LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

LFTC - Index 10/23/09

3 posts: (1) Cuban Missile Crisis: Augury for Emerging Dangers--Classics; (2) IRAN: WMD or Bust--Us v. Them; (3) Cheney Nails Team Obama--The Home Front.

LFTC - Cuban Missile Crisis: Augury for Emerging Dangers

Yesterday The American Spectator published under the title "Cuba 1962: Lessons for Today" my review of One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khruschev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (2009), written by Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs.  It prints at four pages.

LFTC - IRAN: WMD or Bust

SecState Hillary said that Iran & North Korea must curb their nuclear ambitions.  In the same speech, she said that the US must abandon Cold War thinking and reduce its nuclear stockpiles.  She does not grasp that if we move towards zero every proliferator in the world gets more bang for the buck in its nuclear arsenal.  But Iran's Atomic Energy Orgamization chief said yesterday that Iran reserves the right to enrich uranium fuel beyond commercial grade, no matter what agreement it makes in talks.

Ex-CIAer Robert Baer writes in TIME that ethnic strife is Iran's biggest worry.  Another regime thorn is a prominent opposition cleric in Tehran going public, as reported by the New York Times.  The cleric, who ran third in the June 12 fraudulent election, has aired politically incorrect truths about torture of protesters:

Mr. Karroubi works from a villa on a quiet street in Tehran that ends at a rundown palace once occupied by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. It is one of the many symbols of his standing among the revolutionary elite. He was jailed nine times by the shah and spent years in prison, where he grew close to inmates of widely different political persuasions: nationalist, socialist, Islamist, said Rasool Nafisi, an Iran expert based in Virginia.

“These forced companionships, Karroubi wrote in his autobiography, made him aware of the pain of the others, and relieved him from sectarian behavior,” Mr. Nafisi said.

After the overthrow of the shah, Ayatollah Khomeini put Mr. Karroubi in charge of the Imam Khomeini Relief Committee and the Martyrs Foundation, two of the nation’s most important and wealthiest institutions. He also served twice as speaker of Parliament, where he earned a reputation as a conciliator; served on the powerful Expediency Council; and was appointed adviser to the subsequent supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

So it was hard for the leadership to brand him an enemy of the state when he posted on his Web site last month an impassioned, unyielding and damning letter to the nation, written in response to the judicial finding that his allegations of the rape of imprisoned protesters were unfounded.

“The ugliness has reached the point that instead of the perpetrators and propagators and people behind this oppression, it is Mehdi Karroubi whom they want to put on trial,” he wrote. “I take refuge with you, oh God, from these catastrophes which some are causing and are not only a disgrace to the Islamic republic, but a disgrace to Iran.”

Michael Ledeen sees Iran as America's worst enemy.  He sees massive, disciplined domestic opposition to the regime inside Iran & argues for a stronger US commitment to helping the dissenters.

Bottom Line.  The failure of Teams Bush 43 & Obama 44 to promote regime change in Iran is the great missed strategic opportunity since September 11, 2001.

LTC - Cheney Nails Team Obama

On Wed. Oct. 22 former VP Dick Cheney blasted Team Obama over Afghanistan and interrogations.  Re Afghanistan, Team Obama has taken a plan largely conceived in the last months of Team Bush and advertised it as its own, all the while dumping on Team Bush for inaction.  Re interrogations, Cheney said that Team Obama had "libeled" the CIA.  Read a terrific speech that I was privileged to hear in person.

LFTC - Index 10/22/09

4 posts: (1) Iran's enrichment Gambit--Us v. Them; (2) Nukes Again: Sleepwalking Towards Armageddon--Us v. Them; (3) Gitmo Detainee Travel Update: Coming to America?--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (4) Michigan's Obamanomics Model--The Home Front.

LFTC - IRAN's Enrichment Gambit

The New York Times report on the draft agreement reached in Vienna between Iran and negotiators acknowledges that Iran would be delayed a year in making a nuclear bomb only if: (a) it does not have undeclared stocks of enriched uranium; (b) timing of the agreement is critical (no pun intended):

The energy agency’s experts said Iran would have too little fuel on hand to build a nuclear weapon for roughly a year after a shipment to Russia. But if the 2,600 pounds of fuel was shipped out of Iran in small batches instead of all at once, the experts warn, Iran would be able to replace it with new fuel almost as quickly as it leaves the country.

Also of concern is the possibility that Iran might have more nuclear fuel in its stockpile than it is letting on. The agency’s estimate that it has 3,500 pounds of low-enriched uranium “assumes that Iran has accurately declared how much fuel it possesses, and does not have a secret supply,” as one senior European diplomat put it on the sidelines of negotiations in Vienna.

Ultimately, Mr. Obama would have to get Iran to agree to give up the enrichment process as well. Otherwise, the fuel taken out of circulation in the draft accord would soon be replaced.

The Times article asserts that because Russia will return the 1,200 kilos (2,600 pounds) of enriched uranium (medical grade--19.75 percent, far higher than 3.5 percent commercial enriched fuel) in the form of metal rods the product cannot be diverted into nuclear weapon fuel.  I will seek verification on this technical point, and post an answer in a future LFTC.  (In all, Iran has 1,600 kilos--3,500 pounds--of enriched uranium.)

Another New York Times piece explores the "generational chasm" between the young and elderly in Iran.  The problem is that the regime change that might bring younger, liberal leaders to power has been undermined by Team Obama's flaccid temporizing since the June 12 elections.  As only regime change can secure the future for Iran as a peaceful Mideast power, only rapid change can save the day.  But the regime will not give in easily.  One son of a Revolutionary Guard member, the Times story notes, was tortured to death after protesting the June election, as step which his father defends, as needed to protect the regime.

Bottom Line.  In chess a gambit is the sacrifice of one or more pieces to gain advantage in longer term position.  If, as is likely, Iran has clandestine, undisclosed facilities enriching uranium, the Vienna accord would buy Iran precious diplomatic time and freeze Israel's military option.  As the mullahs' Iran has never kept any agreement it has made there is no reason to anticipate that they will honor this one.  Only regime change will prevent Iran from nuclear weapons and regional hegemony.  The clock keeps ticking, and time is on Iran's side.

LFTC - Nukes Again: Sleepwalking Towards Armageddon

Last week I posted my recent talk on matters nuclear, indicating that Q&A was included.  Having now had time to watch the tape (normally I do not watch myself perform) I see that the Q&A was not included.  Also, I have a more accurate time duration for the clip.  So here is my "Nukes Again: Sleepwalking Towards Armagedddon" (36:22--4:10 intro plus my 32:12 talk) posted once more.

