LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

Vietnam +30: The Way It REALLY Was

Walter Cronkite's famous tag line was: "And that's the way it is," followed by the broadcast date.  It was "the most trusted man in America" whose turn against the Vietnam War in February 1968, after the North Vietnamese launched their end-January Tet Offensive (the symbol-laden Vietnamese lunar new year), that turned US elite public opinion against the war.  Contrary to much "recalled" today, many Americans--"the silent majority"--continued to support the troops, but with MSM (MainStream Media: then ABC, CBS, NBC, NY Times, Washington Post, Time & Newsweek; today, add CNN too) firmly in command of the media high ground, leaders in Congress turned.

Tom Lipscomb writes in the NY Post that 30 years after the April 30, 1975 final fall of Saigon myths still pervade discussion of the war.  Popular MSM narrative tells us that Vietnam was a war (a) fought by mostly minority draftees sent into combat by white leaders, (b) to support the wrong side of a civil war, (c) whose northern communist coloration was incidental to its essentially indigenous nationalist character, (d) with US intervention justified by a phony "domino theory" of inevitable communist advance if not stopped by America.

In fact, as Lipscomb explains, Vietnam was a war (a) fought mainly by draftees (67 percent) whose ethnic composition virtually precisely mirrored the US population, (b) to support the free half of a divided country against subversion from the other half, (c) which was driven by Soviet-backed communist leaders cleverly hiding behind by the protective mask of indigenous nationalism, (d) with US intervention necessary to prevent serious erosion of non-communist Asia.  Singapore ex-PM Lee Kuan Yew said that absent US intervention in Vietnam dominoes would indeed have fallen; the US effort, Lee said, bought Asia time to politically (and thus economically) stabilize even though in the end the US lost the war itself.

Other MSM myths: (a) popular opinion turned against the war after the US suffered a military defeat during Tet; (b) the South Vietnamese government was worse than the North; (c) the South Vietnamese military could not--and would not--fight, once the US stopped propping them up; (d) the war was an "unwinnable" guerrilla war supported by the populace even in the South, not a conventional military conflict between states.

Reality: (a) elite opinion turned against the war post-Tet, after MSM wrongly reported that Tet was a US defeat, when in fact Tet was a disastrous defeat for the North Vietnamese that, among other things, resulted in the destruction of the "Viet Cong," the "National Liberation Front" that posed as indigenous guerrillas but were in fact infiltrators from the North; (b) while the South government was monumentally corrupt and inefficient, the North was a Stalinist dictatorship whose iron rule caused millions to take to the sea in rafts & small boats at the war's end; (c) the ARVN could--and did--fight so long as it had US air power to neutralize the NVA's armor, and collapsed only after Congress cut off funds despite massive violation by the North of the January 1973 Paris Accords; (d) the war was in fact a conventional military conflict conducted by the North to conquer the South, which had declined to participate in a rigged election in 1956 and whose people resisted communist domination so long as protection was provided.

America's strategic goal--prevention of the spread of communism in Southeast Asia, was valid.  But far too many blunders were committed along the way for us to prevail.  JFK's decision to back the November 1963 coup against Ngo Dinh Diem brought to power a succession of weak, corrupt political leaders.  LBJ's decision to micro-manage bombing strategy and tactics--LBJ boasted that no one could bomb an outhouse without his approval--proved highly susceptible to political manipulation by North Vietnam, leading to ill-advised bombing halts and insane target restrictions that exposed our airmen to hostile fire from "sanctuary" locations.  General William Westmoreland's "attrition" strategy failed spectacularly, and by the time General Creighton Abrams started to turn the tide with his "enclave" strategy MSM had turned elite opinion against the war.  RN's "Vietnamization" strategy was sound--over four years it worked as intended--but RN waited three years too long to blockade Haiphong Harbor (not done until May 1972) and unleash a full-scale bombing campaign (not done until December 1972).

By then MSM had done what General Giap said after the war proved decisive, what the NVA could not do on the battlefield.  Pressed by MSM, RN offered carrots to the North repeatedly, which the North happily swallowed up whilst ignoring its own promises to desist and negotiate.  Each time the US accepted the North's demands, the North moved the goalposts, and MSM began a full-court press to get the US to accept the new markers.  The North's strategy was "What's mine is mine; what's yours is negotiable."  It worked.

Was Vietnam winnable?  Looking back 30 years later it seems likely that from a strictly military point of view it was.  Once RN and General Abrams turned US strategy things improved greatly, with US casualties falling sharply as NVA numbers jumped.  When the US blockaded Haiphong Harbor the North came back to the peace table; the massive December 1972 bombing brought the North back again.  It is reasonable to conclude that more sustained military pressure, coupled with better strategy, could have prevailed in the field.

But the South had one Achilles heel: the lack of a competent government.  The North was cohesive, skillful and resolute.  The South was not.  Unless the US could have shored up the South until competent leaders came to power, it seems that politically the war was "unwinnable."  It would have required patience that MSM and US elites simply did not have.

In larger perspective, Vietnam's 1962-1975 span transformed the baby boomer elite from social to political revolutionaries, morphed MSM from news reporters to advocacy journalists joined at the hip to the liberals who captured the Democratic party, and energized America's enemies around the world.  It took the rise of Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to turn the political tide in the 1980s and win the Cold War for the West.  Asia has been transformed today into an economic powerhouse that dwarfs Europe.   US engagement in the Pacific is (rightly) greater than ever, with best-ever ties to Japan, growing ties to India, and tightest of all with best-friend Australia, whose troops served alongside ours in Vietnam.  For the rest of Asia relations with the US are of highest import.

The consequences for Vietnam of  America's defeat?  Ironically, while the US lost 1962-1975 the North Vietnamese lost post-1975.  Compare Vietnam's fate with that of South Korea, whose 1953 armistice with North Korea was roughly contemporaneous with the 1954 Geneva accord that ended France's colonial role in Vietnam.  South Korea is democratic and vibrant, with a GDP that surpassed $1 trillion in 2004, 38 times today's per capita figure for still unfree Vietnam.  And South Korea leads the WORLD in broadband Internet penetration, with 30 percent of its GDP derived from broadband applications, much of which is not even available in to US consumers today.  In Vietnam, the communist North chose war when the South refused phony elections, and extended its dictatorial rule to the South after the American exit in 1975.  Today, Chinese gangs are kidnapping thousands of Vietnamese women to make them unwilling brides for Chinese single men, a problem few (if any) South Korean women face.

In November 1999 I spent one week in Viet Nam.  Torrential rain marred my stay, first during a bus ride from the French imperial capital, Hue (site of an 1968 communist massacre of thousands ignored by an MSM that later put My Lai in klieg lights), across normally scenic but this time fog-shrouded Hai Van Pass to Danang, where the flood-swollen Mekong rose 18 feet in 24 hours and stranded us an extra day while rain deprived us of the pleasures of China Beach, and then finally on to Saigon for more rain (albeit less in volume).

But first I visited Hanoi, where some sun prevailed (and Ha Long Bay, where the sun lost out).  I conversed in French with an elderly gent and in English with a university-age student who wanted to join our travel group.  We talked as we toured Ho Chi Minh's residence, not far from where Senator John McCain's A-4 was shot down (I also toured the Hanoi Hilton, not to be confused with the Ritz as a place to stay).  The young man was eager to speak to Americans, considered the war ancient history, and would no doubt today happily trade his dismal government for a free one with 38 times higher GDP and broadband Internet access.  Some day the fog of politics--as blinding as Karl von Clausewitz's famed fog of war--will lift, and all Vietnamese will join the community of the free.  Maybe then American elites will, finally, come home.  (Maybe not, but the world moves on, with our without them.)

Full disclosure: I was (a) classified 4-F, ineligible for military service; (b) a hawk pre-Tet; (c) a dove post-Tet; (d) a sap after reading Peter Braestrup's brilliant "Big Story," which told how MSM's defeatism was decisive in giving victory to the North.  For me, those who served in Viet Nam belong as much to honored memory (Lincoln's "mystic chords" linking generations) as my late cousin, who landed first-day, first hour at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944.  To all Vietnam veterans, including South Viet, Australian and South Korean troops who fought with us, you are living refutations of the pernicious myth of stressed-out, disaffected vets.  On this 30th anniversary day, thank all of you for your grand service to America and world freedom.
Lipscomb: "Nam: What We Won"

 

"Who Do You Trust?"

