LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

Index 7/31/08

6 posts: (1) Will Israel's Earthquake Make Iran Shake & Bake?--Us v. Them; (2) China's Internal Convulsions: Stratfor Report--Us v. Them; (3) NY Budget Bulge Blues--The Ap & the Cap; (4) Mali: Muslim & Pro-US--Us v. Them; (5) India's Islam Challenge--Wobble Watch; (6) Darfur: UN Nix; Private Sector Fix?--Turtle Bay Tortoise.

Will Israel's Earthquake Make Iran Shake & Bake?

PM Ehud Olmert's announcing that he will step down in mid-Sept. makes Israel's Sept. 17 primary date especially significant.  As his Jerusalem Post story explains, whoever wins the Kadima primary to replace Olmert as party leader will form a coalition government, going left and/or right to do so.  The winner will have 40 days (until Oct. 26) to submit a proposed new government to President Shimon Peres.  Failing that, custom extends the deadline to form a new government for 90 days (to Jan. 24, 2009), after which an election is held, for which a new government would not likely be formed until March 2009.  Until a new government is formed, Olmert remains PM.  This second JP article exposes the seamy underside of Israeli politics: the primary is among 30,000 Kadima party regulars, not the full number of Kadima voters; party hacks will favor whoever will last longer in power, without regard to who is a hawk (Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz) or who is a dove (FM Tzipi Livni).  Kadima figures to be annihilated in the next national elections.

An NY Sun report places delivery of Russia's lethal S-300 Surface to Air Missile (SAM, SA-20 in NATO lexicon) as March 2009, with full operational status in June 2009.  The hypersonic S-300 can destroy planes, ballistic missiles & cruise missiles, with a ceiling of 90,000 feet (well above operational ceilings of combat aircraft) and can track 100 targets at once; its range is estimated at 150 - 250 miles.

ABC News reporter Jake Tapper recounts what an inside source (corroborated by others) heard Obama tell the House Democratic Caucus in a post-tour briefing he gave them: Israel will likely strike Iran if sanctions fail; Obama was not told in so many words, but read between the lines + body language.  Obama also told his colleagues that Jordan's King Abdullah indicated he would be glad if Iran is stopped from going nuclear.

Thus if Israel is to strike, it must decide before the SA-20s are operational.  Figure June 2009 is the outside deadline.  After then, Israel likely will not act.  Even before then, Olmert will not do so.  FM Livni will not do so.  But Shaul Mofaz will.  He likely would prefer to act earlier rather than later, before Russian advisers are on the ground come March; crossing Tsar Vlad the Bad carries added risk Israel may prefer not to bear.  Thus, it appears that whether Israel does "shake & bake" over Iran hinges upon what 30,000 Kadima party hacks want--whichever PM will keep them in power longer.

The timing of such an attack now appears highly likely, should it be launched, to take place after America's November 4 election, because Israel's cumbersome political process is unlikely to produce a replacement government before late October at the earliest; a new PM will wish to review the plans carefully before striking.  Obama's briefing suggests that while he would prefer that Israel not strike, he will not crack down on Israel if it acts before Jan. 20, in the event that he wins the election.

For sanctions to bite that quickly requires a frontal all-out assault: cutting off Iran's supply of refined oil, which it imports because it can only refine 40% of its oil demand.  This means stepping outside the UN, where Russia & China wield vetoes in the Security Council and can be expected to water down sanctions.  The Bush administration looks not up to the effort, partly due to an evident lack of serious support from Europe.  Germany effectively repudiated Angela Merkel's spring speech to the Knesset re Iran, by entering into more contracts and siding increasingly with China on sanctions, at odds even with the British & French.

Increasingly, it looks like Israel is the Free World's "last, best hope" for stopping Iran from going nuclear.

China's Internal Convulsions: Stratfor Report

The strategic consulting firm Stratfor posted a 7-page analysis of conditions inside China on the eve of the Olympics, for which a nervous China announced plans to limit Internet access, even for reporters covering the Games.  It is an intriguing assessment, finding that there probably are internal tensions within the Chinese government that could lead to a lengthy crackdown after the Olympics, even at the expense of economic growth.  A stable, growing China has been a prime assumption for many policy types.  Cutting visas and shutting down many firms for a full quarter bespeak of much turmoil, the report says.  There is rising friction between provincial governments and Beijing.  This is a fine report, reprinted with Stratfor's permission.

China, the Olympics and the Visa Mystery

             July 29, 2008

                  

By Rodger Baker

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Something extraordinary is happening in China, and we are not talking about the Olympics. Rather, Chinese officials have been clamping down on visa applications and implementing bureaucratic impediments to new and renewed visa applications under the guise of pre-Olympic security.

In some ways, Beijing’s plan for a safe and secure Olympics appears based on the premise that if no one shows up, there can be no trouble. But placing restrictions on the movement of managers and employees of foreign businesses operating in China, even if for a limited time as Chinese officials have been at pains to reassure, makes little sense from the standpoint of gaining political and economic benefits from hosting the Olympics. Something just isn’t right.

The Post-’70s Economic Framework

Since China’s economic reform and opening in the late 1970s, China’s economic policy — and thus the basis for the overall development of the nation — has been based on a simple two-part framework. First, draw in as much foreign investment as possible and use the money and technology to strengthen China while using the subsequent economic leverage to secure China. And second, encourage growth for growth’s sake to ensure an ever-increasing flow of money through the system to provide employment and social services to a massive and urbanizing population.

Key to this policy has been creating a very open environment for foreign businesses, which bring money, technology and expertise and use their influence with their own governments to keep stable international relations with China — hence reducing international and economic frictions and increasing the efficiency of the supply chain. For more than two decades, Chinese national strategy has thus revolved around the principle of encouraging investment, joint ventures and wholly-owned foreign enterprises in China. There have been two foundations for this strategy: the evolution of financial facilities for transferring and controlling foreign money with a level of transparency nearing international standards, and the ease of movement of personnel in and out of China.

It is this latter point that recently has been hit the hardest. Over the past several months as the Beijing Olympics drew nearer, the Chinese government has effectively frozen up most financial reform plans. It also has issued a raft of new security measures not entirely unlike other host cities in the post 9/11 security environment. But China has gone several steps further than its predecessor hosts, placing official and bureaucratic impediments on visa applications. This not only has targeted potential “troublemaking” rights advocates, it has also impacted foreign businesses ranging from invited guests to the Olympic games to managers and employees of foreign companies in China.

Business and the New Visa Hassles

The visa restrictions in particular have been a source of angst for foreign businesses and business associations. Many smaller operations may circumvent Chinese regulations and travel on tourist visas (provided they can still obtain them). And there are ways around the tighter regulations or bureaucratic hurdles if one has the right connections or the willingness to apply several times or from different locations. But multinational corporations are less willing to jeopardize their operations by skirting the laws. Instead, they are making their concerns known to Beijing and hoping that restrictions are eased in September, as Beijing has rumored and hinted will occur.

In general, these visa restrictions have been brushed aside by foreign observers as simply paranoia on China’s part regarding protests or terrorist attacks during the Olympics. In many ways, however, this makes little sense. First and most obvious, the Olympics were supposed to highlight the opening of China — not restrict the very people who have made China a key part of the global economy. Second, imposing tight restrictions in Shanghai, the center of the Chinese foreign-domestic economic nexus, makes little sense on grounds of Olympic security since Shanghai is playing only a minor role in the games compared to Beijing and Qingdao. (Think shutting down visas to New York during the Atlanta games in the name of security, though Shanghai admittedly is hosting some soccer matches.)

Shutting down business visas to keep terrorists out makes little sense anyway — it is hard to imagine Uighur militants traveling on business visas as representatives of foreign multinationals. Furthermore, by restricting business visas — even if not across the board in a coherent fashion — China is putting a massive strain not only on the ability of businesses to trust Chinese regulations and business relations with the government, but also on the fluidity of the global supply chain. Shutting down or impeding visas affects much more than delaying the movement of a single individual into China; it impacts the ability of multinational corporations to move, replace or supplement managers and dealmakers in China. A delayed visa applications of just three months still represents an entire quarter that multinational corporations cannot reliably manage their businesses operations i n China, and that doesn’t take into account the visa backlog when restrictions are loosened or lifted.

Disrupting an integral part of the global economy for a full quarter because of an international exposition makes little sense. The Germans in 1936 didn’t do it, the Russians in 1980 didn’t — no one has. One doesn’t simply shut down international business transactions for three months or more to stop a terrorist — and particularly not China, which depends on foreign direct investment. This is not simply an inconvenience for some people: It is the imposition of friction on a part of the system that is supposed to be frictionless. And it is not merely individuals who are affected, but the relations between mammoth companies.

A Period of Erratic Policies

China’s behavior has been erratic for several months now, if not for the past few years, with the implementation of new and often contradictory security and economic policies. These have all been brushed aside as somehow related to preparation for the Olympics. But they are in fact anomalous. China’s behavior is not that of a country trying to show its best side for the international community, nor that of a nation simply concerned about potential terrorist or public relations threats to the Olympic games. In another two months, after the Olympics and Paralympics have ended, it will become clearer whether this was a spate of excessive paranoia or a reflection of a much more significant crisis facing the Chinese leadership — and the evidence increasingly points toward the latter.

As mentioned, China’s economic policies in the reform and opening era have been based on the idea of growth. This in many ways simply reflects the Asian economic model of maintaining cheap lending policies at home, subsidizing exports, flowing money through the system and focusing on revenue rather than profits. In essence, it is growth for the sake of growth. This was the policy of Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. And it led each of those countries to a final crisis point, striking Japan first in the early 1990s and the rest of the Asian tigers a few years later. But China managed to avoid each of the previous Asian economic crises points, as it was on the lagging end of growth and investment curves.

