By John Hawkins
Friday, February 23, 2007
Many people assume that the Democrats' opposition to the war on terrorism and their unwavering determination to undercut the war in Iraq are solely an outgrowth of their dislike of George Bush. While Bush Derangement Syndrome and raw political considerations certainly are part of the problem, you've got to understand that the modern Democratic Party is simply no longer capable of dealing with a conflict like the war on terrorism because of the weird ideological tics of liberalism.
Look at how weak and helpless Jimmy Carter was when he was confronted by the Iranians. And Bill Clinton? Despite being prodded to take action time and time again by world events like the bombing of the World Trade Center, Saddam Hussein's attempted assassination of George Bush, Sr., the Khobar Towers bombing, the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Tanzania, the bombing of the USS Cole, along with India, Pakistan, and North Korea acquiring nuclear weapons under his watch, Clinton seemed incapable of dealing effectively with any serious foreign policy challenges.
That being said, if this nation were unfortunate enough to be burdened for four years with Barack Obama, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton or one of the other liberals contending for the Democratic nomination, things would be even worse this time around. Why would that be the case? There are a variety of reasons for it.
1) The Democratic insistence on treating the war on terrorism as a law enforcement issue will make it extremely difficult to deal with terrorist groups. When you have heavily armed terrorists ensconced in foreign nations, sometimes with the approval of their government, it's simply not practical to capture them, read them their rights, and take them back to America for trial. That is something that should be obvious after that approach was tried by Bill Clinton in the nineties and it failed to produce results. Going back to it in the post 9/11 world, which is what the Democrats want to do, is nothing but an invitation to catastrophe.
2) Ronald Reagan once said that, "Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong." Conversely, a super power that seems weak invites attack. After spending the last six years railing against the Bush Administration and fighting tooth and nail against almost every measure that makes it tougher on the terrorists, a Democratic victory in 2008 would be viewed by the world as nothing less than an American capitulation in the war on terror. This would encourage the terrorists to launch more attacks and cause our allies in the fight to lose heart.
3) When the only credible Democratic voice on national security in the Senate, Joe Lieberman, was defeated in the Democratic primary last year, the message sent to Democrats was, "Being serious about defending America may cost you your job." After that, elected Democrats became even more reluctant to stand up against terrorism, which is really saying something, since the Democratic Party has been nothing but a hindrance in the war on terrorism since they voted en masse for the war in Afghanistan.
4) The Democratic base doesn't take terrorism seriously and considers it to be nothing more than a distraction from socializing the economy, raising taxes, promoting gay marriage, and the other domestic issues that are near and dear to the heart of liberals. It's old hat to hear Democrats say that they think global warming is more dangerous than terrorism, but at one point in 2006, 94% of the readers at the most popular liberal blog on earth, the Daily Kos, were actually saying that they thought that corporate media consolidation was a greater threat than terrorism. If you have a Democratic base that isn't serious about fighting terrorism -- and it isn't -- you will have a Democratic President that isn't serious about fighting terrorism.
5) Using the American military to further the interests of our country makes liberals uncomfortable, even though they're usually happy to send the troops gallivanting off to the latest godforsaken hotspot that has caught the eye of liberal activists. That's why many Democrats, like Hillary Clinton, who oppose winning the war in Iraq, are all for using our military in Sudan. However, it is also why those same liberals will oppose using our military to tackle terrorists abroad except in Afghanistan, where it would be politically damaging for them to call for a pull-out.
6) When the U.N. Security Council has members like China, France, and Russia that seem to be financially in bed with every country we end up at loggerheads with, the UN is going to be even more hapless and ineffective than normal. Since the Democrats are so hung up on getting UN approval for everything we do, it will be practically impossible for them to move forward on any serious, large scale foreign policy enterprise.
7) The Democrats are overly concerned with "international opinion," AKA "European opinion." The Europeans have mediocre militaries, pacifistic populations, fetishize international law, and have extremely inflated views of their own importance. Other than Britain, they don't have much to offer in a military conflict, yet even getting token forces from them that are minimally useful is like pulling teeth. Getting large numbers of European nations to cooperate with us on military ventures that are important to American security will be nearly impossible at this point -- yet since Democrats place a higher priority on European approval than our national security, they will insist on it. This, combined with the logjam at the UN, would hamstring any Democratic President.
8) The Democrats want to close Guantanamo Bay and put the terrorists held there into the American court system. The justice system in the United States is simply not designed to deal with and interrogate terrorists or enemy fighters captured overseas by our troops. Putting the terrorists held at Gitmo into our court system would only mean that hundreds of terrorists would be freed on technicalities because it's not advisable to reveal intelligence methods -- or because our soldiers aren't trained in the legal niceties that are necessary for policemen, but should be irrelevant in a war zone. How absurd would it be to catch a Taliban fighter entering Afghanistan, take him back to the United States, have him released by a liberal judge, and then dropped back off on the Afghan border where he'd be back shooting at our troops the next day? If a Democrat wins in 2008, we will get to find out all about it first hand.
9) The intelligence programs that have helped prevent another 9/11 would be curtailed under a Democratic President. As a general rule, Democrats favor weakening our military and intelligence agencies. Add to that the complete hysteria we've seen from liberals over programs like the Patriot Act and the NSA tapping calls from terrorists overseas to people in the U.S. Under a Democratic President, we would be sure to see our intelligence agencies systematically stripped of the powers they need to detect and foil terrorist plots.
If a Democrat were to win in 2008, it would give terrorists worldwide a four year respite to rebuild, reload, and run wild without serious opposition from the United States. The price our nation and our allies would pay in blood and treasure for that mistake would be incalculable.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Ending Democrats' Free Ride on Iraq
By David Limbaugh
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
For liberals like Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, it is far worse for Vice President Dick Cheney to accuse congressional Democrats of playing into Al Qaeda's hands on Iraq than for Democrats actually to play into Al Qaeda's hands on Iraq.
It's perfectly fine for liberals to liken Bush and Cheney to Adolf Hitler or falsely accuse them of lying us into war in Iraq to steal its oil. It's perfectly fine for liberals to attribute failures in the federal response to Hurricane Katrina to alleged Republican racism.
But don't you dare question the wisdom of the Democrats' proposals on Iraq in such a way as to cause the hypersensitive to infer you were challenging their patriotism.
Apparently to Dionne and other like-minded liberals, the potential dire consequences of the Democrats' policies on Iraq are not appropriate for discussion and debate because they might make Democrats look bad, or even feel bad -- and those are far worse evils than throwing our national security in the toilet.
Precisely what did Dick Cheney -- the public servant who Democrats may, with impunity, stoop to any depths to slander -- say to make House Speaker Nancy Pelosi so indignant? Well, he issued his assessment of the Democrats' legislative proposals to emasculate our current offensive in Iraq.
Cheney said, "Al Qaeda functions on the basis that they think they can break our will … " and cause us to "quit and go home. … That's their fundamental underlying strategy. … If we adopt the Pelosi policy … we will validate the strategy of Al Qaeda. I said it, and I meant it."
What's wrong with that statement? If Cheney believes the Democrats' cut and run policies will benefit Al-Qaeda, doesn't he have an obligation to warn us? Not according to Pelosi, who said Cheney was questioning her patriotism.
Not once did Cheney suggest the Democrats were unpatriotic. He said, "I didn't question her patriotism. I questioned her judgment." Likewise, President Bush recently made clear that he didn't view the Democrats' proposals to withdraw from Iraq unpatriotic.
But if accusing your political opponents of playing into the enemy's hands constitutes an attack on their patriotism, the Democrats' hands are hardly clean either.
How many times have we heard Democrats say that President Bush's policies in Iraq are the best terrorist recruitment tool we could have possibly given to Osama bin Laden? Have you ever heard President Bush whine that Democrats were questioning his patriotism? No, perhaps because Bush is quite secure about his own patriotism.
What is the administration supposed to do in the face of the Democrats' relentless campaign to undermine any possible chance of our victory in Iraq? Should it simply remain silent as congressional Democrats, more concerned with mollifying their militant antiwar base and kicking a beleaguered president in the teeth than with assuming the sober responsibility their office requires, try to engineer America's surrender and defeat?
Until very recently the Democrats have had a free ride, slamming President Bush's policy, even parts of it they approved and authorized, without offering any alternative solutions. Now that they control Congress and are presenting actual legislative proposals, they can't stand the scrutiny their plans invite.
In the midst of these partisan skirmishes, we best not lose sight of the momentousness of the issues before us. Questions about the Democrats' patriotism pale in comparison to real issues at stake in the war on terror.
What is absolutely scandalous is that we are seriously considering unilateral surrender in a war without so much as contemplating the consequences to the Middle East or to our national security.
Democrats (and some Republicans) are advocating that we leave Iraq now, refusing even to consider what might happen if we withdraw prematurely. Presidential candidate John Edwards openly admitted as much.
Surely, they recognize the strong possibility that a bloodbath will ensue, that the constitutional republic our soldiers died to make possible will implode and that America-hating Islamists could seize control of Iraq and its oil and convert it to a launching pad for international terrorism.
It is imperative we begin to have a discussion about Iraq that involves more than dwelling on the problems if we stay, but also weighs those against the even greater problems that will accompany our precipitous departure. We must have a debate whose sobriety matches the gravity of the national security issues involved.
The administration and congressional Republicans must not be intimidated by false charges of name-calling from proceeding with a public debate that will force Democrats to emerge from their hiding places to explain and justify the inevitable, devastating consequences of their reckless policies. Haven't they had a free ride long enough?
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
For liberals like Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, it is far worse for Vice President Dick Cheney to accuse congressional Democrats of playing into Al Qaeda's hands on Iraq than for Democrats actually to play into Al Qaeda's hands on Iraq.
It's perfectly fine for liberals to liken Bush and Cheney to Adolf Hitler or falsely accuse them of lying us into war in Iraq to steal its oil. It's perfectly fine for liberals to attribute failures in the federal response to Hurricane Katrina to alleged Republican racism.
But don't you dare question the wisdom of the Democrats' proposals on Iraq in such a way as to cause the hypersensitive to infer you were challenging their patriotism.
Apparently to Dionne and other like-minded liberals, the potential dire consequences of the Democrats' policies on Iraq are not appropriate for discussion and debate because they might make Democrats look bad, or even feel bad -- and those are far worse evils than throwing our national security in the toilet.
Precisely what did Dick Cheney -- the public servant who Democrats may, with impunity, stoop to any depths to slander -- say to make House Speaker Nancy Pelosi so indignant? Well, he issued his assessment of the Democrats' legislative proposals to emasculate our current offensive in Iraq.
Cheney said, "Al Qaeda functions on the basis that they think they can break our will … " and cause us to "quit and go home. … That's their fundamental underlying strategy. … If we adopt the Pelosi policy … we will validate the strategy of Al Qaeda. I said it, and I meant it."
What's wrong with that statement? If Cheney believes the Democrats' cut and run policies will benefit Al-Qaeda, doesn't he have an obligation to warn us? Not according to Pelosi, who said Cheney was questioning her patriotism.
Not once did Cheney suggest the Democrats were unpatriotic. He said, "I didn't question her patriotism. I questioned her judgment." Likewise, President Bush recently made clear that he didn't view the Democrats' proposals to withdraw from Iraq unpatriotic.
But if accusing your political opponents of playing into the enemy's hands constitutes an attack on their patriotism, the Democrats' hands are hardly clean either.
How many times have we heard Democrats say that President Bush's policies in Iraq are the best terrorist recruitment tool we could have possibly given to Osama bin Laden? Have you ever heard President Bush whine that Democrats were questioning his patriotism? No, perhaps because Bush is quite secure about his own patriotism.
What is the administration supposed to do in the face of the Democrats' relentless campaign to undermine any possible chance of our victory in Iraq? Should it simply remain silent as congressional Democrats, more concerned with mollifying their militant antiwar base and kicking a beleaguered president in the teeth than with assuming the sober responsibility their office requires, try to engineer America's surrender and defeat?
Until very recently the Democrats have had a free ride, slamming President Bush's policy, even parts of it they approved and authorized, without offering any alternative solutions. Now that they control Congress and are presenting actual legislative proposals, they can't stand the scrutiny their plans invite.
In the midst of these partisan skirmishes, we best not lose sight of the momentousness of the issues before us. Questions about the Democrats' patriotism pale in comparison to real issues at stake in the war on terror.
What is absolutely scandalous is that we are seriously considering unilateral surrender in a war without so much as contemplating the consequences to the Middle East or to our national security.
Democrats (and some Republicans) are advocating that we leave Iraq now, refusing even to consider what might happen if we withdraw prematurely. Presidential candidate John Edwards openly admitted as much.
Surely, they recognize the strong possibility that a bloodbath will ensue, that the constitutional republic our soldiers died to make possible will implode and that America-hating Islamists could seize control of Iraq and its oil and convert it to a launching pad for international terrorism.
It is imperative we begin to have a discussion about Iraq that involves more than dwelling on the problems if we stay, but also weighs those against the even greater problems that will accompany our precipitous departure. We must have a debate whose sobriety matches the gravity of the national security issues involved.
The administration and congressional Republicans must not be intimidated by false charges of name-calling from proceeding with a public debate that will force Democrats to emerge from their hiding places to explain and justify the inevitable, devastating consequences of their reckless policies. Haven't they had a free ride long enough?
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Global Warming: Fact, Fiction and Political Endgame
By Mark M. Alexander
Monday, February 26, 2007
"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." --James Madison
Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Albert Arnold Gore, was the toast of Hollywood at the self-congratulatory soiree known as the 2007 Academy Awards.
Gore, whose failure to carry his "home" state of Tennessee cost him the 2000 presidential election, has recast himself as the populist pope of eco-theology and the titular head of the green movement's developmentally arrested legions.
Now the darling of Leftcoast glitterati, predictably, Gore received two Oscars for a junk-science production called "An Inconvenient Truth," a pseudo-documentary follow-up from the eco-disaster fiction, "The Day After Tomorrow." Gore's "Truth," however, is about 10 percent substance and 90 percent fragrance.
"The Academy Awards have gone green," said Gore, after collecting his Oscars -- maybe a thin coat of green over a thick base of red.
The awards for Gore's climate diatribe coincide, not coincidentally, with the much-ballyhooed release of a media summary of a report on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These two events are a launch pad for the coming cavalcade of dire ecological predictions by Gore and his ilk. Their goal will be to saturate the all-too-sympathetic media outlets with apocalyptic hysterics about a man-made global disaster. Perhaps, too, if all goes according to plan, we'll see another Gore presidential run.
All the "Live Earth" road-show talking points will play up an alarming assertion from Bill Clinton's former veep: "Never before has all of civilization been threatened. We have everything we need to save it, with the possible exception of political will. But political will is a renewable resource."
To be sure, there is "no controlling legal authority" for this, the biggest political and economic power grab ever attempted. The Left's desire to hamstring the U.S. economy and force worldwide Kyoto Treaty compliance will, according to one United Nations estimate, cost the world economy $553 trillion this century.
Al Gore may be a comical dupe when it comes to climatology (in college, he collected a C+ and a D in his two natural-sciences courses), but the global-warming debate and the consequences of that debate are serious. To participate meaningfully, one must distinguish between fact and fiction ?- in addition to understanding the underlying political agendas.
In the inimitable words of the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." To that end, Al Gore's "facts" are deserving of rigorous scrutiny.
Separating fact from fiction
First, let's be clear that the current debate about climate focuses on "global warming," which is not synonymous with the debate about the environmental consequences of the "greenhouse effect." The latter issue concerns what, if any, relationship exists between man-made CO2 in the atmosphere and global temperatures.
For the record, most reputable scientists agree that we are in a period of gradual global warming (about 0.7 degrees Celsius in the last century), and that the greenhouse effect prevents our climate from becoming a deep freeze. Most also agree that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased in the last century, and there is a growing consensus that global warming is due, in part, to the greenhouse effect.
However, there is no scientifically established correlation between global-warming trends and acceleration of the greenhouse effect due to human production of CO2 -- only broad speculation. Although some politicians and their media shills insist that the primary cause of global warming is the burning of hydrocarbons here in the United States, that government regulation of man-made CO2 will curb this global warming, that our failure to limit CO2 output will have dire consequences, and that the costs of enacting these limitations far outweigh the potential consequences, there is no evidence supporting any of these assertions.
Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, notes, "When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works."
In fact, there remains substantial doubt that the production of CO2 by human enterprise has any real impact on global temperature, and if it does, that such impact is, necessarily, negative. Human activity may contribute a maximum estimate of three percent of CO2 to the natural carbon cycle (the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged between the biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere of the Earth), but there is broad dispute about the total production of CO2 from natural sources, which is to say the human contribution may be a much smaller percentage. Atmospheric CO2 levels have increased from about 315 parts per million five decades ago, to about 380 ppm today, which is to say, there are major factors influencing the amount of CO2 levels in the atmosphere besides our burning of hydrocarbons.
Case in point: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii has maintained the world's longest continuous worldwide record of atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels -- those cited by global-warming alarmists. In 2002 and 2003, NOAA recorded increases in atmospheric CO2 of 2.43 and 2.30 ppm respectively -- a 55 percent increase over the annual average of 1.5 ppm for previous years. In 2004, however, this increase fell back to 1.5 ppm per year.
