Obama and his campaign have been dominating the campaign, relentlessly bombarding McCain with everything they’ve got for more than 48 hours. That’s two full news cycles. And Team McCain seems to be getting worried, as they are back to responding to Obama. Two days ago, McCain was confidently saying that “the fundamentals of the US economy are strong”. Today, McCain is acknowledging that, yes, perhaps the economy is indeed in bad shape…

Let’s see if Team Obama can keep it up.

QUICK ADD TO QUICK: But there is a danger. If McCain can somehow manage to neutralize the economy-issue, by turning around and acknowledging the problems and make people believe that he, too, promises real change, then it’s back to square one for Obama.

So it was refreshing to see Nichols criticizing Obama for a change in an article pasted here, but unfortunately, Nichols missed the mark. He was right to criticize Obama, but for the wrong reason.

Both Barack Obama and John McCain are right: more troops are needed in Afghanistan, but with one unifying mandate, not two different ones that cancel each other out. As is currently the case.

So I wrote Mr Nichols an email. To which he didn’t respond, of course.

Dear Mr Nichols,

I read your article on the commitments Mr Obama made to Afghan leaders, on TheNation.com.

Fine article, good read, but I felt that some points were missing.

Like many people, you correctly state that there’s too much fighting going on, and not much building.

But that’s exactly the problem; the deployment to Afghanistan has become a chicken-or-the-egg dilemma.

As you know, the American troops are basically on a fighting mission named ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’, in Afghanistan. Their mandate is combat, and only combat.

Then there’s NATO’s ISAF, that has a very different mandate for the troops. ISAF is confined to (re)building, nation building, etc.

All good and well, but all the Afghans and the Taleban see are Western military uniforms.

Aside from that, the Taleban are very effective in applying what is basically an African tribal strategy. Instill fear, fear and fear among the civilian population, and ensure that the (re)building effort by NATO fails.

Their tactics are horrendous, and well documented by Dutch soldiers, who have been in Afghanistan since the start.

The biggest frustration of Dutch soldiers is that whenever they build a school or small hospital in a small rural town, the Taleban usually sneak into the town after the Dutch have left, and then raze the schools and hospitals. Those who have cooperated with the Dutch are killed, and often their entire families as well. They are public executions; young boys and girls are hanged up on their feet, so upside down, and then gutted, like one would with a cow. The warning is clear to the villages in close proximity: this is what happens to you when you cooperate with ISAF.

Dutch soldiers are now being spurned by local Afghan leaders. They would like to cooperate, but they say they can’t, because the Dutch (and other forces) won’t always be there to protect them.

In the beginning, ISAF troops made the error of promising Afghans that they were safe from the Taleban, that they’d be protected. Years of experience has shown the Afghans that those promises are empty.

And to Afghans, he who controls an area, rules that area. It’s that simple.

Another problem is the ISAF mandate. NATO troops are in Afghanistan, yes, but they’re there under a tight mandate. They are in principle not allowed to undertake offensive action against (known) Taleban forces. They are allowed to defend themselves, and the civilian population, but that’s it.

Dutch Special Forces have now taken to baiting tactics; they try to attract enemy fire, by for instance sending a lone jeep with soldiers into a known ‘hot zone’ and then faking that the jeep has a breakdown. Taleban spotters, often civilians whose family members have been taken hostage by the Taleban and so forced to enroll into their ranks, then go into action. All they usually do is call in the location of the jeep – but the talk via open walkie-talkie radio is then intercepted by the Dutch, the location of the civilian spotter located, and he is subsequently killed.

The Taleban then later show up, collect the remains, and present them to the inhabitants of the killed civilian’s town, exclaiming the perverse violence of the ISAF troops.

A couple of months ago, a Dutch TV programme comparable to ‘60 Minutes’ found out that Dutch troops had started undertaking offensive action, to flush out the Taleban that had been systematically razing schools and hospitals in towns. The broadcast caused a political outcry. As a result, the Dutch forces are now back to full defensive ISAF duty. And they’re frustrated, because the results of their rebuilding efforts are nil.

This is happening throughout ISAF-‘controlled’ territory. Taleban attacks on the civilian population and ISAF troops are up. The number of hospitals, schools and medical posts in villages being razed is up. Production of poppies, the sale of which is probably the Taleban’s main source of income, is up by record numbers. And the ISAF troops are, by their mandate, not allowed to do anything about it.

Then Operation Enduring Freedom. US forces are fighting the Taleban hard, but there are two problems.

