LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

"A Soldier's 'Silent Night'"

Special posting today: I just heard a 3:45 video of a poignant poem set to music, "A Soldier's 'Silent Night'", composed in 2002.  Let LFTC's last 2006 posting remember those who keep us all free.  And may all our soldiers, the magnificent men and women of the United States military, have a safe and Merry Christmas and and a most Happy 2007.

Index 12/20/06

4 posts today: (1) One Brit's True Grit--Us v. Them; (2) You and Me: Our 2006--Cyber-Serendip; (2) Sanitizing the Genocidal--MSM Murders; (4) Jim Baker Negotiates With Iran--Cyber-Serendip.  LFTC goes now on holiday vacation (a nicer word than hiatus) starting tomorrow, coincidentally the Winter Solstice; days will start getting longer Friday.  LFTC will return in a fortnight, on Wednesday, January 3, 2007, when the new (110th) Congress convenes.

One Brit's True Grit

David Pryce-Jones gives us the name of a true hero: Bryan Budd, a British SAS officer who was posted to Afghanistan, in the Afghan highlands.  Corporal Budd, serving with the SAS Parachute Regiment, first rescued a comrade held hostage by storming a house and killing the captors; then Corporal Budd saved several comrades in a firefight by charging the Taliban with his weapon set on automatic.  He was killed in the action.  For his gallantry, Corporal Budd has been awarded Britain's highest combat honor, the Victoria Cross.  Remember him come Christmas.

You--and Me: Our 2006

Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year is...YOU!  Time's "You!" is the explosion of content creation, distributed over the World Wide Web, which includes the "blogosphere" of which LFTC is one tiny part.  Now, before you get excited, remember that prior honorees have not always been so charming--Hitler, Mao, etc.  Time's criterion is "most influential," whether naughty or nice by Santa's tally.  Those of us born after 1940 were collective winners before, in 1966, when Time chose the under-25 generation.  Women born since 1941 are three-time winners, as women collectively were the 1975 choice.  A machine even won once, when the PC was selected in 1982.  Also, less than flattering are the 2006 winners Time chose to highlight given in this article.

For LFTC 2006 was a year best described as unusual.  First and happiest, LFTC's extended readership family expanded.  Second, and sadly, LFTC was forced into a four-month mid-year hiatus for family reasons.  Third, and most surprisingly, my intended two-part evaluation of where we stand five years after 9/11 grew like topsy, to ten parts and 23,000 words.  Trimmed to 15,000 then roughly tripled in the past three months, and presto!  It is a book that will come out early next year.  During the writing of the online material I had no thought of morphing it into a book.  The title is still in flux during the final editing process.  The basic focus is on two wars: (1) what John Abizaid calls the "Long War"--the ideological, multi-generational component of our survival struggle with Islamism; (2) what I call the "Short War"--the race to stop Iran getting The Bomb.

Back to Time's "You!" and LFTC.  In 2005 LFTC's closing message recapped major themes covered during its first year.  For 2006 such a summary is less useful for two reasons: (1) Mideast wars so overshadowed other issues--dominating even the off-year elections; and (2) the four-month hiatus for LFTC truncated the posting corpus.  Instead, here are a few thoughts on what LFTC has become for me, and what I hope it has become for you.

For me, LFTC authorship has forced me to sharpen my thinking and writing, prioritize issues and reconsider my own positions, as evidence and argument elsewhere comes to my attention.  My positions as to what kind of wars we fight, and what to do in Iraq, for example, are by no means the same as they were even when in late September I posted the first installments of my five-year assessment.  LFTC postings made possible a relatively quick creation of a book, which I hope will present LFTC's ideas to a wider audience--within and outside of the Beltway--and thus increase website visitors to LFTC.

For LFTC readers, I hope that LFTC presents issues in a way that sharpens your thinking, too, as to what is important and what, if anything, can be done about things.  So we march forward, if not always in lockstep, side by side, into 2007.

May 2007 bring all of you good health and much happiness.

Sanitzing the Genocidal

Time's editors said that had they picked a single person as Person of the Year they would have selected..Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose they describe in a photo essay as an "Iranian Paradox."  The 14 photos presented make a magnificent montage for any politician in the West, running for elective office--a shot of young adulthood, meeting with leaders, seated in the UN General Assembly (where truly he belongs, all the time) addressing students, etc.  My personal favorites are #5, #8 and #12, all taken in August 2006.  It seems that Ahmadinejad had a stellar month in August 2006.

#5 shows him visiting an Iranian town, Ardabil.  He is standing up in an open-top car, waving to crowds lining a boulevard.  Time's caption describes him as having "fashioned himself into an Iranian Everyman"...by focusing on "economic issues" and "vowing to fight corruption."   #8 shows him on the airport tarmac, after arriving by helicopter in West Azerbaijan, just, Time informs us, "after he defied the UN Security Council deadline to halt uranium enrichment."  And #14, taken at a public meeting in Ardabil, shows him standing before his fellow citizens, with hand on heart, a reverential expression on his face. Time's caption tells us that at that event he "vowed to stand by Iran's nuclear work, saying the UN cannot deprive Iran of its rights."

Now one cannot expect Time to capture all the events and statements that Ahmadinejad, or anyone else, makes in a lifetime. Fair enough.  But what did they miss?  Well, for starters, how about MA calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map?"  How about his calling for "death to America?"  How about his presiding over a monster global Holocaust denial event in Tehran?  Or his presiding over a Holocaust and Jew-mocking cartoon contest, also in Tehran?

In a companion interview with "Iran's agitator" (for what, social justice?  global understanding and tolerance?) Time notes MA's Holocaust denial, but then says: "His denials of the Holocaust and his threat to destroy Israel cause shudders in the West but have made him an icon throughout the Muslim world."  An icon.  The scary part: That much is indeed true.  But my favorite MA quote is this gem: "People should be talked too with reason."  Gotta give it to the guy--he has a sense of humor.  Of the Tehran Holocaust-denial hate-fest, asked by Time why, instead of holding the confab, he doesn't press for a "dialogue" between Israel and the Palestinians, MA responded: "As a matter of fact, this conference was in line with peace."

Let's assume that MA really intends to push economic development and fight corruption.  Are those goals more important than MA's Hitlerian anti-Semitism, threats to vaporize a UN-member state, resurrection of Nazi-like demonizing and ridiculing of the Jews?  In the wild, weird world of MSM, apparently so.  And that bodes ill for everyone who cares about the survival of Western civilization--even for the survival of the MSM types who seek peace by sanitizing our mortal enemies to the point of hagiography.