Did human industrial output somehow increase 55 percent during those two years, and then decline by that amount in 2004? Of course not. For the record, NOAA concluded that the fluctuation was caused by the natural processes that contribute and remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Al Gore would be hard-pressed to explain NOAA's findings within the context of his apocalyptic thesis, and he would be hard-pressed to convince any serious scientists that his Orwellian solutions could correct such fluctuations. This is because his thesis is based largely on convenient half-truths.
For instance, Gore insists that the increased incidence of hurricanes, tornadoes, drought and other weather phenomena is the direct result of global warming.
Renowned meteorologist Dr. William Gray takes exception: "The degree to which you believe global warming is causing major hurricanes," he says, "is inversely proportional to your knowledge about these storms."
In a recent issue of Discover Magazine, Gray, described by Discover's editors as one of "the world's most famous hurricane experts," wrote, "This human-induced global-warming thing ... is grossly exaggerated. ... I'm not disputing there has been global warming. There was a lot of global warming in the 1930s and '40s, and then there was global cooling in the middle '40s to the early '70s. Nearly all of my colleagues who have been around 40 or 50 years are skeptical ... about this global-warming thing. But no one asks us."
Gore preaches about the two percent of Antarctica that is warming without noting that temperature readings over the rest of Antarctica indicate the continent has cooled over the previous 35 years, or that the UN's climate panel estimates net snow mass increases in Antarctica this century. Gore notes the increasing temperatures and shrinking ice caps in the Northern Hemisphere but does not note the decreasing temperatures and increased sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere.
Richard S. Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, writes, "A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse."
Perhaps worse still is Gore's intellectual cowardice. During his visit to Europe in January, Gore agreed to an interview with Denmark's largest national newspaper, Jyllands-Posten. Then, when he learned that Bjorn Lomborg, one of the world's leading critics of eco-theological dogma, was also going to be interviewed, Gore abruptly canceled.
Lomborg, a statistician, has delved deep into the data to expose the environmental movement's selective and oft-misleading use of evidence. His book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist" was hailed by Washington Post Book World as "a magnificent achievement" and "the most significant work on the environment since the appearance of its polar opposite, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, in 1962." Perhaps a thoughtful debate is what scares Al Gore most of all.
Dr. Roy Spencer, former senior scientist for climate studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, has some additional "Questions for Al Gore" based on what he calls "Gore's Inconvenient Truth." We are still awaiting Gore's reply...
Alternative causes for global warming
Beyond the natural carbon cycle and greenhouse warming, there are some other serious causal explanations for global warming.
Among the suspects are, of all things, the sun and its fellow stars. A venerable scientific journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society, published recent research done at the Danish National Space Center indicating that the impact of cosmic rays on the climate could be much greater than scientists estimated. The researchers put forth evidence that cosmic rays have a lot to do with cloud formation in the atmosphere, which in turn has a lot to do with shielding us from the sun's warmth. Combining this discovery with evidence that our local star is experiencing historically high levels of solar activity, the researchers suggest that our sun is batting away cosmic rays from elsewhere in the galaxy and thus reducing our planet's cloud cover. Imagine that: The sun is affecting our planet's temperature.
Nigel Calder provides another angle on this thesis: "After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago. Climate history and related archeology give solid support to the solar hypothesis."
Research concerning cosmic radiation as a factor in global warming builds on earlier comprehensive research done a decade ago by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine's Arthur Robinson, whose research soundly refutes Gore's thesis that global warming is human-induced, noting the relationship between the solar magnetic cycle and global temperatures over the last 250 years.
In 1997, Dr. Frederick Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Sciences, invited colleagues to sign a petition based on Robinson's work, which received more than 20,000 signers, most of whom hold advanced degrees in relevant fields of study. That petition stated, in part: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."
Some other global-warming factors being seriously considered scientifically include ocean currents, changing jet-stream patterns and the Earth's mantle activities affecting ocean temperatures.
The Political Endgame
During the second term of the Clinton/Gore administration, the U.S. faced international pressure to become a signatory to the Kyoto Treaty. The Senate, however, passed a resolution rejecting approval of that treaty in an eye-popping show of bipartisanship. The vote was 95-0, and 56 of those senators are still in Congress.
That 1997 Byrd-Hagel Senate resolution objected to the lack of any "specific scheduled commitments" in regard to the CO2 output of 129 "developing" countries, most notably, China and India, the second and fourth most powerful economies in the world.
China, home to 1.3 billion people, will have the largest economy on earth in little more than a decade. Currently, the country accounts for 33 percent of the world's steel production and 50 percent of all concrete. China burns 2,500 tons of coal and 210,000 gallons of crude oil per minute. Every ten days, China fires up a new coal generator, and plans for 2,200 additional plants by 2030. China consumed in excess of 2.7 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2006 -- almost twice the consumption rate of 2002. At current growth rates of consumption, China alone will devour all the earth's resources in three decades and generate a whole lot of CO2 in the process.
Yet European industrial nations and developing nations on other continents would like to see the U.S. economy restrained by the Kyoto Treaty.
Clearly, some U.S. politicians understand the implications of Gore's folly. Don't expect that to stop Democrats from milking every last drop of political capital from this debate. Talk of carbon credits and other nonsense is really all about campaign coffers -- holding out the threat of regulation as a means of financing campaigns and perpetuating office tenures.
University of Colorado climate scientist Roger Pielke fantasizes about a Gore victory in '08 based on swing states with lower-than-average CO2 output: "[I]n 2004 the per-state carbon-dioxide emissions in states that voted for George Bush were about twice as large on a per-capita basis than those in states that voted for John Kerry. If climate change is a major issue in 2008 then there is a decided advantage in [important swing] states to the Democrats. Colorado and Nevada are below the national average for carbon-dioxide emissions, and Ohio and Iowa stand to benefit immensely from an ethanol bidding war."
However, Gore's political and economic agenda runs deeper than environmental concerns. In his recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism, Christopher Horner, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, aptly describes Gore and his ilk as "green on the outside, red to the core," noting that they are motivated by an anti-capitalist agenda.
Conclusions
Regarding the prevailing winds of contemporary science, my colleague Thomas Sowell reminds us, "Back in the 1970s, the hysteria was about global cooling and the prospect of a new ice age." I published a collection of those dire predictions in an essay entitled, "The Day After Tomorrow."
Al Gore's current hysterics should be received with much more skepticism than the last round of climate soothsayers. His efforts to politicize meteorological science (what little we actually understand about our climate), is ludicrous. A lethal dose of his eco-elixir is precisely the wrong prescription, as it is full of the Left's archetypal defeatist, retreatist statism but void of regard for real-world economic consequences.
Gore's flawed analysis notwithstanding, however, sea level has risen, by best estimates, between four and eight inches in the last 150 years.
The annual rate of rise has remained relatively stable since the "big thaw" ended some 6,000 years ago. However, if current temperature trends continue, an increased rate of rise could pose significant challenges to nations around the world as millions of people now live only a few feet higher than current tides.
Increasing global temperatures will also have other consequences -- some positive, some negative.
Although Gore, et al., would insist otherwise, we mere mortals are no match for the age-old forces that heat and cool our planet. Yet, in the face of enormous odds, we Americans have a history of perseverance and success. We can improvise, adapt and overcome -- just as we have for hundreds of years in response to catastrophe. Unbridled innovation and ingenuity have served us well throughout our history, and these tools will take us, and the rest of the world, far into the future -- unless shackled by a subterfuge like the Kyoto Protocol.
Monday, February 26, 2007
"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." --James Madison
Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Albert Arnold Gore, was the toast of Hollywood at the self-congratulatory soiree known as the 2007 Academy Awards.
Gore, whose failure to carry his "home" state of Tennessee cost him the 2000 presidential election, has recast himself as the populist pope of eco-theology and the titular head of the green movement's developmentally arrested legions.
Now the darling of Leftcoast glitterati, predictably, Gore received two Oscars for a junk-science production called "An Inconvenient Truth," a pseudo-documentary follow-up from the eco-disaster fiction, "The Day After Tomorrow." Gore's "Truth," however, is about 10 percent substance and 90 percent fragrance.
"The Academy Awards have gone green," said Gore, after collecting his Oscars -- maybe a thin coat of green over a thick base of red.
The awards for Gore's climate diatribe coincide, not coincidentally, with the much-ballyhooed release of a media summary of a report on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These two events are a launch pad for the coming cavalcade of dire ecological predictions by Gore and his ilk. Their goal will be to saturate the all-too-sympathetic media outlets with apocalyptic hysterics about a man-made global disaster. Perhaps, too, if all goes according to plan, we'll see another Gore presidential run.
All the "Live Earth" road-show talking points will play up an alarming assertion from Bill Clinton's former veep: "Never before has all of civilization been threatened. We have everything we need to save it, with the possible exception of political will. But political will is a renewable resource."
To be sure, there is "no controlling legal authority" for this, the biggest political and economic power grab ever attempted. The Left's desire to hamstring the U.S. economy and force worldwide Kyoto Treaty compliance will, according to one United Nations estimate, cost the world economy $553 trillion this century.
Al Gore may be a comical dupe when it comes to climatology (in college, he collected a C+ and a D in his two natural-sciences courses), but the global-warming debate and the consequences of that debate are serious. To participate meaningfully, one must distinguish between fact and fiction ?- in addition to understanding the underlying political agendas.
In the inimitable words of the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." To that end, Al Gore's "facts" are deserving of rigorous scrutiny.
Separating fact from fiction
First, let's be clear that the current debate about climate focuses on "global warming," which is not synonymous with the debate about the environmental consequences of the "greenhouse effect." The latter issue concerns what, if any, relationship exists between man-made CO2 in the atmosphere and global temperatures.
For the record, most reputable scientists agree that we are in a period of gradual global warming (about 0.7 degrees Celsius in the last century), and that the greenhouse effect prevents our climate from becoming a deep freeze. Most also agree that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased in the last century, and there is a growing consensus that global warming is due, in part, to the greenhouse effect.
However, there is no scientifically established correlation between global-warming trends and acceleration of the greenhouse effect due to human production of CO2 -- only broad speculation. Although some politicians and their media shills insist that the primary cause of global warming is the burning of hydrocarbons here in the United States, that government regulation of man-made CO2 will curb this global warming, that our failure to limit CO2 output will have dire consequences, and that the costs of enacting these limitations far outweigh the potential consequences, there is no evidence supporting any of these assertions.
Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, notes, "When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works."
In fact, there remains substantial doubt that the production of CO2 by human enterprise has any real impact on global temperature, and if it does, that such impact is, necessarily, negative. Human activity may contribute a maximum estimate of three percent of CO2 to the natural carbon cycle (the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged between the biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere of the Earth), but there is broad dispute about the total production of CO2 from natural sources, which is to say the human contribution may be a much smaller percentage. Atmospheric CO2 levels have increased from about 315 parts per million five decades ago, to about 380 ppm today, which is to say, there are major factors influencing the amount of CO2 levels in the atmosphere besides our burning of hydrocarbons.
Case in point: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii has maintained the world's longest continuous worldwide record of atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels -- those cited by global-warming alarmists. In 2002 and 2003, NOAA recorded increases in atmospheric CO2 of 2.43 and 2.30 ppm respectively -- a 55 percent increase over the annual average of 1.5 ppm for previous years. In 2004, however, this increase fell back to 1.5 ppm per year.
Did human industrial output somehow increase 55 percent during those two years, and then decline by that amount in 2004? Of course not. For the record, NOAA concluded that the fluctuation was caused by the natural processes that contribute and remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Al Gore would be hard-pressed to explain NOAA's findings within the context of his apocalyptic thesis, and he would be hard-pressed to convince any serious scientists that his Orwellian solutions could correct such fluctuations. This is because his thesis is based largely on convenient half-truths.
For instance, Gore insists that the increased incidence of hurricanes, tornadoes, drought and other weather phenomena is the direct result of global warming.
Renowned meteorologist Dr. William Gray takes exception: "The degree to which you believe global warming is causing major hurricanes," he says, "is inversely proportional to your knowledge about these storms."
In a recent issue of Discover Magazine, Gray, described by Discover's editors as one of "the world's most famous hurricane experts," wrote, "This human-induced global-warming thing ... is grossly exaggerated. ... I'm not disputing there has been global warming. There was a lot of global warming in the 1930s and '40s, and then there was global cooling in the middle '40s to the early '70s. Nearly all of my colleagues who have been around 40 or 50 years are skeptical ... about this global-warming thing. But no one asks us."
Gore preaches about the two percent of Antarctica that is warming without noting that temperature readings over the rest of Antarctica indicate the continent has cooled over the previous 35 years, or that the UN's climate panel estimates net snow mass increases in Antarctica this century. Gore notes the increasing temperatures and shrinking ice caps in the Northern Hemisphere but does not note the decreasing temperatures and increased sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere.
Richard S. Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, writes, "A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse."
Perhaps worse still is Gore's intellectual cowardice. During his visit to Europe in January, Gore agreed to an interview with Denmark's largest national newspaper, Jyllands-Posten. Then, when he learned that Bjorn Lomborg, one of the world's leading critics of eco-theological dogma, was also going to be interviewed, Gore abruptly canceled.
Lomborg, a statistician, has delved deep into the data to expose the environmental movement's selective and oft-misleading use of evidence. His book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist" was hailed by Washington Post Book World as "a magnificent achievement" and "the most significant work on the environment since the appearance of its polar opposite, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, in 1962." Perhaps a thoughtful debate is what scares Al Gore most of all.
Dr. Roy Spencer, former senior scientist for climate studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, has some additional "Questions for Al Gore" based on what he calls "Gore's Inconvenient Truth." We are still awaiting Gore's reply...
Alternative causes for global warming
Beyond the natural carbon cycle and greenhouse warming, there are some other serious causal explanations for global warming.
Among the suspects are, of all things, the sun and its fellow stars. A venerable scientific journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society, published recent research done at the Danish National Space Center indicating that the impact of cosmic rays on the climate could be much greater than scientists estimated. The researchers put forth evidence that cosmic rays have a lot to do with cloud formation in the atmosphere, which in turn has a lot to do with shielding us from the sun's warmth. Combining this discovery with evidence that our local star is experiencing historically high levels of solar activity, the researchers suggest that our sun is batting away cosmic rays from elsewhere in the galaxy and thus reducing our planet's cloud cover. Imagine that: The sun is affecting our planet's temperature.
Nigel Calder provides another angle on this thesis: "After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago. Climate history and related archeology give solid support to the solar hypothesis."
Research concerning cosmic radiation as a factor in global warming builds on earlier comprehensive research done a decade ago by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine's Arthur Robinson, whose research soundly refutes Gore's thesis that global warming is human-induced, noting the relationship between the solar magnetic cycle and global temperatures over the last 250 years.
In 1997, Dr. Frederick Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Sciences, invited colleagues to sign a petition based on Robinson's work, which received more than 20,000 signers, most of whom hold advanced degrees in relevant fields of study. That petition stated, in part: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."
Some other global-warming factors being seriously considered scientifically include ocean currents, changing jet-stream patterns and the Earth's mantle activities affecting ocean temperatures.
The Political Endgame
During the second term of the Clinton/Gore administration, the U.S. faced international pressure to become a signatory to the Kyoto Treaty. The Senate, however, passed a resolution rejecting approval of that treaty in an eye-popping show of bipartisanship. The vote was 95-0, and 56 of those senators are still in Congress.
That 1997 Byrd-Hagel Senate resolution objected to the lack of any "specific scheduled commitments" in regard to the CO2 output of 129 "developing" countries, most notably, China and India, the second and fourth most powerful economies in the world.
China, home to 1.3 billion people, will have the largest economy on earth in little more than a decade. Currently, the country accounts for 33 percent of the world's steel production and 50 percent of all concrete. China burns 2,500 tons of coal and 210,000 gallons of crude oil per minute. Every ten days, China fires up a new coal generator, and plans for 2,200 additional plants by 2030. China consumed in excess of 2.7 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2006 -- almost twice the consumption rate of 2002. At current growth rates of consumption, China alone will devour all the earth's resources in three decades and generate a whole lot of CO2 in the process.
Yet European industrial nations and developing nations on other continents would like to see the U.S. economy restrained by the Kyoto Treaty.
Clearly, some U.S. politicians understand the implications of Gore's folly. Don't expect that to stop Democrats from milking every last drop of political capital from this debate. Talk of carbon credits and other nonsense is really all about campaign coffers -- holding out the threat of regulation as a means of financing campaigns and perpetuating office tenures.
University of Colorado climate scientist Roger Pielke fantasizes about a Gore victory in '08 based on swing states with lower-than-average CO2 output: "[I]n 2004 the per-state carbon-dioxide emissions in states that voted for George Bush were about twice as large on a per-capita basis than those in states that voted for John Kerry. If climate change is a major issue in 2008 then there is a decided advantage in [important swing] states to the Democrats. Colorado and Nevada are below the national average for carbon-dioxide emissions, and Ohio and Iowa stand to benefit immensely from an ethanol bidding war."
However, Gore's political and economic agenda runs deeper than environmental concerns. In his recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism, Christopher Horner, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, aptly describes Gore and his ilk as "green on the outside, red to the core," noting that they are motivated by an anti-capitalist agenda.
Conclusions
Regarding the prevailing winds of contemporary science, my colleague Thomas Sowell reminds us, "Back in the 1970s, the hysteria was about global cooling and the prospect of a new ice age." I published a collection of those dire predictions in an essay entitled, "The Day After Tomorrow."
