LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

LFTC - Index 5/22/09

5 posts: (1) Cheney Versus "Bam" Over War Policy--The Home Front; (2) Afghan, Iraq Wars: Vietnam Redux?--Us v. Them; (3) Civilian National Security Upgrade--Us v. Them; (4) California, There You Go....--The Home Front; (5) ACORN Again: Fraud & Fakery--The Home Front; (N.B. I will have three special postings Monday, May 25, as the country observes Memorial Day--one post of remembrance, one post of celebration, and one of a very grand film year to remember.

LFTC - Cheney Versus "Bam" Over War Policy

Yesterday ex-VP Dick Cheney gave a major speech at the American Enterprise Institute defending the Bush administration's record.  Cheney spoke right after President Obama spoke at the National Archives, trying to show that Team Obama will win the war lawfully, avoiding all those dastardly doings of the Bush - Cheney years.  Cheney said that one side's policy is premised primarily on whether one sees 9/11 and a harbinger of greater attacks to come versus those who think it a "one-off" event.  He proclaimed: "Seven and a half years is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, let alone criminalize."  Cheney accused Democrats of false indignation--feigned outrage over methods critics in Congress had been briefed about. He called for release of the two Team Bush CIA memos that would add content of the answers to the four Team Bush memos that revealed the method of asking questions--44 having declassified the latter but not the former.

President 44 cited our values as encouraging surrender to the allies in WW-II and said that we would proceed with more allied support and less alienated Muslims.  We shall see if such allied support, so far not consistently in evidence, materializes.  As for alienated Muslims, these have not been in short supply anytime in the past few centuries, and if detention policy angers them, so do our Predator strikes in Southwest Asia.  Bam assured us we can safely house Gitmo detainees in our prisons; he should read Steven Schwartz's chilling piece about how a vast militant Islamist literature infests the libraries of our prison system--moderate Islamic texts need not apply.

Jed Babbin sees hubris in Obama and pride in Cheney, as shown by speech texts.  The NY post uses "jailhouse jihad" to describe how radical Islamist doctrine acquired in prison drove the NY terror plotters arrested earlier this week.  David Brooks says Obama won by packaging the Bush second term policies, which pulled back from Cheney first term policies, and that thus Cheney defends only the first Bush term; DB thinks us now more secure with he changes made in Bush's second term and continued by Team 44.  The WSJ editors see vindication in Obama following Bush-Cheney.

Charles Krauthammer sees in 44's performance the "Obama three-step": (a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy.  CK notes that on indefinite detention--even of terrorists not convicted at trial--military commissions, enhanced interrogation as a retained option, rendition, surveillance, etc., Team 44 sounds like Team 43.  He notes that the island idea is gaining currency re where to hold the Gitmo Gang, in light of the Senate's 90-6 NIMBY vote, which partly reflects a desire of Americans to impose the traditional remedy of extreme physical isolation upon those who pose the very worst threats to society:

That doesn't leave a lot of places. The home countries won't take them. Europe is recalcitrant. Saint Helena needs refurbishing. Elba didn't work out too well the first time. And Devil's Island is now a tourist destination. Gitmo is starting to look good again.

CK sees a national consensus being thus forged by 44 in accord with much of what 43 did:

The genius of democracy is that the rotation of power forces the opposition to come to its senses when it takes over. When the new guys, brought to power by popular will, then adopt the policies of the old guys, a national consensus is forged and a new legitimacy established.

That's happening before our eyes. The Bush policies in the war on terror won't have to await vindication by historians. Obama is doing it day by day. His denials mean nothing. Look at his deeds.

Complementing the showdown is Arthur Herman's "The Gitmo Myth" offering a detailed look at the Bush detention policy, in a 17-page piece for weekend reading, especially appropriate to Memorial Day.

Bottom Line.  Bam has iconography on his side, Cheney the better pure case on the merits.  But it was telling that the President adjusted his own speech schedule to speak on the same day as the former Vice-President.  Normally it would be the other way around, one would think.  But these are not normal times, Cheney was not a normal VP, and Obama is hardly a normal Prez.  Thus Dick Cheney emerges as the big winner of the Cusp of Memorial Day Weekend Showdown--Obama tacks towards Cheney policies and lets Cheney set the agenda.  Stay tuned.

LFTC - Afghan, Iraq Wars: Vietnam Hubris Redux?

With Memorial Day Weekend and the painful remembrances coming Monday, a recent essay on war and hubris merits consideration.  Army Col. H. R. McMaster has published a brilliant essay in the online journal World Affairs, The Human Element: when Gadgetry Becomes Strategy (7 pages text).  He argues that planners for the 2001 Afghan & 2003 Iraq Wars repeated "whiz kid" hubris in Vietnam: the presumption that modern technology could substitute for, rather than act as a complement to, traditional political, psychological and situational factors that historically determined how conflicts unfold, proceed and end.  McMaster presents his case very well.

I would, however, offer three reservations for LFTC readers to judge after reading this must-read essay.

The Gulf War's Portent.  McMaster does not discuss how the planners' belief that Iraqis would rise up alongside them and help dispatch Saddam was a prime factor.  At the end of the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqis rose up against Saddam (having been encouraged to do so by Bush 41) and seized 15 of 18 Iraqi provinces within days.  But when America declined to destroy helicopters and armor that Saddam used to crush rebellion--in violation of his ceasefire promises--Saddam recovered and held on to power.  Swayed by the Saudis, we saved Saddam.  We still presumed that Iraqis would flock to our side upon commencing the March 2003 Iraq War, given that Saddam's rule since the Gulf War ended has hardly been a model of humane governance.  That happened in some areas, but did not in many other locales.

