From charisma to populism—this is the slippery slope down which Barack Obama has been sliding over the past two years. In June 2008, Obama the candidate described his nomination as “the moment when . . . our planet began to heal.” In June 2010, Obama the president promised his partisans he would find an “ass to kick.”
NRO: "According to an internal U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo going the rounds of Capitol Hill and obtained by National Review, the agency is considering ways in which it could enact 'meaningful immigration reform absent legislative action' — that is, without the consent of the American people through a vote in Congress."
Gary Schmitt debunks former CIA head Jack Devine's plan for Afghanistan, as outlined in today's Wall Street Journal, which calls for the U.S. to "start...developing a new covert action plan to be implemented by the Central Intelligence Agency." Schmitt writes:
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Jack Devine, former CIA operations head and one-time chief of the Afghan Task Force at the CIA in the mid-’80s, argues that the United States should end its military-led counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan and let the CIA take over. Instead of fighting a losing war, Devine argues, we ought to give the agency free reign to devise a covert plan to pay off and work with various elements of Afghanistan’s fractionalized society—ranging from the current government, warlords, and even the Taliban—“to keep Afghanistan from re-emerging as al Qaeda’s staging ground.” Putting on his agency-learned mask of pseudo realism, he says, “Afghanistan is a tribal society, not a nation state, and tribal interests are often easy to accommodate with cash and other assets that help tribal leaders maintain their power. Make no mistake: We’re not talking about supporting advocates for Jeffersonian democracy here. But these partnerships have proven dependable and highly advantageous to U.S. policy makers in promoting regional stability in the past.”
Oh really? What stability does Devine have in mind? Pakistan, Afghanistan? He has to be kidding. It was precisely the agency’s inability to play this insiders’ game well in the 1980s that kept Pakistani intelligence well-fed with American largesse while it worked with more extremist elements of the mujahedeen and eventually established the Taliban as the ruling force in Afghanistan in the mid-’90s. I don’t know what history book Devine has been reading from, but it’s not one that comes close to what really happened. And should we pull the plug on the Afghan mission as he suggests, count on history repeating itself.
With more and longer-standing assets in hand, religious and personal ties, and greater “street-level” knowledge of the factions themselves, there is no way the CIA can outperform and outmaneuver Pakistan’s intelligence when it comes to Afghanistan. In fact, it is precisely the fractionalized nature of Afghanistan that makes a would-be CIA effort virtually impossible, with the agency lacking anywhere near the number of personnel with the experience, cultural smarts, or even language skills to keep all the required balls in the air.
In an appropriately titled piece ("Nil, Baby, Nil"), Commentary's Abe Greenwald notices that observers of the oil spoil in the Gulf of Mexico are beginning to think that it might not be that bad after all.Greenwald quotes the New York Times as reporting yesterday, "The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected, a piece of good news that raises tricky new questions about how fast the government should scale back its response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster."
And how is it according to Time? "[S]o far — while it's important to acknowledge that the long-term potential danger is simply unknowable for an underwater event that took place just three months ago — it does not seem to be inflicting severe environmental damage."
The real tragedy, though, according to Greenwald, is the moral failure of the "enviro-catastrophists."
In 1991, Saddam Hussein dumped 8 million barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf. Two years later, an international team of scientists determined that there was little if any evidence of environmental damage to show for it. The BP spill, by comparison, put an estimated 5 million barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. It is not, and should not, be surprising to learn that the area’s wildlife is already testing clean and fishing restrictions are steadily being lifted.
The Saddam comparison raises an additional thought. If BP’s accidental spill had the left-wing enviro-catastrophists calling for Tony Hayward’s head and for a million-man protest to bring down the global denialist superstructure, why did Saddam’s intentional and more egregious act of geological sabotage (which was the least of his heinous crimes) elicit nothing of the sort? After all, when the time came depose that polluter, the left got its street marches -- in favor of leaving him be. But then, no one should look for moral direction from a movement that cares more about the potential damage done to seaweed than the actual deaths of human beings.
“This should be a rocket-boost for the environmental movement, a time to finally put to rest the notion that environmentalists are misguided alarmists,” wrote Daou, the misguided alarmist, back in May. Now, with the half-summer of self-righteousness behind us, the environmentalists will begin composing their own narratives of denial. Thomas Friedman and others are cautioning that the real danger lies in what we cannot detect, see, or test for. This is faith inverted and misapplied -- believing in the existence of unseen matter and calling it science. Let’s do as the great drilling proponent Sarah Palin advises and refudiate it.
Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), chairman of the Senate Conservatives Fund, announced the endorsement of businessman and former state senator Dino Rossi for U.S. Senate in Washington.
"Dino Rossi is a principled conservative who will help us take our country back. He will fight to stop the massive spending, bailouts, and debt that are bankrupting our country," said Senator DeMint. "Dino understands the stimulus bill was a failure, he will fight to repeal the health care takeover, and he will help us pass a constitutional amendment to balance the budget.
