Confidence in the average free citizen made America absolutely exceptional.
Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, June 30, 2011
For the last 235 years, on the Fourth of July, Americans have celebrated the birth of the United States, and the founding ideas that have made it the most powerful, wealthiest, and freest nation in the history of civilization.
But as another Fourth of July approaches, there has never been more uncertainty about the future of America — and the anxiety transcends even the dismal economy and three foreign wars. President Obama prompted such introspection in April 2009, when he suggested that the United States, as one of many nations, was not necessarily any more exceptional than others. Recently, a New Yorker magazine article sympathetically described our new foreign policy as “leading from behind.”
The administration not long ago sought from the United Nations and the Arab League — but not from Congress — authorization to attack Colonel Qaddafi’s Libya. Earlier, conservative opponents had made much of the president’s bows to Chinese and Saudi Arabian heads of state, which, coupled with serial apologies for America’s distant and recent past, were seen as symbolically deferential efforts to signal the world that the United States was at last not necessarily preeminent among nations.
Yet there has never been any nation even remotely similar to America. Here’s why. Most revolutions seek to destroy the existing class order and use all-powerful government to mandate an equality of result rather than of opportunity — in the manner of the French Revolution’s slogan of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” or the Russian Revolution’s “peace, land, and bread.”
In contrast, our revolutionaries shouted “Don’t tread on me!” and “Give me liberty or give me death!” The Founders were convinced that constitutionally protected freedom would allow the individual to create wealth apart from government. Such enlightened self-interest would then enrich society at large far more effectively that could an all-powerful state.
Such constitutionally protected private property, free enterprise, and market capitalism explain why the United States — with only about 4.5 percent of the world’s population — even today, in an intensely competitive global economy, still produces a quarter of the world’s goods and services. To make America unexceptional, inept government overseers, as elsewhere in the world, would determine the conditions — where, when, how and by whom — under which businesses operate.
Individual freedom in America manifests itself in ways most of the world can hardly fathom — whether our unique tradition of the right to gun ownership, the near impossibility of proving libel in American courts, or the singular custom of multimillion-dollar philanthropic institutions, foundations, and private endowments. Herding, silencing, or enfeebling Americans is almost impossible — and will remain so as long as well-protected citizens can say what they want and do as they please with their hard-earned money.
Race, tribe, or religion often defines a nation’s character, either through loose confederations of ethnic or religious blocs as in Rwanda, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia, or by equating a citizenry with a shared appearance as reflected in the German word “volk” or the Spanish “raza.” And while the United States was originally crafted largely by white males who improved upon Anglo-Saxon customs and the European Enlightenment, the Founders set in place an “all men are created equal” system that quite logically evolved into the racially blind society of today.
This year a minority of babies born in the United States will resemble the look of the Founding Fathers. Yet America will continue as it was envisioned, as long as those of various races and colors are committed to the country’s original ideals. When International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was accused of sexual assault against a West African immigrant maid in New York, supposedly liberal French elites were outraged that America would dare bring charges against such an establishment aristocrat. Americans, on the other hand, would have been more outraged had their country not done so.
The Founders’ notion of the rule of law, coupled with freedom of the individual, explains why the United States runs on merit, not tribal affinities or birth. Most elsewhere, being a first cousin of a government official, or having a prestigious name, ensures special treatment from the state. Yet in America, nepotism is never assured. End that notion of American merit and replace it with racial tribalism, cronyism, or aristocratic privilege, and America itself would vanish as we know it.
There is no rational reason why a small republican experiment in 1776 grew to dominate global culture and society — except that America is the only nation, past or present, that put trust in the individual rather than in the state and its elite bureaucracy. Such confidence in the average free citizen made America absolutely exceptional — something we should remember more than ever on this Fourth of July.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
New Jersey Miracle: What About the Rest of Us?
By Cal Thomas
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Something astonishing happened in New Jersey last week. A majority Democratic legislature and a Republican governor agreed on a measure that will cut benefits for the state's 750,000 employees and retirees.
Like Wisconsin and other states that are being forced to deal with large budget deficits caused mostly by sweetheart deals struck in more prosperous times between politicians who need votes and labor unions who deliver them, New Jersey couldn't afford to go on like this.
The new law "will sharply increase what state and local workers must contribute for their health insurance and pensions." And in a major whack at rising costs, will also suspend "cost-of-living increases ... raise retirement ages and curb the unions' contract bargaining rights," writes Richard Perez-Pena in the June 23 issue of The New York Times.
Gov. Chris Christie's administration estimates the deal will save New Jersey $132 billion over the next 30 years. That would be a real saving, unlike the Obama administration's phony prediction of cost reductions with his national health insurance law, which is now being challenged in the courts.
Predictably, labor unions are excoriating Democrats who joined Republicans to pass the law, but even "tax and spend" Democrats are beginning to realize we can't go on like this and the future of the country is more important than seeking short-term partisan political advantage.
A new study co-authored by Joshua Rauh of Northwestern University and Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Rochester, both finance professors, has concluded that without a change in their pension systems, federal, state and local governments "will need to raise taxes by $1,398 per household every year for the next 30 years if they are to fully fund their pension systems." The study also found that New Jersey "will need to increase its revenue by the largest margin, requiring $2,475 more from each household per year." That's if the new law hadn't passed.
Last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a frightening report that concluded the ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP) this year would be 69 percent. That's 7 percentage points higher than last year. By 2021, the CBO predicts that without a serious recalibration in Social Security, Medicare and other spending, debt will quickly reach 76 percent of GDP and "the public debt will be 101 percent of GDP 10 years from now." Interest on the debt is now more than the entire GDP of some nations.
The Federal Reserve last week issued a gloomy forecast for the U.S. economy. It noted "slower than expected growth" and warned of "higher inflation." Can anyone say "Jimmy Carter"? This and many other signs give the lie to the Obama administration's claims about last year's "summer of recovery" and other rosy scenarios about sluggish economic growth and "job creation."
Do I hear the echo of Ronald Reagan who said during his 1980 campaign for president, "A recession is when your neighbor loses his job; a depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his."
The Obama administration, which now "owns" the economy, as acknowledged by Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is incapable of turning things around as long as it remains mired in its Keynesian, redistributionist, punish the successful and subsidize the unsuccessful mentality.
In justifying his vote for meaningful entitlement reform in New Jersey, Assemblyman Angel Fuentes, a Democrat from Camden, told The New York Times, "These reforms are unquestionably bitter pills for us to swallow, but they are reasonable and they are necessary."
Are there enough "reasonable" Democrats in Congress who will join with reasonable Republicans and do what is necessary to repair what out-of-control spending, unlimited benefits and entitlements are doing to the federal government and to the other 49 states? If not, in the coming election, voters will have another opportunity to increase reasonable representation in Congress and in the White House.
Whoever thought traditionally liberal states like New Jersey and Wisconsin would lead the way.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Something astonishing happened in New Jersey last week. A majority Democratic legislature and a Republican governor agreed on a measure that will cut benefits for the state's 750,000 employees and retirees.
Like Wisconsin and other states that are being forced to deal with large budget deficits caused mostly by sweetheart deals struck in more prosperous times between politicians who need votes and labor unions who deliver them, New Jersey couldn't afford to go on like this.
The new law "will sharply increase what state and local workers must contribute for their health insurance and pensions." And in a major whack at rising costs, will also suspend "cost-of-living increases ... raise retirement ages and curb the unions' contract bargaining rights," writes Richard Perez-Pena in the June 23 issue of The New York Times.
Gov. Chris Christie's administration estimates the deal will save New Jersey $132 billion over the next 30 years. That would be a real saving, unlike the Obama administration's phony prediction of cost reductions with his national health insurance law, which is now being challenged in the courts.
Predictably, labor unions are excoriating Democrats who joined Republicans to pass the law, but even "tax and spend" Democrats are beginning to realize we can't go on like this and the future of the country is more important than seeking short-term partisan political advantage.
A new study co-authored by Joshua Rauh of Northwestern University and Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Rochester, both finance professors, has concluded that without a change in their pension systems, federal, state and local governments "will need to raise taxes by $1,398 per household every year for the next 30 years if they are to fully fund their pension systems." The study also found that New Jersey "will need to increase its revenue by the largest margin, requiring $2,475 more from each household per year." That's if the new law hadn't passed.
Last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a frightening report that concluded the ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP) this year would be 69 percent. That's 7 percentage points higher than last year. By 2021, the CBO predicts that without a serious recalibration in Social Security, Medicare and other spending, debt will quickly reach 76 percent of GDP and "the public debt will be 101 percent of GDP 10 years from now." Interest on the debt is now more than the entire GDP of some nations.
The Federal Reserve last week issued a gloomy forecast for the U.S. economy. It noted "slower than expected growth" and warned of "higher inflation." Can anyone say "Jimmy Carter"? This and many other signs give the lie to the Obama administration's claims about last year's "summer of recovery" and other rosy scenarios about sluggish economic growth and "job creation."
Do I hear the echo of Ronald Reagan who said during his 1980 campaign for president, "A recession is when your neighbor loses his job; a depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his."
The Obama administration, which now "owns" the economy, as acknowledged by Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is incapable of turning things around as long as it remains mired in its Keynesian, redistributionist, punish the successful and subsidize the unsuccessful mentality.
In justifying his vote for meaningful entitlement reform in New Jersey, Assemblyman Angel Fuentes, a Democrat from Camden, told The New York Times, "These reforms are unquestionably bitter pills for us to swallow, but they are reasonable and they are necessary."
Are there enough "reasonable" Democrats in Congress who will join with reasonable Republicans and do what is necessary to repair what out-of-control spending, unlimited benefits and entitlements are doing to the federal government and to the other 49 states? If not, in the coming election, voters will have another opportunity to increase reasonable representation in Congress and in the White House.
Whoever thought traditionally liberal states like New Jersey and Wisconsin would lead the way.
Self-Deception and the Jihad
When it comes to the jihadi threat, we’re now way beyond willful blindness.
Clifford D. May
Thursday, June 30, 2011
‘All warfare is based upon deception,” instructed Sun Tzu, the great Chinese military strategist of the 6th century B.C. But when it comes to the Global Jihad of the 21st century, the extent to which we in the West insist upon deceiving ourselves would shock even Sunny. Five brief examples follow.
1) Yonathan Melaku was charged in federal court with shooting at the National Museum of the Marine Corps. The officials who arrested him later searched his home and found a videotape in which he is shouting “Allahu Akbar!” They also found a notebook in which he’d written about Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and The Path to Jihad, a book of lectures by Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Islamic cleric who was widely considered a moderate before he fled to Yemen where he is now a top al-Qaeda commander.
So it’s pretty obvious what Melaku was up to, right? Not if you’re a federal employee, it’s not. “I can’t suggest to you his motivations or intent,” James W. McJunkin, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, told reporters at a news conference. “It’s not readily apparent yet.”
Many in the mainstream media also expressed befuddlement. A Washington Post story carried the headline: “Pentagon Shooting Subject Not Known to Law Enforcement.” (Really? That’s the news here?) The article told readers that “a motive for the shootings — and why Melaku had possible bomb-making materials — remains elusive.” So does that mean we can’t rule out a crime of passion — or a paint-ball competition that got out of hand?
To be fair, if you read to the very end of the story you will learn that it has occurred to some law enforcement officials that Melaku’s “writings and the contents of his laptop” might “indicate a desire to be involved in jihad.” Ya think? And not jihad in the sense of a struggle for individual self-fulfillment?
2) A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column arguing that there was no evidence to support the mainstream-media narrative that Muslims in America face increasing discrimination and persecution — as do, for example, religious and ethnic minorities in most Muslim-majority countries, a topic the mainstream media assiduously avoids. I received many angry letters in response. My favorite included three newspaper stories meant to prove I was wrong.
The first cited a poll showing that a majority of Americans “believe that Muslims face more discrimination than any other religious group in the U.S.” Well, yes, that has to be expected given the decade-long media campaign to establish this meme. The next was a piece by liberal commentator Alan Colmes headlined, “Growing Bias Against Muslims in America” and citing rising “claims of bias against Muslims in the workplace.” It, too, offered no proof — or even evidence — that such claims are justified by facts.
Finally, there was a story about Muslims in North Carolina who, following the terrorist attacks carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba in Mumbai, India, received an e-mail saying that “such violent acts wouldn’t intimidate people, but only make them stronger.”
“I was furious,” Motaz Elshafi — an American-born Muslim who received such a note — told USA Today. He had a right to be. The e-mail he received — though by no means threatening — was misdirected. Nevertheless, one might have hoped Elshafi would mention that he was at least equally furious with those who slaughter innocent men, women, and children based on their reading of his religion.
3) The term “conscientious objector” used to refer to those who sought exemption from military duty because their religious beliefs prohibited their use of violence. But, as Patrick Poole has reported, in May the secretary of the army granted conscientious-objector status to a soldier — a volunteer — who refused to deploy to Afghanistan. PFC Nasser Abdo claimed that sharia, Islamic law, prohibits him not from killing anyone, but only from killing fellow Muslims — including, apparently, “violent extremists” who join the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
“I don’t believe I can involve myself in an army that wages war against Muslims,” Abdo told al-Jazeera. “I don’t believe I could sleep at night if I take part, in any way, in the killing of Muslims.”
Imagine if, in 1942, a PFC Helmut Shultz had said: “I don’t believe I could sleep at night if I take part, in any way, in the killing of Germans.” You think he would have been called a conscientious objector and sent merrily on his way?
4) A few days ago, the regime that rules Iran, designated by the U.S. State Department as the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism, held what it called the First International Conference on the Global Fight against Terrorism. The U.S. and Israel were singled out as “satanic world powers” with a “black record of terrorist behaviors.” This should have been the subject of scorn and ridicule from the “international community.” But senior officials from at least 60 countries attended and U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon delivered a message via special envoy expressing his appreciation to Tehran. Apparently he was not bothered by the fact that Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court, was among those attending. Don’t worry: American taxpayer support for the U.N. is not in jeopardy.
5) Yale University has decided to shut down the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) following protests — for example, from the Palestine Liberation Organization’s representative to the United States — that studying the rise of Jew-hatred in the Muslim world is by definition “racist” and “right-wing.” Meanwhile, the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project (IRDP) at the University of California at Berkeley continues to receive funding and support.
A few years ago, Andy McCarthy wrote Willful Blindness, a book about political leaders, academics, journalists, and others refusing to see the jihadi threat staring America in the face. But we’ve now gone well beyond that. The examples above — and I could cite many more — have to be seen as determined self-deception, if not symptoms of madness. I’m pretty sure Sun Tzu would agree.
Clifford D. May
Thursday, June 30, 2011
‘All warfare is based upon deception,” instructed Sun Tzu, the great Chinese military strategist of the 6th century B.C. But when it comes to the Global Jihad of the 21st century, the extent to which we in the West insist upon deceiving ourselves would shock even Sunny. Five brief examples follow.
1) Yonathan Melaku was charged in federal court with shooting at the National Museum of the Marine Corps. The officials who arrested him later searched his home and found a videotape in which he is shouting “Allahu Akbar!” They also found a notebook in which he’d written about Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and The Path to Jihad, a book of lectures by Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Islamic cleric who was widely considered a moderate before he fled to Yemen where he is now a top al-Qaeda commander.
So it’s pretty obvious what Melaku was up to, right? Not if you’re a federal employee, it’s not. “I can’t suggest to you his motivations or intent,” James W. McJunkin, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, told reporters at a news conference. “It’s not readily apparent yet.”
Many in the mainstream media also expressed befuddlement. A Washington Post story carried the headline: “Pentagon Shooting Subject Not Known to Law Enforcement.” (Really? That’s the news here?) The article told readers that “a motive for the shootings — and why Melaku had possible bomb-making materials — remains elusive.” So does that mean we can’t rule out a crime of passion — or a paint-ball competition that got out of hand?
To be fair, if you read to the very end of the story you will learn that it has occurred to some law enforcement officials that Melaku’s “writings and the contents of his laptop” might “indicate a desire to be involved in jihad.” Ya think? And not jihad in the sense of a struggle for individual self-fulfillment?
2) A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column arguing that there was no evidence to support the mainstream-media narrative that Muslims in America face increasing discrimination and persecution — as do, for example, religious and ethnic minorities in most Muslim-majority countries, a topic the mainstream media assiduously avoids. I received many angry letters in response. My favorite included three newspaper stories meant to prove I was wrong.
The first cited a poll showing that a majority of Americans “believe that Muslims face more discrimination than any other religious group in the U.S.” Well, yes, that has to be expected given the decade-long media campaign to establish this meme. The next was a piece by liberal commentator Alan Colmes headlined, “Growing Bias Against Muslims in America” and citing rising “claims of bias against Muslims in the workplace.” It, too, offered no proof — or even evidence — that such claims are justified by facts.
Finally, there was a story about Muslims in North Carolina who, following the terrorist attacks carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba in Mumbai, India, received an e-mail saying that “such violent acts wouldn’t intimidate people, but only make them stronger.”
“I was furious,” Motaz Elshafi — an American-born Muslim who received such a note — told USA Today. He had a right to be. The e-mail he received — though by no means threatening — was misdirected. Nevertheless, one might have hoped Elshafi would mention that he was at least equally furious with those who slaughter innocent men, women, and children based on their reading of his religion.
3) The term “conscientious objector” used to refer to those who sought exemption from military duty because their religious beliefs prohibited their use of violence. But, as Patrick Poole has reported, in May the secretary of the army granted conscientious-objector status to a soldier — a volunteer — who refused to deploy to Afghanistan. PFC Nasser Abdo claimed that sharia, Islamic law, prohibits him not from killing anyone, but only from killing fellow Muslims — including, apparently, “violent extremists” who join the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
“I don’t believe I can involve myself in an army that wages war against Muslims,” Abdo told al-Jazeera. “I don’t believe I could sleep at night if I take part, in any way, in the killing of Muslims.”
Imagine if, in 1942, a PFC Helmut Shultz had said: “I don’t believe I could sleep at night if I take part, in any way, in the killing of Germans.” You think he would have been called a conscientious objector and sent merrily on his way?
4) A few days ago, the regime that rules Iran, designated by the U.S. State Department as the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism, held what it called the First International Conference on the Global Fight against Terrorism. The U.S. and Israel were singled out as “satanic world powers” with a “black record of terrorist behaviors.” This should have been the subject of scorn and ridicule from the “international community.” But senior officials from at least 60 countries attended and U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon delivered a message via special envoy expressing his appreciation to Tehran. Apparently he was not bothered by the fact that Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court, was among those attending. Don’t worry: American taxpayer support for the U.N. is not in jeopardy.
5) Yale University has decided to shut down the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) following protests — for example, from the Palestine Liberation Organization’s representative to the United States — that studying the rise of Jew-hatred in the Muslim world is by definition “racist” and “right-wing.” Meanwhile, the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project (IRDP) at the University of California at Berkeley continues to receive funding and support.
A few years ago, Andy McCarthy wrote Willful Blindness, a book about political leaders, academics, journalists, and others refusing to see the jihadi threat staring America in the face. But we’ve now gone well beyond that. The examples above — and I could cite many more — have to be seen as determined self-deception, if not symptoms of madness. I’m pretty sure Sun Tzu would agree.
The Greek Way of Sorrow
How a charismatic politician with the slogan “Change” launched Greece on the path to ruin
Napoleon Linardatos
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Thirty years ago this fall, on October 18, 1981, a charismatic academic with rather limited government experience and with a one-word slogan, “Change,” was elected prime minister of Greece. His name was Andreas Papandreou. Greeks may now wish that 30 years ago they had had a Tea Party movement. Things could have turned out differently.
