the war and for remaining in Iraq — we’ve moved from weapons of mass destruction to deposing Saddam to imposing democracy to maintaining order to … to what? And that’s the point. What exactly are we hoping to accomplish?
It’s time to get out.
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Bring ’em home

Juan Cole is right: The president’s veto of the withdrawal timeline needs aresponse, but John Edwards’ approach — to send the same bill back to the president until he signs it — is probably the wrong one politically.

It is satisfying to say so, but it probably isn’t good political tactics. When Newt Gingrich played politics with the budget under Clinton and even shut down DC, it was Congress that took the hit in the polls. Just being obstreperous isn’t very attractive.

U.S. Rep. John Murtha appears to have the best idea on this — as Cole points out:

Murtha is suggesting that they don’t fund a whole year, maybe only two months. That sort of conditionality, whatever its mechanism, seems right to me.

The key is to find a way to fund the troops, but begin the process of getting them home. In the meantime, war opponents need to turn up the pressure by expanding their protests. This thing has gone on way too long.

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Sticks, stones and Bill O’Reilly

Here’s a study that essentially proves what we’d already suspected — that conservative talk show host Bill O’Reilly is a fear-monger and a bully, forcing the world to fit into a neat “good v. evil”/”us v. them” paradigm and using this paradigm to generate ratings and create conservative propaganda.

(That his show has grown increasingly weird as the conservative moment wanes should be a topic for another study, but alas….)

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