The late comedian Johnny Carson first hit it big on TV with a show called "Who Do You Trust?"  Exactly the question voters ask on big issues.  For national security they generally answer "Republicans": regrettably for President Bush, on Social Security they generally say "Democrats."  Which is why 43's effort to re-cast Social Security will likely fail.  Never mind that "tiering" future benefits redistributes income in a way Democrats traditionally support in their role as the "party of compassion."  Politics trumps all for a party whose leaders accuse 43 of lying to get America to invade Iraq, compare his Social Security reform to Nazism, call every judge who is not 100 percent pro-choice a right-wing extremist and ignore sixteen years of distinguished service so as to smear John Bolton and wound 43's foreign policy.

Broadly speaking, a leader can choose from a menu of four "trust strategies" for dealing with politically radioactive stuff: (1) Trust Me; (2) Trust Us; (3) Trust Them; (4) Trust No One.  Trust Me works when a party leader wants to turn his own party around; this is the famed "Nixon-to-China" rule.  Trust Us works where neither party feels secure; the military base closing commission is an exemplar.  Both parties join to form a phalanx and march in bipartisan lockstep.  Trust Them is when the less trusted party seeks reform; it must then pay two bribes: one to the more trusted party in the form of watered-down provisions and the other to its own supporters in the form of more goodies up front (e.g., increased benefits, wider eligibility).  This is what 43 did in his first term with prescription drugs.

And then there is the fourth strategy: Trust No One.  If the less trusted party sees political opportunism by the more trusted party as inevitable, it stands pat and tells the more trusted folks: "Your move."  Given today's toxic Beltway environment this appears 43's most viable option.  Republicans have been playing Charlie Brown to the Democrats Lucy for forty years with the Social Security football.  43 deserves great praise for trying to push reform in the face of this history, but it looks likely to come up short.  In what passes for political discourse in today's media hothouse environment, "cuts" trumps "tiering."  Unless the Democrats decide to bargain seriously and keep opportunism within tolerable bounds, stand pat and refuse to raise taxes and let the more trusted party figure it out if and when you-know-what hits the fan.

Sic Semper Idiot Box

Last night President Bush held his first press conference in about one year, to discuss his Social Security plan.  Reporters questions pushed past the one-hour schedule.  ABC & PBS, to their credit, continued to carry the conference.  CBS exited to Survivor - Palau, NBC to Donald Trump and Fox to Paris Hilton.  It seems May is "sweeps" time.  One hope post-9/11 was that there would be a cultural silver lining in the dark cloud of death: a renewed seriousness in America after the Party Decade/Holiday from History America enjoyed in the Clinton/Millennium Day years.  As comedian Slappy White used to day: "Guess again!"  Celebrity reigns supreme, followed closely by "reality" shows that are anything but.

We live in an age when adults seeking entertainment act like children, while children seeking entertainment are targeted as if they were adults.  One shudders to think what level of attack on America would be necessary to cure the citizenry of entertainment infantilism.

Castro + Oil = Chavez

WSJ''s Mary Anastasia Grady writes that if Venezuelan Castro-clone Hugo Chavez gets his way South America will become what Fidel Castro was unable to accomplish in his 46 years of misrule: a Communist continent.  Destabilizing Colombia is key to this.  Meantime Chavez ships oil to Cuba not only to prop up El Jefe, but also to ensure that after Fidel's long-overdue rendezvous with his Maker Cuba remains commie.

We are paying the price of past mistakes: the coup plotters who deposed Chavez for 24 hours a few years back and did not shoot him right between the eyes; and Jimmy Carter's absurd certification of the fraudulent recall election last August (and Colin Powell's equally absurd acceptance of same).  Few if any allies here, either.  Worse, Chavez could easily live decades.

43 and Condi cannot let sleeping dogs lie here, because the dogs are not sleeping.  Our near-term goal should be containment; our long-term goal the same as the Gipper's Cold War strategy: "We win, they lose."
Grady: the "Cubanization" of Latin America

Nuclear Production Treaty

NPT ace Henry Sokolski writes in WSJ that Iran's interpretation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty effectively turns the NPT on its head, by transforming a limited right to produce nuclear fuel for commercial purposes under international supervision into an absolute right to produce enriched fuel to the brink of weapons production regardless of international supervision.  Article IV of the NPT permits states commercial use, but Auricles II requires that they do not attempt to procure weapons-grade fuel assistance and Article III requires that they accept IAEA supervision.  Iran would instead transform the NPT from a non-proliferation pact into a "nuclear bartering tool."  Sokolski further notes that 2003 MUF (an apt acronym for Material Unaccounted For) at UK and Japanese plants--under IAEA monitoring--was tens and hundreds of kilos, respectively.  Figure ten kilos suffices for one Hiroshima device.

In effect, Iran would turn the NPT into the Nuclear Production Treaty.  43 cannot permit this. Nor will sanctions suffice: they will mostly hurt the population, which is currently on our side.   But a pure air strike option cannot guarantee complete takeout of Iran's widespread, buried facilities.  US intelligence sees Iran several years away, but if the US claims production is imminent, who would believe us after the Iraqi WMD fiasco?  And how much support would military intervention get after the prolonged Iraqi insurgency?  Which leaves the human rights options: press Iran strongly for free elections early in 2006, after the Iraqi transformation is completed and, hopefully, after honest elections in Lebanon next month and in Egypt this fall.  And PRAY that Israeli intelligence--far superior to ours--is wrong in its assessment that Iran is two months to two years away from crossing the nuclear threshold.  Iran wwould turn the NPT on its head; we should turn the mullahs' regime on ITS head.
Sokolski: It's Called Nonproliferation

Crouching Tiger, Snapping Dragon

AEI's Tom Donnelly warns in online TWS that Chinese nationalism's aggressive anti-Japan agitation reflects a corrosive form of nationalism that spells trouble for Asia and the US.  China's obsessive harking back to 19th century humiliations suffered at the hands of the West (Opium Wars, etc.) and twentieth century atrocities by the Japanese (1930s and 1940s) is no coincidence.  Chinese kingpin Hu Jintao aims to direct popular discontent with domestic political, economic and social conditions outward, a traditional tactic of dictatorial regimes.  Mideast support for terrorism was rooted in the same tactic by local tyrants.  It led to 9/11.  Should China continue on this path it could easily lead to things far more unpleasant than 9/11.
Donnelly: Unleashed

"Incidental Carrying Charges"

One would think that with 90 percent of regional TV revenues for Washington Nationals games, declining to a 67 percent floor over twenty years, Orioles owner Peter Angelos did well enough.  Seems that shades of Senor Ferrari and Rick there are other charges, previously undisclosed: a $75 million fee for the "estimated" value of the Nationals' 10 percent share of network revenues.  It's time for a name change.  How about the Washington Sabines?
Washington Times: Network Fee for Angelos

Fog at Foggy Bottom

The State Department is not called Foggy Bottom for nothing.  NRO"s Andrew McCarthy informs us that State's weenie bureaucracy declines to release the latest data on global terrorist attacks.  Last year the 2003 numbers were spun--inaccurately, it turns out--by Colin Powell and his deputy, Rich Armitage.  So we are in a war on terror and cannot have basic metrics?  The numbers include non-Islamic groups unrelated to our war.  And as McCarthy notes, progress in the war is not a raw quantity.  No 9/11 since 9/11 is a better yardstick, as is democracy's march.

Making matters nuttier, Condi apparently was persuaded by Philip Zelikow, her counselor, who was staff director of the 9/11 panel.  Numbers were 22 in 2002, 175 in 2003 and 655 last year.  Iraq went from 22 in 2003 to 198 in 2004.   The Iraqi jump is entirely consistent with the insurgents' all-put campaign to derail elections.  Craziest of all: Does anyone think State's decision will stand?  The State Department still needs, as former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick said, a Department of American Interests.
Andrew McCarthy: "Release 'Em
Washington Post: Terror Figures Rise in 2004

Algiers Redux?

George Will's column today raises the possibility that Iraq 2005 will repeat France's 1954-62 Algerian War.  France, triumphant in 1958, was gone in 1962.  He cites the late Librarian of Congress, the great scholar-historian Daniel Boorstin, for an intriguing proposition on violence and disruption.  For most of human history those wishing to do damage had to set things in motion--e.g., throw a rock.  But modern society depends upon "flow" technologies--e.g., oil refineries, water and electricity, and violence need merely stop their flow.  It may, Will says, take a dictatorial government in the mode of Thomas Hobbes to stop what he calls the "deranged Hobbesians" who comprise the insurgency--former regime elements seeking return to power for the sake not of ideology but simply to wield power again.

There is, of course, no way to know if this will develop.  A major difference Will acknowledges is that the Iraqi government is not a colonial one.  Alas, at present and for the foreseeable future, it is not a strong one, either.
Will: "Battle of Algiers?"

