Stromata Blog

A Unilateral War

When General Petraeus told Congress that Iran is furnishing weapons and training to our enemies in Iraq, and is responsible for the deaths of “hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians”, the anti-war Left yawned. To the extent that the pro-defeat crowd paid any attention, they dismissed such charges as more Bushitler lies, designed to stampede the public into war with the Mullarchy.

Yet just the other day, as Abe Greenwald points out, the Los Angeles Times, not often a conduit for Administration propaganda, quoted a Mahdi Army commander casually discussing his men’s receipt of arms shipments from Iran, including “bombs that can rip a hole in a U.S. tank and rockets that can pound Baghdad’s Green Zone”. He professes to “hate Iran”, and maybe he does, even as his pseudo-army’s nominal leader hides out in Tehran, but we ought to have learned by now that expectations that our enemies in the Middle East won’t cooperate with each other are delusory. Like Saddam Hussein before them, the mullahs are happy to arm and subsidize any species of anti-American mufsidun.

Does that matter at all to, say, Barack Obama? He insists that he’s not a pacifist; he’ll pour troops in Afghanistan and maybe Pakistan, too, to find Osama bin-Laden. Why? Because bin-Laden’s organization murdered Americans. Yet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s organization has done the same, and the prospective Democratic President plans to invite him to a summit meeting – much as if President Roosevelt had proposed getting together with Hideki Tojo after Pearl Harbor.

Liberals scorn “unilateralism”, but only when America takes the offensive. Unilateral attacks against us, it seems, are not a cause for concern.

Quote of the Day

Abe Greenwald:

With Obama’s nomination a lock, there’s been increasing discussion of what his Presidency might produce. Time and again, conversation comes back to this question of a black president and America’s image abroad. Yet, no one can name a single country that isn’t ages behind the U.S. in terms of diversity and integration. The notion that there’s a soft and cuddly world just waiting for America to catch up is not “global consciousness” but the very opposite: it is an American fantasy born of prosperity and isolation. If neoconservatives are criticized for their arrogance in assuming the universality of American ideals, how will Obama supporters of this stripe answer similar charges?

Mr. Greenwald backs this generalization up with ample supporting data. Did you know that only one member of the French Chamber of Deputies belongs to a racial minority? Of course, as Michelle Obama will tell you, America’s leadership in racial integration is no reason to be proud of this country.

Barack Obama’s Fantasy Universe

Gateway Pundit calls our attention to this, well, remarkable bit from Slick Barry’s North Carolina victory speech:

The man I met in Pennsylvania who lost his job but can’t even afford the gas to drive around and look for a new one. He can’t afford four more years of an energy policy written by the oil companies and for the oil companies; a policy that is not only keeping gas at record prices but funding both sides of the war on terror and destroying our planet. . . . He needs us to take a permanent holiday from our addiction for oil by making automakers raise their fuel standards, corporations pay for their pollution and oil companies invest their record profits in a clean energy future. That’s the change we need.

GP fastened on the peculiar phrase “funding both sides of the war on terror”, wondering what rational meaning it could possibly have, and reaching no satisfactory conclusion. The answer to the riddle can be found, I believe, in the point that caught James Taranto’s eye (second item):

Of course we’re all unhappy that regimes like those in Saudi Arabia and Iran [and don’t forget Venezuela, Jim!] (but no longer Iraq, thanks to Congress and President Bush) are able to use oil revenues to fund terrorism.

But Obama finds fault with funding both sides – that is, he finds fault with funding our side. If Obama wants to stake out a position of neutrality in wartime, he should run for president of Switzerland, not America.

If one takes Senator Obama’s statement at face value, that is, as implying that America has no legitimate role in the War on Terror, “funding both sides” makes sense. The Iraqi government, on the “other side” from the terrorists, supports itself largely through oil profits. A President Obama evidently would adopt energy policies that would keep money away from Baghdad, as well as from its foes. Then he would be off to negotiate peace with Iran and other countries that feel threatened by the Bush Administration, just like FDR did with Hitler and Tojo. To put it another way, he would both withdraw military support from our erstwhile ally and seek to bankrupt it, much as the Democratic Congress in 1975 worked actively to enfeeble South Vietnam.

The rest of the Obama quote contains further layers of fantasy. Slick Barry wants to cut the price of gasoline for that unemployed Pennsylvanian. He also wants to cut the carbon dioxide emissions that are “destroying our planet”. The only way to do that in the short or medium run is to discourage driving by making gasoline more expensive. Consistent with that view, he opposes the modest price relief that would come from suspending the federal gasoline tax. So, does he want lower prices or higher? If lower, how does he propose to reduce the amount of driving that Americans do while making it less expensive to drive? Mileage rationing?

