re: "Fred Fleitz: Leftist Legacy of Bad Intel Estimate on Iran"

Secure Freedom Radio at Big Peace hosted an interesting guest.

Money quote(s):

"(F)ormer CIA Intelligence Officer Fred Fleitz shares his concerns with the U.S. Intelligence community’s scandalous refusal to “make an honest call” on the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Fleitz explains the biased nature of U.S. Intelligence’s 2007 assessment that concluded Iran halted its program in 2003, even as experts have widely concluded the existence of an active program."

From the outside, it's hard to conclude anything but that this NIE's conclusion was politically-motivated.

re: "Why Doesn’t The United Kingdom Own Argentina?"

Paul Hair at Big Peace takes a non-post-Modern look at an international flashpoint.


Money quote(s):


"I understand why Argentina does it: the U.K. seems militarily weak as demonstrated by its performance in Libya and by other reports of its deterioration. And when a state that is unencumbered by political correctness and principles, such as Argentina, sees an opportunity to take advantage of another nation, it is going to do so. Furthermore, even if the U.K. has the capabilities to fight back, history tells us that it will only minimally do so. In fact, the only reason Argentina exists today is that the U.K. didn’t do what it should have done in 1982 when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

By this analysis, if the U.K., by Argentine analysis, can't or won't make it either too expensive for the Argies to take and/or hold the Falklands, they'll make another attempt to do just that.

"(A) combination of self-hatred and cowling to internationalism has brought the U.K. to its knees. Even worse, the same self-hatred and submission to internationalism infects the U.S. as well. Hence, ten years after Islamic thugs attacked the U.S. we still haven’t beaten them. Actually, we aren’t even comfortable with the term “victory” any longer."

When was it, exactly, that the term "exit strategy" replaced "victory"?

I don't recall precisely, at least in terms of a time and date, but philosophically it marked the time when those who made (and those who accepted) that change determined that victory was no longer an option.

"(T)here is a heavy price to pay for self-hatred. And the civilians of the U.K. and U.S.—the people ultimately responsible for the policy of voluntary defeat—have yet to see the full consequences of their actions. The West paid a price in the 20th century for allowing the enemy Axis powers to flourish. So too is the U.K. paying a price for not conquering Argentina . . . and so too will the U.S. pay a price for not conquering its enemies."

re: "Obama to give Re-Election speech on A-Stan tonight"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") has concerns about our strategy in Afghanistan.


Money quote(s):


"When fighting an enemy that thinks in centuries and millenniums, announcing that you only have the vision and fortitude to manage a year and a half to oppose them is nearly criminal.

Afghanistan and the larger war against Islamist extremists is one we are quite poorly suited to fight. They have a long war mentality and know this is a clash of civilizations"

The Huntington question is one I'm still undecided about.

One of the reasons is that it's difficult, frankly, to credit tribal Afghanis with being part of any civilization to speak of, at least in other than the most broad and general of definitions.

"(E)very weakness that al Qaeda and the rest have properly stated about us; we don't have the will or intestinal fortitude as a nation to fight them as they do to fight us. They don't have to beat us to win; they simply have to outlast us"

The flip side to this is that all we have to do is not lose.

"They were slaughtered in the thousands by the Soviets, and yet they simply cringed away, licked their wounds and returned. They were toppled by us in one of the most amazing uses of Special Operations force multiplication in 2001, and yet they simply cringed away, licked their wounds and returned. Now we have again dealt them crippling blows and even finally killed their head goat-raper, does anyone doubt they will again cringe away, lick their wounds and return? Who will stop them, the kleptocracy of the Karzais, the Afghan Security forces, the international community? Hell no!"

One of the advantages of being part of an only nominally literate culture is that your institutional memory has a very short shelf life. Usually that's a disadvantage, but if keeping up your tribe's will to fight requires that you have a fairly short memory for the times you got your butts kicked, it can work in your favor.

"If we had left in 2002, we could have claimed a victory and then proclaimed that we will bomb the living hell out of any Islamist bastards who pop their heads up. We didn't and in staying we planted a flag in the ground." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

The "Pottery Barn" rule is so much horseshit. The West, collectively, has forgotten the merits of the punitive raid or action. After all, it's hardly "reconstruction" if you're building something they never had to begin with.

"(W)e did fight them and killed them in bunches, but that was a tactical victory for the prowess of American fighters. This battle in the greater war? That we will watch al Qaeda and their allies claim for a win."

The demographic reality of high birthrate cultures mean our enemies have some advantages in the long run. Doesn't mean they're guaranteed a win in the end, but that's how they're betting at any rate.

re: "Campaign Design and Strategy in Libya"

Andrew at Abu Muqawama ("a blog that focuses on small wars and insurgencies in addition to regional issues in the Middle East") reviews U.S. strategy for Libya.

Money quote(s):

"The U.S. and allied military campaign in Libya is an embarassment. From the very beginning, U.S. and allied political and strategic objectives have been unclear, and thus U.S. and allied military forces have been asked to carry out military operations without a clear commander's intent or end state. Out of all the operations orders that have been issued by the U.S. military for operations in Libya, in fact, only one -- the order to carry out the evacuation of non-combatants -- included an end state. None of the other orders issued to and by the U.S. military included an end state, in large part because senior military and civilian leaders either could not or chose not to explicitly articulate what the end state might be. The U.S. and allied military intervention is thus the very definition of an open-ended military intervention -- the kind in which most U.S. decision-makers swore we would never again engage after Iraq and Afghanistan." (Empasis in original text. - CAA.)

This has been, in turn, alternately and simultaneously an aggravation, an infuriation, and an embarrassment. WTF, over?

If I have to say this again; I will shed no tears on the day Col. Qadhafy is confirmed dead. None. He's been a long-time resident on my better-off-dead roster for decades now.

That being said, I'm clueless as to how going after Col. Qadhafy is intended, in a foreign policy objective sense, to disincentivize rogue statesmen from pursuing their own WMD proliferation.

"The U.S. Army, in response to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (in which the military was asked to operate in a complex environment with often unclear policy guidance), developed commander's appreciation and campaign design (.pdf) to help officers properly frame and understand the problems in front of them."

That's an interesting TRADOC product linked therein.

"Campaign design is a great tool for commanders, but it is also the reflection of a bigger problem -- one identified and described most eloquently by Hew Strachan in this essay in Survival. It is what happens when you leave military commanders to figure out strategy and policy for themselves."

Mr. Strachan's essay is well worth reading.

"(T)he United States has now been applying force in Libya for over two months without explaining why. What is the political end we are trying to achieve? The United States needs to be honest with both its allies and its military. Because we should expect the U.S. military to go to great lengths to understand the environment and the enemy, but what makes the military intervention in Libya so embarassing is that the U.S. military is once again in the position of laboring to divine the intent of its own elected and appointed leaders." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Somewhere out there, not even in uniform yet, is a young man or woman who will write, for the Libyan intervention, what H.R. McMasters wrote for the Vietnam war.

re: "Another task for Crocker: Fix relations between embassy and USAID"

Josh Rogin at The Cable ("Reporting Inside The Foreign Policy Machine") has a little something for the new COM's "to do" list.

