2 January 2008 a Wednesday

Back to normal schedule again, and one hopes that the neighborhood guys have finally exhausted all of their fireworks. Tony resumes 'school' again with his real school to begin in about a month.

From the editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy a generally negative review of the Bush administration, except...except way down near the bottom, one startling admission:

Amazing...seven years into the awful unilateralist Bush administration, every country thinks that their relations with the United States are improving!

After acknowledging that fact, though, the editor makes no attempt to explain it. I'm surprised he included it at all, since in general it conflicts with his thesis, but I've noticed in the past that liberals have no problem writing what it is they believe is happening despite internal conflicts of fact. You see, here's what he wants to believe:

Almost a decade of U.S. disengagement and distraction have allowed international and regional problems to swell. ... Of course, the America that the world wants back is not the one that preemptively invades potential enemies, bullies allies or disdains international law. The demand is for an America that rallies other nations prone to sitting on the fence while international crises are boiling out of control; for a superpower that comes up with innovative initiatives to tackle the great challenges of the day, such as climate change, nuclear proliferation and violent Islamist fundamentalism.

Disengaged? The complaint, obviously, is all about what the editor considers to be a distraction in Iraq but what is actually a preoccupation with the Persian Gulf, a situation FAR more challenging than the overblown global warming predictions, two consecutive seasons of sub-par hurricane seasons not having slowed them any. To argue that the Bush administration is not concerned with nuclear proliferation and violent Islamist fundamentalism is simply...well...there has to be a word...

No new president is going to remove the policy of preemption from American policy, and few are actually inclined to play the Gulliver role when it comes to "international" law, no matter how much nice talk they may make about it.

An innovative initiative to tackle violent Islamist fundamentalism? You are seeing it in action. For the decade prior to this administration there was a steadily-increasing level of violent Islamist fundamentalism as American embassies and ships were bombed and attacked, culminating in 9/11. This was designed by Osama to be the final blow which would cause America to withdraw from the Middle East to lick her wounds.

After decades of retreat in the face of increasing violent Islamist fundamentalism, the new initiative was to take the battle to them, in their own homelands rather than ours.

As for the bullied allies, who would those be? Germany and France have been creeping back, and Japan never went anywhere. Bush bullied Tony Blair? Really?

Ah, well...this is the world the editor perceives so it's going to be the world he writes about. Submit to international law and all would be well. Fortunately for the well-being of Americans everywhere, we aren't meekly doing that. We prefer our own courts and constitution, thank you very much.

Oh, well, back to politics...and has Romney conceded Iowa with this statement?

On September 30, 2002, American forces were preparing to deal with what was considered then to be a large and effective conventional army in Iraq. They had armored forces, artillery, even an air force. The elite Republican Guards were said to perhaps be the equal of U.S. troops. They were said to be dug in and prepared to fight from entrenched defensive positions so well hardened that we would suffer the loss of tens of thousands of U.S. troops during the invasion phase alone.

The question, in fact, was how large should our conventional forces be in order to deal with them. Some argued for huge and overwhelming; others argued for a small footprint just large enough to do the job. And the job was not intended to be occupation but the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Iraq was not, on Sept. 30, 2002, an "irregular warfare scenario" and could not possibly have been if those who argue that it was our presence in Iraq which subsequently caused al-Qaeda to appear there as a result! Remember how terrorists supposedly flocked there from all around the world because there hadn't been any in Iraq to begin with?

What's that? These are the same people who complain that Bush diverted our army to Iraq rather than go into Afghanistan and root out bin Laden, a definite irregular warfare situation? How many conventional forces should Bush have spared for THAT situation?

How many Americans died from "bird flu" in 2007? Answer: No one. A year and a half ago, the global news media was awash with stories about how a major epidemic of bird flu was almost a certainty. A number of stories darkly referred to the great flu epidemic of 1918 when some 50 million people died. Some congressional Democrats were attacking President Bush and the pharmaceutical companies because not enough Tamiflu — the drug seen as the best available treatment for the avian flu — was being produced. ... Since the threat of bird flu was first identified several years ago, fewer than 300 people in the entire world are known to have died from it.

How much did the federal budget deficit rise in 2007? Answer: It did not rise, it got much smaller. The deficit has been declining rapidly for the last three years and is now only about 1 percent of gross domestic product, which is far lower than the average deficit for the last half-century. Left-wing ideologues, such as Paul Krugman of the New York Times, have been predicting for years that the Bush tax cuts would lead to ever-growing deficits. Wrong again.