For the truth, kudos to NRO's David Frum for pointing me me to a story in the Dec. 18 Guardian Unlimited, telling how Iranian students who vigorously protested against MA last week are now in hiding, as MA's thugs hunt for them.  Freedom of dissent, it seems, is the "corruption" MA intends to root out.  Meantime, the latest Mossad estimate is that Iran is 3 to 4 years away from a  nuclear bomb.  Ahmadinejad, in a masterpiece of timing with Time's obtuseness, proclaimed publicly today that Iran is a "nuclear power" for having completed the nuclear fuel cycle, enabling civil nuclear power generation, and a key step on fabricating bombs.  Come to think of it, a nuke can rid the world of lots of "corrupt" folks (albeit, there is a collateral damage issue as to folks not corrupt, but when you make an omelette...).

Jim Baker Negotiates With Iran

LFTC readers should end 2006, a most unfunny year indeed, with a well-earned laugh.  A Hollywood type, David Zucker, has placed on YouTube a hilarious two-minute video with actors showing how Jim Baker would negotiated with Iran.

Index 12/19/06

5 posts: (1) Iraq: Has Bush Embraced Kagan-Keane?--Us v. Them; (2) Mideast Anti-Semitism: The Core--Us v. Them; (3) Wanted: Mideast Pinochets--Us v. Them; (4) Webbonomics Meets the Real Economy--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (5) Publish or (Professionally) Perish--Literally--Class & Crass.

Iraq: Has Bush Embraced Kagan-Keane?

Fred Barnes writes that President Bush has embraced the plan (posted 12/18/ on LFTC)  floated publicly by AEI scholar Frederick W. Kagan, which is co-sponsored by retired Army Vice-Chief of Staff John Keane.  Kagan-Keane draws on the Creighton Abrams (for whom the M-1 tank is named) plan in Vietnam ("clear and hold"--which supplanted William Westmoreland's "attrition" plan); the Abrams plan was headed for military victory when Congress cut off funds.  Kagan-Keane calls for a 50,000 troop "surge" operation centered on Baghdad; the military maintains that 80 percent of the violence in Iraq is within a 35-mile radius of the capital.

A "mega-question" (as John McLaughlin might put it): If Bush's current commanders (John Abizaid and George Casey) do not believe in the plan, will Bush trust them to fully implement it?  In 1914, Helmut von Moltke the Younger failed to fully carry out the 1890 von Schlieffen plan, which called for hurlng all Germany's troops into a "wheel" sweep through Belgium; as the great historian Alistair Horne recounts in What Price Glory?, the younger Moltke, lacking has famed father's elan, withheld a few divisions in reserve along the Franco-German border, thus depriving the main thrust of the added punch that might have put the Germans in Paris.

Ralph Peters says send more troops only if we really mean to win; he proposes what he calls a "zero tolerance" plan that would require two years to carry out.  But Fareed Zakharia argues that Bush must pull back in Iraq, else his democracy focus will be doomed in the Mideast, as Iraq is a poster-child for democracy's defects--at least, in the Mideast.  In the event, initial reaction at the Pentagon has been favorable, Barnes reports.  Dubya, it seems, is ready to double down on his Iraq wager.  Stay tuned.

Mideast Anti-Semitism: The Core

As Bret Stephens shows in his Dec. 16 column, European anti-Semitism primarily takes the form of false and malicious--and even absurd--attacks that equate Israel with the Nazis.  Things like equating 60 dead in Jenin (2002) with the Warsaw Ghetto (57,000 dead).  In the Mideast the forms anti-Semitism take are many.  Holocaust denial, as with the noxious Tehran conference last week, is one form.  But as Muslim expatriate Ayan Hirsi Ali explains about Mideast education, many Muslim are not deniers.  A true denier is someone who, confronted with overwhelming evidence that the Holocaust did happen, rejects the evidence and adopts some crackpot alternate theory (staged photos, only a few hundred thousand died, mostly of disease, etc.)   Most Muslims, however, are simply factually ignorant of the Holocaust.  Writes Ali:

"Growing up as a child in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews were evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims whose only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the Holocaust.

"Later in Kenya, as a teenager, when Saudi and other Gulf philanthropy reached us in Africa, I remember that the building of mosques and donations to hospitals and the poor went hand in hand with the cursing of Jews. Jews were said to be responsible for the deaths of babies, epidemics like AIDS, for the cause of wars. They were greedy and would do absolutely anything to kill us Muslims. And if we ever wanted to know peace and stability we would have to destroy them before they would wipe us out. For those of us who were not in a position to take arms against the Jews it was enough for us to cup our hands, raise our eyes heavenward and pray to Allah to destroy them.

"Western leaders today who say they are shocked by the conference of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran denying the Holocaust need to wake up to that reality. For the majority of Muslims in the world the Holocaust is not a major historical event they deny; they simply do not know because they were never informed. Worse, most of us are groomed to wish for a Holocaust of Jews."

It is very un-P.C., to say, but as least as to the Jews, and to the West as a whole, pretty much 100 percent of what Mideast children learn is lies.  Lies, period.  This is of a piece with Palestinian kids going to schools that use maps which lack Israel.  The UN makes this worse.  A tabulation of human rights actions at the UN shows Israel by far the main target.  At the 56th anniversary commemoration of the 1947 UN Partition of Palestine, the UN HQ displayed a map of the Mideast that excluded Israel.  In 2001, a fortnight before 9/11, the UN held a conference in Durban, South Africa that was an anti-Semitic hate-fest of Nazi proportions.  Check out these Durban confab still-images for a flavor.

In 1996 eight stages of genocide were described by scholar Gregory Stanton: (1) classification; (2) symbolization; (3) dehumanization; (4) organization; (5) polarization; (6) preparation; (7) extermination; (8) denial.  Anti-Semitism grows, and grows, with half-hearted condemnations unaccompanied by serious action.  And the monster grows, and grows....

Wanted: Mideast Pinochets

LFTC on 12/14/06 published an assessment of the just-deceased Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, noting that he was less repressive than Marxist dictators, and unlike most Marxists, held an election and stepped aside upon losing.  Chile today is prosperous and free.  There is, suggests NRO's Jonah Goldberg, a need for an Iraqi Pinochet.  By the same logic, upon regime change in Iran a Persian Pinochet would be useful, too.  Why?