Following the Asian economic crisis, China fully recovered from the international stigma of Tiananmen Square and became the global economic darling. By the time the 21st century rolled around, China was already taking on the mantle of the Japanese and other Asians. It began to be labeled both an economic miracle and a rising power; a future challenge to U.S. economic dominance with all the political ramifications that brought. Were it not for 9/11, Washington would have squared off with Beijing to prevent the so-called China rise. The reprieve of international pressure that came when U.S. attention turned squarely toward Afghanistan and then Iraq freed China’s leaders from an external stress that could have brought about a very different set of economic and political decisions.

With the United States preoccupied, and no other major power really challenging China, Beijing shifted its attention to domestic issues, and its review quickly revealed the stresses to the system. These did not primarily come from “splittist” forces like the Tibetans or the Falun Gong, but rather from the economic policies that had brought China from the Third World to the center of the global economic system. Beijing is well-aware that should it continue with its current economic policies, it will face the same risk of crisis as Japan, South Korea and the rest of Asia. It is also aware that growing internal challenges — from the spread and invasiveness of corruption to geographic economic imbalances, from rising social unrest to massive dislocation of populations ̵ 2; are causing immediate problems.

Economics from Mao to Hu

Mao Zedong built a China designed to be self-sufficient and massively redundant. Every province, every city, every factory was supposed to be a self-contained unit, making the country capable of weathering nearly any military attack. Deng Xiaoping didn’t get rid of these redundancies when he opened the economy to foreign investment. Instead, he and his successors encouraged local officials to work to attract foreign investment and technology so as to raise China’s economic standard more rapidly. By the time Jiang Zemin was in power it had become clear that the regionally and locally driven economic policies threatened to throw China back into its old cycle of decentralization — and, ultimately, competing centers of power. Attempts by Jiang to correct this through the Go West program, for example, came to naught after meeting massive resistance in the wealthy c oastal provinces. The central government accordingly backed off, shifting its attention to reclaiming centralized authority over the military.

Hu Jintao has sought once again to try to address the problem of the concentration of economic power in China’s coastal provinces and cities through his Harmonious Society initiative. The idea is to redistribute wealth and economic power, regain central authority over the economy, and at the same time reduce redundancies and inefficiencies in the Chinese economy. With minimal external interference, Hu was able to test policies that by their very nature were going to sacrifice short-term social stability in the name of long-term economic stability. Growth was replaced by sustainability as the target; longer-term redistribution of economic growth engines would replace short-term employment and social stability.

This was a risky proposition, and one that met strong resistance in China. But the alternative was to sit back and wait for the inevitable economic crisis and the social repercussions thereto. In some ways, Hu was suggesting that China risk stability in the short term to preserve stability in the long run. But Hu didn’t anticipate the massive surge in global commodity prices, particularly of food and oil. This was compounded by increased international scrutiny over China’s human rights record ahead of the Olympics, natural disasters hitting at the availability and distribution of goods, a rise in domestic social unrest triggered by local government policies and economic corruption, several attempted and successful attacks against China’s transportation infrastructure, and   the uprising in Tibet. Thus, the already-risky policies the central government was pursuing suddenly looked more destructive than constructive from the point of view of continued rule by the Communist Party of China (CPC).

The global economic slowdown was the external impetus China feared — something that could undermine the flow of capital and leave Beijing unable to control the outcome of a reduction in the inflow of capital. At the same time, the internal social tensions triggered both by Hu’s attempts to reshape the Chinese economy and by the slow pace of those changes created a crisis for the Chinese leadership. It was hard enough internally to control a measured economic slowdown to reshape the economic structure of China, but quite another thing altogether to have such a slowdown imposed on China from outside at the very moment social stability was in a critical state at home.

A Government in Crisis

China’s rapid and contradictory economic and security policies, rising social tensions, and seemingly counterproductive visa regulations appear to be signs of a government in crisis. They are the reactionary policies of a central leadership trying to preserve its authority, stabilize social stability and postpone an economic crisis. At the same time, we see signs that the local governments, and even organs of the central government, are putting up steady resistance to the announcements coming from Beijing. Slapping restrictions on foreign businessmen may make little sense from a broader business continuity sense, but if the point is to begin breaking the backs of the local governments — whose strength lies in their relations with foreign businesses — then the moves may make more sense.

If the central government has reached the point that it is willing to risk its international business role to rein in wayward local officials, however, then the Chinese leadership sees a major crisis looming or already under way. It is one thing to toss out a few local leaders and replace them, quite another to undermine the structure of the Chinese economy for the sake of regaining control over local officials. But if Chinese history since 1949 (and really quite a ways before) is any guide, the core of the CPC leadership is willing to sacrifice social and economic stability to preserve power. One need only look at the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution or the crackdown at Tiananmen Square for evidence of this. Revolution is not, after all, a dinner party, and maintaining CPC control is paramount to the government.

After each major revolution or crisis, China eventually has recovered. The Cultural Revolution was followed by diplomatic relations with the United States, Tiananmen Square was put aside as China joined the World Trade Organization and surged ahead in gross domestic product (GDP). Certainly, there was change among the leadership and in the way the party dealt with policies at home and abroad. But if there is the likelihood of loss of control due to an impending economic crisis, better to have some role in shaping the crisis to preserve the chance of maintaining a role in the future political structure than to sit by and try to clean up as things fall apart. The Party in fact has a long history of taking a self-generated crisis/revolution over an externally or domestically initiated one.

It may be that the contradictory policies Beijing is tossing around these days will simply fade away after September and things will get back to “normal.” But already, Chinese officials are downplaying the previously hyped political and economic benefits of the Olympic games. They are now warning that economic conditions may not be so strong in the future, and at least internally discussing the distinct possibility that at least certain regions of China are facing the same economic crises faced by their mentors Japan, South Korea and the Asian tigers.

Internal Crises vs. the Economy

A recent article in the Global Times, a paper that addresses myriad topics of domestic and international significance and is read among China’s leaders, discussed how economics is not the best measure of strength. It referred to the overall comparative GDP and the size of China’s military in the late 1800s. Then, China was considered at its weakest, but from an economic or military perspective it could have been considered comparable to the global powers of the day. This hints at the deeper internal debate in Beijing, where true national strength and the role of the economy is under discussion. Assumptions that China is only focused on continued good economic ties with the world shouldn’t be taken as gospel — China has a track record of shutting down external connections when internal crises brew.

Numerous polices are being thrown around in firefighting fashion, including blocking or at least hindering foreign business movement in and out of the country and tightening the flow of foreign capital in both directions. They are coming in reaction to flare-ups in economic, environmental, public relations and social arenas. Energy policies are making less sense, imbalances in supply and demand are growing and seemingly contradictory policies are being issued. Social unrest, or at least local media coverage of such unrest, seems to be increasing; either is a sign of weakening control. Local officials are still failing to fall in line with central government edicts. Strategic state enterprises like China National Petroleum Corp., China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. and the China Development Bank are all defyi ng state-council orders — and the State Council itself is apparently going head-to-head with major policy bodies long given control over economic policies.

Something extraordinary is happening in China. And while not everyone may want that to be the case, and so have sought to use the Olympics to explain things away, the easy explanation simply doesn’t make enough sense.

NY Budget Bulge Blues

Hudson Institute President Herb London finds Albany's budget woes traceable to massive excess spending.  His prime evidence?  Try New York State spending more on Medicaid than California & Texas combined, despite there being 55 million in CA + TX, versus 20 million in the Empire State.  (Medicaid is an entitlement program for low-income people.)  Well worth a full read.

Manhattan Institute scholar Nicole Gelinas offers her solution: avoid the mistakes of the 1960s & 1970s, when Wall Street slowdown led to higher taxes that drove out one million jobs in the decade that ended in 1975; trim the budget, starting with a 10 percent cut in the city's Medicaid tab, now $6 billion per year.

Mali: Muslim & Pro-US

This Weekly Standard article informs us that Mali, in NW Africa, is a friendly Muslim country, largely free of violence; America provides foreign aid plus military advisers.  A nice 3-page read.

India's Islam Challenge

India faces a terror challenge from Islamists, and is fumbling.  Its mistakes include suspending preventive detention and witness protection laws, and failing to integrate a 140-million Muslim community into Indian society; sharia law governs much within Islamic areas.  The latest terror bombings, reports the Christian Science monitor, threaten Indo-Pakistani relations, because some in India believe that the group blamed for the bombings, styled the Indian Mujahadeen, is a front for Pakistani terrorism aimed at India.

Darfur: UN Nix; Private Sector Fix?

WSJ editor Bret Stephens offers a way out for Darfur's genocidal horrors: accept the offer of the Blackwater security firm's CEO, Erik Prince, to allow him to send 250 advisers to train an elite African force; augmented by choppers and other equipment, they could go after the killers. Don't hold your breath for the UN to actually do anything.  It prefers, as BS notes, to strut around, bloviate, and--knowingly--look the other way as genocide continues.

While Blackwater personnel are persona non grata in Iraq, due to allegations that the firm used too much force in carrying out its contractual commitments (leading Hillary to sponsor legislation outlawing the use of private security forces overseas), it turns out, reports the Daily Telegraph, that Obama used Blackwater in Afghanistan to protect him and fellow senators Jack Reed & Chuck Hagel.

Index 7/30/08

7 posts: (1) Congress & Justice--The Home Front; (2) Europe's Magic Non-Moment--Wobble Watch; (3) Pelosi's Planetary Purview--The Home Front; (4) Gitmo Trial: Chauffeur Chutzpah--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (5) NYC Bankrupt Again?  DC Bankrupt Soon?--The Ap &  the Cap; (6) Child Rape: Second Chance for the Supremes--The Home Front; (7) Airlines: Jumbo Jet-Set Haven--"It's the Earth Stupid!".