Money quote(s):

"Ambassador Ryan Crocker was sworn in today as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. One of his first tasks in his new job will be to repair the dysfunctional relationship between U.S. diplomats in Kabul and Afghanistan-based USAID officials, which has hampered U.S. development assistance in the country."

The relationship between State and USAID, to put it opaquely, has been in transition for years. The office of USAID's chief or "Administrator" is held or "dual-hatted" by a senior State Dept. official.

And yet USAID is not (yet) actually an organic or subsidiary agency within the Department of State.

At the same time, except for military or DoD personnel operating under the authority of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that puts them under the authority of a military commander, all official U.S. persons working within a foreign country are supposed to come under the authority of the "chief of mission" or COM (i.e., the U.S. ambassador).

Confused yet? Okay; now imagine you're a USAID staffer working in Afghanistan

"(T)he Coordinating Director for Development and Economic Affairs (CDDEA). The office was meant to oversee USAID's efforts in the country, but according to a recent report by the State Department Inspector General's office, the relationship has suffered from bureaucratic and communications issues between aid workers and diplomats.

The report found that the problems between the embassy and USAID in Kabul stem in part from the State Department's idea that chiefs of mission should be in charge of all development issues in their country, as envisioned by the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) that State released earlier this year."

Where ever would State get such an idea?

"The IG said that Crocker should work with the office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP) Marc Grossman, Deputy Secretary Tom Nides, and the Office of the Director of Foreign Assistance to explain to USAID exactly how they should work with the embassy.

USAID personnel in Kabul chafe at the embassy's demands for lots of briefings and explanations of their financial management. They also feel like second-class citizens because the embassy doesn't provide them with the best housing and office space, the report said.

On the other hand, the embassy folks don't believe the USAID personnel are on board with the "whole of government" approach, the report states. They think USAID withholds information from them and sometimes creates political messes they are then forced to clean up.

The USAID mission has responsibility for a large portion what will reportedly be over $71 billion of U.S. assistance to Afghanistan by the end of 2011, making it a significant player in the largest U.S. development mission in the world.

It's been a rough few weeks for the USAID mission in Afghanistan. A report last week by the Government Accountability Office found that USAID is failing to properly oversee aid dollars."

re: "National Security Part 2: The Armed Forces"

The Curmudgeon Emeritus at Eternity Road takes a look at "military" missions.

Money quote(s):

"(I)n the event of an invasion of the land territory of the United States, America's armed forces should reply with their full speed and power. That's what armed forces are for. If we're not going to use them for that, we needn't have spent all that money on guns, ships, tanks, planes, and various sort of ammunition for them. Despite that self-evident fact, the existence of our armed forces is itself an element of ongoing controversy, mainly arising from two questions:

How large a military do we need?

What should it do when it's not fighting in the field?

It is here, rather than in the use of whatever military we have at the moment to respond to an attack on America or her vital interests, that questions of national security arise."

IIRC (from my long-ago days as an AROTC cadet), the Army's mission is to defend the nation and carry out the national mission.

Defending the nation sounds simple enough, but is actually extraordinarily complicated.

Carrying out the national mission is whatever the commander-in-chief or the Congress says it is, pretty much.

"Only after World War II did our peacetime military grow to "superpower size." In large measure, that growth was elicited by the alliances the U.S. entered in the years after the war, most particularly NATO.

The NATO alliance occupied about half of America's combat power for forty-five years. The great size of the putative opponent -- the USSR -- seemed to demand a large military presence in Europe, if the Old World was to avert yet another continent-shattering war."

Mission accomplished. Second- and third-order consequences which nobody predicted (no one ever does) shouldn't obscure that basic fact.

"After the World Wars, it became America's job to secure the world's oceans, those indispensable conduits for travel and trade. Thus, the Navy could not be permitted to shrink to its pre-war size (even though it has). The emergence of the intercontinental bomber and the nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile as strategic threats made it necessary to erect the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), best known for its redoubt in Cheyenne Mountain. The swelling of those two services required the support of vast defense-contracting and defense-procurement apparatuses; modern wars must be fought with modern weapons, wielded according to the best available strategic and tactical thinking available." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

"This was inevitable; technological advance, plus the emergence of a new, aggressive ideology and its dominance of two enormous nations, demanded it. Those who objected to the large military, saying that that nuclear weapons made it unnecessary, completely missed the critical point: You cannot respond to small, confined incursions with large, indiscriminate weapons. Indeed, large nukes cannot deter a similarly armed opponent willing to use lesser forces and military proxies to advance its interests. To meet the threat of such an opponent, a military capable of responding with calibrated force, from the smallest engagements all the way up to global nuclear war, is required.

Yes, even in "peacetime." " (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

"The current crisis along our borders, particularly our southern border, screams for a military response. Surely, an invasion need not be composed of uniformed men to be a danger to the nation. Indeed, it's arguable whether the armed drug gangs or the (generally unarmed) hordes of illegal aliens constitute the greater threat to our national security. "

This same argument has been posed, from a legal standpoint, to justify the exclusion of children born to illegal immigrants from birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment.

re: "Out of the Valley of Death"

Lex at Neptunus Lex ("The unbearable lightness of Lex. Enjoy!") offers a professional opinion.

Money quote(s):

"I have often expressed my emerging belief that Afghanistan is not salvageable without the kind of heroic military and economic commitment that we as a nation are no longer politically or fiscally able to underwrite."

The same may be true for Iraq, although (re)construction efforts there mean that the fall will come from a greater altitude.

re: "Betting the Farm"

Mark Steyn at The Corner ("a web-leading source of real-time conservative opinion") described what an invasion and occupation looks like.

Money quote(s):

"First, you get some oddly determined visitors and attendant burglaries. Then, the intimidation gets ratcheted up. Your farmhands get beaten. The local authorities take down the details and do nothing. Then you or your wife and kids get beaten, or shot. You sell your land for a fraction of what you would have got a few years earlier. And, if you don’t, you get driven off it anyway. Or killed.

White Rhodesians were the planet’s favorite pariahs for a long time, so nobody cares what happens to them. But it’s strange to see the same scenario starting to play out in the Golden State – and in parts of Arizona, too. Where next? Texas? Border immigration on the scale of the south-west is not about people moving but about borders moving. Less enlightened regions of the world understand this as they understand the sun rising in the morning, but it all seems too complicated for Californian sophisticates." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

You've heard (or read) perhaps the La Raza slogan that goes something like "I didn't cross the border, the border crossed me."

When enough actual border crossers have entered the U.S., our effective borders will shift, as has already begun.

