LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

Index 1/31/07

posts: (1) Super Sunday: Paris Blues--Class & Crass; (2) Iran: Euro-Weasels--Weenie Watch; (3) Jeane's Early Days--Class & Crass; (4) Ayaan's "West, Ahoy!"--Us v. Them; (5) Afghanistan: Less Bombs, More Talk?--Us v. Them; (6) Iraq: Ajami Sees Light; Kaus Sees Hagel--Us v. Them; (7) Palestinian Values, Chapter Umpteen--Us v. Them; (8) Hospital Russian Roulette--The Home Front; (9) France's Baby Boomlet--Weenie Watch; (10) LFTC Correction re Bush Energy Posting--Oops!

Super Sunday; Paris Blues

Leave us start the last post before hiatus with a cheery item.  Essayist-author Joseph Epstein dismisses the media's harping on two African-American coaches by observing: "Great vulgar minds think alike."  So they do.  Epstein compares the coaches to the great African-American jazz musicians of Jazz's Golden Age.  But Sunday THE GAME will take over.  It is forty years since the January 1967 first Super Bowl, played in a partly-full LA Colosseum.  That game's MVP, Max McGee, stayed up all night partying with the ladies, and scored two touchdowns on game day.

I saw Super Bowl's II and III, played at the Orange Bowl while I attended the University of Miami--the latter was the famous Broadway Joe Super Jet Bowl.  Never since those days has the game seemed so real to me, and I have missed probably a third of them, for all sorts of reasons--concerts, skiing, sheer ennui.  But I will watch this time, on my new 40" Sony Bravia HDTV.  I will see more clearly than I ever did from the stands.

Can Peyton Manning follow in Broadway Joe's footsteps?  In terms of significance, surely not: the Jet win changed football forever as nothing since can ever do.  But Peyton can win MVP, which Joe did not (Matt Snell won).  Interestingly, Peyton plays for the Indianapolis Colts, who used to be the Baltimore Colts, who were the team Joe beat.  What goes around.....  I will tune in, not just for THE GAME, but also  partly to forget the wars, the 2008 campaign, feckless Europe, etc.

Meanwhile, have a laugh at the lawsuit Paris Hilton plans against a website owner who posted nude pics of Paris.  Not Gene Kelly's Paris, or Maurice Chevalier's.  Over-exposed Paris now wants under-exposure, which is her way of saying that indecent exposure is her choice alone.  On Fox News last night I heard an ex-DA say, however, that Paris has no legal rights to the pics.

Iran: Euro-Weasels

A New York Times front-pager informs us that once again Europe is balking at curtailing trade and financial ties with Iran, and resisting US pressure to do so.  Only Angela Merkel has been reasonably resolute in agreeing to take such steps.  All of which can only increase the incentive for Bush to take care of matters by force, before leaving office.

Jeane's Early Days

Writer Peter Collier conducted interviews with the late Jeane Kirkpatrick as part of a planned memoir never completed.  But one narrative was recorded and now is published: Jeane Kirkpatrick's early years.  Enjoy also remembrances from her fellow AEI scholars.

Ayaan's "West, Ahoy!"

Somalia-born, Dutch expatriate, immigrant to America Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells NRO's Deroy Murdock that Western culture is indeed superior to that of militant Islam.  Saith she: “Human beings are equal; cultures are not.  A culture that holds the door open to her women is not equal to one that confines them behind walls and veils.  A culture that encourages dating between young men and young women is not equal to a culture that flogs or stones a girl for falling in love. A culture where monogamy is an aspiration is not equal to a culture where a man can lawfully have four wives all at once.”

And to top all that, she is also gorgeous.

Afghanistan: Less Bombs, More Talk?

Southeast Asia expert Selig Harrison counsels less firepower and more treating with the Pashtun majority (in 2001 we allied ourselves with the minority Tajiks) to improve our chances in Afghanistan.  A well-written article worth a look.

Iraq: Ajami Sees Light; Kaus Sees Hagel

Fouad Ajami sees reason to hope that we can stabilize Iraq.  Work with Maliki and the Shi'a, he believes, will come around.  Says FA, don't trust the neighboring Arab Sunni states.  Read his four pages, as ever, written with the poet's touch.  A bleaker view but not without some hope is provided by a New York Times reporter who, to her credit, has been in the streets doing her own reporting, rather than sitting in a hotel bar awaiting footage of the latest roadside bomb scene from an Iraqi local.

Meanwhile, enjoy Slate's Mickey Kaus impaling of Chuck Hagel's self-praise on his anti-surge non-binding vote.  Republican policy wonk Jim Pinkerton sees Hagel taking the media torch from McCain, due to McCain's support for President Bush & Iraq.  He also thinks Hagel may run in 2008 as an Independent, and might even, he argues, win.  As for McCain, live by the (media) sword....

Palestinian Values, Chapter Umpteen

Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Click graphically portrays the hell that is Palestine, despite an increase in foreign assistance since Hamas was elected to power:

"As Ibrahim Gambari, the UN under-secretary-general for political affairs, noted last Thursday, official Western aid to the Palestinians, not including Arab and Iranian support for Hamas and Fatah, increased by 10 percent in 2006 over 2005, and stood at $1.2 billion.

"The Palestinians, who receive more aid per capita than any people on earth, are needy not because they lack funds. They are poor because they prefer poverty, violence and war to prosperity, peace and moderation."

