re: "Iraqi Irony"

Prof. Victor Davis Hanson at Private Papers provided the longer perspective of the historian.

Money quote(s):

"Amid all the stories about the ongoing violence in Syria, the most disturbing is the possibility that President Bashar Assad could either deploy the arsenal of chemical and biological weapons that his government claims it has, or provide it to terrorists.

There are suggestions that at least some of Assad’s supposed stockpile may have come from Saddam Hussein’s frantic, eleventh-hour efforts in 2002 to hide his own arsenals of weapons of mass destruction in neighboring Syria. Various retired Iraqi military officers have alleged as much. Although the story was met with general neglect or scorn from the American media, the present US director of national intelligence, James Clapper, long ago asserted his belief in such a weapons transfer."

Weapons of mass destruction = WMD

That classification, borrowed from former Soviet terminology rather than having a Western provenance, can include what Europeans used to call ABC (atomic-biological-chemical), the U.S. used to call NBC (nuclear-biological-chemical), and which are now more commonly expanded to CBRN (chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear) weapons.

In other words, WMD was never just about nukes.

"The Bush administration fixated on WMD in justifying the invasion of Iraq while largely ignoring more than 20 other writs to remove Saddam, as authorized by Congress in October 2002. That obsession would come back to haunt George W. Bush when stockpiles of deployable WMD failed to turn up in postwar Iraq. By 2006, “Bush lied; thousands died,” was the serial charge of the antiwar Left. But before long, such depots may finally turn up in Syria."

There were 23 writs, but more than one of them had to do with WMD.

"Many Americans understandably questioned how civilian and military leaders allowed a brilliant three-week victory over Saddam to degenerate into a disastrous five-year war before the surge finally salvaged Iraq. That fighting and reconstruction anywhere in the Middle East are difficult under any circumstances was forgotten. The press preferred instead to charge that the singular incompetence or malfeasance of Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld led to the unnecessary costs in American blood and treasure."

CAA would have to be numbered among those "Many Americans." But no matter how good a plan we might have developed (which we didn't), in any events Iraq turned into at least three different wars, some of them over-lapping in time and space, with some former enemies morphing into allies.

"George W. Bush’s problems in conducting difficult wars in the Middle East were inherent in the vast differences between cultures"

True that. None of the countries in that region are going to look like post-reconstruction Germany or Japan no matter how long we stay there.

"For all the biases and incompetence of Nouri al-Maliki’s elected government in Iraq, the Middle East’s worst dictatorship now seems to have become the region’s most stable constitutional government. Given Iraq’s elections, the country was relatively untouched by the mass “Arab Spring” uprisings. And despite sometimes deadly Sunni-Shiite terrorist violence and the resurgence of al Qaeda, Iraq’s economy, compared with those of some of other nations in the Middle East, is stable and expanding."

&

"The moral of the story is that history cannot be written as it unfolds. In the case of Iraq, we still don’t know the full story of Saddam’s WMD, the grand strategic effects of the Iraq War, the ripples from the creation of the Iraqi republic, or the relative degree of incompetence of any American administration at war in the Middle East — and we won’t for many years to come."

8/1

re: "Taking Out Dictators"

Victor Davis Hanson at Private Papers ("victor davis hanson on the web") deduced the rules for U.S. intervention.

Money quote(s):

"In the past 40 years, the United States has intervened to go after autocrats in Afghanistan, Grenada, Haiti, Iraq, Libya, Panama, Somalia, and Serbia. We have attacked by air, by land, and by a combination of both. In the post-Vietnam, post-Cold War era, are there any rules to guide us about any action envisioned against Syria or Iran — patterns known equally to our enemies?"

Prof. Hanson outlined 15 rules.

"(W)e can make two general observations about Syria and Iran. In Syria, the US, on proper humanitarian grounds, could easily intervene through air power alone — without either congressional or UN sanction — to so weaken the non-nuclear Assad regime that, as happened in Serbia and Libya, it would surely and quickly implode. That said, we probably will not, given that such action would offend China and Russia, would not ensure quiet or stability in the aftermath, be soon criticized by those pundits who originally urged us to go in, and in six months be either unappreciated or overtly criticized by nations that had initially demanded that we do something to stop the slaughter.

