Libertarian Leanings

Bipartisanship

The Wall Street Journal points out Barack Obama has come through on his promise to put an end to partisansip.

'Barack Obama promised to end the "politics of division," unite Washington's factions and overcome partisanship. And what do you know -- so far he has: The President's stimulus plan generated bipartisan House opposition, with every Republican and 11 Democrats voting against it on Wednesday. It passed 244-188.'

Opposition to the president is bipartisan.  Support for his stimulus plan is, shall we say, unilateral? 

The Great Foreign Policy Blunder

In early 2007 George W. Bush confounded his critics when he announced a change in the conduct of the Iraq War.  He said that he would commit 20,000 more troops to the fight and that they would employ a new counterinsurgency strategy that made protecting the Iraqi population the highest priority.  This, he said, was intended to "create space" that would allow political progress to move forward.  Hopeful Democrats and their supporters in the mainstream press had been urging surrender. 

2006 was a bad year in Iraq.  An eruption of sectarian violence raised monthly death tolls to their highest since fighting began in 2003.  By the end of 2005 the insurgents had recognized that they had no hope of defeating U.S. forces militarily.  In 2006 insurgent stategy had shifted comletely -- away from confronting the Americans, to attacking Iraqi civilians instead.  The insurgents went about demonstrating their ability to randomly inflict murder upon large numbers of Iraqi citizens. 

This was described in the press and in Democratic political speeches as evidence of the coming U.S. defeat in the Iraq war.  It was to be the signature failure of the Bush administration, although it would be a neat trick for the insurgents to win the war without winning any military battles.  It meant they would have to win the war on the information front by convincing the American people that victory against them was impossible. 

Murder was the insurgency's only vehicle for doing this -- the bloodier the better.  As the U.S. set out to protect Iraqi civilians, the insurgents set out to prove it couldn't be done.  In this the insurgent's natural ally was the media.  "If it bleeds it leads," so goes the saying, and the worldwide press celebrated the spectacular misery visited on the Iraqis. 

Democrats were aghast that President Bush failed to heed the opinion polls and instead set the surge in motion.  Call it an accident if you wish, but Democrats had lined themselves up with the insurgency.  As the insurgency endeavored to prove the impossibility of defeating them Iraq, the Democratic obliged by agreeing with them publicly and constantly. 

2006 was a bad year for Republicans seeking re-election.  While Democrats campaigned against the war Republicans tried to change the subject.  Instead of standing with their President, Republicans stood by and watched the Democrats take control of both the Senate and the House.  They felt they would hurt their chances if they appeared to be connected to George W. Bush and the war in Iraq.

The newly minted Senate Majority Leader and Democrat Harry Reid famously declared that the war was already lost.  Time and again Democratic leaders in congress moved to cut off funding for the "failed" war, but each time they failed to win enough votes to do it.  Unfortunately, by the time George W. Bush announced his intention to build up troop levels, 70% of Americans opposed the move believing Democratic and media pronouncements that it wouldn't do any good. 

It did, though.  When the additional troops finally reached Baghdad and the surrounding area, violence took a dramatic plunge.  It took time, but eventually Democrats were forced to admit that the surge worked after all.  Even Barack Obama, late in his presidential campaign, was forced to admit, "the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated."  Nobody?  Really?

After a while, even media luminaries who had opposed the war and opposed the surge had to admit it worked.  Recently Peter Beinart writing in the Washington Post said it's no longer even a close call.  The surge worked. 

The fallback position is:  So what?  The new reality now being force fed to the news consuming public is,

'...even if the calm endures, that still doesn't justify the Bush administration's initial decision to go to war, which remains one of the great blunders in American foreign policy history.'

In Beinart's mind and in the minds of Democrats in congress it's a given.  They casually throw it out there at every opportunity, confident that American support for the war has been decimated by the relentlessly negative reporting by the media and rhetoric of their Democratic clients.  But it's a claim that gets its support almost solely on the media, which is virulently anti-war and anti-Bush, and on opinion polls which are media driven.  What happens when this, too, turns out to be just another premature assessment? 