Hospital Russian Roulette

Betsy McCaughey, who deep-sixed HillaryCare in 1994, and now chairs a group seeking to reduce lethal infections in hospitals, compares the results of SARS in two Canadian hospitals.  In one, proper hygiene was practiced, while in the other it wasn't.  Death rates were far worse in the less sanitary one.  A patient's chance of survival is like Russian roulette: It depends upon which hospital you are taken to. This is an un-sexy issue that deserves more attention.  Thousands of lives are lost annually due to lethal infections contracted during hospital stays.

France's Baby Boomlet

Last year France joined Ireland among European countries as having a positive birth rate (demographers peg it at 2.1 to allow for infant mortality).  Not yet a trend, it still looks good compared to the 1.3 - 1.4 range of most European countries.  And the birth boost appears to have been native births, not immigrants.  Marianne, symbol of French liberty (her living embodiment since Brigitte Bardot in 1972 has been a glamorous rather than a peasant face--witiness the current choice--and here is how "La Casta" was cast) would say:" "Pour la patrie!"

LFTC Correction Re Bush Energy Posting

My 1/29/07 posting on Bush's energy plan contained a statistic on rising US oil imports that was posted originally as rising oil consumption.  The increase from 34.8 to 60.3 percent was in oil imports.  Thanks to an alert LFTC reader for informing me.

Index 1/30/07

posts: (1) The Coming Global Entropic Disorder--"It's The Earth Stupid!"; (2) Imperial Chutzpah--Classics; (3) Tsarina Nancy Amends Mr. Madison--The Home Front; (4) UN in Wonderland--Turtle Bay Tortoise; (5) Barack Bites Back--and Hmself--The Home Front; (6) Israel Embraces Diversity--Us v. Them.

The Coming Global Entropic Disorder

Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakharia attended the Davos Summit and found that America, for once, was a peripheral subject.  The world's elites have, he writes, moved beyond the lame-duck President they loathe.  No high-level US official was featured, either.  FZ says that a "post-US world" will likely not be multi-polar, but "apolar": a dystopic, chaotic, fragmented place, with no nation stepping up to take the place of the US.  China and India, for example, explicitly reject environmental leadership responsibility.  Nonpareil Orientalist Bernard Lewis predicts that Muslims will take over Europe; Lewis sees them already on the verge of doing so and says that but one question remains: "Will it be an Islamized Europe or a Europeanized Islam?"  Such a Europe will hardly step up to maintain a measure of world order.  All of which may well prove true. so where were the world's elites when America got in trouble in Iraq?  And where are they in helping us against Iran?  They viewed America's troubles with schadenfreude.

On a similar notes, historian Niall Ferguson fears that Scotland will, this year, separate from the United Kingdom.  States are trying to make a go of it as smaller entities.  In 1913 there were 14 empires that incorporated 82 percent of the world's population.  In 1946, after two world wars, there were 72 nations and now there are 192.  There are 21 countries today with populations over 60 million, with 22 of the remaining 171 having populations greater than 30 million and 22 of the 171 having populations greater than 15 million.  Such smaller states can do well economically, but find security hard (wars require mass) and also are less culturally influential.  There may, Ferguson writes, be new empires--caliphates, ethnic, language, etc.--empires in the planet's future, if small nations band together to increase their political and cultural power.

The Laws of Thermodynamics apply here.  The First Law says: "Energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed."  What energy America gives up, will be transferred elsewhere in the world, in some form or another.  The Second Law states: "in all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state."  In other words, absent some mediating, regulating principle, a system tends to move from order toward disorder, and eventually breaks down completely.  Think of the rods that moderate the reactions in a nuclear reactor.  Remove them, and the result will be increased agitation, reaction, heat and eventually a meltdown.

What FZ sees as the post-US world's future is, in effect, a meltdown, as entropy replaces a US-led world order.  The gaggle of international bodies that Europeans fantasize can step in--UN, EU, ICC, etc.--will of course prove totally ineffective.  The energy America radiated, in search of world order, will be diffused, and radiated instead by smaller powers less committed to agendas that transcend parochial purposes.  Yes, the US did invade Iraq to upset stability, but in search of greater stability in the form of democratic states replacing tyrannies.  That project looks set to fail, but the US intended to increase long-term stability by destroying terrorist states.  The US did, after all, promote stability in 1999 by unseating Slobodan Milosevic in the Kosovo War--in the process, doing the work that Western Europe should have done, but instead foisted off mostly on the US.  Now conflicts will spring up all over the globe, without any intent whatsoever on the part of the states involved to promote world stability or democracy or anything else useful.  The world, always a dangerous place, will become more dangerous.

To the world's smug elites who savored America's humbling and retreat one can but say: "You reap what you sow."

Imperial Chutzpah

In 204, just in time for the elections, a CIA analyst named Michael Sheuer published Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror, doing so under the pseudonym "Anonymous" because at the time he was still with the CIA.  The book is a slashing critique of the Bush Administration's conduct of the war on terror.  The author maintains that even the Afghan campaign was a disaster, that Afghanistan is, in the end, ungovernable and will revert to tribalism no matter what we do, and that bin Laden and al-Qaeda are doing just fine and getting stronger by the day, all the while laughing at our ineptitude.  Further, he argues that the reason behind bin Laden's war has nothing whatever to do with a desire to destroy America and the West, or even Israel, let alone to create a global caliphate.  Rather, he says that the problem is US Mideast policy, and thus the solution is for the US to stop supporting nasty Mideast regimes and to lean on Israel to settle the Palestinian issue once and for all.