As far as Iran goes, based on past precedents, there is zero chance that the United States would ever intervene to change the government, either on the ground or by an extended bombing campaign — and only a slight chance we will preempt by bombing suspected Iranian nuclear facilities."

3/2

re: "Illegal Immigration Is Immoral"

Victor Davis Hanson at Private Papers specified eight (8) reasons why illegal immigration is immoral.

Give it a read, wontcha?.

Money quote(s):

" Legal immigration. Hundreds of thousands from Asia, Africa, and Europe wait patiently and in legal fashion to apply for citizenship. “Crowding to the front of the line” is not a cheap talking point, but an accurate description of those who ignore the rules while others suffer. In essence, the United States has established that several million foreign nationals have precedence for citizenship by virtue of the facts that (a) they have already broken the law in entering the US, (b) they are currently residing illegally in the US, and (c) they are of a particular ethnic group. To question why a PhD in electrical engineering from India must wait for years to gain permanent residence in the US while someone from Oaxaca without a high-school diploma is exempt from such scrutiny is deemed illiberal; in fact, the reality, not the description of it, is the real illiberality."

The president's recent initiative to provide temporary documentation, status, and work permits to an estimated 800,000 illegal immigrants who entered the country when they were teenagers (but may now be as old as 30) means that perhaps a million illegals are cutting to the head of the line in front of all those legal immigrants who've been following the rules.

"4. The law. Much of the discussion focuses on the fact that illegal immigration flouts federal law. But the problem is less the initial entry into the US without documentation, and more the succession of law-breaking that needs must follow. If one crosses the border illegally, then one is not likely to state the truth on dozens of subsequent official documents, from matters of identification to certification of employment and entitlement. At each juncture, the law itself is insidiously eroded and the calls for it to be ignored increase. The real immorality is not a law that is found oppressive, but the notion that anyone, most ironically a foreign national, has the right to pick and choose which laws he will obey. No civilization can survive when the law hinges on individual interpretation. If foreign nationals are not required to abide by US law, why would American citizens think that they must?"

Entering the country is just the first in a series of crimes that each illegal commits. The crime spree then cascades from obtaining fraudulent identification documents, using a false or stolen social security number (causing tax and credit problems for the SSN's actual owner), to driving without a license or auto insurance. Of course, none of this is likely to instill any respect for the remaining body of our state, federal, or local laws and ordinances.

"There are ways that are both moral and practical to deport recent arrivals, felons, and those entirely on public assistance, while offering mechanisms for long-residing aliens, employed and not convicted of felonies, to apply for citizenship — without automatic approval, however, and only after meeting logical criteria and paying fines. The only real issue is whether the qualified should obtain temporary residence cards while waiting for adjudication of their requests, or must return to Mexico to apply; but that is a decision that follows, not precedes, an end to open borders."

12/15

re: "Pearl Harbor Considered"

Victor Davis Hanson at Private Papers looked at the Pearl Harbor attack, on its 70th anniversary.

Money quote(s):

"Why did Japan attack us 70 years ago today, other than the usually cited existential reasons and the fact that they thought they could and get away with it?"

Mostly because they thought they could get away with it.

Herman Wouk, in one of his Winds of War books, had a character (a U.S. naval aviator aboard one of our aircraft carriers, IIRC) explain, pre-Pearl Harbor, that peace (i.e., restraining Japanese aggression) in the Pacific was maintained by three "legs." Those were Russia, Britain, and the U.S.

With Russia and Britain preoccupied fighting Nazi Germany, the peace that had been resting on this three-legged stool was about to fall on its ass.

"(U)ntil August 1945, it was the United States, not Japan, that had a traditional two-front war. We rarely talk of Stalin’s duplicity in this regard: While we were suffering terrible casualties from the Japanese, supplying Russia, conducting bloody campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and over the skies of Europe, and being hectored by the Soviets to open a second front in Europe, the Soviets honored their non-aggression pact with Japan, freeing up hundreds of thousands of veteran troops to be used against us on the islands. I never understood why history books focus on Stalin’s exasperation with our supposedly tardy invasion of Normandy, when he was completely unwilling to open a second front against Japan — until it was utterly wrecked in August 1945 and there were easy pickings to be had in the region."

