suburbanmusings

Slightly self-indulgent I know, but hey it's gotta be done and it's harder then to do than you might think!

1. Sara, Fleetwood Mac

2. Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels), Arcade Fire

3. Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out), Arcade Fire

4. Atomic, Blondie

5. Suspicious Minds, Elvis Presley

6. You Can’t Hurry Love, Diana Ross & The Supremes

7. Air 'On The G String', J.S. Bach

8. Float On, Modest Mouse

9. Canon In D, Pachobel

10. Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, Edith Piaf

Record: Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels), Arcade Fire
Book: A Short History Of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
Luxury Item: A Machete

The terrible attacks committed in Mumbai, clearly designed to kill as many innocent people as possible have confirmed that Al Qaeda-influenced terrorism continues to present an unacceptable threat to global security. It is probable that such an ambitious and well co-ordinated attack was authorised and planned several hundred miles north west of Mumbai in the lawless tribal regions of Pakistan where the Al Qaeda leadership is currently holed up. We know for a fact that several of the al Qaeda plots in Britain were planned and directed by al Qaeda leaders based in North West Pakistan. The leaders of the 7/7 and 21/7 plots learn their bomb making skills at terrorist traning camps in Pakistan, as did the leader of the ‘Fertilliser Bomb Plot’ and the ‘Gas Limos Bomb Plot’. The alleged plot to blow up a dozen airliners in 2006 also appeared to be directed from al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, in particular by one Rashid Rauf.

Rashid Rauf briefly made the headlines this week when it was announced that he had met his untimely end as the result of a US missile strike in North West Pakistan, of course that news has since been overshadowed by more recent and bloody events. It appears that the target of the strike had been Abu Zubair al-Masri, a top level Al Qaeda commander and explosives expert whose death was confirmed by an Islamist website. However, sometimes you are judged by the company you keep and the same website also reported the deaths of Rashid Rauf and three other militants.

This strike, by an unmanned drone, was the the most recent of several similar strikes since the summer. According to The Times President Bush signed of new rules of engagement this summer which allowed missile strikes to be launched with a much lower probability of success, 50% as opposed to 90% previously. These strikes appear to have been successful in putting pressure on al Qaeda’s leadership and as a result the group has been forced to move senior leaders out of the tribal areas and ino the North West Frontier Province. An American intelligence official told The Times the upsurge in attacks was the resut of fears of an al Qaeda spectecular, “But there is also a very real threat of an attack in Obama’s first days and even the bitterest loser wouldn’t want to see that.”

The use of unmanned Predator drones to kill terrorist targets is intertwined with the history of America's 10 year old struggle with al Qaeda. In late 2000 the CIA used the prototype Predator drone to track bin Laden in a prioject dubbed, “Aghan Eyes”. At this stage the drones were unarmed and there was considerable debate in Washington about whether it would be illegal to assasinate bin Laden, despite there being several opportunities to do so. Of course 9/11 altered perceptions of the threat posed by al Qaeda and on 3 November 2002 the US used a Predator drone to kill Abu Ali al-Harithi (believed to be behind the USS Cole bombing) and five other militants as they travelled in a car in Yemen. Although the strike was sucesful it proved immensley controversial within intelligence circles in Washington. The tactic was not repeated until there were a handful of strikes in the tribal regions of Pakistan in 2005 and 2006 which again killed senior al Qaeda leaders. The upsurge in attacks since the summer appears to be an attempt by Gorge Bush to ensure that he piles on the pressure on the al Qaeda leadership before Obama is innaugurated.

Of course the Predator strikes are still immensley controversial. Assasination is illegal under American law that much is true, yet so is euthanasia; the law is no guide to wheher something is morally right or wrong. It is terrible when any innocent civillian dies but Predator strikes are highly targeted and selective and very few civillians have been killed as a result. The civillian deaths that have occurred are tragic but they must be balanced against the potential civillian casualties that would occur if al Qaeda was given free reign to commit atrocities. It is immensley desirable that terrorists are brought to justice through legal means, indeed the vast majority are, but that is not possible for those who hideout in the lawless tribal regions of Afghanistan. Rahsid Rauf was arrested at America’s request in 2006, however he quickly escaped after Pakistani police allowed him to have his lunch at Burger King and then pray at a local mosque. Just the slighterst, merest hint of collusion there, do you reckon? Therefore we need to take a realistic approach to dealing with the global menace presented by al Qaeda, in my opinion it is essential to apply military and criminal pressure on the top leadership whilst pursuading potential footsoldiers and sympathisers to turn their back on violent Jihad.

