“I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion”
The events unfolded half a world away, but the last days of April 1975 were dark ones in American history. The United States had withdrawn its forces from Southeast Asia, leaving the Communist North Vietnamese army to overrun South Vietnam. On April 29, as North Vietnamese troops encircled Saigon, American officials began a helicopter evacuation to get thousands of U.S. citizens, South Vietnamese allies, and others out of the capital city. On April 30, South Vietnam surrendered.
Just days earlier, a similar though smaller-scale evacuation had taken place in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, as forces of the Communist Khmer Rouge moved in on that capital. As U.S. officials fled the country, the American ambassador asked Prince Sirik Matak if he would like to leave. Matak’s response is difficult for Americans to read:
I thank you very sincerely for your letter and your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you, and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection, and we can do nothing about it. You leave, and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under this sky. But, mark it well, that if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is no matter, because we are all born and must die. I have only committed this mistake of believing in you.
When the Khmer Rouge seized Phnom Penh, they shot Matak in the stomach. Unattended, it took him three days to die. During the Khmer Rouge’s four-year reign of terror, some 1.5 million people died from execution, starvation, and forced labor.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Saturday, April 27, 2013
More Boston - G. Will
When fear crushed rights: A cautionary tale for the Boston bombing case
By George Will
Two of the three most infamous Supreme Court decisions were erased by events.
The Civil War and postwar constitutional amendments effectively overturned Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held that blacks could never have rights that whites must respect. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which upheld legally enforced segregation, was undone by court decisions and legislation.
The third, Korematsu v. United States (1944), which affirmed the president’s wartime power to sweep Americans of disfavored racial groups into concentration camps, elicited a 1988 congressional apology. Now Peter Irons, founder of the Earl Warren Bill of Rights Project at the University of California at San Diego, is campaigning for a Supreme Court “repudiation” of the Korematsu decision and other Japanese internment rulings. Such repudiation, if it occurred, would be unprecedented.
An essay Irons is circulating among constitutional law professors whose support he seeks is timely reading in today’s context of anti-constitutional presidencies, particularly regarding war powers.
On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the military to “prescribe military areas . . . from which any or all persons may be excluded.” So some 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of them born here, were sent to camps in desolate Western locations. Supposedly, this was a precaution against espionage and sabotage. Actually, it rested entirely on the racial animus of Gen. John DeWitt, head of the Western Defense Command.
Using government records, Irons has demonstrated that because senior officials, including Solicitor General Charles Fahy, committed “numerous and knowing acts of governmental misconduct,” the Supreme Court based its decision on “records and arguments that were fabricated and fraudulent.” Officials altered and destroyed evidence that would have revealed the racist motives for the internments. And to preserve the pretext of a “military necessity” for the concentration camps, officials suppressed reports on the lack of evidence of disloyalty or espionage by Japanese Americans.
The 1943 “Final Report” on Japanese “evacuation,” prepared under DeWitt’s
direction and signed by him, said a Japanese invasion was probable, that “racial characteristics” of Japanese Americans predisposed them to assist the invasion, and that it was “impossible” to distinguish loyal from disloyal Japanese American citizens, if there were any. “The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second- and third-generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become ‘Americanized,’ the racial strains are undiluted.”
When War Department officials objected to such assertions and demanded revisions, DeWitt ordered all copies and records of the original report destroyed, though one copy escaped DeWitt’s cover-up. The court, however, never saw it, remaining unaware of the racist basis of the theory of internment’s “military necessity.”
Also kept from the court was a report, prepared for the Chief of Naval Operations and made available to DeWitt, estimating potentially disloyal Japanese as just 3 percent of the Japanese American population and declaring that these were “already fairly well known to naval intelligence” and could be quickly apprehended, if necessary.
The suppressed report’s conclusion: “The entire Japanese problem has been magnified out of its true proportion, largely because of the physical characteristics of the people (and) should be handled on the basis of the individual. . . and not on a racial basis.”
Fahy ignored an assistant attorney general’s warning that not advising the court of this report would constitute “suppression of evidence.” Furthermore, DeWitt justified internment because “the interception of unauthorized radio communications” emanating from along the coast “conclusively” accounted for Japanese submarine attacks on U.S. ships.
The FBI, however, reported “no information” of “any espionage activity ashore or . . . illicit shore-to-ship signaling.” The Federal Communications Commission investigated “hundreds” of reports of suspicious radio communications but found nothing to confirm DeWitt’s accusations. Yet Fahy in his oral argument assured the court he could guarantee the veracity of “every line, every word, and every syllable” of DeWitt’s report, and that “no person in any responsible position has ever taken a contrary position.”
The Korematsu decision reflected perennial dangers: panic and excessive deference, judicial and other, to presidents or others who would suspend constitutional protections in the name of wartime exigencies.
It is less important that the decision be repudiated than that it be remembered. Especially by those currently clamoring, since Boston, for a U.S. citizen — arrested in America and concerning whom there is no evidence of a connection with al-Qaeda, the Taliban or other terror network — to be detained by the military as an “enemy combatant.” The Korematsu case is a reminder that waiving constitutional rights is rarely necessary and rarely ends well.
By George Will
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| ||
Two of the three most infamous Supreme Court decisions were erased by events.
The Civil War and postwar constitutional amendments effectively overturned Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held that blacks could never have rights that whites must respect. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which upheld legally enforced segregation, was undone by court decisions and legislation.
The third, Korematsu v. United States (1944), which affirmed the president’s wartime power to sweep Americans of disfavored racial groups into concentration camps, elicited a 1988 congressional apology. Now Peter Irons, founder of the Earl Warren Bill of Rights Project at the University of California at San Diego, is campaigning for a Supreme Court “repudiation” of the Korematsu decision and other Japanese internment rulings. Such repudiation, if it occurred, would be unprecedented.
An essay Irons is circulating among constitutional law professors whose support he seeks is timely reading in today’s context of anti-constitutional presidencies, particularly regarding war powers.
On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the military to “prescribe military areas . . . from which any or all persons may be excluded.” So some 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of them born here, were sent to camps in desolate Western locations. Supposedly, this was a precaution against espionage and sabotage. Actually, it rested entirely on the racial animus of Gen. John DeWitt, head of the Western Defense Command.
Using government records, Irons has demonstrated that because senior officials, including Solicitor General Charles Fahy, committed “numerous and knowing acts of governmental misconduct,” the Supreme Court based its decision on “records and arguments that were fabricated and fraudulent.” Officials altered and destroyed evidence that would have revealed the racist motives for the internments. And to preserve the pretext of a “military necessity” for the concentration camps, officials suppressed reports on the lack of evidence of disloyalty or espionage by Japanese Americans.
The 1943 “Final Report” on Japanese “evacuation,” prepared under DeWitt’s
direction and signed by him, said a Japanese invasion was probable, that “racial characteristics” of Japanese Americans predisposed them to assist the invasion, and that it was “impossible” to distinguish loyal from disloyal Japanese American citizens, if there were any. “The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second- and third-generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become ‘Americanized,’ the racial strains are undiluted.”
When War Department officials objected to such assertions and demanded revisions, DeWitt ordered all copies and records of the original report destroyed, though one copy escaped DeWitt’s cover-up. The court, however, never saw it, remaining unaware of the racist basis of the theory of internment’s “military necessity.”
Also kept from the court was a report, prepared for the Chief of Naval Operations and made available to DeWitt, estimating potentially disloyal Japanese as just 3 percent of the Japanese American population and declaring that these were “already fairly well known to naval intelligence” and could be quickly apprehended, if necessary.
The suppressed report’s conclusion: “The entire Japanese problem has been magnified out of its true proportion, largely because of the physical characteristics of the people (and) should be handled on the basis of the individual. . . and not on a racial basis.”
Fahy ignored an assistant attorney general’s warning that not advising the court of this report would constitute “suppression of evidence.” Furthermore, DeWitt justified internment because “the interception of unauthorized radio communications” emanating from along the coast “conclusively” accounted for Japanese submarine attacks on U.S. ships.
The FBI, however, reported “no information” of “any espionage activity ashore or . . . illicit shore-to-ship signaling.” The Federal Communications Commission investigated “hundreds” of reports of suspicious radio communications but found nothing to confirm DeWitt’s accusations. Yet Fahy in his oral argument assured the court he could guarantee the veracity of “every line, every word, and every syllable” of DeWitt’s report, and that “no person in any responsible position has ever taken a contrary position.”
The Korematsu decision reflected perennial dangers: panic and excessive deference, judicial and other, to presidents or others who would suspend constitutional protections in the name of wartime exigencies.
It is less important that the decision be repudiated than that it be remembered. Especially by those currently clamoring, since Boston, for a U.S. citizen — arrested in America and concerning whom there is no evidence of a connection with al-Qaeda, the Taliban or other terror network — to be detained by the military as an “enemy combatant.” The Korematsu case is a reminder that waiving constitutional rights is rarely necessary and rarely ends well.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
REGAL Hours Ripped: Thanks to Obamacare
Monday, Regal Entertainment Group, the largest movie theatre chain in the country, announced that thousands of employees will have their work hours cut -- as a direct result of the added cost of the new ObamaCare mandates that become effective later this year.
In a memo to employees, management was
blunt: “To comply with the Affordable Care Act, Regal had to increase
our health care budget to cover those newly deemed eligible based on the
law's definition of a full-time employee.”
Fox News reports that, as a result of
cutting employees' work hours (which is, of course, the same as a pay
cut), full-time Regal managers have resigned in "a wave" after their
hours and pay checks were slashed by as much as twenty-five percent.
The manager told FoxNews.com ObamaCare has had the unintended consequence of taking food off his table.
“Mandating businesses to offer
health care under threat of debilitating fines does not fix a problem,
it creates one," he said. "It fosters a new business culture where 30
hours is now considered the maximum in order to avoid paying the high
costs associated with this law.