When did the recession of 2007 begin? Answer: It never started. CNN and other news media are quoting polls showing many Americans think the economy has been in a recession. But the economy has grown in every quarter of 2007, and employment is at a record high, despite the subprime mortgage problem and the rise in oil prices. Economic growth in 2007 will be more than 2 percent — not great, but not a disaster or a recession. The reason so many think the U.S. is in a recession is the unbalanced reporting about the economy from many in the left-leaning media who overly report the comments of Bush-hating politicians and the bad, but not the good, numbers.

How did foreign investment endanger the U.S. economy and security in 2007? Answer: It only helped. The United States is benefiting from a continuing high flow of foreign investment capital, which despite the cries of economic know-nothings is good, rather than bad, and is one of the major reasons the economy did not go into recession in 2007. Foreign investment funds jobs for American workers, brings new technologies, finances more than 13 percent of U.S. research and development, and fuels U.S. exports.

How much warmer did the Earth get in 2007? Answer: It did not get any warmer. In fact, actual measurements show there has been no statistically significant increase in global temperatures since 2001, contrary to what the models used by the global-warming alarmists have been predicting (you might have noticed the weather models have predicted many more tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic and Caribbean for the last two years than actually occurred).

I have to laugh every now and then when you hear of someone obviously influenced by the likes of Krugman expresses puzzlement for why the deficits aren't actually cratering the economy? They can't understand it and struggle mightily with complicated reasons to explain away what they think they should be seeing but aren't. But the annual budget deficits have actually been declining in raw numbers, not increasing, and measured by the only standard which has real meaning, as a percentage of GDP, the decline has been even more rapid! Simply understanding this removes the need for complicated explanations.

What's the really scary part about Rahn's list? Every one of them is a media creation!

The bird flu scare was entirely their imagination from start to finish, since there weren't any real numbers to support it. An even-handed media would emphasize the declining budget deficits and incorrect recession scenarios, and it's blatantly obvious that they aren't even trying to do this, because if they were doing their job then there couldn't possibly be poll numbers like those! How many people believe the world is flat? Why aren't they in a majority? The same with the fact that the hottest year of the last century was 1934 and the lack of change from 2001-2007. Just the simple fact that a majority of people don't know these things means, duhhh, the media isn't doing their job of informing the public of the actual facts. The information is out there, so why isn't it more widely known?

Confused about Pakistan and what you should think about Musharraf? This should explain it to you:

Slowly but surely, the Islamic Emirate's writ is pushing beyond Waziristan itself, to encompass other sections of Pakistan's mountainous tribal regions--thereby fueling the ongoing insurgency across the border in Afghanistan. With a third of Pakistanis in a recent poll expressing favorable views of al Qaeda, and 49% registering favorable opinions of local jihadi terror groups, the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan may yet conquer Pakistan. Fear of a widening Islamist rebellion in this nuclear-armed state was Gen. Pervez Musharraf's stated reason for the recent imposition of a state of emergency. And in fact Osama bin Laden publicly called for the overthrow of Mr. Musharraf's government this past September.

Back to lighter American politics as this American Spectator article pokes at Joe Biden:

"Everything I care about, everything I've devoted my life to -- everything -- is impeded by the continuation of this war," Biden lamented. "Iraq is like a big boulder sitting in the middle of the road."

More like in the middle of Joe Biden's political driveway. Once he ends the war, Biden promises the revenues saved will make universal healthcare and college with no debt possible, eviscerate the national debt and summon forth the renewable energy technology to end dependence on "oligarchs of oil."

Of course, Joe Biden was in Congress for 30 years before the Iraq invasion. ... Once upon a time there was no Iraq war and we still didn't have the cash for Biden's platform.

TAS also points out something that I missed seeing much about with regards to the Bali climate conference:

...during the conference 100 prominent scientists released a letter they all had signed to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. It began, "It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has altered humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables. We therefore need to equip nations to become resilient to the full range of these natural phenomena by promoting economic growth and wealth generation."

And maybe I'm just not paying enough attention, because this note by Mickey Kaus is the first I've seen about something I commented on earlier:

Team Huckabee is trying hard not to appear defensive about the governor’s somewhat odd performance in the last couple of days, a period dominated by his I’m-not-going-to-air-this-negative-ad-but-I-am-going-to-show-it-to-the-press news conference and, later, by a full day of complaining about Romney’s attacks. By the end of those 48 hours, Huckabee seemed in danger of channeling Bob Dole’s famous — and disastrous — “stop lying about my record” moment from 1988. ... Why Huckabee even decided to show the ad to reporters is a mystery.

