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French and EU President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a call from the floor of the UN yesterday to expand the Security Council and G8. Declaring that, “The 21st century world cannot be governed with the institutions of the 20th century,” he argued that inclusion of today’s emerging powers is not just “a matter fairness” but a necessary condition for “being able to act effectively.” “We cannot wait any longer to enlarge the Security Council. We cannot wait any longer to turn the G8 into the G13 or G14 and to bring in China, India, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil,” said Sarkozy.

In “Expand the Security Council? Non. The G8? Qui,” I explain why that proposal is only half bad.

John McCain is taking advantage of Barack Obama’s “foreign vacation” in Hawaii and using the crisis in Georgia to showcase his foreign policy prowess.

He’s dispatched his minions, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, to Georgia.  TPM’s Greg Sargent figures,

The idea is to showcase himself as a man of action during a time of international crisis and to remind people that the world is a dangerous place that’s still filled with aggressive actors, something that the McCain camp presumably thinks will play in his favor.

McCain’s announcement of his key campaign allies’ trip abroad also seems designed to shoulder Bush aside as the primary GOP leadership figure here.

Politico’s Jonathan Martin agress and observes, “McCain’s declaration has something of a shadow government feel to it, as though he’s sending his own emissaries into the war zone.” Over at News Hounds, Melanie finds that FOX News — or at least Neil Cavato — is treating McCain like he’s already president.  Why, they’re even covering McCain’s foreign policy speeches!

Andrew Sullivan thinks we’re getting a preview of what a President McCain would look like and he’s less than impressed:

He’s giving press conferences. He’s warning of a new Tsarist empire. You can tell what sends him into high-energy zones: a clear enemy abroad. He knows black and white; and he knows war. It gives him clarity and strength. Up next: Iran and China. Oh, the conflicts we can have …

Various comment sections have the inevitable jokes about McCain being “presumptuous” and “uppity” for acting like he’s already president, an allusion to recent controveries over Barack Obama’s overseas adventures and various campaign logos.

Even AllahPundit thinks this is a bad idea.

Do Committee members really need to conduct their own fact-finding missions in the middle of a hot war? State and Defense briefings could probably get them up to speed. And what would the reaction have been if The One had made this move first with Bayh and Webb in the surrogate roles? Would have seemed to me like a transparent attempt to squeeze a photo op from a crisis that the administration’s already straining to manage without needing any extra distractions.

Foreign policy isn’t golf.  One doesn’t get to shush the galleries.  Presidents have to juggle multiple international crises, make domestic policy decisions, and deal with political campaigns all at the same time.

I say:  More of this, please.  After months of campaigning about nothing, we’re seeing how the two men who could plausibly get elected president less than three months from now are reacting to a big time foreign policy situation.  While I’m frankly not sure what Lieberman and Graham could possibly accomplish by going to Georgia, at least we see that McCain gets how important this is.

Interestingly, as Dave Schuler and I discussed on last night’s installment of OTB Radio, there’s very little light between McCaina and Obama on this issue, at least on substance.  Obama is more low key and McCain is more emphatic about Russia’s outrageous conduct but they’re landing in pretty much the same place: work with our NATO Allies, use the G8 and WTO for leverage, and otherwise engage in diplomacy; military force is decidedly not an option.

McCain’s more visible on the issue, to be sure, which points to both his being behind in the race and thinking foreign affairs is his long suit.   Aside from Obama surrogate Bill Richardson’s bizarre suggestion of having the UN Security Council — where Russia has a veto! — solve this and McCain’s rather humorous suggestion that “In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations,” both teams are playing this rather well.

Photo: Shakesville

Georgian forces have been routed and have retreated from their South Ossetia province after being outmatched by the Russians.  Now, many Georgians are wondering where their Western allies are.

Tony Halpin for The Times of London:

As a Russian jet bombed fields around his village, Djimali Avago, a Georgian farmer, asked me: “Why won’t America and Nato help us? If they won’t help us now, why did we help them in Iraq?”

A similar sense of betrayal coursed through the conversations of many Georgians here yesterday as their troops retreated under shellfire and the Russian Army pressed forward to take full control of South Ossetia.

Andrew Kramer and Ellen Barry for the NYT:

“We killed as many of them as we could,” he said. “But where are our friends?”