Levantine Lineup

Amir Taheri in today's NY Post sees three broad groups contending for power in the May 29 Lebanese elections: (1) Hezbollah; (2) Amal; (3) an emerging pro-democracy coalition of non-Shi'a. The first two groups are Shi'a.  Amal (Hope) is pro-Syrian; its leader, Nabbi Berri, was the group leader in 1985 when TWA Flight 847 was hijacked and flown to Lebanon.  American seaman Robert Dean Stethem was murdered on the tarmac by Amal militia.  Thus, two of three factions contending for power in Lebanon are terrorist.  Taheri gives Amal little chance, however.  Hezbollah may also have trouble, as a Syrian (and Iranian) client.  Let's hope so.  Too bad the CIA is not set up to fund friendlies as was done in Italy in 1947.  And if it is, count on the press to expose it, even if the result is to elect a terrorist regime.
Amir Taheri: Lebanon's Hope
Time Archive: June 1985 TWA 847 Hijacking

Hippy/Dippy Steven

Taranto's 4/27 BOTW reports that Steven Spielberg told the AP that he is confident any ET visitors to Earth, should they materialize, will be friendly: "I can't believe anybody would travel such vast distances bent on destruction.  I believe anybody who would travel such vast distances are curious explorers, not conquerors.  Carrying weapons 100,000 light-years is quite a schlepp.  I believe it's easier to travel 100,000 light-years with their versions of the Bible."  Spielberg told AP this in LA.  Figures.  Schlepping 100,000 light-years nightly across LA's freeway maze to go out to dinner takes its toll after a few decades.  (Yo, Steven, carrying Bibles 100,000 light-years is ALSO "quite a schlepp.")

Rapping Rap

The various styles of ghetto-created music over the past 25 years--rap, hip-hop and other stomach-turning, ear-assaulting pseudo-musical fauna--are at long last getting critical scrutiny in the black community, according to the WSJ critic Martha Bayles.  Her concern is that three factors will block efforts to curb the flood of artistic sewage: the "shameless manipulativeness" of the moguls, association of protest groups with Al Sharpton and academic feminists who conflate hip-hip with racism, "heterosexism" and capitalism.

This is good news, but 20 years too late.  The damage is done to a generation of youths poisoned in their social outlook and deprived of exposure to real music and art.  The problem might have been fixed in 1985, by denying copyright protection to violent-lyric music (as not being a "useful art" protected by copyright) and enforcing nuisance ordinances strictly against public noise.  Much less trash would then have been produced.  But such action would have required a society far surer than this one, of its entitlement to assert some forms of music superior to others, some legitimate and others beyond the social and cultural pale.  Post Vietnam and Watergate and with a liberal MSM that simply was not going to happen.
Martha Bayles: Heedful Hip-Hop

Let the Left Win One

Ralph Peters writes in the NY Post that Mexico's next president will be Mexico City's Leftist mayor, unless he is murdered, or convicted on trumped-up charges by the current government, led by "conservative" Vincente Fox.  Peters counsels the US to use its influence to prevent the corrupt Mexican establishment from preventing an honest election.  Right on, Ralph.  It is one thing for us to balk at election of an Islamist government in Pakistan, given its nuclear arsenal and its pivotal position in America's counter-terror and anti-proliferation campaigns.  Quite another with Mexico.  And it is not as if Fox has been a pal.  Mexico's Uber-Kleptocracy has done us no favors regarding illegal immigration, or anything else, for that matter.  Hoist a margarita if Fox loses.
Ralph Peters: A Dirty Frame

Yearning for Yesterday

Leave it to Dopey Kofi to try to spoil things.  Over objections from US, British and--yes--the French, Annan watered down a UN report on Syria's Lebanon occupation, eliminating references to Syria's "heavy-handed and inflexible" interference there, and Syria's role int he February 14 assassination of former Lebanese Pm turned democracy activist Rafiq Hariri.  What makes this especially disturbing is that unacknowledged Syrian intelligence personnel remain in Lebanon, a fact that the US, Britain and France recognize and plan to deal with.  A UN inspection team aims to verify full withdrawal of Syrian intelligence, a task not made easier by waffling at Turtle Bay.
Washington Post: Syrian Intelligence Still in Lebanon

Fat Albert Flies

The Airbus A380 sperjumbo made its maiden flight yesterday--as Boeing 787 Dreamliner orders gathered steam.  Look at the bright side: airport runway construction will get a firm strength test--Bill Cosby's character weighed one ton, the A380 weighs about as much as the Moon.
Washinton Post: Airbus Makes Aviation History

The Hard Side of Soft

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius gives most of the credit for Syria's exit from Lebanon to  "soft" power--diplomacy, much less to "hard" power--military force.  He says that the US "learned some lessons" from the Iraq War, and stayed in the background while the UN envoy did the heavy lifting.  Ignatius--an honest columnist, no partisan anti-43 hack-- says: "It was George Bush's good luck that this Lebanese uprising coincided with his calls for Arab freedom and democracy."  He recounts that last June the US and France got together to draft what became Security Council Resolution 1559, whose goal, he notes, was to "deter further Syrian meddling."  He concedes that ; "few imagined" what transpired this week, a final Syrian withdrawal.  He advises that we stay tuned as to what happens next in Syria.  Indeed.

Ignatius needs to be reminded of one of Lady Thatcher's favorite quotes, Frederick the Great's "diplomacy without force is like music without instruments."  Without hard power, soft power simply does not work against dictators.  The Lebanese people took to the streets in mid-February because they had witnessed on television the January 30 Iraqi election.  that changed their collective sense of what was possible for them, an indispensable step in igniting a revolution.  Just as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine resonated with Iraqi voters, and the Afghan election did the same for Ukraine.  And the elections in Afghanistan and Iraq were made possible by...military force applied by two coalitions led by America.  America was led by a President who proclaimed "Free Afghanistan" and "Free Iraq" when many thought those visions twin pipe dreams--including, it must be said, 43's own State/CIA Axis of (UN) Grovel.

Without the above chain of events, set in motion by 43, Syria's huge economic stake in sponging off Lebanon would alone have stiffened Bashir Assad's  spine.  Now we shall see what happens to Bashir Assad's neck.
David Ignatius: Back to Syria--and Beyond

Et Tu, Brits?

NRO's John O'Sullivan reports that a left-wing newspaper's publication of a government legal analysis stating that without UN approval the Iraq War was illegal, a report that Tough Tony ignored--and, perhaps more significantly, denied receiving in the run up to the war, will not lead to Labor's defeat, but more likely will lead to Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown replacing tough Tony as British PM.  Bad news for the US, as Brown shares his party's dovish, UN-first instincts.  Regrettably, so does the British public.  The Liberals, not the Tories, will benefit from the damage to Tough Tony.  Which means that the UK is poised to become Brussels West.

Does this mean that 43 was wrong to bypass the UN and go to war?  No.  Going to the UN was an unfortunate necessity if the Brits were to join us (and the Aussies as well).  UN approval would never have come--even if WMD were found, as France and Russia would have blocked it, if only to continue profiting from Saddam's largesse.  But the bald fact of life facing the US is that around the world the UN is regarded as a source of legitimacy.  That the UN on its historical track record has shown, with exceptions all too rare, that it can neither organize a two-car funeral nor stop a candy store robbery, is simply beside the point to the anti-US set.

So what to do if Blair loses?  Soldier on, with such coalitions of the willing as we can muster, on a case-by-case basis. US Republicans and most Israelis are from Mars; US Democrats and  Europeans are from Venus.  If people--and their governments--think the UN and international lawyers can stop the likes of bin Ladin and al-Zarqawi,  what Alexander Solzhenitsyn said in his 1978 commencement address at Harvard, in the Cold War context, applies even more today.

Regarding Western hopes for detente, the great writer warned:  "There is, for instance, a self-deluding interpretation of the contemporary world situation.  It works as a sort of petrified armor around people's minds.  Human voices from 17 countries of Eastern Europe cannot pierce it.  It will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events."

Solzhenitsyn's speech, given during the time of Jimmy Carter, proved excessively pessimistic.  Within three years Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, leaders without self-delusion, came to power.  Karol the Great, Maggie the Magnificent and the Gipper heard the voices of freedom from Europe's East, and led the West to victory.  Sadly, the prospects of three such leaders coming forth at a given time are never good, and hardly seems likely now.  Awful to say it, but it may well take a WMD 9/11 to wake up the Venus set to the UN's impotence.
John O'Sullivan: War Now Major UK Election Issue
Solzhenitsyn: "A World Split Apart"

Search and Destroy...US

Today's WSJ reports that many 9/11 commission recommendations have gone nowhere fast since the report was issued last fall.  Specifically cited are the need for more emergency radio spectrum, fully integrating disparate terror watch lists, targeting funding toward locales with greatest vulnerability (e.g., NYC & DC) and consolidating Congressional oversight.  Set aside reforming Congressional oversight;  members willing to surrender jurisdiction are about as common as executive branch bureaucrats willing to do so.  As to protecting highest-value locales, that will not happen without paying tribute to less-likely venues.  The solution is to decide how much to spend to protect the most vulnerable targets, and then pay the necessary price to over-protect others.  With an $11+ trillion annual GDP (and growing) this is a wealthy enough society to err on the high spending side to protect the homeland.

