withdrawal symptoms

where most see the recent clash in basra between maliki's u.s.-backed forces and sadr's militiamen as a further slide into quicksand, bob wright @ bloggingheads.tv sees a bright red exit sign:

bob wright: well, let me tell you — get onto why i felt a little more sanguine after this, about the consequences of american withdrawal, or at least a little less concerned about the possibility of chaos engulfing the region if america withdraws. what you saw in this was that, contrary to some stereotypes, actually none of the parties involved are crazy, okay? maliki did miscalculate a little, but once he got himself into trouble, all of the parties saw that it was in their interest to work out a peaceful solution, and they did it. and they did it without any american help. they did with iranian help. we were not involved in the solution. they worked it out without us, okay? the only effect we may have had is by doing a little more — helping maliki inflict a little more damage than he would have otherwise. it may have weakened sadr's bargaining position a little, so maybe he got a little worse deal than he would have, but as you yourself said, it's far from clear whether it's better that sadr lose or that he prevail among the shiites. i mean, we don't even — we just don't know. the main thing is that first you get order on the shiite side, then you can proceed to hope for shiite-sunni reconciliation, and as far as the ordering process on the shiite side, i thought they passed the test. y'know, they worked it out. it's stable, it did not — all hell did not break loose. we had nothing to do with the solution. iran did, and that's just ... what we're stuck with is that iran is going to be the source of, a great source of power in the shiite south, and we insured that by invading iraq, and we gotta live with it.

unfortunately both pride and greed make it extremely unlikely that america will decide to "live with it", which guarantees that we'll continue to overstay our welcome in southern iran iraq ...

giuliani campaign '08: r.i.p.

to all but the very last of his desperate disciples, the ruination of giuliani's ascension to washington was all but foretold in scripture. it is only fitting that the trajectory of his heavenly rise and meteoric fall be properly documented, if only in part, to the best of my mortal powers, in this humble shrine:

(i) the adoration of the magi mayor:

moses ... or rudy, america's mayor, has come down from the mountaintop with "the twelve committments" ...

---

(ii) the gospel according to you-know-who:

bryan wiliams: ... these frequent — some would say constant — mentions of 9-11, you've trailed off a little bit lately ... rudy: y'know — y'know, bryan, i don't, i don't think that's correct.

---

(iii) the crucifixtion and burial:

tom brokaw: ... that whole conventional wisdom that he made a mistake in not going into iowa and new hampshire — i think he might have been out earlier if he had gone to iowa or new hampshire, or even to south carolina. look, he had a lot of baggage that began to develop ...

bob wright and francis fukuyama:

francis fukuyama: ... and [giuliani] has built his entire candidacy out of a kind of morbid 9-11 nostalgia ... saying [chuckling] if you really liked, uh, if you like 9-11, y'know, and everything that's happened since then, you'll get more of it with me ...

gotta love bob's reaction ...

josh marshall:

... the funny thing about rudy is that while he ran on 'staying on offense' against islamic bad guys, his whole race was defined by running away from fights. we've talked a lot about his alleged 'strategy' of ignoring the early races and focusing all his energy on florida which would launch him to glory on super tuesday. and it's an open secret that this 'strategy' was really more a work-in-progress rationalization for his collapse of support in the early states. rudy, i believe, outspent everyone in new hampshire. and he campaigned there a lot. but it's more than that. if you look closely, every time it didn't look like it was going to be an easy victory in a state, rudy's campaign packed up and left. or not quite packed up, but basically backed out, made an occasional visit, said it'd be nice to win but that it wasn't really necessary. it was somewhat the case in iowa, totally the case in new hampshire and the same in south carolina too. i think it was the same basically in michigan, though i'm not as familiar with the particulars there. ... with rudy, he just finally ran out of places to run.

abc news:

[fellow former new york mayor] ed koch, who has feuded with giuliani for years, was delighted with giuliani's crushing defeat in florida. he crowed, before the final votes were even tallied, that he was certain the verdict by florida's voters "will drive a stake through his heart. the beast is dead."

---

(iv) the resurrection:

i don't anticipate one. quite possibly the greatest story never to be told.

---

update: from the l.a. times ... (h/t josh marshall)

the failed campaign of rudolph w. giuliani can claim one distinction: the worst bang for the buck 1 of any delegate winner in presidential politics history. the former new york mayor, who dropped his republican bid for the presidency this week, disclosed thursday in a filing with the federal election commission that he raised $58.5 million and spent $48.8 million in 2007. with his donors' money, giuliani captured a single national delegate, in nevada. at that rate, it would have taken close to $60 billion in spending to capture the 1,191 delegates needed to win the nomination.

1 to be fair to "america's mayor", anyone who spent money on the nomination who failed to get any delegates at all would have a worse bang for their buck.