Dem Myths Collide with NAFTA Reality
By Steve Chapman
Democrats often pillory Republicans for their economic errors. From the 1930s on, they reminded Americans of Herbert Hoover's Great Depression. In 1960, they blamed Dwight Eisenhower for slow growth. In the 1980s, they decried the "trickle-down" policies of Ronald Reagan. And today, they excoriate the damage caused by the North American Free Trade Agreement passed under ... Bill Clinton.
Even Hillary Clinton treats the accord with a warmth she normally reserves for Kenneth Starr. She never misses a chance to denounce what she calls "the shortcomings of NAFTA," or to insist she was always against it. But she has to deal with Barack Obama, who often gives the impression that his opponent's name is Hillary Nafta Clinton.
So Tuesday's debate in Cleveland devoted a lot of time to the question: Are you now or have you ever been a supporter of NAFTA? Both candidates denied any complicity, past or present, and both vowed to scrap the treaty if the Mexican government doesn't agree to changes.
Obama makes a special theme of blaming this and other trade agreements for setting off a race to the bottom that destroys American jobs. "In Youngstown, Ohio," he said in a Texas debate, "I've talked to workers who have seen their plants shipped overseas as a consequence of bad trade deals like NAFTA, literally seeing equipment unbolted from the floors of factories and shipped to China." Why NAFTA would induce a company to move production to China is a puzzle, but you get the idea.
His campaign claims a million jobs have vanished because of the deal. That sounds devastating, but over the last 14 years, the American economy has added a net total of 25 million jobs -- some of them, incidentally, attributable to expanded trade with Mexico. When NAFTA took effect in 1994, the unemployment rate was 6.7 percent. Today it's 4.9 percent.
But maybe all the jobs we lost were good ones and all the new ones are minimum-wage positions sweeping out abandoned factories? Actually, no. According to data compiled by Harvard economist Robert Z. Lawrence, the average blue-collar worker's wages and benefits, adjusted for inflation, have risen by 11 percent under NAFTA. Instead of driving pay scales down, it appears to have pulled them up.
Manufacturing employment has declined, but not because we're producing less: Manufacturing output has not only expanded, but has expanded far faster than it did in the decade before NAFTA. The problem is that as productivity rises, we can make more stuff with fewer people. That's not a bad thing. In fact, it's essentially the definition of economic progress.
We're not the only country facing that phenomenon. China makes everything these days, right? But between 1995 and 2002, it lost 15 million manufacturing jobs.
Even if the candidates don't want to acknowledge the gains of the last 14 years, it's hard to see how they can blame NAFTA for economic troubles in Ohio or elsewhere. The whole idea was to eliminate import duties in both the United States and Mexico (as well as Canada). What everyone forgets is that we got the best of that bargain, since our tariffs were very low to begin with.
"Mexico had very good access to the U.S. market" already, says Charlene Barshefsky, who was U.S. Trade Representative in the Clinton administration. "What NAFTA did was level the playing field."
Critics complain that while exports to Mexico have risen, imports from Mexico have risen even faster. But that's not because we embraced free trade. It's because our economy has been more robust than theirs. Prosperous consumers buy more goods, from both home and abroad, than struggling consumers. Absent NAFTA, the trade imbalance with Mexico would not be smaller. It would be bigger.
None of this is a revelation to economists. The candidates' broadsides require them to ignore not just a wealth of evidence but the overwhelming consensus of experts. Gary Clyde Hufbauer, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, estimates that 90 percent of the people in his profession regard the accord as a good thing.
Jagdish Bhagwati, a Columbia University trade economist, supports Obama and thinks his positions on trade are generally better than Clinton's. "But on NAFTA," Bhagwati told me, "he is dead wrong."
Clinton is also in error, but on the question of which candidate has more consistently and vehemently denounced the accord, Obama has opened up a clear lead. Now there's a race to the bottom.
schapman@tribune.com
Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/02/the_democratic_trade_myths.html at February 28, 2008 - 06:41:35 PM CST
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Guns Save Lives
February 27, 2008
Guns Save Lives
By John Stossel
It's all too predictable. A day after a gunman killed six people and wounded 18 others at Northern Illinois University, The New York Times criticized the U.S. Interior Department for preparing to rethink its ban on guns in national parks.
The editorial board wants "the 51 senators who like the thought of guns in the parks -- and everywhere else, it seems -- to realize that the innocence of Americans is better protected by carefully controlling guns than it is by arming everyone to the teeth."
As usual, the Times editors seem unaware of how silly their argument is. To them, the choice is between "carefully controlling guns" and "arming everyone to the teeth." But no one favors "arming everyone to the teeth" (whatever that means). Instead, gun advocates favor freedom, choice and self-responsibility. If someone wishes to be prepared to defend himself, he should be free to do so. No one has the right to deprive others of the means of effective self-defense, like a handgun.
As for the first option, "carefully controlling guns," how many shootings at schools or malls will it take before we understand that people who intend to kill are not deterred by gun laws? Last I checked, murder is against the law everywhere. No one intent on murder will be stopped by the prospect of committing a lesser crime like illegal possession of a firearm. The intellectuals and politicians who make pious declarations about controlling guns should explain how their gunless utopia is to be realized.
While they search for -- excuse me -- their magic bullet, innocent people are dying defenseless.
That's because laws that make it difficult or impossible to carry a concealed handgun do deter one group of people: law-abiding citizens who might have used a gun to stop crime. Gun laws are laws against self-defense.
Criminals have the initiative. They choose the time, place and manner of their crimes, and they tend to make choices that maximize their own, not their victims', success. So criminals don't attack people they know are armed, and anyone thinking of committing mass murder is likely to be attracted to a gun-free zone, such as schools and malls.
