Dancing with Hezbollah

A review of Michael Young's "The Ghost's of Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon's Life Struggle "

With the malady of a nuclear armed Islamic Republic of Iran looming on the 2011 horizon (to take the low end of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ estimate), there is a stubborn ontology afflicting both the “bomb Iran” and the “containment” strategies for dealing with the Iranian nuclear program: Both put the US and Israel in a dangerous spiral towards confrontation with Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, the “most technically-capable terrorist group in the world,” according to the State Department. Bomb Iran’s nuclear reactors, and Hezbollah will attack Israel with three times its 2006 rocket supply. Opt for containment, and brace for a Hezbollah theocracy-within-a-state with startling leverage.

General James Mattis walked back this cat in his July CENTCOM confirmation hearing, advocating a boost to Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) funding, “to balance the influence of Syria and Hezbollah.” Yet just days later, an Israeli battalion commander was fatally sniped not by Hezbollah, but by the LAF. And after the clash, Lebanese MPs were inviting Hezbollah to join the LAF’s resistance to Israeli aggression.

What is this strange country, Lebanon? Who are the Lebanese? What will we wish we had known about Hezbollah’s Lebanese hosts when the inevitable happens in Iran?

Michael Young gives us some of the answers before we ask the questions. In a country where memory is bad manners, Young turns his own memories of assassinated friends and humbled dreams into an emotional tale of Lebanon’s meanderings through politics and war since 2005. Lebanon has spent the last five years delaying the answers of the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon investigating the February 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. But as the Iran showdown nears, the world needs answers quickly. What is the secret to a stable Lebanon? What can be done about Hezbollah? Where does Lebanon start and Syria and Iran end? The Lebanese prefer to forget, but Americans, fond memorizers of their own republic’s founding, would do well to learn.

The good news, Young argues, is that Lebanon’s perplexity is a function of its liberalism. Whereas the region’s autocrats are easy to read, Lebanon thrashes around with a “paradoxical” liberalism, in which “illiberal institutions tend to cancel each other out in the shadow of a sectarian system that makes the religious communities and sects more powerful than the state – to me, the main barrier to personal freedom in the Middle East.” Lebanese politics, in other words, may be the haunt of swindlers and their stomach churning deals with devils. But there is an invisible hand at work here: Yes, it was this hand that ferried the Aounists, for example, away from their opposition to Syrian chauvinism. But it is the same hand that slaps away totalitarian creepings of all confessions.

Ambition counteracting ambition, faction offsetting faction? Young, a self-described “American libertarian” and contributor to Reason magazine, must know his American audience will not be able to help but fancy him some sort of Lebanese James Madison. Why not embrace the role and invoke the Federalist Papers? He has said “I did not set out to write a political science text,” but his book’s republican theme does beg the slightest tipping of his hat to the American constitution. Or perhaps a bow to Alexis de Tocqueville, who praised the “happy land” of American federalism, “where man’s vices are almost as useful to society as his virtues!” and warned “If freedom is lost in America, that will be due to the omnipotence of the majority.”

But this is a book about Lebanon, not America, and therein lays the bad news: Whatever the lure of internal political theories, Lebanon is a small state in a shady neighborhood, where the invisible hand is no match for the foreign hand. Young describes a dazed Lebanon in the fresh ruins of “Pax Syriana.” He invites the reader to join him in marveling over Syrian President Bashir al Assad’s shameless threats to “break Lebanon” – even, in so many words, to the Secretary General of the United Nations. And he reels in the fables of the idolized Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who, it turns out, is only as great as his Iranian patrons wish. For even Hezbollah cannot resist “the ease with which outsiders have been able to exploit Lebanon’s divisions to assert their power over the country.”

Would that it were so “easy,” America’s diplomats will say. Young’s book comes at a time of crisis for US policy towards Lebanon and its Syrian and Iranian puppeteers. President Obama’s validation of the “Islamic Republic” and appointment of an ambassador to Syria have made for a one-sided affair. As American power in the region wanes with a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, so too does the “Bush-era fervor” of the Lebanese in the face of Syrian hegemony. That phrase will strike many American readers as ironic. But Young, who supported the Iraq War, gives President Bush his due: “the Lebanese, like the Iraqis, used America to help create a new order – whether America was appreciated or not, thanked or not.” Here he echoes another Lebanese writer, with whom he shares a poetically wistful way of historiography. Fouad Ajami, author of “The Foreigner’s Gift,” a story of Americans in post-Saddam Iraq, might have added the Lebanese to the list of that gift’s recipients. Then again, perhaps not, given the “Independence Intifada’s” flickering out amidst the cheers of “condescending and deterministic” Western elites, who say “what Arab societies needed was the time to develop democratic habits.”

Indeed, the sluggish STL, which Young has probed extensively as an editor for the Beirut-based Daily Star, has bought five years. Only upon Nasrallah’s August announcement of “evidence” of Israeli involvement in the assassination – which Young’s account of Syrian meddling with the STL quickly dispels – has the STL indicated urgency. Detliv Mehlis, the first commissioner of the UN investigation and the subject of trendy “I love Mehlis” t-shirts roaming Beirut, is a tragic hero in Young’s story; one who tried to break the memory taboos, but failed. In another parallel to Iraq, just as the international community preferred the time-buying of Hans Blix to the proven inspection record of Rolf Ekeus, so too is the UN content to let Mehlis’ efforts go to waste under the failed tenures of Serge Brammertz and Daniel Bellemare. For the STL and the sectarian Lebanese system, Young writes, “Hariri was a page best turned.”

The Hezbollization of Lebanon and its army, however, is a page that the world cannot turn. What is the Lebanese Army? Young knows its dance. In the weeks after Hariri’s assassination when the LAF deployed with the delicate task of quelling popular protests, Young and fellow-protestors refused to yield: “the soldiers murmured to us to push, because the quicker we pushed, the quicker the absurdity would end for them. And as we pushed, they gave way, making it seem like a struggle.” UNIFL may be forgiven for its clumsy rendition of the same dance last month, when it allowed a Hezbollah-friendly south Lebanese village to disarm it and smash its vehicles. But the August 3 border clash indicates the army’s dance may be over.