"It certainly seems a safe bet that these trends will not diminish over the course of the next decade in an ever more debt-ridden state ruled by kleptocrat commissars far from the sharp end of their policy consequences. When widespread impoverishment meets demographic transformation, you’re not going to want to be standing anywhere near"

re: "The real danger in Washington: defense cuts"

Dov Zakheim at Shadow Government ("Notes From The Loyal Opposition") looks at the consequences of defense cuts.

Money quote(s):

"The military simply cannot sustain cuts of that magnitude and preserve a strategy that, in its fundamentals, has not changed since the end of the Second World War. That strategy called for U.S. forces to deploy "forward", whether in Europe, the Middle East or Asia, so as to fight far away from the United States' shores. With cuts the size of those being discussed, the United States will no longer be able to maintain its presence overseas, other than in a "virtual" sense, and, as one wag has put it, "virtual presence is actual absence."

It is difficult to see how cuts approaching $100 billion in each of the next ten years will not eviscerate the U.S. defense posture. Defense "entitlements" -- military pay and retirement, as well as military health care -- absorb a substantial portion of the budget and seem virtually immune to reductions. It has taken years to move Congress just to contemplate enacting a minor increase in co-pays for the Tricare health program, while any change to the military retirement system, which penalizes anyone who serves less than twenty years but over-rewards those who serve longer, has been strictly verboten. Civilian personnel are immune to reductions -- cuts in any office simply have led civilians to migrate to other offices. Operations and maintenance, which account for about a third of all defense spending, include payments to a huge cadre of "staff augmentation" contractors whose number the department has never been able to calculate."

As a retired reservist, I won't see a dime of my own earned military retirement until I reach age 60. There was talk of starting reserve retired pay earlier than that based upon wartime active service, but I don't think anything ever came of that. In any case, my own military retired pay will be peanuts compared to that of someone in the same grade who served the same number of active duty years that I did in a combination of active and reserve service.

"Cuts in procurement, research and development, training, and spares marked previous drawdowns, whether in the 1970s, the era of the "hollow Army" or the 1990s, the decade of the "peace dividend." This time around, however, the U.S. military and its equipment are worn out, ravaged by two seemingly never-ending conflicts and several other smaller ones that receive far fewer headlines. It actually would take a budget increase, not a decrease, to restore U.S. forces to their pre-September 2001 state.

There is much talk of reducing the Army's end-strength, cutting back on the carrier force, and shrinking the F-35 buy, among other programmatic reductions. While some cuts in land forces are to be expected when all U.S. troops finally leave Iraq at the end of this year (unless Prime Minister Maliki decides he wants thousands of them to stay), and more cuts when U.S. troops depart from Afghanistan in 2014, assuming they actually do leave, those cuts surely place an even greater premium on naval and air forces. If those forces are also cut back, the United States will, sooner rather than later, have to scale back its air and naval presence in both the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific, ceding those oceans to others, be they China, Iran, or India. Indeed, it is ironic that as Washington decides whether to reduce the carrier force by one or two ships, China is building its first aircraft carrier."

I'm sure that our "peer competitors" (i.e., prospective enemies) will be happy to wait and let us catch up to them later when we've got more dough. (Or maybe they won't.)

"The world will not stand by idly if the United States wrecks what has been the finest military force in the history of the world. Instead, nations will, as some in East Asia and the Middle East already have done, look to other powers for support and leadership."

re: "Call Him John"

Lex at Neptunus Lex ("The unbearable lightness of Lex. Enjoy!") has an interesting snippet from AP.

Money quote(s):

"Intelligence drives operations."

Write that down somewhere. And read the whole thing.

re: "Take Your Bulbs and Stick 'Em"

Emperor Misha at The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler ("HQ of the Rottweiler Empire. An Affiliate of the VRWC.") was making good points right up until the talk about wading knee-deep in blood.

(Not cool.)

Money quote(s):

"(G)overnor Perry has, once again, told the fascist regime in DC to quit meddling"

What is it about Texas that her governors seem more presidential than those of other states?

"The point is that there is no Constitutional authority for the retards in the DC swamp to tell us which kind of bulb we want to purchase and, Constitutional issues aside, nobody has any fucking business interfering with consumer choice. If one choice is superior to the other, it will win out in the market place without any interference needed.

If it isn’t, then nobody has the right to force you to choose the inferior product."

The interstate commerce clause has been emanated and penumbra-ed unto death. At this point, you could probably get a majority of people in the country to vote in favor of deleting it from the Constitution (not that our system allows for such referenda, nor should it). It apparently takes the decades of legal training and judicial experience of our nine Supreme Court justices, not to mention that of generations of congressmen and such, to enable one to believe the expansive abuse of this clause is Constitutionally justified.

Because an ordinary U.S. citizen, relying solely upon their knowledge of the English language, middle school civics classes, and their own native common sense would never manage such a feat unassisted.

re: "White House: Jewish “refugees” right of return should be “on the table” "

Josh Rogin at The Cable ("Reporting Inside The Foreign Policy Machine") noted the raising of a non-issue.

Money quote(s):

"The right of Jews to return to the Arab and predominantly Muslim countries they fled from or were kicked out of over several decades could be "on the table" as part of the Middle East peace negotiations, according to a senior White House official."

This could, theoretically, be useful in terms of neutralizing the demand for a right-of-return for Palestinian Arabs.

"In response to a question asking why there is a great deal of focus on the Palestinian refugee issue but almost no focus on the Jews who departed Arab lands, Rhodes declared that the Israelis and Palestinians should negotiate on the Jewish right of return to Arab and Muslim countries and that the United States could play in role in mediating that issue."

Unlike the Arabs who, after being variously expelled or fleeing what is now the state of Israel, became refugees in various neighboring countries, Jews who were forced to leave majority Muslim countries were accepted and integrated in their countries of refuge (primarily Israel). The hows and whys of that fill volumes.

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the argument that Palestinian refugees have the right of return to Israel in his Tuesday speech before a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.

"[T]he Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside the borders of Israel," he said. "You know, everybody knows this. It's time to say it. It's important."

But neither Obama nor Netanyahu mentioned the Jewish right of return in any of their speeches or remarks over the past few days.

Noah Pollak, the executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, said that the Jewish right of return is actually not an issue that's part of the peace negotiations, largely due to the fact that a) there are no Jewish refugees, and b) they don't have any desire to claim lands in Arab states.

"I would like to congratulate the administration for even-handedness, but in fact there are no Jewish refugees today. That's because the Jews who were expelled from Arab countries have been citizens of Israel for decades, where they live in freedom and prosperity," he said."

re: "Guns or butter? Saving food stamps at expense of national defense"

McQ at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") lays out some facts about cutting defense spending.

Money quote(s):

"(T)here’s a whole lot of military spending going on in the world, and we do most of it.