But that is not what is most intriguing about the book.  Set aside that there are a number of al-Qaeda missives calling for establishment of the very caliphate the author denies bin Laden desires.  Also set aside that bin Laden's fatwas do not seek implementation of UN security Council 242, but rather the expulsion of the US and the "Zionist Crusader state" from the Mideast.  Ending our dependence on Persian Gulf oil is key to our disengaging.  Bin Laden's reasons for desiring this are religiously inspired: Crusaders and Zionists in his Holy Land.  To be fair, the author also says we should have struck instantly after 9/11 with a massive barrage that might have killed more al-Qaeda, including bin Laden; yet later he says that key leaders left the camps days before 9/11.  And elsewhere in the book the author chides us for lack of ruthlessness; we should, he says, be willing to inflict many more collateral casualties, without compunction.

But what really makes Scheuer's book interesting is what he has to say about Osama.

First, the author compares Osama to Robin Hood (p. 18) and Errol Flynn (p. 18) and (not making this up) Robert E. Lee (p. 19).  (Re Flynn, one thinks of the title of his 1959 autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways; Osama sure has those, and far worse vices than Flynn's.)  But the topper is this passage on p. 168, speaking of Osama's "person and character":

"There is no reason, based on the information at hand, to believe bin Laden is anything other than what he appears: a pious, charismatic, gentle, generous, talented, and personally courageous Muslim who is blessed with sound strategic and tactical judgment, able lieutenants, a reluctant but indispensable bloody-mindedness, and extraordinary patience."  I wonder which adjective--"gentle," "generous" or courageous"--best describes ordering the slitting of flight attendants' throats, crashing planes filled with jet fuel burning at the temperatures of the ovens of Auschwitz, beheading captives, sending juvenile suicide bombers?  In the event, one finds references to gentility and courage in the Boy Scout law and to reverence in both the law and the Scout Oath (scroll down).  Osama did do better than we as to the Scout Motto (scroll down): "Be prepared."  But Osama is not too swift on the Scout Slogan (scroll down): "Do a good turn daily."  Even Hillary gets it, having called Osama "evil" while campaigning in Iowa.

One wonders how many analysts in the bowels of CIA and State share this view of Osama.  Keep in mind that this book was cleared by the CIA before its release.  (Then again, as writer David Frum notes in a piece on Syrian intelligence, the CIA relies on it, despite evidence of its dubious value.)  One also wonders if any of the media folks who lionized the author bothered to read the book.  More likely, it was just another way to bash the President in an election year.  This is not to say that the author may not be proven right about Afghanistan.  The jury is still out.  But it would be interesting to see how widely his view of OBL is shared inside our government.  Do not expect any Administration to investigate this, however.  We wouldn't want another "witch hunt," would we?

Tsarina Nancy Amends Mr. Madison

George Will, at his sarcastic best, flags Tsarina Nancy for amending the 1787 handiwork of James Madison & friends.  The Democrats, repeating their ploy of 1993, have once again given votes in the Committee of the Whole to delegates from DC, Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa and the Virgin Islands.  The House's legislative work of amending and pruning bills is done in the Committee of the Whole, before the final vote is taken sitting as the full House; so the newcomers will help shape bills but cannot vote on the final product.  Will compares the populations of Guam (171,000), Samoa (58,000) and the Virgin islands (109,000) to that of the average Congressional District (687,000).  He could as well have summed up those three to reveal that their combined population total of 338,000 is less than half that of a single District.  There are more neat nuggets in his piece.

Will ends by posing anew the question that Tommy Campbell, a Tammany Hall Democrat, once asked President Grover Cleveland, upon being told that Cleveland intended to veto a bill as unconstitutional: "What's the Constitution between friends?"  To which any self-respecting Tsarina will answer: "I am the Constitution!"

UN in Wonderland

Eye on the UN maven (and Hudson Institute scholar) Anne Bayevsky warns on NRO that the UN is looking the other way as Iran prepares for genocidal war, just as the UN ignored genocides in Bosnia-Herzegovina (200,000) and Rwanda (800,000), and is now ignoring the Darfur (500,000) genocide.  Oh yes, in 2006 the country cited for the most human rights violations was (as usual) Israel.  The US was fourth, cited more often than Iran.  The Tortoise trundles on.

Barack Bites Back--and Himself

Barack Obama fought back, denying reports that he attended a madrassa while growing up in Indonesia.  He explains that it was (a) only two years and (b) a "Muslim school" where he was taught the Qu'ran--at which he "made faces".  Dad was an atheist but buried in a Muslim burial.  The Qu'ran, the Bible and the Baghavad Gita graced the Obama home.  He was doing great until the reporter quoted words from his auto-biography expressing admiration for 1960s black Muslim militant Malcolm X:

“Malcolm X’s autobiography seemed to offer something different.  His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me; the blunt poetry of his words, his unadorned insistence on respect, promised a new and uncompromising order, martial in its discipline, forged through sheer force of will.  Malcolm’s discovery toward the end of his life, that some whites might live beside him as brothers in Islam, seemed to offer some hope of eventual reconciliation.”