Young is not immune from Lebanon’s selective amnesia. Where in his book is the Lebanon where the most common reaction to seeing Israeli civilian casualties, according to Zogby’s 2010 poll, is “Israelis brought it upon themselves,” “empathy” not even registering a percentage? And where is the Beirut that closed the shutters as journalist Christopher Hitchens was nearly beaten to death last year for defacing a swastika? All in all, though, Young sees Lebanon for the liberal wonder on a rough street that it is. We are lucky to have Young’s account to guide us through this confusing country, with little time to spare before the dark curfews return.

The Othello Element

What is the Tea Party? Why, it’s elementary. There is the “radical element,” everyone knows. And there is the “racist element,” which the “radical” element claims is just a “fringe” element, but was nevertheless condemned by a majority of NAACP elements. Lesser known is the “Tea Party” element, which -- get this -- actually believes in the Tea Party. The NAACP’s smears have taught this fringe something of the anguish of Shakespeare’s Othello: When he, too, was told his love was not pure, he replied:

Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore…
Her name, that was as fresh as Dian’s visage,
Is now begrimed and black as mine own face…
If thou dost slander her and torture me,
Thou hadst been better have been born a dog

Perhaps the NAACP risks less accountability if in error, but let’s have it: does the begrimed Tea Party merit its villains' claims?

Representative John Lewis claimed he was repeatedly called the “N word” on Capitol Hill last March, but he lacked something the ancient courts of Othello’s Venice called “proof.” After extensive googling I found some photos of people holding signs (supposedly at Tea Party rallies) depicting the President as a monkey -- though none with as much success as the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s cartoons of the previous President. And I found one picture of a loser holding an “N word” sign. But dost a few losers maketh thine love a whore? I happen to subscribe to the “Tea Party” element’s propaganda outlets -- my favorite being The Jason Lewis Show -- and I have yet to break any racist code.

And let’s not deny the liberal elements their due. “Barack the Magic Negro,” Barack the “light-skinned” man without a “negro dialect,” and Barack the “clean and articulate” black man were epithets from the Left. New York Times writer Matt Bai says there is a “generational divide” in the Tea Party, between the racist “older” element, and the naïve “younger” element. But it was the Left that profited from its own “generational divide” when it slandered Tea Partiers as “Tea-baggers” -- a term Bill Burton, spokesman for a White House full of twenty-somethings that know better, claimed was not derogatory.

Still, what’s so wrong with telling the Tea Party to “expel the bigots and racists in your ranks,” however few they may be? By all means, expel away. But assuming our guiding principle is contempt of all bigotry in all ranks, there are a few elements in a certain group of 1.3 billion that might complicate the expulsion’s logistics.

And let’s nix right now the idea that 1.3 billion Muslims get immunity from standards of political decency because their’s is a religion. (That’s precisely the problem, as when Othello’s lieutenant rebuts a Senator’s “Thou art a villain” crack: “Thou art -- a Senator”). A 2008 Gallup poll showed that “substantial majorities” of Muslims in Muslim-majority countries favor Sharia legislation. And it’s gross negligence to say they lack the Tea Party’s influence, thus owing less public accountability: It’s not Tea Partiers yelling “allah akbar” and pushing the IED detonator as American soldiers deliver aid in Afghanistan. Most of the American defense budget is a political calculation based on “elements” of Islam. So yes, expel away.

And the expulsion of bigots in Muslim ranks should be easier, because whereas the Tea Partiers at least have a core of noble classical liberalism to rest claims of innocence on, Muslims have the Koran. Anyone that praises the Koran as the best book ever written, as all Muslims do, owes you an explanation. It takes a bold imagination to read the Koran and not conclude it is hateful, fearful, and ugly. Its bigotry is of the misogynistic and xenophobic brand. Let’s just say it’s not a book you would let a child read, as almost every other paragraph has a chilling voice demanding “dread me,” or reminding the reader of the bloody punishment that awaits the unsure. Better that thou hadst been born a dog, indeed, than get your face scalded for eternity.

But don’t judge a book by its contents. Look at what Muslims actually do and think. One word: dhimmi. What's that? Just like the old poker saying, if you don’t know who it is, it’s probably you. Another word: Jews. Ninety percent of Middle Easterners view them “unfavorably.” 78% of Pakistanis and 74% of Indonesians. Gee, what could these people have in common that makes them all so bigoted? And a final word: jihad. Or man-caused disaster, or ADD or whatever we call it nowadays. It happens every day, and its victims are chosen for their beliefs. It’s bigotry by definition.

So where proportion and principle are concerned, the NAACP may be biting off more bigotry than it can chew. It’s easy to tell the Tea Party to expel its bigots, because there aren’t many to begin with. Do we have the patience to ask Islam to expel its inherent bigotry? Do we have the defense budget? These types of questions are mostly frivolous where the “begrimed” Tea Party is concerned, but they are horribly pertinent in Kandahar, Afghanistan and, more unexpectedly, Kampala, Uganda. No doubt Islam has its fair Othello’s too: let this radical element be the first to seek the villain’s proof.

Freedom and the Moral Imperative

In a piece published by Forbes today, the writer poses an enormously important question: what are we to do about the economy? But he frames the debate in a meaningful way. Typically, pundits and “academics” (I use the word loosely to describe the delusional Paul Krugman) spend their ink debating the merits of a centrally-planned, welfare state versus the laissez-faire, market mechanism for creating wealth in our economy.

The thing I found refreshing about this piece is that it transcends that argument, as we ought to as citizens. It is clear to both me and the author that central planning, government intervention and manipulation, and the redistribution of wealth result in misery. It has been discredited in theory and practice countless times. The government cannot create wealth; at its best it can only protect it.