It was the question of the day. As Russian forces massed Sunday on two fronts, Georgians were heading south with whatever they could carry. When they met Western journalists, they all said the same thing: Where is the United States? When is NATO coming?

Since the conflict began, Western leaders have worked frantically to broker a cease-fire. But for Georgians — so boisterously pro-American that Tbilisi, the capital, has a George W. Bush Street — diplomacy fell far short of what they expected.

Even in the hinterlands, at kebab stands and in farming villages, people fleeing South Ossetia saw themselves as trapped between great powers. Ossetian refugees heading north to Russia gushed their gratitude to Dmitri A. Medvedev and Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian leaders. Georgians around Gori spoke of America plaintively, uncertainly. They were beginning to feel betrayed.

“Tell your government,” said a man named Truber, fresh from the side of the Tbilisi hospital bed where his son was being treated for combat injuries. “If you had said something stronger, we would not be in this.”

He had not slept for three days, and he was angry — at himself, at Georgia, but mainly at the United States. “If you want to help, you have to help the end,” he said.

[...]

On the other side of the line of battle, Georgians had begun to question the strength of their alliance with the United States.

In recent years, Mr. Bush has lavished praise on Georgia — and the so-called Rose Revolution that brought Mikheil Saakashvili to power — as a model of democracy-building. The feeling was mutual: when Mr. Bush visited Tbilisi in 2005, the authorities estimated that 150,000 people showed up to see him. He famously climbed up on a platform and wiggled his hips to loud Georgian folk music.

Those exuberant days seemed very distant around Gori on Sunday, as people fled, leaving behind corn fields and apple orchards. A group of men tried mightily to push a truck with a blown-out tire, but it got stuck on the road, and they finally abandoned it.

Gato Tkviavi lingered in Tirzini, a village of one-story houses where cows were wandering through the streets.  Asked where the border with South Ossetia was, he pointed at his feet. “The border is where the Russians say it is,” he said. “It could be here, or it could be Gori.”

The grimmest among the Georgians were the soldiers, haggard, unshaven and swinging their Kalashnikovs. A group of them had piled onto a flatbed truck, crowding on in such numbers that some were sitting on the roof, their feet dangling over the windshield.

One, who gave his name as Major Georgi, spoke with anger.   “Write exactly what I say,” he said. “Over the past few years, I lived in a democratic society. I was happy. And now America and the European Union are spitting on us.”

Indeed.

As sad as the events of the past few days have been, I do not believe that the United States has sufficient interests in Georgia keeping sovereignty over South Ossetia to justify war with Russia.   Strong words, and perhaps diplomatic sanctions — including ousting Russia from the G8 — are as much as we can reasonably do.

But here’s the rub:  It is the position of the United States government that Georgia should be admitted to NATO.  We begged, cajoled, and arm twisted our European allies to that end in Bucharest this past April, ultimately settling for a vague pledge that Georgia will be put on the path to membership soon.

While NATO has become many things since the end of the Cold War, it remains at its essence a military alliance in which an attack upon the territory of any one member is considered an attack on all members.  Everything beyond that is a function of the fact that NATO feels itself safe from outside attack and therefore has the resources to do more, including having ambition as a collective security alternative to the United Nations.

If, however, we have no intention of defending Georgia from an attack by the only country on the planet that could conceivably pose it any threat, what the hell are we doing inviting them into NATO?

UPDATE: Matt Yglesias, now ensconced at his new digs at the Center for American Progress, agrees.

Photo credit: Dmitry Kostyukov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via NYT

The views in this piece are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Jonah Goldberg has sparked a minor blogospheric furor for a recent column in which he castigated Barack Obama, John McCain, and others for promoting a compulsory national service program, which he compared to slavery.

There’s a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.

For those who don’t remember, the 13th Amendment says: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime … shall exist within the United States.”

Most of the outrage directed at this column deals directly with these two paragraphs. And, frankly, I do think that Goldberg did employ some bad rhetoric here. But it’s bad rhetoric used to make an excellent point. Namely, that there’s something un-American about compulsory national service. As Goldberg points out:

In his speech on national service Wednesday at the University of Colorado, Obama promised that as president he would “set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year.”

