LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

LFTC - Index 9/25/09

One post: Gaza War: UN Blood-Libels Israel, Whitewashes Hamas--Turtle Bay Tortoise.

LFTC - Gaza War: UN Blood-Libels Israel, Whitewashes Hamas

The 575-page Goldstone Report, by Richard Goldstone (a South African Jew) and three others, was released last week.  I read the Executive Summary (pp. 5-38) and the sections on Conclusions and Recommendations (pp. 520-554: Conclusions begin on page 520, and Recommendations on page 546).  These paragraphs from the Conclusions section encapsulate how grotesque the report is (sorry for formatting problems--the excerpts are still readable):

1680. The Gaza military operations were, according to the Israeli Government, thoroughly and
extensively planned.  While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as
essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right to self defence, the Mission
considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza
as a whole. 
1681. In this respect, the operations were in furtherance of an overall policy aimed at punishing
the Gaza population for its resilience and for its apparent support for Hamas, and possibly with
the intent of forcing a change in such support. The Mission considers this position to be firmly
based in fact, bearing in mind what it saw and heard on the ground, what it read in the accounts
of  soldiers who served in the campaign, and what it heard and read from current and former
military officers and political leaders whom the Mission considers to be representative of the
thinking that informed the policy and strategy of the military operations.

Here is what the Conclusions section says of Palestinian rocket attacks:

E. Rocket and mortar attacks in Israel
1697. Palestinian armed groups have launched thousands of rockets and mortars into Israel
since April 2001. These have succeeded in causing terror within Israel’s civilian population, as
evidenced by the high rates of psychological trauma within the affected communities. The
attacks have also led to erosion of the social, cultural and economic lives of the communities in
southern Israel, and have affected the rights to education of the tens of thousands of children and
young adults who attend classes in the affected areas.
1698. Within the mandated period of the Mission, these attacks have left 4 people dead and
hundreds injured. That there have not been more casualties is due to a combination of luck and
measures taken by the Israeli government, including the fortification of public buildings,
construction of shelters and, in times of escalated hostilities, the cloure of schools. 
1699. The Mission notes, with concern, that Israel has not provided the same level of protection
from rockets and mortars to affected Palestinian citizens as it has to Jewish citizens. In particular,
it has failed to provide public shelters or fortification of schools, for example, to the Palestinian
community living in the unrecognised villages and some of the recognised communities. It ought to go without saying that the thousands of Palestinian Israelis– including a significant number of
children – who live within the range of rocket fire, deserve the same protection as the Israeli
Government provides to its Jewish citizens.

Here are two more "rockets" paragraphs later in the section:

1747. In relation to the firing of rockets and mortars into Southern Israel by Palestinian armed
groups operating in the Gaza Strip, the Mission finds that the Palestinian armed groups fail to
distinguish between military targets and the civilian population and civilian objects in Southern
Israel. The launching of rockets and mortars which cannot be aimed with sufficient precisions at
military targets breaches the fundamental principle of distinction. Where there is no intended
military target and the rockets and mortars are launched into civilian areas, they constitute a
deliberate attack against the civilian population. These actions would constitute war crimes and
may amount to crimes against humanity.
1748. The Mission concludes that the rocket and mortars attacks, launched by Palestinian
armed groups operating from Gaza, have caused terror in the affected communities of southern
Israel. The attacks have caused loss of life and physical and mental injury to civilians as well as
damaging private houses, religious buildings and property and eroding the economic and cultural
life of the affected communities and severely affected economic and social rights of the
population.

N.B. In para. 1747, "may" amount to war crimes.

Here from the Conclusions section is a paragraph exemplifying moral equivalence between Palestinian and Israeli suffering, plus false history--the 1967 Green Line marked ceasefire positions, not negotiated borders:

1705. Both the Palestinians and the Israelis are legitimately angered at the lives that they are
forced to lead: For the Palestinians, the anger about individual events – the civilian casualties,
injuries and destruction in Gaza following from military attacks, the blockade, the continued
construction of the Wall outside of the 1967 borders – feed into an underlying anger about the
continuing Israeli occupation, its daily humiliations and their as-yet-unfulfilled right to self-
determination. For the Israelis, the public statements of Palestinian armed groups celebrating
rocket and mortar attacks on civilians strengthen a deep-rooted concern that negotiation will
yield little and that their nation remains under existential threat from which only it can protect its
people. In this way, both the Israelis and the Palestinians share a secret fear – for some, a belief –
that each has no intention of accepting the other’s right to a country of their own. This anger and
fear are unfortunately ably represented by many politicians.

In other words, the serial atrocities of Palestinian terrorism over the past four decades are to be equated with Israel's "occupation"--much of which covers territory awarded to Israel by the UN's own 1947 Partition Plan and then illegally seized by the Jordanians in 1948.  Nor is there any acknowledgment that Israel in 200o offered 98 percent of the West Bank to Yasser Arafat, plus 2 percent of Israel proper to compensate for the 2 percent of the WB Israel proposed to retain, and Arafat turned the offer down.

This paragraph later in the section:

1750. The Mission also examined whether the Palestinian armed groups complied with their
obligations under international humanitarian law to take constant care to minimize the risk of
harm to the civilian population in Gaza among whom the hostilities were being conducted. The
conduct of hostilities in built-up areas does not, of itself, constitute a violation of international
law.  However, launching attacks - whether of rockets and mortars at the population of southern
Israel or at the Israeli armed forces inside Gaza - close to civilian or protected buildings constitutes a failure to take all feasible precautions. In cases where this occurred, the Palestinian armed groups would have unnecessarily exposed the civilian population of Gaza to the inherent dangers of the military operations taking place around them. The Mission found no evidence to suggest that Palestinian armed groups either directed civilians to areas where attacks were being launched or that they forced civilians to remain within the vicinity of the attacks. The Mission also found no evidence that members of Palestinian armed groups engaged in combat in civilian dress. Although in the one incident of an Israeli attack on a mosque it investigated the Mission found that there was no indication that that mosque was used for military purposes or to shield military activities, the Mission cannot exclude that this might have occurred in other cases.