Thirty years ago, Greece was in an enviable position on the matter of national debt, with its debt just 28.6 percent of GDP. Few advanced countries can manage that kind of debt-to-GDP ratio. By the end of Papandreou’s first term in office, that ratio had nearly doubled, with debt at 54.7 percent of GDP. By the end of his second term, the figure was in the mid 80s.
The 1980s in Greece were a time of dramatic expansion of government. Papandreou and his Socialist party created a new government-run health-care system, dramatically expanded employment in the public sector, nationalized failing companies, and increased government handouts of every shape and form.
It was a government expansion so large and many-sided that in the end it generated a revolution of expectations and attitudes about the role of government in society. No government since then has been able to reverse that revolution, no matter how willing it was or how pressing the circumstances.
It is in this detrimental position that the current prime minister, George Papandreou, son of Andreas, finds himself. A sorry state of affairs created by one generation to be dealt with by another, the sins of the father to be paid for by the son — this is the material that Greek tragedies are made of.
The statism of the Eighties got another boost when subsidies from the European Union started to pour in, and yet another boost in 2001 when Greece adopted the euro and discovered that she could borrow at very cheap rates. The euro and the subsidies played the same role in Greece that oil has played in the Middle East: the lifeline of an unsustainable economic system, the enabler of a demagogic political class.
Now the Greek government finds itself with a debt-to-GDP ratio somewhere north of 140 percent and quickly rising. Since May of 2010, that problem has also become the European Union’s problem. Because Greece is a member of the EU and the eurozone, it is feared that her instability will lead to the destabilization of other weak members of the EU. Greece cannot go out to the markets to service her debt and finance her new deficits; that has become the care now of other nations’ taxpayers across the continent.
The agreement between the EU and Greece stipulated that Greece would drastically reduce her deficits in return for European aid. That was to be achieved by budget cuts and tax increases. The Greek government since then has mostly intended budget cuts and vigorously pursued tax increases.
Such an approach is not surprising considering the political clout that government employees enjoy in Greece. One of every four working adults is a government employee. The government at the beginning made some across-the-board cuts in salaries and pensions, but since then it has basically tried to address the issue of public finance with tax increases.
The absolutely dismal results of those tax increases have not persuaded the younger Papandreou and his colleagues to reduce the size of government and its tax, regulatory, and corruption burden on the economy. The Greek government employs lots of people, even by European standards; the increase in unemployment since the crisis started has come exclusively from the private sector. Finland may have the best educational system in Europe, but its ratio of students to teachers is double that of Greece, which has one of the worst educational systems. In area after area of governmental activity, Greece has the most people employed per population but also the worst results: a way-above-average number of tax collectors but very poor tax collection; an above-average number of policemen but dismal public order; a record number of local courts but perhaps the slowest justice system on the continent; a record number of hospitals but one of the worst systems of health care.
There are hundreds of governmental organizations that employ thousands of people and no one knows what they do, how they do it, or indeed if they do anything at all. Recently it was found that there was a government agency for the preservation of a lake that was drained decades ago.
Then there are the companies owned or controlled by the government. One of them is the Railroad Organization, which has annual revenues of €100 million, pays annual salaries of €400 million, and each year has a loss of about €1 billion. Now the government pretends that it is cleaning up the Railroad Organization’s finances by transferring the employees from the company to the central bureaucracy of the government. That kind of cleaning up would embarrass even an Enron executive.
On the other hand, the Greek government has no problem increasing taxes. Taxes on income and property, on sodas and swimming pools, on cars and natural gas, on corporate profits of years past, on everyone’s electricity bill. The Valued Added Tax (VAT) for many goods is now at 23 percent.
The Greek government finds itself in a very difficult place. It cannot continue to squeeze the private sector for more euros. The Greek private sector, which has become a kind of new serf class, is very weak and rapidly shrinking. On the other hand, the public sector — with salaries two and three times that of the private sector, plum benefits, egregious pensions, and early retirements — is just too politically powerful to be messed with. There is a solution to the Greek crisis; the only problem is that solutions in Greece tend not be to politically viable things.
Greeks like me cringe when we hear people like Paul Krugman lecturing Americans on how a government takeover in a certain sector of the economy will facilitate in the future reforms that are necessary now.
There stands Greece today, a year after it was bailed out by the taxpayers of other countries, facing the choice of reforming itself or going to utter ruin, and it cannot make up its mind.
The thirty years of hardcore statism have destroyed not only the economy of the nation, but also its ability to do politics, to articulate choices and ideas for the crisis at hand. Everything seems already decided, pre-determined, and set in stone, like the annual government budgets with their immovable expenditures tied to vote-rich constituencies.
Back in the mid-Eighties I was a primary-school student. I didn’t understand the politics, but I could feel the pathos of a country that had just “discovered” that there is a thing called a free lunch. Oftentimes, one is asked what one most missed having in one’s childhood. I couldn’t have told you at the time, but I can with certainty answer today: a Tea Party.
There are Americans who wonder what American exceptionalism is. I know.
Napoleon Linardatos
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Thirty years ago this fall, on October 18, 1981, a charismatic academic with rather limited government experience and with a one-word slogan, “Change,” was elected prime minister of Greece. His name was Andreas Papandreou. Greeks may now wish that 30 years ago they had had a Tea Party movement. Things could have turned out differently.
Thirty years ago, Greece was in an enviable position on the matter of national debt, with its debt just 28.6 percent of GDP. Few advanced countries can manage that kind of debt-to-GDP ratio. By the end of Papandreou’s first term in office, that ratio had nearly doubled, with debt at 54.7 percent of GDP. By the end of his second term, the figure was in the mid 80s.
The 1980s in Greece were a time of dramatic expansion of government. Papandreou and his Socialist party created a new government-run health-care system, dramatically expanded employment in the public sector, nationalized failing companies, and increased government handouts of every shape and form.
It was a government expansion so large and many-sided that in the end it generated a revolution of expectations and attitudes about the role of government in society. No government since then has been able to reverse that revolution, no matter how willing it was or how pressing the circumstances.
It is in this detrimental position that the current prime minister, George Papandreou, son of Andreas, finds himself. A sorry state of affairs created by one generation to be dealt with by another, the sins of the father to be paid for by the son — this is the material that Greek tragedies are made of.
The statism of the Eighties got another boost when subsidies from the European Union started to pour in, and yet another boost in 2001 when Greece adopted the euro and discovered that she could borrow at very cheap rates. The euro and the subsidies played the same role in Greece that oil has played in the Middle East: the lifeline of an unsustainable economic system, the enabler of a demagogic political class.
Now the Greek government finds itself with a debt-to-GDP ratio somewhere north of 140 percent and quickly rising. Since May of 2010, that problem has also become the European Union’s problem. Because Greece is a member of the EU and the eurozone, it is feared that her instability will lead to the destabilization of other weak members of the EU. Greece cannot go out to the markets to service her debt and finance her new deficits; that has become the care now of other nations’ taxpayers across the continent.
The agreement between the EU and Greece stipulated that Greece would drastically reduce her deficits in return for European aid. That was to be achieved by budget cuts and tax increases. The Greek government since then has mostly intended budget cuts and vigorously pursued tax increases.
Such an approach is not surprising considering the political clout that government employees enjoy in Greece. One of every four working adults is a government employee. The government at the beginning made some across-the-board cuts in salaries and pensions, but since then it has basically tried to address the issue of public finance with tax increases.
The absolutely dismal results of those tax increases have not persuaded the younger Papandreou and his colleagues to reduce the size of government and its tax, regulatory, and corruption burden on the economy. The Greek government employs lots of people, even by European standards; the increase in unemployment since the crisis started has come exclusively from the private sector. Finland may have the best educational system in Europe, but its ratio of students to teachers is double that of Greece, which has one of the worst educational systems. In area after area of governmental activity, Greece has the most people employed per population but also the worst results: a way-above-average number of tax collectors but very poor tax collection; an above-average number of policemen but dismal public order; a record number of local courts but perhaps the slowest justice system on the continent; a record number of hospitals but one of the worst systems of health care.
There are hundreds of governmental organizations that employ thousands of people and no one knows what they do, how they do it, or indeed if they do anything at all. Recently it was found that there was a government agency for the preservation of a lake that was drained decades ago.
Then there are the companies owned or controlled by the government. One of them is the Railroad Organization, which has annual revenues of €100 million, pays annual salaries of €400 million, and each year has a loss of about €1 billion. Now the government pretends that it is cleaning up the Railroad Organization’s finances by transferring the employees from the company to the central bureaucracy of the government. That kind of cleaning up would embarrass even an Enron executive.
On the other hand, the Greek government has no problem increasing taxes. Taxes on income and property, on sodas and swimming pools, on cars and natural gas, on corporate profits of years past, on everyone’s electricity bill. The Valued Added Tax (VAT) for many goods is now at 23 percent.
The Greek government finds itself in a very difficult place. It cannot continue to squeeze the private sector for more euros. The Greek private sector, which has become a kind of new serf class, is very weak and rapidly shrinking. On the other hand, the public sector — with salaries two and three times that of the private sector, plum benefits, egregious pensions, and early retirements — is just too politically powerful to be messed with. There is a solution to the Greek crisis; the only problem is that solutions in Greece tend not be to politically viable things.
Greeks like me cringe when we hear people like Paul Krugman lecturing Americans on how a government takeover in a certain sector of the economy will facilitate in the future reforms that are necessary now.
There stands Greece today, a year after it was bailed out by the taxpayers of other countries, facing the choice of reforming itself or going to utter ruin, and it cannot make up its mind.
The thirty years of hardcore statism have destroyed not only the economy of the nation, but also its ability to do politics, to articulate choices and ideas for the crisis at hand. Everything seems already decided, pre-determined, and set in stone, like the annual government budgets with their immovable expenditures tied to vote-rich constituencies.
Back in the mid-Eighties I was a primary-school student. I didn’t understand the politics, but I could feel the pathos of a country that had just “discovered” that there is a thing called a free lunch. Oftentimes, one is asked what one most missed having in one’s childhood. I couldn’t have told you at the time, but I can with certainty answer today: a Tea Party.
There are Americans who wonder what American exceptionalism is. I know.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
Like Chauncey Gardiner, Obama Is Profoundly Aloof
By Michael Barone
Monday, June 27, 2011
Which past leader does Barack Obama most closely resemble? His admirers, not all of them liberals, used to compare him to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.
Well, Obama announced his candidacy in Lincoln's hometown two days before Abe's birthday, and he did expand the size and scope of government. But no one seriously compares him with Lincoln or FDR anymore.
Conservative critics have taken to comparing him, as you might imagine, to Jimmy Carter. The more cruel among them, like The Weekly Standard's Jay Cost, say the comparison is not to Obama's advantage.
But there is another comparison I think more appropriate for a president who, according to one of his foreign-policy staffers, prefers to "lead from behind." The man I have in mind is Chauncey Gardiner, the character played by Peter Sellers in the 1979 movie "Being There."
As you may remember, Gardiner is a clueless gardener who is mistaken for a Washington eminence and becomes a presidential adviser. Asked if you can stimulate growth through temporary incentives, Gardiner says, "As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well in the garden."
"First comes the spring and summer," he explains, "but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again." The president is awed as Gardiner sums up, "There will be growth in the spring."
Kind of reminds you of Barack Obama's approach to the federal budget, doesn't it?
In preparing his February budget, Obama totally ignored the recommendations of his own fiscal commission headed by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Others noticed: The Senate rejected the initial budget by a vote of 97-0.
Then, speaking in April at George Washington University, Obama said he was presenting a new budget with $4 trillion in long-term spending cuts. But there were no specifics.
Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf was asked last week if the CBO had prepared estimates of this budget. "We don't estimate speeches," Elmendorf, a Democrat, explained. "We need much more specificity than was provided in that speech for us to do our analysis."
Evidently "first we have the spring and summer" was not enough.
Then Obama deputed Vice President Joe Biden and congressional leaders to handle negotiations over raising the debt ceiling. Biden apparently did a good job of letting everyone set out their positions and interact.
But last Thursday two influential Republicans, Rep. Eric Cantor and Sen. Jon Kyl, left the bargaining table and said that they wouldn't return until Democrats dropped demands for tax increases. After all, if the Democrats hadn't been able to raise taxes on high earners when they had large majorities in December's lame duck session, what makes anyone think this more Republican Congress will raise them now?
Cantor said it was impossible to make progress unless Obama got personally involved. Top Senate Democrat Harry Reid said the same thing. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, fresh from making a bipartisan compromise on public employee benefits, offered succinct advice: "First, the president can show up."
Well, Obama has agreed to do that Monday. But while Chauncey Gardiner, in his befuddlement, tried to answer questions squarely, Obama has seemed less interested in the substance of public policy than in framing issues for the next presidential campaign.
That was plainly the case in the decisions on Afghanistan he announced Wednesday night. Regardless of conditions on the ground, the president promised that the last of the surge troops will be removed by September 2012, the month Democrats hold their national convention.
As for Libya, Obama pretends we're not involved in "hostilities" and has been content to "lead from behind." Another sop to the antiwar left.
Sometimes it seems he's president of the AFL-CIO, not the U.S.A. The man who said he wanted to double exports in five years has nothing to say about his National Labor Relations Board appointee's attempt to shut down a $1 billion plant being built by the nation's No. 1 exporter.
And don't forget the enviro types. Obama is releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but his appointees are barring drilling in the Gulf and Alaska and refusing approval for a natural gas pipeline from Canada.
On all these issues, Obama seems oddly disengaged, aloof from the hard work of government, hesitant about making choices.
That doesn't sound like Lincoln. Or Roosevelt. Or even Jimmy Carter. More like "then we have fall and winter."
Monday, June 27, 2011
Which past leader does Barack Obama most closely resemble? His admirers, not all of them liberals, used to compare him to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.
Well, Obama announced his candidacy in Lincoln's hometown two days before Abe's birthday, and he did expand the size and scope of government. But no one seriously compares him with Lincoln or FDR anymore.
Conservative critics have taken to comparing him, as you might imagine, to Jimmy Carter. The more cruel among them, like The Weekly Standard's Jay Cost, say the comparison is not to Obama's advantage.
But there is another comparison I think more appropriate for a president who, according to one of his foreign-policy staffers, prefers to "lead from behind." The man I have in mind is Chauncey Gardiner, the character played by Peter Sellers in the 1979 movie "Being There."
As you may remember, Gardiner is a clueless gardener who is mistaken for a Washington eminence and becomes a presidential adviser. Asked if you can stimulate growth through temporary incentives, Gardiner says, "As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well in the garden."
"First comes the spring and summer," he explains, "but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again." The president is awed as Gardiner sums up, "There will be growth in the spring."
Kind of reminds you of Barack Obama's approach to the federal budget, doesn't it?
In preparing his February budget, Obama totally ignored the recommendations of his own fiscal commission headed by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Others noticed: The Senate rejected the initial budget by a vote of 97-0.
Then, speaking in April at George Washington University, Obama said he was presenting a new budget with $4 trillion in long-term spending cuts. But there were no specifics.
Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf was asked last week if the CBO had prepared estimates of this budget. "We don't estimate speeches," Elmendorf, a Democrat, explained. "We need much more specificity than was provided in that speech for us to do our analysis."
Evidently "first we have the spring and summer" was not enough.
Then Obama deputed Vice President Joe Biden and congressional leaders to handle negotiations over raising the debt ceiling. Biden apparently did a good job of letting everyone set out their positions and interact.
But last Thursday two influential Republicans, Rep. Eric Cantor and Sen. Jon Kyl, left the bargaining table and said that they wouldn't return until Democrats dropped demands for tax increases. After all, if the Democrats hadn't been able to raise taxes on high earners when they had large majorities in December's lame duck session, what makes anyone think this more Republican Congress will raise them now?
Cantor said it was impossible to make progress unless Obama got personally involved. Top Senate Democrat Harry Reid said the same thing. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, fresh from making a bipartisan compromise on public employee benefits, offered succinct advice: "First, the president can show up."
Well, Obama has agreed to do that Monday. But while Chauncey Gardiner, in his befuddlement, tried to answer questions squarely, Obama has seemed less interested in the substance of public policy than in framing issues for the next presidential campaign.
That was plainly the case in the decisions on Afghanistan he announced Wednesday night. Regardless of conditions on the ground, the president promised that the last of the surge troops will be removed by September 2012, the month Democrats hold their national convention.
As for Libya, Obama pretends we're not involved in "hostilities" and has been content to "lead from behind." Another sop to the antiwar left.
Sometimes it seems he's president of the AFL-CIO, not the U.S.A. The man who said he wanted to double exports in five years has nothing to say about his National Labor Relations Board appointee's attempt to shut down a $1 billion plant being built by the nation's No. 1 exporter.
And don't forget the enviro types. Obama is releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but his appointees are barring drilling in the Gulf and Alaska and refusing approval for a natural gas pipeline from Canada.
On all these issues, Obama seems oddly disengaged, aloof from the hard work of government, hesitant about making choices.
That doesn't sound like Lincoln. Or Roosevelt. Or even Jimmy Carter. More like "then we have fall and winter."
ACLU Attacks God and Children, Again
By Mark Baisley
Monday, June 27, 2011
It must require an Ivy League degree in relevant truth to buy into the ACLU’s separation clause arguments. The relevant portion of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Pretty straightforward.
This shrewdly crafted sentence should keep government in its place while citizens work out their own salvation. In order to unclarify this succinct instruction, the ACLU has pulled a bait-and-switch maneuver that tricks ‘em every time.
In 1789, the wording of the First Amendment was proposed in Congress by Representative Fisher Ames, debated at great length, voted on by both houses, and ratified by three-fourths of the states.
In 1947, Justice Hugo Black embraced a newly proposed interpretation of the First Amendment, citing a phrase from a letter written by a President of the United States.
Last Tuesday, June 21, 2011, the ACLU filed its latest lawsuit against an American school district for violating their “separation between church and state” mantra. The specific offense is allowing parents to spend vouchers for their children at schools that have a religious foundation.
The Supreme Court was created by the nation’s founders to interpret components of the Constitution in light of their original meaning. Purportedly, that was the action taken in 1947 with Everson v. Board of Education when the separation clause mandated that children attending religious-based schools could not ride a publicly funded school bus.
No, I am not kidding.
The decision has been the basis for challenges against prayer, nativity scenes, mentioning God in the Pledge of Allegiance, and every other recognition of the Creator where the ACLU can gleefully find an application.
The famous words, “wall of separation between church and state” came from a letter of assurance from President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Church. That same letter from Jefferson also includes the sentiments, “I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man.”
And yet, there is no insistence by the courts nor the ACLU that public schools recognize the Father and Creator of man.
Thomas Jefferson was not a fan of having a Bill of Rights in the Constitution.
Yet his unofficial words that were never debated, voted on, nor ratified have become the phrase used to hammer school districts who would dare allow voluntary attendance to schools that acknowledge an intelligent design behind the science that they teach.
If the 1947 Supreme Court were sincere in their desire to discover the original intent of the writers of the First Amendment, they would more appropriately have cited the following statement from Congressman Fisher Ames himself; “Why then, if these books for children must be retained, as they will be, should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a school book?“
I see no one asking for vouchers to fund the education of religion.
Rather, it is anticipated, reasonable, and very normal to explore the possibility of an intelligent designer behind the consistency in math, matter, and natural laws.
It is an insidious agenda that denies parents the choice of spending public dollars on educating their students at a school that also teaches about faith.
Rather than ensuring that the First Amendment is respected, the ACLU and their fellow plaintiffs are misappropriating a precious legal process to destroy a civilization.