Al Gore's current hysterics should be received with much more skepticism than the last round of climate soothsayers. His efforts to politicize meteorological science (what little we actually understand about our climate), is ludicrous. A lethal dose of his eco-elixir is precisely the wrong prescription, as it is full of the Left's archetypal defeatist, retreatist statism but void of regard for real-world economic consequences.
Gore's flawed analysis notwithstanding, however, sea level has risen, by best estimates, between four and eight inches in the last 150 years.
The annual rate of rise has remained relatively stable since the "big thaw" ended some 6,000 years ago. However, if current temperature trends continue, an increased rate of rise could pose significant challenges to nations around the world as millions of people now live only a few feet higher than current tides.
Increasing global temperatures will also have other consequences -- some positive, some negative.
Although Gore, et al., would insist otherwise, we mere mortals are no match for the age-old forces that heat and cool our planet. Yet, in the face of enormous odds, we Americans have a history of perseverance and success. We can improvise, adapt and overcome -- just as we have for hundreds of years in response to catastrophe. Unbridled innovation and ingenuity have served us well throughout our history, and these tools will take us, and the rest of the world, far into the future -- unless shackled by a subterfuge like the Kyoto Protocol.
Monday, February 26, 2007
The Choice on Iraq
"I appeal to my colleagues in Congress to step back and think carefully about what to do next."
BY JOSEPH LIEBERMAN
Monday, February 26, 2007 12:01 a.m.
Two months into the 110th Congress, Washington has never been more bitterly divided over our mission in Iraq. The Senate and House of Representatives are bracing for parliamentary trench warfare--trapped in an escalating dynamic of division and confrontation that will neither resolve the tough challenges we face in Iraq nor strengthen our nation against its terrorist enemies around the world.
What is remarkable about this state of affairs in Washington is just how removed it is from what is actually happening in Iraq. There, the battle of Baghdad is now under way. A new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, has taken command, having been confirmed by the Senate, 81-0, just a few weeks ago. And a new strategy is being put into action, with thousands of additional American soldiers streaming into the Iraqi capital.
Congress thus faces a choice in the weeks and months ahead. Will we allow our actions to be driven by the changing conditions on the ground in Iraq--or by the unchanging political and ideological positions long ago staked out in Washington? What ultimately matters more to us: the real fight over there, or the political fight over here?
If we stopped the legislative maneuvering and looked to Baghdad, we would see what the new security strategy actually entails and how dramatically it differs from previous efforts. For the first time in the Iraqi capital, the focus of the U.S. military is not just training indigenous forces or chasing down insurgents, but ensuring basic security--meaning an end, at last, to the large-scale sectarian slaughter and ethnic cleansing that has paralyzed Iraq for the past year.
Tamping down this violence is more than a moral imperative. Al Qaeda's stated strategy in Iraq has been to provoke a Sunni-Shiite civil war, precisely because they recognize that it is their best chance to radicalize the country's politics, derail any hope of democracy in the Middle East, and drive the U.S. to despair and retreat. It also takes advantage of what has been the single greatest American weakness in Iraq: the absence of sufficient troops to protect ordinary Iraqis from violence and terrorism.
The new strategy at last begins to tackle these problems. Where previously there weren't enough soldiers to hold key neighborhoods after they had been cleared of extremists and militias, now more U.S. and Iraqi forces are either in place or on the way. Where previously American forces were based on the outskirts of Baghdad, unable to help secure the city, now they are living and working side-by-side with their Iraqi counterparts on small bases being set up throughout the capital.
At least four of these new joint bases have already been established in the Sunni neighborhoods in west Baghdad--the same neighborhoods where, just a few weeks ago, jihadists and death squads held sway. In the Shiite neighborhoods of east Baghdad, American troops are also moving in--and Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army are moving out.
We of course will not know whether this new strategy in Iraq will succeed for some time. Even under the most optimistic of scenarios, there will be more attacks and casualties in the months ahead, especially as our fanatical enemies react and attempt to thwart any perception of progress.
But the fact is that we are in a different place in Iraq today from even just a month ago--with a new strategy, a new commander, and more troops on the ground. We are now in a stronger position to ensure basic security--and with that, we are in a stronger position to marginalize the extremists and strengthen the moderates; a stronger position to foster the economic activity that will drain the insurgency and militias of public support; and a stronger position to press the Iraqi government to make the tough decisions that everyone acknowledges are necessary for progress.
Unfortunately, for many congressional opponents of the war, none of this seems to matter. As the battle of Baghdad just gets underway, they have already made up their minds about America's cause in Iraq, declaring their intention to put an end to the mission before we have had the time to see whether our new plan will work.
There is of course a direct and straightforward way that Congress could end the war, consistent with its authority under the Constitution: by cutting off funds. Yet this option is not being proposed. Critics of the war instead are planning to constrain and squeeze the current strategy and troops by a thousand cuts and conditions.
Among the specific ideas under consideration are to tangle up the deployment of requested reinforcements by imposing certain "readiness" standards, and to redraft the congressional authorization for the war, apparently in such a way that Congress will assume the role of commander in chief and dictate when, where and against whom U.S. troops can fight.
I understand the frustration, anger and exhaustion so many Americans feel about Iraq, the desire to throw up our hands and simply say, "Enough." And I am painfully aware of the enormous toll of this war in human life, and of the infuriating mistakes that have been made in the war's conduct.
But we must not make another terrible mistake now. Many of the worst errors in Iraq arose precisely because the Bush administration best-cased what would happen after Saddam was overthrown. Now many opponents of the war are making the very same best-case mistake--assuming we can pull back in the midst of a critical battle with impunity, even arguing that our retreat will reduce the terrorism and sectarian violence in Iraq.
In fact, halting the current security operation at midpoint, as virtually all of the congressional proposals seek to do, would have devastating consequences. It would put thousands of American troops already deployed in the heart of Baghdad in even greater danger--forced to choose between trying to hold their position without the required reinforcements or, more likely, abandoning them outright. A precipitous pullout would leave a gaping security vacuum in its wake, which terrorists, insurgents, militias and Iran would rush to fill--probably resulting in a spiral of ethnic cleansing and slaughter on a scale as yet unseen in Iraq.
I appeal to my colleagues in Congress to step back and think carefully about what to do next. Instead of undermining Gen. Petraeus before he has been in Iraq for even a month, let us give him and his troops the time and support they need to succeed.
Gen. Petraeus says he will be able to see whether progress is occurring by the end of the summer, so let us declare a truce in the Washington political war over Iraq until then. Let us come together around a constructive legislative agenda for our security: authorizing an increase in the size of the Army and Marines, funding the equipment and protection our troops need, monitoring progress on the ground in Iraq with oversight hearings, investigating contract procedures, and guaranteeing Iraq war veterans the first-class treatment and care they deserve when they come home.
We are at a critical moment in Iraq--at the beginning of a key battle, in the midst of a war that is irretrievably bound up in an even bigger, global struggle against the totalitarian ideology of radical Islamism. However tired, however frustrated, however angry we may feel, we must remember that our forces in Iraq carry America's cause--the cause of freedom--which we abandon at our peril.
BY JOSEPH LIEBERMAN
Monday, February 26, 2007 12:01 a.m.
Two months into the 110th Congress, Washington has never been more bitterly divided over our mission in Iraq. The Senate and House of Representatives are bracing for parliamentary trench warfare--trapped in an escalating dynamic of division and confrontation that will neither resolve the tough challenges we face in Iraq nor strengthen our nation against its terrorist enemies around the world.
What is remarkable about this state of affairs in Washington is just how removed it is from what is actually happening in Iraq. There, the battle of Baghdad is now under way. A new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, has taken command, having been confirmed by the Senate, 81-0, just a few weeks ago. And a new strategy is being put into action, with thousands of additional American soldiers streaming into the Iraqi capital.
Congress thus faces a choice in the weeks and months ahead. Will we allow our actions to be driven by the changing conditions on the ground in Iraq--or by the unchanging political and ideological positions long ago staked out in Washington? What ultimately matters more to us: the real fight over there, or the political fight over here?
If we stopped the legislative maneuvering and looked to Baghdad, we would see what the new security strategy actually entails and how dramatically it differs from previous efforts. For the first time in the Iraqi capital, the focus of the U.S. military is not just training indigenous forces or chasing down insurgents, but ensuring basic security--meaning an end, at last, to the large-scale sectarian slaughter and ethnic cleansing that has paralyzed Iraq for the past year.
Tamping down this violence is more than a moral imperative. Al Qaeda's stated strategy in Iraq has been to provoke a Sunni-Shiite civil war, precisely because they recognize that it is their best chance to radicalize the country's politics, derail any hope of democracy in the Middle East, and drive the U.S. to despair and retreat. It also takes advantage of what has been the single greatest American weakness in Iraq: the absence of sufficient troops to protect ordinary Iraqis from violence and terrorism.
The new strategy at last begins to tackle these problems. Where previously there weren't enough soldiers to hold key neighborhoods after they had been cleared of extremists and militias, now more U.S. and Iraqi forces are either in place or on the way. Where previously American forces were based on the outskirts of Baghdad, unable to help secure the city, now they are living and working side-by-side with their Iraqi counterparts on small bases being set up throughout the capital.
At least four of these new joint bases have already been established in the Sunni neighborhoods in west Baghdad--the same neighborhoods where, just a few weeks ago, jihadists and death squads held sway. In the Shiite neighborhoods of east Baghdad, American troops are also moving in--and Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army are moving out.
We of course will not know whether this new strategy in Iraq will succeed for some time. Even under the most optimistic of scenarios, there will be more attacks and casualties in the months ahead, especially as our fanatical enemies react and attempt to thwart any perception of progress.
But the fact is that we are in a different place in Iraq today from even just a month ago--with a new strategy, a new commander, and more troops on the ground. We are now in a stronger position to ensure basic security--and with that, we are in a stronger position to marginalize the extremists and strengthen the moderates; a stronger position to foster the economic activity that will drain the insurgency and militias of public support; and a stronger position to press the Iraqi government to make the tough decisions that everyone acknowledges are necessary for progress.
Unfortunately, for many congressional opponents of the war, none of this seems to matter. As the battle of Baghdad just gets underway, they have already made up their minds about America's cause in Iraq, declaring their intention to put an end to the mission before we have had the time to see whether our new plan will work.
There is of course a direct and straightforward way that Congress could end the war, consistent with its authority under the Constitution: by cutting off funds. Yet this option is not being proposed. Critics of the war instead are planning to constrain and squeeze the current strategy and troops by a thousand cuts and conditions.
Among the specific ideas under consideration are to tangle up the deployment of requested reinforcements by imposing certain "readiness" standards, and to redraft the congressional authorization for the war, apparently in such a way that Congress will assume the role of commander in chief and dictate when, where and against whom U.S. troops can fight.
I understand the frustration, anger and exhaustion so many Americans feel about Iraq, the desire to throw up our hands and simply say, "Enough." And I am painfully aware of the enormous toll of this war in human life, and of the infuriating mistakes that have been made in the war's conduct.
But we must not make another terrible mistake now. Many of the worst errors in Iraq arose precisely because the Bush administration best-cased what would happen after Saddam was overthrown. Now many opponents of the war are making the very same best-case mistake--assuming we can pull back in the midst of a critical battle with impunity, even arguing that our retreat will reduce the terrorism and sectarian violence in Iraq.
In fact, halting the current security operation at midpoint, as virtually all of the congressional proposals seek to do, would have devastating consequences. It would put thousands of American troops already deployed in the heart of Baghdad in even greater danger--forced to choose between trying to hold their position without the required reinforcements or, more likely, abandoning them outright. A precipitous pullout would leave a gaping security vacuum in its wake, which terrorists, insurgents, militias and Iran would rush to fill--probably resulting in a spiral of ethnic cleansing and slaughter on a scale as yet unseen in Iraq.
I appeal to my colleagues in Congress to step back and think carefully about what to do next. Instead of undermining Gen. Petraeus before he has been in Iraq for even a month, let us give him and his troops the time and support they need to succeed.
Gen. Petraeus says he will be able to see whether progress is occurring by the end of the summer, so let us declare a truce in the Washington political war over Iraq until then. Let us come together around a constructive legislative agenda for our security: authorizing an increase in the size of the Army and Marines, funding the equipment and protection our troops need, monitoring progress on the ground in Iraq with oversight hearings, investigating contract procedures, and guaranteeing Iraq war veterans the first-class treatment and care they deserve when they come home.
We are at a critical moment in Iraq--at the beginning of a key battle, in the midst of a war that is irretrievably bound up in an even bigger, global struggle against the totalitarian ideology of radical Islamism. However tired, however frustrated, however angry we may feel, we must remember that our forces in Iraq carry America's cause--the cause of freedom--which we abandon at our peril.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
An Upside-Down World
The British far left makes common cause with Muslim reactionaries.
BY NICK COHEN
Sunday, February 25, 2007 12:01 a.m.
LONDON--The other day Ken Livingstone, the mayor of my hometown of London, organized a conference on Islam and the West. It was a carefully rigged affair in which handpicked speaker after handpicked speaker stood up and announced that the democracies were to blame for the tidal wave of murder sweeping the world. To provide a spurious air of balance, the organizers invited a few people who dissented from the line of the Muslim Brotherhood and its British allies. Agnès Poirier, a French feminist, was one of them, but she pulled out because although there were no special facilities for Christians, Hindus and Jews, Mr. Livingstone had provided separate prayer rooms for Muslim men and Muslim women.
She wanted to know: Does Ken Livingstone's idea of multiculturalism acknowledge and condone segregation? It clearly does, but what made this vignette of ethnic politics in a European city worth noting is that commentators for the BBC and nearly every newspaper here describe Mr. Livingstone as one of the most left-wing politicians in British public life. Hardly any of them notice the weirdness of an apparent socialist pandering to a reactionary strain of Islam, pushing its arguments and accepting its dictates.
Mr. Livingstone's not alone. After suicide bombers massacred Londoners on July 7, 2005, leftish rather than conservative papers held British foreign policy responsible for the slaughters on the transport network. ("Blair's Bombs," ran the headline in my own leftish New Statesman.) In any university, you are more likely to hear campaigns for the rights of Muslim women derided by postmodernists than by crusty conservative dons. Our Stop the War coalition is an alliance of the white far left and the Islamist far right, and George Galloway, its leader, and the first allegedly "far left" member to be elected to the British Parliament in 50 years, is an admirer of Saddam Hussein and Hezbollah.
I could go on with specific examples, but the crucial point is the pervasive European attitude to the Iraq catastrophe. As al Qaeda, the Baathists and Shiite Islamists slaughter thousands, there is virtually no sense that their successes are our defeats. Iraqi socialists and trade unionists I know are close to despair. They turn for support to Europe, the home of liberalism, feminism and socialism, and find that rich democrats, liberals and feminists won't help them or even acknowledge their existence.
There were plenty of leftish people in the 20th century who excused communism, but they could at least say that communism was a left-wing idea. Now overwhelmingly and everywhere you find people who scream their heads off about the smallest sexist or racist remark, yet refuse to confront ultra-reactionary movements that explicitly reject every principle they profess to hold.
Why is the world upside down? In part, it is a measure of President Bush's failure that anti-Americanism has swept out of the intelligentsia and become mainstream in Britain. A country that was once the most pro-American in Western Europe now derides Tony Blair for sticking with the Atlantic alliance. But if Iraq has pummeled Mr. Blair's reputation, it has also shone a very harsh light on the British and European left. No one noticed it when the Berlin Wall came down, but the death of socialism gave people who called themselves "left wing" a paradoxical advantage. They no longer had a practical program they needed to defend and could go along with ultra-right movements that would once have been taboo. In moments of crisis, otherwise sane liberals will turn to these movements and be reassured by the professed leftism of the protest organizers that they are not making a nonsense of their beliefs.
If, that is, they have strong beliefs to abandon. In Europe and North America extreme versions of multiculturalism and identity politics have left a poisonous legacy. Far too many liberal-minded people think that is somehow culturally imperialist to criticize reactionary movements and ideas--as long as they aren't European or American reactionary movements. This delusion is everywhere. Until very recently our Labour government was allowing its dealings with Britain's Muslim minority to be controlled by an unelected group, the Muslim Council of Britain, which stood for everything social democrats were against. In their desperate attempts to ingratiate themselves, ministers gave its leader a knighthood--even though he had said that "death was too good" for Salman Rushdie, who happens to be a British citizen as well as a great novelist.
Beyond the contortions and betrayals of liberal and leftish thinking lies a simple emotion that I don't believe Americans take account of: an insidious fear that has produced the ideal conditions for appeasement. Radical Islam does worry Europeans but we are trying to prevent an explosion by going along with Islamist victimhood. We blame ourselves for the Islamist rage, in the hope that our admission of guilt will pacify our enemies. We are scared, but not scared enough to take a stand.
I hope conservative American readers come to Britain. But if you do, expect to find an upside-down world. People who call themselves liberals or leftists will argue with you, and when they have finished you may experience the strange realization that they have become far more reactionary than you have ever been.
BY NICK COHEN
Sunday, February 25, 2007 12:01 a.m.
LONDON--The other day Ken Livingstone, the mayor of my hometown of London, organized a conference on Islam and the West. It was a carefully rigged affair in which handpicked speaker after handpicked speaker stood up and announced that the democracies were to blame for the tidal wave of murder sweeping the world. To provide a spurious air of balance, the organizers invited a few people who dissented from the line of the Muslim Brotherhood and its British allies. Agnès Poirier, a French feminist, was one of them, but she pulled out because although there were no special facilities for Christians, Hindus and Jews, Mr. Livingstone had provided separate prayer rooms for Muslim men and Muslim women.