Government may promise to protect us from criminals, but it cannot deliver on that promise. This was neatly summed up in book title a few years ago: "Dial 911 and Die." If you are the target of a crime, only one other person besides the criminal is sure to be on the scene: you. There is no good substitute for self-responsibility.
How, then, does it make sense to create mandatory gun-free zones, which in reality are free-crime zones?
The usual suspects keep calling for more gun control laws. But this idea that gun control is crime control is just a myth. The National Academy of Sciences reviewed dozens of studies and could not find a single gun regulation that clearly led to reduced violent crime or murder. When Washington, D.C., passed its tough handgun ban years ago, gun violence rose.
The press ignores the fact that often guns save lives.
It's what happened in 2002 at the Appalachian School of Law. Hearing shots, two students went to their cars, got their guns and restrained the shooter until police arrested him.
Likewise, law professor Glenn Reynolds writes, "Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school's vice principal took a .45 from his truck and ran to the scene. In (last) February's Utah mall shooting, it was an off-duty police officer who happened to be on the scene and carrying a gun".
It's impossible to know exactly how often guns stop criminals. Would-be victims don't usually report crimes that don't happen. But people use guns in self-defense every day. The Cato Institute's Tom Palmer says just showing his gun to muggers once saved his life.
"It equalizes unequals," Palmer told "20/20". "If someone gets into your house, which would you rather have, a handgun or a telephone? You can call the police if you want, and they'll get there, and they'll take a picture of your dead body. But they can't get there in time to save your life. The first line of defense is you."
Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc. Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/02/guns_save_lives.html at February 27, 2008 - 03:10:36 PM CST
Guns Save Lives
By John Stossel
It's all too predictable. A day after a gunman killed six people and wounded 18 others at Northern Illinois University, The New York Times criticized the U.S. Interior Department for preparing to rethink its ban on guns in national parks.
The editorial board wants "the 51 senators who like the thought of guns in the parks -- and everywhere else, it seems -- to realize that the innocence of Americans is better protected by carefully controlling guns than it is by arming everyone to the teeth."
As usual, the Times editors seem unaware of how silly their argument is. To them, the choice is between "carefully controlling guns" and "arming everyone to the teeth." But no one favors "arming everyone to the teeth" (whatever that means). Instead, gun advocates favor freedom, choice and self-responsibility. If someone wishes to be prepared to defend himself, he should be free to do so. No one has the right to deprive others of the means of effective self-defense, like a handgun.
As for the first option, "carefully controlling guns," how many shootings at schools or malls will it take before we understand that people who intend to kill are not deterred by gun laws? Last I checked, murder is against the law everywhere. No one intent on murder will be stopped by the prospect of committing a lesser crime like illegal possession of a firearm. The intellectuals and politicians who make pious declarations about controlling guns should explain how their gunless utopia is to be realized.
While they search for -- excuse me -- their magic bullet, innocent people are dying defenseless.
That's because laws that make it difficult or impossible to carry a concealed handgun do deter one group of people: law-abiding citizens who might have used a gun to stop crime. Gun laws are laws against self-defense.
Criminals have the initiative. They choose the time, place and manner of their crimes, and they tend to make choices that maximize their own, not their victims', success. So criminals don't attack people they know are armed, and anyone thinking of committing mass murder is likely to be attracted to a gun-free zone, such as schools and malls.
Government may promise to protect us from criminals, but it cannot deliver on that promise. This was neatly summed up in book title a few years ago: "Dial 911 and Die." If you are the target of a crime, only one other person besides the criminal is sure to be on the scene: you. There is no good substitute for self-responsibility.
How, then, does it make sense to create mandatory gun-free zones, which in reality are free-crime zones?
The usual suspects keep calling for more gun control laws. But this idea that gun control is crime control is just a myth. The National Academy of Sciences reviewed dozens of studies and could not find a single gun regulation that clearly led to reduced violent crime or murder. When Washington, D.C., passed its tough handgun ban years ago, gun violence rose.
The press ignores the fact that often guns save lives.
It's what happened in 2002 at the Appalachian School of Law. Hearing shots, two students went to their cars, got their guns and restrained the shooter until police arrested him.
Likewise, law professor Glenn Reynolds writes, "Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school's vice principal took a .45 from his truck and ran to the scene. In (last) February's Utah mall shooting, it was an off-duty police officer who happened to be on the scene and carrying a gun".
It's impossible to know exactly how often guns stop criminals. Would-be victims don't usually report crimes that don't happen. But people use guns in self-defense every day. The Cato Institute's Tom Palmer says just showing his gun to muggers once saved his life.
"It equalizes unequals," Palmer told "20/20". "If someone gets into your house, which would you rather have, a handgun or a telephone? You can call the police if you want, and they'll get there, and they'll take a picture of your dead body. But they can't get there in time to save your life. The first line of defense is you."
Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc. Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/02/guns_save_lives.html at February 27, 2008 - 03:10:36 PM CST
Monday, February 25, 2008
It is all about him (Obama)
By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Last October, a reporter asked Barack Obama why he had stopped wearing the American flag lapel pin that he, like many other public officials, had been sporting since soon after Sept. 11. Obama could have responded that his new-found fashion minimalism was no big deal. What matters, obviously, is what you believe and do, not what you wear.
But Obama chose to present his flag-pin removal as a principled gesture. “You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest.”
Leave aside the claim that “speaking out on issues” constitutes true patriotism. What’s striking is that Obama couldn’t resist a grandiose explanation. Obama’s unnecessary and imprudent statement impugns the sincerity or intelligence of those vulgar sorts who still choose to wear a flag pin. But moral vanity prevailed. He wanted to explain that he was too good — too patriotic! — to wear a flag pin on his chest.
