Right in San Francisco

Global Leadership? : Nyet

    One could make the case - and Dinesh D'Souza has quite convincingly - that President Obama's policies for much of the world reflect the anti-imperial activism of his Kenyan father and, to a lesser extent, his Indonesian stepfather. Thus, his non-response to the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria. Thus his retreat from Iraq without leaving any forces behind. Thus his leaving the fight against Al Queda in North Africa to the French. Thus his ineffectual and ambivalent treatment of the war which he escalated in Afghanistan. Among the progressives on the left and many libertarians on the right, this is OK. There is too much global discord for us to settle it all.

    But what about the "leading from behind" strategy in the rest of the world?  What will eight years of President Obama do to the military and economic Pax Americana that has existed since 1945? There are plenty of clues:

    -  With all of the histrionics about the impact of the sequester on the social safety net, there has been nary a peep from the Commander in Chief about the impact on the military. The closest thing has been the call of narrowly-confirmed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel for "fundamental (downward) Pentagon spending changes".

    -  The decennial change of leadership in China has received little fanfare in the United States, but it no accident that the first foreign trip of new President Xi Jinping was to Moscow. Or that China is beginning efforts with Australia, Brazil, Russia, and Iran to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

   -  From Vladimir Putin's perspective, the Eurozone's confiscation of Russian deposits in Cyprus, with the blessing of the American-led International Monetary Fund, stimulates a rethinking about Russia's place in the world at a time when the Obama administration has demonstrated its "flexibility" by cancelling the planned Eastern Europe missile defense shield - with no quid pro quo. The Russians have reason to be offended, and latitude to respond.

   - And what of the remaining two members of George W Bush's "axis of evil"?  North Korea and Iran barrel ahead on their paths to become realistic nuclear threats. Realizing that the American "nuclear shield" may no longer be operable, Japan and South Korea are taking first steps to develop their own deterrents. Without a credible assurance of American protection, the same will undoubtedly happen in the Sunni world once Iran crosses the threshold.

   It's not a pretty picture. Maybe the world will move slowly or the House and Senate will be able to exert real pressure on President Obama's military and foreign policies. Maybe there is enough financial strength in the European and American economic systems to retain primacy for a decade or two. But don't look to Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Chuck Hegel to usher in a new era of American global leadership.  Quite the opposite.

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    For this week's video we have NBCs Brian Williams expressing shocked surprise that Obamacare's requirements for extended coverage without real cost containment are driving double digit rate increases. Next step - price controls.  

bill bowen - 4/5/13   

Rand Paul's Filibuster: A Perspective

    A president has to trust the common sense of the American people. On the small stuff the people, wanting  to have faith in the president, will give him wide berth. (Let him flit around on Air Force One while shutting down White House tours.) On the middle stuff he can fool most of the people enough of the time. (Of course he will address spending just as soon as he gets the fat cats to pay their fair share in taxes.) But on the big stuff he can't believe that, as Jack Nicholson's Col Jessup yells in A Few Good Men, "You can't handle the truth." Rand Paul believes that we can.

    The conflict between national security and individual liberty in a post-911 world  is complicated. People of good will on the left and on the right will disagree on much, but the zealots of Code Pink agree with the zealots of the libertarian movement that we need to discuss the limits of government power. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) don't want the discussion; Ron Wyden (D-OR), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Mike Lee (R-UT) do.  

    Unfortunately, Barack Obama is with McCain - perhaps because he is tangled up ideologically; perhaps because he enjoys having few limits on his power; perhaps because he doesn't think in terms of how the Constitution set up the government in the first place. Twelve years after the attacks in New York and Washington, we have:

        - A president who led the criticism of his predecessor's use of "enhanced interrogation technques" refusing to share with the Senate Intelligence Committee the legal rationale supporting the killing of Americans;

        - An administration which insists on calling the murder of 13 people at Fort Hood by Major Hassan an "act of workplace violence";

        - An administration which is told that it cannot close the detention facility at Guantanamo, and doesn't seem to understand (or accept) the difference between civilian and military judicial systems;  

        -  A security establishment which continues to blur the distinction between the role of the CIA and the role of the military in fighting foreign wars;

        -  A Nobel Peace Prize winning president who maintains a central personal role in deciding what targets to approve for drone strikes, without a public discussion of criteria or any judicial review;

        -  The establishment of a cybersecurity mission at the Pentagon with vast powers to monitor civilian travel, purchasing, reading, and assembly patterns with hardly a peep from the folks who went ballistic about Dick Cheney's purported interest in library records.

        -  The New York Times finally reporting on the killing of not only American-born  Al Queda leader Anwar al Awlaki, but also his 16 year old son and another American whose offense was purely in the propaganda realm.  

    Out on the right are the conspiracy theorists who are still incited by the government's ham-handed assaults on a white separatist family at  Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992 and the Branch Davidian compound in Waco in 1993, and the Second Amendment advocates who see a need for militias to protect ourselves from King George III.  That thread is not healthy for democracy, but it is fed by Obama's leftist policies and his refusal to acknowledge any limits on government power.   

   Eric Holder's answer to the question before Paul's filibuster - does the president have the authority to kill Americans on American soil without due process and in the absence of an imminent threat?: "It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States."  And after the filibuster, a petulant Holder wrote "The answer to that question is no."

    A small victory for liberty. Thank you Senator Paul.

                                                    -----

  This week's video is a brief year-old exchange about the killing of Americans between Jake Tapper of CNN and President Obama's deliberate know nothing press secretary.

bill bowen - 3/15/2013

 

The Military Sequester: Making Lemonade

    Every year or so I write a piece that offends many of my friends. This is the one for 2013. We do not need to spend nearly as much on our military as the rest of the world combined, and sequestration seems to be the only way to tame the beast.

    Before talking about how much we need, lets put aside the question of what we do with the military and state department that we have. If this were thrust of the discussion, I wouldn't be offending my friends:

        -  Obama withdrew from Iraq and did not make an effort to leave a small peace keeping force behind. He will also abandon whatever progress has been made in his greatly expanded war in Afghanistan. They will have to fend for themselves.

        -  Obama has chosen to not get involved in the messy side of the Arab Spring - Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria. They will have to fend for themselves.

        -  Obama is doing little to reassure our friends in Japan and South Korea about North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. They will have to fend for themselves.

        -  Obama is doing little to reassure our friends in Israel and Saudi Arabia about Iran's nuclear program. They will eventually have to fend for themselves.

        -  Obama is doing little to reassure our friends in Poland and the Czech Republic about our missile defense program for them, now that Obama has been reelected and has "more flexibility". They will have to fend for themselves.

        -  Obama is committing to a significant reduction in our nuclear arsenal on the hope that our adversaries will follow suit. Fend they will.

        -  Obama has chosen a Secretary of Defense who shares his vision for a reduced military which will be less involved in the world. Senators fend for Senators.

    Lets also stipulate that Obama proposed the sequestration concept and, as Commander in Chief, has structured the implementation to inflict maximum pain and damage on the military with the expectation that conservatives would again cave in to give him tax increases without meaningful budget reductions. It would appear as if the House Republicans are finally saying "no mas", regardless of how many firemen, teachers, and soldiers Obama can line up behind him for his histrionic speeches. Good for them. The union will survive, and we may have finally turned the corner on our debt, which Chief of Staff Mullen famously called  the greatest threat to our national security.

    Now the hard stuff. We have the same military structure that was created in 1947.  Ike warned about the "military-industrial complex" in 1952, and it is still out if full force in opposition to the sequester. Donald Rumsfeld tried to shift from aircraft carriers and new generations of Air Force fighters and Army tanks - getting more unconventional forces after 9/11, but not getting rid of the old stuff. Now the Pentagon has taken on a cyber-defense mission, but again hangs on to the past. We have a military that is a jobs plan (for the bloated corps of admirals and generals as well as the folks at Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and L3 Communications), not a defense plan. 

    For the optimists, maybe, just maybe, the House Republicans will have passed the tipping point, and - thinking of the warnings of Admiral Mullen, Ike, and Rummie - they will ask  the staffers down in the bowels of the Pentagon and over at the think tanks to envision a military which lets us do what Obama chooses not to do, but doesn't cover simultaneous wars on three oceans and the plains of Poland, while obliterating Russia 10 times over.

    That's a hope, but if the House has come far enough to accept military sequestration, maybe real change is possible.

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    This week's video extends the White House's battle with Bob Woodward, in which he was threatened for detailing the facts of Obama's original proposal of the sequestration.  

bill bowen - 3/1/13     

Benghazi to Mali: Connecting the Dots

     In his inaugural address President Obama included much that people want to believe, including: "This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve  and proved our resilience.  A decade of war is now ending." Done with Bush's "bad war" in Iraq; ending Obama's inconsequential "good war" in Afghanistan. Smooth sailing ahead. Good enough to win reelection; freightening if he believes it.

    Dot 1. The al Queda franchises are alive and well - in Afghanistan and Pakistan; in Yemen; in North Africa. Gone is the spiritual leader, but remaining is the virulent anti-West Islamism. The drone war continues, killing leaders when they can be found, civilians when they get in the way, and an occasional American traitor. Finding leaders to interrogate - forget it.  Winning the hearts and minds of the populace - such a 70's concept.

   Dot 2. NATO brought the Arab Spring to Libya - a war, whether Obama was willing to ask Congress for approval or not. One ugly dictator removed; chaos in its wake.

   Dot 3. Libyan armaments make their way to Syria; former mercenaries make their way to Saharan Africa and make us learn a new set of place names - Gao, Bamako, Mopti - and learn where Timbuktu is.  They join Islamist militias who conquor northern Mali and attack western interests in Algeria.

   Dot 4. The French intervene to support African Union troops and save the government of Mali, a country of 14.5 million people with a territory almost twice the size of Texas. Europe fears an Afghanistan-like safe haven from which jihadist attacks can be launched. Obama rejects initial French calls for help with reconnaisance, air transport, and aerial refueling, but later relents as the French face little resistance. He agrees to base some American drones in neighboring Niger. Our allies need to rethink American support - in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

   Dot 5. Our outgoing Secretary of State tells the Senate, "What difference does it make whether .... (her subordinates in Benghazi) were killed by a planned terrorist attack or a bunch of guys out for a walk."  The New York Times cheers.

   Dot 6. Looming sequestration threatens meat-axe cuts of $45 billion per year on top of planned reductions with the wind down of the Afghan war.  Chuck Hagel is brought on as Secretary of Defense with the job of scaling back personnel, equipment, and missions.

    Well, Hillary  ....  acknowledging the reality that virulent anti-West Islamism is thriving across a wide swath of territory makes a big difference to Europe, to our friends in the Middle East, and to us. We are, and will remain, the dominant global military power. We have the unique ability to support allies in places like Libya or Mali with intelligence (satellite; electronic), air transportation, aerial refueling, and materiel without risking American lives. If we believe that the decade of war is ending (never mind Iran and Syria), that it doesn't matter who we are facing in North Africa, and that the French and Africans can do it without us, we will all pay a heavy price in the future.

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   As a change of pace, this week's video is a 24 minute tour of the international space station by a NASA astronaut.

bill bowen - 2/1/2013  

The Queen of Benghazi

     Surprise newsflash: The consensus Democratic frontrunner for president in 2016, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who graciously protected President Obama from blame for security failures at Benghazi in October, and allowed ambitious subordinate Susan Rice to be the administration's prime source of disinformation, misses key congressional hearings (due to a virus or a concussion or whatever), while the official administration report on State's failures focuses on subordinates and she embraces all 29 recommended changes, and she hopes that firing four subordinates cauterizes the wouund.  

    Hillary has clearly learned from her husband that lying under oath is a bigger risk than any misdeeds of omission or comission. But maybe, just maybe, the House Republicans and a few reporters beyond Fox will stick with it until the questions get answered.

Before the attack:

    1. Were you pesonally aware of the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi, including the April and June bombing of the consulate and the June attempt on the British ambassador's life?

    2. Were you personally aware of the department's security measures in Benghazi - the inadequate design of the consulate facility; the removal of the Libyan embassy's 16 member Site Security Team and three small emergency response teams; the removal of a quick-response transport aircraft; the absence of Marine guards and reliance on a Libyan militia for external security? Were you involved in any of these decisions?

  3. If money is tight, why did you spend $750,000,000 to build a new embassy in Baghdad with a staff of 15,000?  

During the September 11 attack:

    1. What was the command structure for monitoring activity and directing responses during the seven-hour attack? Who were the senior officials involved from the White House, State, Defense, and the CIA? Did you have access to video from the on-site drone and ground surveillance cameras, telephone communications with the Ambassador and consular and CIA staff, and radio intercepts of the attackers?

   2. Who determined the Rules of Engagement and what were they? Why did we not deploy the special operations team located in Italy? Was there a delay in authorizing the CIA contractors at the annex to assist in the defense of the consulate?

   3. Did the desire to maintain a light footprint in the face of ongoing violent demonstrations across the region result in a decision to deny available assistance to the consulate?

After the attack:

    1. With the breadth of information available during and immediately after the attack, why did the administration continue for a week to insist that the attack was a response to a video? Who was involved in the creation of this story?

    2. Why was the investigation of the attack itself so leisurely pursued - a cursory on-site inspection of the consulate several weeks after the attack; no interrogation of an attack leader from Tunisia who was captured in Turkey; no effort to capture an attack leader openly living in Benghazi?