“In a time where 40 hours is just
getting us by, putting these kind of financial pressures on employers
is a big step in a direction far beyond the reach of feasibility for not
only the businesses, but for the employees who rely on their success,"
he said.
In order to avoid the added cost of
providing health insurance for employees working 30 hours a week (as
ObamaCare mandates), it only makes sense for companies to schedule
employees for 29 hours. So anyone who was working full-time is now being
hit with a 25% pay cut.
Moreover, in a jobless "recovery" like
the one we've been suffering under for four long years now, employers
hold all the cards. And even if someone is able to find another job,
what are the chances that employer won't be making the same decision to
avoid the expense of ObamaCare?
The most under-covered story in the
media this year is and will continue to be the effect ObamaCare is
having on America's working class -- those who are losing their health
insurance and the crucial work hours that can make all the difference
when you live on the margins.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
O Will Never be anything More than a Sleazy Community Organizer
Obama's Official Snub Of Thatcher Funeral Shows How Small He Is
Posted 06:50 PM ET
Protocol: President Obama declined to send a high-level delegation to Wednesday's funeral of Britain's Margaret Thatcher. It's a measure of how little he values the special relationship — and a sign of his own smallness.
Back in more gracious times, vice presidents routinely attended funerals of foreign dignitaries. As such, the presence of Vice President Joe Biden — if not Obama himself — would seem fitting for as significant a U.S. ally as the late Prime Minister Thatcher, if not out of warmth of feeling, then simply to represent the U.S.' gratitude. Thatcher's uncompromising friendship with the U.S. helped to set off a free-market revolution, end the Cold War, and left the U.S. and U.K. the standard-bearers for freedom in the world — the very basis of the power Obama now enjoys.
But appallingly, not even Biden could be spared for the funeral of the most consequential British prime minister since Winston Churchill.
On Tuesday, the White House announced that gun control was a more pressing issue, so there'll be no high-level representation from the Obama administration at the funeral that will be attended by Queen Elizabeth.
Instead, an ex-ambassador, an embassy charge d'affaires and two respected former Secretaries of State from decades past will represent us.
That's a lower-level delegation than the one he sent to Caracas for the funeral of Venezuela's anti-American dictator Hugo Chavez last month, which saw a sitting congressman there to represent the U.S.
This snub shows Obama places partisan politics above leadership or statecraft.
His strange antipathy toward the British is well known — he insultingly returned the bust of Winston Churchill to the U.K. after it was loaned to the White House in friendship after 9/11, among many slights.
He also despises everything Thatcher stood for — free men and free markets — in favor of a socialistic state, based on both his policies and his past.
We also know he sympathizes with Occupy Wall Street radicals, whose U.K. counterparts are organizing ghoulish "celebrations" of Thatcher's death, a specter that has disgusted even punk rocker Johnny Rotten.
But a president ought to rise above his feelings to act as a statesman and represent the U.S. abroad.
Sadly, he can't. Thatcher was a giant of her time. In his pettiness, Obama is showing just how much he isn't.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Reagan to Parliment 1982
My Lord Chancellor, Mr. Speaker:
The journey of which this visit forms a part is a long one. Already it has taken me to two great cities of the West, Rome and Paris, and to the economic summit at Versailles. And there, once again, our sister democracies have proved that even in a time of severe economic strain, free peoples can work together freely and voluntarily to address problems as serious as inflation, unemployment, trade, and economic development in a spirit of cooperation and solidarity.
Other milestones lie ahead. Later this week, in Germany, we and our NATO allies will discuss measures for our joint defense and America's latest initiatives for a more peaceful, secure world through arms reductions.
Each stop of this trip is important, but among them all, this moment occupies a special place in my heart and in the hearts of my countrymen -- a moment of kinship and homecoming in these hallowed halls.
Speaking for all Americans, I want to say how very much at home we feel in your house. Every American would, because this is, as we have been so eloquently told, one of democracy's shrines. Here the rights of free people and the processes of representation have been debated and refined.
It has been said that an institution is the lengthening shadow of a man. This institution is the lengthening shadow of all the men and women who have sat here and all those who have voted to send representatives here.
This is my second visit to Great Britain as President of the United States. My first opportunity to stand on British soil occurred almost a year and a half ago when your Prime Minister graciously hosted a diplomatic dinner at the British Embassy in Washington. Mrs. Thatcher said then that she hoped I was not distressed to find staring down at me from the grand staircase a portrait of His Royal Majesty King George III. She suggested it was best to let bygones be bygones, and in view of our two countries' remarkable friendship in succeeding years, she added that most Englishmen today would agree with Thomas Jefferson that "a little rebellion now and then is a very good thing.'' [Laughter]
Well, from here I will go to Bonn and then Berlin, where there stands a grim symbol of power untamed. The Berlin Wall, that dreadful gray gash across the city, is in its third decade. It is the fitting signature of the regime that built it.
And a few hundred kilometers behind the Berlin Wall, there is another symbol. In the center of Warsaw, there is a sign that notes the distances to two capitals. In one direction it points toward Moscow. In the other it points toward Brussels, headquarters of Western Europe's tangible unity. The marker says that the distances from Warsaw to Moscow and Warsaw to Brussels are equal. The sign makes this point: Poland is not East or West. Poland is at the center of European civilization. It has contributed mightily to that civilization. It is doing so today by being magnificently unreconciled to oppression.
Poland's struggle to be Poland and to secure the basic rights we often take for granted demonstrates why we dare not take those rights for granted. Gladstone, defending the Reform Bill of 1866, declared, "You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side.'' It was easier to believe in the march of democracy in Gladstone's day -- in that high noon of Victorian optimism.
We're approaching the end of a bloody century plagued by a terrible political invention -- totalitarianism. Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy's enemies have refined their instruments of repression. Yet optimism is in order, because day by day democracy is proving itself to be a not-at-all-fragile flower. From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than 30 years to establish their legitimacy. But none -- not one regime -- has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.
The strength of the Solidarity movement in Poland demonstrates the truth told in an underground joke in the Soviet Union. It is that the Soviet Union would remain a one-party nation even if an opposition party were permitted, because everyone would join the opposition party. [Laughter]
America's time as a player on the stage of world history has been brief. I think understanding this fact has always made you patient with your younger cousins -- well, not always patient. I do recall that on one occasion, Sir Winston Churchill said in exasperation about one of our most distinguished diplomats: "He is the only case I know of a bull who carries his china shop with him.'' [Laughter]
But witty as Sir Winston was, he also had that special attribute of great statesmen -- the gift of vision, the willingness to see the future based on the experience of the past. It is this sense of history, this understanding of the past that I want to talk about with you today, for it is in remembering what we share of the past that our two nations can make common cause for the future.
We have not inherited an easy world. If developments like the Industrial Revolution, which began here in England, and the gifts of science and technology have made life much easier for us, they have also made it more dangerous. There are threats now to our freedom, indeed to our very existence, that other generations could never even have imagined.
There is first the threat of global war. No President, no Congress, no Prime Minister, no Parliament can spend a day entirely free of this threat. And I don't have to tell you that in today's world the existence of nuclear weapons could mean, if not the extinction of mankind, then surely the end of civilization as we know it. That's why negotiations on intermediate-range nuclear forces now underway in Europe and the START talks -- Strategic Arms Reduction Talks -- which will begin later this month, are not just critical to American or Western policy; they are critical to mankind. Our commitment to early success in these negotiations is firm and unshakable, and our purpose is clear: reducing the risk of war by reducing the means of waging war on both sides.
At the same time there is a threat posed to human freedom by the enormous power of the modern state. History teaches the dangers of government that overreaches -- political control taking precedence over free economic growth, secret police, mindless bureaucracy, all combining to stifle individual excellence and personal freedom.
Now, I'm aware that among us here and throughout Europe there is legitimate disagreement over the extent to which the public sector should play a role in a nation's economy and life. But on one point all of us are united -- our abhorrence of dictatorship in all its forms, but most particularly totalitarianism and the terrible inhumanities it has caused in our time -- the great purge, Auschwitz and Dachau, the Gulag, and Cambodia.
Historians looking back at our time will note the consistent restraint and peaceful intentions of the West. They will note that it was the democracies who refused to use the threat of their nuclear monopoly in the forties and early fifties for territorial or imperial gain. Had that nuclear monopoly been in the hands of the Communist world, the map of Europe -- indeed, the world -- would look very different today. And certainly they will note it was not the democracies that invaded Afghanistan or supressed Polish Solidarity or used chemical and toxin warfare in Afghanistan and Southeast Asia.
If history teaches anything it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. We see around us today the marks of our terrible dilemma -- predictions of doomsday, anti-nuclear demonstrations, an arms race in which the West must, for its own protection, be an unwilling participant. At the same time we see totalitarian forces in the world who seek subversion and conflict around the globe to further their barbarous assault on the human spirit. What, then, is our course? Must civilization perish in a hail of fiery atoms? Must freedom wither in a quiet, deadening accommodation with totalitarian evil?
Sir Winston Churchill refused to accept the inevitability of war or even that it was imminent. He said, "I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines. But what we have to consider here today while time remains is the permanent prevention of war and the establishment of conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries.''
Well, this is precisely our mission today: to preserve freedom as well as peace. It may not be easy to see; but I believe we live now at a turning point.
In an ironic sense Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are conflicting directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxist-Leninism, the Soviet Union. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. It also is in deep economic difficulty. The rate of growth in the national product has been steadily declining since the fifties and is less than half of what it was then.
The dimensions of this failure are astounding: A country which employs one-fifth of its population in agriculture is unable to feed its own people. Were it not for the private sector, the tiny private sector tolerated in Soviet agriculture, the country might be on the brink of famine. These private plots occupy a bare 3 percent of the arable land but account for nearly one-quarter of Soviet farm output and nearly one-third of meat products and vegetables. Overcentralized, with little or no incentives, year after year the Soviet system pours its best resource into the making of instruments of destruction. The constant shrinkage of economic growth combined with the growth of military production is putting a heavy strain on the Soviet people. What we see here is a political structure that no longer corresponds to its economic base, a society where productive forces are hampered by political ones.
