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January 30, 2011

Egyptian Outcome Possibilities

I said in my post yesterday about the protests in Egypt that there were no good choices, or at lease ones that did not carry significant risk, for the United States, and I see no reason to change that assessment.

If Mubarak somehow hangs on, the dislike and hatred for his government will only increase. This ends up playing into the hands of the radicals, whose power will increase. They will eventually overthrow the government and a radical Islamist regime will be placed in power.

If there are free and fair elections, Islamists will be voted into power sooner or later. It'll be just like the 1979 revolution in Iran, where the revolution went on for almost a year before the Islamic radicals took the reigns.

In other words, there's small chance of any decent government emerging.

I think Barry Rubin has the best take on what's happening. He sees three possible outcomes:

First, the establishment and army stick together, get rid of Mubarak, but preserve the regime. The changes put in charge a former Air Force commander (the same job Mubarak once held) and the intelligence chief. The elite stays united, toughs it out, does a skillful combination of coopting and repressing the demonstrations, and offering some populist reforms. The old regime continues. In that case, it is only a minor adjustment.

Second, the elite loses its nerve and fragments, in part demoralized by a lack of Western -- especially U.S. -- support. The Muslim Brotherhood throws its full weight behind the rebellion. Soldiers refuse to fire at or join the opposition. Eventually, a radical regime emerges, with the Muslim Brotherhood as either ruler or power behind the throne. Remember that the "moderate democratic" leaders have been largely radical and willing to work with the Brotherhood. In that case, it is a fundamental transformation.

The new regime turns against the West, tears up the peace treaty with Israel (in practice if not formally), and joins hands with Hamas. Iranian influence isn't important with this regime, but that will be small comfort as it launches its own subversive efforts and even goes to war against Israel at some point in the future. This will be the biggest disaster for the region and the West since the Iranian revolution 30 years ago. And in some ways it will be worse.

Third and least likely, neither side backs down bringing bloody civil war.

Absolutely critical here is the Muslim Brotherhood's decision. Should it be cautious or decide that the moment for revolution has arrived? The choice is not clear because if it picks wrong it could be destroyed. Have no doubt, though, that the Brotherhood is the only non-government group with disciplined followers, real organization, and mass support. In an election where it was harassed, repressed, and cheated -- thus undercounting its support -- the Brotherhood officially received 20 percent of the vote.

Did you get that last sentence? That the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the three branches of the jihad and the organization that created Hamas, got 20 percent of the vote the last time in Egypt and that was almost certainly an undercount?

So why the pessimism? In a word, experience. Rubin again:

1. Iranian revolution, 1978-1979: Mass protests by a wide coalition against dictatorship. Result? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now president.

2. Beirut Spring: Christians, Sunni Muslims, and Druze unite against Syrian control. Moderate government gains power. Result? Hezbollah is now running Lebanon.

3. Palestinians have free elections: Voters protest against corrupt regime. Result? Hamas is now running the Gaza Strip.

4. Algeria holds free elections: Voters back moderate Islamist group. Result? Military coup; Islamists turn (or reveal their true thinking) radical; tens of thousands of people killed.

I could also mention Muslim Turkey, which has gone Islamist recently, almost completely abrogating the promise of Kemalism.

We've also seen where sudden revolutions take us in the West as well; the French Revolution which started off well enough in 1789, but descended into a Reign of Terror after the Jacobins seized control, and then into the military dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The protests in Iran in Dec 2009 - Jan 2010 were by a people already under an Islamist regime, and the goals of the demonstrators seemed to be to want to push things in a better direction. To be sure, even if they had somehow succeeded in overthrowing the government there's no guarantee they would have gotten what they wanted, but it was at least worth a try.

More, from what I know the Iranian people are generally much better educated and sophisticated than the Egyptians.

More

But what do Egyptians really think? According to a recent Pew poll, they are extremely radical even in comparison to Jordan or Lebanon. When asked whether they preferred "Islamists" or "modernizers," the score was 59% to 27% in favor of the Islamists. In addition, 20 percent said they liked al-Qaeda; 30 percent, Hezbollah; 49 percent, Hamas. And this was at a time that their government daily propagandized against these groups.

How about religious views? Egyptian Muslims said the following: 82 percent want adulterers punished with stoning; 77 percent want robbers to be whipped and have their hands amputated; 84 percent favor the death penalty for any Muslim who changes his religion.

In a democracy, of course, these views are going to be expressed by how people vote. Even if Egypt does not have an Islamist government, it might well end up with a radical regime that caters to these attitudes and incites violence abroad.

How unhappy.

What To Do

All this said, we can't support Mubarak. We may as well take our chances with elections and hope for the best. As such, the suggestions made by the bipartisan Working Group on Egypt are as good as any:

Statement of the Working Group on Egypt, Saturday January 29, 2011

Amidst the turmoil in Egypt, it is important for the U.S. to remain focused on the interests of the Egyptian people as well as the legitimacy and stability of the Egyptian government.

Only free and fair elections provide the prospect for a peaceful transfer of power to a government recognized as legitimate by the Egyptian people. We urge the Obama administration to pursue these fundamental objectives in the coming days and press the Egyptian government to:

-- call for free and fair elections for president and for parliament to be held as soon as possible.

-- amend the Egyptian Constitution to allow opposition candidates to register to run for the presidency.

-- immediately lift the state of emergency, release political prisoners, and allow for freedom of media and assembly

-- allow domestic election monitors to operate throughout the country, without fear of arrest or violence.

-- immediately invite international monitors to enter the country and monitor the process leading to elections, reporting on the government's compliance with these measures to the international community.

-- publicly declare that Mr. Mubarak will agree not to run for re-election.

We further recommend that the Obama administration suspend all economic and military assistance to Egypt until the government accepts and implements these measures.

Evolution, Not Revolution?

One answer is slow evolution towards liberty and plurality over time. The authoritarian governments on Taiwan and in South Korea morphed into democracies. Francos' fascist Spain is a democracy today. It can happen.

Samuel Huntington explained how this worked in his 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations:

During the 1970′s and 1980′s over thirty countries shifted from authoritarian to democratic political systems....Democratization was most successful in countries where Christian and Western influences were strong....These transitions and the collapse of the Soviet Union generated in the West, particularly in the United States, the belief that a global democratic revolution was underway and that in short order Western concepts of human rights and Western forms of political democracy would prevail throughout the world. Promoting this spread of democracy hence became a high priority goal for Westerners....The greatest resistance to Western democratization efforts, however, came from Islam and Asia. This resistance was rooted in the broader movements of cultural assertiveness embodied in the Islamic Resurgence and the Asian affirmation. (p 193)

In the post-Cold War world the choice can be the more difficult one between the friendly tyrant and an unfriendly democracy. The West's easy assumption that democratically elected governments will be cooperative and pro-Western need not hold true in non-Western societies where electoral competition can bring anti-Western nationalists and fundamentalists to power....As Western leaders realize that democratic processes in non-Western societies often produce governments unfriendly to the West, they both attempt to influence those elections and lose their enthusiasm for promoting democracy in those societies. (p 198)

So even a slow, evolutionary change, is harder to pull off in some countries than others. History seems to show that the more a country has been influenced by the West, the greater it's chances of success. The more Islamic, the worse it's chances.

What about Iraq, then? The jury is still out so we can't really say. It's headed in the right direction, but now that we are withdrawing we'll see if the situation holds.

In Conclusion

Instant revolutions rarely produce good outcomes. Ours was more a colonial revolt than a true government; we didn't go to London and depose the king.

Could I be wrong? You betcha. It's possible that the Brotherhood doesn't gain a foothold in a new government, and that instead of morphing into an Islamist regime it moves toward real liberty. Moderate voices could prevail. I'm just not holding my breath.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 29, 2011

The Cairo Clashes: Will Mubarak Survive? Should He?

As is so often the case with dictatorships, the Mubarak regime has been shown to be at once strong yet fragile. They control their countries with varying degrees of ruthlessness and brutality, but control them they do. They go for decades with amazing political stability, calm in the streets, and a secret police that keeps opposition under control.

Then, one fine day, seemingly out of nowhere, chaos erupts. Sometimes the government falls, sometimes not, but either way it is weakened. We've seen the pattern time and again. Nicolae Ceausescu ran Romania with an iron fist for 25 years, then one day in December 1989 we heard about disturbances in the streets, then in a few days there was a revolution and he was hopscotching around the country in a helicopter, and a week later he and his wife were shot dead by firing squad. "Where did that come from?" was the reaction of most people in the West.

We saw something similar happen in Iran ten years prior. Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, appeared secure on his thrown. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a few small anti-Shah demonstrations that no one had paid much attention to exploded and soon the country was paralyzed by strikes. Ayatollah Khomeini returned, and the Shah fled. Most of the world was caught totally by surprise.

Likewise, nobody paid much attention to the protests in Tunisia last month, either. Then a few weeks ago they jumped to the front page of the papers and we learned that the government had resigned and the president had fled. "Where did that come from" was what everyone said.

Is the same thing happening in Egypt now?

Right now there are no good options for U.S. policymakers. But that's because for the past few decades we haven't been doing what we should have been doing.

Right Now

As of this writing, the Egyptian capital seems to have fallen into anarchy. Protesters own the streets. The army and police are overwhelmed, and at this point are holding back and not even trying to disperse the protesters any more. They have relegated themselves to protecting what government and state television and radio buildings as they can. Military and police vehicles are overrun by demonstrators. Yesterday, the protesters burned down the ruling party's headquarters.

The government has shut down all Internet access, cellular and landline telephone systems. Foreign news media report their stories through private satellite links.

Photos via Fox News

What is happening is going far beyond what happened in Iran last year and is more reminiscent of the Iranian revolution of 1979. Mubarak has not had to flee, however, as did Ceausescu. Mubarak has fired his cabinet, but the crowds have made it clear that they are not going to be satisfied with that. They want him gone.

The Democracy Alternative

Maybe, just maybe, we would not be in this situation if we had spent the past few decades promoting liberty in these countries instead of just proping up whatever strongman was in power as long as we could work with him.

To be sure, sometimes we were able to follow this policy and get away with it. The Kuomintang government on Taiwan ran the country as a single party state, i.e quasi-dictatorship, until the 1990s. South Korea was run by a series of autocrats until maybe the 1980s. Both are full democracies today.

But as with the Iran or Nicaragua, sometimes the opposite happens, and they go from a pro-American authoritarian dictatorship to an anti-American totalitarian one. They go from the frying pan into the fire, as it were.

The biggest criticism that the left made about US policy during the Cold War was over our support of right-wing dictators over a communist alternative. It was wrong to support a dictator who oppressed the people just because they were "our guy," the argument went. And, truth be told, their case was hardly without merit.

Our justification was that 1) these dictators were the lesser of two evils, and 2) they might evolve into democracies whereas communist countries would not (see Jeanne Kirkpatrick's Dictatorships and Double Standards) Although countries like the ROC and ROK did evolved into democracies, the left did have a point. We should have pushed these countries harder to reform.