    The media has largely given Barack Obama a free ride because they hated Bush and loved him. With media attitudes toward Hillary being more mixed, perhaps a reporter or two will even ask these questions of the woman who once challenged Barack Obama's competence to respond to a 3 AM phone call. Or maybe Congressional Democrats will call her back to testify ... if everybody promises to not ask where President Obama was.  

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    This week's video is a seasonally-appropriate flashmob from the City of Brotherly Love where baseball fans boo the Seventh Inning Stretch.  

bill bowen - 12/21/2012 

 

Obama's Foreign Policy Collapse

    Nothing is more central to the Obama foreign policy than his outreach to the Muslim world as reflected in his June 2009 Cairo speech. As is often the case, the speech was soaring. It reflected a great sensitivity to Muslim religion, culture, and history. It also leaned forward in criticizing the Bush policies - interrogation, Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan. At various points it criticized Germany (the Holocaust), Spain (the Inquisition), and Israel (West Bank settlements). What it did not do was mention the positives of America's relation with the Muslim world - for example, it rightly praised Al Azhar and the University of Cairo, but made no mention of the prominent American University in Cairo. It did not offer concrete assistance, set goals or challenge the Muslim leadership.

    So, three years later what do we know?

`1. Our friends cannot depend on our support.

    -  In Egypt we have abandoned not only Hosni Mubarak, but also the moderates as reflected in the military, the tourist industry, and the Coptic Christisan community.  Obama doesn't know if Egypt - the most important state in the Arab world - is an ally.

    -  In Israel there is a break with the leadership, with Obama refusing to meet with Premier Netanyahu. All options for stopping Iran's march to nuclear weapons are on the table - where they will remain.

    -  Obama was silent while the Iranians put down pro-democracy demonstrators in 2009.

    -  He is again silent in 2012 when the Iranian-backed president of Syria slaughters 20,000 civilians seeking his removal.

    - Allies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates can only wonder what awaits them.  

    2. Our enemies see us in withdrawal and sense that they can attack with impunity.

    -  In Afghanistan the resurgent Taliban are conducting more brazen attacks on our troops who are hanging on until 2014. President Karzai is taking an increasingly independent posture, recognizing that his future does not rest with the United States.

    -  The United Nations Secretary General attends a Non-aligned Conference of 120 nations in Iran whose final statement supported Iran's right to a nuclear program and opposed any sanctions.

    -  Anti-American demonstrators, with Al Queda influence, are free to attack embassies, consulates, schools, and businesses with little consequence.

   3. It is, of course, somebody else's fault.

    -  The animosity between the Muslim world and the West built up over centuries and cannot be solved in one term. With Obama's background, he is the best hope.  But for some reason the Pew attitude surveys of Middle Eastern countries show a decline in positives for the United States since 2008 in every case.

    -   The attack on the Benghazi consulate was spontaneous and not anti-American or against Obama's policies, although the (politically incorrect) Libyan president, the 9/11 timing, and the weapons and tactics of the attackers all indicate that it was. The State Department investigation will probably be available about November 7.

    -  The attention should be on Mitt Romney for criticizing the Cairo embassy's apologetic message which was later disavowed by the State Department and the White House.

    The Obama administration's response to events across the Middle East is similar to its response to the domestic economy - passive, ineffectual, and blame shifting.  The quandry for the Romney campaign - how much time to spend discussing Obama's foreign policy failures when the public wants to hear specifically what he will do to fix the economy. Perhaps things will get so bad that even CNN and the networks  will have to set the record straight on the collapse of Obama's foreign policy. Good luck with that!

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   This week's video is of UN Ambassador Susan Rice doubling down on the administration's position that the rash of violent demonstrations from Morocco to Jakarta had nothing to do with anti-Americanism or the Obama administration's policies.

bill bowen - 9/21/12 

Mitt's Polish Connection

     As the political discussion shifts for a moment to the international stage the Romney camp's hope is to capitalize on Mitt's role in saving the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics and stress his two foreign policy themes: he will be a stronger military and diplomatic leader of the Free World; and he will be a more reliable partner for our long term allies. Beyond the Olympics, most attention will go Romney's fourth visit to Israel where he will meet with former Boston Consulting Group colleague Benjamin Netanyahu. The Polish visit is being shrugged off by much of the media, but it may be more important.  

    On the substance:

          -  The Poles, caught between Germany and Russia, have embraced the West and the United States since Reagan backed down the Soviet Union.  They joined NATO in 1999, the European Union in 2004 (but not the common currency), and have provided units of 2500 troops in Iraq and 2600 in Afghanistan.

           -  After six years of missile defense negotiation and agreement between the Bush Administration and the governments of Poland and the Czech Republic, Obama abandoned the plan in 2009 without consulting with the Poles and Czechs, and getting nothing in return from the Russians. He chose the 70th anniversary of Russia's invasion of Poland to make the announcement.  

           -  Beyond the substance, relations with the Obama administration have been prickly. In May Obama offended many Poles by refusing Lech Walesa's request to represent a WW II Polish hero at a Medal of Freedom ceremony - probably due to Walesa's caution about our "slipping into socialism". Obama's inadvertent reference to "Polish (not Nazi) death camps" at the ceremony, brought the current Polish president's response that "we always react in the same way when ignorance, lack of knowledge, bad  intentions lead to such a distortion of history, so painful for us here in  Poland, in a country which suffered like no other in Europe during World War  II." Reagan and the Bush's were friend of Poland; Obama not so much.

           -  Romney's characterization of Russia as "our number one geopolitical foe" plays well in Poland, following Obama's accidental on-mike assurance to Russian leaders that he would have "more flexibility" to deal with central European issues after the election.

    And on the politics:

           -  Narrowly, there are about 10 million people of Polish ancestry in the United States.  In a time of ethnic politics - African-Americans for Obama; Hispanics for Obama - they are an identifiable subset of "Reagan Democrats", making up 9.3% of voters in Wisconsin, 8.6 % in Michigan, and 6.7% in Pennsylvania where the election promises to be very close.

           -  Few seem to be watching the large geopolitical trends, but as we have been focused on the Muslim world since 9/11 (Iraq; Afghanistan; the Arab Spring), Putin's Russia has gone about consolidating the Kremlin's power internally, and reestablishing it's hegemony over much of the former Soviet Union with the Georgia War in 2008, and the establishment of the Belarus/Kazakhstan/Russia Customs Union in 2010.

    There are lots of options for Romney to make symbolic visits to allies who have been shorted by the Obama Administration - Canada; Mexico; the United Kingdom; Germany; Japan - but his choice of Poland shows both a bit of "out of the box" thinking, and a broad geopolitical grasp. Not that the media will give him credit for a very real foreign policy difference with the Obama administration.

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     Senator Scott Brown's "Let America Be America Again" is the best political ad in a long time - bipartisan references, patriotic, pro-jobs, and even pro Red Sox.

bill bowen - 7/27/2012 

         

   

Mea Culpa - Foreign Policy

I have received quite a bit of blow-back for last week's suggestion that Hillary Clinton's foreign policy performance has made her a powerful Democratic choice for VP, and perhaps for president. My point was about her political position; the Obama foreign policy legacy is a longer (and sadder) story, but it might as well begin here.

The big picture:

1. After a doubling of our forces in Afghanistan (truly Obama's war), we are drawing down there, have exited Iraq (where America's influence is rapidly being eclipsed by Iran), and have had a very light footprint in places such as Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. Al Queda is decimated, but anti-Western Muslim fundamentalism lives; we just confront it in the way that Donald Rumsfeld advocated - with small special forces operations, the CIA, and the TSA. Most would agree that it is good to be ending the larger post-9/11 wars, and that the administration is "directionally correct."

2. To a large extent Obama tried to reach out to our adversaries - Iran; North Korea; Cuba - offering talks with no preconditions, while slighting many friends: Great Britain (removing Churchill's bust from the Capitol for example), Canada (the XL Pipeline for example); Mexico (Fast and Furious for example); Poland (missile defense agreements for example.) This got missile tests in Korea and the back of a hand from Iran and Castro. There have been few gestures of solidarity with other major allies - Japan (despite the potential to help after the tsunami), Germany (who seems to be alone in defending financial integrity in Europe), Israel (advocating a return to the '67 borders). The" re-set" of the relation with Russia is over, as evidenced by Putin's snub of the upcoming G-8 meeting in New York. Overall, it has been a naive rookie performance - more like Jimmy Carter than Nixon or Reagan.

3. For neo-isolationists on the Left and Right who think that the US should not get involved in other countries' affairs Obama has generally been good news. The Arab Spring has come and gone with little effort by the US to help bend it in the direction of western democracy - first in Iran in 2009, then in Egypt and Libya, and now in Syria, where an overthrow of Assad would be a blow to Iran. The Obama Doctrine was accurately described in the liberal New Yorker as "leading from behind".

4. Not much karma has been used in defending American companies around the world. Trade with China - including exchange rates, intellectual property protection, and Chinese import restrictions on things such as automotive products - is a big issue which Romney will emphasize. Brazil's criminal prosecution of US oil industry executives for a relatively small spill draws no response. And then, there is no administration response to having the world's highest corporate income tax rate.

In political terms, Obama's general retreat from the international stage may have been what people want - reflecting exhaustion from the Iraq and Afghan wars. The bad news is that the world is a dangerous place (particularly Iran, Pakistan, and Korea) while America's economic success is inevitably tied to our position as the world's economic, political, monetary, and military leader - and the result of electing a president whose inclinations are against business and the military has been predictable.

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This week we have two videos: one in France where the victorious Socialist, Francois Hollande, has promised a 75% tax on the French 1%; the other in Oakland where we may soon have a combined state/federal rate of over 60% with the proposals of President Obama and Governor Brown.

bill bowen - 5/18/2012

 

Bin Laden: "It's Bush's Fault"

OK, lets take a deep breath. Veterans and conservatives may be offended by President Obama's self-promotion and the silly claim that Romney wouldn't have given the SEALs a "Go", but killing bin Laden is a political winner for President Obama - perhaps his biggest. I'd like to focus on two aspects that the mainstream media will note only in passing, if at all.

1. It is the policies put in place by President George W. Bush and opposed by candidate Barack Obama which allowed this national success. Specifically, and unquestionably, the harsh interrogation of key prisoners - 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al Queda operations chief Abu Faraj al-Libi, "20th hijacker" Muhammad Mani al-Qahtani, and Hassan Ghul, an associate of al Queda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi - at Guantanamo Bay and CIA "black sites" led to the identification of the courier who was Osama bin Laden's primary contact with the outside world. The courier led the CIA to bin Laden. For the remaining "deniers", this article on Red State by Dan McLaughlin lays it out in excruciating detail.

Obama has closed the "black sites" and stopped rendition to prisons in countries with lower treatment standards. Holder's brief effort to prosecute CIA interrogators has been put in abeyance - at least until after the election. The Obama / Holder objective of closing Guantanamo and trying terrorists in civilian courts in New York has been defeated by Republicans in Congress. The current policy of drone assassinations which avoids risk to ground troops and the legal thicket of where prisoners should be held and tried unfortunately also forecloses any opportunity for intelligence gathering.

For those who think moral purity trumps national security, the killing of bin Lden is "Bush's fault."

2. Still on this "enhanced interrogation" theme, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gets the prize for the greatest chutzpah of the You Tube age for this 2009 performance in which she claimed that the CIA had lied to her and that she was never briefed on the fact that "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as water-boarding were being used. Unfortunately for Nancy, recently retired CIA Clandestine Service manager Jose Rodriguez has discussed in a book, Hard Measures, both the measures that were used and the detail in which he explained them to the Speaker.

Don't expect an apology.

And one final thought on the politics of it all: there is a rhythm to the campaign and a shelf life on the public's interest in any subject. The Romney campaign is playing it best with congratulations for all, and perhaps wondering why Axelrod played his biggest trump so early in the game.

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To take the discussion one step further, this week's video is a conversation between former Attorney General Ed Meese, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul relative to renewal of the Patriot Act. Last year the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court heard 1745 requests for wiretaps and espionage surveillance, approving them all. Perhaps if Washington is all-Republican, we can have a good discussion of the trade-offs without the partisan posturing.

bill bowen - 5/5/12

Slinking Home From Iraq

I recently heard the leader of the Democratic National Committee list the end of the war in Iraq as one of President Obama's major achievements. Lets take an inventory.

-The war cost the United States some 4500 killed, 32,000 wounded and over $1 trillion. (For comparison, the Vietnam War cost some 58,000 Americans killed and 350,000 wounded, more than ten times as many.) Iraqi suffering was much greater. There is room to argue about the war's genesis, but there is little doubt that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein - his invasion of Iran in 1980 led to a war which cost at least 500,000 lives; his invasion of Kuwait in 1990 led to our first Gulf War; his retribution against the Kurds and Iraqi Shiites led to his eventual execution. George W Bush's "surge" in 2007, achieved its military and political objectives of a unified country with an elected government and a commitment to withdraw US combat forces by the end of 2011.

- There were options as to how the end of American involvement would be handled. President Obama's approach has been consistent with his broader approach to the Middle East - not attempting to influence the direction of local political or military developments - Iran in 2009; Libya in 2011; Egypt in 2011; Yemen; Palestine; Syria.

-- While it may have been possible to retain a small military presence in a training role and to mediate between the Sunnis, the Shiites, and the Kurds, Obama did not seek that role.

-- Rather than move remaining high profile prisoners to Guantanamo he chose to turn them over to the Iraqis, with the likelihood that the Shiites will be released.

-- Hillary's State Department will have the world's largest embassy in Baghdad to oversee some police training and watch the regional politics.

-- Understanding the new Iraqi order, Exxon Mobil has decided to explore in the semi-independent Kurdistan with the likelihood that they will be expelled from the major Iraqi oil fields.

-- The December 20 ceremony to welcome home the colors and the final troops was attended by President Obama and Vice President Biden had little fanfare and no hint of "mission accomplished."

In the first week after the American withdrawal events have gone predictably badly:

- The Shiite president Malaki has issued an arrest warrant for the Sunni Vice President who is hiding in Kurdistan. So much for the balanced government that Gen. Petreus had forged.

- The Iranians have demonstrated their ascendancy - in response to western sanctions against their nuclear program, but also as a demonstration to their neighbors - staging major war games in the Persian Gulf, and threatening to close the Straights of Hormuz through which one third of the world's oil exports pass if a US aircraft carrier reenters the Gulf.

And, per Representative Wasserman Schultz, this is one of Obama's great achievements.

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This week's video is an introduction to the Wounded Warriors Project for those who are reviewing their charitable giving in the new year.

bill bowen - 1/6/12

Newt: Judge This

Hearing that Iowa has recently recalled three judges for approving same sex marriage, the Newtster has apparently decided that the civil libertarian caucus goers will vote for Ron Paul anyway and he should swing for the fences with the evangelicals who are on the warpath about the courts. His Waterloo.

The "historian" presidential candidate has determined that the Founding Fathers were wrong in establishing three co-equal branches of government, that U.S. Marshall's should be used to force federal judges to explain their rulings to Congress, and that President Gingrich would ignore Supreme Court decisions that he didn't like. Shades of "It Can't Happen Here."

Like many conservatives, I am conflicted when it comes to civil liberties in an age of terrorism and technology.

- The Patriot Act, passed shortly after 9/11, increased the government's ability to conduct secret searches of property, conduct wiretaps, access third party data bases, and trace internet communications. Maybe an understandable response in a time of war (after all, Gingrich argues, Lincoln suspended the right to a trial during the Civil War), but uncomfortable in a free society.

- In September Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a drone-fired missile in Yemen, the first time since 9/11 that an American-born citizen was deliberately targeted and killed by American forces. OK by me as an act of war - assuming proper controls over identification and authorization.

- This very month Congress has passed and the president will sign a bill specifically authorizing indefinite detention of anyone (foreign or American; captured in the United States or abroad) who "substantially supports" groups such as Al Queda or "associated forces." No duration; no guaranteed trial.

- Medical record systems are being rapidly expanded to improve quality and reduce cost. Privacy controls are included, but ...

- Massive data bases, public and private, contain detailed purchase and banking records, internet viewing histories, e-mail histories, and on and on. Cameras on every corner in some cities. Amazon knows enough about you to recommend books; Apple can recommend music; Yelp can recommend restaurants. Good luck with privacy there.

So, who is going to protect a semblance of habeus corpus and the right to privacy if not the court system? Citibank? The CIA? Congress? President Gingrich? We all know that we'd be safe with him, but what about the next guy or gal?

I really don't know the answers to the privacy and civil liberties questions, but I do rely on an independent judiciary to help the country stay on track. And, as alarmist as it may sound, I do know that folks like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao have sounded the same notes that Newt is using on the courts.

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This week's video provides a bit of levity for those not particularly interested in Hanukkah, Quanza, or Muharram. Merry Christmas!!!

bill bowen - 12/23/11

The Military Budget: Thinking the Unthinkable

     Back in the Cold War days military planners were forced to "think the unthinkable" - produce dispassionate studies of various nuclear war scenarios. Here's hoping that they've turned their talents to looking at the defense budget.    

    The baseline: The military budget is now about $700 billion per year; 20% of federal spending; almost 5% of GDP. Taking out the Afghan and Iraq wars it is about $550 billion - slightly less in inflation adjusted terms than it was in the 80s when we were facing down the Soviet Union, China, and their global allies.  We are the world's policeman, protecting Europe, the flow of oil from the Middle East, our allies in the Far East, and our borders. Well, maybe not so much our borders.

    The problem: We're broke. Republican instincts would protect military budgets and hold taxes steady;  Democratic instincts would protect entitlements and raise taxes. So, this year's battles have been fought over the 35% of spending that is "discretionary"; or actually the 15% of the "discretionary" that is non-military. Yet we've got trillion dollar deficits. The Republican Ryan budget proposes a minimal defense reduction (beyond the wars); the Obama twelve year proposal is $400 billion; if the Deficit Reduction Committee can't resolve its differences there will be an additional automatic $600 billion. Mind boggling.

    The options: When facing big cuts it is often better to eliminate broad swaths instead of chiselling away to the point that nothing is workable. Beyond the wars, what is available?  For example, the Air Force budget includes $11 billion for 35 more Stealth fighters; the Navy budget includes $4 billion for two more nuclear submarines and a $1 billion down-payment on an additional aircraft carrier; the nuclear program projects $100 billion over the next decade to improve our 1550 long range nuclear weapons.  The New York Times and Obama will probably get their way with significant reductions in the health-care and pensions of military families and retirees. (Labor costs are about 25% of the military budget.)   

    A vignette: By chance I attended a class reunion at the Air Force Academy this past weekend and had a chance to reflect. The school has a top rated academic program, particularly in engineering; they field 27 intercollegiate athletic teams and offer a robust intramural program; they have done a good job integrating women into the cadet corps. Since my graduation in the pre-Cambrian age the corps has increased from 2500 to 4400; a light aircraft flight program has been added, as has a drone program; world class track, field house, and indoor athletic training facilities have been added. (Some with private contributions.)  Planning is underway for a stunning Leadership Center. In good times each Superintendant has been able to build upon the edifice of their predecessor. In the Ryan "nip and tuck" scenario there may be no more buildings and maybe the football team will not stay at an off site hotel for home football games. In the Obama scenario the student body might revert to 2500. In the Armageddon scenario somebody will ask why we spend $300,000 on each cadet's education rather than consolidating the military academies or relying on ROTC.

    It is not possible to achieve national fiscal sanity without significant cuts in military budgets - IMHO.  Robert Gates did a decent job restraining expensive weapons systems and Leon Paneta's understanding of Congress indicates that he might as well, but these are the preliminaries. One would hope that the next administration will have a clear foreign policy, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of our adversaries, and preserve just the forces necessary to achieve our national security objectives. The selection of a Secretary of Defense will be as important as the Treasury Secretary.

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   This video of Mitt Romney on MSNBC's Morning Joe provides a glimpse of what a general election campaign would look like.  

bill bowen - 9/30/11

Four Middle Eastern Truths

    Like them or not, there are four truths that govern Middle Eastern outcomes from Pakistan to Morocco. Forget the power of tweets and the Arab Spring. This is the big picture.

    1. We are Israel's guarantor. With the strength of the Jewish lobby there is no alternative. And with Barack Hussein Obama being the darling of Academia where the Palestinians are seen as the subjugated victims there is no chance that he can improve upon the comprehensive proposition which nearly was accepted in 1993 under the Clinton administration. Obama's "lets start with pre-1967 borders" is an effort to get things going, but it is a non-starter and uber-envoy George Mitchell's resignation reflects that Obama is not the arbiter.

    2. Iran will have the bomb; the question is how the neighbors will react. Since China developed theirs, the bipartisan American commitment to defend Japan (and Taiwan and eventually Korea) prevented an East Asian arms race. When India developed theirs the Pakistanis felt that they needed their own.  For Iran's neighbors (Saudi Arabia; Egypt; maybe Turkey) to rely on the United States instead of starting an arms race would require a belief in an unshakable bipartisan American commitment to their defense. Sorry President Mubarek. Sorry President Karzai. Sorry President Zardari. Sorry President Saleh. We need to find leaders who better represent our ideals; but, trust us, we really will have the Sunni Arab backs when Iran comes calling.  Good luck with that. (The key in a list of bad situations - support Zardari in Pakistan, the Saudis, and the Egyptian generals.)

    3. Oil matters - and Saudi Arabia controls oil. UN Ambassador / CIA Director / President George H W Bush got it.  Texas oilman George W Bush got it. The relationship with the Saudi royal family was genuine and personal. Not so Barack Obama of the wind farms, solar panels, and subsidized electric cars. At least we are staying out of the way as the Saudis clean up their neighborhood in Bahrain and Yemen and we are not calling for "power to the people" of the Arabian Peninsula.

    4. Terrorism is transnational and permanent. Congratulations to President Obama for finishing the job that President Bush began with bin Laden. We can push these guys from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Somalia to Yemen and kill each generation of new leaders, but human history is filled with more Pol Pots and bin Laden's than Mother Theresa's and Ghandi's.  The question is not how to raise the global standard of living to the point where Nirvana will break out (our apparent Afghan policy); it is how to contain the risk in an age of physical, communication, and financial globalization. Better governance throughout the Middle East would help, but not as much as Seal Team 6.  

    My apologies to those who are looking for more optimistic answers. We need Kissinger more than Carter.  Maybe he could explain why the President is defying the War Powers Act to prosecute a war in Libya that has no apparent connection to American interests.

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   This week's video is President Obama's self-congratulatory auto industry speech which The Washington Post calls "one of the most misleading collections of assertions we have seen in a short presidential speech. Virtually every claim by the president regarding the auto industry needs an asterisk, just like the fine print in that too-good-to-be-true car loan." That is the Washington Post.

bill bowen - 6/10/11

bin Laden - Reflections

    Few events merit the discussion that the killing of Osama bin Laden is generating. President Obama exhibited uncharacteristic leadership; years of rigorous intelligence work were vindicated; Seal Team 6 performed at the highest standards imaginable. A lifetime ago I spent some years in military intelligence and have the highest regard for the participants. Some reflections:

    1. The Bush policies of agressive interrogation, electronic surveillance, and overseas prisons each played a role in identifying the courier who led us to bin Laden's compound.  Bush's creation of the joint terrorism operations center and expansion of special operations capabilities also deserves some credit. On the other hand, the Obama/Holder policies of closing Guantanamo, restricting surveillance, and treating terrorists as common criminals would not have. Nor does the Holder/Obama decision in 2009 to investigate CIA interrogators for "improper" behavior. There is room for liberals to argue morality or legalisms here, but the "effectiveness" argument is destroyed - and the American people would seem to care more about effectiveness.

    2. Jay Carney, the president's PR guy is in over his head. In events such as this it is critical that there be one spokesman - not having Carney, Brennan, Panetta, Clinton, and others giving their shifting versions of what happened. That said, most of the substantive decisions have been good - deny the Muslim fanatics a martyr by giving him a proper burial at sea and not showing the photos.

    3. The praise for Obama's courage is a bit misplaced. Given strong evidence that bin Laden was there, the (improper) courageous act would have been to NOT follow the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs and the Director of the CIA. (A bomb would not have provided the necessary direct physical evidence, would have caused collateral damage, and would not have allowed the collection of other materials from the site.) What is amusing is the reaction of Obama's remaining acolytes who opposed aggressive interrogation but have no problem with what amounted to an execution.

    4. Panetta was apparently the hawk in the group. With him taking over Defense and Petreus taking over the CIA, we will have robust national security leadership. Nevertheless, the timely exit from Afghanistan seems to be more likely.

    5. We sometimes over estimate our adversaries. It is stunning that bin Laden would have extensive unprotected information in paper and electronic form. His loss is a big deal to al Queda (people had taken an oath of fealty to him personally), but we should also have the ability to roll up much of the second tier. And if they expect that they have been compromised many may take risky measures to find alternative cover.

    6. The question of whether the Pakistani government is duplicitous or incompetent is false. They were duplicitous. What is disappointing is that we didn't have anybody in the high command or in Abbottabad who would tell us what was going on. (Or maybe we did and some of this other story is a cover.) In any case Hillary's positioning is correct: that Pakistan has suffered greatly from Islamic militants (presidential and other assassinations for example), that they have helped us a great deal (giving up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for example), that their nuclear stockpile must be protected, and that we need to be responsive to the entire complex relationship.

    7. The domestic politics will play out to Obama's advantage - particularly in finally acting as the Commander in Chief rather than a law professor.  Understandably President Bush chose not to be a foil, opting to hold his Ground Zero appearance until the 10th anniversary.  Perhaps Obama's previous history of attacking the Supreme Court justices and then Paul Ryan at major "non-partisan" public events went into the calculation.    

    In any event, this was a great day - for the Seals, for the intelligence community, for the administration, and for America.

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    This week's You Tube is the interview of Leon Panetta by Brian Williams in which Panetta was clear that waterboarding was one source of information that led to the locating of bin Laden.  Williams did a nice job in not letting Panetta get by with a vague answer.

bill bowen - 5/6/11 

Libya: Knowns and Unknowns

    As Don Rumsfeld so cleverly said, there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.  Unfortunately the administration is floundering in the latter.

    First the known knowns:

        -  Perhaps the best early military strategist, Sun Tzu, stressed having profound understanding of your enemy and allies and maneuvering in such a way that battle is unnecessary. This was extended in the post-Vietnam "Powell Doctrine": if you do need to go to war, bring overwhelming force. In his defense, Robert Gates understands these principles and cautioned against Libyan intervention without Congressional approval.

        -  Libya is a third-tier player in the broader Middle East, of little strategic importance to the United states.  See my posting of March 3.

        -  Engagement in a foreign conflict may not require prior congressional approval, but the "advise and consent" function requires more than a letter postmarked from Rio. Legislators on both sides of the aisle have egos.

        -  Liberal Obama apologists in the media and the Democratic party can tie themselves in knots explaining why this is not like George Bush's war in Iraq, how great leadership can be from the back of the parade, and good intentions are more important than executable plans.

       Second the known unknowns:

        -  We do not know the objectives - the UN resolution to protect the innocent with a no-fly zone; the correlary of stopping Khadafi''s ground attacks on rebel cities; Obama's strategy that "Khadafi must go" - which encouraged the rebels in the first place, but is not in the UN resolution and promises a very brief and limited engagement.

        -  We do not know the chain of command - with Obama's commitment to turn over leadership within a few days, NATO is the only realistic military option but that is opposed by France, Germany, Turkey, and Italy for various political reasons. France's suggestion of a "political steering committee" of US, European, and Arab foreign ministers is patently absurd - but Obama may well seize on it as a way to avoid responsibility.

        -  We have little idea who we are fighting for.  Stratfor has a great analysis of the mistaken premise that throughtout the region there is a thirst for liberal democracy. (It is largely about tribal power.)  In Libya there is neither a likelihood that the rebels can succeed without extensive military support nor a likelihood that they can govern in a way acceptable in the Park Avenue salons - whoever they are.  

        Third the unknown unknowns:

        -  What if Khadafi survives?  Tons of mustard gas. Sons to continue on for decades. A world willing to buy oil from anybody. Decades of documented terrorist acts against Western and Arab states? A resurrected nuclear program? A "wounded bear" syndrome.

        -  What are the implications for the countries that matter - Iran, Israel, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia; for the lesser regional players; for our posture toward the rebellions spreading across the Arab world; for anybody else who is watching the decline of American power. Fortunately Bush got Khadafi to give up his nuclear program in the 2003, but what is the lesson for North Korea or other wannabe's.

    There are reasons that Khadafi has been in power for 42 years, and they haven't changed.  Unfortunately, what has changed is that we have a president who has not read Sun Tzu or spoken with Colin Powell. And one who believes that a speech wishing for a result is the same as making the commitments necessary to achieve it.

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    Here is Tim Pawlenty's video announcing the official start of his presidential campaign. Within the party he is not the first choice of many, but is offensive to few and may well be the leading "Anybody but Romney" candidate.

bill bowen - 3/25/11

Libya In Perspective

    Successful foreign policy requires a bit of idealism (particularly in a democracy) and a lot of Realpolitik.  The strategy must be well understood by the leaders, but a bit of ambiguity is needed to prevent the adversaries from attacking the weak points.

    First, the idealism:

        George Bush and Condi Rice pushed the idea that the spread of democracy in the Muslim world would serve as an antidote to fundamentalism. Barack Obama adopted the theme in his Cairo speech of 2009. For the United States, this theme goes back at least to Woodrow Wilson's "war to make the world safe for democracy."  In Iraq and Afghanistan we did not just put a friendly face in power - as the British did throughout the region in the '50s - we held messy elections. In the long run that may be best.

        We'd also like to stop people from killing their own people. In Egypt it was a few hundred; in Libya it is in the thousands.  But, in recent decades the West has shown little interest in the neighborhood when the numbers were in the hundreds of thousands or millions in Darfur/Sudan, Rwanda, and the Congo. For some reason CNN did not care.

    Second, the Realpolitik:

        Throughout the region there are three tiers of importance, and our actions should be measured in their impact on the top tier.  The game is about Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran.  If the first four are OK, we are OK; it would be a great world if we could make Iran OK.  Tier Two Egypt and Iraq matter, but not so much.

        The third tier, which includes most of the places currently in turmoil - Libya, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Morocco - doesn't really matter except for their impact on the top tier. For these there are simple rules - no weapons of mass destruction, no al Queda, no attacking your neighbors - particularly if they are in the top tier. Fortunately Gaddafy gave up his nuclear program when Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. Sadly, Afghanistan belongs in this bottom group.

        As we consult with our allies, position our forces, and pass UN resolutions we need to keep our priorities in mind. We still have overwhelmingly the world's greatest military force, an economy almost three times the size of the second place Chinese and the dollar as the global reserve currency, but in the new reality we cannot be the world's only police force - particularly where we are not invited. Libya matters to Europe because of oil and a potential flood of refugees; if they don't take a stronger position than they did in the Balkan Wars of the 90's, maybe the European Union needs to rethink their military policies.  If the Arab League doesn't want our help, well ...

    As we approach the 2012 elections there is a tendency to view the performance of the Obama administration in political terms. "Mubarak is not a tyrant" (Biden);  "his government is stable"(Clinton); "he must go now"(Carney); "we should impose a no fly zone in Libya" (Clinton); "we need to avoid loose talk about a no fly zone" (Gates).  It is clear that there is no coordinated strategy or position as each leader makes their own statements while policy is made up on the fly.  Thus far the result in the lesser countries is acceptable, but American leadership in the region is being badly eroded.   

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    Joe Biden is always good for a humorous video, here during a plant visit to tout the administration's heavy subsidies for electric cars.

bill bowen - 3/4/11

        

         

Egypt: Giving Credit

    As the news cycle moves on to President Obama's feckless budget (next week's posting), a quick reprise of the events in Egypt is in order.

    -  First, I assume that the Army will maintain order until elections are held in the Fall, that the Muslim Brotherhood will be one of several political blocks, that we will continue to buy the Army's support, and that the new government will reflect the country's dependence on Western tourism. Best case, most likely IMHO. The next daunting task - turning political energy into economic energy.

    -  The Egyptian people deserve a great deal of credit for remaining purposefully nonviolent despite reasonable gripes and a spate of provocation. Wael Ghonim, Google's chief of marketing for North Africa and the Middle East, will probably get a Nobel Peace Prize for his use of Facebook to organize protesters. One hopes that the next couple of years are not filled with a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for retribution against the supporters of the Mubarak regime.

    -   President Obama deserves credit for the voice which he eventually found ("decisions are up to the Egyptian people; we support representative government and free expression") after false starts by Hillary Clinton ("regime stable"), Robert Gibbs ("transition must start now"), and Joe Biden ("no dictator"). Obama probably got some courage from perfect pitch editorials by Charles Krautheimer and Bill Kristol which far outshone Glenn Beck's rants about a new caliphate aligned with the objectives of the political Left. Most perplexing was the fact that CIA Director Paneta found it necessary to prematurely announce Mubarek's resignation and to proclaim that the Muslim Brotherhood was a secular institution. Perhaps next time the administration will have a single public voice.

    -  Fortunately our policy has been consistent since Condi Rice's 2005 Cairo speech  (more forceful and four years before Obama's): democracy and personal liberty are universal objectives; friends encourage friends to take preemptive steps in that direction. The policy is bipartisan, with virtually no elected Republicans criticizing Obama for his handling of the Egyptian uprising. 

    Egypt (and Tunisia) may be just the beginning. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and the Gulf states will not be so enlightened in their dealing with protesters. Iran's democracy movement may replay the protests of 2009, hoping (probably futily) for American support this time. Israel may be faced with its Palestinian citizens. Yemen has an al Queda presence and a long open border with Saudi Arabia. Each country has its own history, factions, and limitations - lights will be on late at night at the State Department, the Central Command, and Langley. Beyond Egypt, our government remains eerily quiet, reflecting a belief that we have lost our influence in the region. Lets ask Allah for some more luck.  

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      This week's video shows our dear leader responding to criticism that he forgot to include fixing Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security in his 2012 budget.  Clueless or politically calculating?

Chinese Relations: Scruting the Inscrutable ChiComs

    Discussions about President Hu Jintao's recent visit to the United States have been remarkably shallow, given the importance of the relationship between the two countries and the availability of information. Perhaps it is a European bias in our East Coast media or our current sense of national financial angst that prevents a meaningful discussion. (It did give Obama an "investment" theme for his State of the Union address.)  I will provide a perspective on this most important relationship nurtured out here on the West Coast.

    The Chinese leadership - not a single dictator; a Politburo of a couple dozen members - must feel quite good about themselves. With the past decade's annual 9% GDP growth they have lifted 300 million people out of poverty and passed Japan as the world's second largest economy. They have had no wars. They were little affected by the 2008 global financial meltdown. They enjoy the traditional "Mandate of Heaven".

    The century before this had not been so harmonious for the Middle Kingdom: the Boxer Rebellion; Sun Yat Sen's overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1912; World War I; Mao's Revolution; World War II; the Korean War; the Great Leap Forward; and a few million casualties from other internal and external conflicts. Today's leaders grew up in these latter days. They like peaceful, prosperous order.

    China's self-image has been helped by the shaking of the Western economic system, but they do have their problems. They have lost their family-based social security system as hundreds of millions have migrated for jobs and government policy has required a single child; thus a high personal savings rate. Lack of confidence in the currency and the stock market has driven a real estate bubble. Highway construction has not kept up with 12 million auto sales per year. Pollution abounds. Despite a population four times the US, their GDP is still only about one third of ours - one tenth in per capita terms.  

    So what do we need from them?

        1. Support for a soft landing while we get our financial house in order. That means reasonable currency and export policies and continued purchases of our debt.  In exchange they'd like to see a plan. (So would I.)

        2.  Peace in East Asia. Mostly this means corralling North Korea. A low profile in neighborhood disputes would be a bonus. (Their recent test of a "stealth" aircraft matches where we were 30 years ago.  Our military budget is six times theirs.)

        3. A market for our agricultural and tech stuff. We are still the world's largest manufacturer and have a comparative advantage in computers, telecom, pharma, aircraft, and a number of other industries.

    And what do they need from us?

        1. A continued market for their lower end stuff. They still have a couple hundred million more folks in the interior to get off of the farm and become consumers and they need jobs to soak up internal migration.  And as their labor costs increase, global manufacturing of textiles, shoes, and plastic junk moves to Bengladesh and Vietnam. But WalMart still becons.  

        2. No meddling in their internal affairs.  Democracy activist  Liu Xiaobo and Tibet independence leader The Dalai Lama do have more Nobel Peace Prize "cred" than Barack Obama, but there is understandable resentment that the West would focus on a developing democracy rather than more worthy honorees in Russia, Pakistan, Africa, or Latin America.

        3. Respect. This was the gift of Obama to the Chinese, as "parity" was trumpeted in the Chinese press.  The reciprocal gift?

    It is ironic that we have been lurching toward an enlarged central government which intervenes extensively in the economy while the Chinese success is driven largely by an adoption of capitalism. (Their favorite presidents are probably Nixon who opened relations and George W who allowed a massive trade imbalance.) We will inevitably compete with the Chinese for natural resources and we need to stand up for our friends in the neighborhood, but the Chinese have never had global military ambitions. They do not export religious zealots. And they don't insist that the rest of the world adopt a One Child Policy, outlaw the burning of coal, or speak Mandarin. We could do a lot worse for a partner with whom to share global leadership in the new century.

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    This week's video is Paul Ryan's ten minute response to President Obama's State of the Union address.  Obama has apparently made the political calculation to ignore the recommendations of his Deficit Reduction Commission, put on a sunny face, and defer to the leadership of Ryan and the Republicans on all matters financial.  While that may be good cynical politics, the experience of Chris Cristie suggests that the American people are at the point where they will reward adult supervision. Let's hope.

bill bowen - 1/28/11  

START - Some Good News

    One very important subject that has received modest attention in recent days is the nation's nuclear weapons policy. I will try to present some perspective on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia which President Obama would like to have approved by the lame duck Senate.

    - Presidents Nixon, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush all negotiated successful nuclear arms reduction treaties with the Russians (nee Soviets) to reduce strategic nuclear armaments by some two thirds from their peak to today's levels. The new treaty cuts the total by 30% and sets limits of 1550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads each on land, air, and sea launchers - a figure that all military testimony agrees is adequate. With some caveats it has the support of the last six Republican Secretaries of State as well as the usual New York Times crowd and opposition of groups such as the Heritage Foundation.

     -  Senator Kyle, the Republicans' leader on the subject (and the party's Whip) is satisfied with the verification procedures and has extracted $84 billion over 10 years to upgrade our nuclear stockpile. (I am reminded of President Eisenhower's warning about the need to keep feeding the military industrial complex, and the fact that after the Soviet collapse we spent millions to subsidize work for their nuclear scientists so that they would not seek other employers.)

-  There is one important caveat. Since 1972 all agreements have separated discussions of offensive weapons from defensive weapons. The Russians have wanted to link defensive and offensive systems since President Reagan's "Star Wars" initiative propelled the American advantage in defensive technology which the Russians have been unable to afford. (Logically, if the other guy has a better defense, you probably do need more offense.) In the main body of Obama's START agreement they remain uncoupled; however, the preamble recognizes an "interrelationship." The Republicans would like more time to review the inconsistencies between Russian President Medvedev's interpretation that they are linked and president Obama's that they are not. Particularly, there are a number of briefing papers and diplomatic communications that need to be reviewed and a clear statement from the president before the Senate's "Advice and Consent".  

    -  The broader perspective is that this is the last century's discussion and todays focus needs to be on preventing proliferation (Iran; North Korea), developing a joint defensive shield that would protect against a rogue state, and limiting the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons (where the Russians have greater numbers)  - all things that the Russians are interested in discussing. In the background our East European allies seem to be more interested in these subjects and Belarus, one of two Soviet republics outside of Russia with a stockpile of highly enriched uranium, has committed to give it up by 2012. Progress indeed.

    -  Meanwhile the pundits have their day - George Will talks about the irrelevance of the current Russia and the Senate's constitutional role while others talk about Obama's lack of negotiating skills, linking the treaty to concessions on other legislation, and the importance of getting it approved before more Republicans arrive. I agree with Condi Rice, the sooner the better.

                                         -----

    This week's video is a sobering trailer by former Senator Sam Nunn's Nuclear Threat Initiative, the premier private organization devoted to reducing the threat of nuclear terrorism. My novel, The Target, is intended to be part of this conversation, demonstrating the universality of the problem.

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     And a comment on comments. We are having some excellent discussions; I would encourage readers to look at the comments from the prior week. I respond when I think it would be appropriate. For those posting comments, the site is sometimes too time sensitive - I would recommend writing the comment in word and then pasting it into the blog's comments box. Thanks for your active interest.

12/10/10            

 

 

 

Afghanistan No; Mexico Si

It is nice to have another speech from President Obama about his victory in Iraq and the "get in / get out" strategy in Afghanistan. It would be nice to hear something from him about the escalating war on our southern border.

As a preamble, I would note that Mexico abuts four states while Afghanistan is 7000 miles away; we have a stalwart ally in Mexico's Felipe Calderon (who recently fired 10% of the federal police force for corruption) as compared to Hamid Karzai (who fired the chief investigator of Afghan corruption); and we now spend over $70 billion per year on the Afghan War as compared to $400 million supporting Mexico's anti-drug efforts.  

It is hard to know what to think about the cartel-driven violence in Mexico. Since Calderon began his crackdown on drug smuggling in 2006, some 28,000 people have been killed - mostly members of the Gulf, Familia, Zeta, and other cartels, but also many targeted government officials and a significant number of civilians. While the greatest problem is drugs (a $13 billion dollar a year business), attempted kidnappings have caused the removal of US consulate dependents in the business center of Monterrey; and last week 72 Central and South American migrants were killed 100 miles from the Texas border when they did not pay extortion demands. Kingpins keep getting killed or captured, but new ones pop up. In several border areas, the cartels represent an alternate government.

While most of the violence remains in Mexico, we are a big part of the problem: most of the cocaine, meth, and marijuana market is in the U.S.; most of the weapons come from here; and the migrants are easy targets. Our border cities- San Diego; Albuquerque; Tucson; Phoenix; El Paso; Houston - do not have particularly high murder rates, but a third of the prisoners in Arizona are illegal immigrants. The cartels largely fight their war south of the border, but they definitely have tentacles in the north.  

On the one hand, the violence in Mexico is not our problem. We contribute some $400 million per year to the multinational Merida Initiative to provide equipment and training for the Mexican law enforcement agencies. We agreed in March 2009 to increase our efforts to reduce the flow of money and weapons from the U.S. If our tourists choose to go to the Caribbean or Hawaii, that seems like a good choice.

But, eventually we need to deal with the millions of illegal Mexican immigrants in the country, the things which we do to attract them here, and the things which make them want to leave Mexico. The Calderon administration has been understandably focused on their civil war while our political leaders have been focused on the politics of border management. It would be nice if President Obama moved beyond his polemics against Arizona's efforts to protect themselves, and put as much effort into helping the Mexicans as the Pashtuns. You can bet that John McCain would.

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This week's You Tube is an ad by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer focused on criminality associated with the drug trade - before Hillary's State Department included Obama's attack of the Arizona law in a report to the UN as an example of his defense of human rights. He's on our side, right? Just sayin'. 

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And, another plug for my new nuclear terrorism thriller, The Target, which can be purchased in paperback or Kindle versions at Amazon.com or by order from most book stores.

bill bowen - 9/3/10

 

Afghan Nation Building

The belated discussion about our objectives in Afghanistan recalls the long-standing division between the George Washington-style "Non-interventionists" and Woodrow Wilson-style "Make the World Safe for Democracy" internationalists. It is time for Washington's realism.  

    In our quest for rapid "nation building" in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have thought that military success would lead to elections and stable societies, lubricated with a few billion dollars of assistance for roads and schools. To our surprise, we are finding that the real test of democracy is not the courage of the public to vote in the face of insurgent threats, but whether leaders are willing to relinquish power - to alternative national leaders (in Iraq), or to local leaders (in Afghanistan.) To his great credit, George Washington did; to his great discredit, Al Gore did not (even though he really did lose.)  

    Most of today's major nations have taken centuries to form - Italy; Germany; the United Kingdom; China - and even at that there frequently remain separatist tendencies. We keep being shown the lesson that it is very difficult to impose nationhood, democracy, and economic development - most recently in Haiti and Kosovo. Even in the United States, nationhood is not a totally settled question; within the past few weeks:

    -  An Iroquois lacrosse team refused to travel to an international tournament on US and Canadian passports, insisting instead on their own;

    -  Senator Akaka's bill for a single Hawaiian Native governing entity burbled along in the Senate; 

     - The House passed a bill to allow a referendum on Puerto Rican statehood. (It will presumably die in the Senate.)

    These may seem like quixotic dalliances, but they do make one wonder why we think the Afghans would suddenly want a strong central government. Any "nation building" strategy which starts from that premise - including a strong central army instead of local militias - is doomed to failure.  

    Some years ago I listened to a presentation by a senior CIA officer who had helped defeat the Taliban with a few hundred Americans, a freightening mix of tribal leaders, a focused mission, and no embedded NY Times reporters. My guess is that, without calling it the Bush approach revisited, Obama will within a year see the wisdom of "less is more". 

    ----- 

This video of Congressman Pete Stark defending the right of the federal government to do anything they wanted comes courtesy of the now-famous Andrew Breitbart.

bill bowen - 8/6/10    

Sounding Retreat

  The premise:  The military and political decline of empires often follows an economic decline as self-serving corruption eats at the center and rulers favor butter over guns. Chinese dynasties; Rome; Barney Frank and Charlie Rangel.   

The question: Faced with unsustainable deficits and a limited ability to raise taxes, what will be the response of Barry Obama-Soetoro - son of a disillusioned American ex-patriot mother and a politically displaced polygamist Kenyan father; step-son of a middle class Indonesian army geologist; student of Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers; patron of Van Jones and Eric Holder?

The setting: The U S of A has had an unprecedented run -with 5 % of the world's population enjoying 30 % of the economy; with the dollar being the global reserve currency buttressed by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization; with pliant military and political alliances spanning Europe, south-central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America; with a defense budget equal to 41% of the world's military spending; with the United Nations in New York and the greatest international universities spread across the land; with McDonalds, Hollywood, and Madonna raising global cultural standards. Ah, those were the days.

The upheaval: So what happens when Obama's trillion dollar deficits make us give up the deal: the hundred Army, Air Force, Marine, and Navy bases spread around the globe; the naval bases in the Indian Ocean which protect the flow of oil to Japan and Australia; the bases in South Korea and Japan which guarantee our friends against Kim Jong il's North Korea and Hu Jintao's China; the 80,000 troops in Europe for some forgotten reason. Oh, and things like the billion dollar bribe to Egypt to leave Israel alone.

The path forward: So, where does the pied piper (whose $3.83 trillion 2011 budget has a deficit of $1.27 trillion and "discretionary security" spending of $782 billion) want to take us if he ever gets serious on the spending side?

- An age with many fewer nuclear weapons - despite a big increase in the 2011 budget.  Probably a good idea. Probably will save some money in the long run.  

-  An age with less new military hardware - the $140 million per F-22 fighter jet; perhaps a carrier battle group or two; the moon exploration program. Secretary of Defense Gates should be able to wield a surgical knife. Will decrease some exports and spin-off civilian applications of the technologies. Bad for some of my stocks.

-  An age with a lesser commitment to our long time friends - England; Israel; Japan. Definitely a bad idea, but Hillary doesn't seem to have much of a policy voice. Nature won't like the vacuums.

-  An age with less global largess under the State Department's $56 billion umbrella: help for the globe's poor, hungry, sick, climate-challenged, and politically needy.

- An age of diminished expectations - for our kids and grandkids; for the kids growing up in Iran's neighborhood; for the Europeans who have long since forgotten how to protect themselves; for the 100 United Nations members who so much enjoy voting against us in the Security Council - and should start studying Chinese.  A very bad idea indeed.

Sometime after the election we will get the recommendations of Obama's commission on fiscal responsibility. One assumes that it will be at least 2000 pages long and that nobody in Congress will read it. But you can also assume that it will protect the expanding health care entitlements, contain enough taxes (probably VAT) to provide the butter, and enough military and foreign policy cuts to sound retreat for the empire. Barry's mother would be proud.

   -----

This week's video is an ad being run by the Republican Governor's Association, Remember November. Much better than what the Republican National Committee is doing.

bill bowen - 4/30/10 

An urgent favorite: Tom Campbell who is running in a June 8 primary to face Barbara Boxer in November. Harvard Law; U of Chicago PhD in economics; 5 term congressman from Silicon Valley; twice named the most frugal member of Congress by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation; a fountain of fiscally conservative/socially moderate ideas.

Obama's Katrina?

    There will be much written about Flight 253 - some of it a chronology of facts; some of it a search to attach or deflect blame; much of it political.  In my perspective, there are two questions - is the management right? and does leftist ideology get in the way of common sense security measures?

   1. Do we have the right management in place? The Department of Homeland Security is a difficult job, even in a conservative administration. By most accounts, the 180,000 person department went through consolidation pains under the politically capable Tom Ridge, and got its act together under the more managerial Michael Chertoff. Somewhere in the murk between Janet Napolitano's idiotic "the system worked" and the apologists like Richard Clark who feel that she is doing a great job (like Katrina's "Brownie"), lie serious management questions. Obama has had a year to work on it, so it is a bit lame to talk of Bush's procedures which they inherited. 

   - If the transportation Security Administration is so important, why did the Obama administration wait until September to nominate Erroll Southers (an apparently well-qualified former FBI agent) to lead the TSA? The Bush administration created a non-union TSA, but gave the director the authority to allow union elections - a likely prospect in any Democratic administration for the 50,000 federal employees, but one that has caused Senator DeMint to hold the nomination pending a debate on the merits - a debate that will probably not ever happen. .

 -  Is there a system in place to consolidate all of the known intelligence, review it continuously, and take action on questionable actors - arrests; extra screenings; review of visas; more extensive monitoring.   If not, is it because of practical considerations (limitations of data base management capabilities), or concern for civil liberties? With Oracle's data base expertise and Google's magic, why is there a problem in sorting the data?  With American Muslims attacking military facilities and traveling to Somalia and Pakistan to blow themselves up, it is obvious that the question isn't just about boarding airplanes.

 -  Are there regular brainstorming sessions and exercises to stay ahead of the evolving terrorist threat? It is good to keep some of the procedures vague - witness the potential damage from the December 8 publication of airline screening procedures on the Internet.  Hopefully, the Intelligence committees will have private inquiries into such questions as why there were apparently still no air marshals on the same Amsterdam to Detroit flight two days after the attempted bombing incident, and why the authorities in Amsterdam had instructions not to use body scans on passengers bound for the United States.  

The senior management responsibility is to make sure that the proper processes and people are in place, and then to periodically test them. Bad managers do nothing (Katrina); mediocre managers thrash around after problems (current); good managers use profound understanding to prevent problems.  Obama recently gave himself a B + for his first year in office; he needs a mulligan.  

   2. Does President Obama get it? His three days of silence in Hawaii while he deferred to Secretary Napolitano is eerily similar to President Bush's reading "The Pet Goat" to second graders during 9/11. When he eventually referred to the "alleged" bombing attempt and called the bomber an "isolated individual",  he obviously didn't have his normal well-tuned PR voice. 

    But, this incident should not be viewed in isolation. Like the pending trial of KSM in New York, this is treated as a criminal rather than military offense. This bomber was arrested and charged with the crime of threatening an airliner - thus getting a lawyer, and shutting down his discussion of his Yemeni contacts - who were they; where did he get the materials; what other targets were considered; why did he pick Amsterdam? Presumably he will be able to see all of the evidence against him and have the right to challenge any witnesses. 

Interestingly,  Dawn Johnsen, Obama's stalled nominee for Director of the Office of Legal Council in the Justice Department would have a big part in the administration's policies on interrogation and prosecution, but enough senators have opposed her for extreme national security and abortion views to deny her the position. Assuming that her name is not resubmitted, Obama has the opportunity to select someone who clearly distinguishes between criminals (entitled to US civil trial rights) and unlawful combatants (entitled only to limited Geneva Convention rights on treatment; and subject to indefinite detention). We'll see.

   A narrow criticism of the CIA and the National Counter Terrorism Center will not be enough - although they are appropriate and easy targets. Congress and the public should hold Obama to his outraged call for accountability.  

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  This week's video is an interview with Parker Griffith, the Congressman (and oncologist) from Alabama who changed party registration from Democrat to Republican this week. Hopefully, his logic will have broader acceptance. 

And for those who want one more "2009 in Review", Dave Barry's column is the funniest ever.   

Favorites: 
    1. Mitt Romney's "Free and Strong America" PAC web site. 
    2. Tom Campbell's California governor campaign web site  

bill bowen - 1/1/10

The Afghan Surgelet

I must confess that the clever "surgelet" title belongs to George Will in his overly pessimistic reaction to President Obama's December 1, speech at West Point. My general premise that the region should be looked at from the perspective of Pakistan rather than Afghanistan is contained in my March 20 blog. (See archives to the right.) As much discussion as there has been of Obama's third Afghan strategy - one for the campaign; one in March when he appointed General Chrystal; one now - most observers seem to have missed important points.

First on the substance:

1. Relative to Afghanistan: We can succeed if the objectives are limited. If we need to purge governments of corruption, we should start in Louisiana, New Jersey, or Chicago. If we need to stop the flow of drugs, we should focus on Mexico and Columbia. Schools? - we can start here in California. If we just want to deny a safe haven to al Queda, we can do that with a secure government in Kabul which allows us to "search and destroy" as necessary.

2. Relative to Pakistan: I hear pundits talking about how we need to convince the Rawalpindi government of the seriousness of the need to engage the fundamentalists. They have had two prime ministers assassinated and suffer frequent suicide bombings of civilian targets and military headquarters. They get it. What they don't need - and which our media and politicians regularly give them - is embarrassing calls for governmental change attached to aid agreements, publicized discussions about violations of their sovereignty with drone attacks, and discussions about cooperative plans to secure their nuclear weapons in the event of Taliban attacks. We have been on Pakistan's side since the Cold War (when the Russians picked India); their military leaders have attended American schools; they use American military aircraft. Vagueness is necessary for internal Pakistani sensitivities - and a strategy of pushing the terrorists across the border into Pakistan makes no sense.  

3. Relative to Iraq: It is good to hear the grudging realization that the Petreus/McCain surge worked there and that the strategy of isolating extremists who abuse the population is to be copied. In a way, Iraq was harder with the Sunni/Shiite division, and the prospect of Arabs from throughout the Middle East coming for their chance at Eternity. The Afghan problem is Pashtun and largely limited to the South and East. Even there, there are not many folks wanting to die to help al Queda. (Again, limited objectives.)

4. Relative to Vietnam: (I served there in 1967-68, and worked on Southeast Asia stuff at the Pentagon in 1970-72.) Some justify the Afghanistan mission as a result of "but they attacked us and the Vietnamese never could", but it wasn't the Afghans who attacked us and al Queda could just as easily move to Yemen or Somalia.  Ironically, the true risk becomes one of a "domino theory", with failure in Afghanistan leading to disaster in nuclear-armed Pakistan.  

5. Relative to the Budget: An annual "all-in" cost for Afghanistan and Iraq since 9/11 has been about $940 billion. If we are to criticize the environmental crazies for not caring about the cost of their ideology, the Bush-era practice of carrying the cost of the Iraq War "off budget" should be avoided, and there should be a debate about guns, butter, and taxes. (Overall, we spend about 4 % of GDP for defence and 17% for health care.)

And on the politics:

1. There is little risk in the "begin withdrawal" date of July 2011. Aside from the Gates/Clinton/Jones tour to calm frayed nerves in the region and in the military, there is no way that Obama will create a Dunkirk-like collapse of his war a year before his reelection bid.

2. The New York Times had an excellent, long article on the White House's deliberations, which had two messages - there are more leaks than discussions, and the law professor asks a lot of good questions, but doesn't know how to bring it to a decision. Why he excluded General McChrystal from the discussions is anybody's guess.

3. Chris Matthews spoke from the heart for many on the Left when he called West Point the "enemy camp."  These intelligent, educated, disciplined young patriots signed up well into the Iraq War and know what service awaits them. To many on the Left, this is unfathomable.

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Instead of a You Tube, this week's humor comes from a conference on governmental transparency put on by the new Office of Government Information Services. George Orwell would be delighted; the Daily Show should be. The conference at the Commerce Department was closed to the public and the media.

bill bowen - 12/11/2009

Favorites: 
    1. Mitt Romney's "Free and Strong America" PAC web site. 
    2. Tom Campbell's California governor campaign web site

Emptying Gitmo

   Khalid Sheik Muhammed and Eric Holder have one thing in common - they both want a show trial. Hopefully, the judge will not.

 What does KSM want?  In 2007 when he confessed to masterminding the 9/11 attacks and many other atrocities, he boasted of a plan to hijack another plane, and make a speech at an American airport after killing all of the male passengers.  Holder has given him his stage, and as a bonus the opportunity to expose American intelligence sources and cause a second round of pain to the families of the victims.  

What does Holder want? There are two lines of thought:

- The benign one - claimed by Holder and his defenders on the Left: Demonstrate the fairness and robustness of our judicial system. But this is belied by the fact that other Gitmo prisoners will be tried by military tribunals or held indefinitely, that Obama has assured the public that KSM will be convicted and executed, and that Holder has said that under any circumstance KSM will not be released.  Justice?  

- And the cynical one:  Demonstrate for the world that the Obama administration is purging the evil ways of the Bush administration in terms of torture and illegal detention. Holder's controversial decision in August to reopen an investigation of CIA interrogators, the April release of a Justice Department memo critical of "enhanced interrogation techniques", and Holder's history - which includes a recommendation that President Clinton pardon unrepentant Puerto Rican terrorists - provide a clear picture.  His claim that he had not discussed the decision directly with President Obama is either incredible or alarming. (With the resignation of Obama's chief legal advisor on the delinquent closing of Gitmo, it is possible that the president is keeping a "deniability" distance.)

The reality of what may happen:

- In the trial itself - In a criminal trial the defendant is entitled to a presumption of innocence (have Obama and Holder poisoned the jury pool?; can there be an impartial jury in New York?), the right to cross-examine witnesses (and expose them), to have access to all of the evidence, and to make extensive opening and closing statements. One can never be sure of 12 jurors - see OJ's "trial of the century". Judges can go off the rails - see the Scottish judge who released the convicted Lockerbie bomber. And in the end, the legal truism that "hard cases make bad law" reflects the risk that stretching criminal law to fit a preordained military outcome could set bad precedents.

-  Beyond the trial - Senator Lindsay Graham points out that those capturing terrorists will need to read the prisoners their Miranda rights (which were not applied in this case), thus allowing lawyers and limiting interrogation benefits. It is also likely that some sources of intelligence will be exposed in the trial, and the incentive for informants to work with us will be severely compromised. (If Holder really did not consult with Obama, he may not be concerned about these things.)   

   And what will we do with the other 200 misfits?

  The Geneva Conventions are clear that to be a lawful combatant (and thus be protected by the Conventions) a person must (a) be commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) have a fixed distinctive sign (such as a uniform) recognizable at a distance; (c) carry arms openly; and (d) conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. Absent that, they are entitled to humane treatment, but are subject to trial as war criminals or indefinite detention.

  Many have been released to other countries, with the potential that as many as 60  (mostly Yemeni's) have returned to the battlefield.

  In 2006 Congress revised the laws covering military tribunals to meet legal and ideological objections to the Bush approach, and Holder has assigned the bombers of the USS Cole to that path.   

  Obama and Holder have not signaled their intent with the rest of the 200, except for Holder's explanation that the KSM group was in a civilian court because most of their victims were civilians. (If a terrorist wants more rights, kill civilians.)  There may be a politically-motivated pragmatic approach that the forum will be chosen to prevent any prisoners from actually being released, with a handful held indefinitely.  But law professor Obama does not distinguish between the purpose of criminal law (punish wrongdoers) and the purposes of military incarceration (prevent future damage and gather intelligence.)  

   In sum, with trials and appeals this will be a long and ugly process, designed by both KSM and the Obama administration to show the world the dark side of America. Two thirds of the public disagree with the decision - even before the $75 million price tag was disclosed. 2012 cannot come soon enough.

   -----  

 This week's You Tube is a snippet of Senate testimony, in which Lindsay Graham  demonstrates the inadequacy of Eric Holder's thinking.

bill bowen - 11/27/2009

Favorites: 
    1. Mitt Romney's "Free and Strong America" PAC web site. 
    2. Tom Campbell's California governor campaign web site

Global Dithering

    Global leadership requires four elements: vision; capacity; skill; and resolve. One can reasonably argue that George W. Bush had the vision (spreading democracy as an antidote to Muslim fanaticism), capacity (the strongest economy and military), and resolve (the Iraq War; the East European missile shield), but suffered from a lack of skill (overbearing approach). Conversely, Obama's apparent idealistic Wilsonian vision of a lesser American role in the world is blurry, our economic capacity is reduced, the leader's inexperience (or perhaps naivete) is apparent, and dithering is a predominant feature. A quick survey:

1. Afghanistan: His appointed general provided recommendations to implement March's  "carefully crafted" counterinsurgency strategy on August 30. Nearly four months later we have nothing, our enemies are emboldened, and our NATO allies are becoming restive as they have bought into General McChrystal's recommendations.

2. Iraq: The Bush / Maliki strategy for US withdrawal continues on the pace that Obama inherited, the Iraqis have settled their election law issues, and ongoing incidents of violence do not appear likely to derail the process. We have the first significant functioning Arab democracy. No change is a good thing.

3. Pakistan: The most dangerous country in South Asia has undertaken an aggressive stance against al Queda and the Taliban in the face of rising carnage in their cities. Clumsy and offensive American conditions attached to a  $7.5 billion aid package -and Secretary of State Clinton's criticism for nor being more focused on al Queda - seem designed to paint President Zardari as an ineffective American stooge.

 4. Iran: Cancellation of the Eastern European missile shield was intended to buy Russia's good will and support for a plan to ensure that Iran's nuclear program was limited to peaceful purposes. Forget that! Likewise, the dance about Iran sending their nuclear materials to France or Russia for peaceful purpose upgrade - a temporary illusion. The policy - talk for talk's sake.  

5. North Korea: Nuclear and missile tests continue with nary a sideways glance as Obama's special envoy prepares to open bilateral discussions. At risk - the Bush policy of Six Party Talks with China in a major role.

6. Israel/Palestine: The graveyard where all good diplomats go to die. One can fault Obama/Hillary for tilting toward Israel in the latest round (which resulted in the announced retirement of Palestinian Authority President Abbas), but a peaceful "two state" solution has eluded the best diplomats for decades.

7. Honduras: We find ourselves on the side of Castro and Hugo Chavez in this battle between the Honduran Supreme Court and Legislature in their confrontation with a leftist president who tried to overthrow the constitutional provision for term limits. A recent agreement for November 29 elections would seem to overcome the Obama administration's demand that President Zelaya be reinstated.

8. Norway. Ah yes, the Nobel Peace Prize for which nominations were submitted within three weeks of Obama's inauguration.

   As Woodrow Wilson found in the 20s, it is a dangerous world and good intentions are not enough. It was initially hoped that Joe Biden (Senate Foreign Relations chair), Hillary (Bill's global legacy), and the plethora of special envoys (Richard Holbrooke in Afghanistan/Pakistan, George Mitchell in the Middle East, Stephen Bosworth in Korea) would bring experience to an effective foreign policy. Instead, the plan to delegate foreign hot spots to a team of experts from the past has captured some good will, but is accompanied by a decline in influence.

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This week's You Tube is for all of the Gladys Knight fans - a parody, and the original.  

bill bowen - 11/13/09

Favorites: 
    1. Mitt Romney's "Free and Strong America" PAC web site. 
    2. Tom Campbell's California governor campaign web site

Obama's Global Retreat

   For the last 28 years, with the support of American presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush, Western Europe has been expanding to the East with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Warsaw Pact, the addition of a dozen countries to the European Union, and a similar dozen to NATO. Some 100 million people that had previously taken their direction from Moscow chose democracy and economic integration with the West.  There were key symbolic events - Lech Walesa and Solidarity's uprising in Poland in 1980; the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 - and each country chose its own path. Several - notably Belarus, and several central Asian republics  - chose to remain centered on Russia while most central Europeans sought the economic and military security of alignment with the United States and our European allies.  

   Until Barack Obama became president. When he announced a reversal of President Bush's plan for a missile shield based in Poland and the Czech Republic, there was apparently no quid pro quo, and no engagement with these countries or our NATO allies in the decision. Secretary of Defense Gates has written about the military rationale for changing strategies, but that ignores the political implications for the East Europeans who cast their lot with the West despite Moscow's protestations and threats to withhold natural gas and oil. The choice of September 17, for the announcement - the day that Russia invaded Poland at the start of World War II - can be attributed to ignorance or arrogance. Hopefully it was no more deliberate than that.

   The reversal in Afghanistan seems to be in progress.  Obama's statement in March (when he committed to 21,000 more troops and a new commander)  that he had a “a stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy” to win the  "necessary war" which Bush had ignored, is now being replaced with deferral of newly-appointed General McCrystal's request for additional troops until there is a viable strategy.  So much for the Afghans who have put their families at risk as they rallied to American leadership.

   So, how does this look from Tel Aviv or other capitals where governments have traditionally looked to the United States for support and protection?  "Change" is obviously global. If you are trying to figure out who you can depend on and  you are a long time ally in Columbia or Honduras, Pakistan or Taiwan, it is necessary to re-write your strategic plan.

   One corner of the world that has received little attention, but which is facing its own "hope and change" agenda is Japan. For the first time since World War II, Japan's center-right government has given way to a center-left coalition with the likelihood of questioning many of our mutual assumptions relative to bases on Okinawa, benign currency and trade policies, and our role as their nuclear protector from North Korea, China and Russia.  Hopefully, the Hatoyama administration will remain more reliable than the Obama administration.

   One Obama-friendly British paper, The Guardian, has expressed a growing anxiety:

    "Unless Barack Obama is able to demonstrate a better level of political skill than he has shown so far, everyone needs to fasten their seat belts. The world is about to enter a challenging phase where the US – the undisputed leader of the free world for the past 60 years – is going to rapidly cede its place at the head of the line."  Based on his speech at the United Nations and the anticipated announcements from the G-20 meeting in Pittsburg, Obama will be leading the shift.

  Perhaps we need a global tea party.   

   -----

    This week's You Tube answers the question asked several weeks ago, "Where in the World is Hillary Clinton?"

Bill Bowen - 9/25/09

Favorites: 
    1. Mitt Romney's "Free and Strong America" PAC web site. 
    2. Tom Campbell's California governor campaign web site.

National (In)Security

   It's not that I have anything against Laura Ling, or Euna Lee, or any of Al Gore's other acolytes for that matter. It's just that I hate to use up our few points of influence with Kim Jung-Il to avoid 12 year prison sentences for reporters who stupidly and illegally entered the territory of a frightening adversary. So, Bill Clinton has had his moment in the sun, KJI has had his photo-op with the American president coming to pay him homage, and - as the New York Times reports - the Obama administration is quietly moving from the Bush-era policy of using six-party talks and sanctions to make North Korea give up their nuclear program, to a more enlightened and realistic policy of "containment" in which the objective becomes to prevent North Korea from exporting the technology to countries such as Syria and Burma. We await the pronouncement from mouthpiece Robert Gibbs.

    And it's not that I object to Obama deferring to his Attorney General who wants to override candidate Obama's pledge to not prosecute CIA operatives for aggressive interrogation techniques which helped to kill or capture senior al Queda leaders shortly after 9/11.  (What will be interesting is whether the "show trials" make their way up the food chain to the Bush-era lawyers who tried to define the boundaries of allowable interrogation techniques.) After all, when we close Guantanamo, these prisoners will have to go somewhere, and they will be telling the world about how they were abused. Besides, the CIA is obviously filled with rogue officers (like that stupid cop in Cambridge) and they must be brought back in line. It wasn't the Attorney General's pledge anyway; the president is just deferring to the experts. 

   And it's not that I want to obsess over the real time figures at www.debtclock.org which track the national debt and underlying accounts - now at over $11 trillion and projected to be up over $1.8 trillion this fiscal year.  I am hopeful that there are some principles of economics that I missed in my pre-Obama/Pelosi/Reid education, that a couple trillion dollars of debt to China won't really matter, and that this is a great time to add a few hundred billion dollars per year to our health care spending. Our grand kids will be able to handle this one.

        The real problem - thanks for Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer for pointing it out - is these "un-American" protesters on health care.  Never mind that Obama's assurances are patently false - taxing employers WILL cause citizens to lose their coverage as their companies drop out; he HAS openly advocated for a single-payer system; government panels WILL determine allowable coverage; and he HASN'T READ the 1000 page House and Senate drafts of the bill which doesn't yet exist.  It is obviously time for all of us to chill out, and appreciate that "elections have consequences".  

    The broader context for the Town Hall meeting disruptions is the hope that many Americans still believe in security built on fiscal responsibility, military strength, an effective intelligence service, and an informed electorate - even if the White House does want them to be reported so that their "misinformation" can be countered.  Hope and Change indeed!!!!

    

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    This week's You Tube is an AARP meeting called to discuss health care with members who would have none of it. A few days later, Obama claimed that AARP had endorsed his plan - a claim that the organization promptly refuted.   

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Next week: Obama's Business Cycle

bill bowen - 8-14-09

     Favorites: 
    1. Mitt Romney's "Free and Strong America" PAC web site. 
    2. Tom Campbell's California governor campaign web site.

The Wrong Funeral

It is perhaps one more indicator that I am out of step with the masses. I did not cry at Elvis' funeral, or John Lennon's, and I skipped Michael Jackson's. No, I think that the important funeral of the week was Robert McNamara's. 

For those whose memories have failed, or are too young to have the memory, McNamara was the chief architect of the Vietnam War. A compelling case can be made for our engagement - we were committed to the protection of Japan, the Philippines, and other legacies of World War II which ended in 1945; Mao had taken over China in 1949; the war with China and North Korea lasted from 1950 to 1953; a major Chinese-inspired insurrection in Indonesia cost perhaps 500,000 lives in 1965 and 1966. When the French were driven out of Indo-China in 1954, we were called in by the leaders in the South. With hindsight, a different choice could have been made, but President Eisenhower began the effort to erect a barricade. 

Enter President John F. Kennedy and his Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara - previously the President of Ford Motors. It was an age of optimism about the ability of the intellectuals (McNamara's Whiz Kids) to manage these messy things better than the generals could. Prominent among the tragic theories was micro-escalation - the premise that in war it was inefficient and immoral to  use more force than minimally necessary to achieve an objective. What the theory missed was that it gave the enemy an opportunity to grow and adapt as General Westmoreland called for a few thousand more and a few thousand more troops until we had a total of 540,000, but were always precluded from taking any decisive action in North Vietnam. 

Colin Powell understood the alternative, and applied it in the First Gulf War. Actually, Lao Tse had explained it clearly in "The Art of War" in 600 B.C. - have a profound understanding of your enemy; maneuver so as to make combat unnecessary; if it is necessary, bring overwhelming force. George W. Bush missed it at the beginning of the Second Gulf War, but the "surge" advocated by John McCain rectified the error. Ironically, the milestone of turning over all of the cities to the Iraqis occurred in the week that McNamara died. 

One must wonder whether President Obama and his coterie understand this principle. The eradication of al Queda and the protection of the nuclear-equipped Pakistani government are certainly legitimate objectives - perhaps imperatives. But whether Obama's White House has profound understanding and whether they will follow the ineffective incremental path of McNamara or that of Lao Tse is to be determined.

    From my perspective, that would call for a change of perspective, if not actions. Sending another 20,000 troops to Afghanistan to secure the Helmund Valley feels a lot like putting another Division into the Central Highlands around Pleiku, when the real objective should be to ensure that Islamic militants do not gain access to Pakistan's nukes. That may involve many of the same actions, and hopefully all of the negotiations and deployments are not in the New York Times, but one hopes that Obama has his eye on the proper ball, and that he will bring whatever force is necessary.

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    For those who missed the whole Michael Jackson thing, this week's You Tube is a rather lengthy rendition of his breakout Thriller video.

bill bowen - 7/10/2009

Favorites:
    1. Mitt Romney's "Free and Strong America" PAC web site.
    2. Tom Campbell's California governor campaign web site.

North Korea: Part 2

    I have had enough feedback and afterthoughts from last week's posting on the North Korean confrontation to call for a follow-up. The thoughts fall into three general subjects:

    1. The ball is in China's court.  The logic goes like this - China has been North Korea's patron since at least the Korean War; they are the predominant trading partner and financial supporter; they have a major interest in eliminating a motivation for Japan to develop their own nuclear capability; their behavior at Tienanmen Square and in Tibet demonstrates that they are not as constrained by public opinion as we are; significant voices in Beijing note that Kim Jung-il has "crossed the bottom line"; they provide the medical care for the ailing dictator; and they can / should hasten the Great Leader on his way.

   This all makes sense, but it opens an even larger subject - the transition from Pax Americana to a duopoly of global power. Since WWII we have been the only country willing and able to exert military power to keep the world's order. (An exception is our client Israel, which has occasionally needed to clean up its neighborhood.)  When we have chosen to act, we have had the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the NATO mission in Yugoslavia. When we have chosen not to act, nobody has stepped in to the void - Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, Cambodia, Iran's nuclear program. We are now hoping that China will step up. 

    But the scope of the emerging duopoly is broader. China has started talking of a replacement for the dollar as the global reserve currency, and when their students spontaneously laugh at Treasury Secretary Geithner's claim of financial prudence, they acknowledge the reality. As our recession began, there was hopeful talk of a "decoupling" - the premise that other countries would be able to carry on as US demand for gadgets declined. Lo and behold, while our economy has been contracting at a 6% rate in recent quarters, theirs has continued to growin high single digits, Nancy Pelosi's harangues about human rights and carbon emissions notwithstanding.

    It will be very difficult for us to accept, but power follows economics, and we are no longer preeminent. Life will be easier in terms of economics and security if we have a good partner, and North Korea offers China an opportunity to demonstrate that they are ready for prime time.

 2. Reality, as well as domestic politics requires that Obama do something, and there are some meaningful things that can be done. The first is a quarantine on military-related exports, enforced by a naval interdiction force. South Korea has agreed to join the 90 nation Proliferation Security Initiative, despite North Korea's calling it a "declaration of war." How far this gets pushed depends on China, Obama, and the North Korean generals, but we have enough forces on hand to manage a blockade, if not the potential North Korean land response.  Russia and China apparently are finally ready to join a meaningful UN resolution in this direction.

    The second response is longer term, technological, and expensive.  While short of Reagan's "Star Wars" vision, we have a missile defense technology that should be upgraded and deployed. We cannot defend against a Cold War onslaught from the Russians, but we should be able to provide protection against Korean or Iranian missiles, working with our allies - including Russia and China. More problematic - equally necessary and less expensive, but probably less effective - is the deployment of bomb-detection equipment for use at world ports and at sea.

   The third is a broader expansion of non-proliferation efforts. Mohamed ElBaradei's term as Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency ends in November, and it is important that he be replaced with another well respected international figure. Obama has talked of downsizing US and Russian nuclear arsenals - strengthened international constraints against the backdrop fo US/Russian cooperation would certainly be a good thing.

    3. It is a unique irony that Al Gore's TV reporters apparently wandered into North Korea at a most unpropitious time.  While the Huffington Post would like to blame their incarceration on George Bush, they should plan on a long stay.   

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        Instead of a You Tube, this week I have attached a video about the Memorial at Harbor ViewPark, in Bayonne, New Jersey - a gift from the Russian people to commemorate the 911 victims. The media has apparently been too busy writing about Paris Hilton and our politics to cover this excellent statement of Russia's attitude in the 21st Century.

bill bowen - 6/12/09

Chamberlain v Kim

    When Joe Biden "guaranteed" in October that there would be a foreign crisis to test the mettle of a President Obama, he provided no specifics, and John McCain predicted that he would have the wrong response.  For the moment we seem to have evaded the collapse of the financial system, swine flu, and the retreat of the Pakistani government, leaving global warming for another day.  Enter Kim Jong-il, the Asian pillar of the Axis of Evil, with his erratic behavior seeking who knows what, and leaving little room for Obama to "meet with any world leader without preconditions" in search of "Peace in Our Time".   

    What we do know:

        -  Since Kim's father withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation treaty in 1993, Presidents Clinton and Bush have tried everything- Six Party talks; Chinese leadership; US engagement; food and energy aid; a promise of nuclear energy assistance; non-aggression commitments; offers of a peace treaty ending the 1950's Korean war; olive branches from the South. It is not a question of finding better adjectives and adverbs.

        - North Korea, a country of 24 million,  has an Army of 1.2 million to go with its significant missile program, and the nuclear program which has achieved Hiroshima-sized explosions.  Although there is no evidence that they can deliver the bombs any distance at this point, that is not far away - at least relative to South Korea and Japan, two countries which have relied on the United States for defense, much to the relief of the remainder of Asia. Between the two allies, we have about 60,000 US troops to supplement the South Korean regular forces of some 520,000 army and 70,000 navy troops, and 600 aircraft.  This is not like the Wizard of Oz where the facade crumbles when confronted.

        -  The military has firm control, having displayed little concern during the famine of the 90's which killed between one and two million people. This satellite photo of the Korean Peninsula at night shows the state of affairs.

        -  Yongbyon, the center of the nuclear program, is too far from Tel Aviv to count on the Israeli's to clean up the mess. But the Iranians are watching the American response closely.

        -  The South Korean stock market is up 22% through May. What me worry?

   What we can assume:

        -  Smart people in diplomatic and military positions throughout East Asia are considering all alternatives. The North's nuclear and missile facilities could be destroyed with conventional weapons, but that leaves the million-man army concentrated along the DMZ, which is within 25 miles of Seoul, the South's thoroughly modern capital with over 10 million people. There is no good answer. 

        -  The hope has been that over time the next generation of leaders of the North would migrate toward the prosperity of the south, a la East Germany.  But Kim Jong-il replaced his father in 1994, and his 26-year old son, Kim Jong-un, is apparently being groomed to replace him with no change to the marriage between the military leadership and the Kim family business.  Neville Chamberlain would still bank on this path.

      -  My guess - the Obama administration will migrate from saying that a nuclear-armed North Korea is unacceptable, to saying that they cannot be allowed to export nukes. (They have been exporting missiles to Iran for decades, and were apparently involved in a nuclear site in Syria which the Israeli's took out in 2008.)  The issue will become the ability to inspect outbound cargoes, a prospect that the South Koreans have recently endorsed, but which the North Koreans consider an act of war. To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, we will "walk stickly and carry a big soft."  The press may even give more coverage to the two naive reporters from Al Gore's "Current TV", who were captured doing an investigation of refugees going to China - real people are always more important than a few theoretical nukes.

        - Plan B would involve some elements of further economic embargo, incentives for cooperation, more UN resolutions, and a Chinese pledge to shelter the North Korean leadership in the event of a collapse.  Then, serious interdiction of shipping, large-scale civil defense planning in the South, and a collective holding of our breath.  In a year or two, even this will not be possible.

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    To put the implications of North Korea's nuclear program in context, this week's You Tube is an investigative report by John Oliver of the Daily Show on this Fall's experiment to test the results of high energy collision of nuclear particles.  

Bill Bowen - 6/5/09

Why Afghanistan?

        "They're a mixed lot, and it won't help us to know the names of their tribes. The more tribes, the more they fight, and the better for us."     Rudyard Kipling, about the Afghans in "The Man Who Would Be King"

    A brief history: The Persians couldn't conquer them. The Hindus couldn't conquer them. Alexander the Great couldn't conquer them. The British couldn't conquer them. The Russians couldn't conquer them.  Afghanistan has particularly difficult terrain, fierce tribal loyalties, and no strategic significance other than opium, and possibly a hiding place for outlaws. Yet, Obama wants "in".

    The comparison to Iraq is stark. Easy terrain; oil; under Hussein, a threat to its neighbors, and to our Kurdish friends - with demonstrated chemical weapons with a goal of nuclear; now, an emerging Arab democracy which can serve as a barrier for Iran. Yet, Obama wants "out".

    So, why does the guy who made his leap into national prominence by early opposition to the Iraq War want to go "all in" in Afghanistan?  My premise - he got there in two stages:

        -  Early in his primary campaign against Hillary Clinton he was primarily attacking her vote for the Iraq War, and grabbed onto the failure to find bin Laden as resulting from a wrong focus. This despite not visiting Afghanistan when he had a chance, and ignoring it in his role as chair of the Senate Subcommittee on European Affairs, which had oversight responsibilities. During the campaign against John McCain this posture morphed into a need to demonstrate that he was not a naive peacenik as his connections with various leftists became known. 

      -  Once the election was over, he decided to concentrate his political might on domestic (and economic) issues, choosing not to open a second front by taking on the national security establishment yet.  The commitment to close Guantanamo was politically necessary, but even that has been announced in a way that is unsatisfactory to his liberal base.  For now, he will concentrate on his domestic agenda - healthcare; income redistribution; and climate change.   If that means a commitment of another 17,000 troops to Afghanistan with no exit strategy, so be it. 

    There are several other indicators of this domestic concentration:

        -  A perceived snub of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown during a February visit;

        -  Silence in the face of  Russian plans to operate bombers from Cuba and Venezuela, North Korean missile plans, and Iran's advance toward nuclear status;

        -  Allowing Teamster-supported abrogation of NAFTA agreements with Mexico.  

    Hopefully, General Petreus will be able to figure out a way to prevent Obama's Afghan adventure from ending like Kipling's verse:

    "When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll on your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your Gawd like a soldier."  The Young British Soldier

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    This Glenn Beck video provides a bit of perspective for the non-economists among us. (Thanks to Jerry Roth - a long time friend in Wisconsin.)

Bill Bowen - 3/20/09

Avoiding Tarbabies

    With a father from Kenya and a stepfather from Indonesia, Barack Obama has a broader perspective on the Middle East and Islam than does the New York Times. Allah Akbar! (God is great.)  Over the next month or two we will have a chance to see beyond the few conflicting clues that have carried him this far. One would hope that caution and pragmatism will lead him to expend his political capital on situations that are ready for progress, and which align with basic American interests while treading lightly in areas that offer little hope.  

    The smallest problem in the Middle East (in terms of geography and population) is the Palestinian/Israeli question which has evaded solution despite the efforts of recent American presidents and British Prime Ministers. Faced with the end of the Bush protectorate, the Israelis have chosen to clean up the minor threat from Gaza rather than the nuclear threat from Iran. Politics is the art of the possible, and the Iran option was beyond reach. So also is an Obama-led solution unless both sides decide that something like Carter's Camp David Accords and Clinton's tentative 2000 Palestine agreement is better than continued conflict. (It really seems simple out here in San Francisco. To remain a Jewish democracy, Israel must have a place to put thet Palestinians. To have this succeed, they need to help the West Bank and Gaza prosper.)  Perhaps the best approach is to leave a phone number to call when the parties are ready.  

    The second theater on which Obama would be wise to not base his foreign policy is Afghanistan. My premise is that his support for increased troops in Afghanistan was a political tactic, allowing him to be a vocifrous advocate for an ignominious withdrawal from Iraq without being branded a naive anti-military pacifist. Afghanistan defied conquest by the British, the Russians, and many others; it is hard to envision any scenario that would lead to a stable, unified government; and we have little reason to be there other than chasing Osama bin Laden - who is probably not there anyway. 

    The larger issue is the millenial conflict between the Shiite Iranians and the Sunni Arabs, and it is in this context that Obama should view politics in Iraq, support for Hamas and Hezbollah, the expansion of the nuclear club, and our need for oil. "Meeting without preconditions" with Ahmedinejad suggests his perspective - and while it may be opposed by the right in the US, and most of our allies in the region, it will probably happen, and will be likened to Nixon meeting with Mao in China in 1972 as an opportunity to change the game.  

    The fourth issue - and the second worth spending a lot of time on - is the India/Pakistan conflict. In fact, an unstable, nuclear, Muslim Pakistan should probably be the first priority. In a sense, the restraint of the Indians with attacks on their parliament in 2001, and then on Mumbai in December is more than remarkable, and an indicator that they understand the risk of chaos. So does the government of President Zardani in Islamabad, whose family has had two previous leaders assassinated by the zealots. With motivated leaders on both sides, progress is possible. Hopefully Obama did not mean his campaign rhetoric about attacking our long-time ally Pakistan if they didn't help more against al Quaeda.

    Obama has promised that shortly after his innauguration he will make a major presentation in a prominant Muslim location (perhaps Indonesia.) If he demonstrates a nuanced understanding of why the Bush administration has done what it has, and emphasises the above priorities, he will be off to a good start in my mind. The reality will look quite different from the Oval Office.  

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    For those who don't know the apparent winner of the Minnesota Senate race, here's a short clip by Al Franken's supporters. Thanks to thet people who gave us Jesse Ventura. And why has it taken over two months to count a few thousand votes anyway?

Bill Bowen - 1/9/09

The Guantanamo Test

   Anticipating what Barack Obama will do as president isn't too difficult, except for the timing. We will definitely have universal healthcare, an environmental/energy policy that penalizes the 50% of our electricity produced by coal, and a reduced military budget. Most has been thoroughly discussed, and the public has given a "go ahead". Less discussed, easier to accomplish by executive order, and potentially more dangerous is an overhaul of President Bush's policies on detention of terrorists.

    The Bill Ayers/New York Times perspective would be that the US has taken a deserved public relations hit from the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, that the prisoners there are not that important anyway, and that the appropriate response is for the new president to close the prison and either return the prisoners to their home countries, to try them in the US civilian court system, or to let them go. (The same question applies to prisoners at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and perhaps at other locations.) That he could do on Day 1 by an executive order.   

    "Upon further review" Obama will find (at least behind closed doors) that the Bush administration has in fact made the country safer, and that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, expanded electronic surveillance, and agressive detention of Al Queda and other terrorists have all been contributing factors. As to Guantanamo, he will find that there is a fundamental difference between a criminal justice system designed to punish offenders after-the-fact, and preventive incarceration of combatants. The complicating factor is that the Geneva Conventions for handling combatants assume the existence of an adversary government with whom one can exchange prisoners and an eventual end of hostilities. Among the obstacles for civilian trials are the fact that some of their information was obtained by agressive interrogation techniques (not allowed as tainted evidence), and other would require disclosure of clandestine sources and cooperation by other governments that prefer to remain in the background. Going forward, it will be possible to adhere to the Geneva Convention protocols on treatment (as we now are), but that does not deal with trials.  

    The "send them home" option is limited by the fact that some of their governments do not want them, or would release them. About 100 of the 250 are Yemeni, and that government does not want to be seen as cooperating with the United States. Another seventeen are Uighir Chinese who would be harshly treated if returned to China.

    The Bush administration has muddled through by creating a Geneva Convention-type category of "illegal enemy combatants" and keeping them out of reach of American judges who might prioritize civil liberties over common sense security. Unless Obama follows that general direction he will pay a large political price when the next attack comes - as it eventually will.

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    As promised, the attached video from Peter Schiff shows that the signs of the economic crisis were available years ago, but that the keepers of the conventional wisdom were willfully blind. A vote for Peter Schiff - and one against Art Laffer (of the Reagan-era Laffer Curve fame) and Ben Stein (recently cited by Barney Frank as an expert on the auto industry.)  

Bill Bowen - 11/21/08

Obama's Foreign Policy Problems

   The problem with foreign policy is that it is complex and that words are not enough - military or economic muscle is frequently necessary. While the US represents about 40% of global defense spending at 3.3 % of our Gross Domestic Product (per the Congressional Research Services), most of our European and Asian allies spend in the 1 to 2 % range, and our adversaries spend relatively more - North Korea (25%); Iran (4.6%); China (4.1%); and Russia (4.8%). Over time it may be desireable to reduce our burden for protecting Japan and Europe, but for now it is necessary for a US president to be adept at managing the dangerous world stage. A few recent examples give one pause about Obama's experience and instincts:

    1. The Georgia - Russia conflict was triggered when the Georgian president disturbed the status quo by trying to exert control over two break-away provinces that had a significant Russian presence.  In Russia's perspective, this provided an opportunity to regain some of the Soviet Union's territory and to avenge the West's separation of Kosovo from Russia's long time ally, Serbia. The democratically-elected presidents of Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia flew to Tbilisi to show solidarity with Georgia. The US flew 2000 Georgian soldiers back from Iraq and placed a military relief contingent in Tbilisi as a tripwire. McCain called for strong economic and diplomatic consequences for Russia; Obama  claimed that McCain's saber rattling encouraged the Russians.

  2. Pakistan - a nuclear-armed country with a growing Islamist insurgency, a teetering democracy, and a Taliban threat on the western border - provides perhaps a greater threat. The delicate compromises to shut down AQ Khan's nuclear export ring, gain a truce with India in Kashmir, disown the Taliban in Afghanistan, and turn over al-Queda leaders from the frontier area cost President Musharaf his job and resulted in a search for an accomodation with the major factions in the Pakistani parliment. In this sensitive quagmire, and in an effort to show his strength in the face of his calls to abandon Iraq, Obama called for attacking  Pakistan if they did not do more.

 3. In a June speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Obama found it necessary to counteract the effect of his earlier commitment to meet without preconditions with President Ahmedinejad of Iran.  There he promised to do everything in his power to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, to give aid to Israel without the longstanding balance with Egypt, and to support Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel - a key negotiating point which is unacceptable to the Muslim world.

  Nobody knows what the next four years will bring with North Korea, Cuba, Russia, Syria, or a number of other countries, and a bias toward negotiation is certainly desireable, but this is no place for a naive rookie.  In this arena, I'll take a Kissinger over a Carter any day.

                                               -----

   This week's You Tube. Some of these campaign ads are getting a little too rough.

A Big Week for Civil Liberties

    This has been an extraordinary week for those who have been watching the intersection of national security and civil liberties since 9/11/01.  First the Supreme Court determined that prisoners at Guantanamo have a right to challenge their detention in a civilian court. Then, the House of Representatives agreed on a sweeping update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.  In between, the European Parliment approved a set of laws governing the detention of illegal immigrants.  It will take the lawyers and scholars a long time to digest all of this, but the game has changed, with great political cause and effect.

    With a 5-4 decision in the case of Boumediene v Bush, the Supreme Court decided that non-US citizens held outside of the US are entitled to access to federal courts to challenge judicial review procedures relative to detention.  To civil libertarians this is a major victory for the individual over the arbitrary power of the state. To the politicians it becomes a platform to discuss who will keep us safer, and the importance of who makes the next Supreme Court appointment.  But, the thorny issue really turns on the procedures to be used by a court - civilian or military - in determining legitimacy of incarceration. Here we need to also look at both the possibility of releasing unrepentant terrorists, and the upstream impact on the intelligence community of requiring informants to come forward to be cross-examined. It is not by chance that between 1988 and 2003, there were at least 20 incidents of terrorism against American interests killing some 850 people, aside from the 9/11 attacks, and that there have been none since. It is not about whether we call people "illegal enemy combatants" or some other term, it is whether we have the right procedures to make sure that we have the right people.

    After almost six months of wrangling, the House has largely agreed (and the Senate is expected to follow) with the White House's proposals to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Among the provisions: individual warrants will no longer be required to monitor purely foreign communications passing through American switches; prior court approval is required for procedures to monitor foreign communications; and, individual court orders are required to monitor Americans outside the US, but a 7 day exception is allowed for "exigent" circumstances. Most importantly to the trial lawyer lobby, telephone companies were given effective immunity for their cooperation with the administration in the period after 9/11. The Democrats apparently decided that restrictions on intelligence gathering were a political liability in an election year.

   Finally, to keep the European civil libertarians busy, the European Parliment has standardized rules (to become effective later this year) which would allow incarceration of illegal immigrants, including families, for up to 18 months at specialized facilities. With an estimated 8 million illegal immigrants in the EU, myriad poorer countries on the periphery, free passage between the member states, and a patchwork of national rules, it has become necessary to control who is in, as Europe looks to harmonize general labor laws.  The problem with our southern border pales in comparison. 

   When later generations of historians look back at the major issues of our times, they will want to look closely at the middle of June, 2008.