The president has made negotiations all but impossible.
Charles Krauthammer
Friday, May 27, 2011
Every Arab-Israeli negotiation contains a fundamental asymmetry: Israel gives up land, which is tangible; the Arabs make promises, which are ephemeral. The longstanding American solution has been to nonetheless urge Israel to take risks for peace while America balances things by giving assurances of U.S. support for Israel’s security and diplomatic needs.
It’s on the basis of such solemn assurances that Israel undertook, for example, the Gaza withdrawal. In order to mitigate this risk, Pres. George W. Bush gave a written commitment that America supported Israel’s absorption of major settlement blocs in any peace agreement, opposed any return to the 1967 lines, and stood firm against the so-called Palestinian right of return to Israel.
For two and a half years, the Obama administration has refused to recognize and reaffirm these assurances. Then last week in his State Department speech, President Obama definitively trashed them. He declared that the Arab-Israeli conflict should indeed be resolved along “the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”
Nothing new here, said Obama three days later. “By definition, it means that the parties themselves — Israelis and Palestinians — will negotiate a border that is different” from 1967.
It means nothing of the sort. “Mutually” means both parties have to agree. And if one side doesn’t? Then, by definition, you’re back to the 1967 lines.
Nor is this merely a theoretical proposition. Three times the Palestinians have been offered exactly that formula, 1967 plus swaps — at Camp David 2000, Taba 2001, and the 2008 Olmert-Abbas negotiations. Every time, the Palestinians said no and walked away.
And that remains their position today: The 1967 lines. Period. Indeed, in September the Palestinians are going to the U.N. to get the world to ratify precisely that: a Palestinian state on the ’67 lines. No swaps.
Note how Obama has undermined Israel’s negotiating position. He is demanding that Israel go into peace talks having already forfeited its claim to the territory won in the ’67 war — its only bargaining chip. Remember: That ’67 line runs right through Jerusalem. Thus the starting point of negotiations would be that the Western Wall and even Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter are Palestinian — alien territory for which Israel must now bargain.
The very idea that Judaism’s holiest shrine is alien or that Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter is rightfully, historically, or demographically Arab is an absurdity. And the idea that, in order to retain them, Israel has to give up parts of itself is a travesty.
Obama also moved the goal posts on the so-called right of return. Flooding Israel with millions of Arabs would destroy the world’s only Jewish state while creating a 23rd Arab state and a second Palestinian state — not exactly what we mean when we speak of a “two-state solution.” That’s why it has been the policy of the U.S. to adamantly oppose this “right.”
Yet in his State Department speech, Obama refused to simply restate this position — and refused again in a supposedly corrective speech three days later. Instead, he told Israel it must negotiate the right of return with the Palestinians after having given every inch of territory. Bargaining with what, pray tell?
No matter. “The status quo is unsustainable,” declared Obama, “and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace.”
Israel too? Exactly what bold steps for peace have the Palestinians taken? Israel made three radically conciliatory offers to establish a Palestinian state, withdrew from Gaza, and has been trying to renew negotiations for more than two years. Meanwhile, the Gaza Palestinians have been firing rockets at Israeli towns and villages. And on the West Bank, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas turned down the Olmert offer, walked out of negotiations with Binyamin Netanyahu, and now defies the United States by seeking not peace talks but instant statehood — without peace, without recognizing Israel — at the U.N. And to make unmistakable this spurning of any peace process, Abbas agrees to join the openly genocidal Hamas in a unity government, which even Obama acknowledges makes negotiations impossible.
Obama’s response to this relentless Palestinian intransigence? To reward it — by abandoning the Bush assurances, legitimizing the ’67 borders, and refusing to reaffirm America’s rejection of the right of return.
The only remaining question is whether this perverse and ultimately self-defeating policy is born of genuine antipathy toward Israel or of the arrogance of a blundering amateur who refuses to see that he is undermining not just peace but the very possibility of negotiations.
Friday, May 27, 2011
The Die Is Cast
By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, May 27, 2011
Alea iacta est. That's what Julius Caesar proclaimed as he crossed the Rubicon river in 49 B.C. It means "the die is cast." By crossing the Rubicon with his army, against Roman law, Caesar guaranteed a head-on conflict with the overconfident Roman ruler Pompey. Outnumbered, Caesar was presented with the choice: win or die.
The recent special election in the 26th congressional district of New York was a political Rubicon. The Democrat, Kathy Hochul, ran against the Republican budget, specifically Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to save Medicare by turning it into a voucher program starting 10 years from now (excluding all current beneficiaries).
The Republican, Jane Corwin, said she supported the plan and then spent much of the campaign defending it with all of the verbal dexterity of a contestant in a cracker-eating competition.
It's difficult to exaggerate the gloating and glee from Democrats about their triumph. Their takeaway: Democrats can win if they demonize the Ryan plan and run ads (or allow third-party groups to run them) showing old ladies being flung from cliffs like Spartan infants.
There is certainly good reason to believe that Hochul's so-called "Medi-scare" tactics made the difference. It was the top issue for nearly a quarter of voters. And while most of them may well have voted Democrat anyway, the simple fact is that Hochul won a single-issue campaign in a district that shouldn't have elected a Democrat at all.
Republicans console themselves by noting that the she won with only 47 percent of the vote, and a Democrat-gadfly who bought the tea party label garnered 9 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, Corwin simply wasn't a very strong candidate. Karl Rove points out in the Wall Street Journal that Hochul received merely one more percentage point than Barack Obama did when he lost the district in 2008.
Even Paul Ryan says that aside from the Democrats' lies and distortions about his plan, Hochul's victory "shows that a Democrat running as a tea party candidate dumping a couple million dollars in the race is going to have an effect."
Fine, fine. For the sake of argument let's stipulate that's all true. So what?
The simple fact is that the Democrats have their battle plan. It's going to be Medi-scare every day in every way for the next 17 months. They are on autopilot. They are committed. Their die is cast. They have crossed their Rubicon. They have no desire to defend ObamaCare, high gas prices, high unemployment and a third Middle East war. They want -- no, need -- to be on offense because they have so much they cannot defend.
The question now is, What are Republicans going to do about it? Are they going to play the role of Pompey, the dissolute leader who didn't want to fight? Or will they don Caesarian robes and join the battle head-on because they know they have nowhere to retreat? That is the political choice for the GOP: win or die.
There's an entirely plausible case to be made that the GOP bravely blundered in passing the Ryan budget. I don't agree with that argument. But again, so what?
A surefire way for that claim to be proven true is for Republicans to start hemming and hawing and apologizing for what they've done. Look, the House of Representatives passed it with a near-unanimous vote among Republicans. Forty Senate Republicans voted for it as well. Republicans can't run from that, so they shouldn't try.
The one advantage the outnumbered Caesar had was that he and his battle-tested forces understood that there was only one solution to their plight: victory.
The battle-tested Republicans have the same suite of options. And they are battle-tested. Last November they won sweeping victories in the midterm elections. How? By focusing first and foremost on the Democrats' failures.