LFTC - Gitmo Detainee Travel Update: Coming to America?

The Senate has passed an amendment to a homeland security bill allowing detainees to be brought to America for trial.  The college town of Amherst, Massachusetts is leaning towards passing a resolution calling for resettlement of cleared detainees in Amherst and elsewhere in the US as well.  Their town is their business; the rest of us should decide for ourselves and ignore the presumption of the elders of Amherst.  In the event, Amherst may yet get its chance: The Washington Post reports that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal filed by yet another Uighur (Muslim sect from western China) Guantanamo detainee.  At issue is whether having been determined not to be an enemy combatant, a detainee thus gains the legal right to enter the US and reside here.  In Kiyemba v. Obama (April. 7, 2009), a federal appeals appeals panel sided with the government, which argued that the right to habeas corpus release does not deprive the executive and legislative branches of their right to specify conditions of entry that exclude such applicants.  The case will be heard next year.

LFTC - Michigan's Obamanomics Model

Michigan Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm's tax, budget and union policies have made the state a poster child for economic stagnation and unemployment.  It this what Team Obama wishes to emulate nationwide?

LFTC - Index 10/21/09

4 posts: (1) Nuclear Weapons: The Case for Testing--The Home Front; (2) Team Obama v. Human Rights--Us v. Them; (3) Afghanistan: Politics Prevails There--and Here--Wobble Watch; (4) Afghanistan: An Expert's View--Wobble Watch.

LFTC - Nuclear Weapons--The Case for Testing

Arizona GOP Senator John Kyl explains why we must test our nuclear weapons, and thus not sign on to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.  In short: (1) our adversaries will test if need be; (2) they will not respond to our unilateral renunciation; (3) our massive disarmament to date--over 90 percent of our nuclear arsenal retired--has not notably improved the conduct of North Korea, Iran etc.  Senator Kyl's op-ed merits a read.

LFTC - Team Obama v. Human Rights

Wall Street Journal editor Bret Stephens excoriates President Obama's dismal human rights policy.  He covers China, Iran, Sudan and, finally, Burma.  In each case the President has put negotiations and "engagement" above all else, no matter how odious the regime.  Read the column in full, but here is a tart condemnation, speaking of Burma and Sudan--far smaller players on the world stage than China and Iran:

Yet as with Sudan, the administration's new policy is "engagement," on the theory that sanctions haven't worked. Maybe so. But what evidence is there that engagement will fare any better? In May 2008, the Burmese junta prevented delivery of humanitarian aid to the victims of Cyclone Nargis. Some 150,000 people died in plain view of "world opinion," in what amounted to a policy of forced starvation.

Leave aside the nausea factor of dealing with the authors of that policy. The real question is what good purpose can possibly be served in negotiations that the junta will pursue only (and exactly) to the extent it believes will strengthen its grip on power. It takes a remarkable presumption of good faith, or perhaps stupidity, to imagine that the Burmas or Sudans of the world would reciprocate Mr. Obama's engagement except to seek their own advantage.

It also takes a remarkable degree of cynicism—or perhaps cowardice—to treat human rights as something that "interferes" with America's purposes in the world, rather than as the very thing that ought to define them. Yet that is exactly the record of Mr. Obama's time thus far in office.

LFTC - Afghanistan: Politics Prevails There--and Here

Steve Coll, author of the superb Charlie Wilson's War, surveys the Afghan scene and says that politics will determine whether we can prevail there.  A corrupt, incompetent regime will find a way to lose.  Sadly, the Taliban are learning from experience and becoming more competent--shades of Hezbollah in Lebanon.  The Wall Street Journal editors see our "AfPak" allies stepping up to the plate while President Obama dithers.

LFTC - Afghanistan: An Expert's View

The following essay co-authored by Stratfor founder/CEO George Friedman is reprinted by permission from Stratfor:

The U.S. Challenge in Afghanistan

By George Friedman & Reva Bhalla

October 20, 2009

The decision over whether to send more U.S. troops into Afghanistan may wait until the contested Afghan election is resolved, U.S. officials said Oct. 18. The announcement comes as U.S. President Barack Obama is approaching a decision on the war in Afghanistan. During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, Obama argued that Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time, but Afghanistan was a necessary war. His reasoning went that the threat to the United States came from al Qaeda, Afghanistan had been al Qaeda’s sanctuary, and if the United States were to abandon Afghanistan, al Qaeda would re-establish itself and once again threaten the U.S. homeland. Withdrawal from Afghanistan would hence be dangerous, and prosecution of the war was therefore necessary.

After Obama took office, it became necessary to define a war-fighting strategy in Afghanistan. The most likely model was based on the one used in Iraq by Gen. David Petraeus, now head of U.S. Central Command, whose area of responsibility covers both Afghanistan and Iraq. Paradoxically, the tactical and strategic framework for fighting the so-called “right war” derived from U.S. military successes in executing the so-called “wrong war.” But grand strategy, or selecting the right wars to fight, and war strategy, or how to fight the right wars, are not necessarily linked.

Afghanistan, Iraq and the McChrystal Plan

Making sense of the arguments over Afghanistan requires an understanding of how the Iraq war is read by the strategists fighting it, since a great deal of proposed Afghan strategy involves transferring lessons learned from Iraq. Those strategists see the Iraq war as having had three phases. The first was the short conventional war that saw the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s military. The second was the period from 2003-2006 during which the United States faced a Sunni insurgency and resistance from the Shiite population, as well as a civil war between those two communities. During this phase, the United States sought to destroy the insurgency primarily by military means while simultaneously working to scrape a national unity government together and hold elections. The third phase, which began in late 2006, was primarily a political phase. It consisted of enticing Iraqi Sunni leaders to desert the foreign jihadists in Iraq, splitting the Shiite community among its various factions, and reaching political — and financial — accommodations among the various factions. Military operations focused on supporting political processes, such as pressuring recalcitrant factions and protecting those who aligned with the United States. The troop increase — aka the surge — was designed to facilitate this strategy. Even more, it was meant to convince Iraqi factions (not to mention Iran) that the United States was not going to pull out of Iraq, and that therefore a continuing American presence would back up guarantees made to Iraqis.

It is important to understand this last bit and its effect on Afghanistan. As in Iraq, the idea that the United States will not abandon local allies by withdrawing until Afghan security forces could guarantee the allies’ security lies at the heart of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. The premature withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, e.g., before local allies’ security could be guaranteed, would undermine U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. To a great extent, the process of U.S. security guarantees in Afghanistan depends on the credibility of those guarantees: Withdrawal from Iraq followed by retribution against U.S. allies in Iraq would undermine the core of the Afghan strategy.

