The Razor

In the final weeks before the election I’ve been thinking long and hard about what the outcome could mean for the future of my country. Regardless of who wins, he will face a China that is bullying its neighbors into American arms, a Middle East that has become more radicalized not less, an Iranian nuke or a war started by Israel or the United States but blamed on the Great Satan regardless of which flag is painted on the bunker busters. The November winner will face a crumbling Europe, a soaring American debt that has become so big no one knows how to tame it, and a catatonic domestic economy. American education spends more than any nation in the world on its students yet they learn less. The weight of the pensions of Baby Boomers threatens to crush public spending, turning cities and states into mob enforcers who shake down the working, relatively poor young and pass the cash to the retiring relatively wealthy elderly.

I will leave the economic issues aside for the moment to focus on foreign policy. In my view with the exception of China, Obama has made all of these problems worse. But looking at these issues over the long-term, say through the remainder of this decade, would an Obama loss be really a victory for those of us who have opposed him every step of his way to the office he now holds?

China stands as perhaps the only issue I agree with the administration on. I’ve studied China and East Asia for decades, and recognize that handling a rising superpower is never easy, especially one with a 4,500 year history and cursed by a long, often twisted, memory. The Obama administration has attempted to encourage the rise of a peaceful, prosperous China that would take its place as an equal partner in the Pacific, but at the same time has worked to support our allies such as Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. It is an art more than a science, and while mistakes have been made by the Obama administration, they are to be expected in such a long-term important endeavor. The Chinese cannot understand why the United States would welcome a peaceful, prosperous and powerful China that is integrated with the rest of the world, and instead sees every American move through paranoid eyes and zero-sum calculations. We can’t do much to change this view of American policy in the Pacific, except by doing what this administration has done, setting policies that reassure our allies while encouraging the Chinese to play nice with others in the Pacific’s playground.

Unfortunately the tact, intelligence and real-politic shown by the Obama administration towards China has not been manifested anywhere else in the world. In the same way the reality of Iraq showed the folly of the neocon dream, the murder of our diplomat in Libya and the virulent anti-American nature of the “Arab Spring” has put paid to the dreams of Obama and his liberal eggheads. Obama believed that he alone could solve the Middle East problem with a grand speech in Cairo and apologies and bows to Arab leaders. He thought he could strong-arm Israel to make peace with the Palestinians, and that the Muslim world would see the wisdom of the Nobel committee’s awarding him his Peace Prize. He believed that once free from Iraq, he would be able to exit Afghanistan gracefully without fear of the Taliban taking it over and turning back the clock to 2000.

Nearly four years later America is even more hated than it was under the Bush administration. Iraq is becoming a satellite of Iran, allowing its Shiite neighbor unrestricted flights over its territory to resupply the Assad regime. Pakistan has degenerated into a pit of vipers that protected a man personally responsible for more American deaths than anyone since Ho Chi Minh and allowed Chinese to test a piece of top secret American gear left behind after its forces aired out his skull. Vast swathes of North Africa have been lost to al-Qaeda affiliated radicals including half of its most populous nation, Nigeria. Women are being secreted behind closed doors in Cairo and Tunis, as Egyptians copts are raped and terrorized out of their homes, putting an end to communities that date almost to the time of Christ. Liberals laughed when a man threw shoes at George W. Bush; they are oddly silent as they see Obama burned in effigy by crowds throughout the Middle East. Americans once were able to visit the Pyramids and Valley of the Kings; today members of the Egyptian government call for the destruction of the Pyramids and the State Dept warns Americans to avoid Egypt.

Hope and change.

The murder of the Libyan ambassador proves the Obama administration has failed to learn the lessons of 9-11. The average rapper has better security in Los Angeles than the Libyan ambassador. Threats against American interests there were ignored just as Bin Laden’s declaration of war against the US was in 1998. Many on the right including myself have given a pass to the Clinton administration for failing to imagine the attacks of 9-11 and stop them; today the Obama administration has no such excuses.

And speaking of silence, where is Code Pink, Cindy Sheehan and the other anti-war Left? Where are the anti-war drums that sounded for every dead Muslim civilian or American soldier arriving at Dover Air Force base in Delaware in the middle of the night? Where is the anger, the spiteful commentary of lost wars, the Vietnam comparisons that flowed thick through every mainstream news outlet during the Bush administration? As Walter Russell Mead notes, “If George W. Bush were president now, and had ordered the surge and was responsible for the strategic decisions taken and not taken in Afghanistan over the last four years, the mainstream press would be rubbing our noses in his miserable failures and inexcusable blunders 24/7. The New York Times and the Washington Post would be treating us to pictures of every fallen soldier. The PBS Newshour would feature nightly post-mortems on “America’s failed strategies in the Afghan War” and every arm-chair strategist in America would be filling the op-ed pages with the brilliant 20/20 hindsight ideas that our pathetic, clueless, failed president was too dumb and too cocky to have had.”