She wanted to know: Does Ken Livingstone's idea of multiculturalism acknowledge and condone segregation? It clearly does, but what made this vignette of ethnic politics in a European city worth noting is that commentators for the BBC and nearly every newspaper here describe Mr. Livingstone as one of the most left-wing politicians in British public life. Hardly any of them notice the weirdness of an apparent socialist pandering to a reactionary strain of Islam, pushing its arguments and accepting its dictates.
Mr. Livingstone's not alone. After suicide bombers massacred Londoners on July 7, 2005, leftish rather than conservative papers held British foreign policy responsible for the slaughters on the transport network. ("Blair's Bombs," ran the headline in my own leftish New Statesman.) In any university, you are more likely to hear campaigns for the rights of Muslim women derided by postmodernists than by crusty conservative dons. Our Stop the War coalition is an alliance of the white far left and the Islamist far right, and George Galloway, its leader, and the first allegedly "far left" member to be elected to the British Parliament in 50 years, is an admirer of Saddam Hussein and Hezbollah.
I could go on with specific examples, but the crucial point is the pervasive European attitude to the Iraq catastrophe. As al Qaeda, the Baathists and Shiite Islamists slaughter thousands, there is virtually no sense that their successes are our defeats. Iraqi socialists and trade unionists I know are close to despair. They turn for support to Europe, the home of liberalism, feminism and socialism, and find that rich democrats, liberals and feminists won't help them or even acknowledge their existence.
There were plenty of leftish people in the 20th century who excused communism, but they could at least say that communism was a left-wing idea. Now overwhelmingly and everywhere you find people who scream their heads off about the smallest sexist or racist remark, yet refuse to confront ultra-reactionary movements that explicitly reject every principle they profess to hold.
Why is the world upside down? In part, it is a measure of President Bush's failure that anti-Americanism has swept out of the intelligentsia and become mainstream in Britain. A country that was once the most pro-American in Western Europe now derides Tony Blair for sticking with the Atlantic alliance. But if Iraq has pummeled Mr. Blair's reputation, it has also shone a very harsh light on the British and European left. No one noticed it when the Berlin Wall came down, but the death of socialism gave people who called themselves "left wing" a paradoxical advantage. They no longer had a practical program they needed to defend and could go along with ultra-right movements that would once have been taboo. In moments of crisis, otherwise sane liberals will turn to these movements and be reassured by the professed leftism of the protest organizers that they are not making a nonsense of their beliefs.
If, that is, they have strong beliefs to abandon. In Europe and North America extreme versions of multiculturalism and identity politics have left a poisonous legacy. Far too many liberal-minded people think that is somehow culturally imperialist to criticize reactionary movements and ideas--as long as they aren't European or American reactionary movements. This delusion is everywhere. Until very recently our Labour government was allowing its dealings with Britain's Muslim minority to be controlled by an unelected group, the Muslim Council of Britain, which stood for everything social democrats were against. In their desperate attempts to ingratiate themselves, ministers gave its leader a knighthood--even though he had said that "death was too good" for Salman Rushdie, who happens to be a British citizen as well as a great novelist.
Beyond the contortions and betrayals of liberal and leftish thinking lies a simple emotion that I don't believe Americans take account of: an insidious fear that has produced the ideal conditions for appeasement. Radical Islam does worry Europeans but we are trying to prevent an explosion by going along with Islamist victimhood. We blame ourselves for the Islamist rage, in the hope that our admission of guilt will pacify our enemies. We are scared, but not scared enough to take a stand.
I hope conservative American readers come to Britain. But if you do, expect to find an upside-down world. People who call themselves liberals or leftists will argue with you, and when they have finished you may experience the strange realization that they have become far more reactionary than you have ever been.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
A Failure to Communicate
And one last chance to win the war of ideas in Iraq
By Cliff MayThursday
February 22, 2007
In Iraq, we have been losing not clashes of arms but clashes of perceptions. Our enemies understood early on that they could not defeat American troops in combat. But they were clever enough to realize they didn’t need to. Instead, they could win a war of ideas.
Their strategy was audacious: They would target their enemies--“occupiers,” “infidels” and “collaborators” -- only opportunistically and sporadically. Their most lethal weapon, the suicide-bomber, they would deploy against ordinary Iraqis shopping in the market, waiting on line for jobs, sitting in cafes.
One might have expected the fabled “Arab Street” to erupt over the slaughter of fellow Arabs. It did not do so. Muslims around the world ought to have been furious over seeing their co-religionists killed in cold blood. They were not.
Nor were Europeans outraged at the mass murder of innocents. On the contrary, many expressed something close to admiration for what they persisted in calling the “Resistance.”
The media, for their part, were not diligent in reporting on the affiliations, motives and strategies of the killers – whom they referred to as “insurgents” or “militants” or something equally non-judgmental. They talked about “the violence,” and the “security situation”– as though the cause of the bloodshed was not specific individuals, groups and regimes but a force of nature, like a hurricane or a tornado.
The White House, the Pentagon and the State Department allowed this spin to go almost unchallenged – and eventually to become the dominant “narrative.” What could they have done instead? They could have made the truthful case – forcefully and relentlessly -- that ruthless fanatics were intentionally killing innocent Iraqis; that civilized people do not excuse such barbarism, no matter the cause or grievance; that principled people fight and defeat it.
On a BBC radio show, an interviewer asked if I agreed that the situation in Iraq was dire: I said I thought it was: Iraqi non-combatants -- men, women and children -- are being murdered by the score. So surely, I added, the one thing we must not do is turn the country over to those dispatching the killers.
Startled, he suggested that the presence of Americans was responsible for the violence. I asked him to be more precise: Is it the sight of Americans that causes people to kill one another? Or is it perhaps our smell?
A second and also cunning aspect of the anti-American/anti-Iraqi strategy has been to stoke sectarian fires, knowing that Americans would not want to be caught in a civil war. A year ago this month, the Golden Mosque in Samara – the holiest Shia shrine in Iraq – was bombed. It was a stroke of tactical brilliance. Once again, international outrage at the predators was muted (nothing like the protests in response, for example, to Israeli attempts to repair a ramp near the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem). But Iraqi Shia, until then restrained despite repeated attacks, turned to militias both to protect them and to take revenge against what they saw as their complicit Sunni neighbors.
Having lost so many clashes of perceptions, the US has now had to change its strategy for the clash of arms. Under a new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, American forces are not just training Iraqi forces to “stand up so Americans can stand down,” they are actually attempting to provide security to the residents of Baghdad, to clear out the terrorists and keep them out.
To accomplish that will require sophisticated counter-insurgency techniques – a subject on which Petraeus has literally written the book. But beyond making progress, Petraeus will need to show progress through the media to the world: a terrorist cell eliminated, a weapons cache seized, a torture chamber located, a neighborhood stabilized, a market teeming with people no longer afraid they won’t survive the afternoon. Purple fingers once a year will not suffice.
The enemy knows what it has to do in response: Litter the streets of Baghdad with bodies. If the dead are Americans, that’s a bulls-eye. But if they are just ordinary Iraqis heading for work or taking their children to school or buying rice for dinner that can be spun as a victory, too. The “international community” will direct its anger not at the killers but at those brave enough to stand up to them. Is that not perverse, illogical and immoral? Is it not insane? Of course it is. But most people won’t understand why until and unless the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department learn to wage a more effective war of ideas.
By Cliff MayThursday
February 22, 2007
In Iraq, we have been losing not clashes of arms but clashes of perceptions. Our enemies understood early on that they could not defeat American troops in combat. But they were clever enough to realize they didn’t need to. Instead, they could win a war of ideas.
Their strategy was audacious: They would target their enemies--“occupiers,” “infidels” and “collaborators” -- only opportunistically and sporadically. Their most lethal weapon, the suicide-bomber, they would deploy against ordinary Iraqis shopping in the market, waiting on line for jobs, sitting in cafes.
One might have expected the fabled “Arab Street” to erupt over the slaughter of fellow Arabs. It did not do so. Muslims around the world ought to have been furious over seeing their co-religionists killed in cold blood. They were not.
Nor were Europeans outraged at the mass murder of innocents. On the contrary, many expressed something close to admiration for what they persisted in calling the “Resistance.”
The media, for their part, were not diligent in reporting on the affiliations, motives and strategies of the killers – whom they referred to as “insurgents” or “militants” or something equally non-judgmental. They talked about “the violence,” and the “security situation”– as though the cause of the bloodshed was not specific individuals, groups and regimes but a force of nature, like a hurricane or a tornado.
The White House, the Pentagon and the State Department allowed this spin to go almost unchallenged – and eventually to become the dominant “narrative.” What could they have done instead? They could have made the truthful case – forcefully and relentlessly -- that ruthless fanatics were intentionally killing innocent Iraqis; that civilized people do not excuse such barbarism, no matter the cause or grievance; that principled people fight and defeat it.
On a BBC radio show, an interviewer asked if I agreed that the situation in Iraq was dire: I said I thought it was: Iraqi non-combatants -- men, women and children -- are being murdered by the score. So surely, I added, the one thing we must not do is turn the country over to those dispatching the killers.
Startled, he suggested that the presence of Americans was responsible for the violence. I asked him to be more precise: Is it the sight of Americans that causes people to kill one another? Or is it perhaps our smell?
A second and also cunning aspect of the anti-American/anti-Iraqi strategy has been to stoke sectarian fires, knowing that Americans would not want to be caught in a civil war. A year ago this month, the Golden Mosque in Samara – the holiest Shia shrine in Iraq – was bombed. It was a stroke of tactical brilliance. Once again, international outrage at the predators was muted (nothing like the protests in response, for example, to Israeli attempts to repair a ramp near the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem). But Iraqi Shia, until then restrained despite repeated attacks, turned to militias both to protect them and to take revenge against what they saw as their complicit Sunni neighbors.
Having lost so many clashes of perceptions, the US has now had to change its strategy for the clash of arms. Under a new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, American forces are not just training Iraqi forces to “stand up so Americans can stand down,” they are actually attempting to provide security to the residents of Baghdad, to clear out the terrorists and keep them out.
To accomplish that will require sophisticated counter-insurgency techniques – a subject on which Petraeus has literally written the book. But beyond making progress, Petraeus will need to show progress through the media to the world: a terrorist cell eliminated, a weapons cache seized, a torture chamber located, a neighborhood stabilized, a market teeming with people no longer afraid they won’t survive the afternoon. Purple fingers once a year will not suffice.
The enemy knows what it has to do in response: Litter the streets of Baghdad with bodies. If the dead are Americans, that’s a bulls-eye. But if they are just ordinary Iraqis heading for work or taking their children to school or buying rice for dinner that can be spun as a victory, too. The “international community” will direct its anger not at the killers but at those brave enough to stand up to them. Is that not perverse, illogical and immoral? Is it not insane? Of course it is. But most people won’t understand why until and unless the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department learn to wage a more effective war of ideas.
Shhhh... The Surge is Working
By Patrick Ruffini
Saturday, February 24, 2007
A gloomy haze has settled over the nation's prosecution of the War on Terror as of late. It seems like we can only watch helplessly as Nancy Pelosi and Jack Murtha size up new angles of attack for undermining the war effort. The media is chomping at the bit the tell the story of an America, bruised and humbled and exhausted, heading for the exits in Iraq.
But something interesting is happening on the way to the "new direction." Early indications are that the troop surge into Baghdad is working. It hasn't been reported on widely, but murders in Baghdad are down 70%, attacks are down 80%, Mahdi Army chief Moqtada al-Sadr has reportedly made off for Iran, and many Baghdadis who had fled the violence now feel it's safe enough to return. The strategy that Congress is busy denouncing is proving to be our best hope for victory.
In Iraq, there's a sense that change is in the air -- literally. Omar of Iraq the Model spots a B-1 Bomber in the skies of Baghdad for the first time since the end of the major combat. On the ground, Omar writes that the signs that Iraqis are getting serious about security are more palbable. With the help of Compstat-like technology, security forces are cracking down at checkpoints (even ambulances are getting stopped) and getting nimbler about locating them strategically so the terrorists don't know what to expect.
This turnaround in Baghdad is confirmed at home by the media's near-deafening silence. If it seems like you've heard less about how Iraq is spiraling into civil war in the weeks since the surge was announced, this is why. Even some discordant voices in the media are starting to wonder what's happening. Time magazine worries that it's "Quiet in Baghdad. Too quiet." That's right -- a dramatic reduction in violence is actually bad news.
It's too early to claim victory just yet; the operation is just two weeks old. But U.S. troops have been able to accomplish all of this with just one more brigade in-country, with four more on the way by May. These encouraging early returns show the potential for success when we apply concentrated military force to the security problem. When the Army and Marine Corps are on offense, carrying out combat operations and clearing out insurgent strongholds, we win. When we lay back, carrying out routine patrols and playing Baghdad beat cop, we lose.
The key to success is staying power. The always incisive Daffyd ab-Hugh has a good read on this dynamic. Counterinsurgency in Iraq has often been compared to a game of whack-a-mole -- secure an area, only to have the insurgents pop up somewhere else. But if we slammed a mallet into the hole, and kept it there, then picked up a new one... and did the same?
This is a new game called Seal-a-Hole , and it has a very different dynamic from Whack-a-Mole: the normal game is one of futility; the game continues until the player gets tired and quits or he runs out of money. But Seal-a-Hole actually has a victory point: when all the holes are sealed, the game is over -- and the player, America, has won.
Even though Seal-a-Hole is not futile, it nevertheless requires a great deal of patience; there are many, many holes, and each hole has a mole who must be whacked. Some of the holes, such as Sadr City, are very big and will require many mallets to properly seal. But if we have the courage and fortitude of our American forebears, we will seal those holes... and we will win.
On the political front, the White House also seems to have dislodged a major roadblock to victory: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's reluctance to allow U.S. troops to take the fight to Sadr and his militias. Returning American troops have expressed their frustration at having to walk on eggshells when it came to came to entering Shi'ite areas, a backbone of support for the government. Thankfully, the rules of engagement are changing. American troops are now freer to take on all comers, and the results are clear in both Sunni and Shi'ite areas.
In the coming days and weeks, these rules of engagement will face their ultimate test with the decision to enter Sadr City, the Mahdi Army's key stronghold. And enter we must. Those intent on turning Iraq into a breeding ground for al-Qaeda won't be convinced of our seriousness until we confront the key sources of violence on both sides of the sectarian divide.
When things don't go well in Iraq, we see the endless B-roll of chaos and carnage. When things are on the upswing, we tend to hear more about Anna Nicole Smith. The media will never acknowledge victories in Iraq, so we'll have to settle for an absence of bad coverage. But even in this relative lull in Iraq, it's important to understand and appreciate the short-term victories so we can create more of them. And finish the job.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
A gloomy haze has settled over the nation's prosecution of the War on Terror as of late. It seems like we can only watch helplessly as Nancy Pelosi and Jack Murtha size up new angles of attack for undermining the war effort. The media is chomping at the bit the tell the story of an America, bruised and humbled and exhausted, heading for the exits in Iraq.
But something interesting is happening on the way to the "new direction." Early indications are that the troop surge into Baghdad is working. It hasn't been reported on widely, but murders in Baghdad are down 70%, attacks are down 80%, Mahdi Army chief Moqtada al-Sadr has reportedly made off for Iran, and many Baghdadis who had fled the violence now feel it's safe enough to return. The strategy that Congress is busy denouncing is proving to be our best hope for victory.
In Iraq, there's a sense that change is in the air -- literally. Omar of Iraq the Model spots a B-1 Bomber in the skies of Baghdad for the first time since the end of the major combat. On the ground, Omar writes that the signs that Iraqis are getting serious about security are more palbable. With the help of Compstat-like technology, security forces are cracking down at checkpoints (even ambulances are getting stopped) and getting nimbler about locating them strategically so the terrorists don't know what to expect.
This turnaround in Baghdad is confirmed at home by the media's near-deafening silence. If it seems like you've heard less about how Iraq is spiraling into civil war in the weeks since the surge was announced, this is why. Even some discordant voices in the media are starting to wonder what's happening. Time magazine worries that it's "Quiet in Baghdad. Too quiet." That's right -- a dramatic reduction in violence is actually bad news.
It's too early to claim victory just yet; the operation is just two weeks old. But U.S. troops have been able to accomplish all of this with just one more brigade in-country, with four more on the way by May. These encouraging early returns show the potential for success when we apply concentrated military force to the security problem. When the Army and Marine Corps are on offense, carrying out combat operations and clearing out insurgent strongholds, we win. When we lay back, carrying out routine patrols and playing Baghdad beat cop, we lose.
The key to success is staying power. The always incisive Daffyd ab-Hugh has a good read on this dynamic. Counterinsurgency in Iraq has often been compared to a game of whack-a-mole -- secure an area, only to have the insurgents pop up somewhere else. But if we slammed a mallet into the hole, and kept it there, then picked up a new one... and did the same?
This is a new game called Seal-a-Hole , and it has a very different dynamic from Whack-a-Mole: the normal game is one of futility; the game continues until the player gets tired and quits or he runs out of money. But Seal-a-Hole actually has a victory point: when all the holes are sealed, the game is over -- and the player, America, has won.
