Arne Owens
Thursday, April 30, 2009
In December 2004, a little over a year after the launch of major combat operations in Iraq, then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld gave a speech to troops in Kuwait and a line that stays with me to this day:
“You go to war with the Army you have…not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
Way back in 1991 when I went to war with the 1st Infantry Division (The Big Red One), the Army that surrounded me as we launched our attack into Iraq was huge. The legions were spread from the Persian Gulf in the east to the Jordanian border in the west as the largest mechanized force since World War II assembled for battle.
The list of Army divisions involved in Operation Desert Storm read like a who’s who of American combat muscle—1st Infantry, 1st and 3rd Armored, 1st Cavalry, 24th Infantry, 101st Airborne, 82nd Airborne, 2nd Armored, and two Marine divisions. The joint force assembled numbered over 500,000 men and women from the Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force. Some would say the force was too large. In hindsight, perhaps it was. But the fact is that the ground war was over in four days!
The joint force with which America went to war in Afghanistan and in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 was much smaller, and the primary reason is seldom discussed. The Army we had, the joint force we had, to paraphrase Sec. Rumsfeld, was the product of a 40% cut during the 1990s by the Clinton Administration. The number of active Army divisions went from a pre-Desert Storm total of 18 down to 10, and its end strength from 750,000 to under 500,000. The other services underwent similar reductions, with the Air Force losing squadrons of combat aircraft and the Navy losing ships, especially aircraft carriers.
The reasons for the reductions of the 1990s surely seemed reasonable at the time. The Soviet Union had disappeared, an aggressor had been thrown out of Kuwait, and we were, after all, at “the end of history.” However, in ten short years, the situation changed with 9/11, and today even more threats loom on the horizon. Yet the force structure remains basically the same as when it was downsized, while the stresses on the men and women in all of our military services after six years of combat are enormous.
The military forces we had ready in 1990 were conceived and procured, at great expense, in the 1970s and early 1980s. The tanks, ships and aircraft were relatively new. During the post-Desert Storm downsizing, older equipment was retired. But unlike defense planners of the 1970s and 1980s, Clinton Administration planners allowed procurement of replacement weapons and equipment to slip below even what was needed to replace that which remained after the downsizing. In fact, President Clinton cut defense spending from 4.8%% of GDP in 1992 to 3% in 2000.
In 1997, writers of the National Defense University’s Strategic Assessment 1997 pointed out that “each military service needs a recapitalization funding surge in the first decade of the twenty first century.” In other words, right about now, we should be buying new weapons systems and equipment to replace that which is either old and worn out, or broken after six years of combat operations. Except we’re not; or at least not to the extent needed to ensure America can defend itself from future worst case threats.
Today, the damage the Clinton team did to defense in the 1990s is about to be compounded by a Defense budget being prepared by the Obama Administration. As recently reported in The Wall Street Journal, the Joints Chiefs of Staff requested $584 billion for 2010 and a floor of 4% of GDP. The White House puts the floor at $3.7%, for a total of $533 billion for 2010, falling in 2011 and then flat-lining for another five years.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently outlined the Administration’s defense budget priorities and created even more cause for concern. The Air Force takes a major hit with the halt in production of the F-22 Raptor, a replacement for the 40-year old F-15 Eagle air superiority fighter, and a halt in production of C-17 transport planes that are a lifeline to remote war zones such as Afghanistan. The Army received a marginal increase in end-strength from the Bush Administration, but Sec. Gates now proposes canceling the Future Combat System ground vehicle, which is the only replacement on the drawing board for M1 Abrams tanks and M2 Bradley Infantry fighting vehicles, both designed in the 1970s.
Most disturbing, however, is the plan to cut missile defense spending by $1.4 billion. At a time when North Korea is developing a nuclear weapons capability and perfecting a launch vehicle to deliver a warhead, cutting spending on missile defense is downright dangerous. And North Korea is not the only threat. The mid-term threat from Iran is also very real. Only a credible missile defense shield will convince North Korea and Iran of the futility of their expenditure, or, worst case, deter them from using the nuclear weapons they develop.
Honorable people will disagree, but our concern should be that the military we will have when the next major threat is upon us may not, as a result of decisions made today, be fully prepared, and the cost in American lives and treasure could be great.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Torture TV
Cliff May
Thursday, April 30, 2009
When I was asked to appear on the Daily Show, the news-with-views-and-edgy comedy TV program, I was reluctant. The issue: whether "enhanced interrogation techniques" used to pry information about terrorist plots from al-Qaeda leaders should be regarded as torture and those responsible prosecuted. How would Jon Stewart, the acerbic and unabashedly liberal host, make this issue funny? How would I make it serious?
In the end, I agreed. Why? Because millions of Americans don't read newspapers, web-zines and wonky blogs. If my mission is to tell the public what I believe to be the truth about life-and-death issues, I have to be willing to go where the public is.
As always on TV, I'd have to make my case in sound-bites - though in this instance, many would be swallowed by Jon's punch lines, and by the studio audience's laughter, cheers and hoots. I figured I'd better try to prepare myself by running an interview in my head. What follows is the interview I fantasized.
Jon: So, Cliff, let's get to the point: How can you support torture!?!?!
Cliff: Actually, Jon, I don't. But more important: The CIA officials who have performed harsh interrogations do not support torture. The lawyers who wrote the memos telling the CIA what was permitted and what was not permitted don't support torture. Nor do the congressmen - including Democrats -- who not only didn't ban these practices - they funded them.
J: You don't think the torture memos told these guys to go ahead and knock yourself out - or rather knock out your prisoners?
C: No one who reads the memos can think that. The media keep calling these "torture memos." They're really "anti-torture memos." They tell the CIA where they must draw the line. They instruct them not to cross from coercive interrogations - sometimes called "stress and duress" - to torture, a practice which is defined under law, illegal and prohibited. You can disagree about where the attorneys drew the line - but drawing it was indisputably what they were doing in these memos.
J: C'mon, Cliff. You're trying to tell me waterboarding is not torture?
C: It can be - it certainly was when the Japanese did it. If you want to, you can kill someone in minutes by waterboarding. But that's not the way it was done by American intelligence officials. They had to have physicians on hand empowered to stop it at any time. They had to tell their subjects they were not going to be killed - because if they didn't, that would cause them too much suffering. They could only pour water on them for up to 40 seconds at a time -unpleasant, sure, but not longer than they could hold their breath.
And let's remember: Only three individuals were waterboarded. Three. All of them al-Qaeda leaders concealing information about active terrorist plots. And by the way, no one has been waterboarded since 2003.
J: But answer my question: Is waterboarding torture? Yes or no?
C: Defining torture is not easy. A simple legal definition is that it "shocks the conscience." Cutting off Daniel Pearl's head on videotape - that shocks my conscience. Sending a child out as a suicide bomber - that shocks my conscience. People jumping off the World Trade Towers because they'd rather die that way than by burning - that shocks my conscience. Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, mastermind of the 9/11 atrocities, gagging for a few minutes and, as a result, providing information that saves lives, then going back to his cell for dinner and a movie - no, my conscience is not shocked by that.
J: There's no proof any of this was effective. In fact, a lot of people say such techniques don't produce good information.
C: Obama's top intelligence official, Admiral Dennis Blair, says these techniques produced "high-value information" that gave the U.S. government "a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country."
Former CIA director, Gen. Michael Hayden, and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently wrote: "As late as 2006, fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of Al Qaeda came from those [coercive] interrogations."
Former CIA Director George Tenet has said, "I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than [what] the FBI, the [CIA], and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."
Former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has said, "We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened."
Many other top intelligence officials say the same: coercive interrogations are the only way we have to get life-saving information out of trained, hardened al-Qaeda terrorists.
I think the evidence is clear. But if others do not, let's release the "effectiveness memos" as former Vice President Cheney has requested and let's release other data on this question. Perhaps at this point we need a national debate on security and morality.
J: How do we know softer methods wouldn't have worked?
C: Look, we know this: Khalid Sheikh Mohamed was captured. He said: "I want a lawyer." He didn't get one - I know some people think he deserved one but he's not a criminal defendant or an honorable prisoner of war. The Geneva Convention does not cover him - even Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder has said that.
Later, they asked KSM over and over: "Will there be another attack?" He would just smile and say: "Soon you will see."
Now maybe you think asking him again and adding pretty please with a cherry on top would have produced results in time. The intelligence officials didn't think that. They went to the Justice Department and said: "What can we do? How far can we go to save lives?" And they got the information they needed -- and we haven't had another attack on American soil since
And after being waterboarded and suffering other coercive methods in 2002, Abu Zubaydah explained that he and his "brothers" were permitted to give up information - only once interrogators pushed them to the limit of their endurance. At that point, he provided information that helped the CIA capture terrorist Ramzi Binalshibh.
The two captives then gave up details that led to the capture of KSM who, as I said, was initially defiant but who finally revealed information leading to the capture of several other terrorist and at least one terrorist cell.
J: You not saying we're "in danger" if we stop this kind of interrogation?
C: I am. The current administration appears to have ruled out any coercive techniques: No sleep deprivation - not even for a night. No loud music - it drives the terrorists crazy! So it's torture! Better to let the attack proceed. The victims and their families surely will understand.
We basically have three weapons against terrorists: capture them, interrogate them, kill them. But there's no point in capturing if you can't effectively interrogate, so that leaves just killing. How do you justify that? How do you say, yes you can hit that terrorist with a Predator missile but you can't make him listen to Shady Slim?
J: And what do you propose?
C: I would hope that President Obama would change his mind. I would hope he would say to his advisors: "Give me a list of all the techniques that are effective. I'll take a red pen and cross out the ones we will never use no matter what. But I'll circle the ones that may be used if I'm asked -- and if I give specific authorization. As for other techniques that are clearly not torture but may inflict discomfort, there will be detailed guidelines and I want the director of the CIA to sign off every time they are used.
J: Fair enough but those who have already broken the law, shouldn't they be prosecuted?
C: What we're talking about is astonishing: Government lawyers in the current administration prosecuting government lawyers from the previous administration because they disagree with their legal opinions. Never before in American history has policy been so politicized. It's as though Eisenhower prosecuted Truman for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
The one indisputable achievement of the Bush administration was keeping Americans safe from terrorism for seven years. It's one thing to minimize that; it's quite another to try to spin it as a war crime.
J: But surely no one is above the law?
C: If there was any real basis for prosecutions, those cases should have been brought. They could have been brought anytime since 2003 - when, as I said, waterboarding stopped being used. Instead, leaders of Congress from both parties were briefed on these interrogation methods and they not only approved of them - they funded them. And there were occasions when bills were brought before Congress to specifically outlaw waterboarding. Those bills did not pass.
If members of Congress want to make a statement now, let them pass a law against waterboarding. Let them do that this week. But no witch hunts or show trials. That's not good for the country.
J: Gosh, Cliff. You've made some very strong points. I need to think about this. And can I make a donation to your organization?
Ok, this was my fantasy interview. It didn't actually go quite this well. How did it come out? You can watch the real debate on-line (www.thedailyshow.com) and judge for yourself.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
When I was asked to appear on the Daily Show, the news-with-views-and-edgy comedy TV program, I was reluctant. The issue: whether "enhanced interrogation techniques" used to pry information about terrorist plots from al-Qaeda leaders should be regarded as torture and those responsible prosecuted. How would Jon Stewart, the acerbic and unabashedly liberal host, make this issue funny? How would I make it serious?
In the end, I agreed. Why? Because millions of Americans don't read newspapers, web-zines and wonky blogs. If my mission is to tell the public what I believe to be the truth about life-and-death issues, I have to be willing to go where the public is.
As always on TV, I'd have to make my case in sound-bites - though in this instance, many would be swallowed by Jon's punch lines, and by the studio audience's laughter, cheers and hoots. I figured I'd better try to prepare myself by running an interview in my head. What follows is the interview I fantasized.
Jon: So, Cliff, let's get to the point: How can you support torture!?!?!
Cliff: Actually, Jon, I don't. But more important: The CIA officials who have performed harsh interrogations do not support torture. The lawyers who wrote the memos telling the CIA what was permitted and what was not permitted don't support torture. Nor do the congressmen - including Democrats -- who not only didn't ban these practices - they funded them.
J: You don't think the torture memos told these guys to go ahead and knock yourself out - or rather knock out your prisoners?
C: No one who reads the memos can think that. The media keep calling these "torture memos." They're really "anti-torture memos." They tell the CIA where they must draw the line. They instruct them not to cross from coercive interrogations - sometimes called "stress and duress" - to torture, a practice which is defined under law, illegal and prohibited. You can disagree about where the attorneys drew the line - but drawing it was indisputably what they were doing in these memos.
J: C'mon, Cliff. You're trying to tell me waterboarding is not torture?
C: It can be - it certainly was when the Japanese did it. If you want to, you can kill someone in minutes by waterboarding. But that's not the way it was done by American intelligence officials. They had to have physicians on hand empowered to stop it at any time. They had to tell their subjects they were not going to be killed - because if they didn't, that would cause them too much suffering. They could only pour water on them for up to 40 seconds at a time -unpleasant, sure, but not longer than they could hold their breath.
And let's remember: Only three individuals were waterboarded. Three. All of them al-Qaeda leaders concealing information about active terrorist plots. And by the way, no one has been waterboarded since 2003.
J: But answer my question: Is waterboarding torture? Yes or no?
C: Defining torture is not easy. A simple legal definition is that it "shocks the conscience." Cutting off Daniel Pearl's head on videotape - that shocks my conscience. Sending a child out as a suicide bomber - that shocks my conscience. People jumping off the World Trade Towers because they'd rather die that way than by burning - that shocks my conscience. Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, mastermind of the 9/11 atrocities, gagging for a few minutes and, as a result, providing information that saves lives, then going back to his cell for dinner and a movie - no, my conscience is not shocked by that.
J: There's no proof any of this was effective. In fact, a lot of people say such techniques don't produce good information.
C: Obama's top intelligence official, Admiral Dennis Blair, says these techniques produced "high-value information" that gave the U.S. government "a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country."
Former CIA director, Gen. Michael Hayden, and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently wrote: "As late as 2006, fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of Al Qaeda came from those [coercive] interrogations."
Former CIA Director George Tenet has said, "I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than [what] the FBI, the [CIA], and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."
Former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has said, "We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened."
Many other top intelligence officials say the same: coercive interrogations are the only way we have to get life-saving information out of trained, hardened al-Qaeda terrorists.
I think the evidence is clear. But if others do not, let's release the "effectiveness memos" as former Vice President Cheney has requested and let's release other data on this question. Perhaps at this point we need a national debate on security and morality.
J: How do we know softer methods wouldn't have worked?
C: Look, we know this: Khalid Sheikh Mohamed was captured. He said: "I want a lawyer." He didn't get one - I know some people think he deserved one but he's not a criminal defendant or an honorable prisoner of war. The Geneva Convention does not cover him - even Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder has said that.
Later, they asked KSM over and over: "Will there be another attack?" He would just smile and say: "Soon you will see."
Now maybe you think asking him again and adding pretty please with a cherry on top would have produced results in time. The intelligence officials didn't think that. They went to the Justice Department and said: "What can we do? How far can we go to save lives?" And they got the information they needed -- and we haven't had another attack on American soil since
And after being waterboarded and suffering other coercive methods in 2002, Abu Zubaydah explained that he and his "brothers" were permitted to give up information - only once interrogators pushed them to the limit of their endurance. At that point, he provided information that helped the CIA capture terrorist Ramzi Binalshibh.
The two captives then gave up details that led to the capture of KSM who, as I said, was initially defiant but who finally revealed information leading to the capture of several other terrorist and at least one terrorist cell.
J: You not saying we're "in danger" if we stop this kind of interrogation?
C: I am. The current administration appears to have ruled out any coercive techniques: No sleep deprivation - not even for a night. No loud music - it drives the terrorists crazy! So it's torture! Better to let the attack proceed. The victims and their families surely will understand.
We basically have three weapons against terrorists: capture them, interrogate them, kill them. But there's no point in capturing if you can't effectively interrogate, so that leaves just killing. How do you justify that? How do you say, yes you can hit that terrorist with a Predator missile but you can't make him listen to Shady Slim?
J: And what do you propose?
C: I would hope that President Obama would change his mind. I would hope he would say to his advisors: "Give me a list of all the techniques that are effective. I'll take a red pen and cross out the ones we will never use no matter what. But I'll circle the ones that may be used if I'm asked -- and if I give specific authorization. As for other techniques that are clearly not torture but may inflict discomfort, there will be detailed guidelines and I want the director of the CIA to sign off every time they are used.
J: Fair enough but those who have already broken the law, shouldn't they be prosecuted?
C: What we're talking about is astonishing: Government lawyers in the current administration prosecuting government lawyers from the previous administration because they disagree with their legal opinions. Never before in American history has policy been so politicized. It's as though Eisenhower prosecuted Truman for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
The one indisputable achievement of the Bush administration was keeping Americans safe from terrorism for seven years. It's one thing to minimize that; it's quite another to try to spin it as a war crime.
J: But surely no one is above the law?
C: If there was any real basis for prosecutions, those cases should have been brought. They could have been brought anytime since 2003 - when, as I said, waterboarding stopped being used. Instead, leaders of Congress from both parties were briefed on these interrogation methods and they not only approved of them - they funded them. And there were occasions when bills were brought before Congress to specifically outlaw waterboarding. Those bills did not pass.
If members of Congress want to make a statement now, let them pass a law against waterboarding. Let them do that this week. But no witch hunts or show trials. That's not good for the country.
J: Gosh, Cliff. You've made some very strong points. I need to think about this. And can I make a donation to your organization?
Ok, this was my fantasy interview. It didn't actually go quite this well. How did it come out? You can watch the real debate on-line (www.thedailyshow.com) and judge for yourself.