1) the population of the villages they half destroy while bombing Taleban troops who purposely take up positions in those villages, are VERY unlikely to aid the Americans and be anti-Taleban, and
2) the Taleban are constantly withdrawing to Pakistan, where GIs can’t touch them. (Eerily reminiscent of the VietCong’s retreat tactics into Laos and Cambodia.)

So US forces are doing something that the ISAF can’t – fighting offensive – but not doing what they should be doing after the fighting, which in turn is what ISAF is doing.

There are two main strategic problems.
1. Geographic divide. There are areas where the NATO ISAF troops simply are not allowed to operate.
This is Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) territory. This results in OEF GIs flushing out the Taleban from a village, and then moving on, with no ISAF troops following up to do the rebuilding – and staying there for a while to ensure that Taleban troops don’t sneak back in. Plus: Pakistan.

2. Mandate divide. As shown, the two operations have very different mandates. Problem is, if you change the ISAF mandate to allow for offensive (i.e., more risky) actions, most NATO countries will pull back their troops. (The Dutch had to extend their ISAF mandate period because no other NATO country wanted to send troops to replace the Dutch.)

The only way to solve this:
- ONE mandate, for all forces in Afghanistan.
- MORE troops, to ensure that newly built infrastructure (which is why ISAF’s there, for Christ’s sake!) isn’t immediately razed after the troops depart.

So far, both Obama’s and McCain’s proposals fall short of the mandate-thing.

Observing the media coverage of the primary war for the Democratic nomination, I can’t help but watch in amazement how the collective mainstream media press has apparently decided to dance around candidate Barack Obama, singing ‘Kumbaya’ loudly and farting in the general direction of the Clintons and John Edwards in the process. Amazement, because it won’t last.

Right now, any attack by the Clintons (or Edwards, or anybody else for that matter) is either completely ignored, or berated as something close to Pure Evil by the MSM. Whatever Bill Clinton says, it is now ‘racist’ or meant to ‘damage Obama’. Even when Clinton calls Obama’s candidacy so far “a fairy tale”, by which Clinton obviously means the non-critical, out-of-this-world aura the MSM has bestowed upon the Senator from Illinois, Clinton is attacked by hissing snakes. The Obama campaign doesn’t have to do squat.

Sure, now you’re thinking that I believe that Bill Clinton isn’t purposely throwing in the race-thing. Of course he is, but get this: that’s not my point. The point is that if/when Obama (or one of his surrogates) throws in some coded sentence that could be interpreted as racially tinged, but also could not, Obama is left alone.

But whenever Clinton says something that could be racially tinged, oh boy – there comes the Cavalry of the 1st Hypocrites Regiment, stormin’ out Fortress Moral Outrage!

Yet what I want to know is: will the press corps still defend Obama against the attack of Republican X during the general election campaign? Will the same press people hiss and harr-umph against a Republican campaign surrogate if/when he says that Obama may have a hidden agenda? Will the same press corps storm out of the fortress again to bash the GOP candidate?

Of course they won’t. As with every long-winded campaign, the dynamics in this campaign will have changed as well within three months or so. Why? Because journalists are human, believe it or not.

Right now just about every journalist who has seen Obama on the stump is impressed by the man’s oratory and rhetorical skills. That is very understandable because he has that gift. I’ve read stories and snippets in the past weeks where editors have said that they’ve had to take junior reporters off the Obama beat because they were clearly on Obama’s side, after visiting just one of the Senator’s campaign events. Veteran journalists come out of an Obama event completely puzzled and confused, asking themselves how in hell they are supposed to write an objective, possibly even critical article about the man.

But give it three months. Like with Bill Clinton in 1992, who was equally able to mesmerize journalists while on the stump, the effects of Obamania will wear off. So will the present knee-jerk reaction towards anything Clinton. Remember, dear Old Timers, how you and your buddies tried to tear down Clinton from the moment he hit the White House? Sure, he may have had the wrong approach towards the press once he sat down behind his desk in the Oval Office but the MSM didn’t exactly give him the time of day either.

So what I’m going to say now is what Bill Clinton has basically argued already – and he should know, because he’s been there, right in the middle of it.

To the Democratic voter who doesn’t want another Republican in the White House: if Barack Obama is nominated as the Democratic candidate, the press will no longer give him quarter. As soon as the ticker tape falls on the Convention in Denver, the very same press corps that danced Kumbaya around Obama will switch to a very different set of priorities.

