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December 28, 2009

Napolitano Changes Her Tune, More Questions About Security Than Answers

After making a complete fool of herself over the weekend by saying that "the system worked," Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has changed her story. Predictably, she's taking the "out of context" excuse:

Here, clearly, something went awry. We want to fix that problem," Napolitano told Fox News on Monday.

She said officials are doing a complete review to determine what needs to change to prevent such a passenger from clearing security in the future.

"No secretary of homeland security would sit here and say that a system worked prior to this incident which allowed this individual to get on this plane," Napolitano said.

And here on Matt Lauer's show on Sunday she responded to the criticism by saying that

I think the comment is being taken out of context. What I'm saying is once the incident occurred, moving forward we were immediately able to notify the 128 flights in the air on protective measures to take, immediately able to notify law enforcement on the ground, airports domestically, internationally... all of that happening within 60 to 90 minutes...

When directly asked if she conceded that prior to the incident whether the system had failed miserably she responded "it did."

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As for the "out of context," here is her original comment:

What we are focused on is making sure that the air environment remains safe, that people are confident when they travel. And one thing I'd like to point out is that the system worked. Everybody played an important role here. The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action. Within literally an hour to 90 minutes of the incident occurring, all 128 flights in the air had been notified to take some special measures in light of what had occurred on the Northwest Airlines flight. We instituted new measures on the ground and at screening areas, both here in the United States and in Europe, where this flight originated.

So the whole process of making sure that we respond properly, correctly and effectively went very smoothly.

Ok, I get her point that "the system" she was talking about was after the attack, but this misses the point spectacularly. Once the terrorist got on the plane with his bomb, the system had failed. That's the part of "the system" that counts the most. Sure, let's take action to prevent future attacks, but at best Napolitano sounded stupid in her initial remarks, at worst completely out of touch.

The Bush-Era DHS

Yes Bush-era DHS Secretaries Tom Ridge and Michael Cherthoff left a lot to be desired. The latter, especially, was attacked up one side and down the other by conservatives. So the "well what about George Bush this" and "What about George Bush that" doesn't carry any water with me.

You didn't have to go far on right-wing talk radio to hear Cherthoff in particular ridiculed for various things, in particular his lack of enthusiasm for a fence along the Mexican border to keep out illegals. We weren't happy with his anti-terror policies either, and he came under a fair amount of criticism from the right on that score too.

More, two wrongs don't make a right. It's like the argument that because George Bush drove up the deficit, conservatives and Republicans have no right to criticize Obama for doing the same.

Further, for all those liberals who want to tell me that Obama inherited Bush's security regime, it's been almost a year since our new president has been in office. I thought he was going to "change the world," institute "change" and all that. Heck, from some of the stuff I heard I thought he was going to move the mountains and calm the seas. Turns out he can't even be bothered to tighten up security on our airlines.

Security Failures

Don't take it from me, though, take it from two liberal newspapers. First up is the New York Times. In a story titled Questions on Why Suspect Wasn't Stopped:

When a prominent Nigerian banker and former government official phoned the American Embassy in Abuja in October with a warning that his son had developed radical views, had disappeared and might have traveled to Yemen, embassy officials did not revoke the young man's visa to enter the United States, which was good until June 2010.

Instead, officials said Sunday, they marked the file of the son, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, for a full investigation should he ever reapply for a visa. And when they passed the information on to Washington, Mr. Abdulmutallab's name was added to 550,000 others with some alleged terrorist connections -- but not to the no-fly list. That meant no flags were raised when he used cash to buy a ticket to the United States and boarded a plane, checking no bags.

Now that Mr. Abdulmutallab is charged with trying to blow up a transcontinental airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day, some members of Congress are urgently questioning why, eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks, security measures still cannot keep makeshift bombs off airliners...

Officials in several countries, meanwhile, worked to retrace Mr. Abdulmutallab's path and to look for security holes. In Nigeria, officials said he arrived in Lagos on Christmas Eve, just hours before departing for Amsterdam. American officials were tracking his travels to Yemen, and Scotland Yard investigators were checking on his connections in London, where he studied from 2005 to 2008 at University College London and was president of the Islamic Society.

Obama administration officials scrambled to portray the episode, in which passengers and flight attendants subdued Mr. Abdulmutallab and doused the fire he had started, as a test that the air safety system passed.

"The system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days," Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary said, in an interview on "This Week" on ABC. Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, used nearly the same language on "Face the Nation" on CBS, saying that "in many ways, this system has worked."

But counterterrorism experts and members of Congress were hardly willing to praise what they said was a security system that had proved to be not nimble enough to respond to the ever-creative techniques devised by would-be terrorists.

Here again, the idea that "the air safety system passed" it's test is lunacy. As I said above, the system failed the minute Abdulmutallab got on the plane with his bomb. That id didn't destroy the aircraft and kill everyone on board was sheer luck.

Next we have an editorial in the Washington Post titled Unconnected Dots, Yet Again, on a Terror Attempt:

THE THWARTED Christmas Day airplane bombing raises three causes for alarm. First, it illustrates a screening system that remains porous enough to let a suspect board with the same explosive shoe-bomber Richard Reid attempted to use in 2001. Second, it exposes a terrorism bureaucracy too clumsy to catapult the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, at least to a higher level of preflight scrutiny after his father came forward with warnings that he might pose a danger. Third, if it is true that the suspect received explosives training from al-Qaeda in Yemen, the incident underscores the emergence of that troubled nation as a training ground for terrorists. To that initial list, we would add a fourth: the disturbingly defensive reaction of the Obama administration.

No screening system can be foolproof, and every system must balance security against the need to allow an acceptably free flow of travel. But the system apparently failed in the case of Mr. Abdulmutallab in significant part because available technologies were not employed. The explosive PETN, pentaerythritol tetranitrate, that Mr. Abdulmutallab allegedly carried would not be found through normal X-rays or metal detectors. However, it is detectable by bomb-sniffing dogs, by "sniffer" technology that blows particles off travelers, or by swabbing passengers for traces of explosives; full-body imaging might also have been helpful. Mr. Abdulmutallab does not appear to have undergone any such screening in Lagos, where his travel started, or in Amsterdam, where he boarded the Northwest flight for Detroit. Given the continuing threat, it may be necessary to reexamine the need for such intensive screening before flights are cleared for the United States.

More disturbing is the apparent failure of U.S. authorities to respond swiftly and seriously to warnings by Mr. Abdulmutallab's father about his son's "radicalization and associations" with Islamist extremists. As the recently retired chairman of a major Nigerian bank, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab was a credible source; his alert to Nigerian and U.S. Embassy officials in Lagos about his son's increasingly militant views should have been enough to prompt an immediate review of Mr. Mutallab's multiple-entry visa and, at a minimum, to have him flagged for extra security precautions. The notion that there was "insufficient derogatory information available" to do more than add Mr. Abdulmutallab's name to a broad terror watch list, as the administration suggested, is infuriating. This was not an American citizen entitled to due-process protections and the right to enter the country at will. How much more derogatory does information have to be than a father's warning that his son is dabbling in radical Islam?

Ouch.

Posted by Tom at 9:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 27, 2009

Christmas Day Terror in the Skies Averted No Thanks to Homeland Security

Since I'm too tired to type it up myself, NRO News provides a summary of the events that took place on Christmas Day:

A Nigerian national and self-described Al Qaeda affiliate is in federal custody after allegedly trying to explode a Northwest Airlines Flight (253) bound for Detroit, according to news reports.

Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, twenty-three, reportedly attempted to set off a chemical incendiary device on the Amsterdam-Detroit flight shortly before it landed, but was foiled when fellow passengers smelled smoke and rushed him.

According to a federal counterterrorism official, Abdulmutallab has told authorities in preliminary interviews that he met with Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen to collect the chemical components for the device and learn how to use it. Authorities also said that Abdulmutallab appears in government records as a terrorism suspect, though he was not on the Transportation Safety Authority's "no-fly" list.

An analysis in the Telegraph asks the obvious questions:

How can a Muslim student, whose name appears on a US law enforcement database, be granted a visa to travel to America, allegedly acquire an explosive device from Yemen, a country awash with al-Qaeda terrorists, and avoid detection from the world's most sophisticated spy agencies?

There's much, much, more in the news that I'm sure you've read and so I won't rehash it. Long story short, this guy should have never made it onto the airplane;

Let's hope that this puts the brakes on attempts to end Bush-era security measures. Yes, Virginia, there is a threat, and it is real. No it is not a police problem best met through a law-enforcement model. And can we please have a real investigation into why in the world we didn't stop this guy before he got on the plane?

Incredibly, Secretary of Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano says that the system worked:

(transcript here, via American Power)

Napoliano: "...And one thing I'd like to point out is that the system worked...This was one individual literally of thousands that fly and thousands of flights every year. And he was stopped before any damage could be done... he was on what's called a tied list, which has half-a-million-plus names on it"

Fire this woman now.

Our "system" didn't do squat. We got lucky this time. It was a Dutch film producer that stopped the terrorist, not anyone from Homeland Security. She also insinuates that because he was on a list with a "half-a-million-plus names on it" is somehow an excuse, as if that's too big for modern computers to handle. To her credit, it didn't seem like CNN host Candy Crowley was buying her answers.

Thomas Joscelyn lets her have it with both barrels:

The would-be Christmas Day bomber boarded a plane with an explosive device that may have been capable of destroying an airliner, and yet "the system worked"? One wonders: What would it take for the "system" to fail? And if Abdulmutallab was not "improperly screened," then what is the point to screening anyone at all?

As far as we can tell according to the press accounts thus far, there are two reasons Abdulmutallab failed in his attempt at mass murder. Neither reason has anything to do with the "system."

First, Abdulmutallab's explosive device may have had a faulty detonator. Second, alert passengers pounced on Abdulmutallab, thereby preventing him from trying to rectify the problem, but only after Abdulmutallab had already started a fire on the plane.

Again, neither of these reasons for Mutallab's failure has anything to do with the "system."

In fact, contrary to what Napolitano says, there are an increasing number of "suggestion(s)" that the "system" failed miserably. Abdulmutallab's father says he contacted the U.S. embassy to warn American officials about his son's radicalism weeks ago. If true, and he still wasn't prevented from getting on an American-bound airliner, then this was a "system" failure. According to this account from CBS News, U.S. officials knew about Abdulmutallab for two years and while he was not on the no-fly list (a failure in and of itself), he was "on a list that includes people with known or suspected contact or ties to a terrorist or terrorist organization."

So, how did the "system" work if U.S. officials were warned about Abdulmutallab by his father, after knowing about him for two years, and yet didn't manage to do anything to stop him?

One of the most disappointing outcomes of 9-11 was that almost no one in the Administration was fired. That FDR didn't fire anyone after Pearl Harbor but scapegoated the commanders in Hawaii was no excuse. Heads should roll at DHS, starting with Napolitano's.

To those who think that everything is fine since, hey, we arrested the guy, Andy McCarthy has the perfect rejoinder

In Willful Blindness, I recount the debacle of repeated entries into the United States by, among others, the Blind Sheikh (Omar Abdel Rahman) and al Qaeda operative Ali Mohammed -- the former permitted free entrance, egress and, finally, a green card (as a special religious worker) even though he was one of the world's most famous jihadists and was on the terror watch lists for having authorized the murder of Anwar Sadat; the latter permitted to immigrate from Egypt and join the U.S. army despite having been caught trying to infiltrate the CIA. Now, nearly 20 years later -- after 9/11, the 9/11 Commission, etc. -- we have Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: He was in the terrorist "database" because we were warned by his own influential father of his radical ties and proclivities, and he was evidently notorious among associates in Africa and Europe for his jihadist leanings; yet, he was issued a multiple-entry visa. And he claims to have been trained in Yemen -- the al Qaeda hub to which the administration has just sent a half-dozen trained jihadists previously detained in Gitmo, and where it hopes to send many more. ...

Hadn't Abdulmutallab heard that we are closing Gitmo? Hadn't he heard that we're phasing out military-commissions so we can show the world that we give even the worst mass-murderers civilian trials with all the rights of American citizens? Hadn't he heard that President Obama has banned torture (yes, yes, I know, actually Congress banned it 15 years ago -- details, details ...)? Hadn't he heard that the president has called for "a new beginning" in America's relationship with the Muslim world? Hadn't he heard that this is our new, smarter strategy to safeguard the nation from man-caused disasters?

I suspect he's heard all those things.

The blind Sheikh as the mastermind behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and McCarthy was the chief prosecutor at his trial.

Finally, let me swat down one thing we're likely to hear from those who will deny that there is a large threat; that because Umar Farouk Abdul Mudalladalone (assuming he did), this was just an isolated incident and it's nothing much to worry about.

I don't have time now to go through the whole thing, but suffice it to say that al Qaeda is not the mafia or Nazi Germany. It is as much a concept, or mindset, as it is a formal organization. al Qaeda doesn't want to terrorize anyone or gain anything for it's own sake, but rather to reestablish the Caliphate by way or destroying Western civilization. The ideology seeks to inspire Muslims to commit acts of violent jihad as a means to this end. Whether they are formally working for the organization or not is irrelevant. In this sense, Walid Phares is right when he says it's all part of a War of Ideas.

As it is, Umar Farouk Abdul Mudallad reportedly "said he received instructions and training from al Qaeda operatives based in Yemen ahead of boarding the Detroit-bound flight Friday," so we shall see.

Whatever else, both we and other countries need to reexamine their security protocols and fast.

Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Iranians Protest: Obama is AWOL Again

Last June, while protests raged in the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities, President Obama remained silent. I and other like-minded protested, conservative pundits and politicians raged, and Obama finally made a few tepid remarks in support of the protesters.

Like deja vu all over again, protests rage throughout Iran and once again our president is silent. Nile Gardiner sums up my feelings exactly in the Telegraph:

I wrote back in June about the shameful silence of the Obama administration during the mass street protests that greeted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's fraudulent re-election victory as President of Iran. As White House spokesman Robert Gibbs ludicrously put it, the administration was "impressed by the vigorous debate and enthusiasm this election generated." Or in Vice President Joe Biden's words on NBC's Meet the Press, describing Ahmadinejad's victory - "we're going to withhold comment... I mean we're just waiting to see."

Embarrassingly for Washington, even many European leaders showed more backbone in condemning the Iranian regime's brutal suppression of protestors, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton humiliatingly outflanked by her French and German counterparts, who had no qualms about speaking out swiftly and firmly against the election result and the actions of the Iranian government.