Even though Seal-a-Hole is not futile, it nevertheless requires a great deal of patience; there are many, many holes, and each hole has a mole who must be whacked. Some of the holes, such as Sadr City, are very big and will require many mallets to properly seal. But if we have the courage and fortitude of our American forebears, we will seal those holes... and we will win.
On the political front, the White House also seems to have dislodged a major roadblock to victory: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's reluctance to allow U.S. troops to take the fight to Sadr and his militias. Returning American troops have expressed their frustration at having to walk on eggshells when it came to came to entering Shi'ite areas, a backbone of support for the government. Thankfully, the rules of engagement are changing. American troops are now freer to take on all comers, and the results are clear in both Sunni and Shi'ite areas.
In the coming days and weeks, these rules of engagement will face their ultimate test with the decision to enter Sadr City, the Mahdi Army's key stronghold. And enter we must. Those intent on turning Iraq into a breeding ground for al-Qaeda won't be convinced of our seriousness until we confront the key sources of violence on both sides of the sectarian divide.
When things don't go well in Iraq, we see the endless B-roll of chaos and carnage. When things are on the upswing, we tend to hear more about Anna Nicole Smith. The media will never acknowledge victories in Iraq, so we'll have to settle for an absence of bad coverage. But even in this relative lull in Iraq, it's important to understand and appreciate the short-term victories so we can create more of them. And finish the job.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Bill Clinton's AMT Bomb
Why millions in the middle class may see their tax bill explode.
Wall Street Journal
Friday, February 23, 2007 12:01 a.m.
As tax season nears, Democrats in Congress are discovering they have an urgent political bomb to defuse--the alternative minimum tax. The AMT already hits four million Americans, and without new legislation this year it will explode in the pocketbooks of 23 million taxpayers come April 15, 2008.
What's amazing is that many Democrats and reporters are trying to blame this looming tax increase on the 2001-2003 tax cuts. See if you can follow their argument: Taxpayers are obliged to pay the higher of their tax bill under either the regular IRS code or the AMT. And because the tax cuts reduced the regular income tax of the average family by $2,000 a year, more middle-class families are being bounced to the AMT system. Ergo, it's all President Bush's fault.
This logic requires overlooking that a taxpayer's bill under the AMT is still lower than it would have been without the tax cuts. But never mind: The political game here is to use the AMT as an excuse to justify repealing the Bush tax cuts.
In reality, the AMT is one more liberal monster that was created in the name of soaking the rich but has now come back to swallow the middle class. Democrats created the AMT in 1969, amid a political frenzy to capture a mere 21 millionaires who had paid nothing. And the politician most responsible for the AMT's relentless expansion in recent years is none other than William Jefferson Clinton.
Remember the 1993 tax hike that was supposed to fall only on the rich? In addition to raising gas taxes and Medicare payroll taxes and income tax rates, the Democratic Congress that year also raised the AMT: from a 24% flat rate to a dual tax rate of 26% on AMT income up to $175,000 and 28% on AMT income above that amount.
It's true that the 1993 bill slightly increased the AMT's family income exemption, but Democrats refused to index those exemptions for inflation. So the combination of the higher rates and the failure to index for inflation has caught more and more middle-class taxpayers in the AMT's maw. From 1992 to 2002, this Clinton stealth tax hike increased sixfold the number of filers paying the AMT, to nearly two million from 300,000.
A Joint Tax Committee (JTC) analysis requested last year by Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa shows that about 11 million more Americans will have to pay the AMT next year thanks to the higher post-1993 AMT rates. The House Ways and Means Committee calculates that if you live in a high-tax state (such as California or New York) and have two or more kids, you're very likely to be hit with the AMT this year even if your income is as low as $75,000.
All of which means that if Democrats really want to spare Joe Lunchbucket from the AMT, the cleanest solution is to repeal the Clinton AMT rate hikes. The nearby chart, prepared by the American Shareholders Association based on Joint Tax data, compares the number of filers who will be hit by the AMT under current law and what would happen if the AMT rate was moved back to the pre-Clinton 24% and the exemption was indexed for inflation at the 2005 level of $40,250 ($58,000 for a joint return). Going back to the pre-Clinton rates would leave only about 2.6 million tax filers subject to an AMT penalty next year instead of 23 million under current law.
The estimated "cost" of this fix to the Treasury over 10 years would be some $632 billion, which is money Democrats in Congress would prefer to spend. But as Senator Grassley notes: "This tax was never meant to tax the middle class, so why should we count it as a revenue loss when we make sure they don't have to pay it?"
There's a larger policy lesson to keep in mind as the debate unfolds over both the AMT and the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts in 2010: Beware politicians who say they only want to tax the rich. Sooner or later their tax schemes will soak the middle class because that's where the real money is. Regarding the AMT, Democrats are now saying they'll be glad to provide AMT relief for the middle class but they'll have to raise taxes on CEOs and other high-income Americans to do it. Where have we heard that one before?
Wall Street Journal
Friday, February 23, 2007 12:01 a.m.
As tax season nears, Democrats in Congress are discovering they have an urgent political bomb to defuse--the alternative minimum tax. The AMT already hits four million Americans, and without new legislation this year it will explode in the pocketbooks of 23 million taxpayers come April 15, 2008.
What's amazing is that many Democrats and reporters are trying to blame this looming tax increase on the 2001-2003 tax cuts. See if you can follow their argument: Taxpayers are obliged to pay the higher of their tax bill under either the regular IRS code or the AMT. And because the tax cuts reduced the regular income tax of the average family by $2,000 a year, more middle-class families are being bounced to the AMT system. Ergo, it's all President Bush's fault.
This logic requires overlooking that a taxpayer's bill under the AMT is still lower than it would have been without the tax cuts. But never mind: The political game here is to use the AMT as an excuse to justify repealing the Bush tax cuts.
In reality, the AMT is one more liberal monster that was created in the name of soaking the rich but has now come back to swallow the middle class. Democrats created the AMT in 1969, amid a political frenzy to capture a mere 21 millionaires who had paid nothing. And the politician most responsible for the AMT's relentless expansion in recent years is none other than William Jefferson Clinton.
Remember the 1993 tax hike that was supposed to fall only on the rich? In addition to raising gas taxes and Medicare payroll taxes and income tax rates, the Democratic Congress that year also raised the AMT: from a 24% flat rate to a dual tax rate of 26% on AMT income up to $175,000 and 28% on AMT income above that amount.
It's true that the 1993 bill slightly increased the AMT's family income exemption, but Democrats refused to index those exemptions for inflation. So the combination of the higher rates and the failure to index for inflation has caught more and more middle-class taxpayers in the AMT's maw. From 1992 to 2002, this Clinton stealth tax hike increased sixfold the number of filers paying the AMT, to nearly two million from 300,000.
A Joint Tax Committee (JTC) analysis requested last year by Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa shows that about 11 million more Americans will have to pay the AMT next year thanks to the higher post-1993 AMT rates. The House Ways and Means Committee calculates that if you live in a high-tax state (such as California or New York) and have two or more kids, you're very likely to be hit with the AMT this year even if your income is as low as $75,000.
All of which means that if Democrats really want to spare Joe Lunchbucket from the AMT, the cleanest solution is to repeal the Clinton AMT rate hikes. The nearby chart, prepared by the American Shareholders Association based on Joint Tax data, compares the number of filers who will be hit by the AMT under current law and what would happen if the AMT rate was moved back to the pre-Clinton 24% and the exemption was indexed for inflation at the 2005 level of $40,250 ($58,000 for a joint return). Going back to the pre-Clinton rates would leave only about 2.6 million tax filers subject to an AMT penalty next year instead of 23 million under current law.The estimated "cost" of this fix to the Treasury over 10 years would be some $632 billion, which is money Democrats in Congress would prefer to spend. But as Senator Grassley notes: "This tax was never meant to tax the middle class, so why should we count it as a revenue loss when we make sure they don't have to pay it?"
There's a larger policy lesson to keep in mind as the debate unfolds over both the AMT and the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts in 2010: Beware politicians who say they only want to tax the rich. Sooner or later their tax schemes will soak the middle class because that's where the real money is. Regarding the AMT, Democrats are now saying they'll be glad to provide AMT relief for the middle class but they'll have to raise taxes on CEOs and other high-income Americans to do it. Where have we heard that one before?
Trolling for International Admiration
By David Limbaugh
Friday, February 23, 2007
While arrogantly guaranteeing that she would be the next president, Hillary Clinton promised to stop America from being an "arrogant power." Well, maybe when she accomplishes her mission, she can begin to work on herself.
Notice that Hillary didn't say we "appear" to be arrogant or that other nations misperceive us as an arrogant nation. She said, "When I'm president, I'm going to send a message to the world that America is back -- we're not the arrogant power that we've been acting like for the last six years."
For those of you who doubted John Kerry was expressing a common Democratic sentiment when he called America an "international pariah," here is your confirmation. Indeed, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, when running for president himself, said of America, "We find ourselves, too often, isolated and resented." President Bush, he said, had "created a new rallying cry for terrorist recruits."
And in case you think Hillary is less politic on this issue than her politically gifted husband, you might recall that when accepting an award for "international understanding" a few years ago, Bill Clinton said that America's image had suffered in the Muslim world. Another Democratic ex-president, Jimmy Carter, said that by acting unilaterally, President Bush had alienated and isolated the United States from its potential allies in the war on terror. He said Bush's policies have resulted in America losing her "reputation as the most admired champion of freedom and justice."
Are these people singing from the same hymnbook, or what?
Since before we attacked Iraq, they have mercilessly excoriated Bush for his "radical unilateralism," his "go-it-alone" approach. It never occurred to them to criticize, say, France or Germany, for not doing the right thing by joining the coalition against Saddam Hussein, despite believing the exact same things we believed about his weapons of mass destruction, his dangerous ties to terrorism and his serial violations of post-war treaties and U.N. resolutions.
Is it just me, or is anyone else getting tired of these people ceaselessly, instinctively siding with America's foreign critics and slamming the United States? Sometimes it seems that Hillary and company are as concerned about their poll numbers in France and Germany as in the United States.
Hillary said, "We want to be an admired country again in the world. There is a lot of work to be done."
When in recent history has America been greatly admired by other nations? When haven't we been the object of resentment and jealousy throughout the world, and quite underappreciated, considering our record of philanthropy?
What other great nation in history -- let alone the world's lone superpower -- has been so willing to use its power for the good and so cautious, contrary to conventional wisdom, about using its power to impose its will on other nations?
I can just hear the catcalls now from those who prefer to accuse us of imperialism at the drop of a hat -- from those who spread the malicious myth that we attacked Iraq to confiscate its oil. These drive-by verbal assassins have always spewed their bile with impunity. They've never even considered apologizing for their propaganda -- propagandists don't -- though we not only declined to exploit Iraqi oil for our benefit, but have generously engaged in a comprehensive program to rebuild the country.
I hear even harsher catcalls coming from the same people -- who also blame us for the destruction wrought in Iraq by sectarian and terrorist mayhem following our removal of Saddam Hussein. They're certainly entitled to their opinion.
While no one wants America gratuitously to alienate the international community, should the primary focus of our foreign policy be to ingratiate ourselves to foreign nations?
But if Hillary and her cohorts are so concerned about America's image, maybe it's time they quit slandering their commander in chief to the rest of the world, wrongly accusing him of having lied us into war and of having attacked Iraq "unilaterally" just so they can rehabilitate themselves politically.
If they are so concerned about America's so-called "unilateralism," they should quit hypocritically demanding we abandon our multilateral approach to Iran and North Korea. They should muzzle colleagues like Dick Durbin and Ted Kennedy, who tell the world that our military routinely engages in prisoner torture and abuse for sadistic sport.
Democrats indignantly deny they are soft on defense. But we are engaged in a protracted war, and when campaigning, their leading presidential candidates choose to dwell on how America is faring in international polls.
I don't know about you, but I'd just as soon our next president -- like the current one -- be a little less preoccupied with international popularity contests and more dedicated to keeping America secure.
Friday, February 23, 2007
While arrogantly guaranteeing that she would be the next president, Hillary Clinton promised to stop America from being an "arrogant power." Well, maybe when she accomplishes her mission, she can begin to work on herself.
Notice that Hillary didn't say we "appear" to be arrogant or that other nations misperceive us as an arrogant nation. She said, "When I'm president, I'm going to send a message to the world that America is back -- we're not the arrogant power that we've been acting like for the last six years."
For those of you who doubted John Kerry was expressing a common Democratic sentiment when he called America an "international pariah," here is your confirmation. Indeed, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, when running for president himself, said of America, "We find ourselves, too often, isolated and resented." President Bush, he said, had "created a new rallying cry for terrorist recruits."
And in case you think Hillary is less politic on this issue than her politically gifted husband, you might recall that when accepting an award for "international understanding" a few years ago, Bill Clinton said that America's image had suffered in the Muslim world. Another Democratic ex-president, Jimmy Carter, said that by acting unilaterally, President Bush had alienated and isolated the United States from its potential allies in the war on terror. He said Bush's policies have resulted in America losing her "reputation as the most admired champion of freedom and justice."
Are these people singing from the same hymnbook, or what?
Since before we attacked Iraq, they have mercilessly excoriated Bush for his "radical unilateralism," his "go-it-alone" approach. It never occurred to them to criticize, say, France or Germany, for not doing the right thing by joining the coalition against Saddam Hussein, despite believing the exact same things we believed about his weapons of mass destruction, his dangerous ties to terrorism and his serial violations of post-war treaties and U.N. resolutions.
Is it just me, or is anyone else getting tired of these people ceaselessly, instinctively siding with America's foreign critics and slamming the United States? Sometimes it seems that Hillary and company are as concerned about their poll numbers in France and Germany as in the United States.
Hillary said, "We want to be an admired country again in the world. There is a lot of work to be done."
When in recent history has America been greatly admired by other nations? When haven't we been the object of resentment and jealousy throughout the world, and quite underappreciated, considering our record of philanthropy?
What other great nation in history -- let alone the world's lone superpower -- has been so willing to use its power for the good and so cautious, contrary to conventional wisdom, about using its power to impose its will on other nations?
I can just hear the catcalls now from those who prefer to accuse us of imperialism at the drop of a hat -- from those who spread the malicious myth that we attacked Iraq to confiscate its oil. These drive-by verbal assassins have always spewed their bile with impunity. They've never even considered apologizing for their propaganda -- propagandists don't -- though we not only declined to exploit Iraqi oil for our benefit, but have generously engaged in a comprehensive program to rebuild the country.
I hear even harsher catcalls coming from the same people -- who also blame us for the destruction wrought in Iraq by sectarian and terrorist mayhem following our removal of Saddam Hussein. They're certainly entitled to their opinion.
While no one wants America gratuitously to alienate the international community, should the primary focus of our foreign policy be to ingratiate ourselves to foreign nations?
But if Hillary and her cohorts are so concerned about America's image, maybe it's time they quit slandering their commander in chief to the rest of the world, wrongly accusing him of having lied us into war and of having attacked Iraq "unilaterally" just so they can rehabilitate themselves politically.
If they are so concerned about America's so-called "unilateralism," they should quit hypocritically demanding we abandon our multilateral approach to Iran and North Korea. They should muzzle colleagues like Dick Durbin and Ted Kennedy, who tell the world that our military routinely engages in prisoner torture and abuse for sadistic sport.
Democrats indignantly deny they are soft on defense. But we are engaged in a protracted war, and when campaigning, their leading presidential candidates choose to dwell on how America is faring in international polls.
I don't know about you, but I'd just as soon our next president -- like the current one -- be a little less preoccupied with international popularity contests and more dedicated to keeping America secure.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Democrats disingenuous in their anti-war rhetoric
By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Why did a majority of Democratic Senators - such as Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Harry Reid, Jay Rockefeller and Chuck Schumer - vote to authorize a war with Iraq on Oct. 11, 2002? And why is this war now supposedly George Bush's misfortune and not theirs?
The original fear of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, of course, played a role in their votes - but only a role. In the 23 writs that authorized force to remove Saddam, senators at the time also cited Iraq's sanctuary and subsidies for terrorists. Then there were Saddam's attempts to assassinate a former United States president; his repression of, and use of weapons of mass destruction against, his own people; and his serial violations of both United Nations and Gulf War agreements. If paranoia over weapons of mass destruction later proved just that, these other more numerous reasons to remove Saddam remain unassailable.
Nevada's Sen. Reid summed up best the feeling of Democrats that there were plenty of reasons to remove Saddam Hussein in a post-9/11 climate. He reminded his Senate colleagues that Saddam's refusal to honor past agreements "constitutes a breach of the armistice which renders it void and justifies resumption of the armed conflict."
But it was not just fear of Saddam alone that prompted Democrats to authorize the use of force to remove him. There was the more general, liberal notion of using American arms to stop violent dictators. While the Democratic Party has a strong pacifist wing, its mainstream has always advocated a global promotion of American liberal values - sometimes through the use of preemptory force.
Many Democrats in Congress, for example, had earlier authorized George Bush Sr. to fight the first Gulf War to stop Saddam's mad drive to absorb Kuwait. In 1999, House Democrats sought, but failed, to pass congressional authorization for President Clinton's ongoing air war against Slobodan Milosevic.
Democratic leaders from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama have long lamented that the United States did not preempt in Africa to stop the Rwandan genocide. In contrast, George Bush, not Al Gore, ran for the presidency in 2000 promising to end Clinton's humanitarian interventions, whether in the Balkans, Haiti or Somalia. As then-candidate Bush put it, "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building."