But we’ve known that for decades. What the chart doesn’t tell you, for instance, is how much China’s spending has increased. China’s defense budget for the past few years has seen double digit jumps, with the only year in single digits being 2010 when it only increased the budget by 7.5%. This year, it’s back in double digits at 12.7%. So that wedge you see in this static chart is a rapidly growing wedge. As China’s economy has heated up over the years, so has China’s military spending.

Russia too is increasing its spending on defense. It plans on spending $650 billion on its armed forces over the next 10 years.

France, on the other hand, has been cutting its level of military spending consistently over the years since 1988. But a country that isn’t cutting its spending and which now spends more of its GDP on the military than does France, is Iran.

The point, of course, is that while it is evident that we spend an inordinately larger amount than any other country on defense, we’ve done that because we’ve assumed an international role that others can’t fill or we don’t want them to fill.

And that’s an important point. One reason that we’ve generally seen a peaceful 50 or so years (with most wars being of the regional, not world wide, type) is because we’ve been the country which has shouldered the burden of keeping the peace. Peace through strength.

Obviously there is certainly an argument that can be made that we shouldn’t have to shoulder that burden and it’s time we gave it up. But as soon as you say something like that, you have to ask, “but who will fill the role”?

Certainly not the Third World Debating society known as the UN. They’re inept, corrupt and incompetent. And certainly not NATO – as Libya has proven, they can’t get out of their own way.

So who keeps Russia in its place and stands up to China as that country flexes its newly developed muscle? What about Iran? Or North Korea?

That’s the problem with being about the only country standing of any size after a world war. So we have to ask ourselves, is it in our best interest to back out of our pretty dominant role and cut back drastically in our spending in that area? If we answer yes, we have to ask who we trust to pick up that slack. I know my answer to that – no one. But rest assured that power vacuum will indeed be filled. A dilemma for sure."

One of the fun facts about Russia is that the millions of dollars we've given them in aid to clean up, secure, and demilitarize their older nuclear force freed them to spend their defense budget (remember: money is fungible!) on modernizing and upgrading their new nuclear forces.

"We lead the world in spending but do not have the largest military – not by a long shot. In fact, our entire military is just a bit smaller than the Chinese Army alone. Looking at that, and considering the spending chart, what would it tell you?

It would tell me we spend the majority of our money on technology. It costs money – and a lot of it – to maintain our level of superiority. We spend it on things like 5th generation fighters, state-of-the-art naval vessels, and the like. Programs that are designed not only to give us the technological edge on the battlefield, but also to deter would-be enemies from even trying, given their inability to match our capabilities. It is obviously an intangible – we can’t really measure how much this has saved us from brutal and even more costly wars – but with the budget battles and the fiscal crisis, we’re in a position where we certainly have to clearly state our priorities."

One can place domestic politics and policies, re-election concerns, and "transforming America" at the top of one's "to do" list, but that doesn't make the rest of the world go away.

"Defense spending is 4.7% of GDP and it is approximately 20% of the federal budget."

Just keep that part in mind. It's an important fact. Hmmm. If defense spending is twenty percent of the federal budget, what's the other eighty percent? Foreign aid? Not too likely, considering non-Defense "discretionary" spending is only nineteen percent of the federal budget.

(And according to the pie charts at Blackfive, Medicare & Medicaid are 23%, Social Security is 20%, other "mandatory" spending is 12%, and interest on federal debt is 6%.)

"And we’ve so overspent that we’re spending 6% on interest alone. So 62% of the budget – as designed by those brilliant legislators we’ve elected decade after decade – is untouchable by law. That leaves 39% that these yahoos want to “balance the budget” on. The elephant in the room is ignored to go after the dog. And only part of the dog." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

"(U)ntouchable by law" means untouchable-until-the-law-is-changed. Entitlements and mandatory spending are labels used by politicians to convince the public that transfer-of-wealth payments used to redistribute income are God-given and Constitutionally-guaranteed rights.

(And they ain't.)

"Is it a core commitment of the government of the United States to protect and defend the citizens of the country as outlined in the Constitution of the United States, or is it a core commitment to take other people’s money and redistribute it?

Because that’s the choice we’re talking about here. Make the commitment to national security and, within reason, the cost that entails, or (snip) throw it under the bus in favor of redistribution of income instead." (Bold typeface in original text. - CAA.)

re: "Adventures in Smart Diplomacy, #2,783"

MikeM at Confederate Yankee ("Because liberalism is a persistent vegetative state.") reminds us of just how many tentacles the Muslim Brotherhood possesses.

Money quote(s):

"The Muslim Brotherhood is arguably the oldest, most influential and most extreme Muslim organization in the modern world. Founded in 1935 in Egypt, its most modern jihadist incarnation began in 1952 when Sayed Qtub, arguably the modern father of the Jihadist movement, returned to Egypt. He had been studying, of all things, American Literature at the University of Northern Colorado. The behavior of American women he saw in movies and in society in general—remember, we’re talking about the early 1950’s—convinced him that western society and Christianity were depraved and turned him irrevocably toward Jihad. His writings had a major influence on Jihadist thinking, an influence still being powerfully felt.

With branches in at least 70 countries (Hamas is the Palestinian branch), including America, the MB is very influential to Muslims around the world. Fatwas—religious edicts—issued by MB mullahs (priests or pastors) are taken very seriously in the Muslim world. A 2004 Fatwa by MB Shiekh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, for example, proclaiming the religious duty of Muslims to abduct and kill Americans in Iraq was widely observed and cost many lives.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s motto is: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” Americans tend to analyze such things through the lens of America’s tradition of tolerance of all faiths and of the separation of church and state. Observant Muslims do not think of themselves as Egyptians or Yemenis—for example--who happen to be Muslim, but as Muslims first and foremost. Their nationality and loyalty to any nation tends to be far down on their list, after being Muslim, family, tribe, clan, and other concerns, if it registers for them at all. When Muslim Brotherhood members speak of jihad and “dying in the way of Allah,” they are not engaging in pandering or politically correct rhetoric but expressing their duty and willingness to die killing anyone they consider the enemy of Islam.

It is, for Americans, a bizarre paradox that American Muslims, people who identify themselves as loyal Americans who happen to practice Islam, people who would not take up the call of Jihad, are different from Jihadist Muslims, from Muslims who support the MB. In fact, these American Muslims are seen as apostates, fit only for death, by their more radical co-religionists. In fact, Muslims not taking the path of Jihad are not truly observing the dictates of their religion, not the other way around."

This may be the best four-paragraph explanation of the Muslim Brotherhood ever written.

If you've go the time and dedication, take a look at this as well.

"Consider that the MB certainly considers all Americans to be infidels, fit only for slavery, conversion to Islam and Sharia, or death. This is not political rhetoric read from a teleprompter, but the life and belief and passion of all observant Muslims who follow MB philosophy. They particularly consider women to be nothing more than chattel, the possessions of men."

