It is not easy to win a presidential election when there is a war going on. I'm talking about Obama, not McCain. The Iraq war that everyone thought would be a cakewalk is now in its fifth year, and it will not end anytime soon. The theme of the GOP campaign is going to be that McCain got it right because violence is down ever since he supported President Bush's troop "surge" less than a year ago, and that we might actually win the war.

Obama is no idiot. He certainly know there are things he cannot say on the campaign trail. Such as . . . there is no value in "winning" a war that should have never started. If the war was fought on a false premise, and the U.S. was the aggressor by invading a country that neither attacked or threatened us, what do we gain by winning?

War is a funny thing. The American people are still wary of starting a war without good reason. Political scientists call it the "Vietnam syndrome," borne out of that endless conflict which turned into a quagmire, killing nearly 60,000 American soldiers and maiming many others. But once any war starts, the American people are on board, at least at the beginning, and Our Team deserves to win any war because our troops deserve victory and, hey, we're Americans who mean well and stand for all that's right and good.

I have no doubt that the United States will "win" the Iraq war if our troops stay there long enough. The U.S. has the firepower and resources to win a war against a small country like Iraq, and winning a war like this is akin to the sixth graders kicking the shit out of the third graders in the schoolyard, even after the third graders grab hold of some baseball bats and other weapons to defend themselves.

What does it mean to "win" a war that should have never started? It is conventional wisdom that the United States lost the Vietnam war. But at least one war critic has suggested otherwise: Noam Chomsky, who rose to prominence in the 1960's as an early war protester, peeking out from his Ivory Tower at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to rally anti-war people in Boston. Chomsky notes that the United States dropped more bombs over Vietnam than all of Europe in World War II. That's a lot of bombing, and a lot of destruction, and death. The U.S. killed over a million people in Vietnam, most of them non-soldiers. Our government destroyed the country and its infrastructure. Vietnam was no longer going to be an economic model in Southeast Asia, and it would no longer be able to develop itself economically without the influence and exploitation of the American government, which deemed it God's will that Americans would control the economic life of any government around the world. The U.S. "lost" the Vietnam war because it could not prop up a plastic government in South Vietnam, and when Saigon fell to the communists that was the end of any U.S. influence in that country. That counts as a loss in the American vernacular.

But under Chomsky's view, we did not lost the Vietnam war. We destroyed that country completely, devastated it. The people of Vietnam did not go along with our handpicked dictator and they paid the price for it. We destroyed them. In a sense, we won the Vietnam war by sending a message to other countries that the U.S. means business when it tries to exert control over another country.

This is what's happening in Iraq right now. Maybe the violence is down in that country, but our military has destroyed Iraq, and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Their infrastructure is destroyed. All this happened at great cost to the United States. Many U.S. soldiers are dead or maimed. Hundreds of billions of dollars have gone into the rabbit hole, at no benefit to the American taxpayer or families who are struggling. But through it all, we might actually "win" the war.

Winning is meaningless if you win a fraudulent war. Many investigative journalists over the past few years have exposed the trickery of the Bush administration in selling this war. It was revealed through the Downing Street Memos that the British government, our ally in this war, believed that the Bush administration was fixing the intelligence around the policy. It has been proven through a recent book by Ron Suskind that the Bush administration manufactured a document to "prove" that Saddam Hussein had a connection with al Qaeda, fueling retaliatory anger against Iraq for its (non-existent) role in the 9/11 attacks. It has been proven by many investigative journalists that Bush knew it was highly unlikely that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction before the war started. If winning a war like this has any real value to us, I am not aware of it.

Obama knows that he can forcefully argue to the American people that the Republican Party should be severely punished for its shenanigans in Iraq, and that McCain should pay the price as Bush's partner in this disaster. But he knows that he cannot do this. It is still unique in American politics for someone to win the presidency by pushing an anti-war, anti-imperialist platform. The fire-breathing rightists will question his patriotism, and too many Americans hold to the view that you cannot campaign this way when our boys are in harm's way in Iraq.

The sad truth is that had Bush found a way to end the Iraq war three years ago and claim victory, the war would be a distant memory today, even though the war was a fraud from the start. That is how American politics works. Too many people associate patriotism with support for any war, and they still believe that any war that our government starts should be won. McCain is an old warrior who will capitalize on any positive news from Iraq. How Obama can play this disgraceful war to his advantage under those circumstances is a mystery to me. But the solution means everything for those who see McCain as guardian of the old school, and Obama as the best way for us to start picking up the pieces.