U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s strategy in Afghanistan ultimately is built around the principle that the United States and its NATO allies are capable of protecting Afghans prepared to cooperate with Western forces. This explains why the heart of McChrystal’s strategy involves putting U.S. troops as close to the Afghan people as possible. Doing so will entail closing many smaller bases in remote valleys — like the isolated outpost recently attacked in Nuristan province — and opening bases in more densely populated areas.

McChrystal’s strategy therefore has three basic phases. In phase one, his forces would fight their way into regions where a large portion of the population lives and where the Taliban currently operates, namely Kabul, Khost, Helmand and Kandahar provinces. The United States would assume a strategic defensive posture in these populated areas. Because these areas are essential to the Taliban, phase two would see a Taliban counterattack in a bid to drive McChrystal’s forces out, or at least to demonstrate that the U.S. forces cannot provide security for the local population. Paralleling the first two phases, phase three would see McChrystal using his military successes to forge alliances with indigenous leaders and their followers.

It should be noted that while McChrystal’s traditional counterinsurgency strategy would be employed in populated areas, U.S. forces would also rely on traditional counterterrorism tactics in more remote areas where the Taliban have a heavy presence and can be pursued through drone strikes. The hope is that down the road, the strategy would allow the United States to use its military successes to fracture the Taliban, thereby encouraging defections and facilitating political reconciliation with Taliban elements driven more by political power than ideology.

There is a fundamental difference between Iraq and Afghanistan, however. In Iraq, resistance forces rarely operated in sufficient concentrations to block access to the population. By contrast, the Taliban on several occasions have struck with concentrations of forces numbering in the hundreds, essentially at company-size strength. If Iraq was a level one conflict, with irregular forces generally refusing conventional engagement with coalition forces, Afghanistan is beginning to bridge the gap from a level one to a level two conflict, with the Taliban holding territory with forces both able to provide conventional resistance and to mount some offensives at the company level (and perhaps at the battalion level in the future). This means that occupying, securing and defending areas such that the inhabitants see the coalition forces as defenders rather than as magnets for conflict is the key challenge.

Adding to the challenge, elements of McChrystal’s strategy are in tension. First, local inhabitants will experience multilevel conflict as coalition forces move into a given region. Second, McChrystal is hoping that the Taliban goes on the offensive in response. And this means that the first and second steps will collide with the third, which is demonstrating to locals that the presence of coalition forces makes them more secure as conflict increases (which McChrystal acknowledges will happen). To convince locals that Western forces enhance their security, the coalition will thus have to be stunningly successful both at defeating Taliban defenders when they first move in and in repulsing subsequent Taliban attacks.

In its conflict with the Taliban, the coalition’s main advantage is firepower, both in terms of artillery and airpower. The Taliban must concentrate its forces to attack the coalition; to counter such attacks, the weapons of choice are airstrikes and artillery. The problem with both of these weapons is first, a certain degree of inaccuracy is built into their use, and second, the attackers will be moving through population centers (the area held by both sides is important precisely because it has population). This means that air- and ground-fire missions, both important in a defensive strategy, run counter to the doctrine of protecting population.

McChrystal is fully aware of this dilemma, and he has therefore changed the rules of engagement to sharply curtail airstrikes in areas of concentrated population, even in areas where U.S. troops are in danger of being overrun. As McChrystal said in a recent interview, these rules of engagement will hold “Even if it means we are going to step away from a firefight and fight them another day.”

This strategy poses two main challenges. First, it shifts the burden of the fighting onto U.S. infantry forces. Second, by declining combat in populated areas, the strategy runs the risk of making the populated areas where political arrangements might already be in place more vulnerable. In avoiding air and missile strikes, McChrystal avoids alienating the population through civilian casualties. But by declining combat, McChrystal risks alienating populations subject to Taliban offensives. Simply put, while airstrikes can devastate a civilian population, avoiding airstrikes could also devastate Western efforts, as local populations could see declining combat as a betrayal. McChrystal is thus stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place on this one.

One of his efforts at a solution has been to ask for more troops. The point of these troops is not to occupy Afghanistan and impose a new reality through military force, which is impossible (especially given the limited number of troops the United States is willing to dedicate to the problem). Instead, it is to provide infantry forces not only to hold larger areas, but to serve as reinforcements during Taliban attacks so the use of airpower can be avoided. Putting the onus of this counterinsurgency on the infantry, and having the infantry operate without airpower, is radical departure in U.S. fighting doctrine since World War II.

Seismic Shift in War Doctrine

Geopolitically, the United States fights at the end of a long supply line. Moreover, U.S. forces operate at a demographic disadvantage. Once in Eurasia, U.S. forces are always outnumbered. Infantry-on-infantry warfare is attritional, and the United States runs out of troops before the other side does. Infantry warfare does not provide the United States any advantage, and in fact, it places the United States at a disadvantage. Opponents of the United States thus have larger numbers of fighters; greater familiarity and acclimation to the terrain; and typically, better intelligence from countrymen behind U.S. lines. The U.S. counter always has been force multipliers — normally artillery and airpower — capable of destroying enemy concentrations before they close with U.S. troops. McChrystal’s strategy, if applied rigorously, shifts doctrine toward infantry-on-infantry combat. His plan assumes that superior U.S. training will be the force multiplier in Afghanistan (as it may). But that assumes that the Taliban, a light infantry force with numerous battle-hardened formations optimized for fighting in Afghanistan, is an inferior infantry force. And it assumes that U.S. infantry fighting larger concentrations of Taliban forces will consistently defeat them.

Obviously, if McChrystal drives the Taliban out of secured areas and into uninhabited areas, the United States will have a tremendous opportunity to engage in strategic bombardment both against Taliban militants themselves and against supply lines no longer plugged into populated areas. But this assumes that the Taliban would not reduce its operations from company-level and higher assaults down to guerrilla-level operations in response to being driven out of population centers. If the Taliban did make such a reduction, it would become indistinguishable from the population. This would allow it to engage in attritional warfare against coalition forces and against the protected population to demonstrate that coalition forces can’t protect them. The Taliban already has demonstrated the ability to thrive in both populated and rural areas of Afghanistan, where the terrain favors the insurgent far more than the counterinsurgent.