Throughout American history, it was usually the Democratic Party that proved the more interventionist. Democratic Presidents - whether Woodrow Wilson in 1917, Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939-40, Harry Truman in 1950, John Kennedy in 1963 or Bill Clinton in 1999 - long battled Republican isolationists who insisted that it was never in America's interest to fight costly wars abroad unless directly attacked by a foreign nation.
Again, why then did the majority of Democratic Senators vote for the present war in October 2002?
One, they rightly concurred with the president's post-9/11 conversion to the idea that removing a Middle Eastern mass-murdering regime and leaving a consensual government in its place could be a key component in winning the war against Islamic terrorism. And two, their party had always believed that the United States can sometimes make things better abroad by stopping tyrants and dictators.
By the same token, why do many of these same initial supporters of the Iraq war four years later now promise either to withdraw troops or to cut off funds, and so often hedge on or renounce their past records?
Partisan advantage explains much of the present posturing against an opposition president. But mostly, the rising Democratic furor comes as a reflection of public anger at the costs of the war -- and the sense that we are not winning.
Unlike the invasion of Panama (1989), the Gulf war (1991), the Balkans war (1999) or even the Afghanistan conflict (2001-2007), Iraq has taken over 3,000 American lives. Had the reconstruction of Iraq gone as relatively smoothly as the three-week removal of Saddam, most Democratic candidates would now be heralding their past muscular support for democratic change in Iraq.
So instead of self-serving attacks on the present administration, Democratic senators and candidates should simply confess that while most of the earlier reasons to remove Saddam remain valid, the largely unforeseen costs of stabilizing Iraq in their view have proved too high, and now outweigh the dangers of leaving.
But they should remember one final consideration. The next time a Democratic administration makes a case for using America's overwhelming military force to preempt a Milosevic or a mass murderer in Darfur - and history suggests that one will - the Democrats' own present disingenuous anti-war rhetoric may come back to haunt them, ensuring that such future humanitarian calls will probably fall on ears as deaf as they are partisan.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Why did a majority of Democratic Senators - such as Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Harry Reid, Jay Rockefeller and Chuck Schumer - vote to authorize a war with Iraq on Oct. 11, 2002? And why is this war now supposedly George Bush's misfortune and not theirs?
The original fear of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, of course, played a role in their votes - but only a role. In the 23 writs that authorized force to remove Saddam, senators at the time also cited Iraq's sanctuary and subsidies for terrorists. Then there were Saddam's attempts to assassinate a former United States president; his repression of, and use of weapons of mass destruction against, his own people; and his serial violations of both United Nations and Gulf War agreements. If paranoia over weapons of mass destruction later proved just that, these other more numerous reasons to remove Saddam remain unassailable.
Nevada's Sen. Reid summed up best the feeling of Democrats that there were plenty of reasons to remove Saddam Hussein in a post-9/11 climate. He reminded his Senate colleagues that Saddam's refusal to honor past agreements "constitutes a breach of the armistice which renders it void and justifies resumption of the armed conflict."
But it was not just fear of Saddam alone that prompted Democrats to authorize the use of force to remove him. There was the more general, liberal notion of using American arms to stop violent dictators. While the Democratic Party has a strong pacifist wing, its mainstream has always advocated a global promotion of American liberal values - sometimes through the use of preemptory force.
Many Democrats in Congress, for example, had earlier authorized George Bush Sr. to fight the first Gulf War to stop Saddam's mad drive to absorb Kuwait. In 1999, House Democrats sought, but failed, to pass congressional authorization for President Clinton's ongoing air war against Slobodan Milosevic.
Democratic leaders from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama have long lamented that the United States did not preempt in Africa to stop the Rwandan genocide. In contrast, George Bush, not Al Gore, ran for the presidency in 2000 promising to end Clinton's humanitarian interventions, whether in the Balkans, Haiti or Somalia. As then-candidate Bush put it, "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building."
Throughout American history, it was usually the Democratic Party that proved the more interventionist. Democratic Presidents - whether Woodrow Wilson in 1917, Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939-40, Harry Truman in 1950, John Kennedy in 1963 or Bill Clinton in 1999 - long battled Republican isolationists who insisted that it was never in America's interest to fight costly wars abroad unless directly attacked by a foreign nation.
Again, why then did the majority of Democratic Senators vote for the present war in October 2002?
One, they rightly concurred with the president's post-9/11 conversion to the idea that removing a Middle Eastern mass-murdering regime and leaving a consensual government in its place could be a key component in winning the war against Islamic terrorism. And two, their party had always believed that the United States can sometimes make things better abroad by stopping tyrants and dictators.
By the same token, why do many of these same initial supporters of the Iraq war four years later now promise either to withdraw troops or to cut off funds, and so often hedge on or renounce their past records?
Partisan advantage explains much of the present posturing against an opposition president. But mostly, the rising Democratic furor comes as a reflection of public anger at the costs of the war -- and the sense that we are not winning.
Unlike the invasion of Panama (1989), the Gulf war (1991), the Balkans war (1999) or even the Afghanistan conflict (2001-2007), Iraq has taken over 3,000 American lives. Had the reconstruction of Iraq gone as relatively smoothly as the three-week removal of Saddam, most Democratic candidates would now be heralding their past muscular support for democratic change in Iraq.
So instead of self-serving attacks on the present administration, Democratic senators and candidates should simply confess that while most of the earlier reasons to remove Saddam remain valid, the largely unforeseen costs of stabilizing Iraq in their view have proved too high, and now outweigh the dangers of leaving.
But they should remember one final consideration. The next time a Democratic administration makes a case for using America's overwhelming military force to preempt a Milosevic or a mass murderer in Darfur - and history suggests that one will - the Democrats' own present disingenuous anti-war rhetoric may come back to haunt them, ensuring that such future humanitarian calls will probably fall on ears as deaf as they are partisan.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Why is Capitalism is a Dirty Word?
By David Strom
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Why is "Capitalism" a dirty word for some people?
It makes no sense at all. Since the decline of feudalism and mercantilism, the rise of capitalism has given us the most remarkable expansion of wealth, health, and general well-being that the world has ever seen.
In the last few centuries, our life spans have doubled, our wealth has expanded immeasurably, our educational attainments are unparalleled in human history, and our productivity growth has allowed us to enjoy leisure and entertainment inconceivable only a century ago.
All these facts are certainly attributable mainly to the development and expansion of capitalism and the division of labor that springs from it; yet with few exceptions intellectuals and many others consider capitalism with suspicion and even hostility.
Why?
It seems to me that the term itself puts people off. After all, if you think of the three major economic ideologies, Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism, one has as its descriptive root “capital” which usually means money, while the others both refer to human relations themselves. In short, it looks like capitalism focuses on money, while socialism and communism focus on people.
Who would prefer an economic and political system that focuses on the good of money or capital versus one where the good of people comes first?
But of course, history and experience show that a liberal society with a capitalist economic system is infinitely superior to the command-and-control communist model, and a far better wealth and well-being generator than the increasingly creaky democratic socialist states seen in much of Europe. (The average European Union citizen is only 70% as wealthy as the average American, and falling further behind).
Adam Smith, the iconic economist and philosopher of Capitalism had a much different way of describing our system than we use today. Smith did not call what he was describing and advocating for “capitalism;” instead the term he used was in many ways superior, if not as succinct: “the system of natural liberty.”
Smith’s formulation is superior to the term capitalism, if for no other reason than it defines one of the great moral differences between free market economics (capitalism) and its more statist rivals: capitalist economies are free economies with free people, while socialist, communist, and fascistic economies are characterized by central planning and control, which requires some level of coercion.
Milton Friedman’s most famous work, Capitalism and Freedom, drives home this point. Friedman argues correctly that economic and political freedoms are indissoluble. You simply cannot be politically free without economic freedom. It is not only the case that capitalism or free market economies are superior at producing wealth; without basically free markets people themselves aren’t free.
Both Smith and Friedman point to the most salient point about what we call capitalism, that it isn’t about the efficient allocation of capital. It’s about the maximizing of human freedom.
Capitalism and freedom don’t just coexist comfortably; what we call “capitalism” really is just another way of saying what Smith did: capitalism is freedom expressed in economic relations. It is the economic system of people making free choices. And capitalism works so well precisely because free people trading freely become ever more productive, and do well precisely to the extent that what they have to trade is wanted by others.
Liberal democracies with free markets are so successful precisely because free people prosper precisely to the extent that they are successfully “other directed;” individuals prosper as they learn to satisfy the wants and desires of other free people.
So really, we need to think up a modern version of Smith’s “system of natural liberty,” because in a way people are right to cringe at the term “capitalism.” The focus shouldn’t be on capital, it should be on freedom.
Even “free market” doesn’t capture the essence of what we are talking about, because it still implies that the market is free, but maybe not the people.
Maybe instead of “capitalism” or “free markets” we should just cut to the chase. Our preferred alternative to planned economies or European corporatist socialism is simple: call it “freedom.”
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Why is "Capitalism" a dirty word for some people?
It makes no sense at all. Since the decline of feudalism and mercantilism, the rise of capitalism has given us the most remarkable expansion of wealth, health, and general well-being that the world has ever seen.
In the last few centuries, our life spans have doubled, our wealth has expanded immeasurably, our educational attainments are unparalleled in human history, and our productivity growth has allowed us to enjoy leisure and entertainment inconceivable only a century ago.
All these facts are certainly attributable mainly to the development and expansion of capitalism and the division of labor that springs from it; yet with few exceptions intellectuals and many others consider capitalism with suspicion and even hostility.
Why?
It seems to me that the term itself puts people off. After all, if you think of the three major economic ideologies, Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism, one has as its descriptive root “capital” which usually means money, while the others both refer to human relations themselves. In short, it looks like capitalism focuses on money, while socialism and communism focus on people.
Who would prefer an economic and political system that focuses on the good of money or capital versus one where the good of people comes first?
But of course, history and experience show that a liberal society with a capitalist economic system is infinitely superior to the command-and-control communist model, and a far better wealth and well-being generator than the increasingly creaky democratic socialist states seen in much of Europe. (The average European Union citizen is only 70% as wealthy as the average American, and falling further behind).
Adam Smith, the iconic economist and philosopher of Capitalism had a much different way of describing our system than we use today. Smith did not call what he was describing and advocating for “capitalism;” instead the term he used was in many ways superior, if not as succinct: “the system of natural liberty.”
Smith’s formulation is superior to the term capitalism, if for no other reason than it defines one of the great moral differences between free market economics (capitalism) and its more statist rivals: capitalist economies are free economies with free people, while socialist, communist, and fascistic economies are characterized by central planning and control, which requires some level of coercion.
Milton Friedman’s most famous work, Capitalism and Freedom, drives home this point. Friedman argues correctly that economic and political freedoms are indissoluble. You simply cannot be politically free without economic freedom. It is not only the case that capitalism or free market economies are superior at producing wealth; without basically free markets people themselves aren’t free.
Both Smith and Friedman point to the most salient point about what we call capitalism, that it isn’t about the efficient allocation of capital. It’s about the maximizing of human freedom.
Capitalism and freedom don’t just coexist comfortably; what we call “capitalism” really is just another way of saying what Smith did: capitalism is freedom expressed in economic relations. It is the economic system of people making free choices. And capitalism works so well precisely because free people trading freely become ever more productive, and do well precisely to the extent that what they have to trade is wanted by others.
Liberal democracies with free markets are so successful precisely because free people prosper precisely to the extent that they are successfully “other directed;” individuals prosper as they learn to satisfy the wants and desires of other free people.
So really, we need to think up a modern version of Smith’s “system of natural liberty,” because in a way people are right to cringe at the term “capitalism.” The focus shouldn’t be on capital, it should be on freedom.
Even “free market” doesn’t capture the essence of what we are talking about, because it still implies that the market is free, but maybe not the people.
Maybe instead of “capitalism” or “free markets” we should just cut to the chase. Our preferred alternative to planned economies or European corporatist socialism is simple: call it “freedom.”
Plus Ça (Climate) Change
The Earth was warming before global warming was cool.
BY PETE DU PONT
Wednesday, February 21, 2007 12:01 a.m.
When Eric the Red led the Norwegian Vikings to Greenland in the late 900s, it was an ice-free farm country--grass for sheep and cattle, open water for fishing, a livable climate--so good a colony that by 1100 there were 3,000 people living there. Then came the Ice Age. By 1400, average temperatures had declined by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, the glaciers had crushed southward across the farmlands and harbors, and the Vikings did not survive.
Such global temperature fluctuations are not surprising, for looking back in history we see a regular pattern of warming and cooling. From 200 B.C. to A.D. 600 saw the Roman Warming period; from 600 to 900, the cold period of the Dark Ages; from 900 to 1300 was the Medieval warming period; and 1300 to 1850, the Little Ice Age.
During the 20th century the earth did indeed warm--by 1 degree Fahrenheit. But a look at the data shows that within the century temperatures varied with time: from 1900 to 1910 the world cooled; from 1910 to 1940 it warmed; from 1940 to the late 1970s it cooled again, and since then it has been warming. Today our climate is 1/20th of a degree Fahrenheit warmer than it was in 2001.
Many things are contributing to such global temperature changes. Solar radiation is one. Sunspot activity has reached a thousand-year high, according to European astronomy institutions. Solar radiation is reducing Mars's southern icecap, which has been shrinking for three summers despite the absence of SUVS and coal-fired electrical plants anywhere on the Red Planet. Back on Earth, a NASA study reports that solar radiation has increased in each of the past two decades, and environmental scholar Bjorn Lomborg, citing a 1997 atmosphere-ocean general circulation model, observes that "the increase in direct solar irradiation over the past 30 years is responsible for about 40 percent of the observed global warming."
Statistics suggest that while there has indeed been a slight warming in the past century, much of it was neither human-induced nor geographically uniform. Half of the past century's warming occurred before 1940, when the human population and its industrial base were far smaller than now. And while global temperatures are now slightly up, in some areas they are dramatically down. According to "Climate Change and Its Impacts," a study published last spring by the National Center for Policy Analysis, the ice mass in Greenland has grown, and "average summer temperatures at the summit of the Greenland ice sheet have decreased 4 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since the late 1980s." British environmental analyst Lord Christopher Monckton says that from 1993 through 2003 the Greenland ice sheet "grew an average extra thickness of 2 inches a year," and that in the past 30 years the mass of the Antarctic ice sheet has grown as well.
Earlier this month the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a summary of its fourth five-year report. Although the full report won't be out until May, the summary has reinvigorated the global warming discussion.
While global warming alarmism has become a daily American press feature, the IPCC, in its new report, is backtracking on its warming predictions. While Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" warns of up to 20 feet of sea-level increase, the IPCC has halved its estimate of the rise in sea level by the end of this century, to 17 inches from 36. It has reduced its estimate of the impact of global greenhouse-gas emissions on global climate by more than one-third, because, it says, pollutant particles reflect sunlight back into space and this has a cooling effect.
The IPCC confirms its 2001 conclusion that global warming will have little effect on the number of typhoons or hurricanes the world will experience, but it does not note that there has been a steady decrease in the number of global hurricane days since 1970--from 600 to 400 days, according to Georgia Tech atmospheric scientist Peter Webster.
The IPCC does not explain why from 1940 to 1975, while carbon dioxide emissions were rising, global temperatures were falling, nor does it admit that its 2001 "hockey stick" graph showing a dramatic temperature increase beginning in 1970s had omitted the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warming temperature changes, apparently in order to make the new global warming increases appear more dramatic.
Sometimes the consequences of bad science can be serious. In a 2000 issue of Nature Medicine magazine, four international scientists observed that "in less than two decades, spraying of houses with DDT reduced Sri Lanka's malaria burden from 2.8 million cases and 7,000 deaths [in 1948] to 17 cases and no deaths" in 1963. Then came Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring," invigorating environmentalism and leading to outright bans of DDT in some countries. When Sri Lanka ended the use of DDT in 1968, instead of 17 malaria cases it had 480,000.
Yet the Sierra Club in 1971 demanded "a ban, not just a curb," on the use of DDT "even in the tropical countries where DDT has kept malaria under control." International environmental controls were more important than the lives of human beings. For more than three decades this view prevailed, until the restrictions were finally lifted last September.
As we have seen since the beginning of time, and from the Vikings' experience in Greenland, our world experiences cyclical climate changes. America needs to understand clearly what is happening and why before we sign onto U.N. environmental agreements, shut down our industries and power plants, and limit our economic growth.
BY PETE DU PONT
Wednesday, February 21, 2007 12:01 a.m.
When Eric the Red led the Norwegian Vikings to Greenland in the late 900s, it was an ice-free farm country--grass for sheep and cattle, open water for fishing, a livable climate--so good a colony that by 1100 there were 3,000 people living there. Then came the Ice Age. By 1400, average temperatures had declined by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, the glaciers had crushed southward across the farmlands and harbors, and the Vikings did not survive.
Such global temperature fluctuations are not surprising, for looking back in history we see a regular pattern of warming and cooling. From 200 B.C. to A.D. 600 saw the Roman Warming period; from 600 to 900, the cold period of the Dark Ages; from 900 to 1300 was the Medieval warming period; and 1300 to 1850, the Little Ice Age.
During the 20th century the earth did indeed warm--by 1 degree Fahrenheit. But a look at the data shows that within the century temperatures varied with time: from 1900 to 1910 the world cooled; from 1910 to 1940 it warmed; from 1940 to the late 1970s it cooled again, and since then it has been warming. Today our climate is 1/20th of a degree Fahrenheit warmer than it was in 2001.