Those of you are curious should look into the status of women taken prisoner or captive in war, under koranic observances. Apparently, the misadventure involved in being taking captive suffices to dissolve the captive's matrimonial bonds, thus absolving those who enslave them from committing the serious sin of adultery as they enjoy a bit of rapine thereafter.

How convenient.

"Prominent MB thinkers have already been speaking of completely Islamicizing Egypt, and calling her archeological treasures such as the pyramids and statuary “idols.” This is significant in that Islam brooks no depictions of Muhammed, Allah, or photographs, statues or similar images, considering it to be idolatry. They would gladly do to Egypt’s priceless treasures what the Taliban did to Afghanistan’s priceless and irreplaceable Buddhist statuary: destroy it as contrary to the Koran."

One would think that the pyramids and all the antiquities of Ancient (and not-so-ancient) Egypt would be safe, being such a money-maker and tourist draw for the country. Certainly there are plenty of Egyptians, in and out of government, who understand the economic realities involved in the millions of Egyptians whose livelihoods are dependent upon the successful exploitation of these pre-Islamic treasures.

Unfortunately, there are no guarantees that those who do understand Egypt's economic realities are going to be any match for those who combine a madrassa-style education (i.e., nothing resembling science or reason) with access to modern weaponry and high explosives.

re: "The Golden Days Are Over"

Dave Schuler at The Glittering Eye looks at economic, immigration, and trade policies.

Money quote(s):

"I think that trade and immigration policies must conform to actual needs and realities rather than some ideological view. The reality is that we have millions of unemployed unskilled or semi-skilled people here in the U. S. already and wages for unskilled and semi-skilled workers have been stagnant or falling for decades, a sure sign of flagging demand. Our immigration policy wih respect to Mexico should reflect that reality; sadly, it does not."

The current (our second annual) "recovery summer" is driving this point home to the point where even Congress may catch on to what everyone who isn't Mexican (and petitioning for their under-educated and unskilled relatives) already knows: unlimited (which is the result of lax enforcement) immigration of under-skilled workers does nothing but pull the rug out from under our own (U.S. citizen) labor pool.

"China poses a unique challenge for American economic policy. I trace many of our economic woes to three events, all involving China: China’s 1979 abandoning of its official policy of autarky, China’s pegging of the yuan to the dollar in 1993, and the admission of China to the WTO in 2001. I think that these actions eroded manufacturing jobs in the U. S., increased our imports from China to the detriment of American-made goods, and drove money into housing construction with the results that we see around us today. Our trade policy with respect to China should reflect the unique challenges that China presents; it does not."

Not being an economist, I'm unable to discern the linkage between the three Chinese developments cited and increased U.S. housing construction. Anyone care to spell this out for me?

re: "Creeping competencies, or incompetent creeps?"

Melanie Phillips at The Spectator (UK) clearly believes this to be mere theatre.

Money quote(s):

"(T)he British government is shocked – shocked! – that the European Union’s foreign service is attempting to usurp the role and authority of British diplomats."

Not a bug. A feature.

"Foreign Secretary William Hague has ordered British ambassadors around the world to fight off what he believes are attempts by the EU foreign service to usurp their positions"

He's just now figuring this out?

I know that the British are even less likely than we Americans to put an actual professional diplomat in charge of their foreign ministry (we've done it precisely once), but one of the flaws of the Westminster parliamentary model is that it limits such appointments to elected politicians. At least in the U.S. we can cast a somewhat wider net than that for such appointments.

"What’s with the surprise all of a sudden? The thermonuclear row over the Lisbon Treaty, which enshrined the EU constitution and thus effectively created the EU Superstate of Bureaucratiya, was all about the fact that henceforth the EU would indeed speak on behalf of member states through its foreign service – indeed, that it would usurp virtually every self-governing function of Britain and other EU member states.

The whole point about the Lisbon Treaty was that it would finally destroy Britain as an independently governed country."

Not just Britain. The whole point of the "European Project" to the de-nationalization of Europe's nationalities. The aim or goal of the EU (and the "European Project" of which it is a phase) is to avoid a repeat of conflagrations and devastation brought to Europe by World Wars I & II.

As if the nationalism of, for instance, Monaco, Finland, San Marino, and Malta is as much a threat as that of Germany, Italy, and Russia was when their nationalism was harnessed to national socialism, fascism, and communism, respectively.

The logic, it fails me.

_____

Please visit Melanie Phillips at her new home.

re: "Ministry of Irony: President Obama Stiff Brits' Green Fines"

Howie at The Jawa Report ("Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.") quotes a news story citing the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

By the way, Pres. Obama is correct in this instance.

re: "Shoot the Messenger"

Lex at Neptunus Lex ("The unbearable lightness of Lex. Enjoy!") has the measure of our allies.

Money quote(s):

"Unhappy at the way a journalist had portrayed the country’s defense and intelligence establishment, the Pakistani ISI murdered him, according to US intelligence"

Considering all that can be creditably attributed to the ISI over the years, this doesn't exactly stretch the horizons of disbelief.

"He was bludgeoned to death, it appears. Because of his criticism about the professionalism of the country’s security apparatus."

This sends exactly the message, to their intended audience, that they wish to send. Unfortunately for them, messages fall out of channels all the time and are read or heard by audiences unconsidered.

Consider: Saddam Hussein's deception plan, directed against Iran, to convince the Iranians that he had WMD, thus deterring aggression or attacks from Iran.

This wasn't actually stupid of Saddam, just short-sighted. He, sensibly enough, kept his focus on the more immediate threat right next door. And managed to convince a more distant but equally existential threat, leading directly to OIF.

"The gloves are well and truly off now.

I sincerely hope that our diplomatic corps is hard at work seeking transit privileges to – and more importantly from – Afghanistan through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan."

Lex is displaying his professionalism here. As Tom Clancy put it:

"(A)mateurs discuss tactics,.... Professional soldiers study logistics."

I share Lex's hope. Afghanistan is a long ways away to have to execute another anabasis.

re: "Fareed Zakaria knows the problem with the United States"

Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom ("Because not just anybody can summarize the news.") is clearly losing patience with Mr. Zakaria.

Money quote(s):

"It’s the Constitution. Which is old and hasn’t been usefully updated for the 21st century — something we should be doing through social media, starting with archaic and useless institutions like the electoral college, or Senate representation (because clearly it’s unfair that California have 2 senators and Wisconsin have 2 senators when California is bigger).

When Ezra Klein floated this idea a month or so back I suggested that the left was working on its messaging for just such a push to destroy the republic and replace it with a pure democracy, where the mob, which the left will run through large urban centers, will vote themselves your money and the Democrats their power. Less populated states will have to bend to the will of more populated states — and politicians could save themselves time and effort by having to pander only to the large urban centers, ignoring in some cases entire areas of the country."