Fast forward to last Monday in Wisconsin. Michelle Obama, in the course of a stump speech, remarked, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”
Michelle Obama’s adult life goes back to the mid-1980s. Can it really be the case that nothing the U.S. achieved since then has made her proud? Apparently. For, as she said later in the same appearance: “Life for regular folks has gotten worse over the course of my lifetime, through Republican and Democratic administrations. It hasn’t gotten much better.”
Now in almost every empirical respect, American lives have in fact gotten better over the last quarter-century. And most Americans — and most Democrats — don’t think those years were one vast wasteland. So Barack Obama hastened to clarify his wife’s remarks. “What she meant was, this is the first time that she’s been proud of the politics of America,” he said, “because she’s pretty cynical about the political process, and with good reason, and she’s not alone.” Later in the week, Michelle Obama further explained, “What I was clearly talking about was that I’m proud of how Americans are engaging in the political process.”
But that clearly isn’t what she was talking about. For as she had argued in the Wisconsin speech, America’s illness goes far beyond a flawed political process: “Barack knows that at some level there’s a hole in our souls.” This was a variation of language she had used earlier on the campaign trail: “Barack Obama is the only person in this race who understands that, that before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.”
But they can be repaired. Indeed, she had said a couple of weeks before, in Los Angeles: “Barack Obama ... is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”
So we don’t have to work to improve our souls. Our broken souls can be fixed — by our voting for Barack Obama. We don’t have to fight or sacrifice to help our country. Our uninvolved and uninformed lives can be changed — by our choosing Barack Obama. America can become a nation to be proud of — by letting ourselves be led by Barack Obama.
John Kennedy, to whom Obama is sometimes compared, challenged the American people to acts of citizenship and patriotism. Barack Obama allows us to feel better about ourselves.
Obama likes to say, “we are the change that we seek” and “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Obama’s rhetorical skill makes his candidacy appear almost collective rather than individual. That’s a democratic courtesy on his part, and one flattering to his followers. But the effectual truth of what Obama is saying is that he is the one we’ve been waiting for.
Barack Obama is an awfully talented politician. But could the American people, by November, decide that for all his impressive qualities, Obama tends too much toward the preening self-regard of Bill Clinton, the patronizing elitism of Al Gore and the haughty liberalism of John Kerry?
It’s fitting that the alternative to Obama will be John McCain. He makes no grand claim to fix our souls. He doesn’t think he’s the one everyone has been waiting for. He’s more proud of his country than of himself. And his patriotism has consisted of deeds more challenging than “speaking out on issues.”
Last October, a reporter asked Barack Obama why he had stopped wearing the American flag lapel pin that he, like many other public officials, had been sporting since soon after Sept. 11. Obama could have responded that his new-found fashion minimalism was no big deal. What matters, obviously, is what you believe and do, not what you wear.
But Obama chose to present his flag-pin removal as a principled gesture. “You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest.”
Leave aside the claim that “speaking out on issues” constitutes true patriotism. What’s striking is that Obama couldn’t resist a grandiose explanation. Obama’s unnecessary and imprudent statement impugns the sincerity or intelligence of those vulgar sorts who still choose to wear a flag pin. But moral vanity prevailed. He wanted to explain that he was too good — too patriotic! — to wear a flag pin on his chest.
Fast forward to last Monday in Wisconsin. Michelle Obama, in the course of a stump speech, remarked, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”
Michelle Obama’s adult life goes back to the mid-1980s. Can it really be the case that nothing the U.S. achieved since then has made her proud? Apparently. For, as she said later in the same appearance: “Life for regular folks has gotten worse over the course of my lifetime, through Republican and Democratic administrations. It hasn’t gotten much better.”
Now in almost every empirical respect, American lives have in fact gotten better over the last quarter-century. And most Americans — and most Democrats — don’t think those years were one vast wasteland. So Barack Obama hastened to clarify his wife’s remarks. “What she meant was, this is the first time that she’s been proud of the politics of America,” he said, “because she’s pretty cynical about the political process, and with good reason, and she’s not alone.” Later in the week, Michelle Obama further explained, “What I was clearly talking about was that I’m proud of how Americans are engaging in the political process.”
But that clearly isn’t what she was talking about. For as she had argued in the Wisconsin speech, America’s illness goes far beyond a flawed political process: “Barack knows that at some level there’s a hole in our souls.” This was a variation of language she had used earlier on the campaign trail: “Barack Obama is the only person in this race who understands that, that before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.”
But they can be repaired. Indeed, she had said a couple of weeks before, in Los Angeles: “Barack Obama ... is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”
So we don’t have to work to improve our souls. Our broken souls can be fixed — by our voting for Barack Obama. We don’t have to fight or sacrifice to help our country. Our uninvolved and uninformed lives can be changed — by our choosing Barack Obama. America can become a nation to be proud of — by letting ourselves be led by Barack Obama.
John Kennedy, to whom Obama is sometimes compared, challenged the American people to acts of citizenship and patriotism. Barack Obama allows us to feel better about ourselves.
Obama likes to say, “we are the change that we seek” and “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Obama’s rhetorical skill makes his candidacy appear almost collective rather than individual. That’s a democratic courtesy on his part, and one flattering to his followers. But the effectual truth of what Obama is saying is that he is the one we’ve been waiting for.
Barack Obama is an awfully talented politician. But could the American people, by November, decide that for all his impressive qualities, Obama tends too much toward the preening self-regard of Bill Clinton, the patronizing elitism of Al Gore and the haughty liberalism of John Kerry?
It’s fitting that the alternative to Obama will be John McCain. He makes no grand claim to fix our souls. He doesn’t think he’s the one everyone has been waiting for. He’s more proud of his country than of himself. And his patriotism has consisted of deeds more challenging than “speaking out on issues.”
