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So how are things in the Middle East you ask? We have a number of posts from Contentions, The Spine, and The Weekly Standard. Charles Krauthammer’s column completes the section. First Michael Totten tells us about John Brennan’s ideas about the “moderates” in Hezbollah. The ax fell on the wrong one when it landed on Blair. Should have been Brennan.
… There are no moderates within Hezbollah, at least not any who stand a chance of changing Hezbollah’s behavior. Sure, the terrorist militia has sent a handful of its members to parliament, as Brennan says, and once in a while they sound more reasonable than its secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, but these people are employees. They don’t make policy.
If you want to catch a glimpse of Hezbollah’s org chart, just rent a car in Beirut and drive south. You’ll see billboards and posters all over the place in the areas Hezbollah controls. Some show the portraits of “martyrs” killed in battle with Israel. Others show the mug shots of Hezbollah’s leadership, most prominently Nasrallah and his deceased military commander, truck bomber, and airplane hijacker Imad Mugniyeh. Alongside the pictures of Hezbollah’s leaders, you’ll also see Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the two “supreme guides” of the Islamic Republic regime in Iran.
It’s obvious, if you know who and what you’re looking at, that Hezbollah is still subservient to Khamenei. …
Marty Peretz posts on missile defense and sanctions.
… It used to be that the president sent out Ms. Clinton to do the retreat on Iran, and she’s been doing it for about 17 months. Pathetically, actually, and with some embarrassment on her face. Now it’s Susan Rice’s turn. It’s only fair. For our U.N. ambassador actually believes that the processes of the organization are more important than the results. So it was given to Ms. Rice to explain and explain away why the sanctions agreed upon by the five permanent members of the Council plus Germany omitted and efforts “that would stop the flow of oil out of Iranian ports, or gasoline into the country.”
This last quote comes from an absolutely clarifying New York Times news article by David E. Sanger and Mark Landler. Basically it says that nothing will happen. This is, as the dispatch says, “the fourth round of sanctions against Iran.” But there is only one truly fresh provision.
“The newest element of the sanctions would require countries to inspect ships or aircraft headed into or out of Iran if there are suspicions that banned materials are aboard. But as in the case of North Korea, there is no authorization to board these ships forcibly at sea, a step officials from many countries could start a firefight, and perhaps touch off a larger confrontation.”
This is an ideal Ricean solution. You state a goal but provide no means at all to achieve it. …
Then Peretz turns his attention to the Brennan “Hezbollah Follies”. Remember, in the beginning Peretz was an Obama acolyte.
The dispatch is from Reuters. And the dateline is Wonderland.
Flush with success in turning Iran away from nukes and Syria away from Tehran, the administration seems to be setting its sights on turning Hezbollah away from Hezbollah.
If this is truly the goal of the administration, look for an another spectacular humiliation. No, worse: It will be a spectacular self-abasement. After all, there’s no evidence that the Lebanese terror fraternity is looking to become mild and modest. Actually, it’s mostly an idea in the head of John Brennan, the president’s chief aide on terrorism and homeland security. Pudding-headed notions go far in today’s Washington. So, hey, why shouldn’t he try? Obama himself is trying a less daring experiment, to turn Islam towards the West … or, rather, the West towards Islam. Or whatever.
But, if Brennan really wants to be helpful, why doesn’t he figure out how Faisal Shahzad got on an Emirates flight bound for Dubai even though his very name—not just a description—had been on a drastic alert list for hours.
What does this have to do with John Brennan, aside from the fact that the man happens to be the president’s counselor on such matters?
Plenty! …
A Weekly Standard Blog post reacts to Obama’s assertion of “more confidence” in Brennan.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Admiral Dennis Blair as Director of National Intelligence—nor of the institution of DNI, for that matter. A fine naval officer, Blair seemed out of his milieu as DNI, often unaware of basic facts that someone in his position should know. Part (of) the problem is inherent in the DNI concept—the conceit that some all-seeing super-bureaucrat could, simply by virtue of high rank, a big staff and an even bigger budget, fix all the problems with America’s intelligence community. But some of the problems resided with Blair himself. The Obama administration has come to the same conclusion and asked Blair to resign.
So far so good. But reading through the report by ABC’s Jake Tapper one comes across this hair-raising assertion: “… the White House made it clear that it had more confidence in others, such as counterterrorism and homeland security adviser John Brennan …”
More confidence in Brennan? Really? To understand how terrifying that assertion is, one does not even have to look much past this week. …
It remains for Charles Krauthammer to sum up the remains of Obama’s fecklessness.
… The real news is that already notorious photo: the president of Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America, and the prime minister of Turkey, for more than half a century the Muslim anchor of NATO, raising hands together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader in the world.
That picture — a defiant, triumphant take-that-Uncle-Sam — is a crushing verdict on the Obama foreign policy. It demonstrates how rising powers, traditional American allies, having watched this administration in action, have decided that there’s no cost in lining up with America’s enemies and no profit in lining up with a U.S. president given to apologies and appeasement.
They’ve watched President Obama’s humiliating attempts to appease Iran, as every rejected overture is met with abjectly renewed U.S. negotiating offers. American acquiescence reached such a point that the president was late, hesitant and flaccid in expressing even rhetorical support for democracy demonstrators who were being brutally suppressed and whose call for regime change offered the potential for the most significant U.S. strategic advance in the region in 30 years.
They’ve watched America acquiesce to Russia’s re-exerting sway over Eastern Europe, over Ukraine (pressured by Russia last month into extending for 25 years its lease of the Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol) and over Georgia (Russia’s de facto annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is no longer an issue under the Obama “reset” policy).
They’ve watched our appeasement of Syria, Iran’s agent in the Arab Levant — sending our ambassador back to Syria even as it tightens its grip on Lebanon, supplies Hezbollah with Scuds and intensifies its role as the pivot of the Iran-Hezbollah-Hamas alliance. The price for this ostentatious flouting of the United States and its interests? Ever more eager U.S. “engagement.”
They’ve observed the administration’s gratuitous slap at Britain over the Falklands, its contemptuous treatment of Israel, its undercutting of the Czech Republic and Poland, and its indifference to Lebanon and Georgia. And in Latin America, they see not just U.S. passivity as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez organizes his anti-American “Bolivarian” coalition while deepening military and commercial ties with Iran and Russia. They saw active U.S. support in Honduras for a pro-Chávez would-be dictator seeking unconstitutional powers in defiance of the democratic institutions of that country.
This is not just an America in decline. This is an America in retreat — accepting, ratifying and declaring its decline, and inviting rising powers to fill the vacuum.
Nor is this retreat by inadvertence. This is retreat by design and, indeed, on principle. It’s the perfect fulfillment of Obama’s adopted Third World narrative of American misdeeds, disrespect and domination from which he has come to redeem us and the world. Hence his foundational declaration at the U.N. General Assembly last September that “No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation” (guess who’s been the dominant nation for the last two decades?) and his dismissal of any “world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another.” (NATO? The West?)
Given Obama’s policies and principles, Turkey and Brazil are acting rationally. …
Turning to the homeland, we have more analysis of last week’s voting. Karl Rove first.
… Democrats are increasingly likely to distance themselves from Mr. Obama, either ignoring him or running against him. Which brings us to Pennsylvania’s 12th District. Democrats are right to crow about keeping that seat, left vacant by the death of Jack Murtha. Murtha’s longtime aide, Mark Critz, won with a message that he was pro-life, pro-gun and anti-ObamaCare, while benefiting from a sympathy vote for Murtha’s legacy.
In a district where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 137,000 voters, 62% to 29%, Mr. Critz also benefited from Gov. Ed Rendell’s clever decision to schedule the special election on the same day as party primaries.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says “This is the type of race [the] GOP has to win.” He is right, but just how many other Democrats will be running this year as pro-life, pro-gun, anti-ObamaCare, and against cap and trade?
The Democratic theory that voter anger would fade or burn out once health care was passed was wrong-headed and was undermined Tuesday. That anger remains and likely will persist through the November elections.
Republican intensity also continues: The Democratic turnout in Kentucky declined 8% from the last midterm, while GOP turnout rose 27%. …
Jennifer Rubin posts on the Dem “strateegery”.
The Washington Post tries to throw Obama and the Democrats a lifeline. It’s understandable that the liberal media — which witnessed a complete repudiation of Obama and his agenda at the polls — would scramble to help him out. After all, they invested so much credibility in helping to elect him. But the advice they offer is simply daft:
“Strategists at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue say it is now clear that, although Obama’s name will not be on the ballot, it will fall to him to build the case for the activist approach that he has pressed his party to take over the past 16 months. And just as important, they say, he must take the lead in making the argument against the Republicans.”
Are they joking? The president who in 17 months could not sell ObamaCare to the American people and whose agenda has shifted the country to the right is now expected to remind the entire populace, when his poll numbers are sliding downward, that Democrats believe in big government, lots of regulation, and higher taxes? The Republican reaction is likely to be: Oh, please do! …
Peter Wehner comments too.
… We have, in fact, seen a fascinating phenomenon take place: the more Barack Obama – supposedly the Democrat Party’s answer to the Republican Party’s “the great communicator,” Ronald Reagan – speaks out in behalf of a topic, the more unpopular it becomes. If Democrats are staking their future on Obama becoming their “salesman in chief,” the GOP has a very bright future ahead of itself.
George Will closes the section on politics.
The candidate who on Tuesday won the special election in a Pennsylvania congressional district is right-to-life and pro-gun. He accused his opponent of wanting heavier taxes. He said he would have voted against Barack Obama’s health-care plan and promised to vote against cap-and-trade legislation, which is a tax increase supposedly somehow related to turning down the planet’s thermostat. This candidate, Mark Critz, is a Democrat.
And that just about exhausts the good news for Democrats on a surreal Tuesday when their presumptive candidate for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut — the state’s attorney general, Richard Blumenthal — chose to hold a news conference at a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall to discuss why he had falsely said he fought in a foreign war. National Democrats may try to find a less damaged candidate for Connecticut, but first they may have to do that in Illinois.
Their candidate to hold the Senate seat Obama held, Alexi Giannoulias, has a problem: The failure of the bank owned by his family — it made loans to Tony Rezko, the convicted developer who helped Obama with a 2006 property transaction — may cost taxpayers many millions. Proving his credentials as a disciple of the president, Giannoulias blamed the bank’s failure on George W. Bush. …
Roger Simon comments on Rand Paul’s civil rights stinkbomb.
Recent primary winner and son ‘o Ron, Rand Paul has made a fool of himself, and shamed many of his supporters, criticizing the 1964 Civil Rights Act on the The Rachel Madow Show. One is tempted to question Paul Jr’s IQ, but he is a medical doctor and at some point he must have passed physical chemistry.
So what caused this breakdown? Well, on one level it’s a demonstration of an extraordinary lack of media sophistication, in itself dangerous in a political candidate, especially in our instant information times. But I think it is something more. This is a prime example of the danger of extreme ideological beliefs. No matter what they are, they blind us. …
Stephan Thernstrom has a perfect example of the foolish thinking of our country’s foundation elite.
… the nation’s seventh-largest philanthropic foundation might have spent its $75 million to attack the real problems that impede the development of many minority children (and many white ones as well). Improving our schools, the traditional avenue of social mobility for young Americans, deserves the highest priority.
The recently released results of the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress reading tests reveal that 52% of black 4th-graders and 51% of Hispanics lack even the most basic reading skills; in the 8th grade the figures are 43% and 39% respectively. Blacks and Latinos without a strong education are second-class citizens in a land of opportunity.
Some schools do far better than this, however. Kellogg could have offered to pick up the tab for the Washington D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program that the Obama administration has killed off, or contributed to excellent charter schools like MATCH in Boston. It could have supported the further expansion of charter school networks that have proven results—KIPP and Uncommon Schools, among them.
If Kellogg wants to do something constructive for disadvantaged children, it should back such innovative efforts to improve their cognitive skills. The foundation cannot see that point, alas, because it has bought into the simplistic notion that all disparities in educational achievement are attributable to continuing racism—and thus is financing antiracist programs devoted to publicizing “past wrongs and group suffering.” Nothing good is likely to come from this.
David Harsanyi thinks the rubes should leave the “tubes” alone. The rubes would be the government. The tubes would be the internet moniker applied by Ted Stevens of the Alaskan senatorial delegation who described the internet as “a series of tubes.”
As there is no real problem with the Internet, it’s not surprising that some of our top minds have been diligently working on a solution.
In a 2001 interview (one that’s only recently gone viral and caused a brouhaha), Cass Sunstein, now the nation’s regulatory czar, is overheard advocating for government to insist all websites offer opposing viewpoints — or, in other words, a Fairness Doctrine for the Web. This was necessary because, as hundreds of millions of Internet users can attest, ferreting out competing perspectives online is all but impossible. (A search for “Cass Sunstein” on Google, for instance, barely generated 303,000 results in 0.19 seconds.)
What if websites refused to acquiesce to this intrusion on free speech? “If we could get voluntary arrangements in that direction it would be great,” said Sunstein at the time, “and if we can’t get voluntary arrangements maybe Congress should hold hearings about mandates.” After all, Sunstein went on to say, “the word voluntary is a little complicated. And sometimes people don’t do what’s best for our society.” Mandates, he said, were the “ultimate weapon designed to encourage people to do better.”
Actually, the word “voluntary” isn’t complicated at all. And mandates do not “encourage” people to do better; mandates “force” people to do what those writing regulations happen to think is better. We’re intimately familiar with the distinction. …