Congress & Justice

The Justice Department indicted Alaska GOP Senator Ted Stevens on seven counts of making false statements with respect to $250,000 in gifts he failed to report on his Senate disclosure forms, that he allegedly accepted from executives of Veco, an energy company for whom he did favors.  The indictment neither alleges a quid pro quo (which would cover bribery) nor does it charge perjury, which applies only to statements made under oath.  The False Statement Statute (Title 18 U.S.C. sec. 1801) is a broad catch-all, with statements normally being made to investigators, often at preliminary stages of a case.  Veco CEO William Allen entered into a plea agreement with investigators and turned state's evidence.

Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) has not been charged with anything arising out of his accepting sweetheart loans from Countrywide Financial, as to whose favored nature Dodd risibly professed ignorance.  Dodd will likely walk, and any financial mess indictments that might be politically damaging will come well after the fall election.  Life, as JFK famously said, is unfair.

Given the GOP's troubles in 2006, this is an ominous development that augurs ill for the GOP's chances this fall.  It cannot help John McCain, either.  A Wall Street Journal editorial suggests that Senator Stevens do his party a favor and step aside, else it hopes Alaska Republicans will retire the Senator (running  for another 6-year term at age 84) come the state's August 26 senatorial primary.

Europe's Magic Non-Moment

Author-columnist Anne Applebaum writes of Obama's challenge to Europe that Europeans will not respond in any serious way.  She quotes a Luxembourg foreign minister's 1992 pronouncement over the Balkans: "This is the hour of Europe."  AA notes that Angela Merkel pointedly declined to commit more combat troops to Afghanistan.  She suggests that Europe could win big points by going to the White House come January, with either candidate as president, and offer real help in return for a real partnership. But she says that in the end this will fail, as Europe will pass on making such an offer:

The truth, shown by the brief Obama visit, is that few European statesmen look on changes in Washington as an opportunity to propose something new. Most simply feel relief that President Bush will be gone, coupled with anxiety about what is to come next.

And as the election gets closer, the anxiety will grow. In a strange sense, Mr. Bush's catastrophic diplomacy was a gift to Europe's politicians. "Bush allowed them to explain away radical Islam as an understandable, even legitimate, response to the hypocrisies and iniquities of American policy," wrote one British columnist this week. He also allowed them to blame American "unilateralism" for their own lack of initiative, to use bad American diplomacy as an excuse for doing nothing.

Yet herewith Obama, noted by the Wall Street Journal editors, showing a gaucherie that led German parliament members on Sunday to repudiate Germany's "commitment" to do more: Obama said that Germany's upped ante would enable tax cuts for middle-income American families.  Germany has no intention of paying for our tax cuts, which would, among other things, make America more competitive.  Said one German leader: "it is the opposite of solidarity and partnership when one side is to make more sacrifices and the other gains an advantage from it."

WSJ's Bret Stephens sees the Berlin Obama missed: an economic distaste since the Wall came down, due to profligate spending; This Berlin, "hip, sexy, sophisticated and tolerant," is, BS writes, a city of "wasted promise."  Sounds like an Obama presidency, doesn't it?  Russian human rights activist Garry Kasparov (ex-world chess champ) fingers another Obama shortcoming re Europe: his apparent desire to kowtow to the Kremlin in pursuit of friendship.  In doing so Obama will echo Europe, as, writes economist Michael Boskin (CEA chairman under Bush I), he will also do with is high-tax + trade protectionist economic policy proposals.

Obama's linking of domestic tax cuts to European commitments in Afghanistan is a gaffe of epic proportion, but most of the media missed it entirely.  They are, Lisa Fabizio writes in TAS, too enamored of Europe--despite many Europeans' contempt for "cowboy America," to notice.  What, then, may be the Big European Story for 2009?  If this LA Times op-ed in on the money, we may finally see the breakup of Belgium, a Velvet Divorce II for Flemings & Walloons.  More like the breakup of the former Czechoslovakia than the former Yugoslavia.

Would Americans notice?  Of a Belgium breakup what comes to mind is Dorothy Parker's crack, upon being told that Calvin "Silent Cal" Coolidge had passed on: "How can they tell?"

Pelosi's Planetary Purview

Let this Politico item tell you all you need to know about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  Calling alternative energy the "chronometer of our time"--Pelosi is an enthusiast for the great European explorers of the Age of Discovery--she says, of blocking GOP energy proposals via parliamentary maneuver, “I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet.  I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy.”

Pelosi's planetary pretensions boggle the rational mind.  Who does she think she is, the Hindu deity Vishnu (Preserver)?  Laugh one might, but this exemplifies a certain attitude among Democratic leaders.  Al Gore has numerous statements like this on record--testifying before Congress last year on global warming, Gore likened himself to the leader of "The 300" Spartan heroes then commemorated in a movie.

Save the planet?  The "fatal conceit" economist Frederich Hayek spoke of, about government's presumed ability to run national economic affairs, is there, in amusingly expanded form.  Except that the policies Pelosi will pursue will have consequences not likely to be amusing to many.

On, by the way, St. Nancy of San Fran, if you really can save our planet, how come you could not prevent yesterday's California quake?  A mere 5.4 Richter scale should be easy work for Planet President Pelosi.  All of which leaves one question: Who might save us from those who would "save the planet"?

Gitmo Trial: Chauffeur Chutzpah

You have to admire the chutzpah of the lawyers representing Osama's chauffeur at the Guantanamo habeas proceeding.  The Washington Post reports that Salim Ahmed Hamdan's lawyers are asserting that for most of their client's service to Osama, al-Qaeda was not at war with America.  They assert, incredibly, that the war started on September 11, 2001 (guess who started it).  A law professor from South Texas College was asked if he had heard of bin Laden's 1998 fatwa declaring war against Uncle Sam, to which he replied, with no hint of understatement: "I'll concede that it is something to look at."

What about Osama's 1996 fatwa 1996?  The 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia?  The twin US embassy bombings in Africa in 1998?  Well, the US took a law enforcement stance then, so maybe the Gitmo tribunal will buy the defense's argument.  Stay tuned: the legal system is on trial here, as much as the defendant.  The charge: incipient insanity.

NYC Bankrupt Again? DC Bankrupt Soon?

NYC.  Manhattan Institute scholar Nicole Gelinas explains how The Big Apple came to its worst financial state in over 30 years: Mayor Mike took the mega-injection of taxes revenue from Wall Street's boom and spent it on John Lindsay-style social programs.  Bloomberg has grown NYC spending at 22% annually, versus 9% under Rudy; social program take as large a share of the budget as in 1974, at 25%.  The problem: the financial crisis has undermined spending plans based upon revenues from Wall Street's cash cow.  Because Wall Street has admitted it could not accurately price risk, investors will be spooked for a long time.  So it is "deja vu all over again" for Gotham.

What makes this so awful is that Mike knows better.  A huge success in Wall Street, Mike understands the Street's oft wicked ways.  A huge success in business, turning himself from a millionaire securities trader into a billionaire provider of essential equipment for traders the world over, Mike understands business and entrepreneurship.  So when he takes his city down the same garden path to financial ruin that the clueless political hacks of the Lindsay and Beame eras did a generation ago, he lacks their excuse of abysmal ignorance of the private sector.

Mayor Mike once wanted to be UN Secretary-General, a post he could not get, because no one from any of the 5 permanent members of the Security Council can be chosen, per custom.  Too bad, because while his world-view is essentially the same the mayor is at least honest, and might have improved UN administration (not hard).

DC.  Manhattan Institute scholar Howard Huscock flags bipartisan federal policy as having fostered the mess at Fannie & Freddie, who pursued "affordable housing goals and subgoals" set for them by the Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD), and the absurdly misnamed Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992.  In 2005 HUD reported that 8.5 million families benefited from these rules.  Husock translates the government-speak:

How are such affordable housing goals to be achieved? As recently as April of this year, Fannie Mae said it would use those government-written rules. Fannie actually boasted of "mortgage products and options" which included "reduced requirements for down payment and closing costs; choices for borrowers with less-than-perfect credit; and flexibility to provide loans to home buyers with no traditional credit history." The effects were not minor.

Minor indeed.  Trillions at risk at something, but "minor" does not come to mind.  US News & World Report editor-in-chief Mort Zuckerman calls Fannie & Freddie "too fat to fail" and notes that their equity cushion of $80 billion would be wiped out by a 2% decline in their $5.5 trillion mortgage portfolio.  Democrats bear special responsibility, having flagellated lenders for "redlining" poor neighborhoods, denying credit-worthy borrowers access to capital.  In July 2004 the National Association of Realtors warned Washington:

As great as they are, the uncertainties involved in measuring past performance are dwarfed by the uncertainties involved in predicting performance in future years which, in the end, must serve as the basis for establishing the GSE goals. ... Increases in housing prices have exceeded income growth in the past few years, interest rates are on the rise, and rental markets are soft. And ... the credit scores of renters have declined significantly over time, reducing the number of qualified borrowers.

Sage advice.  Like most sage advice offered inside the Beltway, it was ignored.  Taxpayers will, as usual, foot the bill.