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Turning Point for Missile Defense
Turning Point for Missile Defense
By Rich Lowry
Somewhere 130 miles above the Pacific Ocean, tumbling around the Earth at 17,000 mph, a disabled spy satellite met a fiery end late Wednesday night -- destroyed by a U.S. missile-defense interceptor.
The spectacular hit marks a definitive turn in the debate concerning missile defense, from whether it's technically possible to whether it's ethically desirable. Many of the same people who had argued for years that missile defense couldn't be done now will complain that it constitutes a nefarious "weaponizing of space."
The U.S. normally isn't in the business of shooting down satellites. It took out the dead National Reconnaissance Office satellite because it had a full, 1,000-pound tank of toxic rocket fuel that there was some slim chance could fall on a populated area when it re-entered the atmosphere in a few weeks. Now, the hydrazine fuel appears to have burned up in an explosion in space, and small pieces of the 5,000-pound satellite -- about the size of a school bus -- will fall harmlessly to Earth.
The satellite wasn't a missile launched with just minutes warning, but hitting it is still a major success for our missile-defense system. The window for a successful strike was about 30 seconds, the speeds involved were mind-boggling, and all the same technologies that would be deployed against a missile -- a Standard Missile 3 rocket launched from an Aegis-class cruiser and a battery of radar and sensors -- were in play.
The Chinese immediately lashed out. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said that they will continue to monitor "the possible harm caused by the U.S. action to outer space security and relevant countries." The Chinese commitment to "outer space security" was recently exemplified by their shooting down an aging weather satellite with no warning, then denying that they had done it for two weeks, and doing it at an orbit so high that 1,600 pieces of space debris will clutter Earth's orbit for years.
The Chinese test -- of a system that is explicitly designed to target satellites -- didn't produce much outrage from arms controllers. It's long been an axiom of arms control that whatever the U.S. does is dangerous and a provocation to other countries, while our adversaries are merely forced into hostile or irresponsible acts by our recklessness. But the U.S. position on space -- like our position on the high seas -- is that everyone should have full and free access to it for peaceful purposes.
What we have resisted is getting pushed into an unenforceable treaty against weapons in space that could hamper our ability to address threats in the future. So many weapons can be transformed instantly into "space weapons" if they are used against targets above the Earth's atmosphere -- as we've seen with the SM-3 missile -- that banning them is impossible. The real agenda of the Russians and the Chinese is to keep us from ever putting missile-defense interceptors in space. That would enhance our capability against their intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) arsenals.
This is how deep the Chinese and Russian commitment to the peacefulness of space runs: They want to have the option of launching ICBMs out into space where they will travel undisturbed until they reenter Earth's atmosphere on their way to visiting untold devastation on a target. The Chinese could make a genuine gesture toward peace in space by ending their rapid buildup of ICBMs, but their true interest is in preventing us from checking their missile threat to us and our allies.
Space has been weaponized at least since the Germans launched V-2 rockets against Britain. Today, we use satellites not just for commercial purposes, but for intelligence and military command and control. That's the reason the Chinese are so keen to be able to shoot them down. Space isn't a pristine last frontier unsullied by human competitiveness and ferocity, but an extension of our flawed world down here below. It can be dangerous, which is why it's a comfort that we are building defenses against threats more serious than a tank of hydrazine.
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/02/turning_point_for_missile_defe.html at February 23, 2008 - 01:15:43 PM CST
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By Rich Lowry
Somewhere 130 miles above the Pacific Ocean, tumbling around the Earth at 17,000 mph, a disabled spy satellite met a fiery end late Wednesday night -- destroyed by a U.S. missile-defense interceptor.
The spectacular hit marks a definitive turn in the debate concerning missile defense, from whether it's technically possible to whether it's ethically desirable. Many of the same people who had argued for years that missile defense couldn't be done now will complain that it constitutes a nefarious "weaponizing of space."
The U.S. normally isn't in the business of shooting down satellites. It took out the dead National Reconnaissance Office satellite because it had a full, 1,000-pound tank of toxic rocket fuel that there was some slim chance could fall on a populated area when it re-entered the atmosphere in a few weeks. Now, the hydrazine fuel appears to have burned up in an explosion in space, and small pieces of the 5,000-pound satellite -- about the size of a school bus -- will fall harmlessly to Earth.
The satellite wasn't a missile launched with just minutes warning, but hitting it is still a major success for our missile-defense system. The window for a successful strike was about 30 seconds, the speeds involved were mind-boggling, and all the same technologies that would be deployed against a missile -- a Standard Missile 3 rocket launched from an Aegis-class cruiser and a battery of radar and sensors -- were in play.
The Chinese immediately lashed out. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said that they will continue to monitor "the possible harm caused by the U.S. action to outer space security and relevant countries." The Chinese commitment to "outer space security" was recently exemplified by their shooting down an aging weather satellite with no warning, then denying that they had done it for two weeks, and doing it at an orbit so high that 1,600 pieces of space debris will clutter Earth's orbit for years.
The Chinese test -- of a system that is explicitly designed to target satellites -- didn't produce much outrage from arms controllers. It's long been an axiom of arms control that whatever the U.S. does is dangerous and a provocation to other countries, while our adversaries are merely forced into hostile or irresponsible acts by our recklessness. But the U.S. position on space -- like our position on the high seas -- is that everyone should have full and free access to it for peaceful purposes.
What we have resisted is getting pushed into an unenforceable treaty against weapons in space that could hamper our ability to address threats in the future. So many weapons can be transformed instantly into "space weapons" if they are used against targets above the Earth's atmosphere -- as we've seen with the SM-3 missile -- that banning them is impossible. The real agenda of the Russians and the Chinese is to keep us from ever putting missile-defense interceptors in space. That would enhance our capability against their intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) arsenals.