Many things are contributing to such global temperature changes. Solar radiation is one. Sunspot activity has reached a thousand-year high, according to European astronomy institutions. Solar radiation is reducing Mars's southern icecap, which has been shrinking for three summers despite the absence of SUVS and coal-fired electrical plants anywhere on the Red Planet. Back on Earth, a NASA study reports that solar radiation has increased in each of the past two decades, and environmental scholar Bjorn Lomborg, citing a 1997 atmosphere-ocean general circulation model, observes that "the increase in direct solar irradiation over the past 30 years is responsible for about 40 percent of the observed global warming."
Statistics suggest that while there has indeed been a slight warming in the past century, much of it was neither human-induced nor geographically uniform. Half of the past century's warming occurred before 1940, when the human population and its industrial base were far smaller than now. And while global temperatures are now slightly up, in some areas they are dramatically down. According to "Climate Change and Its Impacts," a study published last spring by the National Center for Policy Analysis, the ice mass in Greenland has grown, and "average summer temperatures at the summit of the Greenland ice sheet have decreased 4 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since the late 1980s." British environmental analyst Lord Christopher Monckton says that from 1993 through 2003 the Greenland ice sheet "grew an average extra thickness of 2 inches a year," and that in the past 30 years the mass of the Antarctic ice sheet has grown as well.
Earlier this month the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a summary of its fourth five-year report. Although the full report won't be out until May, the summary has reinvigorated the global warming discussion.
While global warming alarmism has become a daily American press feature, the IPCC, in its new report, is backtracking on its warming predictions. While Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" warns of up to 20 feet of sea-level increase, the IPCC has halved its estimate of the rise in sea level by the end of this century, to 17 inches from 36. It has reduced its estimate of the impact of global greenhouse-gas emissions on global climate by more than one-third, because, it says, pollutant particles reflect sunlight back into space and this has a cooling effect.
The IPCC confirms its 2001 conclusion that global warming will have little effect on the number of typhoons or hurricanes the world will experience, but it does not note that there has been a steady decrease in the number of global hurricane days since 1970--from 600 to 400 days, according to Georgia Tech atmospheric scientist Peter Webster.
The IPCC does not explain why from 1940 to 1975, while carbon dioxide emissions were rising, global temperatures were falling, nor does it admit that its 2001 "hockey stick" graph showing a dramatic temperature increase beginning in 1970s had omitted the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warming temperature changes, apparently in order to make the new global warming increases appear more dramatic.
Sometimes the consequences of bad science can be serious. In a 2000 issue of Nature Medicine magazine, four international scientists observed that "in less than two decades, spraying of houses with DDT reduced Sri Lanka's malaria burden from 2.8 million cases and 7,000 deaths [in 1948] to 17 cases and no deaths" in 1963. Then came Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring," invigorating environmentalism and leading to outright bans of DDT in some countries. When Sri Lanka ended the use of DDT in 1968, instead of 17 malaria cases it had 480,000.
Yet the Sierra Club in 1971 demanded "a ban, not just a curb," on the use of DDT "even in the tropical countries where DDT has kept malaria under control." International environmental controls were more important than the lives of human beings. For more than three decades this view prevailed, until the restrictions were finally lifted last September.
As we have seen since the beginning of time, and from the Vikings' experience in Greenland, our world experiences cyclical climate changes. America needs to understand clearly what is happening and why before we sign onto U.N. environmental agreements, shut down our industries and power plants, and limit our economic growth.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Europe and the Mullahs
How the EU subsidizes trade with Iran.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007 12:01 a.m.
Wall Street Journal
On the record, Europe claims to be as concerned as America about a nuclear-armed Iran. The record also shows, however, that Europe's biggest countries do a booming business with the Islamic Republic. And so far for the Continentals, manna trumps security.
The European Union--led by Germany, France and Italy--has long been Iran's largest trading partner. Its share of Iran's total imports is about 35%. Even more notable: Its trade with Tehran has expanded since Iran's secret nuclear program was exposed. Between 2003 and 2005, Europe's exports rose 29% to €12.9 billion; machinery, transport equipment and chemicals make up the bulk of the sales. Imports from Iran, predominantly oil, increased 62% to €11.4 billion in that period.
In the absence of an official embargo against Tehran, private EU companies have sought commercial opportunities in Iran. But the real story here is that these businesses are subsidized by European taxpayers. Government-backed export guarantees have fueled the expansion in trade. That, in turn, has boosted Iran's economy and--indirectly by filling government coffers with revenues--its nuclear program. The German record stands out. In its 2004 annual report on export guarantees, Berlin's Economics Ministry dedicated a special section to Iran that captures its giddy excitement about business with Tehran.
"Federal Government export credit guarantees played a crucial role for German exports to Iran; the volume of coverage of Iranian buyers rose by a factor of almost 3.5 to some €2.3 billion compared to the previous year," the report said. "The Federal Government thus insured something like 65% of total German exports to the country. Iran lies second in the league of countries with the highest coverage in 2004, hot on the heels of China."
Iran tops Germany's list of countries with the largest outstanding export guarantees, totaling €5.5 billion. France's export guarantees to Iran amount to about €1 billion. Italy's come to €4.5 billion, accounting for 20% of Rome's overall guarantee portfolio. Little Austria had, at the end of 2005, €800 million of its exports to Iran covered by guarantees.
The Europeans aren't simply facilitating business between private companies. The vast majority of Iranian industry is state-controlled, while even private companies have been known to act as fronts for the country's nuclear program. EU taxpayers underwrite trade and investment that would otherwise be deterred by the risks of doing business with a rogue regime.
It's also hard not to see a connection between Europe's commercial interests and its lenient diplomacy. The U.N.'s December sanctions resolution orders countries to freeze the assets of only 10 specific companies and 12 individuals with ties to Iran's nuclear program. Europe's governments continue to resist U.S. calls for financial sanctions, and the German Chamber of Commerce recently estimated that tougher economic sanctions would cost 10,000 German jobs.
As if on cue, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier last week detected in Tehran a "new ambition" to resume talks. The last time the Europeans promoted such diplomatic negotiations, Iran won two more years to get closer to its goal of becoming a nuclear power. In 2004, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily, then-Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told Iranians to consider Europe a "protective shield" against U.S. pressure. The EU continues to provide a shield for its business interests in Iran, and thus a lifeline to a regime that is unpopular at home and sponsors terror abroad.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007 12:01 a.m.
Wall Street Journal
On the record, Europe claims to be as concerned as America about a nuclear-armed Iran. The record also shows, however, that Europe's biggest countries do a booming business with the Islamic Republic. And so far for the Continentals, manna trumps security.
The European Union--led by Germany, France and Italy--has long been Iran's largest trading partner. Its share of Iran's total imports is about 35%. Even more notable: Its trade with Tehran has expanded since Iran's secret nuclear program was exposed. Between 2003 and 2005, Europe's exports rose 29% to €12.9 billion; machinery, transport equipment and chemicals make up the bulk of the sales. Imports from Iran, predominantly oil, increased 62% to €11.4 billion in that period.
In the absence of an official embargo against Tehran, private EU companies have sought commercial opportunities in Iran. But the real story here is that these businesses are subsidized by European taxpayers. Government-backed export guarantees have fueled the expansion in trade. That, in turn, has boosted Iran's economy and--indirectly by filling government coffers with revenues--its nuclear program. The German record stands out. In its 2004 annual report on export guarantees, Berlin's Economics Ministry dedicated a special section to Iran that captures its giddy excitement about business with Tehran.
"Federal Government export credit guarantees played a crucial role for German exports to Iran; the volume of coverage of Iranian buyers rose by a factor of almost 3.5 to some €2.3 billion compared to the previous year," the report said. "The Federal Government thus insured something like 65% of total German exports to the country. Iran lies second in the league of countries with the highest coverage in 2004, hot on the heels of China."
Iran tops Germany's list of countries with the largest outstanding export guarantees, totaling €5.5 billion. France's export guarantees to Iran amount to about €1 billion. Italy's come to €4.5 billion, accounting for 20% of Rome's overall guarantee portfolio. Little Austria had, at the end of 2005, €800 million of its exports to Iran covered by guarantees.
The Europeans aren't simply facilitating business between private companies. The vast majority of Iranian industry is state-controlled, while even private companies have been known to act as fronts for the country's nuclear program. EU taxpayers underwrite trade and investment that would otherwise be deterred by the risks of doing business with a rogue regime.
It's also hard not to see a connection between Europe's commercial interests and its lenient diplomacy. The U.N.'s December sanctions resolution orders countries to freeze the assets of only 10 specific companies and 12 individuals with ties to Iran's nuclear program. Europe's governments continue to resist U.S. calls for financial sanctions, and the German Chamber of Commerce recently estimated that tougher economic sanctions would cost 10,000 German jobs.
As if on cue, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier last week detected in Tehran a "new ambition" to resume talks. The last time the Europeans promoted such diplomatic negotiations, Iran won two more years to get closer to its goal of becoming a nuclear power. In 2004, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily, then-Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told Iranians to consider Europe a "protective shield" against U.S. pressure. The EU continues to provide a shield for its business interests in Iran, and thus a lifeline to a regime that is unpopular at home and sponsors terror abroad.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Global Hot Air: Part III
By Thomas Sowell
Thursday, February 15, 2007
If you take the mainstream media seriously, you might think that every important scientist believes that "global warming" poses a great threat, and that we need to make drastic changes in the way we live, in order to avoid catastrophes to the environment, to various species, and to ourselves.
The media play a key role in perpetuating such beliefs. Often they seize upon every heat wave to hype global warming, but see no implications in record-setting cold weather, such as many places have been experiencing lately.
Remember how the unusually large number of hurricanes a couple of years ago was hyped in the media as being a result of global warming, with more such hurricanes being predicted to return the following year and the years thereafter?
But, when not one hurricane struck the United States all last year, the media had little or nothing to say about the false predictions they had hyped. It's heads I win and tails you lose.
Are there serious scientists who specialize in weather and climate who have serious doubts about the doomsday scenarios being pushed by global warming advocates? Yes, there are.
There is Dr. S. Fred Singer, who set up the American weather satellite system, and who published some years ago a book titled "Hot Talk, Cold Science." More recently, he has co-authored another book on the subject, "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years."
There have been periods of global warming that lasted for centuries -- and periods of global cooling that also lasted for centuries. So the issue is not whether the world is warmer now than at some time in the past but how much of that warming is due to human beings and how much can we reduce future warming, even if we drastically reduce our standard of living in the attempt.
Other serious scientists who are not on the global warming bandwagon include a professor of meteorology at MIT, Richard S. Lindzen.
His name was big enough for the National Academy of Sciences to list it among the names of other experts on its 2001 report that was supposed to end the debate by declaring the dangers of global warming proven scientifically.
Professor Lindzen then objected and pointed out that neither he nor any of the other scientists listed ever saw that report before it was published. It was in fact written by government bureaucrats -- as was the more recently published summary report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that is also touted as the final proof and the end of the discussion.
You want more experts who think otherwise? Try a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, Patrick J. Michaels, who refers to the much ballyhooed 2001 IPCC summary as having "misstatements and errors" that he calls "egregious."
A professor of climatology at the University of Delaware, David R. Legates, likewise referred to the 2001 IPCC summary as being "often in direct contrast with the scientific report that accompanies it." It is the summaries that the media hype. The full 2007 report has not even been published yet.
Skeptical experts in other countries around the world include Duncan Wingham, a professor of climate physics at the University College, London, and Nigel Weiss of Cambridge University.
The very attempt to silence all who disagree about global warming ought to raise red flags.
Anyone who remembers the 1970s should remember the Club of Rome report that was supposed to be the last word on economic growth grinding to a halt, "overpopulation" and a rapidly approaching era of mass starvation in the 1980s.
In reality, the 1980s saw increased economic growth around the world and, far from mass starvation, an increase in obesity and agricultural surpluses in many countries. But much of the media went for the Club of Rome report and hyped the hysteria.
Many in the media resent any suggestion that they are either shilling for an ideological agenda or hyping whatever will sell newspapers or get higher ratings on TV.
Here is their chance to check out some heavyweight scientists specializing in weather and climate, instead of taking Al Gore's movie or the pronouncements of government bureaucrats and politicians as the last word.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
If you take the mainstream media seriously, you might think that every important scientist believes that "global warming" poses a great threat, and that we need to make drastic changes in the way we live, in order to avoid catastrophes to the environment, to various species, and to ourselves.
The media play a key role in perpetuating such beliefs. Often they seize upon every heat wave to hype global warming, but see no implications in record-setting cold weather, such as many places have been experiencing lately.
Remember how the unusually large number of hurricanes a couple of years ago was hyped in the media as being a result of global warming, with more such hurricanes being predicted to return the following year and the years thereafter?
But, when not one hurricane struck the United States all last year, the media had little or nothing to say about the false predictions they had hyped. It's heads I win and tails you lose.
Are there serious scientists who specialize in weather and climate who have serious doubts about the doomsday scenarios being pushed by global warming advocates? Yes, there are.
There is Dr. S. Fred Singer, who set up the American weather satellite system, and who published some years ago a book titled "Hot Talk, Cold Science." More recently, he has co-authored another book on the subject, "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years."
There have been periods of global warming that lasted for centuries -- and periods of global cooling that also lasted for centuries. So the issue is not whether the world is warmer now than at some time in the past but how much of that warming is due to human beings and how much can we reduce future warming, even if we drastically reduce our standard of living in the attempt.
Other serious scientists who are not on the global warming bandwagon include a professor of meteorology at MIT, Richard S. Lindzen.
His name was big enough for the National Academy of Sciences to list it among the names of other experts on its 2001 report that was supposed to end the debate by declaring the dangers of global warming proven scientifically.
Professor Lindzen then objected and pointed out that neither he nor any of the other scientists listed ever saw that report before it was published. It was in fact written by government bureaucrats -- as was the more recently published summary report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that is also touted as the final proof and the end of the discussion.
You want more experts who think otherwise? Try a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, Patrick J. Michaels, who refers to the much ballyhooed 2001 IPCC summary as having "misstatements and errors" that he calls "egregious."
A professor of climatology at the University of Delaware, David R. Legates, likewise referred to the 2001 IPCC summary as being "often in direct contrast with the scientific report that accompanies it." It is the summaries that the media hype. The full 2007 report has not even been published yet.
Skeptical experts in other countries around the world include Duncan Wingham, a professor of climate physics at the University College, London, and Nigel Weiss of Cambridge University.
The very attempt to silence all who disagree about global warming ought to raise red flags.
Anyone who remembers the 1970s should remember the Club of Rome report that was supposed to be the last word on economic growth grinding to a halt, "overpopulation" and a rapidly approaching era of mass starvation in the 1980s.
In reality, the 1980s saw increased economic growth around the world and, far from mass starvation, an increase in obesity and agricultural surpluses in many countries. But much of the media went for the Club of Rome report and hyped the hysteria.
Many in the media resent any suggestion that they are either shilling for an ideological agenda or hyping whatever will sell newspapers or get higher ratings on TV.
Here is their chance to check out some heavyweight scientists specializing in weather and climate, instead of taking Al Gore's movie or the pronouncements of government bureaucrats and politicians as the last word.
Global Hot Air: Part II
By Thomas Sowell
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Propaganda campaigns often acquire a life of their own. Politicians who have hitched their wagons to the star of "global warming" cannot admit any doubts on their part, or permit any doubts by others from becoming part of a public debate.
Neither can environmental crusaders, whose whole sense of themselves as saviors of the planet is at stake, as they try to stamp out any views to the contrary.
A recent and revealing example of the ruthless attempts to silence anyone who dares question the global warming crusade began with a "news" story in the British newspaper "The Guardian." It quickly found an echo among American Senators on the left -- Bernard Sanders, an avowed socialist, and John Kerry, Pat Leahy and Dianne Feinstein, who are unavowed.
The headline of the "news" story said it all: "Scientists Offered Cash to Dispute Climate Study." According to "The Guardian," scientists and economists "have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report."
It is a classic notion on the left in general, and of environmentalist zealots in particular, that no one can disagree with them unless they are either uninformed or dishonest. Here they dispose of scientists who are skeptical of the global warming hysteria by depicting them as being bribed by lobbyists for the oil companies.
While such charges may be enough for crusading zealots to wrap themselves ever more tightly in the mantle of virtue, some of us are still old-fashioned enough to want to know the actual facts.
In this case, the fact is that the American Enterprise Institute -- a think tank, not a lobbyist -- did what all kinds of think tanks do, all across the political spectrum, all across the country, and all around the world.
AEI has planned a roundtable discussion of global warming, attended by people with differing views on the subject. That was their fundamental sin, in the eyes of the global warming crowd. They treated this as an issue, rather than a dogma.
Like liberal, conservative, and other think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute pays people who do the work of preparing scholarly papers for presentation at its roundtables. Ten thousand dollars is not an unusual amount and many have received more from other think tanks for similar work.
Enter Senators Sanders, Kerry, Leahy, and Feinstein. In a joint letter to the head of the American Enterprise Institute, they express shock, shock, like the corrupt police official in "Casablanca."
These Senators express "our very serious concerns" about reports that AEI "offered to pay scientists up to $10,000 for questioning the findings" of other scientists. The four Senators express how "saddened" they would be if the reports are true, "by the depths to which some would sink to undermine the scientific consensus" on global warming.