The strategy of training Afghan soldiers and police to take up the battle and persuading insurgents to change sides faces several realities. The Taliban has an excellent intelligence service built up during the period of its rule and afterward, allowing it to populate the new security forces with its agents and loyalists. And while persuading insurgents to change sides certainly can happen, whether it can happen to the extent of leaving the Taliban materially weakened remains in doubt. In Iraq, this happened not because of individual changes, but because regional ethnic leadership — with their own excellent intelligence capabilities — changed sides and drove out opposing factions. Individual defections were frequently liquidated.

But Taliban leaders have not shown any inclination for changing sides. They do not believe the United States is in Afghanistan to stay. Getting individual Taliban militants to change sides creates an intelligence-security battle. But McChrystal is betting that his forces will form bonds with the local population so deep that the locals will provide intelligence against Taliban forces operating in the region. The coalition must thus demonstrate that the risks of defection are dwarfed by the advantages. To do this, the coalition security and counterintelligence must consistently and effectively block the Taliban’s ability to identify, locate and liquidate defenders. If McChrystal cannot do that, large-scale defection will be impossible, because well before such defection becomes large scale, the first defectors will be dead, as will anyone seen by the Taliban as a collaborator.

Ultimately, the entire strategy depends on how you read Iraq. In Iraq, a political decision was made by an intact Sunni leadership able to enforce its will among its followers. Squeezed between the foreign jihadists who wanted to usurp their position and the Shia, provided with political and financial incentives, and possessing their own forces able to provide a degree of security themselves, the Sunni leadership came to the see the Americans as the lesser evil. They controlled a critical mass, and they shifted. McChrystal has made it clear that the defections he expects are not a Taliban faction whose leadership decides to shift, but Taliban soldiers as individuals or small groups. That isn’t ultimately what turned the Iraq war but something very different — and quite elusive in counterinsurgency. He is looking for retail defections to turn into a strategic event.

Moreover, it seems much too early to speak of the successful strategy in Iraq. First, there is increasing intracommunal violence in anticipation of coming elections early next year. Second, some 120,000 U.S. forces remain in Iraq to guarantee the political and security agreements of 2007-2008, and it is far from clear what would happen if those troops left. Finally, where in Afghanistan there is the Pakistan question, in Iraq there remains the Iran question. Instability thus becomes a cross-border issue beyond the scope of existing forces.

The Pakistan situation is particularly problematic. If the strategic objective of the war in Afghanistan is to cut the legs out from under al Qaeda and deny these foreign jihadists sanctuary, then what of the sanctuaries in Pakistan’s tribal belt where high-value al Qaeda targets are believed to be located? Pakistan is fighting its share of jihadists according to its own rules; the United States cannot realistically expect Islamabad to fulfill its end of the bargain in containing al Qaeda. The primary U.S. targets in this war are on the wrong side of the border, and in areas where U.S. forces are not free to operate. The American interest in Afghanistan is to defeat al Qaeda and prevent the emergence of follow-on jihadist forces. The problem is that regardless of how secure Afghanistan is, jihadist forces can (to varying degrees) train and plan in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia — or even Cleveland for that matter. Securing Afghanistan is thus not necessarily a precondition for defeating al Qaeda.

Iraq is used as the argument in favor of the new strategy in Afghanistan. What happened in Iraq was that a situation that was completely out of hand became substantially less unstable because of a set of political accommodations initially rejected by the Americans and the Sunnis from 2003-2006. Once accepted, a disastrous situation became an unstable situation with many unknowns still in place.

If the goal of Afghanistan is to forge the kind of tenuous political accords that govern Iraq, the factional conflicts that tore Iraq apart are needed. Afghanistan certainly has factional conflicts, but the Taliban, the main adversary, does not seem to be torn by them. It is possible that under sufficient pressure such splits might occur, but the Taliban has been a cohesive force for a generation. When it has experienced divisions, it hasn’t split decisively.

On the other hand, it is not clear that Western forces in Afghanistan can sustain long-term infantry conflict in which the offensive is deliberately ceded to a capable enemy and where airpower’s use is severely circumscribed to avoid civilian casualties, overturning half a century of military doctrine of combined arms operations.

The Bigger Picture

The best argument for fighting in Afghanistan is powerful and similar to the one for fighting in Iraq: credibility. The abandonment of either country will create a powerful tool in the Islamic world for jihadists to argue that the United States is a weak power. Withdrawal from either place without a degree of political success could destabilize other regimes that cooperate with the United States. Given that, staying in either country has little to do with strategy and everything to do with the perception of simply being there.

The best argument against fighting in either country is equally persuasive. The jihadists are right: The United States has neither the interest nor forces for long-term engagements in these countries. American interests go far beyond the Islamic world, and there are many present (to say nothing of future) threats from outside the region that require forces. Overcommitment in any one area of interest at the expense of others could be even more disastrous than the consequences of withdrawal.

In our view, Obama’s decision depends not on choosing between McChrystal’s strategy and others, but on a careful consideration of how to manage the consequences of withdrawal. An excellent case can be made that now is not the time to leave Afghanistan, and we expect Obama to be influenced by that thinking far more than by the details of McChrystal’s strategy. As McChrystal himself points out, there are many unknowns and many risks in his own strategy; he is guaranteeing nothing.

Reducing American national strategy to the Islamic world, or worse, Afghanistan, is the greater threat. Nations find their balance, and the heavy pressures on Obama in this decision basically represent those impersonal forces battering him. The question he must ask himself is simple: In what way is the future of Afghanistan of importance to the United States? The answer that securing it will hobble al Qaeda is simply wrong. U.S. Afghan policy will not stop a global terrorist organization; terrorists will just go elsewhere. The answer that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is important in shaping the Islamic world’s sense of American power is better, but even that must be taken in context of other global interests.

Obama does not want this to be his war. He does not want to be remembered for Afghanistan the way George W. Bush is remembered for Iraq or Lyndon Johnson is for Vietnam. Right now, we suspect Obama plans to demonstrate commitment, and to disengage at a more politically opportune time. Johnson and Bush showed that disengagement after commitment is nice in theory. For our part, we do not think there is an effective strategy for winning in Afghanistan, but that McChrystal has proposed a good one for “hold until relieved.” We suspect that Obama will hold to show that he gave the strategy a chance, but that the decision to leave won’t be too far off.

LFTC - Index 10/20/09

7 posts: (1) Iran's Vienna Warning as Mideast War Clouds Gather--Us v. Them; (2) Pakistan on the Precipice--Wobble Watch; (3) Terror Trial Tribulations--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (4) Terror Recruitment Jumps--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (5) "Drill (Offshore) Baby Drill!"--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (6) Fannie & Freddie: Mortgage Predators--The Home Front; (7) NFL: Race Card Bum's Rush--MSM Murders.