In the six months that have followed, Barack Obama's high-risk engagement strategy has simply encouraged more repression from the Mullahs, as well as ever greater levels of defiance over Iran's nuclear weapons programme. As Con Coughlin noted in an excellent piece for The Wall Street Journal last month, Obama's Iran diplomacy isn't working:

"Iranian human-rights groups say that since the government crackdown began in late June, at least 400 demonstrators have been killed while another 56 are unaccounted, which is several times higher than the official figures. The regime has established a chain of unofficial, makeshift prisons to deal with the protesters, where torture and rape are said to be commonplace. In Tehran alone, 37 young Iranian men and women are reported to have been raped by their captors."

Now once again huge street protests have flared up on the streets of Tehran and a number of other major cities, with several protesters shot dead this weekend by the security forces and Revolutionary Guards, reportedly including the nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, and dozens seriously injured. And again there is deafening silence from the Commander-in-Chief as well as his Secretary of State. And where is the president? On vacation in Hawaii, no doubt recuperating from his exertions driving forward the monstrous health care reform bill against the overwhelming will of the American public and without a shred of bipartisan support.

For all the talk about human rights and the danger of theocracy that comes from the left, you'd think they could bring themselves to at least say something in support of people who are protesting true dictatorial theocrats.

I've heard all the excuses and they're all bullcrap; because of our role in the Mohammed Mossadeq affair, we're not allowed to ever again interfere in Iran's internal affairs, that even speaking in support of the protesters will backfire, giving the government the excuse it wants to crack down, that silent diplomacy works best, or that the protesters don't live up to our Jeffersonian standards so are probably little better than the government.

Funny how these arguments didn't apply to apartheid South Africa.

Just as with his failed attempt to bring the 2016 Olympics to the Chicago, this is all about Obama. He didn't care about the Olympics, he just wanted to make himself look good by getting them. Likewise, he doesn't care about the well-being of the Iranian people, he just wants to make himself look good by negotiating a deal that will end Iran's nuclear program.

President Obama needs to take a lesson from Ronald Reagan and stand with the protesters in Iran. End this silence, lets end the mullah's regime, and let's bring real democratic change to Iran.

Previous
Why President Obama Should Stand for Freedom in Iran June 27, 2009
Terror in Tehran... But is the Government Getting the Upper Hand? June 24, 2009
More Action, Protests, Remberences of Neda Agha-Soltan in Iran June 23, 2009
One and a Half Cheers for Obama June 23, 2009
Will The Protesters In Iran Succeed In Overturning the Government? June 21, 2009
Violence in Iran, and Obama Shifts His Position...Sort of June 20, 2009
House and Senate Democrats Diss Both Obama and Liberal Bloggers June 20, 2009
Reagan v Obama: How To Handle Tyranny June 17, 2009
Obama to Iranian Protesters: You're On Your Own June 16, 2009
A Few Thoughts On The Iranian Elections June 14, 2009

Posted by Tom at 8:30 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 22, 2009

The Great Copenhagen Global Warming Fraud

I just haven't had much time to post recently, so in leiu of writing it all myself I'm resorting to posting the opinions of others. Whatever. Today I'll round out my series of posts on The Great Copenhagen Global Warming Fraud with excerpts from three editorials in Sunday's Washington Times.

Obama's cold day in Denmark
The White House is being outmaneuvered by Red China

...as the conference neared, huge gaps in the treaty language persisted. The final three-page version was tossed together in the closing hours with little deliberation and wound up saying little. The much-ballyhooed treaty promises next to nothing, other than a $100 billion slush fund for Third World dictators to "adapt to climate change," which probably involves buying mansions in southern France.

Mr. Obama's speech reflected the general frustration of the hour and was uncharacteristically flat and angry. The president fumed that it was "not a time to talk but to act," but we wonder why he's in such a hurry. There is no particular crisis. The inflated gravitas of the event was punctured by the ongoing collapse of the scientific basis for global-warming theory in the wake of the scandal about fudged scientific research.

The Chinese seem to have been on the right side of this debate all along. China was viewed as the major stumbling block at the conference, and Mr. Obama met privately with Premier Wen Jiabao to try to iron out the wrinkles. It's ironic that dictatorial goons like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe blamed capitalism for the world's global-warming ills while China puts the brakes on monitoring emissions. Having weighed all the factors, Beijing would rather be an economic powerhouse.

The only reason China gives lip service to the global-warming alarmist agenda is to hamper the competition - and our Democratic president is falling for the trap. Mr. Obama pledged that the United States would move forward with strict emissions limits whether or not the international community did the same. From Beijing's perspective, if the foolish Americans want to wreck their economy based on the misguided belief that they are saving polar bears, who is China to say no?

No one ever said the Chinese were stupid.

Carbon class warfare
The wrong countries are criticized for carbon-dioxide emissions

The United States currently produces 30 percent of the world's total goods and services but emits 20 percent of man-made carbon dioxide. The rest of the wealthy, developed nations aren't far behind. Under the Kyoto treaty, Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Russia are known as the Annex 1 countries. Combined, they produce 45 percent of the world's goods and services while emitting 31 percent of the world's man-made carbon dioxide. The United States produces 1.5 percent of the world's gross domestic product for each 1 percent of the world's man-made carbon dioxide emissions. That ratio is 1.45 to 1 for the other developed countries.

The rest of the world doesn't come close to this efficiency. By far the worst offenders are the former and current communist states. China generates just 6 percent of the world's gross domestic product but - at 21 percent - produces more man-made carbon dioxide than America. That's a ratio of .28 to 1. The former Soviet republics are even worse, producing just 2 percent of the world's GDP and 9 percent of its man-made carbon dioxide for a miserable .22 to 1 ratio. Other places such as India, members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Africa, Brazil and the rest of South America all produce a greater share of the world's man-made carbon dioxide than they do of the world's GDP.

Translation: Democratic capitalism is the system that is more friendly to the environment than any other. The great irony, as the Times editors point out, is that it was Venezuelan dictator-wanna-be Hugo Chavez that got the most applause.

The green dictatorship
Global-warming radicals want to take away our freedom

Last week's Copenhagen summit surrendered all pretense to significance when it turned into a showcase for dictators' attempts to greenwash their bloody regimes....

Last week's Copenhagen summit surrendered all pretense to significance when it turned into a showcase for dictators' attempts to greenwash their bloody regimes. Granting the spotlight to the tyrannical trio of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez so they could express their profound concern for Mother Earth is like asking former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his prostitute Ashley Dupre to propound upon the state of marriage.

Mr. Mugabe used the opportunity to blame global warming for the deaths of millions of his subjects. No doubt his country turned from food exporter to famine because of coal electric plants in Idaho. Of course, driving thousands of farmers from their land, rejecting modern farming methods, confiscating his people's wealth and turning his nation into a police state have little to do with Zimbabwean poverty.

"When we spew hazardous emissions for selfish, consumptionist ends, in the process threatening land masses and atmospheric space of smaller and weaker nations, are we not guilty of gross human rights violations?" Mr. Mugabe asked. In case you didn't recognize him, that's the good dictator, the campaigner for human rights and pollution control.