The decay of the Soviet experiment should come as no surprise to us. Wherever the comparisons have been made between free and closed societies -- West Germany and East Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Malaysia and Vietnam -- it is the democratic countries that are prosperous and responsive to the needs of their people. And one of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this: Of all the millions of refugees we've seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward the Communist world. Today on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving.
The hard evidence of totalitarian rule has caused in mankind an uprising of the intellect and will. Whether it is the growth of the new schools of economics in America or England or the appearance of the so-called new philosophers in France, there is one unifying thread running through the intellectual work of these groups -- rejection of the arbitrary power of the state, the refusal to subordinate the rights of the individual to the superstate, the realization that collectivism stifles all the best human impulses.
Since the exodus from Egypt, historians have written of those who sacrificed and struggled for freedom -- the stand at Thermopylae, the revolt of Spartacus, the storming of the Bastille, the Warsaw uprising in World War II. More recently we've seen evidence of this same human impulse in one of the developing nations in Central America. For months and months the world news media covered the fighting in El Salvador. Day after day we were treated to stories and film slanted toward the brave freedom-fighters battling oppressive government forces in behalf of the silent, suffering people of that tortured country.
And then one day those silent, suffering people were offered a chance to vote, to choose the kind of government they wanted. Suddenly the freedom-fighters in the hills were exposed for what they really are -- Cuban-backed guerrillas who want power for themselves, and their backers, not democracy for the people. They threatened death to any who voted, and destroyed hundreds of buses and trucks to keep the people from getting to the polling places. But on election day, the people of El Salvador, an unprecedented 1.4 million of them, braved ambush and gunfire, and trudged for miles to vote for freedom.
They stood for hours in the hot sun waiting for their turn to vote. Members of our Congress who went there as observers told me of a women who was wounded by rifle fire on the way to the polls, who refused to leave the line to have her wound treated until after she had voted. A grandmother, who had been told by the guerrillas she would be killed when she returned from the polls, and she told the guerrillas, "You can kill me, you can kill my family, kill my neighbors, but you can't kill us all.'' The real freedom-fighters of El Salvador turned out to be the people of that country -- the young, the old, the in-between.
Strange, but in my own country there's been little if any news coverage of that war since the election. Now, perhaps they'll say it's -- well, because there are newer struggles now.
On distant islands in the South Atlantic young men are fighting for Britain. And, yes, voices have been raised protesting their sacrifice for lumps of rock and earth so far away. But those young men aren't fighting for mere real estate. They fight for a cause -- for the belief that armed aggression must not be allowed to succeed, and the people must participate in the decisions of government -- [applause] -- the decisions of government under the rule of law. If there had been firmer support for that principle some 45 years ago, perhaps our generation wouldn't have suffered the bloodletting of World War II.
In the Middle East now the guns sound once more, this time in Lebanon, a country that for too long has had to endure the tragedy of civil war, terrorism, and foreign intervention and occupation. The fighting in Lebanon on the part of all parties must stop, and Israel should bring its forces home. But this is not enough. We must all work to stamp out the scourge of terrorism that in the Middle East makes war an ever-present threat.
But beyond the troublespots lies a deeper, more positive pattern. Around the world today, the democratic revolution is gathering new strength. In India a critical test has been passed with the peaceful change of governing political parties. In Africa, Nigeria is moving into remarkable and unmistakable ways to build and strengthen its democratic institutions. In the Caribbean and Central America, 16 of 24 countries have freely elected governments. And in the United Nations, 8 of the 10 developing nations which have joined that body in the past 5 years are democracies.
In the Communist world as well, man's instinctive desire for freedom and self-determination surfaces again and again. To be sure, there are grim reminders of how brutally the police state attempts to snuff out this quest for self-rule -- 1953 in East Germany, 1956 in Hungary, 1968 in Czechoslovakia, 1981 in Poland. But the struggle continues in Poland. And we know that there are even those who strive and suffer for freedom within the confines of the Soviet Union itself. How we conduct ourselves here in the Western democracies will determine whether this trend continues.
No, democracy is not a fragile flower. Still it needs cultivating. If the rest of this century is to witness the gradual growth of freedom and democratic ideals, we must take actions to assist the campaign for democracy.
Some argue that we should encourage democratic change in right-wing dictatorships, but not in Communist regimes. Well, to accept this preposterous notion -- as some well-meaning people have -- is to invite the argument that once countries achieve a nuclear capability, they should be allowed an undisturbed reign of terror over their own citizens. We reject this course.
As for the Soviet view, Chairman Brezhnev repeatedly has stressed that the competition of ideas and systems must continue and that this is entirely consistent with relaxation of tensions and peace.
Well, we ask only that these systems begin by living up to their own constitutions, abiding by their own laws, and complying with the international obligations they have undertaken. We ask only for a process, a direction, a basic code of decency, not for an instant transformation.
We cannot ignore the fact that even without our encouragement there has been and will continue to be repeated explosions against repression and dictatorships. The Soviet Union itself is not immune to this reality. Any system is inherently unstable that has no peaceful means to legitimize its leaders. In such cases, the very repressiveness of the state ultimately drives people to resist it, if necessary, by force.
While we must be cautious about forcing the pace of change, we must not hesitate to declare our ultimate objectives and to take concrete actions to move toward them. We must be staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a lucky few, but the inalienable and universal right of all human beings. So states the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, among other things, guarantees free elections.
The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy, the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities, which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.
This is not cultural imperialism, it is providing the means for genuine self-determination and protection for diversity. Democracy already flourishes in countries with very different cultures and historical experiences. It would be cultural condescension, or worse, to say that any people prefer dictatorship to democracy. Who would voluntarily choose not to have the right to vote, decide to purchase government propaganda handouts instead of independent newspapers, prefer government to worker-controlled unions, opt for land to be owned by the state instead of those who till it, want government repression of religious liberty, a single political party instead of a free choice, a rigid cultural orthodoxy instead of democratic tolerance and diversity?
Since 1917 the Soviet Union has given covert political training and assistance to Marxist-Leninists in many countries. Of course, it also has promoted the use of violence and subversion by these same forces. Over the past several decades, West European and other Social Democrats, Christian Democrats, and leaders have offered open assistance to fraternal, political, and social institutions to bring about peaceful and democratic progress. Appropriately, for a vigorous new democracy, the Federal Republic of Germany's political foundations have become a major force in this effort.
We in America now intend to take additional steps, as many of our allies have already done, toward realizing this same goal. The chairmen and other leaders of the national Republican and Democratic Party organizations are initiating a study with the bipartisan American political foundation to determine how the United States can best contribute as a nation to the global campaign for democracy now gathering force. They will have the cooperation of congressional leaders of both parties, along with representatives of business, labor, and other major institutions in our society. I look forward to receiving their recommendations and to working with these institutions and the Congress in the common task of strengthening democracy throughout the world.
It is time that we committed ourselves as a nation -- in both the pubic and private sectors -- to assisting democratic development.
We plan to consult with leaders of other nations as well. There is a proposal before the Council of Europe to invite parliamentarians from democratic countries to a meeting next year in Strasbourg. That prestigious gathering could consider ways to help democratic political movements.
This November in Washington there will take place an international meeting on free elections. And next spring there will be a conference of world authorities on constitutionalism and self-goverment hosted by the Chief Justice of the United States. Authorities from a number of developing and developed countries -- judges, philosophers, and politicians with practical experience -- have agreed to explore how to turn principle into practice and further the rule of law.
At the same time, we invite the Soviet Union to consider with us how the competition of ideas and values -- which it is committed to support -- can be conducted on a peaceful and reciprocal basis. For example, I am prepared to offer President Brezhnev an opportunity to speak to the American people on our television if he will allow me the same opportunity with the Soviet people. We also suggest that panels of our newsmen periodically appear on each other's television to discuss major events.
Now, I don't wish to sound overly optimistic, yet the Soviet Union is not immune from the reality of what is going on in the world. It has happened in the past -- a small ruling elite either mistakenly attempts to ease domestic unrest through greater repression and foreign adventure, or it chooses a wiser course. It begins to allow its people a voice in their own destiny. Even if this latter process is not realized soon, I believe the renewed strength of the democratic movement, complemented by a global campaign for freedom, will strengthen the prospects for arms control and a world at peace.
I have discussed on other occasions, including my address on May 9th, the elements of Western policies toward the Soviet Union to safeguard our interests and protect the peace. What I am describing now is a plan and a hope for the long term -- the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people. And that's why we must continue our efforts to strengthen NATO even as we move forward with our Zero-Option initiative in the negotiations on intermediate-range forces and our proposal for a one-third reduction in strategic ballistic missile warheads.
Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets, but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.
The British people know that, given strong leadership, time and a little bit of hope, the forces of good ultimately rally and triumph over evil. Here among you is the cradle of self-government, the Mother of Parliaments. Here is the enduring greatness of the British contribution to mankind, the great civilized ideas: individual liberty, representative government, and the rule of law under God.
I've often wondered about the shyness of some of us in the West about standing for these ideals that have done so much to ease the plight of man and the hardships of our imperfect world. This reluctance to use those vast resources at our command reminds me of the elderly lady whose home was bombed in the Blitz. As the rescuers moved about, they found a bottle of brandy she'd stored behind the staircase, which was all that was left standing. And since she was barely conscious, one of the workers pulled the cork to give her a taste of it. She came around immediately and said, "Here now -- there now, put it back. That's for emergencies.'' [Laughter]
Well, the emergency is upon us. Let us be shy no longer. Let us go to our strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible but probable.
During the dark days of the Second World War, when this island was incandescent with courage, Winston Churchill exclaimed about Britain's adversaries, "What kind of a people do they think we are?'' Well, Britain's adversaries found out what extraordinary people the British are. But all the democracies paid a terrible price for allowing the dictators to underestimate us. We dare not make that mistake again. So, let us ask ourselves, "What kind of people do we think we are?'' And let us answer, "Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.''