The Islam Problem

But it's not just a lack of voting rights or free speech that is the problem. We would be sticking our heads in the sand if we didn't say that there was a problem within Islam as well.

This is emphatically not to say that "Islam is the problem," or is unreformable. I reject that conclusion. What it is to say is that the way all too many Muslims interpret their religion is conducive to radicalism, whether it goes by the name of Salafism, Wahabism, Khomeinism, or something else. The Sharia of old must be rejected. The Caliphate is not a legitimate form of government.

That this will be difficult to achieve is an understatement. Now is not the time for me to lay out my ideas on how to push the Islamic world in that direction, and I've done so too many times before here on this blog (start here and start scrolling).

All Choices Now are Bad Ones

Right now we have three choices

1) Support Mubarak
2) Call for Mubarak's ouster and support the protesters
3) Do nothing except issue a general plea for peace and calm.

The problem with the first is that it goes against our principles, and if he's overthrown the new government will remember that we supported him.

The problem with the second is that the protesters would likely set up an Islamist government that is at best unfriendly to us, and at worst is straight out dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. It may well become the Sunni equivalent of Khomeinist Iran.

The argument against the third is that we ought to at least try and push things in a direction that is favorable to us.

Either way, in the long run we cannot go back to the old way of supporting one dictator over another. Hopefully, whatever the outcome of this current situation, we come to realize that we have to adopt a policy of pushing this region of the world towards some sort of pluralism and Western concepts of liberty.

The Muslim Brotherhood

Long story short, the Muslim Brotherhood was formed in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna as a response to the fall of the Turkish Caliphate in 1924. In the intervening years, it has become the world's largest Muslim organization, with branches and front organizations in nearly all parts of the world. It's stated goal is the restoration of the caliphate and imposition of Sharia rule. Groups in the United States like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) are Brotherhood front groups. The National Islamist Front, the political party that runs Sudan, is a Brotherhood organization. The Brotherhood created Hamas, the terrorist organization in Gaza. On and on it goes.

Although officially banned in Egypt, the Brotherhood is in reality quite active. Over the years, in order to prepare for the day when Islamists can seize power, they have spent their time infiltrating Egyptian institutions. Over the decades the government has attempted to destroy the Brotherhood by mass arrests and persecution, but has never been completely successful, as the Brotherhood always comes back.

Brotherhood is independent of any state. It works with rulers who are sympathetic to it, but operates outside of them. Theirs is a "grassroots" strategy. While the Wahabists "float with the world", the Brotherhood floats with the target society, which thus far has always been a Middle Eastern one.

The Brotherhood is part of the same Sunni Salafist tradition as the Wahabists. To some extent the Brotherhood competes with the Saudi Wahabists for influence within the Muslim world. Sometimes they cooperate, it all depends on the politics of the moment.

Basically, the Brotherhood seeks to change a society and government by trying to put its members or sympathizers in positions of influence. These positions may be in the media, industry, military, or, if it exists in the target country, a parliament. It is willing to start small, encouraging members to join at the "entry level" and work their way up. Rather than fighting the regime directly, it seeks to undermine it from the bottom up.

After infiltrating from the bottom up, they work their way back down again. As Walid Phares explains, "the Brotherhood would be interested in spreading through the elites, converting them patiently into the Salafi doctrine, and only then enlisting them into the organization." They never engaged the regime directly until they reached full strength. Their methods were "amazingly fluid and adaptable to circumstances. Their ideal shortcut wa to infiltrate the ranks of the military and proceed with a coup d'etat against the government. Their next choice was to "advise" the ruler and influence him instead."

Although the Brotherhood appears to be officially sitting out the protests, they are no doubt waiting in the wings, positioning themselves for a takeover or at least to have significant influence in any post-Mubarak government.

All of this is why we cannot ignore groups like the Brotherhood and pretend that there is no problem within Islam. This is why we need to celebrate and promote true reformers in the Muslim world. We need a long term policy of pushing for reform so that we are not faced with these devil's choices.

Why Should We Care?

We should care because whether we like it our not we are a nation with worldwide interests. The world complains about us, but expects us to "do something" to solve problems when they arise, whether they be tsunami relief or revolutions.

We didn't support Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua and the Sandinistas proved worse. We didn't support the Shah and the Khomeinists have become a huge problem for the world. We didn't support Ceausescu (not that we would have, but just for the sake of example), and the new government proved far better. Which way will Egypt go if the revolution topples Mubarak?

Iran is now on the verge of getting nuclear weapons. Egypt could have nuclear weapons if they wanted them. We can stop Mubarak from getting them, but have little chance against an Islamist government.

It's also bad enough to have the Muslim Brotherhood as an independent organization trying to spread it's ideology throughout the world. The problem would be far, far, worse, if they had control of a government. al Qaeda is dangerous enough as it is; they were far more so when they were fully supported by the government of Afghanistan.

An Islamist government in Cairo could incite wars, support terror in ways a private organization could not, abrogate the peace treaty with Israel, and threaten our access to natural resources, i.e. oil.

In Conclusion

Mubarak will have to go, but we should not fully support the protesters either. Whether Mohamed El Baradei should be the person who takes over or someone else is a matter for the experts, but perhaps we can thread the needle between options #1 and #2 above.

We must make sure that a post-Mubarak government has minimal Brotherhood infiltration (that there will be some is inevitable), but most of all is perceived as legitimate by the people. And we must adopt a true program of pushing them towards some sort of pluralism, liberty, and Islamic reformation. Difficult? You betcha. Impossible? Stranger things have happened.

Posted by Tom at 10:15 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

January 27, 2011

Our $1.5 Trillion Deficit

We've been hit by two incredible pieces of news on the federal budget front this week:

CBO: Federal deficit to hit $1.5T this year
Bipartisan deal to cut taxes, raise spending is cited for record shortfall
The Washington Times
Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Last month's bipartisan tax cuts and spending deal has deepened the federal deficit dramatically this year, putting the government on track for a nearly $1.5 trillion shortfall -- the largest in history -- the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

The sobering check on the country's finances was announced a day after President Obama's address to Congress and underscored the country's tenuous fiscal standing, which could doom many of Mr. Obama's initiatives to boost government spending on education, roads and other infrastructure.

This is bad enough as it is. Last year's deficit was $1.4 trillion, and the situation is only getting worse. But add to it the looming Social Security debacle and you've got a real mess:

Social Security Fund to Be Empty by 2037
Published January 27, 2011
|Associated Press

Sick and getting sicker, Social Security will run at a deficit this year and keep on running in the red until its trust funds are drained by about 2037, congressional budget experts said Wednesday in bleaker-than-previous estimates.

The massive retirement program has been suffering from the effects of the struggling economy for several years. It first went into deficit last year but had been projected to post surpluses for a few more years before permanently slipping into the red in 2016.

Unfortunately, Social Security is in even worse shape than this story makes it sound. Kevin Wiliamson explains on his Exchequer blog over at NRO:

The CBO's revenue/expenditure estimates now place the program in permanent deficit. There had been some hope that payroll taxes would recover sufficiently post-recession to put the program back into the black (the theoretical black) for at least a few more years, putting off the day of reckoning for an election cycle or more. No more: The new CBO estimates put Social Security in the red for as far as the eye can see.

But there's a bit of camouflage attached: If you include the "interest" that the federal government "owes" the fictitious Social Security "trust fund," then the program is in the black. Which is to say, if you think that borrowing another $1 trillion from the bond market to shift money from one government account to another government account makes the nation $1 trillion richer, then everything's hunky-dory. But if you compare the program's tax income to its benefit outlays, without the "interest" owed, as CBO does, what you get is deficits from this year forward to 2021 of $45 billion, $30 billion, $28 billion, $30 billion, $31 billion, $33 billion, $44 billion, $59 billion, $77 billion, $98 billion, and $118 billion -- by my always-suspect English-major math, about six-tenths of a trillion dollars in the hole.

Back to the Deficit

What's astounding about the $1.5 trillion deficit figure is that revenues are only projected to be $2.228 trillion. Here's the math:

$3.708 trillion spending
$2.228 trillion revenue
$1.48 trillion deficit

What to do? Well, in his State of the Union speech Monday, President Obama proposed this

I am proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years. This would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, and will bring discretionary spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president.

This freeze will require painful cuts. Already, we have frozen the salaries of hardworking federal employees for the next two years. I've proposed cuts to things I care deeply about, like community action programs. The Secretary of Defense has also agreed to cut tens of billions of dollars in spending that he and his generals believe our military can do without.

Two problems with this. One, non-defense ("domestic) discretionary spending accounts for only about 19% percent of the federal budget. Two, Obama and the Democrats hiked even this tremendously in the past two years. It's a neat trick; hike spending dramatically, then freeze it at those levels and proclaim yourself a budget hawk.

So freezing domestic discretionary spending will not do. Cutting it is good, but that will not suffice either. Let's revisit the numbers for Fy 2010 so we can get an idea as to what our federal budget is all about:

* Mandatory spending: $2.009 trillion (-20.1%)

o $695 billion (+4.9%) - Social Security
o $571 billion (−15.2%) - Other mandatory programs
o $453 billion (+6.6%) - Medicare
o $290 billion (+12.0%) - Medicaid
o $164 billion (+18.0%) - Interest on National Debt
o $11 billion (+275%) - Potential disaster costs
o $0 billion (−100%) - Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)
o $0 billion (−100%) - Financial stabilization efforts

* Discretionary spending: $1.368 trillion (+13.1%)

o $663.7 billion (+12.7%) - Department of Defense (including Overseas Contingency Operations)
o $78.7 billion (−1.7%) - Department of Health and Human Services
o $72.5 billion (+2.8%) - Department of Transportation
o $52.5 billion (+10.3%) - Department of Veterans Affairs
o $51.7 billion (+40.9%) - Department of State and Other International Programs
o $47.5 billion (+18.5%) - Department of Housing and Urban Development
o $46.7 billion (+12.8%) - Department of Education
o $42.7 billion (+1.2%) - Department of Homeland Security
o $26.3 billion (−0.4%) - Department of Energy
o $26.0 billion (+8.8%) - Department of Agriculture
o $23.9 billion (−6.3%) - Department of Justice
o $18.7 billion (+5.1%) - National Aeronautics and Space Administration
o $13.8 billion (+48.4%) - Department of Commerce
o $13.3 billion (+4.7%) - Department of Labor
o $13.3 billion (+4.7%) - Department of the Treasury
o $12.0 billion (+6.2%) - Department of the Interior
o $10.5 billion (+34.6%) - Environmental Protection Agency
o $9.7 billion (+10.2%) - Social Security Administration
o $7.0 billion (+1.4%) - National Science Foundation
o $5.1 billion (−3.8%) - Corps of Engineers
o $5.0 billion (+100%) - National Infrastructure Bank
o $1.1 billion (+22.2%) - Corporation for National and Community Service
o $0.7 billion (0.0%) - Small Business Administration
o $0.6 billion (−14.3%) - General Services Administration
o $19.8 billion (+3.7%) - Other Agencies
o $105 billion - Other

In Case You Can't Figure It Out...