For instance, the Democrats have a plan too. It's the Status Quo-Plus. It involves letting Medicare continue to spiral out of control, consuming our budget until it becomes necessary for an unelected chamber of health-care bureaucrats to impose draconian cuts. Actually, Democrats have two plans. That was the Obama plan. There's also the Harry Reid plan, which involves lawlessly refusing to pass a budget for coming up on 800 days.
The GOP does need to be more optimistic and pro-growth. It can't just sell reality-based pain when the opposition is selling the cheap lies of deceit.
But more than anything, Republicans need to realize that the die has been cast. All that is left for them is to decide whether they will play the role of Pompey or of Caesar.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Alea iacta est. That's what Julius Caesar proclaimed as he crossed the Rubicon river in 49 B.C. It means "the die is cast." By crossing the Rubicon with his army, against Roman law, Caesar guaranteed a head-on conflict with the overconfident Roman ruler Pompey. Outnumbered, Caesar was presented with the choice: win or die.
The recent special election in the 26th congressional district of New York was a political Rubicon. The Democrat, Kathy Hochul, ran against the Republican budget, specifically Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to save Medicare by turning it into a voucher program starting 10 years from now (excluding all current beneficiaries).
The Republican, Jane Corwin, said she supported the plan and then spent much of the campaign defending it with all of the verbal dexterity of a contestant in a cracker-eating competition.
It's difficult to exaggerate the gloating and glee from Democrats about their triumph. Their takeaway: Democrats can win if they demonize the Ryan plan and run ads (or allow third-party groups to run them) showing old ladies being flung from cliffs like Spartan infants.
There is certainly good reason to believe that Hochul's so-called "Medi-scare" tactics made the difference. It was the top issue for nearly a quarter of voters. And while most of them may well have voted Democrat anyway, the simple fact is that Hochul won a single-issue campaign in a district that shouldn't have elected a Democrat at all.
Republicans console themselves by noting that the she won with only 47 percent of the vote, and a Democrat-gadfly who bought the tea party label garnered 9 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, Corwin simply wasn't a very strong candidate. Karl Rove points out in the Wall Street Journal that Hochul received merely one more percentage point than Barack Obama did when he lost the district in 2008.
Even Paul Ryan says that aside from the Democrats' lies and distortions about his plan, Hochul's victory "shows that a Democrat running as a tea party candidate dumping a couple million dollars in the race is going to have an effect."
Fine, fine. For the sake of argument let's stipulate that's all true. So what?
The simple fact is that the Democrats have their battle plan. It's going to be Medi-scare every day in every way for the next 17 months. They are on autopilot. They are committed. Their die is cast. They have crossed their Rubicon. They have no desire to defend ObamaCare, high gas prices, high unemployment and a third Middle East war. They want -- no, need -- to be on offense because they have so much they cannot defend.
The question now is, What are Republicans going to do about it? Are they going to play the role of Pompey, the dissolute leader who didn't want to fight? Or will they don Caesarian robes and join the battle head-on because they know they have nowhere to retreat? That is the political choice for the GOP: win or die.
There's an entirely plausible case to be made that the GOP bravely blundered in passing the Ryan budget. I don't agree with that argument. But again, so what?
A surefire way for that claim to be proven true is for Republicans to start hemming and hawing and apologizing for what they've done. Look, the House of Representatives passed it with a near-unanimous vote among Republicans. Forty Senate Republicans voted for it as well. Republicans can't run from that, so they shouldn't try.
The one advantage the outnumbered Caesar had was that he and his battle-tested forces understood that there was only one solution to their plight: victory.
The battle-tested Republicans have the same suite of options. And they are battle-tested. Last November they won sweeping victories in the midterm elections. How? By focusing first and foremost on the Democrats' failures.
For instance, the Democrats have a plan too. It's the Status Quo-Plus. It involves letting Medicare continue to spiral out of control, consuming our budget until it becomes necessary for an unelected chamber of health-care bureaucrats to impose draconian cuts. Actually, Democrats have two plans. That was the Obama plan. There's also the Harry Reid plan, which involves lawlessly refusing to pass a budget for coming up on 800 days.
The GOP does need to be more optimistic and pro-growth. It can't just sell reality-based pain when the opposition is selling the cheap lies of deceit.
But more than anything, Republicans need to realize that the die has been cast. All that is left for them is to decide whether they will play the role of Pompey or of Caesar.
Republicans Better Learn To Defend Ryan Plan
By Mona Charen
Friday, May 27, 2011
Though I warned two weeks ago about the possibility of a Republican loss in NY 26, I'm not sorry that Democrat Kathy Hochul's deceptive, demagogic resort to Mediscare succeeded. After May 24, no Republican can fail to anticipate the contours of the 2012 election. They'd best pay attention.
The New York loss may yield even more dividends. It may induce a certain complacency among Democrats. Rep. Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, crowed, "Today, the Republican plan to end Medicare cost Republicans $3.4 million and a seat in Congress. And this is only the first seat ... We served notice to the Republicans that we will fight them anywhere in America when it comes to defending and strengthening Medicare."
Liberal columnist E.J. Dionne noted with satisfaction that "This is a big setback for Paul Ryan's budget and a warning for Republican incumbents everywhere."
And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, eager to wring every partisan drop from the special election results, scheduled a rushed vote on the Ryan budget. It failed 57-40 in the Democrat-majority chamber. A number of Republicans, including Scott Brown, Lisa Murkowski, and the ladies from Maine voted with the Democrats. (Rand Paul also voted against the Ryan budget -- believing it to be too timid.)
Democrats believe that Republicans have blundered badly -- changing the subject from the limping economy, the soaring debt, and the unpopular Obamacare to the Democrats' favorite campaign issue -- Medicare. But that confidence is misplaced.
Jane Corwin, the Republican candidate in NY 26, didn't make counterarguments about Medicare -- not even when the liberal group The Agenda Project aired a spot that looked more like a "Saturday Night Live" parody of a political ad than the real thing. A tall young fellow looking very much like Ryan pushes a delicate old lady in a wheelchair toward a scenic lookout. To the strains of "America the Beautiful," on-screen graphics describe the Medicare program and claim that Ryan's budget would "privatize" and thus end it. At the end of the spot, the Ryan figure dumps grandma out of the wheelchair and off the cliff. Subtle.
"Is America still beautiful without Medicare?" asks the graphic.
Is America still beautiful with politics like this? Sheesh.
For the Democrats to succeed with this tactic (and on political hygiene grounds alone, they deserve to lose), they must rely on the ignorance of voters. That's a dangerous gamble. In one special election, you can get by with it. But in a nationwide contest that includes the presidency, it's not going to be so easy.
Republicans happen to have reality on their side.
Reality: It isn't as if there is a choice between preserving Medicare "as we know it" and reform. Medicare is -- to use the environmentalists' favorite word -- unsustainable. The trustee's report issued last week puts the program's unfunded liabilities at $24.6 trillion and projects the program going broke in 2024. Even Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner recognizes "the need to act sooner rather than later to make reforms to our entitlement programs."