New York artist Makoto Fujimura recently said, “We today have a language to celebrate waywardness. But we do not have a cultural language to bring people back home.”
To the ACLU and their plaintiffs, I would say, “Stop dragging the public into your personal struggle with God.”
Monday, June 27, 2011
It must require an Ivy League degree in relevant truth to buy into the ACLU’s separation clause arguments. The relevant portion of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Pretty straightforward.
This shrewdly crafted sentence should keep government in its place while citizens work out their own salvation. In order to unclarify this succinct instruction, the ACLU has pulled a bait-and-switch maneuver that tricks ‘em every time.
In 1789, the wording of the First Amendment was proposed in Congress by Representative Fisher Ames, debated at great length, voted on by both houses, and ratified by three-fourths of the states.
In 1947, Justice Hugo Black embraced a newly proposed interpretation of the First Amendment, citing a phrase from a letter written by a President of the United States.
Last Tuesday, June 21, 2011, the ACLU filed its latest lawsuit against an American school district for violating their “separation between church and state” mantra. The specific offense is allowing parents to spend vouchers for their children at schools that have a religious foundation.
The Supreme Court was created by the nation’s founders to interpret components of the Constitution in light of their original meaning. Purportedly, that was the action taken in 1947 with Everson v. Board of Education when the separation clause mandated that children attending religious-based schools could not ride a publicly funded school bus.
No, I am not kidding.
The decision has been the basis for challenges against prayer, nativity scenes, mentioning God in the Pledge of Allegiance, and every other recognition of the Creator where the ACLU can gleefully find an application.
The famous words, “wall of separation between church and state” came from a letter of assurance from President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Church. That same letter from Jefferson also includes the sentiments, “I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man.”
And yet, there is no insistence by the courts nor the ACLU that public schools recognize the Father and Creator of man.
Thomas Jefferson was not a fan of having a Bill of Rights in the Constitution.
Yet his unofficial words that were never debated, voted on, nor ratified have become the phrase used to hammer school districts who would dare allow voluntary attendance to schools that acknowledge an intelligent design behind the science that they teach.
If the 1947 Supreme Court were sincere in their desire to discover the original intent of the writers of the First Amendment, they would more appropriately have cited the following statement from Congressman Fisher Ames himself; “Why then, if these books for children must be retained, as they will be, should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a school book?“
I see no one asking for vouchers to fund the education of religion.
Rather, it is anticipated, reasonable, and very normal to explore the possibility of an intelligent designer behind the consistency in math, matter, and natural laws.
It is an insidious agenda that denies parents the choice of spending public dollars on educating their students at a school that also teaches about faith.
Rather than ensuring that the First Amendment is respected, the ACLU and their fellow plaintiffs are misappropriating a precious legal process to destroy a civilization.
New York artist Makoto Fujimura recently said, “We today have a language to celebrate waywardness. But we do not have a cultural language to bring people back home.”
To the ACLU and their plaintiffs, I would say, “Stop dragging the public into your personal struggle with God.”
Holier Than Mao
By Mike Adams
Monday, June 27, 2011
An American maker of Internet routing gear is in deep public relations trouble. It has been accused of customizing its technology to help Communist China track members of a religious dissident group calling itself “Falun Gong.” It has resulted in a lawsuit being filed last month in federal court in California.
The lawsuit alleges that the American Internet routing company marketed its equipment by developing special training manuals to teach the Chinese government how to locate dissidents. The lawsuit also alleges that those training manuals used inflammatory language borrowed from the era of the Maoist Revolution. Finally, it contends that the company helped design the “Golden Shield” firewall that has actually been used to censor political and religious speech in China and to track opponents of the Chinese government.
The lawsuit is of great interest to me because the American Internet company named as a defendant in the lawsuit is none other than Cisco Systems. In fact, the suit also individually names Cisco President John Chambers. Readers of this column are probably familiar with Chambers because he has also been named in my last three columns. Those columns have all explored the firing of American political and religious dissident Frank Turek. That firing occurred after Turek’s religious and political speech was tracked by a manager at Cisco who promptly had him excluded from the workplace under the Cisco policy of inclusion.
Evidence of the company’s activities in China first became public in 2004, in the book "Losing the New China: A Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal," by Ethan Gutmann. Since then, Cisco has disassociated itself from the marketing materials, stating that they were the work of a low-level employee. This argument is similar to the argument being made in conjunction with the Turek firing. In both cases, Cisco insists that individuals within the company are acting in a manner inconsistent with its deep commitment to tolerance of political and religious dissent.
The Falun Gong suit claims that additional Cisco marketing presentations prove that it promoted its technology to Communist China as being specifically capable of taking aim at dissident groups. The New York Times is reporting that, in one marketing slide, the goals of the Golden Shield are described as follows: To “douzheng evil Falun Gong cult and other hostile elements.” Douzheng is a Chinese term used specifically to describe the persecution of undesirable political and/or religious groups. It was widely used by the Communist Party in the Cultural Revolution led by Mao.
So the federal lawsuit essentially argues that Cisco developed and marketed the Golden Shield as a system that could a) censor Internet traffic flowing into China, and b) identify and monitor opponents of the Communist Chinese government. The suit also alleges that Falun Gong members were tracked by the Golden Shield and then apprehended.
What happened next isn’t exactly the same as what happened to Frank Turek – who was simply fired. In contrast, members of the Falun Gong were arrested and tortured with one member being beaten to death. As of this writing, another plaintiff who was arrested has since vanished and is presumed to be dead.
The lawsuit is a serious one because it states that other Cisco documents will show that it taught the Chinese Ministry of Public Security how to pursue dissidents effectively. This lawsuit was filed the very week that the Cisco Senior Director of Inclusion and Diversity Marilyn Nagel was denying that a managerial decision to monitor and track the religious beliefs of Frank Turek had nothing to do with a broader cultural problem at Cisco.
It is interesting to note that Falun Gong is also a religious organization, which has come out publicly against gay marriage. But there is no allegation that Cisco wanted to see members of Falun Gong tortured because of their opposition to gay marriage. (Sarcasm equal on). Cisco is above that sort of thing. The accusation is merely that Cisco helped throw these dissidents to the wolves in order to make a quick buck. This has nothing to do with traditional morality. (Sarcasm equal off).
The Falun Gong lawsuit is based on the Alien Torts Statute, which permits foreign nationals to bring lawsuits in United States federal court. Falun Gong also brought charges under the Torture Victim Protection Act and under California statutory law. The lawsuit has been filed, in part, on behalf of eight unidentified Chinese citizens, including those who were tortured and killed or are missing. Like the opponents of same-sex marriage employed at Cisco their names are being withheld to protect them from retaliation.
Many libertarian readers of my column have defended Cisco’s “right” to fire a man based on his privately held religious beliefs discovered by investigating him on the internet. But that is typical of libertarians who only ask whether something is free and not whether it is right.
For now, we will all have to sit back and wait to see whether the evidence shows that Cisco did indeed teach the Communist Chinese how to effectively pursue political dissidents. But it is safe to assume that Cisco management has learned a thing or two from the Communist Chinese.
Monday, June 27, 2011
An American maker of Internet routing gear is in deep public relations trouble. It has been accused of customizing its technology to help Communist China track members of a religious dissident group calling itself “Falun Gong.” It has resulted in a lawsuit being filed last month in federal court in California.
The lawsuit alleges that the American Internet routing company marketed its equipment by developing special training manuals to teach the Chinese government how to locate dissidents. The lawsuit also alleges that those training manuals used inflammatory language borrowed from the era of the Maoist Revolution. Finally, it contends that the company helped design the “Golden Shield” firewall that has actually been used to censor political and religious speech in China and to track opponents of the Chinese government.
The lawsuit is of great interest to me because the American Internet company named as a defendant in the lawsuit is none other than Cisco Systems. In fact, the suit also individually names Cisco President John Chambers. Readers of this column are probably familiar with Chambers because he has also been named in my last three columns. Those columns have all explored the firing of American political and religious dissident Frank Turek. That firing occurred after Turek’s religious and political speech was tracked by a manager at Cisco who promptly had him excluded from the workplace under the Cisco policy of inclusion.
Evidence of the company’s activities in China first became public in 2004, in the book "Losing the New China: A Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal," by Ethan Gutmann. Since then, Cisco has disassociated itself from the marketing materials, stating that they were the work of a low-level employee. This argument is similar to the argument being made in conjunction with the Turek firing. In both cases, Cisco insists that individuals within the company are acting in a manner inconsistent with its deep commitment to tolerance of political and religious dissent.
The Falun Gong suit claims that additional Cisco marketing presentations prove that it promoted its technology to Communist China as being specifically capable of taking aim at dissident groups. The New York Times is reporting that, in one marketing slide, the goals of the Golden Shield are described as follows: To “douzheng evil Falun Gong cult and other hostile elements.” Douzheng is a Chinese term used specifically to describe the persecution of undesirable political and/or religious groups. It was widely used by the Communist Party in the Cultural Revolution led by Mao.
So the federal lawsuit essentially argues that Cisco developed and marketed the Golden Shield as a system that could a) censor Internet traffic flowing into China, and b) identify and monitor opponents of the Communist Chinese government. The suit also alleges that Falun Gong members were tracked by the Golden Shield and then apprehended.
What happened next isn’t exactly the same as what happened to Frank Turek – who was simply fired. In contrast, members of the Falun Gong were arrested and tortured with one member being beaten to death. As of this writing, another plaintiff who was arrested has since vanished and is presumed to be dead.
The lawsuit is a serious one because it states that other Cisco documents will show that it taught the Chinese Ministry of Public Security how to pursue dissidents effectively. This lawsuit was filed the very week that the Cisco Senior Director of Inclusion and Diversity Marilyn Nagel was denying that a managerial decision to monitor and track the religious beliefs of Frank Turek had nothing to do with a broader cultural problem at Cisco.
It is interesting to note that Falun Gong is also a religious organization, which has come out publicly against gay marriage. But there is no allegation that Cisco wanted to see members of Falun Gong tortured because of their opposition to gay marriage. (Sarcasm equal on). Cisco is above that sort of thing. The accusation is merely that Cisco helped throw these dissidents to the wolves in order to make a quick buck. This has nothing to do with traditional morality. (Sarcasm equal off).
The Falun Gong lawsuit is based on the Alien Torts Statute, which permits foreign nationals to bring lawsuits in United States federal court. Falun Gong also brought charges under the Torture Victim Protection Act and under California statutory law. The lawsuit has been filed, in part, on behalf of eight unidentified Chinese citizens, including those who were tortured and killed or are missing. Like the opponents of same-sex marriage employed at Cisco their names are being withheld to protect them from retaliation.
Many libertarian readers of my column have defended Cisco’s “right” to fire a man based on his privately held religious beliefs discovered by investigating him on the internet. But that is typical of libertarians who only ask whether something is free and not whether it is right.
For now, we will all have to sit back and wait to see whether the evidence shows that Cisco did indeed teach the Communist Chinese how to effectively pursue political dissidents. But it is safe to assume that Cisco management has learned a thing or two from the Communist Chinese.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Not Stealing Palestine, but Purchasing Israel
The real history of Israel’s founding, and why it matters
Daniel Pipes
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Zionists stole Palestinian land: That’s the mantra both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas teach their children and propagate in their media. This claim has vast importance, as Palestinian Media Watch explains: “Presenting the creation of the [Israeli] state as an act of theft and its continued existence as a historical injustice serves as the basis for the PA’s non-recognition of Israel’s right to exist.” The accusation of theft also undermines Israel’s position internationally.
But is this accusation true?
No, it is not. Ironically, the building of Israel represents almost the most peaceable in-migration and state creation in history. Understanding why requires seeing Zionism in context. Simply put, conquest is the historical norm. Governments everywhere have been established through invasion and nearly all states came into being at someone else’s expense. No one is permanently in charge; everyone’s roots trace back to somewhere else.
Germanic tribes, Central Asian hordes, Russian tsars, and Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors remade the map. Modern Greeks have only a tenuous connection to the Greeks of antiquity. Who can count the number of times Belgium was overrun? The United States came into existence after the defeat of Native Americans. Kings marauded in Africa, Aryans invaded India. In Japan, Yamato-speakers eliminated all but tiny groups such as the Ainu.
The Middle East, due to its centrality and geography, has experienced more than its share of invasions, including the Greek, Roman, Arabian, Crusader, Seljuk, Timurid, Mongolian, and modern European. Within the region, dynastic froth caused the same territory — Egypt for example — to be conquered and re-conquered.
The land that now makes up Israel was no exception. In Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel, Eric H. Cline writes of Jerusalem: “No other city has been more bitterly fought over throughout its history.” He backs up that claim, counting “at least 118 separate conflicts in and for Jerusalem during the past four millennia.” He calculates Jerusalem to have been destroyed completely at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. The PA fantasizes that today’s Palestinians are descended from a tribe of ancient Canaan, the Jebusites; in fact, they are overwhelmingly the offspring of invaders and immigrants seeking economic opportunities.
Against this tableau of unceasing conquest, violence, and overthrow, Zionist efforts to build a presence in the Holy Land until 1948 stand out as astonishingly mild, mercantile rather than military. Two great empires, the Ottomans and the British, ruled Eretz Yisrael. In contrast, Zionists lacked military power. They could not possibly achieve statehood through conquest.
Instead, they purchased land. Acquiring property dunam by dunam, farm by farm, house by house, lay at the heart of the Zionist enterprise until 1948. The Jewish National Fund, founded in 1901 to buy land in Palestine “to assist in the foundation of a new community of free Jews engaged in active and peaceable industry,” was the key institution — and not the Haganah, the clandestine defense organization founded in 1920.
Zionists also focused on the rehabilitation of what was barren and considered unusable. They not only made the desert bloom, but drained swamps, cleared water channels, reclaimed wasteland, forested bare hills, cleared rocks, and removed salt from the soil. Jewish reclamation and sanitation work precipitously reduced the number of disease-related deaths.
Only when the British Mandate of Palestine gave up power in 1948, followed immediately by an all-out attempt by Arab states to crush and expel the Zionists, did the latter take up the sword in self-defense and go on to win land through military conquest. Even then, as the historian Efraim Karsh demonstrates in Palestine Betrayed, most Arabs fled their lands; exceedingly few were forced off.
This history contradicts the Palestinian account that “Zionist gangs stole Palestine and expelled its people” which led to a catastrophe “unprecedented in history” (according to a PA twelfth-grade textbook) or that Zionists “plundered the Palestinian land and national interests, and established their state upon the ruins of the Palestinian Arab people” (writes a columnist in the PA’s daily). International organizations, newspaper editorials, and faculty petitions reiterate this falsehood worldwide.
Israelis should hold their heads high and point out that the building of their country was based on the least violent and most civilized movement of any people in history. Gangs did not steal Palestine. Merchants purchased Israel.
Daniel Pipes
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Zionists stole Palestinian land: That’s the mantra both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas teach their children and propagate in their media. This claim has vast importance, as Palestinian Media Watch explains: “Presenting the creation of the [Israeli] state as an act of theft and its continued existence as a historical injustice serves as the basis for the PA’s non-recognition of Israel’s right to exist.” The accusation of theft also undermines Israel’s position internationally.
But is this accusation true?
No, it is not. Ironically, the building of Israel represents almost the most peaceable in-migration and state creation in history. Understanding why requires seeing Zionism in context. Simply put, conquest is the historical norm. Governments everywhere have been established through invasion and nearly all states came into being at someone else’s expense. No one is permanently in charge; everyone’s roots trace back to somewhere else.
Germanic tribes, Central Asian hordes, Russian tsars, and Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors remade the map. Modern Greeks have only a tenuous connection to the Greeks of antiquity. Who can count the number of times Belgium was overrun? The United States came into existence after the defeat of Native Americans. Kings marauded in Africa, Aryans invaded India. In Japan, Yamato-speakers eliminated all but tiny groups such as the Ainu.
The Middle East, due to its centrality and geography, has experienced more than its share of invasions, including the Greek, Roman, Arabian, Crusader, Seljuk, Timurid, Mongolian, and modern European. Within the region, dynastic froth caused the same territory — Egypt for example — to be conquered and re-conquered.
The land that now makes up Israel was no exception. In Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel, Eric H. Cline writes of Jerusalem: “No other city has been more bitterly fought over throughout its history.” He backs up that claim, counting “at least 118 separate conflicts in and for Jerusalem during the past four millennia.” He calculates Jerusalem to have been destroyed completely at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. The PA fantasizes that today’s Palestinians are descended from a tribe of ancient Canaan, the Jebusites; in fact, they are overwhelmingly the offspring of invaders and immigrants seeking economic opportunities.
Against this tableau of unceasing conquest, violence, and overthrow, Zionist efforts to build a presence in the Holy Land until 1948 stand out as astonishingly mild, mercantile rather than military. Two great empires, the Ottomans and the British, ruled Eretz Yisrael. In contrast, Zionists lacked military power. They could not possibly achieve statehood through conquest.
Instead, they purchased land. Acquiring property dunam by dunam, farm by farm, house by house, lay at the heart of the Zionist enterprise until 1948. The Jewish National Fund, founded in 1901 to buy land in Palestine “to assist in the foundation of a new community of free Jews engaged in active and peaceable industry,” was the key institution — and not the Haganah, the clandestine defense organization founded in 1920.
Zionists also focused on the rehabilitation of what was barren and considered unusable. They not only made the desert bloom, but drained swamps, cleared water channels, reclaimed wasteland, forested bare hills, cleared rocks, and removed salt from the soil. Jewish reclamation and sanitation work precipitously reduced the number of disease-related deaths.
Only when the British Mandate of Palestine gave up power in 1948, followed immediately by an all-out attempt by Arab states to crush and expel the Zionists, did the latter take up the sword in self-defense and go on to win land through military conquest. Even then, as the historian Efraim Karsh demonstrates in Palestine Betrayed, most Arabs fled their lands; exceedingly few were forced off.
This history contradicts the Palestinian account that “Zionist gangs stole Palestine and expelled its people” which led to a catastrophe “unprecedented in history” (according to a PA twelfth-grade textbook) or that Zionists “plundered the Palestinian land and national interests, and established their state upon the ruins of the Palestinian Arab people” (writes a columnist in the PA’s daily). International organizations, newspaper editorials, and faculty petitions reiterate this falsehood worldwide.
Israelis should hold their heads high and point out that the building of their country was based on the least violent and most civilized movement of any people in history. Gangs did not steal Palestine. Merchants purchased Israel.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Our Sharia-Compliant Afghan War
Our policy in Afghanistan is part tragedy, part farce.
Andrew C. McCarthy
Saturday, June 25, 2011
In a better time, when the burdens of war were shared by an engaged nation and not shouldered exclusively by military families making up less than 1 percent of the population, the high farce that is the Afghanistan mission would have been obvious before President Obama uttered one word on Wednesday night. All you’d need to know is the story that came to light the day before.
Turns out that the U.S. government has embraced a core tenet of sharia — that archaic corpus of Islamic law that Mitt Romney recently assured us would never gain traction in America. Patrick Poole reported at Pajamas Media on Tuesday that the secretary of the army has just granted “conscientious objector” status to Pfc. Nasser Abdo, a Muslim American soldier who refused to deploy to Afghanistan. Heeding the admonitions of CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood operatives, the Pentagon accepts the claim that sharia forbids Muslims from assisting infidels in a war against Muslim forces in an Islamic land.
News Flash One: The war in Afghanistan, an Islamic land, is a war waged by infidels (that would be us) against Muslim forces — the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Haqqani network, etc.
News Flash Two: The operating theory of the American counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in Afghanistan is that the hearts and minds of the population of this tribal sharia society will side with us non-Muslims in a war against their fellow Muslims, most of whom are also their fellow Afghans.