The Mission "cannot exclude" that Hamas used civilians "in other cases" as shields?  Hamas routinely does so.

Here are two paragraphs in the section on Gaza authorities, which do not, in the Mission's view, seems to be a Hamas dictatorship controlling armed groups, but simply unable to control all those nasty people:

1751. Although the Gaza authorities deny any control over armed groups and responsibility of
their acts, in the Mission’s view, if they failed to take necessary measures to prevent the
Palestinian armed groups from endangering the civilian population, the Gaza authorities would
bear responsibility for the damage arising to the civilians living in Gaza. 
1752. The Mission finds that security services under the control of the Gaza authorities carried
out extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrest, detention and ill treatment of people, in particular
political opponents, which constitute serious violations of the human rights to life, to liberty and
security of the person, to freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment, to be protected against arbitrary arrest and detention, to a fair and impartial legal
proceeding; and to freedom of opinion and expression, including freedom to hold opinions
without interference. 

This paragraph from the Conclusions section is telling as to bias:

1711. After decades of sustained conflict, the level of threat to which both Palestinians and
Israelis are subjected has not abated, but if anything increased with continued escalations of
violence, death and suffering for the civilian population, of which the December-January
military operations in Gaza are only the most recent occurrence. The State of Israel is therefore
also failing to protect its own citizens by refusing to acknowledge the futility of resorting to
violent means and military power. 

Israeli military action is only futile because Israel has never unleashed the full power of its military.  Were Israel to unleash its full might on the Palestinians it could kill tens of thousands in days, and end resistance.  Israel's civilized values prevent it from doing so.  Israel, put simply, will not do what Syrian dictator Hafez Assad did in the city of Hamas in 1982: send in tanks to kills 20,000 in two days to quell an uprising.

Oh, and how come there is no comment in the UN's paragraph quoted above, as to the futility of resorting to terrorism?  Because the UN, and surely the authors of this report, see terrorism as justified by Israel's "occupation." (The report goes on to praise all the good works of UN personnel in the Palestinian lands, ignoring how the UN has facilitated and abetted Palestinian terrorism and the spread of lies about Israel and the Jews, during those decades.)

Here, from the Executive Summary (pp. 5 - 38), are all of two paragraphs on the Palestinians and civilian casualties:

4. Obligation to take feasible precautions to protect civilian population and objects by
Palestinian armed groups in Gaza
35. The Mission examined whether and to what extent the Palestinian armed groups violated
their obligation to exercise care and take feasible precautions to protect the civilian population in
Gaza from the inherent dangers of the military operations (Chapter VIII). The Mission was faced
with a certain reluctance by the persons it interviewed in Gaza to discuss the activities of the
armed groups. On the basis of the information gathered, the Mission found that Palestinian
armed groups were present in urban areas during the military operations and launched rockets
from urban areas. It may be that the Palestinian combatants did not at all times adequately
distinguish themselves from the civilian population. The Mission found no evidence, however, to
suggest that Palestinian armed groups either directed civilians to areas where attacks were being
launched or that they forced civilians to remain within the vicinity of the attacks.

36. Although the situations investigated by the Mission did not establish the use of mosques for
military purposes or to shield military activities, it cannot exclude that this might have occurred in other cases. The Mission did not find any evidence to support the allegations that hospital
facilities were used by the Gaza authorities or by Palestinian armed groups to shield military
activities and that ambulances were used to transport combatants or for other military purposes. 
On the basis of its own investigations and the statements by UN officials, the Mission excludes
that Palestinian armed groups engaged in combat activities from UN facilities that were used as
shelters during the military operations. The Mission cannot, however, discount the possibility
that Palestinian armed groups were active in the vicinity of such UN facilities and hospitals.
While the conduct of hostilities in built-up areas does not, of itself, constitute a violation of
international law, Palestinian armed groups, where they launched attacks close to civilian or
protected buildings, unnecessarily exposed the civilian population of Gaza to danger.

"Could not find any evidence" of the human shields policy that is the hallmark of how Hamas operates?  Willful blindness is a kind appellation for such failure by the Mission.

In all, the Goldstone Mission found Palestinians guilty of minor war crimes, but accused Israel of major crimes, while ignoring much done by Hamas.  The Recommendations, broadly, call for criminal prosecution and for pervasive monitoring, with Israel clearly the prime target.  Here are the twin paragraphs from the Recommendations section that offer the prescription for the Palestinians to undertake:

1770. To Palestinian armed groups
 
• The Mission recommends that Palestinian armed groups undertake forthwith to respect
international humanitarian law, in particular by renouncing attacks on Israeli civilians and
civilian objects, and take all feasible precautionary measures to avoid harm to Palestinian
civilians during hostilities
• The Mission recommends that Palestinian armed groups who hold Israeli soldier Gilad
Shalit in detention release him on humanitarian grounds. Pending such release they
should recognize his status as prisoner of war, treat him as such, and allow him ICRC
visits.  
1771. To responsible Palestinian authorities 
 
• The Mission recommends that the Palestinian Authority issue clear instructions to
security forces under its command to abide by human rights norms as enshrined in the
Palestinian Basic Law and international instruments; ensure prompt and independent
investigation of all allegations of serious human rights violations by security forces under
its control; and end resort to military justice to deal with cases involving civilians.