This would require a Constitutional amendment; and the amendment process is rigged, deliberately so, to make this development unlikely at best.

Not impossible, mind you, just unlikely. The less populated states, and their representative, would have to vote themselves into irrelevence.

"The founders and framers saw what would happen. The only direct elections they advocated were for those in the House. They did this to protect against populism and, ultimately, majority tyranny — while keeping power vested in the separate states."

re: "Joint Chiefs of Staff Sweepstakes"

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway ("an online journal of politics and foreign affairs analysis") had some thoughts about who should fill this important post.

Money quote(s):

"Both (Petraeus and Stavridis) epitomize the scholar-warrior-diplomat that the military has been touting for a generation as the ideal type."

Subsequent to Mr. Joyner's insightful post, GEN Petraeus was offered, and accepted the directorship of the Central Intelligence Agency.

"The United States has been at war for most of the last two decades. That we launched an operation in Libya whilst still bogged down in two major wars and are ratcheting up rhetoric elsewhere in the region gives me little confidence that we’re about to change.

Further, while it’s certainly possible to be an outstanding strategic leader without having been in harm’s way, the fact of the matter is that the Army and Marine Corps have done the lion’s share of the fighting in these wars. It would be odd, indeed, to disqualify our ground force leaders for the chairmanship because they’ve been off fighting the country’s wars rather than thinking about the wars we might one day fight."

re: "House panel votes to defund the OAS"

Josh Rogin at The Cable ("Reporting Inside The Foreign Policy Machine") covers a possibly momentous development.

Money quote(s):

"The House Foreign Affairs Committee began its Wednesday markup of the State Department authorization bill by voting to end funding for the Organization of American States (OAS), with Republicans lambasting the organization as an enemy of freedom and democracy.

The one-hour debate over the GOP proposal to cut the entire $48.5 million annual U.S contribution to the OAS is only the beginning of what looks to be a long and contentious debate over the fiscal 2012 State Department and foreign operations authorization bill written by chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). Democrats accused the Republicans of isolationism and retreat for their proposal, while the Republicans accused the OAS of being an ally of anti-U.S. regimes in Cuba and Venezuela. The OAS Charter was signed in 1948 at a conference led by U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall."

By their fruits shall you know them. Or something like that.

Despite the fine pedigree and charter, lots of international organizations have, to put it gently, not lived up to expectations. The OAS in recent years has acted more like a club of presidents rather than the umbrella group of Western Hemisphere democracies that it's billed as being.

This will, I expect, amount to nothing much. At least not this time. But it puts the OAS (and other international organizations who exist substantially on the U.S. dime) on notice. Personally, I'm rather fond of the OAS's Washington establishment. They do good work. Some of their principals' political wrangling, especially lately, had some pretty bad optics nonetheless.

When it comes to international fora and organizations in general, let's just say that CAA is a fan of the idea. As for the reality: they haven't come close to matching the vision, to say the least. It remains to be seen, in some cases, whether things would be better, in their individual areas of action/inaction, whether their absence would in fact be an improvement.

Be sure to read the whole article for the partisan play-by-play.

re: "National Debate on the Legions"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog") frames the discussion.

Money quote(s):

"It is time for a national debate on the military: how big do we need it? What are our military objectives and goals? Do we go abroad seeking monsters to slay, or are we the friends of liberty everywhere but guardians only of our own? If guardians of our own, what are the treats we must guard against? Who are our potential enemies and how stable are they? Where abroad do our national interests lie?

These are not trivial questions. They are not politically easy, either, since the needs of the services are different. It is much easier to build a large Army from cadre than greatly to expand a professional Navy. (The Caine Mutiny had some revelations about that.) The Air Force has to decide just what its role is now that SAC no longer exists, and we are not faced with 26,000 launchable nuclear warheads. The Army can’t be reduced simply to cadre. What is the proper size and role of the Marine Corps? These are not just political questions although they will be answered by politicians.

One problem is that we don’t have many who can debate these questions. As Kagan said long ago in his comments on the Peloponnesian War, if you seek peace you must keep that peace. Or as Appius Claudius put it, if you would have peace, be thou then prepared for war. Of course most of those who will be debating these matters will not have heard of Appius Claudius, or Plutarch, or Thucydides, and if they vaguely remember that people with those names existed they will not have read about them, much less have read them."

There's little I can add to Dr. Pournelle's remarks. These decisions will be made by politicians, in and out of uniform, and be made for political reasons, when what the Republic needs are statesmen.

"We expected our Senators to be familiar with keeping the peace, and what a Pyrrhic victory was. Indeed we expected anyone who put himself up as a candidate for Congress to have some familiarity with the basic documents and ideas in the development of Western Civilization. Now – well, not so much"

It would be much easier, if it were possible at all, to come up with a list of politicians who do have that kind of basic familiarity. The list of those who do not is much, much longer, and includes some whose professional training would have caused you to suppose quite the opposite, at least in a less-imperfect world.

"We can’t afford to take a meat axe to the Legions, either. If we are to remain a Republic we must discuss these issues, which means that the debates must start, and those who do know some history will have to spoon feed it to the many who don’t – and worse, to those who have been persuaded that they know things they do not know. We have far too many who seem to have majored in self-esteem while in fact learning little that is estimable."

Not too long ago, CAA had the opportunity to share some classroom time with junior military folks in an environment where they were being exposed to some of the Western military history one would once have expected them to have learned long ago in their schoolroom days. They were, frankly, lapping it up, eager and wondering aloud why they'd never been taught any of this stuff before.

re: "The Rocket's Red Glare of the Occasional Sortie...."

Deebow at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") is following U.S. war news in the foreign press (which means he receives information, not cheer-leading).

Money quote(s):

" "KABLUEY!" in a bad way would be the way I would describe how the current president is experiencing his military successes, particularly in Libya, where the rocket's red glare and the bombs bursting in air are currently giving way to Qaddafi's flag still being there."

Way back when Gulf War I was being televised on CNN, there was talk of how it all looked like a video game: grainy and detached, bloodless and antiseptic.

This also fostered an illusion of military omnipotence.

Sure. Our guys, and their gizmos, are good. But they're not all-powerful. And sometimes the biggest bang, even if properly applied, isn't going to result in the outcome you want.

Back when dinosaurs (and Soviets) roamed the Earth, your humble scribe learned a bit of wisdom working with nuclear weapons systems: There is a proper tool for every task.

Maybe NATO airstrikes aren't the perfect tool for this task. Oh, and what exactly are this task's objectives?

"(W)ith more word games from the State Department, and diplomats don't run combat operations for a very good reason, the bombs bursting in air is likely to continue" (Bold typefaced added for emphasis. - CAA.)

No offense taken, at least not by me, and I'm a lot closer by temprament and training to actually being able to run combat operations than most of my diplomatic peers. After all, it's not what diplomats are either trained or selected/promoted to do. Nor should they be.