Malcolm was a murderer, thief, hustler and screaming racialist demagogue.  His comment upon hearing of  JFK's assassination, which I recall vividly, was: "The chickens have come home to roost."  Obama surely doesn't know that, but he should know about Malcolm X's resume.  Makes one wish the Senator had spent time in a madrassa after all.

Israel Embraces Diversity

Israel has appointed its first Muslim cabinet minister (in 2001 an Israeli cabinet included a minister from the Druze sect--they are an Arab offshoot of Islam).  Arab and some Israeli politicians dismissed the move as window-dressing.  Maybe it is.  But does anyone think that there ever will be a Jewish cabinet minister in any imaginable Palestinian state--or anywhere else in the Muslim world?

Index 1/29/07

posts: (1) Iran in Iraq: Finally We Hit Back--Us v. Them; (2) Iraq: The Hard Option of "Soft" Partition--Us v. Them; (3) Turkey: "Sick Man" of Asia Minor--Weenie Watch; (4) Energy: Bush's "Bush" Plan--"It's The Earth Stupid!"; (5) Katrina Kayos Kathleen--Katrina Etc.; (6) Israel: Carter Tells Tall Tales--Weenie Watch.

Iran in Iraq: Finally We Act

Friday's Washington Post reports that the Administration has authorized US forces to kill Iranian agents inside Iraq.  According to Fox News, this policy was actually put in place last summer.  This means that we woke up three years after Iran began meddling in Iraq.  A better metaphor for the Administration's strategic failure to see how Iraq fits in the mosaic of Mideast conflict is hard to imagine.  Critics, naturally, fear escalating "tensions" with Iran.  Yet Friday's NY Sun reports that US intelligence agencies are split over the extent of Iran's influence inside Iraq.  We continue to pay the price of inadequate investment in human intelligence over the past generation.

Iraq: The Hard Option of "Soft" Partition

Columnist David Brooks sees conditions inside Iraq as approaching critical mass for genocide as in Rwanda: "Violent, stupid men who would be the dregs of society under normal conditions....manipulated by political leaders with a savage, zero-sum mind-set" have created "the psychological conditions that have undergirded the bloodbaths of recent years":

"Some people become hyperaggressive and turn into perfect killers. Others endure a phased mental shutdown that looks like severe depression. They lose their memory and become passive and fatalistic. They become perfect victims.

"Amid the turmoil, the complexity of life falls away, and things are reduced to stark polarities: Sunni-Shiite or Shiite-Sunni, human-subhuman. Once this mental descent has begun, it is possible to kill without compunction."

Brooks thus supports a "soft partition": a partition in all but name, with migrations to separate the ethnic groups and thus create "a cold (if miserable) peace" as in the Balkans.  The keys: modify the Iraqi Constitution to provide for oil revenue-sharing, convince sects that their best interest lie in separation and move populations to effect separation.  Then comes the task of reassuring neighboring countries--most notably, Saudi Arabia and Turkey--that instability in their lands will not result.  Much partition has taken place, some de jure: the provinces can already appoint their own ambassadors, create their own security services, and bind with other provinces.

But WSJ's Dan Henninger fears that the US has fallen into a self-defeating hyper-pessimism that will, in effect, work like a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom, with severe adverse impact on America's standing in the world and, consequently, its fortunes.  He writes of best-pal Australia's foreign minister, Alexander Downer, who sees America tuning out foreign affairs:

"Our slide to a national nervous breakdown because of Iraq is not going unnoticed. Australia's foreign minister, Alexander Downer, has been visiting across the U.S. this week. 'I've been pretty worried about what I've heard,' Mr. Downer said in an interview. Walking on Santa Monica beach Sunday before last, Mr. Downer said he encountered a display of crosses in the sand, representing the American dead in Iraq.

"'What concerns me about this,' he said, 'is that it's sort of an isolationist sentiment, subconsciously, not consciously, and that would be an enormous problem for the world. I hope the American people understand the importance of not retreating and thinking the world's problems aren't theirs.""

An NRO piece recounts nine online pages of good news from Iraq, unheralded by our media.  The author does not convince me that the overall trend is a net plus, but it's nice to see some good being done over there.  More good news: 300 insurgents were apparently killed yesterday in a battle at Najaf, with (bad news) only five Iraqi and two US troops killed.  In the event, writes Robert Kagan in the Washington Post, America will be involved in Iraq when the next President takes office, and for years after.  We will, says Kagan, be in better shape (or, at least, less bad) if Iraq is making progress than if it collapses into chaos.

Turkey: "Sick Man" of Asia Minor

In 19th century parlance Turkey was known as "The Sick Man of Europe."  Tsar Nicholas I coined the term in 1853: "We have a sick man on our hands--a man gravely ill.  It will be a grave misfortune if one of these days he slips through our hands, especially before the necessary arrangements are made."  The decay of the Ottoman Empire led to a Young Turks coup in 1908 and in 1913 the Empire's fatefiul decision to side with the Central Powers, putting it on the losing side in World War I.