An  Afghan Portent.  McMaster does not account for how we assumed the Afghanistan campaign--which looked largely successful in early 2003, if less so today--could be replicated in Iraq.  After all, Afghanistan, the Graveyard of Empires, had gone astonishingly well in the early phases. despite our failure to capture the two top al-Qaeda leaders.

A Values Portent.  McMaster fails to weigh fully how the West's humane values prevent use of force on a scale that could otherwise prevail against primitivist adversaries--the way, for example, Russia prevailed over rebels in Chechnya.  While the 1979-1989 Russo-Afghan war is commonly called "Russia's Vietnam," Russia was winning the Afghan War until 1986, when we provided the Afghans with deadly Stinger surface-to-air missiles that neutralized Soviet Russia's deadly Hind helicopter gunship.  We could have used firepower to completely vaporize huge areas of Afghanistan & Iraq, and won brutally and finally--albeit, with more worldwide political fallout.  Our values, more than so-called world opinion, constrain us.  They are, to be sure, quite honorable and worthy of respect, but they do hinder prosecution of war at a level of violence sufficient to defeat barbarians ready to inflict and endure massive casualties--far in excess of what modern Western societies can endure.

Bottom Line.  Colonel McMaster has written an elegant, insightful essay, worth pondering, despite my comments above.  He is right that modern technology--given values constraints Western power operate under, cannot win wars alone.  Alas, should our enemies ever control comparably lethal technologies, we will discover that they just might succeed in winning wars, even for survival, simply because they lack ethical constraints.  Thus, our values remain a virtue, to be sure, but with their virtue they carry a substantially elevated risk premium, as to the ability of civilized societies to confront and defeat barbarians.

LFTC - Civilian National Security Upgrade

Bush 43 official Douglas Feith endorses President Obama's proposal to fund a $223M an upgrade to our overseas civilian national security organization.

LFTC - California, There You Go....

George Will sees a California bailout in the American taxpayer's future. He notes that the only one of 6 propositions on the ballot that voters approved was one denying state legislators pay raises unless the budget is balanced--it passed with 73.9 percent support.  But Will is not happy with them, either:

Now California's mostly Democratic political class will petition Washington for a bailout to nourish the public sector that is suffocating the state's dwindling -- and departing -- private sector. The Obama administration, which rewarded the United Auto Workers by giving it considerable control over two companies it helped reduce to commercial rubble, will serve the interests of California's unionized public employees and others largely responsible for reducing the state to mendicancy.

These factions will flourish if the state becomes a federal poodle on a short leash held by the president. He might make aid conditional on the state doing things that California Democrats and their union allies would love to be "compelled" to do: eliminate the requirements of two-thirds majorities of both houses of the legislature to raise taxes and pass budgets, and repeal Proposition 13, which voters passed in 1978 to limit property taxes. These changes would enable the legislature (job approval rating: 14 percent) to siphon away an ever-larger share of taxpayers' wealth and transfer it to public employees. Such as prison guards, whose potent union is one reason California's cost-per-inmate (about $49,000) is twice the national average.

California's voters are complicit in their state's collapse. They elect and reelect the legislators off whom public employees unions batten. Also, voters have promiscuously used their state's plebiscitary devices to control and fatten the budget. In November, as the dark fiscal clouds lowered, they authorized $9.95 billion more in debt as a down payment on a perhaps $75 billion high-speed-rail project linking San Francisco and Los Angeles -- a delight California cannot afford.

A WSJ editorial sees a message in California voters rejecting a set of tax-hike ballot initiatives in the Golden State.  They note:

Tuesday's vote was a voter cry that the state needs more such restraints, and now is the time to push them. First, California needs a sturdy cap on the rate of spending growth. Thirty years ago this November, when California's economy was in a similar rut, three-quarters of the voters approved the famous Gann Amendment. That limited the annual growth rate of spending to population growth and inflation.

The result was that California's annual average rate of spending growth after inflation fell to 2% through the 1980s from 9% in the 1970s. California's state per-capita expenditures fell to 16th in the nation in 1990 from 7th in 1979. The economy soared, growing by 121% -- 14% faster than the U.S. average. The Gann limits were effectively neutered in 1988 and 1990 by initiatives that exempted education and transportation from the cap.

The next step is to fix California's steeply progressive and antigrowth tax code. California's 10.55% income tax and 9% sales tax are driving businesses and high income taxpayers out of the state, depleting the tax base month after month. They also lead to overspending during the good times as revenues boom, but to budget crises when those revenues fall precipitously during the busts. A 5% to 6% tax rate on sales and income without deductions would halt the flight to low-tax neighboring states and invite newcomers who could start buying houses again.

WSJ adds pension numbers that are ghastly.  Wes Pruden, in an uncharacteristically somber column, sees the end of illusions in the land where everything is tried first and then exported to the other 49 states.

Perhaps the Great California Quake will resolve the issue by detaching the Golden State from the CONUS and set i on sail for Asia, where it can ask China for a bailout.

LFTC - ACORN Again: Fraud & Fakery

Glenn Beck has a series of recent videos that are riveting, including a confrontational exchange with ACORN's national spokesman, which is a genuine doozy.  Also there are several dissenting ACORN workers adding detail.  A WSJ editorial on the latest election fraud by ACORN adds useful detail.

LFTC - Index 5/21/09

4 posts: (1) Terror Detainees: Senate Goes NIMBY--The Home Front; (2) Photos & War--The Home Front; (3) Military Code of Conduct; CIA Code of Questioning--The Home Front; (4) Iran Nuclear Targets: Not Enough Photos--Us v. Them.

LFTC - Terror Detainees: Senate Goes NIMBY

An unreleased Pentagon report found that one in seven of the 534 Guantanamo detainees released have returned to terrorism.  National security maven Thomas Joscelyn reports that the Pentagon sat on the report since February for political reasons--for fear of embarrassing the White House, which made a big show of announcing the planned Gitmo closing right after 44 entered the Oval Office.