Which is to say, our strategy is insane.
That does not mean our troops cannot kill a goodly number of jihadists. They have done that, and they will no doubt continue to do that as long as U.S. and allied forces remain in Afghanistan. Naturally, the number of terrorists we manage to get will dwindle as we draw down, while our diminishing numbers will make our own troops increasingly vulnerable to attack. But, sure, we can stick around forever, killing pockets of jihadists and overtaking their strongholds, however temporarily.
That, however, is not victory. It is an ever-worsening stalemate. Victory, under our chosen strategy, can never be achieved. That is why Obama, Gen. David Petreaeus, and COIN enthusiasts everywhere resist mention of the V-word.
“Victory” has been downgraded to “success,” but even success is not much discussed — and that is because, as conceived, success is a pipedream too. The idea is that we stay and hold the Taliban et al. at bay until we have finally trained enough Afghan soldiers and police officers to fight the Taliban for us. Because once we win over their hearts and minds, the theory goes, these Afghans will believe they are actually fighting the Taliban for themselves — fighting “their war,” not ours, as the heady plan was explained by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former theater commander and Kennedy School fellow who now teaches international relations at Yale. It’s all very cerebral, psychological, and sophisticated, the kind of war professors could love.
There’s just one problem with it. Okay, there’s a ton of problems, but let’s get to the big one: If we acknowledge that sharia is a valid reason not to send an American Muslim to fight against his fellow Muslims in Afghanistan, what on earth makes us think the Afghan Muslims are going to fight their fellow Afghan Muslims in furtherance of American national-security interests?
The sharia objection Private Abdo successfully posed to his deployment is not frivolous. To the contrary, from the perspective of a devout Muslim, it is ironclad. The animating theme of Islamic law is the supremacy of Islam and the imperative that it reign over the earth, that Muslims overcome non-Muslims. Consequently, infidel forces are generally regarded with hostility in Islamic countries (particularly if they are pursuing their own, rather than Islamic, interests). This is why politicians in the new Afghan and Iraqi “democracies” get such mileage out of America-bashing. Their populations, which are nearly 100 percent Islamic, despise America. In these places, the very thought of Muslims helping non-Muslims make war against Muslims is anathema.
Reliance of the Traveller, the classic manual of Islamic law accepted throughout the ummah, instructs believers that there is nothing “more heinous in Allah’s sight” than “the killing of a believer.” How, you may ask, are we to convince Afghans that when we kill Taliban operatives we’re not killing believers, and that when they kill them for us, they won’t be killing believers either? Here, our Beltway solons get downright Jesuitical, maintaining that these Taliban characters are not really Muslims but, yes, “violent extremists” who have perverted Islam. But behold: Even in the West Wing faculty lounge, they don’t really buy this fairy tale. That’s why such pains were taken to give Osama bin Laden a fastidiously Muslim funeral, during which American naval personnel actually prayed for Allah to pardon him and grant him every blessing of paradise before feeding him to the sharks.
Like the army secretary, the administration was just following sharia, under which bin Laden was a Muslim, through and through. As the Prophet Mohammed decreed, any man “who testifies that there is no god but Allah and that I am the Messenger of Allah” is a Muslim. Mass-murder is not disqualifying.
Under sharia, believers may not join non-Muslims in killing Muslims, even if those Muslims, like the Taliban, are not particularly popular. According to Reliance of the Traveller, it is unlawful to shed the blood of a Muslim “unless he be one of three: a married adulterer, someone killed in retaliation for killing another, or someone who abandons his religion and the Muslim community.”
Wait a second, you say: If sharia permits retaliatory killing, can’t Muslims help us against these assassins from al-Qaeda and Taliban? No, with exceptions that are not relevant to this discussion, only when the murder victims are Muslims is retaliatory killing permitted. Muslims who kill non-Muslims are expressly protected. Moreover, non-Muslim forces in Islamic countries are deemed “occupiers,” the term the detestable Afghan president Hamid Karzai has taken to calling American troops. Occupiers (like any non-Muslims who fight and kill Muslims) are seen as oppressors and enemies of Allah. The Koran sternly warns Muslims not to take such non-Muslims as friends or protectors (e.g., Suras 4:139, 60:01), and most certainly not to take up their cause against fellow Muslims. As Sura 4:144 puts it, “O, ye who believe, take not for friends Unbelievers rather than Believers: do ye wish to offer Allah an open proof against yourselves?”
Private Abdo may not approve of al-Qaeda. He may not want to see the Taliban retake control of Afghanistan. But that is not the point. They are Muslims. He, like the Muslims of Afghanistan, sees himself as a Muslim first. He is not going to side with us over them. It doesn’t matter that he may privately believe they are reprehensible. Since they are Muslims, he sees it as Allah’s place, not his, to condemn them. In this life, in the sharia schema of Muslims versus non-Muslims, he is with his fellow Muslims — and would risk grave peril, both here and in the afterlife, were he to cross over to the other side.
On the Corner this week, Iraq vet David French complained that counterinsurgency had developed an undeserved reputation for being “touchy-feely” because of its close association with nation-building. His point is well taken. COIN, as he attests, involves “intense fighting” under conditions that are exceedingly dangerous — made intolerably dangerous, I would add, by the stringent rules of engagement imposed on our warriors, given the impossible task of wooing the Islamic population with one hand while they battle the Islamic enemy with the other. That our forces make such progress in the constraints under which they operate is an astonishing testament to their bravery and competence.
The problem is that COIN and nation-building, if they are to have a prayer, cannot succeed until after the enemy has been defeated. What wins hearts and minds is not showing how virtuous and decent we are — especially in a confrontation between civilizations with very different ideas about virtue and decency. Hearts and minds are won when the enemy’s will is broken. COIN and nation-building worked in postwar Germany and Japan because complete victory was achieved first. As Jed Babbin recounts, it did not work in Vietnam, where, as in the War on Terror, the enemy was never conquered and its state sponsors were permitted to fuel the fighting with impunity.
Victory is not a step that can be skipped. Its stark absence cannot be disguised by miniaturizing the enemy, by pretending it is an aberrant fringe of violent extremists. The Taliban enjoys broad popular support — or, at least, sympathy — because the Afghan public is more aligned with its beliefs than with ours. That makes the population the enemy. There is a reason why so many U.S. and allied troops are being attacked and killed in sneak attacks by the Afghan recruits they are trying to train. There is a reason why the Obama administration is negotiating with the Taliban — conceding that the Taliban won’t be defeated and must be accommodated — even as Americans are told that battling the Taliban is the reason our young men and women must remain in harm’s way.
It is madness.
Andrew C. McCarthy
Saturday, June 25, 2011
In a better time, when the burdens of war were shared by an engaged nation and not shouldered exclusively by military families making up less than 1 percent of the population, the high farce that is the Afghanistan mission would have been obvious before President Obama uttered one word on Wednesday night. All you’d need to know is the story that came to light the day before.
Turns out that the U.S. government has embraced a core tenet of sharia — that archaic corpus of Islamic law that Mitt Romney recently assured us would never gain traction in America. Patrick Poole reported at Pajamas Media on Tuesday that the secretary of the army has just granted “conscientious objector” status to Pfc. Nasser Abdo, a Muslim American soldier who refused to deploy to Afghanistan. Heeding the admonitions of CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood operatives, the Pentagon accepts the claim that sharia forbids Muslims from assisting infidels in a war against Muslim forces in an Islamic land.
News Flash One: The war in Afghanistan, an Islamic land, is a war waged by infidels (that would be us) against Muslim forces — the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Haqqani network, etc.
News Flash Two: The operating theory of the American counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in Afghanistan is that the hearts and minds of the population of this tribal sharia society will side with us non-Muslims in a war against their fellow Muslims, most of whom are also their fellow Afghans.
Which is to say, our strategy is insane.
That does not mean our troops cannot kill a goodly number of jihadists. They have done that, and they will no doubt continue to do that as long as U.S. and allied forces remain in Afghanistan. Naturally, the number of terrorists we manage to get will dwindle as we draw down, while our diminishing numbers will make our own troops increasingly vulnerable to attack. But, sure, we can stick around forever, killing pockets of jihadists and overtaking their strongholds, however temporarily.
That, however, is not victory. It is an ever-worsening stalemate. Victory, under our chosen strategy, can never be achieved. That is why Obama, Gen. David Petreaeus, and COIN enthusiasts everywhere resist mention of the V-word.
“Victory” has been downgraded to “success,” but even success is not much discussed — and that is because, as conceived, success is a pipedream too. The idea is that we stay and hold the Taliban et al. at bay until we have finally trained enough Afghan soldiers and police officers to fight the Taliban for us. Because once we win over their hearts and minds, the theory goes, these Afghans will believe they are actually fighting the Taliban for themselves — fighting “their war,” not ours, as the heady plan was explained by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former theater commander and Kennedy School fellow who now teaches international relations at Yale. It’s all very cerebral, psychological, and sophisticated, the kind of war professors could love.
There’s just one problem with it. Okay, there’s a ton of problems, but let’s get to the big one: If we acknowledge that sharia is a valid reason not to send an American Muslim to fight against his fellow Muslims in Afghanistan, what on earth makes us think the Afghan Muslims are going to fight their fellow Afghan Muslims in furtherance of American national-security interests?
The sharia objection Private Abdo successfully posed to his deployment is not frivolous. To the contrary, from the perspective of a devout Muslim, it is ironclad. The animating theme of Islamic law is the supremacy of Islam and the imperative that it reign over the earth, that Muslims overcome non-Muslims. Consequently, infidel forces are generally regarded with hostility in Islamic countries (particularly if they are pursuing their own, rather than Islamic, interests). This is why politicians in the new Afghan and Iraqi “democracies” get such mileage out of America-bashing. Their populations, which are nearly 100 percent Islamic, despise America. In these places, the very thought of Muslims helping non-Muslims make war against Muslims is anathema.
Reliance of the Traveller, the classic manual of Islamic law accepted throughout the ummah, instructs believers that there is nothing “more heinous in Allah’s sight” than “the killing of a believer.” How, you may ask, are we to convince Afghans that when we kill Taliban operatives we’re not killing believers, and that when they kill them for us, they won’t be killing believers either? Here, our Beltway solons get downright Jesuitical, maintaining that these Taliban characters are not really Muslims but, yes, “violent extremists” who have perverted Islam. But behold: Even in the West Wing faculty lounge, they don’t really buy this fairy tale. That’s why such pains were taken to give Osama bin Laden a fastidiously Muslim funeral, during which American naval personnel actually prayed for Allah to pardon him and grant him every blessing of paradise before feeding him to the sharks.
Like the army secretary, the administration was just following sharia, under which bin Laden was a Muslim, through and through. As the Prophet Mohammed decreed, any man “who testifies that there is no god but Allah and that I am the Messenger of Allah” is a Muslim. Mass-murder is not disqualifying.
Under sharia, believers may not join non-Muslims in killing Muslims, even if those Muslims, like the Taliban, are not particularly popular. According to Reliance of the Traveller, it is unlawful to shed the blood of a Muslim “unless he be one of three: a married adulterer, someone killed in retaliation for killing another, or someone who abandons his religion and the Muslim community.”
Wait a second, you say: If sharia permits retaliatory killing, can’t Muslims help us against these assassins from al-Qaeda and Taliban? No, with exceptions that are not relevant to this discussion, only when the murder victims are Muslims is retaliatory killing permitted. Muslims who kill non-Muslims are expressly protected. Moreover, non-Muslim forces in Islamic countries are deemed “occupiers,” the term the detestable Afghan president Hamid Karzai has taken to calling American troops. Occupiers (like any non-Muslims who fight and kill Muslims) are seen as oppressors and enemies of Allah. The Koran sternly warns Muslims not to take such non-Muslims as friends or protectors (e.g., Suras 4:139, 60:01), and most certainly not to take up their cause against fellow Muslims. As Sura 4:144 puts it, “O, ye who believe, take not for friends Unbelievers rather than Believers: do ye wish to offer Allah an open proof against yourselves?”
Private Abdo may not approve of al-Qaeda. He may not want to see the Taliban retake control of Afghanistan. But that is not the point. They are Muslims. He, like the Muslims of Afghanistan, sees himself as a Muslim first. He is not going to side with us over them. It doesn’t matter that he may privately believe they are reprehensible. Since they are Muslims, he sees it as Allah’s place, not his, to condemn them. In this life, in the sharia schema of Muslims versus non-Muslims, he is with his fellow Muslims — and would risk grave peril, both here and in the afterlife, were he to cross over to the other side.
On the Corner this week, Iraq vet David French complained that counterinsurgency had developed an undeserved reputation for being “touchy-feely” because of its close association with nation-building. His point is well taken. COIN, as he attests, involves “intense fighting” under conditions that are exceedingly dangerous — made intolerably dangerous, I would add, by the stringent rules of engagement imposed on our warriors, given the impossible task of wooing the Islamic population with one hand while they battle the Islamic enemy with the other. That our forces make such progress in the constraints under which they operate is an astonishing testament to their bravery and competence.
The problem is that COIN and nation-building, if they are to have a prayer, cannot succeed until after the enemy has been defeated. What wins hearts and minds is not showing how virtuous and decent we are — especially in a confrontation between civilizations with very different ideas about virtue and decency. Hearts and minds are won when the enemy’s will is broken. COIN and nation-building worked in postwar Germany and Japan because complete victory was achieved first. As Jed Babbin recounts, it did not work in Vietnam, where, as in the War on Terror, the enemy was never conquered and its state sponsors were permitted to fuel the fighting with impunity.
Victory is not a step that can be skipped. Its stark absence cannot be disguised by miniaturizing the enemy, by pretending it is an aberrant fringe of violent extremists. The Taliban enjoys broad popular support — or, at least, sympathy — because the Afghan public is more aligned with its beliefs than with ours. That makes the population the enemy. There is a reason why so many U.S. and allied troops are being attacked and killed in sneak attacks by the Afghan recruits they are trying to train. There is a reason why the Obama administration is negotiating with the Taliban — conceding that the Taliban won’t be defeated and must be accommodated — even as Americans are told that battling the Taliban is the reason our young men and women must remain in harm’s way.
It is madness.
Clearing the Air
By Paul Driessen
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Trying to correct all the disinformation about "mercury and air toxics" is a full-time job.
Ever since public, congressional and union anger and anxiety forced the Environmental Protection Agency to postpone action on its economy-strangling carbon dioxide rules, EPA has been on a take-no-prisoners crusade to impose other job-killing rules for electricity generating plants.
As President Obama said when America rejected cap-tax-and-trade, "there's more than one way to skin the cat." If Congress won't cooperate, his EPA will lead the charge. Energy prices will “skyrocket.” Companies that want to build coal-fired power plants will “go bankrupt.” His administration will “fundamentally transform” our nation’s energy, economic, industrial and social structure.
EPA’s proposed “mercury and air toxics” rules for power plants are built on the false premise that we are still breathing the smog, soot and poisons that shrouded London, England and Gary, Indiana sixty years ago. In reality, US air quality improved steadily after the 1970 Clean Air Act was enacted.
Moreover, since 1990, even as US coal use more than doubled, coal-fired power plant emissions declined even further: 58% for mercury, 67% for nitrogen oxides, 70% for particulates, 85% for sulfur dioxide – and just as significantly for most of the other 80 pollutants that EPA intends to cover with its 946-pages of draconian proposed regulations.
It’s time to clear the political air – and scrub out some of the toxic disinformation that EPA and its allies have been emitting for months, under a multi-million-dollar “public education” campaign that EPA has orchestrated and funded, to frighten people into supporting its new rules. PR firms, religious and civil rights groups, environmental activists and college students are eagerly propagating the myths.
EPA’s “most wanted” outlaw is mercury. But for Americans this villain is as real as Freddy or Norman Bates. To turn power plant mercury emissions into a mass killer, EPA cherry-picked studies and data, and ignored any that didn’t fit its “slasher” film script. As my colleague Dr. Willie Soon and I pointed out in our Wall Street Journal and Investor's Business Daily articles, US power plants account for just 0.5% of mercury emitted into North American’s air; the other 99.5% comes from natural and foreign sources.
Critics assailed our analysis, but the studies support us, not EPA – as is abundantly clear in Dr. Soon's 85-page report, available at www.AffordablePowerAlliance.org. The report and studies it cites fully support our conclusion that America’s fish are safe to eat (in part because they contain selenium and are thus low in biologically available methylmercury, mercury’s more toxic cousin), and blood mercury levels for American women and children are already below FDA’s and other agencies’ safe levels.
Not only are EPA’s mercury claims fraudulent. They are scaring people away from eating fish, which are rich in essential fatty acids. In other words, EPA is actively harming people’s nutrition and health.
One of the more bizarre criticisms of our analysis contends that mercury released in forest fires “originates from coal-burning power plants,” which supposedly shower the toxin onto trees, which release it back into the atmosphere during arboreal conflagrations. In fact, mercury is as abundant in the earth’s crust as silver and selenium. It is absorbed by trees through their roots – and their leaves, which absorb those 0.5% (power plant) and 99.5% (other) atmospheric mercury components through their stomata.
Another bizarre criticism is that mercury isn’t the issue. The real problem is ultra-fine (2.5 micron) soot particles. So now the “power plant mercury is poisoning babies and children” campaign was just a sideshow! Talk about changing the subject. Now, suddenly, the alleged health benefits and lives saved would come from controlling soot particles. That claim is as bogus as the anti-mercury scare stories.
Even EPA and NOAA data demonstrate that America’s air already meets EPA’s national standard, which is equivalent to disseminating an ounce of soot (about one and a quarter super-pulverized charcoal briquettes) across a volume of air one-half mile long, one-half mile wide and one story high. That’s less than you’re likely to get from sitting in front of a campfire, fireplace or wood-burning stove, inhaling airborne particulates, hydrocarbon gases and heavy metals. (Search the internet for Danish, EPA and Forest Service studies and advisories on these popular “organic” heating and cooking methods.)
Simply put, EPA’s proposed rules will impose huge costs – for few health or environmental benefits, beyond what we are already realizing through steadily declining emissions under existing regulations.
Besides bringing mythical health benefits, EPA claims its lower national emission standards will simply put all states and utility companies “on the same level playing field.” This pious rhetoric may be fine for states that get little electricity from coal. However, for states (especially manufacturing states) that burn coal to generate 48-98% of their electricity, the new rules will be job, economy and revenue killers.
Energy analyst Roger Bezdek estimates that utilities will have to spend over $130 billion to retrofit older plants, under the measly three year (2014) deadline that EPA is giving them, under a sweetheart court deal the agency worked out with radical environmental groups. On top of that, utilities will have to spend another $30 billion a year for operations, maintenance and extra fuel for the energy-intensive scrubbers and other equipment they will be forced to install.
Many companies simply cannot justify those huge costs for older power plants. Thus Dominion Power, American Electric Power and other utilities have announced that they will simply close dozens of generating units, representing tens of thousands of megawatts – enough to electrify tens of millions of homes and businesses. Illinois alone will lose nearly 3,500 MW of reliable, affordable, baseload electricity – with little but promises of intermittent pixie-dust wind turbine electricity to replace it.
Electricity costs are set to skyrocket, just as the President promised. Consumers can expect to pay at least 20% more in many states by 2014 or shortly thereafter. According to the Chicago Tribune, Illinois families and businesses will shell out 40-60% more! How’s that for an incentive to ramp up production and hire more workers? How’s that “hope and change” working out for families that had planned to fix the car, save for college and retirement, take a nice vacation, get that long-postponed surgery?