Radio spectrum re-assignment is held up because the broadcast TV networks currently hold twice as many channels as they need to broadcast, with no need to surrender before 2006 at the earliest; more likely it will come later.  One would think that in the 38th month since 9/11 radio spectrum re-assignment would have been completed.  The FCC might want to spend less time worrying about rock star wardrobe malfunctions, and more time worrying about first-responders lacking the ability to communicate after a major terror strike.  The agency should compel channel giveback by end-2006, regardless of the geographic market broadcast reach of high-definition TV (an 85 percent trigger which could delay giveback past 2006).

The FBI has made some progress in matching watch lists, but not enough, and other agencies are doing even worse.  An op-ed piece in the Washington Post by one Omar Khan gives more evidence that TSA stands for Terminally Stupid Aardvarks.  Seems that Mr. Khan, a green card holder married to a US citizen and of Pakistani descent, is a business consultant who travels outside the US 15 to 20 times per year.  Coming back from Toronto he was detained three hours and missed his flight.  Every time he travels it happens again, because no one in DC corrects the watch lists.  As Ted Kennedy has been detained multiple times Mr. Khan is not alone.

Seems local officials--even knowing about prior clearance--are not allowed to use judgment.  Civil libertarians do have a point here: corrective action must be taken to fix database errors, not simply to benefit innocent travelers, but also to reduce time wasted by security folks searching the wrong people.  But libertarians object to "trusted traveler" lists, which would reduce search load and protect those willing to surrender enough information to make the list.  They cite "discrimination," yet judgment is the intelligent exercise of discrimination; lack of discrimination gives us TSA bozos abusing Aunt Tillie and honest business travelers, the latter being those who add to American GDP while TSA imbecility subtracts from it.

The best way to fix TSA?  43 should sack Norm Mineta, who is haunted by his internment in a wartime detention camp of Japanese-Americans (a wrongful action few defend today), and replace him with a Transportation Secretary haunted by 9/11.

Waiting for the Next 9/11
TSA: Dumb & Dumber

Tipper, Not the Gipper, Dunit

In May 1981 Reagan Budget director David Stockman floated the first installment of Social Security reform: reducing from 80 to 55 percent the payment to early retirees.  Facing a system due to run out of funds in summer 1982 (as in fact it did) this hardly seemed revolutionary.  House Speaker Tip O'Neill and Florida Senator Claude Pepper thought otherwise.  They raised such a ruckus that the Senate voted 96-0 to kill Stockman's idea.  Reagan scrambled for cover under a bi-partisan commission, which ended up recommending mostly higher taxes to shore up the system.  That in 1977 Jimmy Carter had done nearly the same and failed to fix it did not faze Democratic members.  No higher taxes, no deal.

NY Times columnist John Tierney neatly sums up the result, comparing his situation with that of a Chilean friend, based upon Chile's privatized pension system.  It was put in place by Augusto Pinochet just as Tipper was yapping "Whatever happened to jes' plain fairness" and Pepper was scaring seniors with the "they're trying to take your old age retirement away" bromide.

Well, the numbers are in.  Tierney's Chilean pal did about three times as well.  THREE times--and will be able to buy himself a vacation home to boot.  Even if 43 manages to get a bill with today's savagely partisan Democratic party (where is Dan Rostenkowski when we really need him?), it is late in the game: whereas in 1981 the oldest boomers were 35, today the youngest are 40.  Still, some form of personal savings accounts plus re-indexing benefit growth to wages instead of prices would probably make for a decent fix.  But it is hard to imagine the Soros/Pelosi/Reid Dems doing 43 any favors.
John Tierney: The Proof is in the Pension

For Our Finest Friends

Take a moment today to salute those who fell 90 years ago at Gallipoli.  Valiant Australian and New Zealand troops stormed the forbidding cliffs in the face of Turkish machine guns.  Honor equally all those who fell, but give an extra salute for Australia.  Alone among the world's countries, Australia fought alongside America in every major 20th century war we entered.  Aussie special forces were first into Iraq two years ago, and fight with us in Afghanistan.  (Fittingly, Aussie PM John Howard was in Washington, DC on 9/11, in the fight with us from the start.)  Thanks, mates.
Record Crowds on 90th ANZAC Day

Can Tech Trump Terror?

WSJ columnist Melanie Kirkpatrick visited Lawrence Livermore Laboratory at Los Alamos and discovered that folks there are developing super tools to detect pathogens and radioactive material, to ward off WMD strikes.  In 2006 General Electric intends to market its Autonomous Pathogen Detection System (APDS), which will detect 95 pathogens and enable analysis within the hour, far superior to today's monitoring systems.  APDS has already been field-tested--with zero false positives in a million readings--in New York City subways, the Washington Metro, and San Francisco and Albuquerque airports.  Los Alamos is also working with New York's and New Jersey's Port Authority, on a device to detect radiation, to spot "dirty" bombs and nukes.  A "nuclear car wash" that can detect nuclear material in shipping containers is slated for a 2007 field test by US Customs.

Not a moment too soon.  This kind of stuff will do more to protect Americans than re-shuffling the organization chart for US intelligence.  High-tech devices must be combined, however, with another key tech tool:  database mining to detect terrorist spending patterns and flag cells.  15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers showed up in various government and commercial databases before 9/11 yet, as the 9/11 Commission Report noted, none were nailed.  Ferocious civil libertarian opposition to the USA Patriot Act would deny homeland security folks the needed data integration to reduce the prospect of another 9/11, or worse, a nuclear 9/11.  Civil libertarians rarely, if ever, publicly reflect on the civil liberties aftermath of a nuclear event.  How about martial law?  Laws giving the government vastly greater search powers than existing law does?  (The USA Patriot Act, up in Congress for renewal, mostly is about extending existing powers used in criminal investigation to agencies chasing terrorists.)

On 9/11 terrorists turned our technology against us; since 9/11 civil libertarians would turn us against our technology.  We must not let them prevail in this.  To reduce to a near-zero probability the occurrence of certain catastrophic strikes that would severely damage our society upon even a single occurrence, is the primary mission of homeland security.  Correlating traffic tickets and credit purchases with patterns of terror activity must be part of our counter-terror portfolio.  Libertarian protests against "racial profiling" have turned our airport search into a P.C. parody, chiefly at the expense of soccer moms and granny.  Los Alamos cannot win the anti-WMD battle if meantime civil libertarians disarm us.  The IRS already knows how to find you and me.  It's high time Homeland Security can find aspiring WMD Muhammad Attas.
Melanie Kirkpatrick: "The Anti-Doomsday Machine"

Culture's Bloody Crossroad

John O'Sullivan sees at the center of the UK's upcoming (May 5) election a struggle between cultural liberalism and multiculturalism.  He defines multiculturalism as "the doctrine that says all cultures are equal and must be given equal respect and protection by government."  Cultural liberalism he sees as "a larger and vaguer concept [whose] essential meaning is that people should be helped to free themselves from irksome traditional moral customs and cultural restraints."  Both ideas flowered in Britain in the 1960s, but O'Sullivan spots three flaws in cultural liberalism's traditional tolerance towards multiculturalism: (1) multiculuralism's resistance to assimilation undermines the common cultural ties that bind a society; (2) some foreign cultures are illiberal and thus hostile to Western liberal values; and (3) illiberal cultures perceive liberalism's universal human rights as not purely a secular concept, but rather as a threat to their own religion.

These issues go beyond the UK election (as O'Sullivan knows, but his NRO piece focuses on the UK election).  The late Pat Moynihan once said that there are two great truths about politics and culture: "The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society.  The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself."  Sometimes the latter is for the good, as with America's mid-2oth century civil rights revolution.  But tolerance for multiculturalism destroyed the Britain that persevered to win World War II and replaced it with a Britain unsure of its entitlement to prevail against multicultural challenge.