Juan Williams pointed out on Fox that the terror detainee recidivism rate is below that for common criminals in America.  True--the NYT article notes recidivism rates run as high as 68 percent among prisoners.  But as Charles Krauthammer noted, terrorists can join in groups to kill thousand.  Here is an AP timeline re Gitmo detention milestones.  As it happens, yesterday's news about terrorists plotting to blow up a New York synagogue and shoot down military planes flying out of a National Guard base in Riverdale, New York (up on the Bronx--I went to school there in more tranquil times) offers a punctuation mark to CK's point.

The Senate voted 90 - 6 to deny funds needed to bring any Gitmo detainees (about 240 remain) to the United States.  Message from Senate to Obama: NIMBY, as in Not In My Back Yard.  Moderate Democrat Kirsten Powers picked up this theme, noting that without "spine transplants" Dems in Congress will balk at housing them in the US of A.  Ms. Powers misses two points: (1) Why spend money to build new facilities when Gitmo serves perfectly well?  (2) We do not want them here, anyway.

Let 44 tour Gitmo, then use his vaunted soft power to tell the world that Gitmo way exceeds standards elsewhere.  Invite any country which has a tonier facility to show it to the world.  There will be zero takers.  But what of tales of Gitmo abuse?  ALL prisons have been the scene of abuses--many far worse than Gitmo.  There just have not been photos.  It would be nice if once a President confronted the rank hypocrisy of the "world community"--including that of our morally smug allies.

LFTC: Photos & War

A New York Times front-pager titled "Images, the Law and War" offers historical examples to ponder.  Ex-Bush 43 legal eagle (and Cheney critic) Jack Goldsmith presents his portrait of Cheney and the legal issues of torture, and Team 44's policies; the policies of 44 change those of 43 greatly in style, but hardly in substance.  Stephen Hayes sees Cheney winning the public debate with Democrats.

The past generation's greatest Constitutional lawyer, the late Yale Law School professor Alexander Bickel, faced this query from a judge in the famous case concerning publication of governmental papers on the controversial decisions made in the Vietnam War.  The NYT article reports:

What if, Justice Potter Stewart asked a lawyer for The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case in 1971, a disclosure of sensitive information in wartime “would result in the sentencing to death of 100 young men whose only offense had been that they were 19 years old and had low draft numbers?” The Times’s lawyer, Alexander M. Bickel, tried to duck the question, but the justice pressed him:

“You would say that the Constitution requires that it be published and that these men die?”

Mr. Bickel yielded, to the consternation of allies in the case. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that my inclinations of humanity overcome the somewhat more abstract devotion to the First Amendment.”

LFTC - Military Code of Conduct; CIA Code of Questioning

This article on the military code of conduct's evolution shows that the military does not expect its soldiers to successfully resist torture. 

Meanwhile, a Washington Post front-pager reports that (surprise!) CIA interrogators worry that the new rules will not enable them to elicit vital information from detainees.  Thus:

The Field Manual, which was published in 2006, says that "direct approach" interrogation operations in World War II had a 90 percent effectiveness, and those in Vietnam, Kuwait and Iraq had a success rate of 95 percent. Afghanistan since 2002 and Iraq since 2003 are still being studied. "However," it adds, "unofficial studies indicate that in these operations, the direct approach has been dramatically less successful."

Another intelligence official, who also asked not to be identified, said waterboarding and other harsh techniques "were meant to get hardened terrorists to a point where they were willing to answer questions." That capability, the official said, "is now gone."

AEI's poll maven Karlyn Bowman surveys American attitudes towards torture.  Americans are roughly evenly divided over torture but solidly favor targeted assassination, which kills innocent civilians--at times, by the carload.  Go figure.

LFTC - Iran Nuclear Targets: Not Enough Photos

Washington Times reporter Rowan Scarborough reports for Human Events that President Bush was never eager to bomb Iran, partly because our intelligence agencies lack sufficient detailed data on the exact location of known targets, and fear that other targets unknown would be missed.  Setting the depth of penetration of bombs, exactly when to donate and also how much explosive force is needed for a given target complicate the matter.  So our agencies issue a political report in late 2007 saying Iran is not pursuing nukes.  Possibly this was in part motivated by the desire to take pressure off the administration to act, without revealing that we lack intel confidence re targets.  The latter is understandably; the former was inexcusable.

Meanwhile, Iran's solid-fuel ballistic missile test alters the European theater missile balance, according to defense officials.  Here is YouTube video of Sajil-II (4:34).  And URGENT AGENDA has posted my recent EMP article, based on my book review of One Second After.  EMP is one thing Iran can do to catastrophically harm us.

LFTC - Index 5/20/09

4 posts: (1) Pakistan: More Nukes--Wobble Watch; (2) Afghanistan: Petraeus & "Nice Taliban"--Wobble Watch; (3) Russia, Iran, North Korea & Nuclear--Us v. Them; (4) Israel: An Insider's View--Wobble Watch.

LFTC - Pakistan: More Nukes

The New York Times reported Monday that Pakistan is increasing the size of its nuclear arsenal.  In the words of one expert, Pakistan "has more terrorists per square mile than anyplace on earth, and it has a nuclear weapons program that is growing faster than anyplace on Earth."  There are about 2,000 Pakistanis with "critical knowledge" as to nuclear weapons production.

Here is a Pakistan nuclear nightmare scenario: Taliban seize Pakistani nukes.  Because the $100M America sent to Pakistan was not used to properly secure the nukes, Pakistan's warheads do not have trigger-locks--arming codes.  They also lack dual arming (one remote, one local)--what in US lingo is called "Permissive Action Linkage" (PAL).  Perhaps worst of all, they are very vulnerable when transported on mobile platforms.  What if terrorists create  disturbance to get the Paks to put their nukes on the road?

