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Krauthammer at his most ironic.
Voices around the world, from Europe to America to Libya, are calling for U.S. intervention to help bring down Moammar Gaddafi. Yet for bringing down Saddam Hussein, the United States has been denounced variously for aggression, deception, arrogance and imperialism.
A strange moral inversion, considering that Hussein’s evil was an order of magnitude beyond Gaddafi’s. Gaddafi is a capricious killer; Hussein was systematic. Gaddafi was too unstable and crazy to begin to match the Baathist apparatus: a comprehensive national system of terror, torture and mass murder, gassing entire villages to create what author Kanan Makiya called a “Republic of Fear.”
Moreover, that systemized brutality made Hussein immovable in a way that Gaddafi is not. Barely armed Libyans have already seized half the country on their own. Yet in Iraq, there was no chance of putting an end to the regime without the terrible swift sword (it took all of three weeks) of the United States.
No matter the hypocritical double standard. Now that revolutions are sweeping the Middle East and everyone is a convert to George W. Bush’s freedom agenda, it’s not just Iraq that has slid into the memory hole. Also forgotten is the once proudly proclaimed “realism” of Years One and Two of President Obama’s foreign policy – the “smart power” antidote to Bush’s alleged misty-eyed idealism. …
IBD editors remind us of the value of our stand in Iraq.
Italian Prime Minister Sergio Berlusconi, in a September 2003 interview, said Gadhafi told him: “I will do whatever the United States wants, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid.”
Mark Helprin on our missing warships.
… We have the smallest navy in almost a century, declining in the past 50 years to 286 from 1,000 principal combatants. Apologists may cite typical postwar diminutions, but the ongoing 17% reduction from 1998 to the present applies to a navy that unlike its wartime predecessors was not previously built up. These are reductions upon reductions. Nor can there be comfort in the fact that modern ships are more capable, for so are the ships of potential opponents. And even if the capacity of a whole navy could be packed into a small number of super ships, they could be in only a limited number of places at a time, and the loss of just a few of them would be catastrophic.
The overall effect of recent erosions is illustrated by the fact that 60 ships were commonly underway in America’s seaward approaches in 1998, but today—despite opportunities for the infiltration of terrorists, the potential of weapons of mass destruction, and the ability of rogue nations to sea-launch intermediate and short-range ballistic missiles—there are only 20.
As China’s navy rises and ours declines, not that far in the future the trajectories will cross. …
Evelyn Gordon explains why Israelis might be apprehensive.
Max finds it incomprehensible that many Israelis are fearful, even unhappy, over the changes sweeping our region. So as an Israeli, let me explain.
Over the past two decades, Israelis have lived through numerous regional changes, each of which, we were confidently assured — by both our own leaders and the West — would benefit us greatly. And in every single case, the change only made things worse. …
David Goldman continues to be concerned about Egypt.
… In 2009 Egypt imported $56 billion of goods but exported only $29 billion. The difference was made up by tourism, other services, foreign aid and borrowing. Even if we presume that Egypt can increase its foreign aid from other powers anxious to avoid instability, the Saudis, for example, it is hard to see how the numbers will add up. With 40 million people living on less than $2 a day, an economic disruption implies not just misery, but life-threatening misery.
Stability seems the least likely outcome. And that means that risk perceptions should keep rising.
Thomas Sowell points out the problems maintaining a government of limited powers.
… Today, we take universal literacy for granted. But literacy has not been universal, across all segments of the American population during all of the 20th century. Illiteracy was the norm in Albania as recently as the 1920s and in India in the second half of the 20th century.
Bare literacy is just one of the things needed to make democracy viable. Without a sense of responsible citizenship, voters can elect leaders who are not merely incompetent or corrupt, but even leaders with contempt for the Constitutional limitations on government power that preserve the people’s freedom.
We already have such a leader in the White House– and a succession of such leaders may demonstrate that the viability of freedom and democracy can by no means be taken for granted here.
Michael Barone addresses the possible reasons people vote on principles not pocketbooks.
It’s a question that puzzles most liberals and bothers some conservatives. Why are so many modest-income white voters rejecting the Obama Democrats’ policies of economic redistribution and embracing the small-government policies of the Tea Party movement?
It’s not supposed to work out that way, say the political scientists and New Deal historians. Politics is supposed to be about who gets how much when, and people with modest incomes should be eager to take as much from the rich as they can get. …
From The Corner we learn Eric Holder’s slip was showing.
As a litigation attorney I learned that, no matter how well prepared a witness may be, he will often make revealing admissions if he becomes flustered or angry. That happened yesterday as Attorney General Eric Holder testified before a House Commerce subcommittee chaired by Rep. Frank Wolf. …
John Stossel discusses his stutter.
Because “The King’s Speech,” a movie about King George’s effort to overcome stuttering, won the Oscar for best picture, reporters have been interviewing me about my stuttering.
Some ask why they don’t hear me stutter on TV. Others wonder why a stutterer is on TV in the first place. Here’s my explanation. Since I was a child, my stuttering has come and gone. Sometimes I was sure the problem had disappeared — then it would return with such a vengeance I’d fear saying anything. I’d stay silent in class. I avoided parties. When I was old enough to date, sometimes I’d telephone a girl and try to speak, but nothing would come out. I’d just hang up. Now, because of caller ID, stutterers can’t do that.
I never planned on a career in TV. …