Hamas are resistance fighters who are struggling to defend their land. They have won an election. I have told this to U.S. officials ... I do not accept Hamas as a terrorist organization. I think the same today. They are defending their land.
That would be Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking before an exultant crowd a few weeks ago in the city of Konya as a newly decorated defender of regional Islamism. This is the man whom David Cameron was out to please the other day when, in a speech delivered in Ankara, he referred to Gaza as a “prison camp,” assailed Israel’s raid on the Mavi Marmara as “completely unacceptable,” and insisted that despite the aura of hopelessness now clinging to Turkey’s agonized bid to join the European Union, it must join it whatever the grumblings from Germany and France. Brutal occupation of Cyprus, subjugation of a Kurdish minority in everything from politics to linguistics, and ongoing denial of the Armenian genocide are evidently Maastricht-compatible initiatives to the new British prime minister, considered even by his support base not to “do” foreign policy so terribly well.
That didn’t stop a fellow Conservative, MP Daniel Hannan, from encouraging Cameron’s Obama-like overture to an increasingly hostile and subversive ally: “Cameron's reasons for backing Ankara's bid for EU membership are solidly Tory: Turkey guarded Europe's flank against the Bolshevists for three generations, and may one day be called on to do the same against the jihadis.”
Except that Turkey is sponsoring the jihadists, not guarding against them—a fact which ought to have been clear to Cameron in the post-script news coverage to the flotilla crisis. The best look into Turkey’s turn toward radicalism has been provided by independent Turkish journalists who have for months been arguing that Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) is leading the country into the asphyxiating embrace of the East. The Islamist “lite” party, which won power in 2002, used to adhere to a policy of “zero problems with the neighbors;” today it prefers one of helping the neighbors cause problems with the West.
A House ethics report charges that Rep. Charles Rangel, an iconic New York powerbroker, broke the chamber's rules by abusing his office for personal gain, raising the possibility that he could be punished by — or even expelled from — the House.
The panel's "statement of alleged violations" reports that there is "substantial reason to believe" that the 40-year House veteran violated a series of 13 ethics and federal regulations on public officials.
"We must regain the public's trust," Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the lead Republican on the ethics subcommittee "jury" hearing the case. "
The headliner allegations are that he improperly solicited money from corporate officials and lobbyists for the Charles B. Rangel Public Policy Center in New York, that he failed to disclose hundreds of dollars of income and assets on financial disclosure forms, that he maintained multiple rent-stabilized apartments in violation of New York City rules and failed to pay income taxes on a Dominican island resort home.
Jim Galloway at the AJC has the latest ad from Georgia's Karen Handel, the Sarah Palin-endorsed candidate for governor. Handel is facing former Rep. Nathan Deal in the runoff on August 10. The ad features the Palin endorsement prominently:
It's perhaps no mistake that Handel couples this message about Deal's corruption with the Palin appearance. The former Alaska governor attacked corruption in her own party, and the Handel campaign probably expects Georgia GOP voters to make that connection. There's even a Palin-esque sign off at the end: "Bring it on."
So is Deal really a "corrupt relic" of Washington? The feds are investigating a meeting Deal attended last year at the Georgia Capitol, but so far Deal has not been subpoenaed.
Deal and Cronan operate a salvage yard in Gainesville that for nearly 20 years enjoyed a no-bid agreement with the state to provide space for inspections of rebuilt vehicles. The AJC reported in August 2009 that Deal intervened with Graham and other state leaders to stop Graham from changing the program that earned Deal and Cronan's company nearly $300,000 a year.
Obama said on The View yesterday that he didn't know who Snookie is. But here's Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner: [...]
"The following individuals shall be excluded from the indoor tanning tax within this bill: Snooki, J-WOWW, the Situation, and House Minority Leader John Boehner."
Ousted Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod said Thursday she will sue a conservative blogger who posted an edited video of her making racially tinged remarks last week.
The edited video posted by Andrew Breitbart led Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to ask Sherrod to resign, a decision he reconsidered after seeing the entire video of her March speech to a local NAACP group. In the full speech, Sherrod spoke of racial reconciliation and lessons she learned after initially hesitating to help a white farmer save his home.
She said she doesn't want an apology from Breitbart for posting the video that took her comments out of context, but told a crowd at the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention that she would "definitely sue."
If Sherrod's going to sue someone, shouldn't she sue the Obama administration for wrongfully firing her?
60 Minutes had a fascinating report last week on what it calls "The Narrative," which "says that the United States is out to destroy Islam," and a man who devotes his life to combating this absurd meme. The man is Maajid Nawaz, who himself was once a radical fundamentalist. It's worth viewing in full:
President Obama spoke to the Urban League in Washington, D.C. this morning. Here's what he had to say about the firing of Shirley Sherrod:
Now, last week I had a chance to talk to Shirley Sherrod, an exemplary woman whose experiences mark both the challenges we have faced and the progress we have made. She deserves better than what happened last week.