We're going to have to tackle Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlement programs if we're ever going to get a handle on this budget problem. Sure, defense spending should be on the table too, but as I've shown, once you remove spending for Iraq (and to a lesser degree Afghanistan) defense spending has been flat or declining for decades. The areas that have grown the fastest are the entitlement programs. Worse, as the baby boomers enter retirement that problem will only accelerate. The oldest baby-boomers who took the earliest Social Security retirement option started doing so in 2007.

Taxes v Spending

As laid out by NROs Kevin Williamson, here are our options:

1. Cut spending, raise taxes.
2. Cut spending, maintain taxes.
3. Cut spending, cut taxes.
4. Maintain spending, raise taxes.
5. Maintain spending, maintain taxes.
6. Maintain spending, cut taxes.
7. Raise spending, raise taxes.
8. Raise spending, maintain taxes.
9. Raise spending, cut taxes.

Dizzy yet? Ok, here's the deal; on the one hand #1 seems the obvious way out of our current deficit problem. And contrary to what some conservatives say, cutting taxes does not always lead to more revenue. The problem is that historically, raising taxes (and thus increasing revenue) has tended to slow the economy, but more importantly for our case here it fuels spending. The additional revenue just proves too great of a temptation for politicians.

Right now Democrats like option # 6, raise spending and taxes. Republicans like # 3, cut spending and cut taxes. Cutting taxes will help the economy, but will increase the deficit as seen by the story at the top of this post, so in the long run makes the situation worse. Republicans aren't going to go for raising taxes, so in the end the only politically viable solution is option # 2. The question is how much we can cut spending, and whether we will have the courage to go after the entitlement programs.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 24, 2011

The Civility Charade

There's a movement afoot, led be Democrats, to have "bipartisan seating" during tomorrow's State of the Union speech. We're supposed to think this kumbaya moment will be a good thing and lead to greater civility.

What a load of bunk.

It's all fake bipartisanship and fake civility. Before the shell casings had even hit the floor after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot, the left unleashed a torrent of hate and vitriol on Sarah Palin, but also conservative talk radio and Fox News, and the Tea Party movement. Mad that they had lost the Nov 2010 elections, they decided that this was the time to get even. Their objective was to silence Palin and shot down the conservative media outlets that had led the charge against Obama and the Democrats.

The civility charade is in the same vein. The liberals are still spewing their vitriol in congress and on the airwaves. It's only conservatives that must obey the new mandate.

It's also an attempt to divert us from the issues. The Republicans in Congress want to scale back Obama's agenda, and the Dems are desperately trying to stop that from happening. Polls show that as many as 60 percent of the American people want ObamaCare repealed. The more people hear about ObamaCare the more they dislike it

Obama's Mandela Moment
January 22, 2011
Victor Davis Hanson

...the current rise (in Obama's popularity in the polls) is exclusively a direct result of three interrelated phenomena: 1) the tragic January 8, 2011, Tucson shootings; 2) the hysterical left-wing scapegoating of everyone from the Tea Party to Sarah Palin for the violence; and 3) the sudden emergence of a sober and judicious Mandela-like Obama, quite admirably calling for calm on all sides -- while suggesting simultaneously that the horrific killings had no connection with the right wing, but also that the horrific killings offer an appropriate moment to reconsider all political zealotry in general.

In the ensuing ten days, Obama's polls and approval have skyrocketed.

However politically brilliant all of this was, it remains in some sense quite morbid, in a creepy sort of never-waste-a-tragedy sense. The reaction to the killings almost instantly blotted out information about and concern for the dead and maimed. Yet in this entire confusing media circus, questions simply were not only not answered, but in fact never raised...

How can a president subtly distance himself from the macabre and revolting behavior of his left-wing base while simultaneously editorializing on unhinged invective in general (e.g., without an embarrassing extreme, there is no occasion to call for moderation from others)?

Why did five days of presidential silence follow the shootings (so unlike instant editorializing about the Mutallab and Hasan incidents), when the likes of Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, Andrew Sullivan, Sheriff Dupnik, and the New York Times rushed in to scavenge political capital amid the carnage?...

And why not some therapeutic confessional of past (and in many cases quite recent) presidential culpability (e.g., the president's own metaphorical use of knives, guns, enemies, punishing, kicking ass, relegation to backseat, get angry, getting in their face, hostage takers, trigger fingers, tearing up)?

The way ahead

We all know what is coming in 2012 -- the most well-financed, Wall Street-subsidized, vitriolic camping in modern memory, in which Obama's rivals will be metaphorically reduced to caricatures of racist, selfish, and cruel nativists. The 2011 Tucson speech will have about as much resonance with Obama's impending campaign style as the 2004 oration affected his 2004-9 political behavior.

Rhetoric in the new age of tolerance

And finally, why not an iota of presidential follow-up when in nanoseconds Obama's own progressive supporters returned to form and took up the old successful hate tropes? Rep. Cohen (D-TN) was soon comparing conservative opponents to Nazis in their Goebbels-like propaganda that likewise would, we were to believe, result in a Holocaust-like denial of basic human compassion. Columnists in Slate were back to the old Jonathan Chait-style ("I hate George Bush. There, I said it") of declaring their unabashed loathing for political opponents ("Why I Loathe my Connecticut Senator"). All that was left was the reemergence from his Atlanta peace center of a smiling Jimmy Carter, quoting scripture as he might yet again remind us that the elder Bush was "effeminate," Vice President Cheney was a "militant," the younger Bush was the "worst" president, and Israel is an "apartheid" state.

Yup, 2012 is going to be ugly, folks, so hang onto your seats. If they're this bad now, imagine how it'll get if they think Obama will lose.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 22, 2011

The South Koreans Respond to Pirates the Right Way

The South Koreans respond to piracy the right way; by killing the pirates. The Somali pirates, at least, will have second thoughts before seizing any more ROK (Republic of Korea) flagged ships, or in seizing any ships at all when the South Korean military is in the area.

SKorea storms Somali pirates to rescue ship crew
January 21, 2011
Fox News/Associated Press

South Korean special forces stormed a hijacked freighter in the Arabian Sea on Friday, rescuing all 21 crew members and killing eight assailants in a rare and bold raid on Somali pirates, South Korea said.

The military operation in waters between Oman and Africa, which also captured five pirates and left one crew member wounded, came a week after the Somali attackers seized the South Korean freighter and held hostage eight South Koreans, two Indonesians and 11 citizens from Myanmar.

"We will not tolerate any behavior that threatens the lives and safety of our people in the future," South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said in a brief televised statement, adding that the rescue was a "perfect operation."

The successful raid is a triumph for Lee, whose government suffered harsh criticism at home in the weeks following a North Korean attack in November on a South Korean island near disputed waters. Critics said Lee's military was too slow and weak in its response to the attack, which killed two marines and two civilians.

With a South Korean destroyer and a Lynx helicopter providing covering fire, South Korea's special navy forces stormed the hijacked vessel in a pre-dawn rescue operation that left eight of the pirates dead and five captured, Lt. Gen. Lee Sung-ho told reporters.

The captain of the ship was shot by a pirate and taken by a U.S. helicopter to a nearby country for treatment, but the wound is not life-threatening, Lt. Gen. Lee said. The 20 other crew members were rescued unharmed, he said.

"This operation demonstrated our government's strong will to never negotiate with pirates," the general said.

Storming a ship held by pirates is rare and navies tend to avoid it because of the risk of harming hostages, who are usually kept below decks out of sight. So rescues are not normally attempted once the pirates are onboard the ship unless the crew is locked in a safe room -- often called a "citadel" -- with two way communications.

Authorities did not immediately give details on the location of crew members during the rescue.

The 11,500-ton chemical carrier Samho Jewelry was sailing from the United Arab Emirates to Sri Lanka when it was hijacked. It was the second vessel from South Korea-based Samho Shipping to be hijacked in the past several months.

In November, Somali pirates freed the supertanker Samho Dream and its 24 crew -- five South Koreans and 19 Filipinos -- after seven months of captivity.

It's tempting to say that they only responded with force this time because South Korean President Lee Myung-bak felt he needed to look tough to his constituents after the North Korean artillery attack on Yeonpyong Island last November. And that was probably part of it. They may also have been embarrassed over the seizure of the other South Korean ship alluded to above.

More, as the article relates, the South Koreans did not just up and respond in knee-jerk fashion to the seizure of the Samho Jewelry, risking the killing of the hostages, but apparently made sure that the situation on the ship was favorable before proceeding with the rescue.

The Israel Analogy

Just recently, Malaysian naval commandos also freed a ship seized by Somali pirates. As Richard Fenandez quips that the Malaysians and Koreans had a secret "wonder weapon" that led to their success was that "they were neither European nor American."

Its the same mentality that leads the international left to want George W Bush in the dock at the International Criminal Court than Fidel Castro or Robert Mugabe.

Sad but true. If we'd carried out such an attack our press would have fretted for months over whether we'd given negotiations long enough to succeed, and if a Republican was in the White House you can guess that the more leftist members of Congress would talk of possible war crimes. On our part, that is.

People who live in tough neighborhoods tend to become tough themselves. It's a matter of sheer survival. Likewise, when an otherwise peaceful country has militarily aggressive or terrorist neighbors, it tends to take far tougher actions than do countries what are far away from the danger.

South Korea has been the victim of dozens of attacks by the communist North Koreans for over 60 years. The list of border incidents precipitated by the North is staggering.

It's therefore easy for Americans or Europeans to say that the Koreans or Israelis are "overreacting." Other than 9/11, our homeland has never really been attacked. Western Europe hasn't seen serious military action since World War II. While these are very good things, they do seem to breed a softness in dealing with threats.

The Somali Piracy Situation

The map on Somali Piracy from the Wikipedia:

Googling around, it's hard to say exactly if the situation is getting worse or at a plateau. The Wikipedia article is extensive but doesn't directly answer the question.

Certainly the long-term solution is a single, stable, government in Somalia that is perceived as legitimate by the majority of the people there. But the Somalians don't seem to have the desire or wherewithal to come to their senses, and the "international community" isn't about to take any serious action to install one either.

Using naval ships is for the most part like using a sledgehammer to swat flies. Most modern ships were built to deal with more sophisticated threats, and so most of their weapons are not even applicable. More, since the end of the Cold War the combined navies of the world are a lot smaller. What is needed off Somalia is a lot of low-tech ships that can provide something as simple as gunfire and a floating base for a small team of commandos, not a handful high-tech ships capable of sinking nuclear subs or shooting down supersonic anti-ship missiles.

In Piracy - The Simple Yet Impossible Solution and Piracy - The Simple Yet Impossible Solution Part II I wrote that Steve Shippert's idea of arming the merchant ships themselves with .50 cal machine guns would solve the problem in short order. And indeed I believe it would. But it'll never happen because right now it's cheaper for the shipping companies to pay the ransom, the sailors would for some reason I don't get rather run the risk of being taken hostage or killed rather than train for their own self-defense (the anti-gun mentality, as near I can tell), and everyone knows that the so-called human rights groups would much rather have Western capitalists and politicians in the dock than the pirates themselves.