Nothing in the summary of the Obama energy agenda – “making automakers raise their fuel standards, corporations pay for their pollution and oil companies invest their record profits in a clean energy future” – will help the Pennsylvanian buy gas soon enough to aid his job search. Fuel economy standards are a long-term proposition, the economics of which, we know from other evidence, the Senator doesn’t fathom. Taxes on “corporate pollution” – whatever he may be thinking of there – aren’t obvious energy cost savers. Compelling oil companies to invest in “clean energy” will leave them less money to explore and drill for oil. Between 1992 and 2006 (the latest available data), the U.S. oil industry invested $1.25 trillion in those activities, four-thirds of its net income. An Obama Administration will put a stop to that.

Subjected to even mild scrutiny, Senator Obama’s statements about energy and the war are adolescent fantasizing. Superbama’s will of steel can bend logic with its bare thought and leap contradictions at a single bound. How long before this guy adopts a secret identity?

Quote of the Day

Roy Spencer, “More Carbon Dioxide, Please”:

It is quite possible that the biosphere (vegetation, sea life, etc.) has been starved for atmospheric CO2. Before humans started burning fossil fuels, vegetation and ocean plankton had been gobbling up as much CO2 out of the atmosphere as they could, but it was like a vacuum cleaner trying to suck through a stopped-up hose.

Now, no matter how much CO2 we pump into the atmosphere each year, the biosphere takes out an average of 50 percent of that extra amount. Even after we triple the amount of CO2 we produce, nature still takes out 50 percent of the extra amount.

I think it is time for scientists to consider the possibility that more CO2 in the atmosphere might, on the whole, be good for life on Earth. Oh, I’m sure there will be some species which are hurt more than helped, but this is true of any change in nature. . . .

The view that nature was in some sort of preferred, yet fragile, state of balance before humans came along is arbitrary and philosophical — even religious. It is entirely possible that there are other, more preferable states of balance in nature which are more robust and less fragile than whatever the state of nature was before we came along.

You would think that science is the last place you would find such religious opinions, yet they dominate the worldview of scientists. Natural scientists tend to worship nature, and they then teach others to worship nature, too . . . all under the guise of “science.” . . .

The automatic assumption that mankind’s production of CO2 by burning of fossil fuels is bad for the environment needs to be critically examined. Unfortunately, scientists who question that point of view are immediately branded as shills for Big Oil.

Operation Anointing

Rush Limbaugh has his Operation Chaos. The elite media have their opposing push, which I would dub “Operation Anointing”, the drive to settle the Democratic contest stat by clearing the path for Slick Barry.

The Lioness of Tuzla of course is an underdog (underfeline?) at this point, but an historical comparison brings out the extent to which reporters are mere spinmeisters. Per Jim Geraghty): “In 1980, Ted Kennedy came into the Democratic convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City with 1,225 delegates to President Carter's 1,981 and 122 uncommitted.” I don’t remember a media chorus demanding that he drop out in order to unite the Democratic Party against Ronald Reagan.

Similarly, in 1976 Gerald Ford had a majority of pledged delegates before the convention. The media were, however, delighted to see Governor Reagan fight on, thus boosting the Democratic candidate’s prospect.

If Senator Clinton were still a left-wing favorite, or if the cadre of faux reporters were neutral between the parties, her tenacity in an improbable, but not impossible, cause would draw no adverse comment. Since neither condition is even remotely true, Operation Anointing is in full swing. It’s useful to have the reminder that, if he didn’t have a dime of his own to spend, Slick Barry would have a full-fledged campaign juggernaut working in his behalf.

Further reading: John Tabin, “The Game Over Chorus”:

The race for the Democratic nomination is close to the end, and Hillary’s chance of victory is about one in ten. But that’s more than zero, and the eagerness of the talking heads to end the race prematurely is more than a little revealing. Political coverage, especially in primary season, is usually somewhat distorted by reporters’ bias in favor of viewing races as tighter than they are, which makes the job of reporting on politics more interesting. This tendency has been swamped by an overwhelming affinity in the press for Barack Obama. If he does prevail with the superdelegates, he will have as shameless a media cheering section as any nominee has ever had.

Hope from Across the Pond?

It would be easier to cheer heartily at the British Conservative Party’s electoral triumph last week if the party leader, that guy who demanded that W. H. Smith stop selling chocolate oranges, didn’t have approximately the gravitas of the Earl of Ickenham. Still, perhaps Iain Murray is correct in his assessment:

After Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair, in September and October last year he was riding high. If he’d called an election then, Brown would have seen Labour re-elected with a bigger majority than Tony Blair and he would have destroyed David Cameron’s claim to be a viable alternative. This concentrated the Conservative mind wonderfully. Starting at the party conference in October last year, the Tories started advancing genuinely conservative policies on tax, crime and education, for example. Yes, Brown proved to have a political ear as tinny as Al Gore’s, but the Tory decontamination of the brand (Cameron’s genuine acheivement) meant that people reacted well to Conservative policies for the first time in 15 years. Boris [Johnson, the new Mayor of London] is a solid conservative (with a small ‘c’) and Labour attempted to use this to paint him as the bastard son of Cruella de Ville and Lord Voldemort. It didn’t work. Nor did people turn to the Liberal Democrats. People are not just tuning out Labour, they are willing to listen to conservatives advancing conservative thought again. And about time, too.