Sir Winston led his people to great victory in war and then lost an election just as the fruits of victory were about to be enjoyed. But he left office honorably, and, as it turned out, temporarily, knowing that the liberty of his people was more important than the fate of any single leader. History recalls his greatness in ways no dictator will ever know. And he left us a message of hope for the future, as timely now as when he first uttered it, as opposition leader in the Commons nearly 27 years ago, when he said, "When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have,'' he said, "come safely through the worst.''
Well, the task I've set forth will long outlive our own generation. But together, we too have come through the worst. Let us now begin a major effort to secure the best -- a crusade for freedom that will engage the faith and fortitude of the next generation. For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.
Thank you.
President Ronald Reagan - June 8, 1982
Friday, April 12, 2013
Terry McCauliff - Solyndra
Strassel: Terry McAuliffe's Solyndra
Running for governor of Virginia, the Democrat's main business credential is fast turning into a crony-capitalist embarrassment.
Turn over any green-energy rock, and wiggling underneath will be the usual creepy mix of political favoritism and taxpayer-funded handouts. Add to this the Clintons, Mississippi and a murky visa program, and you've got a particularly ripe political embarrassment for Terry McAuliffe.
Everyone remember The Macker? Best Friend of Bill. Chairman of Hillary's 2008 presidential campaign. Famed money-tree shaker. Former Democratic Party chief. Failed 2009 contender for the Virginia governorship but now back as the party's nominee for that position in this fall's election. Oh—and in Mr. McAuliffe's words—"a Virginia businessman" intent on "creating jobs."
Or at least that was the image Mr. McAuliffe sought to portray in 2009, when he became chairman of a car company called GreenTech
Automotive, with plans to produce golf-cart sized electric vehicles. The former DNC chief is no stranger to moneymaking, having once used a friendly union pension fund to spin a $100 investment in a Florida land deal into $2.45 million. GreenTech, however, was designed to shed the moneyman image and to reposition Mr. McAuliffe as a (clean) job creator the way Mark Warner and Bob McDonnell used their pro-business credentials to win office in Virginia.
To this end, Mr. McAuliffe got out the political Rolodex and went on the money hunt. By October 2009, GreenTech announced it would build a plant in Tunica, Miss., after the state (under Republican then-Gov. Haley Barbour) promised at least $5 million in public loans and grants to aid the company moving in.
GreenTech bragged that in its first phase alone it would invest $1 billion, employ 1,500 and produce 150,000 cars annually. Mr. McAuliffe grandly unveiled his signature MyCar last July at a rock-star event attended by Messrs. Clinton and Barbour. Business creds
in hand, he then announced his run for governor—and the problems began.
Among the first questions he was asked was why, as a proud "Virginia" businessman, he'd located his business in Mississippi.
Scrambling, Mr. McAuliffe stated that he had wanted to bring his jobs home but the Virginia Economic Development Partnership "didn't want to bid on" GreenTech—whereas Mississippi had offered incentives. He went so far as to criticize the state for not going after manufacturing jobs like his, suggesting he'd change that.
After an investigation, media outlets discovered that Virginia never received enough information from GreenTech to proceed. The
Associated Press reported that the state agency worried that "GreenTech lacked brand recognition; had not demonstrated vehicle performance; had no federal safety and fuel-economy certification; no emissions approval . . . no distribution network" and (ouch) "no demonstrated automotive industry experience within the executive management team." Rather than respond to these concerns, GreenTech moved on with Mississippi (which perhaps wasn't asking annoying questions).
Virginia was particularly alarmed by GreenTech's use of an opaque visa program, called EB-5, to fund itself. Part of a 1990 immigration law, EB-5 lets foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in a U.S. company receive green cards. A federal immigration agency approves "regional centers" that administer the program.
While these centers can be run by local government, GreenTech proposed running a Virginia center itself. One official at the Virginia development agency wrote to colleagues that she couldn't view Greentech's EB-5 program as "anything other than a visa-for-sale scheme with potential national security implications."
GreenTech is today using its own investment vehicle to run a regional center in Mississippi. The president and CEO of Gulf Coast Funds Management is Anthony Rodham, the youngest brother of Hillary Clinton. Its board is composed of Democratic Party insiders, from former Clinton IRS Commissioner Margaret Richardson to former Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco. Neither the immigration agency, nor GreenTech or Gulf Coast, has divulged how much money the company has raised via EB-5, or how many visas it has issued.
This is of particular interest, since GreenTech looks to be a lemon. Despite promising production in 2011, there is no evidence the company is manufacturing any cars in volume. It is operating out of a temporary site and has yet to begin building its flagship factory in Tunica. GreenTech is the latest proof (after Solyndra, Fisker, A123 and others) that the political class is adept at hooking up cronies and investors with taxpayer dollars. But creating jobs? No can do.
This may explain the latest news bomblet. Mr. McAuliffe continued flogging his GreenTech credentials this year, appearing in January at a trade show under the title "chairman of GreenTech Automotive." Recent media reports have also used that title—with no protest from the candidate. But as the heat mounted, his campaign last week released a letter that claims Mr. McAuliffe had resigned from GreenTech by Dec. 1, 2012. The company, Mr. McAuliffe would now like everyone to know, has nothing to do with him.
The Democratic pol may not shake the story so easily, given the degree to which he made the firm central to his gubernatorial run. Green crony capitalism is proving to be one of the more politically toxic stories of our time. And in this case, just in time for an election.
Write to kim@wsj.com
Monday, April 8, 2013
700 Retired Sp OPS Want Answers : Benghazi
Government
700 Retired Spec Ops Professionals to Congress: Form a Select Committee to Investigate Benghazi
It
has been more than six months since the attack on the U.S. consulate in
Benghazi that cost four Americans — including U.S. Ambassador Chris
Stevens — their lives. Yet, the picture is not much clearer than it was
in the weeks after the tragedy. It seems the government and the media
have largely moved on.
But
now, a staggering 700 retired Military Special Operations professionals
have submitted a letter to Congress urging all members of the U.S.
House of Representatives to support H.Res. 36, which would create a
House Select Committee to investigate the deadly September 11 attack.
“It
appears that many of the facts and details surrounding the terrorist
attack which resulted in four American deaths and an undetermined number
of American casualties have not yet been ascertained by previous
hearings and inquiries,” the letter states. “Additional information is
now slowly surfacing in the media, which makes a comprehensive
bipartisan inquiry an imperative.”
The
letter proceeds to list roughly 20 questions the retired professionals
believe “at a minimum” need to be addressed. Many are so
straightforward that, reading them back-to-back, it’s stunning we still
don’t have the answers. The questions include:
- Why was there no military response to the events in Benghazi?
- Were assets deployed to any location in preparation for a rescue or recovery attempt?
- What, if any, non-military assistance was provided during the attack?
- How many US personnel were injured in Benghazi?
- Why have the survivors of the attack not been questioned?
- Who was in the White House Situation Room (WHSR) during the entire 8-hour period of the attacks, and was a senior US military officer present?
- Who gave the order to “STAND DOWN” that was heard repeatedly during the attacks?
- Why did the Commander-in Chief and Secretary of State never once check in during the night to find out the status of the crisis situation in Benghazi?
- What was the nature of Ambassador Stevens’ business in Benghazi at the time of the attack?
The
letter was organized by Lieutenant General William G. “Jerry” Boykin
USA (Ret.) and the not-for-profit organization Special Operations Speaks
(SOS).
“As
a retired Special Operations officer who spent most of my thirty-six
years preparing for and executing rescue missions to save fellow
Americans, I am deeply troubled by the events in Benghazi on September
11, 2012,” Boykin told Breitbart News.
“The men and women who I served with lived by an ethos that pledged to
never leave a fallen comrade and to make every effort to respond when a
fellow American was threatened. I have seen men take great risks to save
a fellow warrior. I have even seen men die trying to do so.”
He continued:
“The lack of accountability regarding the Benghazi event disturbs me greatly and bears the earmarks of a cover up. America is entitled to a full accounting of this egregious attack on our people with some explanation as to why there was no effort to save the Americans in the US Embassy annex and the CIA station, or at least to recover their bodies before they fell into Libyan hands. Our Congress has yet to fulfill its responsibility to provide a complete analysis of the attack or to provide answers as to what exactly happened. A bi-partisan Special Committee is needed to determine the truth about Benghazi.”
Former Navy SEAL Captain Larry Bailey, one of the signatories, went even further in a statement to Breitbart.
“As
veterans from all aspects of Special Operations, we have no doubt that
there’s a lot more to what happened in Benghazi than President Obama and
his Administration are letting on,” he wrote. “From the very
beginning, he has attempted to mislead and outright lied to the American
people about why the attack on September 11th, 2012 happened, how it
happened, and what our government did or did not do to save the lives of
our patriots abroad.”
You can read the entire letter at Special Operation Speaks. There is also a link to sign a similar petition urging Congress to take action on H.Res. 36.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Cyprus - Can It Happen Here?
The decision of the government in Cyprus to simply take money out of
people's bank accounts there sent shock waves around the world. People
far removed from that small island nation had to wonder: "Can this
happen here?"
The economic repercussions of having people feel that their money is not safe in banks can be catastrophic. Banks are not just warehouses where money can be stored. They are crucial institutions for gathering individually modest amounts of money from millions of people and transferring that money to strangers whom those people would not directly entrust it to.
Multi-billion dollar corporations, whose economies of scale can bring down the prices of goods and services -- thereby raising our standard of living -- are seldom financed by a few billionaires.
Far more often they are financed by millions of people, who have neither the specific knowledge nor the economic expertise to risk their savings by investing directly in those enterprises. Banks are crucial intermediaries, which provide the financial expertise without which these transfers of money are too risky.