Ralph Peters calls today's Turkey suicidal, with Islamist influence growing and in the process destroying the secular, cosmopolitan, prosperous state created by Kemal Attaturk after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.  Between shafting the US on the eve of Iraqi Freedom, to obsessing about the Kurds to Islamist harassment of secular elements inside Turkey, the outlook is grim.  Perhaps our best hope, albeit it would embarrass the US, is if once again, as they did several times in the 20th century, the generals step in and replace this Islamist mess with a secular state.  Given a choice between Islamist democracy and non-Islamist authoritarian rule, the latter looks better every day.  If Islamism triumphs in Turkey, it can say "bye-bye" to admission to Europe anytime soon, which makes Turkey now "the Sick Man of Asia Minor."  (But in a generation or two Turkey may get in, if Europe becomes once and for all "Eurabia"....)

Energy: Bush's "Bush" Plan

Charles Krauthammer skewers the President's ethanol and fuel economy fix for energy.  Serious policy, CK says (rightly) is three things: (1) a gas tax, that diverts funds from OPEC to the US Treasury while cutting consumption; (2) Arctic drilling, that reduces US imports modestly, important in a tight market; and (3) nuclear power, that is the least-polluting, more energy-intensive fuel available, and yields waste compact enough to bury.  CK counts since 1973 24 SOTU's out of 34 in which energy independence has been set as a goal, during which time our oil import share of total oil imported has risen from 34.8 to 60.3 percent.  This equates to 1.06 percent increased oil imports per SOTU in which energy independence is mentioned.

A Wall Street Journal editorial debunks dreams that ethanol is the energy be-all end-all: (1) it is of limited potential (its energy output barely exceeds its energy input--in stark contrast to gasoline, let alone nuclear power); (2) it has poor environmental trade-offs (raises food prices, increases global warming by encouraging deforestation).  But ethanol is great for two things: the corn and sugar lobbies.  Lobbyist independence, what a concept!

Katrina Kayos Kathleen

The India Post reports that Republican Congressman Bobby Jindal (who is of Indian descent) leads incumbent Governor Kathleen Blanco 59-35 in polls, with only 7 percent of voters not already decided, and this nine months before the November 2007 race.  Seems Louisiana voters grasp what the national media, in their eagerness to hang Katrina's aftermath on President Bush, do not: Managerial incompetence at the state level far exceeded that in Washington.  Governor Blanco assailed the President the morning after he gave his State of the Union address, for not mentioning Katrina: "I guess the pain of the hurricane is yesterday's news in Washington," said she.  A Weekend WSJ front-pager details how Katrina funds are not reaching Louisiana (and also Mississippi) due to the Stafford Act, a 1972 federal anti-fraud law that erects major bureaucratic vetting hurdles to government aid; crooked local contractors must be policed to reduce fraud.  The Bush Administration has waived the Stafford Act in the past, but not this time.

The Governor is learning the hard way what one thinks would come naturally to 99.44 percent of politicians: Publicly shifting blame to the President, insulting him and doing whatever possible to damage him, is no way to win friends in any White House.  One suspects Democratic governors like Bill Richardson (New Mexico) and Ed Rendell (Philadelphia) would have known better.  So would many Louisiana Democrats of an earlier generation than the present dope in Baton Rouge.  Nor would prior Democratic Senators--the likes of Russell Long, John Breaux and J. Bennett Johnston--have been huffing right after the storm, as Sen. Mary Landrieu did re President Bush, that they "might likely have to punch him--literally."  They were adults.

Thus Katrina has separated the adults from the kiddie crowd.  Adieu, Ms. Guv, come November.

Israel: Carter Tells Tall Tales

Jimmy Carter has apologized for a "completely improper and stupid way" of words that link cessation of Palestinian terror to Israeli concessions.  The offending passage in his new book reads (p. 213): "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel."

Yet this is but the beginning.  It seems that then-President Carter rejected the original list of proposed government appointees of the Holocaust Memorial Council (for the Holocaust Museum in DC) as having "too many Jews"--and even objected to one Christian nominee because his name sounded too Jewish.  Carter also, in 1987, wrote the Justice Department urging leniency for a convicted Nazi war criminal who sought entry into the US.

Carter's increasing anti-Israel tilt and his rewriting of history is soldily documented by a former close associate who assisted Carter in Mideast matters after Carter left the Presidency.  Fleshing out the picture is a 10-pager by scholar Joshua Muravchik in the February 2007 issue of Commentary, in which he provides fascinating details about how Carter's career, including how he ran as a redneck to win the Georgia governorship in 1971, how he tried to get the UN Security Council to stop the Gulf War, how he helped North Korea get the bomb by negotiating an agreement that froze US efforts but did not stop North Korea from circumventing it, plus more on his meddling in Bosnia and the Middle East.  Muravchik finishes aptly, by noting that Carter, one of our worst Presidents, is our worst ex-President as well.  For more lies told by Carter--during the 1976 Presidential campaign and about Israel--scroll down to Gabriel Schoenfeld's second piece in the excellent new blog launched by Commentary, Contentions.

However, Carter still has not been fully taken to task for comparing Israel's  occupation of the West Bank to the 1994 Rwandan genocide that saw 800,000 Rwandans butchered in 90 days.  I would be surprised if in 40 years occupying the West Bank Israel has killed 8,000 Palestinians.

Index 1/26/07

posts: (1) Iran: Proliferator's Progress--Us v. Them; (2) No Nukes At Last?--Us v. Them; (3) Scooter Puts White House on Trial--The Home Front; (4) Multicultural Muslims--Us v. Them; (5) UN: Ban Rolls Over; Us v. Them; (6) Bach Bambino--Class & Crass; (7) Greenland, the Gray Lady and Sophia Loren--"It's The Earth Stupid!".