Pelosi's Tortured Explanation
Debra J. Saunders
Thursday, April 30, 2009
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been pushing for a "truth commission" to investigate the CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques like waterboarding -- until Republicans started shining the spotlight on Pelosi herself. Now she is not so adamant.
Spokesman Brendan Daly told me that Pelosi wants a truth commission, "but she still realizes the political reality" -- as in the opposition of President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
The rest of the reality may well be this: Pelosi knew that White House lawyers had sanctioned waterboarding in 2002 -- and did not protest.
According to the Senate Intelligence committee, the CIA briefed Pelosi, then the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah -- who was waterboarded -- in 2002.
The Washington Post reported in 2007 that the 2002 briefing provided Pelosi and company with a "virtual tour" of interrogation techniques. At the time of the story, a congressional source speaking for Pelosi, however, told the Post that Pelosi thought waterboarding was in the planning stages. The source admitted Pelosi did not object.
Who then is Pelosi to go after Bush lawyers for sanctioning waterboarding, which she now refers to as torture? This is what Pelosi told reporters last week: "We were not -- I repeat -- we were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used." Yes, the Bush Office of Legal Counsel said the techniques "could be used," she explained, "but not that they would."
So Pelosi thought that just because the Bushies were sticking out their necks and authorizing the CIA's use of waterboarding, that did not mean the CIA would use it. And the Democrats called George W. Bush dim and ineffective?
Note that Pelosi used the term "enhanced interrogation methods" when referring to her CIA briefing. Not torture. On Tuesday, Pelosi added a twist to the story. She told CNN that the briefers "said they had a legal opinion they said they weren't going to use and when they did they would come back to Congress to report to us on that."
Daly added, "There's really not a whole lot you can do when you're being briefed" and you're a member of the minority. Then what is the point of having a bipartisan intelligence committee? Why not just buy a rubber stamp? Porter Goss, the House Intelligence Committee chairman in 2002 who went on to become director of the CIA has a different recollection. As he wrote in the Washington Post, he, Pelosi and the ranking Senate Intelligence Committee members were briefed extensively, "understood what the CIA was doing," and "gave the CIA our bipartisan support." Goss was "slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were actually to be employed."
Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, has called on the director of national intelligence to release complete CIA briefing documents -- including information as to who attended and what was said, so that Americans will know what congressional leaders like Pelosi knew. Daly told me that Pelosi supports that effort, as she generally believes in transparency.
Good riddance to a "truth commission." It's pretty sickening to think some Democrats have been poised to investigate and possibly prosecute those who sanctioned waterboarding in 2002. Yet when Pelosi knew the White House was pushing it, she did not try to move heaven and earth to make sure it never happened.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been pushing for a "truth commission" to investigate the CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques like waterboarding -- until Republicans started shining the spotlight on Pelosi herself. Now she is not so adamant.
Spokesman Brendan Daly told me that Pelosi wants a truth commission, "but she still realizes the political reality" -- as in the opposition of President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
The rest of the reality may well be this: Pelosi knew that White House lawyers had sanctioned waterboarding in 2002 -- and did not protest.
According to the Senate Intelligence committee, the CIA briefed Pelosi, then the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah -- who was waterboarded -- in 2002.
The Washington Post reported in 2007 that the 2002 briefing provided Pelosi and company with a "virtual tour" of interrogation techniques. At the time of the story, a congressional source speaking for Pelosi, however, told the Post that Pelosi thought waterboarding was in the planning stages. The source admitted Pelosi did not object.
Who then is Pelosi to go after Bush lawyers for sanctioning waterboarding, which she now refers to as torture? This is what Pelosi told reporters last week: "We were not -- I repeat -- we were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used." Yes, the Bush Office of Legal Counsel said the techniques "could be used," she explained, "but not that they would."
So Pelosi thought that just because the Bushies were sticking out their necks and authorizing the CIA's use of waterboarding, that did not mean the CIA would use it. And the Democrats called George W. Bush dim and ineffective?
Note that Pelosi used the term "enhanced interrogation methods" when referring to her CIA briefing. Not torture. On Tuesday, Pelosi added a twist to the story. She told CNN that the briefers "said they had a legal opinion they said they weren't going to use and when they did they would come back to Congress to report to us on that."
Daly added, "There's really not a whole lot you can do when you're being briefed" and you're a member of the minority. Then what is the point of having a bipartisan intelligence committee? Why not just buy a rubber stamp? Porter Goss, the House Intelligence Committee chairman in 2002 who went on to become director of the CIA has a different recollection. As he wrote in the Washington Post, he, Pelosi and the ranking Senate Intelligence Committee members were briefed extensively, "understood what the CIA was doing," and "gave the CIA our bipartisan support." Goss was "slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were actually to be employed."
Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, has called on the director of national intelligence to release complete CIA briefing documents -- including information as to who attended and what was said, so that Americans will know what congressional leaders like Pelosi knew. Daly told me that Pelosi supports that effort, as she generally believes in transparency.
Good riddance to a "truth commission." It's pretty sickening to think some Democrats have been poised to investigate and possibly prosecute those who sanctioned waterboarding in 2002. Yet when Pelosi knew the White House was pushing it, she did not try to move heaven and earth to make sure it never happened.
Don't Fear! The War on Terror Is Won
Emmett Tyrrell
Thursday, April 30, 2009
WASHINGTON -- Students of intelligence-gathering will tell you that deception and outright lying are essential to the art. Having now reviewed the controversy over who in Congress knew what about the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques, I have concluded that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might make a superb intelligence officer. She claims that she was utterly unaware of the CIA's rough treatment of terrorists detained after 9/11. She says this without betraying a hint of deception or uncertainty. Well done, well done.
Yet a really good liar does not lie about something easily refuted. In the case of the Hon. Pelosi's protests of ignorance, there are no fewer than three public sources out there refuting her. One is a 2007 Washington Post report that she was included in a "bipartisan group" from the Hill that was fully apprised of these interrogation techniques in September 2002. Another refutation comes from former CIA Director George Tenet's memoirs, "At the Center of the Storm," in which Tenet is pretty open about how rough treatment cracked 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who boasts of beheading journalist Danny Pearl. Tenet also adds that he briefed "senior congressional leaders," presumably among them the Hon. Pelosi, about another of her present concerns, namely, warrantless wiretaps. Then there is this revelation by former CIA Director and former Rep. Porter Goss in The Washington Post this past weekend: "Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members (of Congress) claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as 'waterboarding' were never mentioned." So maybe the speaker of the House would not be a very good spy.
If there is any good news to come from the Obama administration's release of CIA documents relating to the detention and interrogation of post-9/11 detainees, it is that Washington's post-9/11 fears of further terrorist attacks against America have abated. It is official that the Obama administration no longer uses the term "global war on terror." So maybe the war is over and we all can relax.
Yet there is no question that the release of these documents and the ongoing debate over whether to prosecute government functionaries involved in the Bush administration's treatment of terrorists has hurt our intelligence community, both at home and abroad. Intelligence officers within our service have been intimidated by our own government. Foreign intelligence officers who have been sharing intelligence with us abroad are going to be much less forthcoming. It is a good thing that the administration has determined that America is now secure from terrorist threats.
This is not the first time liberal politicians have put the clamps on our intelligence services' ability to protect the country. In 1975, the Church Committee investigated both the CIA and the FBI, with the consequence that congressional oversight committees were set up, which, in the aftermath of 9/11, were accused of inhibiting our intelligence services from pursuing al-Qaida aggressively in the 1990s. Now, apparently, with the war on terror won, we can go back to those blissful days.
Yet frankly, I am uneasy about this new climate here in Washington. Historically, intelligence documents have been kept from the public eye, not only here but also throughout the Western world. The idea is that we do not want our enemies to be informed of what we know. In David Reynolds' stupendous book ("In Command of History") on how Winston Churchill wrote his World War II memoirs, Reynolds shows over and again Churchill and his opponents in the Labour government cooperating to keep British secrets from the public. British intelligence techniques, in particular, were not divulged. That President Obama's administration, in the first 100 days of its existence, would expose the intelligence techniques used by his predecessor strikes me as reckless. Yet, on the other hand, the global war on terror is over, so maybe everything is going to be OK. I do, however, wonder how President Barack Obama managed to win the war so quickly. Was it just a matter of retiring the hellish Bush from the White House, or is there more to it?
Thursday, April 30, 2009
WASHINGTON -- Students of intelligence-gathering will tell you that deception and outright lying are essential to the art. Having now reviewed the controversy over who in Congress knew what about the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques, I have concluded that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might make a superb intelligence officer. She claims that she was utterly unaware of the CIA's rough treatment of terrorists detained after 9/11. She says this without betraying a hint of deception or uncertainty. Well done, well done.
Yet a really good liar does not lie about something easily refuted. In the case of the Hon. Pelosi's protests of ignorance, there are no fewer than three public sources out there refuting her. One is a 2007 Washington Post report that she was included in a "bipartisan group" from the Hill that was fully apprised of these interrogation techniques in September 2002. Another refutation comes from former CIA Director George Tenet's memoirs, "At the Center of the Storm," in which Tenet is pretty open about how rough treatment cracked 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who boasts of beheading journalist Danny Pearl. Tenet also adds that he briefed "senior congressional leaders," presumably among them the Hon. Pelosi, about another of her present concerns, namely, warrantless wiretaps. Then there is this revelation by former CIA Director and former Rep. Porter Goss in The Washington Post this past weekend: "Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members (of Congress) claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as 'waterboarding' were never mentioned." So maybe the speaker of the House would not be a very good spy.
If there is any good news to come from the Obama administration's release of CIA documents relating to the detention and interrogation of post-9/11 detainees, it is that Washington's post-9/11 fears of further terrorist attacks against America have abated. It is official that the Obama administration no longer uses the term "global war on terror." So maybe the war is over and we all can relax.
Yet there is no question that the release of these documents and the ongoing debate over whether to prosecute government functionaries involved in the Bush administration's treatment of terrorists has hurt our intelligence community, both at home and abroad. Intelligence officers within our service have been intimidated by our own government. Foreign intelligence officers who have been sharing intelligence with us abroad are going to be much less forthcoming. It is a good thing that the administration has determined that America is now secure from terrorist threats.
This is not the first time liberal politicians have put the clamps on our intelligence services' ability to protect the country. In 1975, the Church Committee investigated both the CIA and the FBI, with the consequence that congressional oversight committees were set up, which, in the aftermath of 9/11, were accused of inhibiting our intelligence services from pursuing al-Qaida aggressively in the 1990s. Now, apparently, with the war on terror won, we can go back to those blissful days.
Yet frankly, I am uneasy about this new climate here in Washington. Historically, intelligence documents have been kept from the public eye, not only here but also throughout the Western world. The idea is that we do not want our enemies to be informed of what we know. In David Reynolds' stupendous book ("In Command of History") on how Winston Churchill wrote his World War II memoirs, Reynolds shows over and again Churchill and his opponents in the Labour government cooperating to keep British secrets from the public. British intelligence techniques, in particular, were not divulged. That President Obama's administration, in the first 100 days of its existence, would expose the intelligence techniques used by his predecessor strikes me as reckless. Yet, on the other hand, the global war on terror is over, so maybe everything is going to be OK. I do, however, wonder how President Barack Obama managed to win the war so quickly. Was it just a matter of retiring the hellish Bush from the White House, or is there more to it?
The 100-Day Assault on America
Larry Elder
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Has it really been 100 days?
Aided by an eagerly compliant Democratic-controlled Congress, a sycophantic media, and a bunch of squishy Republicans, President Obama has taken the country on a radical, mind-boggling leap into collectivism.
Obama -- to use one of his favorite expressions -- doubled down, no, tripled and quadrupled down on Bush's "stimulus" and "rescue" packages, spending trillions of dollars to "bail out" financial institutions, too-big-to-fail businesses, and even deficit-running states. Obama promises to use taxpayer money to rescue "responsible homeowners" -- whatever that means -- from foreclosure, thus artificially propping up prices that shut out renters who would love to buy now-much-cheaper houses.
Obama proposes spending billions (or trillions?) more on "creating or saving" -- whatever that means -- 4 million, 3.5 million or 2.5 million jobs. Pick a number. Given the government's vast business expertise, Obama proposes spending gobs of money to "invest" in green jobs. And he's just warming up. He wants taxpayers to guarantee, presumably to all who request it, a "world-class education" -- whatever that means.
Firmly in charge of much of the domestic car industry, Obama effectively fired the CEO of General Motors. He threatens to fire still more executives in the parts of the financial services industry currently under the management, direction or control of Uncle Sam -- that eminent, well-regarded banker.
Obama blames the financial crisis on "greed" and the "lack of regulatory oversight." Funny thing about greed. Celebrated investor-turned-Obama-supporter/adviser Warren Buffett says, "Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful." Apparently, some practice good greed, while others engage in greedy greed.
As for regulation, the SEC already heavily regulates most of the troubled financial institutions. The world's largest insurer, AIG, operated under heavy regulation. The government-sponsored entities Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae -- blamed for irresponsibly buying, packaging and selling bad mortgages -- are regulated by a government agency, called the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. Its sole responsibility is to oversee those two agencies. OFHEO, shortly before the government takeover of Freddie and Fannie, gave them two thumbs up.
Did the President, after campaigning against pork and earmarks, really sign bills that include both? Yes. Will the President's new budget really triple and quadruple the annual deficit? Yes. Will the President's budget really double the national debt within a few years and then increase still more beyond that? Yes. Do the President and members of Congress, many of whom never operated so much as a T-shirt concession booth, really believe that they can "modernize" health care, thus "saving" taxpayers buckets of money? Yes.
America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone's going from nothing to something. Why? In theory, if not practice, the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism -- or, at least, we used to.
Today's global downturn reflects too much borrowing and too much lending. But would borrowers and lenders -- at least in America -- have engaged in the same kind of behavior but for artificially low interest rates under the Federal Reserve System? Would borrowers and lenders have acted as precipitously but for the existence of Fannie and Freddie, which bought up their mortgages? Would banks have so readily lent money to those who clearly could not repay it but for the Community Reinvestment Act? That law pressured banks into relaxing their normal lending standards to help low-income borrowers.
Now let's turn to Job No. 1 -- national security. We no longer call the War on Terror the "War on Terror." We no longer call Islamofascist enemy detainees "enemy detainees." The President embarked on an I'm-not-Bush and we're-sorry-for-being-arrogant international tour. To the receptive, admiring G-20 nations, the President flogged America, calling us domineering and overbearing. What did the swooning leaders give in return? Virtually nothing. He wanted more assistance in fighting the war in Afghanistan. The NATO members offered more advisers and trainers, all, mind you, out of harm's way and only on a temporary basis.
The President offered a new relationship with Iran, provided Iranians "unclenched their fist." The President even sent a shout-out video to the Iranians on one of their holidays. What did he get in return? Iran promised to continue its march toward the development of a nuclear weapon and called Israel the "most cruel and racist regime."
Obama offered North Korea a kinder, gentler foreign policy. What did he get in return? The North Koreans, in violation of a United Nations resolution, attempted to launch a long-range missile. The President condemned the act. The United Nations Security Council convened an emergency session. What happened? Nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. North Korea kicked out the U.N.'s nuclear inspectors and announced the resumption of its nuclear weapons program. And North Korea, along with Iran, arrested and imprisoned American journalists.
On the other hand, Washingtonian magazine graced us with a spiffy, Photoshopped cover of a fit and toned swimsuit-wearing President Obama. So all is not lost.
At least he looks good.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Has it really been 100 days?
Aided by an eagerly compliant Democratic-controlled Congress, a sycophantic media, and a bunch of squishy Republicans, President Obama has taken the country on a radical, mind-boggling leap into collectivism.
Obama -- to use one of his favorite expressions -- doubled down, no, tripled and quadrupled down on Bush's "stimulus" and "rescue" packages, spending trillions of dollars to "bail out" financial institutions, too-big-to-fail businesses, and even deficit-running states. Obama promises to use taxpayer money to rescue "responsible homeowners" -- whatever that means -- from foreclosure, thus artificially propping up prices that shut out renters who would love to buy now-much-cheaper houses.
Obama proposes spending billions (or trillions?) more on "creating or saving" -- whatever that means -- 4 million, 3.5 million or 2.5 million jobs. Pick a number. Given the government's vast business expertise, Obama proposes spending gobs of money to "invest" in green jobs. And he's just warming up. He wants taxpayers to guarantee, presumably to all who request it, a "world-class education" -- whatever that means.
Firmly in charge of much of the domestic car industry, Obama effectively fired the CEO of General Motors. He threatens to fire still more executives in the parts of the financial services industry currently under the management, direction or control of Uncle Sam -- that eminent, well-regarded banker.
Obama blames the financial crisis on "greed" and the "lack of regulatory oversight." Funny thing about greed. Celebrated investor-turned-Obama-supporter/adviser Warren Buffett says, "Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful." Apparently, some practice good greed, while others engage in greedy greed.
As for regulation, the SEC already heavily regulates most of the troubled financial institutions. The world's largest insurer, AIG, operated under heavy regulation. The government-sponsored entities Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae -- blamed for irresponsibly buying, packaging and selling bad mortgages -- are regulated by a government agency, called the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. Its sole responsibility is to oversee those two agencies. OFHEO, shortly before the government takeover of Freddie and Fannie, gave them two thumbs up.
Did the President, after campaigning against pork and earmarks, really sign bills that include both? Yes. Will the President's new budget really triple and quadruple the annual deficit? Yes. Will the President's budget really double the national debt within a few years and then increase still more beyond that? Yes. Do the President and members of Congress, many of whom never operated so much as a T-shirt concession booth, really believe that they can "modernize" health care, thus "saving" taxpayers buckets of money? Yes.
America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone's going from nothing to something. Why? In theory, if not practice, the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism -- or, at least, we used to.