For a mid-sized hospital or factory that currently pays $500,000 annually for electricity (including peak-demand charges), those rate hikes could add $300,000 a year to its electricity bill. That’s equivalent to ten full-time entry-level employees … that now won't get hired, or will get laid off.
And it’s not just private businesses that will get hammered. As the Chi Trib notes, if the Chicago public school system wants to keep the lights on and computers running for two semesters, by 2014 it will get hit for an extra $2.7 million it doesn’t have, to pay for skyrocketing electricity costs.
Carry those costs through much of the US economy – especially the 26 states that get 48-98% of their electricity from coal-fired power plants – and we are talking about truly “fundamental transformations.” Millions will be laid off, millions more won't be hired, millions of jobs will be shipped overseas – and millions will endure brownouts, blackouts and social unrest.
EPA generally refuses to consider the economic effects of its regulations, except to insist that even its most oppressive rules will generate benefits “far in excess” of any expected costs. Perhaps it will at least consider the obvious, unavoidable and monumental adverse physical and mental health impacts of its rate hikes and layoffs – on nutrition, healthcare, depression, family violence and civil rights progress.
The Environmental Protection Agency has always had a horse-blinder attitude about environmental policy. Under Administrator Lisa Jackson, it has become a truly rogue agency.
It’s time for Congress, state legislatures, attorneys-general and courts to bring some balance and common sense back into the picture. Otherwise 9.1% unemployment – with Black and Hispanic unemployment even higher – will look like boom times.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Trying to correct all the disinformation about "mercury and air toxics" is a full-time job.
Ever since public, congressional and union anger and anxiety forced the Environmental Protection Agency to postpone action on its economy-strangling carbon dioxide rules, EPA has been on a take-no-prisoners crusade to impose other job-killing rules for electricity generating plants.
As President Obama said when America rejected cap-tax-and-trade, "there's more than one way to skin the cat." If Congress won't cooperate, his EPA will lead the charge. Energy prices will “skyrocket.” Companies that want to build coal-fired power plants will “go bankrupt.” His administration will “fundamentally transform” our nation’s energy, economic, industrial and social structure.
EPA’s proposed “mercury and air toxics” rules for power plants are built on the false premise that we are still breathing the smog, soot and poisons that shrouded London, England and Gary, Indiana sixty years ago. In reality, US air quality improved steadily after the 1970 Clean Air Act was enacted.
Moreover, since 1990, even as US coal use more than doubled, coal-fired power plant emissions declined even further: 58% for mercury, 67% for nitrogen oxides, 70% for particulates, 85% for sulfur dioxide – and just as significantly for most of the other 80 pollutants that EPA intends to cover with its 946-pages of draconian proposed regulations.
It’s time to clear the political air – and scrub out some of the toxic disinformation that EPA and its allies have been emitting for months, under a multi-million-dollar “public education” campaign that EPA has orchestrated and funded, to frighten people into supporting its new rules. PR firms, religious and civil rights groups, environmental activists and college students are eagerly propagating the myths.
EPA’s “most wanted” outlaw is mercury. But for Americans this villain is as real as Freddy or Norman Bates. To turn power plant mercury emissions into a mass killer, EPA cherry-picked studies and data, and ignored any that didn’t fit its “slasher” film script. As my colleague Dr. Willie Soon and I pointed out in our Wall Street Journal and Investor's Business Daily articles, US power plants account for just 0.5% of mercury emitted into North American’s air; the other 99.5% comes from natural and foreign sources.
Critics assailed our analysis, but the studies support us, not EPA – as is abundantly clear in Dr. Soon's 85-page report, available at www.AffordablePowerAlliance.org. The report and studies it cites fully support our conclusion that America’s fish are safe to eat (in part because they contain selenium and are thus low in biologically available methylmercury, mercury’s more toxic cousin), and blood mercury levels for American women and children are already below FDA’s and other agencies’ safe levels.
Not only are EPA’s mercury claims fraudulent. They are scaring people away from eating fish, which are rich in essential fatty acids. In other words, EPA is actively harming people’s nutrition and health.
One of the more bizarre criticisms of our analysis contends that mercury released in forest fires “originates from coal-burning power plants,” which supposedly shower the toxin onto trees, which release it back into the atmosphere during arboreal conflagrations. In fact, mercury is as abundant in the earth’s crust as silver and selenium. It is absorbed by trees through their roots – and their leaves, which absorb those 0.5% (power plant) and 99.5% (other) atmospheric mercury components through their stomata.
Another bizarre criticism is that mercury isn’t the issue. The real problem is ultra-fine (2.5 micron) soot particles. So now the “power plant mercury is poisoning babies and children” campaign was just a sideshow! Talk about changing the subject. Now, suddenly, the alleged health benefits and lives saved would come from controlling soot particles. That claim is as bogus as the anti-mercury scare stories.
Even EPA and NOAA data demonstrate that America’s air already meets EPA’s national standard, which is equivalent to disseminating an ounce of soot (about one and a quarter super-pulverized charcoal briquettes) across a volume of air one-half mile long, one-half mile wide and one story high. That’s less than you’re likely to get from sitting in front of a campfire, fireplace or wood-burning stove, inhaling airborne particulates, hydrocarbon gases and heavy metals. (Search the internet for Danish, EPA and Forest Service studies and advisories on these popular “organic” heating and cooking methods.)
Simply put, EPA’s proposed rules will impose huge costs – for few health or environmental benefits, beyond what we are already realizing through steadily declining emissions under existing regulations.
Besides bringing mythical health benefits, EPA claims its lower national emission standards will simply put all states and utility companies “on the same level playing field.” This pious rhetoric may be fine for states that get little electricity from coal. However, for states (especially manufacturing states) that burn coal to generate 48-98% of their electricity, the new rules will be job, economy and revenue killers.
Energy analyst Roger Bezdek estimates that utilities will have to spend over $130 billion to retrofit older plants, under the measly three year (2014) deadline that EPA is giving them, under a sweetheart court deal the agency worked out with radical environmental groups. On top of that, utilities will have to spend another $30 billion a year for operations, maintenance and extra fuel for the energy-intensive scrubbers and other equipment they will be forced to install.
Many companies simply cannot justify those huge costs for older power plants. Thus Dominion Power, American Electric Power and other utilities have announced that they will simply close dozens of generating units, representing tens of thousands of megawatts – enough to electrify tens of millions of homes and businesses. Illinois alone will lose nearly 3,500 MW of reliable, affordable, baseload electricity – with little but promises of intermittent pixie-dust wind turbine electricity to replace it.
Electricity costs are set to skyrocket, just as the President promised. Consumers can expect to pay at least 20% more in many states by 2014 or shortly thereafter. According to the Chicago Tribune, Illinois families and businesses will shell out 40-60% more! How’s that for an incentive to ramp up production and hire more workers? How’s that “hope and change” working out for families that had planned to fix the car, save for college and retirement, take a nice vacation, get that long-postponed surgery?
For a mid-sized hospital or factory that currently pays $500,000 annually for electricity (including peak-demand charges), those rate hikes could add $300,000 a year to its electricity bill. That’s equivalent to ten full-time entry-level employees … that now won't get hired, or will get laid off.
And it’s not just private businesses that will get hammered. As the Chi Trib notes, if the Chicago public school system wants to keep the lights on and computers running for two semesters, by 2014 it will get hit for an extra $2.7 million it doesn’t have, to pay for skyrocketing electricity costs.
Carry those costs through much of the US economy – especially the 26 states that get 48-98% of their electricity from coal-fired power plants – and we are talking about truly “fundamental transformations.” Millions will be laid off, millions more won't be hired, millions of jobs will be shipped overseas – and millions will endure brownouts, blackouts and social unrest.
EPA generally refuses to consider the economic effects of its regulations, except to insist that even its most oppressive rules will generate benefits “far in excess” of any expected costs. Perhaps it will at least consider the obvious, unavoidable and monumental adverse physical and mental health impacts of its rate hikes and layoffs – on nutrition, healthcare, depression, family violence and civil rights progress.
The Environmental Protection Agency has always had a horse-blinder attitude about environmental policy. Under Administrator Lisa Jackson, it has become a truly rogue agency.
It’s time for Congress, state legislatures, attorneys-general and courts to bring some balance and common sense back into the picture. Otherwise 9.1% unemployment – with Black and Hispanic unemployment even higher – will look like boom times.
Friday, June 24, 2011
The Reckless Folly of the "Undocumented Immigrant"
By Michelle Malkin
Friday, June 24, 2011
With great fanfare and elite media sympathy, Jose Antonio Vargas publicly declared himself an "undocumented immigrant" this week. "Undocumented" my you-know-what. In the felony-friendly pages of The New York Crimes -- er, Times -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist turned illegal-alien activist spilled the beans on all the illegal IDs he amassed over the years. He had documents coming out of his ears.
The Times featured full-color photos of Vargas' fake document trove -- including a fake passport with a fake name, a fake green card and a Social Security card his grandfather doctored for him at a Kinko's. He committed perjury repeatedly on federal I-9 employment eligibility forms. In 2002, while pursuing his journalism career goals, an immigration lawyer told him he needed to accept the consequences of his law-breaking and return to his native Philippines.
Following the rules would have meant a 10-year bar to reentry into America. Making false claims of citizenship is a felony offense. Document fraud is a felony offense.
Vargas, who frames himself as a helpless victim, freely chose instead to secure yet more dummy documents. He used a friend's address to obtain an Oregon driver's license under false pretenses. It gave him an eight-year golden ticket to travel by car, board trains and airplanes, work at prestigious newspapers, and even gain access to the White House -- where crack Secret Service agents allowed him to attend a state dinner using his bogus Social Security number.
At least Vargas tells the truth when he says he's not alone. Go visit a 7-11 in the D.C. suburbs. Or the countless vendors in MacArthur Park in East L.A. Or any of the 19 cities in 11 states from Massachusetts to Ohio to Kentucky where a massive, Mexico-based "highly sophisticated and violent" fraudulent-document trafficking ring operated until February 2011. "Undocumented workers" and "undocumented immigrants" have plenty of documents.
The persistent use of these open-borders euphemisms to describe Vargas and countless millions like him is a perfect illumination of the agenda-driven, dominant progressive media.
They're as activist inside their newsrooms as Vargas is out in the open now. Bleeding-heart editors were hoaxed by a prominent colleague, exposed to liability, and yet still champion his serial subversion of the law. San Francisco Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein bragged that he was "duped" by Vargas, but endorses his "subterfuge" because Vargas' lobbying campaign for the illegal-alien student bailout known as the DREAM Act "just might lubricate the politically tarred-up wheels of government and help craft sane immigration policy."
Who's insane? The Vargas deceit is not an object lesson about America's failure to show compassion. It's another stark reminder of America's dangerous failure to learn from 9/11.
Time and again, security experts have warned about how jihadists have exploited lax immigration and ID enforcement. Driver's licenses are gateways into the American mainstream. They allow residents to establish an identity and gain a foothold into their communities. They help you open bank accounts, enter secure facilities, board planes, and do things like drive tractor-trailers carrying hazardous materials.
It's been nearly 10 years since several of the 19 9/11 hijackers operated in the country using hundreds of illicitly obtained fake driver's licenses and IDs. Most states tightened licensing rules, yet Vargas easily obtained a driver's license not only in Oregon, but more recently in Washington State. He again used a friend's residence to pass muster. Washington State's licensing bureaucracy still does not check citizenship. The man sitting in the White House campaigned to keep driver's license laws as loose as possible for the open-borders lobby. He appointed illegal-alien lobbyists to top federal immigration positions. His head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement just signed a memo pushing the DREAM Act through by administrative fiat. And the privacy of illegal aliens still trumps national security.
I ask again: Who's insane?
Vargas believes his sob story is an argument for giving up on immigration enforcement and passing a mass amnesty. It's a sob story, all right. Homeland security officials across the country should be weeping at the open mockery Vargas and his enablers have made of the law.
Friday, June 24, 2011
With great fanfare and elite media sympathy, Jose Antonio Vargas publicly declared himself an "undocumented immigrant" this week. "Undocumented" my you-know-what. In the felony-friendly pages of The New York Crimes -- er, Times -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist turned illegal-alien activist spilled the beans on all the illegal IDs he amassed over the years. He had documents coming out of his ears.
The Times featured full-color photos of Vargas' fake document trove -- including a fake passport with a fake name, a fake green card and a Social Security card his grandfather doctored for him at a Kinko's. He committed perjury repeatedly on federal I-9 employment eligibility forms. In 2002, while pursuing his journalism career goals, an immigration lawyer told him he needed to accept the consequences of his law-breaking and return to his native Philippines.
Following the rules would have meant a 10-year bar to reentry into America. Making false claims of citizenship is a felony offense. Document fraud is a felony offense.
Vargas, who frames himself as a helpless victim, freely chose instead to secure yet more dummy documents. He used a friend's address to obtain an Oregon driver's license under false pretenses. It gave him an eight-year golden ticket to travel by car, board trains and airplanes, work at prestigious newspapers, and even gain access to the White House -- where crack Secret Service agents allowed him to attend a state dinner using his bogus Social Security number.
At least Vargas tells the truth when he says he's not alone. Go visit a 7-11 in the D.C. suburbs. Or the countless vendors in MacArthur Park in East L.A. Or any of the 19 cities in 11 states from Massachusetts to Ohio to Kentucky where a massive, Mexico-based "highly sophisticated and violent" fraudulent-document trafficking ring operated until February 2011. "Undocumented workers" and "undocumented immigrants" have plenty of documents.
The persistent use of these open-borders euphemisms to describe Vargas and countless millions like him is a perfect illumination of the agenda-driven, dominant progressive media.
They're as activist inside their newsrooms as Vargas is out in the open now. Bleeding-heart editors were hoaxed by a prominent colleague, exposed to liability, and yet still champion his serial subversion of the law. San Francisco Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein bragged that he was "duped" by Vargas, but endorses his "subterfuge" because Vargas' lobbying campaign for the illegal-alien student bailout known as the DREAM Act "just might lubricate the politically tarred-up wheels of government and help craft sane immigration policy."
Who's insane? The Vargas deceit is not an object lesson about America's failure to show compassion. It's another stark reminder of America's dangerous failure to learn from 9/11.
Time and again, security experts have warned about how jihadists have exploited lax immigration and ID enforcement. Driver's licenses are gateways into the American mainstream. They allow residents to establish an identity and gain a foothold into their communities. They help you open bank accounts, enter secure facilities, board planes, and do things like drive tractor-trailers carrying hazardous materials.
It's been nearly 10 years since several of the 19 9/11 hijackers operated in the country using hundreds of illicitly obtained fake driver's licenses and IDs. Most states tightened licensing rules, yet Vargas easily obtained a driver's license not only in Oregon, but more recently in Washington State. He again used a friend's residence to pass muster. Washington State's licensing bureaucracy still does not check citizenship. The man sitting in the White House campaigned to keep driver's license laws as loose as possible for the open-borders lobby. He appointed illegal-alien lobbyists to top federal immigration positions. His head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement just signed a memo pushing the DREAM Act through by administrative fiat. And the privacy of illegal aliens still trumps national security.
I ask again: Who's insane?
Vargas believes his sob story is an argument for giving up on immigration enforcement and passing a mass amnesty. It's a sob story, all right. Homeland security officials across the country should be weeping at the open mockery Vargas and his enablers have made of the law.
How the Democrats Nearly Destroyed the Economy
By Mona Charen
Friday, June 24, 2011
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. -- Winston Churchill
There is history -- a chronicle of human events -- and then there is perceived history. So often, the two are wildly at odds.
In 1963, a popular Democratic president was assassinated by a Marxist named Oswald, who had actually defected to the Soviet Union and returned to the U.S. with a Soviet wife, was an active member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and had attempted to assassinate a right-wing general named Edwin Walker earlier in the year.
Yet those who write history found these facts inconvenient. They created a different history in which the "atmosphere of hate" in the southern city of Dallas, Texas, led to the terrible political violence. In other words, it was political conservatism that led to John F. Kennedy's assassination. This perceived history was recycled as recently as the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. ABC's Christiane Amanpour, interviewing Jean Kennedy Smith, noted that the Kennedy assassination was "eerily relevant" and asked Kennedy to evaluate the "political atmosphere" in the country today.
Starting just a few years after the Kennedy assassination, American liberals began to consider anti-communism a kind of mental disorder. Hostility to communism was akin to racism, sexism and other character flaws. Reagan's description of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" cemented liberal suspicions that Reagan was a dangerous buffoon. Yet starting in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, liberals began to find their anti-anti-communism embarrassing. And so they created a perceived history -- one in which the Cold War was a time of consensus, a time when, as former Sen. Bill Bradley put it, "We knew where we stood on foreign policy."
More recently we've witnessed the creation of new historical narrative about the financial crisis of 2008. The perceived history, eagerly peddled by liberals and Democrats, is that the crash of 2008 was the result of Wall Street greed. It was unregulated capitalism that brought us to the brink of financial meltdown, the Democrats insisted. And they codified their manufactured history in a law, the Dodd-Frank Act, that completely avoided the true problem.
It's both surprising and gratifying, therefore, to report that a great revisionist history has just been published by none other than a New York Times reporter, Gretchen Morgenson, and a financial analyst, Joshua Rosner.
In "Reckless Endangerment," Morgenson and Rosner offer considerable censure for reckless bankers, lax rating agencies, captured regulators and unscrupulous businessmen. But the greatest responsibility for the collapse of the housing market and the near "Armageddon" of the American economy belongs to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and to the politicians who created and protected them. With a couple of prominent exceptions, the politicians were Democrats claiming to do good for the poor. Along the way, they enriched themselves and their friends, stuffed their campaign coffers, and resisted all attempts to enforce market discipline. When the inevitable collapse arrived, the entire economy suffered, but no one more than the poor.
Jim Johnson, adviser to Walter Mondale and John Kerry, amassed a personal fortune estimated at $100 million during his nine years as CEO of Fannie Mae. "Under Johnson," Morgenson and Rosner write, "Fannie Mae led the way in encouraging loose lending practices among the banks whose loans the company bought. A Pied Piper of the financial sector, Johnson led both the private and public sectors down a path that led directly to the credit crisis of 2008."
Fannie Mae lied about its profits, intimidated adversaries, bought off members of Congress with lavish contributions, hired (and thereby co-opted) academics, purchased political ads (through its foundation) and stacked congressional hearings with friendly bankers, community activists and advocacy groups (including ACORN). Fannie Mae also hired the friends and relations of key members of Congress (including Rep. Barney Frank's partner).
"Reckless Endangerment" includes the Clinton administration's contribution to the home-ownership catastrophe. Clinton had claimed that dramatically increasing homeownership would boost the economy, instead "in just a few short years, all of the venerable rules governing the relationship between borrower and lender went out the window, starting with ... the requirement that a borrower put down a substantial amount of cash in a property, verify his income, and demonstrate an ability to service his debts."
"Reckless Endangerment" utterly deflates the perceived history of the 2008 crash. Yes, there was greed -- when is there not? But it was government distortions of markets -- not "unregulated capitalism" -- that led the economy to disaster.
Friday, June 24, 2011
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. -- Winston Churchill
There is history -- a chronicle of human events -- and then there is perceived history. So often, the two are wildly at odds.
In 1963, a popular Democratic president was assassinated by a Marxist named Oswald, who had actually defected to the Soviet Union and returned to the U.S. with a Soviet wife, was an active member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and had attempted to assassinate a right-wing general named Edwin Walker earlier in the year.