Iran:Proliferator's Progress

Iran has accelerated its cooperation with North Korea, and may manage an undeerground nuke test as early as the end of 2007, according to the Daily Telegraph.  Iran's Hitler-talk Prez again has apparently said that "the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives."  Speaking at a conference in Herzliya, two US pols showed that they get it: Newt Gingrich said Israel is in the greatest danger it has been in since 1967 and faces a "second Holocuast" if Iran strikes with nukes; Mitt Romney called jihadism "the nightmare of this century" and warned that detereence will not work against leaders who believe in the virtue of martyrdom.  Nicholas Burns of Foggy Bottom warned Iran against stirring up trouble in the Persian Gulf and said that there can be no negotiations unless Iran stops enriching uranium.  Pray that State means it.

No Nules At Last?

Four prominent national security figures (Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry, Sam Nunn) recently wrote that it is time to revive the Reagan-Gorbachev Reykjavik 1986 vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.  Sound utopian?  Were the proponents less  august, we could let it pass.  But it bears reading and reflection.  My quick take on a "deep thinker" piece: an essential task, not mentioned for understandable reasons, is to take out regimes that cannot be trusted to cooperate.  Whom?  The usual suspects.

Mideast: Rice Realignment?

Columnist David Ignatius reports that Secretary of State Rice's Mideast trip aims to cement a strategic realignment that puts Israel and the Sunni Arab states arrayed against Iran.  Hence her push for "final-status" talks between Israel and the Palestinians.  There is no reason, however, to expect success on such talks.  As for uniting Sunni states, it would be an historic first.  If successful it could build support for US action against Iran.

Scooter Puts White House on Trial

NRO's Byron York informs us that Scooter Libby's defense will focus less on faulty memory than on efforts of the White House to sandbag him and thus deflect attention from Karl Rove.  Wow!  Seems the Bush White House will pay more in political coin for its caving in in late 2003 when they appointed Captain Ahab Fitzgerald to investigate the Wilson-Plame Affair.  Thursday's testimony featured yet another prosecution witness with iffy memory.

Multicultural Muslims

Author Francis Fukuyama has written an incisive essay on the role of identity politics in promoting Muslim militancy in Europe.  It prints at 10 pages with 1.5 line spacing, and is well worth reading.  Illustrative of a multicultural moment in the USA is a small claims case in Detroit, where a female Muslim plaintiff lost her case because she refused a judge's order to remove her niqab--a head-to-toe veil with a horizontal slit at eye level.  She has been granted a re-hearing, and plans to re-assert her position.  The judge rightly refused the initial request because in court the "demeanor evidence" of a litigant or witness is highly relevant to ascertaining credibility of testimony.  This is a fundamental proposition of American law.  It would be disastrous to allow religious fanaticism to triumph over a central tenet of law in a society where church and state are separated by fundamental constitutional law, and where trials are conducted in secular courts ("God save this honorable court" notwithstanding).

Meanwhile, a vicious hate-crime has apparently been committed in North Carolina, with three Palestinians the victims; this will surely result in prosecution, and it also will give ammunition to Muslim activist groups to assert that the rare instances of such assaults are (a) common and (b) indicative of a racist climate against Muslims in America.  Neither is true, but brace yourself.

UN: Ban Rolls Over

Claudia Rosett, she of the oil-for-food exposure fame, laments what appears to be new UN S-G Ban Ki-Moon's first step back, in entrusting an audit of North Korea's misuse of development aid to a UN administrative body not known for diligence in such matters.  Ban, it seems, has decided--at least, this tine--to roll over rather than roll on.

Bach Bambino

Check out this YouTube video (4-1/2 minutes) showing a child, supposedly age 4, play Bach's C-minor Partita.

Greenland, the Gray Lady and Sophia Loren

Climatologist Patrick Michaels debunks the latest enviro-scare thrown up by the New York Times.  Seems that a feared 23-foot rise in sea levels if Greenland melts away will be more like a one-inch rise, from far less melting.  Enjoy the dissection.  But on Feb. 2 the UN will release a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change that, the IPCC Chairman assures us will "shock" the world by documenting both warming and mankind's role in warming.  Meanwhile, Anchorage is reeling under record snowfall of 74 inches that is leading to what locals term a "crisis" and Colorado has seen blizzards galore this winter and the Northeast is experiencing its coldest temperatures in two years.  Oh, and by the way, think that Sweden's gloomy winter causes suicides to spike?  Now the Italians say that global warming is linked to higher rates of suicide in Italy for 1974-2003.  I cannot resist the suspicion that failure to score with Sophia Loren has caused more Italian suicides than anything to do with climate.  Then again, at the risk of committing male chauvinism, Sophia represents an especially nice form of global warming....

Index 1/25/07

posts: (1) Can Syria Sunder Israel from US?--Us v. Them; (2) Homeland Security: College Daze--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (3) Hill-Bill for 2008?--The Home Front; (4) Carol Kumbaya Moseley Hussein Braun Obama--The Home Front; (5) Muslim "Million Man March" Anybody?--Us v. Them".

Can Syria Sunder Israel from US?

