9/11: A reminder that freedom isn't free

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime,
and the punishment of his guilt.

—John Philpott Curran

During the decade of the 1990s, our times often seemed peaceful on the surface. Yet beneath the surface were currents of danger. Terrorists were training and planning in distant camps. . . . America's response to terrorism was generally piecemeal and symbolic. The terrorists concluded this was a sign of weakness, and their plans became more ambitious, and their attacks more deadly. Most Americans still felt that terrorism was something distant, and something that would not strike on a large scale in America. That is the time my opponent wants to go back to. A time when danger was real and growing, but we didn't know it. . . . September 11, 2001 changed all that. We realized that the apparent security of the 1990s was an illusion. . . . Will we make decisions in the light of September 11, or continue to live in the mirage of safety that was actually a time of gathering threats?

—George W. Bush, October 18, 2004

History will not end until the Lord returns, and neither will the twist of the human heart toward evil. The idea that we can just ignore or deny this reality and go on about what we'd rather be doing, whether in domestic or in foreign policy, is the political equivalent of cheap grace; and it is no more capable of bringing what blessing our politics can muster than its theological parallel can bring salvation. It may be true, as Theodore Parker said, that the arc of the moral universe "bends toward justice," but if it is, we must remember that it's only true because God is the one bending it—taken all in all, the collective effort of humanity is to bend it the other way.

This world is fallen, and all of us are tainted by the evil that rots its core; and all too many have given in to that evil and placed their lives in its service. Most have not done so knowing it to be evil—there are very few at the level of Milton's Satan or Shakespeare's version of Richard III—but that doesn't make them any better. Indeed, the fact that people like Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden do vast evil believing they serve what is right and good only makes them more dangerous, because it makes them far more effective in corrupting others, and far less likely to repent. Evil is a cancer in the human soul, and like any cancer, it will not stop growing until either it or its host is destroyed—which means that those who serve it will not stop unless someone else stops them.

Which is why the 18th-century Irish politician John Philpott Curran was right. There are those in this world who are the servants of evil, those movements which are driven by it, and those nations which are ruled by such—some in the name of religion, some in allegiance to political or economic theory, some in devotion to nation or tribe—and in their service to that spiritual cancer, they operate themselves as cancers within society, the body politic, and the international order; they will not stop until they are stopped. As Edmund Burke did not say (but as remains true nevertheless), the only thing that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing; the logical corollary is that to prevent the triumph of evil, those who would oppose it must be vigilant to watch for its rise, and must stand and fight when it does.

Must that always mean war? Not necessarily; as Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., among others, have shown, there are times when nonviolent moral resistance is the most effective form of opposition (helped in Gandhi's case, I would argue, by the fact that the Raj was not evil). But the fact that that works in some societies doesn't mean that it works in all, because nonviolent resistance depends for its effect on the willingness of others to repent—and not everyone is willing. Some people are hard of heart and stiff of neck, unwilling to humble themselves, liable only to judgment; they will not stop unless they are forced to do so. When such people rule nations and are bent on tyranny and conquest, then sometimes, war becomes necessary. A tragic necessity, yes, but no less necessary for all that.

We have enemies who have decided in their hearts that they must destroy us, and they will not be shaken from that decision, because they have excluded anything that could shake them; they are unflinching in their resolve to building up the power and ability to do what they have committed themselves to do. This is hard for Americans to understand or accept, because—with the characteristic arrogance of our Western culture—we think that everyone, deep down, thinks and feels and understands the world as we do, and thus is "rational" on our terms, by our definition of the word. We fail to understand people and cultures that really don't value their own lives and their own individual wills and desires above all else. But there are those in this world who don't, who simply have different priorities than ours, and who consequently cannot be negotiated with or deterred or talked out of things as if they were (or really wanted to be) just like us—and who in fact have nothing but contempt for the very idea.

There are people, movements, nations, who want to destroy America and our culture (which they believe to be Christian culture, far though it is from being so), and who will not be dissuaded by any of our attempts at persuasion or appeasement. Indeed, go as far back as you want in history, you'll never find a case where appeasement of enemies has worked; rather, time after time, it only encourages them. If someone is determined to defeat you and has the ability to do so, it isn't possible for you to choose for things to be different, because their choice has removed that option; your only choice is either to let them do so, or to try to stop them.

But is it right to try to stop them? What of the morality of force? As individuals, when someone hates us, we are called to turn the other cheek and trust to the justice of God—but that's when we ourselves are the only ones at risk. When it comes to defending others from harm, the calculus is different; this is especially true of government, which bears the responsibility to defend all its citizens from evil, and has been given the power of the sword for that purpose. The decision to use force of any sort—whether it be the national military or the local police—must not be made lightly; it must be done only when there is clear certainty that the deployment of force is necessary in the cause of justice. But when it is truly necessary in order to defend the right, if that defense is properly our responsibility, then we cannot shrink back: we must stand and fight, or else allow evil to triumph.

Freedom and justice and true peace only come at a cost, in this lost and broken world of ours; they must forever be defended against those who do not value them, and would destroy them for their own purposes. This includes defending them against those who would use the fact that we value them against us—who would subvert our freedoms and use our willingness to accept a false peace, the mere absence of overt military conflict, to extort from us our own piecemeal surrender. If "peace" is achieved by craven cowering before the threats of the vicious, it is no real peace, merely a temporary and unstable counterfeit that does nothing but postpone the inevitable conflict; and if that false peace is gained through the sacrifice of freedom and justice, it is worth nothing at all. For any society willing to do so, the only epitaph has already been written by Benjamin Franklin:

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

A deeply troubling development on the world scene

is the accelerating pivot of Turkey from an ally of the West into the Islamist camp. It shouldn't have been surprising, I suppose, given that its secularist parties were so corrupt; the effort to secularize a Moslem country was probably doomed to failure anyway, but when their corruption and incompetence left them with no moral legitimacy or political capital, there was no one to stand up to or counterbalance the radicals. The consequences are becoming increasingly dire:

To follow Turkish discourse in recent years has been to follow a national decline into madness. Imagine 80 million or so people sitting at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. They don't speak an Indo-European language and perhaps hundreds of thousands of them have meaningful access to any outside media. What information most of them get is filtered through a secular press that makes Italian communists look right wing by comparison and an increasing number of state (i.e., Islamist) influenced outfits. Topics A and B (or B and A, it doesn't really matter) have been the malign influence on the world of Israel and the United States.

For example, while there was much hand-wringing in our own media about "Who lost Turkey?" when U.S. forces were denied entry to Iraq from the north in 2003, no such introspection was evident in Ankara and Istanbul. Instead, Turks were fed a steady diet of imagined atrocities perpetrated by U.S. forces in Iraq, often with the implication that they were acting as muscle for the Jews. The newspaper Yeni Safak, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's daily read, claimed that Americans were tossing so many Iraqi bodies into the Euphrates that local mullahs had issued a fatwa ordering residents not to eat the fish. The same paper repeatedly claimed that the U.S. used chemical weapons in Fallujah. And it reported that Israeli soldiers had been deployed alongside U.S. forces in Iraq and that U.S. forces were harvesting the innards of dead Iraqis for sale on the U.S. "organ market."

The secular Hurriyet newspaper, meanwhile, accused Israeli soldiers of assassinating Turkish security personnel in Mosul and said the U.S. was starting an occupation of (Muslim) Indonesia under the guise of humanitarian assistance. Then U.S. ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman actually felt the need to organize a conference call to explain to the Turkish media that secret U.S. nuclear testing did not cause the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. One of the craziest theories circulating in Ankara was that the U.S. was colonizing the Middle East because its scientists were aware of an impending asteroid strike on North America.

Given this, the fact that Turkey was behind the deliberate provocation that was the Gaza flotilla is an ominous sign (though the fact that the administration, in the person of Joe Biden, was willing to stand up to them on Israel's behalf is an encouraging one); a country that was for many years a key ally of the US in the region is now well on its way to becoming another Iran—and while the Turks lack the mullahs' oil money, they are in all other ways in a far better position to damage us and our allies. If their current moves toward Iran turn into a long-term alliance, that would be an extremely difficult radical Islamic power bloc to counter; if they end up as rivals with Iran, the resulting conflict could be even worse. It's hard to see a way this turns out well.

For lack of better options, if Turkey continues to swing in an Islamist direction, maybe the US and Iraqi governments need to get together and figure out a way to strike a deal with the Kurds—see if they would be willing to make concessions to the Iraqis in exchange for all-out assistance against the governments of Iran, Turkey and Syria. After all, as nervous as the government in Baghdad is about the Kurds, at this point one would think Iraq and the Kurds could find real common cause here.

This is depressing

I haven't been over to Viola Larson's blog, Naming His Grace, for a while—in large part because, for a lot of reasons, I've been very low on energy for dealing with the internecine warfare in the PC(USA)—and now I rather wish I hadn't. Nothing against Viola in the slightest, and in fact it's a good thing that I know about this . . . I just wish it wasn't there to know about.