Why is this so?  Because Pakistan harbors two fears about America and Pakistan's nukes: (1) If America knows where they are stored, they will snatch or destroy them; (2) If America creates remote arming codes it may include the ability to disable the warheads.  To be fair, these are not unreasonable fears.  But where nukes go, fairness is not an issue.  Results are all that count.

So what can America do?

Bottom Line.  America faces desperate risks of enduring horrific destruction, should terrorists hijack Pakistani nukes and set them off over here.  What to do to convince the Pakistanis to give us more access?  Simple.  We announce to the Pakistanis that if they refuse to let us install secure technology on their arsenal, they are, from now on, in the nuclear insurance business.  If a Paki nuke goes off in America and we can trace it back, we will vaporize the entire country.  No ifs, ands of buts.  No lawyer debates.  Just, "Bye bye!"

It might well not work.  But then again, nothing else looks good either.

LFTC - Afghanistan: Petreaus & "Nice Taliban"

This David Petraeus interview on Afghanistan sums up the general's current perspective.  Islam expert Stephen Schwartz says that "nice Taliban" are a myth.  Schwartz sees Pakistani Islamists now creating a "major support structure" among Pakistanis in the United States--a new and scary development.  These are Deobandi extremists who are even more radical than Saudi Wahhabi Muslims, because unlike the Saudis the Pakistanis do not make practical compromises, as the Saudis are doing (we hope).  The three "wheels" Schwartz sees driving Sunni jihadism are Saudi money, Pakistani "functionaries' and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood theologians. 

I offer a definitional duo to separate nasty from nice with the Taliban: Nasty Taliban stone to death women who violate Sharia; nice Taliban give them 30 lashes.

LFTC - Russia, Iran, North Korea & Nuclear

A WSJ piece asks why the Team 44 push for nuclear arms talks with Russia?  The numbers are startling: Vastly more arms have been decommissioned since the last major arms talks with Russia ended, in 1991, than during the arms negotiation period.  Both sides have sharply cut arsenals, rather than holding on to their entire stocks a bargaining chips.  Under the Bush 43 administration, US nuclear warheads went from 6,000 to 2,2000--a level that had been slated for attaining by Dec. 31, 2012.  The article has more astonishing detail of arms reduction and nuclear material safeguarding metrics.  A great read.

Meanwhile, the NYC District Attorney, the venerable Robert Morgenthau, worries over how to stop Iran from improving the accuracy of its missiles.  Iran is using more sophisticated technology than we had expected, and is using front organizations to acquire contraband nuclear material.  Here is Morgenthau's May 6 testimony on Iran before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (10 pages).

Ex-CIAer Reuel Marc Gerecht writes that the US & Israel have a common interest in stopping Iran's nuclear program.  RMG sees Iran posing a huge threat even without attacking America or Israel.  Suppose, he asks, Saddam had possessed nukes in 1990.  Would Bush the Elder have invaded in 1991?  The Saudis will instantly arm with nukes (buying them from North Korea or Pakistan) if Iran crosses the nuclear threshold.  John Bolton warns us to expect another nuke test by North Korea, and that if it goes unpunished, as is likely, the North will know that the six-party talks are for show--and Iran will judge its situation accordingly.

LFTC - Israel: An Insider's View

Stratfor's George Friedman offers his strategist's view of US - Israel relations, reprinted with permission from Stratfor:

An Israeli Prime Minster Comes to Washington Again
May 18, 209

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting Washington for his first official visit with U.S. President Barack Obama. A range of issues — including the future of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Israeli-Syrian talks and Iran policy — are on the table. This is one of an endless series of meetings between U.S. presidents and Israeli prime ministers over the years, many of which concerned these same issues. Yet little has changed.

That Israel has a new prime minister and the United States a new president might appear to make this meeting significant. But this is Netanyahu’s second time as prime minister, and his government is as diverse and fractious as most recent Israeli governments. Israeli politics are in gridlock, with deep divisions along multiple fault lines and an electoral system designed to magnify disagreements.

Obama is much stronger politically, but he has consistently acted with caution, particularly in the foreign policy arena. Much of his foreign policy follows from the Bush administration. He has made no major breaks in foreign policy beyond rhetoric; his policies on Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia and Europe are essentially extensions of pre-existing policy. Obama faces major economic problems in the United States and clearly is not looking for major changes in foreign policy. He understands how quickly public sentiment can change, and he does not plan to take risks he does not have to take right now.

This, then, is the problem: Netanyahu is coming to Washington hoping to get Obama to agree to fundamental redefinitions of the regional dynamic. For example, he wants Obama to re-examine the commitment to a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. (Netanyahu’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has said Israel is no longer bound by prior commitments to that concept.) Netanyahu also wants the United States to commit itself to a finite time frame for talks with Iran, after which unspecified but ominous-sounding actions are to be taken.

Facing a major test in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama has more than enough to deal with at the moment. Moreover, U.S. presidents who get involved in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations frequently get sucked into a morass from which they do not return. For Netanyahu to even request that the White House devote attention to the Israeli-Palestinian problem at present is asking a lot. Asking for a complete review of the peace process is even less realistic.

Obstacles to the Two-State Solution

The foundation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process for years has been the assumption that there would be a two-state solution. Such a solution has not materialized for a host of reasons. First, at present there are two Palestinian entities, Gaza and the West Bank, which are hostile to each other. Second, the geography and economy of any Palestinian state would be so reliant on Israel that independence would be meaningless; geography simply makes the two-state proposal almost impossible to implement. Third, no Palestinian government would have the power to guarantee that rogue elements would not launch rockets at Israel, potentially striking at the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem corridor, Israel’s heartland. And fourth, neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis have the domestic political coherence to allow any negotiator to operate from a position of confidence. Whatever the two sides negotiated would be revised and destroyed by their political opponents, and even their friends.