Reality: Without reform, severe benefit cuts will be required in the Medicare program. Increased taxes simply will not cover the gap.
Reality: The Ryan plan would not affect those 55 and older and would gradually shift from an open-ended entitlement (which pays all bills submitted and thus encourages overuse) to a "premium support" model that will encourage competition among private providers. It will provide less money to the wealthy and more to lower-income elderly.
Reality: One of the biggest drivers of spiraling medical costs is the third-party payer problem. Both in the Medicare program and in employer-provided coverage, the patient himself has no incentive to shop around, and doctors are encouraged to order more and more tests and services because they are paid on a fee-for-service basis.
Reality: The Democrats' solution to rising Medicare costs is rationing. They deny it, but the Independent Payment Advisory Board (which will not come into existence until after the 2012 election), a 15-person panel created by Obamacare, would have virtually unreviewable discretion to set prices for medical services. While it's technically true that the IPAB wouldn't have the power to prevent doctors from performing services, the low reimbursement levels will surely dry up the number of doctors willing to take Medicare patients.
Reality: The Democrats' plan for a centralized, unaccountable, bureaucratic, price-controlling body for key medical decisions is precisely the sort of policy that has led European nations toward insolvency. Competition-oriented reform is not only the only possible way to save Medicare; it is the only way to preserve the national fisc.
And that's the real message of NY 26.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Though I warned two weeks ago about the possibility of a Republican loss in NY 26, I'm not sorry that Democrat Kathy Hochul's deceptive, demagogic resort to Mediscare succeeded. After May 24, no Republican can fail to anticipate the contours of the 2012 election. They'd best pay attention.
The New York loss may yield even more dividends. It may induce a certain complacency among Democrats. Rep. Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, crowed, "Today, the Republican plan to end Medicare cost Republicans $3.4 million and a seat in Congress. And this is only the first seat ... We served notice to the Republicans that we will fight them anywhere in America when it comes to defending and strengthening Medicare."
Liberal columnist E.J. Dionne noted with satisfaction that "This is a big setback for Paul Ryan's budget and a warning for Republican incumbents everywhere."
And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, eager to wring every partisan drop from the special election results, scheduled a rushed vote on the Ryan budget. It failed 57-40 in the Democrat-majority chamber. A number of Republicans, including Scott Brown, Lisa Murkowski, and the ladies from Maine voted with the Democrats. (Rand Paul also voted against the Ryan budget -- believing it to be too timid.)
Democrats believe that Republicans have blundered badly -- changing the subject from the limping economy, the soaring debt, and the unpopular Obamacare to the Democrats' favorite campaign issue -- Medicare. But that confidence is misplaced.
Jane Corwin, the Republican candidate in NY 26, didn't make counterarguments about Medicare -- not even when the liberal group The Agenda Project aired a spot that looked more like a "Saturday Night Live" parody of a political ad than the real thing. A tall young fellow looking very much like Ryan pushes a delicate old lady in a wheelchair toward a scenic lookout. To the strains of "America the Beautiful," on-screen graphics describe the Medicare program and claim that Ryan's budget would "privatize" and thus end it. At the end of the spot, the Ryan figure dumps grandma out of the wheelchair and off the cliff. Subtle.
"Is America still beautiful without Medicare?" asks the graphic.
Is America still beautiful with politics like this? Sheesh.
For the Democrats to succeed with this tactic (and on political hygiene grounds alone, they deserve to lose), they must rely on the ignorance of voters. That's a dangerous gamble. In one special election, you can get by with it. But in a nationwide contest that includes the presidency, it's not going to be so easy.
Republicans happen to have reality on their side.
Reality: It isn't as if there is a choice between preserving Medicare "as we know it" and reform. Medicare is -- to use the environmentalists' favorite word -- unsustainable. The trustee's report issued last week puts the program's unfunded liabilities at $24.6 trillion and projects the program going broke in 2024. Even Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner recognizes "the need to act sooner rather than later to make reforms to our entitlement programs."
Reality: Without reform, severe benefit cuts will be required in the Medicare program. Increased taxes simply will not cover the gap.
Reality: The Ryan plan would not affect those 55 and older and would gradually shift from an open-ended entitlement (which pays all bills submitted and thus encourages overuse) to a "premium support" model that will encourage competition among private providers. It will provide less money to the wealthy and more to lower-income elderly.
Reality: One of the biggest drivers of spiraling medical costs is the third-party payer problem. Both in the Medicare program and in employer-provided coverage, the patient himself has no incentive to shop around, and doctors are encouraged to order more and more tests and services because they are paid on a fee-for-service basis.
Reality: The Democrats' solution to rising Medicare costs is rationing. They deny it, but the Independent Payment Advisory Board (which will not come into existence until after the 2012 election), a 15-person panel created by Obamacare, would have virtually unreviewable discretion to set prices for medical services. While it's technically true that the IPAB wouldn't have the power to prevent doctors from performing services, the low reimbursement levels will surely dry up the number of doctors willing to take Medicare patients.
Reality: The Democrats' plan for a centralized, unaccountable, bureaucratic, price-controlling body for key medical decisions is precisely the sort of policy that has led European nations toward insolvency. Competition-oriented reform is not only the only possible way to save Medicare; it is the only way to preserve the national fisc.
And that's the real message of NY 26.
"The Worst Environmental Disaster in U.S. History!" (One Year Later)
By Humberto Fontova
Thursday, May 26, 2011
"There's just no data to suggest this is an environmental disaster, “said Marine Scientist and former LSU professor Ivor Van Heerden who also works as a BP spill-response contractor. “I have no interest in making BP look good — I think they lied about the size of the spill — but we're not seeing catastrophic impacts. There's a lot of hype, but no evidence to justify it."
In fact these observations came-- not a year after the Deepwater Horizon blew-up -- but a mere three months afterwards, making them all the more blasphemous at the time. By now they’ve been amply vindicated, making the Obama team’s “moratorium” and more recent stonewalling on Gulf of Mexico drilling permits all the more preposterous.
Your loyal servant here grew up in South Louisiana and spends most week-ends along the Louisiana coast hooking, spearing, gaffing, blasting and otherwise assassinating the raw ingredients of his family meals. He also shares the resulting joys and debacles with readers and TV-show hosts. So he had more than a casual concern with the BP oil spill.
The reasons for this “disasters’” fizzling out are many and were apparent to non-hack scientists from the get-go. To wit:
“People don’t comprehend how so much oil could break down in such a short time period,” explains Dr. LuAnn White, a toxicologist with the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, who also serves as Director of the Center for Applied Environmental Health. “But we have natural oil seeps in the Gulf, and over 200 genera of microbes that break down oil already exist there.”
“It cannot be repeated often enough,” says Louisiana Marine Biologist Jerald Horst , Crude oil is a natural substance, its biodegradable. It’s a feast for microbes. And these consumed most of it from the BP spill.”