This is how deep the Chinese and Russian commitment to the peacefulness of space runs: They want to have the option of launching ICBMs out into space where they will travel undisturbed until they reenter Earth's atmosphere on their way to visiting untold devastation on a target. The Chinese could make a genuine gesture toward peace in space by ending their rapid buildup of ICBMs, but their true interest is in preventing us from checking their missile threat to us and our allies.
Space has been weaponized at least since the Germans launched V-2 rockets against Britain. Today, we use satellites not just for commercial purposes, but for intelligence and military command and control. That's the reason the Chinese are so keen to be able to shoot them down. Space isn't a pristine last frontier unsullied by human competitiveness and ferocity, but an extension of our flawed world down here below. It can be dangerous, which is why it's a comfort that we are building defenses against threats more serious than a tank of hydrazine.
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/02/turning_point_for_missile_defe.html at February 23, 2008 - 01:15:43 PM CST
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Sunday, February 17, 2008
Iraq's Jihad Myths
Among Democrats and even many Republicans, it is by now accepted wisdom that the war in Iraq brought huge numbers of holy warriors to the anti-American cause. But is it true? I don't think so.
Muslim holy warriors are a diverse lot, reacting with differing intensity to the hot-button issues that define contemporary Islamic militancy. For many fundamentalists, what is seen as an unrelenting Western assault on Muslim male honor and female virtue is the core infuriating offense. For others it may be the alienation that second-generation young Muslim men encounter in an immigrant-unfriendly Europe. And for still others, Iraq, Afghanistan, the tyranny of U.S.-backed Muslim rulers and the Palestinian resistance can all come together to convert individual indignities into a holy-warrior faith.
These complexities may help explain, at least in part, why so many secular Westerners seek relief in more easily understood explanations for jihadism (the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict being the usual favorites) -- explanations that don't probe too deeply into Islamic history and the militant Muslim imagination.
Regarding the Iraq war and jihadism, two facts stand out. First, if we make a comparison with the Soviet-Afghan war of 1979-89, which was the baptismal font for al-Qaeda, what's most striking is how few foreign holy warriors have gone to Mesopotamia since the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Admittedly, we don't have a perfect grasp of the numbers involved in either conflict. But the figure of 25,000 Arab mujaheddin is probably a decent figure for those who went to Pakistan to fight the Red Army. Most probably did so in the last four years of the war, when the recruitment organizations and logistics became well developed. In Iraq, we see nothing of this magnitude, even though Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is in the Arab heartland and at the center of Islamic history. Moreover, for Arabs, getting to Iraq isn't difficult, and once there they speak the language and know the culture. And of course the United States, the bete noire of Islamists, is the enemy in Iraq.
But according to the CIA and the U.S. military, we are now seeing at most only dozens of Arab Sunni holy warriors entering the country each month. Even at the height of the insurgency in 2006-07, the figure might have been just a few hundred (and may have been much smaller).
In the 1980s the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and most well-organized Islamist movement, was at the center of the anti-Soviet jihadist recruitment effort. But in the case of Iraq, the Brotherhood has largely sat out the war. Even in Saudi Arabia, the mother ship of virulently anti-American, anti-Shiite, anti-moderate Muslim Wahhabism, the lack of commitment has been striking. We should have seen thousands, not hundreds, of Saudi true believers descending on Iraq.
Throughout the Arab world, fundamentalism today is much stronger on the ground than it was in the 1980s. Yet the fundamentalist commitment to the Iraqi Sunni Arab insurgency pales in comparison with that made to Sunni Afghans.
A second striking fact about Islamism and the Iraq war is that the arrival of foreign holy warriors is deradicalizing the local population -- the exact opposite of what happened in Afghanistan. In the Soviet war, the "Arab Afghans" arrived white-hot -- their radicalization had occurred at home in the 1960s and 1970s, when Islamic fundamentalism replaced secular Arab nationalism as the driving intellectual force. On the subcontinent, Arab holy warriors accelerated extreme Islamism among both Afghans and Pakistanis. We are still living with the results.
In Iraq, as we have seen with the anti-al-Qaeda, Sunni Arab "Awakenings," Sunni extremism is now in retreat. More important, the gruesome anti-Shiite tactics of extremist groups, combined with the much-quoted statements made by former Sunni insurgents about the positive actions of the United States in Iraq, have caused a great deal of intellectual turbulence in the Arab world.
It's way too soon to call Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda spiritual outcasts among Arab Muslims, but they have in fact sustained enormous damage throughout the region because of Iraq. The lack of holy-warrior manpower coming from the Muslim Brotherhood is surely, in part, a reflection of this discomfort with al-Qaeda's violence, the complexity of Iraqi politics and America's not entirely negative role inside the country. If bin Ladenism is now on the decline -- and it may well be among Arabs -- then Iraq has played an essential part in battering the movement's spiritual appeal.
Iraq could still fall apart (and if an American president starts withdrawing troops haphazardly, it probably will). The country's descent into chaos and renewed sectarian strife would likely reenergize Islamic extremism. But it is certainly not too soon to suggest that Iraq could well become America's decisive victory over Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and all those Muslims who believe that God has sanctified violence against the United States.
Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former case officer for the CIA.
Muslim holy warriors are a diverse lot, reacting with differing intensity to the hot-button issues that define contemporary Islamic militancy. For many fundamentalists, what is seen as an unrelenting Western assault on Muslim male honor and female virtue is the core infuriating offense. For others it may be the alienation that second-generation young Muslim men encounter in an immigrant-unfriendly Europe. And for still others, Iraq, Afghanistan, the tyranny of U.S.-backed Muslim rulers and the Palestinian resistance can all come together to convert individual indignities into a holy-warrior faith.