After his election I feared that Obama would weaken the position of the United States in the world. I envisioned Obama to be a pacifist who would gut our military, anger our friends and embolden our enemies. I was wrong about Obama’s pacifism; he may be a pacifist at heart but he has shown a willingness to kill America’s enemies that would make Dick Cheney offer him a high-five. Unfortunately he has succeeded in doing what I feared. Our alliances with our closest friends Australia, Canada and Great Britain are ignored. Our long-standing friendship with Israel rebuffed. A deep relationship with Egypt lost. Meanwhile Iran, North Korea and the socialist states in South America continue on as before, confident that the US lacks the resources to challenge them. As Machiavelli wrote “if one cannot be both, it is better to be feared than loved.” Obama should play less golf and read more because he has failed to do either.

The only solace I can take is that the Obama administration has shown a willingness to kill our enemies. Bin Laden is crab food, and drone strikes and special operations continue worldwide. The administration avoids calling it by its name, but the Global War on Terrorism continues using the same methods and tactics that the Bush administration developed and supported. What Obama has not done is use his speech giving abilities to provide an explanation to the American people why the war continues, and show that he and his administration understand the existential threat posed by radical Islam. It is a shame because it is possible that a liberal like Obama could do more to protect and advance freedom in the world for the same reason that a cold warrior like President Nixon could open up to China: his base trusts him.

And this is what concerns me about a Romney victory. If Romney wins I would expect that the Democrats would stoke the flames of their anti-war brothers at a critical time in our history. War is Not the Answer bumperstickers would sprout on foreign cars. Colleges would be wracked by anti-war protests. We need a coherent strategy explained to the American people while continuing the fight against terrorists around the world. There is the potential for Obama to do that, and for his allies to keep their anti-war instincts at bay. Likewise I suppose it’s possible that Obama, having achieved his goal of reelection would simply allow his own pacifist instincts to rule the day, putting American in even more danger. But I would hope that four years of at least occasional Angry Birds free Intelligence Briefings would have convinced Obama the threat to our nation is real.

So it is possible that the best outcome is an Obama victory for those of us who believe in the primacy of the war against radical Islam. The continued media silence at dead terrorists may be worth the price of four more years of Obama. This of course will not change my vote in November, but it has given me something to think about.

I’m often amazed at how ignorant journalists are of history. I get frustrated when one shows his or her ignorance for a complex issue, falling back on conventional wisdom instead of historical truth to provide the background for a story. Case in point is this New York Times piece. I’m not sure how old the writer is, but he should Google “1979” and “Iranian Revolution.”

In late 1978 and early 1979 the Shah had ceded power to Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar, a member of the liberal opposition. Bakhtiar hoped to share power with the Ayatollah Khomeini and allowed the Ayatollah to return to Iran from exile. Khomeini arrived in Teheran to a crowd of millions and promised to “kick their (liberal regime’s) teeth in.” He appointed his own government and drained support away from the liberal opposition movement. Iran then sought to export its Islamic revolution throughout the Middle East, and spread terrorism around the world.

“I would say people should not be too alarmed by the anti-American rhetoric,” said Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, based in Washington. The end last year of the Mubarak rule in Egypt, he said, “is an important step in combating terrorism in the region and undermining its appeal.” “People can freely vent their frustrations and go to the polls to vote,” he added.

By this logic Bakhtiar should have succeeded in Iran, and the Palestinian Authority would still be running Gaza. The problem with this thinking is that it assumes the causes of terrorism are due to the lack of democracy and a say in a people’s own governance. This is looking at Islamic terrorism through the lens of leftist and nationalist terrorism as conducted by guerrilla movements such as the IRA, Red Army, and FARC. Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with people’s frustration of not being in control of their own destiny. If it did they wouldn’t replace secular dictators with religious dictators as the Iranians, Lebanese Shi’a, and Palestinians in Gaza have, and Iran wouldn’t be sponsoring Hezballah, Islamic Jihad and a dozen other Israeli and American-killing outfits.

Islam is not a nationalist movement, it is a religious one. While executive directors of projects and their New York Times’ interviewers might see the world as nation states whose citizens dream of controlling them, a Muslim sees the community of believers (umma) and non-believers. Earthly power derives from God, and only those He has appointed are able to lead. It’s a simple concept that is even baked into the meaning of the term “Islam.” It means “submission” to God’s will, and democracy where people lead themselves is as heretical to Islam as Scientology is to Roman Catholicism. New York Times reporters and their think-tank sources don’t get that because they haven’t studied Islam except through the narrow lens of their own political and philosophical assumptions.