Historian Michael Oren, a serious source, warns of a possible rift between the US and Israel.  Seems that Israel is seriously exploring a peace settlement with Syria, ceding the Golan Heights in return for recognition and peace.  But the Bush Administration opposes a bargain at this time, because Syria's increased legitimacy derived from signing an accord will undercut US efforts to save democracy in Lebanon and to thwart Syrian efforts to undermine the US in Iraq.  Beside, while Oren declines to mention it, who really believes that Syria would honor a treaty?  Israel would once again be trading irrevocable tangible concessions for revocable intangible ones.

Homeland Security: College Daze

ABC News reports that al-Qaeda had planned to infiltrate 10 to 20 students into the US so as to launch a new attack on American soil.  Remember all the complaints from the universities about how the Bush Administration is making it harder for us to attract foreign students?  Seems that there was a reason for so doing.  This does not mean relaxing visa rules is unreasonable, but only that there is a potential security trade-off inherent in how visa rules are drawn.

Hill-Bill for 2008?

No, not that Bill, not William Jefferson Clinton.  Bill Richardson, as Veep on a Hill ticket.  Captain's Quarters blogger Ed Morrissey explains why Richardson is as heavyweight as Kumbaya Hussein Obama is lightweight.  And he, too, carries a diversity point--Hispanic. 

Kumbaya is the fourth African-American to run for the Presidency, after former NY Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm (1972), race hustler Jesse Jackson (1984 & 1988) and race hustler Al Sharpton (2004).  And media types still go ga-ga over him.  So where is the media hoopla over Richardson, whose candidacy truly is a minority "first"--and who hails from what is now the nation's largest minority population group?  Richardson, unlike Kumbaya, is up to the job.  As Governor of New Mexico Richardson actually has had to govern, not grandstand from the Senate chamber.  He serves on the immigration front line, too.  And as a real-life governor he can only but dream about extended free rides from the media.

One thing for sure: If Bill tops Hill, Hill will not be Veep to anyone.  And if Bill attacks Hill, as Morrissey thinks he might, that could scotch Hill-Bill.  But Richardson is an appealing personality, and once Barack Buzz has quieted down, look for Kumbaya to fade.

Carol Kumbaya Moseley Hussein Braun Obama?

Remember Carol Moseley-Braun?  Her "star-burst" candidacy propelled her to the Senate in 1992, winning her an Illinois Senate seat.  1992 was the "Year of the Woman"--so designated by the media liberal cheering section.  In addition to Moseley-Braun, 1992 gave us the imbecilic Patty "Mom in tennis shoes" Murray, who told us after 9/11 that Osama bin Laden builds roads and schools, and the venomous Barbara Boxer who, true to her surname, boxes the ears of witnesses whom she figures will probably decline to hit back.  But it was Moseley-Braun, a "two-fer" in affirmative action parlance--both female and black--who stole the show.

Well, it turned out C M-B had a messy relationship with a staffer.  Further, certain campaign and Congressional funds reportedly were, in the parlance of the nuclear industry, "materials unaccounted for."  C M-B lost her bid for re-election, so in the second term of "America's first black President" she was awarded the ambassadorship to New Zealand and Samoa, which also covers Cook Island and...yes, Antarctica.  She served 1999-2001.  The Kiwis deserved better.  Our Carol was far away indeed.  Fortunately for her, the pilot knew where NZ is on the map, else she'd have, left to her own devices, landed on Easter Island.

So wherefore Kumbaya Hussein Obama, or latest minority star-burst candidate?  Is he a male C -M-B?  Like her, he is largely a conventional liberal.  He seems to be more careful in his utterances than was she.   OK, so he has a lovely family and there is no sign of fund diversion.  He remains, however, largely a blank slate.  If Senator Kumbaya agrees to abandon his Presidential run, there are ambassadorships galore awaiting.

Muslim "Million Man March" Anybody?

Thomas Friedman laments the thunderous silence in the Muslim world over the mass slaughter of Muslims by other Muslims in Iraq, compared to their constant caterwauling about foreign influences on and interventions in Muslim and Arab societies.  He is, of course, quite right.

Index 1/24/07

posts: (1) State of the Union 2007-The Home Front; (2) The SOTU Bush Did Not Give--The Home Front; (3) Iraq: Changes Already?--Us v. Them; (4) UN: Ban Rolls On--Turtle Bay Tortoise; (5) More From Chairman Milton--"It's the Earth Stupid!".

State Of The Union 2007

President Bush's SOTU was far better than his recent Iraq speech (not hard--the earlier speech was awful).  But despite a polite Democratic response, it is hard to expect that it will move hard hearts.  His domestic initiatives (health care, Social Security, immigration, energy) will likely go nowhere, with the possible exception of energy.  His coverage of Iraq and Iran was well-framed, but one suspects that hearts are even harder here.

The Democratic response, delivered by Virginia freshman Senator James Webb, showcased economic ignorance (save re overpaid CEOs, where Webb is right, CEOs are paid tons of money even given poor performance) of the kind exhibited by former New York Governor Mario Cuomo at the 1984 Democratic Convention in his famed "tale of two cities" speech (wrong not as to two cities--the urban underclass really is a separate "city"--but as to the remedies proposed).  As to foreign policy, decorated veteran Webb, an opponent of the Iraq invasion from before it started, did better.  He said that Bush took us into war "recklessly" and disregarded much sage advice.  "We are now held hostage" to that mistake, and seriously damaged worldwide.  Webb said not to withdraw precipitously, but argued for rapid Iraqification, to take our troops ASAP out of harm's way.  Webb cited President Eisenhower's quote re Korea: "When comes the end?"  To his credit, Webb rejected the prepared script given him by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and delivered his own words, crisply.

