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David Warren offers a prayer for Mugabe’s removal.
… The West, and in particular, former Rhodesia’s departed imperial master, Britain, can take no satisfaction in the turn of events. In the Lancaster House Agreement, of almost thirty years ago, Lord Carrington and the panjandrums of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office delivered the future Zimbabwe into the hands of its most revolutionary faction, in the fairly complete knowledge of what they were doing, in order to wash their hands of the place. They knew then that Mugabe was violent and depraved.
This is a long and cumbersome diplomatic history to which the moral, in retrospect, needs to be affixed. We must eventually abandon the cynical diplomatists’ belief that by cutting the legs out under the most moderate, reasonable, and even popular faction, and delivering a country into the hands of murderous revolutionaries, “progress” will be most efficiently served. In Zimbabwe today, upwards of three million starve, in payment for post-colonial “realpolitik.” …
Times, UK says Mandela has finally spoken out.
Nelson Mandela accused President Mugabe of a “tragic failure of leadership” last night, as southern Africa turned its back on the Zimbabwean leader.
Mr Mandela spoke of his concern and sadness at the chaos engulfing Zimbabwe, amid clear indications that the patience of Mr Mugabe’s remaining allies was at breaking point.
Wielding the moral authority of the world’s best-known statesman, Mr Mandela broke his silence at a fundraising event to mark his 90th birthday celebrations in London.
Hours before he spoke, Zimbabwe’s neighbours presented a united front for the first time and urged Mr Mugabe to call off Friday’s presidential vote. …
But, according to Marty Peretz, Andrew Young still defends Mugabe
So has Israel been practicing an Iranian attack? George Freidman of StratFor says it was a head fake.
… There are also explanations for the extreme publicity surrounding the exercise. The first might be that the Israelis have absolutely no intention of trying to stage long-range attacks but are planning some other type of attack altogether. The possibilities range from commando raids to cruise missiles fired from Israeli submarines in the Arabian Sea — or something else entirely. The Mediterranean exercise might have been designed to divert attention.
Alternatively, the Israelis could be engaged in exhausting Iranian defenders. During the first Gulf War, U.S. aircraft rushed toward the Iraqi border night after night for weeks, pulling away and landing each time. The purpose was to get the Iraqis to see these feints as routine and slow down their reactions when U.S. aircraft finally attacked. The Israelis could be engaged in a version of this, tiring out the Iranians with a series of “emergencies” so they are less responsive in the event of a real strike.
Finally, the Israelis and Americans might not be intending an attack at all. Rather, they are — as the Iranians have said — engaged in psychological warfare for political reasons. The Iranians appear to be split now between those who think that Ahmadinejad has led Iran into an extremely dangerous situation and those who think Ahmadinejad has done a fine job. The prospect of an imminent and massive attack on Iran could give his opponents ammunition against him. This would explain the Iranian government response to the reports of a possible attack — which was that such an attack was just psychological warfare and could not happen. That clearly was directed more for internal consumption than it was for the Israelis or Americans.
We tend toward this latter theory. Frankly, the Bush administration has been talking about an attack on Iran for years. It is hard for us to see that the situation has changed materially over the past months. But if it has, then either Israel or the United States would have attacked — and not with front-page spreads in The New York Times before the attack was launched. In the end, we tend toward the view that this is psychological warfare for the simple reason that you don’t launch a surprise attack of the kind necessary to take out Iran’s nuclear program with a media blitz beforehand. It just doesn’t work that way.
Was Iraq worth the effort. Tony Blankley has an answer.
… Fighting and winning always impress. Even merely fighting and persisting impress. Shortly after the fall of Soviet Communism, I had dinner with a then-recently former senior Red army general. He told me that the Soviets were astounded and impressed by the fact that we were prepared to fight and lose 50,000 men in Vietnam, when the Soviets never thought we even had a strategic interest there. They thus calculated that they’d better be careful with the United States. What might we do, they thought, if our interests really were threatened?
The full effects of the vigorous martial response of President Bush to the attacks of Sept. 11 will not be known for decades. But if history is any indicator, military courage, persistence and a capacity to kill the enemy in large numbers usually work to the benefit of such nations.
On Sept. 10, 2001, many Islamists thought America and the West were decadent, cowardly and ripe for the pickings. (Hitler thought the same thing about us.) On the basis of President Bush’s political courage — and supremely on the physical courage, moral strength and heartbreaking sacrifice of all our fighting uniformed men and women (and un-uniformed intelligence operatives) — America’s willingness and capacity to fight to protect ourselves cannot be doubted around the world. This may prove to be the most important global political fact of the first decade of the 21st century — with implications even beyond our struggle with radical Islam. …
Jennifer Rubin and Peter Wehner from Contentions write on Blankley’s piece.
As you note, Jennifer, Thomas Friedman argues in his New York Times column today that Iraqis, in the wake of their liberation of Basra, Amara, and Sadr City from both Mahdi Army militiamen and pro-Iranian death squads, “now have their own narrative of self-liberation.” This, in turn, has created self-confidence and legitimacy for the Maliki government and the Iraqi military. And there is, I think, a lot to Friedman’s analysis–and, it should be pointed out, it is an insight that General Petraeus has long had. It is one of the pillars of his effort to create “sustainable security” for Iraq.
There is, though, a paragraph from Friedman’s column that I wanted to take issue with: …
Karl Rove says they’re both economic illiterates.
Barack Obama and John McCain are busy demonstrating that in close elections during tough economic times, candidates for president can be economically illiterate and irresponsibly populist.
In Raleigh, N.C., last week, Sen. Obama promised, “I’ll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we’ll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills.”
Set aside for a minute that Jimmy Carter passed a “windfall profits tax” to devastating effect, putting American oil companies at a competitive disadvantage to foreign competitors, virtually ending domestic energy exploration, and making the U.S. more dependent on foreign sources of oil and gas.
Instead ask this: Why should we stop with oil companies? They make about 8.3 cents in gross profit per dollar of sales. Why doesn’t Mr. Obama slap a windfall profits tax on sectors of the economy that have fatter margins? Electronics make 14.5 cents per dollar and computer equipment makers take in 13.7 cents per dollar, according to the Census Bureau. Microsoft’s margin is 27.5 cents per dollar of sales. Call out Mr. Obama’s Windfall Profits Police! …
IBD editors on Obama’s ethanol policy.
Barack Obama says he represents change. He also criticizes John McCain for trying to drill our way to energy independence to add to the profits of Big Oil. But it’s Obama who’s playing politics by trying to plant our way to energy independence, buying votes with alternative fuel subsidies that benefit ethanol producers such as Archer Daniels Midland.
ADM is based in Illinois, the second-largest corn-producing state. Not long after arriving in the U.S. Senate, Obama flew twice on corporate jets owned by the nation’s largest ethanol producer. Imagine if McCain flew on the corporate jets of Exxon Mobil.
Corn-based ethanol gets a 51-cents-a-gallon tax subsidy that will cost taxpayers $4.5 billion this year. McCain opposes ethanol subsidies while Obama supports them. McCain opposed them even though Iowa is the first caucus state. Obama, touted by Caroline Kennedy as another JFK, was no profile in courage in Iowa. …
Victor Davis Hanson thinks we have become the “can’t do” society.
… With gas over $4 a gallon, the public is finally waking up to the fact that for decades the United States has not been developing known petroleum reserves in Alaska, in our coastal waters or off the continental shelf. Jittery Hamlets apparently forgot that gas comes from oil — and that before you can fill your tank, you must take risks to fill a tanker.
Building things is a good indication of the relative confidence of a society. But the last American gasoline refinery was built almost three decades ago. As “cowards of our conscious,” we’ve come up with countless mitigating reasons not to build a new one. Our inaction has meant that our nation’s gasoline facilities have grown old, out of date and dangerous.
Maybe Americans can instead substitute plug-in, next-generation electric cars that can be charged at night on the nation’s grid powered by nuclear power plants? Wrong again. We haven’t issued a single new license that actually led to the building of a nuclear power plant in over 30 years. …
Walter Williams points out the problems with centralized control.
… You might argue that saving for retirement is important, but so is saving for a home or your children’s education. Would you want Congress to force us to put money aside for a home or our children’s education?
Oblivious to the huge information problem in the allocation of resources, the people in Washington have confidence that they can run our lives better than we can. Charles Darwin wisely noted over a century and a half ago that “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” Suggesting that Congress is ignorant of the fact that knowledge is highly dispersed, and decisions made locally produce the best outcomes, might be overly generous. They might know that and just don’t give a hoot because it’s in their political interest to centralize decision-making.
Thomas Jefferson might have had the information problem in mind when he said, “Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”
Amazing volcanic eruptions on the floor of the Arctic Ocean.
Brit historian Paul Johnson reviews comparative bio of Churchill and Gandhi.
… It is often said that Churchill’s knowledge of India was shallow and out of date. But he was proved right in his prediction that independence would mean the end of unity. Gandhi had argued that the Hindu–Muslim divide was superficial and could be bridged by patience and statesmanship. He was proved totally wrong on this fundamental point. Not only was Pakistan created, despite all his efforts, but it in turn split into two, when the eastern section, now Bangladesh, refused to accept government by the western section. The key problem of Kashmir — the most beautiful part of the subcontinent, where the elite was Hindu and the majority population Muslim — was left unsolved by partition, and smolders away. It has already caused two wars between India and Pakistan; if the Muslim extremists take over Pakistan, a nuclear exchange may well occur, justifying Churchill’s worst fears.
In the meantime, India has taken the route of high technology and advanced capitalism, and is racing along it. For the first time scores of millions of Indians are tasting affluence. By mid-century India will have over a billion inhabitants and, quite possibly, the world’s largest economy after the United States. This prospect would have delighted Churchill, who always believed that the Raj had set India’s feet firmly on the road to long-term prosperity. It would have horrified Gandhi, who deplored Western living standards and wanted Indians to lead simple, pure, and prayerful lives close to the subsistence level. His chief reason for espousing independence was that India would thereby escape the corruption of the West. So who was right about India? The answer is that both Churchill and Gandhi were right — and both were wrong. But this juxtaposition of these two extraordinary men makes for a fascinating story.