• The Mission recommends that the Palestinian Authority and the Gaza authorities release
without delay all political detainees currently in their power and refrain from further
arrests on political grounds and in violation of international human rights law.
• The Mission recommends that the Palestinian Authority and the Gaza authorities
continue to enable the free and independent operation of Palestinian non-governmental
organizations, including human rights organizations, and of the Independent Commission
on Human Rights

Other Views.  This Los Angeles Times op-ed summarizes the absurdity of the UN's latest Mideast atrocity: whitewashing Hamas & smearing Israel.  This article excerpt captures the outrageous bias of Goldstone and Co.:

In an attempt to balance the report, the mission did conclude that Palestinian rocket fire into Israel constitutes war crimes. But this is largely irrelevant because the extent of the charges against Israel is so much greater and more damning.

The political bias of the mission was borne out in the report, which, despite its 575 pages, failed to find conclusive evidence of Hamas' extraordinary use of civilians and civilian infrastructure for military purposes.

For example, the report makes no mention of the recorded incidents of Palestinian rocket fire from school premises during the operation, despite video evidence.

The mission also failed to find evidence of Palestinian forces using mosques to store rockets and explosives and said so in the report. But the Israel Defense Forces made public many videos showing Israeli air force strikes on mosques in which huge secondary explosions can be seen following the initial attack, testifying to the presence of rocket stores in the mosques.

The report also fails to mention that the Palestinian forces recruited children to conduct combat-support operations. A Jan. 9 report in an Arabic-language paper in Israel included an interview with Khaled, a child from Gaza. He said: "We the children ... are fulfilling missions of support for the [Hamas] resistance fighters, by transmitting messages about the movements of the enemy forces or by bringing them ammunition and food."

The Palestinian forces utilized the civilian infrastructure of Gaza so completely that IDF soldiers and commanders could never be sure that people usually considered to be noncombatants were not participating in the hostilities, and that installations typically considered to be of a civilian nature were not being used to stage attacks on them. Without this crucial context, it is impossible to understand the dilemmas faced by the IDF during the operation or the reasons why injury to Gazan civilians and damage to civilian infrastructure were incurred.

On Commentary Blog, author Max Boot assesses the Goldstone product.  MB notes that Goldstone & Co. refer to Gaza as "occupied territory"; MB concludes that had the UN done a similar report on World War II, Allied sins would have received more attention than the war crimes of of the Nazis.  This one paragraph of Boot's crisp piece notes--read it in full--how the UN accepts the Palestinian position in toto:

The report also takes a swipe at Israeli restrictions on movement in the West Bank without any acknowledgment that this is done solely to prevent terrorism in Israel or any suggestion that this is related to the Gaza War. Israel is even castigated for “policies on the right to enter from abroad and the right of return for refugees,” meaning that the UN (or at least its Human Rights Commission) has endorsed the Palestinian bargaining position of the supposed “right to return,” which really amounts to the destruction of Israel by demographic means. But such pervasive anti-Israeli bias should not be surprising coming from a fact-finding mission that misses the elementary fact that the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip ended in 2005; the report still refers to Gaza as “Israeli occupied territory.”

Don't believe Boot?  Try this paragraph from the Conclusions section:

1694. As the Mission focussed on investigating and analyzing the specific matters within its
mandate, Israel’s continuing occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank emerged as the
fundamental factor underlying violations of international humanitarian and human rights law
against the protected population and undermining prospects for development and peace.  Israel’s
failure to acknowledge and exercise its responsibilities as the Occupying Power further
exacerbated the effects of occupation on the Palestinian people, and continue to do so. 
Furthermore, the harsh and unlawful practices of occupation, far from quelling resistance, breed
it, including its violent manifestations.  The Mission is of the view that ending occupation is a
prerequisite for the return of a dignified life for Palestinians, as well as development and a
peaceful solution to the conflict.

David Landau of Haaretz, in a Sunday New York Times op-ed, argued that Goldstone missed a chance for a needed debate by falsely accusing the IDF of intentionally targeting civilians:

When does negligence become recklessness, and when does recklessness slip into wanton callousness, and then into deliberate disregard for innocent human life?

But that is the point — and it should have been the focus of the investigation. Judge Goldstone’s real mandate was, or should have been, to bring Israel to confront this fundamental question, a question inherent in the waging of war by all civilized societies against irregular armed groups. Are widespread civilian casualties inevitable when a modern army pounds terrorist targets in a heavily populated area with purportedly smart ordnance? Are they acceptable? Does the enemy’s deployment in the heart of the civilian area shift the line between right and wrong, in morality and in law?

These were precisely the questions that Israeli politicians and generals wrestled with in Gaza, as others do today in Afghanistan.

It is possible, and certainly arguable, that the Israeli policymakers, or individual Israeli field commanders in isolated instances, pushed the line out too far.

But Judge Goldstone has thwarted any such honest debate — within Israel or concerning Israel. His fundamental premise, that the Israelis went after civilians, shut down the argument before it began.

Bottom Line.  The Goldstone Mission produced the latest UN atrocity in the Mideast.  Israel remains in the UN's gun-sights, while Hamas gets mostly a pass.  US taxpayers helped pay the cost of this grotesquerie.  In essence, what the Goldstone Report did was cast a blood-libel on Israel--knowingly level (intent is inferred from act, in evidence law) a maliciously false, deeply damning accusation.

LFTC - Index 9/24/09

One post: UN Today: Obama Self-Disarms...in Advance--Turtle Bay Tortoise.