Remember, that to a Leftists, "There are no enemies on the Left." Therefore, niggling details like the Molotov-Ribbontrop Pact, the artificial famines, the show trials, the gulag, and the Venona Papers, aren't to be mentioned.

"One final thought. The growth of Japan in the 1920s and 1930s and the alarm that it caused in the Pacific, its increasingly illiberality and nationalism, the enormous industrial and military progress that it had made in emulating European economies and Western armed forces, the concurrent impressions that a Depression-era America was a sinking rather than a rising power, and a general sense that the Japanese model was superior to the alternatives offersome general parallels to the current comparative status of China and America in the Pacific. Let us hope that we learn the lessons of Pearl Harbor, namely that anything is possible at any time, that deterrence ultimately keeps the peace, and that deterrence is a combination of known superior military strength and a certainty among concerned parties that such overwhelming power will be used in defense, and thereby will assure the aggressor that its attack will prove suicidal." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

12/15

re: "Goodbye, Mr. Hitchens"

Victor Davis Hanson at Private Papers ("Victor Davis Hanson on the web") had shared some reminiscences of the late Mr. Hitchens.

Money quote(s):

"In this regard, I never quite understood why conservatives thought Hitchens a conservative. He was most certainly not. Did they expect that his brilliant polemics on behalf of finishing the job in Iraq would lead to metamorphoses on other issues? Did they not see that for Hitchens the issue was not supporting George Bush — or conservatives or Republicans or a US war, right or wrong — but helping to rectify the betrayal of the Shiites of 1991, showing solidarity with the long-persecuted (and at times Trotskyite) Kurds, opposing a murderously illiberal radical Islam that sought to hijack our own liberation from a genocidal Saddam, fulfilling both the UN and congressional authorizations, and in the process tweaking a number of liberal hypocrisies that long had needed to be tweaked? I note too that he had an enormous respect for US soldiers on the ground in Iraq that made the thought of opposing what they were in the middle of fighting for impossible."

Requiescat in pace.

1/4

re: "The Moral Dimensions of Illegal Immigration"

Victor Davis Hanson at Private Papers considered several aspects of our illegal immigration problem.

Money quote(s):

"Poverty is the burden of illegal immigration — understandable when poor indigenous peoples from the Mexican interior left everything behind and started at the bottom rung of American society with three strikes against them – illegal, undereducated, and without English. But recently Mexico has been the recipient of billions in remittances; estimates usually range from $20 to $25 billion per annum.

The new magnitude of such transfers raises a number of questions never quite adequately addressed. The profits certainly explain the loud editorializing of the Mexican government, which has opened dozens of new consulates and is now suing Arizona over the state’s new immigration laws. And they raise questions about American entitlements as well. Do the math. One assumes that most of the remittances are sent home from Mexican nationals. California, for example, is also thought to spend about $10 billion-plus for entitlements to ensure minimal parity for illegal aliens. California is also believed to be the home of 25%-40% of those illegal aliens now residing in the US — or probably between 2 and 4 million in the state.

In some sense, then, California allots about the same amount of cash to help illegal aliens as the latter may well send home to relatives in Mexico. That might raise all sorts of ethical questions: Is the undeniable poverty of illegal aliens in part due not to a stinginess on the part of the California taxpayer or the rapacity of the employer, but rather also to the choice to send thousands of dollars per year back to Mexico? Both the capital flight from California, coupled with the staggering increase in entitlements, may well nullify any advantage rendered the state by industrious and rather inexpensive workers. Is it ethical to take state support and still send money back to Mexico?" (B0ld typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Consular officers serving "south of the border" see the results of illegal immigration (and remittances) on a daily basis. We see the deportees, the spouses and children left behind, and what happens when illegal immigrants start new families in the U.S. and can no longer afford to send all that money to their old family anymore.