Now, Obama’s plan, like most plans of this type, doesn’t outright mandate that all students perform national service. It merely makes such service a condition for federal education dollars. So in a technical sense, these types of plans probably don’t run afoul of the 13th Amendment. But they’re still pretty appalling, and I think that Goldberg does make an excellent point here:

This is the real problem with national service mania: It seeks to fix what ain’t broke. No, national service isn’t slavery. But it contributes to a slave mentality, at odds with American tradition. It assumes that work not done for the government isn’t really for the “common good.”

I agree with this sentence wholeheartedly. Both Obama and McCain’s service plans serve the nefarious idea that people ought to be forced to help somebody else, which is something that is anathema to the rights of “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” that this country was ostensibly founded upon. I can’t be the only one who shook his head in disbelief at John McCain’s essay about ‘patriotism, in which he said:

Patriotism is deeper than its symbolic expressions, than sentiments about place and kinship that move us to hold our hands over our hearts during the national anthem. It is putting the country first, before party or personal ambition, before anything. [emphasis added]

Yes, in John McCain’s worldview, country reigns supreme. Above religion. Above conscience. Above the human race as a whole. At least, that’s the conclusion you have to reach if you take his words at face value. But that’s the very ideology that drives the clamor for compulsory service–the idea that the lives of young people are not their own. That their dreams and their ambitions should be shunted aside in the name of some vaguely defined “greater good.”

Look, if a kid wants to spend 50 hours a year volunteering at a soup kitchen or building a house for habitat for humanity, then more power to him. If she wants to spend that time playing video games or basketball, or even *gasp!* holding down a part-time job well, that’s her choice, too. The point of America is that you got to make the choice about what you want to do with your life, not have some bureaucrat decide for you.

Clunky prose aside, I think that Goldberg was dead on in condemning compulsory service. It’s an antiquated, un-American notion that should by no means make its way into federal law.

Two articles cited in today’s Small Wars Journal roundup have almost nothing to do with wars, small or otherwise, but are nonetheless interesting in showing the state of flux of some key international institutions.

Steven Erlanger reports on a bold attempt to forge a “Union of the Mediterranean” which would be something of a minor league for the European Union.

Perhaps the grandest new idea of France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, looking to give his presidency of the European Union a lasting stamp, is the Union of the Mediterranean. An effort to bind the 17 nations bordering the Mediterranean Sea with the European Union around regional projects, the new union will be inaugurated next week at a Paris summit meeting.

But as with some of Mr. Sarkozy’s other ideas, the execution has been haphazard. The Union of the Mediterranean has created resistance among vital allies, like the Germans and the Spanish, and confusion within his own government. The result may be more show than substance.

Peter Alford reports on the emergence of what would be a radical transformation of the G8.

The largest, most expensive gathering of world leaders under the G8 banner convenes today confronted by an awesome array of problems, from runaway oil prices and scarce food to flaring inflation and global warming, but with little prospect of real breakthroughs on any front. Failure this year could call seriously into question the viability of the Group of Eight industrialised nations, a 33-year-old gathering originally of the top Western powers, struggling now for relevance against huge shifts in the world’s political and economic geography.

That shift will be underlined when the “Plus 5″ developing nations issue for the first time their own communique after meeting the G8 leaders on Wednesday at the Windsor Hotel, the luxurious and now heavily-secured summit site on Lake Toya, in Toyako, near here.

Since the 2005 Gleneagles summit, China, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa have met annually as the “G8 plus 5″ with the chief summiteers, the leaders of the US, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Russia. But because of their rising economic power, their huge hunger for energy and food and their critical role in deciding a new climate change regime – or not – after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, the Plus 5 communique will carry as much weight as G8 statements.

The summit situation also gives force to calls from France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain’s Gordon Brown, lately joined by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, for the eight to be expanded to a G13 with the emerging powers as full partners. This idea is strongly resisted by Washington and Tokyo, the Japanese apparently fearing further dilution of their claims to Asian leadership if China gains a seat.

The addition of Russia, a major regional actor but an economic lightweight, to the group in the 1990s opened a Pandora’s box that may be impossible to close. Certainly, China, Brazil and India have stronger claims to membership in the elite economic club than Russia although, I must confess, what Mexico and South Africa are doing on the list eludes me.