Today's global downturn reflects too much borrowing and too much lending. But would borrowers and lenders -- at least in America -- have engaged in the same kind of behavior but for artificially low interest rates under the Federal Reserve System? Would borrowers and lenders have acted as precipitously but for the existence of Fannie and Freddie, which bought up their mortgages? Would banks have so readily lent money to those who clearly could not repay it but for the Community Reinvestment Act? That law pressured banks into relaxing their normal lending standards to help low-income borrowers.
Now let's turn to Job No. 1 -- national security. We no longer call the War on Terror the "War on Terror." We no longer call Islamofascist enemy detainees "enemy detainees." The President embarked on an I'm-not-Bush and we're-sorry-for-being-arrogant international tour. To the receptive, admiring G-20 nations, the President flogged America, calling us domineering and overbearing. What did the swooning leaders give in return? Virtually nothing. He wanted more assistance in fighting the war in Afghanistan. The NATO members offered more advisers and trainers, all, mind you, out of harm's way and only on a temporary basis.
The President offered a new relationship with Iran, provided Iranians "unclenched their fist." The President even sent a shout-out video to the Iranians on one of their holidays. What did he get in return? Iran promised to continue its march toward the development of a nuclear weapon and called Israel the "most cruel and racist regime."
Obama offered North Korea a kinder, gentler foreign policy. What did he get in return? The North Koreans, in violation of a United Nations resolution, attempted to launch a long-range missile. The President condemned the act. The United Nations Security Council convened an emergency session. What happened? Nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. North Korea kicked out the U.N.'s nuclear inspectors and announced the resumption of its nuclear weapons program. And North Korea, along with Iran, arrested and imprisoned American journalists.
On the other hand, Washingtonian magazine graced us with a spiffy, Photoshopped cover of a fit and toned swimsuit-wearing President Obama. So all is not lost.
At least he looks good.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Obama’s Liberal Arrogance Will Be His Undoing
American politics didn’t come to an end with Obama’s election.
By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
The most remarkable, or certainly the least remarked on, aspect of Barack Obama’s first 100 days has been the infectious arrogance of his presidency.
There’s no denying that this is liberalism’s greatest opportunity for wish fulfillment since at least 1964. But to listen to Democrats, the only check on their ambition is the limit of their imaginations.
“The world has changed,” Sen. Charles Schumer of New York proclaimed on MSNBC. “The old Reagan philosophy that served them well politically from 1980 to about 2004 and 2006 is over. But the hard right, which still believes . . . [in] traditional-values kind of arguments and strong foreign policy, all that is over.”
Right. “Family values” and “strong foreign policy” belong next to the “free silver” movement in the lexicon of dead political causes.
No doubt Schumer was employing the kind of simplified shorthand one uses when everyone in the room already agrees with you. He can be forgiven for mistaking an MSNBC studio for such a milieu, but it seemed not to dawn on him that anybody watching might see it differently.
When George W. Bush was in office, we heard constantly about the poisonous nature of American polarization. For example, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg came out with a book arguing that “our nation’s political landscape is now divided more deeply and more evenly than perhaps ever before.” One can charitably say this was abject nonsense. Evenly divided? Maybe. But more deeply? Feh.
During the Civil War, the political landscape was so deeply divided that 600,000 Americans died. During the 1930s, labor strife and revolutionary ardor threatened the stability of the republic. In the 1960s, political assassinations, riots, and bombings punctuated our political discourse.
It says something about the relationship of liberals to political power that they can overlook domestic dissent when they’re at the wheel. When the GOP is in office, America is seen as hopelessly divided because dissent is the highest form of patriotism. When Democrats are in charge, the Frank Riches suddenly declare the culture war over and dismiss dissent as the scary work of the sort of cranks Obama’s Department of Homeland Security needs to monitor.
If liberals thought so fondly of social peace and consensus, they would look more favorably on the 1920s and 1950s. Instead, their political idylls are the tumultuous ’30s and ’60s, when liberalism, if not necessarily liberals, rode high in the saddle.
Sure, America was divided under Bush. And it’s still divided under Obama (just look at the recent Minnesota Senate race and the New York congressional special election). According to the polls, America is a bit less divided under Obama than it was at the end of Bush’s first 100 days. But not as much less as you would expect, given Obama’s victory margin and the rally-around-the-president effect of the financial crisis (not to mention the disarray of the GOP).
Meanwhile, circulation for the conservative National Review (where I work) is soaring. More people watch Fox News (where I am a contributor) in primetime than watch CNN and MSNBC combined. The “tea parties” may not have been as big as your typical union-organized “spontaneous” demonstration, but they were far more significant than any protests this early in Bush’s tenure.
And yet, according to Democrats and liberal pundits, America is enjoying unprecedented unity, and conservatives are going the way of the dodo.
Obama has surely helped set the tone for the unfolding riot of liberal hubris. In his effort to reprise the sort of expansion of liberal power we saw in the ’30s and ’60s, Obama has — without a whiff of self-doubt — committed America to $6.5 trillion in extra debt, $65 billion for each of his first 100 days, and that’s based on an impossibly rosy forecast of the economy. No wonder congressional Democrats clamor to take over corporations, tax the air we breathe, and set wages for everybody.
On social issues such as abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, Obama has proved to be, if anything, more of a left-wing culture warrior than Bush was a right-wing one. All the while, Obama transmogrifies his principled opponents into straw-man ideologues while preening about his own humble pragmatism. For him, bipartisanship is defined as shutting up and getting in line.
I’m not arguing that conservatives are poised to make some miraculous comeback. They’re not. But American politics didn’t come to an end with Obama’s election, and nothing in politics breeds corrective antibodies more quickly than overreaching arrogance. And by that measure, Obama’s first 100 days have been a huge down payment on the inevitable correction to come.
By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
The most remarkable, or certainly the least remarked on, aspect of Barack Obama’s first 100 days has been the infectious arrogance of his presidency.
There’s no denying that this is liberalism’s greatest opportunity for wish fulfillment since at least 1964. But to listen to Democrats, the only check on their ambition is the limit of their imaginations.
“The world has changed,” Sen. Charles Schumer of New York proclaimed on MSNBC. “The old Reagan philosophy that served them well politically from 1980 to about 2004 and 2006 is over. But the hard right, which still believes . . . [in] traditional-values kind of arguments and strong foreign policy, all that is over.”
Right. “Family values” and “strong foreign policy” belong next to the “free silver” movement in the lexicon of dead political causes.
No doubt Schumer was employing the kind of simplified shorthand one uses when everyone in the room already agrees with you. He can be forgiven for mistaking an MSNBC studio for such a milieu, but it seemed not to dawn on him that anybody watching might see it differently.
When George W. Bush was in office, we heard constantly about the poisonous nature of American polarization. For example, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg came out with a book arguing that “our nation’s political landscape is now divided more deeply and more evenly than perhaps ever before.” One can charitably say this was abject nonsense. Evenly divided? Maybe. But more deeply? Feh.
During the Civil War, the political landscape was so deeply divided that 600,000 Americans died. During the 1930s, labor strife and revolutionary ardor threatened the stability of the republic. In the 1960s, political assassinations, riots, and bombings punctuated our political discourse.
It says something about the relationship of liberals to political power that they can overlook domestic dissent when they’re at the wheel. When the GOP is in office, America is seen as hopelessly divided because dissent is the highest form of patriotism. When Democrats are in charge, the Frank Riches suddenly declare the culture war over and dismiss dissent as the scary work of the sort of cranks Obama’s Department of Homeland Security needs to monitor.
If liberals thought so fondly of social peace and consensus, they would look more favorably on the 1920s and 1950s. Instead, their political idylls are the tumultuous ’30s and ’60s, when liberalism, if not necessarily liberals, rode high in the saddle.
Sure, America was divided under Bush. And it’s still divided under Obama (just look at the recent Minnesota Senate race and the New York congressional special election). According to the polls, America is a bit less divided under Obama than it was at the end of Bush’s first 100 days. But not as much less as you would expect, given Obama’s victory margin and the rally-around-the-president effect of the financial crisis (not to mention the disarray of the GOP).
Meanwhile, circulation for the conservative National Review (where I work) is soaring. More people watch Fox News (where I am a contributor) in primetime than watch CNN and MSNBC combined. The “tea parties” may not have been as big as your typical union-organized “spontaneous” demonstration, but they were far more significant than any protests this early in Bush’s tenure.
And yet, according to Democrats and liberal pundits, America is enjoying unprecedented unity, and conservatives are going the way of the dodo.
Obama has surely helped set the tone for the unfolding riot of liberal hubris. In his effort to reprise the sort of expansion of liberal power we saw in the ’30s and ’60s, Obama has — without a whiff of self-doubt — committed America to $6.5 trillion in extra debt, $65 billion for each of his first 100 days, and that’s based on an impossibly rosy forecast of the economy. No wonder congressional Democrats clamor to take over corporations, tax the air we breathe, and set wages for everybody.
On social issues such as abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, Obama has proved to be, if anything, more of a left-wing culture warrior than Bush was a right-wing one. All the while, Obama transmogrifies his principled opponents into straw-man ideologues while preening about his own humble pragmatism. For him, bipartisanship is defined as shutting up and getting in line.
I’m not arguing that conservatives are poised to make some miraculous comeback. They’re not. But American politics didn’t come to an end with Obama’s election, and nothing in politics breeds corrective antibodies more quickly than overreaching arrogance. And by that measure, Obama’s first 100 days have been a huge down payment on the inevitable correction to come.
Specter Ushers In a Brave New World
Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
On Tuesday, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania thrust America forward into a brave new world. Citing his growing rift with the Republican Party base, Specter switched parties, granting Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate to go along with their overwhelming majority in the House for the first time since the Carter administration. By cravenly choosing political survival over political backbone, Specter has given radical leftists their greatest opportunity in a generation to destroy every principle America has historically embraced.
Specter says that he'll still stand against cloture on particular issues. But Specter is a creature of practicality, and he recognizes that his bread is now buttered on the Democratic side. That means if he is threatened with the loss of his new chairmanships or committee roles, he will bend like a bad penny.
Recognizing that Democrats now run the show entirely, here's what we can expect in the coming months:
Nationalized health care. Despite his incompetence in handling the current swine flu situation, President Barack Obama will use the fear generated by the pandemic to suggest the health of all Americans is inextricably intertwined -- and that therefore, every American must have government-sponsored health care. Don't be surprised if Obama and his allies in Congress push even further, promoting government-sponsored health care for every resident of the United States, including illegal aliens. A tremendous shortage of doctors will be the predictable result.
Unprecedented tax increases. Using the Republican rhetoric of balanced budgets against them, Democrats will call for dramatic tax increases, ostensibly to balance the budget. And without the filibuster, Republicans will have no way of stopping them. Forty-eight percent of Americans are already free of income taxes -- and those forty-eight percent have no stake in the survival of the 52 percent who do pay taxes. More and more wealthy Americans will shut down their businesses or leave the country for fiscally safer havens abroad.
Greater unionization combined with inflated monetary supply. General Motors Corp. has become a government-owned entity -- and, illustrating the power of the perverse alliance between Democratic governance and union honchos, 55 percent of Chrysler is now owned by the United Auto Workers. Without either raising tariffs on imported vehicles or dramatically subsidizing GM at the expense of American taxpayers, GM will be out of business by the end of the first Obama term. The more likely measure is yet another bailout for GM. Meanwhile, higher prices for goods, created by either subsidization or tariffs, will force the Federal Reserve to print more cash, devaluing everyone's savings.
Radical federal judges. This is perhaps the most obvious effect of the Specter move. Specter has always been a judicial liberal -- his glaringly stupid examination of Robert Bork demonstrated his total ignorance of Constitutional theory and text. With his move to the Democratic Party, Specter can now indulge his whimsical love for judges who enforce social libertinism from the bench. And Republicans will have no way to pressure him, as they did when he was beholden to them.
The return of abortion-first policies. Specter is on the left side of the aisle on abortion. Now he'll get to speak his mind on the issue. Obama promised to make the so-called Freedom of Choice Act one of his first priorities as president. With Republicans able to filibuster, Obama had no choice but to shelve the measure. Now it will return, horrors intact. The Freedom of Choice Act effectively invalidates all state laws restricting abortion in any way.
The criminalization of religious perspectives. The first step may be H.R. 1913, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, which seeks to convert certain crimes punishable by law into “hate crimes.” Such “hate crimes” constitute crimes that target people based on perception of sexual orientation or gender identity -- in other words, any crime that has as its victim a non-openly straight male. An overzealous police department could easily get the idea that pastors preaching Leviticus 18:22 violate federal law. Watch also for a move to tie federal funding for medical facilities to doctor certifications stipulating that the doctors will perform abortions and other controversial medical procedures.
This is only the beginning. Certain conservatives celebrated Obama's election, thinking that his incompetence would spell conservative resurgence in 2012. The only problem is that Obama, with his new filibuster-proof Congress, will do incredible harm to the traditional social values and liberty-based economic values that make this nation great. And there's no one left to stop him.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
On Tuesday, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania thrust America forward into a brave new world. Citing his growing rift with the Republican Party base, Specter switched parties, granting Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate to go along with their overwhelming majority in the House for the first time since the Carter administration. By cravenly choosing political survival over political backbone, Specter has given radical leftists their greatest opportunity in a generation to destroy every principle America has historically embraced.
Specter says that he'll still stand against cloture on particular issues. But Specter is a creature of practicality, and he recognizes that his bread is now buttered on the Democratic side. That means if he is threatened with the loss of his new chairmanships or committee roles, he will bend like a bad penny.
Recognizing that Democrats now run the show entirely, here's what we can expect in the coming months:
Nationalized health care. Despite his incompetence in handling the current swine flu situation, President Barack Obama will use the fear generated by the pandemic to suggest the health of all Americans is inextricably intertwined -- and that therefore, every American must have government-sponsored health care. Don't be surprised if Obama and his allies in Congress push even further, promoting government-sponsored health care for every resident of the United States, including illegal aliens. A tremendous shortage of doctors will be the predictable result.
Unprecedented tax increases. Using the Republican rhetoric of balanced budgets against them, Democrats will call for dramatic tax increases, ostensibly to balance the budget. And without the filibuster, Republicans will have no way of stopping them. Forty-eight percent of Americans are already free of income taxes -- and those forty-eight percent have no stake in the survival of the 52 percent who do pay taxes. More and more wealthy Americans will shut down their businesses or leave the country for fiscally safer havens abroad.
Greater unionization combined with inflated monetary supply. General Motors Corp. has become a government-owned entity -- and, illustrating the power of the perverse alliance between Democratic governance and union honchos, 55 percent of Chrysler is now owned by the United Auto Workers. Without either raising tariffs on imported vehicles or dramatically subsidizing GM at the expense of American taxpayers, GM will be out of business by the end of the first Obama term. The more likely measure is yet another bailout for GM. Meanwhile, higher prices for goods, created by either subsidization or tariffs, will force the Federal Reserve to print more cash, devaluing everyone's savings.
Radical federal judges. This is perhaps the most obvious effect of the Specter move. Specter has always been a judicial liberal -- his glaringly stupid examination of Robert Bork demonstrated his total ignorance of Constitutional theory and text. With his move to the Democratic Party, Specter can now indulge his whimsical love for judges who enforce social libertinism from the bench. And Republicans will have no way to pressure him, as they did when he was beholden to them.
The return of abortion-first policies. Specter is on the left side of the aisle on abortion. Now he'll get to speak his mind on the issue. Obama promised to make the so-called Freedom of Choice Act one of his first priorities as president. With Republicans able to filibuster, Obama had no choice but to shelve the measure. Now it will return, horrors intact. The Freedom of Choice Act effectively invalidates all state laws restricting abortion in any way.
The criminalization of religious perspectives. The first step may be H.R. 1913, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, which seeks to convert certain crimes punishable by law into “hate crimes.” Such “hate crimes” constitute crimes that target people based on perception of sexual orientation or gender identity -- in other words, any crime that has as its victim a non-openly straight male. An overzealous police department could easily get the idea that pastors preaching Leviticus 18:22 violate federal law. Watch also for a move to tie federal funding for medical facilities to doctor certifications stipulating that the doctors will perform abortions and other controversial medical procedures.
This is only the beginning. Certain conservatives celebrated Obama's election, thinking that his incompetence would spell conservative resurgence in 2012. The only problem is that Obama, with his new filibuster-proof Congress, will do incredible harm to the traditional social values and liberty-based economic values that make this nation great. And there's no one left to stop him.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Nine Questions the Left Needs to Answer About Torture
Dennis Prager
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Any human being with a functioning conscience or a decent heart loathes torture. Its exercise has been a blight on humanity. With this in mind, those who oppose what the Bush administration did to some terror suspects may be justified. But in order to ascertain whether they are, they need to respond to some questions:
1. Given how much you rightly hate torture, why did you oppose the removal of Saddam Hussein, whose prisons engaged in far more hideous tortures, on thousands of times more people, than America did -- all of whom, moreover, were individuals and families who either did nothing or simply opposed tyranny? One assumes, furthermore, that all those Iraqi innocents Saddam had put into shredding machines or whose tongues were cut out and other hideous tortures would have begged to be waterboarded.
2. Are all forms of painful pressure equally morally objectionable? In other words, are you willing to acknowledge that there are gradations of torture as, for example, there are gradations of burns, with a third-degree burn considerably more injurious and painful than a first-degree burn? Or is all painful treatment to be considered torture? Just as you, correctly, ask proponents of waterboarding where they draw their line, you, too, must explain where you draw your line.
3. Is any maltreatment of anyone at any time -- even a high-level terrorist with knowledge that would likely save innocents’ lives -- wrong? If there is no question about the identity of a terror suspect , and he can provide information on al-Qaida -- for the sake of clarity, let us imagine that Osama Bin Laden himself were captured -- could America do any form of enhanced interrogation involving pain and/or deprivation to him that you would consider moral and therefore support?
4. If lawyers will be prosecuted for giving legal advice to an administration that you consider immoral and illegal, do you concede that this might inhibit lawyers in the future from giving unpopular but sincerely argued advice to the government in any sensitive area? They will, after all, know that if the next administration disapproves of their work, they will be vilified by the media and prosecuted by the government.