For this reason, the entire peace process — including the two-state solution — is a chimera. Neither side can live with what the other can offer. But if it is a fiction, it is a fiction that serves U.S. purposes. The United States has interests that go well beyond Israeli interests and sometimes go in a different direction altogether. Like Israel, the United States understands that one of the major obstacles to any serious evolution toward a two-state solution is Arab hostility to such an outcome.

The Jordanians have feared and loathed Fatah in the West Bank ever since the Black September uprisings of 1970. The ruling Hashemites are ethnically different from the Palestinians (who constitute an overwhelming majority of the Jordanian population), and they fear that a Palestinian state under Fatah would threaten the Jordanian monarchy. For their part, the Egyptians see Hamas as a descendent of the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks the Mubarak government’s ouster — meaning Cairo would hate to see a Hamas-led state. Meanwhile, the Saudis and the other Arab states do not wish to see a radical altering of the status quo, which would likely come about with the rise of a Palestinian polity.

At the same time, whatever the basic strategic interests of the Arab regimes, all pay lip service to the principle of Palestinian statehood. This is hardly a unique situation. States frequently claim to favor various things they actually are either indifferent to or have no intention of doing anything about. Complicating matters for the Arab states is the fact that they have substantial populations that do care about the fate of the Palestinians. These states thus are caught between public passion on behalf of Palestinians and the regimes’ interests that are threatened by the Palestinian cause. The states’ challenge, accordingly, is to appear to be doing something on behalf of the Palestinians while in fact doing nothing.

The United States has a vested interest in the preservation of these states. The futures of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are of vital importance to Washington. The United States must therefore simultaneously publicly demonstrate its sensitivity to pressures from these nations over the Palestinian question while being careful to achieve nothing — an easy enough goal to achieve.

The various Israeli-Palestinian peace processes have thus served U.S. and Arab interests quite well. They provide the illusion of activity, with high-level visits breathlessly reported in the media, succeeded by talks and concessions — all followed by stalemate and new rounds of violence, thus beginning the cycle all over again.

The Palestinian Peace Process as Political Theater

One of the most important proposals Netanyahu is bringing to Obama calls for reshaping the peace process. If Israeli President Shimon Peres is to be believed, Netanyahu will not back away from the two-state formula. Instead, the Israeli prime minister is asking that the various Arab state stakeholders become directly involved in the negotiations. In other words, Netanyahu is proposing that Arab states with very different public and private positions on Palestinian statehood be asked to participate — thereby forcing them to reveal publicly their true positions, ultimately creating internal political crises in the Arab states.

The clever thing about this position is that Netanyahu not only knows his request will not become a reality, but he also does not want it to become a reality. The political stability of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt is as much an Israeli interest as an American one. Indeed, Israel even wants a stable Syria, since whatever would come after the Alawite regime in Damascus would be much more dangerous to Israeli security than the current Syrian regime.

Overall, Israel is a conservative power. In terms of nation-states, it does not want upheaval; it is quite content with the current regimes in the Arab world. But Netanyahu would love to see an international conference with the Arab states roundly condemning Israel publicly. This would shore up the justification for Netanyahu’s policies domestically while simultaneously creating a framework for reshaping world opinion by showing an Israel isolated among hostile states.

Obama is likely hearing through diplomatic channels from the Arab countries that they do not want to participate directly in the Palestinian peace process. And the United States really does not want them there, either. The peace process normally ends in a train wreck anyway, and Obama is in no hurry to see the wreckage. He will want to insulate other allies from the fallout, putting off the denouement of the peace process as long as possible. Obama has sent George Mitchell as his Middle East special envoy to deal with the issue, and from the U.S. president’s point of view, that is quite enough attention to the problem.

Netanyahu, of course, knows all this. Part of his mission is simply convincing his ruling coalition — and particularly Lieberman, whom Netanyahu needs to survive, and who is by far Israel’s most aggressive foreign minister ever — that he is committed to redefining the entire Israeli-Palestinian relationship. But in a broader context, Netanyahu is looking for greater freedom of action. By posing a demand the United States will not grant, Israel is positioning itself to ask for something that appears smaller.

Israel and the Appearance of Freedom of Action

What Israel actually would do with greater freedom of action is far less important than simply creating the appearance that the United States has endorsed Israel’s ability to act in a new and unpredictable manner. From Israel’s point of view, the problem with Israeli-Palestinian relations is that Israel is under severe constraints from the United States, and the Palestinians know it. This means that the Palestinians can even anticipate the application of force by Israel, meaning they can prepare for it and endure it. From Netanyahu’s point of view, Israel’s primary problem is that the Palestinians are confident they know what the Israelis will do. If Netanyahu can get Obama to introduce a degree of ambiguity into the situation, Israel could regain the advantage of uncertainty.

The problem for Netanyahu is that Washington is not interested in having anything unpredictable happen in Israeli-Palestinian relations. The United States is quite content with the current situation, particularly while Iraq becomes more stable and the Afghan situation remains unstable. Obama does not want a crisis from the Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush. The fact that Netanyahu has a political coalition to satisfy will not interest the United States, and while Washington at some unspecified point might endorse a peace conference, it will not be until Israel and its foreign minister endorse the two-state formula.

Netanyahu will then shift to another area where freedom of action is relevant — namely, Iran. The Israelis have leaked to the Israeli media that the Obama administration has told them that Israel may not attack Iran without U.S. permission, and that Israel agreed to this requirement. (U.S. President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert went through the same routine not too long ago, using a good cop/bad cop act in a bid to kick-start negotiations with Iran.)