Yet those who write history found these facts inconvenient. They created a different history in which the "atmosphere of hate" in the southern city of Dallas, Texas, led to the terrible political violence. In other words, it was political conservatism that led to John F. Kennedy's assassination. This perceived history was recycled as recently as the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. ABC's Christiane Amanpour, interviewing Jean Kennedy Smith, noted that the Kennedy assassination was "eerily relevant" and asked Kennedy to evaluate the "political atmosphere" in the country today.
Starting just a few years after the Kennedy assassination, American liberals began to consider anti-communism a kind of mental disorder. Hostility to communism was akin to racism, sexism and other character flaws. Reagan's description of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" cemented liberal suspicions that Reagan was a dangerous buffoon. Yet starting in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, liberals began to find their anti-anti-communism embarrassing. And so they created a perceived history -- one in which the Cold War was a time of consensus, a time when, as former Sen. Bill Bradley put it, "We knew where we stood on foreign policy."
More recently we've witnessed the creation of new historical narrative about the financial crisis of 2008. The perceived history, eagerly peddled by liberals and Democrats, is that the crash of 2008 was the result of Wall Street greed. It was unregulated capitalism that brought us to the brink of financial meltdown, the Democrats insisted. And they codified their manufactured history in a law, the Dodd-Frank Act, that completely avoided the true problem.
It's both surprising and gratifying, therefore, to report that a great revisionist history has just been published by none other than a New York Times reporter, Gretchen Morgenson, and a financial analyst, Joshua Rosner.
In "Reckless Endangerment," Morgenson and Rosner offer considerable censure for reckless bankers, lax rating agencies, captured regulators and unscrupulous businessmen. But the greatest responsibility for the collapse of the housing market and the near "Armageddon" of the American economy belongs to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and to the politicians who created and protected them. With a couple of prominent exceptions, the politicians were Democrats claiming to do good for the poor. Along the way, they enriched themselves and their friends, stuffed their campaign coffers, and resisted all attempts to enforce market discipline. When the inevitable collapse arrived, the entire economy suffered, but no one more than the poor.
Jim Johnson, adviser to Walter Mondale and John Kerry, amassed a personal fortune estimated at $100 million during his nine years as CEO of Fannie Mae. "Under Johnson," Morgenson and Rosner write, "Fannie Mae led the way in encouraging loose lending practices among the banks whose loans the company bought. A Pied Piper of the financial sector, Johnson led both the private and public sectors down a path that led directly to the credit crisis of 2008."
Fannie Mae lied about its profits, intimidated adversaries, bought off members of Congress with lavish contributions, hired (and thereby co-opted) academics, purchased political ads (through its foundation) and stacked congressional hearings with friendly bankers, community activists and advocacy groups (including ACORN). Fannie Mae also hired the friends and relations of key members of Congress (including Rep. Barney Frank's partner).
"Reckless Endangerment" includes the Clinton administration's contribution to the home-ownership catastrophe. Clinton had claimed that dramatically increasing homeownership would boost the economy, instead "in just a few short years, all of the venerable rules governing the relationship between borrower and lender went out the window, starting with ... the requirement that a borrower put down a substantial amount of cash in a property, verify his income, and demonstrate an ability to service his debts."
"Reckless Endangerment" utterly deflates the perceived history of the 2008 crash. Yes, there was greed -- when is there not? But it was government distortions of markets -- not "unregulated capitalism" -- that led the economy to disaster.
Who Takes Us to War?
We need a set of rules governing the legality of any future conflicts.
Charles Krauthammer
Friday, June 24, 2011
Is the Libya war legal? Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, it is not. President Obama has exceeded the 90-day period to receive retroactive authorization from Congress.
But things are not so simple. No president should accept — and no president from Nixon on has accepted — the constitutionality of the WPR, passed unilaterally by Congress over a presidential veto. On the other hand, every president should have the constitutional decency to get some congressional approval when he takes the country to war.
The model for such constitutional restraint is — yes, Senator Obama — George W. Bush. Not once but twice (Afghanistan and then Iraq) did Bush seek and receive congressional authorization, as his father did for the Gulf War. On Libya, Obama did nothing of the sort. He claimed exemption from the WPR on the grounds that America is not really engaged in “hostilities” in Libya.
To deploy an excuse so transparently ridiculous isn’t just a show of contempt for Congress and for the intelligence of the American people. It manages additionally to undermine the presidency’s own war-making prerogatives by implicitly conceding that if the Libya war really did involve hostilities, the president would indeed be subject to the WPR.
The worst of all possible worlds: Insult Congress, weaken the presidency. A neat trick.
But the question of war-making power is larger than one president’s blundering. We have a core constitutional problem. In balancing war-making power between Congress and the presidency, the Constitution grants Congress the exclusive right to declare war.
Problem is: No one declares war anymore. Since World War II, we’ve been involved in five major wars, and many minor engagements, without ever declaring war.
But it’s not just us. No one does. Declarations of war are a relic of a more aristocratic era, a time when, for example, an American secretary of state closed his department’s code-cracking office because “gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.”
The power to declare war has become, through no fault of anyone, archaic and obsolete. Taken literally, it is as useless as granting Congress the right to regulate horse-and-buggies.
We need, therefore, some new way to fulfill the original constitutional intent. The WPR was a good try, but it failed because it was the work of Congress alone, which tried to shove it down the throat of the executive, which, in turn, for over three decades has resisted it as an encroachment on the inherent powers of the commander-in-chief.
Moreover, the judiciary, which under our system is the ultimate arbiter of constitutionality, has consistently refused to adjudicate this “political question” (to quote one appellate court judge) and thus resolve with finality the separation-of-powers dispute between the other two co-equal branches.
We therefore need a new constitutional understanding, mutually agreed to by both political branches, that translates the war-declaration power into a more modern equivalent:
First, formalize the recent tradition of resolutions (Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq) authorizing the initiation of war and recognize them as the functional equivalent of a declaration of war.
Second, establish special procedures for operations requiring immediacy and surprise, for example, notification of the House speaker, Senate majority leader, and their opposition counterparts, in secret if necessary.
Third, in such cases, require retroactive authorization by the full Congress within an agreed period — but without any further congressional involvement (contra the War Powers Resolution). The Constitution’s original grant of power to Congress was for a one-time authorization, with no further congressional constraint on executive war-making except, of course, through the power of the purse.
The Libya adventure is too much of a mess to expect mutual agreement on this kind of constitutional compromise now. Nor is Obama, having bollixed the war-powers issue in every possible way, the man to negotiate this deal.
Resolution of this issue will require time, dispassion, and therefore inevitably a commission — say, chaired by a former president of each party, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and consisting of former legislators, judges, and generals, with perhaps a couple of historians and not more than one international lawyer thrown in.
Then submit the commission’s proposed new law for approval by Congress and the president. And have David McCullough read the final text aloud at the signing ceremony. That will make it official.
We need a set of rules governing the legality of any future war. This will allow us to concentrate on the most important question: its wisdom.
Charles Krauthammer
Friday, June 24, 2011
Is the Libya war legal? Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, it is not. President Obama has exceeded the 90-day period to receive retroactive authorization from Congress.
But things are not so simple. No president should accept — and no president from Nixon on has accepted — the constitutionality of the WPR, passed unilaterally by Congress over a presidential veto. On the other hand, every president should have the constitutional decency to get some congressional approval when he takes the country to war.
The model for such constitutional restraint is — yes, Senator Obama — George W. Bush. Not once but twice (Afghanistan and then Iraq) did Bush seek and receive congressional authorization, as his father did for the Gulf War. On Libya, Obama did nothing of the sort. He claimed exemption from the WPR on the grounds that America is not really engaged in “hostilities” in Libya.
To deploy an excuse so transparently ridiculous isn’t just a show of contempt for Congress and for the intelligence of the American people. It manages additionally to undermine the presidency’s own war-making prerogatives by implicitly conceding that if the Libya war really did involve hostilities, the president would indeed be subject to the WPR.
The worst of all possible worlds: Insult Congress, weaken the presidency. A neat trick.
But the question of war-making power is larger than one president’s blundering. We have a core constitutional problem. In balancing war-making power between Congress and the presidency, the Constitution grants Congress the exclusive right to declare war.
Problem is: No one declares war anymore. Since World War II, we’ve been involved in five major wars, and many minor engagements, without ever declaring war.
But it’s not just us. No one does. Declarations of war are a relic of a more aristocratic era, a time when, for example, an American secretary of state closed his department’s code-cracking office because “gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.”
The power to declare war has become, through no fault of anyone, archaic and obsolete. Taken literally, it is as useless as granting Congress the right to regulate horse-and-buggies.
We need, therefore, some new way to fulfill the original constitutional intent. The WPR was a good try, but it failed because it was the work of Congress alone, which tried to shove it down the throat of the executive, which, in turn, for over three decades has resisted it as an encroachment on the inherent powers of the commander-in-chief.
Moreover, the judiciary, which under our system is the ultimate arbiter of constitutionality, has consistently refused to adjudicate this “political question” (to quote one appellate court judge) and thus resolve with finality the separation-of-powers dispute between the other two co-equal branches.
We therefore need a new constitutional understanding, mutually agreed to by both political branches, that translates the war-declaration power into a more modern equivalent:
First, formalize the recent tradition of resolutions (Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq) authorizing the initiation of war and recognize them as the functional equivalent of a declaration of war.
Second, establish special procedures for operations requiring immediacy and surprise, for example, notification of the House speaker, Senate majority leader, and their opposition counterparts, in secret if necessary.
Third, in such cases, require retroactive authorization by the full Congress within an agreed period — but without any further congressional involvement (contra the War Powers Resolution). The Constitution’s original grant of power to Congress was for a one-time authorization, with no further congressional constraint on executive war-making except, of course, through the power of the purse.
The Libya adventure is too much of a mess to expect mutual agreement on this kind of constitutional compromise now. Nor is Obama, having bollixed the war-powers issue in every possible way, the man to negotiate this deal.
Resolution of this issue will require time, dispassion, and therefore inevitably a commission — say, chaired by a former president of each party, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and consisting of former legislators, judges, and generals, with perhaps a couple of historians and not more than one international lawyer thrown in.
Then submit the commission’s proposed new law for approval by Congress and the president. And have David McCullough read the final text aloud at the signing ceremony. That will make it official.
We need a set of rules governing the legality of any future war. This will allow us to concentrate on the most important question: its wisdom.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
The World's Best Policeman
By Jeff Jacoby
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Should the United States be the world's policeman?
According to a new Rasmussen poll, only a narrow sliver of US voters -- 11 percent -- want America to be the nation chiefly responsible for policing the planet and trying to maintain international order. An overwhelming 74 percent reject the idea.
These aren't anomalous results. When Rasmussen polled the same question in 2009, the results were virtually identical. Gallup regularly asks how large a role -- leading, major, minor, or none -- the United States should take in solving international problems; only a small minority of respondents ever favors the "leading" role.
America may be the world's "indispensable nation," as Bill Clinton said in his Second Inaugural Address, but most Americans, most of the time, are uncomfortable with the idea of US global hegemony. John Quincy Adams wrote long ago that America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." As the polls consistently suggest, that isolationist sentiment still resonates strongly.
But in Adams's day America was not the mightiest, wealthiest, and most influential nation on the face of the earth. Today it is. The United States is the world's only superpower, and if we shirk the role of global policeman, no one else will fill it. By nature Americans are not warmongering empire-builders; their uneasiness about dominating other countries reflects a national modesty that in many ways is admirable -- and that belies the caricature of Uncle Sam as arrogant bully or "great Satan."
Nevertheless, with great power come great responsibilities, and sometimes one of those responsibilities is to destroy monsters: to take down tyrants who victimize the innocent and flout the rules of civilization. If neighborhoods and cities need policing, it stands to reason the world does too. And just as local criminals thrive when cops look the other way, so do criminals on the world stage.
Nazi Germany had conquered half of Europe and Japan was brutalizing much of Asia by the time America finally entered World War II. If America hadn't rescued Kuwait from Saddam Hussein in 1990, no one else would have, either. If America hadn't led NATO in halting Serbia's ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, no one else would have, either. If America hadn't faced down the Soviet Union during the long years of the Cold War, no one else would have, either -- and hundreds of millions of human beings might still be trapped behind the Iron Curtain.
There is no realistic alternative to America as the world's policeman. It clearly isn't a job the United Nations can do. Can an organization that makes no distinction between tyranny and democracy rein in the world's monsters? As the UN's bloody trail of failure from Bosnia to Somalia to Rwanda makes clear, UN "peacekeeping" offers no protection against predators.
None of this is to say that America-as-Globocop is a perfect solution to the world's ills, nor that the United States hasn't made many grievous mistakes in its actions abroad. But as the historian Max Boot argues, "America's occasional missteps should not lead us to abdicate our indispensable role, any more than the NYPD should stop doing its vital work, simply because cops occasionally do the wrong thing. On balance, the NYPD still does far more good than harm, and so does the United States of America."
To say that America must be the world's policeman is not to call for waging endless wars against all the world's bad actors. Police officers carry weapons, but they fire them only infrequently. The cops' main function is not to gun down criminals, but to suppress crime and reduce fear by patrolling the streets and maintaining a visible presence in the community. Similarly, a well-policed world is one with less combat, not more. The purpose of America's nuclear umbrella and its global network of military bases is not to foment war on all fronts, but to prevent it -- by deterring aggression, maintaining the flow of commerce, and upholding human rights.
We don't do it perfectly, not by a long shot. We don't always live up to our own standards, we sometimes confuse police work with social work, and we are often rewarded not with thanks but with resentment. A policeman's lot is not a happy one. It is, however, an essential one. Our world needs a policeman. Whether most Americans like it or not, only their indispensable nation is fit for the job.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Should the United States be the world's policeman?
According to a new Rasmussen poll, only a narrow sliver of US voters -- 11 percent -- want America to be the nation chiefly responsible for policing the planet and trying to maintain international order. An overwhelming 74 percent reject the idea.
These aren't anomalous results. When Rasmussen polled the same question in 2009, the results were virtually identical. Gallup regularly asks how large a role -- leading, major, minor, or none -- the United States should take in solving international problems; only a small minority of respondents ever favors the "leading" role.
America may be the world's "indispensable nation," as Bill Clinton said in his Second Inaugural Address, but most Americans, most of the time, are uncomfortable with the idea of US global hegemony. John Quincy Adams wrote long ago that America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." As the polls consistently suggest, that isolationist sentiment still resonates strongly.
But in Adams's day America was not the mightiest, wealthiest, and most influential nation on the face of the earth. Today it is. The United States is the world's only superpower, and if we shirk the role of global policeman, no one else will fill it. By nature Americans are not warmongering empire-builders; their uneasiness about dominating other countries reflects a national modesty that in many ways is admirable -- and that belies the caricature of Uncle Sam as arrogant bully or "great Satan."
Nevertheless, with great power come great responsibilities, and sometimes one of those responsibilities is to destroy monsters: to take down tyrants who victimize the innocent and flout the rules of civilization. If neighborhoods and cities need policing, it stands to reason the world does too. And just as local criminals thrive when cops look the other way, so do criminals on the world stage.
Nazi Germany had conquered half of Europe and Japan was brutalizing much of Asia by the time America finally entered World War II. If America hadn't rescued Kuwait from Saddam Hussein in 1990, no one else would have, either. If America hadn't led NATO in halting Serbia's ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, no one else would have, either. If America hadn't faced down the Soviet Union during the long years of the Cold War, no one else would have, either -- and hundreds of millions of human beings might still be trapped behind the Iron Curtain.
There is no realistic alternative to America as the world's policeman. It clearly isn't a job the United Nations can do. Can an organization that makes no distinction between tyranny and democracy rein in the world's monsters? As the UN's bloody trail of failure from Bosnia to Somalia to Rwanda makes clear, UN "peacekeeping" offers no protection against predators.
None of this is to say that America-as-Globocop is a perfect solution to the world's ills, nor that the United States hasn't made many grievous mistakes in its actions abroad. But as the historian Max Boot argues, "America's occasional missteps should not lead us to abdicate our indispensable role, any more than the NYPD should stop doing its vital work, simply because cops occasionally do the wrong thing. On balance, the NYPD still does far more good than harm, and so does the United States of America."
To say that America must be the world's policeman is not to call for waging endless wars against all the world's bad actors. Police officers carry weapons, but they fire them only infrequently. The cops' main function is not to gun down criminals, but to suppress crime and reduce fear by patrolling the streets and maintaining a visible presence in the community. Similarly, a well-policed world is one with less combat, not more. The purpose of America's nuclear umbrella and its global network of military bases is not to foment war on all fronts, but to prevent it -- by deterring aggression, maintaining the flow of commerce, and upholding human rights.
We don't do it perfectly, not by a long shot. We don't always live up to our own standards, we sometimes confuse police work with social work, and we are often rewarded not with thanks but with resentment. A policeman's lot is not a happy one. It is, however, an essential one. Our world needs a policeman. Whether most Americans like it or not, only their indispensable nation is fit for the job.
Conservatives and the "N" Word
By J.D. Thorpe
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
The “N” word is a deplorable utterance that has elucidated the ignorance of a certain demographic in our country for many decades. We should condemn and reeducate these individuals whenever they use this hurtful word. It is simply unacceptable in America for liberals to continue to refer to conservatives as Nazis.
Last week at a union protest in Trenton the Vice President of Communications Workers of America, Chris Shelton, came close to using this barbaric language, but exercised slightly more tact by only referring to New Jersey’s Governor as “Adolf Christie.”
But the insinuation was still evident. This type of vituperative language from the left is not uncommon. Liberals have a long and sordid history of attempting to inculcate society with the idea that American conservatism is synonymous with Nazism.
Yet ironically the philosophical origins of Nazism are much more closely aligned with the views of today’s progressive liberals. Both hold highly statist views on the role of government in society – including a vehement hatred of free enterprise.
On the opposite side, two of the main branches of conservatism – paleoconservatism and libertarianism – find the origin of their free-market beliefs in the works of economic luminaries Ludwig Von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and Milton Friedman.
Not only did these economists/thinkers espouse the polar opposite views from the Nazis; they all belonged to a religion that was not quite tolerated in Nazi Germany.
In fact, Mises immigrated to America in 1940 over concern that the Nazis would take over Switzerland where he was teaching at the time.
Despite overwhelming evidence that refutes their claims, liberals continue their mission to besmirch conservatives with this dishonest campaign.
Throughout Obama’s presidency, good-natured tea party activists – individuals who advocate for fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government – have drawn constant comparisons to Nazis.
In March, union protestors in Madison held signs juxtaposing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s picture with Hitler’s.
The most famous example of liberal slander on this front occurred at the 1968 Democratic National Convention when Gore Vidal called William Buckley a “crypto-Nazi,” sparking Buckley’s famous retort, “Now listen you queer. Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.”
While this might not be Mr. Buckley’s most eloquent moment, it proves that there was a time in our history when conservatives fought back against these allegations on the grounds of their utter absurdity.
Like Buckley, today’s conservatives promote the basic tenants of a free society. Our views are in stark contrast to the massive, leviathan government sought by the Nazis and liberals.
In order to correct this inaccurate stereotype, we must address the problem at its core: the misguided way we’ve been taught to view political ideologies.
The ideological spectrum must be restructured. Instead of a line that runs from right to left, ideologies should be thought of as existing somewhere between the statist and anti-statist extremes. This would place Communism, Socialism, Nazism, and Liberalism on one side while conservatives would land on the opposite side with its other limited government cousins.
Based on this construct, conservatives will never be confused or maligned with Nazism again. And more importantly, liberals’ archaic way of thinking will be left in the past where all ignorant views belong.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
The “N” word is a deplorable utterance that has elucidated the ignorance of a certain demographic in our country for many decades. We should condemn and reeducate these individuals whenever they use this hurtful word. It is simply unacceptable in America for liberals to continue to refer to conservatives as Nazis.