Bill Clinton is the gift that keeps on giving. Exit polls identified two issues that wounded Republicans in 2006: Iraq and corruption. He muddies the Democratic message on both.

His false claim that he opposed the Iraq invasion only drew attention to his support for it. In fact, his words and deeds in office supplied President Bush with ample arguments for the war. “Regime change” was not a neoconservative concoction. It became official policy when President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Several weeks later, he launched air strikes to “attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.” Noting that Saddam Hussein had already used weapons of mass destruction, he stressed: “I have no doubt today, that left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again.”

Clinton is also a walking reminder that Republicans have no patent on pay-to-play politics “I see the White House is like a subway,” Democratic fundraiser Johnny Chung said in 1997, “you have to put in coins to open the gates.” That quotation came up again this past fall, when Senator Hillary Clinton had to give back thousands in tainted contributions.

You wait...Hillary will be back this fall reminding us that Iraq was actually their idea, not Bush's.

Contrary to popular belief, there are motorists in Fallujah. There is a so-called vehicle ban, but it has been misreported and misunderstood. It is true that Fallujah neighborhoods are segmented by barriers, but residents can walk and drive their vehicles from one neighborhood to the other after passing through Iraqi Police checkpoints. They can also leave and enter the city whenever they like as long as they have a Fallujah resident sticker on the windshield of their car. Fallujah's vehicle ban only applies to cars from outside the city. Non-residents are welcome in Fallujah, but they have to leave their vehicle at the outskirts. The city is very small. It is easily walkable, and taxi service is cheap and available. The non-resident vehicle ban is enforced by the Iraqi Police, not the Marines. Iraqi Police Colonel Faisal will decide when the non-resident vehicle ban will be lifted.

Taxi service cheap and available. When I lived in Amador County, California, the entire county had ONE taxi and it was quite expensive.

It has been months since the jihadists have been able to murder anyone in Fallujah. Only a few weeks before, however, a handful showed up on a street corner and handed out anti-American snuff films on DVD. Apparently they thought the local civilians would be impressed. They were not. They called the Iraqi Police, and the propagandists were taken away to the jail.

The main Jolan market was up ahead, but first we passed through a neighborhood that, unlike almost anywhere else in Iraq, received 24 hours a day of electricity.

Lieutenant Barefoot pointed up toward the sky. “See the electricity poles?” he said. I did, and I was amazed.

The neighborhood was wired properly as though it were part of a modern First World country. Gone all of a sudden were the hideously tangled rat's nest of wires and cables that make up most of Iraq's electrical grid.

You should go to his site and look at the pictures of the "normal" grid. It makes Costa Rica at its worst look first world by comparison. Literally unbelievable...you can't see why the entire mess doesn't simply short out instantly. I am not exaggerating, either.

An Iraqi Police captain recently started a Fallujah-wide volleyball tournament. He purchased uniforms for the players and trophies that will go to the winners when the tournament ends. Most of the Marines I spoke to were stunned by this development, especially those who had previously served in Fallujah when it was still the catastrophically violent city most Americans think it still is.

I wasn't personally all that impressed with the fact that Iraqis play volleyball now. That is not because I don't “get it,” but because it's hard to imagine just how bad a place Fallujah recently was. It's not a nice place today, but it is almost normal for a rough-around-the-edges city in the Third World. And it's a paradise compared with, say, a shantytown-packed Mexican border town like Juarez or Tijuana.

All the Marines I spoke to were amazed at the progress made in Fallujah. It was safer than even they had expected. I asked Lieutenant Laughlin what, specifically, surprised him most about the current state of the city.

“The most surprising thing,” he said, “is how friendly people are. I expected people here to just hate us after Al-Fajr. You kind of have to take it with a grain of salt, though. Some of them really just want the Iraqi Police to take over, and they only smile at us to be polite.”

That has to be right. Some unknown percentage of Fallujahns are still disgruntled with the American presence. But there is almost no surface-level evidence that this is true. Very nearly 100 percent of the people who live there are friendly.

“Have you run into any civilians who are hostile toward you?” I said.

“Not really,” he said. “Some of them are scared of us, though. We can look pretty intimidating.”