The horrid black goo that leaked into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP spill last year is certainly toxic—but so are broccoli, beer and salt. It all depends on the dosage. In fact that horrid black goo has spilled naturally into the Gulf of Mexico for millennia— at the rate of two Exxon Valdez spills annually.
A study by the Dept. of Oceanography at Texas A&M found 600 “oils spills,” into the Gulf of Mexico, all ancient if not prehistoric, all antiseptically “natural”, and all courtesy of Earth Goddess Gaia. In fact these “spills” probably saved the survivors of Hernando De Soto’s plucky band of explorers in 1542, who record caulking their boats with the abundant tar balls found along an east Texas beach. The study also reports that in 1909 a genuine gusher was spotted in the same area, shooting crude oil high into the air from the Gulf floor.
Not all these gushers lie below the Gulf of Mexico however. In fact one of Mother Earth’s biggest “spills” is off Southern California’s coast at Coal Oil Point, not far from the homes of ”environmentalist activists” Leo De Caprio, Charlie Sheen, Barbara Streisand, Brad Pitt, Ed Begley Jr and many, many others of their ilk. This spill gushes an estimated 3000 gallons of crude oil daily into the waters off Malibu beach. But none of the above “activists” appear overly agitated over this “disaster.”
Nothing normally soothes the savage beast of an environmentalist like the notion of a substance being “biodegradable.” Indeed, the term “environmentally-friendly,” has become almost its synonym. Well, crude oil is about as biodegradable as substances come, especially when spewed into warm, microbe-filled waters like the Gulf of Mexico. Hence the stratospheric dunce caps crowning so many “environmentalist” heads a mere year after “The Worst Environmental Disaster in U.S. History!”
“The damaging effects of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will be felt all the way to Europe and the Arctic!” according to a “top scientist” addressing a congressional panel, as reported by CNN last year.
In fact, the damaging effects were hardly visible in Louisiana itself a few months later. Dr. Van Heerden who spent most of his days inspecting the Louisiana coast found that less than one square mile of coastal marsh had been severely oiled, mostly around Timbalier Bay. That’s out of 5300 square miles of Louisiana coastal marsh and swamp, by the way.
And by last July the “severely oiled” areas were already bouncing back. “Van Heerden's assessment team showed me around Casse-tete Island in Timbalier Bay,” wrote Time Magazine’s Michael Grunwald last July, “where new shoots of Spartina (marsh) grasses were sprouting in oiled marshes and new leaves were already growing on the first black mangroves I've ever seen that were actually black."
“Ah!” you ask. “But what about that poisonous chemical used as a dispersant for the oil?”
You probably ingested traces of this poisonous chemical compound with last night’s dinner, and other traces probably coat your pots, pans, cups, spoons and forks right now. Some people call the dispersant Corexit 9500—and some call it “soap.” Essentially it’s Dawn dishwashing detergent.
“Dispersants are not very toxic.” Explains Dr. Robert Dickey, director of FDA’s Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory. “They are detergents and solvents. And they become rapidly diluted. One square mile of sea water one foot deep is 200 million gallons. We added 1.8 million gallons in the whole Gulf.”
Point is: you add much higher concentration to your kitchen sink to make your dishes “safe” for your family.
After the spill, the FDA’s Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Seafood Inspection Laboratory, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the Louisiana Dept. of Health and Hospitals along with similar agencies from neighboring Gulf coast states have methodically and repeatedly tested Gulf seafood for cancer-causing “polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.”
“Not a single sample [for oil or dispersant] has come anywhere close to levels of concern,” reported Olivia Watkins, executive media advisor for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
“All of the samples have been 100-fold or even 1,000-fold below all of these levels, “reports Bob Dickey, director of the FDA’s Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory. “Nothing ever came close to these levels.”
“Fine,” some might say. But kindly define what constitutes this “level of concern.”
“The small amount of hydrocarbons in a seafood meal is much less than the exposure from pumping gas,” clarifies La. Dept. of Health and Hospitals Dr. Jimmy Guidry
“Anyone who smokes one cigarette gets more PAHs than they could get from eating gallons of any Gulf oysters that have been tested,” clarifies Dr. LuAnn White
After the Exxon Valdez “disaster” a NOAA study found that “residents of village communities (near Prince William Sound) became upset when it was pointed out that samples of smoked fish from their villages contained carcinogenic hydrocarbon levels hundreds of times higher than any shellfish samples collected from oiled beaches.”
The proof of the abundance of Louisiana’s the marine life is in the eating, but first comes the catching and spearing. So let’s head to an offshore oil platform a few months after and a few miles away from “The Worst Environmental Disaster in U.S. History!” and take a peek.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
"There's just no data to suggest this is an environmental disaster, “said Marine Scientist and former LSU professor Ivor Van Heerden who also works as a BP spill-response contractor. “I have no interest in making BP look good — I think they lied about the size of the spill — but we're not seeing catastrophic impacts. There's a lot of hype, but no evidence to justify it."
In fact these observations came-- not a year after the Deepwater Horizon blew-up -- but a mere three months afterwards, making them all the more blasphemous at the time. By now they’ve been amply vindicated, making the Obama team’s “moratorium” and more recent stonewalling on Gulf of Mexico drilling permits all the more preposterous.
Your loyal servant here grew up in South Louisiana and spends most week-ends along the Louisiana coast hooking, spearing, gaffing, blasting and otherwise assassinating the raw ingredients of his family meals. He also shares the resulting joys and debacles with readers and TV-show hosts. So he had more than a casual concern with the BP oil spill.
The reasons for this “disasters’” fizzling out are many and were apparent to non-hack scientists from the get-go. To wit:
“People don’t comprehend how so much oil could break down in such a short time period,” explains Dr. LuAnn White, a toxicologist with the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, who also serves as Director of the Center for Applied Environmental Health. “But we have natural oil seeps in the Gulf, and over 200 genera of microbes that break down oil already exist there.”
“It cannot be repeated often enough,” says Louisiana Marine Biologist Jerald Horst , Crude oil is a natural substance, its biodegradable. It’s a feast for microbes. And these consumed most of it from the BP spill.”
The horrid black goo that leaked into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP spill last year is certainly toxic—but so are broccoli, beer and salt. It all depends on the dosage. In fact that horrid black goo has spilled naturally into the Gulf of Mexico for millennia— at the rate of two Exxon Valdez spills annually.
A study by the Dept. of Oceanography at Texas A&M found 600 “oils spills,” into the Gulf of Mexico, all ancient if not prehistoric, all antiseptically “natural”, and all courtesy of Earth Goddess Gaia. In fact these “spills” probably saved the survivors of Hernando De Soto’s plucky band of explorers in 1542, who record caulking their boats with the abundant tar balls found along an east Texas beach. The study also reports that in 1909 a genuine gusher was spotted in the same area, shooting crude oil high into the air from the Gulf floor.