In an attempt to get the Presbyterian General Assembly to not receive the paper Christians and Jews: People of God the Israel/Palestine Mission Network lied about the Jewish organizations in the United States suggesting that they sent a bomb to our Presbyterian headquarters and burnt down a church. They also lied about the Jewish people in their synagogues. The Israel/Palestine Mission Network lied.

Why won’t more Presbyterians speak up? Surely even those Presbyterians who believe that everything Israel is doing is wrong can’t believe that lying about Jewish organizations in the United States is the right thing to do? Why isn’t there an outcry from fellow Christians about this?

The IPMN insists that the rising anti-semitism, the caricatures of Jewish people, in all countries, is caused by the Jews themselves. That is an old story. Less than eighty years ago such lies led to the death of six million Jews.

Anti-Semitism is on the rise again, driven by this queer alliance between the Western Left and the anti-Western wing of Islam; it's grievous to me to see people trying to use the PC(USA) to further it.

Your Attorney General at work (updated)

I posted a comment on this on a friend's Facebook page and thought I'd note this here as well. It is honestly bewildering to me the way the Left refuses to recognize that the anti-Western wing of Islam, particularly its jihadists, is adamantly opposed to all that liberals profess to believe and hold dear. I don't want to jump to the negative conclusion and assume that they're all either moral cowards or secretly enamored of Islam's totalitarian impulses, so I keep looking for a more charitable interpretation . . . but so far, I have failed to find one.

Update: Jonathan Gurwitz of the San Antonio Express-News has an excellent column up about this, pointing out an important truth:

About the same time Holder was refusing to utter the threat that cannot be named in the Obama administration, security officials in Indonesia—the world's largest Muslim nation and third-largest democracy—foiled a plot to assassinate the president and top officials, massacre foreigners in a Mumbai-style attack and create a state governed by Shariah, or Islamic law.

That last goal provides a clue as to who was behind this violent conspiracy, though Attorney General Holder may not be able to recognize it. But it is important to do so because in spite of 9-11, Times Square and every event in between, Americans are not the primary victims of Islamic extremism. Muslims are.

Over the past decade, radical Islamists have carried out successful terrorist attacks in Amman, Baghdad, Casablanca, Istanbul, Jakarta, Karachi, Riyadh and Sharm el-Sheikh, to name a few Muslim targets. Muslim civilians and leaders, such as Benazir Bhutto, are their principal casualties. In the countries and forbidden zones where they have been able to establish Shariah rule, Muslim women are treated like chattel, Muslim gays are summarily executed and Muslim girls are doomed to illiteracy and honor killings.

America may be radical Islam's fount of all evil. But more often than not, citizens of Muslim nations are their first prey.

Holder and the president he serves do no favor to the overwhelming majority of moderate Muslims when they refuse to identify our common enemy. You can't delegitimize what you won't even acknowledge exists.

Credit to the White House

This was a good and wise and humane decision:

extending temporary amnesty to Haitians who were illegally inside the U.S. before this week's catastrophic earthquake. Some 30,000 Haitians had been awaiting deportation but will now be allowed to stay in the U.S. and work for another 18 months. . . .

We hope even the most restrictionist voices on the right and in the labor movement will understand the humanitarian imperative. The suffering and chaos since the earthquake should make it obvious that Haiti is no place to return people whose only crime was coming to America to escape the island's poverty and ill-governance.

For that matter, we don't mind if they stay here permanently. Haitian immigrants as a group are among America's most successful, which demonstrates that Haiti's woes owe more to corruption, disdain for property rights and lack of public safety than to any flaw in its people. Their remittances to Haiti also help to sustain the impoverished population. Haitians received some $1.65 billion from overseas in 2006, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

The President and his advisors have reason to be proud of themselves.

Diminishing returns on the Obama foreign policy

As a presidential candidate, Sen. Obama was firmly convinced (and convinced a lot of people) that the reason for America's unpopularity in some parts of the world was George W. Bush and his conservative policies. A vote for Obama, we were assured, would make the world like America again.

Roughly eleven months on from his inauguration, the bloom is well and truly off that rose, at least in the Arab/Muslim world.

He has not made the world anew, history did not bend to his will, the Indians and Pakistanis have been told that the matter of Kashmir is theirs to resolve, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the same intractable clash of two irreconcilable nationalisms, and the theocrats in Iran have not "unclenched their fist," nor have they abandoned their nuclear quest.

There is little Mr. Obama can do about this disenchantment. He can't journey to Turkey to tell its Islamist leaders and political class that a decade of anti-American scapegoating is all forgiven and was the product of American policies—he has already done that. He can't journey to Cairo to tell the fabled "Arab street" that the Iraq war was a wasted war of choice, and that America earned the malice that came its way from Arab lands—he has already done that as well. He can't tell Muslims that America is not at war with Islam—he, like his predecessor, has said that time and again. . . .

In the Palestinian territories, 15% have a favorable view of the U.S. while 82% have an unfavorable view. The Obama speech in Ankara didn't seem to help in Turkey, where the favorables are 14% and those unreconciled, 69%. In Egypt, a country that's reaped nearly 40 years of American aid, things stayed roughly the same: 27% have a favorable view of the U.S. while 70% do not. In Pakistan, a place of great consequence for American power, our standing has deteriorated: The unfavorables rose from 63% in 2008 to 68% this year.

There are various reasons for this. One, which Fouad Ajami notes, is that anti-Americanism in that part of the world is useful—perhaps, indeed, psychologically necessary—as an alibi for the political and economic failures of those nations and a pressure release for the tensions and frustrations created by their autocratic, self-interested governments; having someone to blame for all that is far too valuable to be let go in return for a few pretty speeches.

As well, Ajami explains, the President's confidence that he could make everything better by apologizing for America to everyone in sight betrayed a fundamental failure to understand Arab culture.

Steeped in an overarching idea of American guilt, Mr. Obama and his lieutenants offered nothing less than a doctrine, and a policy, of American penance. No one told Mr. Obama that the Islamic world, where American power is engaged and so dangerously exposed, it is considered bad form, nay a great moral lapse, to speak ill of one's own tribe when in the midst, and in the lands, of others.

The crowd may have applauded the cavalier way the new steward of American power referred to his predecessor, but in the privacy of their own language they doubtless wondered about his character and his fidelity. "My brother and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against the stranger," goes one of the Arab world's most honored maxims. The stranger who came into their midst and spoke badly of his own was destined to become an object of suspicion.

It also didn't help that in Iran, when the President was offered the choice between standing with the Iranian people protesting their oppression or standing with the anti-American religious tyrants who oppress them, he chose the tyrants. That, one suspects, will not be soon forgotten, and it's impossible to know what the long-term effects might be.

Some might be surprised that President Obama's approach to foreign policy is not yielding the promised results; but students of history shouldn't be. How many horror movies do you have to watch before you learn to expect that the pretty cheerleader going alone into the dark house on a stormy night is going to end up dead? I don't even watch horror movies, and I can see that one coming. This administration's foreign policy is just a remake of a movie we've seen before; it debuted roughly 33 years ago, it was called Carter, and as Bret Stephens pointed out a couple weeks ago, it didn't end well then, either.

An idealistic president takes office promising an era of American moral renewal at home and abroad. The effort includes a focus on diplomacy and peace-making, an aversion to the use of force, the selling out of old allies. The result is that within a couple of years the U.S. is more suspected, detested and enfeebled than ever.

No, we're not talking about Barack Obama. But since the current administration took office offering roughly the same prescriptions as Jimmy Carter did, it's worth recalling how that worked out.

Stephens explicates this through an examination of the 1979 battle over the Grand Mosque in Mecca, an incident remembered little (if at all) in this country, and its aftermath—an aftermath we're still dealing with today.

Among Muslims inclined to favor the U.S., the Carter administration's instincts for knee-jerk conciliation and panicky withdrawals only had the effect of alienating them from their ostensible protector. Coming as it did so soon after Khomeini's rise to power and the revolutionary fervors which it unleashed, the siege of Mecca carried the real risk of undermining pro-American regimes throughout the region. Yet American embassies were repeatedly instructed not to use their Marines to defend against intruders, as well as to pull their personnel from the country.

"The move didn't go unnoticed among Muslim radicals," notes Mr. Trofimov. "A chain of events unleashed by the takeover in Mecca had put America on the run from the lands of Islam. America's foes drew a conclusion that Osama bin Laden would often repeat: when hit hard, America flees, 'dragging its tail in failure, defeat, and ruin, caring for nothing.'" It is no accident, too, that the Soviet Union chose to invade Afghanistan the following month, as it observed a vacillating president who would not defend what previously were thought to be inviolable U.S. strategic interests.

Here's hoping that if and when America faces another such incident in the Muslim world, that the administration has the courage, will and wit to react in defense of American interests and allies, rather than to follow the Carter path of trying to be as inoffensive as possible. I am not, however, optimistic.

Reflections on the revolution in Berlin

I’m still feeling awful, but a distinctly better shade of awful than I’ve been the last two days; my sincere thanks for all the good wishes, and I can at least say that I'm heading in the right direction. I still haven’t been up from the horizontal much today, but I had to stop and take note of the anniversary of the most amazing thing I’ve seen in my lifetime so far. From the celebration around the inaugural this past January, I get the feeling that many in this country would put Barack Obama’s election in that slot, but for me, nothing yet tops the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. The Wall didn’t all physically come down on that day twenty years ago, of course, but psychologically, that was the day East Germans forced their way through. It was an amazing victory for the forces of democracy over the forces of tyranny, and a vindication of Ronald Reagan’s belief that the Eastern Bloc could in fact be beaten, and was not simply a fact of life which must be accommodated. It may have been the greatest triumph for human rights that the world has seen in the last half century; I can’t say for sure, but I'm not thinking of anything to top it at the moment.

It was of course a victory won by many; in the West, as John O’Sullivan pointed out, President Reagan was in fact the last of the three great leaders in the fight, joining Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II. I think, though, that the psychological moment was President Reagan’s, coming in June of 1987 when he stood at the Brandenburg Gate and threw down a challenge to the leader of the Soviet world: “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Later on in his speech, he declared, “Across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.” For his words, he was mocked by many, and ignored by many more; but in the end, the truth of his words was proved when the wall was torn down, not by Mr. Gorbachev, but by the combined weight of the East German people.

The one thing that amazes me is that our president is not going to Berlin to honor the fall of the Wall and those who brought it down. German Chancellor Angela Merkel invited him, and he said no. He didn’t hesitate to go to Berlin to celebrate himself when he was merely running for president; why would he not go when he is the president to celebrate this great victory for the cause of freedom and human rights? I'm not the only one wondering, either; here, for example, is Rich Lowry:

Wouldn’t Obama at least want to take the occasion to celebrate freedom and human rights—those most cherished liberal values? Not necessarily. He has mostly jettisoned them as foreign-policy goals in favor of a misbegotten realism that soft-pedals the crimes of nasty regimes around the world. During the Cold War, we undermined our enemies by shining a bright light on their repression. In Berlin, JFK called out the Communists on their “offense against humanity.” Obama would utter such a phrase only with the greatest trepidation, lest it undermine a future opportunity for dialogue.

Pres. Ronald Reagan realized we could meet with the Soviets without conceding the legitimacy of their system. He always spoke up for the dissidents—even when it irked his negotiating partner, Mikhail Gorbachev. Whatever the hardheaded imperatives of geopolitics, we’d remain a beacon of liberty in the world.

Obama has relegated this aspirational aspect of American power to the back seat. For him, we are less an exceptional power than one among many, seeking deals with our peers in Beijing and Moscow. Why would Obama want to celebrate the refuseniks of the Eastern Bloc, when he won’t even meet with the Dalai Lama in advance of his trip to China?

For what it’s worth, I think his refusal to meet with the Dalai Lama was far more significant, and far more worrisome, since that concerned an ongoing struggle against tyranny in this world; but this still bothers me, not least because it dishonors the many, many Americans whose service in the cause of freedom contributed to the fall of the Iron Curtain twenty years ago. As president, honestly, you just can’t do that to your people. This also concerns me because it suggests a significant historical tone-deafness on the part of President Obama—and ever since Santayana, we all know what happens to those who don't learn the lessons of history.

I do appreciate the fact, however, that Sarah Palin seems to understand the magnitude of this anniversary:

Twenty years ago, the ultimate symbol of the division between freedom and tyranny was torn down. The Berlin Wall was constructed for one purpose: to prevent the escape of East Germans to the freedom of the West. The Wall’s cold, gray façade was a stark reminder of the economic and political way of life across the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.

Ronald Reagan never stopped regarding the Berlin Wall as an affront to human freedom. When so many other American leaders and opinion makers had come to accept its presence as inevitable and permanent, Reagan still hammered away at the Wall’s very premise in human tyranny, until finally the Wall itself was hammered down. Its downfall wasn’t the work of Reagan alone. Our president’s actions were joined with the brave acts of many individuals who stood firm and united in facing the Soviet Union. The Berlin Wall came down because millions of people behind the Iron Curtain refused to accept the fate of enslavement and their supporters in the West refused to accept that the “captive nations” would remain captive forever.

Though that long, tragic episode in human history had come to a close finally with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it wasn’t the “end of history” or the end of conflict as some had hoped. New conflicts confront us today throughout the world which call for courage and resolve and dedication to freedom. The new democracies and market economies that have emerged in Central and Eastern Europe still require our friendship and alliances as they continue to seek security, prosperity, and self-determination. But as we reflect on present and future challenges, let’s take time to celebrate the anniversary of this awesome victory for freedom. The downfall of that cold, gray concrete Wall should be a lesson to us in hope. Nothing is inevitable. Tyranny is no match for the hope and resolve of those who work and fight for freedom.

—Sarah Palin

Remind me again why it was that he was supposed to be qualified to be president and she was woefully unqualified even to be VP?

Indecision is the worst decision

and as this video highlights, that's where the White House has left us in Afghanistan, with real and deleterious consequences:

For my part, I think pulling out of Afghanistan, abandoning our allies to the Taliban, would be a mistake; but better that than leaving our troops twisting in the wind. Better just to yank the tooth and get it over with than to let it rot in place like this. Macbeth's comment is not exactly to the point, but seems apposite to me nevertheless:

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly.

—Macbeth, in William Shakespeare, Macbeth, I.VII.1-2

HT: Tim Lindell

The imperial history of SW Asia

courtesy of Maps of War:

If you wanted to be persnickety, you could certainly critique their presentation, but it succeeds in its purpose—it gives you a feel for just how many empires have rolled through what is usually (wrongly) called the Middle East (the map's focus is more on the Near East, and includes the whole of the broader region of Southwest Asia), and how it's often served as a crossroads for imperial expansion.

The Nobel Prize for laughter

I have to say, the thing that has surprised me the most about Barack Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize has been all the laughter. Sure, I expected some people to laugh, but I wouldn’t have thought to see anyone literally doubled over and out of breath from laughter, and I have seen that. I would have expected more support from the decision around the world, instead of the incredulity that seems to be the general response from major global political figures. After all, someone argued that those who expected Copenhagen to hurt the President’s international prestige should similarly expect the news from Oslo to boost it, and that made a certain amount of sense; but it doesn’t seem to be playing out that way. And I thought that the Left would be pleased by the award, but so far, they haven’t been supporting it either.

Indeed, the late-night jokesters appear to have decided that this is something about President Obama that they can safely mock; and mock they have, with gusto. Here’s Jay Leno, for instance:

Congratulations to Barack Obama—he has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Apparently, the Nobel committee wanted to recognize the president’s fine work in bringing peace to a black professor and a white cop through the strategic use of beer.

President Obama said he was humbled to win the prize. Not as humble as he was when Rio got the Olympics. But still humble.

That’s pretty amazing, winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Ironically, his biggest accomplishment as president so far . . . winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

President Obama won another Nobel Prize today. This time in medicine for pretending to give up smoking.

The Nobel Peace Prize also comes with a cash award of $1.4 million. Apparently, this is President Obama's plan to finance healthcare reform.

And Conan O’Brien:

Today, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The committee said they gave it to Obama partly for his idealism and commitment to global cooperation, but mostly for calling Kanye West a jackass.

It’s a great honor for America that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. Unfortunately, our economy is so bad, Obama’s already been forced to trade the medal in at “Cash 4 Gold.”

The Nobel Committee is saying the reason they gave Obama the Peace Prize is for reducing tension around the world. So, the runners-up for this year’s Nobel Prize were “red wine” and ”the Brookstone 3-Speed Massaging Recliner.”

Jimmy Fallon took the opportunity to skewer a rival:

Congratulations to President Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize this morning. That’s quite an accomplishment. I’m sure he’ll pick it up as soon as he’s finished fighting two wars.

Along with the Nobel Peace Prize President Obama also gets $1.4 million. Usually to get a check that big you need to blackmail David Letterman.

Jimmy Kimmel added a shot at the VP:

A day after declaring war on the moon, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Vice President Biden was awarded the Nobel Hair-Piece Prize.

And Craig Ferguson got off I think the best line at the expense of America’s best-loved losers:

The Chicago Cubs are filing for bankruptcy. They’re from Chicago; they’ve spent millions of dollars they don’t have . . . I smell Nobel Peace Prize.

I’m not sure if this means the President’s media honeymoon is wearing off, or just that the funnymen are that happy to have a “safe” way to get laughs out of him.

Barack Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

The story from Reuters; Phil at The Thinklings has some good comments, as does the Times of London. For my part, all I have to say is that Morgan Tsvangirai was robbed.

Thoughts on the President's Olympian effort

So, the President and his wife flew to Copenhagen (spending, I might note, a fair bit of money, and producing quite a lot of greenhouse gases) to lobby for Chicago for the 2016 Olympic Games; the IOC was so impressed, they awarded the 2016 Games to Rio (which, I think, was absolutely the right move, for all sorts of reasons). There has been much gnashing of teeth in some quarters, and a fair bit of schadenfreude in others; I can't remember ever seeing this much commentary on an Olympic decision, which of course is all due to the participation of the Celebrity-in-Chief.

The question is, does this actually hurt him? After some reflection, count me in with those who think it does. Granted, the matter was relatively trivial in the geopolitical scheme of things, but the fact remains: President Obama injected himself into the competition, trying to use his influence to bring the Olympics to Chicago, and that influence was rejected. Decisively. That’s why the Times of London opines, "Obama’s Olympic failure will only add to doubts about his presidency."

There has been a growing narrative taking hold about Barack Obama’s presidency in recent weeks: that he is loved by many, but feared by none; that he is full of lofty vision, but is actually achieving nothing with his grandiloquence.

Chicago’s dismal showing yesterday, after Mr Obama’s personal, impassioned last-minute pitch, is a stunning humiliation for this President. It cannot be emphasised enough how this will feed the perception that on the world stage he looks good—but carries no heft.

If they actually meant "grandiloquence"—which means "pompous or bombastic speech or expression"—rather than "eloquence," that’s a remarkable slap. In any case, the perception to which the Times refers is clearly not just its own creation, judging by French President Nicolas Sarkozy's recent comments at the UN; and its conclusions echo Fred Barnes’ observations in the Weekly Standard:

When an American president voluntarily takes up a fight and loses badly, it’s a big deal. Obama could have stayed out. Having the summer Olympics in Chicago doesn’t involve the national interest. But he thought the matter important enough to fly to Denmark and make the pitch for his hometown in person. He put his prestige on the line, only to be slapped down. He can’t blame George W. Bush for this one, though his minions may try.

We know the world loves Obama. What the action by the International Olympic Committee demonstrates is that being loved isn’t the same as being influential or taken seriously or respected or feared—the traits of many of Obama’s predecessors in the presidency. If he can’t deliver on a vote of the IOC, does he really have the clout to pressure the mullahs in Iran into giving up their nuclear ambitions? Maybe not.

Along with this, Barnes asks a pointed question:

Where was the charisma, the skill in persuading people to see things Obama’s way? The media has built Obama up as a communicator who’s the equal of Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt. True, he’s delivered several fine speeches, but all of them before he became president. Now he’s either lost his touch or never was the orator the press said he was.

A persuasive president is one who can move people and poll numbers his way. Obama hasn’t managed this as president. Last month, he spoke in prime time to Congress on health care, appeared on five Sunday interview shows, and showed up on the David Letterman show. The result: zilch. Support for his health care policy rose ever so slightly, then settled back to where it had been.

The biggest question I have is, why did he put his prestige on the line like that? Barnes suggests that the White House "thought the IOC was poised to ratify the president’s bid for a Chicago Olympics"; I suppose that’s possible, but if so, it argues for a remarkable degree of poor judgment on their part (which is exactly Barnes’ conclusion). If that’s the case, it also suggests a fair bit of cynicism, that the President and his staff thought he could swoop in and cherry-pick the credit for a Chicago win.

The other suggestion I’ve seen—which, to be honest, seems more likely to me—is that he was doing it as payback for support received from the Chicago machine. Chicago has done a lot to push him to the top of the political heap, after all, and turnabout is fair play; from their point of view, they helped him get there, and now it’s his job to help them out. Didn’t work, but that’s the way Chicago does business.

The amazing thing to me is, judging by the reaction shots, Chicagoans really thought the President had put it in the bag for them; which makes me wonder, could this be the first real crack in the Obama mystique here in the States? Sure, the White House is saying "it’s only the Olympics," but people can be funny about sports sometimes; and after all, if the President doesn't get a health care bill passed this year, there’s always next year, but Chicago only got one strike, and they’re out. It will be interesting to see if people really buy the "no big deal" line from the White House on this one, or if they end up holding it against him.

Sarah Palin on foreign policy

I've been wanting to comment on Gov. Palin’s speech in Hong Kong, but I’ve wanted to wait until I could see a full text of the speech. So far, I haven’t seen the whole speech anywhere, but she has posted a section on her Facebook page. I’ll comment on it later, but first, here’s what she’s given us of the speech:

So far, I’ve given you the view from Main Street, USA. But now I’d like to share with you how a Common Sense Conservative sees the world at large.

Later this year, we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall—an event that changed not just Europe but the entire world. In a matter of months, millions of people in formerly captive nations were freed to pursue their individual and national ambitions.

The competition that defined the post World War II era was suddenly over. What was once called “the free world” had so much to celebrate—the peaceful end to a great power rivalry and the liberation of so many from tyranny’s grip.

Some, you could say, took the celebration too far. Many spoke of a “peace dividend,” of the need to focus on domestic issues and spend less time, attention and money on endeavors overseas. Many saw a peaceful future, where globalization would break down borders and lead to greater global prosperity. Some argued that state sovereignty would fade—like that was a good thing?—that new non-governmental actors and old international institutions would become dominant in the new world order.

As we all know, that did not happen. Unfortunately, there was no shortage of warning signs that the end of the Cold War did not mean the end of history or the end of conflict. In Europe, the breakup of Yugoslavia resulted in brutal wars in the Balkans. In the Middle East, a war was waged to reverse Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. North Korea’s nuclear program nearly led to military conflict. In Africa, U.S. embassies were bombed by a group called al Qaeda.

Two weeks ago, America commemorated the 8th anniversary of the savagery of September 11, 2001. The vicious terrorist attacks of that day made clear that what happened in lands far distant from American shores directly affect our security. We came to learn, if we did not know before, that there were violent fanatics who sought not just to kill innocents, but to end our way of life. Their attacks have not been limited to the United States.

They attacked targets in Europe, North Africa and throughout the Middle East. Here in Asia, they killed more than 200 in a single attack in Bali. They bombed the Marriott Hotel and the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. Last year in Mumbai, more than 170 were killed in coordinated attacks in the heart of India’s financial capital. In this struggle with radical Islamic extremists, no part of the world is safe from those who bomb, maim and kill in the service of their twisted vision.

This war—and that is what it is, a war—is not, as some have said, a clash of civilizations. We are not at war with Islam. This is a war within Islam, where a small minority of violent killers seeks to impose their view on the vast majority of Muslims who want the same things all of us want: economic opportunity, education, and the chance to build a better life for themselves and their families. The reality is that al Qaeda and its affiliates have killed scores of innocent Muslim men, women and children.

The reality is that Muslims from Algeria, Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan and many other countries are fighting al Qaeda and their allies today. But this will be a long war, and it will require far more than just military power to prevail. Just as we did in the Cold War, we will need to use all the tools at our disposal—hard and soft power. Economic development, public diplomacy, educational exchanges, and foreign assistance will be just as important as the instruments of military power.

During the election campaign in the U.S. last year, you might have noticed we had some differences over Iraq. John McCain and I believed in the strength of the surge strategy—because of its success, Iraq is no longer the central front in the war on terrorism. Afghanistan is. Afghanistan is where the 9/11 attacks were planned and if we are not successful in Afghanistan, al Qaeda will once again find safe haven there. As a candidate and in office, President Obama called Afghanistan the “necessary war” and pledged to provide the resources needed to prevail. However, prominent voices in the Democratic Party are opposing the additional U.S. ground forces that are clearly needed.

Speaker of the House Pelosi, Defense Subcommittee Chairman Murtha, the Senate Armed Services Committee Chair, and many others, recently expressed doubts about sending additional forces! President Obama will face a decision soon when the U.S. Commander in Afghanistan requests additional forces to implement his new counterinsurgency strategy.

We can win in Afghanistan by helping the Afghans build a stable representative state able to defend itself. And we must do what it takes to prevail. The stakes are very high. Last year, in the midst of the U.S. debate over what do to in Iraq, an important voice was heard—from Asia’s Wise Man, former Singaporean Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, who wrote in the Washington Post about the cost of retreat in Iraq. In that article, he prophetically addressed the stakes in Afghanistan. He wrote:

The Taliban is again gathering strength, and a Taliban victory in Afghanistan or Pakistan would reverberate throughout the Muslim world. It would influence the grand debate among Muslims on the future of Islam. A severely retrograde form of Islam would be seen to have defeated modernity twice: first the Soviet Union, then the United States. There would be profound consequences, especially in the campaign against terrorism.

That statesman’s words remain every bit as true today. And Minister Lee knows, and I agree, that our success in Afghanistan will have consequences all over the world, including Asia. Our allies and our adversaries are watching to see if we have the staying power to protect our interests in Afghanistan. That is why I recently joined a group of Americans in urging President Obama to devote the resources necessary in Afghanistan and pledged to support him if he made the right decision.

That is why, even during this time of financial distress we need to maintain a strong defense. All government spending should undergo serious scrutiny. No programs or agencies should be automatically immune from cuts.

We need to go back to fiscal discipline and unfortunately that has not been the view of the current Administration. They’re spending everywhere and with disregard for deficits and debts and our future economic competitiveness. Though we are engaged in two wars and face a diverse array of threats, it is the defense budget that has seen significant program cuts and has actually been reduced from current levels!

First, the Defense Department received only ½ of 1 % of the nearly trillion dollar Stimulus Package funding—even though many military projects fit the definition of “shovel-ready.” In this Administration’s first defense budget request for 2010, important programs were reduced or cancelled. As the threat of ballistic missiles from countries like North Korea and Iran grow, missile defense was slashed.

Despite the need to move men and material by air into theaters like Afghanistan, the Obama Administration sought to end production of our C-17s, the work horse of our ability to project long range power. Despite the Air Force saying it would increase future risk, the Obama Administration successfully sought to end F-22 production—at a time when both Russia and China are acquiring large numbers of next generation fighter aircraft. It strikes me as odd that Defense Secretary Gates is the only member of the Cabinet to be tasked with tightening his belt.

Now in the region I want to emphasize today: The reason I speak about defense is because our strong defense posture in Asia has helped keep the region safe and allowed it to prosper. Our Asian allies get nervous if they think we are weakening our security commitments. I worry about defense cuts not because I expect war but because I so badly want peace. And the region has enjoyed peace for so long because of our security commitment to our longstanding allies and partners.

Asia has been one of the world’s great success stories. It is a region where America needs to assist with right mix of hard and soft power. While I have so much hope for a bright future in Asia, in a region this dynamic, we must always be prepared for other contingencies. We must work at this—work with our allies to ensure the region’s continued peace and prosperity.

I know that you all—like all of Asia and indeed the whole world—has a keen interest in the emergence of “China as a great power.” Over the past few decades China’s economic growth has been remarkable. So has the economic growth and political liberalization of all of our key allies in Asia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Asia’s economic growth and political development, together with our forward military presence in the region and strong alliances, have allowed the region to prosper in peace for a long time. We hope that Asia will continue to be an engine of world economic growth, will continue to democratize and will remain at peace.

Our future is now deeply linked to Asia’s success. Our children’s future. We must continue to strengthen our key alliance with Japan, a country going through its own democratic change. Together the U.S. and Japan built the security umbrella under which so many Asians prospered. While there is so much attention to China these days, we cannot forget the importance of Japan in helping to make this the “Pacific Century.”

The recent elections in Japan demonstrated that voters wanted reform and an end to debt and stagnation. We have a substantial stake in Japan’s success—our alliance with must continue to be the linchpin of regional security.

With its open political system and vibrant democracy, South Korea wants to play a larger role on the international stage as well. Of course it wants us to work together toward a future where the peninsula is irreversibly denuclearized, and unified. But it also wants to play a global role. We need to work together with Japan, South Korea and our steadfast ally to the south, Australia, to make sure Asia remains peaceful and prosperous.

Australia rightly reminds us to keep our eye on Southeast Asia, where Indonesia has proved that Islam and democracy can co-exist. Indonesia has fought extremism inside its own border and is consolidating a multi-ethnic democracy that is home to hundreds of millions of Muslims. Those who say Islam and democracy are incompatible insult our friends in Indonesia.

Our great democratic friend India is also “looking East”, seeking a greater role in East Asia as well. Together with our allies we must help integrate India into Asia. If we do so we will have yet another strong democracy driving Asia’s economy and working on shared problems such as proliferation and extremism. And we must continue working with the region’s most dynamic economy, China. We all hope that China’s stated policy of a “Peaceful Rise” will be its future course.

You know better than most the enormous change that has taken place in China over the last thirty years. Hundreds of millions of Chinese have been pulled out of poverty as China has undertaken economic reforms that have resulted in unprecedented growth. Even today, China’s economy is projected to grow by some 8%. It is helping to edge the world out of recession.

China has amassed huge financial reserves. Chinese diplomats are engaged on every continent and, through its vote on the United Nations Security Council, China has become critical in gaining UN support on multilateral issues from Darfur to Iran to North Korea.

Just four years ago, then-Deputy Secretary of State Bob Zoellick urged China to become a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. He observed the many benefits to China of a “benign international environment.”

The peaceful regional environment that China has enjoyed was created through the hard work of Americans, Japanese, South Koreans and Australians. Secretary Zoellick urged China to step up and play its role too. We are working with China to de-nuclearize North Korea. But to be a responsible member of the international community China should exert greater pressure on North Korea to denuclearize and undergo the fundamental reforms it needs. Zoellick urged China to play a greater role in stabilizing the international energy market by ceasing its support of dangerous regimes.

China could play a role in stabilizing its ally Pakistan, and working for peace in Afghanistan. There are many areas where the U.S. and China can work together. And, we would welcome a China that wanted to assume a more responsible and active role in international politics.

But Secretary Zoellick also noted that many of China’s actions create risk and uncertainty. These uncertainties led nations to “hedge” their relations with China because, in Zoellick’s words: “Many countries HOPE China will pursue a ‘Peaceful Rise’ but NONE will bet their future on it.”

See: this is the heart of the issue with China: we engage with the hope Beijing becomes a responsible stakeholder, but we must takes steps in the event it does not. See? We all hope to see a China that is stable, peaceful, prosperous and free. But we must also work with our allies in the region and the world in the event China goes in a direction that causes regional instability.

Asia is at its best when it is not dominated by a single power. In seeking Asia’s continued peace and prosperity, we should seek, as we did in Europe, an Asia “whole and free” – free from domination by any one power, prospering in open and free markets, and settling political differences at ballot boxes and negotiating tables.

We can, must and should work with a “rising China” to address issues of mutual concern. But we also need to work with our allies in addressing the uncertainties created by China’s rise. We simply CANNOT turn a blind eye to Chinese policies and actions that can undermine international peace and security.

China has some 1000 missiles aimed at Taiwan and no serious observer believes Taiwan poses a military threat to Beijing. Those same Chinese forces make our friends in Japan and Australia nervous. China provides support for some of the world’s most questionable regimes from Sudan to Burma to Zimbabwe. China’s military buildup raises concerns from Delhi to Tokyo because it has taken place in the absence of any discernable external threat.

China, along with Russia, has repeatedly undermined efforts to impose tougher sanctions on Iran for its defiance of the international community in pursuing its nuclear program. The Chinese food and product safety record has raised alarms from East Asia and Europe to the United States. And, domestic incidents of unrest—from the protests of Uighurs and Tibetans, to Chinese workers throughout the country rightfully make us nervous.

It is very much in our interest and the interest of regional stability that China work out its own contradictions – between a dynamic and entrepreneurial private sector on the one hand and a one party state unwilling or unable to adjust to its own society’s growing needs and desires and demands, including a human being’s innate desire for freedom.

I do not cite these issues out of any hostility toward China. Quite the contrary, I and all Americans of good faith hope for the Chinese people’s success. We welcome the rise that can be so good for all mankind. We simply urge China to rise responsibly. I simply believe we cannot ignore areas of disagreement as we seek to move forward on areas of agreement. Believe me, China does not hesitate to tell us when it thinks we are in the wrong.

I mentioned China’s internal contradictions. They should concern us all. We hear many Chinese voices throughout that great country calling out for more freedom, and for greater justice. Twenty years ago, many believed that as China liberalized its economy, greater political freedom would naturally follow. Unfortunately that has not come to pass.

Ummm, in fact, it seems China has taken great pains to learn what it sees as “the lesson” of the fall on the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union: any easing of political constraints can inevitably spin out of control. But, in many ways, it is the essence of China’s political system that leads to concerns about its rise.

Think about it. How many books and articles have been written about the dangers of India’s rise? Almost as large as China—and soon to be more populous—virtually no one worries about the security implications of India becoming a great power—just as a century ago the then-preeminent power, Great Britain, worried little about the rise of America to great power status. My point is that the more politically open and just China is, the more Chinese citizens of every ethnicity will settle disputes in courts rather than on the streets. The more open it is, the less we will be concerned about its military build-up and intentions. The more transparent China is, the more likely it is they we will find a true and lasting friendship based on shared values as well as interests.

I am not talking about some U.S.-led “democracy crusade.” We cannot impose our values on other counties. Nor should we seek to. But the ideas of freedom, liberty and respect for human rights are not U.S. ideas, they are much more than that. They are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many other international covenants and treaties. They apply to citizens in Shanghai as much as they do to citizens in Johannesburg or Jakarta. And demands for liberty in China are Chinese, not American, demands. Just last year, many brave Chinese signed Charter 08, a Chinese document modeled on the great Czech statesman Vlacav Havel’s Charter 77. Charter 08 would not be unfamiliar to our Founding Fathers and was endorsed by Havel himself. No, we need not convince the Chinese people that they have inalienable rights. They are calling for those rights themselves. But we do have to worry about a China where the government suppresses the liberties its people hold dear.

Nothing of what I am saying should be seen as meaning conflict with China is inevitable. Quite the contrary. As I said, we welcome China’s responsible rise. America and China stood together against fascism during World War II, before ravages took over in China—we were ready to stand together with China to shape international politics after World War II. Much has been accomplished since President Nixon’s fateful visit. And again, we stand ready to work with what we hope will be a more open and responsible China on the challenges facing the 21st century.

All of you here know how deeply integrated the economies of the United States’ and China’s are. We rely on each other, sometimes unfortunately in unhealthy ways. America spends too much that we don’t have, and then we go to China as a lender of first resort. Our fiscal policy, lately, seems to be “tax, spend, borrow, tax some more, repeat” and then complain about how much debt China holds. America needs to gets its own fiscal house in order. That’s a Common Sense Conservative perspective. We can hardly complain that China holds so much of our debt when it’s overspending that created the debt.

But here’s the reality. If in fact the United States does the “right” thing—if we spend less and save more—then China will also have to rebalance its economy. We need to export more to China—and we’d like China to consume more of our goods—just as we need to save and invest more. This vital process—so crucial to both countries—is impeded by problems of market access.

We must talk about these issues with more candor. If China adopts policies that keep our highest value products out of their markets, by manipulating technical standards or licensing requirements, our economic relationship suffers.

Our economic interdependence drives our relationship with China. I see a future of more trade with China and more American high-tech goods in China. But in order for that to happen, we need China to improve its rule of law and protect our intellectual property. We need to avoid protectionism and China’s flirtation with state-assisted “national champions.” On our part, we should be more open to Chinese investment where our national security interests are not threatened. In the end, though, our economic relationship will truly thrive when Chinese citizens and foreign corporations can hold the Chinese government accountable when their actions are unjust.

I see a bright future for America in Asia. One based on the alliances that have gotten us this far, one based on free and open markets, one that integrates democratic India into East Asia’s political life and one in which China decides to be a responsible member of the international community and gives its people the liberty—the freedom—they so desperately want.

Sadly, however, our largest free trade agreement ever in Asia, with South Korea, sits frozen in the Congress. In contrast, China is behaving wisely in negotiating free trade agreements throughout Asia. We want an Asia open to our goods and services. But if we do not get our free trade act together, we will be shut out by agreements Asians our making among themselves.

All of you here follow global financial markets and economic policy closely, I know that it will come as no surprise to you that United States leadership on global trade and investment is being sorely tested at this moment.

We are struggling with a monumental debate on whether fiscal discipline, or massive government spending, will drive a sustained recovery. We are struggling to repair the excesses that grew in our own economy and served as a trigger to a catastrophic collapse in the global financial system. And we are attempting to do so under the weight of a global imbalance of debt and trade deficits that are not only unbearable for the world’s mightiest economy, but also unacceptable in that they foster tensions between global economic partners like the United States and China.

I am proud to be an American. As someone who has had the tremendous opportunity to travel throughout the United States and listen to the concerns of Americans in towns and cities across the country, I can tell you that there is a sense of despair and even crisis afoot in America that has the potential to shape our global investment and trade policies for years, and even decades to come. Never has the leadership of our government ever been more critical to keeping my country, and the world, on a path to openness, growth and opportunity in global trade and investment.

It would of course be a mistake to put the entire burden of restoring the global economy on the backs of America’s leaders. There is plenty of work for all of us to do in this matter. Governments around the world must resist the siren call of trade protection to bring short term relief during a time of crisis.

Those who use currency policy or subsidies to promote their nation’s exports should remain acutely aware that if there ever were a time in which such policies could be viewed as “tolerable,” that time has now passed. All participants who seek to find benefit in the global trading system must also take the responsibility of playing by the rules.

The private sector has responsibilities as well. For instance, it should not be the responsibility of government to dictate the salaries of bankers or the ownership of companies. And yet, due of the excesses committed by some, this is exactly where we find ourselves now because government now owns substantial portions of the private economy—even, unbelievably, in the United States.

These are challenging times for everyone, but we in the United States must humbly recognize that if we are to lead and to set the direction for the rest of the world, it must be by our example and not merely our words. And we must tread lightly when imposing new burdens on the imports of other countries.

Well, CLSA: My country is definitely at a crossroad. Polling in the U.S. shows a majority of Americans no longer believe that their children will have a better future than they have had . . . that is a 1st.

When members of America’s greatest generation—the World War II generation—lose their homes and their life savings because their retirement funds were wiped after the financial collapse, people feel a great anger. There is suddenly a growing sentiment to just “throw the bums out” of Washington, D.C.—and by bums they mean the Republicans and the Democrats. Americans are suffering from pay cuts and job losses, and they want to know why their elected leaders are not tightening their belts. It’s not lost on people that Congress voted to exempt themselves from the health care plan they are thrusting on the rest of the nation. There is a growing sense of frustration on Main Street. But even in the midst of crisis and despair, we see signs of hope.

In fact, it’s a sea change in America, I believe. Recently, there have been protests by ordinary Americans who marched on Washington to demand their government stop spending away their future. Large numbers of ordinary, middle-class Democrats, Republicans, and Independents from all over the country marching on Washington?! You know something’s up!

These are the same people who flocked to the town halls this summer to face their elected officials who were home on hiatus from that distant capital and were now confronted with the people they represent. Big town hall meetings—video clips circulating coverage—people watching, feeling not so alone anymore.

The town halls and the Tea Party movement are both part of a growing grassroots consciousness among ordinary Americans who’ve decided that if they want real change, they must take the lead and not wait to be led. Real change—and, you know, you don’t need a title to do it.

The “Tea Party Movement” is aptly named to remind people of the American Revolution—of colonial patriots who shook off the yoke of a distant government and declared their freedom from indifferent—elitist—rulers who limited their progress and showed them no respect. Today, Main Street Americans see Washington in similar terms.

When my country again achieves financial stability and economic growth—when we roar back to life as we shall do—it will be thanks in large part to the hard work and common sense of these ordinary Americans who are demanding that government spend less and tax less and allow the private sector to grow and prosper.

We’re not interested in government fixes; we’re interested in freedom! Freedom! Our vision is forward looking. People may be frustrated now, but we’re very hopeful too.

And, after all, why shouldn’t we be? We’re Americans. We’re always hopeful.

Thank you for letting me share some of that hope, and a view from Main Street with you. God Bless You.

Playing politics with the troops

Check this out:

Escalation is a bad idea. The Democrats backed themselves into defending the idea of Afghanistan being The Good War because they felt they needed to prove their macho bonafides when they called for withdrawal from Iraq. Nobody asked too many questions sat the time, including me. But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.

There have been many campaign promises “adjusted” since the election. There is no reason that the administration should feel any more bound to what they said about this than all the other committments it has blithely turned aside in the interest of “pragmatism.”

Jim Geraghty, commenting on this, writes,

The base of the Democratic party is fundamentally pacifist and isolationist and has extraordinary, although not complete, leverage over this White House. They want the rest of the world to go away so we can focus on creating the perfect health-care system. . . .

We now know liberal bloggers never meant what they wrote about Afghanistan. We will soon know if the president meant anything he said about that war on the campaign trail.

On that, the Anchoress is skeptical. Sure, six months ago, the President said that the war in Afghanistan is one we must win and could easily lose, that it would be a Very Bad Thing if we did, and thus that we needed to send more troops and push harder; now, though, he has Secretary of State Clinton telling our military commanders that we don’t need to send more troops because the situation really isn’t that bad. (Umm, politicians with no military training or experience who are half a world away from the combat zones interfering with the military commanders on the scene . . . I thought the idea was not to have another Vietnam. Was I wrong?) As the Anchoress sums it all up,

The Afghan war, the “good” war, the “war that needs winning” was—it turns out—just one more hammer meant to beat up Bush.

Now, the Anchoress sounds mostly resigned about this, I think because she never expected anything better out of the Left. Others, though, are less so; Ace, for one, is utterly furious:

But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.

You claimed to support a war in which American soldiers were fighting and dying, leaving friends and limbs on the battlefield, as a cynical political strategy?

You . . . um . . . voiced support of a real serious-as-death war to cadge votes out of a duped public?

We won’t forget, champ. And we won’t let you forget, either.

Again we see a leftist projecting his pathological darkness on to others. They accused Bush of fighting wars for this very reason. And now, when it’s safe to say so (they think), they concede: We supported a war for the reason we accused Bush of doing so for 8 years.

I think Ace is right to be furious at the sickening dishonesty, hypocrisy and cynicism evident here, as these people berated George W. Bush to high heaven for “playing politics with people’s lives” and “using war for political gain” even as—indeed, as the very act of—doing the exact same thing. I agree, if that’s what President Bush was doing (and I didn’t and don’t agree that it was, either by intent or in practice, which is why I supported him), it was reprehensible; but doesn’t that make his critics, who are now admitting to doing so, at least as reprehensible?

Still, I don’t have the energy even to reach, let alone to sustain, Ace’s level of anger; in large part, I suppose, because I too never expected anything better. It would have been nice to believe that President Bush’s critics were all operating out of the degree of moral seriousness and geopolitical awareness they claimed; but in truth, the only ones I ever believed to be sincere were the ones (like Doug Hagler, I believe) who were just as opposed to Afghanistan as to Iraq. I thought (and still think) they were wrong and unwise, but I trusted them to be honest, as I did not trust the posers. As such, I am not surprised, nor even truly dismayed, for the reality merely matches my expectations.

If you want to know what's really happening in Afghanistan

read Michael Yon, who has established himself as the single most indispensable reporter from the Iraq-Afghanistan theater of operations. I’m realizing I’ve never linked to his site (that I’m remembering, anyway)—there’s always stuff I don't get to, that falls by the wayside for lack of time or energy; it’s to my discredit that I’ve never actually gotten as far as posting on his work, because what he’s been doing is profoundly important.

And it’s only getting more important. He's been embedded with the British forces there, but they just canceled his ticket because of his last dispatch; this on top of financial problems which have forced him to appeal for support, without which he'll have to give up his reporting and leave the country. If you care about what’s going on in Afghanistan, and are able to help support Yon’s work, it would truly be in your best interest (and the best interest of the nation) to do so.

This is a critical time for Afghanistan and Iraq both. As Yon testifies,

There is a crucial development and governance aspect to this war, and still a crucial smashing side. Sometimes you’ve got to swap hats for helmets. Mullah Omar is still alive, apparently in Pakistan, and he needs to be killed. Just on 20 August I heard a Taliban singing over a walkie talkie that Mullah Omar “Is our leader,” and they were celebrating shooting down a British helicopter only twelve hours before just some miles from here. . . .

The enemy often uses pressure cookers to make bombs, just as was done by the Maoists in Nepal. In Nepal, the government began confiscating pressure cookers (which angered many people), and the government often shut down cell service (angering many people) because the Maoists used cell phones. The Maoists won the war. We are operating far smarter in Afghanistan. Here it’s the enemy who actually shuts down cell towers—and this angers the people. Also, the enemy bombs around here are killing a lot of innocent people, and this also angers the people. Despite progress made by the Taliban, they alienate many people.

Meanwhile, Iraq is in a state of transition as the US is drawing down its presence there:

In the dangerous security vacuum that followed the demolition of Saddam’s regime, Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) ignited a civil war by unleashing ferocious terror attacks against the country’s Shia community. Now that American soldiers have withdrawn from urban areas and created another partial security vacuum, the shattered remnants of AQI are trying to ramp up that effort again. It won’t be as easy for AQI now as it was last time. . . .

Terrorist attacks against Shias by AQI won’t likely reignite a full-blown sectarian war as long as the Sunnis continue to hold fast against the psychotics in their own community and Maliki’s government provides at least basic security on the streets.

Iraq’s Sunnis have as much incentive as its Shias to fight the AQI killers among them. They suffered terribly at AQI’s hands, after all. Out in Anbar Province, they violently turned against “their own” terrorist army even before the Shias turned against “theirs.” And Tariq Alhomayed points out in the Arabic-language daily Asharq al-Awsat that Maliki faces the same pressure to provide security on the streets, especially for his own Shia community, that any Western leader would face under similar circumstances—he wants to be re-elected.

The uptick in violence following America’s partial withdrawal shouldn’t shock anyone. If you scale back security on the streets, more violence and crime are inevitable. The same thing would happen in the United States if local police departments purged the better half of their officers. That does not mean, however, that Iraq is doomed to revert to war.

Last time I visited Iraq, Captain A.J. Boyes at Combat Outpost Ford on the outskirts of Sadr City warned me that we should expect this. “When we leave and transition all of what we do now to the Iraqi Security Forces, will there be a spike in [terrorist] activity?” he said. “Absolutely. One hundred percent.” He thinks Iraq will probably pull through just fine, even so. “It should be up to the media to portray this as something expected. There will be a spike in violence because the insurgents are going to test the Iraqi Security Forces, but I have complete faith that the resolve of the Iraqis will be there. Eventually, the bad guys will understand that the Iraqi Security Forces are here to stay. They are improved. They are vastly superior to anything we have seen in the past.” . . .

Before he was promoted to commander in Iraq, General Petraeus was known for his mantra “Tell me how this ends.” It was something everyone needed to think about, though no one could possibly know the answer to. Iraq makes a fool of almost everyone who tries to predict the course of events. How all this ends isn’t foreseeable. Nor is it inevitable. But the current spate of violence we’re seeing was.

As a country, we can’t afford to forget about Iraq and Afghanistan, as if nothing of any importance is happening there anymore just because they’re no longer useful to a media establishment that no longer wants to use them to bring down the president; what happens there matters a great deal, and we need to know what’s going on. For that, we need people like Michael Yon and Michael Totten, and we should be thankful for them.

Calling the administration to account

During and (especially) after last year's presidential campaign, there was much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth on the Republican side of the aisle about how the Democrats were so much more hip to social media and Web 2.0 and texting and so on, and how far behind the Republicans were and how much of a disadvantage they were at as a consequence, and how hard the party would have to work to catch up. I'm not sure anyone went quite so far as to claim that this was the only reason Barack Obama won, but there were a few folks who seemed to be thinking that (as there are always people looking to blame the unexpected on something they consider to be a gimmick).

Now, I think we can safely say that at least one prominent Republican gets it: Sarah Palin. As governor of Alaska, she used Twitter to keep Alaskans up on what she was doing and what was going on—as well as giving quick, incisive comments on broader political issues—and won a large number of followers in so doing. Now that she's left office, she's turned from the scalpel to the sword, using her Facebook account to go to war with the current administration in Washington, DC, primarily over their efforts to deform the American health-care system; and though she's wielded Facebook like a rapier, her blows have fallen on the administration's efforts like great strokes from a claymore, depriving them of momentum and putting them on the defensive. For those of us who think Obamacare is the wrong approach at the wrong time and will only make matters worse, this is a very good thing, a nice change from politics as usual, and reason for real hope.

Just because her focus of late has been on health care (which is, after all, the domestic political issue at the moment), though, doesn't mean she has nothing else to talk about; energy is still a signature issue for her as well, and so when the Obama administration used the Export-Import Bank to commit $2 billion in loans to fund offshore drilling—in Brazil—she was quick to offer the following comment:

Today's Wall Street Journal contains some puzzling news for all Americans who are impacted by high energy prices and who share the goal of moving us toward energy independence.

For years, states rich with an abundance of oil and natural gas have been begging Washington, DC politicians for the right to develop their own natural resources on federal lands and off shore. Such development would mean good paying jobs here in the United States (with health benefits) and the resulting royalties and taxes would provide money for federal coffers that would potentially off-set the need for higher income taxes, reduce the federal debt and deficits, or even help fund a trillion dollar health care plan if one were so inclined to support such a plan.

So why is it that during these tough times, when we have great needs at home, the Obama White House is prepared to send more than two billion of your hard-earned tax dollars to Brazil so that the nation's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, can drill off shore and create jobs developing its own resources? That's all Americans want; but such rational energy development has been continually thwarted by rabid environmentalists, faceless bureaucrats and a seemingly endless parade of lawsuits aimed at shutting down new energy projects.

I'll speak for the talent I have personally witnessed on the oil fields in Alaska when I say no other country in the world has a stronger workforce than America, no other country in the world has better safety standards than America, and no other country in the world has stricter environmental standards than America. Come to Alaska to witness how oil and gas can be developed simultaneously with the preservation of our eco-system. America has the resources. We deserve the opportunity to develop our resources no less than the Brazilians. Millions of Americans know it is true: "Drill, baby, drill." Alaska is proof you can drill and develop, and preserve nature, with its magnificent caribou herds passing by the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), completely unaffected. One has to wonder if Obama is playing politics and perhaps refusing a "win" for some states just to play to the left with our money.

The new Gulf of Mexico lease sales tomorrow sound promising and perhaps will move some states in the right direction, but we all know that the extreme environmentalists who serve to block progress elsewhere, including in Alaska, continue to block opportunities. These environmentalists are putting our nation in peril and forcing us to rely on unstable and hostile foreign countries. Mr. Obama can stop the extreme tactics and exert proper government authority to encourage resource development and create jobs and health benefits in the U.S.; instead, he chooses to use American dollars in Brazil that will help to pay the salaries and benefits for Brazilians to drill for resources when the need and desire is great in America.

Buy American is a wonderful slogan, but you can't say in one breath that you want to strengthen our economy and stimulate it, and then in another ship our much-needed dollars to a nation desperate to drill while depriving us of the same opportunity.

—Sarah Palin

Now, this is not to say that this is a bad deal; in fact, though the Ex-Im Bank doesn't have a great record, there are some very strong reasons to be very glad the administration made this move. They probably have other reasons as well (such as the fact that it will pump a lot of money into George Soros' pocket), but those don't invalidate the deal by any means. It is to say, though, that this deal calls into question the administration's stance against energy development in the US, because there is simply no coherent way to support offshore drilling in Brazil and at the same time oppose new drilling off the Gulf Coast, in the Chukchi Sea, or in ANWR.

At least, there's no coherent economic or environmental argument for doing so; which suggests that those aren't the arguments that really matter to the White House.

Taking a look around

I wasn't out of touch with the world during our time away, just off the 'Net for most of that time—but reading mediocre newspapers (which most of them are) and catching the occasional cable news show (sometimes with the sound off) doesn't exactly give one a full-orbed view of current events; and then the first part of this week, I've been busy and occupied with other things, so it's only been today that I've started to catch up a bit with the political news.

It's interesting to see that Gov. Palin has pretty much gone mano a mano with President Obama over health care, defining the terms of the debate with her Facebook posts—to such an extent that even non-Palinites within the GOP are acknowledging that she's taken the leadership of the party—and judging by the poll numbers, the Obama administration's fixation on her, the recent market gains made by health insurers, and the decision of the Senate Finance Committee to drop consultations on end-of-life care from its version of the bill, it seems clear that she's winning. Given that her op-ed on the cap-and-tax bill was a hammer blow to its political prospects, it would seem that Gov. Palin's leadership has had a significant effect on the Obama administration's legislative agenda.

Perhaps the most unnerving thing to happen during the last week or two was the White House's decision to invite people to report on friends and neighbors who are opposed to Obamacare—something which doesn't surprise me all that much, given the pattern of behavior shown by Barack Obama and his coterie, but which is nevertheless concerning; on the bright side, at least it inspired a vintage effort from the redoubtable Mark Steyn in response.

As a result of all this, the polls aren't being very kind to the president or his party. New Jersey is turning on his policies (and seems likely to put a Republican in the statehouse this fall), while Rasmussen is showing voters favoring the GOP on health care (and in fact on nearly every other issue as well) and the president's approval ratings continuing to drop (just 47% approve, only 29% strongly, while 52% disapprove, including 65% of independents; on the bright side, only 37% strongly disapprove).

On a brighter note, it looks like our government has lost some of the bank bailout money:

Although hundreds of well-trained eyes are watching over the $700 billion that Congress last year decided to spend bailing out the nation's financial sector, it's still difficult to answer some of the most basic questions about where the money went.

Nice job, guys. That's definitely the sort of thing to make people think twice about giving the feds even more money to play with. And in the meantime, as the government's left trying to clean up the mess made by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, here comes their cousin Ginnie Mae to make a whole new one. Startlingly, Congress doesn't see anything wrong with this (though if Ginnie Mae does indeed crash, they will no doubt look for some way to blame it on George W. Bush).

On the foreign policy front, the Marines have launched a major assault in Afghanistan; the incomparable Michael Yon reports (if you can get the video to work; I always have trouble with PJTV). I wish them well, but no foreign power has ever really won in Afghanistan, and I'm not confident we'll be the first. (This, btw, was the problem with Senator Obama's insistence that Iraq was the wrong war, that we should have been fighting in Afghanistan; fighting in Iraq drew al'Qaeda down from the mountains of Afghanistan to the deserts and streets of Iraq, where we could actually get at them.)

All this is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg of everything the president has to keep track of; and all we expect of our presidents is that they keep track of all of it and know what to do about all of it. It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for them . . . if it weren't for the fact that they did everything possible to put themselves in that position.

The Clinton-Obama rivalry continues

When Barack Obama asked Hillary Clinton to serve as his Secretary of State, it appeared to be a move in true "team of rivals" fashion, very much in line with Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet choices: naming the woman who based much of her campaign on presenting herself as better qualified to handle foreign policy to the chief foreign-policy position in the government. It hasn't turned out that way, though, as William Jacobson pointed out recently:

Week-by-week, world event-by-world event, the public humiliation of Hillary Clinton is taking place right before our eyes. Actually, not before our eyes. Hillary has gone missing.

There was a time when United States Secretaries of State were front and center in foreign policy making and implementation. Our first Secretary of State was Thomas Jefferson, and other historical luminaries included John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, William Jennings Bryant, and George C. Marshall.

In more modern times, names such as Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, James Baker, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, and Condolezza Rice loom large in our psyche and history.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? Who? Possibly the most marginalized Secretary of State in modern times. . . .

Obama doesn't act alone in foreign affairs, but he certainly doesn't act through Hillary. . . .

The treatment of Hillary Clinton by Obama to date amounts to a slow drain of Hillary's political persona. The fearsome tiger now is a pussycat. . . .

If Hillary's loss in the primaries was a body blow, being Secretary of State is like being bled by leeches. Hillary seems to know her political persona is being bled dry, but she feels no physical pain.

Tina Brown takes it a step further, writing,

It’s time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa. . . .

It becomes clearer by the day how brilliantly Obama checkmated both Clintons by putting Hillary in the topmost Cabinet job. Secretary Clinton can’t be seen to differ from the president without sabotaging her own power. And ex-President Clinton has been uncharacteristically disciplined about not threatening the careful political equilibrium his wife is trying to maintain. . . .

Before she took the job, she was assured she could pick her own trusted team. Yet she was overruled in appointing her own choice for deputy secretary, Richard Holbrooke. Instead, she was made to take an Obama guy, James Steinberg, who had originally been slated to become national-security adviser. (Hillary took care of Holbrooke, one of diplomacy’s biggest stars, by giving him the most explosive portfolio—Pakistan and Afghanistan.) She lost the ability to dole out major ambassadorships, too. A lot of these prizes are going to reward Obama fundraisers instead of knowledgeable appointees like Harvard’s Joseph Nye, whom she wanted to send to Japan.

Even when there’s legitimate credit to be had, she remains invisible. Contrary to administration spin that Joe Biden played a critical role in the decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, the vice president stayed opposed to Obama's strategy. It was Hillary, sources tell me, whom the president relied on throughout the deliberations with principal national-security advisers to support and successfully argue his point of view. The need to paper over the difference between Obama and the vice president meant Hillary’s role went unacknowledged. . . .

You could say that Obama is lucky to have such a great foreign-policy wife. Those who voted for Hillary wonder how long she'll be content with an office wifehood of the Saudi variety.

It may well be, though, that she's reaching her breaking point. Though the Obama administration has lined itself up firmly behind Kristen Gillibrand, Secretary Clinton's successor in the Senate, to the point of trying to snuff a primary challenge from Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Bill Clinton agreed to headline a fundraiser for Maloney later this month. Ed Morrissey points out the obvious:

Clinton’s spokesperson claims that this doesn’t constitute an endorsement, but it’s hard to read it any other way. Clinton hasn’t campaigned for Gillibrand, after all. Since Gillibrand got appointed to replace Hillary Clinton earlier this year, Bill and Hillary have remained quiet about the seat—until now.

More recently, she handed Obama critics a strong headline while speaking to employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development, criticizing the administration for its abject failure to find someone to run the agency.

Six months into the administration's tenure without having appointed someone to the agency's top spot, Clinton told USAID employees on Monday that several people had turned down the job due to overly burdensome financial and personal disclosure requirements that she called a "nightmare," "frustrating beyond words" and "ridiculous."

She also said the White House had turned down her request to announce on Monday that someone—expected by officials to be physician and Harvard University professor Paul Farmer, who is well known for his work in Haiti—would be named to the post soon.

"Let me just say it's not for lack of trying," Clinton said in response to an employee's question about the delay, despite her and President Barack Obama's stated desire to have USAID play a bigger role in American foreign policy. "We have worked very hard with the White House on looking for a candidate who, number one, wants the job."

The comment drew laughter from the audience, prompting her to say: "It's been offered." She then launched into a critique of the vetting process.

"The clearance and vetting process is a nightmare and it takes far longer than any of us would want to see," Clinton said. "It is frustrating beyond words. I pushed very hard last week when I knew I was coming here to get permission from the White House to be able to tell you that help is on the way and someone will be nominated shortly."

"I was unable," she said. "The message came back: 'We're not ready.'"

It will be fascinating to see how this all shakes out. After all, Sen. Clinton's appointment was political in nature; her real utility to the administration isn't her (relatively meager) foreign-policy credentials, but her political skills and support. (This is rather too bad; given that President Obama can't seem to stop insulting people, it's clear he could really use a foreign-policy ace or two at his side.) As Morrissey says,

If the politics between the two have stopped working, then Obama has no other need for Hillary. If Obama jettisons her, though, Hillary could turn into a formidable foe within the Democratic Party, and might wind up challenging an Obama re-election bid the way Ted Kennedy did to Jimmy Carter, which turned into a disaster for both men. How much defiance can Obama handle?

It will be interesting to find out.