A few months ago the Onion ran a satirical piece on the television news shows where the panelists seem to know something about every issue. But this parody shows them bullshitting their way through arcane subject matters. It was obvious the panels were not prepared, but they know how to sound informed. It was funny, but real life now imitates art. First, watch this video:

In The Know: Situation In Nigeria Seems Pretty Complex

John McCain's Vice Presidential pick, Sarah Palin, was finally interviewed on national television the other day after two weeks of seclusion. She was asked some basic questions about American foreign policy. Her scripted answers were not enough, so the interviewer kept asking the question in a different way. She does not know what the Bush Doctrine is. Any political junkie knows that the Bush Doctrine means the U.S. can launch a pre-emptive war against a hostile foreign state, i.e., Iraq. Take a look at the video below and see how Palin has a future working for the Onion:

Election day is two months away. The candidates have been campaining for over a year. A few issues are being thrown around from time to time, but for the most part nothing of importance is on the table and we are about to elect a President the way we vote for American Idol.

The best indication that American political culture is on the level of Saturday morning cartoons is John McCain's selection of an obscure vice presidential candidate. Obscure is OK as far as it goes, but this choice was obscure for a reason. Someone must have told McCain that he needed a woman on the ticket to pull in Hillary Clinton's supporters and also that his running mate has to be a far-right winger, and a flat-earther wouldn't hurt ("global warming is not a problem"). Sarah Palin is apparently the only politician in the country who fits the description.

Whatever your feeling about Obama, we can all agree that he's no idiot. He taught constitutional law, and that's good enough for me. The Bush administration is routinely violated the Constitution, and even the conservative Supreme Court has several times overturned on constitutional grounds the administration's bogus military tribunals to try suspected terrorists. This is a big deal, as the Supreme Court normally does not like to second-guess the President on war and peace and national security. This and other examples of lawbreaking (such as wiretapping without a warrant in violation of U.S. law) makes it imperative that a true thinker occupies the Oval Office, not a dimwit n'er do well like George W. Bush or some fuddy-duddy who's still fighting the Vietnam War (John McCain). Obama's running mate,

Joe Biden, has also taught constitutional law and chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee for many years, vetting Supreme Court nominees and standing up to Ronald Reagan's extremist nominee, Robert Bork, in 1987. Imagine, two thinkers on a national ticket. two guys who know what the rules are and how not to break them. This is not to glorify Obama and Biden, but at a minimum they seem competent.

That cannot be said for the McCain ticket. Choosing Sarah Palin was a sick joke. He did so to prove a point: that this fuddy-duddy can work with right-wing extemists, too, and that he is hip enough to run with a woman who can raise kids and shoot moose at the same time. What makes this choice so shocking is not the political calculation but that Palin is an airhead, a former beauty queen who does not read books or much of anything else. We know this because her first televised interview (after the McCain campain kept her away from the press for two weeks) shows her to be uninformed but quite eager to spit out talking points and other things she memorized during her two-week training period. Her job was to look cute, call the interviewer "Charlie" throughout the session and talk the right wing talk that will keep the Republicans excited.

The worst comment she made was to denigate experience in government: "We’ve got to remember what the desire is in this nation at this time. It is for no more politics as usual and somebody’s big, fat resume maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment, where, yes, they’ve had opportunities to meet heads of state." What is she saying? Better to have no experience at all? The anti-intellectual tone of Republican politics has hit a new low.

So shallow are the people who are excited by Palin. The Republican base loves her, but Palin's interview was pathetic. The interviewer asked if she agreed with the Bush Doctrine. If you follow politics, you know all about the Bush Doctrine. Every President has a foreign policy doctrine. What made Bush's unique is that he overturned decades and decades of U.S. policy against pre-emptive war. The Iraq war changed that, tearing this country apart, killing thousands, costing hundreds of billions of dollars and ruining our efforts to really go after the terrorists who attacked us on September 11. Political thinkers have argued about the Bush Doctrine, but Palin has never heard of it. This was apparent from her answers and facial expressions. Rather than answer the question, she went off on some rehearsed answer about how American fights its enemies and if elected everything will be wonderful. The interview was very painful to watch, and I'll link it here if you can stomach it. More of the interview here, equally sad, and full of cliches.

So we have hit rock bottom in American politics. Rock bottom. Another consequential election and a 72 year old Republican nominee with health problems has chose a potential successor who can't answer basic questions about foreign and domestic policy. Take someone off the street at random and that's McCain's vice presidential pick. We've had bad vice presidents before, like Spiro Agnew and Dan Quayle. But nothing like this, and even more shocking, McCain is running neck and neck with Obama. I always knew the day was near that political culture in the U.S. would hit bottom. Still, it feels funny to be there.

