With the last American troops being pulled out of Iraq by the end of the year, the consequences of President Obama’s decision will soon be apparent. As the New York Times reports on its front page this morning, there is every expectation the New Year will bring with it a surge of attacks from al-Qaeda. The absence of U.S. forces will embolden the terrorists as well as make the tribal forces that allied themselves with us as a result of the surge wonder whether it is time to switch sides again.

Military analysts such as our Max Boot have discussed this issue in detail. But the administration has proved impervious to such arguments and is following through on its vow to bug out of Iraq. While we should not entirely despair of the ability of the fledgling democracy that America has helped to install in Iraq to defend itself, the possibility now exists for Obama to have squandered all the hard-won gains those U.S. troops won since the surge turned the tide in that war. But the question we must ask is whether or not anyone here will care if Obama’s fecklessness snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. No matter what horrors await the Iraqis, Obama may be counting on the indifference of Americans to what happens there once the last American soldier leaves.

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The filmmaker Michael Moore spoke at an Occupy Denver event. He was also in Denver to promote a book on his life, from which he presumably receives proceeds. But what Moore said to the crowd was less interesting than what he said to the press. When asked by a local Denver reporter about his net worth and whether he was part of the so-called one percent, Moore merely responded, “I do very well.”

When the reporter then asked Moore how he was using his purported $50 million to assist the Occupy movement, Moore became aggressive and angry.  “You’re just punk media, is all you are,” Moore said. “You lie. You lie to people. Stop lying. Stop lying. Just don’t lie, okay?”

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Last night after his so-called Lincoln-Douglas debate with Newt Gingrich (unlike the “rail splitter” and the “little giant”) during which they disagreed about very little, reporters asked Herman Cain about the public statement of one of the women who alleged that he harassed them while he was CEO of the National Restaurant Association. His response was to say, “Don’t go there.” Later he stopped and told them to read “the other accounts” and that he was “back on message.” After that, his campaign manager Mark Block, who earlier in the week made scurrilous and unsubstantiated allegations about the Perry campaign being responsible for the story coming out, scolded journalists about whether they knew the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.

Block’s attempt to brand the entire inquiry as unethical is geared toward appealing to the sentiments of conservatives who view the media as a hostile liberal entity that cannot be trusted on any issue. But those who bother to read the Code, would easily see there was nothing unethical about the original Politico story that broke the news. Nor is there anything unethical about asking Cain to respond to the public statement released by one of the women who charged him harassment alleging that his version of events was false. But you don’t have to be a critic of Cain to know that there is something fishy about a campaign that refuses to address these questions and chooses instead to attack the press.

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Once upon a time, in what seems to be a different world, the U.S. actually engaged in political warfare. Whether it was in the 1950s, when the CIA supported Christian Democratic parties in Europe, or in the 1980s, when the CIA helped to supply Solidarity, the U.S. used covert action to promote our political interests—in that case, helping to topple Communism. Since the end of the Cold War, political warfare has largely morphed into more toothless “democracy promotion.” The result is what we see today in Egypt. As Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin reports:

U.S. assistance to Egypt is helping political parties of all ideologies prepare for the upcoming elections — even Islamic parties that may have anti-Western agendas.

“We don’t do party support. What we do is party training…. And we do it to whoever comes,” William Taylor, the State Department’s director of its new office for Middle East Transitions, said in a briefing with reporters today. “Sometimes, Islamist parties show up, sometimes they don’t. But it has been provided on a nonpartisan basis, not to individual parties.”

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