These complexities may help explain, at least in part, why so many secular Westerners seek relief in more easily understood explanations for jihadism (the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict being the usual favorites) -- explanations that don't probe too deeply into Islamic history and the militant Muslim imagination.
Regarding the Iraq war and jihadism, two facts stand out. First, if we make a comparison with the Soviet-Afghan war of 1979-89, which was the baptismal font for al-Qaeda, what's most striking is how few foreign holy warriors have gone to Mesopotamia since the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Admittedly, we don't have a perfect grasp of the numbers involved in either conflict. But the figure of 25,000 Arab mujaheddin is probably a decent figure for those who went to Pakistan to fight the Red Army. Most probably did so in the last four years of the war, when the recruitment organizations and logistics became well developed. In Iraq, we see nothing of this magnitude, even though Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is in the Arab heartland and at the center of Islamic history. Moreover, for Arabs, getting to Iraq isn't difficult, and once there they speak the language and know the culture. And of course the United States, the bete noire of Islamists, is the enemy in Iraq.
But according to the CIA and the U.S. military, we are now seeing at most only dozens of Arab Sunni holy warriors entering the country each month. Even at the height of the insurgency in 2006-07, the figure might have been just a few hundred (and may have been much smaller).
In the 1980s the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and most well-organized Islamist movement, was at the center of the anti-Soviet jihadist recruitment effort. But in the case of Iraq, the Brotherhood has largely sat out the war. Even in Saudi Arabia, the mother ship of virulently anti-American, anti-Shiite, anti-moderate Muslim Wahhabism, the lack of commitment has been striking. We should have seen thousands, not hundreds, of Saudi true believers descending on Iraq.
Throughout the Arab world, fundamentalism today is much stronger on the ground than it was in the 1980s. Yet the fundamentalist commitment to the Iraqi Sunni Arab insurgency pales in comparison with that made to Sunni Afghans.
A second striking fact about Islamism and the Iraq war is that the arrival of foreign holy warriors is deradicalizing the local population -- the exact opposite of what happened in Afghanistan. In the Soviet war, the "Arab Afghans" arrived white-hot -- their radicalization had occurred at home in the 1960s and 1970s, when Islamic fundamentalism replaced secular Arab nationalism as the driving intellectual force. On the subcontinent, Arab holy warriors accelerated extreme Islamism among both Afghans and Pakistanis. We are still living with the results.
In Iraq, as we have seen with the anti-al-Qaeda, Sunni Arab "Awakenings," Sunni extremism is now in retreat. More important, the gruesome anti-Shiite tactics of extremist groups, combined with the much-quoted statements made by former Sunni insurgents about the positive actions of the United States in Iraq, have caused a great deal of intellectual turbulence in the Arab world.
It's way too soon to call Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda spiritual outcasts among Arab Muslims, but they have in fact sustained enormous damage throughout the region because of Iraq. The lack of holy-warrior manpower coming from the Muslim Brotherhood is surely, in part, a reflection of this discomfort with al-Qaeda's violence, the complexity of Iraqi politics and America's not entirely negative role inside the country. If bin Ladenism is now on the decline -- and it may well be among Arabs -- then Iraq has played an essential part in battering the movement's spiritual appeal.
Iraq could still fall apart (and if an American president starts withdrawing troops haphazardly, it probably will). The country's descent into chaos and renewed sectarian strife would likely reenergize Islamic extremism. But it is certainly not too soon to suggest that Iraq could well become America's decisive victory over Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and all those Muslims who believe that God has sanctified violence against the United States.
Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former case officer for the CIA.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Conservative's case for McCain
By Jeff Jacoby
February 3, 2008
IT IS NOT news that much of the conservative base bitterly opposes John McCain and is appalled that the man they consider a Republican apostate could soon be the GOP's presidential nominee. From talk radio to the blogosphere to the conservative press, many on the right are outraged that what Mitt Romney last week called "the House that Reagan Built" - the modern Republican Party - might anoint as its standard-bearer the candidate who by their lights is the least likely to follow in the Gipper's footsteps.
Conservatives bristle at the thought of a Republican president who might raise income and payroll taxes. Or enlarge the federal government instead of shrinking it. Or appoint Supreme Court justices who are anything but strict constructionists. Or grant a blanket amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.
Now, I don't believe that a President McCain would do any of those things. But President Reagan did all of them. Reagan also provided arms to the Khomeini theocracy in Iran, presided over skyrocketing budget deficits, and ordered US troops to cut and run in the face of Islamist terror in the Middle East. McCain would be unlikely to commit any of those sins, either.
Does this mean that Reagan was not, in fact, a great conservative? Of course not. Nor does it mean that McCain has not given his critics on the right legitimate reasons to be disconcerted. My point is simply that the immaculate conservative leader for whom so many on the right yearn to vote is a fantasy. Conservatives who say that McCain is no Ronald Reagan are right, but Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan either. Neither is Mike Huckabee. And neither was the real - as opposed to the mythic - Ronald Reagan.
The conservative case against McCain is clear enough; I made it myself in some of these columns when he first ran for president eight years ago. The issues that have earned McCain the label of "maverick" - campaign-finance restrictions, global warming, the Bush tax cuts, immigration, judicial filibusters - are precisely what stick in the craw of the GOP conservative base.
But this year, the conservative case for McCain is vastly more compelling.
On the surpassing national-security issues of the day - confronting the threat from radical Islam and winning the war in Iraq - no one is more stalwart. Even McCain's fiercest critics, such as conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, will say so. "The world's bad guys," Hewitt writes, "would never for a moment think he would blink in any showdown, or hesitate to strike back at any enemy with the audacity to try again to cripple the US through terror."