What the failed attempts to bring liberal democracy to Iraq, the West Bank and Lebanon show is that societies with little or no democratic tradition and with powerful extremist elements within, are poor candidates for rapid democratization.  As political scientist Crane Brinton wrote in his classic study, Anatomy of Revolution (1952), after a revolution engineered by a coalition of moderate and extreme elements, the dispute that inevitably arises between them is settled by the extremists, who simply kill the moderates.  Not nice, but quite effective.

Societies with dictatorial pasts often lack an essential leavening element for democracy: the existence of powerful, well-organized moderate groups.  The remedy?  Install a Pinochet who, as did Chile's, kills the extremists first.  Then a transition to democracy can be effected.  Meanwhile, clandestine assistance to moderate political parties, as was given by the CIA in Italy in 1947, helps build centers of moderate power.  Extremists, by their nature, tend to be more activist than moderates, because their passions are more fully engaged.  When these are wedded to gun-toting, jihadist militias, like the Mahdi Army in Iraq, the results are lethal for genuine liberal democracy.

But what if the Mideast Pinochets, if they can be found, decline to step down?  Democracy is delayed, but not precluded.  A revolutionary projection of power is not regime policy.  We can live with that, probably more easily than with an illiberal pseudo-democracy that has the superficial form without the genuine commitment to same.

Webbonomics Meets the Real Economy

Former Hudson Institute economics maven Alan Reynolds, a walking encyclopedia of economic data and analysis, shows what Senator-Elect James Webb knows (not much) about America's income distribution data.  Reynolds explains that the figure Webb touts, that the top one percent of  earners takes 16 percent of national income, up from 8 percent in 1980, is untrue.  Webb does not know enough about economics to see why this is so, but Reynolds does.

Several factors are missing from Webb's article--which, no doubt, cadged its data and analysis from staffers and liberal economists: (1) Webb's household income numbers exclude Social Security and other transfer payments income; (2) his numbers count only taxable income and thus IRA growth is excluded, as IRA funds escape taxation; (3) high-end taxpayers shifted income from small business forms to individual, after individual rates were cut, generating no net gross income increase; (4) most high-income households are two-earner households, not true in the bottom quintile.

Webb did not, it seems, win the Navy Cross and Silver Star for his prowess in economics.

Pulbish or (Porofessionally)Perish - Literally

HarperCollins fired publisher Judith Regan last week, at least in part to the the collective dry heave by a public stunned that anyone has taste awful enough to allow O.J., whose golfing tour in Florida is methodically eliminating greens-keepers, caddies and golf pros as "real killer" suspects, to publish a ghoulish "If I Did It" fantasy.  The NY Times online posting informs us about other factors behind Regan's firing, and, with humor surely unintended, as part of a montage of six Regan book covers, places a photo of Judge Robert Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah cover directly beneath a photo of the cover of...porn star Judith Jameson's How to Make Love like a Porn Star.  Given how the NY Times feels about Judge Bork....As for O.J., perhaps in 2007 he will begin canvassing the tennis courts ISO TRK....

Index 12/18/06

5 posts: (1) Iraq: Condi Bakes Jim--The Home Front; (2) How Jeane Met the Gipper--The Home Front; (3) Iraq: Win in a Week or Step Aside?--Us v. Them; (4) Justice Breyer's Campaign Law Rules--The Home Front; (5) Duke Lacrosse Rape Case: DNA AWOL--MSM Murders.

Iraq: Condi Bakes Jim

Last Thursday Condi tossed the Iraq Surrender Group's "suck up to Syria and Iran" proposal into the ashcan.  It is clear that the ISG's 79 recommendations will be treated like a Chinese menu, with the harmless ones adopted, the middling ones halfheartedly adopted, but the suicidal ones ignored.  Most heartening were the reasons Condi offered, both correct: (1) If Syria and & Iran desired stability in Iraq, they would help anyway; (2) in the event, their price for cooperating with us--ending democracy in Lebanon (Syria's) and ending opposition of nuclear ambition (Iran's) is too high.  Charles Krauthammer writes that the ISG's flop gives Bush one last chance to re-boot Iraq policy (literally, with more "boots on the ground"); he says that Bush should (a) maneuver thug-cleric Moqtada al-Sadr out to builds a functional coalition government that replaces the current dysfunctional one, and (b) surge troops to re-take Baghdad.  CK says that Bush is already trying to do the first.  AEI defense scholar Frederick Kagan has posted a detailed plan for surge operations aimed at victory.

How Jeane Met the Gipper

Ronald Reagan's first National Security Adviser, Richard V. Allen, tells the story of the first private meetings between then-candidate Ronald Reagan and Jeane Kirkpatrick, and how in due course Jeane led other Democrats to cross over to the Gipper's camp.  A neat slice of history.

Iraq: Win in a Week or Step Aside?

Washington Times columnist Diana West says the West has two options that would work: (1) nuke Islamist targets; (2) withdraw and let Sunni & Shi'a duke it out, may the better side win.  The first, she writes, we have not the will to do.

Start with the second option.  It is seductive, as we need not do the killing.  But if we exit Iraq, at least the following happens: (1) Pakistan's Musharraf, already playing a double game, switches sides and sells nukes to the Saudis; (2) Iran accelerates its nuclear program (they may already have a "dirty bomb"; (3) every Mideast government turns away from the US, as an unreliable partner.

OK, how about the first option.  We vaporize military and key urban targets within Islamist control: (1) tens of millions of innocent civilian casualties; (2) horrific video sent worldwide; (3) riots by Muslims in Western countries, surely including the USA; (4) mass demonstrations by non-Muslims in the West.  Put simply, we could win the war abroad, but probably not internally.  Our societies do not have the stomach for this, as West recognizes.

Which makes an important point: Our adversaries have an immense edge against us, in superior ruthlessness.  That is a quality highly valuable in any fight, especially one to the finish.

Justice Breyer's Campiagn Law Rules

In a recent TV interview with Fox  News Sunday host Chris Wallace, Justice Stephen Breyer had this to say about the Court's 300-page monster 2003 ruling (McConnell v. Federal Election Commission) upholding the speech restrictions of McCain-Feingold:

The very point of speech in an election is to get a message across. And that may mean, in part, that you don't want one person's speech, that $20 million giver, to drown out everybody else's. So if we want to give a chance to the people who have only $1 and not $20 million, maybe we have to do something to make that playing field a little more level in terms of money. [Emphasis added.]