In Mr. Ahmadinejad's case, he unsurprisingly pushed an agenda of spreading nuclear technology to all nations. In a slight oversight, the misunderstood Iranian president failed to mention his desperate hurry to create a nuclear arsenal. No matter, the good Mr. Ahmadinejad is about saving the environment with a profound commitment to disarmament. "Would it not be better that part of the military funds of some countries be dedicated to improving the welfare of people and reducing pollution?" pleaded the green Iranian dictator.

That's rather an ironic color choice, as Mr. Ahmadinejad recently stole elections from an opposition party using green as its signature campaign color.

Not to be left out is Mr. Chavez as representative of a nation feverishly arming for war with its neighbors, nationalizing whole industries and silencing the opposition press. He believes, "The cause of all this disastrous situation is the destructive capitalist system. ... Capitalism is the road to hell." No doubt the tanks Mr. Chavez is buying from Russia will come with efficient hybrid engines and will be used only to demand that neighboring countries tighten fuel-efficiency standards. Those TV stations he shut down must have refused to use clean and responsible solar energy.

Such deep concern for Western capitalism, consumerism and militarism didn't keep the dictators from joining other less developed nations with their hand out for a $100 billion bribe to be financed by that awful capitalism. But these green dictators have more in common than a desire for handouts. Iran and Venezuela, in particular, finance their oppressive governments with the export of oil. Now what was it that causes carbon emissions again? Fossil fuels, was it?

To call the eco-friendly posturing of Third World dictators a farce is to understate the scandal. That the audience greeted such self-serving insanity with applause and that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Obama sanctified the gathering with their presence exposes a dark side to the green agenda. Global-warming theology is not just a fraud; it attacks freedom and encourages dictatorship.

If the global warmers are so willing to tolerate such dictator wanna-be types, they'll tolerate any intrusion into your life in order to satisfy their agenda.

This, then, brings us to the greatest irony of all; that is typically those who railed the loudest against the Patriot Act who support what amounts to green tyranny. Congratulations, environmentalists! This is where your movement has taken you.

Posted by Tom at 9:20 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

December 20, 2009

Obama - Pelosi - Reid Care Will Bankrupt Us All

Obama care will bankrupt us all while simultaneously decreasing services for most Americans. What an accomplishment.

As it is, the Democrats don't seem much interested in turning out a good bill. They just want any bill. Healthcare is the big enchilada for the left, and they know that now is their chance to get what they've always wanted. They've got the White House and large majorities in Congress, and the stars don't align this way very often.

All of the horse trading has cost them some of their most cherished goals, such as the "public option," which has much of the left in an uproar. The fight over public funding over abortion threatens to derail whatever compromise Reid comes up with.

There are many objections to the current bills. One is simply that it's none of the government's business, another that the current bills will make the situation worse. Third is that it will be hugely expensive, and this in a time when we're already running large deficits.

Yuval Levin, writing over at The Corner, has the scoop:

The CBO assessment of the bill tells the appalling story. We are going to raise taxes by half a trillion dollars over the next ten years, increase spending by more than a trillion dollars, cut Medicare by $470 billion but use that money to fund a new entitlement rather than to fix Medicare itself, bend the health care cost curve up rather than down, insert layers of bureaucracy between doctors and patients, and compel and subsidize universal participation in a failed system of health insurance rather than reform or improve it. Indeed, this bill will make it exceedingly difficult to fix our health insurance financing system in the future, since it sucks dry the potential means of such reform but leaves the fundamental cost problem essentially untouched (and in some respects worsened.) After all the back and forth, pulling and tugging, it is hard to see what is left in this bill that any member of Congress, liberal or conservative, would want to support.

The public seems to see that, and is increasingly opposed to the bill, but for now Democrats in congress still persist. It's no wonder Obama, Reid, and Pelosi want to rush this process through before their rank and file members can grasp what they're doing. But it's a bit of a wonder that those rank and file members so far seem to be playing along. Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, and a few others have been bought with taxpayer-funded favors for their states. What's everyone else's excuse?

Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 17, 2009

More Insanity from the Global Warmers in Copenhagen

There is so much craziness coming from the global warming nutters in Copenhagen that it's hard to know where to start. The good news is that for a group that wants to run the world they can't even run themselves. The bad news is that their heroes are....

Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe.

Australian climate change minister Penny Wong tried to talk some sense into the delegates, but they jeered her. The Australian (via Powerline) describes what happened after she left the podium:

Speaker after speaker from the developing world railed against this idea, with the Sudanese vice president Nafie Ali Nafie speaking on behalf of the developing world and declaring that they stood ready to agree to a new commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol. That would be the agreement where developing countries aren't obliged to do anything. The other proposed agreement that would require big developing country emitters to bind themselves to their own type of emission reductions they are a lot less keen on.

Then President Chavez brought the house down.

When he said the process in Copenhagen was "not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn't that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship...down with imperial dictatorships" he got a rousing round of applause.

When he said there was a "silent and terrible ghost in the room" and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening.

But then he wound up to his grand conclusion - 20 minutes after his 5 minute speaking time was supposed to have ended and after quoting everyone from Karl Marx to Jesus Christ - "our revolution seeks to help all people...socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that's the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell....let's fight against capitalism and make it obey us." He won a standing ovation.

What did you expect from this crowd?

Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe isn't quite as popular, but no one has the guts to keep him out either. His speech included this bit of nonsense:

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Wednesday chided the West from the podium of the United Nations summit on climate change in Copenhagen for what he charged was a double standard under which it fell short on addressing global warming while taking developing countries to task over human rights.

Mr. Mugabe told the climate change summit: "When these capitalist gods of carbon burp and belch their dangerous emissions, it's we, the lesser mortals of the developing sphere who gasp and sink and eventually die."

He complained that polluters are not pursued by Western governments with the same zeal they show in castigating abusers of human rights.

"Why," asked Mr. Mugabe, "is the guilty North not showing the same fundamentalist spirit it exhibits in our developing countries on human rights matters on this more menacing threat of climate change?"

He appeared to single out the United States in his remarks, demanding, "When a country spits on the Kyoto Protocol by seeking to shrink from its diktats, or by simply refusing to accede to it, is it not violating the global rule of law?" The United States has declined to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

He said the developing world would be called upon to clean up the mess left by the industrialized West, therefore deserved ample climate-related funding.

"We who bear the burden of healing the gasping earth must draw the most from the global purse for remedial action," Mr. Mugabe declared.

Pretty rich that he should lecture us about anything.

The leftist love their political theater. Again, from The Australian via the invaluable Powerline:

The lead negotiator for the small island nation of Tuvalu, the bow-tie wearing Ian Fry, broke down as he begged delegates to take tough action.

"I woke up this morning crying, and that's not easy for a grown man to admit," Mr Fry said on Saturday, as his eyes welled with tears.

"The fate of my country rests in your hands," he concluded, as the audience exploded with wild applause.

Turns out, thought, that it was all fake:

But the part-time PhD scholar at the Australian National University actually resides in Queanbeyan, NSW, where he's not likely to be troubled by rising sea levels because the closest beach at Batemans Bay is a two-hour, 144km drive away. Asked whether he had ever lived in Tuvalu, his wife told The Australian last night she would "rather not comment"....

Still, it's a long way from the endangered atolls of Tuvalu, with his neighbour Michelle Ormay confirming he's lived in Queanbeyan for more than a decade, while he has worked his way up to being "very high up in climate change."