LFTC - Iran's Vienna Warning as Mideast War Clouds Gather

The New York Times breathlessly reports in a front-pager that in the Mideast force trumps diplomacy.  The Los Angeles Times reports in a front-pager that Iran warned Western negotiators on the cusp of Vienna talks that it will restart uranium enrichment at home if it does not get its way:

The talks opened with new acrimony as Tehran threatened to "retaliate" against the United States and Britain after Sunday's suicide bombing in southeastern Iran that killed six commanders in the Revolutionary Guard.

The Sunni Muslim militant group Jundallah claimed responsibility for the attack, which also killed 36 other people. Iran maintains that the organization has "direct ties" to U.S., British and Pakistani intelligence services. All three countries have denied the accusations.

"If the Vienna talks fail to satisfy Iran, a letter will be written to the International Atomic Energy Agency to announce that Iran will take the necessary action to supply nuclear fuel to the Tehran reactor," Ali Shirzadian, spokesman for Iran's nuclear agency, told reporters. "Iran can enrich uranium at 20%, and it will do so, if needed, to provide fuel for the reactor."

Makes one wonder if the Iranians get an early copy of the New York Times each day....

Meanwhile, John Bolton warns that President Obama fails to grasp that Iran will not give up its nuclear program at the bargaining table, under any circumstances:

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton tells NRO that President Obama is living in a “virtual reality” if he believes that the talks this week in Vienna over Iran’s nuclear program will yield any significant results. The meetings, hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), are aimed at convincing Iran to ship low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for more processing, in order to prevent Iran from enriching uranium on its own. “Obama’s intent for direct interaction is just read as weakness by Tehran,” says Bolton.

“President Obama doesn’t understand the nature of the regime he’s facing,” says Bolton. “He doesn’t understand the determination of the Iranians to get nuclear weapons, and he doesn’t understand the risk that a nuclear Iran poses to the region. On all three critical points, he fails.”

“The president, so intent on rejecting the eight years of Bush, is ignoring important history,” says Bolton. “On Iran, Bush policy is indistinguishable from Obama policy. They are both based on the idea of negotiations and threatening sanctions, all of which have failed for years. That strategy will not work now, either.”

Bolton says that at this late juncture only force will stop Iran's nuclear quest.

Bottom Line.  As noted in Monday's extensive "Iran Uranium Enrichment Snag?" post (scroll down to yesterday's LFTC posts), talks will fail, sanctions come too late and the clock is running on a nuclear Iran.  Force becomes the only viable quick option, carrying huge risks including those of failure, because feckless diplomacy delayed imposition of strong sanctions when they might have worked, instead of weak ones imposed too late.  Regime change is the only other option, and might well have worked given time that now likely we do not have.  Such are the grim wages of appeasement.

LFTC - Pakistan on the Precipice

This Daily Telegraph article neatly encapsulates America's dilemma in Pakistan: a country whose leaders play a double-game, hedging here & there, hoping to survive and outlast the Americans and the Taliban.  America's leaving Pakistan in the lurch in 1989, after the end of the Russo-Afghan war, was a factor; but so has been rising Islamism inside Pakistan, especially in the military & intelligence services who historically have wielded decisive power inside the country.  A final reckoning may possibly be in the offing.  Retired Army office Robert Maginiss offers his Afghan-Pakistan prescription for Team Obama.  Ex-CNN reporter Peter Bergen, who interviewed Osama bin Laden in 1998, sees a Taliban-al-Qaeda alliance emerging.  Noteworthy are two points Bergen makes: (1) training terrorists over the Internet is not very effective, as it lack sufficient depth; (2) al-Qaeda wants to take over a failed state again, not remain a stateless network.  Stay tuned.

LFTC - Terror Trial Tribulations

Judge Michael Mukasey, Bush-43's last Attorney-General, argues that civilian courts are poor venues for terror trials.  His superb op-ed offers a long list of how our criminal justice system is a poor vehicle for trying terrorists, despite noteworthy convictions.  Problems of protecting intelligence, absurdly compassionate juries, procedural sleight of hand, etc. gum up the works.  Read his excellent op-ed, which ends with this delicious (if sad) nugget:

Nevertheless, critics of Guantanamo seem to believe that if we put our vaunted civilian justice system on display in these cases, then we will reap benefits in the coin of world opinion, and perhaps even in that part of the world that wishes us ill. Of course, we did just that after the first World Trade Center bombing, after the plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific, and after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

In return, we got the 9/11 attacks and the murder of nearly 3,000 innocents. True, this won us a great deal of goodwill abroad—people around the globe lined up for blocks outside our embassies to sign the condolence books. That is the kind of goodwill we can do without.

LFTC - Terror Recruitment Jumps

The Washington Post reports that terror recruitment in the West is on the rise, with more Americans & Europeans attending terrorist training camps.  More recruits are actual recruits rather than volunteers:

In the past, such volunteers were largely self-motivated and had to find their own way to South Asia. Today, however, al-Qaeda and its affiliates have developed extensive recruiting networks with agents on the ground in Europe, counterterrorism officials said. The agents provide guidance, money, travel routes and even letters of recommendation so the recruits can join up more easily.

A worthwhile read.

LFTC: "Drill (Offshore) Baby Drill!

Sarah Palin urges that we should drill offshore for petroleum in an NRO piece.  Her full op-ed length piece is worth reading, but here is the key part:

My home state of Alaska shows how it’s possible to be both pro-environment and pro-resource-development. Alaskans would never support anything that endangered our pristine air, clean water, and abundant wildlife (which, among other things, provides many of us with our livelihood). The state’s government has made safeguarding resources a priority; when I was governor, for instance, we created a petroleum-systems-integrity office to monitor our oil and gas infrastructure for any potential environmental risks.

Alaska also shows how oil drilling is thoroughly compatible with energy conservation and renewable-energy development. Over 20 percent of Alas ka’s electricity currently comes from renewable sources, and as governor I put forward a long-term plan to increase that figure to 50 percent by 2025. Alaska’s comprehensive plan identifies renewable options across the state that can help rural villages transition away from expensive diesel-generated electricity — allowing each community to choose the solution that best fits its needs. That’s important in any energy plan: Tempting as they may be to central planners, top-down, one-size-fits-all solutions are recipes for failure.