So we'll stumble along as we are now, with everyone acknowledging that piracy, from Somalia and elsewhere, is a problem, but with no one doing much of anything about it. In the meantime, hats off to the Malaysians and South Koreans for showing us the way, even if we do not follow.

Posted by Tom at 12:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 19, 2011

House Republicans Vote to Repeal ObamaCare

The House of Representatives voted today to repeal the massive health care bill the Democrats passed last March. The House passed the bill 245-189 with three Democrats voting along with Republicans. Obviously all Republicans voted for repeal, but what's interesting is that ten of the 13 Democrats who voted against Obamacare when it was passed last March voted against repeal, thus reversing their previous stance. Given the popular sentiment against the health care bill, I can't figure that one.

I've no time to write up an analysis myself, but this editorial pretty much sums up my thoughts:

The Battle Rejoined
National Review The Editors
January 19, 2011 9:00 P.M.

The House of Representatives voted to repeal Obamacare today by a vote of 245 to 189. That's a most fitting way for the 112th Congress to begin.

The new Republican majority was propelled into office in large part because of the party's steadfast opposition to the new health-care law. Republican candidates promised without exception that they would vote to repeal Obamacare if they won office. Voters responded by electing more Republicans to the U.S. House than at any time since 1946. Republicans had to keep faith with their constituents and do as they said they would.

Some may argue the vote was a meaningless exercise, as the Senate is not likely to go along, and the president would veto the bill anyway in the unlikely event it was presented to him. But that kind of thinking is inconsistent with the way our government and politics work. For starters, it's not inconceivable that a few Democratic senators, particularly those up for reelection in 2012, might welcome the chance to show disapproval of Obamacare, now that they have seen what happened to some of their House and Senate colleagues in the 2010 midterm election. Getting them on the record in that regard would be extremely important as the battle over this legislation unfolds over the coming months and years.

The argument that the repeal effort is meaningless is offered in bad faith. Everyone knew that Pres. George W. Bush would veto funding for embryonic-stem-cell funding, but no one -- not even we -- said Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi was therefore wasting our time in advocating it. Moreover, in our constitutional system of government, the House and Senate often take positions that are opposed by the other chamber, and presidents quite regularly send proposals to Congress that are thought to be "dead on arrival." That does not make them unimportant. The president and his allies want to create the perception that Obamacare is now a settled matter, and that Republicans should get over it. Passage by the House of full repeal makes it abundantly clear that Obamacare is far from a settled matter. That's a crucial message to send to the public, to employers, to the states, and to participants in the health sector, as they make decisions about what is likely to happen with Obamacare in coming years.

The repeal vote is also an important statement for political accountability. The president and his allies jammed Obamacare through Congress with an arrogance not seen in many years. They had large majorities in the 111th Congress, and they were determined to use it to pass a government-run health plan, come what may. At every crucial step, they chose to go it alone with Democrats rather than compromise in any meaningful way. To get the votes for passage, they bullied opponents, bought votes, and made an end run around the Senate after Scott Brown's victory -- all because they wanted to pass their partisan and government-heavy health-care plan without any compromise whatsoever. (Procedurally, the most outrageous Democratic maneuver was to change election law in Massachusetts so that an appointed senator, Paul Kirk, could put the bill over the top.)

The only remedy for such a brazen power play is to oust those who orchestrated it at the next opportunity, which the voters did in November, and to undo the offending legislation. The House vote is just the first step toward remedying this situation and giving the American people a reform plan built on consensus, not division.

But it is just that, a first step. This will be a long struggle. The proponents of government-run health care are dug in, and will do anything to stop repeal. Republicans must bring an equal amount of determination and persistence to the fight -- because the stakes could not be higher. In terms of spending, deficits, debt, and size of government, health care is the central battlefield. If Obamacare is allowed to stand, no matter what else happens, the country will move steadily toward ever higher levels of spending and taxation, slower growth and less opportunity, and lower-quality health care. That cannot be allowed to happen. And today's vote gives us hope that it won't.

Posted by Tom at 9:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 16, 2011

The Definitive Column on the Liberal/Media Reaction to the Rep Gabrielle Giffords Shooting

So I know I that on Thursday when I wrote One More Post on The Gabrielle Giffords Shooting and the Question of Blame I kind of insinuated that would be my last post on the subject.... and then today I saw Jonah Goldberg's column, so you'll have to endure at least one more. Lesson learned on making foolish promises. And I don't know that his column is truly definitive, but it's pretty darn good. Following are excerpts:

Where the media leads, we don't follow
By Jonah Goldberg
New York Post
Posted: 10:50 PM, January 15, 2011

As President Obama declared in his legitimately moving speech to what seemed to be the homecoming rally of the Arizona Wildcats, now is a time to re-embrace civility.

To that end, now might be a good time to examine the media's role in this mess. There's no disputing -- nor any surprise -- that left-wing activists didn't need to wait for accurate reporting to jump to conclusions about the "real" culprits in the Tucson massacre. For instance, within minutes of the news hitting the wires, commentator Markos Moulitsas wrote on Twitter, "Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin." David Brock, the head of a left-wing activist outfit called Media Matters for America, wrote a laughably self-important "open letter" gloating how he had "warned" Fox News about its dangerous rhetoric. Sounding a bit like Dwight Schrute on NBC's "The Office" penning an urgent letter to the head of the FBI, Brock wrote: "My previous warnings were laughed off and ignored. For the country's sake, I hope you take them more seriously now."
...

They also took cues from such authorities as the editors of The New York Times, who assured readers discomfited by the lack of evidence that it was still OK to blame Republicans for the crime (an approach the Times describes as "Islamophobic" when killers are Muslim). Maybe the lucid-dreamer Loughner lived "well beyond usual ideological categories," but that's no reason not "to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge."

This was something of a fatwah for straight reporters and TV hosts to stay focused on Sarah Palin and Republican rhetoric generally. They used the weaselly rationalization that the murders had started a "national debate" on the political discourse. But this is somewhere between an outright lie and a wild distortion. Loughner's actions didn't spark the conversation, the media (and the Democratic Party) sparked that conversation because they were already locked into a storyline, like a newspaper that has already written an obituary for a still living actor. "People are debating" or a "national conversation has started" is a cheap gimmick for the author -- or his editor -- to talk about whatever they want to talk about. If The New York Times ran an untrue story tomorrow announcing that I beat my wife, it would be the Times that sparked the conversation about my wife-beating, not anything I did.

And this is hardly an isolated incident. It's understandable that journalists would want to set the national agenda by providing new information. That's their job. But sometimes the press just won't take no for an answer, when the public refuses to see events the same way. For instance, last summer the Times worked valiantly to cast the Ground Zero mosque controversy as a symptom of Islamophobia sweeping the nation, even though the data on anti-Muslim hate-crimes undercut the claim entirely. The press routinely floats the idea that the country needs a "frank" or "honest" "national conversation on race" but viciously punishes anybody who says something they don't want to hear. It seems every week there's another thumb-sucking seminar on public radio about how dismaying it is that the public doesn't share the elite press' global warming hysteria. Despite the fact that ObamaCare was persistently unpopular, it seemed news reports often focused on how the public didn't understand what's good for them. Last month, The Washington Post refused to print the results of its own poll, showing that ObamaCare was at an all-time low in popularity. And, right now newspapers are debating whether they should adopt "undocumented immigrant" instead of "illegal immigrant" not because the latter term is inaccurate but because they think their readers will fall for the subtle manipulation.

Just because everyone at the Huffington Post and The New York Times reader forums is regurgitating the same pre-baked narrative isn't proof the narrative is right, it's just proof that everyone in the bubble needs to get out more.

Indeed, it's deeply reassuring (though no doubt dismaying to the Times, MSNBC and other outlets), that the American people didn't buy it. After three days of "discourse hysteria" a CBS poll released Tuesday found that 57% of Americans found the killing unrelated to the political discourse. By Friday a poll by Quinnipiac found that only 15% of Americans blamed the murder spree on "heated political rhetoric." A generation or two ago, this would never have happened.

Posted by Tom at 8:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 15, 2011

The Chinese "Stealth" Fighter is Not Really a Fighter After All

A few days ago I wrote a post about the new Chinese J-20, in which I expressed concern that this thing appeared out of nowhere and caught us totally by surprise. SecDef Gates has confirmed that he didn't know about it.

But what's interesting is that it apparently isn't a fighter at all; it's a medium-range attack bomber, sort of an updated version of our F-111 Aardvark. The F-111 entered service in 1967,and was used a few times in Vietnam. We used it to attack Libya in 1986, and it saw extensive service in the 1991 Gulf War. It was retired by the USAF in 1996, it's place being taken by the F-15E Strike Eagle. The Australians used it, but retired their last models last year.

Here, again, are the photos of the Chinese J-20 that are making the rounds:

Go to my Jan 8 post for details.

The Real Mission of the J-20

From Air Power Australia (h/t TWS):

The emergence of China's new J-XX [J-20] stealth fighter will have a profound strategic impact, for both the United States and its numerous Pacific Rim allies. There can be no doubt that it is proof positive of the absolute and complete failure of the current OSD driven plan for recapitalisation of the United States tactical fighter fleet, and the fleets of its allies. Like the Russian T-50 PAK-FA, the J-XX [J-20] is a "game changer" in the sense that the large scale deployment of operational production examples of these aircraft invalidates all of the key assumptions central to United States and allied air power and force structure planning and development, since the early 1990si.

In terms of gross sizing the [J-20] most closely resembles the smaller configurations proposed for the "theatre bomber" [version of the F-22 Raptor], which was to be a dedicated bomber and [surveillance] airframe, intended to supercruise to targets at combat radii in excess of 1,000 nautical miles, a niche occupied by the...F/FB-111 family of aircraft during the Cold War. Claims that the Chengdu design is a "Sino-F-22A" make little sense, if the latter were true the aircraft would be considerably smaller....

In technological strategy terms the combination of stealth and [sustained supersonic flight, known as] supercruise yields high lethality and survivability, supercruise yields high per-sortie productivity, and the sizing and thus combat radius of the airframe provide a basic design with the flexibility to be used effectively across the spectrum of roles covered by the Cold War design F/FB-111 and proposed FB-22 families of aircraft.

Thomas Donnelly of the TNS article linked to above explains further:

To translate from geek-speak: The new Chinese plane is a revival of an idea championed by former Air Force Secretary James Roche to build an enlarged version of the F-22 to fulfill the medium-range bomber role of the old F-111. It can go a long way, carry a lot of ordnance, and penetrate modern air defense networks. The F-22B project was scrapped in the Bush years and, of course, the Obama administration in 2009 chose to end F-22 production altogether, but it seems the Chinese thought it was a good idea.

Such a capability would add an important new arrow to the People's Liberation Army's quiver, allowing it not only to reach farther - possibly as far as Guam, where immense investments in new facilities (for submarines, B-2 bombers and a supply hub) are being made - but to sustain a punishing air campaign of the "shock and awe" variety. We should expect the Chinese to build a large fleet of these planes, more than the 187 Raptors of the U.S. Air Force. The J-20 will complement but ultimately prove far more decisive than the large fleet of cruise and ballistic missiles that the PLA has been building for more than a decade.