Not all these gushers lie below the Gulf of Mexico however. In fact one of Mother Earth’s biggest “spills” is off Southern California’s coast at Coal Oil Point, not far from the homes of ”environmentalist activists” Leo De Caprio, Charlie Sheen, Barbara Streisand, Brad Pitt, Ed Begley Jr and many, many others of their ilk. This spill gushes an estimated 3000 gallons of crude oil daily into the waters off Malibu beach. But none of the above “activists” appear overly agitated over this “disaster.”
Nothing normally soothes the savage beast of an environmentalist like the notion of a substance being “biodegradable.” Indeed, the term “environmentally-friendly,” has become almost its synonym. Well, crude oil is about as biodegradable as substances come, especially when spewed into warm, microbe-filled waters like the Gulf of Mexico. Hence the stratospheric dunce caps crowning so many “environmentalist” heads a mere year after “The Worst Environmental Disaster in U.S. History!”
“The damaging effects of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will be felt all the way to Europe and the Arctic!” according to a “top scientist” addressing a congressional panel, as reported by CNN last year.
In fact, the damaging effects were hardly visible in Louisiana itself a few months later. Dr. Van Heerden who spent most of his days inspecting the Louisiana coast found that less than one square mile of coastal marsh had been severely oiled, mostly around Timbalier Bay. That’s out of 5300 square miles of Louisiana coastal marsh and swamp, by the way.
And by last July the “severely oiled” areas were already bouncing back. “Van Heerden's assessment team showed me around Casse-tete Island in Timbalier Bay,” wrote Time Magazine’s Michael Grunwald last July, “where new shoots of Spartina (marsh) grasses were sprouting in oiled marshes and new leaves were already growing on the first black mangroves I've ever seen that were actually black."
“Ah!” you ask. “But what about that poisonous chemical used as a dispersant for the oil?”
You probably ingested traces of this poisonous chemical compound with last night’s dinner, and other traces probably coat your pots, pans, cups, spoons and forks right now. Some people call the dispersant Corexit 9500—and some call it “soap.” Essentially it’s Dawn dishwashing detergent.
“Dispersants are not very toxic.” Explains Dr. Robert Dickey, director of FDA’s Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory. “They are detergents and solvents. And they become rapidly diluted. One square mile of sea water one foot deep is 200 million gallons. We added 1.8 million gallons in the whole Gulf.”
Point is: you add much higher concentration to your kitchen sink to make your dishes “safe” for your family.
After the spill, the FDA’s Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Seafood Inspection Laboratory, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the Louisiana Dept. of Health and Hospitals along with similar agencies from neighboring Gulf coast states have methodically and repeatedly tested Gulf seafood for cancer-causing “polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.”
“Not a single sample [for oil or dispersant] has come anywhere close to levels of concern,” reported Olivia Watkins, executive media advisor for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
“All of the samples have been 100-fold or even 1,000-fold below all of these levels, “reports Bob Dickey, director of the FDA’s Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory. “Nothing ever came close to these levels.”
“Fine,” some might say. But kindly define what constitutes this “level of concern.”
“The small amount of hydrocarbons in a seafood meal is much less than the exposure from pumping gas,” clarifies La. Dept. of Health and Hospitals Dr. Jimmy Guidry
“Anyone who smokes one cigarette gets more PAHs than they could get from eating gallons of any Gulf oysters that have been tested,” clarifies Dr. LuAnn White
After the Exxon Valdez “disaster” a NOAA study found that “residents of village communities (near Prince William Sound) became upset when it was pointed out that samples of smoked fish from their villages contained carcinogenic hydrocarbon levels hundreds of times higher than any shellfish samples collected from oiled beaches.”
The proof of the abundance of Louisiana’s the marine life is in the eating, but first comes the catching and spearing. So let’s head to an offshore oil platform a few months after and a few miles away from “The Worst Environmental Disaster in U.S. History!” and take a peek.
Are Voters As Stupid As Insiders Think?
By Debra J. Saunders
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Do Americans have the will to cut government spending in order to curb the rampant growth in government debt and liabilities? Not if the politicians they send to Washington have anything to do with it.
On Tuesday, a Republican candidate lost a special election to replace a disgraced GOP congressman from Buffalo, N.Y. -- to a Democrat who won with the help of a third-party candidate. Presto.
On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called a vote on the House GOP budget bill. As The New York Times reported, Reid "brought the legislation to the floor so that Senate Republicans would either have to vote for it, exposing them to attacks from Democrats and their allies, or against it, exploiting growing Republican divisions on the issue."
Under Reid, the Senate has not passed a budget since April 29, 2009. The Senate has yet to pass a resolution to authorize the use of military force in Libya, even though the 1973 War Powers Resolution requires Congress to authorize military force abroad lasting longer than 60 days. Friday is the 60th day.
But when Reid sees a chance to make Republicans squirm in a symbolic vote that won't change anything, he is a tiger.
The GOP package failed, as expected, after four moderate Republicans and Kentucky purist Rand Paul voted against it.
Then the Senate voted on the Obama spending blueprint. It tanked 97-0.
While headlines focused on the GOP 57-40 loss, there was not a single Democrat who voted to take up the Obama budget. Gee. Reid sure is good at exploiting GOP divisions.
So tell me, what do the Democrats stand for?
I know what most Republicans stand for. The House budget plan trimmed federal spending by $6 trillion over 10 years and targeted the big enchilada, entitlement spending. Under Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's plan, Medicare enrollees would receive subsidies that would allow them to purchase private health care plans starting in 2022.
Democrats call that "ending Medicare as we know it." Republicans counter that the Medicare trust fund is expected to go bust in 2024 (five years earlier than trustees predicted last year) so Washington better change Medicare -- and fast -- in order to save it.
House Republicans are so righteous about reform that their plan includes means-testing to make affluent seniors pay more for Medicare. At a speech to the Economic Club of New York earlier this month, House Speaker John Boehner told billionaire and deficit hawk Pete Peterson, "Pete, I love you to death, but I don't think the taxpayers ought to be paying your Medicare premium."
Democrats are so stuck in "no" mode that they have been reduced to protesting Boehner's remarks. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, issued a statement in which he complained, "this idea may undermine Medicare and cost beneficiaries more at the same time."
The conventional wisdom inside the Beltway says that Republicans lost twice this week -- first in a special election, then a Senate vote. Conventional wisdom says that voters will bite if politicians, who promised fiscal discipline, lift a finger against entitlement spending. But a 97-zip vote on Plan Obama? Who calls that "winning?
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Do Americans have the will to cut government spending in order to curb the rampant growth in government debt and liabilities? Not if the politicians they send to Washington have anything to do with it.
On Tuesday, a Republican candidate lost a special election to replace a disgraced GOP congressman from Buffalo, N.Y. -- to a Democrat who won with the help of a third-party candidate. Presto.
On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called a vote on the House GOP budget bill. As The New York Times reported, Reid "brought the legislation to the floor so that Senate Republicans would either have to vote for it, exposing them to attacks from Democrats and their allies, or against it, exploiting growing Republican divisions on the issue."