Both of these developments — potential breakthroughs in long emerging trends — point to the continual reshuffling of the world order. Attempting to confine major international institutions to its charter members excludes those who now merit membership and who could contribute the the organization’s goals. Opening the window for new members, however, threatens the interests of existing powers in the institution whose ability to steer policy would be diluted.

President Bush reiterated his intention to attend the opening ceremonies in Beijing and stated that doing otherwise would be an “affront” to the Chinese people.

President Bush said Sunday he does not feel the need to boycott the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics to state his opposition to China’s human rights record. Skipping the event would be an “affront” to the Chinese people, he said.

Bush spoke at a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who announced that he also plans to attend the ceremonies. Other world leaders have decided not to go as a rebuke to China’s violent crackdown on anti-government protests in Tibet.

I don’t feel strongly either way about this issue. My preference would have been not to award China the Olympics, given not only their abysmal human rights record but also the ridiculous level of pollution in Beijing which puts the health of the athletes in danger. Boycotting the opening ceremonies would embarrass the Chinese government and send a message, I suppose, although it would likely just increase their intransigence and make them less cooperative.

What strikes me as interesting in all this is that Bush has rather clearly, in his second term, become much more cognizant that symbolic gestures and rhetoric have an impact beyond the domestic audience. A boycott would likely play well at home, since both the Left and the Right are united in their distaste for the PRC government, albeit for different reasons. But China is the key player in Asia and their cooperation is essential in addressing many issues of strategic concern to the United States in that region. Thinking through the consequences of thumbing our noses at them, therefore, is important.

Tyson Homosexual ran 100 meters in a wind-aided 9.68 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials today, in what would have been world record time. I mean, Tyson Gay.

Leftie People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch blog reports that,

In addition to blocking traffic from websites they don’t like, it looks like the web-geniuses behind the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow site have a few other tricks up their sleeves, such as automatically replacing any use of the word “gay” with the word “homosexual” in any of the AP stories they run … leading to instances in which proper names are reformatted to meet their ridiculous standard, such as this article about sprinter Tyson Gay winning the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials in which he is renamed “Tyson Homosexual”

As Steve Benen observes, “auto-replace is not your friend.”

I checked and, apparently, someone tipped off OneNewsNow and they have rendered Gay’s name as Gay in updated stories such as “Gay runs 100 in windy 9.68 to make US Olympic team.”  Which, in this context, is still a pretty funny headline.

via memeorandum

Fareed Zakaria argues that John McCain’s foreign policy would be bellicose whereas Barack Obama’s would be conciliatiatory but, as Dave Schuler notes, both are “confrontational” and “interventionist,” just with slightly different priorities.

Zakaria points to a recent McCain speech:

Not only does it declare war on Russia and China, it places the United States in active opposition to all nondemocracies. It proposes a League of Democracies, which would presumably play the role that the United Nations now does, except that all nondemocracies would be cast outside the pale. The approach lacks any strategic framework. What would be the gain from so alienating two great powers? How would the League of Democracies fight terrorism while excluding countries like Jordan, Morocco, Egypt and Singapore? What would be the gain to the average American to lessen our influence with Saudi Arabia, the central banker of oil, in a world in which we are still crucially dependent on that energy source?

But this vastly overstates and misunderstands McCain’s proposals — not to mention the nature of the presidency.

McCain does not “declare war on Russia and China” or even place “the United States in active opposition to all nondemocracies.” Rather, he argues that we should seek to pursue our interests through the venue of an alliance with those with whom we share values.

He thinks Russia, which has not lived up to the bargain through which it was granted membership to which it was never due to the G-8, should be removed from that institution and that it should be expanded to include emerging economies that are on the same path as the core members of that group. Russia was not admitted to the club of the world’s greatest economies either through having a great economy or, as Zakaria asserts, “to recognize and reward it for peacefully ending the cold war on Western terms, dismantling the Soviet empire and withdrawing from large chunks of the old Russian Empire as well.” Rather, Boris Yeltsin showed up at the meetings and the other leaders didn’t really know what to do about it. Russia was finally admitted in 1997 after making agreeing to and reaching certain milestones but has backslid toward autocracy and regional belligerence in recent years.