LFTC - UN Today: Obama Self-Disarms...in Advance

Hudson Institute scholar Anne Bayevsky details how President Obama, in presiding over a UN Security Council session today, will harm American interests.  As the first President to do so, he will confer more legitimacy on the UN, whose anti-Americanism is deep-seated and unchangeable.  Also, 44 plans to discuss nuclear disarmament without naming violators like Iran & North Korea, and lump in reduction of American arsenals along with rogue proliferators.  (Here is the text of President Obama's Sept. 23 address to the General Assembly;   To his credit, 44 mentioned Iran & North Korea negatively, and comdemned "reflexive anti-Americanism"; the chamber was silent.)

Blindness to huge differences between disarming rogue proliferators and dealing with other nuclear problems can only provide succor to the rogues, who have not been moved one whit by America having already dismantled some 95 percent of its nuclear arsenal, a fact 44 never mentions (and may not even know).

UN maven Claudia Rosett, bane of the oli-for-food fraudsters, chimes in with a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed arguing that Obama will demean himself & his office by chairing the Security Council meeting.  CR fears (rightly that Obama will make more unreciprocated arms control concessions and get only a photo op in return:

The United Nations holds votes, but it is not a democracy, and it does not cleave to its own lofty charter principles about upholding human dignity. If it did, quite a number of member states, including one of the major founders, Stalin's Soviet Union, would never have been enrolled, and others would have been kicked out years ago (that's never happened).

In practice, the United Nations is a messy, murky despot-infested collective - opaque, girdled in diplomatic immunities, and thus largely unaccountable for its actions. The biggest voting bloc in the General Assembly is the 130-member G-77, which this year picked for its chair - I'm not kidding - the genocidal government of Sudan (whose President Omar al-Bashir is under indictment by the International Criminal Court).

The Security Council isn't all that much better. Chairmanship rotates monthly through all 15 members, with no regard for what kind of regimes that might entail. The five permanent members are democratic France, Britain, and the United States, plus despotic Russia and China. The current roster of 10 rotating members includes not only Japan and Austria, but Vietnam and Libya. This month it is America's turn to preside; Obama will sit in the same chair occupied in March by an envoy of Moammar Gadhafi's Libya. With heads of state summoned for Thursday's historic occasion, it's likely history will record the spectacle of terror-drenched tyrant-for-life Gadhafi sharing the table.

In this setup, the most law-abiding of the 192 member states tend to get stuck with the results of whatever the Security Council agrees to. The most unscrupulous, which account to no electorates back home, feel free to lie as they please and do whatever they can get away with, which is plenty, because the United Nations leaves individual member states to police their own compliance with U.N. deals. From the oil-for-food scandal to the current sanctions-busting traffic with the likes of Iran and North Korea, it is common practice for some Security Council members to violate, with impunity, the same deals they vote for. That goes far to explain why a series of "binding" Security Council resolutions over the last three years imposing sanctions on North Korea and Iran have failed to stop the nuclear programs of Pyongyang or Tehran.

Sending an envoy to navigate this scene and report to the president has the great advantage of leaving room to maneuver, revise, rethink, defuse, and deny without showcasing the U.S. president as petitioning support from whatever despot has been exalted to swing vote of the season. Even Jimmy Carter was not foolish enough to try the stunt of subbing for his own ambassador at the Security Council.

In an AEI column last week, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton also assessed the President's UN prospects at the UN.  JB notes that 44 will get loud cheers, unlike Bush 43 (he got applause, but no fan cheers, ususally at the wrong moments).  This is because unlike his predecessor 44 has sucked up to every dictator on the planet (Bolton is too diplomatic to put it this way).  43 called the UN a "wax museum" because he was given the silent treatment.  That was, however unintentionally, an insult to Madame Tussaud's and the other wax museums on the planet.

While the stage was being set for this week's grand opening in NYC, what did the United Nations do recently?  In Vienna, at a meeting of member nations of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), sitting on secret data on Iran's program, the IAEA passed a resolution by a 49-45 vote, with 16 abstentions, condemning the nuclear activities of...Israel.  Yes, Israel.

Bottom Line.  While President Obama diddles at the UN, the UN continues its old ways of shafting Israel, and the clock runs on Israel's Day of Decision re Iran.

LFTC - Index 9/23/09

2 posts: (1) Obama: Slide, Glide, Elide & Deride--The Home Front; (2) Team Obama's Intel strategy--9/11, 3/11 & N/11.

LFTC - Obama: Slide, Glide, Elide & Deride

Charles Krauthammer dissects three Obama promises and finds not flat-out lies, but far more clever evasions.  CK thinks this time they will fail.  Read his entire column, and savor his Medicare deconstruction of 44:

Obama said he would largely solve the insoluble cost problem of Obamacare by eliminating "hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud" from Medicare.

That's not a lie. That's not even deception. That's just an insult to our intelligence. Waste, fraud and abuse -- Meg Greenfield once called this phrase "the dread big three" -- as the all-purpose piggy bank for budget savings has been a joke since Jimmy Carter first used it in 1977.

Moreover, if half a trillion is waiting to be squeezed painlessly out of Medicare, why wait for health care reform? If, as Obama repeatedly insists, Medicare overspending is breaking the budget, why hasn't he gotten started on the painless billions in "waste and fraud" savings?

Obama doesn't lie. He merely elides, gliding from one dubious assertion to another. This has been the story throughout his whole health care crusade. Its original premise was that our current financial crisis was rooted in neglect of three things -- energy, education and health care. That transparent attempt to exploit Emanuel's Law -- a crisis is a terrible thing to waste -- failed for health care because no one is stupid enough to believe that the 2008 financial collapse was caused by a lack of universal health care.

So on to the next gambit: selling health care reform as a cure for the deficit. When that was exploded by the Congressional Budget Office's demonstration of staggering Obamacare deficits, Obama tried a new tack: selling his plan as revenue-neutral insurance reform -- until the revenue neutrality is exposed as phony future cuts and chimerical waste and fraud.