The real case against the use of Predator strikes is not a moral or legal argument but rather the fact that they may be counterproductive. The Times claimed that the Pakistani Government has given its tacit approval of the drone strikes, it is, after all engaged in it own brutal war against al Qaeda and the Taliban. This may be so but even after Musharraf’s removal it is unclear where the real power lies in the country and if there are too many strikes it could lead to popular unrest against the elected Government. Therefore I believe that once Obama comes to power drone strikes will again need a 90% probability of success before they are authorised. Pakistan has so many enormous problems of its own that a few strikes against foreign militants in the backward tribal provinces are unlikely to provoke mass unrest amongst the Pakistani population. This risk level must then be balanced against the opportunity to eliminate a senior terrorist, such as Rauf, and thereby the potential to save thousands of lives. If the US had assasinated bin Laden in 1998, it may have been illegal but few would have heard about it, nobody would have much cared and think what might have been avoided; 9/11, the War in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq, 7/7, the attacks in Mumbai. Surely it would have been a morally justifiable act?

The other argument against drone strikes is that they encourage increased support for al Qaeda, but this is a fallacy; just like the argument that the Iraq War ‘made’ people blow themselves up on tube trains. If someone decides to support a murderous terrorist group as a result of a strike against a terrorist then the chances are that they would have been sympathetic to that ideology in any case. It is a perverted and distorted interperatation of Islam that causes people to kill as many innocent civillians as possible, not foreign policy. After all the predator strikes were ordered in Washington so why did Islamist militants decide to massacre Indian Hindus waiting for their commuter trains in Mumbai?

I meant to do this piece a few weeks ago but never really got round to it, since then every man and his dog written about this subject. I guess I’ll have to scoop everyone else and do a pre-emptive post on Bush’s legacy instead. Anyway here’s what I feel are the main challenges and priorities for President-elect Obama.

1. THE ECONOMY

The world economy is slowing for the first time since 1989 and, more importantly for Obama, America is entering a period of recession. Not only is the US President the Commander-in-Chief but he also expected to be in the country’s Economist-in Chief and one of his resumed duties (if he wants to be re-elected) is to ensure the continued economic growth that Americans have come to see as their birth right. Therefore the economy must be Obama’s top priority, yet this is one area in which there is only so much he can actually do. After a slow start global leaders seem to have made the right decisions as they prepare their slowing economies for a ‘soft’ crash landing and so far they have avoided the mistakes (reduced liquidity, protectionism) that led to the Great Depression. Certainly the economic summit pencilled in for January will be a good opportunity for world leaders to plan a co-ordinated fiscal stimulus package for the global economy. World leaders will be looking to Obama to provide leadership and he must make sure that all the major economies agree to a co-ordinated fiscal stimulus package, otherwise the idea won’t work. Obama should also exploit the influence he will wield during his honeymoon period to encourage China and the Gulf states to invest in the IMF and to promote movement on cross-border regulation and a stabilisation in oil prices. However recessions are inevitable and the best Obama can really hope to do is to make the crash landing as soft as possible and ensure the economy is well prepared for the recovery projected to take place in 2010. There is a real danger in Obama trying to do too much to rescue the economy before it is ready. Both Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have signalled their support for a multi-billion dollar bail out of America’s stricken car industry. This would be a profoundly stupid act. In the 1970s Labour pumped millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into the failing British Leyland. The problem with British Leyland was that it was rotten to the core and nobody wanted to buy its shambolic products, as a result the company haemorrhaged taxpayers’ money while more productive sectors of the economy were strangled through want of investment. In the same way the American car industry is in decline because is uncompetitive and consumers have stopped buying gas guzzling vehicles. By bailing out the automobile producers Obama would be hanging a millstone from the neck of the American economy, it would also increase the already worrying national debt and prompt foreign producers to increase their tariffs, further hindering global growth. Of course bailing out the car industry is a crowd pleaser especially after public disquiet over the banking bailout, however, the difference is that the taxpayer has bought a stake in the banks that will probably reap a profit, furthermore bank failures are contagious and the collapse of the banking system would cause the collapse of the ‘real’ economy. Failures in the automobile industry are not contagious and they are not crucial to economic recovery but I fully expect Obama to press ahead with the bail out in January. That’s democracy for you I guess.

2. IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN

For the first time since Nixon a U.S. president will inherit an overseas war, in fact Obama will inherit two of them. However Iraq, which was the defining issue of the 2004 election, is not quite the challenge it once was. After a year of tough negotiations the Iraqi cabinet this week approved a State of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the US. This is an understanding that US forces will withdraw from Iraqi cites by 2009 and that all US combat troops will be out of Iraq by 2011. Obama produced his own timetable for a US withdrawal but he would be well advised to take the advice of US commanders and Iraqi leaders and follow events on the ground. By 2011 Iraq will almost certainly be free of foreign forces, until then it is hugely reliant on the American Army for combat support, intelligence, training, equipment, air cover, transport, logistics and funding. It would be unwise and dangerous for Obama to pull out US troops too quickly, whatever the temptations or pressures to do so. Iraq will need US political and economic support for a long time to come but unless the insurgency returns with a vengeance, Obama will still be able to go into the 2012 election with all US combat troops out of Iraq.

As the Iraq War draws down so the Afghan War drags on and the aims of the war start to look diffuse and hopeless. This week in Afghanistan a dozen school girls were sprayed with acid for the crime of claiming an education, it is unclear who the attackers were. There are too few coalition troops in Afghanistan and unless Obama can encourage his fans Merkel and Sarkozy to share the risks, America will have to deploy formations from Iraq to Afghanistan as soon as events allow. However the Taliban cannot be defeated militarily and Afghanistan is too poor to be able to raise a big army in the way that Iraq has done. Indeed Afghanistan cannot even afford to maintain its current army of 80,000 corrupt and largely incompetent soldiers. Therefore Obama will need to work out a strategy that encourages a political solution to the conflict. I would favour a divide and rule strategy that would allow more moderate elements of the Taliban back into Afghan politics provided they renounce political violence, accept democracy and the rule of secular law, denounce Al Qaeda and accept the presence of non-Muslims in Afghanistan. This is, of course, easier said than done but there are signs that Mullah Omar and Hamid Karzai are ready talk once a strategic objective has been established America has vast resources it can mobilise to achieve that end. The coalition would then be free to isolate or destroy the hard core elements of the insurgency which would lead to stabilisation and possible a drawdown of troops, although I fear that this is unlikely to happen within the next decade.

Pakistan will also be a major headache for Obama as the country continues to lurch towards bankruptcy and an Iraq-style insurgency. The President will want to strengthen ties with the civilian Government, push for a peace deal with India and encourage increased international aid. However it is unclear what role the Islamist infiltrated ISI play in Afghanistan and the country continues to provide sanctuary for Al Qaeda and Islamist terrorists. Whilst Obama will need to encourage Pakistan to continue its own offensive against the Taliban I would also strongly defend the US air strikes on terrorist targets within Pakistan. Al Qaeda represents an unacceptable threat to global security (that includes Pakistan) and although air strikes have obvious and painful drawbacks they are legitimate acts of self-defence. However, Obama must get used to walking a diplomatic tightrope when dealing with Pakistan.

3. ISRAEL, PALESTINE AND THE WAR ON TERROR

Condi Rice made 22 trips in two years to Israel/Palestine but came away with nothing, yet there is a chance, just a chance, that Obama could help orchestrate a lasting peace across the Middle East. In 2002 Saudi Arabia offered Israel a permanent peace, a veto on the return of Palestinian refugees and diplomatic recognition from the Muslim World if it withdrew to pre-1967 borders. The proposal seems to be back on the table and the Sunday Times reported both that Kadima leader Tzipi Livni backed the idea and that Obama commented to an aide “Israel would be crazy to refuse a deal that offered peace with the Muslim World”. I not convinced about the veracity of the Sunday Times’ report but I do see an opportunity for Obama to produce a lasting peace. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has spoken about withdrawal from the West Bank and I believe that with concerted pressure from Obama the tough but pragmatic Tzipi Livni could be persuaded to make a substantial pull out. I can’t envisage a full Israeli withdrawal from the disputed territory and Obama would have to be extremely tough on both sides in order to hammer out a lasting deal. Yet with both Israel and Fatah ready to talk, negotiations already taking place with Syria over the Golan Heights and initiatives from Saudi Arabia it is possible, however unlikely, that Obama could pull off some kind of ‘Grand Bargain’. If it worked it would be the diplomatic coup of the century but he will need to move fast. The fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is already starting to disintegrate and if another intifada is launched, the chance of peace will be scuppered for another five years.