"(T)here is no such thing as a "passive" exchange of fire, if you don't believe me, look it up in your PIO reference guide or your protocol handbook, but since you might not have time because you are tying yourself in knots trying to explain this, I will clear it up for you; anytime you are dropping bombs on someone, you are "actively" exchanging fire. Just because they don't shoot back, it doesn't change the nature of the transaction..."

Good point. Valid point, simply put. (Perhaps this isn't something covered in law school.)

"This is what happens when you lead from the rear, and if our mission continues to be murky and gets continually redefined between noninformative press conferences, then all of the two bit, tin pot dictators in the world will know that they are safe for at least the next 16 months, because we can't seem to kill the one in Libya, if that is our mission.

And what does this say about our word in the world? Qadaffi did what he is supposed to by coming forward and admitting his WMD programs and cooperating with the US during the last administration, and for that he was rewarded by having bombs dropped on him once per day, maybe. Kind of like teaching your dog to sit and then when he does it, you beat him for it. Any of you egghead diplo-dummies over at State want to explain to me how this perverted form of carrot/stick theory works?" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

CAA apparently lacks sufficient egg-headedness to tackle the writer's request. From my obviously under-informed and inexperienced perspective, this last seems like precisely the reverse of the message we should be sending to governments thinking about a little (or a lot) bit of nuclear proliferation, like, for instance, Iran.

The phrases "counter-intuitive" and "designed to fail" come to mind.

Of course, not being a Middle East-specialist, I can make assertions like "we're doing it exactly wrong" (and not be taken seriously).

"The debate over whether the WPA applies or doesn't apply or whether it passes constitutional muster is something that will continue to go on, but as I have talked about before, consistency is a habit of the successful and makes your leadership believable. If the president says he needs Congress to buy off on attacking Iran, then he better say the same damn thing about attacking anywhere else as well."

This is true only if consistency is valued by leaders. Consistency will be valued by leaders only if they are rewarded for it. If they are rewarded despite inconsistency, then the opposite outcome will result.

re: "China: Please Repudiate Your T-Bills That We Own And Impose Trump-Level 1000% Tariffs On The Shoddy Crap We Sell You"

Ace at Ace of Spades HQ knows (as does China) that warfare is fought in many dimensions.

Money quote(s):

"This was sort of inevitable, and it's pretty bad. China has long supported every indecent country in the world, because America has alliances with most of the decent ones."

China has, and has had, for decades, a Non-Interference Policy (NIP). That essentially meant that it would do business with you and not worry overmuch about your internal affairs. Sort of the stance China would like the rest of the world to take regarding China's internal affairs.

"China has now made it official: an attack on Pakistan (terrorist hunting) is now to be taken as an attack on China.

They have extended their own security zone to the terrorist state of Pakistan, which means China is now officially a terrorist sponsor."

Ace is, as usual, a few steps ahead of the rest of the United States, including with regards to treating the state of Pakistan as an actual enemy of the U.S., rather than as a partner in the war on terrorism, &tc.

I'm not saying he's necessarily wrong, but perhaps prematurely right.

"(L)ucky us. We just found a trillion and a half dollars we thought we were in the hole for, but now we're not."

Chinese strategists plan for assymetrical operations in all theaters, all dimensions, of war, particularly against peer or near-peer opponents. Included in those battlefields will be the financial and economic dimensions. Being prepared to return fire effectively isn't the worst idea I've ever heard.

re: "A Foolish Consistency"

Lex at Neptunus Lex ("The unbearable lightness of Lex. Enjoy!") takes us into some "inside baseball" at the high end of the intelligence community.

Money quote(s):

"For years, intelligence agencies at home and abroad have watched the nuclear program in Iran with growing concern. In 2007, a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided to policy makers by the intelligence community deprecated that threat, saying that Iran had stopped work on its weaponization program in 2003. There were concerns at the time that the NIE had been deliberately shaded by members of the IC to forestall a rumored attack on Iranian nuclear sites by the George W. Bush administration in its waning years."

This was hardly the first NIE whose conclusions seemed policy- (or politics) rather than intelligence-driven, but it's one of the more prominent ones.

"(A) veteran CIA analyst critical of the agency’s 2011 NIE says that the agency has prevented him from revealing the names of outside analysts who reviewed the draft"

Why is that important?

Outside analysts such as academics, think-tankers, and former intelligence officials are used as a form of outside validation. Publicizing those names makes them accountable for that validation.

"Critics have long claimed, with little supporting evidence, that the Bush administration deliberately politicized intelligence in order to justify the Iraq war. At worse, the intelligence community in 2002 was guilty of “confirmation bias”: Told to look for evidence of an Iraqi WMD program, analysts found what they were looking for in the tangled mess of pre-war all-source data and disregarded what didn’t fit the picture. It was a costly, if understandable mistake. Using outside analysts to endorse a position on Iranian nuclear weapons which is clearly at odds with the evidence, and who have evident biases of their own may be just as costly, if not more so."

It's nice to read something outside the specialist literature that touches on the problems of cognitive bias in intelligence analysis. Confirmation bias isn't something you set out to have, although it's something you maybe could have perhaps avoided.

re: "European pickle"

The Phibian at Cdr Salamander ("Proactively “From the Sea”; leveraging the littoral best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma best business case in the global commons, rightsizing the core values supporting our mission statement via the 5-vector model through cultural diversity.") notes the epidemic of rapes committed (in Europe) by immigrants.

Money quote(s):

"Now and then we have to remind everyone - do not confuse our immigration issues with Europe's.

The only problem I have with the USA's is our lack of enforcement of our laws."

He said a mouthful with that one. Just enforce the laws on the books; just don't spend all our time finding ways not to do what the laws already require.

"Eventually, they will have enough - and they will deal with it in the old European way."

That has been Ralph Peters' argument. Timing (and demographics) will tell.

re: "How ‘Friendly Persuasion’ Subverted the Enemy Assessment Process and Robbed Our Warriors of a Chance to Win and Survive in Afghanistan; Three- "

John Bernard, 1st Sgt. USMC (ret.) at Big Peace recently had a multi-part essay illuminating a piece of how our leadership has been deliberately misled.

re: "US Policy and the Middle East"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog*") had a recap of some Israeli-Palestianian issues.

Money quote(s):

"Any border between Israel and Palestine is going to be imposed, not "mutually agreed". If Obama does not know know this -- and it's very difficult to believe that he does not -- Secretary Clinton and the Foreign Service certainly do, as does most of Capitol Hill. There is not going to be any mutually agreed border between Palestine and Israel. There is not going to be any contiguous Palestinian state that unites Gaza and the West Bank. (The Camp David Accord proposal included an elevated railway and an elevated freeway between Gaza and Judea.) Israel is not going to give up the settlements, the Golan Heights, or the fortifications in the Jordan River Valley, nor will the IDF give up unmonitored and unrestricted access to the Jordan Valley. Israel does not have the resources to force the settlers to leave the West Bank. The IDF won't do it; the experience in Gaza was too traumatic. Nor could any Israeli government survive an hour after Palestinian police began forcibly removing Jewish settlers from homes around Bethlehem or in Samaria.