They will be shocked when Egypt follows in the footsteps of Iran and travel to visit the Valley of the Kings and the Great Pyramids become a distant memory for American passport holders just as trips to Teheran and Qom are to older American Asia-hands. Already the calls have begun for the destruction of the Pyramids, just as the Taliban destroyed the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan and Egypt’s first Muslim rulers destroyed the Great Library in Alexandria.

So here we are in the midst of what the Chinese might call “interesting times” in the Middle East and it seems that I can write about nearly everything BUT what is happening there. There’s a reason for that: I really don’t know what is going on. Having lived through 1989, I can sense strong similarities between events that year in Europe and what is happening today in the Middle East but there’s a key difference between 1989 and now: 1989 happened. The Berlin Wall fell, the dust settled, and the world changed for the better (for the most part – Tiananmen Square also happened in 1989 and I don’t think the Chinese are better off because of the slaughter). What is happening today… is happening. It’s the present for me (at least at the time of writing) so I don’t know what is going to happen.

I have some ideas, like we are seeing the beginning of the next stage of development in the Mideast and the end of post-colonialism. In recent history the region has gone from the Ottoman Empire, to colonialism, and finally to post-colonialism. That era has been characterized by secular dictators like Saddam Hussein, Mohamar Khadafi, Gamal Abdal Nasser, Haffaz al-Assad and their regime successors. I believe one could even squeeze Iran into that category, with the secular dictator of the Shah being replaced by a religious dictator in the form of the Ayatollah Khomeini and his successor the Ayatollah Khamenei.

So what comes post post-colonialism? That’s the question and at this point it is impossible to answer it. It would be nice to think that secular democracies would sprout and take root throughout the region, but there is no democratic tradition which could provide the fertile soil necessary. I suppose it is a possibility – perhaps a democracy with Islamic characteristics that would reflect the will of the people more but show little in common with western democracies like Israel, Europe and the United States.

Naturalist Stephen Jay Gould’s hypothesis of “punctuated equilibrium” proposed that the evolution of organisms is characterized by long periods of stability punctuated by brief periods of chaos. In a sense the Middle East has been static for decades and now we are entering a chaotic period that will change the region forever. What comes out of that is impossible to know, no matter how important the results are to us.

So Remember the next time some talking head appears on TV predicting the future of the region that the future is impossible to predict. The next time some political wag waxes poetic in the New York Times about the future of the Middle East, remember that the future is impossible to predict. When some blowhard appears on NPR and offers his vision about what changes lay ahead in the Middle East, shout at the radio “The future is impossible to predict!” (and feel free to add “you liberal moron” as I used to do when I listened to NPR -which I don’t do anymore).

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be supportive of the people over there, or that we should drop our guard and be suspicious of their motives. The outcome is unknown, and as long as it is we should try to influence it as best we can. But truth be told there is little we can do – especially when even helicopter gunships, jets and snipers aren’t enough to stop people from rioting in Libya.

Things are changing, but how are they changing? Who knows! Because the future of the Middle East is impossible to predict. It’s a basic idea but one that gets lost in the 24 hour news cycle and in RSS feeds and Facebook comments.

I’m reminded of this fact as I watch events in Iran. If people really want freedom from the theocracy there, they are going to have to die for it. Freedom rarely comes easy, and when it does it usually doesn’t hang around very long. Freedom is bought with blood. So far Neda has shed hers for her country; do other have the guts to risk shedding theirs and ending up like her?

Some of the protesters looked to us and the rest of the world to intervene. We can’t – it’s not our job. Call me selfish, but I don’t want to risk my stepson’s life. He signed up to protect America, not liberate other nations. Besides when we do intervene the line between liberator and oppressor gets mighty thin as the Iraqis will attest to. We can cheer them on and offer them all the support we can but when it comes down to it, they are going to have to liberate themselves just like the Serbs did earlier in the decade – or be crushed for generations like the Chinese at Tiananmen.

It’s a tough decision, but one that collectively the Iranian people must make on their own.

Twenty years ago I remember watching with horror the Tiananmen Square massacre unfold before my eyes in the newspapers and on CNN. Three months later I watched as one by one the nations of the Warsaw Pact bolted to freedom and the Berlin Wall crumbled. Today I am silent about Iran because I really don’t know how things are going to turn out there.

