Realism vs Democratic Idealism and the Strategic Importance of Bahrain

After having a look at that take some time to wonder whether or not it would be in the US's best interests to be backing some of the new democratic movements in the middle east.It is no doubt in Americas best interests to have a democracy in Iraq(which I have defended rather vigorously) which is a keystone state in the middle east and perhaps in Syria but my thinking is if we lose Bahrain to Iran(which is very likely if the Shiite majority overthrow the Sunni ruling class) than we will have lost a very important strategic ally in the middle east. Which brings me to my final question:

Is Realism or Democratic Idealism more useful in the current situation in the middle east or are we to decide between the two ideologies on a state by state basis? It seems to me that the latter part of the question seems to be the answer.

John Bolton on Obama's flawed Libya policy

As usual the excellent John Bolton tears into Obama's failed strategy on Libya. His NYpost article is worth quoting at length

Our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president has gotten things badly wrong. By demanding Moammar Khadafy's ouster while restricting US military force to the more limited objective of protecting innocent civilians, President Obama has set himself up for massive strategic failure.

Yet America is now committed. Khadafy won't care that he's being bombed for "humanitarian" rather than "regime change" reasons; it is absolutely certain that, once able, he'll retaliate against those doing his forces mortal harm. If he keeps power over any significant part of Libya, he'll likely return to international terrorism, as he has already threatened. He may also resume his quest for nuclear weapons -- and this time we'll have no hope of negotiating him out of it as we did in 2003-04.

Obama is hypersensitive to the Vietnam analogy -- arguing, for example, as he authorized a US "surge" in Afghanistan in 2009 that it is not another Vietnam.

Of course, Vietnam became a "quagmire" because of US unwillingness to persevere to reach our legitimate objectives. Obama entirely ignored the critical point that Gen. Creighton Abrams' strategy had placed us on the path to victory in Vietnam, and that it was a failure of American will, not battlefield defeat, that humbled us there.

And just so is Libya now increasingly a "quagmire" -- because Obama's decision to intervene was perilously late and limited, and later compounded by his mistake in drastically curtailing US strike missions. Two immediate steps are required to prevent the stalemate from becoming permanent.

First, we must reverse course immediately and declare regime change to be our military objective, followed by substantial airstrikes against Khadafy's military forces, whether or not they are imminently threatening civilians. Even now, US airpower should be intimidating enough to shatter the regime, and dramatically close the firepower disparity on the ground to permit an opposition victory.

Our NATO allies will welcome our return to active strike missions. So too will the Arab League, whose leaders must be appalled at that Obama and NATO are risking failure, thus risking an armed and dangerous Khadafy remaining in power in their back yard. (For those who care, Security Council Resolution 1973's authorization of force to protect Libyan civilians is so vague it can easily justify Khadafy's overthrow: What better way to protect those civilians?)

Second, because Libya's opposition leadership is still inchoate at best, we must identify anti-Khadafy figures who are pro-Western and find ways, overt or covert, to strengthen their hands. This will help both in opposing Khadafy today, and in any post-Khadafy government. Without confidence in the soundness of the opposition leaders, there is no justification for NATO supplying even light weapons, whose ultimate destination we can only guess. Failing to identify reliable leaders now will make any post-Khadafy regime, already problematic, potentially even more dangerous.

Thus far, however, Obama cant bring himself to act. Instead, he contends that Khadafy is being "squeezed" in other ways, most notably that his regime is running out of money -- an ironic concern for a president who acts as though no such constraints apply to him.

It is similarly troubling that Obama could say, as he did last week, "I think over the long term, Khadafy will go, and we will be successful." There is no better road to "quagmire" than to see Khadafy's departure as a "long term" eventuality, before which he can cause incalculable damage and destruction, both within Libya and internationally through returning to terrorism.

Obamas Quagmire Leadership and the Libya War

What caught my eye is when Bolton pointed out the difference between attacking Libya for humanitarian reasons and attacking libya with the intention of fostering genuine regime change. So far what we have done is basically bomb Libya for a few days and retreat giving the brunt of the responsibility to the Europeans who don;t appear to be able to do much.If there's anything this conflict demonstrates is how indispensable the US is in terms of maintaining international security. Declinist Pundits may hail the "Post American World" but as the history of declinism shows the notion that the United States is in decline is largely false and not rooted n hard evidence. to the extent that it is true it can be reversed(for example improvements in education).

By making the objective protection of Libyan civilians and not regime change and showing an unwillingness to do what is necessary Obama is essentially guaranteeing that Libya will retaliate by resorting to Terror(as it has in the past) not to mention the very real risk that Libya could restart their WMD programs as they feel threatened.

Furthermore I'd like to add that this war is in no way comparable to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.Legally and multilaterally speaking OIF was far more defensible compared to our current intervention in Libya.