I have no doubt that more freedom, the laissez-faire, market-driven society produces more wealth. But, the author expresses a disbelief that uninhibited people left to do whatever their appetites and lusts drive them to do will create a stable society. His skepticism is well founded. Anarchy is no solution to a bloated and burdensome government.

In sum, when the government controls us and our economy it results in abuse, repression, stifled freedom and ultimately those in government, the empowered, dominating the weak. If we are left completely uninhibited, unchecked, it results in wanton orgies of consumer self-gratification, greed, dishonesty, and the powerful dominating the weak.

So what are we to do? We cannot embrace the domination of the government over its citizens. Nor can we condone the lawlessness of anarchy. The only hope is what the Founders of this nation set out to do hundreds of years ago. These United States are an experiment in self government. We must govern ourselves first. The primacy of restraint is vested in the individual. And how do we become self governing? The natural state of human liberty must be tempered by man’s outright embrace of a moral code. It is imperative.

Ultimately, the real root of the economic problems we face, the real crises is found in our moral, ethical, and social failures as a nation. We have a moral crisis ten times the size of the economic malaise.

We have broken homes and families and scratch our heads wondering why our educational system lacks support. We have built and entitlement society, where wealth isn’t earned, it’s a right, and wonder why people are greedy. We tell people it is just fine to murder their unborn children if their childhood would be inconvenient (92% of women cite “social” or “other” as the most important reason they terminated the pregnancy, 25% say they’re just not “ready”) to the parent, and can’t figure out why people are selfish. We have a government that forcibly steals from the wealthy to buy the votes of the poor, and wonder why charity suffers. We have eviscerated the moral authority of the Church, mocked and ridiculed people of faith, and wonder why people don’t behave ethically anymore. Moral relativism pervades our society today.

This nation has spent the past 50 years divorcing and divesting itself in the most valuable resource a capitalist, free market system has: the morals of the people living in the society. Until we embrace moral behavior, unless we resuscitate the social mores that once tempered lives of the citizens, people in this country will cease to be free.

Self government is the answer. The state should not be forced to dictate my charitable giving, my light bulb usage, or the distribution of economic resources. We must make the right choice individually. If we fail to answer the author’s question we will be a nation of slaves: whether it is an individual without morals, enslaved by their own intemperate lusts and desires for wealth power, or we are dominated by an oppressive government, the result is the same. Freedom dies and the experiment in self government expires in a tragic end.

Liberty Karma

Essay question: “It has been said that we have entered what may be the most dangerous security environment the world has ever known. Evaluate this assertion from the perspective of world history by choosing another time period where a dangerous security environment also existed and compare the present with the past, concluding with your own assessment.”

My answer: International security has never faced a more dangerous threat than the modern rise of Islamist terrorists. Organized under local affiliations from Northern Africa to the Middle East to South East Asia (and increasingly in the shadows of the West), Islamists are ideologically united in Islam’s political goals, the most important being the establishment of a global Islamic caliphate. The Islamist threat would be dangerous enough in the face of united global opposition. Yet in their search to accommodate Islamism, whether through isolationism, moral ambiguity, or curtailments on free speech, Western nations have shown a provocative weakness. The fledgling American democracy of the early 1800s faced a character-defining moment of similar stakes when it fought the Islamist Barbary pirate states. As this was the first time that the infant American constitutional republic had fought a war, the stakes for democracy were enormous. By resisting the Barbary pirates, the U.S. proved that democracies not only have an interest in global security, but that they can also fight for it. Thus, the Barbary Wars, like the Global War on Terror, were a crossroads for democracy. Would it defend its principles, or would it capitulate in the face of a “dangerous security environment”? Unfortunately for the warriors of today’s GWOT, while the premises remain the same, the advanced strike capabilities of the modern Islamist make the threat much deadlier. Regardless, the Barbary Wars proved that principled democracies can act as unlikely barriers to destabilizing ambitions of international terrorists.

Today’s Islamists derive their power from their base of suicidal ideologues willing to kill civilians, as well as their ability to exploit the vulnerabilities of globalization. The Islamic Republic of Iran, for example, uses wealth gained from its global oil sales to fund Islamist terrorism. Islamists may also conduct cyber attacks to devastate Western economies. Most dangerous is the threat of Islamist terrorists gaining access to nuclear weapons. These irrational fanatics embrace suicide killings as a path to martyrdom, and will not be deterred by the notion of “mutually assured destruction.” Technological advances in information, communication, and travel give individual Islamists an unprecedented ability to carry out violent jihad. All of these factors worked to the advantage of Faisal Shahzad, for example, who nearly succeeded in an attack on civilians in Times Square earlier this year. Shahzad’s inspiration came from communication via internet with Yemen-based Anwar al-Awlaki, al Qaeda’s most influential recruiter. He traveled to Pakistan for training in bomb making, and returned to the U.S. to attempt the attack.

The Barbary pirates took advantage of a centuries-old power vacuum in the Mediterranean Sea, in which no state was willing to take responsibility for the region’s security. 18^th century world powers, such as Great Britain and France, found tributes and reactionary naval security more appealing than all-out war in pursuit of their Mediterranean shipping interests. The liberty-minded American revolutionaries in the young United States, however, found tributes to be both economically unbearable and morally objectionable. One of the driving factors behind the transition of the Articles of Confederation into a constitutional republic in 1788 was the desire of Americans to unite against the inhumane (the pirates were human-traffickers) and expensive (tributes and ransoms reached 20 percent of the national budget in the 1790s) threat to the nation’s legitimate interests in the region. From a broader perspective, the stakes for the international security environment were striking: If the American experiment was to bow to the pirates, what hope would there be for an Enlightenment-style transition from the uncertainty of perpetual nation-state wars to a new security order founded on mutual commercial and democratic interests?