China is an emerging economy and I agree with Zakaria that expansion of the G8 to include the likes of India but not China would be problematic. On the other hand, India is more-or-less democratic and complies with the rules of international law; China, not so much.

The idea that a League of Democracies would somehow lessen our mutal interest-based relations with Saudi Arabia and others is likewise puzzling. Does our membership in NATO do that?

Further, as Dave notes, while Obama is more open to diplomacy for its own sake than McCain, as demonstrated by his stated willingness to talk to the leaders of Cuba, Iran, and other states — which I support, incidentally — we shouldn’t pretend that he’s Jimmy Carter.

Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are equally confrontational and interventionist. You can hardly interpret Sen. Clinton’s bellicose statements about Iran and her stump speech hostility to China or Sen. Obama’s stated willingness to intervene in Dar Fur or invade Pakistan in pursuit of Taliban and Al Qaeda finding safe haven there in any other way.

[...]

It looks very much as though come what may we’re going to have a confrontational interventionist president and we and the world had better get used to the idea. So much for mending fences and restoring the U. S.’s lost credibility.

Which, frankly, isn’t surprising. To become president of the United States, after all, one has to be elected by Americans. Our political culture demands a willingness to stand tough against rogue regime and to use military force against those who attack our interests. Even Jimmy Carter had his Desert One. And Carter was a one-termer largely because of his (minus that botched rescue mission) diplomacy-only response to the Iran Hostage Crisis.

Beyond that, as I’ve noted in previous posts, American presidents operate within the institutional confines of the office. The bureaucratic information process remains largely unchanged despite the changing of the occupants of the Oval Office. Congress continues to have essentially the same institutional stance as well, putting enormous pressure on presidents to conform to the expected role of the office.

None of this is to say that the November election won’t impact America’s foreign policy. It will. The personality, temperament, and preferences of the president very much matter, especially in world affairs. But the impact is not nearly as radical as Zakaria and others would have you believe.

The flagship newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party called Saturday for efforts to “resolutely crush” anti-government demonstrations by Tibetans, while Beijing urged people to turn in those on a “Most Wanted” list of 21 protesters.

As Chinese troops smothered Tibetan-heavy areas to avert additional unrest, U.S. presidential hopeful John McCain, a Republican, and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, joined a growing international chorus of criticism against the crackdown.

The protests, which started in Lhasa on the March 10 anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese rule, turned violent four days later and touched off demonstrations among Tibetans in three other provinces.

What will we do about Tibet? The answer, in a word, is nothing:

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States Wednesday called any potential dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama on Tibet “very positive.”

State Department Spokesman Tom Casey said the United States would “certainly encourage and call on the Chinese to engage directly in discussions with the Dalai Lama or his representatives.”

The position of the U. S. is that Tibet is a part of China and disturbances of any kind there are a purely internal matter. A closer relationship with China has been a bipartisan policy of the U. S. for thirty years.

I couldn’t find any mention of China on either Hillary Clinton’s web page or Barack Obama’s (although a year ago Hillary Clinton was talking about the danger of excessive reliance on Chinese investors). John McCain’s web site mentions China only as a possible “strategic competitor”.

We’ve already relinquished most of the things we could have used as leverage on China, notably most favored nation trading status and WTO membership. We won’t go to war with China over Tibet or place tariffs on their exports or cut off travel there. We won’t boycott the Olympics since the last time we tried that 25 years ago the most it achieved was denying a few American athletes their medals.

In the light of that reality I think that airy promises of symbolic “support” are unhelpful:

DHARAMSALA, India — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, visiting the Dalai Lama’s headquarters here on Friday, described recent protests in Tibet as “a challenge to conscience of the world” and pressed for an investigation into whether the Dalai Lama masterminded that unrest as the Chinese government has alleged.

[…]

The visit by Ms. Pelosi, accompanied by nine members of Congress, most of them Democrats, had been scheduled previously as part of a visit to India. It was unclear what her visit would yield for Tibetans, except a symbolic shot in the arm. For the Americans, the timing could not have been better.

Namely, photo ops and sound bites for the folks back home.

Realistically, there’s only one thing we can do with respect to the Chinese: embarrass them. I honestly suspect they’ll give us plenty of opportunities.