If you accept that at all, you've suddenly bought in to the proposition that there are First Amendment interests on both sides of this equation.

And once you're there, you see this problem is complicated. And once you see it is complicated, you begin to factor in to what extent do we defer to Congress. And the answer is going to be quite a lot but not completely.

Rather odd.  Breyer ignores the 1976 Buckely v. Valeo ruling that struck down much of the Federal Election Campaign Act, holding that laws that selectively enhance the voice of some and diminish that of others, are constitutionally impermissible.  (Incidentally, one of the lead counsels on the case was none other than John Bolton, as ever, on the right side of things.)  The language:

"It is argued, however, that the ancillary governmental interest in equalizing the relative ability of individuals and groups to influence the outcome of elections serves to justify the limitation on express advocacy of the election or defeat of candidates imposed by 608 (e) (1)'s expenditure ceiling. But the concept that government may restrict the speech of some elements of our society in order to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment, which was designed "to secure `the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources,'" and "`to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people.'" New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, supra, at 266, 269, quoting Associated Press v. United States, 326 U.S. 1, 20 (1945), and Roth v. United States, 354 U.S., at 484. The First Amendment's protection against governmental abridgment of free expression cannot properly be made to depend on a person's financial ability to engage in public discussion. Cf. Eastern R. Conf. v. Noerr Motors, 365 U.S. 127, 139 (1961)."

And does anyone think that post-McCain-Feingold Joe Blow's influence equals that of George Soros, who uses "527" vehicles to write mega-checks to the Demcorats?  Not even Justice Breyer does.  So what we are left with is Justice Breyer as Immortal Legislator, once again.

But leave us end with Justice Scalia's withering 19-page dissent in the 2003 case upholding McCain-Feingold.  Read it for the pleasure of his acerbic take!

Duke Lacrosse Rape Case: DNA AWOL

A private DNA expert testified in court Friday that he and the DA who charged three Duke lacrosse players with raping a black stripper conspired to hide favorable DNA evidence from the prosecution.  Fox Cable News reports that the DNA of three men were on the "victim" and that the DA has never bothered to interview the alleged perps.  I fearlessly predict that after 24 hours the story will sink without a trace.  Were the players black and the victim white....

Index 12/15/06

4 posts: (1) Another Kirkpatrick Classic--The Home Front; (2) Growing Islamic Threat in USA--The Home Front; (3) France, Arabs and Jews--Weenie Watch; (4) Correction on Kofi--Oops!

Another Kirkpatrick Classic

NRO helpfully published a few days ago a Jeane Kirkpatrick classic, entitled "Why Not abolish Ingorance?", in which Jeane laid out four dinstinctions critical to thinking clearly about foreign policy: (1) ideas & institutions; (2) rights & goals; (3) intention & consequence; and (4) personal morality & political morality.  A four-page masterpiece essay.

Growing Islamic Treat in USA

Mort Zuckerman warns of a growing Islamic threat within the US.  Counter-terror and police chiefs see second- and third-generation Muslim youths radicalized by a combination of personal alienation, a desire for recognition, unemployment and access to Islamist Internet sites that offer not only propaganda, but training in how to launch terrorist attacks.  Two-thirds of these youths have at least some college education.  They gravitate to extremism when traveling, going to mosques for companionship.  They take advantage of our freedoms and the protection against preventive measures that criminal law affords them.  The risk, Zuckerman writes at the conclusion of the details he presents, grows.

It is the second and third immigrant generations that are supposed to fully assimilate, being, as these youths are, fluent in English and in the customs of America.  But instead we are seeing more "adversarial assimilation" in these groups.  Zuckerman warns.  He says, rightly, that we need a new approach to dealing with the threat, as criminal law is not adequate.

France, Arabs and Jews

A slim volume by British Mideast maven David Pryce-Jones, Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews (Encounter Books 2006),  shows that France's pro-Arab tilt is nearly two centuries old, and that anti-Semitism has always been rife at the Quai d'Orsay.  In 1842 there were "blood libel" riots against Jews in Damascus--egged on by the French envoy.  After World War II the Quai D'Orsay actively worked to frustrate efforts of America and Britain to get their hands on war criminal Haj Amin al-Husseini.  France aided the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (the title was bestowed upon the Mufti not by Islamic religious authority, but by the British in 1922), abetting his escape and return to the Mideast, where he fomented hatred of Jews and of Israel for another quarter-century.  A generation later, France deliberately provided the Ayatollah Khomeini with a base inside France to use mass media to pave the way for his overthrow of the Shah.

Besides comparing Israeli actions to Nazi Germany--in and of itself a true blood libel--France committed other atrocities.  Having custody in Paris of Abu Daoud (1977), one of the architects of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes, knowing that Interpol and the German government sought him, the French spirited him to safety in Algeria.  Jacques Chirac fawned over Saddam Hussein for three decades, in ways so pathetic as to defy belief.

Illustrative of France's attitude toward Israel today is its adamant opposition to Israeli Air Force overflights of Lebanon, which Israel insists on continuing until the hostages Hezbollah took last July are returned.  France is deploying a drone vehicle to perform surveillance, in an effort to justify asking that Israeli overflights stop.  France has instructed French troops to fire at any Israeli aircraft that they feel threatens them.

The great political philosopher Raymond Aron said of Charles de Gaulle's slavishly pro-Arab policies that de Gaulle has "knowingly, voluntarily, opened a new era in Jewish and perhaps anti-Semitic history.  Everything becomes possible once more, everything may start again.  Granted, there is no question of persecution only ill will.  This is not a time for contempt but for suspicion."

Vichy France, it seems, is still alive and kicking.  David Pryce-Jones's elegant history informs us that Vichy France existed more than a century before the Vichy regime ruled.

Correction on Kofi

On 12/13 I posted my comments on Kofi Annan's pathetic attack on American policy.  I stated therein that in the 1990s he had been responsible for human rights policy at the UN.  In fact, his specific responsibility was to supervise peacekeeping operations.  It was in the latter capacity that Annan ignored appeals from his field generals to stop genocide.