For the same reason, the federal government shouldn’t push a single, uni versal approach to alternative-powered vehicles. Electric cars might work in Los Angeles, but they don’t work in Alaska, where you can drive hundreds of miles without seeing many people, let alone many electrical sockets. And while electric and hybrid cars have their advantages, producing the electricity to power them still requires an energy source. For the sake of the environment, that energy should be generated from the cleanest source available.

Natural gas is one promising clean alternative. It contains fewer pollutants than other fossil fuels, it’s easier to collect and process, and it is found throughout our country. In Alaska, we’re developing the largest private-sector energy project in history — a 3,000-mile, $40 billion pipeline to transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas to markets across the United States. Onshore and offshore na tural gas from Alaska and the Lower 48 can satisfy a large part of our energy needs for decades, bringing us closer to energy independence. Whether we use it to power natural-gas cars or to run natural-gas power plants that charge electric cars — or ideally for both — natural gas can act as a clean “bridge fuel” to a future when more renewable sources are available.

In addition to drilling, we need to build new refineries. America currently has roughly 150 refineries, down from over 300 in the 1970s. Due mainly to environmental regulations, we haven’t built a major new refinery since 1976, though our oil consumption has increased significantly since then. That’s no way to secure our energy supply. The post-Katrina jump in gas prices proved that we can’t leave ourselves at the mercy of a hurricane that knocks a few refineries out of commission.

Bottom Line.  Sarah Palin is sensibly Green, unlike the ideologically Green purity of this administration.

LFTC - Fannie & Freddie: Mortgage Predators

AEI financial regulation scholar Peter Wallison explains why government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs--Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc.)--were major players in the financial meltdown.  His article merits a full read, but here is the juiciest part:

....Who wanted these dicey loans? The data shows that the principal buyers were insured banks, government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the FHA—all government agencies or private companies forced to comply with government mandates about mortgage lending. When Fannie and Freddie were finally taken over by the government in 2008, more than 10 million subprime and other weak loans were either on their books or were in mortgage-backed securities they had guaranteed. An additional 4.5 million were guaranteed by the FHA and sold through Ginnie Mae before 2008, and a further 2.5 million loans were made under the rubric of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which required insured banks to provide mortgage credit to home buyers who were at or below 80% of median income. Thus, almost two-thirds of all the bad mortgages in our financial system, many of which are now defaulting at unprecedented rates, were bought by government agencies or required by government regulations.

The role of the FHA is particularly difficult to fit into the narrative that the left has been selling. While it might be argued that Fannie and Freddie and insured banks were profit-seekers because they were shareholder-owned, what can explain the fact that the FHA—a government agency—was guaranteeing the same bad mortgages that the unregulated mortgage brokers were supposedly creating through predatory lending?

The answer, of course, is that it was government policy for these poor quality loans to be made. Since the early 1990s, the government has been attempting to expand home ownership in full disregard of the prudent lending principles that had previously governed the U.S. mortgage market. Now the motives of the GSEs fall into place. Fannie and Freddie were subject to "affordable housing" regulations, issued by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which required them to buy mortgages made to home buyers who were at or below the median income. This quota began at 30% of all purchases in the early 1990s, and was gradually ratcheted up until it called for 55% of all mortgage purchases to be "affordable" in 2007, including 25% that had to be made to low-income home buyers.

Bottom Line.  Barney the Dinosaur & Chris Doddering were key players in blocking financial reform as they helped shove mortgages by the carload out the door to unqualified buyers, setting the stage for the housing price collapse that fueled the balance-sheet asset-side collapse at major banks.

LFTC - NFL: Race Card Bum's Rush

Rush Limbaugh's Wall Street Journal op-ed neatly sums up how libel cost him a possible ownership share in the St. Louis Rams NFL franchise.  The Race Card, it seems, while of diminished utility in the Era of Obama, retains some utility.  (A white beauty queen who won a contest at a predominantly black college encountered race card protests, too.)  James Taranto's interview with Internet newsie Andrew Breitbart shows how new media can circumvent liberal bias at times--in this case, over the abuses at ACORN, an outfit that is no stranger to playing the race card.  Those who spread such racial poison seem either not to know or not to care that in doing so they poison themselves as well.  Mark Steyn compares the reaction of the mainstream media (MSM) to the quotes fabricated at Rush's expense to MSM's silence on White House communications director Anita Dunn praising Mao Zedong before a student audience, noting that praising a mass murderer--of the Left, only--is permissible in liberal quarters, but not racist statements:

Well, so what? All those dead Chinese are no-name peasants a long way away. What’s the big deal? If you say, “Chairman Mao? Wasn’t he the wacko who offed 70 million Chinks?”, you’ll be hounded from public life for saying the word “Chinks.” But, if you commend the murderer of those 70 million as a role model in almost any school room in the country from kindergarten to the Ivy League, it’s so entirely routine that only a crazy like Glenn Beck would be boorish enough to point it out.

Which is odd, don’t you think? Because it suggests that our present age of politically correct hypersensitivity is not just morally unserious but profoundly decadent.

LFTC - Index 10/19/09

3 posts: (1) Nuclear Arms: Sleepwalking Towards Armageddon--Wobble Watch; (2) IRAN: Uranium Enrichment Snag?--Us v. Them; (3) Can Israel Ace Hezbollah--and the UN--Next Time?--Us v. Them.

LFTC - Nuclear Arms: Sleepwalking Towards Armageddon

On September 30, 2009 I gave a talk in Seattle, entitled "Nuclear Arms: Sleepwalking Towards Armageddon".  My topic then is a first airing of the subject matter of my second book, which I aim to complete in time for publication next fall.  I begin with an historical overview of 64 years 1945-2009, the Nuclear Age.  I then use country studies, so to speak, to illustrate the problems of nuclear proliferation & arms control.  Russia presents problems of big power linkage, in which arms control is conjoined with a host of other problems Russia poses; Iran represents the problem of an aspiring regional hegemon, with perhaps still a messianic streak that makes deterrence exceptionally problematic; North Korea is the "crazy aunt in the attic"--a rogue proliferator; Pakistan presents problems of command & control of its growing nuclear arsenal; the United States faces the problem of negotiating agreements with disagreeables.

The talk runs about 20 minutes.  It is followed by a Q&A of about twice that length.

LFTC - IRAN: Uranium Enrichment Snag?

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reports that Iran may have encountered a snag in enriching uranium.  DI writes:

Since you're probably not a regular reader of the trade publication Nucleonics Week, let me summarize an article that appeared in its Oct. 8 issue. It reported that Iran's supply of low-enriched uranium -- the potential feedstock for nuclear bombs -- appears to have certain "impurities" that "could cause centrifuges to fail" if the Iranians try to boost it to weapons grade.