Obama doesn't lie. He implies, he misdirects, he misleads -- so fluidly and incessantly that he risks transmuting eloquence into mere slickness.

Slickness wasn't fatal to "Slick Willie" Clinton because he possessed a winning, near irresistible charm. Obama's persona is more cool, distant, imperial. The charming scoundrel can get away with endless deception; the righteous redeemer cannot.

What the Wall Street Journal editors call Obama's Nontax Tax shows how slick 44 can be, in this instance, on mandating people to buy HC insurance not being truly a tax (which of course it is):

"That may be," Mr. Stephanopoulos responded, "but it's still a tax increase." (In fact, uncompensated care accounts for about only 2.2% of national health spending today, but that's another subject.)

Mr. Obama: "No. That's not true, George. The—for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore . . ." In other words, like parents talking to their children, this levy—don't call it a tax—is for your own good.

Mr. Stephanopoulos tried again: "But it may be fair, it may be good public policy—"

Mr. Obama: "No, but—but, George, you—you can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase."

"I don't think I'm making it up," Mr. Stephanopoulos said. He then had the temerity to challenge the Philologist in Chief, with an assist from Merriam-Webster. He cited that dictionary's definition of "tax"—"a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes."

Mr. Obama: "George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now. . . ."

So 44 is arguing with...a dictionary definition.  Politics is wonderful, eh?  Read the full exchange and enjoy.  No wonder columnist Michael Goodwin sees 44 losing public trust; MG cites a recent, astonishing poll number from Quinnipiac: by a 68-26 percent margin Connecticut voters reject 44's assertion that ObamaCare will not add to the federal deficit.  Connecticut is a liberal state, on balance.

Another area where 44 slips & slides around is ACORN's recent scandals.  He had been an attorney for the group.  Read this 3-page TAS ACORN history explaining its militant roots & criminal tactics.  Another 44 gimmick, as Forbes's Terry Keenan details, is using respected public figures like Paul Volcker as window dressing.

Michael Barone adds that liberals--including 44--tend to deride opponents more & more, rather than acknowledge legitimate opposing arguments.  This will, MB suggests, hurt them in the long run.

Bottom Line.  If Obama keeps all this up, it will make one nostalgic for Slick Willei (Clinton) and Tricky Dick (Nixon).

LFTC - Team Obama's Intel Strategy

The National Intelligence Strategy of the United States of America (August 2009, 18 pages) makes changes to the strategy of the Bush years.  Wall Street Journal editor Gordon Crovitz sees less ambitious security goals in the changes made by Team Obama.  Specifically, he cites three areas of Team 44 pullback:

For example, the new version of the document refers to the mission objective to "combat violent extremism" versus what the Bush administration's determination to "defeat terrorists at home and abroad." Combating is weaker than defeating.

Also, a mission that had been defined in 2005 as to "prevent and counter the spread of weapons of mass destruction" has been reduced to "counter WMD proliferation." Reducing prevention to countering seems like a move in the wrong direction as Iran grows closer to acquiring nuclear weapons.

Another change: the deletion of the Bush mission of "promoting the growth of freedom and democracy." From Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's deliberate downgrading of human rights in the U.S.-China relationship to President Barack Obama's choice of Egypt for regional outreach, the administration has intentionally downplayed the U.S. role in promoting human rights and democracy. This is a problem even from a realpolitik point of view in a world where information gaps are the biggest risks. Closed countries and terror groups are the greatest obstacles to the free flow of information, especially about the risks they pose.

Bottom Line.  These sound like, respectively: (a) declare victory and get out (Vermont GOP Senator George Aiken's famous recipe for Vietnam); (b) no more preventive strikes; and (c) support your friendly thug (OK where democracy cannot take root) or not so friendly thug (only OK if alternatives are worse).

LFTC - Index 9/22/09

4 posts: (1) Lawfare's Latest: KSM Goes to the Movies--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (2) IRAN: Appeasement's Wages--Wobble Watch; (3) Bosnia: Augury for Afghanistan?--Wobble Watch; (4) A Great Man's Advice for President Obama--The Home Front.

LFTC - Lawfare's Latest: KSM Goes to the Movies

Reuters reports that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and co-defendants at Guantanamo ordered copies of a Hollywood movie on the 1968 My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War, as part of their defense.  Perhaps his next movie will be Gone With the Wind.

LFTC - IRAN: Appeasement's Wages

While President Obama remains silent on last Friday's mass Iranian demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters inside Iran who bravely defied their tyrannical rulers, Iran's rulers welcomed the President's decision to scrap the planned missile defense deployment in Eastern Europe, joining Tsar Vladimir Putin in the cheering section.

Oh, and Reuters reports that US intelligence believes Iran's Revolutionary Guards are providing the Afghan Taliban with training & weapons, to help kill Americans in Afghanistan:

Pentagon officials pointed to the seizure late last month in western Afghanistan, near the border with Iran, of weapons and explosives bearing markings indicating they were made in Iran.

The large weapons cache, the first seized in Afghanistan in nearly two years, included rockets, explosives, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), as well as munitions known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, capable of piercing U.S. armor, Pentagon officials said.

U.S. officials said they believed the Iranian government was aware of the assistance but it was not clear to what extent its leaders were directly involved.

"To what extent its leaders were directly involved?"  Do we need to intercept e-mails?  Iran is not a place where improvised adventures into neighboring countries that can get America mad at you are likely to be undertaken without official sanction, lest the players risk their heads.  But in legalist America today, that is not enough proof.  Perhaps while in New York Ahmadinejad can be deposed at his attorney's office.