The U.S.’ decision in 1801 to confront the dangerous security environment in the Mediterranean head-on through a declaration of war on the Barbary states may seem an enviably simple solution in light of the complexities of today’s GWOT. While the Americans subdued the pirate-sponsoring states through naval victories in the first Barbary War (1801-1805) and through a bold Marine-led land campaign in the second Barbary War (1815), the GWOT cannot be won in a single theater, let alone with a sole dependence on military strategies. Nevertheless, the first step to any solution in the modern fight against Islamists is to summon the same moral clarity expressed by the U.S. during the Barbary Wars. The U.S. today must articulate its commitment to the uncompromising democratic principles that are threatened by Islamists. A realist mentality of short-term fixes must not play substitute for a long-term war of ideas.

The costs and outcome of this all-in approach to the GWOT are uncertain. Yet in fighting the Barbary states, Americans chose the uncertainty of war to the certainty of leaving its freedoms and values hostage to pirates on the high seas. Just as the blows of appeasement had compounded in the late decades of the 18^th century, the military victories against the Barbary states initiated a positive feedback loop: they inspired the European navies to take a similar stand in the Mediterranean, they cleared the path for New World democracies to prosper with free trade, and they forged a battle-hardened American military that would be able to hold its own against the British in the War of 1812. Most importantly, the military victories validated the power of democracies, which would discover a mutual interest in a secure world environment. Today, as Islamists continue to disrupt the world security environment, the West should draw strength from the moral high ground of its democratic ideals. A short-sighted strategy of turning these very ideals into weakness by apologizing for them and surrendering them as “tribute” to Islamists will, as the history of U.S. involvement with the Barbary states shows, only compound the unprecedented threats to the modern security environment.

McChrystal and Obama (Opening for Mattis?)

On the way home from work today, MPR (I know, I know...) ran a story about some controversial comments by Gen. McChrystal in Rolling Stone towards President Obama and his handling of the Operation Enduring Freedom. Obama summoned the general to Washington to explain his actions in an attempt to retain his job as Commander of ISAF forces in Afghanistan.

Regarding General McChrystal's job security, Obama was quoted as saying, "All options are on the table."

On a formally unrelated, but potentially uniquely intertwined topic, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is expected to nominate the current Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, General James Amos, to fill the Marine Corps' highest position. This leaves the respected, oft-attacked General James Mattis as the bridesmaid in the Commandant wedding.

Assuming McChrystal is unable to retain his job and Mattis is official passed by as a possible Commandant, I'd like to voice my opinion that General James Mattis would be the perfect fit for a possible job opening as ISAF Commander in Afghanistan. Mattis' unique ability to understand the kinetic and non-kinetic battlefield Afghanistan would reap enormous benefit for the war effort there. He is loved dearly by Marines for his brash efficiency, respected by foreigners and feared by enemies.

Full Disclosure: This idea is not unique to me at all, just vigorously supported. Mattis is the first name that would come to any Marine's mind for a job like this.

General Mattis will always hold a place in every Marine's heart for such wonderful quotes as:

2003: On the eve of the Iraq Invasion

"Our fight is not with the Iraqi people, nor is it with members of the Iraqi army who choose to surrender. While we will move swiftly and aggressively against those who resist, we will treat all others with decency, demonstrating chivalry and soldierly compassion for people who have endured a lifetime under Saddam’s oppression...You are part of the world’s most feared and trusted force. Engage your brain before you engage your weapon...Carry out your mission and keep your honor clean. Demonstrate to the world that there is ’No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy’ than a U.S. Marine."

2005:

"Actually, it’s a lot of fun to fight. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot… It’s
fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right upfront with you, I like brawling… You
go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because
they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left
anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."

Terror from Tucson to Tucumcari...and counsel from St. Paul

In these times, when professional athletes like Steve Nash or renowned hips-shakers like Shakira espouse the unconstitutionality of illegal immigration legislation, Friedrich Hayek’s blesséd spirit stirs to remind us that straying from one’s specialized calling brings diminishing returns. It was not to the comparative advantage of seventies south-western folk singer Linda Ronstadt, for example, to debate Arizona’s infamous law earlier this month: “No human being is an illegal person,” she said. “They’re undocumented migrants. They’ve been forced up here from positions of incredible poverty. And these are people who’ve been able to overcome great obstacles.”

If only she had stuck to the lyrics of her trucker hit remake, “Willin,” perhaps then the obstacle-overcomers would already have replaced “¡Si se puede!” with the song’s Arizona twang:

I’ve been warped by the rain, driven by the snow
I’m drunk and dirty, don’t you know…
And I smuggled some smokes and folks from Mexico…
But I’m still…willin

Then again, the obstacle-setter-uppers might find a bold rejoinder elsewhere in the song: “And I’ve been kicked by the wind, robbed by the sleet / Had my head stove in but I’m still on my feet / And I’m still…willin.”

Indeed, Arizonans should be so lucky to get by with a wind-kicking. While the border shooting of rancher Robert Krentz and his dog in March shocked many Americans, it fit a familiar pattern of violence. A state senator testified last week that ranchers watch hundreds of illegals cross their property daily. They travel in military-like overwatch formations, replete with a SAW gunner followed by drugs and guns at half-mile intervals. One rancher found 17 dead bodies on his property in the last two years. Investigating such deaths is dangerous: when police get killed, 80% of the time the killer is an illegal. Meanwhile, Phoenix holds a title most people would associate with Baghdad or Mogadishu: it’s the runner-up to Mexico City for the world’s most kidnappings, notwithstanding this week’s freeing of a 22 year-old mentally handicapped Phoenix woman from drug lords.

So when the White House offered its expert summary of the situation, you’ll understand if Arizonans mistook it for some sort of subtle parable: “Now, suddenly, if you don’t have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you’re going to be harassed,” it said. That’s a scenario that just might be plausible enough to worry about, if “papers” meant the ransom money in your satchel, and “harassed” meant kidnapped. But alas, this was a classic case of a central planner misunderstanding a distant problem, and attacking a solution.

