Spreading Its Sovereign Wings, al-Maliki Chutzpah Flies in Face of Bush, McCain Policy that Winning Means Staying

OhioNewsBureau Opinion Editorial

COLUMBUS, OHIO: The long hard slough to force-feed freedom and democracy to Iraq over the past seven years, two goals President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have defended at ever turn as part of the “birth pangs” of emerging Middle East democracies, are now boomeranging on both the minister from Crawford and his policy soul brother, Republican Sen. John S. McCain of Arizona, forcing them to do what they said they’d do but never expected to be told to do, namely, pack up your troops and head for the exists because Iraq can take care of itself now.

This situation, leaving when your host tells you to leave, has forced Bush and McCain, who both equate leaving Iraq with loosing and staying with winning, are now confronted with abiding by their own words that they would leave if asked. But now that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, has indeed signaled to them that the time to withdraw is nye. Adding insult to injury, al-Maliki, who travels to Iran, a Shiite nation, and who welcomes that country’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in Baghdad with state pomp and protocol, welcomed Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama with open arms recently and sided with his judgment that US troops now need to redeploy to Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders are indeed the gathering storm Bush called them as justification to launch his war of political expediency.

Obama ought to offer a counter challenge to McCain to go to Afghanistan so that the war veteran can see for himself where the Gates of Hell are that he said he would chase Osama bin Laden to if elected president.

Obama is nearly through his political sojourn to see for himself the “conditions on the ground” in Iraq and walk and talk with US military leaders like "president Petraeus, while collecting world leader merit badges in every country he visits. Getting the feel of the office before November, when most signs point to the nation electing him in spite of the mainstream media’s obvious bias to protect McCain from his own gaffes, mis-thoughts and misspoken utterances, that would force him under normal circumstances to step aside as too dangerous or unstable for a job that requires stability and confidence, Obama is globetrotting, making 3-point shots as he goes, and turning the Republican taunt that he hasn’t visited the battle zone in a long time and shouldn’t pre-judge conditions there before he goes into a tour that will bring him back home with plaudits from foreign leaders, a bolstered image that he’s ever inch a commander-in-chief and a confirmation that his judgments both about going to war and now redeploying to the real front on the war on terror – Afghanistan and Pakistan – were right all along while McCain’s policies, little different from those of Bush, have proven to be wrong.

The mainstream media seems to have it all backwards, constantly protecting McCain over his own self-inflicted trips and fumbles. They cover Obama like he was a series of questions about whether he "can or cannot do something that’s really only on the minds of the Washington Beltway crowd and high-paid media pundits" who see McCain falling further behind but want to keep viewers thinking the race is closer than it is. It’s too bad the media, pretending to be neutral, objective and not biased, is not neutral, not objective and biased for McCain, who could say he’ll make pigs fly and not be challenged about it in any way by them while they nitpick at details in Obama's plans.

McCain's Odds of Winning Ohio Black Vote As Good as Winning at Keno?

In Ohio, a state both McCain and Obama want to win but one McCain absolutely needs to win the White House while Obama can show up on Pennsylvania Avenue because his rising popularity gives him other winning scenarios, the duo made stops at the NAACP convention held in Cincinnati recently.

Obama and his speech was greeted with great enthusiasm while McCain was accorded reasonable respect. McCain was audacious enough this year during the Republican primary season to visit Memphis on the anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King and make sympathetic statements about the Reverend and his game-changing work even though McCain’s own voting record showed how often he opposed being supportive of efforts to honor King with a holiday or others actions that converted his agenda into law.

The odds against McCain winning any more than ten percent of the vote of Ohio African Americans are about the same as him winning a game of Keno. Extremely long to non-existent.            

To send a tip or story idea to this correspondent, send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it