American idealism and realpolitik

Eminent British historian and author Paul Johnson writes as contrarian here - ok, if we are NOT to be policeman of the world, then..what? Finally delineating between idealism and realism in foreign policy thought (read - Neocon vs. Realpolitik's Kissengerism), the author clearly lays out what the world would be like without US Military and Political hegemony - and why we have no choice but to lead in this world, or descend into Hobbsian chaos...T (Thanks to CornetJim, again, for this one!)

America is the reluctant sheriff of a wild world that sometimes seems mired in wrongdoing. The UN has nothing to offer in the way of enforcing laws and dispensing justice, other than spouting pious oratory and initiating feeble missions that usually do more harm than good. NATO plays a limited role, as in Afghanistan, but tends to reflect the timidity (and cowardice) of Continental Europe. Britain and a few other nations such as Australia are willing to follow America's lead but are too weak to act on their own.

That leaves the U.S. to shoulder the responsibility. Otherwise — what? Is brute force to replace the rule of law in the world because there's no one to enforce it? I wish some of those who constantly criticize America's efforts and the judgment of President Bush would ask themselves this simple question: Would you really like to live in a world where the U.S. sits idly by and lets things happen?

Life in such a world would be like the bestial existence described in Thomas Hobbes' great work, Leviathan. If people "live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man." In that lawless state there will be "continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."

In the 350 years since Hobbes wrote his book nothing essential has changed. For proof, look at the poor people of Sudan, in whose struggle the U.S. has not been willing to intervene and whose lives are exactly as Hobbes described. The same is true in Somalia, where the U.S. has been indecisive and vacillating. And this was the case in the former Yugoslavia until the U.S., with great misgiving, finally responded to pressure and sent in its forces.

It's fortunate for the world that in areas in which international law doesn't operate and rogue states do as they please, America will sometimes agree to play Leviathan in order to establish law, at the risk of huge financial expense and its soldiers' lives. It does so because it is a country founded on idealism. A majority of Americans have always believed that a society, under G-d, must come to the rescue of the poor, weak and oppressed if it has the means to do so. The U.S. has applied this idealism systematically to the world as a whole and in many different ways, from the Marshall Plan, which helped raise Europe from ruin in 1948, to declaring war on international terrorism five years ago.

ON THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA
America is fundamentally and instinctively idealistic. But following these ideals and acting as the world's policeman raises moral issues. We all agree that the sheriff must be righteous, brave and resolute. But should he also, if the situation demands, be cunning, devious and Machiavellian? In short, should America, along with its idealism, also practice realpolitik? And won't these two forces be in constant practical and moral conflict?

It's difficult to exercise authority in large parts of the world and, to use Hobbes' phrase, "keep them all in awe," without a touch of realpolitik. Britain discovered this in the 19th century, just as the Romans had two millennia before. Moreover, as British statesmen such as Benjamin Disraeli and Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury, found, imperial realpolitik expressed itself principally in two cynical maxims: "Divide and rule" and "My enemy's enemy is my friend." These two maxims are rearing their heads again in the Middle East, and almost unwittingly — and certainly not from any set purpose — the U.S. finds itself following them.

U.S. intervention in Iraq has had the inevitable consequence of fueling the Sunni-Shia feud, which has raged in Islam for 1,000 years at varying degrees of intensity. It's now running hotter than ever, and likely to get worse, as more and more of the Middle East is drawn into it. Of course, with the Sunnis fighting the Shia, they have less time and energy to fight the West, and America finds it easier to rule. But this raises moral dilemmas that the U.S. has so far failed to resolve or publicly recognize.

Another situation where realpolitik could come into play is Iran's nuclear power quest. The moment Iran possesses and can deliver nuclear bombs it will use them against Israel, destroying the entire country and its inhabitants. If this danger becomes imminent, Israel has the means — if suitably assisted — to launch a preemptive strike. Should the U.S. provide such assistance and moral encouragement?

China's progress in advanced military technology, especially Star Wars-like rocket defenses, is also giving American strategists problems: How should the U.S. react? The realpolitik answer would be to assist India, China's natural rival and potential antagonist in east and central Asia, to achieve technological parity. But would it be right to do so?

These kinds of questions can arise almost anywhere but do so especially around ruthless totalitarian regimes that are attempting to acquire more military power than is safe to allow them. North Korea is a case in point. It's one thing for the U.S. to make clear that it will defend its allies, such as South Korea and Japan, from nuclear threats. That is straightforward and honorable. But the realpolitik solution would be to assist and encourage China to deal with the problem of a nuclear-armed and aggressive North Korea, the strategy being based on another old maxim: "Set a thief to catch a thief."

I don't envy those in Washington whose duty it is to resolve the dilemma between idealism and realpolitik. But they will not go far wrong if they respect the great tripod on which all geopolitical wisdom rests: the rule of law, the consultation of the people and the certitude that, however strong we may be, we are answerable to a higher power.
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The Situation in Iraq

This today from Fouad Ajami (via Barone) - no Neocon he! Remember, this situation is vastly better than Vietnam 1973 - and we had effectively won the war on the ground there at that point, only to withdraw under political pressure from the "objective, unbiased" press rooms of "America's anchorman", the communist sympathiser Walter Chronkite. We are on the verge of winning this thing ladies and gentlemen!

The Situation in Iraq

Fouad Ajami has a long piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Iraq in the Balance." Here are some excerpts, which I hope will entice you into reading the whole thing:

"A traveler who moves between Baghdad and Washington is struck by the gloomy despair in Washington and the cautious sense of optimism in Baghdad. Baghdad has not been prettified; its streets remain a sore to the eye, its government still hunkered down in the Green Zone, and violence is never far. But the sense of deliverance, and the hopes invested in this new security plan, are palpable. I crisscrossed the city–always with armed protection–making my way to Sunni and Shia politicians and clerics alike. The Sunni and Shia versions of political things–of reality itself–remain at odds. But there can be discerned, through the acrimony, the emergence of a fragile consensus."

"For our part, we can't give full credence to the Sunni representations of things. We can cushion the Sunni defeat but can't reverse it. Our soldiers have not waged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq against Sunni extremists to fall for the fear of some imagined "Shia crescent" peddled by Sunni rulers and preachers. To that atavistic fight between Sunni and Shia, we ought to remain decent and discerning arbiters. To be sure, in Iraq itself we can't give a blank check to Shia maximalism. On its own, mainstream Shi'ism is eager to rein in its own die-hards and self-anointed avengers."

"One can never reconcile the beneficiaries of illegitimate, abnormal power to the end of their dominion. But this current realignment in Iraq carries with it a gift for the possible redemption of modern Islam among the Arabs. Hitherto Sunni Islam had taken its hegemony for granted and extremist strands within it have shown a refusal to accept "the other." Conversely, Shia history has been distorted by weakness and exclusion and by a concomitant abdication of responsibility.

A Shia-led state in Baghdad–with a strong Kurdish presence in it and a big niche for the Sunnis–can go a long way toward changing the region's terrible habits and expectations of authority and command. The Sunnis would still be hegemonic in the Arab councils of power beyond Iraq, but their monopoly would yield to the pluralism and complexity of that region."
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Weary White Traveler

Almost time to go home, so why not have a good laugh? Musungu means "White Traveler" and we were very well treated by all.

Local Hospitality

Relaxation time. With Kerry and Simon at "Frank's Place East"...T

Ted and Pabbo Kids

At almost 80,000 refugees, Pabbo is the largest IDP camp in Uganda. The kids were happy to see us!...T

It's Lonely up There

We had to construct a security fence using local labor for this site with expensive Solar panels, Wi-Fi gear and batteries, in addition to the radio antennas. Some perspective on the heights in mention...T

UTV Tower

This is the abandoned Uganda Telecom TV tower, which, after much bribery, we were able to lease - to use as an relay station for the Radio devices - up to 100km in broadcast distance. You can see 3 such devices mounted 40 meters up the tower on custom designed carriages...T

The Road to Damascus

As T.R. would have said..."Bully!"...T

"They don't hate us just because the Republican Congress didn't raise the minimum wage or because George W. Bush has a stubborn streak and speaks with a West Texas accent. They hate us because of our freedoms and because we have worked to export those freedoms around the world.
Friendship, hope and a determination to be on the road to peace are not enough to protect us in this world. A speedy exit from Iraq might make many Americans less unsettled while watching cable news -- for a while. But it wouldn't make us safer. It will just leave us more likely to face the kind of surprise we had on Sept. 11, 2001. "

"We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace," Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared after her visit to Syria and her meeting with its hereditary dictator Bashir Assad last week. "We expressed our interest in using our good offices in promoting peace between Israel and Syria."