5. Presumably you would acknowledge that the release of the classified reports on the handling of high-level, post-Sept. 11 terror suspects would inflame passions in many parts of the Muslim world. If innocents were murdered because nonviolent cartoons of Muhammad were published in a Danish newspaper, presumably far more innocents will be tortured and murdered with the release of these reports and photos. Do you accept any moral responsibility for any ensuing violence against American and other civilians?
6. Many members of the intelligence community now feel betrayed and believe that the intelligence community will be weakened in their ability to fight the most vicious organized groups in the world. As reported in the Washington Post, former intelligence officer “(Mark) Lowenthal said that fear has paralyzed agents on the ground. Apparently, many of those in the know are certain that life-saving information was gleaned from high level terror suspects who were waterboarded. As Mike Scheuer, former head of the CIA unit in charge of tracking Osama bin Laden, said, ”We were very certain that the interrogation procedures procured information that was worth having.” If, then, the intelligence community has been adversely affected, do you believe it can still do the work necessary to protect tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people from death and maiming?
7. Will you seek to prosecute members of Congress such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who were made aware of the waterboarding of high-level suspects and voiced no objections?
8. Would you agree to releasing the photos of the treatment of Islamic terrorists only if accompanied by photos of what their terror has done to thousands of innocent people around the world? Would you agree to photos -- or at least photo re-enactments -- of, let us say, Iraqi children whose faces were torn off with piano wire by Islamists in Iraq? If not, why not? Isn’t context of some significance here?
9. You say that America’s treatment of terror suspects will cause terrorists to treat their captives, especially Americans, more cruelly. On what grounds do you assert this? Did America’s far more moral treatment of Japanese prisoners than Japan’s treatment of American prisoners in World War II have any impact on how the Japanese treated American and other prisoners of war? Do you think that evil people care how morally pure America is?
If you do not address these questions, it would appear that you care less about morality and torture than about vengeance against the Bush administration.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Any human being with a functioning conscience or a decent heart loathes torture. Its exercise has been a blight on humanity. With this in mind, those who oppose what the Bush administration did to some terror suspects may be justified. But in order to ascertain whether they are, they need to respond to some questions:
1. Given how much you rightly hate torture, why did you oppose the removal of Saddam Hussein, whose prisons engaged in far more hideous tortures, on thousands of times more people, than America did -- all of whom, moreover, were individuals and families who either did nothing or simply opposed tyranny? One assumes, furthermore, that all those Iraqi innocents Saddam had put into shredding machines or whose tongues were cut out and other hideous tortures would have begged to be waterboarded.
2. Are all forms of painful pressure equally morally objectionable? In other words, are you willing to acknowledge that there are gradations of torture as, for example, there are gradations of burns, with a third-degree burn considerably more injurious and painful than a first-degree burn? Or is all painful treatment to be considered torture? Just as you, correctly, ask proponents of waterboarding where they draw their line, you, too, must explain where you draw your line.
3. Is any maltreatment of anyone at any time -- even a high-level terrorist with knowledge that would likely save innocents’ lives -- wrong? If there is no question about the identity of a terror suspect , and he can provide information on al-Qaida -- for the sake of clarity, let us imagine that Osama Bin Laden himself were captured -- could America do any form of enhanced interrogation involving pain and/or deprivation to him that you would consider moral and therefore support?
4. If lawyers will be prosecuted for giving legal advice to an administration that you consider immoral and illegal, do you concede that this might inhibit lawyers in the future from giving unpopular but sincerely argued advice to the government in any sensitive area? They will, after all, know that if the next administration disapproves of their work, they will be vilified by the media and prosecuted by the government.
5. Presumably you would acknowledge that the release of the classified reports on the handling of high-level, post-Sept. 11 terror suspects would inflame passions in many parts of the Muslim world. If innocents were murdered because nonviolent cartoons of Muhammad were published in a Danish newspaper, presumably far more innocents will be tortured and murdered with the release of these reports and photos. Do you accept any moral responsibility for any ensuing violence against American and other civilians?
6. Many members of the intelligence community now feel betrayed and believe that the intelligence community will be weakened in their ability to fight the most vicious organized groups in the world. As reported in the Washington Post, former intelligence officer “(Mark) Lowenthal said that fear has paralyzed agents on the ground. Apparently, many of those in the know are certain that life-saving information was gleaned from high level terror suspects who were waterboarded. As Mike Scheuer, former head of the CIA unit in charge of tracking Osama bin Laden, said, ”We were very certain that the interrogation procedures procured information that was worth having.” If, then, the intelligence community has been adversely affected, do you believe it can still do the work necessary to protect tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people from death and maiming?
7. Will you seek to prosecute members of Congress such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who were made aware of the waterboarding of high-level suspects and voiced no objections?
8. Would you agree to releasing the photos of the treatment of Islamic terrorists only if accompanied by photos of what their terror has done to thousands of innocent people around the world? Would you agree to photos -- or at least photo re-enactments -- of, let us say, Iraqi children whose faces were torn off with piano wire by Islamists in Iraq? If not, why not? Isn’t context of some significance here?
9. You say that America’s treatment of terror suspects will cause terrorists to treat their captives, especially Americans, more cruelly. On what grounds do you assert this? Did America’s far more moral treatment of Japanese prisoners than Japan’s treatment of American prisoners in World War II have any impact on how the Japanese treated American and other prisoners of war? Do you think that evil people care how morally pure America is?
If you do not address these questions, it would appear that you care less about morality and torture than about vengeance against the Bush administration.
Moving Toward Europe -- but Do Americans Want to Go?
Michael Barone
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Ninety-nine days in, with 1,362 days to go, and we can see with some clarity the trajectory on which Barack Obama wants to take the United States. To put it in geographical terms, he wants to move us some considerable distance toward Europe.
This is apparent in the budget he has presented for the next fiscal year and its projections for the years to come. Government spending is scheduled to rise as a percentage of the economy. This will be accomplished by raising taxes and, even more, by borrowing that will double the national debt in five years and nearly triple it in 10 years. This trajectory can be altered in the future, but much of it is set in stone by the $3 trillion-plus deficit that will, give or take a few hundred billion, be produced by the budget voted this year.
Other Obama goals are less certain of achievement. He wants government to take over much of the one-seventh of the economy that is devoted to health care, but how much and by what means are still unclear. One result, common in Europe, is likely: rationing of care. Obama also wants to reshape the energy sector by imposing a cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions. This will raise energy costs, particularly on the 60 percent of Americans whose electricity is produced by coal, and will provide opportunities for corporations to make profits by gaming the system. But it's not clear that it will encourage development of the one plentiful non-carbon-emitting energy source that France, for one, relies on -- nuclear power.
The European model sacrifices growth in the hope of reducing economic inequality. American experience suggests that this can work, but not perhaps at an acceptable cost.
There are two decades in which economic inequality was sharply reduced. One was the 1930s. High earners made less and low earners fell down toward zero, so incomes were more equal. But the cost in lost economic growth and human misery were very high.
The other decade was the 1940s when, in the phrase of the day, there was a war on. Government controlled wages and prices, required workers to join unions, ordered industries to produce arms and mobilized 16 million Americans into the military.
But those policies seem unlikely today. Obama has only limited plans to take over the private sector economy (he hopes cap-and-trade will produce otherwise uneconomic "green" jobs), and he has abandoned, at least for the moment, the unions' card check bill that would enroll millions of workers in unions by effectively abolishing the secret ballot in unionization elections and then having federal arbitrators impose wage levels and work rules. And he certainly has no plans to expand the military to its proportion of the population in World War II -- 35 million men and women.
Still, Obama may take us some distance toward the Europe whose "dynamic union" he hailed in Strasbourg, with some marginal gains in economic equality and, if Europe's experience is a guide, considerably less economic creativity and growth.
Abroad, Obama has eschewed American "arrogance" and embraced the European model of diplomatic engagement and avoidance of confrontation. He argues that if we show "persistence" in apologizing for America's past and willingness to negotiate with Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and shake hands with Hugo Chavez, they will come to recognize our good will and make concessions they would otherwise refuse.
Perhaps. But one recalls that this was the European response to the genocide in its own back yard by Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic and that he was brought to justice only by the force of American arms. That lesson has not been lost on Obama who, for all his rhetoric, has ordered troop increases in Afghanistan despite the refusal of Europeans to do more.
Obama and his party were brought to power by George W. Bush's perceived incompetence on Katrina and Iraq, not because of some pent-up and suddenly overwhelming demand for the Europeanization of America.
Polls show voters ambivalent about Obama's expansion of government, skeptical of global warming theories, and appreciative despite the financial crisis and recession of the efficacy of market capitalism to produce economic growth. They are also confident, as Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy were, that America is a special and unique country. Obama audaciously believes he can lead the country in a direction it's not sure it wants to go.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Ninety-nine days in, with 1,362 days to go, and we can see with some clarity the trajectory on which Barack Obama wants to take the United States. To put it in geographical terms, he wants to move us some considerable distance toward Europe.
This is apparent in the budget he has presented for the next fiscal year and its projections for the years to come. Government spending is scheduled to rise as a percentage of the economy. This will be accomplished by raising taxes and, even more, by borrowing that will double the national debt in five years and nearly triple it in 10 years. This trajectory can be altered in the future, but much of it is set in stone by the $3 trillion-plus deficit that will, give or take a few hundred billion, be produced by the budget voted this year.
Other Obama goals are less certain of achievement. He wants government to take over much of the one-seventh of the economy that is devoted to health care, but how much and by what means are still unclear. One result, common in Europe, is likely: rationing of care. Obama also wants to reshape the energy sector by imposing a cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions. This will raise energy costs, particularly on the 60 percent of Americans whose electricity is produced by coal, and will provide opportunities for corporations to make profits by gaming the system. But it's not clear that it will encourage development of the one plentiful non-carbon-emitting energy source that France, for one, relies on -- nuclear power.
The European model sacrifices growth in the hope of reducing economic inequality. American experience suggests that this can work, but not perhaps at an acceptable cost.
There are two decades in which economic inequality was sharply reduced. One was the 1930s. High earners made less and low earners fell down toward zero, so incomes were more equal. But the cost in lost economic growth and human misery were very high.
The other decade was the 1940s when, in the phrase of the day, there was a war on. Government controlled wages and prices, required workers to join unions, ordered industries to produce arms and mobilized 16 million Americans into the military.
But those policies seem unlikely today. Obama has only limited plans to take over the private sector economy (he hopes cap-and-trade will produce otherwise uneconomic "green" jobs), and he has abandoned, at least for the moment, the unions' card check bill that would enroll millions of workers in unions by effectively abolishing the secret ballot in unionization elections and then having federal arbitrators impose wage levels and work rules. And he certainly has no plans to expand the military to its proportion of the population in World War II -- 35 million men and women.
Still, Obama may take us some distance toward the Europe whose "dynamic union" he hailed in Strasbourg, with some marginal gains in economic equality and, if Europe's experience is a guide, considerably less economic creativity and growth.
Abroad, Obama has eschewed American "arrogance" and embraced the European model of diplomatic engagement and avoidance of confrontation. He argues that if we show "persistence" in apologizing for America's past and willingness to negotiate with Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and shake hands with Hugo Chavez, they will come to recognize our good will and make concessions they would otherwise refuse.
Perhaps. But one recalls that this was the European response to the genocide in its own back yard by Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic and that he was brought to justice only by the force of American arms. That lesson has not been lost on Obama who, for all his rhetoric, has ordered troop increases in Afghanistan despite the refusal of Europeans to do more.
Obama and his party were brought to power by George W. Bush's perceived incompetence on Katrina and Iraq, not because of some pent-up and suddenly overwhelming demand for the Europeanization of America.
Polls show voters ambivalent about Obama's expansion of government, skeptical of global warming theories, and appreciative despite the financial crisis and recession of the efficacy of market capitalism to produce economic growth. They are also confident, as Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy were, that America is a special and unique country. Obama audaciously believes he can lead the country in a direction it's not sure it wants to go.
Beware Abhorrent Hate Crime Legislation
David Limbaugh
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Homosexual activists aren't easily deterred. Unable to persuade even the people of California to change the definition of marriage to legitimize their lifestyle, they're resorting to a backdoor approach to accomplish the same thing: pushing federal hate crime legislation while few are paying attention.
Well, people better wake up, because the House Judiciary Committee has already approved Barney Frank's bill, H.R. 1913, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The full House is expected to vote on the bill April 29, and various liberal groups, from gay activists to liberal religious organizations, are engaged in a full-court press to get this bill passed.
The bill would make it a federal crime to willfully cause bodily injury to someone (or to attempt to do so with firearms or explosives) because of his or her actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.
If states want to pass their own hate crime legislation, they are free to exercise such poor judgment. But they don't need the long arm of the federal government cramming it down their throats.
Not only is there little constitutional justification for the federal government to legislate in this area but also the bill further impinges on state sovereignty by subjecting people to criminal liability for acts for which they've already been acquitted under state criminal systems.
As others have noted, the bill also violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by codifying the notion that certain groups of citizens, such as homosexuals, are entitled to greater legal protection than others, such as, say, older ladies.
The bill attempts to justify itself and its broad sweeping federal jurisdiction by reciting dubious "findings," such as, "The movement of members of targeted groups is impeded, and members of such groups are forced to move across State lines to escape the incidence or risk of such violence," and, "Perpetrators cross State lines to commit such violence."
Let me ask you sincerely: Do you really believe these assertions? Have you ever heard of such phenomena? Color me oblivious, but I don't and I haven't.
Color me, also, alarmist, but I think the main purpose of this bill is to demonize and criminalize thought, especially the politically incorrect belief that homosexual behavior is either abnormal or sinful. It is to make an emphatic societal statement that this belief constitutes "hate" and possibly to lay the groundwork for outlawing speech expressing this belief, including from the pulpit.
I hardly think I'm being hysterical here. The practice of criminalizing peaceful expression of this belief has already occurred in other nations -- including Sweden, Canada and Great Britain -- and even in our own Philadelphia.
New York City authorities ordered the removal of billboards -- citing an anti-harassment ordinance -- that displayed various biblical versions of Leviticus 18:22, such as the New International Version's rendering, "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable." Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari reportedly publicly condemned the language in the displayed verse as "mean-spirited" and "hate speech."
Irrespective of your opinion on homosexual behavior, it is a distortion of the English language to say that it is hateful to believe it is somehow abnormal or even sinful. One can disapprove of behavior without hating those engaging in it; indeed, the Bible exhorts Christians to love, not hate. One can oppose hate crime legislation or same-sex marriage without being a homophobe -- another distortion of the language to paint the opposition as irrationally and immorally fearful of homosexuals.
If you want to witness a clinic in "hate," watch the YouTube video of homosexual celebrity blogger Perez Hilton excoriating Miss California, Carrie Prejean, for courageously offering her opinion under loaded questioning that marriage should be between a man and a woman, a belief shared by a clear majority of people in her state. This man proudly called Prejean vile names and might have single-handedly caused her to lose the Miss USA title. Now that's an example of direct harm inflicted on one because of her beliefs. It is often not opinionated heterosexuals doing the hating, harassing, thought-control intimidation, and speech chilling these days, but militant homosexual activists.
Lovers of free speech and free exercise of religion should awaken to the relentless effort of radical homosexual activists to validate their lifestyle by demonizing, criminalizing and silencing those who disagree with them.
Far too many people, including certain well-meaning Christians laboring under the belief that Christians must eschew politics, are failing to stand up to this intimidation. This failure could eventually lead to the unintended consequence of their loss of the very freedom to evangelize.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Homosexual activists aren't easily deterred. Unable to persuade even the people of California to change the definition of marriage to legitimize their lifestyle, they're resorting to a backdoor approach to accomplish the same thing: pushing federal hate crime legislation while few are paying attention.
Well, people better wake up, because the House Judiciary Committee has already approved Barney Frank's bill, H.R. 1913, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The full House is expected to vote on the bill April 29, and various liberal groups, from gay activists to liberal religious organizations, are engaged in a full-court press to get this bill passed.
The bill would make it a federal crime to willfully cause bodily injury to someone (or to attempt to do so with firearms or explosives) because of his or her actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.
If states want to pass their own hate crime legislation, they are free to exercise such poor judgment. But they don't need the long arm of the federal government cramming it down their throats.
Not only is there little constitutional justification for the federal government to legislate in this area but also the bill further impinges on state sovereignty by subjecting people to criminal liability for acts for which they've already been acquitted under state criminal systems.
As others have noted, the bill also violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by codifying the notion that certain groups of citizens, such as homosexuals, are entitled to greater legal protection than others, such as, say, older ladies.
The bill attempts to justify itself and its broad sweeping federal jurisdiction by reciting dubious "findings," such as, "The movement of members of targeted groups is impeded, and members of such groups are forced to move across State lines to escape the incidence or risk of such violence," and, "Perpetrators cross State lines to commit such violence."
Let me ask you sincerely: Do you really believe these assertions? Have you ever heard of such phenomena? Color me oblivious, but I don't and I haven't.
Color me, also, alarmist, but I think the main purpose of this bill is to demonize and criminalize thought, especially the politically incorrect belief that homosexual behavior is either abnormal or sinful. It is to make an emphatic societal statement that this belief constitutes "hate" and possibly to lay the groundwork for outlawing speech expressing this belief, including from the pulpit.
I hardly think I'm being hysterical here. The practice of criminalizing peaceful expression of this belief has already occurred in other nations -- including Sweden, Canada and Great Britain -- and even in our own Philadelphia.
New York City authorities ordered the removal of billboards -- citing an anti-harassment ordinance -- that displayed various biblical versions of Leviticus 18:22, such as the New International Version's rendering, "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable." Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari reportedly publicly condemned the language in the displayed verse as "mean-spirited" and "hate speech."