Under Reid, the Senate has not passed a budget since April 29, 2009. The Senate has yet to pass a resolution to authorize the use of military force in Libya, even though the 1973 War Powers Resolution requires Congress to authorize military force abroad lasting longer than 60 days. Friday is the 60th day.
But when Reid sees a chance to make Republicans squirm in a symbolic vote that won't change anything, he is a tiger.
The GOP package failed, as expected, after four moderate Republicans and Kentucky purist Rand Paul voted against it.
Then the Senate voted on the Obama spending blueprint. It tanked 97-0.
While headlines focused on the GOP 57-40 loss, there was not a single Democrat who voted to take up the Obama budget. Gee. Reid sure is good at exploiting GOP divisions.
So tell me, what do the Democrats stand for?
I know what most Republicans stand for. The House budget plan trimmed federal spending by $6 trillion over 10 years and targeted the big enchilada, entitlement spending. Under Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's plan, Medicare enrollees would receive subsidies that would allow them to purchase private health care plans starting in 2022.
Democrats call that "ending Medicare as we know it." Republicans counter that the Medicare trust fund is expected to go bust in 2024 (five years earlier than trustees predicted last year) so Washington better change Medicare -- and fast -- in order to save it.
House Republicans are so righteous about reform that their plan includes means-testing to make affluent seniors pay more for Medicare. At a speech to the Economic Club of New York earlier this month, House Speaker John Boehner told billionaire and deficit hawk Pete Peterson, "Pete, I love you to death, but I don't think the taxpayers ought to be paying your Medicare premium."
Democrats are so stuck in "no" mode that they have been reduced to protesting Boehner's remarks. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, issued a statement in which he complained, "this idea may undermine Medicare and cost beneficiaries more at the same time."
The conventional wisdom inside the Beltway says that Republicans lost twice this week -- first in a special election, then a Senate vote. Conventional wisdom says that voters will bite if politicians, who promised fiscal discipline, lift a finger against entitlement spending. But a 97-zip vote on Plan Obama? Who calls that "winning?
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Living in Appeasement World
The Obama administration is at home in unreality.
Conrad Black
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Contrary to the famous advice of Franklin D. Roosevelt in his State of the Union message in 1941 — “We must always be wary of those who with sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal would preach the ‘ism’ of appeasement” — the United States is now effectively an appeasement power. Because it is so helplessly dependent on imported oil from unfriendly places (unlike Canada), and the American public is so cranky and churlish about paying what other countries pay for imported petroleum products, and the political class of both parties for 40 years has been so hopelessly feeble about explaining the problem and trying to persuade the country to face up to it, the U.S. tolerates the subsidization of Islamic extremism by Saudis and seems to be afraid to do anything to prevent the nuclear militarization of Iran.
Because the U.S. is so debt-ridden and the political class of both parties has generally been incapable of speaking straight to the country about public-sector debt and the related burden of the current-account deficit (half composed of oil imports), and because so much U.S. government debt is held by China, the country’s government is afraid to encourage China’s neighbors to coordinate even an unprovoking and entirely civilized response to China’s high-handed condescensions to India on the Himalayan frontier and puerile expansionism in the South China Sea, presumably for fear of China’s response as a large creditor of the U.S.
No sane person wishes abrasions with another country, especially an important country like China. And there is an argument to be made that short of atrocities on a scale between the anticipated Qaddafi bloodbath in Benghazi and the hecatombs of Rwanda and Cambodia, questions of citizens’ rights in one country are not the province of another country. But all of these responses to the Saudis, Iranians, Chinese, and other regimes, whether concealed in mundane metaphors about reset buttons or swaddled in pseudo-worldly solicitude for the sensibilities of other cultures, show what Roosevelt called “the ‘ism’ of appeasement.”
President Obama campaigned on promises to restore fiscal order and reduce imports of oil from hostile countries. He is already trying to raise a billion dollars for his reelection campaign but has delivered nothing on these absolutely vital objectives that he so clearly espoused. We are still wallowing in oil consumption, mouthing fairy tales about renewable energy and climate change, while we seem to have raised our hands like hold-up victims and surrendered on a military option to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear military power, and have scaled back Mrs. Clinton’s promised “crippling sanctions” against the ayatollahs and Ahmadinejad to porous inconveniences.
Instead of addressing the debt problem that has made discussion of default on “the faith and credit of these United States” a routine possible scenario, the U.S. has poured out $3 trillion of debt, which can be financed only by issuance of bonds to the Federal Reserve, paid for by electronic notes from the Federal Reserve. The world’s reserve currency has become virtual money; no serious arm’s-length entity will buy its debt; most of the largest states of the union are bust; there is no visible will to pay down the debt instead of just devaluing the currency in which it is denominated; the Treasury secretary is as silent as a cigar-store Indian; and Mr. Bernanke’s homilies about clearing up the central bank’s balance sheet are moonshine. The emperor not only has no clothes; in his underclad state he can be seen to be missing some important anatomical components as well.
Mao Tse-tung, in frustration, called the U.S. a “paper tiger,” before he conciliated it; Andrei Gromyko impatiently dismissed his Egyptian ally as “a paper camel,” before their relations broke down. If present trends continue, the U.S. will be a paper mouse before the great American people finally demand that America be America. In the meantime, Iran will at least have punctured the bubble of the hypocrisy of the nuclear-arms regime. The non-proliferation agreements require the nuclear powers to negotiate toward disarmament, which is nonsense, and Barack Obama is the first person to take the idea seriously since the senescent Bertrand Russell. If Iran proceeds undisturbed, other than by hackers, to nuclear capability, assisted by the Russians (while Joe Biden resets the button) and by the Chinese (whom we seem not to dare to question), 20 or 30 countries will follow. If Pakistan and Iran, and the gangster state of Russia, can have nuclear weapons, why should not all the responsible countries, less confident than they were in the American alliance, as well as many of the irresponsible countries, do the same?
A piquant irony in the Obama age is the extreme rudeness of this administration to its ostensible friends, and in normal contacts within the official Washington establishment. President Obama responded to British prime minister Gordon Brown’s thoughtful gift of a bureau made from the timbers of a ship that fought the slave trade, with a set of DVDs for Queen Elizabeth and the return of a bust of Sir Winston Churchill (an honorary citizen of the United States, after whom President Clinton named a U.S. Navy frigate). President Obama harangued the Supreme Court in his State of the Union message in January 2010 with a version of the court’s campaign-financing ruling that he knew to be false and that at least one of the justices helpfully and loudly stated to be false, on camera in mid-speech. Supreme Court justices’ attendance at such occasions is now spotty.