President Obama is headed over there, but it seems pretty certain that he won't be able to persuade them to come up with an agreement. So he'll give another vapid speech which our media will applaud, and come back home to deal with the healthcare mess in Congress he, Reid, and Pelosi have made.

It's all a huge waste of time, money, and energy. The only good news is that there won't be an agreement, sparing our fragile economy that shock.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Al Gore's "Hockey Stick" Environmental Alarmism Disputed

Al Gore and other alarmists insist that human activity that is causing warming to the degree that we face a global catastrophe unless we take drastic action now. Via NRO's Planet Gore, this video puts recent warming into perspective:

Here is a replica of the "hockey stick" graph from page 65 of Al Gore's book An Inconvenient Truth:

Posted by Tom at 9:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 12, 2009

Global Warming as the New Socialism

I'd say that Jonah Goldberg has it about right in this column:

On Monday, Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, formally announced that her agency now considers carbon dioxide to be a dangerous pollutant, subject to government regulation. The finding comes two years after the Supreme Court ruled that CO2 falls under the EPA's jurisdiction.

A day later, an unnamed White House official told Fox's Major Garrett that the message for Congress is clear: "If you don't pass this (cap-and-trade) legislation . . . the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area. . . . And it is not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it's going to have to regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty."

And such "uncertainty" is a huge "deterrent to investment," which will hurt the economy even more.

Translation: We don't want the EPA to kick the economy in the groin, but if Congress doesn't act, well, a-groin-kickin' we shall go.

This is grotesquely dishonest.

The White House and Congress could, quite easily, do something about the EPA's threat. President Obama could instruct Jackson to interpret the Supreme Court's 2007 decision granting the EPA power to regulate greenhouse gases more loosely. He could ask Congress to simply rewrite the Clean Air Act so as to exclude carbon dioxide from its list of official pollutants -- the policy the EPA followed for years until the Supreme Court reinterpreted the Clean Air Act.

But no.

As part of the enduring statist desire to penetrate ever deeper into every nook and cranny of our lives, greens have wanted to find a way for the government to regulate CO2, a natural byproduct of fire and breathing, for decades. Now they can.

That is why the White House will use Jackson as a Medusa's head, to petrify cap-and-trade opponents with the prospect of something even worse: the effective seizing of the means of production. The White House says nothing of the sort is going on. Jackson, the former chief of staff to lame-duck New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, is an independent, disinterested public servant simply following sound science with no concern for politics.

If Jackson cares so much about sound science, why is she basing some of her policies on data from the discredited scientific frat house, the Climatic Research Unit?

If Jackson cares so little about politics, why did she make her announcement to such fanfare at the opening of Climapalooza in Copenhagen?

In fairness, Jackson is only a Medusa's head to those who care desperately about economic growth and who don't think draconian taxes on energy and massive wealth transfers for white elephants in the Third World are the answer to our problems. But for others, she represents another icon from Greek mythology: the Golden Fleece.

Jason and his Argonauts set out to find the fleece so they might place Jason on the throne of Iolcus. The original story is one of power-seeking in a noble cause.

It's debatable whether the modern tale of Jackson and the Goregonauts is quite so noble. But it's obvious they're interested in power and hell-bent on fleecing.

Indeed, some of loudest voices have a weird habit of telegraphing their priorities. Tim Wirth, a former senator and now chairman of the United Nations Foundation, once said: "We've got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy." New York Times columnist and prominent warm-monger Thomas Friedman has repeatedly said (most recently this week) that he doesn't care if global warming is a "hoax" because, even if it is, the fear of it will force us to do what we need to do.

And it just so happens that with the exception of nuclear power -- which most greens still won't support -- global warming fuels nearly every progressive ambition. Wealth transfers from rich to poor nations: Check. The rise of "global governance" and the decline of American sovereignty: Check. A secular fatwa not only to erode capitalism but to intrude on every aspect of our lives (Greenpeace offers a guide to carbon-neutral sex): Check. Weaning us off of oil (which, don't let the Goregonauts fool you, was a priority back when we were still worried about global cooling): Check. The checks go on for as far as the eye can see, and we will be writing them for years to come.

The left has seized upon global warming to perpetuate the greatest power grab in modern times. It's the latest excuse for socialism and big-government regulation, and they're only getting started.

Posted by Tom at 8:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 11, 2009

The Great Copenhagen Global Warming Scam

As an example of how out of control the greenies are, Mary Katherine Ham reports that "This is the video that was shown at the opening ceremonies in Copenhagen, commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark specifically for this high-profile, international gathering:"

Sadly, this goes beyond the usual globaloney. The Obama Administration has threatened to impose 'command and control" regulations over emissions unless Congress regulates emissions its own. In other words, we 'd like to make it all legal with the right laws, but if none are passed we're just going to do it anyway.

So what is going on in Copenhagen, and how does it tie to this threat by the Obama Administration?

Fortunately for you, dear reader, a better wordtmith than I, Charles Krauthammer, has it all figured out:

In the 1970s and early '80s, having seized control of the U.N. apparatus (by power of numbers), Third World countries decided to cash in. OPEC was pulling off the greatest wealth transfer from rich to poor in history. Why not them? So in grand U.N. declarations and conferences, they began calling for a "New International Economic Order." The NIEO's essential demand was simple: to transfer fantastic chunks of wealth from the industrialized West to the Third World.

On what grounds? In the name of equality -- wealth redistribution via global socialism -- with a dose of post-colonial reparations thrown in.

The idea of essentially taxing hardworking citizens of the democracies to fill the treasuries of Third World kleptocracies went nowhere, thanks mainly to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (and the debt crisis of the early '80s). They put a stake through the enterprise.

But such dreams never die. The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism.

One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another NIEO shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of billions from the industrial West to the Third World to save the planet by, for example, planting green industries in the tristes tropiques.

Politically it's an idea of genius, engaging at once every left-wing erogenous zone: rich man's guilt, post-colonial guilt, environmental guilt. But the idea of shaking down the industrial democracies in the name of the environment thrives not just in the refined internationalist precincts of Copenhagen. It thrives on the national scale, too.

On the day Copenhagen opened, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claimed jurisdiction over the regulation of carbon emissions by declaring them an "endangerment" to human health.

Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA will be regulating practically everything. No institution that emits more than 250 tons of CO2 a year will fall outside EPA control. This means more than a million building complexes, hospitals, plants, schools, businesses and similar enterprises. (The EPA proposes regulating emissions only above 25,000 tons, but it has no such authority.) Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life.

This naked assertion of vast executive power in the name of the environment is the perfect fulfillment of the prediction of Czech President (and economist) Vaclav Klaus that environmentalism is becoming the new socialism, i.e., the totemic ideal in the name of which government seizes the commanding heights of the economy and society.

Socialism having failed so spectacularly, the left was adrift until it struck upon a brilliant gambit: metamorphosis from red to green. The cultural elites went straight from the memorial service for socialism to the altar of the environment. The objective is the same: highly centralized power given to the best and the brightest, the new class of experts, managers and technocrats. This time, however, the alleged justification is not abolishing oppression and inequality but saving the planet.

Not everyone is pleased with the coming New Carbon-Free International Order. When the Obama administration signaled (in a gesture to Copenhagen) a U.S. commitment to major cuts in carbon emissions, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb wrote the president protesting that he lacks the authority to do so unilaterally. That requires congressional concurrence by legislation or treaty.