Irrespective of your opinion on homosexual behavior, it is a distortion of the English language to say that it is hateful to believe it is somehow abnormal or even sinful. One can disapprove of behavior without hating those engaging in it; indeed, the Bible exhorts Christians to love, not hate. One can oppose hate crime legislation or same-sex marriage without being a homophobe -- another distortion of the language to paint the opposition as irrationally and immorally fearful of homosexuals.
If you want to witness a clinic in "hate," watch the YouTube video of homosexual celebrity blogger Perez Hilton excoriating Miss California, Carrie Prejean, for courageously offering her opinion under loaded questioning that marriage should be between a man and a woman, a belief shared by a clear majority of people in her state. This man proudly called Prejean vile names and might have single-handedly caused her to lose the Miss USA title. Now that's an example of direct harm inflicted on one because of her beliefs. It is often not opinionated heterosexuals doing the hating, harassing, thought-control intimidation, and speech chilling these days, but militant homosexual activists.
Lovers of free speech and free exercise of religion should awaken to the relentless effort of radical homosexual activists to validate their lifestyle by demonizing, criminalizing and silencing those who disagree with them.
Far too many people, including certain well-meaning Christians laboring under the belief that Christians must eschew politics, are failing to stand up to this intimidation. This failure could eventually lead to the unintended consequence of their loss of the very freedom to evangelize.
The Opposite of Intelligence
Debra J. Saunders
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The mantra from the left during the Bush years went something like this: The world is not black and white. Sophisticated minds should seek out different, nuanced opinions.
Now that Barack Obama is president, you can say a farewell to nuance. The left chants, "torture doesn't work" -- defining waterboarding and sleep deprivation as torture. Obama has a longhand version of that mantra in his rejection of the "false choice between our security and our ideals."
In Obamaland, somehow there never are difficult choices. From the presidency that was supposed to promote intellectualism comes the argument that waterboarding is immoral -- which is a fair argument to make, until its adds: and it doesn't work.
But common sense tells you that techniques like sleep deprivation, waterboarding and a forced bland diet work, at least some times.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (aka KSM) didn't exactly want to help the CIA. Yet Americans are supposed to believe that asked-nicely interrogations yielded or would have yielded the same information as "enhanced techniques" designed to inflict extreme discomfort and dread?
As I reported last week, the newly released Bush administration memos credited the use of waterboarding and other methods with leading to the discovery of a planned "second wave" attack on Los Angeles and other terrorist plans. But there are contradictions in the official accounts of when that L.A. attack was foiled. At one point, the Bush White House had claimed the plot was discovered and interrupted in 2002 -- the year before Mohammed was captured.
Even if that Los Angeles claim does not stand up -- and we don't know at this point -- we do know that former CIA chiefs George Tenet (a Clinton appointee) and Porter Goss believe the "enhanced techniques" program worked. OK, you say: They supported waterboarding, so of course they say it worked. But Obama's director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, a critic of the use of the "enhanced techniques," also said they yielded "high-value information."
Blair, however, maintains that the information was not worth the damage to America's image. I guess it is a sign of the modern age that U.S. forces can deploy unmanned drones to attack the enemy in Afghanistan -- risking the lives of innocent people, among whom the guilty are hiding -- but the left gets its hackles up if KSM loses his beauty sleep.
White House Adviser David Axelrod told CBS's "Face the Nation" that waterboarding and sleep deprivation were "one of the key tools al-Qaida has used for recruitment."
Which begs the question: If these methods serve as a recruiting tool, why is Obama releasing the four Bush waterboarding memos? By his team's own lights, isn't that waving the red flag?
Obama banned "enhanced" interrogation techniques in his first week in office, as he had promised to do during the 2008 campaign. That's not enough, some opponents say. There needs to be a Truth Commission or federal investigation to make sure, as Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., argued, "it never happens again."
The irony is that the CIA stopped waterboarding -- a practice used on three high-value al-Qaida detainees in 2002 and 2003 -- in March 2003. Sometime after 2005, the practice was removed from the CIA authorized list of techniques. Waterboarding ended during the Bush administration.
It ended in part because the longer a detainee was in custody, the more he was separated from usable information. Risk aversion -- intelligence operatives' fear of having to hire expensive lawyers to defend themselves -- and perhaps aversion to waterboarding itself -- did the rest. The mere prospect of a new round of federal investigations has sent the message to all U.S. intelligence operatives that there is no upside in aggressive interrogation. To the contrary, it's a career killer.
The 9/11 commission was supposed to, among other results, prevent intelligence lapses so that 9/11 could never happen again. Now some Democrats want to investigate what they see as post-9/11 intelligence excesses. This isn't about gathering more information to prevent further disasters. It's scalp collecting.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The mantra from the left during the Bush years went something like this: The world is not black and white. Sophisticated minds should seek out different, nuanced opinions.
Now that Barack Obama is president, you can say a farewell to nuance. The left chants, "torture doesn't work" -- defining waterboarding and sleep deprivation as torture. Obama has a longhand version of that mantra in his rejection of the "false choice between our security and our ideals."
In Obamaland, somehow there never are difficult choices. From the presidency that was supposed to promote intellectualism comes the argument that waterboarding is immoral -- which is a fair argument to make, until its adds: and it doesn't work.
But common sense tells you that techniques like sleep deprivation, waterboarding and a forced bland diet work, at least some times.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (aka KSM) didn't exactly want to help the CIA. Yet Americans are supposed to believe that asked-nicely interrogations yielded or would have yielded the same information as "enhanced techniques" designed to inflict extreme discomfort and dread?
As I reported last week, the newly released Bush administration memos credited the use of waterboarding and other methods with leading to the discovery of a planned "second wave" attack on Los Angeles and other terrorist plans. But there are contradictions in the official accounts of when that L.A. attack was foiled. At one point, the Bush White House had claimed the plot was discovered and interrupted in 2002 -- the year before Mohammed was captured.
Even if that Los Angeles claim does not stand up -- and we don't know at this point -- we do know that former CIA chiefs George Tenet (a Clinton appointee) and Porter Goss believe the "enhanced techniques" program worked. OK, you say: They supported waterboarding, so of course they say it worked. But Obama's director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, a critic of the use of the "enhanced techniques," also said they yielded "high-value information."
Blair, however, maintains that the information was not worth the damage to America's image. I guess it is a sign of the modern age that U.S. forces can deploy unmanned drones to attack the enemy in Afghanistan -- risking the lives of innocent people, among whom the guilty are hiding -- but the left gets its hackles up if KSM loses his beauty sleep.
White House Adviser David Axelrod told CBS's "Face the Nation" that waterboarding and sleep deprivation were "one of the key tools al-Qaida has used for recruitment."
Which begs the question: If these methods serve as a recruiting tool, why is Obama releasing the four Bush waterboarding memos? By his team's own lights, isn't that waving the red flag?
Obama banned "enhanced" interrogation techniques in his first week in office, as he had promised to do during the 2008 campaign. That's not enough, some opponents say. There needs to be a Truth Commission or federal investigation to make sure, as Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., argued, "it never happens again."
The irony is that the CIA stopped waterboarding -- a practice used on three high-value al-Qaida detainees in 2002 and 2003 -- in March 2003. Sometime after 2005, the practice was removed from the CIA authorized list of techniques. Waterboarding ended during the Bush administration.
It ended in part because the longer a detainee was in custody, the more he was separated from usable information. Risk aversion -- intelligence operatives' fear of having to hire expensive lawyers to defend themselves -- and perhaps aversion to waterboarding itself -- did the rest. The mere prospect of a new round of federal investigations has sent the message to all U.S. intelligence operatives that there is no upside in aggressive interrogation. To the contrary, it's a career killer.
The 9/11 commission was supposed to, among other results, prevent intelligence lapses so that 9/11 could never happen again. Now some Democrats want to investigate what they see as post-9/11 intelligence excesses. This isn't about gathering more information to prevent further disasters. It's scalp collecting.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Lines on a slippery slope
Michael Gerson
Monday, April 27, 2009
WASHINGTON -- By releasing the Justice Department memos on coercive interrogations, the Obama administration has produced an unintended effect: Revealing the context and care of these decisions has made them more understandable, not less.
I had come to view harsh interrogations as a clear mistake. The war on terror is as much an ideological conflict as a military one, and the combination of Abu Ghraib and revelations about waterboarding had the practical effect of a battle lost. And I worried that these techniques might lead to a dehumanized view of the enemy -- always a risk in a time of war -- thus greasing a slippery slope toward abuse.
But the Justice Department memos disclose a different sort of deliberation -- a government struggling with similar worries even after immense provocation; a government convinced that new attacks were imminent, but still weighing the rights of captured murderers, drawing boundaries to prevent permanent injury during questioning, well aware of the laws regarding torture and determined not to violate them.
Historically, did America ever give such exhaustive consideration to the rights of children incinerated during the firebombing of Dresden? Or to the long-term mental and physical health of the elderly of Hiroshima? Even the most questionable techniques employed in the war on terror bear no comparison to methods common in past American wars.
The Justice Department memos raise a question: Can coercive interrogation ever be justified? Few Americans would object to the slapping of a terrorist during questioning, for example, if this yielded important intelligence. The coercion would be minimal; the goal of saving lives, overriding. Few Americans, on the other hand, would support pressuring a terrorist by torturing his child. Such a heinous act could not be justified in pursuit of an inherently uncertain outcome -- securing information that may or may not prevent greater loss of life.
So the use of coercion in interrogations lies on a continuum of ethics and risk. Lines must somehow be drawn on the slippery slope -- the difficult task that Justice Department lawyers were given. On which side of the line should waterboarding lie? It is the hardest case. The practice remains deeply troubling to me, and was discontinued by the CIA in 2006 after being used on three terrorists. But some members of Congress, it is now apparent, knew of the technique and funded it. The decision was not easy or obvious for them. It was just as difficult for intelligence and Justice Department officials in the months of uncertainty following 9/11.
I respect many of those who say "never'' in regard to coercive interrogation -- just as I respect pacifists who believe that the use of violence and coercion by government is always wrong. This can be a position of admirable moral consistency, and some have willingly sacrificed for its sake. But holding this view is not an option for those in government, charged with the protection of citizens who share this position and those who do not. Adherence to this principle could involve unwilling sacrifice for many others.
Some have dismissed this argument as "moral relativism" or the assertion that the ends justify the means. But this betrays a misunderstanding of ethics itself. The most difficult moral decisions in government are required when two moral goods come into conflict. Most of us believe in the dignity of the human person, a principle that covers even those who commit grave evils. Most of us believe in the responsibility of government to protect the innocent from death and harm. Government officials pursue both moral goods in a complicated world. In retrospect, they may sometimes get the balance wrong. But national security decisions are not made in retrospect.
I suspect that most Americans, in considering these matters, would come to certain conclusions: There should be a broad presumption against harsh interrogations by our government. An atmosphere of permission can result in discrediting crimes such as Abu Ghraib. But perhaps in the most extreme cases -- when the threat of a terrorist attack is clear and serious -- American officials may need to employ harsh questioning, while protecting terrorists from permanent injury. In broad outlines, this approach is consistent with the Justice Department memos.
I remain ambivalent about these issues. There may be other, equally effective ways to get information from terrorists -- I don't know enough about such techniques to be certain. Elements of the interrogation program may have been mistaken. But these were not clear or obvious calls -- and they deserve more than facile, retrospective judgments.
Monday, April 27, 2009
WASHINGTON -- By releasing the Justice Department memos on coercive interrogations, the Obama administration has produced an unintended effect: Revealing the context and care of these decisions has made them more understandable, not less.
I had come to view harsh interrogations as a clear mistake. The war on terror is as much an ideological conflict as a military one, and the combination of Abu Ghraib and revelations about waterboarding had the practical effect of a battle lost. And I worried that these techniques might lead to a dehumanized view of the enemy -- always a risk in a time of war -- thus greasing a slippery slope toward abuse.
But the Justice Department memos disclose a different sort of deliberation -- a government struggling with similar worries even after immense provocation; a government convinced that new attacks were imminent, but still weighing the rights of captured murderers, drawing boundaries to prevent permanent injury during questioning, well aware of the laws regarding torture and determined not to violate them.
Historically, did America ever give such exhaustive consideration to the rights of children incinerated during the firebombing of Dresden? Or to the long-term mental and physical health of the elderly of Hiroshima? Even the most questionable techniques employed in the war on terror bear no comparison to methods common in past American wars.
The Justice Department memos raise a question: Can coercive interrogation ever be justified? Few Americans would object to the slapping of a terrorist during questioning, for example, if this yielded important intelligence. The coercion would be minimal; the goal of saving lives, overriding. Few Americans, on the other hand, would support pressuring a terrorist by torturing his child. Such a heinous act could not be justified in pursuit of an inherently uncertain outcome -- securing information that may or may not prevent greater loss of life.
So the use of coercion in interrogations lies on a continuum of ethics and risk. Lines must somehow be drawn on the slippery slope -- the difficult task that Justice Department lawyers were given. On which side of the line should waterboarding lie? It is the hardest case. The practice remains deeply troubling to me, and was discontinued by the CIA in 2006 after being used on three terrorists. But some members of Congress, it is now apparent, knew of the technique and funded it. The decision was not easy or obvious for them. It was just as difficult for intelligence and Justice Department officials in the months of uncertainty following 9/11.
I respect many of those who say "never'' in regard to coercive interrogation -- just as I respect pacifists who believe that the use of violence and coercion by government is always wrong. This can be a position of admirable moral consistency, and some have willingly sacrificed for its sake. But holding this view is not an option for those in government, charged with the protection of citizens who share this position and those who do not. Adherence to this principle could involve unwilling sacrifice for many others.
Some have dismissed this argument as "moral relativism" or the assertion that the ends justify the means. But this betrays a misunderstanding of ethics itself. The most difficult moral decisions in government are required when two moral goods come into conflict. Most of us believe in the dignity of the human person, a principle that covers even those who commit grave evils. Most of us believe in the responsibility of government to protect the innocent from death and harm. Government officials pursue both moral goods in a complicated world. In retrospect, they may sometimes get the balance wrong. But national security decisions are not made in retrospect.
I suspect that most Americans, in considering these matters, would come to certain conclusions: There should be a broad presumption against harsh interrogations by our government. An atmosphere of permission can result in discrediting crimes such as Abu Ghraib. But perhaps in the most extreme cases -- when the threat of a terrorist attack is clear and serious -- American officials may need to employ harsh questioning, while protecting terrorists from permanent injury. In broad outlines, this approach is consistent with the Justice Department memos.
I remain ambivalent about these issues. There may be other, equally effective ways to get information from terrorists -- I don't know enough about such techniques to be certain. Elements of the interrogation program may have been mistaken. But these were not clear or obvious calls -- and they deserve more than facile, retrospective judgments.
What Chávez Has Wrought
The authoritarian socialist has brought Venezuela food shortages and massive inflation.
By Duncan Currie
Monday, April 27, 2009
In December 2007, a group of paramilitary fighters armed with machine guns ransacked and vandalized a farm in northwest Venezuela. It was not the first time that government-backed thugs had paid a visit to this property. The owner of the farm, Diego Arria, is a prominent opponent of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, the radical leftist. “It was a strong message,” Arria says of the December 2007 attack. (He was not at the farm when it occurred.) “The government has a lot of groups like that.”
Throughout his long career, Arria, now 70 years old, has held a variety of high-level political posts, including governor of Caracas, Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, assistant U.N. secretary general, and special adviser to U.N. chief Kofi Annan. In 1978, Arria made an unsuccessful bid for the Venezuelan presidency as an independent candidate. Shortly after that election, he founded a Caracas-based newspaper called El Diario de Caracas. More recently, he served as a campaign strategist for Manuel Rosales, who opposed Chávez in the 2006 presidential election.
Arria now works as a consultant in New York City, but he still spends a considerable amount of time at his Venezuelan farm.
“I know they are tapping my phones,” Arria says of Venezuelan authorities. “There is a climate of intimidation.” Government intimidation was especially fierce during the weeks prior to a February 15 referendum on political term limits. That referendum was a big triumph for Chávez: Voters cleared the way for him to seek reelection in 2012 and beyond.
Chávez, a former paratrooper, has now been in office for a decade. As Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports, two hallmarks of the Chávez presidency have been political discrimination and “an open disregard for the principle of separation of powers enshrined in the 1999 constitution — and, specifically, the notion that an independent judiciary is indispensable for protecting fundamental rights.” (Implementing a new constitution in 1999 — to replace the 1961 constitution — represented Chávez’s “first major achievement.”)
Chávez has also “undermined freedom of expression through a variety of measures aimed at reshaping media content and control,” HRW notes. Some of his tactics have been indirect. For example, Arria tells me, the Chávez regime has taken over many private companies that were advertising in opposition newspapers. Other companies have refrained from buying ad space in these same papers, fearing the repercussions.
Besides choking Venezuela’s democratic institutions and crippling its independent media, Chávez has also compiled a record of economic malpractice, which he dubs “Bolivarian socialism.” Venezuela is now dealing with food scarcities and severe double-digit inflation. According to some estimates, the annual inflation rate may reach 40 percent this year. As the Wall Street Journal reported in early March, private food companies in Venezuela “are straining under strict price controls aimed at slowing down high inflation set off by Mr. Chávez’s non-stop spending. The controls have led to shortages of staples like milk and rice.” These food shortages have also been driven by government land seizures. Chávez recently expropriated a rice-processing facility owned by Cargill, the U.S.-based multinational.
When oil prices were booming, says Arria, Chávez squandered “the greatest wealth the country ever had.” He wasted billions on an arms buildup that boosted the repressive capacity of the state but did nothing to address Venezuela’s real economic and social needs. “We are living with a military regime,” Arria complains. “Without the armed forces, Chávez would not exist.”