One would hope that peace in Palestine would assuage anti-Americanism on the Arab street, yet contrary to popular belief it would not remove the threat from al Qaeda and Islamist terrorism. For a start Islamist terrorists attack and kill for more Muslims than they do Westerners. Secondly they believe in the supremacy of 'true believers' and to re-instate their idea of the Caliphate by destroying Western influence, the Shia and those Sunnis that oppose them. Islamism is an aggressive, imperialist, expansionist force and it would pose a threat to global security even with the most timid and meek US foreign policy. Furthermore Islamist groups are opposed to the very existence of the Israeli state and even after a peace deal they would pursue its destruction. Therefore the struggle against Islamist terror will continue; I wrote an post on how to win the ‘War on Terror’ several months ago and my views remain the same so I won’t repeat them in detail. The most important point is that Obama follows a divide and rule strategy, i.e. he maintains military/legal pressure on the al Qaeda leadership whilst at the same time disrupting the flow of new recruits to the organisation. Obama does appear to understand this and has pledged to close Guantanamo very soon after taking office, though is unclear what he will do with inmates that cannot be tried in the US but cannot be deported to their home countries for fear that they will be tortured. I would also hope that very early on in his presidency Obama makes a trip to the Middle East and makes a speech (ideally in Cairo or Riyadh) offering the hand of friendship to the Muslim World. This would have the very real effect of helping to atone for the perceived faults of the Bush years and start the process of offering a constructive alternative to Islamist propaganda about the West. The spectre of an al Qaeda attack on America will hang over Obama’s first term and perhaps for many years after that, indeed al Zawahiri has already taunted the president and labelled him a ‘house negro’. Al Qaeda will hope that a terrorist atrocity will goad Obama into blundering into the Middle East like a dinosaur into a tar pit, just as Bush did, for Jihad against the ‘crusaders’ is the group’s life blood and its best recruitment sergeant. Yet Barack Obama is possessed of a preternatural calm and if he has to take the 3 a.m. call, I am confident he would make the right decision.

Sadly the list of challenges Obama must deal with goes on to include Global Warming, suspected Iranian nuclear proliferation, North Korean nuclear proliferation, global trade, Darfur, global poverty, global disease and a host of other problems. However I’ll give him a chance to deal with the first three problems before I come back to the rest.

The clue was in the way the two countries commemorated the end of the war. This week has seen a series of events marking the 90th anniversary of the 1918 armistice which invariably concentrated on the terrible human cost of what has been described as the “greatest tragedy in human history”. I am well aware of the epic tragedy of the Great War but I have often thought that the worst tragedy, from Britain’s point of view at least, was that almost a million died for no good cause in a war that the country might have been better staying out of. There are several theories on the causes of the war ranging from the Marxist view that it was the result of capitalist competition to the conservative belief that the war was a foreign affair that did not threaten Britain’s national interests. However after watching David Reynolds’ excellent recent BBC4 programme, Armistice, which told the story from Germany’s point of view I have found cause to change my mind. I do now tend to side with the view that not only was the war Germany’s fault but that the military dictatorship that ran the German Empire was, in essence, the embodiment of aggressive pan-Germanic nationalism that found its logical conclusion in the cult of Nazism, and as such it could not have been allowed to triumph. For me this best represented in the way the two countries marked the end of the war. After the war Britain unveiled the beautiful, Lutyens designed Cenotaph which stands as a monument to the pity of war and, as such, represents one of the most powerful pieces of anti-war art man has conceived. In 1927 the Germans built the Tannenburg Memorial to mark their great victory over the Russians at the Battle of Tannenburg in 1914 as well as the defeat of the Slavs by the Teutonic Knights on the same ground in 1410. The Tannenburg Memorial, designed to resemble a medieval citadel, was in effect a representation of Germanic racial superiority and militant nationalism, it is not surprising that Hitler used the memorial to hold Nazi party rallies upon coming to power in 1933.

Hitler infamously decided to “go into politics” when he heard news that the armistice had been signed and he represents the logical culmination of Germany’s militaristic nationalist streak that had gathered steam under Kaiser Wilhelm. Germany was only unified in 1871 but it had long been the home of some of Europe’s greatest philosophers, scientists, artists, musicians, writers and architects, by 1900 it had also become Europe’s greatest industrial economy. Yet Germany was still, in effect, an autocracy and when Wilhelm II ascended to the throne he began to systematically dismantle the system of alliances that Bismarck had built up with Germany’s potential enemies. Kaiser Wilhelm was obsessed with claiming Germany’s “place in the sun” and began a dangerous game of escalating political tensions in Europe. The Kaiser lived in a world far removed from reality in which he was brought up to believe he was God’s representative on earth; he was obsessed with militaristic parades, maneuvres and uniforms and revelled in his official title of ‘Supreme War Lord’. It was the Kaiser that encouraged the expansion of Germany’s massive armaments industry and put the military high command in positions of political power. Although he probably did not intend to trigger a World War, the Kaiser never acknowledged any responsibility for his role in starting the conflagration and his only expressed regrets concerned his own forced abdication and Germanys failure to emerge victorious. On his forced abdication he wrote that it was "deepest, most disgusting shame ever perpetrated by a people in history, the Germans have done to themselves”. The fact that more than 10 million souls had perished in the previous 4 years seems to have made little if any impression on him.

In many ways Hitler was the direct heir to the Kaiser’s autocratic rule, both men were heavily influenced by all aspects of militarism and both believed in the creation of a German Empire and the superiority of the German race. Like Hitler, the Kaiser blamed the Jews for his misfortunes and shortly after his abdication he wrote "[the Jews] are a nuisance that humanity must get rid of some way or other. I believe the best would be gas!” After the fall of Paris in 1940 the Kaiser sent a telegram to Hitler staing "Congratulations, you have won using my troops.”

The Kaiser almost certainly never appreciated the cost of war, his experience of war extended to reviewing parade ground maneuvres and dressing in militay uniforms, and he was completely out of his depth as a national leader during wartime. From 1916 onwards Germany was effectively a military dictatorship under the leadership of Paul von Hindenburg and Eric Ludendorff. Germany had always been a militaristic nation indeed it was born out of the Franco-Prussian War. The German military leadership activiely planned a war of aggression against the rest of Europe from the early 1900s. The Schliffen Plan advocated invading neutral Belgium and Holland in order to destroy the French and British armies in the field leaving Germany free to concentrate on winning an empire in the east. In order to achieve this long standing aim, Germany had a large standing army based in barracks on specially built railway lines that criss-crossed Germany from West to East. Again the comparisons with Hitler’s Germany are obvious; Hitler re-built the army, replaced the railways with autobahns and improved the Schilffen Plan but Germany’s war aims had changed little since the 1900s. Both Ludendorff and von Hindeburg played key roles in Hitler’s rise to power, although he had been the first to rquest peace Ludendorff invented and propogated the ‘stab in the back’ myth that helped bring the Nazis to power. The anti-semitic Ludendorff also took part in the Munich Putsch and was the Nazis’ first candidate for president. As president von Hindenburg, who had enjoyed a personality cult smilar to Hitler’s, allowed Hitler to dsband the Reichstag and pass the Enabling Act, which effectively made Germany a one-party state. Although both Lundendorff and von Hindenburg took a personal dislike to Hitler, (Ludendorff presciently stated “this evil man will plunge our Reich into the abyss”), they both believed in the military domination of Europe through the superiority of the German race. It is simply the case that Hitler represented the logical culmination of the Germanic militaristic nationalism that had developed throughout the 19th century. Indeed von Hindenburg was given a full state funeral by the Nazi Party and buried in that monument to German nationalsim, the Tannenburg Memorial.

Of course the other players in the war were from perfect, (Tsar Nicholas probably holds as much responsibility as his German cousin) but the fact remains that Germany used the conflagaration in th Balkans as the excuse to put into action the war plans that had been developed 20 years earlier. It was Germany that declared war on France and Russia and Britain only became involved when Belgium was invaded four days later. With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that more could have been done to try and avoid war but one Germany had invaded France and Belgium then Britain could only make one of two choices. It could defend France and Belgium against German aggression or, like America, it could leave events to play themselves out. If Britain had decided against war then Germany would almost certainly have been victorious, it was the militarily superior nation, but we must ask ourselves what kind of world that would have resulted. Perhaps the Nazis may not have come to power but Germany’s embryonic democracy would also have been crushed. Europe would have been dominated by an aggressive military dictatorship and Britain, like America, might have found itself dragged into war in any case. The bottom line is that Britain, France and America, although imperfect, were still liberal democracies and they were able to prevent the domination of Europe by a military dictatorship. And although the Treaty of Versailles was deeply flawed it was, at least, partially succesful in establishing democracy in the rest of Europe. The human cost of the war was truly apocalyptic and, some might argue, pyrhic but ultimately the cause was right; on the Western Front at any rate. Of course the Treaty of Versailles was fatally flawed and as Marshal Foch predicted it was not peace but “An armistice for 20 years”. For it was Germans that were still infatuated with nationalism, that fell for the ‘stab in the back’ myth and ultimately elected the war veteran who had gone into politics after hearing of the armistice. After all Hitler was wildly popular in Germany until 1943 and it was Germany’s consript army that enthusiastically marched on Moscow and Paris and laid the European continent to waste. Most terribly of all, the existence of the holocaust was well known to the German people, many of whom did nothing some of whom manufactured Zyklon B, others who drove the cattle tains with their human cargoes, others who poured the gas pellets through the air vents. For it was not only in Adolf Hitler that ultra-nationalism reached its terrible but logical conclusion.

The two world wars were, in essence, part of the same struggle against the same enemy. The enemy wasn’t so much the Kaiser or Ludendorff of Hitler, it was militaristic nationalism. We can never be sure but it seems that nationalism in Europe has been defeated, indeed in the dying days of World War II the Tannenburg Memorial was dynamited by the SS as they fled the advancing Russians. The aggressive natioanlism that scarred Germany for so long appears to hav been buried with it. The price paid by humanity during this struggle is almost inconceivable, yet the sacrifice of previous generations reminds us of the reckoning we face when humans are seduced by militarism, nationalsim or supremacism. That is why we should never forget.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00fcy1p/Armistice/

It would be the last thing he would want to be associated with but there is an increasing sense of pathos surrounding John McCain’s election campaign. There is something about the proud, old veteran looking increasingly out of his depth as he makes his final stand that makes me wince in sympathy. The sad truth is that I don’t believe McCain is cut out to be president; the man can’t even manage his own campaign competently. As for Sarah Palin, if she ever gets to within spitting disance of the Whitehouse, then I’m moving to another planet.

The case for Obama was articulately expressed by Colin Powell; Obama has the potential to be a transformational figure and, as such, someone who may be capable of repairing America’s tarnished reputation. I am not convinced by Obama’s domestic or foreign policy pronouncements but he certainly seems better cut out for the role than the current incumbent. In short he appears to be the best man for the job.

I used to think McCain was a man of principle and integrity, but his choice of the uber-populist Palin and his Karl-Rove-style dirty tricks campaign has shown that he does not always exercise great integrity or judgement. McCain has isolated himself from moderates and taken a pummelling from Obama’s multi-million dollar campaign. He would have been far better to have stuck to his core-principles and adopted a campaign similar to the one espoused by the veteran in the video below. This video struck me not because of what the veteran was saying but rather because he was standing up for what he believed in. I’m not saying I agree with what he says but I just like the fact that he has produced a video which is in many ways more profound than any produced by Obama’s multi-million campaign, and I like the way that principle can sometimes triumph over money. One thing that is impressive about America is the way that people are so passionate about elections; many people will disagree with this man’s ideas but my point is that he talking about what he believes in and surely that is the point of politics. Having said that, his choice of music is truly awful which kind of ruins the video.

P.S. This blog is just random thoughts about the US election. Please no comments about Iraq!