Chld Rape: Second Chance for the Supremes

Ace constitutional scholar Terry Eastland raises the intriguing prospect that the Supreme Court might grant a re-hearing in its now infamous June 2008 ruling declaring capital punishment for child rape unconstitutional; SCOTUS Blog rreports on the government's motion (12 pages).  The Court has granted only 22 re-hearings in its 219-year history.  The Court's ruling invalidated a 2006 federal law making child rape punishable by death in military courts, a law that the Court somehow missed.  It invalidated Louisiana's law based in part upon a presumed national consensus against capital punishment for child rape--a fictive one, at that.  Well, a national law passed by Congress and signed by the president would appear to be, as the only expression of national will on the subject, contrary to the Court's ruling.  The Court still can assert, as Justice Kennedy did, that death for child rape is disproportionate under the Eighth Amendment, but doing so against a legislated expression of national consensus is a tougher sell, and would represent a naked exercise of judicial fiat.  Yet re-hearing seems unlikely, for one simple reason: None of the 5 in the majority are likely to admit they made a gross error of law, nor to repudiate their moral (not legal) judgment that the death penalty is too severe.  Pray that I am wrong on this.

Airlines: Jumbo Jet-Set Haven

Emirates, the flagship airline of Dubai, offers super-luxury on its Airbus A380s (a/k/a, on LFTC, the "Flying Fat Albert"), as this photo gallery (10 images) posted by the Sydney Morning Herald shows.  Most fliers will, on the A380 as on other planes, be flying in a glorified Greyhound bus, but a few folks will, it seems, be comfortable.  The real 21st century jet set, naturally, flies private planes.

Index 7/29/08

6 posts: (1) Pakistan: Stroke and Strike--Wobble Watch; (2)  Is McCain Leading?--The Home Front; (3) Can Obama Seal the Deal?  Can McCain Scotch It?--The Home Front; (4) The Law Wars: Islamists Target the Prosecutor--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (5) Dollar Doldrums--The Home Front; (6) Beijing Haze Daze; Arctic Ices Up--"It's the Earth Stupid!"

Pakistan: Stroke & Strike

President Bush met yesterday with Pakistani PM Yousef Raza Gilani (don't his last two names sound like a former NYC mayor?) at the White House, hours after a drone strike in the Pakistani tribal areas killed 6, possibly including a top al-Qaeda weapons expert who, however, was wrongly reported killed in a 2006 strike, so keep your fingers crossed.  Perhaps the next time we meet the Iranians it will be hours after we have destroyed a facility inside Iran that manufactures the explosive devices that kill American & Iraqi soldiers.

Is McCain Leading?

A new Gallup/USA Today poll shows Big Mac up by 4 points, a 10-point swing since the same poll last June.  How come this result, versus a 9-point lead in a different Gallup poll?  Simple: the 9-point Obama lead came in a survey of registered voters; the 4-point McCain lead came in a survey of likely voters.  Likely voters tilt more toward the GOP.  Nothing, of course, is settled by this, but beware of any poll not taken of likely voters.  LFTC will try to flag this, and be more specific in future references to polls.  Karl Rove cautions, however, that without looking at the "internals" one cannot place much stock in any poll.

Can Obama Seal the Deal? Can McCain Scotch It?

Obama's "Real" Deals.  For much of the 2008 campaign I have felt that the race is Barack Obama's to lose.  I have changed my mind.  The formulation by GOP pollster Neal Newhouse is best: He flips the "Obama's race to lose" by saying that the race is Obama's to win. Put another way, Obama does not win unless he makes a major gaffe; he wins if he can close the sale with voters being comfortable having him in the Oval Office.  Robert Novak sees a similar task, but adds numbers to the racial equation: 10 to 15 percent of white voters remain skeptical of voting for a black presidential candidate.  Neither Obama nor McCain have crossed the 50% acceptance threshold, but Obama's problem may prove tougher to overcome.  Politics maven Jay Cost argues that Obama's messianic casting interferes with his ability to connect with skeptical voters, who are wary of messiahs; Cost also comes up with a devastating analogy for both campaign styles of organization: Obama is Felix Unger to McCain's Oscar Madison.

McCain's "Scotch" Strategy.  Philip Terzian ccompares the 2008 race to 1948, when Thomas Dewey lost a can't-lose race to incumbent Harry Truman, and finds the key in the race being about character and personality:

Like a certain junior senator from Illinois, Dewey was famous for his well-groomed appearance, something of a stuffed shirt in manner, largely devoid of a sense of humor, indignant about criticism of himself, and a smooth orator who specialized in self-aggrandizing bromides ("We enter upon a campaign to unite America. On January 20 we will enter upon a new era. We propose to install .  .  . an administration which has faith in the American people, a warm understanding of their needs, and the competence to meet them"). He was also, like Barack Obama, just 46 years old, and widely regarded as an overnight sensation.

Above all, it was an overweening self-confidence that undermined the Republican candidate. The Democrats had controlled the White House for 16 years, and public opinion polls indicated that voters were ready for change. But the governor and his advisers were so beguiled by their early poll readings and press coverage, and persuaded that the campaign was over before it had begun, that a self-protective Dewey did not so much run for the presidency as pose and occasionally speak in anticipation of election.

Terzian notes that HST ran against  "do-nothing Congress", a theme Bill Kristol expands upon in his latest column:

For it will become increasingly obvious, as we approach November, that the Democrats will continue to control Congress for the next couple of years. But if the voters elect Obama as president, they’ll be putting Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in untrammeled control of our future.

In 1948, a Republican Congress, which had taken power two years before with great expectations after a decade and a half of Democratic control, had become unpopular. Harry Truman lambasted it as a no-good, do-nothing Congress — and he rode that assault to the White House. We’ll soon start hearing more from McCain about the deficiencies of today’s surge-opposing, drilling-blocking, earmark-loving Congress.

Thus, Mac's best hope, now that Obama has triangulated close to Mac on foreign policy, may be to focus on a Congress whose poll numbers run 1/2 to, at times, as low as 1/3 those for unpopular George W. Bush.  This is less issue-specific: the prospect of a unified Democratic trinity--White House, House + filibuster-proof Senate--running amok.  Low trust in Obama, and in Congress, may make Mac the "comfortable old shoe" choice for anxious voters.  If the "change you can believe in" option  rings risky, voters sitting on the fence may tip for Big Mac.

X Factors.  There are 4 "X" possibilities: (1) the debates; (2) Israel's domestic politics; (3) the "events, dear boy, events" of which English PM Harold Macmillan spoke of, to a cub reporter, 50 years ago--unexpected events that turn an election upside down; (4) early voting, which begins Sept. 22 in Virginia.  The last numbers I saw were that perhaps 1/3 of voters will vote early.  How early they vote can upset the first three factors.

Once again, there are the debates, which have arguably decided 5 of 9 presidential contests since they were first introduced in 1960 (there were no debates in 1964, 1968 & 1972): 1960 (JFK closed the sale on TV as to his presidential stature, versus a lackluster Nixon, though RN won in the opinion of radio listeners); 1976 (Gerald Ford's "Poles do not feel dominated by the Soviet Union" gaffe cost him momentum against a sagging Jimmy Carter); 1980 (in their one head-to-head debate, one week before Election Day, Ronald Reagan reassured Americans that he would not start a nuclear war, as Jimmy Carter said he would "ask Amy", his 12 year-old daughter, for advice on nuclear proliferation); 1988 (Michael Dukakis's bloodless technocrat answer to a question about what he would do were his wife raped & murdered was chalk screeching on the blackboard to women voters--the Duke's ridiculous tank ride news clip didn't help, either); 2000 (Al Gore's appalling behavior during his first debate with George W. Bush--grimacing, shaking his head, smirking, waving his arms, stepping in front of Bush, nauseated voters).  Only in 1992, 1996 & 2004 do the debates appear not to have made a major difference in election outcome.

Courtesy of the Commission on Presidential Debates here is the schedule for 2008's four 90-minute debates: Sept. 26, foreign policy; Oct. 2, V-P debate; Oct. 7, town meeting, questioners--including some participating via the Internet--choose subjects; Oct. 15, foreign policy.  Debates 1,2 & 4 will feature a single moderator seated at a table with the candidates, with 8 10-minute issue segments, plus opening and closing statements.  These are the primary chances for "lose" or "win" comments, for the candidates.  They will be framed in sharp relief because no third-party candidate is likely to be anywhere near the 15% threshold needed to earn the right to participate in the debates.

Dick Morris & Eileen McGann float yet another factor, on few American radar screens: Israel's mid- to late-Sept. primary for the Kadima Party founded by Ariel Sharon.  Lefty Tzipi Livni (Israel's Condi Rice) vs. ex-Army Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz.  Livni's once solid lead is now but 2 points.  Livni is a dove on Iran; Mofaz is a hawk.  Mofaz might make a coalition with Benjamin Netanyahu's hawkish Likud Party.  Morris speculates that Israel then might strike before our November election, because Obama might, if he wins, urge Israel not to act before he takes office, and Israel might not risk Obama's displeasure at the outset of a new administration.  A strike pre-November could make foreign affairs the top election issue, and could thus give Mac the win.

Events can intervene.  In 2004, two events could have tipped the election: Abu Ghraib, which surfaced in April, and Beslan, the horrific terrorist attack by Chechens against a school in Russia, that killed over 300 child hostages, which came at the end of August. By the fall, Abu Ghraib was old news, defanged by a summer report attributing it to individual aberration rather than endemic institutional failure; Beslan came as moms sent their kids off to school to start the new year.  Flip the two events in time, and security moms might have voted differently in November.  In 1996 Clinton won re-election partly due to his 1995 outmaneuvering of Newt Gingrich over the government partial shutdown that enraged voters; Clinton actually shut things down, but GOP rhetoric convinced voters (with a big assist from the media) that the GOP had done it.  In 1992 George Bush Sr.'s embrace of a massive tax hike in October, reneging on his 1988 "Read my lips: no new taxes" pledge, sealed his fate.  (The 1972 & 1984 races featured Democrats--George McGovern in '72 & Walter Mondale in '84--perceived as far too liberal to be entitled to unseat incumbents; Nixon benefited from Vietnam peace being close at hand, while Reagan benefited from a booming economy.)