"In one of the more brilliant public relations feats in recent memory, the Mexican government has managed to play the aggrieved party, whose citizens are supposedly lured away by rapacious American capitalists. The cynicism has become unmistakable. Let us count the ways: a) Mexico reaps billions — remittances are the second largest source of foreign exchange for the Mexican government — from the hard toil of its own expatriates. (I say cynical because it has published a comic book on how to cross the border illegally — assuming, apparently, that legality is of no importance, and most of its own emigrants are illiterate.); b) Mexico seems little interested in creating conditions in its interior that might improve the lot of its indigenous citizenry, in the manner it has managed to accomplish in Baja to attract the capital of mostly affluent American vacation-home owners; c) Mexico would never allow conditions on its own southern border that it insists should apply on its northern; Why so?; d) Mexico is more concerned about galvanizing a potent expatriate community once it is gone from Mexico than in pursuing social equitability that might lead to improved conditions to keep Mexicans home. I could go on, but the debate over illegal immigration must focus on Mexico as a cynical player, one that sees the lives of millions of its own citizens not in terms of moral concern, but largely through foreign exchange and geopolitical leverage." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

10/16

re: "The New Old Europe"

Victor Davis Hanson at Private Papers ("Victor Davis Hanson ON THE WEB") shared the big picture about Europe.

Money quote(s):

"Nearly ten years ago, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld provoked outrage by referring to “Old Europe.” How dare he, snapped the French and Germans, call us “old” when the utopian European Union was all the rage, the new euro was soaring in value, and the United States was increasingly isolated under the Bush administration."

My how times change. Or remain the same. Or something. Whatever.

"The island of Britain is, and is not, a part of Europe — carefully pulling out when things heat up, terrified that it will be pulled back in when things boil over. British prime minister David Cameron knows the old script well, as he adamantly and publicly insists that Great Britain is still a part of the crumbling European Union while privately assuming that it is not." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Great Britain remains in the increasingly minority (at least in the western part of the EU), party of those nation-state who are part of the EU but not part of the "common currency." Unlike many other countries, the UK just couldn't seem to part with its legacy monetary unit, the pound sterling.

(Given the size and importance of London's financial sector within the British economy, this was a supremely rational decision for them to have taken.)

"No need to mention the German “problem”: Whether the year was 1870, 1914, 1939, or 2011, Europeans always have feared a united Germany, whose people, for a variety of cultural reasons, produce more wealth than the nation’s size might otherwise suggest."

Hmm. It's not like Prof. Hanson to sugar-coat or beat-around-the-bush. For the first three dates (of four), the "problem" with Germany wasn't so much it's economic reach but it's military one. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad no one's (not even the Greeks, for all their public hysterics) actually worried about German militarism anymore. That's, mostly, a really good thing.

"(T)he more France talks of the glory of Gallic culture, the more it seeks to restrain its too-powerful next-door neighbor or, in humiliating fashion, seeks to appease Germany."

France has issues. It takes, approximately, the same bipolar approach to its immigration (and immigrant community) problems.

"The squabbling European family has always feared two great rivals — Russia and radical Islam. From 1453 through the 18th century, Europe lived in fear of the Ottomans, who twice reached the gates of Vienna. Huge European armies invaded Russia twice, and both Napoleon and Hitler destroyed their own empires in their failed attempts at preemption. Russia occupied half of Europe for almost a half-century and now tries to leverage with gas and oil what it used to with missiles and tanks. Europe is as dependent on the oil of Muslim nations as it is terrified of millions of new Islamic immigrants." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Frankly, until those "(h)uge European armies invaded Russia twice," I'm not sure that Central and Western Europe had much reason to fear Muscovy.

(Which doesn't fully apply to Eastern Europe.)

But if you poke the bear enough times, he will come after you.

(CAA wrote an [unclassified] paper not that long ago about Russia's use of its economic leverage, particularly in the "near abroad" as a more subtle exercise of national power than how they used to roll. So I don't exactly disagree with Prof. Hanson's point here.)

(Digression: My professor said "I disagree with your analysis but I like your reasoning.")

"After the Revolutionary War, Europeans both flocked to America and damned it as uncouth and crass, even as they looked to it for money and military help. Nothing has much changed here either, despite the utopian pronouncements of the European Union"

Not only for money and military help. America was a target for investment. Rich Europeans could buy land, companies, stocks, and they were safe, at least from the American government. Their value might rise and fall (as investments do), but unless they (like Germany or Japan) actually went to war with us, their properties were safe. Never nationalized.

(IIRC, when British investments were seized in the U.S. during one, or both, of the World Wars, it was the British government which did it, to raise hard currency.)

"Like clockwork every few decades, some self-described European “visionaries” swear that the continent can either live in peace under utopian protocols or, more darkly, be united under one grand — and undemocratic — system, willingly or not. But for all the noble pretensions of the Congress of Vienna and the European Union — and the nightmarish spread of Napoleon’s Continental System and the Third Reich — and for all the promises of European-born fascism, Communism, and socialism, the result is always the same: disunion, acrimony, and infighting.

That schizophrenia is what we should expect from dozens of cultures and histories squeezed into too small a continent full of lots of bright — and quite proud — people. Every new Europe always ends up as old Europe."

1/2

re: "The News Behind the News"

Victor Davis Hanson at Private Papers discussed several topics of interest, including illegal immigration.

Money quote(s):

"“Illegal immigration” is not about illegal immigration. I would have thought the issue was only about poverty, until realizing that $40-50 billion a year leave the US in remittances to Latin America, in many cases from those who use American subsidies to free up cash to send home. It is not quite about moral justice, given that the US is in near recession with millions of citizens out of work and whose earning power in the Southwest was eroded by cheaper workers here illegally. Nor is Mexico innocent, but by design seeks to export its own impoverished to win remittances, ease the burden of paying for social services, and build an expatriate community more sympathetic to Mexico the longer and farther it is away from it."

&.

"(T)here is some sort of notion that past history or present ethnic solidarity privileges a distortion of the immigration law to such an extent as to render it ineffective. In other words, advocacy for blanket amnesty and open borders hinges on no one else taking up such an offer except those from Mexico and Latin America: there can be only so much controlled chaos before things get uncontrollably chaotic.

If one were to say that we need to resume mass immigration from Europe, one would be seen as a tribalist, racist even — on the grounds that one’s ethnic profile matched the ethnic profile of those who should be given preference in immigration. Yet imagine if an offer of fast-track citizenship were to be extended to any in a now crumbling EU — or for that matter, anyone at all — with a bachelor’s degree, mastery of English, and $20,000 in capital? I think a million skilled workers would arrive within 12 months, along with billions in capital. So let us be frank. Those accused of racism for wishing immigration law enforced can make the argument that they are racially blind and wish it applied without regard to specific individuals; those accusing others of racism wish to render immigration law null and void, only because of the shared race or ethnic background of those who break it." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

11/12

re: "More Mumbais?"

Victor Davis Hanson at Private Papers offers the message that messages matter.

Money quote(s):

"(B)ad actors, whether contemplating conventional wars or unconventional attacks, are often emboldened by even superficial outward signs of appeasement (from Dean Acheson’s slip that Korea was not in the US sphere of defense to April Glaspie’s supposedly casual reference to unconcern with Mesopotamian border disputes, to a few British references to the Malvinas and the withdrawal of an otherwise insignificant ship from the Falklands) — even if the potential target is militarily prepared and quite able to reply in deadly fashion. If I were the administration, I would send out a memo to cut the ‘worry over the rights of the terrorist’ talk, and quietly send messages that the US is fully prepared, as in the past, to take all full measures to prevent an attack, and would respond with overwhelming force to even a small assault." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Let's keep all our options viable, and on the table.

7/21

re: "Occupy What?"

Victor Davis Hanson at Private Papers puts the Occupy movement into broader context.