I stupidly take certain things to heart – and the freedom of oppressed peoples is one of those things. A therapist – heck even any AA sponsor – would warn me of the danger of allowing world events to affect me. As the Serenity Prayer states I must accept the things I cannot change – and there is nothing I can do to alter how the events are unfolding in Iran.

As I did then I curse the cowardice of my own leaders who today cannot distinguish between Hope and Despair in Iran, and those of 1989 who were all too quick to dine with the Butcher of Beijing. Obama today, Bush yesterday – yet they both share a sociopathic attachment to the status quo.  For Bush the tanks must have come as a relief because the Tiananmen Square demonstrations complicated his efforts to cultivate a relationship with China to tip the balance of power vis-a-vis the Soviet Union.  For Obama a less-radical Iran in possibly the mold of today’s Serbia would sidetrack his effort to cleave the Gordian Knot of the Middle East and succeed where all presidents over the last third of a century have failed. His ego and his followers demand nothing less.

The situation is fluid. No one can predict how events in Iran will play out. So I’ve avoided writing about it and tried to push it out of mind. But then the headlines crash through and I’m left yearning for the Persian people  to become free – to experience the liberty that all human beings deserve by birth. I want them to experience the heady days of the  Autumn of 1989 – not the horrifying Summer.

How will this end? I haven’t a clue but I know where my heart lies.

With Neda.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for an apology from a team of Hollywood actors and movie industry professionals visiting his country for producing “insulting” movies. “After recent movies like The Love Guru and The Hottie and the Nottie maybe we should demand one too.

Ralph Peters writing in the NY Post:

What don’t the critics like? Democracy? The defeat of al Qaeda? Muslims turning to the US military for help? Troop cuts? The dramatically improved human-rights situation? What’s the problem here?

The answer’s simple: Admitting that they’ve been mistaken about Iraq guts the left’s argument for political entitlement. If the otherwise deplorable Bush administration somehow got this one right, it means the left got another big one wrong.

So be prepared for frequent time-machine trips until November. The encouraging reality of today’s Iraq will go ignored in favor of an endless mantra of “Al Qaeda wasn’t there in 2003 . . .”

The bottom line? Al Qaeda let the war’s opponents down.

Former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton has this to say about negotiations with Iran:

When the U.S. negotiates with “terrorists and radicals,” it gives them legitimacy, a precious and tangible political asset. Thus, even Mr. Obama criticized former President Jimmy Carter for his recent meetings with Hamas leaders. Meeting with leaders of state sponsors of terrorism such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Il is also a mistake. State sponsors use others as surrogates, but they are just as much terrorists as those who actually carry out the dastardly acts. Legitimacy and international acceptability are qualities terrorists crave, and should therefore not be conferred casually, if at all.

Moreover, negotiations – especially those “without precondition” as Mr. Obama has specifically advocated – consume time, another precious asset that terrorists and rogue leaders prize. Here, President Bush’s reference to Hitler was particularly apt: While the diplomats of European democracies played with their umbrellas, the Nazis were rearming and expanding their industrial power.

The following is a brief history of world events as I see them today, March 18, 2013. I will update this as time permits. I apologize in advance for boring those of you to whom this is “yesterday’s news,” but it’s my way of trying to place the last five years in perspective. A lot has changed, but a lot has not. After all, there are still those who believe that those horrible events our nation experienced in 2010 were just “inside jobs” to either force the president’s hand to declare war, or to make him look ineffectual depending on which side of the “Truther Spectrum” you find yourself on. Long-time readers will note my position on those terrifying days hasn’t wavered: the terrorists are ultimately to blame. But I still hold the prior administration and the former Democratic Congress responsible for creating the conditions that allowed the terrorists to strike, so I didn’t shed a tear when President Obama gave his concession speech. (Like all of his speeches, it sounded good when I heard it but as soon as it was over I forgot what he said. Freakin’ typical…)

I also want to remind readers that the way things are today aren’t the way they were in the past. We tend to believe that Change happens slowly, and when it doesn’t, such as in 2010 and before that Sept. 11, 2001, we rationalize it until we can safely ignore it as “freak event.” Instead we should view History the way seismologists view faults. A fault may be quiet for years, but a seismologists knows that unseen forces are stressing the fault line until it eventually snaps. When it does, the earth moves for a few moments and transforms the landscape by destroying buildings, raising mountains or altering the courses of streams. After the stress is released, the fault becomes quiet again. But that doesn’t mean that the stress is gone; almost immediately after a quake the fault begins accumulating stress that it will release during the next quake.