The woman second in line for the presidency (after Vice President Dick Cheney) seemed to believe she was on a Henry Kissinger-like shuttle diplomacy mission from Jerusalem to Damascus. But Henry Kissinger she ain't. Pelosi said she was delivering a message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that "Israel was ready to engage in peace talks" with Syria. A seeming breakthrough. Not so, said a statement speedily issued by Olmert's office. It said that Olmert had not made "any change in the policies of Israel."

Pelosi said Assad indicated he was ready to "resume the peace process." That wasn't the impression other members of Congress took away from their meeting with him a few days earlier. Syria under Assad pere et fils has steadfastly refused to make peace with Israel, despite diplomatic efforts considerably more assiduous than Pelosi is in a position to undertake. Bill Clinton's first secretary of state, Warren Christopher, traveled the road to Damascus to meet with the elder Assad 22 times. End product: nada.

The Washington Post, not a backer of all Bush policies, called Pelosi's road-to-Damascus statement "ludicrous." "As any diplomat with knowledge of the region could have told Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Assad is a corrupt thug whose overriding priority at the moment is not peace with Israel but heading off charges that he orchestrated the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri." The Post concluded, "Ms. Pelosi's attempt to establish a shadow presidency is not only counterproductive, it is foolish."

House International Affairs Committee Tom Lantos, who accompanied Pelosi, has defended her, without addressing the Post's conclusion that her claims to have set Israel and Syria on "a road to peace." In USA Today, he noted that she "publicly declared that she supports the administration's goals regarding Syria." He said he and she are "convinced that direct communication with Syria's leader cannot worsen Syrian behavior. Rather, over time, it may just lead to improvement."

That's dubious. Coming in "friendship" to Damascus may make Assad more confident he has a free hand in Lebanon, and "may just" doesn't sound very promising. But the bigger issue here is the thinking that gave Pelosi confidence she could produce progress toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

At the heart of that thinking is this proposition: We're the problem. America, or rather George W. Bush, is the problem. We're not doing enough to get the Israelis and Syrians together; we're not doing enough to address the grievances of the Palestinian people (than whom "nobody is suffering more," according to Barack Obama); we're not doing enough to mollify the dictators who are working against us.

Akin to this is the feeling shared by most Democrats and, it seems, by most American voters, that if we can just get our troops out of Iraq all will be well in the world.

I recall reading a few weeks ago an article on Democratic fund raising that quoted a woman as saying that "we were very safe under the Clinton administration." No, we weren't "very safe" -- we just thought we were. Bill Clinton knew we weren't "very safe," and he took some steps -- unfortunately, not enough -- to make us safer.

You can say the same of George W. Bush during first eight months in office. There are evil leaders out there -- the mullahs of Iran, Assad and his thugs, Kim Jong Il, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and his pal Fidel Castro -- who hate the United States and want to do us as much damage as they can.

They don't hate us just because the Republican Congress didn't raise the minimum wage or because George W. Bush has a stubborn streak and speaks with a West Texas accent. They hate us because of our freedoms and because we have worked to export those freedoms around the world.

Friendship, hope and a determination to be on the road to peace are not enough to protect us in this world. A speedy exit from Iraq might make many Americans less unsettled while watching cable news -- for a while. But it wouldn't make us safer. It will just leave us more likely to face the kind of surprise we had on Sept. 11, 2001.
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Iraniana

ahh the Brits...shame on them...Thatcher, let alone Churchill, would be appalled...Good to be home, after such a journey, but the squabbling has not since ceased in my absence, so it seems! VDH is simply the best writer/philosopher out these days, and he is in top form here - witty, and with moral parables discerning our fate, should we not awake in time. this article links to his blog - "Works and Days", which you should consider daily reading...T


Why It Bothers So…

One can make all sorts of clever arguments—indeed the Brits have, from blaming us to blaming their own—about why this crisis was someone else’s fault, due to a misunderstanding, due to media exaggeration, due to an accident. But what is missing is the simple fact that THIS IS THE BRITISH NAVY. Who would care if the Iranians had embarrassed the Italian Navy, the Russian Navy, or the Chinese Navy? But the Brits? We forget that the entire history of Western navies is predicated on the British experience at sea. The Brits had the greatest admirals, the Brits invented the Man-of-War, dreadnought, battleship, heavy cruiser, and aircraft carrier. The Brits created the very notion of modern seamanship and discipline, and its pantheon of naval heroes like Drake, Cook, Anson, Vernon, Nelson, and Fisher still resonates.

So like the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon and World Trade Center this was an iconic act that sent a message that the descendents of Xerxes finally upped Lord Nelson.

Pictures Worth a Thousand Words

Nancy Pelosi in a Scarf at the nexus of terrorism in Damascus

British sailors in cuffs being escorted by proud Iranian seamen

Sophocles 1974

One could make the argument that by early 1974 it was finally known that the prior Tet Offensive really had been a terrible defeat for the North Vietnamese, that the efforts to rid the South of the Viet Cong were mostly successful, that radically different bombing strategies and ordinance had redirected the damage from rice paddies to communist hierarchies in Hanoi—and that the public absolutely did not care, and could not be convinced that there was a chance to save South Vietnam, and so backed serial Congressional cut-offs of aid.

We may be nearing that same crisis point; that is, at last we have made necessary adjustments in Iraq, are defeating the enemy—and no one cares any more for any news other than that of our departure.

It’s almost like a Sophoclean tragedy, since we know the script from 1974-2007 and can’t seem to stop it: we give up, the government collapses, hundreds of thousands are killed and exiled, our military and diplomatic reputation is shredded, and so we squabble for the next 30 years over the defeat and how we had almost won when we threw in the towel.

The British Vocabulary of the Iranian crisis

Rules of engagement: a diplomatic embarrassment waiting to happen

GPS coordinates: an outdated and inexact pseudo-science, of no value in adjudicating territorial or geographical disputes

Admiral Nelson: dead, irrelevant white male imperialist colonialist—fill in the blanks …

First Lord of the Admiralty: nothing first, lordish, or admirable about it

Naval vessel: a floating liability

Royal Marines: diplomatic personnel

Hostages: can instruct the enemy on power-point

The United States: your only ally, but you’d prefer it a neutral

Europe: neutral, but you’d prefer it an ally.European Union: unified by profit, divided by principle

NATO: The Neutral anti-American Truce Organization

Captives of the Past

The success of a country is almost inextricably connected to the degree of its strangulation by the past: confident societies like Japan, Germany, Italy, Israel, China, etc. don’t dwell on the past in the context of victimhood.

But a stereotypical rule of thumb: when I talk to a Mexican national, he whines about the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; when speaking to a Greek, the 1967 coup or the 1973 invasion of Cyprus starts the discussion, for an Iranian of any persuasion, it is always 1953 and Mosaddeq. A Palestinian talks only about 1947, and shows some strange rusted key to a house in Jerusalem.

The point is not that there are not legitimate grievances that have had repercussions, but that they are in the past and one must get on with one’s life. Americans don’t talk about the burning of the White House in the War of 1812, and are not obsessed with hating the Vietnamese for that lost war.

The only exception might be Southerners’ obsession with Longstreet at Gettysburg or Albert Sidney Johnston dying at the high water mark at Shiloh. But rarely now are any in the South captives to the Lost Cause, which is always a symptom of an insecure and angry mind, that faults others for the past rather than looks confidently toward the future. And nowhere is this more common than the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East.

Outtake # 10—No Man A Slave

The great march to free the helots starts out in the last month of the year from Thebes. As Melon and Pelopidas trudge together up the pass at Kithairon, they discuss why they are attacking Sparta. Pelopidas tricks Melon into giving him a lesson about why wars break out.