Fightin' Jack Murtha says our military is broken and has to be brought home out of harm's way where they'll be safe.

In the case of Pakistan, however, we are starting to see a disturbing pattern: the rioting and violence continues, the conspiracies mount, and the three general factions square off (the al-Qaeda/Islamists “death to the West” clique; the military/dictatorship “at least we provide order and secure the nukes” bunch; and the “reform” and democracy Bhuttoites [“forget our past corruption”]).

The common denominator is that it is somehow America’s fault for: either “propping” up a dictator,” or not pressing him enough to reform, or naively backing him up against a wall, or demanding he fight terrorists, or giving him a pass not to fight terrorists, or rigging an American-backed Bhutto return, or exposing a brave heroine to the clutches of her enemies without proper security, or this or that or that or this.

And these endless, and self-contradictory indictments are often voiced by Pakistani elites of two types. They are either opposition figures whose past careers are ample proof of corruption and lost opportunities-or expatriate intellectuals in European capitals and American universities (who sound like they had a little bit more opportunity at the good life than those who grow up in El Paso or Bakersfield), endlessly faulting some aspect of U.S. foreign policy—always forgetting why they are here and not over in Pakistan, and why perhaps they might do more good to match their idealistic and often vituperative rhetoric by returning to the land of their birth to enact real change on the ground, a country that sorely needs those with such international experience and expertise.

Are you kidding? they exclaim. The jihadists will kill us! Much more satisfying--and safer--to complain about what the U.S. is doing wrong than do anything ourselves.

In fairness to Clinton, I don't really see what he could have done about it without being willing to engage in a more muscular diplomacy. The next president will face the same challenge with Iran, unless Bush does something about it first. Never doubt that the Democrat hopefuls nightly prayer is that he does.

The man is utterly oblivious, of course, to the fact that there already exist lands in which "we" are a minority with respect to Islam and Muslims, so we have plenty of opportunity today to see exactly how they will be so towards us in his imaginary future. No one need wait until that time. Duhhh.

You have to wonder what they're thinking when they do things like this. Was some female lion offended?

I got a kick out of Irwin Stelzer pointing out that 2007 wasn't all bad, after all:

AMERICANS DON'T APPROVE of their president (approval rating 36 percent), even more heartily disapprove of their congress (approval rating 18 percent), say their confidence is in free fall, believe their children will be no better or possibly worse off than they are. Three out of four think their country is "on the wrong track." So they say.

Surprise: the American economy added over one million new jobs in the year that is now coming to a close. It grew at an annual rate of between 3 percent and 4 percent. Share prices rose by over 5 percent, with tech shares up by double digits, these gains being recorded in weeks in which the financial markets are said to be in turmoil. Exports soared, bringing down the long-standing trade deficit. In November, supposedly traumatized consumers splurged, increasing spending by the largest amount in 3 1/2 years. Final figures for Christmas are not yet in, but my guess is that early pessimistic estimates will prove wrong.

In foreign affairs, the surge brought down the level of violence in Iraq to a point where American involvement is no longer voters' number one concern. France and Germany are no longer in a contest for the anti-American prize, having ceded that award to a ranting Venezuelan president whose voters denied him the life-long term he sought. The French and American presidents have had a jolly get-together off the briny in Kennebunkport, and the German chancellor has sampled the natural glories of the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Britain's chancellor chooses to be on the outside looking in, but in the end the special relationship will survive his frostiness. Jacques Chirac and Gerhardt Schroeder are hardly missed; Tony Blair is.

Meanwhile, Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin point out in Commentary that crime is way down; teenage drug use, pregnancies, smoking, and drinking are all on the decline; welfare reform is working, bringing down child poverty; and the divorce rate is falling. Most important of all, unlike their counterparts in most industrialized countries, Americans have enough confidence in the future to make lots of babies. Hardly a society in the winter of its discontent, no matter what Americans are telling pollsters.

You have to wonder what kind of job the pollsters are doing...have they become as slanted as the MSM, for instance, and as seemingly unaware? For instance, how about all of those people who apparently believe the American economy is in a recession? Polls report this, but do people really believe that? I've read some explanations which said that many of the people thought their own situation was okay, but others were suffering...they thought.