And that’s why I’ve fought the policies that led to 2010. I knew that I wasn’t being paranoid – although I was portrayed as such by the commenters here and elsewhere – because earthquakes don’t happen for no reason: they are the result of stress. 9-11 and 2010 don’t happen spontaneously; they were the result of a series of conscious decisions and mistakes made by our political, military, law enforcement and intelligence officials any of which might have stopped the plots. If Houston Patrolman Rodriguez had detained the “speeder” instead of releasing him on his own recognizance for fear of bucking the “don’t ask – don’t tell” illegal immigrant policy supported by his department under pressure from the ACLU, his “speeder” wouldn’t have made it to Kansas and achieved martyrdom, taking hundreds of thousands with him. If the NSA had been allowed to monitor the satellite phone traffic that passed through microwave towers in Virginia without a warrant from a judge that happened to be hunting in Saskatchewan at the time of the call, we might have been able to arrest the “moneyman” and unraveled the plot before it made the History books as the greatest series of terrorist attacks of all time.

The refusal by politicians of both parties to take illegal immigration seriously that eventually allowed the terrorists to enter our homeland. The Chinese Walls put in place between foreign intelligence services and domestic law enforcement under the Clinton administration that prevented the warning signs of the impending 9-11 Attacks from being acted on. These walls were breached briefly after those first attacks, but then the Democratic-controlled Congress rebuilt them after Obama took office. The politicization of the CIA and NSA that started under Bush II kept bad news from being reported up the chains of command for fear of appearing disloyal. We all know their roles in 2010 even if you didn’t download the PDF version of the McCain-Webb Report and read the 876 pg investigation results word-for-word.

This is a draft: I will amend it as I see fit but the history itself will not change. We can’t bring back the dead of 2010, nor can we cure those who are permanently scarred. But I believe we can honor their memory best by writing the truth to counter the propaganda that clouds those events, dehumanizing those innocents who died those days for what? For simply being who they are, who we are, Americans.

Middle East

Iraq

As promised President Obama ordered an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq starting in 2009, leaving a token presence in Baghdad. Iran and Syria accelerated their undermining of the Iraqi regime while the Kurds in northern Iraq continued to react coolly for demands of assistance by the central government. By 2010 the Iraqi government had fallen, and a new regime backed by a coalition of Iranian/Syrian forces demanded a complete withdrawal of US forces from Baghdad. The US complied and by the Summer of 2010 Iraq was in complete chaos with the exception of the Kurdish controlled north, which finally gives up the pretense of being a part of Iraq and refers to itself in all official communiqués as Kurdistan. Turkey reacted to the growing autonomy with threats and several military incursion to chase PKK rebels, but the Kurdish authorities promised to keep the PKK under control and renounced claims to a greater Kurdistan – for now. A steady exodus of Iraqi refugees set up camps in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, demanding visas to the United States due to the threat of persecution for supporting the US occupation.

Afghanistan

Emboldened by their success in Iraq, the anti-war Left in the United States demands a similar US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the Taliban, with help from former Iraqi insurgents and Iranian Special Forces, escalate attacks against former-NATO forces and the Afghani populace. This leads to a large increase in casualties among the local populace as well as the remaining contingent of former NATO forces. Weary from the relentless terrorism of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, support evaporates for the regime and by the middle of 2010 the government of Hamed Karzai has fallen. US forces evacuate the remaining former-NATO forces from Baghram air base as Taliban leader Mullah Omar parades triumphantly into Kabul. After reports in the western press that the Taliban are going door-to-door and executing the families of suspected collaborators with former NATO and Karzai’s forces, the Taliban Communication’s chief imposes a news blackout and demands that all reports must receive the approval of Taliban authorities. Cell phones are confiscated, and cellphone towers dynamited. News trickles out from Afghan refugees at camps in Iran and Pakistan of a bloody “cleansing” of the Afghan community by the Taliban, with hundreds of thousands slaughtered.

Saudi Arabia

The abrupt withdrawal of US forces from the region has made traditional Saudi enemy Iran the major player in the region. King Abdullah takes a public stance of solidarity with the Iranian regime, all the while resisting and covertly attacking Iranian interests in Iraq as the kingdom and Iran vie for supremacy over the remnants (the oil fields) of the former state. However Iran soon gains an upper hand in Iraq through its Shi’a allies there, and uses its ties to al-Qaeda developed during the US occupation of Iraq to attack the Saudi kingdom directly. This is made all the more easy when one of the Sudairi Seven, the seven close-knit sons of King Abdul Aziz “ibn Saud” by Hassa bint Ahmad Sudairi, dies under suspicious circumstances. The Arab Street immediately blamed the Jews, but the Saudis knew better.