Index 12/14/06

6 posts: (1) Indonesia Invaded by USA!--Cyber-Serendip; (2) General McCAffrey on Iraq--Us v. Them; (3) TSA's Airport Touchdown!--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (4) Afghan Perils--Us v. Them; (5) Iran--Holocaust Vapors...Again--Weenie Watch; (4) Pinochet Passes On--Us v. Them.

Indonesia Invaded by USA!

Muslim pressure has not quite succeeded in forcing Indonesia's "Playboy" magazine off the stands.  Models are fully clothed, but assume suggestive poses and have come hither looks.  The link is to the article, which provides no photos for American eyes to judge.

General McCffrey on Iraq

Retired General Barry McCaffrey, a Vietnam and Gulf War hero, dismisses the work of the Iraq Surrender Group, and proposes a detailed military plan with the aim of stabilizing Iraq within three years, with our troops gone by then.  His ideas are always well worth consideration, and this article is no exception.  Especially worth noting is that he warns that our own military will be demoralized for a generation, as it was after Vietnam,  if Baker-Hamilton is implemented.

TSA's Airport Touchdown!

The Transportation Security Administration keeps finding new ways to protect fliers.  Their latest gem: barring Troy Smith from taking on a plane his...Heisman Trophy.  The Heisman is awarded every December to the nation's best college football player.  A previous Heisman winner, Eddie George, made the mistake of taking his trophy on a trip some time back, and TSA let him carry it on board; however, going through the airport X-ray machine the trophy, which features the outstretched stiff arm pose of a runner, surrendered one finger and had another one bent by the machine.  Were TSA really on the ball (sorry for that one), they'd have kept the kid off the plane and let the trophy on; the kid, quite solid, can do more damage to a cockpit door or crew member than the trophy; OK, I am sure he is a nice young man--it was just a hypothetical case.  There are no statistics kept on the number of planes hijacked by Heisman Trophy winners (either using or not using their trophy).  It is presumed that the number is roughly equal to the number of planes hijacked by Medal of Honor winners, professional sport MVPs and Oscar winners.

Afghan Perils

Retired officer and Georgetown CSIS scholar Anthony Cordesman warns that we face defeat in Afghanistan if we do not pony up more money and resources.  Cordesman considers the war eminently winnable, Cordesman, believes, but only if we manage it better than the mess in Iraq.

Iran: Holocaust Vapors...Again

Iran is staging a Holocaust conference that--naturally, given its regime--features Holocaust deniers, skeptics and other pseudo-historian trash-merchants.  It is nice to see that Tony Blair and Angela Merkel have joined Israel in condemning in strong terms Iran's latest historical atrocity.

Pinochet Passes On

John O'Sullivan neatly encapsulates the late Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, gone at 91, a dictator of the right who, like Francisco Franco, did some good for his country, unlike the Marxist dictators so wildly and eternally celebrated on the Left.  Murder (in the strict criminal sense) is never justified, nor is financial corruption, both of which Pinochet was guilty.  But Marxists killed more, stole more, and never delivered prosperity.  A Wall Street Journal editorial notes that of some 3,200 killed during Pinochet's 18 years (1973-1991) in power, 2,800 were killed in the fortnight of fighting that followed the September 11, 1973 coup that ousted Salvador Allende--before Allende could consolidate the Marxist dictatorship that was his design.  The WSJ notes that Pinochet proved the validity of Jeane Kirkpatrick's maxim that "authoritarian" dictatorships are more malleable than "totalitarian" ones.  An NRO mini-symposium offers more detail on the general--and on Marxist Allende, who was on the KGB payroll.

As O'Sullivan notes, Symbolic of the Left's dishonesty is that when Pinochet was first arraigned before a British court--a few years ago, on a warrant issued by a Spanish magistrate--Castro was being honored in Madrid.  When Fidel's Maker (finally) claims him, the obituaries will be stomach-turning.

Index 12/13/06

6 posts: (1) The War: Santorum's Lament--The Home Front; (2) Kofi Cluster-Bombs the US of A--Turtle Bay Tortoise; (3) Bush Gets Good Advice: Bomb Baker!--The Home Front; (4) Israel, the ISG and "Jimmy Oil"--The Home Front; (5) WW-II Strategic Bombing--and Today--Us v. Them; (6) ESPN "Raps" With Muhammad Ali--The Home Front.

The War: Santorum's Lament

Departing Senator Rick Santorum states the unvarnished truth: We cannot expect to win a war that our leaders do not understand, and none of President Bush's current senior advisers understands that we are at war with Iran.  Santorum's Churchillian warnings were ignored by voters in Pennsylvania who worry more about stem cells.  Our national peril mounts.

Kofi Cluster-Bombs the US of A

Departing (not soon enough) UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan unloaded on America in a major address--speaking in, off all places, Independence, Missouri, home of nonpareil defender of freedom Harry S. Truman.  He accused the US of A of  "not living up to its principles."  Let's see, the Sec-Gen who, as a senior UN official responsible for peacekeeping in the 1990s, ignored pleas from his field commanders to stop genocide (Romeo Dallaire re Rwanda, Michael Rose re Srenbenica), the Sec-Gen who did nothing to stop Saddam's mass murder of Iraqis, and helped Saddam slip the inspections regime and blind US intelligence; the Sec-Gen who has done nothing to stop the hideous carnage (500,000 and counting) in Darfur (Ralph Peters skewers the UN and Europe over this); the Sec-Gen who, just before 9/11, presided over an anti-Semitic hate-fest in Durban, South Africa, that would have made the Nazis proud; the Sec-Gen who believes in resolute neutrality between butchered and butcher; the Sec-Gen who covered up most of the oil-for-palaces scam the UN and its cronies ran for Saddam--and protected his own son, Kojo, who came by a Mercedes magically...

Hudson Institute's Anne Bayevsky, a one-woman truth squad on UN matters, aptly terms Kofi's UN as "a weapon pointed at our heads."  Claudia Rosett, who will get a Pulitzer one day if justice still exists, offers the speech that Kofi, were he honest, would have given.

Thanks for the lecture, and, Bob Hope might say, were he here, thanks, too, for the memories, Kofi.

Israel, the ISG and "Jimmy Oil"

Michael Kinsley, off all people, manages to dismantle in 700 words, both the Iraq Surrender Group and Jimmy Carter for their proposals re Israel.  A fun read.  A more formal, and crisp, dissection of the ISG's "blame Israel" approach is offered by author-speechwriter David Frum.

