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In Commentary, Michael Totten discusses Iran with a former Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Last week I spoke with Reza Kahlili, a man who during the 1980s and 1990s worked for the CIA under the code name “Wally” inside the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. He wrote a terrific book about his experience as an American agent called A Time to Betray, and today he’s issuing a serious warning about his former Iranian masters: they mean what they say, and the West had better start taking them seriously.
…A military attack against Iran should be rolled out only if every conceivable peaceful solution fails first. Striking Iran would, in all likelihood, ignite several Middle Eastern wars all at once. Hamas and Hezbollah would bombard Israel with missile attacks. Lebanon and Gaza would both come under massive counterbattery fire. The war could easily spill over into Iraq and put American soldiers at risk.
The above scenario may sound like the worst, short of nuclear war, but it isn’t. The worst-case scenario is a regional war that fails to stop Iran’s nuclear program while keeping the regime in place. If the Israelis decide to use force, the nuclear facilities should not be the target. The government should be the target. And the U.S. should back Israel’s play and even assist it, no matter how enraged American officials might be. The last thing any of us needs is a bloodied Iranian government with delusions of invincibility that later acquires the weapons of genocide and then sets out for revenge. As Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, “If you shoot at a king you must kill him.” …
Jennifer Rubin has more on foreign policy, this time on South Korea.
It really doesn’t pay to be an ally of the U.S. these days. That status confers on a nation’s leaders the opportunity to be publicly berated and to see prior agreements evaporate (e.g., the Bush-Sharon settlement deal, the missile-defense arrangement with Eastern Europe). And when it comes to our allies’ security and economic needs, Obama nearly always has some higher priority. A case in point (another one) is South Korea. Fred Hiatt writes:
In a world of dangerously failed states and willful challengers to American leadership, South Korea is an astoundingly successful democracy that wants to be friends. But will America say yes? That seemed to be the question perplexing President Lee Myung-bak when I interviewed him here last Wednesday, though he described relations at the moment as excellent. … The two nations have signed a free-trade agreement that Lee believes would — in addition to bringing obvious economic benefit to both sides — seal a crucial alliance and promote stability throughout Northeast Asia. But President Obama has yet to submit the agreement to Congress for ratification or say when he might do so…
The Economist has a short on the complexity of the tax code.
…The federal tax code, which was 400 pages long in 1913, has swollen to about 70,000. Americans now spend 7.6 billion hours a year grappling with an incomprehensible tangle of deductions, loopholes and arcane reporting requirements. That is the equivalent of 3.8m skilled workers toiling full-time, year-round, just to handle the paperwork. By this measure, the tax-compliance industry is six times larger than car-making.
Every year, the national taxpayer advocate issues a report begging Congress to simplify the system. In her most recent one, published on December 31st, Ms Olson frets that she is repeating herself. She refers Congress to what she said the previous year. An incredible 82% of taxpayers are so flummoxed that they pay for help. Some 60% hire an accountant or tax preparer, while another 22% use tax software. She might have added that even the head of the Internal Revenue Service, Douglas Shulman, gets someone else to do his taxes. …
We applaud Thomas Sowell’s view of things.
…If and when the Republicans return to power in Washington, we can only hope that they remember what got them suddenly and unceremoniously dumped out of power the last time. Basically, it was running as Republicans and then governing as if they were Democrats, running up big deficits, with lots of earmarks and interfering with the market.
But their most lasting damage to the country has been putting people like John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court.
Michael Barone says that Obamacare will be a central issue for the upcoming SCOTUS nominee.
…One is the constitutionality of the health care bill’s mandate to purchase private health insurance. The federal government has never before commanded citizens to buy a commercial product. Could the government command you to buy breakfast cereal?
Some 14 state attorneys general are trying to raise the issue in court, and pending state laws outlawing mandates could raise the question as well. Those state laws are obviously invalid under the supremacy clause unless the federal law is unconstitutional. Is it?
…Such questions may not persuade an Obama nominee to rule that Obamacare is unconstitutional. But they can raise politically damaging issues in a high-visibility forum at a time when Democrats would like to move beyond health care and talk about jobs and financial regulation. Stevens apparently timed his retirement to secure the confirmation of a congenial successor — but some Democrats probably wish that he had quit a year ago when they had more Senate votes and fewer unpopular policies.
Jennifer Rubin comments on polling numbers for repealing Obamacare.
Three weeks after Congress passed its new national health care plan, support for repeal of the measure has risen four points to 58%. That includes 50% of U.S. voters who strongly favor repeal.The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters nationwide finds 38% still oppose repeal, including 32% who strongly oppose it.
It’s startling that fifty percent strongly favor its repeal. It is not simply that Obama hasn’t sold his signature health-care legislation; attitudes are hardening even before the tax hikes, premiums increases, and Medicare cuts go into effect. …
…It has, however, reinvigorated and revived the conservative movement. That’s no small accomplishment.
David Goldman says that small business indicators are not optimistic.
Meanwhile the NFIB’s business optimism index fell to 86.8 in March from 88 in February. Bloomberg quoted an NFIB economist as follows:
The measure of earnings expectations showed the biggest decline in March, falling 4 points to minus 43 percent. Thirty- four percent of respondents cited “poor sales” as the top business concern, the same as in February, and the net percent of owners projecting higher sales, adjusting for inflation, fell to minus 3 percent.
How do we square this with what appears to be a big improvement in employment according to the Household Survey for March? For March, the household survey has a seasonally-adjusted total employment number of 138,905 and an unadjusted unemployment number of 137, 983. Unemployed s.a. are 15.008 million vs. 15,678 million before seasonal adjustment. There is something squirrelly in seasonally-adjusting data in the midst of tectonic shifts in the structure of the economy.
In the WSJ, Burton Folsom, Jr. and Anita Folsom explain how the Great Depression ended.
…Instead, Congress reduced taxes. Income tax rates were cut across the board. FDR’s top marginal rate, 94% on all income over $200,000, was cut to 86.45%. The lowest rate was cut to 19% from 23%, and with a change in the amount of income exempt from taxation an estimated 12 million Americans were eliminated from the tax rolls entirely.
Corporate tax rates were trimmed and FDR’s “excess profits” tax was repealed, which meant that top marginal corporate tax rates effectively went to 38% from 90% after 1945. …
…By the late 1940s, a revived economy was generating more annual federal revenue than the U.S. had received during the war years, when tax rates were higher. Price controls from the war were also eliminated by the end of 1946. The U.S. began running budget surpluses. …
Ralph Kinney Bennett, in the American.com, writes an ode to the Jeep.
…Born of war and now in its 70th year, its brilliant design has propelled it into a new century with an undiminished reputation. It is an engineering landmark, the epitome of functional simplicity, and yet nobody is entirely sure who designed it or gave it its name.
What eventually became the Jeep was originally conceived in the 1930s as a light, rugged “reconnaissance car” to provide speedy movement of key personnel and equipment in the rear and on the battlefield. The U.S. Army vaguely envisioned something bigger than a motorcycle, smaller than a truck, and undaunted by the most difficult terrain. …
…The appeal of the basic Jeep is visceral, profound, beyond explanation. Not even a Volkswagen Beetle is as instantly recognizable. Older Jeeps continue to be recycled through new bodies, new engines, giant wheels and tires, hard tops, soft tops, no tops. They become dune buggies, beach buggies, ball buggies on golf driving ranges, and windshield-down stump jumping go-to-hell cars. They do everything but die. As to the military originals of the Second World War, I have often seen veterans simply break into tears in the presence of a restored one. …