If the reports are true, the Senators continue, "it would highlight the extent to which moneyed interests distort honest scientific and public policy discussions" by "bribing scientists to support a pre-determined agenda."
The Senators ask: "Does your donors' self-interest trump an honest discussion over the well-being of the planet?" They demand that "AEI will publicly apologize for this conduct."
As the late Art Buchwald once said about comedy and farce in Washington, "You can't make that up!"
If it is a bribe to pay people for doing work, then we are all bribed every day, except for those who inherited enough money not to have to work at all. Among those invited to attend the AEI roundtable are some of the same scientists who produced the recent report that politicians, environmentalists, and the media tout as the last word on global warming.
The trump card of the left is that one of the big oil companies contributed money to the American Enterprise Institute -- not as much as one percent of its budget, but enough for a smear.
All think tanks have contributors or they could not exist. But facts carry little weight in smears, even by politicians who question other people's honesty.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Propaganda campaigns often acquire a life of their own. Politicians who have hitched their wagons to the star of "global warming" cannot admit any doubts on their part, or permit any doubts by others from becoming part of a public debate.
Neither can environmental crusaders, whose whole sense of themselves as saviors of the planet is at stake, as they try to stamp out any views to the contrary.
A recent and revealing example of the ruthless attempts to silence anyone who dares question the global warming crusade began with a "news" story in the British newspaper "The Guardian." It quickly found an echo among American Senators on the left -- Bernard Sanders, an avowed socialist, and John Kerry, Pat Leahy and Dianne Feinstein, who are unavowed.
The headline of the "news" story said it all: "Scientists Offered Cash to Dispute Climate Study." According to "The Guardian," scientists and economists "have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report."
It is a classic notion on the left in general, and of environmentalist zealots in particular, that no one can disagree with them unless they are either uninformed or dishonest. Here they dispose of scientists who are skeptical of the global warming hysteria by depicting them as being bribed by lobbyists for the oil companies.
While such charges may be enough for crusading zealots to wrap themselves ever more tightly in the mantle of virtue, some of us are still old-fashioned enough to want to know the actual facts.
In this case, the fact is that the American Enterprise Institute -- a think tank, not a lobbyist -- did what all kinds of think tanks do, all across the political spectrum, all across the country, and all around the world.
AEI has planned a roundtable discussion of global warming, attended by people with differing views on the subject. That was their fundamental sin, in the eyes of the global warming crowd. They treated this as an issue, rather than a dogma.
Like liberal, conservative, and other think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute pays people who do the work of preparing scholarly papers for presentation at its roundtables. Ten thousand dollars is not an unusual amount and many have received more from other think tanks for similar work.
Enter Senators Sanders, Kerry, Leahy, and Feinstein. In a joint letter to the head of the American Enterprise Institute, they express shock, shock, like the corrupt police official in "Casablanca."
These Senators express "our very serious concerns" about reports that AEI "offered to pay scientists up to $10,000 for questioning the findings" of other scientists. The four Senators express how "saddened" they would be if the reports are true, "by the depths to which some would sink to undermine the scientific consensus" on global warming.
If the reports are true, the Senators continue, "it would highlight the extent to which moneyed interests distort honest scientific and public policy discussions" by "bribing scientists to support a pre-determined agenda."
The Senators ask: "Does your donors' self-interest trump an honest discussion over the well-being of the planet?" They demand that "AEI will publicly apologize for this conduct."
As the late Art Buchwald once said about comedy and farce in Washington, "You can't make that up!"
If it is a bribe to pay people for doing work, then we are all bribed every day, except for those who inherited enough money not to have to work at all. Among those invited to attend the AEI roundtable are some of the same scientists who produced the recent report that politicians, environmentalists, and the media tout as the last word on global warming.
The trump card of the left is that one of the big oil companies contributed money to the American Enterprise Institute -- not as much as one percent of its budget, but enough for a smear.
All think tanks have contributors or they could not exist. But facts carry little weight in smears, even by politicians who question other people's honesty.
Global Hot Air
By Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
The political left's favorite argument is that there is no argument. Their current crusade is to turn "global warming" into one of those things that supposedly no honest and decent person can disagree about, as they have already done with "diversity" and "open space."
The name of "science" is invoked by the left today, as it has been for more than two centuries. After all, Karl Marx's ideology was called "scientific socialism" in the 19th century. In the 18th century, Condorcet analogized his blueprint for a better society to engineering, and social engineering has been the agenda ever since.
Not all the advocates of "global warming" are on the left, of course. Crusades are not just for crusaders. There are always hangers-on who can turn the true believers' crusades into votes or money or at least notoriety.
Whether the globe really is warming is a question about facts -- and about where those facts are measured: on land, in the air or under the sea. There is no question that there is a "greenhouse" effect. Otherwise, half the planet would freeze every night when there is no sunlight falling on it.
There is also no question that the earth can warm or cool. It has done both at one time or another for thousands of years, even before there were SUVs. If there had never been any global warming before, we wouldn't be able to enjoy Yosemite Valley today for it was once buried under thousands of feet of ice.
Back in the 1970s, the environmental hysteria was about the dangers of a new ice age. This hysteria was spread by many of the same individuals and groups who are promoting today's hysteria about global warming.
It is not just the sky that is falling. Government money is falling on those who seek grants to study global warming and produce "solutions" for it. But that money is not as likely to fall on those skeptics in the scientific community who refuse to join the stampede.
Yes, Virginia, there are skeptics about global warming among scientists who study weather and climate. There are arguments both ways -- which is why so many in politics and in the media are so busy selling the notion that there is no argument.
If you heard both arguments, you might not be so willing to go along with those who are prepared to ruin the economy, sacrificing jobs and the national standard of living on the altar to the latest in an unending series of crusades, conducted by politicians and other people seeking to tell everyone else how to live.
What about all those scientists mentioned, cited or quoted by global warming crusaders?
There are all kinds of scientists, from chemists to nuclear physicists to people who study insects, volcanoes, and endocrine glands -- none of whom is an expert on weather or climate, but all of whom can be listed as scientists, to impress people who don't scrutinize the list any further. That ploy has already been used.
Then there are genuine scientific experts on weather and climate. The National Academy of Sciences came out with a report on global warming back in 2001 with a very distinguished list of such experts listed. The problem is that not one of those very distinguished scientists actually wrote the report -- or even saw it before it was published.
One of those very distinguished climate scientists -- Richard S. Lindzen of MIT -- publicly repudiated the conclusions of that report, even though his name had been among those used as window dressing on the report. But the media may not have told you that.
In short, there has been a full court press to convince the public that "everybody knows" that a catastrophic global warming looms over us, that human beings are the cause of it, and that the only solution is to turn more money and power over to the government to stop us from our dangerous ways of living.
Among the climate experts who are not part of that "everybody" are not only Professor Lindzen but also Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, whose book "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years," punctures the hot air balloon of the global warming crusaders. So does the book "Shattered Consensus," edited by Patrick J. Michaels, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, which contains essays by others who are not part of "everybody."
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
The political left's favorite argument is that there is no argument. Their current crusade is to turn "global warming" into one of those things that supposedly no honest and decent person can disagree about, as they have already done with "diversity" and "open space."
The name of "science" is invoked by the left today, as it has been for more than two centuries. After all, Karl Marx's ideology was called "scientific socialism" in the 19th century. In the 18th century, Condorcet analogized his blueprint for a better society to engineering, and social engineering has been the agenda ever since.
Not all the advocates of "global warming" are on the left, of course. Crusades are not just for crusaders. There are always hangers-on who can turn the true believers' crusades into votes or money or at least notoriety.
Whether the globe really is warming is a question about facts -- and about where those facts are measured: on land, in the air or under the sea. There is no question that there is a "greenhouse" effect. Otherwise, half the planet would freeze every night when there is no sunlight falling on it.
There is also no question that the earth can warm or cool. It has done both at one time or another for thousands of years, even before there were SUVs. If there had never been any global warming before, we wouldn't be able to enjoy Yosemite Valley today for it was once buried under thousands of feet of ice.
Back in the 1970s, the environmental hysteria was about the dangers of a new ice age. This hysteria was spread by many of the same individuals and groups who are promoting today's hysteria about global warming.
It is not just the sky that is falling. Government money is falling on those who seek grants to study global warming and produce "solutions" for it. But that money is not as likely to fall on those skeptics in the scientific community who refuse to join the stampede.
Yes, Virginia, there are skeptics about global warming among scientists who study weather and climate. There are arguments both ways -- which is why so many in politics and in the media are so busy selling the notion that there is no argument.
If you heard both arguments, you might not be so willing to go along with those who are prepared to ruin the economy, sacrificing jobs and the national standard of living on the altar to the latest in an unending series of crusades, conducted by politicians and other people seeking to tell everyone else how to live.
What about all those scientists mentioned, cited or quoted by global warming crusaders?
There are all kinds of scientists, from chemists to nuclear physicists to people who study insects, volcanoes, and endocrine glands -- none of whom is an expert on weather or climate, but all of whom can be listed as scientists, to impress people who don't scrutinize the list any further. That ploy has already been used.
Then there are genuine scientific experts on weather and climate. The National Academy of Sciences came out with a report on global warming back in 2001 with a very distinguished list of such experts listed. The problem is that not one of those very distinguished scientists actually wrote the report -- or even saw it before it was published.
One of those very distinguished climate scientists -- Richard S. Lindzen of MIT -- publicly repudiated the conclusions of that report, even though his name had been among those used as window dressing on the report. But the media may not have told you that.
In short, there has been a full court press to convince the public that "everybody knows" that a catastrophic global warming looms over us, that human beings are the cause of it, and that the only solution is to turn more money and power over to the government to stop us from our dangerous ways of living.
Among the climate experts who are not part of that "everybody" are not only Professor Lindzen but also Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, whose book "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years," punctures the hot air balloon of the global warming crusaders. So does the book "Shattered Consensus," edited by Patrick J. Michaels, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, which contains essays by others who are not part of "everybody."
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Liberal emotion vs. Conservative logic
By John Hawkins
Friday, February 16, 2007
It takes a lot more integrity, character, and courage to be a conservative than it does to be a liberal. That's because at its most basic level, liberalism is nothing more than childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues.
Going to war is mean, so we shouldn't do it. That person is poor and it would be nice to give him money, so the government should do it. Somebody wants to have an abortion, have a gay marriage, or wants to come into the U.S. illegally and it would be mean to say, "no," so we should let them. I am nice because I care about global warming! Those people want to kill us? But, don't they know we're nice? If they did, they would like us! Bill has more toys, money than Harry, so take half of Bill's money and give it to Harry.
The only exception to this rule is for people who aren't liberals. They're racists, bigots, homophobes, Nazis, fascists, etc., etc., etc. They might as well just say that conservatives have "cooties" for disagreeing with them, because there really isn't any more thought or reasoning that goes into it than that.
Now, that's not to say that conservatives never make emotion based arguments or that emotion based arguments are always wrong. But, when you try to deal with complex, real world issues, using little more than simplistic emotionalism that's primarily designed to make the people advocating it feel good rather than to deal with problems, it can, and often has had disastrous consequences. Liberals never seem to learn from this.
Why don't they learn anything from failed liberal policies? Because there is nothing underpinning them other than feelings and so even when they don't work, their good intentions are treated, by other liberals at least, as more important than the results of their actions.
Just to name one example of many, look at Vietnam. South Vietnam was policing its own country and holding off aggression from the North with the help of the United States. But, people get hurt in wars, so wars are bad. As a result of thinking that went no deeper than that, liberals in Congress cut off the aid and air support we promised the South Vietnamese. The result?
The conquest of South Vietnam, a holocaust in Cambodia, millions dead and in prison camps, another million boat people, a crisis of confidence in America, and our country's reputation around the world was left in tatters, which led to a revolution in Nicaragua, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and a lack of faith in the U.S. military which wasn't truly restored until Operation Desert Storm.
So, we're talking about one of the most shameful and damaging mistakes in American history. Yet, the left is pushing to do the same thing in Iraq, despite the fact that catastrophic consequences would surely also follow a U.S. retreat in that country.
But, this isn't just about foreign policy. Look at Lyndon Johnson's "war on poverty," which did nothing to reduce the poverty rate despite the trillions that were spent; however, it did help drive the illegitimacy rate among black Americans from 22 percent in 1960 to 70% in 2005.
You could go on and on with these sort of examples -- rent control, which causes housing shortages, the minimum wage, which costs poor people jobs, the liberal insistence on putting “making nice at the U.N.” above looking out for American interests. That's what happens when you make decisions based on emotion and wanting people to like you, rather than using logic and doing the right thing.
Unlike liberals, conservatives tend to be primarily concerned with pragmatism, not niceties. This is one of the biggest reasons that conservatives have such a healthy respect for the traditions and institutions that have been proven to work over time and such contempt for those that don't, like the United Nations and the federal government.
Does that mean conservatives are opposed to change? No, not at all, but there is a great reluctance to tinker with ideas and concepts that have proven successful time and time again throughout history, because the more they’re changed, the more likely they are not to work.
Moreover, in Thomas Sowell's immortal words, conservatives believe that, "There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs." Because of this, conservatives regularly do something that liberals seldom do: they consider the long-term consequences of their policies.
Sometimes in politics, that's a tough duty. It's always easier to say, "We're going to use someone else's tax money to give you this right now," than it is to say, "We're going to keep government out of your way and let you do this for yourself." But, that's the path conservatives have chosen for themselves. They’re willing to be attacked and called, in some form or fashion, "mean" in order to advocate policies that are good for the country.
In the end, that's what liberalism versus conservatism all comes down to: sappy, feel good emotionalism that sounds appealing, but doesn't work versus doing things the right way, even when it's not easy.
Friday, February 16, 2007
It takes a lot more integrity, character, and courage to be a conservative than it does to be a liberal. That's because at its most basic level, liberalism is nothing more than childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues.
Going to war is mean, so we shouldn't do it. That person is poor and it would be nice to give him money, so the government should do it. Somebody wants to have an abortion, have a gay marriage, or wants to come into the U.S. illegally and it would be mean to say, "no," so we should let them. I am nice because I care about global warming! Those people want to kill us? But, don't they know we're nice? If they did, they would like us! Bill has more toys, money than Harry, so take half of Bill's money and give it to Harry.
The only exception to this rule is for people who aren't liberals. They're racists, bigots, homophobes, Nazis, fascists, etc., etc., etc. They might as well just say that conservatives have "cooties" for disagreeing with them, because there really isn't any more thought or reasoning that goes into it than that.
Now, that's not to say that conservatives never make emotion based arguments or that emotion based arguments are always wrong. But, when you try to deal with complex, real world issues, using little more than simplistic emotionalism that's primarily designed to make the people advocating it feel good rather than to deal with problems, it can, and often has had disastrous consequences. Liberals never seem to learn from this.
Why don't they learn anything from failed liberal policies? Because there is nothing underpinning them other than feelings and so even when they don't work, their good intentions are treated, by other liberals at least, as more important than the results of their actions.
Just to name one example of many, look at Vietnam. South Vietnam was policing its own country and holding off aggression from the North with the help of the United States. But, people get hurt in wars, so wars are bad. As a result of thinking that went no deeper than that, liberals in Congress cut off the aid and air support we promised the South Vietnamese. The result?
The conquest of South Vietnam, a holocaust in Cambodia, millions dead and in prison camps, another million boat people, a crisis of confidence in America, and our country's reputation around the world was left in tatters, which led to a revolution in Nicaragua, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and a lack of faith in the U.S. military which wasn't truly restored until Operation Desert Storm.
So, we're talking about one of the most shameful and damaging mistakes in American history. Yet, the left is pushing to do the same thing in Iraq, despite the fact that catastrophic consequences would surely also follow a U.S. retreat in that country.
But, this isn't just about foreign policy. Look at Lyndon Johnson's "war on poverty," which did nothing to reduce the poverty rate despite the trillions that were spent; however, it did help drive the illegitimacy rate among black Americans from 22 percent in 1960 to 70% in 2005.
You could go on and on with these sort of examples -- rent control, which causes housing shortages, the minimum wage, which costs poor people jobs, the liberal insistence on putting “making nice at the U.N.” above looking out for American interests. That's what happens when you make decisions based on emotion and wanting people to like you, rather than using logic and doing the right thing.
Unlike liberals, conservatives tend to be primarily concerned with pragmatism, not niceties. This is one of the biggest reasons that conservatives have such a healthy respect for the traditions and institutions that have been proven to work over time and such contempt for those that don't, like the United Nations and the federal government.
Does that mean conservatives are opposed to change? No, not at all, but there is a great reluctance to tinker with ideas and concepts that have proven successful time and time again throughout history, because the more they’re changed, the more likely they are not to work.
Moreover, in Thomas Sowell's immortal words, conservatives believe that, "There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs." Because of this, conservatives regularly do something that liberals seldom do: they consider the long-term consequences of their policies.
Sometimes in politics, that's a tough duty. It's always easier to say, "We're going to use someone else's tax money to give you this right now," than it is to say, "We're going to keep government out of your way and let you do this for yourself." But, that's the path conservatives have chosen for themselves. They’re willing to be attacked and called, in some form or fashion, "mean" in order to advocate policies that are good for the country.
In the end, that's what liberalism versus conservatism all comes down to: sappy, feel good emotionalism that sounds appealing, but doesn't work versus doing things the right way, even when it's not easy.
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