The president produced a ludicrous budget that ignored the fiscal crisis, and when House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan produced substantive proposals, Mr. Obama announced that he would reciprocate. He invited Congressman Ryan to attend the unveiling, seated him right in front of him, and pilloried the congressman and his committee. The Congress having invited Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu to address it, President Obama waited until a day before the Israeli leader’s arrival and then gave an address at the State Department that he knew to be completely unacceptable to Israel, had a cordial photo op of reciprocal smiling accusations of bad faith and stupidity with his visitor, and left the country. Even if the 1967 borders were the key to a lasting Israel-Palestine agreement (which they aren’t — Arab acceptance of a Jewish state is), Israel should not be making preemptive concessions to an Arab world almost all of whose neighboring governments are apt to collapse or be overthrown from one week to the next. (Netanyahu’s elegant address to the Congress de-escalated the impasse without turning the other cheek.)
Unless this regime has invented a virtual diplomacy and revisionist history to accompany its virtual currency, none of it makes any sense.
Conrad Black
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Contrary to the famous advice of Franklin D. Roosevelt in his State of the Union message in 1941 — “We must always be wary of those who with sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal would preach the ‘ism’ of appeasement” — the United States is now effectively an appeasement power. Because it is so helplessly dependent on imported oil from unfriendly places (unlike Canada), and the American public is so cranky and churlish about paying what other countries pay for imported petroleum products, and the political class of both parties for 40 years has been so hopelessly feeble about explaining the problem and trying to persuade the country to face up to it, the U.S. tolerates the subsidization of Islamic extremism by Saudis and seems to be afraid to do anything to prevent the nuclear militarization of Iran.
Because the U.S. is so debt-ridden and the political class of both parties has generally been incapable of speaking straight to the country about public-sector debt and the related burden of the current-account deficit (half composed of oil imports), and because so much U.S. government debt is held by China, the country’s government is afraid to encourage China’s neighbors to coordinate even an unprovoking and entirely civilized response to China’s high-handed condescensions to India on the Himalayan frontier and puerile expansionism in the South China Sea, presumably for fear of China’s response as a large creditor of the U.S.
No sane person wishes abrasions with another country, especially an important country like China. And there is an argument to be made that short of atrocities on a scale between the anticipated Qaddafi bloodbath in Benghazi and the hecatombs of Rwanda and Cambodia, questions of citizens’ rights in one country are not the province of another country. But all of these responses to the Saudis, Iranians, Chinese, and other regimes, whether concealed in mundane metaphors about reset buttons or swaddled in pseudo-worldly solicitude for the sensibilities of other cultures, show what Roosevelt called “the ‘ism’ of appeasement.”
President Obama campaigned on promises to restore fiscal order and reduce imports of oil from hostile countries. He is already trying to raise a billion dollars for his reelection campaign but has delivered nothing on these absolutely vital objectives that he so clearly espoused. We are still wallowing in oil consumption, mouthing fairy tales about renewable energy and climate change, while we seem to have raised our hands like hold-up victims and surrendered on a military option to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear military power, and have scaled back Mrs. Clinton’s promised “crippling sanctions” against the ayatollahs and Ahmadinejad to porous inconveniences.
Instead of addressing the debt problem that has made discussion of default on “the faith and credit of these United States” a routine possible scenario, the U.S. has poured out $3 trillion of debt, which can be financed only by issuance of bonds to the Federal Reserve, paid for by electronic notes from the Federal Reserve. The world’s reserve currency has become virtual money; no serious arm’s-length entity will buy its debt; most of the largest states of the union are bust; there is no visible will to pay down the debt instead of just devaluing the currency in which it is denominated; the Treasury secretary is as silent as a cigar-store Indian; and Mr. Bernanke’s homilies about clearing up the central bank’s balance sheet are moonshine. The emperor not only has no clothes; in his underclad state he can be seen to be missing some important anatomical components as well.
Mao Tse-tung, in frustration, called the U.S. a “paper tiger,” before he conciliated it; Andrei Gromyko impatiently dismissed his Egyptian ally as “a paper camel,” before their relations broke down. If present trends continue, the U.S. will be a paper mouse before the great American people finally demand that America be America. In the meantime, Iran will at least have punctured the bubble of the hypocrisy of the nuclear-arms regime. The non-proliferation agreements require the nuclear powers to negotiate toward disarmament, which is nonsense, and Barack Obama is the first person to take the idea seriously since the senescent Bertrand Russell. If Iran proceeds undisturbed, other than by hackers, to nuclear capability, assisted by the Russians (while Joe Biden resets the button) and by the Chinese (whom we seem not to dare to question), 20 or 30 countries will follow. If Pakistan and Iran, and the gangster state of Russia, can have nuclear weapons, why should not all the responsible countries, less confident than they were in the American alliance, as well as many of the irresponsible countries, do the same?
A piquant irony in the Obama age is the extreme rudeness of this administration to its ostensible friends, and in normal contacts within the official Washington establishment. President Obama responded to British prime minister Gordon Brown’s thoughtful gift of a bureau made from the timbers of a ship that fought the slave trade, with a set of DVDs for Queen Elizabeth and the return of a bust of Sir Winston Churchill (an honorary citizen of the United States, after whom President Clinton named a U.S. Navy frigate). President Obama harangued the Supreme Court in his State of the Union message in January 2010 with a version of the court’s campaign-financing ruling that he knew to be false and that at least one of the justices helpfully and loudly stated to be false, on camera in mid-speech. Supreme Court justices’ attendance at such occasions is now spotty.
The president produced a ludicrous budget that ignored the fiscal crisis, and when House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan produced substantive proposals, Mr. Obama announced that he would reciprocate. He invited Congressman Ryan to attend the unveiling, seated him right in front of him, and pilloried the congressman and his committee. The Congress having invited Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu to address it, President Obama waited until a day before the Israeli leader’s arrival and then gave an address at the State Department that he knew to be completely unacceptable to Israel, had a cordial photo op of reciprocal smiling accusations of bad faith and stupidity with his visitor, and left the country. Even if the 1967 borders were the key to a lasting Israel-Palestine agreement (which they aren’t — Arab acceptance of a Jewish state is), Israel should not be making preemptive concessions to an Arab world almost all of whose neighboring governments are apt to collapse or be overthrown from one week to the next. (Netanyahu’s elegant address to the Congress de-escalated the impasse without turning the other cheek.)
Unless this regime has invented a virtual diplomacy and revisionist history to accompany its virtual currency, none of it makes any sense.
Back to the Pre-American World
By Victor Davis HansonThursday, May 26, 2011
Is America's preeminent world role over?
That's what a recent New Yorker essay, based on interviews with presidential advisers, claimed. It characterized the new Obama foreign-relations style as "leading from behind" -- given the supposed inevitable American decline and growing unpopularity. The president is said to agree with pundits such as Fareed Zakaria and Tom Friedman, who have often outlined the parameters of what the post-American world would look like.
But if American abrogates its preeminent leadership position of the last 65 years, wouldn't the world look a lot like it did in the pre-American days of the 1930s? Then, a Depression-era United States was just one of many powers and reluctant to assert leadership abroad.