The collapse of oil prices to below $50 a barrel hasn’t helped Saudi finances much either. With stagflation haunting the USA and international trade under attack in most of the developed world, world demand for oil has slumped significantly since the US economy entered recession in early 2008. Add in several million Iraqi refugees, many of whom are suspected of being al-Qaeda, and the Kingdom find itself in the toughest place it has been in the modern era.

The United States

The first successful terrorist attack on US soil since 2001 occurred in 2010. You would think that the savagery we witnessed in 2001 would have prepared us somewhat for what happened that year, but unfortunately our capacity for horror is unlimited. Like most I was simply speechless for days afterward. The President’s “Solidarity” speech seemed calming, but that was before the second strike. Then came the third, and the fourth and I remember thinking to myself that they would never end. As with the attacks on 9-11, there were no claims of responsibility but al-Qaeda was suspected until a tape was uploaded to Youtube two months later by al-Zawahiri stating that the US was being punished for its “past transgressions against Islam.” It threatened further attacks unless the USA “redeems itself by repudiating it’s Crusader past” and embracing Islam. Unlike the other threats, al-Zawahiri made good on this one and 2010… Well, it sure wasn’t the vision Arthur C. Clarke had when he wrote the novel. The book it most resembled was Dante’s Inferno.

Leftists claimed that America deserved the attack for its past support of Israel, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After several months of investigation it was determined that the terrorist cell infiltrated the United States through Mexico. Proof of ties between the terrorist and drug gangs operating in northern Mexico were produced by US authorities, but denied by the Mexican government. In an unusual statement, the head of the Mexican drug gang posted a video statement on Youtube where he admits that his gang helped the terrorists infiltrate the United States, but denies knowing anything about their mission.

A small group of influential Leftist scholars called for the indictment of former president George W. Bush, vice president Dick Cheney, and former secretary of state Condoleeza Rice as war criminals. They hoped that a successful prosecution would encourage “peace with our Islamic brothers,” and demanded that a diplomatic delegation be sent to Pakistan to negotiate with al-Qaeda.

The electorate punished President Obama in the 2010 mid-term elections by re-electing a single Democrat to her seat; the Republicans ran the table using the infamous “2010” campaign. Even the Leftist MSM had a hard-time attacking the Republicans due to effectiveness of the campaign message highlighting the government failures that allowed the terrorism to happen.

One of the leading lights of a revitalized Republican party was a governor with strong ties to the religious right but who repudiated the “internationalism that infected our party for the last half a century.” Calling Sen. Ron Paul “an inspiration, and one of the smartest men I’ve ever met,” the Governor demanded that President Obama send the returning armed forces to man the border with Mexico and Canada. “These brave men and women enlist to protect America from its enemies – not the Koreans who stole our jobs, not the Europeans who stole our dignity, and not the Saudis who stole our souls.” On Sunday January 20, 2013, he was elected the 45^th President of the United States.

As anyone who has read this journal before, I am not a big fan of the President. While I have written in the distant past that Isolationism is the default state of America, I cannot help but think how things would have been different had we not elected a closet isolationist president in 2008 at what should have been the end of the recession. It turns out later that the economy wasn’t as bad as Obama and the Democrats made it out to be late in the year, but by that time the recession had bitten deeply into our economy with millions thrown out of work, falling tax revenues and worse, inflation as the Fed printed flooded the markets with cash to try to get the economy moving.

For those of you who weren’t around back then, it was like 1978 all over again. The Democrats reminded us of that over and over, reviving the term “misery index” that had been coined under one of their own presidents. Every potential bright spot of the economy was talked down, while every negative statistic made the headlines. Sure this was a cynical ploy just like the Clinton team had done to the first George Bush’s candidacy in 1992 – but like Clinton it worked – just too well. Perception is reality for Wall Street, and all the trash-talk by Democrats (and those Republicans who thought that McCain’s rhetoric was too polly-annish to dent Obama’s lead) altered its perception. All the negativity about the economy and trading partners was enough to sweep Obama into office but also boxed him into a corner. He had lost the ability to backaway from his more radical policies early in his campaign, but in order to survive he had to repudiate that strategy. When it came time to deliver, he had to come through for his constituents. Taking office just after the economy was starting to dig itself out of negative territory turned out to be a disaster. The markets were tanking. Our trading partners were matching our anti-trade rhetoric tit for tat. We faced the perfect storm: bad monetary situation, low confidence in free markets and trade, and an election without an incumbent. Somehow Obama managed to piss off the Canadians more than Bush ever had. Honestly I didn’t think it was possible given the shared history of our two nations, but the comments he made in 2011 supporting Quebec separatism pretty much killed what little relationship our two nations had after the trade rhetoric cooled.