DI then notes that Iran, in getting Russia & France to enrich 1,200 kilograms of uranium to medical grade--19.75 percent (Iran's total known uranium stock is 1,600 kilograms)--is not a concession but a coup: the uranium will be detoxified before being enriched.

DI then concludes that as a result we may have more time than previously thought to stop Iran's nuclear program.  One hopes that DI is right both as to the contamination of Iranian centrifuges and also as to our thus having more time to address the Iranian nuclear program.  But here are reasons to be less sanguine.

The events inside Iran since June 12's election may result in Iran's Revolutionary Guard supplanting the clerics as prime rulers, which makes traditional deterrence possibly more workable.  But a nuclear Iran could stir up trouble in the Mideast whilst our retaliatory options become severely limited.  Negotiations will not work, because Iran need not disclose other clandestine nuclear sites yet unknown to us.  I fear it is too late for sanctions--partly because under the best of circumstances they take time, and partly because Iran has taken remedial steps--new suppliers of refined oil, plus petroleum stockpiles--that make sanctions far less likely to succeed today, versus even a few years ago.

Ignatius would do well to read an essay, "Can Terrorists Build Nuclear Weapons" (2006), authored by several prominent nuclear weapons designers who worked many years at Los Alamos.  These folks--real experts--inform us of this "inconvenient (nuclear) truth": Nuclear weapons can be made with reactor-grade plutonium.  Specifically, they write:

With respect to the effects of dilution by isotopes of heavy elements, only the two most obvious cases need be considered. One is that of reactor- grade plutonium. This material is not uniquely specified, since the fractional amount of the Pu-240 depends on the level of exposure of the fuel in the reactor before it is discharged. However, at burn-up levels somewhat higher than present practice, the bare crit of plutonium would be only some 25-35 percent higher than that for pure Pu-239. Because of spontaneous fission, the effect of the Pu-240 on the neutron source in the material is thus likely to be more important than its effect on the critical mass. Nevertheless, nuclear weapons can be made with reactor-grade plutonium.

You will not get the same bang out of contaminated plutonium as with full weapons-grade 94 percent enriched plutonium.  You would get what weapons designers call a "fizzle"--pre-detonation before super-critical mass is achieved.  Instead of a Hiroshima-size 14-kiloton yield you might get, say, one kiloton.  Now hear this: One kiloton was the design objective of the Manhattan Project.  It packs the explosive force of 400 Ryder trucks like the one with 5,000 pounds of TNT that on April 19, 1995 destroyed the courthouse in Oklahoma City.  It would level a good part of the Wall Street area, and kill probably at least as as many people as died (70,000 - 90,000) at Nagasaki.  And it would spray-paint much of the Battery area with highly radioactive contaminants, rendering the area uninhabitable for years, unless hugely expensive cleanup were applied.

As to Iran & outside enrichment to medical-grade enriched uranium: This is superior fuel--because it is more highly enriched--for a bomb than the terror nuke described above.  And further enrichment is of course easier starting from from 19.75 percent & going to to 94 percent weapons-grade, than starting from 3.5 percent & going to weapons-grade.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate is under review; that NIE concluded that Iran had suspended work on nuclear weapons, as of 2003.  Within six months of its release, the NIE's conclusion had been publicly repudiated by the Bush administration, both Presidential candidates and the intelligence services of three allies (Israel, UK, France).  In an interview this week, departing chief UN nuke inspector Muhammad el-Baradei reiterated his contention that Israel is the greatest Mideast threat; lost on the not-so-good inspector is that his lackluster inspection of Iranian facilities is a major reason Israel may feel compelled to act.

In a Washington Post four-pager, nuclear policy maven Joseph Cirincione offers what he calls five myths about Iran's nuclear program: (1) Iran is "on the verge" of developing a nuclear weapon; (2) a military strike could stop Iran's nuclear program; (3) sanctions could "cripple" its program; (4) regime change would end the program; (5) Iran is the main nuclear threat in the Mideast.  Re (1) the author may be correct, but in truth, given our lack of knowledge as to the full extent of Iran's program, he presumes to a level of certitude that is unwarranted; also outside his--or anyone's--ambit of knowledge is how much warhead design help Iran may be receiving from outside sources.  Re (2) a strike could delay Iran's crossing the nuclear threshold; the author's contention that a strike would cause opponents of the regime to rally is dubious, given the intensity of the protests, albeit a strike gone badly awry that kills massive numbers of civilians would indeed backfire.  Re (3) the author is right--it is too late for sanctions to work.  Re (4) the author may well be right, but a democratic, liberal government would likely forswear weaponizing, and confine itself to a commercial program.  Re (5) the author's reasoning is a hopeless mishmash.  He asserts that Iran is not the main threat, but rather a Mideast arms race is.  Yet he acknowledges that Israel's nuclear arsenal spurred no nation to start a program, whereas Iran's program has a dozen states starting nuclear programs.  Thus, it is clear that the Mideast arms race starting now is a product of Iran's nuclear program, and thus Iran's program is the main threat to nuclear peace in the Mideast.  Garry Kasparov writes in a WSJ op-ed that Russia cares more about high oil prices to prop up its sagging economy than it worries about stopping a nuclear Iran; this suggests that a nuclear Iran might well benefit Moscow, with near-zero risk that Russia would be on Iran's nuclear target list.

Apropos of regime change, Thomas Friedman compares 11/9 (the German term for the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall) with 9/11 (ours) and sees people power is the key difference--a type of power all too rare in Muslim lands:

The most important difference between 11/9 and 9/11 is “people power.” Germans showed the world how good ideas about expanding human freedom — amplified by people power — can bring down a wall and an entire autocratic power structure, without a shot. There is now a Dunkin’ Donuts on Paris Square adjacent to the Brandenburg Gate, where all that people power was concentrated. Normally, I am horrified by American fast-food brands near iconic sites, but in the case of this once open sore between East and West, I find it something of a balm. The war over Europe is indeed over. People power won. We can stand down — pass the donuts.

The events of 9/11, by contrast, demonstrated how bad ideas — amplified by a willingness of just a few people to commit suicide — can bring down skyscrapers and tie a great country in knots....

The problem we have in dealing with the Arab-Muslim world today is the general absence or weakness of people power there. There is a low-grade civil war going on inside the Arab-Muslim world today, only in too many cases it is “the South versus the South” — bad ideas versus bad ideas, amplified by violence, rather than bad ideas versus good ideas amplified by people power.