In reality, Israel would have a great deal of difficulty attacking Iranian facilities with non-nuclear forces. A multitarget campaign 1,000 miles away against an enemy with some air defenses could be a long and complex operation. Such a raid would require a long trip through U.S.-controlled airspace for the fairly small Israeli air force. Israel could use cruise missiles, but the tonnage of high explosive delivered by a cruise missile cannot penetrate even moderately hardened structures; the same is true for ICBMs carrying conventional warheads. Israel would have to notify the United States of its intentions because it would be passing through Iraqi airspace — and because U.S. technical intelligence would know what it was up to before Israeli aircraft even took off. The idea that Israel might consider attacking Iran without informing Washington is therefore absurd on the surface. Even so, the story has surfaced yet again in an Israeli newspaper in a virtual carbon copy of stories published more than a year ago.

Netanyahu has promised that the endless stalemate with the Palestinians will not be allowed to continue. He also knows that whatever happens, Israel cannot threaten the stability of Arab states that are by and large uninterested in the Palestinians. He also understands that in the long run, Israel’s freedom of action is defined by the United States, not by Israel. His electoral platform and his strategic realities have never aligned. Arguably, it might be in the Israeli interest that the status quo be disrupted, but it is not in the American interest. Netanyahu therefore will get to redefine neither the Palestinian situation nor the Iranian situation. Israel simply lacks the power to impose the reality it wants, the current constellation of Arab regimes it needs, and the strategic relationship with the United States on which Israeli national security rests.

In the end, this is a classic study in the limits of power. Israel can have its freedom of action anytime it is willing to pay the price for it. But Israel can’t pay the price. Netanyahu is coming to Washington to see if he can get what he wants without paying the price, and we suspect strongly he knows he won’t get it. His problem is the same as that of the Arab states. There are many in Israel, particularly among Netanyahu’s supporters, who believe Israel is a great power. It isn’t. It is a nation that is strong partly because it lives in a pretty weak neighborhood, and partly because it has very strong friends. Many Israelis don’t want to be told that, and Netanyahu came to office playing on the sense of Israeli national power.

So the peace process will continue, no one will expect anything from it, the Palestinians will remain isolated and wars regularly will break out. The only advantage of this situation from the U.S. point of view it is that it is preferable to all other available realities.

LFTC - Index 5/19/09

3 posts: (1) CIA's Iran Mission, and Israel's--Wobble Watch; (2) Obama - Bibi: Stalemate Not Checkmate--Wobble Watch; (3) Israel's Fifth Column Swells--Wobble Watch.

LFTC: CIA's Iran Mission, and Israel's

The Times of London reports that CIA Director Leon Panetta warned Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu not to attack Iran without first notifying the US.  Haaretz reports Israel has agreed to notify Team 44.  Israel's government, unlike America's, can keep Big Moves secret.  If Israel does notify us, it might wait to do so until when its planes already are en route to their targets.  Herb London sees a "Japanese solution" for Iran in Team Obama's policy: allow Iran to enrich so long as it does not take the final steps to weaponize the product; that Iran could then make a bomb within weeks at most seems not to faze 44.

Savor this account of successful covert Israeli operations against Iran's nuclear program.  Specifically:

The results have been tremendous. During the last four years, the uranium enrichment project in Iran was delayed by a series of apparent accidents: the disappearance of an Iranian nuclear scientist, the crash of two planes carrying cargo relating to the project, and two labs that burst into flames. In addition, an Iranian opposition group in exile published highly credible information about the details of the project, which caused Iran much embarrassment and led to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.

The article also notes signal successes against Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Now read this Haaretz account summarizing a recent report on Israel's options to strike Iran.  The authors, Georgetown CSIS expert Anthony Cordesman & staffer Abdullah Toukan, produced a serious, richly detailed report.  They conclude that Israel has at best a long shot chance of doing serious damage, at very high risk of significant loss of aircraft, that in such event Iran will rebuild & restart, and that instead Israel should stop hyping the Iran threat and prepare to deter Iranian nuclear action.  Their Study on a Possible Israeli Strike on Iran's Nuclear Development Facilities (Mar. 16, 2009) is a valuable read, with a treasure trove of information on nuclear proliferation and bomb metrics, and air raid scenarios (the northern route via Syria/Turkey is the only politically and operationally viable way, say the authors).  Most intriguing is Israel using its new Jericho III ballistic missiles (Jericho I & Jericho II lack sufficient range to reach from Israel proper) to strike with conventional warheads at long range.

The study's assumption that the Arab world would be outraged by Israel hitting Iran's nuclear targets is flatly contrary to evidence that the Arab world fears Iran more than it hates Israel.  Witness the tepid Arab world responses to Israel's actions in the 2006 Lebanon & 2009 Gaza conflicts, and the thundering silence after Israel's Sept. 6, 2007 destruction of Syria's plutonium reactor facility.

But the report is well worth taking time to peruse, if one has an appetite for culling through detail (mostly Powerpoint-style charts) that while technical in nature is readily accessible to the intelligent lay person.

LFTC - Obama-Bibi: Stalemate Not Checkmate

The meeting of diametrically opposed heads of state, with radically different views of the Mideast, had one overriding goal: avoiding a blow-up while each side sticks largely to its guns for the time being.  Obama's elevation of the Palestinian issue front and center is starkly at odds with Israel's perception of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas as prime threats.  One Israeli intel chief opined that Hamas would win an election on the West Bank.  In such an environment a Palestinian peace accord--or, for that matter, a Syrian accord--would fail as dismally as did the 1993 Oslo Accords.  The real negotiation, thus, is between allies, instead of a unified allied position versus enemies.  Ironically, Israel and the US do have common interests in, above all, stopping a nuclearizing Iran, but also, stopping Hezbollah's takeover of Lebanon and keeping Hamas on the defensive.  A peace accord would, to the contrary, energize Hamas supporters to fight harder, as they reject Israel's right to exist.  This irony is lost on the White House.  An accord with the Palestinian Authority would ignite a civil war within the West Bank, which Hamas supporters might win, enabling Hamas to declare a full-bore Palestinian terror state.