I was never a fan of Obama. I always thought him to be in the mold of Jimmy Carter. However his term by comparison made Jimmy’s term look like a Golden Age. It’s hard to relate what life was like to those of you who don’t remember living in a country that was open to the rest of the world. The prosperity this openness brought us was always taken for granted so that we only appreciated it when we lost it. I always had my doubts about Free Trade, but I wanted to see it tweaked not discarded completely as it has been by both the Obama and current administrations.

Free Trade never got the credit it deserved in Academia due to the latter being the last bastion of Communism on the planet. Therefore much of the elite that grew up in the 80’s and 90’s never appreciated how trade had lifted more people out of poverty than any single idea or ideology. The only time that this was recognized was by the Malthusians in the Eco-movement who wanted the people in China, India and Africa to return to poverty because it lowered their carbon footprint. When the elites started leading, as Obama’s generation took power in the USA, Europe and elsewhere, they were indifferent to Free Trade or worse, antagonistic to it.

But the bonds of trade are not made of steel; they are based on trust, and when that trust began to be broken by Obama’s attempt to renegotiate NAFTA, the bonds were broken. Then 2010 happened and Isolationism became the new paradigm. I suddenly found myself feeling catapulted backward in time with the constant chatter about “the gold standard” and tariffs – not from a Hearst broadsheet, but the blogosphere and MSM.

Europe:

Forces in Europe have been drawn down starting with deployments in Bosnia and Kosovo, followed by the quick redeployments (home) of forces in Spain, Italy and eventually Germany. Finally, all remaining forces returned home by the end of 2012, only the contingents protecting US embassy personnel remained. Total force drawdown as of Dec 2012: 98,000. Remaining: 250

Impact:

NATO unofficially expired going the way of the Warsaw Pact. European governments have been forced to rebuild their dilapidated armed forces; some opted for an EU force, while others (UK, Italy, France) continued to field their own militaries under their own command. Russia’s interest in Europe revived as it saw an opportunity to extend its influence westward, but all this has apparently done is push Europe to the Americans. Much of the virulent anti-Americanism is gone, although some remains among the “usual suspects” (the universities and trade unions). There are articles in the continental press that put forward the idea that should Europe find itself in trouble with Russia, the US will intervene as it has done for the past century. But the Brits seem to get it, with the Daily Telegraph noting in recent piece the depth of America’s antipathy towards Europe:

This expectation ignores the very fundamental question from the American perspective: Why? Why would the United States return to the past, placing US troops on European soil? What would the US derive from such a bargain? Protesters chaining themselves to the gates of their bases? Governments pursuing their own interests and prospering often at the expense of those of the United States, as France emphatically proved in the 1990’s in the Middle East? The transports planes have long gone and the bases at Aviano and Wiesbaden are already becoming overgrown with weeds. Why would the US reverse this process which it believes to be in its own best interest?

Remaining to do;

Iran

Israel

Asia

China’s blockade of Taiwan.

I’m a hawk who changed his dovish plumage on a crystal-blue morning in September 2001. I no longer want the USA to coexist with its enemies: I want to see them destroyed. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s under the era of detente with the Soviet Union. This policy made sense since the USSR was too big to destroy and we had to live with it. However we don’t have to live with Iran and Saudi Arabia – our nation’s current enemies.

But the CIA is not the agency to do it, and Gabriel Schoenfeld agrees. He quotes former CIA director Robert Gates from his memoir From the Shadows:

As a result of the lack of innovative and creative personnel management, I believe this agency is chock full of people simply awaiting retirement: some are only a year or two away and some are twenty-five years away, but there are far too many playing it safe, proceeding cautiously, not antagonizing management, and certainly not broadening their horizons, especially as long as their own senior management makes it clear that [risk-taking] is not career enhancing. How is the health of CIA? I would say that at the present time it has a case of advanced bureaucratic arteriosclerosis: the arteries are clogging up with careerist bureaucrats who have lost the spark. It is my opinion that it is this steadily increasing proportion of intelligence bureaucrats that has led to the decline in the quality of intelligence collection and analysis over the past fifteen years — more so than our declining resources . . . or congressional investigations or legal restrictions. CIA is slowly turning into the Department of Agriculture.

The biggest reason to disband the organization is the simple fact that it has become a large organization. I know large organizations. I tend to work for them; I have seen them from the inside, and realize that it might be okay to rely upon them to manage your insurance or even your bank account, but national security? My bank recently had a security breach and only told me so after my bank account had been drained. Would I trust this bank with the physical security of 300 million Americans when it has difficulty managing data security for a few million bank accounts?