Bottom Line.  While Iran's leaders bite the American hand that feeds them, Team Obama readies yet more concessions.  See anything wrong with this picture?

LFTC - Bosnia: Augury for Afghanistan?

George Will details how Bosnia is on the verge of collapse again, more than a decade after the ethnic war there was settled by the Dayton Accords, and after more than a decade of nation-building.  Will then poses this disturbing but necessary query:

"With factions from all three ethnic groups now challenging the Dayton structure," McMahon and Western are emphatic: "First, a strong U.S. commitment is necessary." But this is not a propitious moment to propose that, with Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq -- and North Korea, etc. -- on Washington's mind. So this question is apposite: If Bosnia -- situated in placid and prosperous Europe; recipient of abundant aid and attention from the United States, the European Union, NATO and the U.N. -- is so resistant to nation-building, what are sensible expectations for a similar project in remote, mountainous, tribal Afghanistan?

"It is human to hate," the late Samuel Huntington wrote. Communities, like individuals, crave clear identities, which sometimes are built on foundations of shared dislikes. This is true of the communities within Bosnia, and Afghanistan.

Tending to confirm Will's gloomy assessment is a classified report on Afghanistan leaked to the Washington Post, which reports that General Stanley McChrystal sees near-certain defeat unless we send more troops and recalibrate our strategy & execution.  The WP article highlights excerpts from the document, showing three distinct enemy forces operating a well-organized insurgent campaign:

McChrystal identifies three main insurgent groups "in order of their threat to the mission" and provides significant details about their command structures and objectives.

The first is the Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) headed by Mullah Omar, who fled Afghanistan after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and operates from the Pakistani city of Quetta.

"At the operational level, the Quetta Shura conducts a formal campaign review each winter, after which Mullah Omar announces his guidance and intent for the coming year," according to the assessment.

Mullah Omar's insurgency has established an elaborate alternative government known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, McChrystal writes, which is capitalizing on the Afghan government's weaknesses. "They appoint shadow governors for most provinces, review their performance, and replace them periodically. They established a body to receive complaints against their own 'officials' and to act on them. They install 'shari'a' [Islamic law] courts to deliver swift and enforced justice in contested and controlled areas. They levy taxes and conscript fighters and laborers. They claim to provide security against a corrupt government, ISAF forces, criminality, and local power brokers. They also claim to protect Afghan and Muslim identity against foreign encroachment."

"The QST has been working to control Kandahar and its approaches for several years and there are indications that their influence over the city and neighboring districts is significant and growing," McChrystal writes.

The second main insurgency group is the Haqqani network (HQN), which is active in southeastern Afghanistan and draws money and manpower "principally from Pakistan, Gulf Arab networks, and from its close association with al Qaeda and other Pakistan-based insurgent groups." At another point in the assessment, McChrystal says, "Al Qaeda's links with HQN have grown, suggesting that expanded HQN control could create a favorable environment" for associated extremist movements "to re-establish safe-havens in Afghanistan."

The third is the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin insurgency, which maintains bases in three Afghan provinces "as well as Pakistan," the assessment says. This network, led by the former mujaheddin commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, "aims to negotiate a major role in a future Taliban government. He does not currently have geographical objectives as is the case with the other groups," though he "seeks control of mineral wealth and smuggling routes in the east."

The 2,500+ out of 14,500 Afghan prison inmates are radicalizing the others, and corruption is rife.  Afghans are losing faith in the NATO force's ability to prevail.  The situation is reversible but critical.  Unless a turnaround happens within the year it will become too late.  But Sunday on ABC President Obama questioned the need to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Prediction.  Obama, however, reluctantly, will approve more troops, for a simple reason: Having called the Afghan War the "necessary war" he took ownership of it as President.  And having already sent troops, he cannot throw the towel in yet.  If he refuses his own commander's request, he not only owns the war, he will own the defeat as well.

Bottom Line.  A realistic goal in Afghanistan may require jettisoning nation-building (of which Will was, as was I, once a proponent) in favor of some measure of containment.

LFTC - A Great Man's Advice for President Obama

Last Friday Irving Kristol, often called intellectual godfather of so-called neoconservatism--loosely defined as disaffected moderate Democrats who left an increasingly liberal Democratic Party to find a place in the GOP--passed away at age 89.  (The Weekly Standard reprinted a 2003 article giving Kristol's explanation of the "neocon" label.)  Invariably gracious, witty and incisive, Professor Kristol was a hugely influential figure in American--and global--politics.  The American Spectator reprinted a May 1969 interview in which Kristol offered Bob Tyrrell his assessment of where liberalism was headed.  Kristol's take was astonishingly prescient.  Charles Krauthammer captures the essence of Kristol's monumental influence on American politics and culture.  Myron Magnet of the Manhattan Institute writes that Kristol understood the centrality of culture in driving politics, and answered hostility by mainstream media publications by simply starting his own.  Manhattan Institute republished Kristol's 1995 Wriston Lecture, The Culture Wars in Perspective.

John Podhoretz of Commentary offers another deeply knowledgeable assessment.  His description of publications Kristol shaped, and his vast influence on student publications as well, merits a close read.  (JP's is a Sept. 18 blog posting, and you may need to scroll down to find it.)  At the end of JP's posting is a link to all of Kristol's print contributions to Commentary, about 45 over a 50-year stretch.  JP notes that Kristol rarely wrote books, but his 1978 book Two Cheers for Capitalism was a gem, melding supply-side economics and the moral case for capitalism.