Eighty years ago, a newly Westernized and anti-democratic Japanese powerhouse, in the fashion of today's rising China, was carving out uncontested Asian spheres of influence. An oil-, rubber- and iron-hungry imperial Japan claimed it needed more natural resources to fuel its industrial revolution, and so spread an authoritarian Asian co-prosperity sphere of influence as an alternative to alliance with an economically depressed and psychologically withdrawn America.
Most Americans then were tired anyway of overseas commitments. Our ancestors felt that their considerable sacrifices in World War I either had gone unappreciated or had solved little -- not unlike the way we are becoming exhausted by Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya.
A newly confident, united and ascendant Germany was growing angry at other European countries. It nursed a long list of financial grievances over feeling used and abused. Sound familiar? A weak Britain and France had almost no confidence in their own declining militaries -- sort of like the sad spectacle of their impotence in Libya that we have witnessed over the last two months.
Much-vaunted international institutions, like the bankrupt League of Nations, were about as effective in the role of world watchdogs as the corrupt United Nations is today. Europe and America were emerging from the nightmare of financial insolvency.
The so-called international community cared as much in the 1930s about rising, aggressive totalitarian states in Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia as it does today about ascendant China or Iran. Millions of Jews, then as now, heard crazy threats of their annihilation, and desperately -- and in vain -- looked to the protection of the United States.
In other words, the post-American world could look a lot like the rather terrifying pre-American version of seven decades past. Why in the world would we wish to return to it?
The declinists insist we have no choice. Globalization has spread power. America has depleted its resources, both natural and financial. And our prior leadership abroad is something worthy of apology rather than pride anyway. Think of receding postcolonial Britain around 1946 as our model, not the confident, rising postwar United States of Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
But decline is always a choice, not an inevitable fate. America's known fossil-fuel reserves -- natural gas, oil, coal, shale, tar-sands -- are larger than ever. The problem is not finding more energy but marshaling the will to use the vast new sources of energy we have recently discovered.
Our military is not just larger than the alternatives, but vastly larger and ever more lethal. Given the enormous size and productivity of the U.S. economy, we have the means -- but not yet the will -- to rapidly pay down our huge debt. In a world short on food, America is the world's greatest agricultural producer.
Other industrialized populations age and decline; ours is still growing. America is widely criticized abroad even as it remains by far the favored destination of global immigrants. Diverse religious practice is still vibrant in the United States. Elsewhere, it is fossilized in Europe, nonexistent in China, and intolerant in the Middle East.
While riots, strikes or revolutions sweep southern Europe and the Middle East, the United States remains stable and quiet -- despite far greater racial, ethnic and religious diversity. Globalization is still mostly a phenomenon of American innovation and originality to be licensed and outsourced abroad.
There have been plenty of thugs who threatened their neighbors over the last 30 years. Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Manuel Noriega and the Taliban were all deposed from rule only by American power. The "lost" war in Iraq resulted in a democratic and, for now, still viable government in place of genocide. Afghanistan is depressing, but the medieval Taliban still have remained out of power for nearly a decade.
In short, the old pre-American world was as unstable and dangerous as would be a new post-American update. But both retrenchments were choices that an unsure and depressed United States made -- not symptoms, then or now, of inherent weakness or inevitable decline.
Is America's preeminent world role over?
That's what a recent New Yorker essay, based on interviews with presidential advisers, claimed. It characterized the new Obama foreign-relations style as "leading from behind" -- given the supposed inevitable American decline and growing unpopularity. The president is said to agree with pundits such as Fareed Zakaria and Tom Friedman, who have often outlined the parameters of what the post-American world would look like.
But if American abrogates its preeminent leadership position of the last 65 years, wouldn't the world look a lot like it did in the pre-American days of the 1930s? Then, a Depression-era United States was just one of many powers and reluctant to assert leadership abroad.
Eighty years ago, a newly Westernized and anti-democratic Japanese powerhouse, in the fashion of today's rising China, was carving out uncontested Asian spheres of influence. An oil-, rubber- and iron-hungry imperial Japan claimed it needed more natural resources to fuel its industrial revolution, and so spread an authoritarian Asian co-prosperity sphere of influence as an alternative to alliance with an economically depressed and psychologically withdrawn America.
Most Americans then were tired anyway of overseas commitments. Our ancestors felt that their considerable sacrifices in World War I either had gone unappreciated or had solved little -- not unlike the way we are becoming exhausted by Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya.
A newly confident, united and ascendant Germany was growing angry at other European countries. It nursed a long list of financial grievances over feeling used and abused. Sound familiar? A weak Britain and France had almost no confidence in their own declining militaries -- sort of like the sad spectacle of their impotence in Libya that we have witnessed over the last two months.
Much-vaunted international institutions, like the bankrupt League of Nations, were about as effective in the role of world watchdogs as the corrupt United Nations is today. Europe and America were emerging from the nightmare of financial insolvency.
The so-called international community cared as much in the 1930s about rising, aggressive totalitarian states in Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia as it does today about ascendant China or Iran. Millions of Jews, then as now, heard crazy threats of their annihilation, and desperately -- and in vain -- looked to the protection of the United States.
In other words, the post-American world could look a lot like the rather terrifying pre-American version of seven decades past. Why in the world would we wish to return to it?
The declinists insist we have no choice. Globalization has spread power. America has depleted its resources, both natural and financial. And our prior leadership abroad is something worthy of apology rather than pride anyway. Think of receding postcolonial Britain around 1946 as our model, not the confident, rising postwar United States of Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
But decline is always a choice, not an inevitable fate. America's known fossil-fuel reserves -- natural gas, oil, coal, shale, tar-sands -- are larger than ever. The problem is not finding more energy but marshaling the will to use the vast new sources of energy we have recently discovered.
Our military is not just larger than the alternatives, but vastly larger and ever more lethal. Given the enormous size and productivity of the U.S. economy, we have the means -- but not yet the will -- to rapidly pay down our huge debt. In a world short on food, America is the world's greatest agricultural producer.
Other industrialized populations age and decline; ours is still growing. America is widely criticized abroad even as it remains by far the favored destination of global immigrants. Diverse religious practice is still vibrant in the United States. Elsewhere, it is fossilized in Europe, nonexistent in China, and intolerant in the Middle East.
While riots, strikes or revolutions sweep southern Europe and the Middle East, the United States remains stable and quiet -- despite far greater racial, ethnic and religious diversity. Globalization is still mostly a phenomenon of American innovation and originality to be licensed and outsourced abroad.
There have been plenty of thugs who threatened their neighbors over the last 30 years. Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Manuel Noriega and the Taliban were all deposed from rule only by American power. The "lost" war in Iraq resulted in a democratic and, for now, still viable government in place of genocide. Afghanistan is depressing, but the medieval Taliban still have remained out of power for nearly a decade.
In short, the old pre-American world was as unstable and dangerous as would be a new post-American update. But both retrenchments were choices that an unsure and depressed United States made -- not symptoms, then or now, of inherent weakness or inevitable decline.
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