Columnist Michael Goodwin explains how Team Obama's view of the Mideast is at odds with reality.   A Financial Times piece reports on Hezbollah confirming its support--including military aid--given Hamas.  The Jerusalem Post reports that latest poll shows Israelis wish George Bush were still in office: President 44's pro-Israel - pro-Palestinian - neutral poll rating is 31 - 14 - 40 versus President 43's 88 - 2 - 7.

Bottom Line.  By each side avoiding checkmate--a blow-up in public, finessing vast differences and dancing diplomatic ballet in public--they achieved the best hoped-for outcome: policy stalemate, as the non-peace process proceeds until reality intrudes in the form of another Israeli war with...whom?

LFTC - Israel's Fifth Column Swells

The Jerusalem Post reports on a disturbing University of Haifa survey of Israeli Arab attitudes:

[A] new University of Haifa study, whose results were released on Sunday, shows that 41 percent of Israeli Arabs recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, compared to 65.6% in 2003.

In addition, 40.5% said the Holocaust did not take place, compared to 28% who made the claim in 2006.

According to Prof. Sami Smooha, who conducted the study, Holocaust-denial crosses all class sectors, with about 37% of respondents having studied beyond high school.

About 53.7% of Israeli Arabs recognize the right of Israel to exist as an independent state, compared to 81.1% who recognized that in 2003.

The article also reports that a Knesset MP) has introduced a bill to criminalize celebration of Israeli Independence Day as "al nakba"--Arabic for "the catastrophe"--the Palestinian term for the 1948 creation of Israel.  Such is foolish, as public utterances convey information about community attitudes.

Bottom Line.  Since 2003, Israeli Arabs have turned sharply against the State of Israel.  Barely more than half support the Jewish State, and Holocaust deniers are approaching half the Arab population--both numbers must worse than 2003.  These numbers come despite the serial rocket aggressions of Hezbollah & Hamas. And Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.  Iran may not, in the long run, prove Israel's biggest problem.

LFTC - Index 5/18/09

3 posts: (1) Torture, Israel and a Nobel Laureate's Call--Wobble Watch; (2) Waterboardgate: Nancy Calls & Raises--The Home Front; (3) Palestinian Civ 2009--Us v. Them.

LFTC - Torture: Israel and a Nobel Laureate's Call

Charles Krauthammer recounts how Nobel Peace Prize winner Yitzhak Rabin authorized torture to save a single Israeli soldier's life, by forcing a Palestinian detainee to reveal where the soldier was being held:

On Oct. 9, 1994, Israeli Cpl. Nachshon Waxman was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists. The Israelis captured the driver of the car. He was interrogated with methods so brutal that they violated Israel's existing 1987 interrogation guidelines, which themselves were revoked in 1999 by the Israeli Supreme Court as unconscionably harsh. The Israeli prime minister who ordered this enhanced interrogation (as we now say) explained without apology: "If we'd been so careful to follow the [1987] Landau Commission [guidelines], we would never have found out where Waxman was being held."

Who was that prime minister? Yitzhak Rabin, Nobel Peace laureate. The fact that Waxman died in the rescue raid compounds the tragedy but changes nothing of Rabin's moral calculus.

One life, not thousands, at stake.

LFTC - Waterboardgate: Nancy Calls & Raises

Nancy Pelosi's astonishing Wednesday press conference is was one for the ages.  Her accusation that the CIA was "misleading the Congress of the United States"--intimating that the Agency had lied to Congress--elicited a sharp Friday response from CIA Director Leon Panetta.  (Enjoy this 6-minute clip from Pelosi's press conference.)  Then savor this Jon Stewart "Waffle House" clip (3:28).

Panetta's message, in the form of a letter to CIA employees, reads (my italics):

Message from the Director: Turning Down the Volume

"There is a long tradition in Washington of making political hay out of our business. It predates my service with this great institution, and it will be around long after I’m gone. But the political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress.

"Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing “the enhanced techniques that had been employed.” Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.

"My advice — indeed, my direction — to you is straightforward: ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission. We have too much work to do to be distracted from our job of protecting this country.

"We are an Agency of high integrity, professionalism, and dedication. Our task is to tell it like it is — even if that’s not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it."

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich fired back, accusing Pelosi of outright lying, and calling for a House inquiry into her conduct:

"I think she has lied to the House, and I think that the House has an absolute obligation to open an inquiry, and I hope there will be a resolution to investigate her. And I think this is a big deal.  I don't think the Speaker of the House can lie to the country on national security matters.”

Pelosi allies in the House suggested that the CIA may have  broken the law by misleading Congress in the briefings.  Missouri GOP Senator "Kit" Bond told "Morning Joe" of the CIA Hill briefings: "They don't have briefings to tell you the techniques they are not going to use."  Wesley Pruden sees "ants in the lady's pants" and a problem for Democrats.  Jed Babbin compares Pelosi's press stumble to Richard Nixon's August 15, 1973 press conference, in which he publicly joined the coverup of the campaign scandal.

Mark Steyn wittily juxtaposes Pelosi and Cheney (not that MS feels the same re Cheney) re waterboarding and adds this, putting matters in broader perspective:

America and its few real allies fight under the most constrained and self-imposed rules of engagement ever devised, and against an enemy that rejects every basic element of the Geneva Conventions. Perhaps we are so rich, so smart, so advanced that we can fight with one arm and both legs tied behind out back and still win – eventually. Along the way many innocents will suffer. But better that than that a Gitmo detainee with a fear of insects should have a caterpillar put in his cell.

Fox's Jim Angle details 40 CIA Hill briefings.  In a related development, the White House denied former VP Cheney's request that it release two CIA two memos detailing how effective enhanced interrogation was; the WH cited pending litigation filed by human rights groups.