Money quote(s):

"No wise politician should invest in the bunch like those rampaging in Oakland [2]. Their nocturnal frolics are a long way from Woody Guthrie’s Deportee, the Hobos’ “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” and the world John Steinbeck fictionalized. It is the angst of the wannabe class, overeducated and underemployed, which chooses to live not in Akron or Fowler, but in tony places like the Bay Area or New York, where annual rents are far more than a down payment on a starter house in the Midwest. Being educated, but broke and in proximity to the wealthy of like upbringing and background, are ingredients for riot." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

That last is as true in America as it is in Cairo, Beijing, Rome, or Paris.

"I don’t think the protests are really much over the Goldman Sachs bailout, or jerks like revolving-door Budget Director Peter Orszag starting back up at Citigroup, or Solyndra crony capitalism. Apparently, most middle-class and upper-middle class liberals — many of them (at least from videos) young and white [3] — are angry at the “system.” And so they are occupying (at least until it gets really cold and wet) financial districts, downtowns, and other areas of commerce across the well-reported urban landscape. As yet there is no definable grievance other than anger that others are doing too well, and the protestors themselves are not doing at all well, and the one has something to do with the other. I am not suggesting union members and the unemployed poor are not present, only that the tip of the spear seems to be furious young middle class kids of college age and bearing, who mope around stunned, as in “what went wrong?” " (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

CAA is given to understand that some, perhaps most, college students are burdened with large amounts of student loan debt.

CAA finds this puzzling, mostly because CAA financed his college tuition through a combination of money earned through work, scholarships, savings (including some thousands saved by my parents in my name), employer tuition assistance, and veteran's benefits. Some tuition payments were made via credit card, which I suppose could be considered a sort of college loan, but only in the most general sense.

So CAA's understanding of the "education bubble" is perhaps somewhat superficial, even unsympathetic.

"Students rarely graduate in four years, but scrape together parental support and, in the bargain, often bed, laundry, and breakfast, federal and state loans and grants, and part-time minimum wage jobs to “go to college.” By traditional rubrics — living at home, having the car insurance paid by dad and mom, meals cooked by someone else — many are still youths. But by our new standards — sexually active, familiar with drugs or alcohol, widely traveled and experienced — many are said to be adults.

Debt mounts. Jobs are few. For the vast majority who are not business majors, engineers, or vocational technicians, there are few jobs or opportunities other than more debt in grad or law school."

Taking on even more debt (on top of an unmarketable degree) in order to put off entry into the wage-earning workforce even later strikes CAA as something akin to taking a payday loan to the race track or to Las Vegas.

"Students with such high opinions of themselves are angry that others less aware — young bond traders, computer geeks, even skilled truck drivers — make far more money. Does a music degree from Brown, a sociology BA in progress from San Francisco State, two years of anthropology at UC Riverside count for anything? They are angry at themselves and furious at their own like class that they think betrayed them. After all, if a man knows about the construction of gender or a young woman has read Rigoberta Menchu [4], or both have formed opinions about Hiroshima, the so-called Native American genocide, and gay history, why is that not rewarded in a way that derivatives or root canal work surely are?

Class — family pedigree, accent, clothes, schooling — now mean nothing. You can meet your Dartmouth roommate working in Wall Street at Starbucks, and seem for all appearances his identical twin. But when you walk out the door with your environmental studies degree, you reenter the world of debt and joblessness, he back into the world of good money."

There's an unending debate, a constant tension, between education as job training and education as intellectual development. It's unending and constant, in part, because they're not completely mutually exclusive, unless taken to an extreme or in a tight economy.

"Never have Americans’ prospects seemed brighter — vast new energy reserves, an unmatched military, disarray in Russia, the Middle East and Europe — and never have Americans been more conditioned and readied for decline."

Optimism and positive thinking is a force multiplier. This should be one of the chief lessons of the Reagan Revolution.

11/6

re: "Anatomy of Congressional Narcissism"

Victor Davis Hanson at Private Papers ("He flits across the stage a transient and embarrassed phantom.") takes congressional egos to task.

Money quote(s):

"Neronian overseas junkets are redundant — we already pay billions for State Department and military officials to be the government’s frontline eyes and ears abroad."

Yes, we do. And said officials send lots of facts back to Washington, D.C., where members of Congress can find them much more easily.