Last week at a union protest in Trenton the Vice President of Communications Workers of America, Chris Shelton, came close to using this barbaric language, but exercised slightly more tact by only referring to New Jersey’s Governor as “Adolf Christie.”
But the insinuation was still evident. This type of vituperative language from the left is not uncommon. Liberals have a long and sordid history of attempting to inculcate society with the idea that American conservatism is synonymous with Nazism.
Yet ironically the philosophical origins of Nazism are much more closely aligned with the views of today’s progressive liberals. Both hold highly statist views on the role of government in society – including a vehement hatred of free enterprise.
On the opposite side, two of the main branches of conservatism – paleoconservatism and libertarianism – find the origin of their free-market beliefs in the works of economic luminaries Ludwig Von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and Milton Friedman.
Not only did these economists/thinkers espouse the polar opposite views from the Nazis; they all belonged to a religion that was not quite tolerated in Nazi Germany.
In fact, Mises immigrated to America in 1940 over concern that the Nazis would take over Switzerland where he was teaching at the time.
Despite overwhelming evidence that refutes their claims, liberals continue their mission to besmirch conservatives with this dishonest campaign.
Throughout Obama’s presidency, good-natured tea party activists – individuals who advocate for fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government – have drawn constant comparisons to Nazis.
In March, union protestors in Madison held signs juxtaposing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s picture with Hitler’s.
The most famous example of liberal slander on this front occurred at the 1968 Democratic National Convention when Gore Vidal called William Buckley a “crypto-Nazi,” sparking Buckley’s famous retort, “Now listen you queer. Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.”
While this might not be Mr. Buckley’s most eloquent moment, it proves that there was a time in our history when conservatives fought back against these allegations on the grounds of their utter absurdity.
Like Buckley, today’s conservatives promote the basic tenants of a free society. Our views are in stark contrast to the massive, leviathan government sought by the Nazis and liberals.
In order to correct this inaccurate stereotype, we must address the problem at its core: the misguided way we’ve been taught to view political ideologies.
The ideological spectrum must be restructured. Instead of a line that runs from right to left, ideologies should be thought of as existing somewhere between the statist and anti-statist extremes. This would place Communism, Socialism, Nazism, and Liberalism on one side while conservatives would land on the opposite side with its other limited government cousins.
Based on this construct, conservatives will never be confused or maligned with Nazism again. And more importantly, liberals’ archaic way of thinking will be left in the past where all ignorant views belong.
Big Media Suicide Compact
By Cal Thomas
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Is there a profit-making business -- other than TV networks and The New York Times -- that so disrespects its audience it works overtime to offend them?
What other business metaphorically flips the bird to those who don't subscribe to their social, cultural and political worldview? That is precisely what big media does to a large number of potential viewers and subscribers.
Three recent examples: 1) The inexplicable editing of the Pledge of Allegiance during the opening of last Sunday's U.S. Open on NBC; 2) the naming of ultra-liberal Norah O'Donnell of MSNBC as CBS News' new chief White House correspondent, in time for the 2012 election; and 3) last Sunday's New York Times, which appeared to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Washington Blade, a leading newspaper for the LGBT community.
Let's take them one at a time.
Someone had to decide that "under God" and "indivisible" were extraneous and needed to be cut from the U.S. Open's patriotic montage. Who was that person? What are his/her ideological and religious beliefs? What editor or manager decided it was OK to air the edited Pledge of Allegiance? Didn't anyone at NBC, which later apologized on air to "those of you who were offended by it," anticipate the reaction? Will heads roll? Probably not. Compare this to comedian Tracy Morgan's crude remarks about gay people in a stand-up act not aired on NBC. His colleagues roundly denounced him and Tina Fey, creator/star of NBC's "30 Rock," suggested that without his gay and lesbian co-workers, Morgan "would not have lines to say, clothes to wear, sets to stand on ... or a printed paycheck from accounting to put in his pocket." Morgan is now on the groveling tour, seeking absolution from gay rights activists.
Norah O'Donnell has been an Obama cheerleader on MSNBC. When Newt Gingrich suggested the president plays too much basketball and should concentrate on more important things, O'Donnell intimated there might be racist overtones because "it suggests that the president is an athlete and some people may suggest, you know, because all black people are good athletes."
All black people? Isn't that racist? Some people may suggest? That's a not-so-clever way journalists have of inserting their own opinions into a story or line of questioning. For many more examples of O'Donnell's liberalism, visit newsbusters.org and search Norah O'Donnell. It doesn't appear likely O'Donnell will put her views on hold while reporting on the president's policies and his re-election campaign.
Last Sunday's New York Times (Father's Day) engaged in blatant cheerleading for the gay rights agenda. It began with a front-page story titled "For President, Gay Marriage Views Evolve." You know where his "evolution" is headed. The president wants and needs money from that lobbying group.
The cover of The New York Times Magazine featured "A Good Life in the Closet? Challenging the Orthodoxy of Coming Out."
And then, just in case readers were still unclear about the Times' editorial position on the issue, three full pages in the New York section were devoted to a story headlined, "And Baby Makes Four: How A Woman, Her Son, Her Sperm Donor And His Lover Are Helping Redefine The American Family." This may be how liberal New York and The New York Times see the American family, but most American families don't.
Reading this brought me as close as I have ever come to canceling my subscription, but I decided against it. I have to know what the culturally depraved are thinking.
Inserted in the newspaper was a "Dear Reader" letter from outgoing Executive Editor Bill Keller and Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal. It announced "new features and a new way of presenting our finest analytical and opinion writing."
It may be a "new way," but the content will remain the same and come from the same ideological perspective. At none of the big networks or at The New York Times is there a recognized conservative or traditional values commentator. It is why these entities are losing readers and viewers, though they don't seem to care. Their ideology trumps their business sense. Meanwhile, the rise of alternative media makes them increasingly irrelevant.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Is there a profit-making business -- other than TV networks and The New York Times -- that so disrespects its audience it works overtime to offend them?
What other business metaphorically flips the bird to those who don't subscribe to their social, cultural and political worldview? That is precisely what big media does to a large number of potential viewers and subscribers.
Three recent examples: 1) The inexplicable editing of the Pledge of Allegiance during the opening of last Sunday's U.S. Open on NBC; 2) the naming of ultra-liberal Norah O'Donnell of MSNBC as CBS News' new chief White House correspondent, in time for the 2012 election; and 3) last Sunday's New York Times, which appeared to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Washington Blade, a leading newspaper for the LGBT community.
Let's take them one at a time.
Someone had to decide that "under God" and "indivisible" were extraneous and needed to be cut from the U.S. Open's patriotic montage. Who was that person? What are his/her ideological and religious beliefs? What editor or manager decided it was OK to air the edited Pledge of Allegiance? Didn't anyone at NBC, which later apologized on air to "those of you who were offended by it," anticipate the reaction? Will heads roll? Probably not. Compare this to comedian Tracy Morgan's crude remarks about gay people in a stand-up act not aired on NBC. His colleagues roundly denounced him and Tina Fey, creator/star of NBC's "30 Rock," suggested that without his gay and lesbian co-workers, Morgan "would not have lines to say, clothes to wear, sets to stand on ... or a printed paycheck from accounting to put in his pocket." Morgan is now on the groveling tour, seeking absolution from gay rights activists.
Norah O'Donnell has been an Obama cheerleader on MSNBC. When Newt Gingrich suggested the president plays too much basketball and should concentrate on more important things, O'Donnell intimated there might be racist overtones because "it suggests that the president is an athlete and some people may suggest, you know, because all black people are good athletes."
All black people? Isn't that racist? Some people may suggest? That's a not-so-clever way journalists have of inserting their own opinions into a story or line of questioning. For many more examples of O'Donnell's liberalism, visit newsbusters.org and search Norah O'Donnell. It doesn't appear likely O'Donnell will put her views on hold while reporting on the president's policies and his re-election campaign.
Last Sunday's New York Times (Father's Day) engaged in blatant cheerleading for the gay rights agenda. It began with a front-page story titled "For President, Gay Marriage Views Evolve." You know where his "evolution" is headed. The president wants and needs money from that lobbying group.
The cover of The New York Times Magazine featured "A Good Life in the Closet? Challenging the Orthodoxy of Coming Out."
And then, just in case readers were still unclear about the Times' editorial position on the issue, three full pages in the New York section were devoted to a story headlined, "And Baby Makes Four: How A Woman, Her Son, Her Sperm Donor And His Lover Are Helping Redefine The American Family." This may be how liberal New York and The New York Times see the American family, but most American families don't.
Reading this brought me as close as I have ever come to canceling my subscription, but I decided against it. I have to know what the culturally depraved are thinking.
Inserted in the newspaper was a "Dear Reader" letter from outgoing Executive Editor Bill Keller and Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal. It announced "new features and a new way of presenting our finest analytical and opinion writing."
It may be a "new way," but the content will remain the same and come from the same ideological perspective. At none of the big networks or at The New York Times is there a recognized conservative or traditional values commentator. It is why these entities are losing readers and viewers, though they don't seem to care. Their ideology trumps their business sense. Meanwhile, the rise of alternative media makes them increasingly irrelevant.
California District Mothballs Newly Built $105 Million School
By Kyle Olson
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
You just have to appreciate the foresight and planning ability of government. The latest stellar example comes from Riverside, California, where the Alvord Unified School District built a state-of-the-art high school. The only problem? The district now lacks the funds to hire administrators and teachers.
Most readers would probably blame the debacle on the school board’s poor planning. But remember, this is California and the rules of common sense do not apply.
Instead, this crack squad of fiscal stewards has found the true culprit: declining funds to the district.
USA Today reports:
"When the California budget goes down and income in the state goes down, funding to K-through-12 education goes with it,’ [superintendent Wendell] Tucker says. ‘We made a number of budget adjustments. Right now, we simply are out of adjustments, and it's not feasible … to open this school.
"While the soon-to-be completed school will be empty, 3,400 students attend nearby La Sierra High School, built to house fewer than half that number. Classes in the main subjects are packed with 35 to 37 students each, Tucker says. Although the new school would ease crowding, he says it would cost $3 million to open and operate it for the coming academic year.
…
"Jo Loss, president of the California State PTA, says Hillcrest was the first new school to be mothballed by California's budget crisis. She calls it ‘a particularly poignant example’ of declining public education.
"Parents are starting to see that their child is not getting the same education that perhaps their older child got," Loss says."
The sad fact is it doesn’t have to be this way.
A few questions for California taxpayers to consider:
Did the Alvord Unified district need to spend the equivalent of 70% of its annual revenues on one single high school?
If so, did the school board try to control construction costs by asking the state to waive unionized construction-only requirements that only jack up costs?
Now that the school board realizes that it doesn’t have the money to staff the school, has it asked its teachers union for contract concessions that might allow them to hire more employees?
I understand the school district passed a bond to fund the building and they are technically separate pots of money, but it shows an extravagance that is unsustainable.
In classic status-quo thinking, USA Today includes this line: “Once a national model for education, California has slipped to near the bottom of states ranked on per-pupil spending.”
Why does USA Today and the education establishment judge taxpayers’ commitment to public education based on how much is spent? Analysis after analysis, including one by ABC 10 in San Diego, show there is little correlation between spending and student achievement.
But nevertheless, the establishment and much of the media continue to beat the drum for more spending.
Perhaps the school district wanted to create a local stimulus of its own? Perhaps it just built the building to create jobs? Maybe it can pass another bond to tear it down or the Obama administration can issue more stimulus to fund the wrecking crews.
Public schools are on a crash course with reality. Poor planning and lack of will to stand up to unions are only complicating the problems. The mothballed high school in Riverside is just the latest example.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
You just have to appreciate the foresight and planning ability of government. The latest stellar example comes from Riverside, California, where the Alvord Unified School District built a state-of-the-art high school. The only problem? The district now lacks the funds to hire administrators and teachers.
Most readers would probably blame the debacle on the school board’s poor planning. But remember, this is California and the rules of common sense do not apply.
Instead, this crack squad of fiscal stewards has found the true culprit: declining funds to the district.
USA Today reports:
"When the California budget goes down and income in the state goes down, funding to K-through-12 education goes with it,’ [superintendent Wendell] Tucker says. ‘We made a number of budget adjustments. Right now, we simply are out of adjustments, and it's not feasible … to open this school.
"While the soon-to-be completed school will be empty, 3,400 students attend nearby La Sierra High School, built to house fewer than half that number. Classes in the main subjects are packed with 35 to 37 students each, Tucker says. Although the new school would ease crowding, he says it would cost $3 million to open and operate it for the coming academic year.
…
"Jo Loss, president of the California State PTA, says Hillcrest was the first new school to be mothballed by California's budget crisis. She calls it ‘a particularly poignant example’ of declining public education.
"Parents are starting to see that their child is not getting the same education that perhaps their older child got," Loss says."
The sad fact is it doesn’t have to be this way.
A few questions for California taxpayers to consider:
Did the Alvord Unified district need to spend the equivalent of 70% of its annual revenues on one single high school?
If so, did the school board try to control construction costs by asking the state to waive unionized construction-only requirements that only jack up costs?
Now that the school board realizes that it doesn’t have the money to staff the school, has it asked its teachers union for contract concessions that might allow them to hire more employees?
I understand the school district passed a bond to fund the building and they are technically separate pots of money, but it shows an extravagance that is unsustainable.
In classic status-quo thinking, USA Today includes this line: “Once a national model for education, California has slipped to near the bottom of states ranked on per-pupil spending.”
Why does USA Today and the education establishment judge taxpayers’ commitment to public education based on how much is spent? Analysis after analysis, including one by ABC 10 in San Diego, show there is little correlation between spending and student achievement.
But nevertheless, the establishment and much of the media continue to beat the drum for more spending.
Perhaps the school district wanted to create a local stimulus of its own? Perhaps it just built the building to create jobs? Maybe it can pass another bond to tear it down or the Obama administration can issue more stimulus to fund the wrecking crews.
Public schools are on a crash course with reality. Poor planning and lack of will to stand up to unions are only complicating the problems. The mothballed high school in Riverside is just the latest example.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Who'll Volunteer to Save the Socialists?
By Rachel Marsden
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
As a free-market, limited-government conservative, I find the total implosion of the Greek economy to be the most stunning example of everything I've ever tried to warn about in regard to socialism. Despite the rest of Europe and the International Monetary Fund promising last year to give Greece 110 billion euros over three years, the country remains in a death spiral, with its budget deficit at about 13.5 percent of gross domestic product. By contrast, the last actual figure for recession-plagued America was at 8.8 percent.
So how did things get this bad for Greece? As IMF negotiator Poul Thomsen said of the country last year: "(Greece's) revenues have declined significantly, while spending, especially on wages and entitlements, has risen sharply." There you have it: the definitive formula for an economic meltdown.
One might think that would have been a wakeup call for Greece. Not so, apparently. Prime Minister George Papandreou -- a socialist, not surprisingly -- faced revolts, resignations and defections from within his own party last week. What exactly is he supposed to do? Shake out the couch cushions for spare change? The socialists broke the bank and there's nothing left to spend. Meanwhile, the IMF and Europe require the Greeks to prove they're making significant moves to get their house in order before handing over the next bailout installment.
The IMF initially recommended the following measures, which have already been adopted: cuts to Christmas, Easter and summer bonuses for workers in the public sector and state-owned enterprise. No raises in pensions or publicly funded wages for three years. Increased taxes on luxury items, tobacco and alcohol. And Greeks can no longer retire on a full pension at an average age of 61, having instead to wait until they're 63.
Now, the Greek government is set to increase sales taxes and sell government assets in an attempt to stay minimally afloat. The result? Riots in the streets.
The world is witnessing, in real time, the total collapse of a socialist system to the point that the conservatives are now ahead in the country's polls. But it's now a case of too little, far too late.
As Margaret Thatcher famously said, "Socialist governments ... always run out of other people's money." Greece was spending beyond its means by injecting cash into a public-sector system that wasn't producing anything of real value on which it could turn a substantial profit. When this system slid into the negative, Greece borrowed on credit until its credit rating tanked and it couldn't get loans like a regular country. So Greece tried a Hail Mary pass to Europe and the IMF, which are made up of countries borrowing money themselves on credit to manage their own debts.
Where in all of this is anyone actually producing anything that's turning a significant profit? Meanwhile, in China, they have enough cash floating around to buy up the treasury bills of every other cash-strapped country, thereby stringing them up by the short and curlies and ensuring the red-carpet treatment anywhere and everywhere they might wish to go on a round-the-world tour.
So where do defenders of freedom turn when they see how socialism has turned them into slaves of communism? To the free market and the private sector they've been up until now taxing into oblivion in the interest of spreading the wealth. You can't make this stuff up.
On Friday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced at a Berlin press conference that they'd like to offer the opportunity for the private sector -- via banks, insurers and investment funds -- to dole out some cash on a "voluntary basis" to bail out Greece, because those 110 billion euros that Europe is currently forking over in installments definitely won't be enough, and none of the countries who might be expected to pony up this new injection of funds has any more money to flush down the toilet. Sarkozy adds that this all needs to happen before September, so the private sector had better hurry up and jump on this most excellent opportunity to never see their money again.
Oh boy, let's all hold our breath for the "Peugeot Parthenon," the "Citroen Coliseum" and the "Airbus Acropolis." Meanwhile, Nigerian scam e-mail writers are probably taking notes in the event this rip-off actually achieves liftoff: "Dear Mister CEO, Sir: I have city to sell in Greece! Please transfer $1,000,000,000 to account below and I will send keys in mail. Many blessings!" Maybe while they're at it, they can also bankrupt all the private health insurance funds in Europe in an attempt to save Greece.
Dark humor aside, the Greek case should serve as a reminder to Obama, America and every other country led by someone trying to spend their way out of economic trouble that it will always lead to things getting much worse. And, as Sarkozy and Merkel have now effectively acknowledged, the free market is the best solution to economic difficulty.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
As a free-market, limited-government conservative, I find the total implosion of the Greek economy to be the most stunning example of everything I've ever tried to warn about in regard to socialism. Despite the rest of Europe and the International Monetary Fund promising last year to give Greece 110 billion euros over three years, the country remains in a death spiral, with its budget deficit at about 13.5 percent of gross domestic product. By contrast, the last actual figure for recession-plagued America was at 8.8 percent.
So how did things get this bad for Greece? As IMF negotiator Poul Thomsen said of the country last year: "(Greece's) revenues have declined significantly, while spending, especially on wages and entitlements, has risen sharply." There you have it: the definitive formula for an economic meltdown.
One might think that would have been a wakeup call for Greece. Not so, apparently. Prime Minister George Papandreou -- a socialist, not surprisingly -- faced revolts, resignations and defections from within his own party last week. What exactly is he supposed to do? Shake out the couch cushions for spare change? The socialists broke the bank and there's nothing left to spend. Meanwhile, the IMF and Europe require the Greeks to prove they're making significant moves to get their house in order before handing over the next bailout installment.
The IMF initially recommended the following measures, which have already been adopted: cuts to Christmas, Easter and summer bonuses for workers in the public sector and state-owned enterprise. No raises in pensions or publicly funded wages for three years. Increased taxes on luxury items, tobacco and alcohol. And Greeks can no longer retire on a full pension at an average age of 61, having instead to wait until they're 63.
Now, the Greek government is set to increase sales taxes and sell government assets in an attempt to stay minimally afloat. The result? Riots in the streets.
The world is witnessing, in real time, the total collapse of a socialist system to the point that the conservatives are now ahead in the country's polls. But it's now a case of too little, far too late.