With the Senate blocking President Obama's cap-and-trade carbon legislation, the EPA coup d'etat served as the administration's loud response to Webb: The hell we can't. With this EPA "endangerment" finding, we can do as we wish with carbon. Either the Senate passes cap-and-trade, or the EPA will impose even more draconian measures: all cap, no trade.

Forget for a moment the economic effects of severe carbon chastity. There's the matter of constitutional decency. If you want to revolutionize society -- as will drastic carbon regulation and taxation in an energy economy that is 85 percent carbon-based -- you do it through Congress reflecting popular will. Not by administrative fiat of EPA bureaucrats.

Congress should not just resist this executive overreaching, but trump it: Amend clean-air laws and restore their original intent by excluding CO2 from EPA control and reserving that power for Congress and future legislation.

Do it now. Do it soon. Because Big Brother isn't lurking in CIA cloak. He's knocking on your door, smiling under an EPA cap.

What gets me is that the same liberals who insisted that the Patriot Act was an unconscionable intrusion into our civil liberties think nothing about regulating every aspect of our lives.

Krauthammer has it right; this whole global-warming, cap 'n trade, Kyoto treaty, carbon tax, greenhouse gas regulation, whatever-else-they-have-cooked-up is all a big scam to regulation us into oblivion by a federal government and UN that amount to a soft tyranny while sending us to our economic doom.

I suppose if the earth really did have a fever and there was the planetary emergency that Al Gore insists is reality I would at least be sympathetic to the arguments of the greenies. During the Bush Administration, we were admonished that we should listen to Ben Franklin when he warned that "they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Funny how along with the imperative of getting bin Laden this has gone by the wayside. So even if what the greenies told us was true I'm inclined to think it wouldn't be worth the price.

Turns out, though, that it's not even clear that the earth is warming, much les that humans are causing it. so the hysteria is completely unwarranted, let alone the need for severe regulations. What's imperative is that we fight tooth and nail to stop these green tyrants from achieving their goals.

Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

December 3, 2009

President Obama's New Plan for Afghanistan: Additional Commentary

Two days ago I reviewed President Obama's speech in which he announced his new plan for Afghanistan. Following is some commentary that I found insightful:

Posted just before the speech, Kim R. Holmes explains why failure is not an option:

The alternative to victory in Afghanistan is a return to chaos and, quite possibly, genocide. Al-Qaeda and its local Taliban enablers would immediately fill the ensuing power vacuum, turning that benighted land into an apocalyptic failed state. This would recreate the exact conditions that produced the 9/11 attacks.

Only this time, things could be worse. We could witness a regional conflagration that quickly turned nuclear and went global. Afghanistan borders on Pakistan, a nuclear nation with many Taliban sympathizers (especially among its ethnic Pashtuns).

A Taliban-dominated Afghanistan could easily inject further instability in Pakistan, strengthening extremist forces in the region that also threaten India. The likelihood of war between India and Pakistan -- a war that could potentially go nuclear -- would rise significantly. Remember, these two countries have already fought three wars since the partition of British India in 1947, and enmity between the two still abounds.

These are the stakes in Afghanistan. Defeating our enemies there and leaving behind a stable state is a national-security priority. President Obama must make this case without hesitation, obfuscation, or qualification.

Remember how for these past 6 or 7 years we had to listen to the left insist that while Iraq was "the wrong war," they were raring to go fight in Afghanistan? They chided Bush for failing to get bin Laden but once they got power they were going to fix that.

Reviewing the speech, Andy McCarthy reminds us of these promises and takes Obama and his movement apart:

If you accept, as I do, the premise that President Obama is an Alinskyite, last night's speech was totally predictable. From 2003 forward, he and his party cynically raised the Afghanistan mission into a noble calling -- not because they thought it really was one, but because it made their political attack on the war in Iraq more effective. Now, Obama is cratering in the polls and his party is in even worse shape. Politically, they can't afford to abandon the noble calling at this point: Even the legacy media couldn't protect them from the fallout, which would intensify when the Taliban overran Karzai right as we headed into our midterm elections next year.

So we can't leave, but we can't wage war either. The Obama Left can tolerate, barely, the appearance of waging war if that's what it takes to prevent rank-and-file Democrats from revolting. But they have no interest in defeating anti-American Muslims (who, after all, have a point, right?) or in pursuing American interests for their own sake.

What to do? Well, the Right has given Obama his escape hatch. Conservatives keep talking about "victory" but they never define it. We keep saying, "Give General McChrystal the troops he needs to win," but because we're as vague as Obama when it comes to what "winning" means, no one will really care what the additional troops actually do in Afghanistan. Thus, as long as Obama agreed to send a contingent -- low-balled, but reasonably close to the 40,000 in McChrystal's last request -- he knew he'd be fine....Our unwavering resolve for this task will last 18 months -- during which we will continue solidifying the new narrative that the war is not ours but Afghanistan's, and that the hapless Karzai isn't producing results fast enough. That will get Democrats through the midterms.

By that point, it will be the middle of 2011 -- and that's when the "taking into account conditions on the ground" kicks in. If the Left has succeeded in souring the country on the whole enterprise such that Obama's reelection chances won't be impaired by a withdrawal, we'll pull-out. On the other hand, if the noble calling is still perceived as noble, Obama will satisfy the Right by bravely staying the course and giving General McChrystal the time he needs "to complete the mission successfully," and satisfy the Left by re-promising a phased withdrawal in about 18 months, so that those resources can be invested here at home in rebuilding our economy and putting Americans back to work (since unemployment should be hovering around 12 percent by then).

All true enough, but Marin Strmecki reminds us it could have been far worse, starting off by pointing out that anything that annoys the left can't be all bad:

When a president from the liberal wing of the Democratic party defies part of his political base in order to protect the national security and vital interests of the United States, it is not wise to begrudge him a measure of praise....

The president deserves praise for the way he has defined the problem. The United States faces a syndicate of violent extremist groups -- al-Qaeda among them -- that is based in western Pakistan....

In addition, the president deserves plaudits for rejecting a narrow counterterrorist strategy -- essentially drone attacks on steroids -- and for adopting a strategy for defeating the enemy by working with and strengthening our partners in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A narrow counterterrorist strategy was tried in the 1990s, and it failed....

The president has also rightly endorsed the counterinsurgency approach articulated by General McChrystal. This approach is based on using the persistent presence of forces at the local level to protect the population from attacks and intimidation by the Taliban....

Moreover, when the president signaled to Pakistan that we will not "tolerate a safe haven for terrorists whose location is known, and whose intentions are clear," he demonstrated a new realism about the problematic conduct of elements of the Pakistani security establishment, which has permitted the development of sanctuaries in its territory.

Victor Davis Hanson asks if we are we to be led in war by a "tiger" or a kitten? Apparently neither a lion or fox was under consideration:

...the problem is that the commander-in-chief was clearly pained by the decision -- sometimes fobbing off his dilemma on the prior administration, at other times trying to contextualize the war as a complex socio-legal problem rather than a struggle to force our enemy to accept our own political aims (i.e., a consensual government in Kabul that is inhospitable, rather than welcoming, to global terrorists).