The Stupidity and Utter Duplicity of Scott Ritter

Now unlike some bloggers I very much relish the idea of re-litigating the past with regards to controversial issues. I very much feel that although the issue of the invasion of Iraq has been beaten to death I feel as if some critics of the Iraq war should be exposed for their dubious assertions and questionable motives.The man I'd like to tackle today is none other than former Un Weapons inspector and hawk turned Anti-war activist Scott Ritter who served as an UNSCOM inspector from 1991-1998. Mr Ritter is no doubt a favorite of the anti-war left for his criticisms of Bush's Iraq policy. However like many critics whether they Michael Moore or George Galloway Ritter has been found to be make seriously questionable assertions.

Let's start with an Assertion that Ritter made about Iraq's compliance with the inspection process. Heres what he said in 1998 on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:

“I think the danger right now is that without effective inspections, without effective monitoring, Iraq can in a very short period of time measured in months, reconstitute chemical and biological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects of their developing of nuclear weapons program”

In addition Ritter argued in his 1999 Book about Iraq that Saddam Hussein was obstructing the inspection process while seeking to preserve its capability to produce WMD(later vindicated by the Iraq Survey Group report). Ritter went on to state that that containment in the absence of inspections would allow Saddam to reconstitute his programs.

However in the run up to the Iraq War Mr. Ritter seemed to be humming a different tune insofar going as far to say that Iraq had been 90-95% disarmed and that the remaining capacity that “doesn’t necessarily constitute a threat... It constitutes bits and pieces of a weapons program which in its totality doesn’t amount to much,”. Such a statement is ludicrous on it's face as anyone who looked at the long list of unaccounted for items you could see that Iraq had not accounted for some things such as

• 3.9 tons of VX nerve Agent

• 6526 aerial chemical bombs

• 550 mustard gas shells

• 8445 liters of anthrax

It is blatantly dishonest for Mr Ritter to say that such a list “doesn't amount to much” given Iraq's long record of non-compliance,lying, and hiding WMD from inspectors (such as the 1995 discovery of their bio weapons program which they had previously denied).Even with proper inspections the party being inspected needs to declare their facilities in order to be inspected. Any undeclared facility is safe from inspection(especially since the inspectors wouldn't know about it).This is exactly what we found post ISG when Iraq was maintaining dual se facilities and equipment in clear violation of the UNSCR's.

Mr Ritter's bogus claims don't however end with Iraq's WMD's but can be found when Scott talks about the Iraqi resistance which he so lovingly described as a “ genuine grassroots national liberation movement” and that “history will eventually depict as legitimate the efforts of the Iraqi resistance to destabilize and defeat the American occupation forces and their imposed Iraqi collaborationist government.”(never mind the brutality of the Baathist Fedayeen Saddam or their Bin Ladenist Al Qaeda allies).

Ritter also went on to state in Sante Fe that a U.S. attack on Iran was certainly going to occur and that then Ambassador John Bolton will deliver a speech about the United State's need to defend itself unilaterally claiming he knew this because he “talked to Bolton's speechwriter”. None of this however came true which certainly raises the question of whether or not Scott Ritter was lying which it seems he has a history of doing.

References

Online Newshour-Scott Ritter August 31 1998

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec98/ritter_8-31.html

Pitt, William R. War On Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know 2002, Context Books, New York

Ritter Scott. Endgame Solving the Iraq Problem Once and For All 1999.

^ "A Critic's Defeatist Rhetoric". Fox News. February 15, 2005

Ex Un Inspector:Iran;s Next Ritter warns that another US invasion in mideast is imminent http://unified-communications.tmcnet.com/news/2006/02/06/1346123.htm

Unresolved Disarmament Issues: Iraq’s Proscribed Weapons Programmes,” March 6, 2003

For anyone wanting to see Mr Ritter being trounced by Christopher Hitchens in a good debate look here

David Leonhardt and the Porkulus apologists

to borrow a quote from Barry O......

It really gets annoying to see how desperate some administration apologists are when it comes to casting the stimulus in the best light possible. Liberal columnist David Leonhardt seems to want to (in the words of Steve Spurriel) present himself as the admin's NY Times columnist in chief since Kruggie is now one of Obama's critics.

But while were on the topic of the Stimulus its best to revisit the various embarassments we have seen over the course of the program from disappointing results to wasted money to false PR claims made in desperation to hopelessly reassure an increasingly cynical public.

Once you've done that we should backtrack to some of the rather ridiculous claims used by Dave in his little NY times piece.

He cites job creation estimates from three research firms as gospel and then in my judgement misleadingly states that the CBO considers them to be conservative. First of all such estimates should be taken with a grain of salt given the rather imprecise nature of modeling which Arnold Kling elaborates on in this excellent post.

Russ Roberts has noted that the CBO has acknowledged that job creation estimates tend to be very imprecise ranging from 600K to 1600K(a pretty imprecise estimate). He also notes that the incoming data used by the CBO that was gathered since has barely improved our understanding of Porkulus's effects on the overall economy. Moreover as Veronique de Rugy of George Mason points out the CBO admitted that "it is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package"

Ignoring the cheap shot he takes and John Taylor n co he cites the work of Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff without acknowledging that they have raised alarm bells about our current debt levels which Steve points out here.

Finally lets not forget about the other issues regarding the stimulus such as poor design, the fact that we had better options fiscal and monetary and the fact that the stimulus has done very little in the context of our recovery.

Now thats not change we can believe in Barry O.

Brooklyn Bridge Sunset

A pic of one of the things that makes NYC the greatest city in the world.

Clearing my Spindle

As you've probably noticed Im not a natural blogger since I tend to lack the ability to organize my thoughts in a post rather I tend to spew my opinions all over the place in a rather messy manner

I have some reading to catch up on so Im just going to post what I need for later.

Strolling over to Robert Stacy McCain's always excellent blog I See that he has amassed a feast of a post written in great detail discussing the latest incident involving Amy Bishop.

Ive yet got some catching up to do on the recent news with Iran on which there has been some interesting points found in the The Greenroom,Faster Please, FPI, and The Hill and of one of my favorite writers and intellectual hero's(drumroll please) William Kristol

Howard Zinn Died recently and although Ive never read his most famous book a People's History being the meanie that I am . I am going to read some critical material which Roger Kimball has summarized in his post Howard Zinn, Peoples Pander.

It's also nice to look up The StrataSphere who also has a good post titled Obama's Ministry of misinformation regarding miranda rights and abdulmutallub

And last but not least Sweetness&Light which is truly one of the best blogs to read for political scandals and the like has an interesting update on Rahm Emnauels ties to Goldman Sachs

Obama's Tax Trap and the Stimulus Debacle

Its often interesting as to how many campaign pledges made by Obama are broken but one that caught my eye recently was his openness to backtrack on his pledge to not raise taxes on the middle class which i must admit despite being unfortunate is rather humorous considering obama was accusing anyone who claimed his econ agenda would require raising taxes on the middle class. Looks like the jokes on Barry this time......

Some Snippets

(my blogger acount is being really screwey so im gonnna try to copy n paste from another blog....

Here are some relevant snippets from a recent bloomberg piece

Obama ‘Agnostic’ on Deficit Cuts, Won’t Prejudge Tax Increases

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama said he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.

Obama, in a Feb. 9 Oval Office interview, said that a presidential commission on the budget needs to consider all options for reducing the deficit, including tax increases and cuts in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“The whole point of it is to make sure that all ideas are on the table,” the president said in the interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “So what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions.”

and

Obama repeatedly vowed during the 2008 presidential election campaign that he would not raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 and households earning less than $250,000 a year. When senior White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner suggested in August that the administration might be open to going back on that pledge, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs quickly reiterated the president’s promise.

In the interview, Obama said that putting preconditions on the agenda of a bipartisan advisory commission, which he said he would soon establish, would just undermine its purpose.

“What I can’t do is to set the thing up where a whole bunch of things are off the table,” Obama said. “Some would say we can’t look at entitlements. There are going to be some that say we can’t look at taxes, and pretty soon, you just can’t solve the problem.”

Note that he is now keeping that off the table which is a lot different than his previous vow to not raise taxes on the middle class by a single dime. Even with tax increases on the rich its important to note that the experts dont believe its possible to close the output gap by simply raising taxes on the rich which is widely favored as the piece notes

Americans’ favorite way of cutting the budget deficit is by raising taxes on the wealthy, according to the Bloomberg News poll conducted by Des Moines, Iowa-based Selzer & Co. Two-thirds of the 1,000 adults surveyed Dec. 3-7 backed that approach.

however this is impoosible to do considering you can only get so much money from the wealthy.....

Analysts say that middle-class taxes will need to be increased because the government can’t raise enough money from the wealthy alone to close the budget gap. “It’s just not possible to get the revenue you need only from this group,” saidJoel Slemrod, director of the Office of Tax Policy Research at the University of Michigan.

Going back on his campaign pledge would be fraught with risks for Obama. Former President George H.W. Bush paid a steep political price when he abandoned his 1988 campaign promise not to raise taxes, losing out in his bid for a second term toBill Clinton.

I agree with Jim Geraghty when he says this reversal came too fast

Now onto this whole stimulus affair.

We were (according to the CEA) promised that the unemployment rate wouldnt top 8 % with the stimulus despite it being close to 1% today. Now economic forecasting isn't an exact science so I think it's a bit unfair to jump all over the fact that the prediction was wildly inaccurate.

It's one thing to be inaccurate but its quite another to be completely dishonest about porkulus considering this was a terribly designed package whose purpose was not to set the stage for a fast or effective recovery.

In fact much the admins attempts to "transform" the economy via porkulus,health reform, etc are a horrible thing to do or even propose during a recession.

But Barry O being the windbag that he is decided to ride the wave of public angst to push for his so called stimulus package when more sensible proposals couldve been implemented such as increased defense spending,permanent cuts in the tax rate, and unrthdox monetary policy which even the biggest stimulus chearleader Paul Kurgman . Yes. Paul Krugman has said it is (from an economic perspective) our best option.

Now im no economist but I'd say whether you believe we are doing too much (in terms of spending and monetary policy) or too little there's really no case to be made for the type of policy that the current administration is following especially since the stimulus is not working.