For several months now, lower oil prices have been draining the Venezuelan economy. Venezuela is also coping with an explosion of violent crime. As Jeremy Morgan of the Latin American Herald Tribune reports, a recent poll found that 86 percent of Venezuelans think crime is their country’s biggest problem. Small wonder that Venezuela has seen a spike in emigration. “We never had a brain drain in Venezuela” until the Chávez years, Arria observes. The exodus has included many Venezuelan Jews, who have been alarmed by a rising tide of anti-Semitism and also by the budding alliance between Chávez and Iran.
So is there any good news from Venezuela? Yes, says Arria. For one thing, the number of private civic groups is growing. For another, the new mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, has emerged as a popular critic of Chávez. Ledezma denounces the Chávez regime as “absolutely authoritarian” and has called for “a permanent civic protest.” Not surprisingly, the government is trying to curb his power.
Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue, says that Chávez has “enormous vulnerabilities” and “can be beaten in 2012.” Unfortunately, the anti-Chávez opposition is deeply divided and has been weakened by government harassment. Earlier this month, Manuel Rosales, the main opposition presidential candidate in 2006, fled to Peru rather than face corruption charges. Rosales, the mayor of Maracaibo, claims he is a victim of political persecution by Chávez. He told a Peruvian newspaper that he feared for his life in Venezuela.
Arria hopes that other Latin American countries will stop turning a blind eye to the steady weakening of Venezuelan democracy. Why have so many of them been reluctant to criticize Chávez? Partly because of their economic interests in Venezuela, and partly because of domestic political considerations, Arria says.
During the recent Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, media coverage focused heavily on Pres. Barack Obama’s smiling handshake with Chávez. At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defended the idea of reaching out to Chávez diplomatically. “We’ve isolated him, so he’s gone elsewhere,” Clinton said. “I mean, he’s a very sociable guy. He’s going to look for friends where he can find them.”
Arria found these comments “shocking” and scandalous. He vigorously disputes the notion that U.S. policy under George W. Bush was responsible for isolating Venezuela. “No one isolated Chávez,” says Arria. “He isolated himself.” As for Clinton’s remark that the Venezuelan leader is “sociable,” Arria asks: “Has she ever heard Chávez?” He is a brutish, vulgar man prone to obscene tirades.
In Arria’s view, the Bush record in Latin America has been unfairly disparaged. He says the United States is caught in a Catch-22 of sorts. If the U.S. is too involved in Latin American affairs, it is blamed for being overly interventionist or “imperialist.” If it is less involved in Latin American affairs, it is blamed for being “indifferent” to the region. Striking the right balance can be difficult.
Arria acknowledges Latin America’s many woes — including widespread corruption, high crime rates, drug violence, and shoddy education systems — but he also points out that the past several years have been a time of tremendous political and economic progress in the region. Admittedly, this progress is now being tested by the global financial crisis, but Latin America is better prepared for such a crisis than it has been in the past.
While Arria is broadly optimistic about the region as a whole, he notes that Chávez has used his petrodollars to promote instability. “He is the worst thing that has happened to the region in the last ten years.” Even if the U.S. seeks a rapprochement with Venezuela, Arria doesn’t expect Chávez’s policies to change anytime soon.
By Duncan Currie
Monday, April 27, 2009
In December 2007, a group of paramilitary fighters armed with machine guns ransacked and vandalized a farm in northwest Venezuela. It was not the first time that government-backed thugs had paid a visit to this property. The owner of the farm, Diego Arria, is a prominent opponent of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, the radical leftist. “It was a strong message,” Arria says of the December 2007 attack. (He was not at the farm when it occurred.) “The government has a lot of groups like that.”
Throughout his long career, Arria, now 70 years old, has held a variety of high-level political posts, including governor of Caracas, Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, assistant U.N. secretary general, and special adviser to U.N. chief Kofi Annan. In 1978, Arria made an unsuccessful bid for the Venezuelan presidency as an independent candidate. Shortly after that election, he founded a Caracas-based newspaper called El Diario de Caracas. More recently, he served as a campaign strategist for Manuel Rosales, who opposed Chávez in the 2006 presidential election.
Arria now works as a consultant in New York City, but he still spends a considerable amount of time at his Venezuelan farm.
“I know they are tapping my phones,” Arria says of Venezuelan authorities. “There is a climate of intimidation.” Government intimidation was especially fierce during the weeks prior to a February 15 referendum on political term limits. That referendum was a big triumph for Chávez: Voters cleared the way for him to seek reelection in 2012 and beyond.
Chávez, a former paratrooper, has now been in office for a decade. As Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports, two hallmarks of the Chávez presidency have been political discrimination and “an open disregard for the principle of separation of powers enshrined in the 1999 constitution — and, specifically, the notion that an independent judiciary is indispensable for protecting fundamental rights.” (Implementing a new constitution in 1999 — to replace the 1961 constitution — represented Chávez’s “first major achievement.”)
Chávez has also “undermined freedom of expression through a variety of measures aimed at reshaping media content and control,” HRW notes. Some of his tactics have been indirect. For example, Arria tells me, the Chávez regime has taken over many private companies that were advertising in opposition newspapers. Other companies have refrained from buying ad space in these same papers, fearing the repercussions.
Besides choking Venezuela’s democratic institutions and crippling its independent media, Chávez has also compiled a record of economic malpractice, which he dubs “Bolivarian socialism.” Venezuela is now dealing with food scarcities and severe double-digit inflation. According to some estimates, the annual inflation rate may reach 40 percent this year. As the Wall Street Journal reported in early March, private food companies in Venezuela “are straining under strict price controls aimed at slowing down high inflation set off by Mr. Chávez’s non-stop spending. The controls have led to shortages of staples like milk and rice.” These food shortages have also been driven by government land seizures. Chávez recently expropriated a rice-processing facility owned by Cargill, the U.S.-based multinational.
When oil prices were booming, says Arria, Chávez squandered “the greatest wealth the country ever had.” He wasted billions on an arms buildup that boosted the repressive capacity of the state but did nothing to address Venezuela’s real economic and social needs. “We are living with a military regime,” Arria complains. “Without the armed forces, Chávez would not exist.”
For several months now, lower oil prices have been draining the Venezuelan economy. Venezuela is also coping with an explosion of violent crime. As Jeremy Morgan of the Latin American Herald Tribune reports, a recent poll found that 86 percent of Venezuelans think crime is their country’s biggest problem. Small wonder that Venezuela has seen a spike in emigration. “We never had a brain drain in Venezuela” until the Chávez years, Arria observes. The exodus has included many Venezuelan Jews, who have been alarmed by a rising tide of anti-Semitism and also by the budding alliance between Chávez and Iran.
So is there any good news from Venezuela? Yes, says Arria. For one thing, the number of private civic groups is growing. For another, the new mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, has emerged as a popular critic of Chávez. Ledezma denounces the Chávez regime as “absolutely authoritarian” and has called for “a permanent civic protest.” Not surprisingly, the government is trying to curb his power.
Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue, says that Chávez has “enormous vulnerabilities” and “can be beaten in 2012.” Unfortunately, the anti-Chávez opposition is deeply divided and has been weakened by government harassment. Earlier this month, Manuel Rosales, the main opposition presidential candidate in 2006, fled to Peru rather than face corruption charges. Rosales, the mayor of Maracaibo, claims he is a victim of political persecution by Chávez. He told a Peruvian newspaper that he feared for his life in Venezuela.
Arria hopes that other Latin American countries will stop turning a blind eye to the steady weakening of Venezuelan democracy. Why have so many of them been reluctant to criticize Chávez? Partly because of their economic interests in Venezuela, and partly because of domestic political considerations, Arria says.
During the recent Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, media coverage focused heavily on Pres. Barack Obama’s smiling handshake with Chávez. At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defended the idea of reaching out to Chávez diplomatically. “We’ve isolated him, so he’s gone elsewhere,” Clinton said. “I mean, he’s a very sociable guy. He’s going to look for friends where he can find them.”
Arria found these comments “shocking” and scandalous. He vigorously disputes the notion that U.S. policy under George W. Bush was responsible for isolating Venezuela. “No one isolated Chávez,” says Arria. “He isolated himself.” As for Clinton’s remark that the Venezuelan leader is “sociable,” Arria asks: “Has she ever heard Chávez?” He is a brutish, vulgar man prone to obscene tirades.
In Arria’s view, the Bush record in Latin America has been unfairly disparaged. He says the United States is caught in a Catch-22 of sorts. If the U.S. is too involved in Latin American affairs, it is blamed for being overly interventionist or “imperialist.” If it is less involved in Latin American affairs, it is blamed for being “indifferent” to the region. Striking the right balance can be difficult.
Arria acknowledges Latin America’s many woes — including widespread corruption, high crime rates, drug violence, and shoddy education systems — but he also points out that the past several years have been a time of tremendous political and economic progress in the region. Admittedly, this progress is now being tested by the global financial crisis, but Latin America is better prepared for such a crisis than it has been in the past.
While Arria is broadly optimistic about the region as a whole, he notes that Chávez has used his petrodollars to promote instability. “He is the worst thing that has happened to the region in the last ten years.” Even if the U.S. seeks a rapprochement with Venezuela, Arria doesn’t expect Chávez’s policies to change anytime soon.
The End of the World as We Know It
Welcome to the “post-American era.”
By Mark Steyn
Saturday, April 25, 2009
According to an Earth Day survey, one third of schoolchildren between the ages of six and eleven think the earth will have been destroyed by the time they grow up. That’s great news, isn’t it? Not for the earth, I mean, but for “environmental awareness.” Congratulations to Al Gore, the Sierra Club, and the eco-propagandists of the public-education system in doing such a terrific job of traumatizing America’s moppets. Traditionally, most of the folks you see wandering the streets proclaiming the end of the world is nigh tend to be getting up there in years. It’s quite something to have persuaded millions of first-graders that their best days are behind them.
Call me crazy, but I’ll bet that in 15-20 years the planet will still be here along with most of the “environment” — your flora and fauna, your polar bears and three-toed tree sloths and whatnot. But geopolitically we’re in for a hell of a ride, and the world we end up with is unlikely to be as congenial as most Americans have gotten used to.
For example, Hillary Clinton said the other day that Pakistan posed a “mortal threat” to . . . Afghanistan? India? No, to the entire world! To listen to her, you’d think Pakistan was as scary as l’il Jimmy in the second grade’s mom’s SUV. She has a point: Asif Ali Zardari, the guy who’s nominally running the country, isn’t running anything. He’s ceding more and more turf to the local branch office of the Taliban. When the topic turns up in the news, we usually get vague references to the pro-Osama crowd controlling much of the “northwest,” which makes it sound as if these guys are the wilds of rural Idaho to Zardari’s Beltway. In fact, they’re now within some 60 miles of the capital, Islamabad — or, in American terms, a couple of I-95 exits north of Baltimore: In other words, they’re within striking distance of the administrative center of a nation of over 165 million people — and its nuclear weapons. That’s the “mortal threat.”
What’s going to stop them? Well, not Zardari. Nor his “summit” in Washington with President Obama and Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. The creation of Pakistan was the worst mistake of post-war British imperial policy, and all that’s happened in the six decades since is that its pathologies have burst free of its borders and gone regional, global, and soon perhaps nuclear. Does the Obama administration have even a limited contingency plan for the nukes if — when — the Pakistani state collapses?
It would be reassuring to think so. But I wonder.
What’s the greater likelihood? That, in ten years’ time, things in Pakistan will be better? Or much worse? That nuclearization by basket-case dictatorships from Pyongyang to Tehran will have advanced, or been contained? That the bleak demographic arithmetic at the heart of Europe and Japan’s economic woes will have accelerated, or been reversed? That a resurgent Islam’s assaults on free speech and other rights (symbolized by the recent U.N. support for a global Islamic blasphemy law) will have taken hold in the western world, or been forced to retreat?
A betting man would check the “worse” box. Because resisting the present careless drift would require global leadership. And 100 days into a new presidency, Barack Obama is giving strong signals to the world that we have entered what Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post calls “the post-American era.” At the time of Gordon Brown’s visit to Washington, London took umbrage at an Obama official’s off-the-record sneer to a Fleet Street reporter that “there’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.” Andy McCarthy of National Review made the sharp observation that, never mind the British, this was how the administration felt about their own country, too: America is just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. In Europe, the president was asked if he believed in “American exceptionalism,” and replied: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”
Gee, thanks. A simple “no” would have sufficed. The president of the United States is telling us that American exceptionalism is no more than national chauvinism, a bit of flag-waving, of no more import than the Slovenes supporting the Slovene soccer team and the Papuans the Papuan soccer team. This means something. The world has had two millennia to learn to live without “Greek exceptionalism.” It’s having to get used to post-exceptional America rather more hurriedly.
It makes sense from Obama’s point of view: On the domestic scene, he’s determined on a transformational presidency, one that will remake the American people’s relationship to their national government (“federal” doesn’t seem the quite the word anymore) in terms of health care, education, eco-totalitarianism, state control of the economy, and much else. With a domestic agenda as bulked up as that, the rest of the world just gets in the way.
You’ll recall that, in a gimmick entirely emblematic of post-exceptional America, Hillary Clinton gave the Russians a (mistranslated) “Reset” button. The button has certainly been “reset” — to September 10th, to a legalistic rearview mirror approach to the “War on Terror,” in which investigating Bush officials will consume far more time and effort than de-nuking Iran. The secretary of Homeland Security’s ludicrous re-classification of terrorism as “man-caused disaster,” and her boneheaded statement that the September 11th bombers had entered America from Canada (which would presumably make 9/11 a “Canadian man-caused disaster”) exemplifies the administration’s cheery indifference to all that Bush-era downer stuff.
But it’s not September 10th. In Pakistan, a great jewel is within the barbarians’ reach, the first of many. At the U.N., the Islamic bloc’s proscriptions on free speech will make it harder even to talk about these issues. In much of the West, demographic decay means the good times are never coming back: Recession is permanent.
Hey, what’s the big deal? Britain and France have been on the geopolitical downward slope for most of the last century and life still seems pretty agreeable. Well, yes. But that’s in part because, when a fading Britannia handed the baton to the new U.S. superpower, it was one of the least disruptive transfers of global dominance in human history. In the “post-American era,” to whom does the baton get passed now?
Since January, President Obama and his team have schmoozed, ineffectively, American enemies over allies in almost every corner of the globe. If you’re, say, India, following Obama’s apology tour even as you watch the Taliban advancing on those Pakistani nukes, would you want to bet the future on American resolve? In Delhi, in Tokyo, in Prague, in Tel Aviv, in Bogota, they’ve looked at these first 100 days and drawn their own conclusions.
By Mark Steyn
Saturday, April 25, 2009
According to an Earth Day survey, one third of schoolchildren between the ages of six and eleven think the earth will have been destroyed by the time they grow up. That’s great news, isn’t it? Not for the earth, I mean, but for “environmental awareness.” Congratulations to Al Gore, the Sierra Club, and the eco-propagandists of the public-education system in doing such a terrific job of traumatizing America’s moppets. Traditionally, most of the folks you see wandering the streets proclaiming the end of the world is nigh tend to be getting up there in years. It’s quite something to have persuaded millions of first-graders that their best days are behind them.
Call me crazy, but I’ll bet that in 15-20 years the planet will still be here along with most of the “environment” — your flora and fauna, your polar bears and three-toed tree sloths and whatnot. But geopolitically we’re in for a hell of a ride, and the world we end up with is unlikely to be as congenial as most Americans have gotten used to.
For example, Hillary Clinton said the other day that Pakistan posed a “mortal threat” to . . . Afghanistan? India? No, to the entire world! To listen to her, you’d think Pakistan was as scary as l’il Jimmy in the second grade’s mom’s SUV. She has a point: Asif Ali Zardari, the guy who’s nominally running the country, isn’t running anything. He’s ceding more and more turf to the local branch office of the Taliban. When the topic turns up in the news, we usually get vague references to the pro-Osama crowd controlling much of the “northwest,” which makes it sound as if these guys are the wilds of rural Idaho to Zardari’s Beltway. In fact, they’re now within some 60 miles of the capital, Islamabad — or, in American terms, a couple of I-95 exits north of Baltimore: In other words, they’re within striking distance of the administrative center of a nation of over 165 million people — and its nuclear weapons. That’s the “mortal threat.”
What’s going to stop them? Well, not Zardari. Nor his “summit” in Washington with President Obama and Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. The creation of Pakistan was the worst mistake of post-war British imperial policy, and all that’s happened in the six decades since is that its pathologies have burst free of its borders and gone regional, global, and soon perhaps nuclear. Does the Obama administration have even a limited contingency plan for the nukes if — when — the Pakistani state collapses?
It would be reassuring to think so. But I wonder.
What’s the greater likelihood? That, in ten years’ time, things in Pakistan will be better? Or much worse? That nuclearization by basket-case dictatorships from Pyongyang to Tehran will have advanced, or been contained? That the bleak demographic arithmetic at the heart of Europe and Japan’s economic woes will have accelerated, or been reversed? That a resurgent Islam’s assaults on free speech and other rights (symbolized by the recent U.N. support for a global Islamic blasphemy law) will have taken hold in the western world, or been forced to retreat?
A betting man would check the “worse” box. Because resisting the present careless drift would require global leadership. And 100 days into a new presidency, Barack Obama is giving strong signals to the world that we have entered what Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post calls “the post-American era.” At the time of Gordon Brown’s visit to Washington, London took umbrage at an Obama official’s off-the-record sneer to a Fleet Street reporter that “there’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.” Andy McCarthy of National Review made the sharp observation that, never mind the British, this was how the administration felt about their own country, too: America is just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. In Europe, the president was asked if he believed in “American exceptionalism,” and replied: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”
Gee, thanks. A simple “no” would have sufficed. The president of the United States is telling us that American exceptionalism is no more than national chauvinism, a bit of flag-waving, of no more import than the Slovenes supporting the Slovene soccer team and the Papuans the Papuan soccer team. This means something. The world has had two millennia to learn to live without “Greek exceptionalism.” It’s having to get used to post-exceptional America rather more hurriedly.