I don't know much about Richard Wright, the Pink Floyd keyboardist who died from cancer on Monday at the age of 65. Richard Wright was one of those rock stars who was heard but not seen. Pink Floyd was not a band of personalities like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. They spoke through their music, and if you grew up listening to Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and the Wall, you heard Richard Wright loud and clear.

Pink Floyd relied heavily on the keyboards and piano. It always seemed to me that Wright was to keyboards what George Harrison was to guitar. Not flashy, but innovative, using his instrument to develop the song and move it along. It was Wright who played the most discordant keyboards I have ever heard, from Dark Side of the Moon. Next time you feel like shit, when you hate the world, when you've had enough, cue up Us and Them. It will not make you feel any better. It will make you feel like you are not alone. And that it's OK to hate the world.

The song is Us and Them. It's the only song from Dark Side of the Moon that I am not tired of. This was a song about alienation. Perfect for the early 1970's, when the world was leaving a traumatic era and entering a new one, equally traumatic. 1973 seems like a scary year to me, though I barely remember it. To me, Us and Them is the sound of 1973. Listen to the discordant notes that Wright plays as he brings the listener into the depths of early 1970's madness, particularly at the beginning and 33 seconds into the song.

Watching a political debate is like watching the playoffs when your favorite baseball team is playing. Its the whole ball of wax. The debate can make or break a candidate, and a bad play can send the team packing for the winter. You watch both with a knot in your stomach, waiting for disaster. This is why post-debate analysis is useless. You see what you want to see, and unless your candidate takes a dump on stage, he's the winner.

Friday night's debate was a good one. Neither candidate is a idiot. This is a sharp break from the past. The 2000 and 2004 presidential debates were notable for George W. Bush's lightweight responses to serious questions. McCain is no Bush, but the debates suffer from the same flaw every election cycle: the candidates are pandering to the lowest common denominator.

By now, any voter who does not have a favorite candidate is a sorry spectacle. It's too late in the game to be an undecided voter. What does it take to know the difference between the candidates? This is why the candidates, during the debates, repeatedly say something like this: "and this is where we have a fundamental disagreement." The candidates have to slam the undecideds over the head with crap like this.

The debates will never allow the candidates to reveal what they truly think. That would alienate the wobbly supporters who switch sides every other week. It would also get the candidates in a hole that they cannot get out of, as serious answers about the horrible state of the country can never be fully explained during a debate, and the viewers will be too confused to understand what is going on.

An example of this is the discussion about the Iraq war. Obama scored points when he talked about the outrageous financial cost of the war (hundreds of billions of dollars) at a time when the U.S. economy is melting down and the government has to spend roughly the same amount of money to bail out the failed financial institutions. McCain responds with a message that most people want to hear: we are winning the Iraq war and that victory will keep us safe. This puts Obama on the defensive, as no one wants to lose the war and therefore we have to keep throwing money away in Iraq to prevent a backslide.

Obama did tell McCain that McCain was wrong to support the war when it started and that Obama knew better than to join in Bush's folly. But Obama cannot go any further without being labeled an anti-American war loser. That is a shame, because then McCain can talk about the joys of victory, reminding us that he fought in Vietnam, when the U.S. lost, and how horrible it was to return to the U.S. as a war loser. The problem is obvious. People like McCain are re-fighting the Vietnam war. There is nothing worse than losing a war, as far as these war-mongers are concerned. Losing a war is death. It's that macho view towards war that places the pro-war side on the offensive during any debate.

Obama could respond by saying that McCain has a pro-war mentality and that a McCain victory will mean more wars that kill more Americans and cost hundreds of billions of additional American dollars. But he can't say this, because the knee-jerk and macho pro-war view will resonate with the undecideds.

Here is what I would love to hear from Obama, though I know he will never do it, for the reasons outlined above:

"Senator McCain is no different from Bush. He wanted war in Iraq and stood by an incompetent president for years. Senator McCain says now that we have to stay in Iraq in order to protect American security. In other words, after fouling up American foreign policy and creating a risk to our country that did not exist prior to the Iraq war, we have to risk more lives and 10 billion dollars a month for the foreseable future to get us out of a mess that we never should have entered into, like a drug addict who owes the violent loan shark money in order to feed his drug habit. Ladies and gentlemen, Senator McCain may not want people to remember that he is a Republican, but he and Bush are joined at the hip. The Republicans should be severely punished for what they did in Iraq, and for the burdens that this war is causing this counry. If you want four more years of this nonsense, vote for McCain. If not, vote for me."