Instahoglets Wednesday

By Steve Hynd

- James Joyner and Matt Yglesias debate why Democrats can't win for losing. Good stuff, although Matt too often seems to be auditioning for the part of VSP nowadays: "American politics in the future will mostly be dominated by a center-right political coalition just as it always has". Is that in the same way that the UK was dominated by an upper-middle class political coalition right up until, post WW2, it wasn't? Where's the fighting spirit and effort to alter paradigms, Matt? 

- Still, Big Tent Democrat gets the fight right - "There is nothing more important that we can do, as citizens, activists or bloggers than fight to pressure DEMOCRATS to do the right thing on OUR issues...It's more important BY FAR than "fighting" for your favorite pol because your favorite pol will ALWAYS, I mean ALWAYS, disappoint you."

- Paul Woodward at War In Context has a story that should scare you. Israel's new government really wants to hit to hit the Iranian leadership, their holiest sites and "anything and everything of value" - and they don't mind embarassing Hillary Clinton or their own ambassador to the U.S. to send that message loud and clear.

- Hagel on Cheney: "The mess that the Bush administration left the Obama administration. I’m a Republican…we got America into two wars, we’ve done great damage to our economy, to our force structure, to our standing in the world. For a Vice President who participated in that, who led in that, to come on and say that this new administration has really put America in danger is just folly."

- Lawrence Wilkerson: Some Truths About Guantanamo Bay. Yes, it could be closed quickly.

- Daniel Larison: The Imperial Double Standard. "Other states do not get to have any tools of coercion, because their use of such tools is automatically unacceptable, and naturally this is all part of his “serious discussion” of diplomacy. These tools of coercion are apparently reserved only for us and those we deem fit to possess them. Our desire to have secure access to the Gulf and its oil is apparently a real interest, but we can’t let anyone else have spheres of influence, because we have increasingly defined the exercise of significant influence by other states to be something akin to aggression, whereas our actual wars of aggression are seriously considered either wars of self-defense or the fulfillment of some high-minded international obligations." Yup, that's American exceptionalism all right. I don't yet see many signs that Clinton Obama foreign policy is trying too hard to unsubscribe from that standard.