It makes sense from Obama’s point of view: On the domestic scene, he’s determined on a transformational presidency, one that will remake the American people’s relationship to their national government (“federal” doesn’t seem the quite the word anymore) in terms of health care, education, eco-totalitarianism, state control of the economy, and much else. With a domestic agenda as bulked up as that, the rest of the world just gets in the way.
You’ll recall that, in a gimmick entirely emblematic of post-exceptional America, Hillary Clinton gave the Russians a (mistranslated) “Reset” button. The button has certainly been “reset” — to September 10th, to a legalistic rearview mirror approach to the “War on Terror,” in which investigating Bush officials will consume far more time and effort than de-nuking Iran. The secretary of Homeland Security’s ludicrous re-classification of terrorism as “man-caused disaster,” and her boneheaded statement that the September 11th bombers had entered America from Canada (which would presumably make 9/11 a “Canadian man-caused disaster”) exemplifies the administration’s cheery indifference to all that Bush-era downer stuff.
But it’s not September 10th. In Pakistan, a great jewel is within the barbarians’ reach, the first of many. At the U.N., the Islamic bloc’s proscriptions on free speech will make it harder even to talk about these issues. In much of the West, demographic decay means the good times are never coming back: Recession is permanent.
Hey, what’s the big deal? Britain and France have been on the geopolitical downward slope for most of the last century and life still seems pretty agreeable. Well, yes. But that’s in part because, when a fading Britannia handed the baton to the new U.S. superpower, it was one of the least disruptive transfers of global dominance in human history. In the “post-American era,” to whom does the baton get passed now?
Since January, President Obama and his team have schmoozed, ineffectively, American enemies over allies in almost every corner of the globe. If you’re, say, India, following Obama’s apology tour even as you watch the Taliban advancing on those Pakistani nukes, would you want to bet the future on American resolve? In Delhi, in Tokyo, in Prague, in Tel Aviv, in Bogota, they’ve looked at these first 100 days and drawn their own conclusions.
Obama's Anti-American Foreign Policy
Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
Monday, April 27, 2009
Apparently, here's the deal: If you are a longtime enemy of the United States, count on a grand reception from the Obama administration. All is forgiven and, worse, forgotten. But if you have a track record as an ally or friend, you won't get the right time of day.
Consider how our enemies are being treated:
Fidel Castro's Cuba? The travel restrictions will be lifted and, doubtless, soon the embargo will be repealed.
Hugo Chavez's Venezuela? Despite the proof of political imprisonment, repression of liberties, confiscation of newspapers, and electoral violence and fraud, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tells Chavez that "ideology is so yesterday," and Obama give Chavez a "yo bro" handshake.
Vladimir Putin's Russia? It invaded Georgia, but who's counting? We are "resetting" the relationship.
Hamas? $900 million of foreign aid, channeled through the UNRWA, a United Nations front filled with Hamas operatives.
Iran? No need to stop uranium enrichment -- the United States will begin endless talks while Tehran nears nuclear capacity.
And our friends?
Israel? Vice President Biden warns against military action to stop Iran from getting the bomb. And Defense Secretary Gates joins the chorus. The administration pressures Israel to buy into the two-state solution, requiring it to recognize a Palestinian state dominated by Hamas and dedicated to the destruction of Israel. The last time Israel ceded territory to the Palestinians, they used the land for new rocket launching pads.
Britain? Obama returned the Churchill bust and humiliated Prime Minister Gordon Brown by giving a gift of some DVDs on his visit.
Colombia? While President Uribe battles those who want to send drugs into our country and faces a military buildup from neighboring Venezuela, Obama won't submit the free trade deal with Bogota to the Senate.
And, within the United States, we free the Guantanamo terrorists while we investigate and potentially prosecute those who interrogated them in an effort to protect us all from their planned mayhem.
What a great time to be our enemy! What a terrible time to be our friend!
Oblivious to the record of terror attacks thwarted by enhanced interrogation techniques, Obama opens the door to prosecuting -- criminally -- those who authorized them.
Does he not realize that there would be no Brooklyn Bridge -- and ten thousand people would have died in the waters of the East River -- if we had not waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? After the National Security Administration picked up mentions of the "Brooklyn Bridge" in its warrantless wiretaps, it alerted New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to the possibility of a terror attack against the bridge. Kelly flooded the bridge with cops and commissioned an engineering study to determine how one could bring down the bridge, plunging ten thousand people into the East River during rush hour.
The study said it was impossible to blow the bridge up -- one would have been discovered -- but that a terrorist could sever the cable holding it aloft with a torch. It would take weeks, but the terrorists could work, undetected, in a vacant building that housed the cables under the bridge. The traffic noises would mask their efforts, and the building was not patrolled or even visited by anyone.
The terrorist noted the cops on the bridge and sent a message, intercepted by the NSA, that it was "too hot on the Brooklyn Bridge." But it was not until we waterboarded Mohammed that we learned the identity of the al-Qaida operative -- Lyman Farris. On learning his name, the New York Police raided his Brooklyn apartment. Chillingly, they found the equipment he would need to bring down the bridge and an engineering diagram (akin to that which Kelly had ordered) identifying where they would have to stand to cut the cables.
Does Obama really want to prosecute the anti-terror investigators who saved thousands by waterboarding Mohammed and learning this information?
Yes, he damn well does!
Monday, April 27, 2009
Apparently, here's the deal: If you are a longtime enemy of the United States, count on a grand reception from the Obama administration. All is forgiven and, worse, forgotten. But if you have a track record as an ally or friend, you won't get the right time of day.
Consider how our enemies are being treated:
Fidel Castro's Cuba? The travel restrictions will be lifted and, doubtless, soon the embargo will be repealed.
Hugo Chavez's Venezuela? Despite the proof of political imprisonment, repression of liberties, confiscation of newspapers, and electoral violence and fraud, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tells Chavez that "ideology is so yesterday," and Obama give Chavez a "yo bro" handshake.
Vladimir Putin's Russia? It invaded Georgia, but who's counting? We are "resetting" the relationship.
Hamas? $900 million of foreign aid, channeled through the UNRWA, a United Nations front filled with Hamas operatives.
Iran? No need to stop uranium enrichment -- the United States will begin endless talks while Tehran nears nuclear capacity.
And our friends?
Israel? Vice President Biden warns against military action to stop Iran from getting the bomb. And Defense Secretary Gates joins the chorus. The administration pressures Israel to buy into the two-state solution, requiring it to recognize a Palestinian state dominated by Hamas and dedicated to the destruction of Israel. The last time Israel ceded territory to the Palestinians, they used the land for new rocket launching pads.
Britain? Obama returned the Churchill bust and humiliated Prime Minister Gordon Brown by giving a gift of some DVDs on his visit.
Colombia? While President Uribe battles those who want to send drugs into our country and faces a military buildup from neighboring Venezuela, Obama won't submit the free trade deal with Bogota to the Senate.
And, within the United States, we free the Guantanamo terrorists while we investigate and potentially prosecute those who interrogated them in an effort to protect us all from their planned mayhem.
What a great time to be our enemy! What a terrible time to be our friend!
Oblivious to the record of terror attacks thwarted by enhanced interrogation techniques, Obama opens the door to prosecuting -- criminally -- those who authorized them.
Does he not realize that there would be no Brooklyn Bridge -- and ten thousand people would have died in the waters of the East River -- if we had not waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? After the National Security Administration picked up mentions of the "Brooklyn Bridge" in its warrantless wiretaps, it alerted New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to the possibility of a terror attack against the bridge. Kelly flooded the bridge with cops and commissioned an engineering study to determine how one could bring down the bridge, plunging ten thousand people into the East River during rush hour.
The study said it was impossible to blow the bridge up -- one would have been discovered -- but that a terrorist could sever the cable holding it aloft with a torch. It would take weeks, but the terrorists could work, undetected, in a vacant building that housed the cables under the bridge. The traffic noises would mask their efforts, and the building was not patrolled or even visited by anyone.
The terrorist noted the cops on the bridge and sent a message, intercepted by the NSA, that it was "too hot on the Brooklyn Bridge." But it was not until we waterboarded Mohammed that we learned the identity of the al-Qaida operative -- Lyman Farris. On learning his name, the New York Police raided his Brooklyn apartment. Chillingly, they found the equipment he would need to bring down the bridge and an engineering diagram (akin to that which Kelly had ordered) identifying where they would have to stand to cut the cables.
Does Obama really want to prosecute the anti-terror investigators who saved thousands by waterboarding Mohammed and learning this information?
Yes, he damn well does!
Obama middle east policy shows change in values
By Star Parker
Monday, April 27, 2009
Barack Obama's obvious comfort level with leaders of un-free countries shouldn't surprise anyone. He is not only our first black president. He is also our first president who doesn't like the free country he was elected to lead and feels his job is to change it.
Obama's cordial encounter with Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez, his bow of deference in London to the Saudi Arabian king, are extensions of behavior we have always seen on the black left. Jesse Jackson openly embraced Chavez, as well as having maintained relations with the likes of Libyian dictator Muammar Qaddafi and Yasir Arafat.
This should be kept in mind as our president now makes his own effort to bring peace to the Middle East.
It should be clear to anyone conscious and watching that central to Obama's Middle East strategy is to disabuse the long held notion that there exists a "special relationship" between the United States and Israel. The sense of unique kinship between our country and the Jewish state has existed since Israel's founding just 60 years ago.
The Arab world has always resented the US-Israel connection and has felt that because of this, Americans would never be an honest broker in Arab-Israeli negotiations.
Obama is out to change this. His first hundred days, from his very first television interview -- given to an Arab television network -- have focused on warming up our relations with Islamic nations and cooling down our Israeli ones.
We should appreciate that this shift is more than a technical change in diplomatic strategy. It reflects a change in values.
The "special" American-Israeli relationship has always reflected the shared values and traditions of the two countries. A commitment to freedom sustained by traditional Judeo-Christian core values.
Freedom House is a widely respected non-partisan organization that publishes annual reports on the state of freedom around the world.
They rate the state of freedom on a scale of 1-7, with 1 being most free.
According to the latest Freedom House data, released this past January, in the area of "political rights", Israel rates a 1. On "civil liberties", Israel gets a 2.
And Israel's Arab neighbors? On "political rights", Egypt ranks 6, Jordan 5, Syria 7, and Lebanon 5. On "civil liberties", Egypt ranks 5, Jordan 5, Syria 6, and Lebanon 4.
Oil rich Saudi Arabia, to whose king the President of the United States bowed deeply at the waist, ranks 7 in "political rights" and 6 in "civil liberties."
Freedom House also reports on freedom of the press. Of 18 countries in the Middle Eastern/North African area, they report only one country with a free press. Israel. Eleven of these countries have no free press, including Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Egypt and Lebanon are rated partly free.
Despite being the youngest country in the region, Israel's per capita gross domestic product is five times higher than the average of all its neighbors. Also, despite having no great endowment of natural resources, its GDP per capita, at $24,097, is higher than Saudi Arabia's, $22, 296, which has, by far, the world's largest oil production and reserves.
The great American writer Mark Twain visited the Holy Land in 1867 before Jews made their miraculous return to their ancient homeland. He reported that there was nothing there. "Palestine is desolate and unlovely."
You have to be either blind or have a political agenda to refuse to see the incredible miracle that has occurred in the re-birth of the Jewish nation.
Of course, there is a special relationship between the United States and Israel. The same values and traditions have produced in both places freedom and prosperity from nothing.
Should we denigrate Arabs and Muslims? Certainly not. But anyone who thinks that peace and prosperity will come from abandoning those very values that got us to where we are, and along with this our friends who share those values, is deeply misguided.
Unfortunately, today we have an American president who is set on doing just that. Principled Americans and Israelis should tighten seatbelts and prepare to defend the truths we hold dear.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Barack Obama's obvious comfort level with leaders of un-free countries shouldn't surprise anyone. He is not only our first black president. He is also our first president who doesn't like the free country he was elected to lead and feels his job is to change it.
Obama's cordial encounter with Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez, his bow of deference in London to the Saudi Arabian king, are extensions of behavior we have always seen on the black left. Jesse Jackson openly embraced Chavez, as well as having maintained relations with the likes of Libyian dictator Muammar Qaddafi and Yasir Arafat.
This should be kept in mind as our president now makes his own effort to bring peace to the Middle East.
It should be clear to anyone conscious and watching that central to Obama's Middle East strategy is to disabuse the long held notion that there exists a "special relationship" between the United States and Israel. The sense of unique kinship between our country and the Jewish state has existed since Israel's founding just 60 years ago.
The Arab world has always resented the US-Israel connection and has felt that because of this, Americans would never be an honest broker in Arab-Israeli negotiations.
Obama is out to change this. His first hundred days, from his very first television interview -- given to an Arab television network -- have focused on warming up our relations with Islamic nations and cooling down our Israeli ones.
We should appreciate that this shift is more than a technical change in diplomatic strategy. It reflects a change in values.
The "special" American-Israeli relationship has always reflected the shared values and traditions of the two countries. A commitment to freedom sustained by traditional Judeo-Christian core values.
Freedom House is a widely respected non-partisan organization that publishes annual reports on the state of freedom around the world.
They rate the state of freedom on a scale of 1-7, with 1 being most free.
According to the latest Freedom House data, released this past January, in the area of "political rights", Israel rates a 1. On "civil liberties", Israel gets a 2.
And Israel's Arab neighbors? On "political rights", Egypt ranks 6, Jordan 5, Syria 7, and Lebanon 5. On "civil liberties", Egypt ranks 5, Jordan 5, Syria 6, and Lebanon 4.
Oil rich Saudi Arabia, to whose king the President of the United States bowed deeply at the waist, ranks 7 in "political rights" and 6 in "civil liberties."
Freedom House also reports on freedom of the press. Of 18 countries in the Middle Eastern/North African area, they report only one country with a free press. Israel. Eleven of these countries have no free press, including Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Egypt and Lebanon are rated partly free.
Despite being the youngest country in the region, Israel's per capita gross domestic product is five times higher than the average of all its neighbors. Also, despite having no great endowment of natural resources, its GDP per capita, at $24,097, is higher than Saudi Arabia's, $22, 296, which has, by far, the world's largest oil production and reserves.
The great American writer Mark Twain visited the Holy Land in 1867 before Jews made their miraculous return to their ancient homeland. He reported that there was nothing there. "Palestine is desolate and unlovely."
You have to be either blind or have a political agenda to refuse to see the incredible miracle that has occurred in the re-birth of the Jewish nation.
Of course, there is a special relationship between the United States and Israel. The same values and traditions have produced in both places freedom and prosperity from nothing.
Should we denigrate Arabs and Muslims? Certainly not. But anyone who thinks that peace and prosperity will come from abandoning those very values that got us to where we are, and along with this our friends who share those values, is deeply misguided.
Unfortunately, today we have an American president who is set on doing just that. Principled Americans and Israelis should tighten seatbelts and prepare to defend the truths we hold dear.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
The Memos Prove We Didn't Torture
The Red Cross was completely wrong about 'walling.'
By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey
Monday, April 20, 2009
The four memos on CIA interrogation released by the White House last week reveal a cautious and conservative Justice Department advising a CIA that cared deeply about staying within the law. Far from "green lighting" torture -- or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees -- the memos detail the actual techniques used and the many measures taken to ensure that interrogations did not cause severe pain or degradation.
Interrogations were to be "continuously monitored" and "the interrogation team will stop the use of particular techniques or the interrogation altogether if the detainee's medical or psychological conditions indicates that the detainee might suffer significant physical or mental harm."
An Aug. 1, 2002, memo describes the practice of "walling" -- recently revealed in a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which suggested that detainees wore a "collar" used to "forcefully bang the head and body against the wall" before and during interrogation. In fact, detainees were placed with their backs to a "flexible false wall," designed to avoid inflicting painful injury. Their shoulder blades -- not head -- were the point of contact, and the "collar" was used not to give additional force to a blow, but further to protect the neck.
The memo says the point was to inflict psychological uncertainty, not physical pain: "the idea is to create a sound that will make the impact seem far worse than it is and that will be far worse than any injury that might result from the action."
Shackling and confinement in a small space (generally used to create discomfort and muscle fatigue) were also part of the CIA program, but they were subject to stringent time and manner limitations. Abu Zubaydah (a top bin Laden lieutenant) had a fear of insects. He was, therefore, to be put in a "cramped confinement box" and told a stinging insect would be put in the box with him. In fact, the CIA proposed to use a harmless caterpillar. Confinement was limited to two hours.
The memos are also revealing about the practice of "waterboarding," about which there has been so much speculative rage from the program's opponents. The practice, used on only three individuals, involved covering the nose and mouth with a cloth and pouring water over the cloth to create a drowning sensation.
This technique could be used for up to 40 seconds -- although the CIA orally informed Justice Department lawyers that it would likely not be used for more than 20 seconds at a time. Unlike the exaggerated claims of so many Bush critics, the memos make clear that water was not actually expected to enter the detainee's lungs, and that measures were put in place to prevent complications if this did happen and to ensure that the individual did not develop respiratory distress.
All of these interrogation methods have been adapted from the U.S. military's own Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (or SERE) training program, and have been used for years on thousands of American service members with the full knowledge of Congress. This has created a large body of information about the effect of these techniques, on which the CIA was able to draw in assessing the likely impact on the detainees and ensuring that no severe pain or long term psychological impact would result.
The actual intelligence benefits of the CIA program are also detailed in these memos. The CIA believed, evidently with good reason, that the enhanced interrogation program had indeed produced actionable intelligence about al Qaeda's plans. First among the resulting successes was the prevention of a "second wave" of al Qaeda attacks, to be carried out by an "east Asian" affiliate, which would have involved the crashing of another airplane into a building in Los Angeles.
The interrogation techniques described in these memos are indisputably harsh, but they fall well short of "torture." They were developed and deployed at a time of supreme peril, as a means of preventing future attacks on innocent civilians both in the U.S. and abroad.