The two talked and were interrupted often by the Sacred Band, especially the younger of the 300, who themselves cared little about the debate, only when they would arrive into Lakonia. Surely Agesilaos must be over the next mountain as they looked down at the great plain of Megara before them.

Melon ignored them all. Instead he laid out what he thought was the thinking of Epaminondas. “Sparta after the fall of the Athenians had to remain preeminent. We disagreed. So we fought battles for 20 seasons. And they ravaged our land each spring. War had no end. Hardly can we remember its beginning. So now the men of our age seek to end it for good. If we cannot make Sparta into a democracy, then we can ring it with democracies I suppose, thought the idea of those crazy hill folk Arkadians voting as if they were civilized is scarier than anything Sparta has done.”

Pelopidas laughed at that, but let Melon finish. “So I think that is why Proxenos and Ainias are already down south as we speak. And if we cannot kill all their hoplites, then we can starve them and make them work for their keep once we free their helots. And I am sure there are thousands already down there as well, to shake up the unfree to meet us at Sparta. So when we go over their pass, the Spartans will understand it is not wise to rile Epaminondas and that their war will always be down there, never again up here.

“If, “Pelopidas shrugged, “if, if we can do all that and more. If, if, if…Yet I fear even with war in Lakonia, and even with Messenia free, and even with the great cities you talk about on her flank, we will leave this war to our children unless we level Sparta and kill her kings. Yes, our Epaminondas must make war so terrible that she can never fight us again.”

Melon laughed “So this was a game all along, Pelopidas! You are no honest philosopher. Much less my pupil! No, you simply wished me to give back your own answers. Dumb farmer me. I say that you are more the fire breather than old iron-gut himself. I saw that the other day in the assembly.”

“I suppose,” Pelopidas offered, but then he took stuck his head closer to Melon’s and in a softer voice went on.

“But sometimes when we have private thoughts, we wish others to say them for us so we can hear how they sound. So others can give voice to the dark truth we prefer ourselves not to utter or even hear, but wish to be aired among all. And because you know war better even than I and you had no belly in the beginning for this great march, Melon, you have taken a great worry off my heart. I know now there is no other way to end this but the way we are marching.”

“No. No, there is no other way,” Melon answered.

Melissos mumbled after them, smiling, “No other way. No other way—no other way than to head south and cut them all down.”

Epaminondas now fell back with them, and taunted them, “Are you now Athenians of this age, who talk and sing while better men of action give them fodder for thought? Leave the world of the clouds of this pass. Come down to the earth beneath our feet. Just remember one thing: either we succeed and prove that Hellas in its old age, is still neither too wealthy nor too clever to play its all. Or we stew. We bicker. We harp finding fancy words about the “good” and what is “wise,” to cover the fear and weaknesses in our hearts. How I hate the cynic.”

With that, the talkers heard the trumpeters’ order to halt and pitch camp and to wait for the 20,000 men at their backs. Melon could already see well the Megarid below, and figured that they had gone some 120 stades while they had talked the first day’s march away.
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Leaving the USA

Just an update everyone: I leave for Uganda this Thursday, March 15th. I'll be there until April 1st at the earliest, or April 15th at the latest. Anyone who wants to know why I'm going can find all they need to learn on our web site,
www.bosco-uganda.org ...See you all again soon (I hope!)...T

The Great Global Warming Swindle

The 'Surge' Is Succeeding

Read it here, for you sure won't be likely to stumble upon it in the MSM-Drive By Media...T

A front-page story in The Post last week suggested that the Bush administration has no backup plan in case the surge in Iraq doesn't work. I wonder if The Post and other newspapers have a backup plan in case it does.

Leading journalists have been reporting for some time that the war was hopeless, a fiasco that could not be salvaged by more troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy. The conventional wisdom in December held that sending more troops was politically impossible after the antiwar tenor of the midterm elections. It was practically impossible because the extra troops didn't exist. Even if the troops did exist, they could not make a difference.

Four months later, the once insurmountable political opposition has been surmounted. The nonexistent troops are flowing into Iraq. And though it is still early and horrible acts of violence continue, there is substantial evidence that the new counterinsurgency strategy, backed by the infusion of new forces, is having a significant effect.

Some observers are reporting the shift. Iraqi bloggers Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, widely respected for their straight talk, say that "early signs are encouraging." The first impact of the "surge," they write, was psychological. Both friends and foes in Iraq had been convinced, in no small part by the American media, that the United States was preparing to pull out. When the opposite occurred, this alone shifted the dynamic.

As the Fadhils report, "Commanders and lieutenants of various militant groups abandoned their positions in Baghdad and in some cases fled the country." The most prominent leader to go into hiding has been Moqtada al-Sadr. His Mahdi Army has been instructed to avoid clashes with American and Iraqi forces, even as coalition forces begin to establish themselves in the once off-limits Sadr City.
Before the arrival of Gen. David Petraeus, the Army's leading counterinsurgency strategist, U.S. forces tended to raid insurgent and terrorist strongholds and then pull back and hand over the areas to Iraqi forces, who failed to hold them. The Fadhils report, "One difference between this and earlier -- failed -- attempts to secure Baghdad is the willingness of the Iraqi and U.S. governments to commit enough resources for enough time to make it work." In the past, bursts of American activity were followed by withdrawal and a return of the insurgents. Now, the plan to secure Baghdad "is becoming stricter and gaining momentum by the day as more troops pour into the city, allowing for a better implementation of the 'clear and hold' strategy." Baghdadis "always want the 'hold' part to materialize, and feel safe when they go out and find the Army and police maintaining their posts -- the bad guys can't intimidate as long as the troops are staying."

A greater sense of confidence produces many benefits. The number of security tips about insurgents that Iraqi civilians provide has jumped sharply. Stores and marketplaces are reopening in Baghdad, increasing the sense of community. People dislocated by sectarian violence are returning to their homes. As a result, "many Baghdadis feel hopeful again about the future, and the fear of civil war is slowly being replaced by optimism that peace might one day return to this city," the Fadhils report. "This change in mood is something huge by itself."

Apparently some American journalists see the difference. NBC's Brian Williams recently reported a dramatic change in Ramadi since his previous visit. The city was safer; the airport more secure. The new American strategy of "getting out, decentralizing, going into the neighborhoods, grabbing a toehold, telling the enemy we're here, start talking to the locals -- that is having an obvious and palpable effect." U.S. soldiers forged agreements with local religious leaders and pushed al-Qaeda back -- a trend other observers have noted in some Sunni-dominated areas. The result, Williams said, is that "the war has changed."

It is no coincidence that as the mood and the reality have shifted, political currents have shifted as well. A national agreement on sharing oil revenue appears on its way to approval. The Interior Ministry has been purged of corrupt officials and of many suspected of torture and brutality. And cracks are appearing in the Shiite governing coalition -- a good sign, given that the rock-solid unity was both the product and cause of growing sectarian violence.

There is still violence, as Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda seek to prove that the surge is not working. However, they are striking at more vulnerable targets in the provinces. Violence is down in Baghdad. As for Sadr and the Mahdi Army, it is possible they may reemerge as a problem later. But trying to wait out the American and Iraqi effort may be hazardous if the public becomes less tolerant of their violence. It could not be comforting to Sadr or al-Qaeda to read in the New York Times that the United States plans to keep higher force levels in Iraq through at least the beginning of 2008. The only good news for them would be if the Bush administration in its infinite wisdom starts to talk again about drawing down forces.

No one is asking American journalists to start emphasizing the "good" news. All they have to do is report what is occurring, though it may conflict with their previous judgments. Some are still selling books based on the premise that the war is lost, end of story. But what if there is a new chapter in the story?
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Scooter Libby by the Numbers

This from Victor Davis Hanson's blog - Works and Days - "The Washington DC press corps and high-ranking officials talk, spin, and network 24/7. Trying to sort out anything among any of them is impossible. These are the grunt soldiers with no rules of engagement in a vast ideological battle between the mainstream media and conservative administrations. "...How true. This is warfare by the criminalization of politics, and we'd better arm ourselves, in the immortal words of Clint Eastwood..T

You try to think of the right adjective—Kafkaesque, Orwellian, surreal?—to describe the Libby fiasco. I don’t know Mr. Libby, but met him on two occasions at dinners in Washington DC.

Both times he seemed to me the most widely read and affable in the room; he was also polite and well spoken, which is rare among the powerful in Washington. Despite all the mess, this much is clear.

1. During the lead-up to the war, one Joe Wilson, a sort of DC gadfly and has-been blowhard, was nominated to go to Niger by some in the CIA, most probably on the prompt of his own wife, to investigate reports of sales of yellowcake to Saddam Hussein. His selection is inexplicable, because the very idea of a Joe Wilson, on a government-sanctioned trip, to inquire, in discreet fashion, about sensitive transactions, is itself Orwellian.

2. He comes back, announces loudly and erroneously that he was on a mission chartered under the auspices of the VP—and that there is no evidence that there was any Iraqi interest in raw nuclear materials. This assertion, as Christopher Hitchens and others have written, was probably false.

3. The VP’s office and others are furious that this buffoon is lying about the circumstances of his trip, so they begin doing background on him, and discover the spousal connection and perhaps suspicions that he is staking out a partisan career. Almost immediately all sorts of reporters and government officials gossip about Valerie Plame’s CIA affiliation to explain his inexplicable selection. Her position, it turns out, is not covert—a fact that may or may not have been known at the time.

4. Apparently Richard Armitage is the first to disclose to a reporter the process how Wilson was chosen, in an interview with Robert Novak. No doubt he wanted to illustrate the conflict of interest involved in the Wilson selection, inter alia, to paint Wilson as either a showman or a partisan or both. As the national mood changes, given the absence of WMD caches in Iraq and the growing insurgency, Wilson sees an opening and suddenly becomes a cry-in-the-wilderness hero to the anti-war Left. I met him in this period in the Fox DC greenroom once, and heard him speak later at UC Berkeley at a journalism conference. Both times I came away thinking with friends like these, the Left didn’t need any more enemies. No wonder that Wilson was quickly let go from the Kerry’s 2004 campaign as a “consultant.”

5. A general allegation is made that government officials violated the law for partisan advantage by disclosing the identity of a covert CIA operative. The Left sees traction here in the storyline that the pro-war Republicans are shorting their own beloved CIA, irony given that past CIA whistleblowers who disclosed top-secret informatio lionized for it by liberals.

A special prosecutor is appointed. Fitzgerald immediately discovers that (A) Richard Armitage first disclosed Ms. Plame’s identity to Mr. Novak, and (B) there was apparently no crime in doing so. But he continues to ask questions from various reporters and officials about the nature of this feeding-frenzy, much of it caused by Mr. Wilson himself who seized the moment, as they say, by publicizing his own wife’s status, glamour, and anger, doing a book deal, magazine spread, and joining the Kerry campaign.

6. Fitzgerald apparently concludes that he has no proof of wrongdoing concerning the original charter of his special prosecutorship, given that Ms. Plame’s status was not covert. He also feels no need to or cannot prosecute Mr. Armitage or others either for violating federal statutes about CIA confidentiality or lying. His highest-ranking target, Mr. Libby, apparently alone will justify his original mandate, albeit on different charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. After hours of testimony from Mr. Libby, contradictions between his recollections and those of others are established, although it seems there is no common truth. Nearly all those interrogated at some point contradicted someone else.

7. Libby alone is charged. If his defense tactics were culpable, it was largely in the initial suggestion that Libby was a fall-guy. That suggested some sort of conspiracy where there was none. The defense had a right to be angry at Armitage, Ari Fleischer, and others who had talked to reporters about Plame, but none had done so in a conspiratorial fashion, and had simply cut their own deals without orchestration. Libby was culled out because he was the highest-ranking target that might justify the prosecutor’s time and expense, and because he either would not or could not strike some deal in the fashion that others had, formally or informally.

Lessons?

1. We now have a new branch of government—a symbiosis between a special prosecutor and the Washington DC judiciary. Given the available jury pool and justices in DC, together with the high-stakes, high-publicity of a special prosecutorship, any prominent conservative is fair game. An innocent or hung verdict spells financial ruin, a guilty one the destruction of a career.

All this is much like the ancient Athenian notion of ostracism, in which the prominent could be exiled and ruined simply by a populist vote on their high-profile stature that was felt to be a danger to an egalitarian Athenian ethos.

2. The Washington DC press corps and high-ranking officials talk, spin, and network 24/7. Trying to sort out anything among any of them is impossible. These are the grunt soldiers with no rules of engagement in a vast ideological battle between the mainststeam media and conservative administrations.

3. There is no sense of proportion or morality involved. One example: Richard Armitage comes off quite negatively. He knew he was the most culpable given the initial directive of the Special Prosecutor, and yet stayed quiet while the searchlight went on to others. This was especially reprehensible given his prior carefully crafted voice of conscious as a luke-warm supporter of the war.

4. We will never know all the power-plays, ego-trips, and vested reputations in all this. But apparently Fitzgerald had a lot on the line by going after Libby, and was willing to apply to him a standard not applied to others in or out of government. This does not mean necessarily that Libby’s testimony was not inconsistent, only that a degree of scrutiny was applied to it in a manner not done elsewhere.

5. All this reminds me again of wisdom from my late mother, a California superior and appellate court justice. She used to remind me that the most powerful people in government are not judges, not juries, not even legislators or executives—but state and federal attorneys, who act as judge and jury of sorts in selecting whom to prosecute. I say that because in the modern age, an indictment ipso facto can spell financial ruin and irrevocable loss of reputation. Our prosecutors must be above any hint of partisanship or grudge-holding, and must not see their offices as platforms for wide-ranging, Les Miserables obsessions.

Sadly, in this case, Mr. Fitzgerald got his one conviction, but in the process lost his own reputation as well.
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The Libby Verdict, etc.

This is from Michael Barone, as non-partisan as they come. He is outraged by the Libby trial, and justifiably so. Also, a progress report on the Iraq Surge...T

The Progress of the Surge
Embedded blogger and Special Forces veteran Michael Yon blogs on the progress of the surge in Iraq. Bottom line: It's going pretty well. Which raises a question: Why didn't we do this sooner? Yon, by the way, is reader-supported; you can contribute here. And here is another upbeat report from Mohammed and Omar Fadhil of iraqthemodel.com.

The Libby Verdict
I consider the prosecution of "Scooter" Libby a travesty of justice and the jury's verdict a tragedy, and I intend to write more about it. There's a huge contrast between the treatment of Libby, who now faces up to 25 years in jail, and that of Sandy Berger, who was allowed to plead guilty, with no jail time, to stealing documents from the National Archives. But in the meantime, let me share some worthy commentary. The Washington Post editorializes smartly and makes some important points.

First:
"The trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame's identity–and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert."

Second:
"It would have been sensible for Mr. Fitzgerald to end his investigation after learning about Mr. Armitage."

Which is to say, right at the beginning of his investigation. There was no violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which was the issue at hand. There was, thus, no warrant for requiring journalists to testify about sources, much less for jailing Judith Miller for 85 days. And there was no warrant for eliciting testimony from administration officials like Libby.

Third, the Post exposes Joseph Wilson for what he is: a liar and, in their words, "a blowhard":
"A bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee subsequently established that all of these claims were false–and that Mr. Wilson was recommended for the Niger trip by Ms. Plame, his wife."

The Wall Street Journal's editorial goes further and calls for an immediate pardon of Libby. It characterizes the gist of the offense:

" ... he has been convicted of telling the truth about Mr. Wilson and Ms. Plame to some reporters but then not owning up to it.Mr. Bush will no doubt be advised to wait for the outcome of an appeal and the end of his Administration to pardon Mr. Libby. We believe he bears some personal responsibility for this conviction, especially for not policing the disputes and insubordination in his Administration that made this travesty possible. The time for a pardon is now."

I agree. So does an outraged Clarice Feldman writing in the American Thinker blog.
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SHOOTING ELEPHANTS IN A BARREL

Friends, I haven't been this angry in quite some time. Sometime soon, someone has to wake up and declare, "We're mad as hell, and we're not taking it anymore!" They put us in jail, ladies and gentlemen! They let an avowed democrat activist, and journalist who is wring a book on the "story" become foreman of the jury in the most left-wing liberal city in the entire USA! That's two blatant conflicts of interest, right there...T

Lewis Libby has now been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lies that had absolutely no legal consequence.

It was not a crime to reveal Valerie Plame' name because she was not a covert agent. If it had been a crime, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could have wrapped up his investigation with an indictment of the State Department's Richard Armitage on the first day of his investigation since it was Armitage who revealed her name and Fitzgerald knew it.

With no crime to investigate, Fitzgerald pursued a pointless investigation into nothing, getting a lot of White House officials to make statements under oath and hoping some of their recollections would end up conflicting with other witness recollections, so he could charge some Republican with "perjury" and enjoy the fawning media attention.

As a result, Libby is now a convicted felon for having a faulty memory of the person who first told him that Joe Wilson (news, bio, voting record) was a delusional boob who lied about his wife sending him to Niger.

This makes it official: It's illegal to be Republican.

Since Teddy Kennedy walked away from a dead girl with only a wrist slap (which was knocked down to a mild talking-to, plus time served: zero), Democrats have apparently become a protected class in America, immune from criminal prosecution no matter what they do.

As a result, Democrats have run wild, accepting bribes, destroying classified information, lying under oath, molesting interns, driving under the influence, obstructing justice and engaging in sex with underage girls, among other things.

Meanwhile, conservatives of any importance constantly have to spend millions of dollars defending themselves from utterly frivolous criminal prosecutions. Everything is illegal, but only Republicans get prosecuted.

Conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh was subjected to a three-year criminal investigation for allegedly buying prescription drugs illegally to treat chronic back pain. Despite the witch-hunt, Democrat prosecutor Barry E. Krischer never turned up a crime.

Even if he had, to quote liberal Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz: "Generally, people who illegally buy prescription drugs are not prosecuted." Unless they're Republicans.

The vindictive prosecution of Limbaugh finally ended last year with a plea bargain in which Limbaugh did not admit guilt. Gosh, don't you feel safer now? I know I do.

In another prescription drug case with a different result, last year, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) (Democrat), apparently high as a kite on prescription drugs, crashed a car on Capitol Hill at 3 a.m. That's abuse of prescription drugs (BEGIN ITAS)plus a DUI offense. Result: no charges whatsoever and one day of press on Fox News Channel.

I suppose one could argue those were different jurisdictions. How about the same jurisdiction?
In 2006, Democrat and major Clinton contributor Jeffrey Epstein was nabbed in Palm Beach in a massive police investigation into his hiring of local underage schoolgirls for sex, which I'm told used to be a violation of some kind of statute in the Palm Beach area.

The police presented Limbaugh prosecutor Krischer with boatloads of evidence, including the videotaped statements of five of Epstein's alleged victims, the procurer of the girls for Epstein and 16 other witnesses.

But the same prosecutor who spent three years maniacally investigating Limbaugh's alleged misuse of back-pain pills refused to bring statutory rape charges against a Clinton contributor. Enraging the police, who had spent months on the investigation, Krischer let Epstein off after a few hours on a single count of solicitation of prostitution. The Clinton supporter walked, and his victims were branded as whores.

The Republican former House Whip Tom DeLay' name is currently under indictment for a minor campaign finance violation. Democratic prosecutor Ronnie Earle had to empanel six grand juries before he could find one to indict DeLay on these pathetic charges -- and this is in Austin, Texas (the Upper West Side with better-looking people).

That final grand jury was so eager to indict DeLay that it indicted him on one charge that was not even a crime -- and which has since been tossed out by the courts.

After winning his primary despite the indictment, DeLay decided to withdraw from the race rather than campaign under a cloud of suspicion, and Republicans lost one of their strongest champions in Congress.
Compare DeLay's case with that of Rep. William "The Refrigerator" Jefferson, Democrat. Two years ago, an FBI investigation caught Jefferson on videotape taking $100,000 in bribe money. When the FBI searched Jefferson's house, they found $90,000 in cash stuffed in his freezer. Two people have already pleaded guilty to paying Jefferson the bribe money.

Two years later, Bush's Justice Department still has taken no action against Jefferson. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) recently put Rep. William Jefferson (news, bio, voting record) on the Homeland Security Committee.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record), Democrat, engaged in a complicated land swindle, buying a parcel of land for $400,000 and selling it for over $1 million a few years later. (At least it wasn't cattle futures!)

Reid also received more than four times as much money from Jack Abramoff (nearly $70,000) as Tom DeLay ($15,000). DeLay returned the money; Reid refuses to do so. Why should he? He's a Democrat.
Former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger literally received a sentence of community service for stuffing classified national security documents in his pants and then destroying them -- big, fat federal felonies.

But Scooter Libby is facing real prison time for forgetting who told him about some bozo's wife.
Bill Clinton was not even prosecuted for obstruction of justice offenses so egregious that the entire Supreme Court staged a historic boycott of his State of the Union address in 2000.

By contrast, Linda Tripp, whose only mistake was befriending the office hosebag and then declining to perjure herself, spent millions on lawyers to defend a harassment prosecution based on far-fetched interpretations of state wiretapping laws.

Liberal law professors currently warning about the "high price" of pursuing terrorists under the Patriot Act had nothing but blood lust for Tripp one year after Clinton was impeached (Steven Lubet, "Linda Tripp Deserves to be Prosecuted," New York Times, 8/25/99).

Criminal prosecution is a surrogate for political warfare, but in this war, Republicans are gutless appeasers.

Bush has got to pardon Libby.
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Let's Make a Deal - Social conservatives, Rudy Giuliani, and the end of the litmus test.

This is why I believe Rudy Giuliani has not only the best shot of winning the presidency next year, but why he would then make a great, not just good, president...T

Next year may see the party of the Sunbelt and Reagan, based in the South and in Protestant churches, nominate its first presidential candidate who is Catholic, urban, and ethnic--and socially liberal on a cluster of issues that set him at odds with the party's base. As a result, it may also see the end of the social issues litmus test in the Republican party, done in not by the party's left wing, which is shrunken and powerless, but by a fairly large cadre of social conservatives convinced that, in a time of national peril, the test is a luxury they cannot afford. For the past 30 years of cultural warfare, there has been only one template for an aspiring president of either party with positions that cross those of its organized activists: Displeasure is voiced, reservations are uttered, and soon enough there is a "conversion of conscience" in which the miscreant--Dick Gephardt, Al Gore, George Bush the elder, even the hapless Dennis Kucinich--is brought to heel in a fairly undignified manner, and sees what his party sees as the light. The Giuliani campaign seems to be departing from this pattern. And this time, a pro-life party, faced with a pro-choice candidate it finds compelling on other grounds, is doing things differently. It is not carping or caving or seeking a convert. Instead, it is making a deal.

One has to wend one's way back through the litmus test saga to see just how big this could be. In 1980, the parties for the first time took radically opposed views, with a plank in the Republican platform calling for a constitutional amendment to ban all abortion, while the Democrats (over the protests of President Carter) insisted abortion should be not only legal, but funded by taxpayers. Four years later, these planks, and the lobbies that backed them, were fully entrenched. By 1988, top tier candidates in both parties had undergone forced conversions; and in the 1990s, both sides attacked their dissenters full bore. In 1992--The Year of the Woman--Democrats famously silenced pro-life Pennsylvania governor Bob Casey at their New York convention, parked him up in the bleachers where no one could see him, and gave his slot to a pro-choice Republican. Four years later, pro-life groups pulled Republican nominee Bob Dole through a knothole, torturing him for a week before denying his suggestion that an expression of "tolerance" for those who dissented be inserted into the plank. As late as 2003, the Democratic candidates began their campaign season with a joint appearance at a NARAL fiesta, all eight of them tugging their forelocks before the group's leader and pledging allegiance, while a repentant Gephardt begged her forgiveness for the pro-life views he had been so ill-advised as to utter two decades before.

With this in mind, it was no minor matter when a small number of conservatives began to float ideas about how Giuliani and the party's activists might all get along. As early as August 2004, from the Republican convention in New York, David Frum was dispensing helpful suggestions: "He should not try to deny or conceal his own views," he wrote of the mayor. "He should not invoke Lee Atwater's 'Big Tent' . . . nor should he spend minutes and minutes parsing his views. . . . His job is not to persuade pro-life Republicans to agree with him, but to assure them that they can live with him." The Powerline blog weighed in in June 2005. "Some pundits think [Giuliani's] views on the social issues will bar him from getting the nomination," wrote Paul Mirengoff. "I disagree. . . . There is a national, largely bipartisan consensus that issues like gay marriage and abortion should be decided democratically, and not by the courts. If Giuliani emphasizes the process issue, and says . . . the key question is whether such issues are to be decided democratically, by legislatures, or autocratically, by judges, he could forge a solid Republican majority." National Review recalled a precedent. "The late Sen. Paul Coverdell," its editorial stated, "supported legal abortion. But once he won his primary, pro-lifers supported him since he promised to vote to ban partial-birth abortion, oppose public funding of abortion, and support conservative nominees to the judiciary."

The 2006 midterms, aka "the bloodbath," brought more people over. Texas pollster David Hill, writing in the Hill, observed that "Giuliani might bargain with the right. He's a transactional politician who might welcome the entreaty, and concede even more than McCain." Actually, Giuliani had been dealing already, by taking the bloggers and pundits' advice. In 2006, he campaigned for many pro-life candidates, spoke out against judicial activism, and cited the likes of Samuel Alito and John Roberts as the kind of judges he wanted to see on the bench. There has been some resistance, but since the start of this year a sizable cadre of social conservatives have declared either their willingness to consider supporting the mayor, or their intention not to write him off. Since Giuliani emerged as a possible candidate, people have known he would have to deal with the base of his party, but everyone thought this would involve a supplicant bending of the knee and begging leave of the Republican voters he had dismayed. No one imagined that so much of that base would come looking for him, and then make it their business to hand him a strategy. But that is what they have done.

Why has this happened now, after decades of litmus-test dictates? Four reasons come to mind.

(1) The War, Stupid: There is the war, which overwhelms everything as the major issue in the eyes of the base. No group in the country backs the war on terror as fervently as social conservatives, whose main criticism of the president's policy is that it has not been aggressive enough. To them, Rudy is the ultimate warrior, a man who not only survived 9/11 and rallied the city, but whose success in routing the gangs of New York is a template for engaging the Islamic terrorists, and an indication that he has the resolve and the relentlessness to carry this bloody task off.

They see him as a more ruthless version of George W. Bush, someone who would not have consented to less-than-aggressive rules of engagement; who would have taken Falluja the first time, and not have had to come back later; who would not have let Sadr escape when he had him; who would not have been fazed by whining over Abu Ghraib and Club Gitmo, and would have treated critics of the armed forces and of the mission with the same impatience he showed critics of the police in New York. As nothing else, the terror war sits at a nexus of issues dear to the heart of the base: the need to use force when one's country is threatened; the need to make judgments between good and evil; the need to protect and assert the moral codes of the Judeo-Christian tradition; the need to defend the ideals of the West.

"For a majority of the GOP primary electorate, it is the war, the war, the war (and judges)," writes the influential radio host and blogger Hugh Hewitt. "The war on terror hasn't just changed Giuliani's profile as a crisis-leader," writes columnist Jonah Goldberg. "It's changed the attitudes of many Americans, particularly conservatives, about the central crisis facing the country. It's not that pro-lifers are less pro-life. . . . It's that they really, really believe the war on terror is for real. At conservative conferences, on blogs, and on talk radio, pro-life issues have faded in their passion and intensity. . . . Taken together, terrorism, Iraq, and Islam have become the No. 1 social issue." And the earth surely moved on February 21, when the writer Maggie Gallagher, as tough and principled as they come on abortion and marriage, allowed in her syndicated column that she just might consider the mayor. "I never voted for Rudy when I lived in New York City for one simple reason: abortion. . . . Why would I even think of changing my mind? Two things: national security, and Hillary Clinton's Supreme Court appointments." Keep your eyes out for more of these eye-popping moments. This one will not be the last.

(2) Not Your Father's Pro-Choice Republican:There were pro-choice Republicans before Giuliani, but they held no appeal for conservatives, and there was little desire to cut them a break. They were politicians like Christie Todd Whitman, Jim Jeffords, Lincoln Chafee, and the ladies from Maine, from the near-extinct school of northern-tier liberal Republicans, regarded as "soft" on a wide range of issues. Or they were like Bill Weld, a fiscal conservative but a libertarian otherwise, whose watchword on most issues was "anything goes." A great many things do not "go" with Rudy, an enforcer by nature, seen as a Puritan scold by most of his liberal critics, who deplored his crackdowns on porn and on crime. As he told the conservative attendees at the CPAC conference in Washington last Friday, quoting Ronald Reagan, "anyone who is with you 80 percent of the time is your 80 percent friend--not your 20 percent enemy." Previous pro-choice Republicans tended to look down on the social conservatives, to agree with the press that they were cringe-making yahoos, and to accept the condolences of the media for the terrible people they had to put up with in their party.

To the press, Rudy was one of those terrible people--too quick to defend the police when they were attacked on brutality charges; a fascist, a bully, and a prude. With most pro-choice Republicans, their views on abortion are only one of a set of positions and attitudes that arouse the ire of the base. Giuliani is that very rare animal, a pro-choice Republican who is also the furthest thing possible from a liberal on a wide range of issues (law and order among them). "In case after case, he refused to accept the veto of liberal public opinion," writes John Podhoretz in his New York Post column. "More than any other candidate in the race, Rudy Giuliani is a liberal slayer. When he rejects liberal orthodoxy, which he does often, he doesn't just oppose it. He goes to war with it--total, unconditional war." If you believe that the enemy of your enemy must be your friend, conservatives have no better friend than the mayor, bête noire and scourge of the limousine liberals, the race hustlers, the friends of identity politics, the opponents of capital punishment, the municipal unions, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the New York Times. Some will want him to be president, if only to annoy all these people--a temptation too big to resist.

(3) The Shape of the Field: Strict conservatives are not all that enthralled by any of the three main contenders--Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. This is their weakness, but also their strength, as they all tend to give each other cover along with other conservative stars. Did Giuliani leave his first wife? So did McCain. Did he leave his second wife? So did Newt Gingrich. Is he pro-choice and gay-friendly? So was Mitt Romney a scant four years ago. McCain is the only one with a firm pro-life record, but the base doesn't like him for a number of reasons, among them tax cuts, immigration, campaign finance reform, and being used by the press to score points against conservatives on too many things to enumerate.

Some day their prince may come--the conservative who hits all the bases--pro-life, pro-supply side, pro-tax cuts, pro-deregulation, and hawkish in foreign policy--but this day is not it, and that day may never arrive. In this case, as the base will be forced to cut slack to someone on something--on his public stances or his private life, on his past or present positions--they may want to do it for someone who in many ways truly excites them, who bonds with them on many issues, and who, so far at least, leads Hillary Clinton and all other comers in the polls.

(4) Mugged by Reality: After 30-plus years of fierce, intense arguments, much emotion, and many polls taken, both sides in the abortion wars have been mugged by reality, and realize that neither is likely to reach its major goals soon. Dreams of outlawing abortion on the one hand, or, on the other, of seeing it funded, legitimized, and enshrined as an unassailable civil right, have faded in the face of a large and so-far unswayable public opinion that is conflicted, ambivalent, and inclined to punish any political figure it sees as too rigid, too strident, or too eager to go to extremes. For this reason, no politician shrewd enough to make himself president is likely to go on a pro-life or pro-choice crusade. (Like Ronald Reagan before him, George W. Bush addresses the March for Life by phone and long distance; the new Democratic Congress, for its part, has wisely decided to leave the whole issue alone.) With this has come an understanding that, aside from the appointing of judges, and some tinkering with executive orders, the president's role is not large.

Purists will want someone whose heart is with them, but, in the real world, the state of the president's heart does not count: Support for abortion remained fairly high under Reagan and Bush 41, and began to fall off under Bill Clinton, the most pro-choice president in American history, strongly backed by the feminist movement, and pushed by his feminist wife. A strict constructionist justice appointed by a president who is pro-choice is no different from a strict constructionist appointed by a pro-life president, at least in the view of the practically minded, and better than an activist justice appointed by somebody else.

For some people, this argument will not be sufficient, and debates have now broken out among social conservatives. But the surprising thing is that these debates are occurring, which had not been foreseen or expected a few months ago. This is why early assessments of Giuliani's possible weakness may be misleading, among them polls indicating that many social conservatives would never back a pro-choice nominee. They do not show what might happen if the nominee pledged not to push for a pro-choice agenda, or if he were endorsed and supported by conservative icons who vouched for him, campaigned with and for him, and swore to their backers that he was all right.

The deal in the works has been carefully crafted to make sure that no one loses too much. Conservatives would be getting a pro-choice nominee, but one who would not push a pro-choice agenda, and one who would give them (as far as presidents can be sure in these matters) the kind of judges they long for. Giuliani would not be required to renounce his beliefs, merely to appoint the right kind of judges and to remain more or less neutral in a policy area in which, to be honest, he has never shown that much interest. The Republicans will remain the pro-life party--as desired by the bulk of their voters and required by the workings of the two-party system--though now with a larger, more varied, and in some ways more competitive field of candidates. And it is worth noting in this altered context that the Democrats also are starting to change. One of the reasons Democrats now run both the houses of Congress is that canny recruiters defied their own culture war lobbies and rammed a number of pro-life and pro-gun candidates down the throats of their interest groups, assessing correctly that control of Congress was worth a few unhappy activists. They are not yet at the point of nominating a pro-life candidate on the national level, but the lid has been pried open a crack. Someday, they too may find a candidate whom they find attractive--say, for irony's sake, a Bob Casey Jr.--except for this single and glaring impediment. And at that point, they too might deal.

And now, as the litmus test slowly expires, it is time to consider its costs. It has been a very good deal for the people who imposed it, but a very bad one for the country at large. It has meant that a candidate for national office must begin by embracing ideas that have been rejected by seven in ten of Americans, while a candidate who comes close to the center of public opinion would never be allowed to compete. It has made candidates for the post of commander in chief of the world's greatest power kick off their campaigns by groveling before leaders of interest groups, which does not make them seem leaderly and causes voters to lose all respect. Worst of all, it posed the real possibility that a candidate would come forth who seemed equipped to deal with a crisis, but who, because he held the "wrong views" in the eyes of the interest groups, would not be allowed to emerge. In Giuliani, some social conservatives think they have found such a candidate and do not want to waste him. And so, they are making a deal.
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I Have a Dream....

and The Dream shall Never Die! Hallelujah, brothers and Sisters!

How to Deal With Islamists

Where is he when we need him? This is, regrettably, the only way Islamist extremism has ever been effectively dealt with. the word "assassin" comes from an Islamist surname, one who created the "Cult of The Assassin" and promised his followers 7 virgins in heaven as reward for their martyrdom (no, its not from the Koran). The Persians, the Turks, and then the Egyptians, Muslims all, enforced "The Hama Rules" on their own, killing them in scores when they arose. we need to do the same...T

A World Without America

As if it needs saying...well, i guess it does...T (Thanks to Splugy for this!)

Brian Lynch/Eddie Palmieri: The Palmieri Effect

Ok, relax and enjoy some hot music...I'm in a good mood...T

The 1/2 Hour News Hour

Finally, a Lewinsky worth "Smoking"...T

Soviet monument to make way for Reagan

Great idea, and about time!...now if we could just get rid of Communism at the NY Times and NBC...T

Opponents of Poland's former communist regime reportedly want to pay a posthumous homage to US President Ronald Reagan by erecting his statue in the place of a Soviet-era monument.

In an open letter to the mayor of the southwestern city of Katowice, the former anti-regime activists said that the staunchly anti-communist Reagan had been a "symbol of liberty," the Polish news agency PAP reported.

As a result, they said, he deserved to become the centrepiece of the city's Freedom Square, replacing a monument to the Soviet troops who drove out the occupying Nazis in 1945.

They also said that they wanted the site to be re baptised "Ronald Reagan Freedom Square."
City hall spokesman Waldemar Bojarun said that Katowice's councillors would consider the issue.
Bojarun said that he had "enormous respect" for Reagan.

However, he said, the proposal could cost an estimated 500,000 zlotys (128,000 euros, 168,000 dollars) and the city had "other pressing needs."

There are already separate plans to erect a statue in memory of Reagan in the centre of the Polish capital, Warsaw, which would be paid-for from private funds.

Reagan, who dubbed the Soviet Union an "evil empire," is widely credited by Poles with having driven communism to the wall.

The conservative Republican made fighting communism the cornerstone of his 1980-1988 presidency, and backed Poland's Solidarity trade union after it went underground when the regime declared martial law in 1981.

Reagan died in June 2004 at the age of 93.
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The real deal? Against the grain: Some scientists deny global warming exists

Once more, for a coda, freezing my a** off, if you please?! Now, no more harangues from all of you, and you know who you are, about Man-made global warming being established science...try taking a physics class on the subject, as I did, before opening that blow hole...T

Astrophysicist Nir Shariv, one of Israel's top young scientists, describes the logic that led him -- and most everyone else -- to conclude that SUVs, coal plants and other things man-made cause global warming.

Step One Scientists for decades have postulated that increases in carbon dioxide and other gases could lead to a greenhouse effect.

Step Two As if on cue, the temperature rose over the course of the 20th century while greenhouse gases proliferated due to human activities.

Step Three No other mechanism explains the warming. Without another candidate, greenhouses gases necessarily became the cause.

The series

Statistics needed -- The Deniers Part I
Warming is real -- and has benefits -- The Deniers Part II
The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science -- The Deniers Part III
Polar scientists on thin ice -- The Deniers Part IV
The original denier: into the cold -- The Deniers Part V
The sun moves climate change -- The Deniers Part VI
Will the sun cool us? -- The Deniers Part VII
The limits of predictability -- The Deniers Part VIII
Look to Mars for the truth on global warming -- The Deniers Part IX
Limited role for C02 -- the Deniers Part X

Dr. Shariv, a prolific researcher who has made a name for himself assessing the movements of two-billion-year-old meteorites, no longer accepts this logic, or subscribes to these views. He has recanted: "Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media.
"In fact, there is much more than meets the eye."

Dr. Shariv's digging led him to the surprising discovery that there is no concrete evidence -- only speculation -- that man-made greenhouse gases cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-- the United Nations agency that heads the worldwide effort to combat global warming -- is bereft of anything here inspiring confidence. In fact, according to the IPCC's own findings, man's role is so uncertain that there is a strong possibility that we have been cooling, not warming, the Earth. Unfortunately, our tools are too crude to reveal what man's effect has been in the past, let alone predict how much warming or cooling we might cause in the future.
All we have on which to pin the blame on greenhouse gases, says Dr. Shaviv, is "incriminating circumstantial evidence," which explains why climate scientists speak in terms of finding "evidence of fingerprints." Circumstantial evidence might be a fine basis on which to justify reducing greenhouse gases, he adds, "without other 'suspects.' " However, Dr. Shaviv not only believes there are credible "other suspects," he believes that at least one provides a superior explanation for the 20th century's warming.

"Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming," he states, particularly because of the evidence that has been accumulating over the past decade of the strong relationship that cosmic- ray flux has on our atmosphere. So much evidence has by now been amassed, in fact, that "it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not exist."

The sun's strong role indicates that greenhouse gases can't have much of an influence on the climate -- that C02 et al. don't dominate through some kind of leveraging effect that makes them especially potent drivers of climate change. The upshot of the Earth not being unduly sensitive to greenhouse gases is that neither increases nor cutbacks in future C02 emissions will matter much in terms of the climate.

Even doubling the amount of CO2 by 2100, for example, "will not dramatically increase the global temperature," Dr. Shaviv states. Put another way: "Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant."

The evidence from astrophysicists and cosmologists in laboratories around the world, on the other hand, could well be significant. In his study of meteorites, published in the prestigious journal, Physical Review Letters, Dr. Shaviv found that the meteorites that Earth collected during its passage through the arms of the Milky Way sustained up to 10% more cosmic ray damage than others. That kind of cosmic ray variation, Dr. Shaviv believes, could alter global temperatures by as much as 15% --sufficient to turn the ice ages on or off and evidence of the extent to which cosmic forces influence Earth's climate.

In another study, directly relevant to today's climate controversy, Dr. Shaviv reconstructed the temperature on Earth over the past 550 million years to find that cosmic ray flux variations explain more than two-thirds of Earth's temperature variance, making it the most dominant climate driver over geological time scales. The study also found that an upper limit can be placed on the relative role of CO2 as a climate driver, meaning that a large fraction of the global warming witnessed over the past century could not be due to CO2 -- instead it is attributable to the increased solar activity.

CO2 does play a role in climate, Dr. Shaviv believes, but a secondary role, one too small to preoccupy policymakers. Yet Dr. Shaviv also believes fossil fuels should be controlled, not because of their adverse affects on climate but to curb pollution.

"I am therefore in favour of developing cheap alternatives such as solar power, wind, and of course fusion reactors (converting Deuterium into Helium), which we should have in a few decades, but this is an altogether different issue." His conclusion: "I am quite sure Kyoto is not the right way to go."

Lawrence Solomon@nextcity.com
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Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts?

Global warming fanatics, I've had it! In your face with The Facts!...T

Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was the first Canadian Ph.D. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.

What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on?

Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.

No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don't pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong?

Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. "It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species," wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.

I was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling engendered as I am to the threats made about Global Warming. Let me stress I am not denying the phenomenon has occurred. The world has warmed since 1680, the nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice Age (LIA) that has generally continued to the present. These climate changes are well within natural variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun. But there is nothing unusual going on.

Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling.

No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and makes career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent.

I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous, from an academic colleague, saying I had no right to say what I was saying, especially in public lectures. Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint.

In another instance, I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie. Apparently he thinks if the fossil fuel companies pay you have an agenda. So if Greenpeace, Sierra Club or governments pay there is no agenda and only truth and enlightenment?

Personal attacks are difficult and shouldn't occur in a debate in a civilized society. I can only consider them from what they imply. They usually indicate a person or group is losing the debate. In this case, they also indicate how political the entire Global Warming debate has become. Both underline the lack of or even contradictory nature of the evidence.

I am not alone in this journey against the prevalent myth. Several well-known names have also raised their voices. Michael Crichton, the scientist, writer and filmmaker is one of them. In his latest book, "State of Fear" he takes time to explain, often in surprising detail, the flawed science behind Global Warming and other imagined environmental crises.

Another cry in the wildenerness is Richard Lindzen's. He is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric waves. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has held positions at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. Linzen frequently speaks out against the notion that significant Global Warming is caused by humans. Yet nobody seems to listen.

I think it may be because most people don't understand the scientific method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law.

As Lindzen said many years ago: "the consensus was reached before the research had even begun." Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists. This has reached frightening levels with these scientists now being called climate change denier with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The normal scientific method is effectively being thwarted.

Meanwhile, politicians are being listened to, even though most of them have no knowledge or understanding of science, especially the science of climate and climate change. Hence, they are in no position to question a policy on climate change when it threatens the entire planet. Moreover, using fear and creating hysteria makes it very difficult to make calm rational decisions about issues needing attention.

Until you have challenged the prevailing wisdom you have no idea how nasty people can be. Until you have re-examined any issue in an attempt to find out all the information, you cannot know how much misinformation exists in the supposed age of information.

I was greatly influenced several years ago by Aaron Wildavsky's book "Yes, but is it true?" The author taught political science at a New York University and realized how science was being influenced by and apparently misused by politics. He gave his graduate students an assignment to pursue the science behind a policy generated by a highly publicised environmental concern. To his and their surprise they found there was little scientific evidence, consensus and justification for the policy. You only realize the extent to which Wildavsky's findings occur when you ask the question he posed. Wildavsky's students did it in the safety of academia and with the excuse that it was an assignment. I have learned it is a difficult question to ask in the real world, however I firmly believe it is the most important question to ask if we are to advance in the right direction.

Dr. Tim Ball, Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (www.nrsp.com), is a Victoria-based environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. He can be reached at letters@canadafreepress.com

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Turning toward Iran

Let's hope so...I still remain optimistic. Let's remember: Still the fastest victory, with the lowest losses, of any military conflict in history. 3000 dead in 5 years vs. 3000 dead in one day on 9/11. Anyway, the author is almost always right. Not an ideologue, but the most accomplished political analyst I've ever followed, and yes, he called the 06 elections exactly right. I did not. There is hope...T

It's often hard to identify a turning point in a military conflict. The news of mayhem comes in every day, and it's hard to figure out which changes the course of things.

Metrics available to the public are useless -- those available to commanders are, I suspect, far from completely helpful. Military historians can look back and, knowing more and with more certainty than anyone at the time, center their narratives on actions that really made a difference. Those of us following events through (often biased) news media and (often insightful but never with a full picture) military bloggers can't do this. Only on looking back can we begin to guess where the road turned.

In looking back over the last year, I see two turning points in the Middle East -- note, not just Iraq, but the Middle East. The first was the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra in February 2006. This was intended to, and evidently did, spark an upsurge of sectarian violence -- Shias killing Sunnis and vice versa.

In retrospect, and as George W. Bush indicated in his speeches of Jan. 10 and Jan. 23, it was a significant turning point. If Mr. Bush's surge of troops into Baghdad and Anbar is the right response to this increased violence now, it would have been the right move six months ago. But readers of military history won't be surprised that his timing was off. So was that, at times, of indisputably great commanders like Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt.

I used to say that the hardest thing in campaign strategy is to distinguish between the one time out of 10 when you should change course and the nine times out of 10 when you should continue on the course you set. I should think it's even harder to get this distinction right in military affairs.

The other turning point, as I look back, was Hezbollah's invasion of Israel last July. The military effectiveness was hard to gauge and Israelis still argue about whether they suffered a defeat, scored a victory or managed a stalemate. But the important thing here, at least in the opinion of key administration policymakers, was not the effect on the Israelis or even the Lebanese, but the effect on other Arab states.

The Sunni Arab states viewed the Hezbollah attack -- undertaken without even the notification of the Lebanese government, yet putting Lebanon at grave risk -- as an Iranian offensive aimed at establishing something like hegemony over the greater Middle East. Shia, Persian hegemony -- not something welcomed by the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. For all their rhetorical opposition to Israel over the years, they found they had more in common with Jewish Israel than Muslim Iran. So they began to urge the United States to do more to curb the power of Iran.

As with the bombing of the Golden Mosque, so with the Hezbollah attack on Israel, the United States took time to respond -- more time, I suspect, than future historians will decide was appropriate. But after the policy review that followed the Republican defeat in the November elections, we have responded. The rules of engagement have been changed in Iraq: U.S. forces captured and held Iranian "consular" officials in Erbil, and there is reason to believe we're stepping up interdiction of Iranian weapon supplies to various hostile forces in Iraq.

Mr. Bush appointed an admiral as head of CentCom, the regional command, and ordered a second aircraft carrier group sent to the Persian Gulf. This is a hugely significant move, signaling we can if necessary bring overwhelming military force to bear against Iran, as we did in 1986-88. We can stop the Iranians from blocking the Straits of Hormuz and, if we choose, conduct the air strikes against Iranian oil refineries and military facilities recommended by historian Arthur Herman.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid responded by demanding the administration not take action against Iran, and the New York Times condemned Mr. Bush for "bullying" poor, sweet little Iran. These responses are typical of the fundamentally unserious criticism being lobbed against Mr. Bush these days. The correct criticism is not that we're doing too much to hurt the mullahs but that we're doing too little.

The critics ignore the fact Iran has been making war against us for 27 years, since they violated the most fundamental law of diplomacy by taking our diplomats hostage. The critics seem more interested in seeing Mr. Bush lose than in seeing the United States win. Fortunately, Mr. Bush still wants to prevail.
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