The SOTU Bush Did Not Give

I posted this proposed speech about an hour before the real SOTU, secure in the knowledge that President Bush will not give it.  It is a corker.

Iraq: Changes Already?

Veteran columnist Jack Kelly sees three changes already in Iraq: (1) al-Qaeda troops are retreating from Baghdad (to Diyala Province, NE of the city), realizing that the US learned how to go house to house in Fallujah; (2) thug cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is backing off; (3) Iraqi PM Maliki is distancing himself from Sadr.  The first will preserve al-Qaeda to fight again, but for al-Qaeda to regain footing in the city after vacating will be difficult.  As I type I see Hillary at the Senate hearing facing Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, telling him that she will not cut funds for US troops in harm's way, but that she would cut funds for Iraqis if the government fails to hold up its end.  She is right on this, and is more adult on the war than many of her Democratic (and even some Republican) colleagues.

UN: Ban Rolls On

A WSJ editorial hails Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's decision to investigate the diversion of UN aid funds to North Korean ghoul Kim Jong-Il's regime.  A report last week by WSJ's Melanie Kirkpatrick detailed how North Korea skimmed funds from the UN Development Program.  The amount is surely in the tens of millions, and may exceed $100 million.  This is nowhere close to the $100 billion epic oil-for-food scandal, but it is coin of the realm.  Claudia Rosett, who exposed oil-for-food, suggests that the UN also look at North Korea's use of the World Food program.  The UN can also finally get off its duff and take on the butchers in Darfur, whose latest outrage is targeting aid workers.  Let us hope that Ban (per the old commercial) rolls on.

More From Chairman Milton

The Wall Street Journal has published a 2006 e-mail exchange with the late Milton Friedman.  Read and savor more pearls of wisdom from the twentieth century's most influential economist.

Index 1/23/07

posts: (1) State of the Union: A Presidential Surprise Idea--The Home Front; (2) Sandbagging Sadr--Us v. Them; (3) Islam v. Secular Humanism--Us v. Them; (4) New Katreans--Katrina Etc.; (5) Congress Loves London & HK, Hates NYC--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (6) Iran: Not So Fast?--Us v. Them.

State of the Union: A Presidential Surprise Idea

So John Warner and a few Republicans feel obligated to come out expressing "concern" over the proposed troop surge, on the day before the President's State of the Union?  So now the President must appear before a joint session with the public fully aware that senior members of his own party are distancing themselves from him.  And any surge would take place under the added handicap of knowledge in the enemy camp that Bush is on a tight leash.  Congress will protect itself by only passing non-binding resolutions.  Nice package, isn't it?

So what can 43 do?  How's this for size: Tell Congress and the American people that he will submit his surge proposal to Congress and demand an up or down vote, without amendment, by March 1, 2007.  Take it or leave it--but VOTE ON IT--QUICKLY.  (If Congress wishes to give the President more troops and resources, the no-amend rule can of course be waived, but his is not seriously in prospect.)  Make Congress put itself on record.  No if, ands or buts.  No more clever slippery sound-bites.  The President need not concede the constitutional issue.  He can say that even though he is not required to submit the surge to a vote, he will do so because going forward in face of so much public skepticism could doom the mission's chances.  Finally, he should state that whoever loses the vote must then support the winner, at least until there is a clear indication as to what the result of the choice is, in real-world consequences.  One way or another, the partisan civil war must be tabled for a decent interval.

Congress may well, in its present mood, and given the public mood, vote the surge down.  But then they, like the Watergate Congress that cut off funds to the South Vietnamese, will be on record and can be held responsible by the voters if the $%^& hits the fan.  The President has been taking hits daily.  It's time for Congress to put itself in the line of fire, too.

43 would hardly win fans in Congress with this.  But he would gain a measure of respect from the public.

Sandbagging Sadr?

The Washington Times reports that Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki has turned on thug cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.  After being told by US intelligence that death squads within Sadr's militia were isolating the PM, by killings of Sunnis that angered neighboring states.  If true, all hail.  But it smells fishy.  Maliki could not be so stupid as to be unaware of such activity, not if he has survived this long in the poisonous clime of the Mideast.  Babes in Toyland die young over there.

Islam vs. Secular Humanism

Yesterday's 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the monument to jurisprudential secular humanist thought, raises anew the issue of our culture's role in fostering animosity in the Muslim world.  Scholar Dinesh D'Souza argues that militant Islam's war against us is driven not by a religious crusade against Christianity, but rather by a religious crusade against secularism--our increasingly materialistic and postmodern culture.  He writes:
"Thus, the liberal doctrine that the war against terrorism is a battle of two opposed forms of religious fundamentalism is false. This is not why the Islamic radicals are fighting against America. From the perspective of bin Laden and his allies, the war is between the Muslim-led forces of monotheism and morality against the America-led forces of atheism and immorality. Secularism, not Christian fundamentalism, is responsible for producing a blowback of Muslim rage."

Essentially the same argument was made by philosopher Roger Scruton in his 2002 book, The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat.