Stromata Blog

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.

A Post-Pennsylvania Post

Jim Geraghty picked up a significant moment in Barack Obama’s concession declaration of moral victory speech:

Obama laments “The threat of terrorism to scare up votes” — ah-ha, a veiled gripe about Hillary’s ad that depicted Osama bin Laden. Because it’s just not fair to remind voters that the next president will still have to fight a war on terror.

What struck me about that gripe was this: Accusing someone of using a “threat” to “scare up votes” connotes that the threat isn’t real. If the Tin Lady had run an ad featuring mortgage foreclosures, Slick Barry might have had any of a number of responses, but one of them would not have been that his opponent was trying to “scare” people. More likely, he would have proclaimed that he thinks that threat is bigger and badder than a millionaire’s life partner can possibly imagine.

What, then, are we to make of the candidate’s statements that, as President, he would scuttle from Iraq in order to concentrate more fiercely on the “real war” against the al-Qa’eda leadership in Afghanistan? If terrorism is a contrived threat, why would President Obama want to pour blood and treasure into the mountains of Central Asia in pursuit of terrorists? Wouldn’t indictments and extradition proceedings be a more judicious – and certainly less costly – course?

Unless Senator Obama is simply muddled (not a top-ranking desirable quality in a President), I think he has let slip what he really believes about the War on Terror, which is just what elite leftists everywhere believe: The entire enterprise is a swindle to distract the masses from their economic misery and enrich multinational corporations. Or, as one of his friends put it recently:

Empire resurrected and unapologetic, war without end, an undefined enemy that’s supposed to be a rallying point for a new kind of energized jingoistic patriotism, unprecedented and unapologetic military expansion, white supremacy changing its form, but essentially intact, attacks on women and girls, violent attacks, growing surveillance in every sphere of our lives, on and on and on, the targeting of gay and lesbian people as a kind of a scapegoating gesture to keep our minds off of what’s really happening.

Turning to the other Democratic hopeful, I’m half-amused, half-appalled by the strange new respect Mrs. Clinton is suddenly receiving from certain quarters of the Right. That she won by 10 points in a state where she was up by 20 before her opponent wandered so far outside the mainstream he doesn’t know what water is, does not impress me. And I’m less impressed than that by her noisy hawkishness on Iran. Aside from the fact that she is more strident than ever about the urgent, peremptory need to embrace defeat in Iraq, her Iranian nuke-rattling tacitly admits that she has no intention or desire to take any measures to prevent the mullarchy from acquiring atomic weapons in the first place. Instead, she will hope that her words will be an adequate deterrent. Just like Bill Clinton hoped Osama bin-Laden would quietly go away.

On a happier note from Pennsylvania, it looked like John Murtha, the Pork King, would run for reelection unopposed this year, his operatives having managed to disqualify Republican Bill Russell’s nominating petitions. To get on the ballot, Colonel Russell needed 1,000 write-ins in the GOP primary – not an easy hurdle when all the dittoheads were reregistering as Democrats to take part in Operation Chaos. Nonetheless, Dave Freddoso reports, he got at least five times the bogey. Contributions can be made to Bill Russell for Congress. Think of it as an earmark offset.

A Long, Long While from May to November

In any competition – love, war, baseball, politics – it’s a fool’s strategy to count on your opponent’s ineptitude. It’s fun to watch Slick Barry and the Tin Lady maul each other and pleasant to fantasize that each will be successful in making the public aware of the other’s dishonesty, radicalism and callowness. Many Republicans have begun to take it for granted, I suspect, that the election will wind up as a formality, with Senator Obama losing by a Stevensonian, if not McGovern-like, margin. We can already relish the tide of Reagan Democrat defections in the blue states.

That’s a nice dream. On the other hand, the Democratic nomination brawl will end no later than August 27, 2008, come what may. “A week is a long time in politics”, and two months is quite adequate for the winner (presumably the Obamamessiah) to rally from any unpleasantness. He’ll have two months of celebrity media coverage, amplified by unlimited campaign funds. He’s raised a quarter of a billion dollars to date; if his direct campaign plus his Soros-funded allies don’t top a billion in expenditures, I’ll be surprised.

Moreover, whatever the real state of the economy next autumn, the majority of voters will perceive a recession – just as they did in 1992, when a brisk recovery was in fact under weigh from a very shallow downturn. Bill Clinton successfully labeled that “the worst economy since 1932”. This year’s Democratic candidate will follow suit and will meet with equal credulity. Slick Barry, at least, has already demonstrated that elementary honesty is beyond him when he talks about such matters.

To fight back, John McCain may have $84 million in federal funding, plus whatever pro-GOP groups can independently raise. I say “may”, because the Federal Election Commission currently lacks a quorum and cannot legally make disbursements. Perhaps the Senate Democrats will be sporting and move rapidly to confirm men to fill the vacancies. But perhaps not: Senator Obama has taken the lead in blocking action. It is not inconceivable that candidate McCain will arrive at Labor Day with no cash and no easy way to raise any.

The money gap is an epiphenomenon of the enthusiasm gap, which David Frum has summarized in a couple of statistics:

Number of views of Obama YouTube videos: 37 million
Number of views of McCain videos: 3 million

Obama funds raised from under $200 donations: $76 million
McCain funds raised from under $200 donations: $7.4 million

(Yes, Mr. Frum is a famous pessimist, who wrote a book in early 1994 about how dismal the Republican Party’s prospects were for the foreseeable future, but his facts in this case are incontrovertible.)

Some of the enthusiasm for Senator Obama arises from the fact that he is a novelty, and until recently seemed like a fresh, hopeful break from politics as usual. Still, he’s hardly the first such to appear on the American political scene, and none has ever before so dominated the landscape.

Is it truly plausible that the huge YouTube popularity and fund raising prowess are nothing but an affirmative endorsement of Barack Obama? Ask yourself whether John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan could have done as well, and you’ll have your answer. A large part of the Obama frenzy is clearly driven by the most conspicuous characteristic of the Democratic Party’s Moveon/Kos Kidz/Code Pink base, namely, irrational hatred of their numerous “enemies”. To their ears, “hope and change” do not suggest a soaring, Reaganesque confidence in America’s ability to surmount any challenge. Rather, they represent the chance to bring the “Bushitler regime” and its backers, that is, people like Dick Cheney, me and you, to revolutionary justice.

The last time we had an election in which one side was primarily motivated by hatred of the other, a shooting war came next. It would be unduly pessimistic to predict the same fate this time, but it’s hard to foresee a genuinely happy outcome. If the Democrats win, the animus that spurs their cadre cannot but seep into an Obama Administration and fatally distort its policies. The most left-wing President in our history, coupled with a core of vengeful underlings, is not a recipe for peace, prosperity and good will.

Yet a McCain Presidency will face grim prospects, too. The heart of the leftist opposition will add bitterness and frustration to the fury it already feels. The riots of the late 1960’s seem distant and quaint today. Most Americans are too young to remember them clearly. I do, and do not look forward to history repeating itself.

Pitchfork Pat’s Patriotism

Five years ago, David Frum penned a rather brutal essay for National Review on “Unpatriotic Conservatives”.

From the very beginning of the War on Terror, there has been dissent, and as the war has proceeded to Iraq, the dissent has grown more radical and more vociferous. Perhaps that was to be expected. But here is what never could have been: Some of the leading figures in this antiwar movement call themselves “conservatives.”

These conservatives are relatively few in number, but their ambitions are large. They aspire to reinvent conservative ideology: to junk the 50-year-old conservative commitment to defend American interests and values throughout the world — the commitment that inspired the founding of this magazine — in favor of a fearful policy of ignoring threats and appeasing enemies.

Since then, the targets of Mr. Frum’s accusation have pilloried him vociferously, particularly on the pages of that ill-named journal, The American Conservative. The paleocons shout to the world that they are the true conservatives, the only guardians of America’s real national interests. Now and then, however, they let their disguises slip, revealing an anti-American animus scarcely distinguishable from Moveon.org or Daily Kos.

Last week, Pat Buchanan, The American Conservative’s founder and guru, published a piece titled “Who’s Behind the Proxy Wars?”. Taking note of “what [General] Petraeus and [Ambassador] Crocker allege” about how “Iran is conducting a proxy war against the United States”, and not bothering to dispute the truth of their allegations, Pitchfork Pat goes on to ask,

What is Tehran’s motive?

Iran, after all, is the principal beneficiary of the U.S. invasion that dethroned its enemy Saddam, ended the Sunni Baath Party’s monopoly of power and opened the door to Shia politicians with strong ties to Tehran. The regime in the Green Zone is the same regime that rolled out a red carpet for President Ahmadinejad.

Why, then, would Iran bloody it up? Why, when things are going Iran’s way in Iraq, would it risk war with the United States over Iraq?

Because a precipitous American exit from Iraq is a necessary condition to Iranian hegemony over that country, and eventually, in Ahmadinejad’s dreams, over the Middle East? Because the Iranian regime has been conducting a war against the United States since 1979 and is taking the opportunity to inflict as much damage as possible on the “Great Satan”? Because the mullarchy in Tehran is fanatically anti-Jewish, anti-Christian and anti-Western?

If any of those explanations occurred to the dean of the paleoconservatives, he left them unexpressed. No, it is all America’s fault.

The April 16 Los Angeles Times offers an answer. Iran’s proxy war against us in Iraq may be Tehran’s response to a U.S. proxy war being waged against Iran. Ahmadinejad may be exacting blood for blood.

According to Times’ writer Borzou Daragahi, Iran believes the United States is behind groups that are systematically killing Iranians along the border.

Buchanan goes on to insinuate that the Bush Administration is aiding anti-Iranian operations by two groups that it has designated as terrorists, the PEJAK and the Mujahedin Khalq. He add, “Iranians also believe the United States is behind attacks in the oil-rich and Arab Khuzestan region of southwest Iran.”

Is there a scintilla of evidence for these charges? Not unless one regards Tehran as a credible source. Buchanan evidently does:

Needed now are congressional hearings to determine if President Bush has authorized a proxy war against Iran – by funding or arming guerrillas to attack the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and if that is what is behind the IRG-backed attacks on U.S. forces.

Back in December 1941, not even the most fervent isolationists called for Congress to consider whether Pearl Harbor had been provoked by U.S. actions. Pat Buchanan no doubt would have. Like one of the Krazy Kos Kidz, he sees no evil in the world – except among the leaders of his own country. About his patriotism, David Frum was right.

Bits and Pieces

■ First of all, let me recommend Robert Ferrigno’s portrayal of a future Bill Clinton’s interior monologue as he waits for the start of a gig at a high school gym in his new role as President Obama’s “Outreach Ambassador to the Heartland”, “Missing Rush Limbaugh”:

He stared at cheerleaders, the white one sawing away at the nails on his left hand, the black one working on the left. Their tight sweaters said Ruth Bader Ginsberg High School, class of 2012. The Tennessee Education Commission had renamed the school two years ago, changed it from Ronald Reagan High and the locals still hadn’t gotten over it. Part of the reason he had been sent down here to Mecklenburg for the grin and grab. Tomorrow he hit two Baptist church pancake breakfasts, a Rotary luncheon, and a Boy Scout banquet that evening. There was an election in November and the party needed every vote to be counted. . . .

The TV in the corner of the cramped, high school dressing room had the sound off, but he still flinched when Barry . . . President Obama and Michelle came onscreen. Follow Us to the Promised Land floated just below their smug faces. Their daily inspirational hour broadcast live to the American people. Michelle had taken a rolled-up newspaper to the FCC right after the inauguration and that had been that. . . .

Nothing on the tube but those two, and nothing on radio but Air America from sea to shining sea, the bad-news-and-it’s-your-fault radio network. Some girl in Salt Lake fell and skinned her knee, the American people and their past leaders had failed her, past leaders meaning him, Willie Boy, Elvis, the Big Him. Like he should have installed marshmallow sidewalks or given away bubble wrap pants. He absently rubbed the I’m Sorry button in his lapel. Well, he might be wearing the button, but he wasn’t sorry. . . .

Not that his job as Heartland Ambassador didn’t carry some risks. He patted his ample belly. Getting pretty jowly too. He had put on over 30 pounds since his appointment. Seems like every group he talked to served nothing but barbeque, mashed potatoes, and peach cobbler — his three favorite food groups. His cholesterol spiked higher every day, while the president and First Lady stayed sleek as minks, never missing a chance to flaunt themselves at the “Fat is More Dangerous than Terrorism” rallies that Nancy Pelosi organized. Which, as White House press secretary Chris Mathews put it, effectively made Bill the new Osama bin Laden. Ha ha. . . .

He pulled out his I-Phone, tried to catch Limbaugh’s latest on the web, but the new NASA filters were blocking it out. Dangit, he missed Rush. One time, Hillary had walked in on him in the Oval Office — no, not that time — and caught him listening to Rush. He had his feet up on the desk, smoking a stogie and just roaring as the Maha Rushy tore into the two of them. Funny stuff. If you can’t laugh at yourself . . . and, truth be told, the man was right about most of it, heck everyone knew that. Hillary though, she started screaming, why are you listening to that maniac? He tapped the ash off his cigar and turned the radio down a little as Rush took a call from Rita X. Just keeping track of the enemy, honeykins, he had said, and besides, you expect me to listen to NPR? Evidently she did.

■ For the Quote of the Day, here is Roger Clegg:

From an L.A. Times op-ed today, about why it’s racist to call Obama “elitist”: “`Elitist’ is another word for ‘arrogant,’ which is another word for ‘uppity,’ that old calumny applied to blacks who stood up for themselves.” Of course, “humble” is another word for “subservient,” which is another word for “slavish.” I guess it’s best not to say anything about Senator Obama, but isn’t ignoring someone because he’s black something that racists do, too?

Yes, it is. Are you wearing your “I’m Sorry” button, Roger?

■ The ABC moderators in last night’s Hillary-Obama 12-rounder asked somewhat tougher questions than, f’rinstance, Slick Barry faced at last week’s Associated Press annual meeting, including mirabile dictu one pointing out that, “in each instance, when the [capital gains tax] rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.”

But Senator Obama has higher priorities than government revenues. He responded, “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.” He then proceeded to rant about how much hedge fund managers get paid. He could have shortened his answer by reciting Huey Long’s little ditty:

Every man can be a king,
Every man a millionaire.
There is money everywhere,
If only they would share!

Both candidates pledged that taxes will go up for anyone earning over $250,000 a year. That is just a tad higher than what Barack and Michelle Obama were making before book royalties for him and a big raise for her sent their fortunes skyrocketing. Let’s recall that Michelle Obama laments how hard it was to make ends meet on $240,000 a year. Yet $10,000 above that is the plateau of the idle, milkable rich.

■ I’ll take good news where I find it and thus am delighted that Barack Obama has killed federal campaign finance regulation. Since January, the Federal Election Commission has had two members and four vacancies. Without a quorum, it can’t do anything. President Bush nominated two new commissioners last year: one Democrat and one Republican, as required by law. Senator Obama has blocked a vote on the Republican, on the ground that, when he held a post in the Justice Department, he defended the constitutionality of laws requiring voters to show identification at the polls. (Having spent his political career in squeaky clean Chicago, the Senator believes that vote fraud is a myth.)

On Monday, the Democratic nominee withdrew, saying that he couldn’t wait any longer for confirmation. The Democratic Senate leader promptly announced that finding a replacement will take “several months”, which means that the FEC is all but certain to remain hors de combat until after the Presidential election.

Yes, this is a misfortune for Senator McCain, who now won’t be able to get public financing for his campaign even if he wants it. (A two-member FEC can’t release funds.) But we can hope that, instead of indulging in schadenfreude over the ironic legacy of McCain-Feingold, conservatives will decide that digging into their wallets for campaign contributions is better than four years of higher taxes at home and national humiliation abroad. And maybe President McCain will thereafter see his handiwork in a less sunny light.

■ Finally, everybody should read Michael Totten’s “Hope for Iraq’s Meanest City”, telling how, after a long, hard struggle, American and Iraqi forces have broken the mufsidun stranglehold on Fallujah. It’s not a tale of brilliant plans brilliantly executed but of persistence in the face of adversity, of learning from mistakes, trying again and never giving up – the qualities that are essential to winning any war, especially one against an enemy for whom atrocities are the weapon of choice and whose chief hope of victory lies in our unwillingness to keep going when the going isn’t smooth.

With a Fiasco Like This . . .

. . . who needs victories?

Google “Basra” and “fiasco”, and you’ll get “about 128,000” hits. On Fox News, the network that lefties want to shut down for its right-wing bias, you can read the headline, “Iraqi Government Sacks 1,300 Soldiers, Police Following Basra Fiasco”. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson will inform you that “Basra fiasco shows war policy flaws”. As for the Senate Democratic leader –

While people of good will on both left and right were trying to figure out what the fighting in Basra meant, Reid needed no time to gather facts. Instead, he leapt to his usual conclusions, insisting that the Basra fighting foretold disaster and exposed Bush administration mendacity and incompetence. "Instead of making our own country safer," Reid droned, “we are greasing the pockets of corrupt Iraqi politicians and buying their temporary cooperation.”

Superficial hawks might contend that the outcome of the Basra operation, half-baked though its conception seemed to be, had hardly been dire. The bien-pensants knew better: The Madhi Army had “humiliated” the Iraqi government, then cleverly declared a cease-fire, in return for which Prime Minister Maliki had no doubt granted secret concessions.

Now time has passed, and this defeat has had a strange aftermath:

Basra residents welcome Iraq army crackdown

BASRA, Iraq (AFP) — Three weeks after Iraqi troops swarmed into the southern city of Basra to take on armed militiamen who had overrun the streets, many residents say they feel safer and that their lives have improved.

The fierce fighting which marked the first week of Operation Sawlat al-Fursan (Charge of the Knights) has given way to slower, more focused house-by-house searches by Iraqi troops, which led on Monday to the freeing of an abducted British journalist.

Residents say the streets have been cleared of gunmen, markets have reopened, basic services have been resumed and a measure of normality has returned to the oil-rich city.

The port of Umm Qasr is in the hands of the Iraqi forces who wrested control of the facility from Shiite militiamen, and according to the British military it is operational once again.

However, the city is flooded with troops, innumerable checkpoints constantly snarl the traffic, residents are scared to go out at night despite the curfew being relaxed, and the sound of sporadic gunfire can still be heard.

An AFP correspondent said three northwestern neighbourhoods once under the firm control of the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr – Al-Hayaniyah, Khamsamile and Garma – are now encircled by Iraqi troops who are carrying out door-to-door searches.

Two other neighbourhoods once dominated by the Mahdi Army, Al-Qiblah in the southwest and Al-Taymiyyah in the centre, have been cleared of weaponry and many people have been arrested, military officials say.

So the “defeated” army controls the battlefield, and the enemy is being strangled. Nor is that just the propaganda of military spokesmen. AFP (not, let’s remember, a notably pro-Iraqi source) quotes local residents:

“I am very happy about the situation right now. The deployment of the Iraqi army has made gunmen and gangsters disappear from the streets,” said court employee Mahdi Fallah, 42.

“The gangs were controlling the ports and smuggling oil. Now the ports are back in government hands. Everything in Basra is better than before.”

Taxi driver Samir Hashim, 35, said he now felt safer driving through the city’s streets and was willing to put up with the traffic jams caused by the many security checkpoints.

“We feel secure. Assassinations have ended, organised crime is finished and armed groups are no longer on the streets,” said Hashim.

“I think Basra will be the best city in Iraq,” he added optimistically. “We are finally beginning to feel there is law in Basra.”

“We feel comfortable and safe and secure,” said civil servant Alah Mustapha.

“The situation in Basra is stable. The Iraqi army controls the city and there are no longer armed groups on the streets.”

We can’t be sure that there won’t be relapses and crises in Basra. The enemy hasn’t given up, and why should then, when Harry Reid’s party may be dictating American policy next year? Still, if we suffer a few more defeats like this, the Mesopotamian mufsidun will be undone before President Obama or Clinton can bail them out.

What Slick Barry Really Meant

So the wingnuts are making a big deal out of this:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

How silly to think that Senator Obama is condescending toward his inferiors in small town America or suggesting that religion is a bad thing to which bitter people cling! We know from the Senator’s own mouth that religion is one of the most important forces in his own life, that he supports gunowners’ rights, that he refuses to turn his back on Jeremiah Wright and others who express “antipathy to people who aren't like them” , and that he is against free trade. What he is really saying is that all of those are right and proper sentiments that everyone ought to feel. In a dystopia like the contemporary U.S. of K.K.K.A., can we be bitterer than Hillary and McCain and other typical white people?

Yes, we can!

Safety (Regulation) Kills

With air safety having reached the record level of one accident per 5.5 million departures, the idea that the nation’s airlines urgently needed to cancel thousands of flights in order to inspect their fleets. That, however, is what the House Transportation Committee ordered, via a compliant FAA, last week. As the Wall Stree Journal puts it on tomorrow’s editorial page,

The regulators got the message and went into panic mode. As is wont with government bureaucracies like the FAA, it proceeded to swing the pendulum waaaay back in the other direction – and hasn’t stopped. An industry-wide “audit” commenced, and FAA inspectors set about finding something – anything – awry with an aircraft to show Mr. Oberstar and other Congressional overseers that the agency was up to the job of enforcing federal maintenance requirements to the letter.

The media coverage didn’t help matters, as reporters and other editorialists nationwide sided with Mr. Oberstar and accused the FAA of playing down safety concerns. Other airlines got the message. American, Delta and United have now grounded thousands of flights for unscheduled maintenance checks that have nothing to do with safety and everything to do with the shell-shocked FAA striking a pose for Congress.

The carriers were already dealing with higher fuel prices and fewer ticket sales, not to mention investor uncertainty. This will only add to their woes. Meanwhile, air travelers face delays and cancellations while inspectors mull over minutiae like whether the retention clips used to bundle wires in the wheel well of a plane should face forward or backward.

And the irony, grim rather than funny, is that this “safety drive” may well have killed a few innocent people. Iain Murray:

Not all those whose flights have been canceled will cancel their trips. Some will find slots on other airlines, but some will choose to go by car (there being no appreciable competition from rail in most markets). Automobile travel is more dangerous than commercial plane travel for long distance trips. With the number of cancellations in the thousands, we can expect very many people to have gone long distances by road who wouldn’t have otherwise. There is a chance that some of these people will be involved in a fatal accident. It is plausible, therefore, that grounding the flights will have fatal consequences.

But Democrats and regulators will feel good about themselves.

Where Would We Rather Fight?

No matter how often we hear this from al-Qa’eda’s second-in-command and chief public spokesman:

As-Sahab: And what is the most important field in which this Mujahid vanguard is wrestling with the enemies of Islam?

Zawahiri: Iraq is the most important of these fields.

– Democrats know better:

As we've said before and I'll end by saying: How is this war in Iraq helping us fight the war on terrorism, the real war on terrorism, Afghanistan? [Rep. Nancy Pelosi, 4/3/08]

I’m well aware of the lefty counterargument to cries that the likes of Ayman al-Zawahiri regard Iraq as the “most important field” in their war against the West: What brought Iraq to the fore was our invasion and toppling of Saddam Hussein. If it weren’t for American actions, a Ba’athist dictatorship would reign over a peaceful Iraq, and it would be nobody’s battlefield.

That is undoubtedly true, as far as it goes. Two questions follow:

First, what role would that “peaceful” Iraq be playing in the War on Terror? The recent report from the Institute for Defense Analyses, based on thousands of captured documents, tells us the answer. It shows how energetic and promiscuous the Ba’athist regime was in its backing for terrorism, particularly terrorism directed at the United States and Israel. Stephens F. Hayes has a side-by-side, comparing the IDA’s discoveries to the opinions of a pair of liberal foreign policy analysts. As Hayes demonstrates, their confidence that Saddam Hussein had no interests in common with, and in fact was hostile toward, religiously motivated Islamofascism has been thorough discredited, even if the elite media haven’t bothered to give the evidence a second glance.

We can be sure, then, that a Saddam-controlled Iraq would be a source of money and material for whatever mufsidun were attacking us. Even under the burden of U.N. sanctions, Iraq sent cash, time bombs, suicide vests and other assistance to terrorists of every stripe. Once the sanctions became a joke, as was already happening before the invasion, that aid and comfort would have grown more extensive and effective. Where would it have been deployed?

That leads to the second question: If Iraq were not the main front, what would be? An obvious but unstated premise underlying much criticism of our Iraqi policy is that, had we not acted against Saddam, al-Qa’eda and its allies would have been content to hunker down passively in whatever hideaways they could find in Afghanistan and vicinity. That course of conduct hardly seems congruent with their other words and deeds. There are numerous targets that Osama bin-Laden could hit if Iraq were not on the front lines: Saudi-controlled Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Morocco – each fragile, each an excellent prize for the nascent “Caliphate”, each harboring substantial pro-jihadist sentiment among its population. I doubt that Cairo or Amman or Rabat would be an easier battleground for American forces than Baghdad. I doubt more that Nancy Pelosi would be willing to fight in any of them.

The mufsidun certainly have no incentive to confine themselves to Afghanistan. As a base of operations, it is impoverished, remote and turbulent. If our enemies ever reach the point that they can act nowhere else, the war will be effectively over. On the other hand, so long as they are operating anywhere else, it’s hard to imagine a more foolish strategy than concentrating our military strength against a famous graveyard of armies. We should do what’s necessary to keep the other side from winning on the Afghan front, and we should harass the enemy’s high command whenever and wherever we can. But the way to win the “real war” is to wage it in the Middle East, which is economically and politically far more vital than Central Asia and to which we can readily deploy our forces. In order to gain any worthwhile objective, the enemy must come to us there. That is the place to defeat them.

Charlton Heston on Shakespeare

Death brings forth the secrets of a man’s life. Not being a movie buff to any degree, I always associated Charlton Heston with Ben Hur, Planet of the Apes and the NRA. Now I learn, via Power Line, that he was an enthusiastic Shakespearean actor and even weighed in once on the Shakespeare authorship pseudo-controversy, in a letter a decade ago to the Weekly Standard. He was prompted to write by the magazine’s review of Alias Shakespeare by Joseph Sobran, a foolish tome that pushed the 17th Earl of Oxenford as the true Bard. Unlike some other actors, Heston didn’t try to display superiority to the groundlings by parroting anti-Stratfordian malarkey:

Paul Cantor scathingly dissects Joseph Sobran’s conviction that the Earl of Oxford wrote the plays bearing William Shakespeare’s name. I would like to add a few words. . . .

Shakespeare was exactly the parvenu player from the country Sobran describes, scribbling away on the South Bank and turning out the 16th-century equivalent of Movies of the Week. It took the richness of the middle plays for London to realize his true size. The world began to catch on only after his death, when Heminge and Condell published the Folio, prefaced by praise from his fellows. (They did not ignore him, as Sobran states.)

Being a writer, Sobran misreads Shakespeare as academics do: He treats him as a writer. I know, there he is on the page, but that’s not where he or his plays live. Shakespeare leaps alive in air, in the spoken sound of his words. Only actors really understand this, though audiences sense it subliminally, in performance. When you’re redacting the plays in rehearsal, you make the changes in terms of the sound as much as the meaning. Also the pauses.

That’s what Shakespeare did as actor/manager. His plays loom so massively over all the other writing in the world because of his sublime gift, but it was a poet-player’s gift. He created those men and women to live on a stage, seen in light and sudden dark, heard in cries and whispers. Exploring them there reveals more than a lifetime in a library can.

I began working on the plays when I was in high school, and I guess I’ve played his people more than any other current American actor. I know how they defeat you, leave you bleeding on your knees in the sand, aching to try again.

When I was adapting Antony and Cleopatra for a film, fearing the outrage of scholars over some radical redactions I’d made, I asked Laurence Olivier’s advice. “Do what you think he would’ve done, laddy,” he said. “They none of them f--g know.”

That’s as good a summary as I’ve seen of why the fundamental anti-Stratfordian premise, that writers of genius can be identified by their biographies and credentials, that the Sobrans and Ogburns “f--g know” what it took to be a London playwright 400 years ago, is fundamentally absurd.

More Arguing About Shakespeare

One of this blog’s sidelines is the pseudo-debate over who wrote the works of William Shakespeare. It’s a lot more entertaining than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama!

One aspect that the “authorship debate” has in common with politics is that believers in alternative Shakespeares are as persistent as believers in the alternative reality of plastic turkeys and John McCain’s 100 years’ war in Iraq. Therefore, something new arises, if not every day, at least every month or two.

A couple of the more ostensibly scholarly anti-Stratfordians, Roger Stritmatter and Lynn Kositsky, have lately embarked on a series of essays designed to refute the generally accepted idea that The Tempest was written in 1611. Their hope is to remove an obstacle to the acceptance of their Shakespearean pretender, the 17th Earl of Oxenford, who inconveniently died in 1604, but an examination of the date of the play is interesting regardless of their motive. Their opening salvo, “Shakespeare and the Voyagers Revisited”, appeared last September in The Review of English Studies, a respectable journal (without, of course and quite properly, any indication of their Oxenfordian views).

In that essay, they address a narrow question: the date of A True Reportory of the wracke, and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight; upon, and from the Ilands of the Bermudas by William Strachey. This account of events that took place in Bermuda and Virginia between July 24, 1609, and July 15, 1610, is traditionally considered to be the kernel from which The Tempest grew. (Vide David Kathman, “Dating The Tempest”.) Stritmatter & Kositsky contend that this opinion must be mistaken. They claim to have proved that the True Reportory was written after the first recorded performance of the play, on November 1, 1611, and therefore cannot have inspired it.

I have devoted a separate article to the merits of their case. In summary, it appears to me that the plain and reasonable interpretation of the data is that the True Reportory is correctly dated July 15, 1610, as its first editor, Samuel Purchas, thought, and that the text was available in London by November 1610 at the latest. The Stritmatter-Kositsky arguments to the contrary are weak and mostly assume their conclusions.

The only real unknown is how Shakespeare would have obtained a copy of the True Reportory, which did not appear in print until 1625, but that is merely unknown, not mysterious. Strachey moved in the same theatrical crowd as the playwright and evidently intended his work for publication. Circulating the manuscript among people with connections to publishers was a natural step. Alternatively, Shakespeare had many links with shareholders of the Virginia Company, so there is nothing astonishing about his seeing a letter from one of the Company’s employees.

So far, I think, stodgy orthodoxy remains unthreatened. We’ll have to see whether the Oxenfordian rebels do better in their subsequent installments.

The Best of April Fool’s Day

This story from the Los Angeles Times was an April Fool’s jest, wasn’t it?

L.A. City Council rejects ‘ban’ on homicides

The Los Angeles City Council dropped plans Tuesday [April 1, 2008] for a symbolic moratorium on killing, deciding instead to use the upcoming anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination to promote peace. . . .

After a 45-minute debate, the council reworked its resolution, saying the city’s opposition to homicides should last more than a single weekend.

“A moratorium on violence and killing is something we should support 365 days a year and every minute we live,” said Councilman Richard Alarcon, who represents part of the San Fernando Valley. . . .

“If this works, then the next logical thing is: If a city like Los Angeles can go 40 hours without one homicide, then why not 40 days?” said [Earl Ofari] Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable.

Others called the ban a hollow gesture, saying the council should focus on more substantive anti-crime proposals. . . .

Councilman Tony Cardenas responded angrily, telling his colleagues that a murder moratorium is not silly at all.

“That’s the kind of attitude that Martin Luther King had to step over and step across to get the job done,” he said. . . .

Councilman Ed Reyes used the issue to denounce homeowner groups that have opposed affordable housing and high-density residential projects.

“This moratorium, I hope, allows those who choose to prioritize property values over human values . . . to look ourselves in the mirror every time we demonize our kids,” Reyes said.

Despite the expressions of support, council members voted only for a resolution that promised to build awareness and dialogue about “the root causes of violence and killing.”

That period of dialogue is scheduled to begin at 6:01 p.m. Friday, the 40th anniversary of King’s death, and end at 10:01 a.m. Sunday.

At Hutchinson’s urging, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors had passed its own resolution, declaring a moratorium on violence during the same 40-hour period.

This weekend I’ll be visiting L.A. and thus am concerned to discover that, unlike Chicago, it does not prohibit murder. On the bright side, if I’m killed, at least it will be a nonviolent death.

Quote of the Day

Of a couple of days ago, but I’m a bit behind. From the WSJ’s Political Diary (only $3.95 a month, cheap):

Detecting scandal at HUD, of course, is by now the journalistic equivalent of finding gambling at Rick’s Café Américain. There’s a long history of HUD bigwigs getting caught up in ethical morasses. In 1997, Clinton HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, a budding Democratic star, stepped down in disgrace amid a scandal involving allegations of a payoff to a mistress. In 1990, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh ordered an investigation of Reagan HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce, whose powerful assistant, Deborah Gore Dean, eventually was convicted on several corruption-related charges. In 1993 a congressional investigation accused Phil Winn, a wealthy Colorado developer and campaign donor who started out as an assistant HUD secretary, of inappropriately securing HUD contracts. He pleaded guilty and paid nearly $1 million in fines – and later was pardoned by President Clinton. . . .

Maybe it’s time someone in Washington came clean on the real problem with HUD: With a $40 billion budget and the power to fund projects anywhere in the country, the agency has proved impossible to police and a fertile source of corrupt dealings.

As Congress rushes to spend billions more tax dollars to bail out the housing market, this experience may be worth keeping in mind.

What’s the News from Basra?

I don’t know. Which makes me wiser, by Socrates’s standard, than a great many pundits who have started telling us who won and lost in the clashes between government forces and the “Madhi Army” in Iraq’s second largest city, as well as what will “inevitably” happen next. Much of this commentary is what Sherlock Holmes would have dismissed as speculation in advance of the evidence. Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, both military historians, have posted an incisive article (“The Basra Business”) summarizing (as of yesterday afternoon) “what we can say with confidence about recent operations and what we cannot”.

Among the unknowns are most of the hard data needed to evaluate how the fighting went on the ground and why it abruptly ended.

How well did the ISF fight in Basra and, in general, what actually happened there? The absence of partnered Coalition Forces in the city makes it extremely difficult to understand the nature of the fighting and the Iraqi forces’ performance – long experience in the limitations of stringers and “eyewitnesses” or hospital sources in places where we did know what had actually happened should leave us skeptical of all initial reports of combat coming out of Basra. . . .

Did Maliki accept a deal with Sadr in return for his stand-down order and, if so, what was involved? We know what Sadr’s demands were (at least publicly), but he ordered his forces to stop fighting before Maliki publicly accepted his terms.

We also don’t know the future, e. g.,

Who will gain or lose more credit in the eyes of the Iraqi people, and particularly the Shia-Maliki or Sadr? . . .

Will Maliki persist in his efforts to disarm JAM [the Mahdi Army] and Special Groups [Iran’s direct proxies] or will he lose his nerve? . . .

How will JAM and Special Groups react? Will they continue with or accelerate the offensive they had already been conducting since the start of the year, or has this operation blunted that offensive and thrown them off-balance?

It’s remarkable how many reporters, editorial writers, U.S. politicians and bloggers can tell us the answers to those questions already. The consensus of the news media is that Moqtada al-Sadr, nominal leader of the Mahdi Army, is in a stronger position than ever, having “won” because the central government didn’t carry through with its ambitious project of destroying his movement in Basra. For what they’re worth, one can read opposing viewpoints at the Belmont Club: An optimistic appraisal is quoted, and a lengthy comment presents a convoluted reply by a left-wing blogger (which, I must say, reminds me a bit of those right-wing analyses in the 1960’s arguing that the Sino-Soviet split was just a deception).

What we do know is less extensive but not uninteresting. Most significant, I think, is that Prime Minister Maliki thought that an all-Iraqi operation could regain control of Basra from the Sadrists and Iranians. What’s more, on the surface at least, that cockiness (as most observers would call it) was not wholly unjustified:

The ISF operation did not clear Basra or destroy either Special Groups or the Mahdi Army.

But the ISF performed remarkably well, moving numerous units to Basra on short notice, establishing them in the city, engaging in hard fighting, and stopping only when Sadr caved.

On the other side, the outcome was not so happy:

The Sadrists and Special Groups failed to set Iraq alight despite their efforts – Iraqi forces kept the Five Cities area (Najaf, Karbala, Hillah, Diwaniyah, and Kut) under control with very little Coalition assistance; Iraqi and Coalition forces kept Baghdad under control.

Sadr never moved to return to Iraq, ordered his forces to stop fighting without achieving anything, and further demonstrated his dependence on (and control by) Iran. . . .

On March 30, Sadr ordered his followers to stop fighting. This decision contrasts with his 2004 decision to fight on, and his continued presence in Iran combined with this surrender results from weakness, rather than strength.

These appearances could be illusory. Many of the aforementioned commentators insist that they must be. A popular parallel is the aftermath of last year’s Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, where Israel did better militarily but is generally perceived to have lost through its failure to render Hezbollah impotent. There is some resemblance but also an important distinction: Israel broke off the fighting unilaterally. Iraq did not. Instead, its enemies declared a truce, which it apparently has felt no obligation to observe.

While we can’t be sure how this offensive, whether half a success or half a failure, will affect Iraqis’ views of the Prime Minister, it is remarkably more than very many foreigners thought his government could do. According to his detractors, Mr. Maliki leans more toward Tehran than Washington and has at his disposal an army that can accomplish nothing without massive American support. In Basra, he acted against Iran’s close allies, and his troops were able to perform creditably under difficult circumstances. Non-vatic though I am, that looks like a good omen to me.

Further reading: Kimberly Kagan, “The Second Iran-Iraq War”:

Senior officials of the Iranian government, the U.S. military has noted in press briefings, support and in some cases control, illegal armed groups that are fighting American forces and undermining the Iraqi government. In particular, the recent fighting in Basra and Baghdad is not at root a civil war between Iraqi Shia political factions, but an ongoing struggle between the Iraqi government and illegal militias organized, trained, equipped and funded by Iran.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Iraqi Security Forces are now fighting these militias, a long-standing demand of the U.S. that was articulated in congressional benchmarks in 2006. The question for Americans is simple: Will we support Iraq in this fight, or abandon its government and people? . . .

Mr. Maliki demonstrated his willingness to challenge Shiite militias and Iran in the Shiite heartland of Iraq. The Iraqi Security Forces ably demonstrated their capability to defend central Iraq, and quell an uprising of the Mahdi Army and the Special Groups in the most important cities between Baghdad and Basra. The remaining security problems in Basra will have to be addressed in future operations, which we should encourage the government of Iraq to undertake after additional planning and, perhaps, reinforcement. . . .

Iran and Mr. Sadr could not simply unleash a floodtide of violence that would overwhelm Iraqi Security Forces partnered with U.S. units, because they are more capable of handling the situation. For all of his nationalist rhetoric, Mr. Sadr is evidently not in control of his movement – it appears that the decision to fight or not rested with the Qods Force commander and not with him. But Mr. Sadr’s militia remains a reserve from which the Special Groups can and will draw in crisis.

These events provide an enormous opportunity for either the U.S. or for Iran – and whichever state responds most intelligently and quickly to the circumstances on the ground will gain the benefit. The U.S. should encourage the Iraqi government to defeat Iran’s proxies and agents, and should provide the requisite assistance. It should encourage and support the Iraqi government’s laudable determination to establish the rule of law throughout Iraq, not just where U.S. forces are present. . . .

Above all, the U.S. must recognize that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq. Iranian agents and military forces are actively attacking U.S. forces and the government of Iraq. Every rocket that lands in the Green Zone should remind us that Iran’s aims are evidently not benign – they are at best destabilizing and at worst hegemonic. The U.S. must defeat al Qaeda in Iraq, and protect Iraq from the direct military intervention of Iran. Failure to do so will invite Iranian domination of an Arab state that now seeks to be our ally.