And when a war leader visibly regrets the situation he has found himself in -- rather than being determined to prevail in the struggle at hand -- that hesitancy inevitably ripples through the ranks. Think of the British or French war effort between September 1939 and May 1940, or America in Vietnam between 1964 and 1969. Chamberlain was no Churchill, and LBJ, like it or not, was not a Nixon, at least when it came to trying to win in Vietnam.

In contrast, with the ascension of the "Tiger," Georges Clemenceau, as prime minister in 1917, his will to win ("la guerre jusqu'au bout") filtered throughout the French ranks and soon made an enormous difference in the trenches. Take away a win-at-all-costs Lincoln in the dark days of spring and summer 1864, and the Army of the Potomac, Grant or no Grant, would have lost its soul. During the Cold War, American forces, down to the level of private, were more enthused with a "tear down this wall" president than an earlier "free of that inordinate fear of communism" commander-in-chief.

So, yes, in the short term, troops will be sent. Two brilliant generals will have leeway. And we will have a year and a half at the new troop levels. But no nation can -- or should try to -- win a war when the heart of the man at the top is not in the struggle.

The invaluable Charles Krauthammer saw the speech as quite strange:

It was a very strange speech. It was supposed to be a clarion call to battle ... But it was so hedged and cramped and ambivalent. There was a huge reluctance you could hear in his tone.

On one hand, he sends in the troops, and on the other hand, he says we are leaving in 18 months. ... You can say it's a sop to the left, but we heard his national security adviser today in testimony say the date is fixed one. The withdrawals will start. The only question is [that] conditions will determine the pace of withdrawal.

So James Jones was saying it is a real date. That's the reason why I think people are unsure about this. There are a lot of people on the right who think this was OK. They won the policy, and the left won the speech -- [meaning] all the caveats are in a speech, but the president is committed to the surge and his commanders have at least partial victory in what they want.

But the issue is this -- Is his heart in it? He spoke about unwavering resolve, and yet he talks about exit. He talks about how the security of the world hangs on this, and yet he had a whole riff in the speech about how we have to look after our economy and how expensive war is and how we have to balance the needs of our country.

Finally, Peter Kirsanow reminds us that we weren't the only ones listening to the speech:

The Taliban and al-Qaeda were not the only ones marking their calendars while listening to President Obama's speech last night. Certain parties in Tehran and Moscow were making self-interested calculations as well. In those cities, the lines from the speech that mattered most were those pertaining to the 18-month timetable. If the president of the United States pronounces this war to be so important, yet spends much of his time plotting an exit seemingly untethered to victory (indeed, doesn't even define what "victory" in Afghanistan would be), that sends a signal to our adversaries likely to produce headaches in the future: Be patient, and your aims shall be realized. If there was any doubt in Tehran that no serious effort would be made to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, that doubt was markedly diminished, if not extinguished, last night. And the gleam of adventurism in Mr. Putin's eyes shines brighter today as well. The dog whistle in last night's speech alerted a few wolves as well.

We may well pull a victory out, but by only sending 3/4 of what General McChrystal asked for he's made it unnecessarily risky. His timeline telegraphs to friends and enemies alike that we're not dedicated to victory. To our enemies it means that all they have to do is survive another 18 months. Our friends must make a hard calculation; "will the U.S. win in 18 months?" If they conclude no, they'll "make their accomodations" with the Taliban now, if they conclude yes, they had better be right, or we'll have what happened in south Vietnam and Cambodia all over again.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

December 2, 2009

President Obama Announces His Plan for Afghanistan

Tuesday evening Obama delivered an address at West Point in which he laid out his plan for Afghanistan.

One thing is certainly true now: President Obama owns the war in Afghanistan. By refusing to accept Gen McChrystal's plan as presented, he cannot blame anyone but himself if the war goes awry. By insisting on his own unique plan, he accepts sole responsibility for success or failure.

Quick Take

The good - All in all I'm fairly pleased with the plan. He is sending 30,000 more troops, a decent number,and that is good. He also recognizes that the presence of U.S. troops is not the problem in that we are not "occupiers," but our troops are part of the solution. He could have chosen a low-troop counterterror strategy, or just announced that we were pulling troops out, or some other screwball plan, and he didn't

The bad - This seems less a strategy for victory, a word that Obama doesn't utter even once, than one to get the issue off of his plate. Another 10,000 troops would have been better and less risk. Fewer troops always increases the possibility of failure. Announcing a date for withdrawal is dumb. He displayed his usual pettiness of blaming his predecessor time and again. Obama is very self-reverential and loves to pat himself on the back.

The Speech

I'll have much more to say about this speech and his new strategy in the days to come, but for now here are some excerpts along with my commentary:

... it is important to recall why America and our allies were compelled to fight a war in Afghanistan in the first place. We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people. They struck at our military and economic nerve centers. They took the lives of innocent men, women, and children without regard to their faith or race or station. Were it not for the heroic actions of the passengers on board one of those flights, they could have also struck at one of the great symbols of our democracy in Washington, and killed many more.

Excellent. Pity that he doesn't say this ever week. George W Bush stopped making the case for Afghanistan and Iraq and it cost him politically. Here's the paradox: Bush could have had all the troops and money for either early on, but he didn't ask for them. When he finally decided he needed more troops for Iraq, it became very difficult to get them. Obama faces the same problem.

Col. Harry Summers made much the same point about Lyndon Johnson in his seminal work On Strategy; A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, in 1982. He pointed out that Johnson didn't think he needed a declaration of war in 1964, so he didn't seek one. By 1968, when he did need one, he couldn't get it.

As such, Obama needs to make the case for Afghanistan on a regular basis. Not just one big speech and then back to healthcare or global warming or whatever, but he needs to do this again and again. If he doesn't he's going to find it very difficult to get the money and support that he needs to see this through.

Then, in early 2003, the decision was made to wage a second war in Iraq. The wrenching debate over the Iraq War is well-known and need not be repeated here. It is enough to say that for the next six years, the Iraq War drew the dominant share of our troops, our resources, our diplomacy, and our national attention - and that the decision to go into Iraq caused substantial rifts between America and much of the world.

Now we're back to typical Obama pettyness: "Hey everyone, none of this is my fault! Blame George W Bush!" The man is incapable of giving a speech in which he doesn't do this. This quite in contrast to another wartime leader who inherited a mess, one Winston Spencer Churchill, who instead of blaming his predecessors just got on with it. Follow the link and listen to Churchill's speech; note that he talks about "we," while with Obama it's always me me me.

He plays the blame game again and again, and of course it's all about him. I'll spare you the quotes as you can read the transcript for yourself.

As your Commander-in-Chief, I owe you a mission that is clearly defined, and worthy of your service. That is why, after the Afghan voting was completed, I insisted on a thorough review of our strategy. Let me be clear: there has never been an option before me that called for troop deployments before 2010, so there has been no delay or denial of resources necessary for the conduct of the war. Instead, the review has allowed me ask the hard questions, and to explore all of the different options along with my national security team, our military and civilian leadership in Afghanistan, and with our key partners. Given the stakes involved, I owed the American people - and our troops - no less.

This review is now complete.

Oh bullcrap. The reason he dithered is that he wanted to push healthcare as far in the congress as he could without making its more leftist members mad at him.

And as Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.

This is less than the 40 - 45,000 that Frederick and Kimberly Kagan recommended, and that McChrystal apparently requested, but we'll apparently get 5,000 from NATO as well. The question is any or how many of those NATO troops will be encumbered with rules of engagement so restrictive as to make them useless, like the German troops are now.

I'm not quite sure if he's promising to bring home all troops after 18 months, or just these "surge" forces. Most likely it's the latter, which would make this surge similar to the one in Iraq, where we went from 15 to 20 brigades for about 18 months, then brought the surge forces home, and have slowly drawn down further since then.

To meet that goal, we will pursue the following objectives within Afghanistan. We must deny al Qaeda a safe-haven. We must reverse the Taliban's momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government. And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan's Security Forces and government, so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan's future.

We will meet these objectives in three ways. First, we will pursue a military strategy that will break the Taliban's momentum and increase Afghanistan's capacity over the next 18 months.

The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 - the fastest pace possible - so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers. They will increase our ability to train competent Afghan Security Forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans.

All good here. Securing the key population centers is the most fundamental aspect of counterinsurgency there is, as I've said about a kazillion times.

Because this is an international effort, I have asked that our commitment be joined by contributions from our allies.

Ha. They'll betray us, just as they have in the past. The same countries that landed tens of thousands of troops in Normany on one day alone seem to have trouble ponying up more than a handful now, and this with far larger populations.

Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.

We shall see. Obama will find this timeline easier to read on a teleprompter than to actually carry out. The oft said phrase, "the enemy gets a vote," is true. You don't have to read much history, or know much Clausewitz, to know that events seldom unfold as expected.

Second, we will work with our partners, the UN, and the Afghan people to pursue a more effective civilian strategy, so that the government can take advantage of improved security.

This effort must be based on performance. The days of providing a blank check are over. President Karzai's inauguration speech sent the right message about moving in a new direction. And going forward, we will be clear about what we expect from those who receive our assistance.

On the good side Obama seems to recognize that our enemy is not Hamid Karzai, and that for better or worse he's the president of Afghanistan and that we've got to work with him. Constantly attacking him will only make him wary that we're going to abandon him, and this in turn will cause him to seek "an accommodation" with the Taliban.

We need to understand that just as with Iraq, the lack of performance was because the Afghans couldn't be sure we wouldn't cut and run on them. Why should they give it their all if we weren't committed? Look, if I was a local governor unsure about the United States, I wouldn't want to make the Taliban too mad as I might have to live under their rule in the near future. In fact, I'b be sorely tempted to "make my arrangements" with them, just in case. In Iraq, Prime Minister Maliki and his government performed much better once the surge got underway, and the realized that yes we were committed to win.

On the down side,, Obama can't just announce anything without blaming his predecessor - "the days of providing a blank check are over" - his pettiness doesn't know any bounds.

Third, we will act with the full recognition that our success in Afghanistan is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan.

We are in Afghanistan to prevent a cancer from once again spreading through that country. But this same cancer has also taken root in the border region of Pakistan. That is why we need a strategy that works on both sides of the border.

In the past, we too often defined our relationship with Pakistan narrowly. Those days are over. Moving forward, we are committed to a partnership with Pakistan that is built on a foundation of mutual interests, mutual respect, and mutual trust.

"Mutual respect" with a nation where Sharia is the law of the land. This sounds like Bush 41 and 43 all over again. Where's that "change" again?

And of course there's that "in the past" blame again.

Ok ok, I know we have to work with the Pakistani government whether we like them or not. But I don't think we need to listen to the left anymore tell us that it's only the conservatives who are in bed with dictators and thugs and such.

...there are those who acknowledge that we cannot leave Afghanistan in its current state, but suggest that we go forward with the troops that we have. But this would simply maintain a status quo in which we muddle through, and permit a slow deterioration of conditions there.

He's certainly right here. This is a point I and many others have made time and again.

...there are those who oppose identifying a timeframe for our transition to Afghan responsibility. Indeed, some call for a more dramatic and open-ended escalation of our war effort - one that would commit us to a nation building project of up to a decade. I reject this course because it sets goals that are beyond what we can achieve at a reasonable cost, and what we need to achieve to secure our interests. Furthermore, the absence of a timeframe for transition would deny us any sense of urgency in working with the Afghan government.

I understand the second argument, in which a timeline gives us leverage and the Afghanis incentive. John McCain gives a good rebuttal:

A date for withdrawal sends exactly the wrong message to both our friends and our enemies - in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the entire region - all of whom currently doubt whether America is committed to winning this war. A withdrawal date only emboldens Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, while dispiriting our Afghan partners and making it less likely that they will risk their lives to take our side in this fight.

"Success is the real exit strategy. When we have achieved our goals in Afghanistan, our troops should begin to return home with honor, but that withdrawal should be based on conditions on the ground, not arbitrary deadlines.

Obama, however, isn't interested in winning. He's interested in getting the whole thing off the table so he can get on with socializing the United States

Back to the president:

Over the past several years, we have lost that balance, and failed to appreciate the connection between our national security and our economy.... All told, by the time I took office the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan approached a trillion dollars.

Grrrr. The man is insufferable.

Obama goes on for some time more, but it's all boilerplate blather and not worth quoting.

Conclusions

My first thought after reading the speech was, "he took all these months to come up with this?" The strategy he came up with is nothing remarkable. Much of the speech is boilerplate and there's not a lot of details.

This increase in troops might be enough to do the trick, but by shorting McChrystal 10,000 he's making it more difficult to win. Also, while Obama may be able to claim credit if it works, he certainly will take the blame if it doesn't. He should have chosen "the full McChrystal," which stands a better chance of success, and he could still have claimed credit because it was he who appointed McChrystal as top dog in Afghanistan back in June of this year.

The hardest part of reading any Obama speech is getting past his incredible pettiness and lack of class. Churchill and Roosevelt spoke about challenges and tried to rally the nation, with Obama it's all about him, how smart he is; his speeches are full of "I" "I" I"I. All leaders think they inherited a mess when they took over; that's why they ran in the first place, to "clean things up." But they don't say so time and time again. He is the most narcissistic, vain, and arrogant president I've ever read about, exceeding that of even Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson.

One gets the unmistakable impression that Obama doesn't really care about winning. When George W Bush finally realized that the Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey strategy wasn't working in Iraq, he appointed a new team and gave them what we had to get the job done. There were no timelines (though surely he knew that there was a political one lurking in the background).

Indeed you can't help but think that he's ordering this troop increase because he wants to get it off the table as a political issue. My guess is that he figured he'd send just enough troops to keep the right happy, but not go with "the full McChrystal," so that he might have some credibility left with his base. In other words, the whole thing was just a big political decision.

As I said earlier, Obama dithered over this decision not because he wanted to conduct a " thorough review of our strategy," but because he wanted to push healthcare as far in the congress as he could without making its more leftist members mad at him. The whole thing is political.

More importantly, the man just can't come out and say "let's win this thing!" No, he approaches it as a policywonk would. There's nothing wrong in formulating policy that way, but the reality is that issues, most of all that of warfare, is about passion. Winning requires passion because political leaders require support as much as anything else.

Politically, he's in the odd position of having most of the right congratulate him and the left attack him. More on this in future posts, but from what I can tell his base is furious that he didn't surrender Afghanistan and withdraw willy-nilly.

Posted by Tom at 7:30 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack