Bush’s War – 2

The primary reason given by the Bush administration for the attack on Hussein’s Iraq was to search there for weapons of mass destruction. We now know there were no such weapons on any significant scale. I keep arguing on this blog that: 1 There were many other reasons to destroy the Hussein regime and, 2 There were very good reasons for any reasonable person to be misled about the existence of such weapons in Iraq. Mostly, it was that the Hussein regime sabotaged the inspection process to which it had agreed as a condition of peace following the first Gulf War. It would be hard to understand the high risks taken to hide things by one who had in fact nothing to hide! (Read this sentence again.)

The important persons and organization who were fooled into believing in the existence of the non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were numerous and varied. They included several western intelligence services and many important politicians.

In 1998, a prominent member of one of the two main American political parties (prominent then and prominent now) said the following,

“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.”

I am not faulting the politician who said this for blindness then but for irresponsible, dishonest amnesia now.

The politician in question is __________________________

(Answer below as a “Comment.”)

The quote is lifted from the Wall Street Journal editorial on 3/20/13.

Bush’s War

“Since March 1996, Iraq has  systematically sought to deny weapons inspectors from the United Nations Special on Iraq Commission (UNSCOM) access to key facilities and documents, has on several occasions endangered the safe operation of UNSCOM helicopters transporting UNSCOM personnel in Iraq, and has persisted in a pattern of deception and concealment  regarding the history of its weapons of mass destruction programs….”

On August 14 — the President signed Public Law 105-235, which declared that “the  Government of Iraq  is in material and unacceptable breach  of its international obligations” and urged the President to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligation….

It should be he policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of  a democratic government to replace that regime.”

The first paragraph is from the Iraq Liberation Act of ___  .

The second and third paragraphs are from  Public-Law 105-235.

The president who signed both items was ___________?

This is lifted from the Wall Street Journal of 3/19/13. The bolding is mine.

Both pieces of legislation were enacted in 1998.

Leadership, International Trade, Hormuz and Ron Paul, Minorities and Ron Paul: The Last-Before-Last Republican Follies

Well, I am just about debated out. It’s difficult for all the candidates or pretend-candidates to maintain their dignity while answering complex questions in sixty seconds with thirty seconds for rebuttals. It’s worse when the debate is moderated, and many of the questions formulated, by one local unknown and two liberals, one of whom has been an air-head for as far back as I can remember. I am referring to Diane Sawyer, of course, and I can remember at least thirty years.

Two general comments about the Saturday night New Hampshire debate. (I missed the Sunday morning debate, sorry.) First, as usual, much time was wasted with questions and answers about “leadership.” I don’t understand the questions. I don’t understand the answers. I suspect (strongly) that the candidates understand neither the questions nor the answers about leadership. Leadership is a word that is worse than useless. Trust me, I taught management for about 25 years. If the concept were useful, I would have noticed. It’s useless the way baby-talk is useless. To the average one-year old, everything is a “wah.” It takes all the resources of parental love to assign to or to invent a meaning for each “wah” utterance. I don’t have such love for anything politicians say. Any politician who made it a rule to eschew completely the use of the word “leader” and of its derivatives would instantly gain in clarity and in sincerity.

My second comment is that, as happens every time, the candidates demonstrated their deep ignorance of basic concepts of international trade and of international economics in general. It makes me feel good that I taught the topic for about thirty years. I think retrospectively, that I must have been doing something useful. I expect such ignorance among liberals. It’s disheartening to encounter it on the conservative and libertarian side.

Two main things: a) If you raise trade barriers against the products of other countries, China, for example, it’s likely that other country will do the same against your products. The general principle here is reciprocity, otherwise known as tit-for-tat. There is no free lunch. It’s not obvious who will suffer most, the other guy’s people or yours. And, by the way the words “free trade” and “fair trade” are not complementary, they are alternatives to each other. “Fair trade” means “not free trade.” In the public arena, the word “fair” always announces the formulation of some protectionistic measure or policy. Let me repeat something I have been saying for thirty years and most economists have said for one hundred and forty years: In the aggregate, protectionism, any restraint on free trade, are a recipe for poverty. (Please, see my several, well-organized and quite accessible lectures on the subject on this blog.)

b) The main reason manufacturing jobs have been shrinking in this country is technical progress. In the meantime, the value of American manufactured products almost tripled in ten years.

Individual participants in the Saturday New Hampshire debate re-affirmed who they are in my book.

Rick Santorum confirmed that he is a clear-headed and brave man. I don’t know why he does not have much traction but he does not. Perhaps next time, perhaps he is too narrow.

John Huntsman is not a serious candidate. Yesterday, he spoke Mandarin to Romney, to make him feel bad and unsophisticated, no doubt. Cheap trick, sophomoric!

Gov. Perry proves once again that he is abysmally ignorant. Not surprising. Those big boned, broad-shouldered handsome guys in high-school always got the benefit of doubt when they said something that sounded misinformed. He said something spirited yesterday about “Iran moving back into Iraq.” I am not completely, completely sure what he meant but would you be willing to bet good money against the following proposition: The governor thinks that before the current elected Iraqi government, Iran occupied Iraq. He might even think Saddam Hussein was Iranian?

Gingrich is often formidable. He is well informed, cultured, rational, possesses a practical, high-power analytical mind in addition to a political past that’s, of necessity, an open book. He speaks clearly, in particular, of such things as Islamic terrorism. I don’t care much about anything else in a President except basic honesty. Gingrich possesses it irrespective of how much money he made eating at the Fannie Mae trough. I wish he hadn’t; I wish I were taller and thinner. I wish that, on that particular occasion, way back then, I had said,” You must be mistaken,” instead of “Fuck off!”

Ron Paul illustrated again what I have been telling you for weeks: He is irresponsible, he will say anything without worrying about factualness if he thinks it serves his argument. Either, he lies, or he believes in his false statements. The latter is worse. My intuition is that he believes them. My intuition matters because I have met people like him often before: “true believers,” in the words of the regretted Eric Hoffer. (Look him up if you are young.)

A couple of examples of Paul’s lack of attention to truth:

He said that minorities suffered more in war than whites. That’s not true. It may have been true when Leftists were saying this at the time of the Vietnam war, 30 years ago. It’s not true now. The reverse it true: White soldiers and Marines die more and get wounded more often. Incidentally, folks, I am tired of doing everyone’s research instead of going to the beach. Here is a proposal: If you don’t believe me, bet me some reasonable amount to be paid by loser to your favorite charity. Can I be more generous? If you don’t want to put your money where your mouth is, there must be a reason. Think it through.

In connection with Pres. Obama’s recent speech on cutting the US military budget, Paul also said clearly that those are cuts in increase to military expenditures, not absolute cuts. As one who has been reading the Wall Street Journal for the past thirty years and also for the past thirty days, I tell you that this is not true. It’s another cheap rumor Mr Paul gathered from Leftists. He is a Congressman; he should know better. And if you don’t believe me, see my bet proposal above,

And then, once in a while, Mr Paul makes seemingly innocent statements that suggest that his many false assertions are embedded in an entire imaginary world in which he lives most of the time. He said Saturday night in New Hampshire that if the Straight of Hormuz were closed (by the Iranians, or, presumably, by anyone), Eastern Europe would be “de-stabilized.” To the regular people who have a job, or who go to school, and who don’t necessarily read the small piece in the last page of the WSJ, the statement implies that eastern Europe, specifically, has a special dependence on the Middle-Eastern oil carried through the Straight of Hormuz. One could easily forgive oneself for not being aware of this bit of trivia. Of course, I will tell you that there is no such dependence. Mr Paul made this up inside his mind for reasons that escape me because I am not privy to the whole movie playing in his mind. And you are right, I did not look it up. I don’t need to. Want to bet?

The long and the short of this primary campaign is that Romney is a colorless, risk-averse smooth character I don’t especially love. But I am a conservative and therefore, a rationalist. Unlike Obama voters I don’t need to be in love with my candidate. (Unlike Chris Matthew of MSNBC, rarely have I felt a tingle along my leg when I thought of a presidential candidate or of a President!) He is far from a good Tea  Party candidate. Yet, when it comes right down to it, if I have to, I will vote for Romney for President. Of one two things I am sure: First, no matter what, he is more conservative than Barack Obama. Second, he is easily more competent than Barack Obama, the man who never achieved anything in his life except  get elected.

I have to keep reminding myself that elections – including primaries – are a lot like negotiations: When all the parties walk away pissed off, you know there has been a valid compromise.

A final thought, one of patriotic pride: In a majority-Protestant country, in the party of conservatism, in the alleged party of the haves, in the imagined party of wealth, two candidates remaining are Catholics, two are Mormons; the other two are Texans, for Christ’s sake!

Debating Leftistanis on Radio

Before I presented on my radio show the essay entitled: “Journey Into Leftistan,” also available on this blog, a man I stage in the essay contacted me through Facebook. John Wolfe offered to debate me on my radio show. ( “Facts Matter” comes on on Sunday on KSCO Santa Cruz, 1080 AM. It’s from 11 am to 1 pm. You can catch it on-line while it’s going on.)

Mr Wolfe’s offer was serious and I treated it lightly at first. I shouldn’t have done that. It happened because whenever I converse with someone who calls himself a “progressive,” I can’t control the devil in my that pushes me to toy with with his mind and try to make him cry. I shouldn’t. I will try to not do it in the future. Of course, I can’t promise anything, because of the same devil, obviously. In spite of all, I had most of the day to consider Mr Wolfe’s offer. I have decided to decline it. The reasons are listed below.

1     My radio station, KSCO, is right in the middle of Santa Cruz, one of the worst sixties time warps in the world. I am guessing my listeners don’t need more left-wing exposure. I am guessing they cannot avoid leftist viewpoints if they try. Why, we have the University of California at Santa Cruz on our hill! Angela Davis is a (quiet) full Professor of “The History of American Consciousness”there (o rretired from it). If you don’t know who she is, that means you are wonderfully young and possibly innocent. Look her up. It will be fun, I promise.

If a handful of my listeners tell me that my perception is mistaken, that they would like me to debate Mr Wolfe on air (if nothing else, for the sport), I will retract my decision.

2   Mr Wolfe and I almost certainly have irreconcilable differences with respect to basic values. I believe that the best way to avoid incipient violence is to threaten the would-be aggressor with overwhelming force, with much greater violence. I and the police forces of all civilized nations are on the same page about this. Mr Wolfe has shown on his Facebook that he is in favor of “proportionate response” to aggression. It means that if someone throws a stone through your window, you are only allowed to throw one stone through his window, if that.

If I debated Mr Wolfe on my show, I am pretty sure that our value differences would quickly bleed into the debate. That would be a waste of time for all, especially for the listeners. Values come from experience filtered through judgment. They never change through discussion.

3  Mr Wolfe has shown on his Facebook that he has access to a multitude of facts that have never reached my ears. This, although I confess to listening to National Public Radio several hours each day. That’s in addition to reading the WSJ, and Le Figaro every day, plus the Weekly Standard, plus Atlantic Monthly, and watching tons of American cable network television, and watching the French-language network TV5, also every day. And, of course, I rush to Al Jazeera in English on-line every time something new happens in the Arab world.

Given all this, I would have to ask Mr Wolfe to name his mysterious sources for his facts, and then, I would have to check them out. I am technically and intellectually incapable of doing this while on the air. Not doing so would be taking the serious moral risk of helping Mr Wolfe spread false rumors. Of course, I believe that facts matter, not a little, a whole lot. Incidentally, I am not calling Mr Wolfe a liar. I just know that many people, especially reformers, find whatever facts they need wherever because their bullshit detector is permanently on the “off” position.

4     If none of the above had any validity, I would still have to wonder whether it’s appropriate to give a tribune to someone with Mr Wolfe’s inexplicable emphasis. Here is what I mean: Mr Wolfe is obsessed with Israel and its misdeeds, real and invented. Even if everything Mr Wolfe and his friends alleged about Israeli atrocities were true, even if he they had left some out, even if there were twice more real killings by Israelis than they allege, the fact would remain that Israel in its whole existence would have killed fewer Arabs than Saddam Hussein in one average year. I am completely sure, Mr Wolfe never lifted a little finger to denounce Saddam Hussein’s massacre of Arabs. Mr Wolfe’s obsession is in itself objectionable even if he is right on everything. He would have to give me a legitimate reason for his obsession with Israel before I would give him the mike.

He might surprise me and do just that. I would enjoy making a tight U-turn on this one. In the meantime, no, I don’t want to give special airtime to “progressive” Mr Wolfe. If he bothers to call my show, as he could have done today, I will certainly bring him right to the head of the line, if nothing as a courtesy to someone who calls from far-away Tennessee. And, of course, he can use as much space as he wishes in a comment on this blog to this posting and to the one that preceded it.

Pres. Obama is a Wimp

The Brits and the Germans sent warships to evacuate their citizens from Libya. Later, they violated Libyan airspace by sending warplanes to pick up  oil workers  stranded in the desert. The French used military transport planes to evacuate their citizens. Our American evacuees were stuck in Tripoli harbor for two-and-a half days on a ferry too rickety to brave bad weather in the Mediterranean over the same distance as New York to Boston. America m cannot use anything even remotely military. Under our enlightened and chronically anti-American leaders, Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, we have become pathetic. That’s because Barak Obama is a wimp, always has been.

President Obama is missing a chance that does not even come to an American president once in a century. If he had any vision at all, he would  have sent several days ago a small party of Special Forces raiders to snatch Moammar Gadhafi and to throw him hogtied on the floor of the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. (I know that the US is not a member. It does not prevent us from acting as a marshal. Let the Court itself decide not to prosecute Gadhafi. ) I know the president wants to be a legalist, I know but the legal excuse for acting in a forceful manner is there: Several high-ranking Libyan defectors have gone public with the assertion that Gadhafi personally ordered the Lockerbee massacre. That’s the equivalent of a Grand Jury, as far as I am concerned. Note that the idea is not to execute him summarily but to try him. That’s what courts are for: to establish the guilt of the accused or to release them. “No harm done. Sorry to have bothered you Mr Supreme Leader, and no hard feelings, we hope. Enjoy yourself in your retirement villa on the Italian Riviera.”

If the President acted in this forceful manner force once,  just for once, for once, America would be on the side of justice and on the side of humanity in the Middle East. And for once, millions of Arabs would applaud and would feel grateful to the US. The famous “Arab street,” the thought of which used to get liberals all weak in the knees up when Pres. Bush liberated Iraq, obviously does not appreciate any more than you and I would the street massacres of ordinary citizens in defense of a failed and probably drugged-up tyrant. Even if the snatching attempt failed, it would shorten the blood-letting in Libya by causing even more military to switch sides. Gadhafi is a lot like Saddam Hussein: Not that many of his soldiers are eager to die for him. That’s why he has to import mercenaries from very poor black African countries.

As usual, I make a note of what is not happening: We don’t hear much about Venezuela’ s military dictator, Hugo Chavez, or anything at all from El Lider Máximo in Cuba, these days. I guess, they are considering.

The liberal American media continue to look silly, ignorant, unprepared, incompetent. “Who could have predicted this upheaval?” they seem to be pleading. Well, someone did. Here is is:

“Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe – because, in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.”

That was George W. Bush in 2003.

Note: I cribbed the citation from a good piece by Elliot Abrams in 2/25/11 WSJ.

Obama’s Wars ( and Not-Wars)

This is kind of a dry blog season for me. First. I live in Santa Cruz, California where other people go on vacation. The sun sets late. The sea is beautiful, the wind warm most evenings. Second, I am suffering from a fairly severe case of Obama fatigue. The spirit ends up rebelling against bad news and commentaries on bad news. Here is a summary, for what it’s worth. I begin with the positive. Won’t take long.

President Obama has had the good sense to do nothing about the Iraq withdrawal plan inherited from President Bush. We are leaving soon, gradually, in orderly fashion. We are leaving behind an imperfect but determinedly democratic form of government. It’s a little chaotic by Swiss standards, pretty good by middle-eastern ones. Ordinary Iraqis are still dying at the hands of terrorists, their enemies and ours. The Iraqi freely elected government seems to be able to deal with the continued atrocities and determined to do so. The US is very popular in Iraqi Kurdistan, at least. We could have an air force base there for the asking. Obama won’t ask. All the same, it’s good to have the good will. We might need it soon, against Iran, possible supported by a newly “Islamist” Turkey.

The fact of Iraqi democracy is not lost on the subjects of various middle-eastern tyrannies, including the ones we have been supporting for a long time. “If the Iraqis can have one, after 25 years of Saddam Hussein’s gangster fascism, why not us?” the subjects tell themselves. It ‘ s not only bad examples that are contagious.

Bush bet on this “war of choice.” The fact is: he won. President Obama did not stand in the way after being elected.

In Afghanistan, Pres. Obama is staying true to the letter of his campaign announcements if not not their spirit. After yielding to the temptation to do the wrong thing: Firing General McChrystal, he did the right thing: Appointing General Petraeus. It must have been exceedingly distasteful and painful to appoint the man his avid Leftists supporters at “MoveOn” were still recently calling, “General Betray US.” Yet, the President took his medicine like a man.

I am reading between the lines of Petraeus’ appointment. The general himself says he supports the planned 1012 withdrawal. But the date was always conditional. This leaves me to believe that Mr Obama is not closing the option to stay as long as necessary.

Full disclosure: Personally, I think we should prosecute that war until both of two things happen: We know for sure that Bin Laden and his seconds are dead, and the Taliban surrender. It’s intolerable to let the world know that you can kill Americans at home without paying the price for doing so. Other Muslim terrorist groups are watching; the Russians are watching; the now-peaceful but increasingly powerful Chinese are watching; the desperate North Korean Stalinist-fascist regime is watching; above all the Iranian Islamist-fascist regime is watching with its tens of thousands of guard dogs dreaming of copulating with seventy-two virgins. None of these dangerous entities shares our interest in peaceful co-existence. None shares our belief in the belief that individual human lives matter.

Of course, my seeming willingness to go on sacrificing young American military lives seems paradoxical in view of the last sentence. It’s only superficially so. Our military men and women are all volunteers. They are more intelligent, better educated, and healthier than the average of the rest of the population. If we had to rely on  a draft, I would be more conflicted. And, of course, I don’t begin to take seriously the liberals who pretend to shed tears about the deaths and maiming of American military personnel. You never hear them complain about the loss of American lives where they would be comparatively easy to avoid. Here is a comparison: About 1,100 American military have died in Afghanistan in 9 years, most, but not all combat-related deaths. That’s about 30 times fewer than die on American roads each year. Many people assume road casualties are unavoidable. Nothing could be less true. Alcohol is involved in a least half of them. We could avoid 15,000 deaths each year by enacting and enforcing a zero-alcohol tolerance at the wheel policy. It’s all a matter of how far we are willing to go. If the obligatory penalty for the first offense where six months in jail with no suspension of sentence and if the second penalty were one year in jail and permanent withdrawal of license, you would see drinking and driving plummet to near zero. Liberal pacifists who deplore loudly 1,000 American combat deaths don’t even ever mention the vastly more murderous conflict on our roads. Hypocrites!

With Iran’s nuclear armament race, President Obama has failed to draw the lessons from the previous administration’s military inaction. The danger is growing greater and nearer by the day. Because we are militarily unprepared in that area, we might end up being forced to use the nuclear option. If we do, we will probably for be killing tens of thousands of Iranians who, we have known since last summer at least, would love to be free from the mad-dog mullahs. The so-called “Islamic Republic” is unlikely to attack us directly, it’s true. The danger is the it will threaten, seriously once, to annihilate Israel. The Israelis will then launch a preemptive attack and dare us to do nothing to help.

President Obama is a wimp, like most liberals. He does not like to contemplate bad dreams like this one.

The passive fiasco with North Korea continues. Here again, the current administration failed to draw the lessons from the past. If we are lucky, the fascist regime there will collapse spectacularly under the weight of its own mistakes and of its risible succession problems (the latter, comparable to those of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century). If we are unlucky, the regime will launch a suicide war against the prosperous Republic of Korea to its south. Then, our paltry 30,000 “trip-wire” troops there will be threatened with extermination. If this happens, we will surely nuke tens of thousands of North Koreans whose sole crime is to have suffered terribly for two life-times at the hands of their monstrous ruler-puppets.

Way to go for peace, Mr President!

Next time: The triumphs of President Obama’s domestic policies.  I will be brief!