Bottom Line.  Obama needs to cross the comfort zone threshold to be accepted as a plausible Oval Office occupant, which is partly his commander-in-chief problem and partly his toxic pastor race problem.  McCain cannot count on foreign affairs dominating the swing vote, though it might do so; he must add to his campaign mix energy (gas prices tip to GOP's favor, due to Democrat opposition to any offshore drilling), judges (GOP has the edge), a Democratic Congress's mess (earmarks, lack of legislative progress on energy) + spending (where the failure of Bush to veto enough gives McCain a chance to bash Congress--both parties + distance himself from an unpopular incumbent president).  And then there are the X factors.  Stay tuned.

The Law Wars: Islamists Target the Prosecutor

An NY Sun article explains in disturbing detail how militant Islamist groups are using litigation to retaliate against what they assert have been over-zealous prosecution of Islamists, motivated by anti-Muslim bias.  It is an excellent read, and illustrates how radicals once again use our legal system to wage war on our capacity to defend ourselves.

Dollar Doldrums

Economist Martin Feldstein warns that the dollar could still go yet lower, even after a 40% drop.  Our $700 billion trade deficit in 2007 (5% of GDP), Feldstein explains, forces the dollar lower, because the capital flow of $700 billion into American securities (stocks & bonds) is placed in dollars, and when foreigners bid they factor into the price they will pay their assessment of the dollar's proper value.  Thus, a weak dollar & trade deficit are related.  Yet trade deficits and a strong dollar have coincided, too.  Bottom line: you may as well defend a strong dollar, regardless of the trade balance.

Beijing Haze Daze; Arctic Ices Up

The International Herald Tribune ran this photo of a man-made "Foggy Day in Beijing Town" that should give enviro-red-hots whooping cough just looking at it.  Beijing says the air there is cleaner than in 2007.  Suffice it to observe that while, contrary to Ira Gershwin's 1937 lyric about a foggy day in another town, the British Museum has not lost its charm, surely this picture shows that the China Olympics will be charm-free for many athletes & visitors.

Meanwhile news from Norway tells us that north of the Svalbard archipelago there is more ice this year--instead of open water there is ice.  Not true at the Pole this summer, but the Pole is clearly not a proxy for everything north of the Arctic Circle.

Index 7/28/08

6 posts: (1) Barack in Bagram--The Home Front; (2) Extra! Extra! Barack Saves Planet! Solar System!!--"It's The Earth Stupid!"; (3) Iraq: Sadr Shut Out--Us v. Them; (4) Gitmo: Trial Run--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (5) Venezuela: Chavez Revives Anti-Semitism--Us v. Them; (6) Electrocuting Iran?--Us v. Them.

Barack in Bagram: A Soldier's Tale

Now that all the "Barack does the troops, scores three-pointer!" stories are dying down, here is a forwarded e-mail from a Marine captain serving at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, on Barack's visit (sorry for the format difficulties, copying from e-mail):

Hello everyone, As you know I am not a  very  political person. I just wanted to pass along
that Senator  Obama  came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his
visit to 'The  War Zone'.  I wanted to share with you what happened.
He got off the plane and  got  into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area
to meet with the  Major  General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram.

As the Soldiers  where lined  up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn't
say a word as he   went into the conference room to meet the General. As he
finished,   the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top
tent that military personnel  can play basketball or work out in with  weights)
so he could take his publicity  pictures playing  basketball. He again shunned the
opportunity to talk  to Soldiers  to thank them for their service.

So really he was  just here to make a showing for  the American's back home
that he is  their candidate for President.  I think that if you are going to
make an effort to come all  the  way over here you would thank those that are
providing the  freedom  that they are providing for you.

I swear we got more  thanks from the NBA  Basketball Players or the Dallas
Cowboy Cheerleaders than from  one of the Senators, who wants to be the
President  of the United  States. I  just don't understand how anyone would
want him to be  our  Commander-and-Chief. It was almost that he was scared to be
around those that provide the freedom for him and our great country.

If this is blunt and to the point I am sorry but I wanted you  all  to know
what kind of caliber of person he really is. What you  see  in the news is
all  fake.

In service,

For some public figures, life is nothing more, it seems, than an endless series of photo ops.  (Obama's people protest that he has visited Walter Reed without cameras present; I accept this, but this tour was about photo ops above all else, on the fair evidence of it.)  Then again, if you are a Marine, wouldn't you rather get "up close & personal" with the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders?  That is one poll the Obama camp will not chance.

Extra! Extra! Barack Saves Planet! Solar System!!

Times of London columnist Gerard Baker is at his acerbically witty best in his "He ventured forth to bring light to the world" Friday column, satirizing brilliantly the media's hagiography of Obama.  A Sunday Times article gives added flavor, detailing his stops with Tony Blair, PM Gordon Brown and opposition leader David Cameron; the Times detected "a hint of Diana-mania, a touch of Obama Mia!" in his UK reception.  On ABC News This Week George Will called "narcissism elevated to a metaphysic" Obama's Berlin opus, which, Will added, amounted to "no metaphor left behind."  On TAS, John Tabin presents a portrait of the Tiergarten crowd that listened to Obama, and notes that Obama's staff, ever thorough, canvassed the crowd looking for Americans they could register to vote come November.

To be fair, National Review Online editors thought better of his speech, listing points of agreement with conservatives; NRO did, however, find it too utopian.  Yet NRO prefers utopian to leftist radicals, and sees Obama as the former.  Manhattan Institute scholar Steven Malanga sees Obama as our first would-be community-organizer president; his roots, like those of Hillary, lie with Chicago activist Saul Alinsky.  Hill went hard left; Barack may achieve more by funding community groups at higher levels than Hill did as First Lady, many of whom are radical.

Victor Davis Hanson catches the whiff of American culpability, and that of giving credit to all, rather than just the allies, for defeating the USSR in the Cold war; Obama's "citizen of the world" is his genuflection to, and identification with, global transnational elites.  Hanson also predicts that Obama's Euro-adulators will not come to love America more.  John Cullinan of NRO rebuts Obama's citation of Belfast as a place where, since the 1998 Good Friday peace accord, walls have come down; in fact, residential segregation has increased, a quite logical, if politically incorrect) consequence of the ending of a protracted, bitter, ethnic conflict.  Jeff Jacoby's Boston Globe column echoes the theme of Obama being one-world rather than alliance-oriented in his historical view, and adds what Harry Truman wrote in his diary during the Berlin Airlift, that separates HST from BO: We'll stay in Berlin -- come what may.  I don't pass the buck, nor do I alibi out of any decision I make."

Jim Gergahty's Campaign Spot entry captures the speech perfectly.  Just as Al Gore's enviro-screed "Earth in the Balance" was replete with passages that are indistinguishable from the Unabomber's screed, so Obama's speech contains quotes inseparable from the lyrics of "We are the World."  Check the link and take the mini-quiz!!  Ace diplomat John Bolton thinks Barack is on another planet, metaphorically, in that he perceives "one world"--a concept, JB notes, that, ironically, was first coined by a GOP presidential candidate (Wendell Wilkie in 1940)--where in fact there is not the commonality of perception and understanding the term implies.

This is true despite Obama's "a proud citizen of the United States" that preceded it.  Put simply, unlike dual national citizenship, citizen of the world is a designation inconsistent with national citizenship.  For citizen status to be meaningful it must exclude being a citizen somewhere, as dual national citizenship does.  If we are all world citizens, then no one is a citizen in any meaningful sense.  We may reasonably believe in a global human community, but not the legal definition implied by global citizen status.

Historian Walter Russell Mead discerns irony in Obama's trip: He has moved close to President Bush on the war, on Iraq & Iran, thus benefiting from an emerging consensus that he, Obama, stood squarely against until becoming presumptive nominee of his party.

GOP pollster Kellyanne Fitzpatrick punctures the notion that Obamamania abroad will tilt the election back home; among her numbers is one showing that by 55-35 voters consider Obama a riskier choice than John McCain.  In other words, Obama has yet to close the sale with the American electorate, even as European publics (not their foreign ministries) have already elected him Emperor Divine--like the Japanese emperor from medieval times to 1946, above mere politics.  A July 23 - 25 Gallup poll shows Obama up 7 nationally; a July 24 - 26 Gallup poll shows Obama up 9.  The latest (posted 3 AM Monday, July 28) Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows Obama up by only 5, 46 - 41.

Confirming Obama's poll problems is a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, reported in the July 23 WSJ.  It also shows the widest-ever young-old generation gap, and a racial chasm.  Besides the 89-3 edge Obama has among blacks, 10% of voters say race is a dominant factor, compared to 6% one month ago; 6% of whites say so, vs. 5% a month ago, while 20% of blacks say so.  Times have indeed changed, as Obama likes to say; today race is taboo--for proof, check out this YouTube video (4:39) of Don Rickles roasting Sammy Davis on the Dean Martin Celebrity Roast, sometime in 1975-76 (you can tell by two clues); watch the whole politically incorrect video to catch all the flavor.

On fitness for office, whereas 50% of voters say they are focused on what kind of president Obama might be, only 25% express similar concerns about Bag Mac (voters are more concerned that Mac will be a Bush Jr. third term).  Perhaps Jay Leno's quip that Obama had just been elected German Chancellor captures his Berlin boffo best.

Iraq: Sadr Shut Out

An NY Times front-pager details how thug-cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, the most dangerous Shia militia, has been defeated.  Merchants no longer pay protection money to the MA.  But the MA may not be gone for good, if the Iraqi government fails to deliver needed services.  Gains remain reversible.  The article is an excellent read.  Even the Gray Lady gets it eight, from time(s) to time(s).

