Tom Engelhardt: Collateral Ceremonial Damage. A report on five or six weddings Bush was involved in, all but one ending badly as US air power rained death on unfortunate parties.

We Americans have only had one experience of death delivered from the air since World War II -- the attacks of September 11, 2001. As no one is likely to forget, they shocked us to our core. And you know how those deaths were covered, right down to the special pages filled with bios of civilians who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the repeated invocations of the barbarism of al-Qaeda's killers (and barbarism it truly was).

These wedding parties, however, get no such treatment. Initially, they are automatically assumed to be malevolent -- until the reports begin to filter in from the hospitals, the ruined villages, and the graveyards, and, by then, it's usually too late for much press attention. When that does happen, their deaths are chalked up to an "errant bomb," or that celebratory gunfire, or no explanation is even offered.

Juan Cole: Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan: A Friendly Critique. On Obama's recent posturing, Cole offers a "quibble" -- that keeping a small force in Iraq to fight Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia wouldn't be effective, let alone prudent -- and a bigger complaint. The latter concerns Obama's proposal to build up US forces in Afghanistan: an extra 10,000 troops over current levels that only seem to be making matters worse. The most obvious problem is that the US (or NATO, if you prefer) is no longer fighting the war they started: instead of chasing Al-Qaeda, which has largely vanished, they're fighting an indigenous group of people (whose links to the vanquished Taliban are uncertain at best) just to show who's the real power, and mostly failing at that. Cole sees this as even more unwinnable than Iraq, and asks:

When was the last time that an al-Qaeda operative was captured in Afghanistan by US forces? Is that really what US troops are doing there, looking for al-Qaeda? Wouldn't we hear more about it if they were having successes in that regard? I mean, what is reported in the press is that they are fighting with "Taliban". But I'm not so sure these Pushtun rural guerrillas are even properly speaking Taliban (which means 'seminary student.') The original Taliban had mostly been displaced as refugees into Pakistan. These 'neo-Taliban' don't seem mostly to have that background. A lot of them seem to be just disgruntled Pushtun villagers in places like Uruzgan.

Many Democrats still entertain the vogueish idea that Afghanistan is the good war and Iraq the bad war -- that if we hadn't gone into Iraq we could have focused and won in Afghanistan, which because of the centrality of 9/11 and Al-Qaeda was the struggle that mattered. Obama's playing into that sentiment. The problem is that regardless of how foolish the Iraq misadventure was, the Afghanistan war was the original US blunder: the US couldn't attack Afghanistan, at least with its cherished military power, without assuming imperialist robes, and imperial subjugation is just something that isn't possible any more, least of all in Afghanistan.

Helena Cobban: Obama's Plan for Iraq: Strengths and Weaknesses. Another analysis of Obama's op-ed -- similar conclusions, more details.

TalkingPointsMemo cites a post-op-ed speech by Obama where he leads: "I Strongly Stand By My Plan to End This War."

Mark Benjamin: McCain, Obama find common ground on Afghanistan. After noting a New York Times headline "Obama and McCain Duel Over Iraq," Benjamin lines up quotes from both showing very little space between the two on Afghanistan. As Iraqis take Iraq off US hands -- the difference between the two candidates there is that Obama should welcome the reprieve -- Afghanistan becomes the more important war. At one inspirational moment Obama promised to change the way we think about war -- note that Helena Cobban has lately dropped the Obama quote she featured on her blog -- but he keeps falling back on the old nostrums himself.

Meanwhile, note that the Green Party nominated Cynthia McKinney to run against Obama, McCain, and fellow Georgian Bob Barr. The left will probably cut Obama a lot of slack this time around, but there are essential issues (and not just Israel) where McKinney would be a much better choice. (Hell, even Barr beats Obama on civil liberty issues, starting with FISA.)