The big brains in the Pentagon have been arguing that the Chinese military buildup is designed to "deny access" to current U.S. forces in the Western Pacific, but the J-20 seems to be more of an instrument of traditional power projection. In other words, the PLA not only wants to kick us out but to move into the resulting security vacuum.

Last November I wrote a post about how our bases in the western Pacific were vulnerable to attack by conventionally-armed Chinese ballistic missiles. Now it looks like the threat will get even worse.

Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 14, 2011

Good News About the Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program

Finally, some good news to report about the Iranian nuclear weapons program; it's behind schedule and it will be several more years before they get the bomb. Some better news too; we're probably involved in sabotaging it.

Israel, U.S. push back estimates of nuclear Iran: Technical difficulties cited for new timeline The Washington Times by Eli Lake Sunday, January 9, 2011

Israel and the United States recently revised their estimates of when Iran will field a nuclear weapon, reflecting difficulties inside Tehran's program of building large numbers of centrifuges to enrich uranium.

Israel's former civilian intelligence chief, Meir Dagan, told Israeli newspapers last weekend that he thought Iran will not be able to produce an atomic bomb until 2015. The interview is significant in part because Mr. Dagan, who recently left the post, has made Iran a major focus for the Mossad intelligence service since he took over in 2002.

Mr. Dagan's estimates also coincide with recent U.S. intelligence community analysis that states Iran has run into difficulties in acquiring the refined equipment it needs to produce more centrifuges and to run the machines properly.

A new U.S. national intelligence estimate for Iran has been stalled for nearly a year, but U.S. officials familiar with the estimate say they expect a new classified estimate to be released as soon as this month.

Iran's difficulties also are likely to be the result of a covert Israeli program of sabotage and U.S. efforts against the country's nuclear program.

A powerful computer virus known as Stuxnet reportedly attacked Iran's nuclear facilities earlier this year. Since then, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has spoken publicly about computer problems the nuclear program has experienced.

In November, Iran's president said, "they succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts."

No country has claimed credit for launching the sophisticated Stuxnet computer virus that reportedly varies the speeds of the delicate high-speed centrifuges, speeding them up and slowing them down so they are rendered useless.

The Internet site WikiLeaks disclosed last month a State Department cable confirming that Israel has waged a covert war against Iran's nuclear program under Mr. Dagan.

The cable, which recounted a Aug. 17, 2007, meeting between Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and Mr. Dagan said the Israeli spy chief outlined Israel's five-pillar strategy for preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

Those five pillars included both something the memo called "covert measures" and "force regime change," or support for elements of Iran's opposition.

In the meeting, Mr. Dagan said, the United States and Israel had different estimated timelines for when Iran would acquire a nuclear weapon. "The threat is obvious, even if we have a different timetable," the cable quotes Mr. Dagan as saying.

A recent analysis of the Stuxnet virus by the U.S.-based Institute for Science and International Security estimated that the virus had been sent as early as 2009.

The paper noted that Iran replaced 1,000 centrifuges at the Natanz facility in late 2009 or early 2010. The paper also quoted Ali Akbar Salehi, then the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization and currently the country's foreign minister, as saying in a November interview that Westerners had sent a computer virus to Iran's nuclear program "one year and several months ago."

Patrick Clawson, a specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said: "Certainly, the IAEA reports and what we hear from people knowledgeable about the nuclear program is that Iran is encountering significant technical problems."

"The great worry is that Iran has clandestine facilities that will allow it to overcome these technical problems," he said.

Mr. Clawson noted that he was also worried that Iran could still gain nuclear fuel because of its ties to North Korea, which has tested a nuclear device already.

Stuxnet was obviously planted by a foreign intelligence service. It's a very complex and sophisticated virus, and from what I've read just isn't the type of thing a team of basement hackers can come up with. Only a few countries have the capability of coming up with this; the U.S., Japan, Israel, China, the larger Western European countries, maybe Russia. Most have financial or political (read "weak knees") reasons for not doing it.

As the article insinuates, Israel was probably in on it. But my guess is this was a team effort, and that we helped them in some way. Certainly (I hope!) we share intelligence on this sort of thing and Obama knew and approved.

Or the article could be wrong and it could have been a U.S effort.

Good News with Cautionary Flags

Surely for the most part this is all very good news. Time works in our favor.

The danger is that we become complacent.

The closer the Iranians get to completing a bomb that harder it will be for military action to stop them. This of course because by that point their facilities will be all the more larger and sophisticated. And unless you get lucky and kill key scientists you can't wipe out the all-important knowledge base.

DEBKAfile also raises some cautionary flags (h/t Dreams into Lightning)

1. Not all Iran's concealed nuclear facilities have been discovered by Western intelligence - not even Mossad. Given Iran's record of concealment, it would be foolish, for instance, to ignore the possibility of a secret plant enriching uranium at full speed somewhere underground out of range of the UN nuclear watchdog's cameras recording every centrifuge spinning at Natanz. They may still be undetected by spy satellites and unbeknownst even to the defectors and double agents willing to collaborate with the West.

A single secret facility of this kind would invalidate the current Western estimate of Iran's stock of low-grade enriched uranium as standing at 3,000 kilos. The real amount could be 20 times or even 100 times as much, enough for three or four bombs.

2. The same applies to the "malfunctions" undoubtedly holding up the program. No competent agency would risk guaranteeing that every last Iranian facility has been crippled or exposed to cyber invasion. The publicity surrounding Stuxnet and the deaths or defections of Iranian nuclear scientists has conveyed the impression of a nation on the point of collapse, whose every nook and cranny is wide open to the long arm of Western and Israeli spy agencies.

But who knows what really goes on in the top-secret laboratories of Shahid Beheshti University in northern Tehran, which employed the two nuclear scientists targeted for attack last month? It is there that much of the research is conducted from Iran's nuclear and missile programs. But there is no certainty that a parallel research institution is not operating in some other dark place.

3. Iran has been known in the past to have established or transferred sensitive nuclear facilities outside the country to remove them from the sight of alien intelligence agencies and safeguard them against sabotage, like the audacious attack of Oct. 12, 2010 against a hidden Shehab-3 missile store at the Revolutionary Guards Imam Ali base in northwest Iran. The consequences of this attack were as destructive as the Stuxnet invasion.

It will be recalled that only when the Israeli Air Force struck the North Korean-built plutonium reactor at A-Zur in northern Syria in Sept. 2007 was this vital external link in Iran's nuclear program revealed.

This is a dangerous business with Iran, and if our experience with Saddam Hussein's WMD program told us anything it's that all the world's intelligence services working together don't even always get it right.

Posted by Tom at 5:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 13, 2011

One More Post on The Gabrielle Giffords Shooting and the Question of Blame

Unless there are major new developments this is going to be it about this incident and then we're moving on.

No, I did not watch President Obama's speech last night, nor do I plan on watching it or reading the text. Most conservative commentators that I trust said 1) His speech was very good,he said the right things and hit the right notes, and 2) the festival-campaign atmosphere with all the whooping and hollering and cheering was entirely inappropriate.

Assuming these commentators have it right, it speaks well of our president but poorly of his supporters. Given liberal behavior this week, I am not surprised.

I first heard of the shooting while at the gym. I saw it on the TV and thought to myself, what a terrible tragedy. We'll have to put up with some calls for more gun control, but that's standard operating procedure for the Sarah Brady bunch and we'll get through it. I had no idea that the left would unleash such a torrent of hate.

Let's start with this amazing video of Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik:

Now, I'm no lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but even I know that it's evidence first, conclusion second.

The tragic shooting of Rep Giffords taught us a lot about our political scene, it just isn't the "heated and threatening rhetoric" that the media is now talking about. The left unleashed a torrent of hate against Sarah Palin, the Tea Party movement, Fox News, and conservatives in general almost immediately after the shooting, and well before any of the facts about the motives of the shooter were known. And by "left," we're not just talking about obscure bloggers, but media people in print and on TV, and politicians.

The shooting taught us about the monumental level of raw hate that the left has for Sarah Palin and the lengths they will go in attacking her. The idea that she is to blame because of some ad that used crosshairs is insane. Reaction is summarized around the Internet, but two good pieces are at Powerline: A Disgrace to Nuts Everywhere and A Disgrace to Nuts Everywhere Part 2.

Before the motives or political affiliation of the shooter were known, a full scale assault was mounted on Palin, the Tea Party movement, conservative talk radio, and Fox News.

Throughout the first eight years of this decade conservatives listed to the left issue the most vile statements about George W Bush; "selected, not elected," "Bush lied, people died," a billion references to Bush as Hitler, usually in the form of something like "BusHitler" or "ChimpyMcHitler." Assassination chic, films about his assassination, and all manner of over-the-top statements were all the rage.

And let's be clear; the hateful, overheated, and sometimes even violent imagery in the rhetoric didn't just come from obscure bloggers. Democrats in Congress and media commentators were guilty as well.

Would you like evidence? Two quickies: Michelle Malkin has put together a progressive "climate of hate:" An illustrated primer, 2000-2010. The Washington Times editorial Taking advantage of tragedy: Hate crimes are down, but liberals use violence to target conservatism provides examples of some pretty big-name Democrats and liberals using rhetoric with some awfully violent rhetoric in it.

Last August James Jay Lee took three people hostage at the Discovery Channel building in Montgomery County, just outside of Washington DC. After a four hour standoff, a tactical squad shot and killed Lee after he pointed his pistol at a hostage. Lee specifically said that he had been inspired by former Vice President Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." Fortunately in this case no one else was killed, but they could easily have been.

Did we see a media campaign to urge environmentalists to "tone down the rhetoric?" Stop their hysterical claims that "the earth has a fever" and that there was "a planetary emergency?" Anyone tell Al Gore to apologize? Of course not. In fact, the reaction of the right was to NOT exploit this, but rather to say "if this had been the other way around the left would exploit it." Sure enough, they have.

Conclusion

What happened in Tucson was that a lone nutcase went on a terrible rampage and killed a wounded many people. Maybe we need to ban the extra large magazines, I'm actually sympathetic to that, although that's a knee jerk reaction that won't prevent diddly.

We've got to find a way to identify and isolate mentally ill people, and keep them from buying guns, but that's a complex issue. Besides what's mentioned in this article on the subject, the other issue is that if someone doesn't want to go to treatment you can't make them. I'm no lawyer, but even basic research shows that you can't incarcerate people against their will most of the time. And anyway, what constitutes mental illness, and who makes the determination? It all seems to obvious after one of these incidents, but there are genuine civil rights concerns.

My heart goes out to the victims of this tragedy. I do hope they knew God so that they are in a better place. You never know when your time will end. Have you said all the things you need to say to your loved ones? Have you gotten in good with your maker?

Finally; what is going on here is clear: The left is mad that they lost the Nov 2010 elections and is trying to get even. They want to shut down conservative talk radio and Fox News, and marginalize the Tea Party movement.

It won't work.

Posted by Tom at 8:30 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 9, 2011

The Gabrielle Giffords Shooting and the Question of Blame

This is going to be a very short post because I don't have much time and for reasons I'll explain below the fold I'm more interested in reader comments than anything else.