Gitmo: Trial Run

A Washington Post front-pager reports that the trial (actually a habeas corpus hearing) of Osama's chauffeur is seen by the government as a test case for the tribunal system, and envisioned as a slam-dunk conviction.  Perhaps this will come to pass.  But this will still not prove that our legal system is a good one for such cases.  Besides that unlawful combatants should not have benefit of trial, if conviction comes with evidence that administration critics think should be excluded, look for accusations of "kangaroo court" coming from the usual suspects.  Still, having gone to trial, we must hope for conviction, regardless of how critics react.

Venezuela: Chavez Revives Anti-Semitism

There is great female beauty in Venezuela, as Miss Universe 2008 attests; and there is great ugliness, too, as this Wall Street Journal article illustrates: Hugo Chavez's thuggish rule features a resurgence of anti-Semitism.  One-third of Venezuela's Jews have fled the country since Chavez took over.

Electrocuting Iran?

Iran risks running afoul of American & Israeli electronic warfare capability, writes national security maven George Wittman in TAS.  As Syria learned last September, such capabilities can radically degrade defenses.

Special Update: LGF Fumbles Discovery Institute

Little Green Footballs is a widely-read blog, with much to recommend, but it fumbled recently in incorrectly naming Discovery Institute as a pro-Islamic militant (among other things) think tank.  The entry linked above was authored by Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman.  Bruce cites my book, The Long War Ahead and the Short War Upon Us, as evidence that Discovery is not soft on radical Islam.  LFTC readers know this, but should also know that Discovery Institute is not soft on radical Islam, either.

Index 7/25/08

7 posts: (1) The War: My Hudson Institute Interview--Us v. Them; (2) Berlin: Barack the un-Bismarck--Wobble Watch; (3) F-22 Raptor Rapture--The Home Front; (4) Stealth Destroyer: Cost Capture--The Home Front; (4) Law & War: A Prosecutor Indicts the Courts--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (5) Guantanamo: Driving Mr. Osama--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (6) War Powers: Time for Reform?--The Home Front; (7) William Buckley: Online Archive--The Home Front.

The War: My Hudson Institute Interview

On Monday, July 21, Hudson Institute scholar S. Enders Wimbush Interviewed me on war issues and my book, The Long War Ahead and the Short War Upon Us.  Part I (8:07) & Part II (8;40) are posted on YouTube.

Berlin: Barack the un-Bismarck

Amity Shlaes offers rich historical detail about the symbol of Prussian militarism that Barack chose for his Berlin superstar tour.  Somehow "blood & iron" does not seem like a good campaign slogan for 2008.  Former Reagan National Security Adviser Richard Allen compares Obama's travels with presidents past, and finds him a piker by comparison.  Joseph Joffe, a prominent German publisher and longtime Atlanticist policy maven, predicts disappointment for Europeans who regard Obama as Redeemer & Savior post-Bush; if elected, Obama will preside over the world's greatest power, and it is America's power that Europeans ultimately dislike most.  A German magazine, Der Spiegel Online, reports that the crowd of 200,000 left with "mixed feelings."  Here is more on Germany "wobbliness."

Here is Obama's "A World That Stands as One" speech, delivered yesterday at Berlin's Victory Column.  David Brooks calls it s "Disney speech" whose sole substantive comment, about Germany sending more troops to Afghanistan, will be studiously ignored in pacifist Germany; JFK & Ronald Reagan, by contrast, were hard-headed realists who spoke soberly and substantively in their Berlin classics.  JFK's "Let them come to Berlin!" was a challenge to people who doubted the vast difference between freedom and communism, between West and East.  Ronald Regan's "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" was a clarion call to the East to embrace freedom.  That speech, the Wall Street Journal notes aptly, was greeted by 10,000 protesters chanting "warmonger" etc.; yet Reagan passed up popularity for statesmanship, and spoke of things many in his 1987 audience did not want to hear.

My take.  Start with the one graceful part, riffing off of a Berlin mayor's speech during the Berlin Airlift and echoing JFK's "Let them come to Berlin!" theme:

But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city's mayor implore the world not to give up on freedom. "There is only one possibility," he said. "For us to stand together united until this battle is won...The people of Berlin have spoken. We have done our duty, and we will keep on doing our duty. People of the world: now do your duty...People of the world, look at Berlin!"

People of the world - look at Berlin!

Look at Berlin, where Germans and Americans learned to work together and trust each other less than three years after facing each other on the field of battle.

Look at Berlin, where the determination of a people met the generosity of the Marshall Plan and created a German miracle; where a victory over tyranny gave rise to NATO, the greatest alliance ever formed to defend our common security.

Look at Berlin, where the bullet holes in the buildings and the somber stones and pillars near the Brandenburg Gate insist that we never forget our common humanity.

People of the world - look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.

The substance?  Utopian and multiculturalist.  So America is not yet "perfected?"  Which country is?  Who is?  So we in the West must reject a Cold War mentality as to Russia?  Someone, tell Barack, that the revival of Cold War antipathy has been a central theme not of any Western leader, but of Vladimir Putin.  Mr. Bush professed to peer into the ex-KGB agent's soul and see a good person.  (Recall Jeane Kirkpatrick's famous 1984 speech at the GOP Convention, on the "San Francisco Democrats": "They always blame America first.")

But above all, Obama's "wall" theme is to tear down all the differences that divide people on every issue, pairing terrorism with carbon emissions, and calling for everyone to love one another.  Not for him is our grand challenge the rise of Islamist extremism:

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.

The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

We know they have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people of Europe have formed a Union of promise and prosperity. Here, at the base of a column built to mark victory in war, we meet in the center of a Europe at peace. Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together; in the Balkans, where our Atlantic alliance ended wars and brought savage war criminals to justice; and in South Africa, where the struggle of a courageous people defeated apartheid.

So history reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is never easy. True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.

"Trust each other?"  Did Gerhard Schroeder & Jacques Chirac trust anyone but themselves?  "Walls between Christian and Muslim and Jew?"  What "wall" have Christians and Jews erected against the great mass of Muslims?  Supporting dictators in a Mideast where liberal democrats did not exist, in preference to other dictators?  Mosques exist in Jerusalem and Rome, but where are the synagogues and churches in Mecca?  America has welcomed Muslims, who intermarry, and earn more, on average, than Americans as a whole; the number of bias incidents against Muslims each year--even since 9/11--is no greater per capita than those against Jews. 

It is Europe that has not allowed social and economic assimilation of its Muslim immigrants, so maybe that is the wall Obama meant?  But somehow I doubt Obama differentiates between America and Europe on this.  Nor does he mention--perhaps out of diplomacy--that it is Europeans who happily did immense commercial business with Saddam and now do so, and have done so for decades, with Iran's mullahs, despite the latter's pursuit of nuclear weapons and long-time sponsorship of terrorism against the West, especially against Israel and Europe.

In sum, Obama's Berlin address is worse than a pure "Kumbaya" speech would have been.  It is tone-deaf to reality, however mellifluous its video sound bites.  How does one say "empty suit" in German?

F-22: Raptor Rapture

The Weekly Standard salutes the F-22 Raptor, America's and the world's finest fighter plane.  Said one well-connected US industry observer:

The F-22 has such remarkable aerodynamic performance--and you could see it here on Monday--that the pilots are still learning all that it can do.  It is such a several orders of magnitude change in capability that it will take our pilots some time to fully recognize the potential of the aircraft. It is not unlike the experience the USAF had when they transitioned from F-4 Phantoms to the first F-15 models.

Now for some real couch-potato fun.  Here is a weapons-release video that shows how the F-22 releases missiles, which are carried internally to preserve Stealth profile (stop the video at 2 minutes, when hangar footage is showing, as the anarchic noise not music gets nastier and the lyrics, now in English, turn nastier still).  For more, try this dizzying takeoff video (31 sec.).  Here is a neat maneuver video (7:17) showing the Raptor going through its paces.  Also check out this minimum radius turn (34 sec.), which ends with a spectacular vertical breakout, and the flatter fishhook turn (20 sec.); see also this swift vertical climb (31 sec.) out of slow level flight.  This shorter (2:47) F-22 "Cobra" video shows the plane doing the Cobra maneuver, and features narrative from a real F-22 pilot, albeit the F-22's "Cobra" is less extreme this the MiG-29 "Cobra" (16 sec.).  (Check out "Pugachev's Cobra", named after the pilot who first performed the maneuver in 1989.)  Try not to faint watching this F-22 flat spin (1:06).

The F-22 Raptor is King of the Skies.  One Red Flag 2007 (simulated combat exercise) account has a pilot saying that his instruments could not even see the Raptor when he saw it visually, for purposes of target acquisition!  At distance, the F-22 can sneak up and "kill" F-15s with ease; reports have 2 Raptors doing so versus 8 F-15s at once.  It features integrated avionics that make it vastly easier for pilots to make crucial decisions in flight, and can sustain 9G (nine times the weight of gravity, a limit range for humans in the air) far longer than an F-15.  It is easier to maintain, and its "super-cruise" feature enables it to sustain supersonic flight, while lowering fuel consumption; all other planes use an afterburner to go supersonic, and burn fuel faster and thus must cut speed back sooner.  (Supersonic flight is not for close-in engagements.)

As for cost, here is Wiki's F-22 Raptor page with lots of figures.  One is that the incremental cost of an F-22 is $138 million, whereas the plane's cost is often reported as over $300 million; figure, as numbers constantly vary, that sunk cost accounts for 45% of the Raptor's total official cost.  The latter figure includes sunk costs, which increase per plane as the total buy is reduced.  The original 750-plane buy is now 183, and thus more than four times as much fixed cost is allocated per plane, as an accounting entry.  This does not equal the actual cost of production, to which sunk costs are an economic irrelevancy.  Factor in superior capability--compare one F-22 to the number of F-15s it can shoot down, etc.--and the F-22 is a bargain.