Pelosi's psychedelic green attire reminded me of Hillary's Beltway-famous April 1994 "pink press conference," in which she spent over an hour side-slipping questions about her $100k cattle futures killing she ostensibly made on her own.  She survived but her reputation as "Saint Hillary" did not.  Nancy has never had a saintly reputation, but her performance will, I think, tar her reputation permanently.  It seems unlikely that Leon Panetta, canniest of Beltway players, will lose this tussle with Nancy.  Panetta is, among other things, smarter than she, and also has a sense of national interest that transcends partisanship, whereas Nancy puts political gain first.

Pat Buchanan sees President Obama siding with the CIA over the ACLU, if only for political survival.  In a similar vein, Bill Kristol asks whether Obama, through Rahm Emanuel, is in league with Leon Panetta to toss Nancy to the wolves and install Steny Hoyer or another low-key moderate liberal who is not the lightning rod Nancy has become.  A Washington Times editorial sees political war being waged against our intelligence agencies, to the detriment of national security.

A Bush 43 Veteran Dredges the 2001 Memory Hole.  Courtesy of Douglas Feith's magisterial book, War and Decision (2008), a must-read, comes this nugget from late 2001: a column from Maureen Dowd, that captures how she and many others felt then.  Dowd saw "quagmire" in Afghanistan, because we are, she wrote, not tough enough to win.  Here are my favorite parts of her diatribe, excerpted from Feith's book:

George W. Bush was brought up to believe in Marquess of Queensberry rules. Now he is competing against combatants with Genghis of Khan rules, who hide among women and children in mosques and school dormitories, and who don't need an executive order to betray and murder.

Just as terrorists, American or foreign, cunningly used our own planes and mailboxes against us, so they used our own morality against us. We were stumbling over scruples against a foe with no scruples.

So Mean Maureen, who Sunday castigated Bush-Cheney as torturers, wanted us to play by street rules.  Other reports have had Nancy Pelosi, early on, pressing the administration on making sure detainees were interrogated aggressively.  When Maureen & Nancy feared for their backsides, they were all gung-ho for jettisoning restraints.  Now that they feel secure, they indulge the luxury of sitting on their moral high horses.

Torture: An Expert Skeptic and an Expert Historian Speak.  Senator James Webb (D-VA), war hero and much more, said on ABC News "This Week" that he had, during his tours in Vietnam, interrogated hundreds of captives without resorting to torture, and that torture does not work.  Fair enough.  But the captives Webb (who speaks Vietnamese) interrogated were not senior terrorist leaders with the plausible prospect of getting their hands on WMD and using it within the American homeland.  As to whether torture ever works, historian Andrew Roberts notes that torture helped win World War II.  Churchill's Britain turned every German spy into a double agent, not always by gentle means of persuasion.  Roberts writes, of the war that writer Studs Terkel called "The Good War":

In the conflict generally regarded today as the most ethical in history, World War II, enhanced interrogation techniques were regularly used by the Allies, and senior politicians knew it perfectly well, just as we now discover that Nancy Pelosi did in the early stages of the war against terror. The very success of the D-Day landings themselves can largely be put down to the enhanced interrogation techniques that were visited upon several of the 19 Nazi agents who were infiltrated into Great Britain and “turned” by the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) between 1939 and 1945. Operation Fortitude—the deception plan that fooled the Germans into stationing 450,000 Wehrmacht troops 130 miles north of the Normandy beaches—entirely depended upon German intelligence (the Abwehr) believing that the real attack was going to take place at the Pas de Calais instead. The reason that Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, was utterly convinced of this, was because every single one of his 19 agents, who he did not know had been turned, told him so.

If anyone believes that SIS persuaded each of these 19 hard-bitten Nazi spies to fall in with Operation Fortitude by merely offering them tea, biscuits, and lectures in democracy, they’re being profoundly naïve. An SIS secret house located in Ham Common near Richmond on the outskirts of London was the location where the will of those agents was broken, using advanced interrogation techniques that reportedly started with sleep deprivation but went on to gross mental and physical abuse. The result? Many thousands of Allied servicemens’ lives were saved because the German 15th Army stayed well away from beaches such as Omaha, Utah, and Sword. And another 100,000 others were stationed in Norway for another attack that never came.

Bottom Line.  Bet that Panetta wins the poker game Pelosi so unwisely started.  Unless the Speaker folds her hand while there is still time, she may lose not only the pot, but all her winnings--including, perhaps, her status as Speaker of the House.

LFTC - Palestinian Civ 2009

The Jerusalem Post reports that Fatah informed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that if he tries to take office Fatah will revolt.  Old-timers are especially unhappy:

In another development signaling increased tensions in Fatah, several of its top officials have threatened to resign in protest against Abbas's decision to hold Fatah's sixth "general conference" in Bethlehem or Jericho. The conference is expected to pave the way for internal elections that are likely to see the rise of "young guard" activists at the expense of veteran old-timers.

Abbas's rivals in Fatah said they were opposed to holding the conference in the West Bank because Israel would almost certainly ban many delegates living in the Arab world from entering the PA territories. Most of the Fatah leaders living abroad, such as Farouk Qadoumi and Maher Abu Ghnaim, belong to the hard-line camp in the faction which opposes the Oslo Accords and any form of normalization with Israel.

And when revolt occurs among the Palestinians, out come the AK-47s....

Meanwhile back at the (French) ranch, here is a video clip (6:00) of pro-Palestinian thugs destroying Israeli goods in a French supermarket.  The clip is in French, but the visual suffices.  The basic message is to blame Israel for "the occupation" and for killing Arab children.  Most stomach-turning of all is that "parents" took along their kids--sheer child abuse--to participate in plunder.