As we all know three-term Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ-8) and several othe3rs were shot in a Safeway in Tucson, AZ yesterday. She was holding her first "town hall," when Jared Lee Loughner, age 22, shot Giffords in the head. He shot 20 people total in his rampage before he was stopped. Six have died and 14 were wounded, including the congresswoman.

Now, who is to blame for this?

From what I've seen in the past day or so, the left has decided that Fox News and right-wing radio talk show hosts are at fault. The Washington Post even links on their front page to a Financial Times story titled Can a gun-crazed society lead? I guess we don't have to guess what their agenda is.

And of course the left is using this incident to go after Sarah Palin. How boringly predictable, yet also how revealing.

To me it's all pretty obvious; the guy who did it is to blame and that's the end of it. People who drag in Fox News, talk radio, the Tea Party, and others on the right are exploiting the murders for their political agenda.

Further, people who are now saying "we should all tone it down" are also just playing politics. They're basically just using the incident to silence the opposition. After all, most of the same folks who are saying this now were riding the "Bush Lied! People Died!" bandwagon not too many years ago. More, whenever someone on the left says something outrageous, the right objects, they issue dark warnings about a "chill on the First Amendment."

Last September James Jay Lee took two hostages at the Discovery Channel building just outside of Washington DC. He said that former Vice President Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" was one of the things that inspired him to commit his crime.

None of the conservatives I listen to on the radio or read in print blamed the enviros for this incident (not saying there wasn't one somewhere...). All, in fact, made a point of saying how absurd it would be to do so, but that if the situation was reversed the liberals would not hesitate to exploit the incident. Predictably they were right.

I'm done. Google around if you're not sure what I'm talking about here and need examples of how some on the left are exploiting this (see this great piece in Slate, for example).

This type of story really isn't my thing, as I'm far more happy talking about Iran, Chinese v American military power, or for that matter even something like national health care policy. In fact, I'm keeping most of this story below the fold for the very reason that I'd rather have you read my story about the new Chinese fighter aircraft.

But for now we've got to get past this silly debate.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

January 8, 2011

The Chinese Jet We Missed

The appearance of fifth-generation J-20 Chinese fighter has shocked the Defense Department

The aircraft looks eerily like our own next-generation stealth fighters:

This is the Northrop/McDonnell Douglas YF-23, the plane that in 1991 lost the competition to the F-22

And the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, the Air Force's current top of the line fighter. It was meant to be our main fighter, replacing the F-15 for use in the most high-threat environments. Until President Obama, in his infinite wisdom, stopped production of this fighter at 187 units, that is. This is not nearly enough planes to meet various global threats, but Democrat constituency groups needed the money more so it was an easy decision for him.

And finally for the U.S., the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. This aircraft grew out of the JSF, or Joint Strike Fighter, program. It will be used by all services; a traditional version by the Air Force where it will replace the F-15 (now that the future production of the F-22 has been canceled) and F-16, a naval version where it will replace the F-18 Hornet, and a VSTOL (Vertical and/or Short Landing and Take Off) version for the Marine Corps where it will replace the AV-8 Harrier. It looks like the military will be allowed to have this plane to replace their fleet of very old fighters, all of which first flew in the 1970s. It's pretty good, but not top of the line like the F-22. Too bad, because with fewer F-22's than expected will have to be our top fighter in most situations, a role for which it was not designed. No worries, if our enemies don't make too many of their new jets most of our guys will survive.

Not to be outdone, the Russians are developing their own fifth-generation stealth fighter, the PAK FA. It'll be like all recent Russian fighters; good performance but lacking in electronics. Their cockpit technology is about 20 years older than what you see in Western aircraft. They also have problems with reliability, that is, their jets require a lot of maintenance meaning that their readiness rates aren't as good as ours. But see my discussion below about Vietnam...

Ok, So What Does It Mean?

Bill Gertz has a great piece in the Washington Times explaining the background so I'll quote all of it:

The Pentagon is scrambling to explain what appears to be an intelligence failure after Internet photos made public recently showed a faster-than-estimated advance of China's new fifth-generation warplane.

U.S. intelligence estimates previously concluded the jet, dubbed the J-20, will not be deployed until 2020.

Vice Adm. David Dorsett, director of Naval Intelligence, told a group of defense reporters on Wednesday that the new Chinese fighter program was not a surprise, but "the speed at which they are making progress ... we underestimated."

"Across a broad array of weapons systems, they are making progress," the three-star admiral said.

Progress on the J-20 is among several other Chinese military developments that U.S. intelligence agencies have been accused of missing over the past decade. Others include the failure to detect a new class of Chinese submarine called the Yuan and shortcomings related to Beijing's long-range cruise missiles and a new anti-ship ballistic missile.

Pentagon spokesman Marine Col. Dave Lapan confirmed to Inside the Ring that recent photos of a new Chinese jet show "taxiing tests" on a prototype aircraft apparently photographed by people who saw it pass by.

"This is evidence that a fifth-generation fighter program is proceeding," Col. Lapan said.

"However, progress appears to be uneven: Open-source reports show that China has been seeking jet engines for its fourth-generation fighter from Russia, indicating that they are still encountering some difficulties in working toward fifth-generation capabilities," he said.

The faster development of the J-20 was first discussed by Chinese Gen. He Weirong, deputy commander of the Chinese air force last year. He predicted deployment as earlier as 2017.

The jet is expected to rival the U.S. F-22 superfighter whose production was canceled by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates after 187 jets were built. In scrapping the F-22, Mr. Gates stated publicly that one reason for his decision was that the Chinese would not deploy a comparable jet until 2020, thus more F-35 jets would be built instead of the more capable F-22.

Richard Fisher, a military analyst with the International Assessment and Strategy Center who was among the first to spot the J-20 photos months ago, said the aircraft is manufactured by the Chengdu Aircraft Co.

"Chengdu's goal is to beat the F-22 and then build their own F-35 when the 18-ton thrust engine is ready. It is a full challenge to the U.S. strategy for air power," Mr. Fisher said.

Both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations are to blame for not continuing production of the F-22, which is needed if there is ever a conflict with China over Taiwan, he said.

"Absent a better combat aircraft, this constitutes one of the most serious U.S. intelligence and leadership failures since the end of the Cold War," Mr. Fisher said.

Mr. Fisher said the images of the jet reveal that China is advancing rapidly toward fielding a credible and competitive fifth-generation fighter. The photos show a large fighter with radar-evading stealth features, an advanced electronically scanned array (AESA) radar and "supercruise" -- the ability to fly at supersonic speed for long distances using less fuel, he said.

"With refueling, this fighter can carry the fight out to Guam," Mr. Fisher said.

As for the Pentagon's claim that the Chinese are having problems developing an advanced engine for the jet, Mr. Fisher said China is ground-testing a new, more powerful jet engine and, as a result, could deploy the new jet by 2017.

"If the United States wishes to remain an Asian power capable of deterring Chinese aggression, or preventing future generations from becoming victims of China's dictates, it is essential that an improved version of the F-22 be put into crash development, as well as putting a sixth-generation fighter into formal development," Mr. Fisher said.

It's impossible to know if this jet really caught us off guard or if we're just saying that because we don't want the Chinese to know how much we know.

Before You Get Too Cocky

Too many Americans, I think, assume that we'll clean up in any air-to-air war, because, you know, we're the United States. Oh sure, we may have a hard time dealing with a bunch of guys in black pajamas or turbans on their heads, who shoot and run and hide, but our technology is so good that we'll dominate any aerial campaign. After all, we showed Saddam what's what twice, right?

Not so fast. Let's take a little walk through history.

The air war in Korea was mostly between our F-86 Sabre and the Russian built Mig-15 flown by Chinese pilots. Each aircraft had an advantage over the other in certain areas, but they pretty much equaled each other out. Our pilots shot down the Mig at a rate of 11 or 13 to 1 (the fog of war and all that, this not being Hollywood). Were were impressed with ourselves, and rightly so.

We went into Vietnam convinced that it's be Korea part 2 and we'd blow the North Vietnam out of the sky in droves.

Much to our surprise, in the 1964-68 period we only achieved a 2 to 1 ratio over the North Vietnamese, and probably only 1 to 1 against their premier fighter, the MiG-21. This greatly disturbed us because we knew that if we could only do this well against the North Vietnamese, we'd surely do much worse against the Russians.

There were two main reasons we did so poorly; one, our pilots had lost the art of dogfighting. We assumed that most fights would be at long to medium range with missiles and that dogfighting was a thing of the past. We didn't even put guns on our aircraft. When practiced aerial combat, it was one American squadron fighting another; i.e. similar or exactly the same aircraft with pilots using the exact same tactics against each other.

The second reason was problems with missile reliability. All too often our guys would squeesze the trigger and the missile would not leave the rail. If it would, as often as not it would fail to track.

The Russian built Mig-17 and especially the Mig-21 proved worthy adversaries when flown by competent North Vietnamese pilots. One thing that saved us from too many aerial defeats is that as often as not the communist pilots weren't very good and relied heavily on direction from controllers on the ground.

During the bombing halt after 1968, we corrected all of the problems. We formed Top Gun for the Navy and Red Flag for the Air Force, and got our missiles to work. At each fighter school the respective services formed dedicated Red Teams, or "opposition forces," who studied in detail the tactics that Russian (and other potential enemies) pilots actually used. They used aircraft different than what U.S. fighter squadrons used, aircraft with different performance characteristics to try and throw our guys off.

When we went back north again in 1972-73 we shot enemy planes down at the rate of 13-1, which was more like what we had achieved in Korea. We learned our lesson the hard way.

On The Other Hand...

All of the above works the other way around, too. If we haven't fought a serious air war in 38 years, the Chinese haven't fought one in 58. Further, that the Israelis shoot down the Arabs in droves every time they clash shows that you can have all of the sophisticated hardware you want and if you can't properly use it it's just so much junk.

So that the new Chinese aircraft carriers that are due to hit the water in 2015 are a big concern, it's one thing to build a ship and take nice photos of aircraft on it, quite another to engage in high-intensity launch-and-recovery operations over a sustained period, and especially under the pressures of combat, without blowing yourself up. We almost lost the USS Oriskany in 1966, the USS Forrestal in 1967, and the USS Enterprise in 1969 due to flight deck fires before we revamped procedures and got our act together.

Maybe we've retained the lessons of Vietnam and maybe not. Top Gun and Red Flag are still around, and our military takes them very seriously. That's the good news.

The Strategy

Wars do not take place in a vacuum. They are fought over something, and most likely that something will be Taiwan, the Chinese democracy on the island of Formosa.

If the mainland Chinese decided to take Taiwan by force, they could pursue any number of options, but all involve keeping United States forces at bay just long enough for them to succeed. In other words, at the end of the day they do not need to control the ocean; they just need to keep us from controlling it long enough to defeat Taiwan.

We, on the other hand, must be able to rapidly prevail in any war. Time is not on our side.

Sounding The Alarm?