This disease affects Western Europe and the core of America's Democratic party as well.  It is unlikely that terrorists will destroy the West by violence. Recent outbreaks of Muslim extremist violence against non-Muslims and critics of Islamism in several European countries have alarmed both the European public and their leaders.  But terror can still win, if multicultural values triumph within the West.  For then the West will have unilaterally disarmed itself and thus will be ripe for the taking.
John O'Sullivan: UK's Multicultural Election

Hill of Beans

The White House race for 2008 may in part be decided by a trial just underway in NYC, in which Hillary's top campaign 2000 fundraiser is charged with understating the cost of a Hollywood bash, so that Hillary would have $800k hard money when she needed it.  Dick Morris has the juicy details.  He further notes that the defendant, who is charged with crimes for which, if convicted, he faces up to 15 years in jail, is not a Clintonista like Webb Hubbell and Susan MacDougal of Whitewater infamy.  If convicted, to save his skin he might finger Hillary as having known about the understatement.  Such would not prove Hillary did know, but if that becomes a pending legal question Hillary's re-invention may be over.  If the chief question about her come 2008 is former Senator Howard Baker's classic Watergate hearing formulation about then-President Nixon, "What did the President know and and when did he know it," than New York's junior senator may never get to the Oval Office from which she, as a 1973 intern, helped drive out a President.
Dick Morris: What Did Hill Know....

GWOE For It, 43

Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland writes on a fundamental shift in 43's terror war strategy.  It begins with a major name change:what has been since 9/11 the  GWOT--Global War On Terror--will give way to the GWOE--Global War On Extremism.  A tripartite division of war labor will put Homeland Security in charge of countering strikes here, Defense in charge of attacking terror networks and State in charge of public diplomacy, the so-called "war of ideas."  The idea component explains why the "T" for terror is now an "E" for extremism.  Clever, that "E": Because it allows for targeting non-Islamic extremists as well it cannot be plausibly typecast as a crusade against Islam.  Thus instead of Samuel Huntington's famed "clash of civilizations" the war is now framed as a clash between civilized and uncivilized.  Also, stripping out cultural referents makes it easier for imperfect societies to fight while acknowledging their own flaws.  In essence, then, the struggle we are engaged in is one between imperfect civilization and perfect barbarism.

Prospects for successful implementation exist, Hoagland notes, because Condi has succeeded Colin Powell.  The upshot: State will shoot its ammo at the enemy instead of at Defense, as State did during 43's first term.  Condi for Colin may prove the best trade since 1961, when at the dawn of Camelot's New Frontier the New York football Giants opened a frontier of their own by swapping a rookie lineman (Lou Cordileone, who lasted hardly at all) for an aging QB (Y.A. Tittle, who went on to win two NFL passing crowns and set several TD passing records).
Jim Hoagland: 43's New Terrorism Strategy

Robber (BB) Barons

Historian Matthew Josephson, who coined the term "robber barons" to describe America's great 19th century industralists, should only have lived to see what the Barons of Baseball have done to the nation's capitol.  (The term "robber" did not mean that industrialists literally stole from the public, but rather that they lined their pockets at the public's expense, by leveraging their vast power to strike manifestly unfair bargains.)  It makes the Jets' attempted hijacking (still likely to succeed) of a stadium on Manhattan's West Side (based partly on NYC's Olympic bid, which will likely be turned down this coming July) look like a Presidents' Day bargain sale by comparison.

Set aside that only one percent of the union workers on the new stadium for the Nationals are DC residents ("Nationals" indeed).  Set aside as well cost overruns (even before the first brick is thrown at a passing motorist, the $434M stadium price tag was ramped up to $614M) and naming rights issues.  Small potatoes compared to the media numbers.  Baltimore's billionaire asbestos tort baron, Peter Angelos, has created a new regional sports network, Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) to inhale the 90 percent of media profits to which the District's deal entitles him.  Angelos pays the Nationals $20 million for media rights in 2005, and more on an escalating scale in later years, but is guaranteed a 67 percent ownership share in perpetuity.

Now look at how the DC and Baltimore metropolitan area media markets stack up.  DC ranks 7th, Baltimore 19th; DC had 5.1M people in 2003, Baltimore had 2.6M; DC's 2002 personal income figure was $214B, Baltimore's was $92B; DC's average per capita household income for 2002, $42,773, was more than 20 percent higher than Baltimore's.  The 2000 US Census ranked DC 5th nationally, and ranked four counties in the nation's top ten richest counties, with Baltimore having none in the top twenty.  In plainspeak, with more than twice the personal income and population than Baltimore, guess who gets the lion's share of media profits?

Some weeks ago DC mayor Anthony Williams told Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace that DC had to make a "premium" deal with the Baseball Barons if it wanted a team.  Does anyone think today's Barons could have struck such a deal without an antitrust exemption?  In 2005, should a neighboring owner be entitled to any compensation whatsoever, to protect his own media market, let alone a sinecure forever?  Meanwhile Congress stages a grandstand spectacle to showcase steroid use about which it can do little.  Bobby Bonds will, in the event, have the asterisk affixed to his name in the public mind (which, by the way, is all that happened to non-steroid-using Roger Maris in 1961, as then-Commissioner/Babe Ruth chum Ford Frick's promise to affix one was never in fact carried out).

When a fish rots, so goes the saying, it rots from the head down.  In this case, the rot starts with a mayor who desired to crown his tenure with a baseball franchise and a Congress that cannot fathom why an antitrust exemption dating from pre-media times no longer fits.  Perhaps the ultimate testament to how pathetic and financially ruinous this deal is comes from the fact that its most prominent opponent is none other than DC's world-famous Hizzoner-for-Life, Marion Barry, now a councilman for Ward 8 (Anacostia), where the new stadium will be built.  If a reformed crackhead can figure the Barons out, how come Bow-Tie Tony and Congress cannot?
WashTimes: Baseball & the Antitrust Exemption

Crass: Diminshed Whats?

April 11 print edition of National Review has the most apt comment on hip-hop shlockmeisters (alias, musicians).  Noting that in 2001 there was a shootout at  hip-hop radio station WQHT in which 24 shots were fired,  NR editors commented: ""[M]arksmanship being about the same standard as musicality in the hip-hop world, only one person was wounded."  The dispute, it seems, was over the "proper use" of diminished seventh chords.  As Maxwell Smart might have asked: "Would you believe, over the proper use of AK-47s?"

If Rs Bolt on Bolton

What is really at stake in the nomination fight over John Bolton as UN Ambassador goes beyond specific policy disagreements between Bush and the Democrats (and their few Republican allies).  Colin Powell's bouquet to the opposition this week shows the real stakes, well-laid out by Bill Kristol in a Weekly Standard Online editorial: preserving the prerogatives of the permanent State Department bureaucracy to obstruct policies of Republican Presidents whose policies they reject.  If Bolton falls, 43 may well nominate another loyalist, but the message will be clear: strongly fight the bureaucrats and you will be roasted on a spit.

A generation ago Henry Kissinger engaged in ceaseless war with a recalcitrant State Department bureaucracy, first as National Security Advisor and later as Secretary of State.  When State succeeds in co-opting a Secretary, which in Colin Powell's case was easy, as Powell shares their view, we get Bush's first term mess.  Powell leaked strategically to continue pressing  arguments he lost internally, notably on Mideast policy, where he sounded more like the Europeans than like 43.  43 could not fire Powell, a political and MSM (mainstream media) icon.  The damage Powell did in refusing to carry 43's torch overseas was immense.  The sales tours Condi Rice is making aim to mend wounds from four years' malign neglect by her predecessor, but Condi's efforts come too far down the road to fully repair America's global public image.

John Bolton is a nominee of rare quality.  Brain (see his piece below), diplomat, superb lawyer, and with the gumption to push policies the bureaucracy rejects.  Losing the fight will permanently damage 43's foreign policy and that of any successors with the temerity to go against State.  it will, as Kristol notes, do the kind of damage done the Judiciary when Robert Bork was "Borked" in 1987, which gave us Anthony Kennedy's and Sandra Day O'Connor's Platonic guardianship, enacted into judge-made constitutional law by numerous 5-4 votes.
Kristol: Borking Bolton
Bolton: (Edmund) Burke's Law

They Picked WHAT Date?

The French vote on the new European Constitution, all 511 pages of it, on May 29.   D. Kelly Jones, writing in TAS online, notes that Turkey's EU admission is a big issue, and that May 29, 1453 was the date that the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople.  OOPS!  Look at the bright side: May 29, 1453 was a Tuesday; it will fall on Sunday in 2005.  Also, the Turks conquered Byzantium, not Europe (they tried the latter, but failed to breach the gates of Vienna in 1683, leaving coffee for the locals).  Then again, the people we call Byzantine called themselves Romans, as they were the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire.   Which brings us (and the French) back to Square One.
Jones: Springtime in Paris

Letting Terror Vote

Washington Times columnist Diana West warns that Europe and the US State Department are up to old tricks, praising Hamas partaking of Palestinian electoral politics. When White House spokesman Scott McCellan describes Hamas folk as "business professionals..."improving the quality of life for the Palestinian people," it's time to see if Foggy Bottom has moved wholesale to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Adopting Europe's view of Hamas as a social service group that occasionally does nasty things is not what 43 was elected to do.  True, Hamas does provide social services, as does Hezbollah in parts of Lebanon; and as did the Mafia in Sicily.  So what?