This is reality; but assume that somehow it happened and there were "mutually agreed swaps" leading to some kind of border: there remains the question of the refugees who claim a right of return. After the 1948 war, and again after the 1967 war, a number of Arabs fled Israel, in both cases at the encouragement of Arab governments. Most expected to return after the Arab victories. When those victories didn't materialize, they became refugees. How many is controversial, but a half million is a not unreasonable compromise. There are now more than a million who claim refugee status and a right of return to Israel. That includes the surviving original refugees and their lineal descendents including heirs to property to which they have a nearly indisputable title going back to the Turkish government that preceded the British League of Nations Mandate that created Trans-Jordan and Palestine. Some are Christians. I know some of these people. As one put it, "I know that the Germans did terrible things to those people, but I do not know why that gives them the right to my home." The home she describes is in the Jerusalem-Bethlehem corridor, and she grew up in it as a girl. Their family has always been Christian, and they claim descent from the original first generation baptized by the Apostles. Whatever the truth of that claim, they certainly owned that property under the Turks and under the British Mandate government, and it is certainly occupied by European born Jews whose title comes from the Israeli government. No compensation has ever been paid -- not that such compensation would be accepted. "It is not for sale. It has never been for sale."

That story can be multiplied by thousands. How many thousands is not clear. Some of the refugees are descendents of nomads of no fixed address -- much of Palestine in 1948 was undeveloped desert. Some have questionable origins or questionable titles to land in Israel. Discard all those of questionable status and there remain hundreds of thousands of genuine refugees displaced from land in pre-1967 Israel, and who claim a right of return. Add the the others whose status cannot be determined and the number climbs toward a million, perhaps more. While my friends have homes and jobs in Bethlehem (one is a physician married to another Palestinian who is legally resident in Jerusalem although he is not allowed to live there), most of those claiming refugee status live in poverty in refugee camps.

The Arab Israeli wars also produced tens to hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, who were forced out of Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, and other Arab lands. They fled to Israel, where they were absorbed into the Israeli economy and have long since ceased to have any kind of refugee status. That did not happen with the Arab refugees. They were put up in refugee camps and kept there. They were not absorbed into any Arab countries, and most of them remain stateless refugees" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

re: "Empower Iranians vs. Tehran"

Daniel Pipes at DanialPipes.Org ("a fast way to comment on many topics") has news from and about Iran.

Money quote(s):

"How should Western governments deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which Washington labels "the most active state sponsor of terrorism"?

Iranian aggression began in 1979, with the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and the holding of some of its staff as hostages for 444 days. Major subsequent attacks included two bombings in Beirut in 1983: at the U.S. embassy, killing 63, and at a U.S. Marine barracks, killing 241."

And that's just hitting some of the high spots. Essentially, they have been waging war against the U.S., albeit mostly at a lowish sort of intensity, since 1979 to the present time (and presumably more to follow).

(My apologies to those whose personal experiences with, por ejemplo, explosively formed projectiles, were undoubtedly highly intense.)

"American responses fall into two main camps: tough and diplomatic."

"The diplomatic camp, which generally controls U.S. policy, accepts the permanence of the Islamic Republic of Iran and expects Tehran to respond to diplomatic overtures.

A main battleground in this dispute is the question of whether or not the most prominent Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MeK), should remain on the U.S. government's terrorism list. The tough camp generally views the MeK, founded in 1965, as a lever against the mullahs and (with a minority dissenting) wants it delisted. The diplomatic camp argues that delisting would anger the Iranian leaders, hampering efforts to improve relations, or (contradictorily) would limit Washington's ability to reach out to the Iranian street.

The pro-MeK side argues that the MeK has a history of cooperating with Washington, providing valuable intelligence on Iranian nuclear plans and tactical intelligence about Iranian efforts in Iraq. Further, just as the MeK's organizational and leadership skills helped bring down the shah in 1979, these skills can again facilitate regime change. The number of street protestors arrested for association with the MeK points to its role in demonstrations, as do slogans echoing MeK chants, e.g., calling Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i a "henchman," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a "dictator," and shouting "down with the principle of Velayat-e Faqih" (that a religious figure heads the government)."

There are merits to both arguments. Since the PMOI doesn't even own up to its past terrorist record against U.S. targets (i.e., murdered U.S. servicemen in 1970's Iran), they don't get a pass from me on this.

"The anti-MeK faction does not address the benefits of delisting but argues that the U.S. government must continue the listing on the basis of allegations of terrorism. Their indictment notes that the MeK killed six Americans in the 1970s. Whether or not these allegations are accurate, a terrorist incident must have occurred within two years to continue with the terrorist-group designation—rendering discussion of the 1970s completely irrelevant."

The "two years" rules is news to me. I followed the link and, admittedly, didn't read the whole Public Law, but when I went to the 8 U.S.C. section that appeared to be amended, the only "two years" that seemed to apply were purely procedural in nature (having to do with a petition period that occurs two years after an organization is designated for the list) and had nothing to do with the length of time since an organization last committed a terrorist act.

"The pro-MeK side points to three main U.S. terrorist databases—the RAND Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents (RDWTI), the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), and the Worldwide Incidents Tracking System (WITS) -- and notes that in each one the MeK comes up clean since 2006 or earlier."

See above. If they won't even admit to what we know they did against us in the past, why would we trust them in the future?

"(C)apabilities and intentions? The State Department's 2006 "Country Reports on Terrorism" accused the MeK of maintaining "capacity and will" for terrorist acts but the 2007, 2008, and 2009 reports omitted this statement. Britain's Court of Appeal derided proscription of the MeK as "perverse," and the group was removed from the U.K. terrorist list in 2008. The European Union cleared the group of terrorism charges in 2009. The French judiciary dismissed all terrorism-related allegations against the group in May 2011."

This is where Mr. Pipes makes some sense. The West and the U.S. specifically are very much not the PMOI's enemies and have not been so for years. In fact, their military arm at Camp Ashraf is very much dependent upon the U.S. for protection.

He concludes:

"In brief, the argument to maintain the MeK's terrorist designation is baseless."

Nah, there's still a base, it's just not getting any younger; just like the families of the U.S. servicement killed by PMOI assassins in Iran all those years ago. An admission of responsibility, an apology, and some reparations to the families would go a long way in cementing the PMOI's credibility.

"Following a court-mandated review of the MeK's terrorist designation, the secretary of state must soon decide whether to maintain this listing. With one simple signature, the Obama administration can help empower Iranians to seize control over their destiny—and perhaps end the mullahs' mad nuclear dash."

For more on that, see Lex's latest here.