Bush Gets Good Iraq Advice: Bomb Baker!

Yesterday President Bush heard from four military experts, who contradicted the mushy advice the Iraq Surrender Group issued last week: Eliot Cohen (whose dissection of the ISG I published on LFTC last week), and three retired generals: John Keane, Barry McCaffrey and Wayne Downing.  Here's hoping he takes their sage advice, noted in yesterday's Washington Post front-pager.

WW-II Strategic Bombing--and Today

English historian Paul Johnson reviews two books on the bombing of Germany, the morality of which came under assault after the war.  Johnson notes that brutal though it was, it had military justification--even the horrific destruction of Dresden in 1945.  Britain's chief of Bomber Command, Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, was left off the honors list after the war, due to this ambivalence.  As Harris carried out government policy, this was deeply unfair.  Moreover, if Britain erred on the side of ruthlessness, against a foes whose viciousness knew no bounds, this seems better than erring on the side of gentility, as we do today in Iraq and elsewhere, against a comparably vicious foe.  In the event, the "Bomber" once had the ultimate answer to a trooper who pulled him over for speeding, during the war.  Warned by the constable that he, Harris, might someday "kill someone" the "Bomber" replied: "Young man, each night I kill thousands."

ESPN "Raps" With Muhammad Ali

Lisa Fabrizio has an article on TAS this morning, on an awful ESPN show that adds more to the hagiography that passes for press coverage of Muhammad Ali.  As Ms. Fabrizio notes, it was Ali who made racism and narcissism respectable--for blacks only.  Whites need not apply.  Ali railed against blacks who dated white women.  I once saw him (around 1970) in the lobby of the NYC apartment building where I lived.  Ali was with two women--both white.  The article is well worth a read.

Index 12/12/06

3 posts: (1) Global Warming: "Bah, Humbug!"--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (2) Palestinian Values: Another Breakthrough--Us v. Them; (3) Target: Freedonia!--The Home Front.

Global Warming: "Bah, Humbug!"

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), who chaired the Environment and Public Works Committee in this Congress, has published a 64-page "Skeptic's Guide to Global Warming" that he helpfully posted at the Committee's website.

Palestinian Values: Another Breakthrough

Palestinian Hamas gunmen sprayed a car carrying three school-kids of a senior Fatah leader.  Another example of the kind of people whom the world considers ready for self-government.

Target: Freedonia?

Some things never change.  About a decade ago some wags asked a bunch of members of Congress what ought to done about the ethnic cleansing in Freedonia.  To a man, they responded that it was an urgent human rights issue, and that the UN ought to do something to remedy it, with US support.  Wonderful, except that "Freedonia" was the name of a mythic kingdom in the Marx Brothers farce, "Duck Soup."

Comes now Silvestre Reyes, selected by Nancy Pelosi to chair the House Intelligence Committee, picked over Jane Harman, solidly qualified and sensible, but whom Pelosi dislikes, and over Alcee Hastings, whom no sane person wanted to see run the Committee.  CQ Daily gave Reyes a pop quiz and, it seems, Reyes knows about radical Islam about what he knows of Freedonia.

Reyes has heard of Sunni and Shi'a, but guessed that al-Qaeda was partly Sunni and partly Shi'a; in fact they are Sunni side up & Sunni side down, and bear the same affection towards their Shi'a brethren as Afghans do toward Russians.  As for Hezbollah, Reyes knew not from Hadassah.  Trent Lott, for his part, said that he doesn't understand all the sectarian killing, as "They all look alike to me."  Well, Trent, Catholics and Protestants in Ireland look alike, and they are not overly fond of each other....

Index12/11/06

2 posts: (1) Jeane Kirkpatrick: Grand Service; Great Lady--The Home Front; (2) Iraq: Negotiation Fever--The Home Front; (3) Jimmy Earl's Mideast Miasma--The Home Front.

Jeane Kirkpatrick:Grand Service; Gracious Lady

On December 7, 2006 Jeane Jordan Kirkpatrick passed away at age 80.  The timing was doubly ironic: John Bolton, another great US Ambassador to the UN, announced his resignation last week, and the Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq signaled the foreign policy establishment's official, public surrender of the idea of an assertive foreign policy against Islamist terror.  Her tenure at the UN was one of the four noble ones by an American (the other greats were Bolton, Pat Moynihan and Arthur Goldberg).  A short tribute from the Wall Street Journal editorial page merits a look.

She left many writings, with much of great value.  Her classic 1979 article in Commentary, Dictatorships and Double Standards, caught the eye of a Presidential aspirant named Ronald Reagan, and the rest, as they say, was history.  Commentary co-founder Norman Podhoretz penned a characteristically elegant appreciation of his close friend and ideological ally.  Here are a pair of brief statements she penned after 9/11, one on use of force and due process limits (9/28/01) and one on the vices of multilateralism (9/1/02).

She is most justly famous for her sizzling 1984 Republican Convention speech that electrified the convention audience.  The phrase "San Francisco Democrat" entered the political lexicon, denoting liberals who "always blame America first."   As she put it then, of the SFDs:

"They said that saving Grenada from terror and totalitarianism was the wrong thing to do - they didn't blame Cuba or the communists for threatening American students and murdering Grenadians - they blamed the United States instead.

"But then, somehow, they always blame America first.

"When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the "blame America first crowd" didn't blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.

"But then, they always blame America first.

"When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn't blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.

"But then, they always blame America first.

"When Marxist dictators shoot their way to power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago.

'But then, they always blame America first."

I had the privilege of getting to know Jeane during her twenty years at the American Enterprise Institute.  She was a gracious interlocutor, who would listen, and then make an invariably insightful comment.  I once said to her that it must have pained her to have to stand up in the UN General Assembly and cast the American vote in support of a resolution condemning the Israeli destruction of Saddam's nuclear reactor.  It had pained her indeed.  But she, and those within the Reagan camp who also supported Israel's action, were all vindicated during Desert Storm, when postwar inspection showed Saddam within at most one year of making a bomb.

A great American's voice has been stilled, and at a time when her always eloquently expressed ideas are sorely needed.

Iraq: Negotation Fever; War at Home

Mort Zuckerman of UN News & World Report offers a solid primer on why negotiations re Iraq and re Iran will prove fruitless.  Dan Henninger writes that failure in Iraq spurred war at home, and that failure to put an Iraq interim government in place, instead of creating the Coalition Provisional Authority (a/k/a "Can't Provide Anything"), may well have sealed our fate in Iraq.