As Margaret Thatcher famously said, "Socialist governments ... always run out of other people's money." Greece was spending beyond its means by injecting cash into a public-sector system that wasn't producing anything of real value on which it could turn a substantial profit. When this system slid into the negative, Greece borrowed on credit until its credit rating tanked and it couldn't get loans like a regular country. So Greece tried a Hail Mary pass to Europe and the IMF, which are made up of countries borrowing money themselves on credit to manage their own debts.
Where in all of this is anyone actually producing anything that's turning a significant profit? Meanwhile, in China, they have enough cash floating around to buy up the treasury bills of every other cash-strapped country, thereby stringing them up by the short and curlies and ensuring the red-carpet treatment anywhere and everywhere they might wish to go on a round-the-world tour.
So where do defenders of freedom turn when they see how socialism has turned them into slaves of communism? To the free market and the private sector they've been up until now taxing into oblivion in the interest of spreading the wealth. You can't make this stuff up.
On Friday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced at a Berlin press conference that they'd like to offer the opportunity for the private sector -- via banks, insurers and investment funds -- to dole out some cash on a "voluntary basis" to bail out Greece, because those 110 billion euros that Europe is currently forking over in installments definitely won't be enough, and none of the countries who might be expected to pony up this new injection of funds has any more money to flush down the toilet. Sarkozy adds that this all needs to happen before September, so the private sector had better hurry up and jump on this most excellent opportunity to never see their money again.
Oh boy, let's all hold our breath for the "Peugeot Parthenon," the "Citroen Coliseum" and the "Airbus Acropolis." Meanwhile, Nigerian scam e-mail writers are probably taking notes in the event this rip-off actually achieves liftoff: "Dear Mister CEO, Sir: I have city to sell in Greece! Please transfer $1,000,000,000 to account below and I will send keys in mail. Many blessings!" Maybe while they're at it, they can also bankrupt all the private health insurance funds in Europe in an attempt to save Greece.
Dark humor aside, the Greek case should serve as a reminder to Obama, America and every other country led by someone trying to spend their way out of economic trouble that it will always lead to things getting much worse. And, as Sarkozy and Merkel have now effectively acknowledged, the free market is the best solution to economic difficulty.
An Obama Foreign Policy
By Caroline Glick
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Outgoing US Defense Secretary Robert Gates is worried about the shape of things to come in US foreign policy. In an interview with Newsweek over the weekend, Gates sounded the warning bells.
In Gates’ words, "I’ve spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower, and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position. It didn't have to look over its shoulder because our economy was so strong. This is a different time.
"To tell you the truth, that's one of the many reasons it's time for me to retire, because frankly I can't imagine being part of a nation, part of a government... that's being forced to dramatically scale back our engagement with the rest of the world.”
What Gates is effectively saying is not that economic forecasts are gloomy. US defense spending comprises less than five percent of the federal budget. If US President Barack Obama wanted to maintain that level of spending, the Republican-controlled Congress would probably pass his defense budget. What Gates is saying is that he doesn’t trust his commander in chief to allocate the resources to preserve America’s superpower status. He is saying that he believes that Obama is willing to surrender the US’s status as a superpower.
THIS WOULD be a stunning statement for any defense secretary to make about the policies of a US President. It is especially stunning coming from Gates. Gates began his tenure at the Pentagon under Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush immediately after the Republican defeat in the 2006 mid-term Congressional elections.
Many conservatives hailed Obama’s decision to retain Gates as defense secretary as a belated admission that Bush’s aggressive counter-terror policies were correct. These claims ignored the fact that in his last two years in office, with the exception of the surge of troops in Iraq, under the guidance of Gates and then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s foreign policies veered very far to the Left.
Gates’s role in shaping this radical shift was evidenced by the positions he took on the issues of the day in the two years leading up to his replacement of Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. In 2004, Gates co-authored a study for the Council on Foreign Relations with Israel foe Zbigniew Brzezinski calling for the US to draw closer to Iran at Israel’s expense.
Immediately before his appointment, Gates was a member of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. The group’s final report, released just as his appointment was announced, blamed Israel for the instability in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. Its only clear policy recommendations involved pressuring Israel to surrender the Golan Heights to Syria and Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria to a Hamas-Fatah “national unity government.”
In office, Gates openly opposed the option of the US or Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear installations. He rejected Israel’s repeated requests to purchase weapons systems required to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. He openly signaled that the US would deny Israel access to Iraqi airspace. He supported American appeasement of the Iranian regime. And he divulged information about Israel’s purported nuclear arsenal and Israeli Air Force rehearsals of assaults on Iran.
A month before Russia’s August 2008 invasion of US ally Georgia, Gates released his National Defense Strategy which he bragged was a “blueprint for success” for the next administration. Ignoring indications of growing Russian hostility to US strategic interests – most clearly evidenced in Russia’s opposition to the deployment of US anti-missile batteries in the Czech Republic and Poland and in Russia’s strategic relations with Iran and Syria – Gates advocated building “collaborative and cooperative relations” with the Russian military.
After Russia invaded Georgia, Gates opposed US action of any kind against Russia.
GIVEN THIS track record, it was understandable that Obama chose to retain Gates at the Pentagon. To date, Obama’s only foreign policy that is distinct from Bush’s final years is his Israel policy. Whereas Bush viewed Israel as a key US ally and friend, from the first days of his administration, Obama has sought to “put daylight” between the US and Israel. He has repeatedly humiliated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He has abandoned the US’s quiet defense of Israel’s purported nuclear arsenal. He has continuously threatened to abandon US support for Israel at the UN.
Not only has Obama adopted the Palestinians’ increasingly hostile policies towards Israel. He has led them to those policies. It was Obama, not Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas, who first demanded that Israel cease respecting Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. It was Obama, not Abbas, who first called for the establishment of a Palestinian state by the end of 2011. It was Obama, not Abbas, who first stipulated that future “peace” negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians must be predicated on Israel’s prior acceptance of the indefensible 1949 armistice lines as a starting point for talks. All of these positions, in addition to Obama’s refusal to state outright that he rejects the Palestinian demand to destroy Israel through unlimited Arab immigration to its indefensible “peace” borders, mark an extreme departure from the Israel policies adopted by his predecessor.
Aside from its basic irrationality, Obama’s policy of favoring the Palestinians against the US’s most dependable ally in the Middle East is notable for its uniqueness. In every other area, his policies are aligned with those adopted by his predecessor.
His decision to surge the number of US forces in Afghanistan was a natural progression from the strategy Bush implemented in Iraq and was moving towards in Afghanistan.
His use of drones to conduct targeted killings of terrorists in Yemen and Pakistan is an escalation not a departure from Bush’s tactics.
Obama’s decision to gradually withdraw US combat forces from Iraq was fully consonant with Bush’s policy.
His decision to engage with the aim of appeasing the Iranian regime while supporting the adoption of ineffective sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council is also a natural progression from Bush’s policies.
His bid to “reset” US relations with Russia was largely of a piece with Bush’s decision not to oppose in any way Russia’s invasion of Georgia.
Obama’s courtship of Syria is different from Bush’s foreign policy. But guided by Rice and Gates, Bush was softening his position on Syria. For instance, Bush endorsed Rice’s insistence that Israel remain mum on the North Korean-built illicit nuclear installation at Deir-A-Zour that the Air Force destroyed in September 2007.
As for Egypt, as many senior Bush administration officials crowed, Obama’s abandonment of 30-year US ally Hosni Mubarak was of a piece with Bush’s democracy agenda.
Obama’s policy toward Libya is in many respects unique. It marks the first time since the War Powers Act passed into law 30 years ago that a US President has sent US forces into battle without seeking the permission of the US Congress. It is the first time that a president has openly subordinated US national interests to the whims of the UN and NATO and insisted on fighting a war that serves no clear US national interest.
Notably, Gates has been an outspoken critic of the war in Libya. In interviews in March he said that Muammar Gaddafi posed no threat to US interests and that no vital US interests are served by the US mission in Libya.
Yet even Obama’s Libya policy is not as sharp a departure from Bush’s foreign policy as his Israel policy is. Although Bush wouldn’t have argued that the UN gets to decide where US troops are deployed, he did believe that the US needed UN permission to deploy troops.
TO A degree, it is the basic incoherence of Obama’s Libya policy that puts it in line with all of his other foreign policies except Israel. Those policies – from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay – are marked by inconsistencies. Like Libya, there is a strong sense that Obama's foreign policy to date has not been guided by an overarching worldview but rather spring from ad hoc decisions with no guiding conceptual framework.
But if Gates’s words to Newsweek are any indication, all of this may be about to change. If Gates believed that Obama would continue to implement the policies of Bush’s last two years with minor exceptions while sticking it to Israel, he would likely not have spoken out against Obama’s policies so strongly. Apparently Gates believes that Obama’s foreign policy is about to undergo a radical transformation.
And this would make sense, particularly if, as Obama has said a number of times, he is more committed to transforming America than winning a second term in office.
Until the Republicans won control of the House of Representatives last November, Obama was able to concentrate on passing his domestic agenda. Obama’s willingness to lose the elections in order to push through his radical health care reform package demonstrated his commitment to implementing his policies at all costs.
With the Republicans in charge, Obama can’t even pass his 2011 budget let alone his far reaching plans to transform US immigration policy, labor policy, environmental policy and Social Security.
In these circumstances, the only place where the power of the presidency gives him wide-ranging freedom of action to transform the US is foreign affairs.
What Gates’s fiery departure indicates then is that for the rest of his term, Obama’s entire foreign policy is liable to be as radical a departure from Bush’s foreign policy as his Israel policy is. The war in Libya is a sign that things are changing. The fact that in recent months even Gates has taken to attacking Obama’s Iran policy as too soft, further attests to a radicalization at work.
Then there is Obama’s Afghanistan policy. When in 2009 Obama announced his surge and withdraw policy, Gates minimized the importance of Obama’s pledge to begin withdrawing US combat forces in July 2011. In recent months, Gates has joined US combat commanders in pleading with the White House not to begin the troop drawdown until next year. But to no avail.
Not only is he unwilling to delay the withdrawal of combat troops. Obama is suing for peace with the Taliban. As Republican lawmakers have argued, there is no way the empowerment of the Taliban in Afghanistan can be viewed as anything but a defeat for the US.
Gates’s successor at the Pentagon will be outgoing CIA Director Leon Panetta. US military and intelligence officers believe that Panetta’s chief mission at the Pentagon will be to slash US defense budgets. Since his appointment was announced, sources inside the military have expressed deep concern that the planned budget cuts will render it impossible for the US to maintain its position as a global superpower. More than anything else, Gates’ statements to Newsweek indicate that he shares this perception of Obama’s plans.
To date, Obama’s stewardship of US foreign policy has been marked by gross naivete, incompetence and a marked willingness to demean and weaken his country’s moral standing in the world.
Imagine what will happen if in the next year and a half Obama embarks on a course that makes his Israel policy the norm rather than the exception in US foreign policy.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Outgoing US Defense Secretary Robert Gates is worried about the shape of things to come in US foreign policy. In an interview with Newsweek over the weekend, Gates sounded the warning bells.
In Gates’ words, "I’ve spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower, and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position. It didn't have to look over its shoulder because our economy was so strong. This is a different time.
"To tell you the truth, that's one of the many reasons it's time for me to retire, because frankly I can't imagine being part of a nation, part of a government... that's being forced to dramatically scale back our engagement with the rest of the world.”
What Gates is effectively saying is not that economic forecasts are gloomy. US defense spending comprises less than five percent of the federal budget. If US President Barack Obama wanted to maintain that level of spending, the Republican-controlled Congress would probably pass his defense budget. What Gates is saying is that he doesn’t trust his commander in chief to allocate the resources to preserve America’s superpower status. He is saying that he believes that Obama is willing to surrender the US’s status as a superpower.
THIS WOULD be a stunning statement for any defense secretary to make about the policies of a US President. It is especially stunning coming from Gates. Gates began his tenure at the Pentagon under Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush immediately after the Republican defeat in the 2006 mid-term Congressional elections.
Many conservatives hailed Obama’s decision to retain Gates as defense secretary as a belated admission that Bush’s aggressive counter-terror policies were correct. These claims ignored the fact that in his last two years in office, with the exception of the surge of troops in Iraq, under the guidance of Gates and then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s foreign policies veered very far to the Left.
Gates’s role in shaping this radical shift was evidenced by the positions he took on the issues of the day in the two years leading up to his replacement of Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. In 2004, Gates co-authored a study for the Council on Foreign Relations with Israel foe Zbigniew Brzezinski calling for the US to draw closer to Iran at Israel’s expense.
Immediately before his appointment, Gates was a member of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. The group’s final report, released just as his appointment was announced, blamed Israel for the instability in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. Its only clear policy recommendations involved pressuring Israel to surrender the Golan Heights to Syria and Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria to a Hamas-Fatah “national unity government.”
In office, Gates openly opposed the option of the US or Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear installations. He rejected Israel’s repeated requests to purchase weapons systems required to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. He openly signaled that the US would deny Israel access to Iraqi airspace. He supported American appeasement of the Iranian regime. And he divulged information about Israel’s purported nuclear arsenal and Israeli Air Force rehearsals of assaults on Iran.
A month before Russia’s August 2008 invasion of US ally Georgia, Gates released his National Defense Strategy which he bragged was a “blueprint for success” for the next administration. Ignoring indications of growing Russian hostility to US strategic interests – most clearly evidenced in Russia’s opposition to the deployment of US anti-missile batteries in the Czech Republic and Poland and in Russia’s strategic relations with Iran and Syria – Gates advocated building “collaborative and cooperative relations” with the Russian military.
After Russia invaded Georgia, Gates opposed US action of any kind against Russia.
GIVEN THIS track record, it was understandable that Obama chose to retain Gates at the Pentagon. To date, Obama’s only foreign policy that is distinct from Bush’s final years is his Israel policy. Whereas Bush viewed Israel as a key US ally and friend, from the first days of his administration, Obama has sought to “put daylight” between the US and Israel. He has repeatedly humiliated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He has abandoned the US’s quiet defense of Israel’s purported nuclear arsenal. He has continuously threatened to abandon US support for Israel at the UN.
Not only has Obama adopted the Palestinians’ increasingly hostile policies towards Israel. He has led them to those policies. It was Obama, not Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas, who first demanded that Israel cease respecting Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. It was Obama, not Abbas, who first called for the establishment of a Palestinian state by the end of 2011. It was Obama, not Abbas, who first stipulated that future “peace” negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians must be predicated on Israel’s prior acceptance of the indefensible 1949 armistice lines as a starting point for talks. All of these positions, in addition to Obama’s refusal to state outright that he rejects the Palestinian demand to destroy Israel through unlimited Arab immigration to its indefensible “peace” borders, mark an extreme departure from the Israel policies adopted by his predecessor.
Aside from its basic irrationality, Obama’s policy of favoring the Palestinians against the US’s most dependable ally in the Middle East is notable for its uniqueness. In every other area, his policies are aligned with those adopted by his predecessor.
His decision to surge the number of US forces in Afghanistan was a natural progression from the strategy Bush implemented in Iraq and was moving towards in Afghanistan.
His use of drones to conduct targeted killings of terrorists in Yemen and Pakistan is an escalation not a departure from Bush’s tactics.
Obama’s decision to gradually withdraw US combat forces from Iraq was fully consonant with Bush’s policy.
His decision to engage with the aim of appeasing the Iranian regime while supporting the adoption of ineffective sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council is also a natural progression from Bush’s policies.
His bid to “reset” US relations with Russia was largely of a piece with Bush’s decision not to oppose in any way Russia’s invasion of Georgia.
Obama’s courtship of Syria is different from Bush’s foreign policy. But guided by Rice and Gates, Bush was softening his position on Syria. For instance, Bush endorsed Rice’s insistence that Israel remain mum on the North Korean-built illicit nuclear installation at Deir-A-Zour that the Air Force destroyed in September 2007.
As for Egypt, as many senior Bush administration officials crowed, Obama’s abandonment of 30-year US ally Hosni Mubarak was of a piece with Bush’s democracy agenda.
Obama’s policy toward Libya is in many respects unique. It marks the first time since the War Powers Act passed into law 30 years ago that a US President has sent US forces into battle without seeking the permission of the US Congress. It is the first time that a president has openly subordinated US national interests to the whims of the UN and NATO and insisted on fighting a war that serves no clear US national interest.
Notably, Gates has been an outspoken critic of the war in Libya. In interviews in March he said that Muammar Gaddafi posed no threat to US interests and that no vital US interests are served by the US mission in Libya.
Yet even Obama’s Libya policy is not as sharp a departure from Bush’s foreign policy as his Israel policy is. Although Bush wouldn’t have argued that the UN gets to decide where US troops are deployed, he did believe that the US needed UN permission to deploy troops.
TO A degree, it is the basic incoherence of Obama’s Libya policy that puts it in line with all of his other foreign policies except Israel. Those policies – from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay – are marked by inconsistencies. Like Libya, there is a strong sense that Obama's foreign policy to date has not been guided by an overarching worldview but rather spring from ad hoc decisions with no guiding conceptual framework.
But if Gates’s words to Newsweek are any indication, all of this may be about to change. If Gates believed that Obama would continue to implement the policies of Bush’s last two years with minor exceptions while sticking it to Israel, he would likely not have spoken out against Obama’s policies so strongly. Apparently Gates believes that Obama’s foreign policy is about to undergo a radical transformation.
And this would make sense, particularly if, as Obama has said a number of times, he is more committed to transforming America than winning a second term in office.
Until the Republicans won control of the House of Representatives last November, Obama was able to concentrate on passing his domestic agenda. Obama’s willingness to lose the elections in order to push through his radical health care reform package demonstrated his commitment to implementing his policies at all costs.
With the Republicans in charge, Obama can’t even pass his 2011 budget let alone his far reaching plans to transform US immigration policy, labor policy, environmental policy and Social Security.
In these circumstances, the only place where the power of the presidency gives him wide-ranging freedom of action to transform the US is foreign affairs.
What Gates’s fiery departure indicates then is that for the rest of his term, Obama’s entire foreign policy is liable to be as radical a departure from Bush’s foreign policy as his Israel policy is. The war in Libya is a sign that things are changing. The fact that in recent months even Gates has taken to attacking Obama’s Iran policy as too soft, further attests to a radicalization at work.
Then there is Obama’s Afghanistan policy. When in 2009 Obama announced his surge and withdraw policy, Gates minimized the importance of Obama’s pledge to begin withdrawing US combat forces in July 2011. In recent months, Gates has joined US combat commanders in pleading with the White House not to begin the troop drawdown until next year. But to no avail.
Not only is he unwilling to delay the withdrawal of combat troops. Obama is suing for peace with the Taliban. As Republican lawmakers have argued, there is no way the empowerment of the Taliban in Afghanistan can be viewed as anything but a defeat for the US.
Gates’s successor at the Pentagon will be outgoing CIA Director Leon Panetta. US military and intelligence officers believe that Panetta’s chief mission at the Pentagon will be to slash US defense budgets. Since his appointment was announced, sources inside the military have expressed deep concern that the planned budget cuts will render it impossible for the US to maintain its position as a global superpower. More than anything else, Gates’ statements to Newsweek indicate that he shares this perception of Obama’s plans.
To date, Obama’s stewardship of US foreign policy has been marked by gross naivete, incompetence and a marked willingness to demean and weaken his country’s moral standing in the world.
Imagine what will happen if in the next year and a half Obama embarks on a course that makes his Israel policy the norm rather than the exception in US foreign policy.
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