43's drive for Mideast democracy will run over a cliff if he allows terrorists to join in.  Terror should disqualify groups from democratic participation.  Should that prove impossible, disarmament and open acknowledgment  of past wrongs must be their admission ticket.

Diana West: Hamas Helpers 

Let's Play "UN Saves the World!"

Intrepid sleuth Tom Lipscomb (nominated for a Pulitzer for his coverage of the Swift Boat/John Kerry campaign war) has his sights on another target: the UN, it seems, is now pushing children's video games.   Food Force, billed as "the first humanitarian video game," has been launched at the International Children's Book Fair, now being staged in (appropriately) Bologna.  Fitting, indeed, that in the week that Hollywood releases the first flick with extensive shooting (film, not bullets) inside the UN building, that we get a UN video game.  Tom notes that UN action after last December's tsunami consisted mostly of taking four weeks to get to Banda Aceh.  Good thing, as it let America and Australia do the heavy lifting.  Come to think of it, Nicole Kidman is cuter than Kofi, and could hardly do worse as Secretary-General.

Tom also endorses New York Sun columnist Alicia Colon's suggestion that we kick the UN out of Turtle Bay and put the new Jets stadium there.  Which would lead to replacement of high-end services--top restaurants, limousines, etc. patronized by UN diplomats, by lower-end food fare and fewer limos.  One major revenue gain: parking revenue, as stadium goers replace UN scofflaws.  Revenue lost: Without the UN in NYC, how many escort services would close down?
Tom Lipscomb: UN Games

Judicious Judges

Charles Krauthammer has taken up the baton carried recently by former Solicitor-General Ted Olson, on excessive criticism of judges.  Krauthammer does, unlike Olson, acknowledge that harsh criticism might possibly curb judicial imperialism.  But such curbs are not likely to amount to much.  So what to do to limit judicial excess?  Impeachment is not a viable practical remedy, as it is too rare and too blunderbuss an instrument.

Better to make a one-time rare adjustment: a constitutional amendment limiting judges to 20 years service or mandatory retirement at age 80, whichever comes first.  Term limits failed for Congress, but for judges ending life tenure removes the incentive to nominate younger, less experienced jurists.  It would also reduce the stakes of confirmation, and thus might make for more civil hearings (one hopes--or perhaps, dreams).

More benefits: It makes also less likely the problem of judges staying too long--not everyone is as sharp a knife as was Oliver Wendell Holmes at age 91 (his retirement age).  It also would prevent judges staying on the court just to deny a President they dislike the chance to nominate a replacement.  Which brings to mind a poignant tale.  In 1869 Justice Stephen Field approached a tottering Justice Robert Grier and conveyed to him his colleagues' request that he step down.  Grier did so in 1870.  In 1997 it was Field, appointed in 1863, whose powers were failing.  Justice John Marshall Harlan Sr., best known for his "the Constitution is color-blind" dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (the "separate but equal" case decided in 1896) approached Field, who refused.  Reminded of his 1869 errand, Field shot back: "Yes, and a dirtier day's work I never did in my life!"  But later that year Field did bow out.
Krauthammer: Judicial Insanity
Anecdote from Abraham, Henry, "Justices and Presidents", pp 152-53 (2d ed. 1985)

Flying High

Remember when flying was fun?  Wes Pruden does.  Seems that PanAm stewardesses were both pretty and pretty friendly to America's Viet servicemen.  Anyone want today's "flight attendants"--most of whom who resemble prison matrons--to be as friendly?  Alfred Kahn once remarked that with airline deregulation he proved it was possible to destroy an industry.   Strictly speaking he was of course kidding.  What transpired was what economists call a welfare shift; more consumers getting poorer service to more destinations replacing fewer consumers getting better service to fewer destinations.  On the books, an easily defensible trade.

But what once was a glamorous experience is now a ride on an airborne Greyhound bus.  When in 1959 I flew on my first 707, going NY to LA in less than 6 hours, having flown NY-LA in 1957 on a DC-7 and taken 9-1/2 hours, the future seemed one of unlimited promise.  Chop another 4 hours off in the next 40 years?  Piece of cake: hypersonic heaven just around the corner.  Well, 6-1/2 hours door-to-door NY-London and NY-Paris in the Concorde was the best I could manage--now that's gone too.  And so is PanAm Clipper service--true first class--for me, NY to Paris 1969.  Between economics and 9/11 forget about it today.  For the younger set they can be consoled in that Greyhound-bus air service is all they know.  Ah, what they missed....
Wes Pruden: Friendly Skies

Space Age Russian Roulette

News reports today say NASA has lowered safety standards for upcoming Shuttle flights.  Which raises the question of how much less safety might be acceptable.  With 2 of 113 missions to date resulting in catastrophic loss of crew, are future benefits of flying sufficient to justify resuming flights?  By way of comparison, in the SR-71 Blackbird program 19 of 50 planes (12 of 32 operational models and 7 of 18 test models) were lost, a 38 percent attrition rate.  Benefits were substantial: near real-time aerial reconnaissance, plus driving Fidel Castro and his Kremlin masters batty due to frustration at the inability of their militaries to down the planes.  (The Blackbird program followed the first Mach 3 craft, the Bell X-2 rocket plane, the first piloted craft to top 100,000 feet and the first to top Mach 3 (both done in 1956); 1 of 3 pilots perished, flying a plane for which no aerodynamic data then existed for speeds above Mach 2.5.)

What benefits justify Shuttle flights?  The umpteen thousandth science experiment in the lower reaches of space, much of which can be done with unmanned craft?  The International Space Station boondoggle?  Alas, it appears that resumption of flights next month will simply provide NASA with a its 35-year prime bureaucratic raison d'etre--manned space flights after ending the lunar program.  A risk of some two percent is far lower than that for the Mach 3 jet set, but is it worth it just to gather data that unmanned craft can do at far lower cost?  The X-2 and SR-71 pilots risked lives for data that could only be gathered then by pilots.  Not true this time around.  Let's ground NASA manned flights until a worthwhile manned mission is developed.

Blackbird Source:  Graham, Richard, "The Sr-71 Blackbird" (MBI 2002)
Report: NASA Lowers Bar
Bll X-2 program

Roe's Woes Pile Up

David Brooks's column today correctly describes how the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling poisoned abortion politics by shutting off democratic debate.  Now, he fears, Roe will destroy the Senate's tradition of minority rights, as anti-Roe Republicans push the "nuclear option" to kill judicial nomination filibusters.  True, Senator Byrd (as Bob Novak today, and others earlier, has pointed out) changed the filibuster rule several times when he led the Senate.  But tempting though it is to give Byrd "the bird" it is a bad idea.  Better to wait until a Supreme Court vacancy opens (likely this summer), and then nominate Miguel Estrada or Janet Rogers Brown.  Let the Democrats filibuster THAT one.

But hark back, too, to what Roe short-circuited.  In 1970, the New York State Legislature debated, and ultimately passed, what then was the most liberal abortion law in the nation.  It passed because a conservative Assemblyman, George Michaels, was persuaded by his family to switch to the pro-abortion camp.  Michaels did so, knowing his vote would cost him his seat, as indeed it did, come 1972.  That process, tumultuous though the debate was (coat hangars brandished by pro- and fetuses in jars by anti- legislators), was democracy in action.  Michaels, whether one agrees with his vote or not--followed Edmund Burke's famous 1774 speech to his electors at Bristol: "Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment, and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."

It is precisely that legislative judgment that Justice Blackmun and six of his equally politically tone-deaf colleagues pre-empted in 1973.  And we continue to live with the fallout from Roe's judicial nuking of constitutional law and legislative prerogative.   Whether one is pro- or anti-abortion, 'twas disastrous for all of us.
Brooks: "Roe's Birth, and Death"
The 1970 NYS Abortion Vote
Burke's Speech

Asia Awakes III

Jim Hoagland warns in the Washington Post that Asia's triumvirate of China, India and Japan will not conveniently chill out while the US chases Islamist fanatics.  True enough, but give the Administration some (Asian) credit.  Its least-heralded triumph is bringing India and Pakistan closer to peace, defusing tensions that could have erupted in a the world's first shooting war between two nuclear powers.  Japan has made major contributions to aiding US efforts against terror.  It is hard, as well, to see how Bush can get more from a China that provoked a midair collision in 2001, refuses to help contain North Korea, incites massive public anger at Japan for sins two-thirds of a century old, and is so belligerent towards Taiwan that even Europe is embarrassed into shelving arms embargo relief.