Jimmy Earl's Mideast Miasma

Former President Jimmy Carter has published a book so anti-Israel even former aides have recoiled.  Herewith his recent interview on "Hardball" in which he accuses Israel of crimes against the Palestinians worse than those committed in 1994 in Rwanda, where 800,000 Africans were slaughtered in less than three months.  There's more: Former Mideast envoy Dennis Ross accuses Georgia's most famous peanut farmer of publishing maps created by Ross, without permission to do so; Jimmy Earl denies, but he believes Hezbollah's denials, too.  The excerpt below is from Carter's November 28 interview and is literally beyond caricature or editorial comment:

SHUSTER:  "Welcome back to HARDBALL.  We‘re back with the 39^th president of the United States, Jimmy Carter.  His new book is called “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”  President Carter, why did you use the word ‘apartheid‘ in the book‘s title?"

CARTER: "Let‘s look at the entire title, if you don‘t mind.  The first word is Palestine, which involves the land that belongs to the Palestinians, not the Israelis.  I didn‘t refer to Israel, because there‘s no semblance of anything relating to apartheid within the nation of Israel.

"And I also emphasized the word ‘not‘ -- that is, peace, and not apartheid. That is what I hope to accomplish with this book, is sort of move to that goal.  But there‘s no doubt that within the Occupied Territories—Palestinian land—that there is a horrendous example of apartheid.  The occupation of Palestinian land, the confiscation of that land that doesn‘t belong to Israel, the building of settlements on it, the colonization of that land, and then the connection of those isolated but multiple settlements—more than 200 of them—with each other by highways, on which Palestinians can‘t travel and quite often where Palestinians cannot even cross.

"So the persecution of the Palestinians now, under the occupying territories—under the occupation forces—is one of the worst examples of human rights deprivation that I know.  And I think it‘s—"

SHUSTER:  "Even worse, though, than a place like Rwanda?"

CARTER:  "Yes.  I think—yes.  You mean, now?"

SHUSTER:  "Yes."

CARTER:  "Yes."

SHUSTER: "The oppression now of the Israelis—of the Palestinians by the Israelis is worse than the situation in Africa like the oppression of Rwanda and the civil war?"

CARTER: "I‘m not going back into ancient history about Rwanda, but right now, the persecution of the Palestinians is one of the worst examples of human rights abuse I know, because the Palestinians—"

SHUSTER:  "You‘re talking about right now, you‘re not talking about say, a few years ago."

CARTER:  "I‘m not talking about ancient history, no."

SHUSTER:  "Rwanda wasn‘t ancient history; it was just a few years ago."

CARTER:  "You can talk about Rwanda if you want to.  I want to talk about Palestine.  What is being done to the Palestinians now is horrendous in their own territory, by the occupying powers, which is Israel.

"They‘re taken away all the basic human rights of the Palestinians, as was done in South Africa against the blacks.  And I make it very plain in this book that the apartheid is not based on racism, as it was in South Africa.  But it‘s based on the desire, of a minority of Israelis to acquire land that belongs to the Palestinians and to retain that land, and then to exclude the Palestinians from their own property and subjugate them, so that they can‘t arise and demonstrate their disapproval of being robbed of their own property. That‘s what‘s happening in the West Bank.

"And the people in this country, in America, never know about this, they never discuss this, there‘s no debate about it, there‘s no criticism of Israel in this country.  And in Israel, there is an intense debate about the issues in this book.  In this country, no. "

SHUSTER: "I agree—I mean, I wish we had that sort of debate that they‘re having in Israel, I wish we had that in the United States.  But give us a sort of sense, how much of the responsibility for the conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, do you think belongs to the Israelis for their tactics like seizing land and occupying territory that didn‘t belong to them, how much of it is the responsibility of the Palestinians for their suicide terror attacks and their bombing within Israel proper?"

CARTER: "As a matter of fact, the basic cause of the conflict is a sustained occupation of other people‘s land by the Israelis.  And this is a direct violation of United Nations resolutions, it‘s a direct violation of an international quartet‘s road map, it‘s a direct violation of the commitments that leaders of Israel have made in the past, at Camp David when I was president, and in Oslo, promising that Israel would withdraw from occupied territories.  They have failed to do so.

"In response to that—and I‘m not excusing them—there have been acts of violence.  As a matter of fact, though, Hamas, the number one accused persons of violence, have not committed an act of suicide bombing, that cost an Israeli life, now since August of 2004.  And I hope that they won‘t do that anymore. 

"Other participants of the Palestinian society, smaller ones, have committed some atrocities, but the loss of life and the entire Occupied Territories has been horrendous and has been caused by both sides. "

And Jimmy Earl has a Nobel Peace Prize, too.

Index 12/8/06

3 posts: (1) Lest We Forget: Pearl Harbor at 65--The Home Front; (2) Analysis of Iraq Report: Two Gems--The Home Front; (3) Iraq Surrender Group: A Report on Their Report--The Home Front.

Lest We Forget: Pearl Harbor at 65

Yesterday marked the 65th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  The NY Times posted a special section commemorating the event.  Visit, and remember true heroes.

Analysis of Iraq Report: Two Gems

I reviewed umpteen writings on the Iraq Surrender Group report.  Two stand out: (1) Michael Gordon's  front-pager in Thursday's NY Times explodes the myth that training the Iraqis to take over responsibility can be accomplished in the short time frame contemplated by the ISG solons; (2) Eliot Cohen, a professor at Johns Hopkins who coined the "World War IV" appellation, masterfully dissects the ISG's work product in a crushing four-pager.

Iraq Surrender Group: A Report on Their Report

The Iraq Study Group’s report is designed to give America a graceful exit after a “decent interval”, an enterprise in which it aims for our enemies to cooperate; the ISG’s “indecent proposal” merits renaming the panel the Iraq Surrender Group. The ISG report, though laden with deeply flawed recommendations, contains some valuable findings: Four of Iraq’s 18 provinces, containing 40 percent of Iraq’s 26 million population, are “highly insecure.”  Iraqi police routinely abuse Sunnis.  Iraqi troops have failed to hold areas cleared by US troops. At least 150,000 to 200,000, and possibly up to 500,000 barrels daily of Iraq’s daily (as of end 2006) 2.2 million barrel oil production is siphoned off via corruption; oil provides nearly 70 percent of Iraq’s Gross Domestic Product and over 95 percent of government revenues. Iraqi attitudes toward the US are ominous: 36 percent think Iraq is “headed in the right direction”; 79 percent have a “mostly negative” view of the US; and 61 percent approve of attacks on US forces. Iraqi refugee flows have already added 700,000 residents to neighbor Jordan’s 7 million population.