And that’s the problem with the CIA. I’m sure that there are some good people who work for it, just like the manager at the local branch of my bank. However these people would be even more effective in smaller, more nimble and less bureaucratic ones than the CIA. As far as I’m concerned any organization concerned with spying should not have a sign directing to it’s headquarters from the interstate.

Does this have to do with bitterness towards their recent report exonerating Iran that even the French government doesn’t believe? Of course. But why should I believe the CIA is right about Iran today when it was wrong about Iraq 4 years ago?

In my experience working with data I have learned that it is better to have no information than unreliable information. The CIA is a large organization which produces unreliable intel. The fact that it was wrong about Iraq is more excusable since its intel was similar to independently gathered intelligence data of other countries. Anti-war folks like to hitch their star on that intelligence failure, forgetting that it wasn’t just the CIA that screwed up. The mossad, M1, French and Russian intelligence agencies all agreed that Saddam was actively hiding his program from the UN inspection teams. Saddam just didn’t fool George Bush he fooled the world.

The CIA remains Truman’s greatest mistake – not his firing of General MacArthur or his handling of the Korean War. It is a mistake that should be rectified by the next president regardless of his/her party affiliation.

The Jerusalem Post points out the failure of the West in general and the US in particular in the PA territories:

Some observers have noted that in the context of the current fighting, the US State Department is blaming Hamas’s “military wing,” thereby for the first time implicitly distinguishing between “good” and “bad” parts of Hamas. It may be that even the US is poised to treat the “good” Hamas as a legitimate Palestinian address, following the collapse of the “good” Mahmoud Abbas, and before him, the “good” Yasser Arafat.

If so, it would mean that the US has learned nothing from the serial failures born of backing particular people rather than policies. In each case, the international community failed to hold its favorite Palestinian leaders accountable for fear that worse ones would take over.

This approach has led precisely to the outcome it sought to avoid. The alternative is a policy that does not support the search for a Palestinian ally to support at all costs, but holds all factions, on behalf of Palestinians and Israelis alike, to basic standards of legitimacy, governance and movement toward peace.

Fuck you

At Dean’s World, Aziz takes issue with what some on the Right are characterizing as the Silence of the Left over recent events in Israel’s neighborhood. I too have noticed that NPR has reported relatively little on the conflict during peak drive time. Instead they have run stories about Bush’s planned veto on federally funded stem cell research, and illegal immigrants. They even ran a story about a town posting signs in a fountain warning of “hydrogen” in the water. Meanwhile Israel is taking care of business.

Whenever the Left is silent, I know that something is up. Reality has intruded into their fantasies, and they are forced to spin new theories or push their cognitive dissonance beyond its limits. Similar events happen on the Right – usually involving the personal failings of a favored pol or spokesman (Rush’s chemical abuse is one example that leaps to mind).

What really buggers them is that the actions of Hamas and Hesballah (today’s spelling) are so blatantly warlike. Crossing a border, attacking soldiers, then firing missiles into civilian areas – all from areas that Israel has completely vacated. The hard anti-semitic Left will have no problem making Israel the aggressor in these cases, but it’s much harder for the softer Left – many of whom happen to be Jewish.

Jews and the American Right have never been natural allies. The traditional Right – exemplified by Pat Buchanan and his publication, American Conservative – has never been a strong supporter of Israel and has always encompassed groups with various degrees of anti-semitic views. They have therefore tended to lean leftward traditionally.

However the traditional terms used to describe political ideologies no longer make sense anymore. For example, the strongest anti-semitism is now found on the Left – supporting boycotts of Israel to its outright destruction. It has also become a bastion of intolerance toward Judeo-Christian religions – seeing them as oppressors of more enlightened peoples.

Meanwhile the Religious Right has been vocal in its support of Israel, de-emphasizing its past history of attempted conversion of the Jews while discovering Biblical basis for Israel’s right to exist. Also, the Neo-Conservatives have championed America’s strong support of Israel as a way to protect the US from the anti-American forces in the Middle East – ignoring Israel’s weapon sales of American technology to China.

The silence exists – contrary to what Aziz believes – and it is palpable as the pro-Israel Left comes to terms with an Israel that played by the rules and got hit anyways. One can only hope that many of the Left begin to recognize that what they call Liberalism is nothing of the such, and is more reactionary than anything found on the Right.

Hot! Hot! Hot!

So the VA loses the records of all living veterans since 1976 to the stupidity of a single data analyst (link). I’m still pissed at them for a fire that happened in 1973 and destroyed my father’s service records. This comes on top of the disgrace veterans hospitals have become, with patients waiting years to see a physician. Then there’s the matter that the VA can’t seem to hold on to physicians to begin with.

Note to the government:
If you really want to help America’s veterans – close down the VA and start from scratch.