It will be somewhat like this, straight out of a George Romero movie. The lights will be on and Obama will be looking at the MSM representatives, smiling as they smile back. Then the lights will fail for a second, and when they’re turned back on, he’s suddenly facing a bunch of evil vampires. And they will be out for blood – any blood.

Because political, thick, scandallous blood is the colour of the ink that sells newspapers. It is the drug that powers TV broadcasts, pays salaries, and is the only kind of blood that makes a sound: that of falling coins. Dollar bills will no longer be a grayish-green but rather printed in blood ink, and the owners and shareholders of the media companies can’t wait to rake in the piles.

The very same journalists that are now slamming the Clintons in a fit of fake moral outrage will cry out for racial slurs, and they’ll claw at the target candidate to get even more pungent ones. News must sell, not inform; elections are big moneymakers for advertising departments. All bets will be off, today’s sheep will be wolves, and unlike most Democrats, most Republicans won’t be wagging their moral fingers at their candidate. On the contrary.

Suddenly, Obama will find that he can no longer rely on the vampires to sing Kumbaya, keeping his enemies at bay. Instead, he will find that he’s in dire need of a thick skin and a really good War Room for some heavy duty fast responses. He will find that his one-time friends are not keeping the lions away from him, but are actually pushing him towards the GOP werewolves.

Mark Halperin and John F. Harris got many things right in their book ‘The Way To Win’, which is about campaigning, but they were really right on the money with this advice to any aspiring political campaigner:

“Journalists are never your friends.”

Halperin and Harris should know. They’re vampires.

So forget Iowa, the Clintons are going after New Hampshire. Bill Clinton in the past few days has within the campaign thumped on the importance of New Hampshire for everything Clinton ever since his second-place ending in the state in the 1992 Democratic nomination campaign. That pivotal feat revived his campaign and kick-started his succesful run for the presidency.

As Alex MacGill of the Washington Post pointed out in this excellent report, the Clintons have cultivated their ties to the state ever since, so much so that New Hampshire is seen as almost synonymous to Clinton’s destiny and political standing among pundits, commentators and — yes — national media journalists. Because of the state’s importance and the significance the Clintons themselves always attributed to it, losing that state in the primary would make Hillary Clinton’s star fade faster than you can say “implosion”.

And so the game that is being played for New Hampshire is one of expectations. Since Bill Clinton’s succesful run for the presidency, New Hampshire has always been high up the political expectations ladder, whilst Iowa — where he never campaigned — was mostly off the pundits’ radar screen when it came to the political fortunes of the Clintons.

In 1992, Iowa senator Tom Harkin had such a strong local following for his nomination campaign that Clinton was smart enough to not even bother trying to get caucus votes there, and in 1996 he didn’t need Iowa. But unfortunately for Bill Clinton, whose reputation is pretty much on the line now that his wife is campaigning for the presidency, the Hillary campaign has put considerable importance on Iowa, so much so that expectations are running high.

And if there is one thing Bill Clinton dislikes, for all his political mastery, it is uncertainty, and Iowa has become a huge question mark. The campaign has realised that all the extra efforts in Iowa of late have been too little, and definitely too late. Hillary Clinton has simply been unable to stem the Obama tide in the unpredictable midwestern state. And even though Hillary’s team pounces on each individual Iowa poll that shows Hillary one or two percent ahead of Obama, the campaign knows full well that the majority of polls are showing the reverse picture.

And so the new strategy will be as follows. Bill Clinton is still probably the single, most popular politician in New Hampshire. Thus, the coming weeks shall see Bill and Hillary — but especially Bill — tour New Hampshire while ensuring as much local media coverage as possible. Hillary will be projected as a Clinton once again bringing the message of ‘change’, much like her husband succesfully did in 1992. Realising the mistake made in Iowa, where there was a big disconnect between Hillary and Iowans, the campaign will get down to the good old nitty-gritty of traditional campaigning, including having her go door-to-door, which she has already started doing.

Meanwhile, the campaign will start what the Russians would call a ‘maskirovska’-campaign, or masking; having everybody believe that they’re still going full-steam for a win in Iowa, while in reality they aren’t. The goal is no longer to win in Iowa but to force Obama to concentrate most of his resources there while the secondary goal is to try to come in second, above Edwards. Look for Bill Clinton and other surrogates to start talking down the importance of Iowa in the last week or so before the caucus there takes place, while at the same time becoming New Hampshire cheerleaders.