On the one hand, China is not the Soviet Union, as their expansionist goals are much more modest. They are much more nationalist and authoritarian than communist and totalitarian.

On the other, remember that the bully boys around the world are watching, and if they see us humbled in one place they'll figure they can do the same. Just as wars do not take place in a vacuum without political objectives, neither do the results of individual wars not cascade around the world.

So while this new Chinese jet is not the equivalent to the Japanese Zero which was clearly superior to all of our aircraft at the time of it's introduction and a clear threat from a hostile power, neither is it to be ignored. If we sit still and do not produce advanced figther aircraft our potential adversaries will move forward. And if it comes to a shooting war, we may not do as well as we think we will.

Posted by Tom at 12:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 6, 2011

Peter King and the Radicalization of All-Too-Many American Muslims

Rep Peter King (R-NY-3) will be the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. He intends to conduct hearings on our counterterrorist efforts, which by nature include the radicalization of American Muslims. He outlined his concerns in an article on his website (h/t Powerline).

Bottom line; before 9/11 King was close to a number of American Muslims, being a regular visitor to their community centers and mosques. He thought he had a good relationship with the Muslim community, and that in turn they were making solid efforts to be good Americans.

9/11 changed all that. Far from help in the War on Terror/War on Jihad (or whatever you want to call it), the Muslims he knew withdrew into strange conspiracy theories about the attack

Before 9/11, few if any American politicians had a closer relationship with the Muslim community and its leadership than I did. During my first months in Congress in 1993, I traveled to the Balkans - including Bosnia, Macedonia and Kosovo - to support that region's Muslims from aggression by Serbian Orthodox Christians. I was one of a bare handful of Republicans who supported President Bill Clinton's military offensives in Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1998.

I attended the Islamic Center of Long Island (ICLI) in Westbury on a regular basis, visited socially with local Muslim leaders, had Muslim students intern in my office, and advocated for Pakistan's position against India in Kashmir. Indeed, in 1995 the ICLI honored me for my "support of the Muslim community in general" and my "advocacy of human rights in Bosnia and Kashmir."

In the days following 9/11, I made several television and radio appearances supporting American Muslims, saying that they had nothing to do with the attacks and were as loyal and patriotic as any Americans. I particularly warned that we could not do to Muslims what was done to Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor.

Even today I cannot begin to describe the disappointment, anger and outrage I felt when, barely a month after those attacks that killed so many hundreds of Long Islanders, prominent Long Island Muslim leaders were insisting there was no evidence that al-Qaida was responsible for the attacks - even saying it could have been the CIA, the FBI or the Zionists!

Even more troubling is that to this day, no Muslim leader has denounced those vile remarks. Nor did Newsday say a word about these slanders - no moral outrage or condemnation. No demand for an apology or even an explanation.

As I became more immersed in attempting to unravel the radical Islamic threat to our nation and our civilization, it became more and more obvious to me that the moral myopia of Long Island's Muslim leaders and their apologists in the media was the rule - and that there were few exceptions.

Federal and local law enforcement officials throughout the country told me they received little or - in most cases - no cooperation from Muslim leaders and imams.

This noncooperation was perilous enough in the years following 9/11, when the main Islamist threat to the homeland emanated from overseas. Fortunately, that aspect of the jihadist threat has subsided because of the effective counterterrorism infrastructure constructed by the Bush administration. Some Bush policies, such as sharing and receiving intelligence with and from our allies, were relatively non-controversial. Others such as enhanced interrogations, wiretapping foreign terrorists phoning into the United States, the prison at Guantánamo, and monitoring terrorist financial transactions were routinely condemned - but all were necessary and effective.

Al-Qaida has adjusted to this new reality and is recruiting Muslims living legally in the United States - homegrown terrorists who have managed to stay under the anti-terror radar screen. This is why the hearings I will hold next year are so critical.

In the past 15 months we saw Najibullah Zazi, who was raised and educated in Queens, attempt to attack the New York City subway system with liquid explosives, using skills he learned in terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. We learned about Zazi by chance when his name came up on a wiretap. The case was almost compromised when a Queens imam - ostensibly cooperating with the New York City Police Department - tipped off Zazi.

Then there was Nidal Hasan, the Army major accused in the murder of 13 innocent people at Fort Hood last year. And Faisal Shahzad, an American citizen trained in Pakistan, who attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square in May. There have also been the recent arrests of homegrown Muslim terrorists in Texas, Chicago, Virginia, Riverdale, North Jersey, San Diego and Portland, Ore.

The great majority of Muslims in our country are hardworking, dedicated Americans. Yet a Pew Poll showed that 15 percent of Muslim Americans between 18 and 29 say suicide bombing is justified. I also know of imams instructing members of their mosques not to cooperate with law enforcement officials investigating the recruiting of young men in their mosques as suicide bombers. We need to find the reasons for this alienation.

There's a disconnect between outstanding Muslims who contribute so much to the future of our country and those leaders who - for whatever reason - acquiesce in terror or ignore the threat. It is this disconnect that threatens the security of us all.

As chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, I will do all I can to break down the wall of political correctness and drive the public debate on Islamic radicalization. These hearings will be a step in that direction. It's what democracy is all about.

Obviously we have a problem, and we need representatives to investigate the problem. Associations with groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Council on American Islamic Relations, Islamic Society of North America and other terrorist/jihadist front groups must be exposed.

I've documented and applauded many true reformist Muslims on this website many times. Look at "Islam" under "categories at right. Islam is not a bad religion, or an "evil" religion, as some extremists on the right say. It is what it's practitioners make it. What we need are more Muslims who want to distance their religion from Sharia and extremist groups and adopt Western concepts of Liberty.

Americans and good reform Muslims who have been helping us deserve no less.

Posted by Tom at 10:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 5, 2011

John Boehner Takes the Reigns in the House

Rep. John Boehner was sworn in today as the Speaker of the House in the new 112th Congress. In an historic election last November, Republicans won 63 seats in the House, 6 in the Senate, and 6 governorships. In addition, Republicans won over 500 seats in state legislatures, flipping at least 14 chambers, and now have unified control of 25 state legislatures.

Boehner's speech was short and humble. There was no triumphalism here. He knows that conservatives at the grass roots level are watching closely to see if he and his fellow Republicans honor their Pledge to America. He's also aware that the election that put him in the speaker's seat was more anti-Democrat than pro-Republican, and that he's got a lot of work to to do gain the trust of the American people. If Republicans perform, we stand a good chance of defeating obama in 2012 and stopping his attempt to bring socialism to America. If not, our chances are small. So much is at stake.

I think that Boehner nailed it perfectly. He hit all the right notes and avoided saying all the wrong things. Following is the text of his speech, as prepared:

Madam Speaker, thank you for your kind words, and thank you for your service. I'd like to welcome our new colleagues and their families. My own family is here as well: my wife, Debbie, our daughters, Lindsay and Tricia; my brothers and sisters, brothers-and-sisters-in-law, and their children.

I am honored and humbled to represent a great, hard-working community in Congress. The people of Ohio's Eighth Congressional District continue to afford me the privilege to serve, for which I am deeply grateful.

We gather here today at a time of great challenges. Nearly one in ten of our neighbors are looking for work. Health care costs are still rising for families and small businesses. Our spending has caught up with us, and our debt will soon eclipse the size of our entire economy. Hard work and tough decisions will be required of the 112th Congress.

No longer can we fall short. No longer can we kick the can down the road. The people voted to end business as usual, and today we begin carrying out their instructions.

In the Catholic faith, we enter into a season of service by having ashes marked on our foreheads. The ashes remind us that life in all its forms is fragile - our time on this Earth, fleeting. As the ashes are delivered, we hear those humbling words: "Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

The American people have humbled us. They have refreshed our memories as to just how temporary the privilege to serve is. They have reminded us that everything here is on loan from them. That includes this gavel, which I accept cheerfully and gratefully, knowing I am but its caretaker. After all, this is the people's House. This is their Congress. It's about them, not us. What they want is a government that is honest, accountable and responsive to their needs. A government that respects individual liberty, honors our heritage, and bows before the public it serves.

Let's start with the rules package the House will consider today. If passed, it will change how this institution operates, with an emphasis on real transparency, greater accountability, and a renewed focus on the Constitution.

Our aim will be to give government back to the people. In seeking this goal, we will part with some of the rituals that have come to characterize this institution under majorities Republican and Democratic alike. We will dispense with the conventional wisdom that bigger bills are always better; that fast legislating is good legislating; that allowing additional amendments and open debate makes the legislative process "less efficient" than our forefathers intended.

These misconceptions have been the basis for the rituals of modern Washington. The American people have not been well served by them.

Today, mindful of the lessons of the past, we open a new chapter.

Legislators and the public will have three days to read bills before they come to a vote. Legislation will be more focused, properly scrutinized, and constitutionally sound. Committees, once bloated, will be smaller, with a renewed mission, including oversight. Old rules that have made it easy to increase spending will be replaced by new reforms that make it easier to cut spending. We will start by cutting Congress's own budget. Above all else, we will welcome the battle of ideas, encourage it, and engage in it - openly, honestly, and respectfully. As the chamber closest to the people, the House works best when it is allowed to work its will. I ask all members of this body to join me in recognizing this common truth.

To my colleagues in the majority, my message is this: we will honor our Pledge to America, built through a process of listening to the people, and we will stand firm on the Constitutional principles that built our party, and built a nation. We will do these things, however, in a manner that restores and respects the time-honored right of the minority to an honest debate and a fair, open process.

To my friends in the minority, I offer a commitment. Openness - once a tradition of this institution, but increasingly scarce in recent decades, will be the new standard. There were no open rules in the House in the last Congress. In this one, there will be many. With this restored openness, however, will come a restored responsibility. You will not have the right to willfully disrupt the proceedings of the People's House. But you will always have the right to a robust debate in open process that allows you to represent your constituents. . .to make your case, offer alternatives, and be heard. In time, this framework will, I believe, restore the House of Representatives as a place where the people's will is done. It will also, I hope, help rebuild trust among us and the people we serve, and in so doing, provide a guidepost for those who follow us in the service of our nation.

To our new members - Democratic and Republican - as you take the oath today, I know you will do so mindful of this shared goal, and the trust placed in you by your constituents. As Speaker, I view part of my job as helping each of you do your job well, regardless of party. My hope is that every new Member - and indeed, every Member - will be comfortable approaching me with matters of the House. We will not always get it right. We will not always agree on what is right. A great deal of scar tissue has built up on both sides of the aisle. We cannot ignore that, nor should we. My belief has always been, we can disagree without being disagreeable to each other. That's why it is critical this institution operate in a manner that permits a free exchange of ideas, and resolves our honest differences through a fair debate and a fair vote. We may have different - sometimes, very different - ideas for how to go about achieving the common good, but it is our shared goal. It is why we serve.

Let us now move forward humble in our demeanor, steady in our principles, and dedicated to proving worthy of the trust and confidence that has been placed in us. If we brace ourselves to do our duty, and to do what we say we are going to do, there is no telling what together we can accomplish for the good of this great and honorable nation. More than a country, America is an idea, and it is our job to pass on to our posterity the blessings bestowed to us.