Should 43 tilt to China like 42 did, and thus undercut the most pro-US PM Japan has ever had?  Not that the US should raise the temperature in confronting China, but firmness is essential.  If the current Chinese were more clever they might pull 43 towards them and away somewhat from Japan and India, by offering to help bring down the North Korean regime and defuse a nuclear threat that the US can do little  about.  But THAT clever China does not appear to be.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6177-2005Apr20.html

French Voters: P.U. to EU?

Tom Lehman writes in The Weekly Standard that French voters may yet pull the rug out from the EU Constitution come May 29.  Chirac's recent public appearance increased to 56 percent the anti-EU poll number.  Seems that the prospect of Turkey entering the EU intersects with rising concern over Franc's unassimilated Muslim population, now 10 percent of the total.  Surely it also does not help that the Constitution, drafted by former French PM Valery Giscard D-Estaing, is nearly as long as War and Peace, but without Tolstoyian eloquence.  Will the Battle of Brussels supplant the Battle of Borodino as an historic ignominious French defeat (one of many)?  Chirac, who has Napoleon's flaws without his virtues, will need media propaganda to pull this one out.
Lehman: "Chirac's Constitution"

A Trillion Here, A Trillion There

Discovery Institute Fellow Richard Rahn writes in today's Washington Times about applying balance sheet principles to addressing transition costs of migrating Social Security to self-funded private accounts.  Surplus assets can be sold to pay debt or expenses.  The US government owns between 600 and 700 million acres of land, some 57 percent of it out West.   By selling 1 to 2 percent over the next 50 years transition costs would probably be covered.  The practical political problem, however, is that with the AARP already in full cry against 43's proposals, does 43 want the green lobbies up in arms too?  Probably not, which is why this excellent idea is unlikely to go anywhere.  In politics "too good to be true" translates into "an idea to good to win approval."
Rahn: "where's the Balance Sheet?"

Does He, or Doesn't he?

Washington Time's national security correspondent Bill Gertz reports in today's edition that the Defense Intelligence Agency has received multiple reports that Iraq insurgency terror chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has acquired either a nuclear device, or radioactive material.  The material is stored in Afghanistan.  But source reliability is questionable.  Thus we pay the consequences of  decades of failing to plant human intelligence operatives in remote places around the globe.  So, does he or doesn't he?  Only his bomb maker knows for sure.  Shifting boxes on the domestic intel org chart will not help on this one.
Gertz Article

Hat Trick?

NRO's Mike Ledeen chronicles signs of rising popular discontent in Iran, China and North Korea.  That there is vast unrest in Iran and China is hardly news.  But  in Pyongyang?  BIG news.  Riots after a soccer match.  Mike urges that the US speak up more forcefully, and take modest human rights measures to help topple the regimes.  Given how little help we are getting (none,  actually) from China re North Korea, given that Iran meddled in the Iraqi insurgency, and that the North's latest gambit is to shut down a reactor as prelude to building more nukes, WHAT THE HELL ARE WE WAITING FOR?  There is a hat trick to go for: three free countries.

Meanwhile what does the Senate Foreign Relations Committee worry about?  Some termite crawls out of the woodwork at the proverbial eleventh hour and says that a decade ago US Ambassador to the UN-designate John Bolton yelled at her.   Democrats, plus one Republican who acts like a Democrat, are aghast.  Oh well, as Will Rogers once said: "I don't belong to an organized political party.  I am a Democrat."
Mike Ledeen: "Now, please."

Gekko Ascendant

Bill Buckley writes on NRO about a chink in the capitalist armor: executive greed untamed by the market.  His target?  Three Viacom executives paying themselves bonuses that put their compensation above $50M for 2004, while the company LOST $17.5B.  A generation ago arbitrageur  Ivan Boesky exhorted college graduates at a commencement, "Seek wealth."  Michael Douglas, playing Boesky-clone Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street" opined that greed is good.  But the less-remembered part of Gekko's film speech was an attack on under-performing executives overpaying themselves.  < Gekko Text  >.  Markets are supposed to reward success and punish failure.  Clearly executive compensation markets are not working.  What to do?

We need to separate three types of executives.  Call them founders, flyers and and failures.  Founders take the risk of starting a company, and are entitled to the rewards of those taking great risk.   Billions?  fine.  Flyers are hired managers.  If they make money for their companies they should be handsomely rewarded, but not receive the same rewards as founders.  Thus Jack Welch, fabulously successful though he was, should not have become a centillionaire, because as a hired manager his risk exposure was vastly less than that of a founder.

As for failures, perhaps the best remedy is for shareholders to sue boards who give platinum parachutes to executives they hire.  For a board to give such a bonus at signing, or to award it after a failed tenure, should be regarded in the courts as a breach of fiduciary duty to the shareholders.  If the courts decline to act, then legislatures should pass the following law: executive compensation in excess of a statutory percentage of corporate assets thereby gives rise to a rebuttable evidentiary presumption that  such compensation (including the discounted present value of future benefits) is a breach of director fiduciary duty.  Further specify that "corporate practice or custom" is not a defense--so that executives cannot simply collectively concur in greed and thus justify their take by pointing to fellow gluttons.  In event of a lawsuit, the presumption could be rebutted by presenting evidence in court that the compensation was justified.

What percentage should establish a presumption of breach of director duty to shareholders?  Pick a number.  Or pick a different number.  But pick SOMETHING.  This stuff has to stop, or ultimately abuses will further erode the trust that is crucial to a healthy capitalist system.
WFB: Capitalism's Boil

20-200 Hindsight

Hindsight,  we are told, is 20-20.  Not always.  Often it is 20-200.  Today is the tenth anniversary of the barbarity known as the Oklahoma City bombing, when 168 people were murdered.  President Clinton was quick to blame right-wing militiamen for the attack, and clearly they were involved.  But there were leads pointing to foreign involvement as well.  Co-conspirator Terry Nichols consorted before the attack with Abu Sayyaf, the Islamic terror group in the Philippines, an al-Qai'da ally.   Author Jayna Davis, in her book "The Third Terrorist," paints a plausible case that Iraq was also involved in the attack.

What is clear is that the Clinton Administration had no stomach for pursuing leads that suggested Islamic terrorist involvement.  Far easier to blame the attack on revenge for the Waco debacle two years earlier.  And, to be sure, Waco motivated Timothy McVeigh and his murderous militia cohorts. Davis's book shows that they likely had help.

But Bubba was too busy enjoying his eight-year party to face terrorist threats squarely.    America had been warned before the bombing.  The great anti-terror journalist Steven Emerson has put his "Jihad in America" on PBS in 1994, showing extensive activity in the US, including around Oklahoma City.  Laurie Mylroie, in her "Study of Revenge" book, made a plausible case that Saddam was behind the first World Trade Center bombing.  But she could not interest the FBI in it.  Meanwhile Emerson was forced into hiding by threats from Islamist groups.

We will never know for sure, because the trails of both WTC I and Oklahoma City have grown cold.  But the road to 9/11 was paved with our successive failures to confront terrorism in the 1990s (and to finish off Saddam).  Public support for decisive action would have been solid were either of those earlier bombings tied to Islamic terror groups, whether supported by Saddam, bin Ladin or anyone else.  On 9/11/01 we found out the extreme high cost of willful blindness.
20-200 Hindsight 

Raptor Rape

The Washington Post does not like the F/A-22 Raptor.   And why does the Raptor not drive the WP to rapture?  Because it is not well-suited to the war against terror, and because of its soaring costs.  What is wrong with this picture?  Two things:  (1) the terror war may not be our challenge in a decade--China may be; (2) the F/A-22's cost is NOT soaring.  On the first point, we cannot know whether China will challenge us by moving on Taiwan.  But the chance they will do so will be reduced if we have a full complement of top-end hardware to deter adventure.  Already, there are models (European & Russian) coming on line  at rough parity with the F-15.

But the WP numbers on the F/A-22 illustrate why the debate is fought on terms that mislead the public.  The plane's cost, including R&D, is shown to have risen (round numbers) from $150M in 1990, when the first prototype flew, to $345M today; as recently as 1999 the per-plane "cost" was $185M.  But this is fiction.  Set aside R&D cost increases due to design changes caused by mission creep--the "A" for attack designation was added when the plane was transformed from a pure air-superiority fighter to a fighter/bomber.  (This was done as well with the F-15.)