In is recent interview with Jim Lehrer, Vice President Richard Cheney put things into perspective.  It's what Beinart considers a blunder.

'MR. LEHRER: Mr. Vice President, getting from there to here, 4500 Americans have died, at least a hundred thousand Iraqis have died. Has it been worth that?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I think so.

MR. LEHRER: Why?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Because I believed at the time that what Saddam Hussein represented was, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, was a terror-sponsoring state - so designated by the State Department. He was making payments to the families of suicide bombers; he provided a safe haven and sanctuary for Abu Nidal and other terrorist operations. He had produced and used weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological agents.

He'd had a nuclear program in the past. He killed hundreds of thousands of his own people and he did have a relationship with al-Qaida. Now, we've had this debate, keeps people trying to conflate those arguments.

That's not to say that Saddam was responsible for 9/11; it is to say - as George Tenet, CIA director testified in open session in the Senate - that there was a relationship there that went back 10 years.

So this was a terror-sponsoring state with access to weapons of mass destruction and that's the greatest threat we faced in the aftermath of 9/11: The next time we found terrorists in the middle of one of our cities, it wouldn't be 19 guys armed with airline tickets and box cutters, it would be terrorists armed with a biological agent or maybe even a nuclear device.

So I think, given the track record of Saddam Hussein, I think we did exactly the right thing, I think the country's better off for it today, I think it's been part of the effort alongside Afghanistan to liberate 50 million people and establish a vibrant democracy in the heart of the Middle East. I think those are major, major accomplishments.'

And this:

'MR. LEHRER: One more general scope here, Mr. Vice President. What do you make of a current suggestion that you have been in fact the most powerful vice president in history, but in one of the most failed presidencies in history?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don't buy that.

MR. LEHRER: You don't buy that?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No, I think the argument that this is a failed presidency is just dead wrong. I think we'll hear that from some of our critics, but when I look back at what we've been able to do - we dealt with big issues.

We didn't deal with school uniforms, we dealt with the fact that we brought down two of the worst regimes in the 20^th century: the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. We were forced when we arrived - shortly after we arrived - to have to deal with the global war on terror, which had not been managed properly before that.

We ended up inheriting a situation that has been very challenging, but we've been very successful at it. And when you look at what we've been able to do, both in terms of our activities overseas as well as our operations that allowed us to block any further attack against the United States here at home, I think those are great successes and I think there aren't many administrations that can point to successes on that scale.'

If Democrats were aghast at Bush's refusal to quit and accept defeat, they and their media cronies were enraged as his determination has led to the victory that can now be declared in Iraq with the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1859.  Omar Fadhil of Iraq the Model celebrated its passage.

'Iraq has started to reap the benefits of the status of forces agreement with the United States. The United Nations Security Council voted to set the ground for relieving Iraq from the restrictions of Chapter Seven of the UN Charter.

In fact, the remaining effects of previous resolutions will from now on serve only to protect Iraq’s assets from claims by other parties, not to impose anything on the people of Iraq. Sovereignty, which was lost two decades ago under Saddam Hussein’s capricious and belligerent reign, is being restored to the nation.

The Security Council resolution 1859 states, among other things, that Iraq is no longer a threat to its neighbors, region, or the world. The United States has succeeded in transforming a bellicose, autocratic state into a friendly one that is making steady progress towards becoming a self-sustaining democracy — the international community is finally coming to recognize this transformation.
This resolution is bound to make a positive impact on the domestic and regional levels. First and foremost it is a testimony to the United States’ true desire to help Iraq get on its feet and relieve it from restrictions that belong to a past era — the United States is indisputably a friendly protector of Iraq, not an occupier as many like to claim.

However, this achievement did not receive as much attention in the Arab media as did the shoes of a disturbed young journalist...'

It's an achievement that received no attention in any media, not just Arab media.  Was anyone even aware of Resolution 1859?  A Google search came up with only three news items about it.  Here is the screen shot, as of January 23rd.