In a WSJ op-ed James Q. Wilson, who published seminal articles in Kristol's The Public Interest, paid tribute to the man whose political view encompassed appreciation of the limits of human beings & their institutions:

Irving Kristol smiled through all of this. He did not care what we were called and he gave to one of his published collections of essays the title, "Neoconservativism: the Autobiography of an Idea." He explained why that tendency differs from traditional conservatism: Neoconservatism is not an ideology, but a "persuasion." That is, it is a way of thinking about politics rather than a set of principles and rules. If neoconservatism does have any principle, it is this one: the law of unintended consequences. Launch a big project and you will almost surely discover that you have created many things you did not intend to create.

This is not an argument for doing nothing, but it is one, in my view, for doing things experimentally. Try your idea out in one place and see what happens before you inflict it on the whole country.

The American Enterprise Institute, where Kristol resided for decades as a scholar, posted his 1991 Lecture, The Capitalist Future; the Lecture, an annual Washington event, has since been named in Kristol's honor.

The Wall Street Journal collected some of his pithy sayings on various subjects, and published them last Friday.  President Obama would do well to read them, and absorb the lessons they teach.

LFTC - Index 9/21/09

2 posts: (1) Seven Former CIA Directors Address the President--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (2) Obama's Euro-Betrayal: Aftershocks--Wobble Watch.

LFTC - CIA: Seven Former Directors Address the President

Seven former CIA Directors wrote a September 18 letter to President Obama, urging him to stop the planned re-opening by the Justice Department of CIA interrogations past.  They counsel that a new investigation of matters already investigated would be unfair to officers who acted in reliance on rules adopted after legal review, would impair intelligence operations and would discourage foreign intelligence services from sharing information with us, for fear it might be made public later.  Read their excellent, concise letter to 44.

The Washington Post reports that the Justice Department inquiry has been narrowed to a few cases, as criticism of A-G Holder's decision to re-open cases mounts.  The WP story puts Holder's negligent review in perspective, and shows that serious reviews were conducted during the Bush 43 years:

Before his decision to reopen the cases, Holder did not read detailed memos that prosecutors drafted and placed in files to explain their decision to decline prosecutions. That issue has rankled GOP lawmakers and some career lawyers in the Justice Department, who question whether Holder's order was made based on the facts or on his political instincts.

But a government source asserted that Holder was briefed on some of the details by advisers and that the attorney general was troubled by the material he read. Authorities have not pointed publicly to new evidence or witnesses that would strengthen the cases under review.

"The professionals at DOJ looked with considerable care at the various serious cases," former CIA inspector general John L. Helgerson said. "I had no concern that they were making uninformed decisions or treating the cases casually. . . . My guess is that for reasons that varied from case to case, they simply did not feel they had a certain conviction in any of these."

Lawyers with experience in the area cast doubt on whether criminal prosecutions will result from Durham's inquiry.

"A lot of times cases look open-and-shut because a guy froze to death on a cold cement floor, but these cases are more complicated and involved than that," said a government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "You have to prove the cause of death. How do we know he froze to death? He may have died a natural death from clogged arteries. You have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he died as a result of the actions of the people who tied him to the floor naked. It may be a logical inference, but proving it beyond a reasonable doubt might be a different story."

Bottom Line.  By re-opening investigations at all, Holder did serious damage to the CIA and, hence, to American national security.  Even if the inquiry is narrow and ends quickly, that damage is irreparable.

LFTC - Obama's Euro-Betrayal: Aftershocks

Team Obama's Thursday tsunami that rocked Eastern Europe and elated Moscow continues to trigger aftershocks.  (Defense Secretary Gates, in a Sunday Washington Post op-ed, argues otherwise.)  Iran maven Ilan Berman notes that the Congressional Budget Office projects the new missile plan's Initial Operational Capability (IOC) as 2015, versus 2013 for the system just scrapped; Iran's ICBM IOC could come sooner than US intel thinks.  Writing in the Weekly Standard on several slights Team Obama has inflicted on the Poles, Reuben Johnson gives us Lech Walesa's take:

"Americans have always cared only about their interests, and all other [countries] have been used for their purposes. This is another example," former Polish president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Wałęsa told Polish TV. "[Poles] need to review our view of America, we must first of all take care of our business. . . . I could tell from what I saw, what kind of policies President Obama cultivates. . . . I simply don't like this policy, not because this shield was required [in Poland], but [because of] the way we were treated."

Hudson Institute scholar Jack David, an ex-arms control official, and the Wall Street Journal's Melanie Kirkpatrick see a new arms race ignited.  They also point out that the proposed system was the only one capable of protecting the east coast of the continental United States from ICBMs; the other two bases are in Alaska & California.  The new system will not protect against ICBM attacks.  Bush 43 defense official Jamie Fly sums up the import of the decision and dredges up a telling quote from the President's senataorial days:

President Obama's decision to cancel plans for U.S. missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic is a knife in the back for those countries. The implications for U.S. security and the transatlantic relationship are profound. Critics rightly note that the sudden announcement Thursday sends a dangerous message to allies, both in Europe and elsewhere, who rely on U.S. security guarantees.

Even those who agree with the administration's approach concede that the rollout was clumsy--middle of the night phone calls and little prior consultation. In July 2007, Senator Obama criticized his predecessor for this very thing. The Bush administration, he said, had "done a poor job of consulting its NATO allies about the deployment of a missile defense system that has major implications for all of them."

Russia expert David Satter explains that Moscow's never feared the deployment, but wanted to gain--as it now has--a veto over NATO deployments in Eastern Europe.  Specifically:

The missiles were never a threat to Russia. This has been acknowledged by Russia’s own experts. Russia’s ICBM force is designed to attack the U.S. over the North Pole and the missiles intended for deployment in Poland are too slow to catch them and designed for a totally different purpose. The constant anti-western propaganda around this issue was referred to in the Soviet Union as “information for fools.” It served to consolidate the support of the population around a corrupt leadership by directing its frustrations against an external foe.