Writing at NRO, Jonah Goldberg pinpoints the one thing, regime change, that can spare us the Iran nuclear menace.  JG writes, noting a recent interview that Shirin Ebadi, Iranian dissident who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, gave:

In an interview with the editors of the Washington Post, Ebadi “suggested that the nature of Iran’s regime is more crucial to U.S. security than any specific deals on nuclear energy.”

Her point is precisely the same point made by so-called neoconservatives for years. The problem with Iran is its regime; its nuclear program is merely a symptom of that problem.

Do you lay awake at night worrying about Britain’s nuclear weapons? France’s? Israel’s? Of course not, because stable democracies in general, and stable democratic allies in particular, aren’t a threat.

If your neighbor is an upright and responsible citizen, who cares if he has a gun? If your neighbor is a complete whackjob and criminal, you sure as Shinola care if he has a gun. Armed neighbors aren’t a problem, dangerous ones are. The same logic applies to nations.

“Imagine if the government actually promised to stop its nuclear program tomorrow,” Ebadi told the Post. “Would you trust this government not to start another secret nuclear program somewhere else?”

It’s a profound and fundamental point. We’ve gotten many such promises from the North Koreans. They are worthless. Promises from oppressive regimes cannot be trusted any more than promises from Tony Soprano could be. If a government is willing to betray its own people on a daily basis, what makes anyone think that it won’t betray its geopolitical adversaries?

A democratic Iran--if liberal, not like democratic (at times) Pakistan--could be trusted to forswear nuclear weapons and obey the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, of which Iran is a signatory.  This is precisely the course that Team Obama seems to have tossed away, preferring to negotiate with a regime that has a 30-year record of breaking its word, and a 25-year record of concealing nuclear matters.

JG chastises (rightly) our peace-prize President, for his reluctance to seek regime change despite growing pressures inside Iran (as evidenced by this weekend's bomb attacks that killed Revolutionary Guard leaders):

Ebadi doesn’t want America to topple the Iranian regime the way it toppled Saddam Hussein’s. Or, if she does, she’s certainly smart enough not to say so outright, given that her family is under constant surveillance by Iranian authorities. What she wants is for America to get its priorities straight. Iran, which has been sponsoring terror for 30 years, is a threat because the Iranian regime is a threat. Change the regime and the threat diminishes or vanishes instantaneously. We had a golden opportunity to accelerate regime change in June, but Obama blinked.

Enamored with the idea that “engagement” with evil will produce good, and convinced that a brutal, undemocratic regime is the legitimate representative of the Iranian people, Obama was slow to recognize the moral authority of the democracy movement. By the time he did say what he should have said at the outset, it was clear that his grudging and qualified support for the protesters had no steel to it. The Iranian regime recognized that it would have a free hand to murder and intimidate its own people in order to reconsolidate power after it stole the election. This was a sad moment for the leader of the free world. “Mr. Obama has extended the hand of friendship to a man who has blood on his hands,” Ebadi told the Post. “He can at least avoid shaking the hand of friendship with him.”

Bottom Line.  We simply do not know whether the story about contaminated centrifuges is true.  More significantly, we do not know how many more undeclared nuclear facilities--likely, several, as noted in LFTC recently--the Iran is building, and whether such facilities are yet up & running.  What we do know is that commercial-grade reactor fuel can make a crude terrorist bomb, and that medical-grade fuel can make a better one.  Which suggests that we keep the champagne on ice, until if & when--albeit likely with no help from us--liberal democratic regime change comes to Iran.

LFTC - Can Israel Ace Hezbollah--and the UN--Next Time?

A Wall Street Journal op-ed explains why Israel can whip Hezbollah today, should a replay of the 2006 War occur.  Hezbollah has 40,000 rockets, 3 times its 2006 total, but Israel is ready with fresh tactics.  Read in full this first-rate op-ed (and pray it is true).  In a related matter, the UN's Human Rights Council--more aptly termed Human Wrongs Council--endorsed the Goldstone Report, whose Goebbels-style Big Lies about the Gaza War (i.e., Israel targets civilians, Hamas does not use them as human shields) were discussed extensively in the Sept. 25 LFTC.  Blood libels like this only encourage Israel to rely more on force to protect its legitimate national interests.

John Bolton urges Team Obama to resign from & defund the Council, due to its acceptance of the Goldstone libel--an acceptance that Britain & France decided merited abstention rather than opposition, breaking with the US.  Indeed, the Council went even further than the Goldstone Report, excluding condemnation of Hamas--a fact even Richard Goldstone criticized.  JB writes:

The U.N. General Assembly created the HRC on March 15, 2006, to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission, which had spent much of its final years concentrating on Israel and the U.S. rather than the world's real human rights violators. The Bush administration voted against establishing this body and declined to join it, believing, correctly, that it would not be an improvement over its predecessor. President Barack Obama changed course, and the U.S. won election to the HRC in May. Mr. Obama argued that engagement would be more effective than shunning the HRC and attempting to delegitimize it.

The Goldstone Report thus provides a stark test of Mr. Obama's analysis. Predictably, the administration blamed the report's underlying mandate and its stridently anti-Israel tilt on America's earlier absence from the HRC when the investigation was authorized and launched. Yet the new administration's diplomacy had no discernible impact on the HRC's disgraceful resolution.

Twenty-five of the Security Council's 47 members voted for the resolution (including Russia and China), six voted against (Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia, Ukraine and the U.S.), and 11 abstained (Japan, South Korea and several European governments among them).

Five didn't vote at all, including Great Britain and France. Press reports indicated that London saw its inaction as a "favor" to Israel, a position simultaneously inexplicable and gutless. It is hard to know just how much real politicking the Obama administration did before this vote, but the loss of key allies is telling.

The Goldstone Report has important implications for America. In the U.N., Israel frequently serves as a surrogate target in lieu of the U.S., particularly concerning the use of military force pre-emptively or in self-defense. Accordingly, U.N. decisions on ostensibly Israel-specific issues can lay a predicate for subsequent action against, or efforts to constrain, the U.S. Mr. Goldstone's recommendation to convoke the International Criminal Court is like putting a loaded pistol to Israel's head—or, in the future, to America's.

Bottom Line.  Israel's next war, whether against Hezbollah, Hamas, ro Iran or whomever, will also be fought against the UN as an active opponent.  Team Obama will have to choose between siding with a longtime ally or with the UN.