It's hard for me to think of our Democratic leadership and our journalistic elites as anything but treasonous, after having done everything in their power to hand victory to a terrorist insurgency over our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, .  They gave air time and credibility to the insurgents' message, they fought their legislative battles hoping to end the American struggle to beat them, and they waged a relentless public relations campaign against anything and everything the Bush administration hoped to achieve.  But still, they failed.  Now they say that they would like to prosecute George Bush.  For what?  Winning a war they said couldn't be won? 

By claiming that Iraq was a foreign policy blunder Democrats absolve themselves of their faithlessness.  Over the next four years liberal pundits, especially the ones masquerading as journalists, will cling to the fiction that deposing Saddam Hussein was a foreign policy blunder.  Fighting the War on Terror was a foreign policy blunder.  Winning the war in Iraq was a foreign policy blunder.  Conversion of two enemy countries to allied countries was a foreign policy blunder.  The spread of democracy in the Middle East was a foreign policy blunder.

The question now, is what happens when it becomes apparent that this "foreign policy blunder" has laid the groundwork for lasting peace to the Middle East?  Will our Democratic leadership sabotage the peace in order to correct the foriegn policy blunder?  If an election hangs in the balance I think we can count on it.  Maybe then the Republicans will finally find the stomache to fight them on it.

The Road Untravelled

Just over a week ago, Neurotic Iraqi Wife vented her frustration at Israel's incursion into Gaza.  Among the tragedies in Gaza was the death of a school friend of hers, which prompted her to direct one of her blog posts, The 21st Century Murderers... to "everyone who thinks the Gaza massacre is justifiable."  She wrote,

'Im not saying Hamas is right. Im not a supporter of Hamas or any organization that deals with violence. But at the same time THIS SHOULD STOP. IT SHOULD STOP NOW. What did my school friend do? What was his fault? Why did he die? He died as a result of this inhumane war. BOTH SIDES ARE WRONG.

I don’t give a damn why this war started in the first place. Nothing, nothing whatsoever justifies kids dying. NOTHING. This post is for every single ignorant person who supports Israel’s current actions. And then you sit and wonder why do people hate us? Why do people dislike us. This is exactly why. You sit and wonder why people want to kill us? All these kids, the kids that have been orphaned, the kids who woke up having no family around will grow up thinking of ways to take revenge. And you wonder why suicide bombers do what they do in your part of the world. Bloody hell even people in other countries are asking to go fight in Gaza...This is exactly what happens as a result of unjustifiable violence.'

It turns out that several "ignorant persons"who support Israel's actions stopped by to explain why in Neurotica's comment section.  First out of the gate was Tex who asked,

'What do you want Israel to do Neurotica? Open their borders to the palestinians and let the murderers flood across and murder all their children and kill every last living jew? Would Israel then be justified in defending themselves? Should Israel pull out of the occupied territories and let them govern themselves? Oh wait...they already did that and the thanks they received for forcing their own citizens to give up their homes was what? Thousands of rockets and mortars fired indiscriminately at civilians.'

Programmer Craig added his two cents soon afterward,

'By the way, Neurotica... every Palestinian blogger I know of has been preaching hate and violence against the Jews (or "zionists" as they call them) for years. Every single one. How am I supposed to sympathize with people like that, when it seems they got exactly what they wanted? You say that the people in Gaza aren't all like Hamas, and that is undoubtedly true, but where are the voices of those in Gaza who DON'T want war? Why aren't they being heard? Why aren't they on the news? Why aren't they on they internet? You say those people are important... shouldn't they be front and center in the Arab world, then?'

Julie added,

'I think a caring heart "gives a damn" why this war is started. How do you fight wrong/evil if you don't? You're not saying "Hamas is right" but can you say they are WRONG?'

Since Neurotica published her essay there have been 80 comments attached to it, far more than I've seen on her blog in the brief time I've been reading it.  To her credit she responds... up to a point.  Yes Hamas is wrong but Israel should target the militants, not the children.

But it's pretty well known that Israel targets the militants, even going so far as to warn civilians to clear out before the shooting starts.  Hamas has made a practice of setting up its rocket launchers near schools and hospitals in order to win the information war with footage of massacred women and children.  Neurotica seems reluctant to believe it, reluctant to accept the possibility that Hamas is to blame for Palestinian deaths.  The best she can do concede that Hamas and Israel are both worthy of blame, and refusing further comment she throws up her hands and says,

'Whether people agree with me or not is not the point here. How can we stop the massacres thats what is important right now. Im leaving it at that.'

Although Neurotica seems predisposed to believe the Arab media take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she was willing to acknowledge, in a more recent post, that there is another side to the story. 

'A few days ago I had to attend some family lunch that my parents were hosting. I wasn’t really up to it but I had to go. As we sat down chitchatting, a few mobile phones beeped simultaneously. “Please donate to Gaza at such and such banks” One of the ladies read the message out loud. She then threw her phone in dismay at the table. “Why should I care about Gaza” She said “While my own country is suffering. What did the Palestinians do for us Iraqis when my people were getting killed by the hundreds” She continued. “Let them go to hell.”

I was in shock. “But Khala (Aunti), these are humans dying, not animals. Surely you can be more compassionate” She had a very hard look on her face. She took out a cigarette, lit it, inhaled, then exhaled and shook her head and said “Neurotica, Iraqis are humans too. Do you know what they (Palestinians) did in Iraq? Do you know how the preyed on us when Saddam was in power. I don’t give a damn about these people. They elected their government so let them suffer the consequences”

Another woman joined in and said “She is right Neurotica. You know where the money is going? Its not going to the victims, it will end up in Hamas’s hands, and surely Hamas will buy weapons. All this is propaganda. No, not a single penny from MY own hard earned money is going there, Id rather spend it on the Orphans of Iraq. Half the millionaires in the Emirates are Palestinians, why don’t THEY help their OWN people?” Then she said, “Hamas don’t even care about their own people, theyre sitting comfortably in Syria and Lebanon while their people burn.”'

Is Neurotica ready to challenge long held convictions?  Wonderful if true.  More people should do it, and if there is ever to be peace in the Middle East, they'll have to.

Of course, there's the alternative that's popular in certain circles -- destroy Israel and annihilate the Jews.  In the conventional view, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the source of all unrest in the Middle East.  But if the Jews were to disappear from the face of the earth, would that bring peace?  I think not.  What about the next enemy of Islam? 

Arab dreams of Israel's destruction gained justification from the reported death of Muhammad al Durah, a twelve year old Palestinian boy said to have been killed by Israeli gunfire in 2000.  But was he?  A challenge of the original news report by Charles Enderlin of France 2 resulted in a 2006 libel suit against Phillippe Karsenty, the challenger, in which Enderlin and France 2 prevailed.  The appeal, however, favored Karsenty.  The French Appeals Court found that Enderlin's report of the death scene was a fake.  

So what's a Palestinian "freedom fighter" to do?  What kind of an identity crisis would each of us endure at the destruction of a core cherished belief?  At some level, what we believe is who we are.  There are core convictions that are not relinquished easily, if ever at all.  Convictions likely to be more tightly held in Palestine and other Arab places, where keeping the faith is a matter of life and death, where deviating from the straight and narrow can draw the wrath of religious enforcers who will kill any who offer dissent.

Iraq had been on the verge of becoming one of those places, but for the success of Bush, Petraeus, and the soldiers and Marines who conducted the surge.  Neurotica's post testifies to the fact that differing opinions can and do exist among Iraqis.

'As I was about to voice my own opinion another lady said “You forgot what they did to our country Neurotica? To our People? They sent suicide bombers, they joined so called “Jihad” groups and killed hundreds even thousands of our people. They backed Zarqawi, that criminal man” Again as I tried to say something, a few teenage girls (daughters of another woman) announced they were leaving to join the protests. “What protests?” we asked. “There is a protest here in AD” They answered while they fixed their Palestinian scarves around their necks. The women rolled their eyes and shot the girls’ mother an evil look.

“How can you let them go?” The mother shrugged and said, its their choice, and I wont stop them. I just got up and left the table for I knew that the poor mom was going to be lectured. The conversation was already draining me.'

The overthrow of Saddam, the battle for Iraq, and the introduction of its democratic government were seismic events that caused a dramatic change in Arab perceptions of the U.S. and of themselves.  But if there was a shift in Arab expectations it is one that was imposed.  If real change is to be sustained, Arabs must begin to arrive at those perceptions on their own. 

Over the last thirty or forty years conventional wisdom has had it that achieving peace in the Middle East depended on resolving the Palestinian situation.  The obvious but unspoken reality is that the Palestinian situation is designed to be irresolvable.  One might have expected the Israeli departure from Gaza in 2005 to lay the groundwork for peace, but instead Gaza became a launch site for lobbing Palestinian rockets into Israel.  Whenever Palestinians thugs are threatened with peace they find a way to avoid it.

Recognition of terrorist tendencies caused Michael Scott Doran to write in a 2003 Foreign Affairs article,

'It is worth remembering that Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 came on the heels of the first Palestinian intifada, which also provoked much Arab hostility toward the United States. It was Saddam's defeat that cleared a space for the Madrid Conference and eventually the Oslo peace process. Then as now, defeating Saddam would offer the United States a golden opportunity to show the Arab and Muslim worlds that Arab aspirations are best achieved by working in cooperation with Washington. If an American road to a calmer situation in Palestine does in fact exist, it runs through Baghdad.'

If Neurotica is to be believed, a rift has appeared in Arab circles, or at least in Iraqi circles.  The Palestinian cause no longer enjoys unanimous, unqualified support in the Arab world, if it ever really did.  Continuing erosion of Arab support for Palestinian demands may eventually exert enough pressure to prevent militant Palestinians from torpedoing every substantive peace initiative that comes down the pike. 

But who is willing to challenge the conventional wisdom?  Neurotica's outspoken Aunti suggests that Doran's "road to a calmer situation in Palestine" has been cut through and construction is well under way.  The question remains as to whether or not the Obama administration, or the rest of the world for that matter, will choose to travel that road.

Renewed Directions

You may have noticed that my passion for blogging has cooled in the recent weeks.  It began with the ice storm that left us without power for the five days, and unfortunately when power was restored the drive to resume blogging was not restored with it.  This has more to do with world events than with personal circumstances.

Iraqi approval of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) has pretty much wrapped up the War in Iraq, or I should say, the Battle for Iraq.  Obama's talk of yanking the troops to fight the War on Terror on its "real front" appears to have been, like everything else he's been saying, little more than campaign talk.  Keeping Robert Gates in place as Secretary of Defense signals that he does not intend to imperil the progress in Iraq, even though things have gotten dicier in Afghanistan.  SOFA makes it nearly impossible for Obama to simply punt and blame the ensuing failure on George Bush.  Obama has been handed a victory, and if he can't maintain it he will be the one to take the heat.

On the domestic front, the economic situation gives Obama cover to propose his redistributionist policies and the Democratic congress will be happy to oblige.  It could mean an avalanche of Democratic vote buying legislation, but then -- maybe not.

One of the more entertaining aspects of the recent election is the surprise in leftist circles at the moves Obama has made -- like keeping Robert Gates.  No one had any idea what Obama was likely to do because his positions shifted to suit the campaign situation.  That is, if you can call 180 degrees a shift.  Meanwhile our fourth estate was too busy in Alaska investigating Bristol Palin to bother trying to pin him down.  It ought to be interesting watching their journalistic contortions for the next four years.

In any case, although there is no lack of blog fodder out there, Libertarian Leanings will be published on a less frequent basis.  I started this blog five years ago this coming April, intending to frame current events from the small-L libertarian perspective.  As time went by the analysis gave way to short comments on the news of the day, until most recently I was just linking to interesting stories without even a comment.  I hope now to return Libertarian Leanings to its original purpose. 

I want to thank the folks who have taken the time to stop by over the years.  It's an honor to write for you.  I'll strive to do a better job of it going forward.