Of course, an unconstitutional law is unconstitutional, regardless of its makers’ proximity to the problem. The final, amended law (a more precise version of the original controversial law) makes it a state crime to be in the US illegally. How terribly ontological: a law that makes illegality illegal. So if cops detain someone for, say, public intoxication, they can now demand a registration document if they suspect (race cannot be the sole factor) illegal residence. Critics object to the “papers please” innuendo, as well as the race factor. Yet the unenforced federal law has both provisions.

Now, I had some proximity of my own to the Mexican border earlier this year. I asked a legal Russian alien friend there what she made of the law. It’s nothing new, she says. When she gets pulled over, the cops hear her accent and immediately ask for her “papers” (she always keeps a copy on her). Actually, she says, America’s immigration laws are weak, considering the demand for entering such a great country.

It seems Mayor Chris Coleman of St. Paul, Minnesota doesn’t share this Russian’s high regard for American greatness. He issued an Arizona boycott. Meanwhile on Main Street in Nogales last weekend, a “merchant” who went nameless to avoid a violent death said the boycotters have taken their toll on his livelihood: “It’s dead. We should be closed today, but we don’t want to hurt our employees.”

If anything, it is Mayor Coleman’s boycott that’s unconstitutional. The Supremacy Clause precludes states from disrupting the enforcement of federal laws. In McCulloch v Maryland (1819), Justice John Marshall ruled, “the States have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress…” Whereas the Arizona law fulfills the federal law's mission (as it also does with, say, inter-state kidnappings), Mayor Coleman’s boycott falls into Marshall’s “otherwise” category, impeding the enforcement of a Congressional law.

So as Arizonans get kicked by the winds of a drug war, rich celebrities and distant politicians stand up for cultural masochism. On a recent trip to China, state department human rights envoy Michael Posner emphasized “racial discrimination” in Arizona “early and often.” Even Roy Stryker, the New Dealer that promoted photographs of destitution in the southwest (e.g., the famous “Migrant Mother) to legitimize government intervention, felt some shame when a Nazi asked for photos which might prove America’s weakness to Hitler: “I had no intention of allowing the record of America’s internal problems to fall into his hand,” Stryker said.

Arizona has internal problems, but it also has an internal solution. The problem is an illegal population that cost the state $2.7 billion last year and is disproportionately behind the terror. The solution lies in the Arizona policemen that will put their lives at greater risk to enforce the federal law. It lies in a state citizenry that’s still proud, and indeed, still willin.

Excellent Evaluation of Recent Global Macroeconomic Policies

An excellent quote:

In his 1971 classic, Dividing the Wealth, Howard Kershner sagely observed that "Those from whom property is stolen lose the incentive to produce and, in time, there will be less and less stealable goods available."

Read this if you'd like to understand where we've been and where we're going.

I've followed John Tamny's writing for a couple of years. He has outstanding common sense and an effective means of communicating it. You can find his articles most often on RealClearMarkets. He also writes for Forbes.

Greco Vindication

Advocates for free markets and free societies have had little to celebrate lately. If one was intentionally trying to stifle growth and destroy the creative power of free people, you’d follow the Team Obama playbook. The hollow promises of new goodies and handouts, the tacit refusal to address the broken and burdensome old entitlements, and the wholesale attempt to micro-manage individual citizens’ economic well-being from cradle to the grave smacks of arrogance and neglect. What reprieve do we have?

While individuals and families day-to-day take austere measures to make ends meet, the government grows ever larger, promising more and more. The dirty secret is that everything government gives, it must forcibly take away from some one else. So as the promises of cheap healthcare and rich retirements grow, so does the consumption of everyone else’s wealth. We used to live in a nation where we would demand our productive citizens to subsidize the unproductive, regardless of whether they actually need it or are reaping the harvest of laziness and irresponsibility. Now we ask our productive citizens, their children, and grandchildren to bear the burdensome costs. What have we become?

Perhaps a more pointed is question is, “what will we become?” The answer lies across the sea. As Europe reels from suffocating budget problems, back-breaking debt, and unfunded liabilities we are offered a chance to peer into the geo-political crystal ball and gaze into the future of our very own United States. Do you like what you see in Greece? Riots, murder, unrest, vandalism, and general violence don’t appeal to me.

Rest assured, the Greek plight threatening the European Union did not come about from taxes too low, a welfare state too small, or the even the lack of audacity to hope for change you can believe in. It happened when government stopped being an entity to protect your rights and property, and became a hand to deliver, “what the people want” (or in their case what the union/government worker/welfare classes want). Humans have unlimited wants but are faced with the harsh reality of limited resources. Only governments (with their power to forcefully wrest wealth away from those who produce it) can evade this basic tautology for so long. Limited government isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity. Any government that ceases to limit itself devours its only source of life: wealth-producing taxpayers.

For decades the thinkers, economists, and political leaders I look up to have been warning any one who would listen: we are on an unsustainable trajectory. The deficits and malignant growth of government we see in the U.S. does not lag far behind that of troubled Europe. We cannot sooner get out of debt by borrowing than you could stand with both feet in a bucket and lift yourself up. Just look at Greece drowning in a pool of their own decadence and profligacy, desperately clawing at their European peers, hoping to be saved.

Somehow the taunting words, “I told you so” just don’t seem to capture the moment.

As horrifying as it is to watch, we are vindicated by the malaise in Greece and Europe. If ever a “third-way” or pseudo-socialist society existed it is most of Europe. And as the European Union gasps for air, will we ignore the lesson we can learn from their suffering?

What's the deal with jihadists?

Have you heard the one about the Muslim prophet that walks into the bar? If you have, just start whistling “too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral” and sneak out the back door with your hands in your pockets. Probably wasn’t that funny anyway. Lars Vilks’ cartoon of Muhammad’s face on a dog’s body was, but he got head-butted in the face and had to scramble off stage for his life last night at a Swedish university. South Park probably had a real foot-stomper lined up last month too, but Comedy Central knew how to get out to get by.

Okay, but maybe you’ve heard the one about the jihadist that tries to do jihad because, and here’s the punch-line, he actually believes in jihad? New York Times writer Robert Wright has, and he has heard quite enough of it. The “jihadi intent” theory regarding the Pakistani jiahdist Faisal Shahzad, who tried to put jihad on Times Square earlier this month, is just too “simple,” says Wright. Jihadists like Shahzad are complex: maybe he “feels unhappy,” maybe “alienated.” “Maybe he’s having financial problems,” suggests Wright, speculating on the theoretical jihadist. And most unfunny of all, maybe the “hawkish policies” of the United States “may have helped incite Shahzad.” Killing Anwar al-Awlaki – the Mr. Fireside Chat of jihad– for example, could have a “downside” similar to that of killing Jesus, says Wright. That is, Jesus knows how many Christians just united and went forth and multiplied after that target package. Wright concludes that the downsides of anti-terrorist policies, which often outweigh the upsides, must be confronted.

While Wright presents himself as being above the narrative-proving game, he (and the many Americans that share his ideology) remains stubbornly attached to the same grievance-narrative that he espoused after the lonely Major Nidal Hassan reacted as one does to hawkish policies.

Yet it's quite the opposite: it's unreasonable to attribute rationality to terrorism. A classic example was Sergio Vieira de Mello's assasination in Iraq in 2003 by Islamists, who were mad he had helped oust Indonesia from East Timor. A "hawkish policy" in which "the downsides outweigh the upsides," Wright would ask? No -- it was an anti-genocide policy. So if we are to avoid instigating terrorists, we must promote genocide.

Wright gets the grievance feedback loop exactly backward: it’s not easy to keep up on the mortgage when you're living the dream in Pakistani jihad camps. And concerning Shahzad’s confused “social niche,” the day jihad enthusiasm in America is not inversely proportional to, say, facebook "friend requests," botched car bombings will be the least of our concerns.

Shahzad's internet connection revealed to him the injustice of US drone strikes accidentally killing Pakistani women and children, notes Wright. But wouldn't it also have led him to recurring stories of Muslim Pakistani girls covered with acid for going to school, or stoned for having relationships? Or of Muslim Somali girls genitally mutilated? Or of innocent Muslims being killed by Muslims with hawkish policies daily, all around the world? Most of the evil inflicted on innocent Muslims comes in these forms. (Shariah law, it turns out, differs from the US Army’s Counterinsurgency Manual). So why didn’t this matter? It seems Shahzad was intent on proving a narrative of his own.

Sense of proportions must not be abandoned in this fight. Wright’s comparison of Jesus to Awlaki, the very type of brute Jesus would defy for throwing the first stone at the town whore, is charming in a “gold jacket, green jacket, who gives a s***?" kind-of-way. But maybe if Wright had an example of an enemy of civilization getting killed and being awarded posthumous worshipers...like, I don't know, Imam Ali?...he might have had a stronger point.

Now, had it been a Tea-Partier in Times Square, saying he did it in the name of the Tea-Party, against the non Tea-Partiers, I would say the main cause was probably his radical belief in the Tea-Party. But then there's a, oh...three percent chance of Wright writing about whether the administration should reevaluate the downsides of its hawkish policies on capitalism. What about the downsides of writing about the downsides of hawkish policies, anyway? Terrorists read that and see less shame in terrorism.

All this reminds me of a joke – the one that Sacha Baron Cohen played on the man labeled "terrorist" in his movie “Bruno” (my first major motion picture, if you freeze the shot of Alpha Company). The “terrorist” tried to sue Baron Cohen saying he wasn't a terrorist anymore at the time of filming. The real joke was on us, Wright might argue: how simple-minded of us to accept the label “terrorist” just based on something that happened in the past. I have a feeling I’d find the “Muhammad walks into a bar” joke a bit funnier.

Saving Will Save Us

Those who speak with me on a regular basis about economic issues know that I have been skeptical about this V-shaped recovery in the making. On many occassions I've made a point to say that either cascading inflation will rip through the economy or we will descend back into economic contraction.

On the fiscal front, I remain doubtful that drolls of money passed out to open hands will provide substatial means for recovery. The problem, the very epicenter of the economic crisis was the asset bubble inflating the housing market. Nothing in the fiscal stimulus has done anything to address that problem. Some of the systemic risk may be mitigated, but nothing has been done to amend the real-estate depression.

All we've done is attempt to stimulate consumer spending. Now if that attempt is met with success (which is debatable), even if we can get people to spend more and banks to lend more, I submit to you this is no means for sustainable economic growth. Consumers buying products is the end result of a healthy, productive economy. By contrast, the origin of a healthy consumer economy is savings. Saving and investment allows for any firm (large or small) to develop new and better products, more efficient means of producing them, and new technology to streamline their efforts. The end result is either higher quality of goods and services, more cost effective products, or some combination of both. And that is precisely what drives consumer spending. Hence, consumer spending is a byproduct, a result of a healthy economy.

In essence, the whole system is turned on its head. How did this happen, you ask? The economic realty that saving and investing drives growth, not consumer spending, has been willingly ignored for various political reasons. Politicians and bureaucrats always need reasons to buy votes and pander to their electorate. Why waste time in an economic downturn? It is popular to give hand outs, freebies, and "stimulus" to people. Hell, I'll bet it polls pretty well compared to the alternative of saving, investing, patiently awaiting a return on invested capital.

If the political class can fool people into believing that if we all just spent more money we can save the economy, they are then able to spend their stimulus, and get all the votes money can buy. And so their power grows with a bought-and-paid-for voting bloc (along with the size of Congress' credit card bill). The ultimate problem with pegging economic hopes on consumerism is that consumer spending will always ebb and flow. Inevitably faulty desicions, natural disasters, wars, etc. will cause periods of economic growth and contraction. However, these periods don't have to be so dramatic and painful to bear. When times are tough, people stop spending. And if the life-blood of the economy is consumer spending, cardiac-arrest ensues. Thus when consumer spending is considered the driving economic factor, the highs will be very high but the lows will be...well look at the past recession.