Kathryn Jean Lopez has the sad news that “William F. Buckley Jr., died overnight in his study in Stamford, Connecticut. After year of illness, he died while at work.”

Sad news, indeed.

More from AP:

Author and conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. has died at age 82.

His assistant Linda Bridges says Buckley died Wednesday morning at his home in Stamford, Conn. She says he had been ill with emphysema and was found dead by his cook.

Buckley became famous for his intellectual political writings in his magazine, the National Review, and his frequent television appearances, including on his own long-running “Firing Line.”

I grew up on “Firing Line” and read National Review for years until finally tiring of the magazine’s stilted style and assumption that I was an old money Catholic who spoke Latin fluently. I even read and enjoyed Buckley’s Blackford Oakes spy novels. His recent autobiography, Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography, was also well worth a read.

Buckley’s intellectual leadership, judgment, and tone were cornerstones in building the modern conservative movement. His good sense in denouncing the John Birchers and distancing himself from the excesses of Pat Buchanan and others earned him respect on both sides of the aisle.

UPDATE: The New York Times, which presumably keeps obits ready in circumstances like these, has the first long form report I’ve seen.

William F. Buckley Jr., who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, famously arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse, died Wednesday at his home in Stamford, Conn.

Mr Buckley, 82, suffered from diabetes and emphysema, his son Christopher said, although the exact cause of death was not immediately known. He was found at his desk in the study of his home, his son said. “He might have been working on a column,” Mr. Buckley said.

Mr. Buckley’s winningly capricious personality, replete with ten-dollar words and a darting tongue writers loved to compare with an anteater’s, hosted one of television’s longest-running programs, “Firing Line,” and founded and shepherded the influential conservative magazine, National Review. He also found time to write more than 45 books, ranging from sailing odysseys to spy novels to celebrations of his own dashing daily life, and edit five more. The more than 4.5 million words of his 5,600 biweekly newspaper columns, “On the Right,” would fill 45 more medium-sized books.

Mr. Buckley’s greatest achievement was making conservatism — not just electoral Republicanism, but conservatism as a system of ideas — respectable in liberal post-World War II America. He mobilized the young enthusiasts who helped nominate Barry Goldwater in 1964, and saw his dreams fulfilled when Reagan and the Bushes captured the Oval Office. To Mr. Buckley’s enormous delight, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the historian, termed him “the scourge of liberalism.”

In remarks at National Review’s 30th anniversary in 1985, President Reagan joked that he picked up his first issue of the magazine in a plain brown wrapper and still anxiously awaited his biweekly edition — “without the wrapper.” “You didn’t just part the Red Sea — you rolled it back, dried it up and left exposed, for all the world to see, the naked desert that is statism,” Mr. Reagan said. “And then, as if that weren’t enough,” the president continued, “you gave the world something different, something in its weariness it desperately needed, the sound of laughter and the sight of the rich, green uplands of freedom.”

Much more at the link.

John McCain wants Florida voters to know that national security policy, not the economy, is the most important issue in this presidential election because we’re in a war and will inevitably be in others. Sam Stein is worried:

Sen. John McCain told a crowd of supporters on Sunday, “It’s a tough war we’re in. It’s not going to be over right away. There’s going to be other wars.” Offering more of his increasingly bleak “straight talk,” he repeated the claim: “I’m sorry to tell you, there’s going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars.”

McCain did not elaborate who the United States would be fighting. But he did warn the crowd to be ready for the ramifications of current and future battles.

“And right now – we’re gonna have a lot of PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder] to treat, my friends,” he said. “We’re gonna have a lot of combat wounds that have to do with these terrible explosive IEDs that inflict such severe wounds. And my friends, it’s gonna be tough, we’re gonna have a lot to do.”

I don’t know the context of these remarks. They’re rather strange and depressing if they’re part of a stump speech but just more “straight talk” if they were in response to an audience question.

There’s not much question about the underlying point. Every president in my lifetime has used military force, often many times. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had Vietnam; Gerald Ford, Mayaguez; Jimmy Carter, Desert One; Ronald Reagan: Beirut and Grenada; George H.W. Bush: Panama, Desert Storm, and Somalia; Bill Clinton: Somalia II, Haiti, and perhaps a dozen others; George W. Bush: Afghanistan and Iraq. And that’s just off the top of my head.