There are poor nations with rich natural resources, which are not developed because they lack either the sophisticated financial institutions necessary to make these key transfers of money or because their legal or political systems are too unreliable for people to put their money into these financial intermediaries.
Whether in Cyprus or in other countries, politicians tend to think in short run terms, if only because elections are held in the short run.
Therefore, there is always a temptation to do reckless and short-sighted things to get over some current problem, even if that creates far worse problems in the long run.
Seizing money that people put in the bank would be a classic example of such short-sighted policies.
After thousands of American banks failed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, there were people who would never put their money in a bank again, even after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was created, to have the federal government guarantee individual bank accounts when the bank itself failed.
For years after the Great Depression, stories appeared in the press from time to time about some older person who died and was found to have substantial sums of money stored under a mattress or in some other hiding place, because they never trusted banks again.
After going back and forth, the government of Cyprus ultimately decided, under international pressure, to go ahead with its plan to raid people's bank accounts. But could similar policies be imposed in other countries, including the United States?
One of the big differences between the United States and Cyprus is that the U.S. government can simply print more money to get out of a financial crisis. But Cyprus cannot print more euros, which are controlled by international institutions.
Does that mean that Americans' money is safe in banks? Yes and no.
The U.S. government is very unlikely to just seize money wholesale from people's bank accounts, as is being done in Cyprus. But does that mean that your life savings are safe?
No. There are more sophisticated ways for governments to take what you have put aside for yourself and use it for whatever the politicians feel like using it for. If they do it slowly but steadily, they can take a big chunk of what you have sacrificed for years to save, before you are even aware, much less alarmed.
That is in fact already happening. When officials of the Federal Reserve System speak in vague and lofty terms about "quantitative easing," what they are talking about is creating more money out of thin air, as the Federal Reserve is authorized to do -- and has been doing in recent years, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a month.
When the federal government spends far beyond the tax revenues it has, it gets the extra money by selling bonds. The Federal Reserve has become the biggest buyer of these bonds, since it costs them nothing to create more money.
This new money buys just as much as the money you sacrificed to save for years. More money in circulation, without a corresponding increase in output, means rising prices. Although the numbers in your bank book may remain the same, part of the purchasing power of your money is transferred to the government. Is that really different from what Cyprus has done?
The economic repercussions of having people feel that their money is not safe in banks can be catastrophic. Banks are not just warehouses where money can be stored. They are crucial institutions for gathering individually modest amounts of money from millions of people and transferring that money to strangers whom those people would not directly entrust it to.
Multi-billion dollar corporations, whose economies of scale can bring down the prices of goods and services -- thereby raising our standard of living -- are seldom financed by a few billionaires.
Far more often they are financed by millions of people, who have neither the specific knowledge nor the economic expertise to risk their savings by investing directly in those enterprises. Banks are crucial intermediaries, which provide the financial expertise without which these transfers of money are too risky.
There are poor nations with rich natural resources, which are not developed because they lack either the sophisticated financial institutions necessary to make these key transfers of money or because their legal or political systems are too unreliable for people to put their money into these financial intermediaries.
Whether in Cyprus or in other countries, politicians tend to think in short run terms, if only because elections are held in the short run.
Therefore, there is always a temptation to do reckless and short-sighted things to get over some current problem, even if that creates far worse problems in the long run.
Seizing money that people put in the bank would be a classic example of such short-sighted policies.
After thousands of American banks failed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, there were people who would never put their money in a bank again, even after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was created, to have the federal government guarantee individual bank accounts when the bank itself failed.
For years after the Great Depression, stories appeared in the press from time to time about some older person who died and was found to have substantial sums of money stored under a mattress or in some other hiding place, because they never trusted banks again.
After going back and forth, the government of Cyprus ultimately decided, under international pressure, to go ahead with its plan to raid people's bank accounts. But could similar policies be imposed in other countries, including the United States?
One of the big differences between the United States and Cyprus is that the U.S. government can simply print more money to get out of a financial crisis. But Cyprus cannot print more euros, which are controlled by international institutions.
Does that mean that Americans' money is safe in banks? Yes and no.
The U.S. government is very unlikely to just seize money wholesale from people's bank accounts, as is being done in Cyprus. But does that mean that your life savings are safe?
No. There are more sophisticated ways for governments to take what you have put aside for yourself and use it for whatever the politicians feel like using it for. If they do it slowly but steadily, they can take a big chunk of what you have sacrificed for years to save, before you are even aware, much less alarmed.
That is in fact already happening. When officials of the Federal Reserve System speak in vague and lofty terms about "quantitative easing," what they are talking about is creating more money out of thin air, as the Federal Reserve is authorized to do -- and has been doing in recent years, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a month.
When the federal government spends far beyond the tax revenues it has, it gets the extra money by selling bonds. The Federal Reserve has become the biggest buyer of these bonds, since it costs them nothing to create more money.
This new money buys just as much as the money you sacrificed to save for years. More money in circulation, without a corresponding increase in output, means rising prices. Although the numbers in your bank book may remain the same, part of the purchasing power of your money is transferred to the government. Is that really different from what Cyprus has done?
Term Limits
The main thing wrong with the term limits movement is the "s" at the end of the word "limit."
What are advocates of term limits trying to accomplish? If they are trying to keep government from being run by career politicians, whose top priority is getting themselves reelected, then term limits on given jobs fail to do that.
When someone reaches the limit of how long one can spend as a county supervisor, then it is just a question of finding another political office to run for, such as a member of the state legislature. And when the limit on terms there is reached, it is time to look around for another political job -- perhaps as a mayor or a member of Congress.
Instead of always making reelection in an existing political post the top priority, in the last term in a given office the top priority will be doing things that will make it easier to get elected or appointed to the next political post. But in no term is doing what is right for the people likely to be the top priority.
Those who favor term limits are right to try to stop the same old politicians from staying in the same old offices for decades. But having the same career politicians circulating around in the same set of offices, like musical chairs, is not very different.
In either case, we can expect the same short-sighted policies, looking no further than the next election, and the same cynical arts of deception and log-rolling to get reelected at all costs.
There are undoubtedly some high-minded people who go into politics to serve their community or the nation. But, in the corrupting atmosphere of politics, there are too many who "came to do good and stayed to do well" -- especially if they stayed too long.
Recently, California's Senator Dianne Feinstein gave a graphic demonstration of what can happen when you have been in office too long.
During a discussion of Senator Feinstein's proposed legislation on gun control, Texas' freshman Senator Ted Cruz quietly and politely asked "the senior Senator from California" whether she would treat the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment the same way her gun control bill was treating the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to bear arms.
Senator Feinstein never addressed that question. Instead, she became testy and told Senator Cruz how long she had been in Congress and how much she knew. Watching her get up on her high horse to put him in his place, recalled the words of Cromwell to Members of Parliament: "You have sat too long for any good that you have been doing lately. ... In the name of God, go!"
Those who oppose term limits express fears of having government run by amateurs, rather than by people with long experience in politics. But this country was created by people who were not career politicians, but who put aside their own private careers to serve in office during a critical time.
When President George Washington was told by one of his advisors that an action he planned to take might prevent him from being reelected, he exploded in anger, telling his advisor that he didn't come here to get reelected.
As for the loss of experience and expertise if there were no career politicians, much -- if not most -- of that is experience and expertise in the arts of evasion, effrontery, deceit and chicanery. None of that serves the interest of the people.
If we want term limits to achieve their goals, we have to make the limit one term, with a long interval prescribed before the same person can hold any government office again. In short, we need to make political careers virtually impossible.
There are many patriotic Americans who would put aside their own private careers to serve in office, if the cost to them and their families were not ruinous, and if they had some realistic hope of advancing the interests of the country and its people without being obstructed by career politicians.
Is any of this likely today? No!
But neither the Reagan revolution nor the New Deal under FDR would have seemed likely three years before it happened. The whole point of presenting new ideas is to start a process that can make their realization possible in later years.
Thomas Sowell
What are advocates of term limits trying to accomplish? If they are trying to keep government from being run by career politicians, whose top priority is getting themselves reelected, then term limits on given jobs fail to do that.
When someone reaches the limit of how long one can spend as a county supervisor, then it is just a question of finding another political office to run for, such as a member of the state legislature. And when the limit on terms there is reached, it is time to look around for another political job -- perhaps as a mayor or a member of Congress.
Instead of always making reelection in an existing political post the top priority, in the last term in a given office the top priority will be doing things that will make it easier to get elected or appointed to the next political post. But in no term is doing what is right for the people likely to be the top priority.
Those who favor term limits are right to try to stop the same old politicians from staying in the same old offices for decades. But having the same career politicians circulating around in the same set of offices, like musical chairs, is not very different.
In either case, we can expect the same short-sighted policies, looking no further than the next election, and the same cynical arts of deception and log-rolling to get reelected at all costs.
There are undoubtedly some high-minded people who go into politics to serve their community or the nation. But, in the corrupting atmosphere of politics, there are too many who "came to do good and stayed to do well" -- especially if they stayed too long.
Recently, California's Senator Dianne Feinstein gave a graphic demonstration of what can happen when you have been in office too long.
During a discussion of Senator Feinstein's proposed legislation on gun control, Texas' freshman Senator Ted Cruz quietly and politely asked "the senior Senator from California" whether she would treat the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment the same way her gun control bill was treating the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to bear arms.
Senator Feinstein never addressed that question. Instead, she became testy and told Senator Cruz how long she had been in Congress and how much she knew. Watching her get up on her high horse to put him in his place, recalled the words of Cromwell to Members of Parliament: "You have sat too long for any good that you have been doing lately. ... In the name of God, go!"
Those who oppose term limits express fears of having government run by amateurs, rather than by people with long experience in politics. But this country was created by people who were not career politicians, but who put aside their own private careers to serve in office during a critical time.
When President George Washington was told by one of his advisors that an action he planned to take might prevent him from being reelected, he exploded in anger, telling his advisor that he didn't come here to get reelected.
As for the loss of experience and expertise if there were no career politicians, much -- if not most -- of that is experience and expertise in the arts of evasion, effrontery, deceit and chicanery. None of that serves the interest of the people.
If we want term limits to achieve their goals, we have to make the limit one term, with a long interval prescribed before the same person can hold any government office again. In short, we need to make political careers virtually impossible.
There are many patriotic Americans who would put aside their own private careers to serve in office, if the cost to them and their families were not ruinous, and if they had some realistic hope of advancing the interests of the country and its people without being obstructed by career politicians.
Is any of this likely today? No!
But neither the Reagan revolution nor the New Deal under FDR would have seemed likely three years before it happened. The whole point of presenting new ideas is to start a process that can make their realization possible in later years.
Thomas Sowell
Syria:Assad's Revenge (Buck Sexton)
TheBlaze TV - Buck Sexton
Syria: Assad’s Revenge
Syria is far past the brink. The death toll, now estimated at seventy thousand, is routinely punctuated with suicide bombings that echo
the worst days of the Iraqi insurgency. Assad has responded with surface-to-surface missiles fired into densely populated Aleppo,
Syria’s largest city. Despite rebel gains, Bashar al-Assad remains the primary driver of events on the ground, and all indicators point toward his ability and willingness to extract an increasingly terrible price from the opposition.
It did not have to be this way. We now know that President Obama quashed lethal aid to the Syrian resistance, and has deferred to chronically ineffective U.N efforts. With Obama’s reelection safely in hand, outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has only recently told the American people that Obama overruled the advice of the intelligence community and the Pentagon on sending the Syrian rebels weaponry.
With that data point, it is now clear that President Obama’s inaction on Syria has helped lead to a number of unintended consequences.
For one, the Jihadists are stronger than ever within the resistance, with fighters flocking to Syria from Rabat to Rawalpindi. Some say the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Levantine affiliate, comprises a quarter of the overall resistance.
Now many of the best-trained, most dedicated anti-Assad insurgents are these hardline Islamists, who have their own networks for transporting weapons and fighters to the front. Al Qaeda funding may not be what it was before 9/11, but there are still plenty of wealthy Gulf Arabs willing to support their favored factions in a struggle to the death against Alawites and their Shia helpers in Syria.
On the other side of the battle lines, Assad has outlasted many predictions for his demise, and Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia remain firmly affixed in his camp. If we were worried about Syria becoming an international proxy conflict, that ship sailed long ago. The U.S. has abstained while other countries have doubled-down.
Sadly for the Syrian people, the Obama administration has managed to conflate a cautious approach with a callous one, and chosen the path not just of least resistance, but least influence as well. For an administration that has made an art form of digital era poll watching and messaging, the lack of meaningful leadership in Syria could come with a catastrophic cost.
Of course President Obama could dramatically change course and take a much more proactive role in ending the Syrian disaster. Weapon shipments to elements of the resistance, passed through third party countries such as Turkey or Jordan, would certainly arrive better late than never.
Absent such a shift in policy, Syria in a post-Assad era increasingly looks like it will be a state akin to Pakistan on the Mediterranean: riddled with Al Qaeda factions, strongly anti-American on the street, and constantly raising fears of implosion. Even this would rely on many positive assumptions, including a relatively constrained endgame from Assad, limited Sunni sectarian reprisals against Alawites and Christians, and Kurdish willingness to play along with the new Syrian state.
The worst-case scenario involves a conflict that spills across borders into Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, or Lebanon, and sees vast stockpiles of chemical weapons fall into the wrong hands. And at this juncture in Syria, it remains difficult to determine just whose hands we could trust to hold them.
Which brings us back to the current conundrum: even if Assad is doomed, he may have already caused enough damage to leave behind a failed state. And it could get worse. Saddam Hussein’s Anfal campaign against the Kurds, including his use of chemical weapons at Halabja, is an ominous historical precedent. Saddam, too, was doomed in the long run, but not before a ferocious campaign of slaughter against his own people that still echoes in Iraq today.
Sadly, no matter what the U.S. does now, the tyrant of Damascus will have extracted a terrible price from the Syrian people. And whether he wins or loses, Assad will face his end buoyed by an insidious final hope that the Jihadists will only make things worse for Syria once he is gone.
Buck Sexton is a former CIA Officer assigned to the Counterterrorism Center and the Office of Iraq Analysis.
Syria: Assad’s Revenge
Syria is far past the brink. The death toll, now estimated at seventy thousand, is routinely punctuated with suicide bombings that echo
the worst days of the Iraqi insurgency. Assad has responded with surface-to-surface missiles fired into densely populated Aleppo,
Syria’s largest city. Despite rebel gains, Bashar al-Assad remains the primary driver of events on the ground, and all indicators point toward his ability and willingness to extract an increasingly terrible price from the opposition.
It did not have to be this way. We now know that President Obama quashed lethal aid to the Syrian resistance, and has deferred to chronically ineffective U.N efforts. With Obama’s reelection safely in hand, outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has only recently told the American people that Obama overruled the advice of the intelligence community and the Pentagon on sending the Syrian rebels weaponry.
With that data point, it is now clear that President Obama’s inaction on Syria has helped lead to a number of unintended consequences.
For one, the Jihadists are stronger than ever within the resistance, with fighters flocking to Syria from Rabat to Rawalpindi. Some say the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Levantine affiliate, comprises a quarter of the overall resistance.
Now many of the best-trained, most dedicated anti-Assad insurgents are these hardline Islamists, who have their own networks for transporting weapons and fighters to the front. Al Qaeda funding may not be what it was before 9/11, but there are still plenty of wealthy Gulf Arabs willing to support their favored factions in a struggle to the death against Alawites and their Shia helpers in Syria.
On the other side of the battle lines, Assad has outlasted many predictions for his demise, and Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia remain firmly affixed in his camp. If we were worried about Syria becoming an international proxy conflict, that ship sailed long ago. The U.S. has abstained while other countries have doubled-down.
Sadly for the Syrian people, the Obama administration has managed to conflate a cautious approach with a callous one, and chosen the path not just of least resistance, but least influence as well. For an administration that has made an art form of digital era poll watching and messaging, the lack of meaningful leadership in Syria could come with a catastrophic cost.
Of course President Obama could dramatically change course and take a much more proactive role in ending the Syrian disaster. Weapon shipments to elements of the resistance, passed through third party countries such as Turkey or Jordan, would certainly arrive better late than never.
Absent such a shift in policy, Syria in a post-Assad era increasingly looks like it will be a state akin to Pakistan on the Mediterranean: riddled with Al Qaeda factions, strongly anti-American on the street, and constantly raising fears of implosion. Even this would rely on many positive assumptions, including a relatively constrained endgame from Assad, limited Sunni sectarian reprisals against Alawites and Christians, and Kurdish willingness to play along with the new Syrian state.
The worst-case scenario involves a conflict that spills across borders into Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, or Lebanon, and sees vast stockpiles of chemical weapons fall into the wrong hands. And at this juncture in Syria, it remains difficult to determine just whose hands we could trust to hold them.
Which brings us back to the current conundrum: even if Assad is doomed, he may have already caused enough damage to leave behind a failed state. And it could get worse. Saddam Hussein’s Anfal campaign against the Kurds, including his use of chemical weapons at Halabja, is an ominous historical precedent. Saddam, too, was doomed in the long run, but not before a ferocious campaign of slaughter against his own people that still echoes in Iraq today.
Sadly, no matter what the U.S. does now, the tyrant of Damascus will have extracted a terrible price from the Syrian people. And whether he wins or loses, Assad will face his end buoyed by an insidious final hope that the Jihadists will only make things worse for Syria once he is gone.
Buck Sexton is a former CIA Officer assigned to the Counterterrorism Center and the Office of Iraq Analysis.
Your States Public Pension Problem is WORSE Than You Think
Your State’s Public Pension Problem Is Worse Than You Think
Apr. 2, 2013 11:18am
Casey Given is a policy analyst covering education and labor issues at the Americans For Prosperity Foundation.
Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Illinois with fraud for misrepresenting the fiscal health of its public pension system. For years, the Midwestern state had been hoodwinking municipal bond investors into believing that it had been properly funding its public servants’ retirement plans when, in reality, the state has a long history of underfunding its pension liabilities. While such blatant pension fraud may be unique to the Land of Lincoln, deception unfortunately is not.
As American Enterprise Institute scholar Andrew G. Biggs explained in a 2010 report, states have been severely underestimating their unfunded liabilities—the difference between the promises made to future retirees and the money saved for these promises–for decades. Although no two pension systems are exactly alike, states typically assume an 8% return on the investments they make towards their employees’ benefits. However, they don’t always receive such a return, as the value of stocks, bonds, and real estate fluctuates year to year.
As Bigg’s explains through an example in his report:
[I]magine a pension that owes a lump-sum liability of $10 million to be paid fifteen years from now. If we discount that liability by the 8 percent return typically projected for pension assets, it has a present value of $3.15 million. A public pension would consider that liability fully funded if it held at least $3.15 million in assets. The practical problem is that those assets are risky while the liability is certain. A simple simulation of market returns shows that, even if we assume that the average long-term return is accurately predicted at 8 percent, volatility from year to year means that $3.15 million in assets today would have only around a 40 percent chance of reaching the goal of $10 million in fifteen years. The remaining 60 percent of the time the plan’s investments would fall short.
History shows this eight percent assumed return to be overly optimistic. Indeed, Biggs calculates the probability of a state being able to cover accrued benefit liabilities with current assets at only 16 percent. There is almost always a difference between what states owe to its retirees and what their assets can cover – and taxpayers are stuck with the bill. As such, it is imperative that states estimate their liability in a manner that more accurately accounts for market risk. After doing so, they can plan a proper funding schedule that eventually eliminates their liabilities and thereby avoid repeating Illinois’ mistake.
Today, the states estimate their unfunded liabilities to be $757 billion assuming this 8% return. However, a more accurate model favored by many economists like Biggs is the Black-Scholes fair market valuation formula that better accounts for risk in returns on investment—this is closer to how corporations value their debt obligations. Using this model, the state’s unfunded liability calculates to almost $3 trillion. This massive amount is almost five times more than the explicit debt that states owe, which was $607 billion as of last year.
Apr. 2, 2013 11:18am
Casey Given is a policy analyst covering education and labor issues at the Americans For Prosperity Foundation.
Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Illinois with fraud for misrepresenting the fiscal health of its public pension system. For years, the Midwestern state had been hoodwinking municipal bond investors into believing that it had been properly funding its public servants’ retirement plans when, in reality, the state has a long history of underfunding its pension liabilities. While such blatant pension fraud may be unique to the Land of Lincoln, deception unfortunately is not.
As American Enterprise Institute scholar Andrew G. Biggs explained in a 2010 report, states have been severely underestimating their unfunded liabilities—the difference between the promises made to future retirees and the money saved for these promises–for decades. Although no two pension systems are exactly alike, states typically assume an 8% return on the investments they make towards their employees’ benefits. However, they don’t always receive such a return, as the value of stocks, bonds, and real estate fluctuates year to year.
As Bigg’s explains through an example in his report:
[I]magine a pension that owes a lump-sum liability of $10 million to be paid fifteen years from now. If we discount that liability by the 8 percent return typically projected for pension assets, it has a present value of $3.15 million. A public pension would consider that liability fully funded if it held at least $3.15 million in assets. The practical problem is that those assets are risky while the liability is certain. A simple simulation of market returns shows that, even if we assume that the average long-term return is accurately predicted at 8 percent, volatility from year to year means that $3.15 million in assets today would have only around a 40 percent chance of reaching the goal of $10 million in fifteen years. The remaining 60 percent of the time the plan’s investments would fall short.
History shows this eight percent assumed return to be overly optimistic. Indeed, Biggs calculates the probability of a state being able to cover accrued benefit liabilities with current assets at only 16 percent. There is almost always a difference between what states owe to its retirees and what their assets can cover – and taxpayers are stuck with the bill. As such, it is imperative that states estimate their liability in a manner that more accurately accounts for market risk. After doing so, they can plan a proper funding schedule that eventually eliminates their liabilities and thereby avoid repeating Illinois’ mistake.
Today, the states estimate their unfunded liabilities to be $757 billion assuming this 8% return. However, a more accurate model favored by many economists like Biggs is the Black-Scholes fair market valuation formula that better accounts for risk in returns on investment—this is closer to how corporations value their debt obligations. Using this model, the state’s unfunded liability calculates to almost $3 trillion. This massive amount is almost five times more than the explicit debt that states owe, which was $607 billion as of last year.
Obama's War on Economic Growth
Obama’s War on Growth
Fred Barnes
April 15, 2013, Vol. 18, No. 29
When Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to President Obama, spoke at a Politico event last week, he was asked what would constitute success in 2013 for the White House. One of his answers was making headway to “rebalance our economy.” The goal, he said, is an economy that’s “not top down.”
Like their boss, Obama aides often speak in euphemisms. So
here’s the translation: The Obama administration will continue to
pursue redistribution of wealth and income, taking from the well-to-do
and giving to the poor and middle class (at least to the lower middle
class).
The president has his own way of touting redistribution.
Whenever he uses the word “fair,” you can bet he’s really referring to
redistribution. He talks of everyone getting a “fair shake” and a “fair
shot.” In his State of the Union address in February, he insisted
economic growth requires “everybody doing their fair share.” In his
inaugural speech in January, he said a free market “only thrives when
there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.”
But Obama’s emphasis on redistribution and his policies to
further it create a problem that he either doesn’t recognize or, as I
suspect, chooses to ignore. He insists economic growth is his “top
priority.” Redistribution, however, is not the friend of growth. It
impedes growth.
The most effective tool in spurring growth is private
investment. Obama may not like it, but major investors tend to be well
off. They have money to invest. Rather than encourage them to invest in
growth and jobs, Obama does the opposite. By raising their taxes and
leaving a strong impression he’d like to raise them even more, he
discourages investment.
In the fiscal cliff deal, Obama not only hiked the top
rate on individual income, he increased the tax rates on two incentives
to invest, capital gains and dividends. In addition, in Obamacare, he
imposed a new tax specifically on investment income. In effect, Obama is
waging a war on investment.
“He’s not a pro-saving, pro-wealth president,” says
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former director of the Congressional Budget
Office. “So he can’t be pro-growth.”
Obama says he’s eager for bipartisan tax reform. And if he
favored the traditional method of overhauling the tax code, that would
put him on the side of growth. But instead of wiping out tax preferences
and loopholes to broaden the base and lower tax rates, Obama wants to
get rid of special breaks as a way to jack up tax revenues. Incentives
for growth? Forget it.
The president has also endorsed entitlement reform. And at the Politico
gathering, Pfeiffer boasted about Obama’s endorsement of “chained-CPI.”
It would recalculate the rate of inflation and slightly restrain annual
cost-of-living adjustments in entitlements, notably Social Security.
“That is on the table and waiting for someone to come to take it,”
Pfeiffer said.
There’s a reason no one has jumped at the chance. Obama’s
price is sure to be high. As part of a deal on entitlements, Republicans
would have to accept still-higher taxes. We don’t have to guess from
whom Obama would want those revenues to come. On top of that, Pfeiffer
suggested the well off would be expected to pay higher premiums for
Medicare.
That deal might be worthwhile if chained-CPI would affect
entitlements significantly. It wouldn’t. Social Security and Medicare
are projected to spend more than $18 trillion over the next decade.
According to Holtz-Eakin, chained-CPI would trim that by $280 billion,
which he calls no more than a “rounding error.”
Obama’s own ideas for promoting growth indicate he’s a
slow learner. He’s bent on pursuing the same policies that have produced
the slowest economic recovery since World War II. The recession ended
in June 2009, yet the economy has struggled with GDP growth averaging
around 2 percent (only 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012).
The result is scary, as John Cassidy outlined in Fortune.
Since the recession began in 2008, the working population—those
employed or looking for jobs—has increased by 12.2 million. But in
five years, the number of jobs has grown by only 1.4 million. Indeed,
participation in the labor force actually shrank from 66.2 percent of
the civilian population in January 2008 to 63.5 percent in February
2013.
In the face of this, Obama is proposing to pour money into
roads, bridges, and other infrastructure. “There are few more important
things we can do to create jobs right now and strengthen our economy
over the long haul than rebuilding the infrastructure that powers our
businesses and our economy,” he said in Miami in March.
Sorry, but there are many more important things. The roads
and bridges panacea has never led to robust growth. It didn’t when the
president and Democrats made it part of the $800 billion “stimulus” in
2009 and it’s unlikely to do so now. But it does thrill a
Democratic
interest group, organized labor.
There’s one more part to Obama’s current plan to increase
growth, a punitive one. He would eliminate tax breaks for companies that
send jobs overseas. The White House says Obama wants to lower the tax
rate for manufacturers here to 25 percent from 35 percent. Manufacturers
shouldn’t hold their breath. He’s been advocating a corporate rate cut
for years, but done little to enact it.
Meanwhile, spending on food stamps and disability payments
has soared. And later this year, Obamacare is to arrive in full force.
It is supposed to give families earning as much as $80,000 a year a
subsidy to buy health insurance.
Obama has paid practically no political price for
redistribution and slow growth. He still talks about fixing the economy
as if no one should have expected anything better. The public hasn’t
rebelled, and Republicans have failed to make growth a salient issue.
It’s time they did.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Politically Correct - "Shut Your Mouth"
Liberals Want To Control Your Words—And Opinions
By MARK STEYN
He who controls the language shapes the debate: In the same week the Associated Press announced that it would no longer describe illegal immigrants as "illegal immigrants," the star columnist of The New York Times fretted that the Supreme Court seemed to have misplaced the style book on another fashionable minority. "I am worried," wrote Maureen Dowd, "about how the justices can properly debate same-sex marriage when some don't even seem to realize that most Americans use the word 'gay' now instead of 'homosexual.'" She quoted her friend Max Mutchnick, creator of "Will & Grace":
"Scalia uses the word 'homosexual' the way George Wallace used the word 'Negro.' There's a tone to it. It's humiliating and hurtful. I don't think I'm being overly sensitive, merely vigilant."
For younger readers, George Wallace was a powerful segregationist Democrat. Whoa, don't be overly sensitive. There's no "tone" to my use of the word "Democrat"; I don't mean to be humiliating and hurtful: it's just what, in pre-sensitive times, we used to call a "fact."
Likewise, I didn't detect any "tone" in the way Justice Scalia used the word "homosexual". He may have thought this was an appropriately neutral term, judiciously poised midway between "gay" and "Godless sodomite." Who knows? He's supposed to be a judge, and a certain inscrutability used to be part of what we regarded as a judicial temperament. By comparison, back in 1986, the year
Scalia joined the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice Warren Burger declared "there is no such thing as a fundamental right to commit homosexual sodomy". I don't want to be overly sensitive, but I think even I, if I rewound the cassette often enough, might be able to detect a certain tone to that.
Nonetheless, Max Mutchnick's "vigilance" is a revealing glimpse of where we're headed. Canada, being far more enlightened than the hotbed of homophobes to its south, has had gay marriage coast to coast for a decade. Statistically speaking, one third of one per cent of all Canadian nuptials are same-sex, and, of that nought-point-three-three, many this last decade have been American gays heading north for a marriage license they're denied in their own country. So gay marriage will provide an important legal recognition for an extremely small number of persons who do not currently enjoy it. But, putting aside arguments over the nature of marital union, the legalization of gay marriage will empower a lot more "vigilance" from all the right-thinking people over everybody else.
Mr Mutchnick's comparison of the word "homosexual" with "Negro" gives the game away: just as everything any conservative says about anything is racist, so now it will also be homophobic. It will not be enough to be clinically neutral ("homosexual") on the subject — or tolerant, bored, mildly amused, utterly indifferent. The other day, Jeremy Irons found himself musing to a reporter on whether (if the issue is unequal legal treatment) a father should be allowed to marry his son for the purpose of avoiding inheritance taxes. The vigilance vigilantes swung into action:
"Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons has sparked outrage," reported The Independent in London, "by suggesting that same-sex marriage could lead to incest between fathers and sons."
Outrageous! That isn't exactly what he said, but, once sparked, the outrage inferno was soon blazing merrily:
"Jeremy Irons' Strange Anti-Gay rant," read the headline in Salon.
I wouldn't say he was ranting. He was languidly drawling, as is his snooty Brit wont, and fighting vainly the old ennui, as if he would rather be doing anything than another tedious media interview. Indeed, he even took the precaution of averring that he didn't "have a strong feeling either way."
You sick bigot theocrat hater! Not having a strong feeling is no longer permitted.The Diversity Celebrators have their exquisitely sensitive antennae attuned for anything less than enthusiastic approval. Very quickly, traditional religious teaching on homosexuality will be penned up within church sanctuaries, and "faith-based" ancillary institutions will be crowbarred into submission. What's that? I'm "scaremongering"? Well, it's now routine in Canada, where Catholic schools in Ontario are obligated by law to set up Gay-Straight
Alliance groups, where a Knights of Columbus hall in British Columbia was forced to pay compensation for declining a lesbian wedding reception, and where the Reverend Stephen Boisson wrote to his local paper objecting to various aspects of "the homosexual agenda" and was given a lifetime speech ban by the Alberta "Human Rights" Tribunal ordering him never to utter anything "disparaging" about homosexuals ever again, even in private. Although his conviction was eventually overturned by the Court of Queen's Bench after a mere seven-and-a-half years of costly legal battle, no Canadian newspaper would ever publish such a letter today.
The words of Chief Justice Burger would now attract a hate-crime prosecution in Canada, as the Supreme Court in Ottawa confirmed only last month.
Of course, if you belong to certain approved identity groups, none of this will make any difference. The Reverend Al Sharpton, who famously observed that Africans of the ancient world had made more contributions to philosophy and mathematics than all "them Greek homos", need not zip his lips — any more than Dr Bilal Philips, the Toronto Islamic scholar who argues that homosexuals should be put to death, need fear the attention of Canada's "human rights" commissions. But for the generality of the population this will be one more subject around which one has to tiptoe on ever thinner eggshells.
I can see why gays might dislike Scalia's tone, or be hurt by Irons' "lack of strong feelings". But the alternative — that there is only one approved tone, that one must fake strong feelings — is creepy and totalitarian and deeply threatening to any healthy society. Irons is learning, as Carrie Prejean learned a while back, that "liberals" aren't interested in your opinion, or even your sincere support, but only that you understand that there's one single, acceptable answer. We don't teach kids to memorize historic dates or great poetry any more, but we do insist they memorize correct attitudes and regurgitate them correctly when required to do so in public.
Speaking of actors from across the pond, I had the good fortune of meeting at the end of his life Hilton Edwards, the founder of Ireland's Gate Theatre. Hilton and the love of his life Michael MacLiammóir were for many years the most famously gay couple in Dublin. At MacLiammóir's funeral in 1978, the Taoiseach and half the Irish cabinet attended, and at the end they went up to Edwards, shook hands and expressed their condolences — in other words, publicly acknowledging him as "the widow". This in a state where homosexuality was illegal, and where few people suggested that it should be otherwise. The Irish officials at the funeral treated
MacLiammóir's relict humanely and decently, not because they had to but because they wished to. I miss that kind of civilized tolerance of the other, and I wish, a mere four decades on, the victors in the culture wars might consider extending it to the losers.
Instead, the relentless propagandizing grows ever more heavy-handed: The tolerance enforcers will not tolerate dissent; the diversity celebrators demand a ruthless homogeneity. Much of the progressive agenda — on marriage, immigration, and much else — involves not winning the argument but ruling any debate out of bounds. Perhaps like Jeremy Irons you don't have "strong feelings" on this or that, but, if you do, enjoy them while you can.
© Mark Steyn, 2013
Syrian Threat and Benghazi
While far too late, the Obama administration may be adopting a sensible policy on Syria. The strategy, however, is unlikely to succeed.
Oh, and there is also a very important clue—I think the key to the puzzle—about what really happened in Benghazi.
Let’s begin with Syria. As U.S. officials became increasingly worried about the visible Islamist domination of the Syrian opposition—which their own policies had helped promote—they have realized the horrible situation of creating still another radical Islamist regime. (Note: This column has been warning of this very point for years.So the response is to try to do two things. The first is to train, with Jordanian cooperation, a more moderate force of Free Syrian Army (FSA) units. The idea is to help the non-Islamists compete more effectively with the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafist, and especially al-Qaeda (Jabhat al-Nusra group) affiliated units.The second is supposedly to create a buffer zone along Syria’s borders with Jordan and perhaps later Israel and even Iraq in order to avoid the conflict spilling over—i.e., cross-border jihad terror attacks—to those countriesAccording to the Wasinngton Post“The last thing anyone wants to see is al-Qaeda gaining a foothold in southern Syria next to Israel. That is a doomsday scenario,” said a U.S. diplomat in Jordan who was not authorized to speak publicly on the subject.”
Someone has also figured out that it isn’t a great idea to have a border with Iraq controlled by Syrian Sunni Muslim terrorist Islamists allied with the Sunni terrorists in Iraq who killed so many Americans.
Well, might someone not have thought about that a year or two ago? Because, while nothing could have been more obvious there was no step taken to avoid this situation happening.
I should point out an important distinction. The problem is not merely al-Qaeda gaining a foothold but also other Salafists or the Muslim Brotherhood doing so. That, however, is not how the Obama administration thinks. For it, al-Qaeda is evil; the other Salafists somewhat bad; and the Muslim Brotherhood good.
What are the other problems here? As so often happens with Western-formulated clever ideas to deal with the Middle East, there are lots of them.
–The United States has stood aside or even helped arm the Islamists through Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. So now the Islamist forces are far stronger than the non-Islamists. That cannot be reversed at this point.
–Might this be laying the basis for a second Syrian civil war in which the Islamists band together against the FSA? In other words, here is this buffer zone that is backed by the West (imperialism!) to “protect” Israel (the Zionists!), Jordan (traitorous Muslims!), and Iraq (Shia heretics!)
–The training is limited and the FSA is badly divided among different commanders, defected Syrian army officers, and local warlords. The Brotherhood militia is united and disciplined. The result: worse than Afghanistan because the Islamists would have both the government and the stronger military forces.
-A situation is being set up in which a future Muslim Brotherhood regime in Syria can blackmail the United States. Either it will force Washington to accept whatever it does (including potential massacres) by threatening to unleash Salafist forces on its borders or it will actually create confrontations.
–Why isn’t the United States working full-time to stop the arms flows to the Islamists by pressuring the Saudis and Qataris (perhaps the point of Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip but hardly effective) and to rein in Turkey’s enthusiasm for a Syrian Islamist regime?
Speaking of Turkey, now we see the reason for the attempted Israel-Turkey rapprochement, because on top of everything else there will be a Kurdish-ruled zone not run by moderates but by the Syrian affiliate of the radical PKK, which is at war with Turkey.
–These proposed buffer zones would not receive Western air support or international forces. –Israel has the experience of maintaining a buffer zone in southern Lebanon for years by supporting a militia group. It succeeded for a long time by sending in Israeli troops covertly and taking casualties. In the end, rightly or wrongly, the effort was given up. Now Hizballah—the equivalent though not the friend of the Syrian Salafists—is sitting on the border and already one war has been fought. It should be noted that Israel has by far the most defensible border with Syria.
Another question, however, is whether the buffer zone idea is real
because it might camouflage something else. Suppose the United States
wants to do something else entirely. This could mean to create a
moderate, secularist force that might win a second Syrian civil war in
which the rebels fought each other for power. Alternatively, since
northern Syria is now dominated by radical Islamists perhaps the U.S.
policymakers hope that the southern part of the country could be a
non-Islamist enclave. Control over that region might strengthen the hand
of the non-Islamists in negotiating the new order in Syria or as a base
for waging a second civil war.
So this is the likely fruit of the Syrian civil war, though that conflict is far from over. The old regime is still alive. What U.S. policy has helped to do is to create a big new threat to Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, and Israel. It’s also a threat to Lebanon, but since the Syrian Islamists will target the Iran-backed Hizballah there, Washington doesn’t mind.
What does this have to do with Benghazi? Find out on the next page.
Read this paragraph from the Washington Post:
Obama administration officials have expressed repeated concern that some of about 20,000 of the weapons, called MANPADS, have made their way from the arsenals of former Libyan dictator Moammar (sic) Gaddafi to Syria.This weapons system might be the most technologically impressive arms ever to fall into the hands of terrorists. Once Libya’s regime fell (another U.S. foreign policy production), these weapons were grabbed by the Libyan rebels and sold to the Saudis and Qataris, who supplied them, respectively, to the Syrian Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to reliable sources, Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was in Benghazi trying to get those MANPADS back and was negotiating with radical militias toward that goal. Stevens was doing something good—trying to take weapons out of the hands of terrorists—and not running weapons to terrorists.
Yet that doesn’t mitigate the mess unleashed by the administration’s policy. At any rate, Stevens and these efforts failed. The money was too good for the Libyan insurgents to pass up, not to mention helping fellow Islamists and anti-Americans. And now thousands of advanced, easily launched anti-aircraft systems are in the hands of anti-Jordanian, anti-Iraqi, anti-Israeli, and possibly anti-Turkish terrorists.
And just imagine the very real possibility of commercial passenger planes being shot at, or even shot down, by terrorists armed with a weapon they obtained because of U.S. government ineptitude or even involvement.
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