Bonus: VTOL video of the F-35, the world's first plane to take off vertically and fly supersonic in level flight; only 12 seconds, it shows how a turbofan lifts the plane, so that the field is not scorched by jet exhaust.

Let's hear it, once more with feeling, for America's superlative military aerospace industry.

Stealth Destroyer: Cost Capture

The Navy's super new DDX Zumwalt Class Destroyer is pricey at about $3 billion each.  But as the linked page shows it is a dandy, that can revolutionize naval warfare close to shore.  The ship will be all-electric, will have a pair of 155mm (6-inch) guns with 100-mile range, and can be fitted with electromagnetic rail-gun technology, enabling firing of hypersonic non-explosive shells that kill with kinetic energy and pose less risk to the ship.

America, BTW, is not the only country building Stealth-capable ships.  Sweden's Visby class corvette is a nifty number, designed for mine-sweeping and anti-sub warfare.

So the Navy plans to end the program now, after only two Zumwalt boats were ordered.  Pennywise and pound-foolish.  Our sailors deserve the best American money can buy.  With a $3 trillion budget, of course we can afford $3 billion ships.  The deficit?  Name one war that was won by accountants.  In war, spend what it takes to win, and worry about the economics afterward.

Law & War: A Prosecutor Indicts the Courts

Ace terror Prosecutor Andy McCarthy proposes a fix for the legal mess described Wednesday in LFTC: Congress should invoke the Suspension Clause of the federal Constitution, and suspend the writ of habeas corpus as applied to aliens held on foreign soil, thus overturning the egregious June 12 Supreme Court Boumediene decision.  McCarthy goes into easily-understood detail that only an experienced prosecutor can supply, as to the potential--even probable--permutations of the Supreme Court's ruling.

Another option is for Congress to apply the Exceptions Clause of the Constitution, and deprive the Supreme Court of subject-matter jurisdiction (the power to hear a given class of cases) entirely.  This 5-pager discusses how Congress might do so, and why it should consider doing so (the article is three years old, but the authors likely feel stronger after recent excesses by the Supreme Court, although the article as written does not discuss war cases).

My own view is that suspending habeas corpus for aliens held overseas would be a great idea, which is why there is no chance Congress will do it.  As for the Exceptions Clause, no major use of its has been made in 219 years of government under the Constitution.  It will not happen here, although getting the courts out of war cases would be a big boost.

Guantanamo: Driving Mr. Osama

Ace terror prosecutor Andy McCarthy reports on the Guantanamo habeas corpus hearing for Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's chauffeur, who was captured in Afghanistan and, surely at the time, never imagined that his name would be half the caption of a landmark Supreme Court case.  McCarthy notes that the defendant did more than merely drive a terror chief:

We learn, for example, that he functioned as a trusted member of al-Qaeda’s inner circle. He provided security when bin Laden would rendezvous with his top deputies, such as Ayman al-Zawahiri and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to discuss terror plots. Thus, the mere “driver” was on hand when bin Laden explained to Mohammed “that he had expected to kill 1,000 to 1,500 people in the [9/11] attacks, rather than the nearly 3,000 who died.”

Moreover, Hamdan helped prepare evacuations so that bin Laden could escape in the event — as it usually happened, the non-event — of any U.S. retaliatory operations. He was also one of the very few al-Qaeda members permitted to carry arms in close proximity to the world’s most wanted man (y’know, so he could, like, stay alive).

McCarthy explains in crisp detail how low-level members of organizations, since 1971, have been prosecuted, using the racketeering model: anyone who knowingly aids a criminal enterprise even be prosecuted without having committed specific unlawful acts.  So, Salim did not need to bomb a cafe to be detained.  Then McCarthy gives the heart of the prosecutor's evidence.

"[The case's] most significant detail [was] rendered by the witness Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who interviewed Hamdan at length:

In advance of attacks, Mr. Soufan said, Mr. Hamdan would often be alerted to prepare vehicles for a rapid move, in case of an American retaliation. He added that Mr. Hamdan came to believe that Washington’s failure to launch massive retaliations after the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa and the 2000 Cole bombing emboldened Mr. bin Laden. The al Qaeda leader believed the U.S. would never send ground troops to pursue him in Afghanistan."

Whether this kind of testimony suffices to win a denial of habeas corpus remains to be seen.  If Hamdan wins the proceeding, and is then not released, expect all hell to break loose (as noted Wednesday in LFTC).

War Powers: Time for Reform?

The National War Powers Commission (NWPC) issued a 72-page report (50 pages + appendices) that calls for repeal of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, and its replacement with a new law, which they suggest be titled the National War Powers Consultation Act of 2009.  The NWPC was co-chaired by former Secretaries of State James Baker (Bush I) and Warren Christopher (Clinton I).  The report is an earnest effort to resolve the widely criticized 1973 act, with a law that draws upon 35 years of lessons.  The new law skirts unresolvable constitutional issues, and puts in place a formalized consultation process with Congressional leaders, with narrow exceptions for such matters as covert operations and surprise strikes.  Because what constitutes "hostilities" within the meaning of the 1973 act was undefined, the new law would specify "significant armed conflict" as a trigger for consultation (save enumerated exceptions), and put a one-week time limit before the "significant" trigger is crossed.

The report reads well enough for the interested lay reader to digest the details.  From my vantage point, the problem is simple: since September 11, 2001--and I say this as a disappointed supporter of President Bush--the conduct of Congress has been, with all too rare exceptions, stupefying irresponsibility and contemptibly extreme partisanship.  OK, I am a Republican, but consider the following points.

1.  Congress approved the administration's actions in Afghanistan, but when interception of communications became an issue in 2005 upon disclosure of the National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program, Congress denied that communications intercepts, always an incident of war, had been authorized--this despite the "Gang of Eight" senior leaders having been briefed regularly by the President on the TSP.

2.  When the abuses of Abu Ghraib surfaced in 2004, despite these clearly being deviations from the broadly exemplary conduct of our military, Congress went into grandstanding mode--weeks of public caterwauling that only helped recruit more jihadists worldwide.  It repeated the performance with its endless keening over our having waterboarded three senior terrorists--interrogations that yielded 25 percent of our human intel re al-Qaeda.

3.  Congress voted by a strong bipartisan majority to authorize the Iraq War.  When the intel turned out to have been disastrously flawed as to Saddam possessing WMD stockpiles the Democratic mantra became "Bush lied, people died."  This continued despite two major inquiries concluding, on a bipartisan, unanimous basis, that the intel, while flawed, was neither falsified nor slanted politically.  Yet members, including some who signed the Senate Select Intelligence Committee's 2004 report, continued to act as if these reports had not been filed.  Worse, Democrats seized every future scrap they could find, an carried out partisan follow-up inquiries designed to undermine the administration.  All this was done without regard to the impact--clearly harmful--on America's ability to conduct the war in Iraq.

4.  Members of the administration, including senior officials, who acted in good faith based upon legal advice rendered them, faced, and  in some cases still face, harassment from Congress.

In sum, Congress performed so abysmally.  The roots of same lie, as a Wall Street Journal editorial notes, in the struggles during the Vietnam War, a generation ago.  It is thus hard to see how any law, even if well-drafted, can improve things.

William Buckley: Online Archive

Hillsdale College posted its online archive of the complete papers of William F. Buckley (save for transcripts of Firing Line, housed at the Hoover Institution).  Bravo to Hillsdale, pro bono la republica.

Index 7/24/08

6 posts: (1) Obama in Palestine--Us v. Them; (2) War's Central Front: Wash-Post Posts Obama--The Home Front; (3) The "Grand Tour" Education of Barack Obama--The Home Front; (4) Lebanon: Cedars Die--Us v. Them; (5) Saudi-American School Daze--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (6) Iraq: Filipino Prelude--Us v. Them.

Obama in Palestine

In classic Palestinian style, anticipating Obama's Wednesday visit to Gaza & the West Bank, the relative of a jailed Hamas terrorist copied last month's bulldozer atrocity in Jerusalem, this time wounding 29; the attack came within 200 yards of the King David Hotel, where Obama will stay.  Obama, at his Tuesday press conference in Amman, showed a tin ear again, calling the attack a "tragedy," as if a tornado had touched down on the spot.  An act motivated by malicious human agency isn't tragic; it is an atrocity. Which leaves one question: How can the Israelis let the relative of a jailed Hamas terrorist drive a lethal conveyance?

Obama's chosen backdrops for public events were interesting indeed.  In Jordan he stood by the monument to Hercules.  In Sderot, Israel, his backdrop was a room where piles of expended Qassam rockets were stacked around him.  The NY Sun reports that one backdrop choice was made for him: meeting with Palestinian Authority honcho Mahmoud Abbas between the two was a portrait of Yasser Arafat's smiling visage.

Obama linked Iran's regional threat to Hamas & Hezbollah.  He called a nuclear Iran "a grave threat" and "a game-changing situation, not just in the Mideast, but around the entire world."  Other Mideast countries would seek nuclear weapons.  Loose nuclear materials could fall into the hands of terrorists.  This is the single greatest threat to America.  We must not permit, Obama said, a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

War's Central Front: Wash-Post Posts Obama

A Washington Post editorial impales Barack Obama, breaking from shill mode.  At last!  Noting Iraqi PM Maliki's withdrawal position, the WP also notes that the Anbar sheiks, whose overture to the Americans in September 2006 laid the foundation for the January 2007 - July 2008 surge, are in no hurry to see Americans depart, and told Obama exactly that.