The other major reason for cost jumps is an accounting convention.  Stay with this.  It is VERY important.  R&D costs are allocated on a per-plane basis.  So in 1990 (round numbers again) that was 650 planes dividing the R&D expense; in 199 it was 340 and today it is 190.  Thus, the fixed-cost allocator has more than trebled since 1990, and roughly doubled since 1999.  The true cost of procuring planes today is nearer $85M.  The quarter-billion on top is simply the allocation of R&D. But those costs are incurred up front, and are "sunk" costs.

Simply, put, SUNK COST IS COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT TO PROCUREMENT DECISIONS MADE TODAY.  That money, whether wisely or foolishly spent, is long gone.   This was done as well with the B-2 Spirit Stealth bomber, a so-called "2 billion dollar plane."  Originally some 130 B-2s were to be built, but ultimately only 21 or 22 were.  Drop their original program number six-fold, and R&D allocated sunk cost sextuples.  So instead of $35B R&D spread at $250M per plane, each plane produced is saddled with $1.5B allocated sunk cost.  The true variable cost of production is more like $600M to &700M.

Then take the issue of capability.   First, the F-22 has successfully "killed" four F-15s in simulated combat (real planes flying, not on a computer screen), before the F-15 pilots were even aware of the F-22's presence.  Then factor in stealth, which the F-15 lacks.  Learn from experience with the F-117 Nighthawk.  In 1986 we declined to use the F-117 to bomb Qaddafi.  Thus the Libyan nut-case was forewarned of attack, and pilots dropping bombs had to take evasive action, at cost to mission success.  In the Gulf War,  the USAF bombed Saddam's nuclear research facility twice.  First, they launched a daylight raid of 72 planes, of which 14 were F-16s carrying bombs, with the rest jammers, escorts, etc.   The raid encountered heavy fire, and due to evasive maneuvering and smoke spread over the target by the Iraqis no hits were scored.  Then, at 3 AM 8 F-117s re-did the mission, using only 2 tankers.  Three of the four reactors were destroyed, and the fourth heavily damaged.  No warning, no camouflage and no evasive action needed.   Besides superior results, a true cost comparison would be 72 planes needed to 10--and the 72 plane mission would have to have been repeated at least once.

Bottom line: We do not know whether we will ever have to fight China.  Best to prepare for war so as to avoid it.  THAT is the cheapest option.  We cannot repeat World War II and start producing planes (or other equipment) by the bushel once combat starts.  We failed to prepare for the terror war are are scrambling to catch up.  We cannot know that terror will be our number one problem in a decade, let alone two.  Prudence dictates that we prepare for a serious prospect of major war in advance.  The F/A-22 and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are part of the last generation of manned aircraft we will build.  Let's give our pilots the BEST.

We owe no less to America's finest citizens.  If budget woes concern you, cut elsewhere, please.  (And put budget numbers in perspective: Even a one-trillion-dollar expense spread over ten years would be less than one percent of ten-year GDP at present numbers; we can, in other words, afford whatever defense force we need, if we have the political will to procure it.)
Raptor Rape

Trial by Fury

Hudson scholar Irwin Stelzer neatly sums up in The Weekly Standard how New York State DA Eliot Spitzer uses destroying reputation as a way of forcing pleas from prominent defendants.  AIG honcho Maurice Greenberg may or may not actually be guilty, but forcing him to invoke the Fifth Amendment because he has not had time to review thousands of documents is no way to run a legal railroad.  Staying with the metaphor, railroading defendants is fairly easy for a top DA: Accuse in public, knowing (as only lawyers and luckless defendants know) that defendants cannot selectively answer questions--either they answer every query or courts will deem them to have waived Fifth Amendment privilege.  Thus defendants are effectively silenced and forced to choose between having their reputation shredded or copping a plea.  Call it "trial by fury."

It is time, then, to bar DAs from running for political office.  True, you will lose the next Rudy Giuliani, but such are rarities.   A few years back the Wall Street Journal's Dorothy Rabinowitz  recounted in chilling, exhaustive detail how Massachusetts prosecutor Scott Harshbarger  paved his way to run for higher office by using coerced, fabricated testimony of children to convict  innocent defendants of child abuse; the appropriately-named Harshbarger is now President of Common Cause.  (Rudy, for his part, had several Wall Street traders led away in handcuffs, who subsequently were exonerated.)   Better to have the likes of New York City DA Robert Morgenthau, or his illustrious predecessor Frank Hogan, make prosecutorial calls.  One need not agree with every call they made, but at least the calls were made on the legal merits.
Trial By Fury

World Murder Capital?

Rio de Janeiro's name means River of  January, and the city is known to its cariocas as "Marvelous City."   But a Washington Times piece today makes clear that Murderous City is a more appropriate title.  A staggering 80 to 95 people a day are killed in Rio, mostly by drug gang shootouts in the favela slums that ring the city.    This translates in round figures to 29,000 to 35,000 annually.  Rio is a city of 10 million, roughly 25% more than inhabit New York City.  Thus for NYC a comparable murder toll range would be  23,000 to 28,000; the 2004 NYC figure was under 600.  Put another way, Rio has some 40 to 50 times NYC's per capita murder rate, with a 300 to 350 murders per 100,000 rate.   (The per capita number of 55 per 100,000 given in the WT article for Rio is clearly wrong--someone misplaced a decimal point.)  One final frame of reference: With a US population of about 300 million, 30 times Rio's total, multiply the annual Rio murder range by 30 to get an equivalent murder total for the US: the range would be, in round figures, 850,000 to 1.1 million!!!!  See a problem here?
World Murder Capital?

Class Beats Crass

Who'd a thunk it: George Steinbrenner shows the class way to build a stadium.  The Yanks are on the verge of winning approval to build a stadium just north of the current one--with an outside facade recreating the historic one, and an inside facade rebult, too.  (OK, technically the proper name for the inside facade is "frieze," but those alive when Mick bounced a ball off it will always call it a facade too.)  The stadium cost?   ENTIRELY out of their own pockets.  The city will, of course, contribute public improvements, including a parking lot whose revenues go to the city.  And the club will keep the Yankee Stadium name.

Meanwhle, the Jets want a stadium in the midst of Manhattan--they too, are about to get it barring a miracle--with hundreds of millions in subsidies (how much depends upon whose accounting one believes), and with the city passing up a better cash deal from Cablevision.  And Bow-Tie Tony in DC overpays for a second-rate club, sells naming rights to the Lords of Baseball, pays indemnity to a billionaire Baltimore tort law baron (by surrendering all media rights), and assumes the risk of delays in construction.

The Apple citizenry gets it: the Jet deal ignited a firestorm while the Yanks sail on smoothly.  How the crass Steinbrenner could show class while the presumably classy mayor of the nationa's Capitol shows crass will remain one of life's mysteries.  I guess DC should also "Let George do it."
Class Beats Crass

DVDs

The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance (1962)
Sellar cast indeed: Jimmy Stewart, Vera Miles, John Wayne, Edmond O'Brien, Lee Marvin and more still!  Elegaic story of the fading of the Old West.  A senator goes home to honor the fogotten man who saved him.  One of John Ford's finest.

CDs

Paired 1950s classics: Anatomy of a Murder & The Man With the Golden Arm
Duke Ellington's 1959 cool score and Elmer Bernstein's 1957 sizzler.  Amazon will pair them for you.  The "dull" 1950s were a golden age for jazz.

Books

The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy, by Peter Huber & Mark Mills (Basic Books 2005)

The authors will change the way you see all energy issues.  We have been asking the wrong questions, let alone what answers we have gotten.  It's not about ENERGY; it's about POWER.  Nine-tenths of all energy we consume goes into higher-order power.  Conservation efforts BOOST consumption.  The future is not low-order alternative fuels, which costs little and produces little, but digital power, which costs more and produces much more.

Timing is the Thing

Uri Dan, ace Mideast columnist of NY Post, writes that US and Israel disagree over Iran solely as to the timing of possible strike against Iran nuclear facilities, if needed.  Israel sees a few months to a two-year time window, while the US sees 2010 is Iran's crossover date.  Now, just WHO do you think has the better intelligence service?  As Mike Ledeen says constantly on NRO, "Faster, please."
Timing is the Thing

Supreme Arrogance

Ethics and Public Policy Center chief Ed Whelan writes in NRO a neat primer on how to gauge Supreme Court rulings--why deferral to legislative enactment is not the same as agreement with it.  Judicial imperialism has rarely been unmasked in so few words.
Supreme Arrogance