McCain was never an agenda-driven movement conservative, but he "entered public life as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution," as he puts it, and on the whole his record has been that of a robust and committed conservative. He is a spending hawk and an enemy of pork and earmarks. He has never voted to increase taxes, and wants the Bush tax cuts made permanent for the best of reasons: "They worked." He is a staunch free-trader and a champion of school choice. He is unabashedly prolife and pro-Second Amendment. He opposes same-sex marriage. He wants entitlements reined in and personal retirement accounts expanded.
McCain's conservatism has usually been more a matter of gut instinct than of a rigorous intellectual worldview, and he has certainly deviated from Republican orthodoxy on some serious issues. For all that, his ratings from conservative watchdog groups have always been high. "Even with all the blemishes," notes National Review, a leading journal on the right (and a backer of Romney), "McCain has a more consistent conservative record than Giuliani or Romney. . . . This is an abiding strength of his candidacy."
As a lifelong conservative, I wish McCain evinced a greater understanding that limited government is indispensable to individual liberty. Yet there is no candidate in either party who so thoroughly embodies the conservatism of American honor and tradition as McCain, nor any with greater moral authority to invoke it. For all his transgressions and backsliding, McCain radiates integrity and steadfastness, and if his heterodox stands have at times been infuriating, they also attest to his resolve. Time and again he has taken an unpopular stand and stuck with it, putting his career on the line when it would have been easier to go along with the crowd.
A perfect conservative he isn't. But he is courageous and steady, a man of character and high standards, a genuine hero. If "the House that Reagan Built" is to be true to its best and highest ideals, it will unite behind John McCain.
February 3, 2008
IT IS NOT news that much of the conservative base bitterly opposes John McCain and is appalled that the man they consider a Republican apostate could soon be the GOP's presidential nominee. From talk radio to the blogosphere to the conservative press, many on the right are outraged that what Mitt Romney last week called "the House that Reagan Built" - the modern Republican Party - might anoint as its standard-bearer the candidate who by their lights is the least likely to follow in the Gipper's footsteps.
Conservatives bristle at the thought of a Republican president who might raise income and payroll taxes. Or enlarge the federal government instead of shrinking it. Or appoint Supreme Court justices who are anything but strict constructionists. Or grant a blanket amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.
Now, I don't believe that a President McCain would do any of those things. But President Reagan did all of them. Reagan also provided arms to the Khomeini theocracy in Iran, presided over skyrocketing budget deficits, and ordered US troops to cut and run in the face of Islamist terror in the Middle East. McCain would be unlikely to commit any of those sins, either.
Does this mean that Reagan was not, in fact, a great conservative? Of course not. Nor does it mean that McCain has not given his critics on the right legitimate reasons to be disconcerted. My point is simply that the immaculate conservative leader for whom so many on the right yearn to vote is a fantasy. Conservatives who say that McCain is no Ronald Reagan are right, but Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan either. Neither is Mike Huckabee. And neither was the real - as opposed to the mythic - Ronald Reagan.
The conservative case against McCain is clear enough; I made it myself in some of these columns when he first ran for president eight years ago. The issues that have earned McCain the label of "maverick" - campaign-finance restrictions, global warming, the Bush tax cuts, immigration, judicial filibusters - are precisely what stick in the craw of the GOP conservative base.
But this year, the conservative case for McCain is vastly more compelling.
On the surpassing national-security issues of the day - confronting the threat from radical Islam and winning the war in Iraq - no one is more stalwart. Even McCain's fiercest critics, such as conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, will say so. "The world's bad guys," Hewitt writes, "would never for a moment think he would blink in any showdown, or hesitate to strike back at any enemy with the audacity to try again to cripple the US through terror."
McCain was never an agenda-driven movement conservative, but he "entered public life as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution," as he puts it, and on the whole his record has been that of a robust and committed conservative. He is a spending hawk and an enemy of pork and earmarks. He has never voted to increase taxes, and wants the Bush tax cuts made permanent for the best of reasons: "They worked." He is a staunch free-trader and a champion of school choice. He is unabashedly prolife and pro-Second Amendment. He opposes same-sex marriage. He wants entitlements reined in and personal retirement accounts expanded.
McCain's conservatism has usually been more a matter of gut instinct than of a rigorous intellectual worldview, and he has certainly deviated from Republican orthodoxy on some serious issues. For all that, his ratings from conservative watchdog groups have always been high. "Even with all the blemishes," notes National Review, a leading journal on the right (and a backer of Romney), "McCain has a more consistent conservative record than Giuliani or Romney. . . . This is an abiding strength of his candidacy."
As a lifelong conservative, I wish McCain evinced a greater understanding that limited government is indispensable to individual liberty. Yet there is no candidate in either party who so thoroughly embodies the conservatism of American honor and tradition as McCain, nor any with greater moral authority to invoke it. For all his transgressions and backsliding, McCain radiates integrity and steadfastness, and if his heterodox stands have at times been infuriating, they also attest to his resolve. Time and again he has taken an unpopular stand and stuck with it, putting his career on the line when it would have been easier to go along with the crowd.
A perfect conservative he isn't. But he is courageous and steady, a man of character and high standards, a genuine hero. If "the House that Reagan Built" is to be true to its best and highest ideals, it will unite behind John McCain.
I ask, on 9/12/2001, did anyone discuss tax policy, social security, political finance reform, etc?
February 3, 2008 -- On Tuesday, New Yorkers will go to the polls to vote in a highly tightly contested election that will help determine who will be the next president of the United States.
In this election, we are not just choosing our next president. We are also choosing our commander-in-chief - the person whose responsibility will be to defend our nation at a time of war.
And have no doubt: We are at war.