Then the WP gave Obama The Old One-Two, calling "eccentric" the candidate's position that Afghanistan, not Iraq, is the central front of the war against al-Qaeda:

Yet Mr. Obama's account of his strategic vision remains eccentric. He insists that Afghanistan is "the central front" for the United States, along with the border areas of Pakistan. But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama's antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

The WP will no longer give Obama a free magic carpet ride.

The "Grand Tour" Education of Barack Obama

Ralph Peters, ever insightful, compares Obama's trip to the Grand Tour taken in the 18th & 19th century by children of the aristocracy.  Peters thinks Barack will learn from aerial views of the Afghan Highlands how impractical it would be to insert many more troops, that he will learn from generals inside Iraq how dangerous premature withdrawal could well be, and that thus if elected he will govern more effectively.

Where Peters sees Obama tripping up is in Europe.  His advance team, Peters writes, as been arrogant.  His selection of Berlin's Victory Column as second-choice backdrop for his speech there is a gaffe one doubts a Republican could get away with.  The monument celebrates Prussian victories in wars against European neighbors, and it was--get this--a favorite of Hitler's; he wanted it to be the centerpiece of Albert Speer's redesigned Nazi Berlin.

But as David Broder' s own "Grand Tour" column notes, with the luck Barack has had--Bush's pivot on Iran + Maliki's fandango with timetables--Obama is walking on water, while McCain is trying to stay afloat.  How much attention voters are paying in July may be another matter.  Big Mac had better hope for good beach weather this weekend.

Lebanon: Cedars Die

Fouad Ajami, ever eloquent and perceptive, mourns what he rightly sees as the death of Lebanon's 2005 Cedar Revolution.  Hezbollah has won.  Why did the Cedar Revolution fail?  For the same reason many do, when moderates contest for power with extremists.  The moderates win the arguments, and the extremists win the shooting wars.  Bullets trump ballots.  Lebanon needed outside help with the bullet part, and did not get it.  Instead it got a stalemated investigation at the UN (predictable), dithering from allies (equally so) and a United States simultaneously pre-occupied with a deteriorating situation in Iraq & thus (illogically) unwilling to confront Syria, and seized of a Mideast peace process fantasy that led it to focus on the Palestinian problem, ignoring Hezbollah.

Ajami covers much ground in op-ed length, well worth a read.  Chilling is his estimate that 100,00 children are being "schooled" by Hezbollah.  Like the schools that dumbest U.S. Senator Patty Murray once said bin Laden was building, and like those in the Palestinian territories, Hezbollah "educates" children to hate Jews & America, and glorify jihad.

Saudi-American School Daze: Act II

Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum updates us on the Saudi-funded academy in northern Virginia that was nailed in 2006 for using anti-US, anti-unbeliever texts.  Comes now a (not much) revised version.  A Hudson Institute report offers 91 pages of updates.  The books still teach Muslims to hate Christians & Jews, as unbelievers.  This puts the interfaith dialogue in Madrid in perspective.  AA suggests that we make sure decent textbooks are distributed in Islamic schools, that we may save ourselves trouble later (future jihadists).  Touching, but we cannot even get decent textbooks into American public schools, written by Americans for Americans.  Talk about a Sisyphean task....

Iraq: Filipino Prelude

Radio host Michael Medved offers us an excellent history lesson: the American experience in the Philippines a century ago.  After our 1898 easy win (Admiral Dewey: "You may fire when ready, Gridley!"), came an insurrection led by Emilio Aguinaldo.  Featured: unexpected casualties, antiwar Democrats, angry celebrities, volunteer soldiers (ours) fighting bravely and building infrastructure, and a tumultuous election returning the incumbent GOP president to the White House.  The war was won in 1903.

Popular history tells how the Colt .45's legendary stopping power killed the Muslim "Moros" on the island of Mindinao by the carload.  As this informative, fascinating article notes, this is legend; in fact, it was not until 1911, after the fighting had ended, that the Colt .45 became the Army's official sidearm; its first use in the Philippines came in 1944, when US submarines from Australia transited the .45 to who else but..the Moros, to stop Japanese troop "Banzai!" charges!  In the end the way to victory, true in counter-insurgencies the world over, required use of soft power along with the hard variety.   Medved's article, loaded with hyperlinks, quotes  Manuel Quezon, the first President of the commonwealth (pre-1946 independence) Philippines, when MQ was an insurgent fighting America during the insurrection:  "Damn the Americans!  Why don't they tyrannize us more?"

Index 7/23/08

5 posts: (1) Barack's West Bank Baker--Cyber Serendip; (2) Iraq: Maliki Enters Our 2008 Race--Wobble Watch; (3) Markets: Laws of Leverage Kick In--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (4) Guantanamo Meltdown: Lawfare Ascendant--The Home Front; (5) Entitlement Reform: What Might Have Been--The Home Front.

Barack's West Bank Baker

No, NOT James Baker.  A real baker.  A Palestinian baker in Ramallah has named a creation of his the Obama bagel.  Yes, bagel.  What next, McCain matzoh ball soup in Tel Aviv?

Iraq: Maliki Enters Our 2008 Race

Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki is playing a dangerous game, supporting both Obama's "troops out by 2010" + McCain's George M. Cohan "Over There" Iraq policy--"and we're not coming home 'til it's over over there!"  Charles Krauthammer speculates that Maliki thinks, once gain, that his troops will be ready to hold the fort by then, despite a record of prior miscalculations as to the readiness of Iraqi troops to take the lead.  Perhaps, or perhaps Maliki merely wishes to avoid being seen as favoring either candidate, as he does not know who will win.

Worse for McCain, argues Jonah Goldberg, Big Mac cannot win using the surge, as its success takes it off the table as a political issue.  This, of course, is what happened to Britain's wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill; voters chose Labor Party leader Clement Atlee in July 1945, and Churchill was recalled halfway through the Potsdam peace parley.  Goldberg says Mac must look ahead; presumably, this means Iran & Afghanistan, not Iraq, are the foreign policy election keys.

Obama, incredibly, stuck to his guns about opposing the surge, a strategy that, to anyone intellectually sentient and not imprisoned by ideology or a political base white-hot over Iraq, clearly succeeded in creating the secure space that was universally understood as a predicate for political reform, now well underway.  We are to believe that without the surge, a negotiations strategy as championed by the Iraq Study Group would have reached the same result via a regional parley.  Iran and Syria, which had been destabilizing Iraq, would suddenly discover the virtue of a stable Iraq if we left, and given America a graceful exit, head held high.  Right.  And Madonna will give up all her dough and relocate to a desert island.

Yet Obama, at his July 22 press conference in Amman (hard to follow because there was no microphone picking up questions), tacked toward Mac by conceding that yes, the surge has produced positive results.  So as Obama narrows the distance between his position and Mac's, Maliki can safely draw away from Mac & Bush 43 and closer to Obama.  Perhaps Mac's best hope, then, is that Obama continues to say that although the surge succeeded he still would have opposed it from the start.  If enough voters digest that one, Obama's halo--what is left of it--could disappear for the mass of voters in the center.

There is a more straightforward solution: Obama should pick Maliki as his vice-presidential running mate.

Markets: Laws of Leverage Kick-In

A Business Week cover story looks at Wall Street and the financial mess.  Behind it is the downside pull of leverage in a declining market.  Banks lend $15 for every $1 of capital, e.g., $10 billion of capital turns into $150 billion in loans.  Works great on the way up.  But now, suppose that there is a measly 2% drop in the bank's asset value, $3 billion dollars.  At 15:1 the bank loses 30 percent of its portfolio, down to $105 billion.

Already there has been a $400 billion meltdown in global credit markets, a figure that the IMF fears may grow to $1 trillion.  Now, multiply these numbers by 15 to see the total impact.  Worse, credit markets take longer, on average, to recover than do stock markets.  For the three months ending in mid-June, credit contracted by 9% at an annualized rate, the worst number in the 35 years since data first was collected.  Mortgage-backed bond issuances are down 87%, and corporate junk bond issuances are down 65%.  Mortgage-backed bond losses alone could amount to $1 trillion.

The Federal Reserve will open its discount window, but--quite understandably--will limit lending leverage.  Similar tighter lending criteria will be imposed by banks who acquire troubled institutions--equally understandably.  Re the Fed, financial writer Allan Sloan reminds us that the Fed controls only short-term (overnight) interest rates; the financial markets set the remainder, and longer-term rates often move in different directions than short-term rates.  Since September, the Fed's discount rate has declined 62%, from 5.25 to 2%, while 30-year mortgage rates rose slightly, from 7.26% to 7.63%.  This is what happens when the Fed's easy money policy spooks inflation-wary investors--long-term rates rise in anticipation of inflation increases due to excess money creation.  On the plus side, Sloan notes that the Fed can create money beyond its $800 billion in Treasury bill reserve, either by buying securities on the open market and reselling them to needy financial institutions, or by entering a credit on its books and lending the same amount to a needy institution, the credit to be redeemed later.  Thus the Fed will not, as a practical matter, run out of money to support Fannie & Freddie.

Also on the sunnier side of the financial street, Hudson Institute's Irwin Stelzer sees cautious optimism in the fact that our economy is growing, if sluggishly, and that it is more flexible it was than a generation ago.  Leverage is the key worry in the rosier scenario.  Leverage, in sum, works like a roller coaster: a thrilling ride on the way up, a heart-stopping moment at the top, and a stomach-upending, screaming descent.  And as the descent continues, gravity works its way, accelerating the roller coaster.  At the amusement park, acceleration is kept within manageable bounds.  For today's financial markets, the hope is that the same can be done by a partnership of public and private entities.  Stay tuned, and hold on to your hat (and wallet).