The Wall Street Journal pinpoints as decisive the moment when Mr. Cameron forgot about oranges and remembered an old Conservative theme:

Mr. Cameron has been wary of Mrs. Thatcher’s legacy, and understandably needs to find his own identity. But some old Tory ideas, such as low taxes, are proven winners. When Mr. Cameron called for lower taxes at the party conference last fall, his polls shot up and Mr. Brown got cold feet about early elections. That was the beginning of this Tory comeback.

So let’s indulge in a jot and tittle of optimism. Europe has often been a leading indicator for our elections. Margaret Thatcher foreshadowed Ronald Reagan. Tony Blair’s slicing and dicing of Michael Howard’s Tories hinted at the GOP calamity in 2006. Now we have seen Nicolas Sarkozy and a reasonably conservative Droit sweep into power in France, Silvio Berlusconi return in Italy, and the Tories garner their biggest victory in local elections since recordkeeping began. More significantly, the Conservative turn-around in Britain took almost no time at all. Half a year ago, Labour was unbeatable; last Thursday, its share of the vote fell behind that of the comical Liberal Democrats.

It may seem like an overwhelming task to persuade American voters “to listen to conservatives advancing conservative thought again”, and it may be an impossible one. Unfortunately, many conservatives have been so demoralized that they haven’t been trying.

Just today, for instance, Slick Barry Obama once again declared that Iraq is hopeless and not worth saving: “If we cannot get the Iraqis to stand up in seven years, we are not going to get them to stand up in fourteen years or fifty-six years.” To that Jim Geraghty says nothing more than “I don’t like that answer, but I think it will resonate with many Americans.”

C’mon, Mr. Kerry Spot. Whether or not it resonates, Senator Obama’s insinuation is ridiculous. “Standing up” is what the Iraqi military has been doing in Basra and Sadr City, to an extent that surprises even its warmest sympathizers. That the likely Democratic Presidential candidate refuses to look at the facts on the ground is a measure of how tenaciously he and his party are committed to American impotence.

Given that the Bush Administration is strangely reticent about speaking up in its own defense, the rest of us should do out bit by vowing not to let Hill-Bama’s stale talking points pass by uncorrected. The history of the past eight years has become clouded by left-wing legendary, and the shrieking carriers of Bush Derangement Syndrome have drowned out rational discourse. Perhaps resistance is futile, but that’s no reason not to try. It wasn’t long ago that politics looked just as grim in the U.K.

Not Quite a Recession, But . . .

A couple of years from now, the National Bureau for Economic Research will apply its oracular hindsight to tell us when the Recession of 2008 began. For all we really know, the downturn may already have come and gone, or it may be an illusion. The last two recessions were grossly misapprehended while they were in progress. The elder President Bush’s, which sunk his reelection hopes, ended months before Bill Clinton declared the economy to be in its worst shape since the Great Depression. The recession that began during Clinton’s last half-year in office became visible after he left, giving the media the opportunity to assign blame to Bush the younger.

In light of those past misconceptions, we may want to be modest about pronouncing on the state of economic affairs. Still, it can’t be encouraging that growth has been extremely sluggish for two quarters in a row and that the buildup of inventories could foreshadow a contraction in the current quarter. Politicians and commentators will naturally show no reticence at all in portioning out blame and touting “solutions”, most of which will look extraordinarily like what they wanted to do anyway under any circumstances.

What makes recession-solving hard is that the only thing we know for sure about the business cycle is that we don’t understand it. Too many forces push economic activity up and down; too many of them are hard to measure; too many have effects whose causes are obscure. It isn’t too bold, however, to suggest that a big determinant of what entrepreneurs do today is what they expect in the future. That, in turn, depends to a large extent on the anticipated political climate. One reason why the recovery from the 1991 recession went so widely unnoticed was that it didn’t pick up steam until the Republican Congressional sweep in the 1994 elections. The slowdown in 2000 stemmed not just from doubts about whether the Internet guaranteed a permanent boom but also from uncertainty about the qualities of the Presidential candidates, both of whom looked, from some angles, like feckless political heirs.

Perhaps, then, it is significant that the current plateau follows the Democrats’ return to control of Congress, the collapse of popular support for the GOP and the widespread expectation that the next President will be a man (or woman) who firmly believes we can tax our way into prosperity. Does the prospect of a firmly liberal, pro-tax, anti-trade, pro-regulation government buck up businessmen’s animal spirits, so that they invest more capital and hire more workers to meet future demand?

It may be that this year’s electorate is so discontented that reasoning about the causes of its discontents will be futile. On the other hand, the American public isn’t immune to reason. Higher taxes, more government regulation, stiffer trade barriers (pace Lou Dobbs) and military weakness are rarely election winners. The Democratic Party’s stands in those areas may turn out, come November, to be more significant to voters than the Democratic Presidential candidate’s relations with Norman Hsu or Jeremiah Wright.