What if people were encouraged by their political leaders (via tax breaks, public address, etc.) to save during times of growth instead of spend, get a credit card, spend again, leverage again, spend some more? In my little fantasy, if a natural contraction occurs, people will have a large cushion to absorb the loss of income. Thus, the economy wouldn't end up wretching in pain at hte loss of income. But in today's "cash-for-clunkers" world, you get a tax break for spending! It's a sad world we live in.

This messy situation an unfortunate reality of the politicized nature of our economy. When the government is so powerfully injected into private enterprise (whether by means of regulation, stimulus, tax gimmicks, corporate welfare, the list goes on) it's difficult to see an economy growing on a sustainable trajectory. Hopefully, people will start to wake up to the shilly-shallying going on in D.C. (perhaps they already are) and we can end this ridiculous Keynesian central-planning.

And in my opinion, among the first things to go should be this idea that consumer spending makes the economy grow. We can just do away with that. Saving provides capital, capital enables ingenuity, and thus the economy grows. Saving will save us from this fine mess we're in.

Rep. Paul Ryan Explains "Financial Reform"

“We didn’t catch this last problem, what makes you think more of the same regulators are going to catch it next time” - Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

For any readers wondering what's wrong with the financial "reform" package currently debated in Congress, this is a clear, concise, and directed breakdown of the legislation. I'm really starting to like this Paul Ryan guy. I've been watching him for awhile now and he's smart as a whip. It's rare to see a Representative so well versed in finance/economics.

Milton Friedman's Intellectual Kung Fu

Behold, the argument for capitalism 40 years ago and yet to be refuted.



Keanu Reeves only dreams of having the clarity of thought requisite to such outstanding arguments as presented by Mr. Friedman in the following video clip. Am I alone in visualizing the intellectual beatdown dished out here? I was just waiting for Friedman to tell Donahue, "Now, go fetch me a switch and we'll whip that ignorance right out of you"

As demonstrated in the video, I find it facsinating that capitalists having been taking central-planning types (socialists, facists, leftists, etc) behind the woodshed for 40 years, we're still having the same debate about economics today.

My only hypothesis is that Marxist ideology is more emotionally satisfying than the reality of the human condition. Free minds and free markets are a difficult concept to appreciate in a vacuum. However, the historical generation of wealth and welfare in a free market when compared to the unending misery cultivated by totalitarian societies seems to serve as a confirmation in my opinion.

Sex and the Holy City

Sitting on a Cairo-bound jet and flipping through the “Gay and Lesbian Travelers" section of my Lonely Planet: The Middle East guide, I spotted a pleasant did-you-know: “while homosexuality is not actually illegal according to Egypt’s penal code, arrests on the charge of ‘debauchery and contempt of religion’ do occur.” In other words, homosexuality may be punishable by death in Islamist Gaza and Iran, but it’s accepted with a wink (or a pursed-lip nod of props if you’re the penetrator) in Egypt.

Nevertheless, when a fashionable young Egyptian man offered my friend and me the 30 mile ride from the airport to downtown Cairo for free, one might have forgiven us for thinking it more Arab hospitality than Arab homosexuality. But one email subject-lined “HOT” later would prove it to be the latter. And a week in Egypt would bring several more advances.

It is impossible not to conclude after visiting Egypt, Jordan, and the West Bank that sexual frustration controls lives in the Middle East. Egyptians explained the Islamic culture of shame to us: romantic relationships outside of marriage or familial supervision stain the woman’s family name. Men must court fathers to get to daughters.

In my favorite Arab pop song, “Habib Hayati,” Mustafa Amar addresses his lover with masculine grammar, to avoid sounding too direct. In Cairo, almost all women cover their hair and avoid eye contact with men on the street. Women pray in the back of the mosque, to avoid “tempting” the men. The only time Muslim girls spoke to us, Muslim men looked on with disdain. “Are you Muslim?” one man asked.

Of course, there will always be undaunted Don Juans. 25 year-old Muhammad told us he aims to have five wives. But this just makes it harder for the rest of the guys. As in all Islamic societies, getting a good, Allah-fearing woman is a jihad in itself. Harmless alternatives like homosexuality, or evils like child abuse and rape, become appealing.

What a world of difference a walk from the sexual apartheid of Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter to the bars and clubs of its Jewish New City makes (excepting the ultra-orthodox Jews, like the rabbi that told us God is punishing America for its sexually diseased women). Lady Gaga’s “bluffin’ with my muffin” replaces the tarzanish call to prayer. Long hair and tight jeans replace the hijab.

This sexual liberation is what Islamism’s fore-father, Sayyid Qutb, hated most when he visited 1950s America: “A girl looks at you, appearing as if she were an enchanting nymph or an escaped mermaid, but as she approaches, you sense only the screaming instinct inside her, and you can smell her burning body, not the scent of perfume but flesh, only flesh. Tasty flesh, truly, but flesh nonetheless.” Sounds like a bachelor’s party gone wrong. Qutb’s – and Islam’s – aversion to having sex like bunny rabbits raises an important question. “What’s wrong with rabbits?” as Charles asks in D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chattlerley’s Lover, the controversial novel censored in Britain from 1928 to 1960 for its sex factor. “Are they any worse than a neurotic, revolutionary humanity, full of nervous hate?” And then the question of sexual frustration, to which Charles puts it mildly: “starved sex interferes with me.”

Indeed, that sexual starvation brings out the neurotic evil in humanity is the premise of people blaming celibacy for the rape of children by Catholic priests. In the past month alone, child rape accusations have been made against Catholic priests in Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Ireland and Wisconsin, where up to 200 deaf children were allegedly raped. Pick your pundit by the toe: The Huffington Post’s David Love says that while “people are entitled to their own expressions of faith,” – how generous of him – there are values inherent to Catholicism, such as “the environment of secrecy and sexual repression,” and the “vow of celibacy” that encourage sex abuse in Catholic communities. “And it always comes back to sexuality, doesn't it?” he concludes.