Russia opposed the missile deployment for a completely different reason. Had they been deployed on the territory of the former Warsaw Pact they would have demonstrated that this region was once and for all part of the defense architecture of the West. By using propaganda to induce Obama to back down, Russia has divided the NATO alliance into those countries where Russia has a veto over deployments and those where it does not with serious negative implications for the cohesion of the West.

Former Bush-41 official David Kramer says that placating Russia won't work.  Kramer notes that in President Obama's April 5 Prague address he said this of the now-scrapped deployment:

"The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against these missiles. As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven. If the Iranian threat is eliminated, we will have a stronger basis for security, and the driving force for missile defense construction in Europe will be removed."

Here is another passage from the President's Prague address, telling in its recognition of the basis of NATO alliance ties--and of the wrongfulness of deciding issues without allies given a voice:

To provide for our common security, we must strengthen our alliance. NATO was founded 60 years ago, after Communism took over Czechoslovakia. That was when the free world learned too late that it could not afford division. So we came together to forge the strongest alliance that the world has ever known. And we should -- stood shoulder to shoulder -- year after year, decade after decade –- until an Iron Curtain was lifted, and freedom spread like flowing water.

This marks the 10th year of NATO membership for the Czech Republic. And I know that many times in the 20th century, decisions were made without you at the table. Great powers let you down, or determined your destiny without your voice being heard. I am here to say that the United States will never turn its back on the people of this nation. (Applause.) We are bound by shared values, shared history -- (applause.) We are bound by shared values and shared history and the enduring promise of our alliance. NATO's Article V states it clearly: An attack on one is an attack on all. That is a promise for our time, and for all time.

NRO's Rich Lowry skewers the President's betrayal of two staunch allies and sums up the President's attitude perfectly:

They say “nyet,” we say “da” — let’s call the whole thing off. As a political figure, Obama is famously aloof, cool, detached. In international diplomacy, there’s a cringing desperation to him.

We’re open to bilateral talks with the North Koreans (within the so-called six-party framework), even though their M.O. of serially selling the same notional concessions is long established; we’re going to sit down with the Iranians, even though they’ve indicated that their nuclear program can’t be the focus; we’re giving in to the Russians on missile defense, even though they are stiffing us on Iran. When the primary tools in your arsenal are talk and soothing gestures, everything looks like an occasion for a negotiation or concession.

This misunderstands the Russians (and most of the rest of the world). Increasingly aggressive and authoritarian, Moscow wasn’t belligerent because we planned to install missile-defense interceptors; it objected to the interceptors because it is belligerent. As Winston Churchill said in a different context: “Disarmament has nothing to do with peace. When you have peace, you will have disarmament.”

Charles Krauthammer was acid in his condemnation last Thursday on Fox News, and warned of risk to Ukraine & Georgia as part of the fallout of America appeasing Moscow:

This is going to be an historic day in the life of Eastern Europe. We have now declared that Eastern Europe — which had assumed that after the Cold War, had joined the West indissolubly and would enjoy its protection — is now in many ways on its own, subject to Russian hegemony and pressure.
 
And imagine if the Poles and Czechs are upset about this, how the feeling is in Ukraine and Georgia. The Russians announced earlier in the week that if a Georgian ship is found in Abkhazian waters, which was a province of Georgia, it will be seized. So it has annexed part of Georgia and it has escalated the war of words on Ukraine.

Mark Steyn juxtaposes Team Obama's attitudes on opponents domestically with its view of Moscow:

It is interesting to contrast the administration’s “wise” diplomacy abroad with its willingness to go nuclear at home. If you go to a town-hall meeting and express misgivings about the effectiveness of the stimulus, you’re a “racist” “angry” “Nazi” “evilmonger” “right-wing domestic terrorist.” It’s perhaps no surprise that that doesn’t leave a lot left over in the rhetorical arsenal for Putin, Chávez, and Ahmadinejad. But you’ve got to figure that by now the world’s strongmen are getting the measure of the new Washington. Diplomacy used to be, as Canada’s Lester Pearson liked to say, the art of letting the other fellow have your way. Today, it’s more of a discreet cover for letting the other fellow have his way with you. The Europeans “negotiate” with Iran over its nukes for years, and in the end Iran gets the nukes and Europe gets to feel good about itself for having sat across the table talking to no good purpose for the best part of a decade. In Moscow, there was a palpable triumphalism in the news that the Russians had succeeded in letting the Obama fellow have their way. “This is a recognition by the Americans of the rightness of our arguments about the reality of the threat, or rather the lack of one,” said Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Duma’s international-affairs committee. “Finally the Americans have agreed with us.”

Steyn captures Vladimir Putin's growing hold on Eastern Europe:

Vladimir Putin is no longer president but he is de facto tsar. And he thinks it’s past time to reconstitute the old empire — not formally (yet), but certainly as a sphere of influence from which the Yanks keep their distance. President Obama has just handed the Russians their biggest win since the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Indeed, in some ways it marks the restitching of the Iron Curtain. When the Czechs signed their end of the missile-defense deal in July, they found themselves afflicted by a sudden “technical difficulty” that halved their gas supply from Russia. The Europe Putin foresees will be one not only ever more energy-dependent on Moscow but security-dependent, too — in which every city is within range of missiles from Tehran and other crazies, and is in effect under the security umbrella of the new tsar. As to whether such a Continent will be amicable to American interests, well, good luck with that, hopeychangers.

Bottom Line.  The wages of betrayal are ugly indeed.  And worse, they are meager.  Russia gave nothing and got a veto over US deployments in Eastern Europe.  Our staunchest allies got slapped in their faces.  No wonder Lech Walesa is unhappy and Vladimir Putin can barely contain his glee.