Some of those conflicts were unavoidable and perhaps ill advised. But, with the exception of Nixon’s inheritance of Vietnam, they all had at least one thing in common: The president wasn’t expecting them when campaigning for office.

Senior government employees spent a nominal amount of money upgrading official flights from coach, the GAO has found.

Federal employees wasted at least $146 million over a one-year period on business- and first-class airline tickets, in some cases simply because they felt entitled to the perk, congressional investigators say.

A draft report by the Government Accountability Office, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, is the first to examine compliance with travel rules across the federal government following reports of extensive abuse of premium-class travel by Pentagon and State Department employees. The review of travel spending by more than a dozen agencies from July 1, 2005, to June 30, 2006, found 67 percent of premium-class travel by executives or their employees, worth at least $146 million, was unauthorized or otherwise unjustified. Among the worst offenders: the State Department, whose employees typically fly abroad on official business.

Many of the cases involved high-ranking senior officials or political appointees who claimed exceptions to federal travel rules by citing old medical records or questionable approval from a subordinate employee.

Investigators found that senior officials often flew business- or first-class because they felt entitled to the perk. The higher airfare for traveling in one of the premium classes resulted in expenses often five to 10 times more than what was authorized under government travel rules.

“With the serious fiscal challenges facing the federal government, agencies must maximize their ability to manage and safeguard valuable taxpayers’ dollars,” investigators wrote, suggesting agencies recoup the extra cost from those who abuse travel policies.

Under federal rules, government employees generally must fly coach for both domestic and international travel unless the flight takes 14 hours or longer. A few exceptions apply when the employee receives agency approval based on a medical condition, security concerns, lack of availability of coach seats or when required “because of agency mission.”

Now, certainly, senior employees ought to know the rules and they definitely should obey them. If they’re not entitled to fly comfortably, then they’re not entitled.

Still, while I’m often outraged (or at least mighty annoyed) at fraud, waste, and abuse by the federal government, my main reaction here was more along the lines of: Senior government employees aren’t allowed to fly business class on official business? You’re kidding me?

We’ve trying to attract high caliber people to work for the government, presumably. And, with relatively rare exception (mostly in the DC area), senior folks (which, since it’s not clear from this report, I’ll define as GS-13 and up, the equivalent of field grade officers in the military) are middle aged people for whom being crammed into coach seats for more than about fifteen minutes is going to be uncomfortable. And we expect them to arrive at their destination ready to perform their duties. So, why aren’t we treating them accordingly?

For that matter, why don’t the feds have a way to let its employees accumulate frequent flier points so that they can get free upgrades?

And how much did the government spend on this investigation, anyway?

The Do You Have Any Grey Poupon Edition OTB Caption Contest^TM is now over.

(AP Photo/EyePress)

The Winners:

First: Gollum – Dieter Zetsche’s job prospects had fallen mightily since the whole Chrysler debacle.

Second: Steven Taylor – Mike Holmgren gets a new endorsement deal.

Third: Paul Barnes – So environmentally friendly, even Rosie O’Donnell endorses it.

Honorable Mention:

Phil Smith – “I’m telling you, the finish on this car is absolutely impenetrable. As you can see, it’s been sealed.”

John425 – Seal says: You like me! You REALLY, REALLY like me!!!

yetanotherjohn – New evidence of dangerous faults with North Korea’s nuclear program surfaced across the border in China.

Hermoine – “Greetings everyone. I’ve just come from the restroom where I enthusiastically engaged in inappropriate conduct.”

Bithead – Don’t the women all get prettier at closing time?

Stormy Dragon – The used car looked well cared for, but it later turned out to have a defective seal.

Dave schuler – (Lingerie-wearing elephant seal optional)

elliot – Oh good, my sardine and anchovie pizza is here. I’m famished.

Rodney’s Bottom of The Barrel

DRUDGEBREAKING: Enumclaw Motors offers car with tight seals. Developing…

Walter was awarded the car. but was later arrested for transporting illegal levels of fish in a mercury

A big fish aficionado was only bidder on the former Paris Hilton car.

The Monday Contest is now learning hand signals.

Time for Thursday OTB Caption Contest^TM

(AP Photo/EyePress)

Winners will be announced Monday PM