America’s key numbers are no more encouraging: Besides a tolls of nearly 3,000 killed and of 21,000 wounded as of the ISG’s report, America has already spent $400 billion, and spends $2 billion per week there, which means that $500 billion will be reached by end-2007; counting long-term “tail” costs, which include veteran’s care and replenishing equipment, estimates peg the ultimate cost as high as $2 trillion.  The non-combat side is as bleak: of 1,000 US embassy employees in Iraq, there are 33 Arabic speakers, of whom 6—six—are fluent in the language.  The Defense Intelligence Agency has fewer than 10 capable analysts who specialize in the Iraqi insurgency, and these are rotated to new positions by bureaucratic routine and replaced periodically by novices.  Worst of all, the ISG concludes that there has been statistical chicanery: in tallying “attacks” the reporting standards exclude some murders of Iraqis, sectarian attacks whose source is unknown, and any attack on US personnel that does not harm anyone (roadside bomb, mortar or rocket misses). Putting these into the database raised the 93 attacks reported for one day in July 2006 to 1,100 attacks, meaning that less than 10 percent of that day’s attacks made it into the attack tally database.

The ISG’s diagnosis of the “fundamental cause of violence in Iraq”, one it maintains cannot be fixed by US troops at any level, is “the absence of national reconciliation.”  This arises primarily out of the unwillingness of the Iraqi people or their leaders to act so as to “avert catastrophe.”  But the recommendations the report makes are hardly up to fixing the problem.

Foremost among the 79 recommendations made by the ISG—whose co-chairmen make clear they wish adopted as a single unit (won't happen--the 9/11 panel tried this without success)—is convening a regional peace conference (a “new diplomatic offensive”) with all of Iraq’s neighbors in attendance. This means that Syria and Iran, among the prime fomenters of chaos inside Iraq, get seats at the table, and are presumed to have “common interests” in settling the chaos in Iraq.  Israel does not get a seat, although the Arab-Israeli conflict is viewed by the panel as central to resolving the mess in Iraq; the ISG states that no American administration will ever abandon Israel (don't believe it--Baker would do so in a nanosecond). Iran’s nuclear question is to be left with the UN Security Council. Syria gets the Golan Heights (at Israel’s northeast border) back that it lost in 1967, in return for which it is to cooperate in supporting Lebanese democracy—by ending its efforts to torpedo same, ending support for Hezbollah and Hamas, effecting return of Israeli hostages held in Lebanon, and to help obtain from Hamas “an acknowledgement of Israel’s right to exist.  All this is supposed to happen, despite the report’s noting that Iran “has been negotiating in the streets of Baghdad” and that Syria also is aiding violence inside Iraq.  Further, while the US swaps embedded support troops for combat front-line troops and draws down troop numbers, the US is to open direct talks with thug-cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran-backed and adamantly opposed to any US presence in Iraq.  The Iraqi government, for its part, is to offer amnesty as a way to disarm the militias, the latter of which is to come to pass after a peace accord is signed.  (No doubt, the peace accord would then be presented to Israel as a fait accompli, which Israel is to swallow, lest it open the agreement and re-ignite widespread conflict.)

All this is offered despite the ISG’s recognizing explicitly that “[t]he regional influence of Iran could rise at a time when that country is on a path to producing nuclear weapons.”

There is a huge disconnect between the facts recognized by the ISG report—worthy of praise, but woefully incomplete—and their recommendations, whose common predicate is a presumed commonality of interest between America and its worst Mideast adversaries that simply does not exist.  Worse, conclusive evidence from the report itself--the trouble that Iran and Syria have been making inside Iraq-- confirms this.

What is missing? To begin with, any evidence that the conflict between Israel and its Mideast neighbors is existential, not territorial. Nowhere in the report will one find reference to the Hitler-like pronouncements of Iran’s current President, who thinks Israel should be “wiped off the map.” No reference to former Iranian leader Hashemi Rafsanjani, still a major political power in Iran, saying a few years ago that Iran would be willing to suffer 15 million dead in a nuclear exchange, in order to kill 5 million Israelis. No reference to Hezbollah chieftain Sheik Nasrallah saying that he hopes all Jews come to the Mideast, so that it would then be easier to kill them all.

Worst of all is the risible idea of commending Iran’s nuclear weapons program to the UN security Council, where three of the five permanent members—Russia, China and France—have helped Iran’s nuclear program, and are hardly willing to support serious efforts (sanctions, or regime change even by non-violent, let alone military means). Any one of them can simply veto a serious effort to stop Iran, and there is every reason to conclude that at least one of them will do so.

Further, we would enter a negotiation with our adversaries having openly proclaimed our weakness and desire for a quick exit. The only times that on can reasonably anticipate success in negotiation with enemies is when we have the upper hand, and our enemies know it. This was the case when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher negotiated with Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s. Gorbachev had famously been told by Marshal Ogarkov, his defense chief, that the Soviet Union simply was unable to keep up with American technological superiority. In an effort to improve his position, Gorbachev instituted the economic (perestroika--"restructuring") and political (glasnost--"openness") reforms that ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

There is nothing like that situation with Iran today, which is in—and knows full well that it is in—a superior position vis-à-vis the US; they are winning and have momentum. There can be no reasonable expectation that they will do us the favor of giving us a deal we want and allowing us a graceful exit. Our defeat, and an ignominious exit from Iraq, is what will most enhance Iran’s power in the region. The mullahs cannot be expected to bargain victory away to suit us.

In sum, the ISG panel, whose members proudly proclaim themselves “realists”--many of whom openly deride democracy promotion as quixotic--have produced a report that is a fantasy, one at polar-opposite odds with salient facts even they acknowledge to be true (albeit, as noted above, they ignore others). Fantasy is self-delusion, not real policy.

Index 12/7/06

3 posts: (1) Iraq Surrender Group--(Martian) Water on the Brain?--The Home Front; (2) Baker: Bombs Away!....on Israel--The Home Front; (3) "Flying While Muslim"--The Home Front.