The dedicated public servants at the CIA and Justice Department -- who even the Obama administration has concluded should not be prosecuted -- clearly cared intensely about staying within the law as well as protecting the American homeland. These memos suggest that they achieved both goals in a manner fully consistent with American values.
By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey
Monday, April 20, 2009
The four memos on CIA interrogation released by the White House last week reveal a cautious and conservative Justice Department advising a CIA that cared deeply about staying within the law. Far from "green lighting" torture -- or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees -- the memos detail the actual techniques used and the many measures taken to ensure that interrogations did not cause severe pain or degradation.
Interrogations were to be "continuously monitored" and "the interrogation team will stop the use of particular techniques or the interrogation altogether if the detainee's medical or psychological conditions indicates that the detainee might suffer significant physical or mental harm."
An Aug. 1, 2002, memo describes the practice of "walling" -- recently revealed in a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which suggested that detainees wore a "collar" used to "forcefully bang the head and body against the wall" before and during interrogation. In fact, detainees were placed with their backs to a "flexible false wall," designed to avoid inflicting painful injury. Their shoulder blades -- not head -- were the point of contact, and the "collar" was used not to give additional force to a blow, but further to protect the neck.
The memo says the point was to inflict psychological uncertainty, not physical pain: "the idea is to create a sound that will make the impact seem far worse than it is and that will be far worse than any injury that might result from the action."
Shackling and confinement in a small space (generally used to create discomfort and muscle fatigue) were also part of the CIA program, but they were subject to stringent time and manner limitations. Abu Zubaydah (a top bin Laden lieutenant) had a fear of insects. He was, therefore, to be put in a "cramped confinement box" and told a stinging insect would be put in the box with him. In fact, the CIA proposed to use a harmless caterpillar. Confinement was limited to two hours.
The memos are also revealing about the practice of "waterboarding," about which there has been so much speculative rage from the program's opponents. The practice, used on only three individuals, involved covering the nose and mouth with a cloth and pouring water over the cloth to create a drowning sensation.
This technique could be used for up to 40 seconds -- although the CIA orally informed Justice Department lawyers that it would likely not be used for more than 20 seconds at a time. Unlike the exaggerated claims of so many Bush critics, the memos make clear that water was not actually expected to enter the detainee's lungs, and that measures were put in place to prevent complications if this did happen and to ensure that the individual did not develop respiratory distress.
All of these interrogation methods have been adapted from the U.S. military's own Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (or SERE) training program, and have been used for years on thousands of American service members with the full knowledge of Congress. This has created a large body of information about the effect of these techniques, on which the CIA was able to draw in assessing the likely impact on the detainees and ensuring that no severe pain or long term psychological impact would result.
The actual intelligence benefits of the CIA program are also detailed in these memos. The CIA believed, evidently with good reason, that the enhanced interrogation program had indeed produced actionable intelligence about al Qaeda's plans. First among the resulting successes was the prevention of a "second wave" of al Qaeda attacks, to be carried out by an "east Asian" affiliate, which would have involved the crashing of another airplane into a building in Los Angeles.
The interrogation techniques described in these memos are indisputably harsh, but they fall well short of "torture." They were developed and deployed at a time of supreme peril, as a means of preventing future attacks on innocent civilians both in the U.S. and abroad.
The dedicated public servants at the CIA and Justice Department -- who even the Obama administration has concluded should not be prosecuted -- clearly cared intensely about staying within the law as well as protecting the American homeland. These memos suggest that they achieved both goals in a manner fully consistent with American values.
Giving Back Cold War Gains
We’re all losing ground — ground that was worth winning.
By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, April 24, 2009
In 1993, Bill Clinton joked, “Gosh, I miss the Cold War.” Because, he explained, somberly: “We had an intellectually coherent thing. The American people knew what the rules were.”
Such Cold War nostalgia vexed many conservatives. It seemed to us that the Cold War consensus had broken down with the Vietnam War. Clinton himself didn’t much like that Cold War endeavor, which is one reason he worked so assiduously to avoid serving in it. A young John Kerry did serve, but he also threw away his medals and denounced his fellow servicemen as war criminals. Jimmy Carter, meanwhile, had proclaimed that he had no “inordinate fear of Communism,” suggesting that those who disagreed with him did.
The “intellectual coherence” of the Cold War didn’t stop many liberals from opposing Ronald Reagan’s foreign-policy efforts in Europe, the Caribbean, and Central America, nor did it dampen Hollywood’s ardor in portraying Reagan as a warmonger, a dunce, or both. In the 1980s, the SANE/Freeze movement fired the minds of much of the Democratic party. And when the Cold War ended without a shot fired, the Left worked hard to give all the credit to Mikhail Gorbachev, since he seemed like a more reasonable fellow.
All of that comes to mind as I watch Barack Obama stroll across the globe apologizing for, or condemning, the sins of his predecessors and, by extension, his country.
After former Soviet pawn and current Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega berated the United States at a recent summit, President Obama joked, in reference to the failed Bay of Pigs operation, “I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old.”
Ah, yes, because the pressing issue is Obama’s blamelessness, not the apparently embarrassing faux pas of America’s effort to rid Cuba of a brutal Communist dictator and lackey of the Soviets, 90 miles off our coast.
In Prague, Obama declared that “the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War” is the large stockpile of nuclear weapons left behind after the war, sounding as if he might have been one of those teenagers who translated SANE/Freeze brochures into high-school term papers.
The truth is that the Cold War’s most dangerous legacy remains the bundle of radioactive lies that poisoned so many lands and deformed so many minds. The Soviets fueled national-socialist movements around the globe, telling the poor that if they embraced violent revolution and systematically purged capitalism, tradition, and religion from their societies, they would hasten their ascent to the sunny uplands of history. The reverse was true: Whole generations were either slaughtered, left to live as dehumanized industrial cogs, or forced to labor as serfs tending crops amidst the bleached bones of their fellow countrymen.
The Soviets spread lies about the nature of democracy and destroyed indigenous democratic movements, lest they leech off the revolutionary fervor of groups both more murderous and more loyal to the Kremlin. In the West, they employed useful idiots in academia and the press to foment self-hatred and eat away at civilizational self-confidence with cancerously idiotic arguments about the “moral equivalence” between West and East. They funded antiwar movements, peace congresses, and supposedly crusading “independent” journalists. For example, they spread the lie around the globe that America invented AIDS to kill blacks.
That lie made it all the way to Barack Obama’s church, where Obama’s former mentor and pastor, Jeremiah Wright, would repeat it with blindingly ignorant passion, saying that America invented “the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.”
Obama talks a lot about wanting to move beyond the “stale arguments” of the Cold War. In one sense, that’s fine, since that twilight struggle is over. But in another sense, as we watch him apologize for America’s history, it is hard to shake the feeling that he only saw one side’s arguments as “stale.”
That wouldn’t matter if the past were a page one could merely turn, as Obama frequently claims. But the Cold War’s lessons aren’t irrelevant to the times we live in. The past is never completely irrelevant.
One small example: The Wall Street Journal’s Dan Henninger asked a former Eastern European dissident imprisoned by Communists: “If you were sitting in a cell in Cuba, Iran, or Syria and saw this photo of a smiling American president shaking hands with a smiling Hugo Chavez, what would you think?”
The former dissident responded: “I would think that I was losing ground.”
When I see the president telling so many of America’s enemies and critics what they want to hear, I feel like we’re all losing ground — ground that was worth winning.
By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, April 24, 2009
In 1993, Bill Clinton joked, “Gosh, I miss the Cold War.” Because, he explained, somberly: “We had an intellectually coherent thing. The American people knew what the rules were.”
Such Cold War nostalgia vexed many conservatives. It seemed to us that the Cold War consensus had broken down with the Vietnam War. Clinton himself didn’t much like that Cold War endeavor, which is one reason he worked so assiduously to avoid serving in it. A young John Kerry did serve, but he also threw away his medals and denounced his fellow servicemen as war criminals. Jimmy Carter, meanwhile, had proclaimed that he had no “inordinate fear of Communism,” suggesting that those who disagreed with him did.
The “intellectual coherence” of the Cold War didn’t stop many liberals from opposing Ronald Reagan’s foreign-policy efforts in Europe, the Caribbean, and Central America, nor did it dampen Hollywood’s ardor in portraying Reagan as a warmonger, a dunce, or both. In the 1980s, the SANE/Freeze movement fired the minds of much of the Democratic party. And when the Cold War ended without a shot fired, the Left worked hard to give all the credit to Mikhail Gorbachev, since he seemed like a more reasonable fellow.
All of that comes to mind as I watch Barack Obama stroll across the globe apologizing for, or condemning, the sins of his predecessors and, by extension, his country.
After former Soviet pawn and current Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega berated the United States at a recent summit, President Obama joked, in reference to the failed Bay of Pigs operation, “I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old.”
Ah, yes, because the pressing issue is Obama’s blamelessness, not the apparently embarrassing faux pas of America’s effort to rid Cuba of a brutal Communist dictator and lackey of the Soviets, 90 miles off our coast.
In Prague, Obama declared that “the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War” is the large stockpile of nuclear weapons left behind after the war, sounding as if he might have been one of those teenagers who translated SANE/Freeze brochures into high-school term papers.
The truth is that the Cold War’s most dangerous legacy remains the bundle of radioactive lies that poisoned so many lands and deformed so many minds. The Soviets fueled national-socialist movements around the globe, telling the poor that if they embraced violent revolution and systematically purged capitalism, tradition, and religion from their societies, they would hasten their ascent to the sunny uplands of history. The reverse was true: Whole generations were either slaughtered, left to live as dehumanized industrial cogs, or forced to labor as serfs tending crops amidst the bleached bones of their fellow countrymen.
The Soviets spread lies about the nature of democracy and destroyed indigenous democratic movements, lest they leech off the revolutionary fervor of groups both more murderous and more loyal to the Kremlin. In the West, they employed useful idiots in academia and the press to foment self-hatred and eat away at civilizational self-confidence with cancerously idiotic arguments about the “moral equivalence” between West and East. They funded antiwar movements, peace congresses, and supposedly crusading “independent” journalists. For example, they spread the lie around the globe that America invented AIDS to kill blacks.
That lie made it all the way to Barack Obama’s church, where Obama’s former mentor and pastor, Jeremiah Wright, would repeat it with blindingly ignorant passion, saying that America invented “the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.”
Obama talks a lot about wanting to move beyond the “stale arguments” of the Cold War. In one sense, that’s fine, since that twilight struggle is over. But in another sense, as we watch him apologize for America’s history, it is hard to shake the feeling that he only saw one side’s arguments as “stale.”
That wouldn’t matter if the past were a page one could merely turn, as Obama frequently claims. But the Cold War’s lessons aren’t irrelevant to the times we live in. The past is never completely irrelevant.
One small example: The Wall Street Journal’s Dan Henninger asked a former Eastern European dissident imprisoned by Communists: “If you were sitting in a cell in Cuba, Iran, or Syria and saw this photo of a smiling American president shaking hands with a smiling Hugo Chavez, what would you think?”
The former dissident responded: “I would think that I was losing ground.”
When I see the president telling so many of America’s enemies and critics what they want to hear, I feel like we’re all losing ground — ground that was worth winning.
The Wreck of the Racial Spoils System
George Will
Sunday, April 26, 2009
WASHINGTON -- Wednesday morning, a lawyer defending in the Supreme Court what the city of New Haven, Conn., did to Frank Ricci and 17 other white firemen (including one Hispanic) was not 20 seconds into his argument when Chief Justice John Roberts interrupted to ask: Would it have been lawful if the city had decided to disregard the results of the exam to select firemen for promotion because it selected too many black and too few white candidates?
In 2003, the city gave promotion exams -- prepared by a firm specializing in employment tests, and approved, as federal law requires, by independent experts -- to 118 candidates, 27 of them black. None of the blacks did well enough to qualify for the 15 immediately available promotions. After a rabble-rousing minister with close ties to the mayor disrupted meetings and warned of dire political consequences if the city promoted persons from the list generated by the exams, the city said: No one will be promoted.
The city called this a "race-neutral" outcome because no group was disadvantaged more than any other. So, New Haven's idea of equal treatment is to equally deny promotions to those who did not earn them and those, including Ricci, who did.
Ricci may be the rock upon which America's racial spoils system finally founders. He prepared for the 2003 exams by quitting his second job, buying the more than $1,000 worth of books the city recommended, paying to have them read onto audiotapes (he is dyslexic), taking practice tests and practice interviews. His studying -- sometimes 13 hours a day -- earned him the sixth-highest score on the exam. He and others denied promotions sued, charging violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the law.
The city claims that the 1964 act compelled it to disregard the exam results. The act makes it unlawful for employers to discriminate against an individual regarding the "terms, conditions, or privileges of employment because of such individual's race." And two Senate supporters of the 1964 act, both of them leading liberals (Pennsylvania Democrat Joseph Clark and New Jersey Republican Clifford Case), insisted that it would not require "that employers abandon bona fide qualification tests where, because of differences in background and educations, members of some groups are able to perform better on these tests than members of other groups."
In a 1971 case, however, the Supreme Court sowed confusion by holding that the 1964 act proscribes not only overt discrimination but also "practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation." But what New Haven ignored is that the court, while proscribing tests that were "discriminatory" in having a "disparate impact" on certain preferred minorities, has held that a disparate impact is unlawful only if there is, and the employer refuses to adopt, an equally valid measurement of competence that would have less disparate impact, or if the measurement is not relevant to "business necessity." One of the city's flimsy excuses for disregarding its exam results was that someone from a rival exam-writing firm said that although he had not read the exam the city used, his company could write a better one.
New Haven has not defended its implicit quota system as a remedy for previous discrimination, and has not justified it as a way of achieving "diversity," which can be a permissible objective for schools' admissions policies, but not in employment decisions. Rather, the city says it was justified in ignoring the exam results because otherwise it might have faced a "disparate impact" lawsuit.
So, to avoid defending the defensible in court, it did the indefensible. It used anxiety about a potential challenge under a statute to justify its violation of the Constitution. And it got sued.
Racial spoils systems must involve incessant mischief because they require a rhetorical fog of euphemisms and blurry categories (e.g., "race-conscious" measures that somehow do not constitute racial discrimination) to obscure stark facts, such as: If Ricci and half a dozen others who earned high scores were not white, the city would have proceeded with the promotions.
Some supporters of New Haven, perhaps recognizing intellectual bankruptcy when defending it, propose a squishy fudge: Return the case to the trial court to clarify the city's motivation. But the motivation is obvious: to profit politically from what Roberts has called the "sordid business" of "divvying us up by race."
Sunday, April 26, 2009
WASHINGTON -- Wednesday morning, a lawyer defending in the Supreme Court what the city of New Haven, Conn., did to Frank Ricci and 17 other white firemen (including one Hispanic) was not 20 seconds into his argument when Chief Justice John Roberts interrupted to ask: Would it have been lawful if the city had decided to disregard the results of the exam to select firemen for promotion because it selected too many black and too few white candidates?
In 2003, the city gave promotion exams -- prepared by a firm specializing in employment tests, and approved, as federal law requires, by independent experts -- to 118 candidates, 27 of them black. None of the blacks did well enough to qualify for the 15 immediately available promotions. After a rabble-rousing minister with close ties to the mayor disrupted meetings and warned of dire political consequences if the city promoted persons from the list generated by the exams, the city said: No one will be promoted.
The city called this a "race-neutral" outcome because no group was disadvantaged more than any other. So, New Haven's idea of equal treatment is to equally deny promotions to those who did not earn them and those, including Ricci, who did.
Ricci may be the rock upon which America's racial spoils system finally founders. He prepared for the 2003 exams by quitting his second job, buying the more than $1,000 worth of books the city recommended, paying to have them read onto audiotapes (he is dyslexic), taking practice tests and practice interviews. His studying -- sometimes 13 hours a day -- earned him the sixth-highest score on the exam. He and others denied promotions sued, charging violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the law.
The city claims that the 1964 act compelled it to disregard the exam results. The act makes it unlawful for employers to discriminate against an individual regarding the "terms, conditions, or privileges of employment because of such individual's race." And two Senate supporters of the 1964 act, both of them leading liberals (Pennsylvania Democrat Joseph Clark and New Jersey Republican Clifford Case), insisted that it would not require "that employers abandon bona fide qualification tests where, because of differences in background and educations, members of some groups are able to perform better on these tests than members of other groups."
In a 1971 case, however, the Supreme Court sowed confusion by holding that the 1964 act proscribes not only overt discrimination but also "practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation." But what New Haven ignored is that the court, while proscribing tests that were "discriminatory" in having a "disparate impact" on certain preferred minorities, has held that a disparate impact is unlawful only if there is, and the employer refuses to adopt, an equally valid measurement of competence that would have less disparate impact, or if the measurement is not relevant to "business necessity." One of the city's flimsy excuses for disregarding its exam results was that someone from a rival exam-writing firm said that although he had not read the exam the city used, his company could write a better one.
New Haven has not defended its implicit quota system as a remedy for previous discrimination, and has not justified it as a way of achieving "diversity," which can be a permissible objective for schools' admissions policies, but not in employment decisions. Rather, the city says it was justified in ignoring the exam results because otherwise it might have faced a "disparate impact" lawsuit.
So, to avoid defending the defensible in court, it did the indefensible. It used anxiety about a potential challenge under a statute to justify its violation of the Constitution. And it got sued.
Racial spoils systems must involve incessant mischief because they require a rhetorical fog of euphemisms and blurry categories (e.g., "race-conscious" measures that somehow do not constitute racial discrimination) to obscure stark facts, such as: If Ricci and half a dozen others who earned high scores were not white, the city would have proceeded with the promotions.
Some supporters of New Haven, perhaps recognizing intellectual bankruptcy when defending it, propose a squishy fudge: Return the case to the trial court to clarify the city's motivation. But the motivation is obvious: to profit politically from what Roberts has called the "sordid business" of "divvying us up by race."
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