When a bogus controversy based on selective and deceiving excerpts of a speech led to her forced resignation, many are to blame for the reaction and overreaction that followed these comments, including my own administration. What I said to Shirley was that the full story she was trying to tell, a story about overcoming our own biases, and recognizing ourselves and folks who, on the surface seem different, is exactly the kind of story we need hear in America.
"Including" his own administration? Yes, it was wrong to post the edited clip, but aren't Obama administration officials solely to blame for firing Sherrod before we had the full clip? And where, exactly, does the buck stop again?
Boy Scouts celebrated their 100-year anniversary at their National Jamboree in Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia this week. President Obama decided not to attend, so he could instead tape his appearance on The View. That's too bad. For a century, Boy Scouts of America has been a top organization that cultivates young leaders by teaching them patriotism, morals, and responsibility. It’s a group the president should want to promote.
Eligible scouts range from fifth graders to young men headed off to college. A scout begins by gaining knowledge of basic skills, like how to start a fire and tie knots. Eventually, scouts should be able to lash intricate structures, know advanced first aid, and understand their roles as citizens. Merit badges offer scouts the chance to focus on a specific interest, skill, or hobby – from Rifle Shooting to Nuclear Science, Snow Sports to Coin Collecting, Entrepreneurship to Environmental Science – and demonstrate mastered knowledge of it. There is something for everyone.
Letting boys loose to explore in the woods on a weekend campout certainly contradicts the politically correct wisdom to insulate adolescents from every possible playground booboo. Yet setting up boys to fail by putting them in unfamiliar and uncomfortable environments and situations is part of the challenge of scouting. And scouts are better off for it.
Our cover image this week is powerful, shocking and disturbing. It is a portrait of Aisha, a shy 18-year-old Afghan woman who was sentenced by a Taliban commander to have her nose and ears cut off for fleeing her abusive in-laws. Aisha posed for the picture and says she wants the world to see the effect a Taliban resurgence would have on the women of Afghanistan, many of whom have flourished in the past few years. Her picture is accompanied by a powerful story by our own Aryn Baker on how Afghan women have embraced the freedoms that have come from the defeat of the Taliban — and how they fear a Taliban revival.
Stengel is right: the cover is "powerful, shocking and disturbing." Take a look, by clicking here. Bill Roggio and Thomas Joscelyn explain here the Taliban's latest effort to target civilians, including women, in Afghanistan.
As the whole world knows by now, several weeks ago, the New York Times was given a trove of some 92,000 classified documents about the war in Afghanistan by Julian Assange, the shadowy head of WikiLeaks. In exchange for advance access, it promised to hold them until July 25, the day it published a selection of them in a coordinated action with the Guardian and Der Spiegel. All but 15,000 of the 92,000 documents were also published on that day on the WikiLeaks web site.
In the weeks before publication, a team of Times reporters was assigned to pore over the reports, trying to find out what they told us about the war. No truly picture-changing surprises have emerged from the documents so far. But as has now become clear—and must have been evident to the Times’s editors and reporters—the raw intelligence and after-action reports contained the names and locations of possibly hundreds of Afghans who had cooperated with NATO troops.
In an editors note, the Times records that it itself scrubbed the secret documents to ensure that no names could be identified. At the request of the White House, it urged WikiLeaks to do the same. Whether or not WikiLeaks attempted to conduct such scrubbing, it clearly did not happen. Those who were named now face the prospect of reprisals by the Taliban, including having their ears or their heads cut off. What is therefore becoming quite significant is the fact that the Times, as a price for getting advance access to the documents, sat for weeks on the most explosive revelation of all: Namely, that WikiLeaks was poised to publish material that held the potential to cost the lives of hundreds of people.
Does that make the Times complicit? If the Times had reported the news despite whatever promises it made to WikiLeaks, could the terrible outcome have been averted?
In the famous 1931 Supreme Court case of Near v. Minnesota, the Supreme Court ruled that prior restraints of the press, not withstanding the strictures of the First Amendment, were permissible in some extreme circumstances. “No one would question but that a government might prevent . . . publication of the sailing dates of transports or the number and location of troops.” There is no issue of prior restraint in this WikiLeaks episode; a restraining order against the foreign-based WikiLeaks organization by an American court would have been impossible to enforce.
But the standard set in Near—permitting a ban on publication of information causing the direct loss of life—is certainly pertinent for evaluating the damage that has been done. Laws in a democracy are not just a mechanical system of sanctions; the Near ruling stands as a guidepost by which the press can be judged by the public and by which the press can judge and police itself.
Moral, not legal, questions are thus brought to the fore by the Times’s collaboration with WikiLeaks. Given what it learned, should the Times have kept its promise to Assange? Was the public interest served by its silence about the threat to human life and to the war effort that the impending leak could entail?