Our enemy in this struggle is the latest in a long line of totalitarians that Americans have been called on to fight throughout our history: a loose alliance of terrorists and tyrants, bound together by the fanatical ideology of Islamist extremism
Terrorism is the preferred weapon of these Islamist extremists, but it is not their ultimate aim. Their vision is far more ambitious and threatening: a vision of conquest in which huge swaths of the world fall under their vicious and repressive rule.
The Islamist extremists are plotting attacks against us and our allies every day - from the deserts of Iraq to the mountains of Afghanistan, from London and Madrid to Jerusalem and Islamabad - and, if given the chance, right here at home in America.
From the moment the next president steps into the Oval Office, he or she will face life-and-death decisions in this war. That is why we need a president who is going to be ready to be commander-in-chief from day one - a president who won't need on-the-job training.
And that is why I have decided to cross party lines to endorse Sen. John McCain for president.
I know that it is unusual for someone like me - an Independent Democrat - to support a Republican candidate for president. But the dangers we face as a nation are too profound, and the challenges we face too real, for us to let partisan politics decide who we will support.
After all, the Islamist extremists we are fighting in this war don't distinguish between Democrats and Republicans. They want to kill all of us, because we are all Americans.
That is why we need a leader who can bring us together again as Americans, and who can rally us to stand in solidarity against our enemies. John McCain is that leader.
When others were silent, John had the courage and the conviction to sound the alarm about the mistakes we were making in Iraq, and to call for more troops and a new strategy there.
And when others waivered, and were fleeing the field of battle, John had the courage and the conviction to stand against public opinion and fight for the surge in Iraq - where, at last, today the forces of Islamist extremism are on the run, and we are winning.
This is the kind of wartime leadership we as a nation desperately need in the years ahead - and it is the kind of leadership that you can expect when John McCain is in White House.
Although security in Iraq has improved dramatically thanks to the surge, this is not a moment for complacency. From terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan to the resurgent and aggressive nationalism we are witnessing in Russia, to the petroleum-funded extremism of Hugo Chavez in our own hemisphere, the fact remains that we live in a very dangerous world.
Consider the threat posed by the extremist regime in Iran, which continues to sponsor a rogue's gallery of terrorist proxies across the Middle East and which is zealously working to develop nuclear weapons. Iran is one of the biggest security challenges that the next president is going to face - and there will be no room for error.
Many fine people are running for president this year. But when it comes to keeping our nation safe and solving the problems we face at home, John McCain is the one with the experience, the determination, and the character to lead America forward to a safer, better future.
That is why I hope, next Tuesday, New Yorkers will go to the polls and help make John McCain - a great American patriot - our next great American president.
Joe Lieberman is an independent Democratic senator from Connecticut.
February 3, 2008 -- On Tuesday, New Yorkers will go to the polls to vote in a highly tightly contested election that will help determine who will be the next president of the United States.
In this election, we are not just choosing our next president. We are also choosing our commander-in-chief - the person whose responsibility will be to defend our nation at a time of war.
And have no doubt: We are at war.
Our enemy in this struggle is the latest in a long line of totalitarians that Americans have been called on to fight throughout our history: a loose alliance of terrorists and tyrants, bound together by the fanatical ideology of Islamist extremism
Terrorism is the preferred weapon of these Islamist extremists, but it is not their ultimate aim. Their vision is far more ambitious and threatening: a vision of conquest in which huge swaths of the world fall under their vicious and repressive rule.
The Islamist extremists are plotting attacks against us and our allies every day - from the deserts of Iraq to the mountains of Afghanistan, from London and Madrid to Jerusalem and Islamabad - and, if given the chance, right here at home in America.
From the moment the next president steps into the Oval Office, he or she will face life-and-death decisions in this war. That is why we need a president who is going to be ready to be commander-in-chief from day one - a president who won't need on-the-job training.
And that is why I have decided to cross party lines to endorse Sen. John McCain for president.
I know that it is unusual for someone like me - an Independent Democrat - to support a Republican candidate for president. But the dangers we face as a nation are too profound, and the challenges we face too real, for us to let partisan politics decide who we will support.
After all, the Islamist extremists we are fighting in this war don't distinguish between Democrats and Republicans. They want to kill all of us, because we are all Americans.
That is why we need a leader who can bring us together again as Americans, and who can rally us to stand in solidarity against our enemies. John McCain is that leader.
When others were silent, John had the courage and the conviction to sound the alarm about the mistakes we were making in Iraq, and to call for more troops and a new strategy there.
And when others waivered, and were fleeing the field of battle, John had the courage and the conviction to stand against public opinion and fight for the surge in Iraq - where, at last, today the forces of Islamist extremism are on the run, and we are winning.
This is the kind of wartime leadership we as a nation desperately need in the years ahead - and it is the kind of leadership that you can expect when John McCain is in White House.
Although security in Iraq has improved dramatically thanks to the surge, this is not a moment for complacency. From terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan to the resurgent and aggressive nationalism we are witnessing in Russia, to the petroleum-funded extremism of Hugo Chavez in our own hemisphere, the fact remains that we live in a very dangerous world.
Consider the threat posed by the extremist regime in Iran, which continues to sponsor a rogue's gallery of terrorist proxies across the Middle East and which is zealously working to develop nuclear weapons. Iran is one of the biggest security challenges that the next president is going to face - and there will be no room for error.
Many fine people are running for president this year. But when it comes to keeping our nation safe and solving the problems we face at home, John McCain is the one with the experience, the determination, and the character to lead America forward to a safer, better future.
That is why I hope, next Tuesday, New Yorkers will go to the polls and help make John McCain - a great American patriot - our next great American president.
Joe Lieberman is an independent Democratic senator from Connecticut.
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