I wish you all the very best. Welcome to the people's House. Welcome to the 112th Congress.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

January 4, 2011

Is the Constitution a Gimmick?

When they take control of the House of Representatives this week, the new Republican majority will do something unprecedented; they will read the Constitution. They've even invited Democrats to join them, although it's not clear if any will.

Not being that long, it would only take about a half an hour or so to read it straight through. Because they'll be taking turns, they'll stretch it out.

Not only will will they read the Constitution, but this will be one of the new rules that House Republicans will pass that will change how Congress works:

Requiring lawmakers to cite the Constitutional authority for any piece of legislation: The Constitution will get a "starring role" in the new Republican-led Congress, says the Washington Post. The fact that this is noteworthy proves just how dysfunctional the House of Representatives has become. Legislators will now be required to outline, in the text of a bill, where in the Constitution the federal government is delegated the authority to carry out a given law. As Boehner said last fall, "If we cannot do this much - we should put down the pen and stop right there."

As you might imagine, this has the left all in a tizzy. They see it as a gimmick, an irrelevancy, or quaint. Most have taken to mocking the exercise. Telling, I think.

The sad reality is that many liberals ("progressives" probably being a better term) regard the United States Constitution as little more than a schedule for holding elections with a few amendments on civil rights. If you think that there is a right to an abortion in the Constitution, or that that there arem"penumbras" and "emanations" in it, then you're part of the problem too.

Don't believe me? A quick trip down memory lane tells us that many liberals/progressives/Democrats, and some Republicans (I won't call this group "conservatives), do need a refresher on what's in the Constitution. These videos were first published on this website last summer:

Democrat Representative Pete Stark (CA-13) ""The federal government can do most anything."

Congressman Phil Hare (D-IL), "I don't care what the Constitution says about this"

Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI) who thinks that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is in the Constitution:

Congressman Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ) who doesn't know the difference between Article 1 and the First Amendment:

Just last week liberal blogger Ezra Klein, a blogger for the Washington Post, gave an astonishing interview on MSNBC in which he said that the Constitution is "confusing" because it was written over 100 years ago:

To these people, the Constitution is an irrelevancy at best. They're interested in the exercise of raw power, and if they can get a law passed that's all that counts. Install some pliable judges who will substitute the Constitution for the liberal political agenda of the day and who cares what that ancient document, written by old white slave owning men, says?

So yes, I do rather think that not only is a reading of the Constitution in order, and I think that not only should members of Congress listen carefully and follow along with a printed copy, but everyone else should too.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

January 1, 2011

Episode #75 and the Confusion of the Scientists

In Twilight Zone episode #75 of the original series, "The Midnight Sun," Norma and her friend Mrs. Bronson are awaiting the end of the earth in an apartment building in an unnamed American city. For reasons scientists are unable to explain, the earth has been moving closer and closer to the sun. This has sent temperatures on earth skyrocketing, in their case to over 120 degrees. Everyone else in the building has left for the polar regions, and only these two women remain. They are visibly perspiring throughout their ordeal.

A man comes to their apartment door and tries to break in, demanding water. Norma threatens him with a gun, and the man breaks down, apologizing and saying that thirst and the general situation have driven to the brink of madness.

The camera the shows the thermometer, which bursts as it goes over 120 degrees. Norma's paintings start to melt, and it is clear that the end is near.

The scene then immediately goes to the apartment, but at night. Norma is lying on the couch, obviously ill. A doctor tells Mrs. Bronson that she will be fine now that her fever has broken. Mrs. Bronson asks the doctor about the latest news reports, about whether the earth will stop moving away from the sun, which has caused worldwide blizzards. Outside it is snowing heavily, and the thermometer shows -10 degrees. As Norma awakes she says "Isn't it wonderful to have darkness, and coolness?" Mrs. Bronson replies with a sense of dread in her voice, "Yes, my dear, it's....wonderful."

The Belmont Club post below prompted my memory of that Twilight Zone episode. Follow the link and read the comments, some of which are quite good. As us usual with most of what Richard Fernandez writes, this one is worth reprinting in its entirety:

Unseasonably cold weather in the UK has spurred speculation the earth may be entering a new Ice Age. This flies completely in the face of last decade's strident warnings about Global Warming. "Piers Corbyn believes that the last three winters could be the harbinger of a mini ice age that could be upon us by 2035, and that it could start to be colder than at any time in the last 200 years. He goes on to speculate that a genuine ice age might then settle in, since an ice age is now cyclically overdue. Is he barmy?"

Piers Corbyn is about as "barmy" as Time Magazine when it predicted in 1974 that another Ice Age was right around the corner.

Telltale signs are everywhere --from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.

The same tone of impending doom; the same portentous omens; the same catastrophic language was used not long ago -- but to warn about a new Ice Age. Today the same tenor is being used to caution against Global Warming. How did the "science" turn 180 degrees around in that time? How could the data have suddenly done an about-face? Who knows?

What is common across the decades was the assertion that weather is generating a political crisis which forces governments to act. Back in 1974, the scientists who looked at Global Cooling believed it would cause the world to starve from freezing crops unless of course, something was done. Today their scientific descendants are claiming the world will starve to death from wilting crops unless something is done. What exactly the crisis happens to be seems less important than acting. Just don't stand there. Do something.

University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: "I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row."

And the direction of that required action always flowed one way. America had to change. Strange as it may seem to people who've watched television for the last ten years, a major concern of the 1980s was that burning vast amounts of carbon from nuclear fireballs would cause a "nuclear winter." "In 1982, a special issue of Ambio devoted to the possible environmental consequences of nuclear war included a paper by Crutzen and Birks anticipating the nuclear winter scenario."

Crutzen and Birks showed that smoke injected into the atmosphere by fires in cities, forests and petroleum reserves could prevent up to 99% of sunlight from reaching the Earth's surface, with major climatic consequences ... Around this time, interest in nuclear war environmental effects also arose in the USSR. ... Russian atmospheric scientist Georgy Golitsyn applied his research on dust-storms to the situation following a nuclear catastrophe. ... In 1984 the WMO commissioned Georgy Golitsyn and N. A. Phillips to review the state of the science."

They found that a nuclear war destroying half the world's cities would create "large quantities of carbonaceous smoke - 1-2 × 10^14 grams being mostly likely, with a range of 0.2 - 6.4 × 10^14 grams (NAS; TTAPS assumed 2.25 × 10^14). The smoke resulting would be largely opaque to solar radiation but transparent to infra-red, thus cooling by blocking sunlight but not causing warming from enhancing the greenhouse effect."

The implication was clear. If the world wanted to avoid nuclear winter, then nuclear disarmament would have to be imposed. And that meant disarming America above all. Jonathan Schell's, The Fate of the Earth, "helped focus national attention in the early 1980s on the movement for a nuclear freeze. The Fate of the Earth painted a chilling picture of the planet in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, while The Abolition offered a proposal for full-scale nuclear disarmament."

Just how exactly cows farting can cause "Global Warming" while exploding thousands of artificial suns on the surface of the planet freezes it is a mystery to me. But the physical process itself may be irrelevant. Whether the world is cooling or warming, or whether burning down every living tree and wooden house on the planet actually cools or heats the earth appears to depend on one political constant: It will always be America's fault. Back when the US had the preponderance of nuclear weapons, "nuclear winter" was the great danger. When it had the preponderance of cars, Global Warming was the universal peril. The process is apparently this: light a match, any match. To the question, does it heat or cool the world, look at where the match is made or failing that, who is striking it. Is it made in the USA? There you have your answer.

To the question: is the world entering a new period of cooling, perhaps Piers Corbyn should ditch his datasets and statistical analysis programs and focus on one single variable. Can a New Ice Age be blamed on America? If it can, then it's real. Otherwise it is false. Over the coming years and beyond my lifetime, historians may wish to apply this formula: V = American Policy multiplied by the absolute value of any variable. It's always America's fault.

One of the great achievements of the Enlightenment was the emergence of Reason as the primary source of authority. The most worrisome thing about the recent history of climate change "science" is its apparent arbitrariness. Perhaps the world is entering new climatic age -- whether of fire or ice is uncertain -- but that is not as worrisome as the mental epoch to which it seems to be returning. The Dark Ages were a time when belief -- or to use another word, ideology -- was the arbiter of truth and social position the determinant of legitimacy. Between Marxism and the Islam, what odds would you give Galileo?

Arbitrary is about right. Environmental scientists have a habit of making botched predictions.

The Questions

1. Is the earth warming, cooling, or in a sort of "steady state?"
   
2. If it is warming or cooling, is it natural or is mankind playing an appreciable role in the change?
   
3. If yes, then is there anything we can do to reverse the change?
   
4. if yes, then would the recommended solution be more gain than pain*?
   

* "pain" in terms of economics and loss of liberties to government regulation

The Answers

1. The earth has probably been warming, but how much is in dispute, and even that may be turning around into a cooling period
   
2. Possibly, but this is uncertain
   
3. No realistic proposal would have an appreciable effect
   
4. All recommended solutions, such as the Kyoto Treaty and Cap and Trade, would be far more pain than gain
   

What We Will Be Told

Based on the Belmont Club post and the comments following it, this is what I believe we will be told

1. Whatever is happening, it must be America's fault
   
2. Whatever is or is not going on, the left will insist that they be in charge*
   
3. More government regulation is necessary
   
4. And, of course, taxes** will have to be raised
   

* Everyone else needs to just shut up and do as they're told
** If not direct taxes, then through various regulations and cap and trade schemes.

There, I think that about sums it up.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

The Year Ahead
Likely and not so likely news of 2011

From Friday's Washington Times, "The Year Ahead: Likely and not so likely news of 2011"

Senatory Murkowski Resigns
Briston appointed to fill vacant seat

Mayor Emanuel to Cubs: Win pennant or else

Sugar Banned as Drug
DEA doubles staff

Pelosi reads ObamaCare Bill:
'Shocking what's in there'

Death Panel Unplugs Grandma

Shock Nuptials: Harry Reid, Scott Brown, to wed

Gore Shifts Focus, Denounces Flat Earth

Democrats Look to Future, Rebrand as 'Whigs'

Limbaugh Announces Presidential Bid

IRS Worker Dies in 1099 Avalanche

President: Balanced Budget Proposal "Irresponsible"

Judge Rules Constitution Unconstitutional

Weather Average Everywhere, Climate Change Blamed

Haiti Offers Aid After U.S. Bond Collapse

Redskins Announce New Stadium in D.C.

Toyota Plagued by Record Recalls
Ford overtakes GM as No. 1 automaker

Bin Laden Found Working as TSA Screener
Napolitano says his skills 'useful for the job'

Wikileaks releases Clinton White House 976 Calls

First Lady Admits Twinkie/Hawaiian Punch Diet

China Forecloses on United States
Vacate order to take effect in 2 weeks

Congress Repeals Lightbulg Ban, EPA Refuses to Comply

Gay Barracks Wins Interior Design Award

Media Matters Declares Fatwa on 'Right-Wing' NYT

Matt Drudge Wins Pulitzer

Posted by Tom at 1:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack