The Review
The Poet Laureate of New Jersey
(
Review) NRO's John Derbyshire introduces us the the official Poet Laureate of New Jersey, Amiri Baraka, and his exploding owls.
Yes, you read that right.
Iraqi Occupation
(
Review) Well, it looks like the Administration
is thinking about what to do in Iraq after the Hussein regime is finished off.
Winning over the Russkies
(
Review) Russian President Vladimir Putin says that he thinks we can come to an agreement over a UN resolution on Iraq. Good news.
Part of the story confuses me though. It states:
Earlier Friday, Blair and his wife, Cherie, and Putin and his spouse, Lyudmila, walked around the snow-dusted grounds of Zavidovo, a presidential residence in the countryside about 75 miles north of the capital.
The setting was relaxed. Putin, wearing a sweater and no tie, accompanied Blair, wearing jeans and an open-necked shirt, into a room in a small hunting lodge for the formal talks. A stuffed wild boar greeted them in the entrance hall.
The hunting lodge near the Volga River was once a favorite of former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
Uh, okay. And it was important to know that, why, exactly?
No peace for the Nobel prize committee
(
Review) Evidently, the Nobel Prize was conferred on Jimmy Carter as a slap to the current Bush administration's policy towards Iraq.
At a news conference, Nobel Committee Chairman Gunnar Berge said that, in addition to honoring Carter, the 2002 prize "should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the current [U.S.] administration has taken."
"It's a kick in the leg to all that follow the same line as the United States," he added.
Pacifism. *sigh*
In my view, pacifism is an evil philosophy. It makes no moral distinction between agression or self defense. It denies that we have a responsibility--indeed, even the right--to act in self defense. It is a philosphy for moral cripples. You need look no further than the Nobel Committee's decision to adorn the father of modern terrorism, Yasser Arafat, with the Prize in 1994. Such a prize perfectly demonstrates the moral confusion of the pacifist caucus.
The LA Times is actually right
(
Review) The editors of the LA Times weigh in on the bait-and-switch ballots in New Jersey and, possibly, Montana.
Politically, it is tempting to change horses three weeks before likely defeat. Would some California Republicans like to slip former Mayor Richard Riordan into the gubernatorial contest today to replace the trailing Bill Simon Jr.? But that ignores rules and subverts citizen participation through the flawed but official primary process and absentee voting well underway.
Montana's Mike Taylor, Republican challenger to Sen. Max Baucus, blamed his sudden withdrawal on a new Democratic Party ad that Taylor and state human rights advocates said appealed to homophobes. Though Baucus, chairman of the powerful Finance Committee, seemed vulnerable last year, Taylor, a state senator, trailed badly in recent polls, 54% to 35%. Montana's ballot deadline is long passed; write-ins may file up to 15 days before the election. Maneuvers such as last-minute dropouts and write-ins have effects beyond any immediate race. Lack of a candidate or the sudden appearance of a more popular one can drastically affect voter turnout and thus all races and referendums.
New technology should enable states to ponder later filing deadlines. Great, let's talk. But no party should be able to substitute candidates this late to seek a better result. For now, let's apply the same rules to everyone.
That's exactly right.
Carter, the Nobel, and a trip down memory lane
(
Review) So. Jimmy Carter, the most ex of our ex-presidents, won the nobel prize. Well, Jay Nordlinger reminds us that there is much about the very former president to criticize.
And lest you forget, while we did elect him as president, we got rid of the SOB as soon as humanly possible.
No cakewalk?
(
Review) Former USAF LT. Gen. Tom McInerny says the following in the
Wall Street Journal today:
I do want to let the American people know that the Cassandras are painting a distorted picture of Saddam's capabilities, just as they did in 1991. This campaign will be less difficult and quicker, but no cakewalk.
Well, actually, the 1991 campaign was a cakewalk. I mean, I was on active duty at the time, just like LtGen McInerney was, and it pretty much seemed like a cakewalk to me. Well, OK, the six months before the attack beagn couldn't suck hard enough, but the actual ground war thrashed the Iraqi army in 96
hours.
Our stealth bombers and air superiority assets will neutralize Iraqi air defenses within 24 hours so we achieve air dominance, which is critical to coalition success. The expansion of our beachheads in the north, south and west regions, with airheads being seized with alarming speed, will allow opposition forces to play a very helpful role in determining the status (friend or foe) of the Iraqi Army for our advancing forces.
But it won't be a cakewalk.
The Iraqi forces we are facing are about 30% of the Iraqi force in Desert Storm, with no significant modernization. We are about ten times more effective with the addition of the B-2 Stealth Bomber, Joint STARS, the new drones, Global Hawk and Predator plus the satellite guided Joint Direct Attack Munition, which allows our bombers to drop up to 16 to 24 bombs simultaneously at different targets.
No, definitely not a cakewalk at all.
These additional capabilities will enable the coalition forces to conduct a campaign that will be over within 30 days and have fewer casualties than we had in Desert Storm with a smaller attacking force. We should expect some attempts at use of weapons of mass destruction against our forces. We can cope with this by moving fast and with our appropriately equipped strike forces. In addition, we will specially target those geographical boxes that Saddam's Scud missiles must move into to reach Iraq's neighbors.
In other words we will beat the Iraqis like a red-headed stepchild within a few days.
But it won't be a cakewalk.
My kind of liberals
(
Review) Jonathon Chait explains in
The New Republic why Liberals should be just as gung-ho to whack Saddam Hussein as Conservatives are.
We'll be just fine, thanks
(
Review) Ralph Peters, as befits an army officer, isn't worried about how to pull off a war against Iraq.
Our soldiers do not fear Saddam. I do not know a single man or woman in uniform who believes that our military will fail or suffer badly, should we go to war with Iraq. The best-informed insist we will hit the Iraqi regime with such overwhelming, unexpected fury that the world will be shocked by our effectiveness.
Ooh-rah!
Those darn Germans
(
Review) Victor Davis Hanson write about our friends, the Germans.
If even Socialists and Leftists revert to nomenclature of a half-century past, has the specter of German nationalism and belligerence really vanished?
Look at some of the creepy rhetoric. Schröder promised that Germans would not simply "click their heels." He talked of the "German way" (deutscher Weg), stressing that Germany was a "modern" country (with autobahns no less?), where decisions will "be made in Berlin — and only in Berlin." Based on that eerie verbiage, a Mel Brooks movie could not have offered a better caricature of repressed nostalgia for the 1930s.
A cynic would see the new German belligerency as particularly opportunistic, coming as it does only after the Soviet threat was gone, after the dream of unification was achieved, and after Berlin is emerging as the capital of a new "modern" Germany. A more jaded skeptic would see in contemporary Germany socialism, pacifism, and relativism shades of a weak and decadent Weimar — with all the attendant extreme reactions to it looming on the horizon. We sadly expect residual anti-Semitism in Germany, but when ex-officials there complain of the power of American Jewish constituencies in New York and Miami, the awful subtext is, of course, that there is no such problem now in Germany, because….
Yes. Because.
So to learn that the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, NATO, the American nuclear shield in protecting free Germans from 400 Soviet divisions, and the recent near-automatic American support for German unification are apparently ancient history came as another post-9/11 wake-up call. In turn, we wonder whether Germans are really aware that over 70,000 American troops on German soil alone allow Mr. Schröder's government to continue to spend no more than 1 percent of GNP on defense, with the assurance that no hostile country would dare enter German airspace.
Yes, funny how often the Europeans forget about that. After all, there's no need to worry about the weather when someone is always there with a large umbrella to hold over you.
In Europe these sudden outbursts have put neighbors east and west on notice; indeed France, Holland, Italy, and the eastern Europeans are more likely to strengthen, not enfeeble, their American ties. Astute politicians there may sense that there is something nasty brewing in Germany that trumps socialism, the EU, and the other utopian pretensions that were supposed to have supplanted all those silly 19th-century ideas like nationalism, status, and honor across the Rhine. If I were a Frenchman, Pole, Greek, or Czech, I would reexamine very carefully the fashionable anti-Americanism of the continent, dissect it, and determine what, in fact, are its real undercurrents and repercussions — before the spooky German rhetoric is turned on them and we, in our disgust, are long gone from the scene.
Such a re-examination won't happen, though, because the Europeans have historically been unable to summon the will to do so. Which goes far towards explaining why German troops held extensive bivouacs in France in 1870, 1914, and 1940.
In a sense, Mr. Schröder and German leaders may have achieved their traditional aspirations — a unified country, with the largest population and economy in Europe, without enemies on the horizon, and now free to chart its own course. Fine and more power to them. And we should ensure that the German government does not feel that it has to click its heels to anyone, simply accept that long-overdue reality, remain friends — but most definitely begin to come home. It will be healthier for all parties involved. And that fact may well usher in a slow return, after a half century, to an inevitable bilateralism with particular European states — with all its attendant dangers that we have seen in that part of the world over the last 130 years.
Mr. Schröder has no idea of the repressed historic forces that he has unleashed both at home and abroad — but unleashed them he most certainly has.
Is it just me, or does it seem like something creepy always happens when Germans unleash "repressed historic forces"?
The game's on
(
Review) The Senate has approved the Use of Force against Iraq, 77-23.
More on the liar, Patrick Leahy
(
Review) Emmett Tyrell weighs in on the contemptible lying and authoritarianism of the lying Democratic senator from Vermont, Pat "Liar" Leahy.
Did I mention that Pat Leahy is a liar? Because he is.
One down, one to go
(
Review) The House has passed the resolution allowing the president to use force in Iraq, by a vote of 296-133. The Senate looks set to vote on the matter very soon, and Even Tom Daschle will be voting in favor of it.
Turnabout is fair play
Review) New Jersey redux: The GOP candidate for Senate in Montana has decided that he can't beat incumbent Democratic Senator Max Baucus, so he's dropping out of the Race. Word is that former Governor Marc Racicot.
This is not good. This is a prescription for electoral chaos.
Bye-bye- bears?
(
Review Rick Bensignor, Morgan Stanley's chief technical analyst, has become bullish on the market. He thinks we've hit the bottom for the year, and Expects the S&P 500 to pop back up into the 900 range.
The Left: Enemies of free speech
(
Review) Jeff Jacoby on a free speech issue in Michigan. It's simply fascinating how the modern left, which started in part as an outgrowth of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, has become the modern enemy of free speech, and how it descends like a pack of rats on any speech in opposition to the orthodoxy of the Left.
Good news for privacy advocates
(
Review) Bill Safire writes:
After 19 months of study, experts convened by the National Research Council, an arm of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, concluded that "national security is too important to be left to such a blunt instrument," and noted pointedly that "no spy has ever been caught [by] using the polygraph."
Good news. The use of the polygraph machine is becoming less and less reputable.
I have always known the machine was unreliable. Back in the early 80s, when it was still legal, employers in Texas, where I lived, used it routinely to screen new employees. I took the polygraph test for a job interview and failed it, even though I was completely truthful. The examiner--who was a complete ass, by the way--called me a liar, and, of course, I didn't get the job. The next week, I had to take another polygraph exam. Same questions (but a nicer examiner) and I passed with flying colors. I didn't come away from that experience with a good feeling about a "science" that wrongly fails truthful people.
There are a lot of things that may cause physical reactions that make you appear untruthful. A large number of them have nothing whatsoever to do with your veracity. I'm a lot older and more experienced now. After a decade in law enforcement, I bet I could take a polygraph exam on anything and pass it.
Polygraphy is junk science, and I'm happy every timer I see it get a stake in the heart.
Don't worry about deflation?
Review) Glenn Hubbard, the chair of the President's council of economic advisors, writes that we don't need to be worried about deflation. His main arguments are:
[T]he basic features of the US economy look quite good and deflation appears unlikely. To start with, analysis of the productivity data over the past six quarters confirms some of the best news that economists have delivered in a generation - the acceleration in productivity growth that began in 1995 continues unabated.
Research suggests that a loss of one dollar in stock market wealth reduces consumption by about three to five cents over the following three years, holding other factors constant. But other factors have not been constant. Disposable personal income - the amount of current income that consumers can spend - has held up much better over the current business cycle than in previous recessions.
Of course, one can point to the strength of the housing market as a factor keeping consumption strong. House values have risen and low mortgage rates have encouraged homeowners to take out some of the equity in their homes through refinancing. But while this process has been a part of healthy consumption growth, it has been only a part. A study by the Federal Reserve of the home refinancing wave of 1998-99 found that it added only about $10bn to consumption expenditure, which totalled $6,200bn in 1989. Home refinancing has also been high in the past two years but the same lesson seems to apply.
Last, one cannot discuss deflation without an examination of the price data themselves. First, falling prices are not always bad - indeed, in most cases they are a crucial stabilising feature of modern economies. For evidence, just ask your local car salesperson. The surge in car sales brought about by zero per cent financing offers should add from 1/2 to 1 full percentage point to gross domestic product growth in the third quarter.
Second, a sustained decline in prices that magnifies the real burden of debtors is not likely. In fact, the inflation rate for consumer commodities, which turned negative in 2001, has turned round and is now headed for positive territory. Moreover, the inflation rate for consumer services has stabilised at little more than 3 per cent a year. Private forecasters expect the overall rate of consumer inflation to rise to about 2.4 per cent in 2003 as the recovery takes hold.
The problem with this argument is that no one is arguing that we will tumble into a great-depression-like deflationary spiral. What those of us in the deflation camp are arguing is that mild deflation, coupled with investment losses, excess capacity, and high business inventories, imply that economic growth will be substantially slower than the 5% productivity figures would normally imply. Nothing in Mr. Hubbard's rosy scenario belies that fact.
Mr. Hubbard's article never answers a most important question: If productivity growth is at 5%, then why is GDP growth below 3%, if deflation isn't a problem? The reason this is such an important question is that the same data used to calculate productivity growth are also used to calculate GDP. So if there is a serious discrepancy between productivity growth and GDP growth, then that disparity requires closer investigation, rather than breezy pronouncements to the effect that everything's fine. Everything isn't fine, or the rate of GDP growth would be at 6%.
Moreover, with interest rates already at historical lows, even a mild deflation makes it harder for normal monetary policy to help. The real driver in monetary policy is the
real interest rate, not the nominal one. If inflation is at 3% and nominal interest rates are at 6%, the real interest rate is 3% (nominal rate - inflation rate) But if inflation is at -3.5% and nominal interest rates are 0%, the real interest rate has increased by 0.5%. Once you hit nominal interest rates of 0%, you lose all control over affecting the real interest rates. Even if the real interest rate is only slightly larger, it still means some measure of below-potential growth.
So the article is a straw man. No one is talking about a massive deflationary crisis. But we are talking about economic growth that has failed to reach potential. Interestingly, Mr. Hubbard doesn't see fit to address that point.
Why wait, bomb now
(
Review) Richard Cohen doesn't like President Bush much, but he's on board for war against Iraq anyway.
Taking a page from Truman's book
(
Review) John fund advises the president to go on the campaign trail and repeat Harry Truman's indictment against the "Do Nothing" congress. This time, Bush could campaign against a "Kill Everything" Senate. Fund points out:
The Daschle-run Senate is primarily responsible for this being the first year since 1974 that Congress will not have passed a budget. It's likely that only one of the 13 annual appropriation bills, the one for defense, will have passed before Congress adjourns next week to go home and campaign. That will force Congress to pass continuing resolutions to fund government departments at last year's levels--a tactic that budget expert Stan Collender says will misallocate billions of dollars and play havoc with agency planning.
Similar obstructionism is at work across the entire Senate agenda. There is no sign that reauthorization of the 1996 welfare-reform bill, generally considered an outstanding success, will pass. The energy bill has been so weighted down with subsidies as to be useless to energy production. Senate Democrats are blocking a House bill that would allow firms that manage 401(k) and other pension funds to offer participants advice on how to invest.
Similar obstructionism is at work across the entire Senate agenda. There is no sign that reauthorization of the 1996 welfare-reform bill, generally considered an outstanding success, will pass. The energy bill has been so weighted down with subsidies as to be useless to energy production. Senate Democrats are blocking a House bill that would allow firms that manage 401(k) and other pension funds to offer participants advice on how to invest.
But it's on judges that the monkey-wrench Senate attitude is most obvious. Nearly 40 of President Bush's nominees to the bench haven't gotten a hearing, including several who were nominated 17 months ago. Democrats would rather have the vacancies, even though the Judicial Conference of the United States has declared many of them "judicial emergencies." This week, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Pat Leahy went back on his commitment to the retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond that he would bring up the nomination of a former Thurmond aide nominated to a federal circuit court.
It's funny, but the generally accepted wisdom used to be that it was the
purpose of the Senate to do nothing.
Your parents were wrong
(
Review) Evidently, money
can buy happiness.
Flirting with irrelevance
(
Review) The editors of
National Review observe that both the Democratic Party and the UN are flirting with irrelevance when faced with the Iraq Situation.
The Democrats and the U.N. have much in common. The Democrats claimed to want a debate that they really feared; the U.N. claims to want a responsibility it has no intention of actually exercising. Now President Bush is forcing both to make a decision they would prefer to put off. It's up to them to demonstrate that they are up to the challenges of our time.
I suspect the President will have better luck with the Democrats than with the UN.
The old folks at home
(
Review) Newly minted American John Derbyshire takes his first trip back to England in four years. He is kind enough to pen his observations about the "auld sod" for the rest of us.
The best of a bad set of options
(
Review) Pejman Yousefzadeh writes that war with Iraq is not the best option, it just happens to be the best available at the moment.
The Review Newsletter, October 2002
The October Edition of
The Review newsletter is available for download in PDF format. This month, I deliver harsh fiskings to Al Gore, Zell Miller, and Robert Scheer. Also included: The future war with Europe, why containment won't work against Iraq, and good riddance to David Bonior.
October Economic Roundup
The bursting of a financial bubble is never pretty, as anyone who has been invested in the stock market for the past few years can attest. Right now, we are mired in the aftermath of the burst of the Internet bubble of the 1990's, so the prospects for robust economic growth in the near term aren't very bright.
As The Economist points out:
Since March 2000 the S&P 500 index has fallen by more than 40%. Some $7 trillion has been wiped off the value of American shares, equivalent to two-thirds of annual GDP. And yet share prices still look expensive. Martin Barnes, an economist at the Bank Credit Analyst, a Canadian research firm, estimates that over the 40 years to 1995 the S&P 500 traded at an average of 15 times historic operating profits; today the ratio is 20. Moreover, experience shows that markets generally overshoot on the way down: at the trough of the previous bear market in 1982, the S&P 500 traded at only eight times profits.
The current situation is very much like the collapse of the investment bubble of the 1920s, which led to the Great Depression. Profits and business investment have suffered their greatest declines since the 1930s. Unlike the 1930s, however, consumer spending and real estate prices have remained strong, so the collapse on Wall Street has not led to a collapse on Main Street. Productivity is still rising as well, which is a good sign, since economic growth is directly tied to increases in productivity.
Still, the economy on Main Street has cooled off considerably, and the potential for a long period of cooling off is still there. If, for example, lower share prices mean that households have to increase the amount of money being put away for retirement, then consumer spending will decline, lowering economic growth.
Not all the news is bad, however. Businesses have been working off excess inventory, and trying to clean up their balance sheets. The October unemployment statistics seem to bear this out. The unemployment rate fell from 5.7% to 5.6%. Even better news is found in the details of the report, which indicate that job growth is on the rise again, to the tune of 181,000 new jobs so far this year. Still, even with this good news, our economic growth is well below what it should be. With productivity growth at 5%, we should expect GDP growth at 6%. That isn't happening, however, and GDP growth for the year will probably be under 3%.
Part of the blame for this situation can be traced to the policy of the Federal Reserve. The Fed has been dropping interest rates recently, which, for most people, means that the Fed has an accommodative policy. In reality however, despite the lower interest rates, the actual growth in the supply of money has been shrinking. As Lawrence Kudlow, former Chief Economist for Bear Sterns puts it:
The Fed provides the raw material (or cash) to create the monetary base. The base, in turn, feeds or restrains the growth of M2 -- a conventional measure of money that includes currency, checking accounts, money market funds, and savings accounts. From the autumn of 2000 to the autumn of 2001, this measure of money roughly doubled to 12% from 6% as the Fed sent fresh cash into the economy. This set the stage for economic recovery in 2002.
However, from the autumn of 2001 to the summer of 2002, M2 growth slipped all the way down to 4%. This nine-month decline in money growth parallels the devastating stock-market plunge and raises big questions about profits and the whole economic rebound.
Recessions are what we call a monetary phenomenon. The reason that recessions occur is because people's demand for ready cash rises. So, rather than spend money, they hoard it, which causes economic growth to slow as spending declines. The way out of that trap, then, is to pump money into the economy until the demand for cash is equalized with the supply.
What the Fed has been doing, however, is turning the money spigot off, slowing the growth in the money supply, and ensuring that the demand for cash becomes greater than the available supply. Hence spending begins to slow.
There are two interest rates the Fed controls: The Discount Rate, which the Fed controls directly, is the interest rate it charges to banks for overnight loans of cash. The fed funds rate is the interest rate paid by short-term securities that banks buy and sell in the Federal Funds Market.
Banks are required to keep a certain percentage of their deposits on hand at all times, in order to pay depositors who want to withdraw their money. This is called the "reserve requirement". To meet that reserve requirement, banks often need some cash. They can obtain it by going directly to the Fed, and borrowing the money at the Discount Rate, or buy selling or buying securities at the Fed Funds window. The drawback of borrowing at the discount rate, however, is that if you do that too many times, Fed investigators start dropping by the bank wondering why. So, the banks prefer to buy and sell at the Fed Funds window.
One of the ways the Fed can push money into the economy is buy using the Fed Funds window to buy a lot more of these short-term securities from the banks, this injecting more cash into the system. This buying demand by the Fed would push the price of these securities higher, which means that the interest rate they pay would drop. Since the Fed sets a target interest rate for the Fed Funds, they stop buying these securities when the rate begins to decline.
What the Fed should do is simply announce that they will not worry about what the Fed Funds rate is for the time being. They should just start pumping cash into the banks by buying these securities, and let the Fed funds rate fall as low as necessary to accommodate the demand for cash in the economy.
As Kudlow points out, "By stubbornly maintaining a fed funds rate of 1.75% instead of fortifying the money supply, economic recovery hopes are fading. Until the central bank comes to its senses, both the stock market and the economy will continue to disappoint. Prices will continue to deflate. Business profits will continue to disappear."
It is important to do this soon because the bursting of the Internet bubble has had a deflationary effect on the economy, and prices have started to fall. In normal times, this might not be such a bad thing, because falling prices would reduce inflation. But since inflation is already low, falling prices take us close to deflation, which is much harder to cure.
For a more detailed explanation of deflationary problems, see the Economic Roundup in the September edition of
The Review newsletter.
So, we've managed to duck the bullet of a "double-dip" recession so far, and things are looking brighter. Without looser money supply growth, however, expect the economy to perform under its potential for the near term.
The road to Munich
(
Review) Perhaps the Europeans are comfortable on the road to Munich, because they know the way so well.
Leahy is evidently a liar. But we already knew that.
(
Review) Senate Judiciary Comittee Chairman Pat Leahy assured several senators that US District Judge Dennis Shed would get a confirmation vote for his elevation to the appeals court. Now, Leahy has gone back on that promise. Republicans are hopping mad.
The blatant politicization of Judicial nominations has reached a new low under Leahy's...well...I was gonna say "leadership", but that's certainly not the right word.
Scheer idiocy
(
Review) Needless to say, Robert Scheer didn't think much of President Bush's Speech. In fact, he seems to think that Iraq is no threat at all.
The CIA report also concedes that the agency has no evidence that Iraq possesses nuclear weapons, although it lamely attempts to put the worst spin on that embarrassing fact: "Although Saddam probably does not yet have nuclear weapons or sufficient material to make any, he remains intent on acquiring them."
Of course, that is a statement about intent, not capability, and one that can be made about dozens of the world's nations, many of them run by dictators as brutal as Hussein.
The difference, of course, is that we know that Iraq
has a nuclear weapons program, and lacks only a supply of uranium. All of the preparatory work for creating nucelar weapons has been done, what remains is only to obtain the uranium and enrich it. Not that Shceer glances over the key word "probably" in the CIA report to which he refers.
This would be the same CIA that estimated the Soviet GNP to be roughly three times what it actually was. And failed to predict the fall of the USSR for good measure. "Probably" covers a lot of territory, including "Oh, and we could be completely wrong."
Also, I suspect if we did know that the Iraqi regime had a nuclear weapon, Mr. Scheer's counsel would still be not to attack Iraq, because the price would be too high. One wonders if Mr. Scheer would approve of the use of military force under any circumstances against Iraq. Or anywhere else for that matter.
None of the unstable nations already possessing deliverable nuclear weapons are targets of Bush's wrath. And in the case of the military dictatorship of Pakistan, which at some point is likely to use such weapons in a war with India, we have even eliminated the sanctions imposed as punishment for developing those nuclear arms.
Well, as far as I can tell, Mr. Musharraf is a bit more stable than Mr. Hussein, most notably because he realizes a nuclear launch on India would result in the extinction of the Pakistani people. Or, perhaps he is suggesting that we should take out Pakistan, too.
No, I doubt it.
But then, what is Mr. Scheer's point? That we should just allow any dictator who wants them to get nuclear weapons? Or that we should prevent all of them for getting them? There are only three policy responses towards nuclear proliferation. Clearly, Mr Scheer disagrees with the current policy, which is to come down hard on the most agressive states, while accepting we can't stop proliferation at all times in all places. Since he doesn't like the current policy, the only other options are to stop all proliferation or to stop none of it.
Naturally, Mr. Scheer doesn't tell us which of the remaining policy options he prefers. All we know is that he doesn't like the one Mr. Bush proposes. I suspect that is because he frankly has not given the other policy options much thought. But, since sniping from the sidelines without offering any alternatives doesn't take a lot of thought, Mr. Scheer is admirably suited for the job.
More important than its psychoanalyzing of Iraq's megalomaniacal leader is the CIA's concession that the much-maligned inspections done by teams of experts organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency actually worked quite well: "More than 10 years of sanctions and the loss of much of Iraq's physical nuclear infrastructure under IAEA oversight have not diminished Saddam's interest in acquiring or developing nuclear weapons."
Similarly, the report concludes that Iraq's chemical weapons "capability was reduced during the UNSCOM [United Nations Special Commission] inspections and is probably more limited now than it was at the time of the Gulf War."
Ignoring the key "probably" again, Mr. Scheer concludes that if Hussein's ability is more limited now than it was in 1990, then he must not be a threat at all.
Well, In 1932, Germany seemed a lot less threatening than it did prior to the First World War, too. But, of course, in 1933, it was the intent of Germany's new rulers that made her a threat, not her capabilities.
If a man points a gun at your head and threatens to kill you, it's prudent to assume that the gun is loaded, even if the CIA tells you that he "probably" doesn't have bullets for the gun.
The report also notes that all cases of documented use of chemical weapons by Iraq occurred on or before March 1988, primarily against Iranian troops in a war covertly supported by the U.S., and that neither chemical nor biological weapons were used against the United States during or after the Gulf War.
Oh, he didn't gas our boys back in '91? He must be a peachy fellow then. The fact that we had the capability to provide a devastating counter-response probably never entered into his calculations. I see.
If Iraq thwarts the resumption of effective inspections, the CIA report also makes obvious that continued airstrikes targeting suspected armaments facilities would make far more sense than a costly, risky full-fledged invasion.
"UNSCOM inspection activities and coalition military strikes destroyed most of [Iraq's] prohibited ballistic missiles and some Gulf War-era chemical and biological munitions," the CIA report says, but "Iraq still has a small force of extended-range Scud-variant missiles, chemical precursors, biological seed stock, and thousands of munitions suitable for chemical and biological agents."
The report claims that Iraq may have converted some of its "legitimate vaccine and biopesticide plants to biological warfare." But since the CIA report provides maps pinpointing suspect Iraqi weapons sites, they could easily be taken out short of the antiseptic-sounding "regime change" the Bush administration is aching to achieve.
Ah. Those surgical airstrikes. That'll solve the problem. Assuming of course that we actually do know where those agents are being made, i.e. that a) the suspect sites are actually what the CIA thinks they are, and b) those site are all that exist.
Funny, though, Mr. Scheer has not been in the past a keen devotee of the CIA's methods or information. He appears to have had a religious conversion that has left him with a child-like trust in the Agency. How touching.
In truth, the invasion is required not to meet a pressing threat to our security but rather to meet the threat to GOP control of Congress posed by a sagging U.S. economy and a stock market that has wiped out the savings of many Americans. That and the pent-up desire of frustrated wannabe imperialists among top Bush advisors to find a way to use our high-tech weaponry to micromanage the world. The CIA report makes it clear there is no plausible national security reason for pushing for war with Iraq at this time, other than the ill-advised imperial goal of directly controlling the world's oil supplies.
The idiotic argument about oil supplies has already been dealth with by the editors of
The New Republic, so I won't belabor it here, excewpt to say that if we wanted more Iraqi oil on the market, all we'd have to do was lift the sanctions. I expect that if we do invade Iraq and change the government there, Iraq's oil will remain in the hands of the Iraqi government. In that case, we won't directly control the world's oil supplies.
To directly control the world's oil supplies, we'd have to put Exxon, Shell, et al., in charge of the Iraqi oil fields. Funny, though, we didn't do that in 1991, when Mr. Scheer was making the same charge then. Yet, Mr. Scheer trots out the same stupid line, as if it's proven falsity were of no account.
Let me be clear. If, like Mr. Scheer, you believe we are interested in Iraq so that we can directly control the supply of oil, then you are a moron.
Ny newest TCS Column
(
Review) This week, I discuss the Europeans, and the possibility that we may be on the road towards a bitterly adversarial relationship.
Case Closed
(
Review) James S. Robbins writes that last night's speech by President Bush was the perfect closing argument on Iraq.
President Bush's partisan opponents are trapped. An election looms which will determine the control of Congress. If they acquiesce to the president, they will alienate the members of their liberal activist base, who may then sit out the election and cost them the Senate. But if they oppose the president too strenuously, the middle, swayed by the simple necessity to respond in some fashion to the Iraqi threat, will desert them. Thus, they seek an argument which will allow them to balance these forces, to obfuscate, to deflect. These same people, who only weeks ago were demanding a full and thorough discussion, an extended national debate, now complain that the president is using the controversy to divert attention from other matters - a clear sign that they are losing the argument. But in the end it comes down to a vote, something objective and unambiguous, an either-or (less abstaining). The pre-vote speeches will be filled with hedging rhetoric, but few will remember the justifications, only the outcome. Then it will be up to the president to use his grant of power to bring about the objectives he has so clearly defined.
And so, it begins.
A note of thanks
I just want to say thank you very much to those of who who've hit the tip jar. Bandwidth isn't free, and every little bit helps.
It's like a planet, but not
(
Review) Scientists have found a new body, 800 miles in diameter, orbiting the sun once every 288 years. They're calling it Quaoar. But it's not a planet. Oh, and by the way, now that they've had 72 years to think about it, they've decided that Pluto isn't a planet either. They're both Kuiper Belt objects.
Not with a ten-foot pole
(
Review) The US Supreme Court has declined to get involved in the Toricelli-Lautenberg affair.
Making the Case in congress
(
Review) Senator Joe Lieberman answers some questions about Iraq in his
Wall Street Journal article today.
Good to see they have those priorities straight
(
Review) Tonight, the President of the United States will explain to the American people why he feels it may be necessary for their sons and daughters to fight and die in a foreign country, for away.
ABC, NBC, and CBS don't think it's newsworthy enough to broadcast.
Going off the deep end
(
Review) Roberet Scheer, writing for
The Nation, weighs in on Iraq with a mixture of cynicism, deceit, and stupidity.
In the laundry list of reasons the Bush team has been trotting out in defense of a unilateral invasion of Iraq, oil is never mentioned. Is the fact that Iraq holds a huge pool of oil a piddling footnote to this debate? Is that Gulf War protest sign, "No Blood for Oil," too cynical, even passe? Perhaps we should ask National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who served as a Chevron director and had an oil tanker named after her.
As the editors of The New Republic pointed out last week, if all we cared about was the free flow of oil, we could ensure that by simply lifting the sanctions against Saddam Hussein's oil sales. Nowhere in the article does Mr. Scheer take notice of that simple, obvious fact. Mainly, I suspect, because it detracts from the "logic" of his vast-right-wing-conspiracy theory. When facts are unpleasant things, people like Mr. Scheer ignore them.
But, let us say that this was all about oil. Indeed, I'll freely stipulate that if Iraq had no oil, we'd be far less concerned with the goings on there. But the free flow of oil at market prices is not an illegitimate concern, nor is it one that is irrelevant to the security and well-being of the United States.
The existence of cheaply, relatively abundant oil is what heats and cools out homes, provides us with individual transportation, ferries our goods around the world, fuels the trucks and trains that fill our supermarkets and department stores with goods, and provides jobs and affluence for our citizenry.
Perhaps Mr. Scheer doesn't care about that. Perhaps he's perfectly happy to freeze to death in the dark. The vast majority of his fellow citizens, however, would prefer otherwise.
That is why our CIA facilitated the rise to power of Iraq's Baath party and ultimately the succession of Saddam Hussein as its current leader. The first Bush Administration supported Hussein, providing him with the means to wage chemical and biological war, up to the day he invaded Kuwait, another of our client states.
Well, now these are some interesting arguments.
First, we didn't "facilitate" the rise of the Ba'ath party in Iraq. We did NOT support the Ba'athist murderous zealots in Iraq. Quite the contrary, we supported the murderous and corrupt military junta that was overthrown by the Ba'athists. The Ba'athist takeover in Iraq was a defeat for the CIA, not a victory. The facts on this matter are so well know, and so well documented, that this statement raises serious questions about Mr. Scheer's competence to remark on the entire subject. Either he does not know about the actual history of the Ba'athist movement in Iraq, or he does know, and is intentionally misleading his readers. In either case, it detracts seriously from his credibility.
Next, our support for Iraq was predicated on the fact that Iraq was at war with Iran. You remember Iran, right? The country that allowed "students" to take over the US embassy and hold our diplomatic personnel hostage for 444 days? The country that provided—and still provides—state sponsorship of terrorism on a large scale? There were reasons for supporting Saddam Hussein at the time. No one was happy about it. As one Reagan Administration official said at the time, "It's too bad both sides can't lose". Sure Saddam Hussein was universally known to be a bad guy. The Ayatollah Khomeini was thought at the time to be a worse guy.
In hindsight, Hussein turned out to be the real threat. To bad the Reagan Administration's leadership didn't have amazing clairvoyant powers so they could figure that out ten years in advance.
After his defeat, we became totally disinterested in the freedom of the people of the countries we had rescued. So much so, in fact, that Saudi Arabia was allowed to thrive as the world capital of religious hatred and the major sponsor of terrorists, producing Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers who gave us the Sept. 11 tragedy.
Does Mr. Scheer mean to suggest that we should overthrow the governments of those countries, and replace them with democratic governments? No, of course he doesn't. If we were to try and do so, Mr. Scheer would be the first to criticize us for our imperialism in trying to change their "traditional culture". Mr. Scheer doesn't give a fig about the freedom of the people of those countries either, except insofar as he can use the issue as a club to bash the Bush administration.
This is cynicism on a breathtaking scale. If Mr. Scheer had his way, the citizens of those countries would be held in thrall to their current leaders
in perpetuum, because he wouldn't under any circumstances allow the use of military force to rectify the situation. Indeed, if Mr. Scheer had his way, Eastern Europe and Russia would still be ruled by the "progressive forces" of the USSR. That tells us, in the final analysis, all we need to know about Mr. Scheer's love for freedom.
The same contempt for democracy has marked our policy toward Iran, that other member of the "axis of evil" we helped create. When Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh moved to eliminate foreign control over Iran's oil, the CIA and its British counterpart overthrew him in 1953. Despite our babbling about democracy, we had no compunction about replacing the elected Mossadegh with a guy who claimed the hereditary right to the throne as shah of all shahs.
When the shah dared to act in the interest of his people--and his own bank account--by bolstering the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in the push for higher oil prices, we came to regard him, too, as expendable.
Mr. Scheer's take on Iran demonstrates the same commitment to accuracy his review of Iraq did. Mossadegh was a murderous thug. Literally. Yes, he was elected to the post of prime minister. After his election he attempted to bump off the royal family, and imprisoned and killed his political foes. Under Mr. Mossadegh, his government whipped up street riots in order to send out gangs of thugs to murder his opponents. Somehow, Mr. Scheer seems to have left those bits out. Perhaps he feels that, as long as a leader is elected, political mass murder carried out by that leader is perfectly legitimate.
The governments of the US and UK evidently disagreed. The Shah was no prince when it came to human rights either, but, unlike Mr. Mossadegh, he at least had some sense of discretion about it. So we bumped off Mossadegh and re-installed the Shah. Certainly, it was a nasty business all around, but let's not pretend that Mr. Mossadegh was the second coming of Thomas Jefferson.
In both Iraq in the 1960s and Iran in the 1950s, it was a choice between our SOB and someone else's. That was the only choice available. No Iraqi Patrick Henrys or Iranian Sam Adamses were knocking about the countryside, waiting for the call to lead their nations to democratic freedom. So we chose our SOB.
Funny, though, it was Mr. Scheer's guy, Jimmy Carter, that dropped the Shah, and for precisely the reason that Mr. Scheer advocates, concern for human rights. Mr. Scheer conveniently glosses over this, of course. Again, the actual facts wouldn't bolster the huge conspiracy theory investment he's made. Whatever other faults he may have displayed--and Lord knows, they are legion--the very idea that Jimmy Carter would serve as the tool of the oil companies defies credulity.
But then again, nearly everything that Mr. Scheer writes defies credulity.
The legitimacy of the UN
(
Review) Robert Bartley points out in the
Wall Street Journal that the legitimacy of the UN to order us about on practically anything is on very weak ground. Besides, who elected the representatives at the UN? Nobody, of course. Moreover, the UN represents the views of quite a few unfree nations.
Now, how many of these governments can claim the consent of their governed? In its latest annual exercise, Freedom House judged the state of freedom of 192 countries for 2001-2002 (click here or on the miniature nearby to see full-size map, in PDF form). Of these 85, with some 41% of the world's population, were "free," enjoying political rights and civil liberties. Another 59, with 24% of the world's population, were "partly free," with significant but abridged rights--in particular one-party political systems. The remaining 48 countries, or 35% of the world's people, were "not free," with no consent of the governed or respect for the individual.
The United Nations is what you get when you have this melange send representatives, confine them in a hothouse on the East River, stir briskly, and tell them to go forth to solve the great issues of the world. In the political pushing and shoving, too, some nations follow Marquess of Queensbury rules and others do not. Left to its own devices, the cacophony produces a contorted consensus.
As for me, I assume that if a state isn't free, its government is by definition illegitimate, since the only true source of legitimacy for a government is the consent of the citizenry.
Deja Vu all over again.
(
Review) Andrew Sullivan writes that, in many ways, this election is a continuation of the 2000 contest.
Also, he says about George W. Bush, "He's the first president who never had a majority of the popular vote." Actually, W is the second president who won without a majority of the popular vote. The first was Rutherford B. Hayes, in 1876.
Oh, and since the presidential election is NOT a national election, but rather 50 separate elections that happen to be held on the same day, the national popular vote is irrelevant.
Politics roundup
(
Review) Nancy Gibbs provides a roundup of the current House and Senate Races for
Time magazine.
Osama: King of the Undead?
(
Review) The newest Osama bin Laden tape prompts som especulation from National Security Analyst James S. Robbins.