Through it all, the world learned to be careful what it wished for. International institutions and foreign governments have been berating Americans for "unbalancing" world trade by running huge trade deficits. Finally, the markets agreed, and drove down the dollar. The result has been an increase in the competitiveness of made-in-USA goods in foreign markets, and a decline in the competitiveness of foreign-made goods in the showrooms of America. The world got what it wished for: a decline in the U.S. trade deficit. So BMW is laying off thousands of workers as the dollars it gets for the cars it sells in America no longer buy enough euros to meet its payroll; Italian designers are reduced to using cotton where once they would consider only silk; and European hotels and restaurants are pining for a return of the gauche but high-spending Americans who have switched vacation plans to American resorts, where the dollar is still king.

I love this part! The idea that the "trade deficit" must be automatically bad is as foolish as the notion that "global warming" must be automatically bad. I also have to laugh as the people who now are happy to tell me that the dollar is "worthless" and that "nobody wants it"...and yet I can still buy gold with my dollars. In fact, people are paying good money to advertise and try to find people who want to give them dollars for their gold.

What's that? They don't intend to keep the dollars, they intend to trade them for euros? Uh...someone wants to trade valuable euros for worthless dollars?

Meanwhile, American exporters--you know, those guys who hire Americans to work domestically rather than abroad--are doing much better than they have been. Jobs are not being exported overseas but kept at home.

It's like an article I read recently complaining about defense spending...where does the complainer think the money goes? We have millions employed in the defense industry, from actual military personnel on up. We buy equipment from domestic manufacturers, who employ millions more. If we laid off our military tomorrow and quit spending any money on defense, what do these guys think would happen to the economy? Do they think?

At the end of 2007, the Afghan Taliban made a radical leadership change which has sparked controversy in the ranks of the terror group. On December 29, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed issued a statement that Mullah Mansoor Dadullah, the commander for southern Afghanistan, was relieved of his command by Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Dadullah stated he had no knowledge of the dismissal and claimed it was a "conspiracy by my enemies." Omar responded by issuing a signed statement ordering Dadullah's firing.

Omar's dismissal of Mansoor was published on Voice of Jihad, a well trafficked jihadi internet forum.. The release was signed by Mullah Mohammad Omar Mujahid, the Ameer Al-Mu’meneen, or the commander of the faithful.

"Mullah Mansoor Dadullah is not [in] obedience to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in his actions and has carried out activities which were against the rules of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," said Omar. "So the Decision Authorities [or Shura Majlis, executive council] of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan have removed Mansoor Dadullah from his post and he will no longer be serving the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in [any way] and no Taliban will obey his orders any more."

Omar's orders also call for Mansoor's followers to disassociate themselves with the former commander. "This decision only applies to Mansoor Dadullah, all other friends of Mullah Dadullah Shahed will be carrying out their Jihad duties for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, all the sympathizers of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan end their relationship with Mansoor Dadullah," said Omar.

Like the original statement announcing Mansoor's dismissal, Omar's statement did not include specifics on Mansoor's failures of "obedience to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan."

Mansoor had contacted the Times of India on December 30 denying he was dismissed. "It's not true that Mullah Omar kicked me out of the Taliban," Mansoor told the Times of India by telephone. "If Mullah Omar wanted me to leave the Taliban, then he would send me the message and I would put down my weapons because he is our top commander." Dadullah admitted he was unable to contact Omar.

Mansoor served as commander of the Taliban's southern front in Kandahar, Helmand, Uruzgan, Zabul, Nimruz, and Farah provinces. He succeeded his brother, Mullah Dadullah Ahkund, who was killed by British special forces in May 2007.

Frankly, I'm heartened to hear about their internal bureaucratic wranglings.

Osama bin Laden said it best. His people will follow the strong horse. If, after years of stumbling and bumbling, the enduring strength and eventual wisdom of the American people can enter into the belly of the Islamist world, overturn tyrants, empower the Muslim people with peaceable and prosperous ways and intimidate two Islamist nuclear aspirants to renounce their pretensions, we will show ourselves to be the strong horse. Thereby we will hasten the day when the terrorist pretensions will fall on deaf Muslim ears and the threat of Islamist terrorism will begin to recede.

We have it almost in our hands to gain the first strategic psychological victory in the war on terror — and that will have been worth the suffering and the loss.

I have only one small complaint about Blankley's assessment: he sort of implies that we had a choice with the "was it worth it?" question.

The notion that the war in Iraq was a choice is perhaps the falsest error we can make. What we CHOSE was to make Iraq a major battlefield according to our own time schedule, an offensive maneuver rather than continued defensive backing up, but the WAR was thrust upon us by people who intended no less than to do just that. And still intend to do so.