But flashback to the “Allah is great” killing rampage of US Army Major Nidal Hassan, who couldn’t get enough of the enchanting nymphs at the Texas strip clubs. Seems none of these mermaids had a screaming instinct strong enough to convince them to settle down in a hijab and let Hassan fulfill the Koran’s matrimonial command: “Women are your fields: go, then, into your fields whence you please.” Indeed, such open reign in married Islamic life makes single life all the more unbearable: most suicide bombers are single. There’s only one time a month married Muslims need abstain: “Keep aloof from women during their menstrual periods,” Muhammad advises (he wasn’t just whistling Dixie).

Yet for Mr. “it always comes back to sexuality” Love, Hassan’s massacre comes back to “the effects of war, and the problems of violence and PTSD.” “[S]o why should the Muslim community shoulder a burden that does not bear their name?” Love asks, even as he tells Catholics to shoulder the sex abuse burden.

Even if we imagined that Palestinian women in burkas didn’t get bone disease from sun deficiency, or that hijabs didn’t force Iranian women to get facial surgery to perfect the 4-inch diameter circle that is their only chance to attract a man; or that it’s OK that Sweden leads Europe by far in rapes – a plurality committed by Muslim immigrants. Even then, Muslims would still have to shoulder their own child abuse burden.

In Islam, sexual maturity is equated with menstruation, not mental maturity. Muhammad, for example, had sex with 9 year old Ayesha. So while Scotland Yard is alarmed to find a pattern of child pornography on the computers of Islamist terror cells in Britain, it has its precedent. The hospitalization of an 11 year-old bride last week for genital injuries, and the sexual assault that turned deadly for another 13 year-old Yemeni girl earlier in the week, were business as usual. About eight Yemeni girls die each day due to child marriage – usually when giving birth. And sex aside, even US schools are happy to accommodate the 18-hour daily fasts of children during Ramadan. “It’s not abuse, it’s Islam!” the thinking goes.

Give the Church its due humiliation for its “no child’s behind left” agenda, as one pundit puts it. But don’t think for a minute that if Islam had the centralization, hierarchy, paper trail, financial liability of dioceses, and liberal critics like the Church has, it would have a better record. For when it comes to sexual repression, the Islamic Middle East outdoes the Roman Catholic Church. St. Augustine said “Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not yet.” Until Allah similarly obliges Muslims, the granting of the former will continue to be the undoing of the latter.

(Photos by Founders' Porch!)

Being a conservative really hurts!

At least it does for this couple. The pony-tail bearing assailiant's hairstyle of choice is a dead giveaway: clearly a liberal activist... maybe even a community organizer of some type.

How soon they forget...

Democrats in D.C. are faced with the harsh reality that to pass their "health care reform" bill they would need to enact the "reconciliation" procedure prevent the GOP from filibustering the vote. Their precious bill at stake, apparently disgracing themselves is not too tall of an order for Congressional Democrats.

For those who don't know, the Senate allows members to filibuster legislation. This means they can continue to the legislative debate indefinitely. It requires a super-majority to end debate on a bill (61 out of 100 votes). As long as debate proceeds, no vote can take place. If no vote takes place, no laws get passed.

Now, the purpose purpose here is to prevent a majority in the Senate from dominating the laws passed. The check and balance against this of course is that Senators must go home and face their consituents. If they filibuster every little thing, they will get thrown out of office. So the essence of the procedure is to raise the threshold or particular pieces of controversial law (ohhhh, say the health care bill for example). To all of us living in reality, this makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, Congress (particularly liberals) don't spend much time in reality.

During the Bush years when the GOP controlled Congress, the process of overiding the filibuster rule (which is designed to protect minorities) through reconciliation was damned repeatedly and even suggested it is "the end of democracy". Liberals on the Hill scorned the reconciliation process and dubbed it the threatening "Nuclear Option".

Of course, the political games never stop and the Democrats have changed their tune. They stopped calling it the "Nuclear Option" (inciting views of death and destruction) to reverted to its proper nomenclature: "Reconciliation" (kind, gentle, and compassionate). With a majority in hand, the liberals in Congress see nothing wrong with supressing the minority, stomping on their opinions, and laughing all the way to the bank.

The irony, arrogance, and hypocrisy is both laughable and depressing. You don't have to take my word for it. Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, et al and even the Big "O" himself deride the reconciliation procedure.

I wish they would just listen to themselves. Check out the video below.

Taking Marjah

The soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan's Helmand Province are preparing for a big attack on Marjah, the Taliban's last bastion there. I don't know what role Rob and the 3/4 Marines will have, but here are a couple more pictures of him and his area of operations, not far from Marjah.

Helping the Arabian Peninsula Help Itself

As Steve works over-time on the gubernatorial campaign of Minnesota's most classical liberal, State Senator David Hann, and Rob leads a Marine infantry rifle platoon in Afghanistan, Founders' Porch has been quiet in 2010. To start our comeback, here are two extended articles on how the US should defend Persian Gulf states against an imperial Islamic Republic, and how Yemen may be in over its head trying to "rehabilitate" terrorists.

The first, The Gulf States in the Shadow of Iran, appears in The Middle East Quarterly's Winter 2010 edition. It is a call for moral clarity in the U.S.'s noble efforts to secure the Persian Gulf from the Islamic Republic's encroachments. The Gulf states, with their human rights abuses and authoritarian instincts, are not to be bowed to. Indeed, they deserved no pity when the US invasion of Baathist Iraq proved unsettling to them. But now moral clarity requires standing with the Gulf states against a sworn-enemy: Iran. The US cannot afford to miss this opportunity by attempting short-sighted deal-making with Iran. It should stick to its principles by reaching out to the Gulf states. Here is an excerpt:

U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf should recognize that outreach to Iran since the "unclench your fist" inaugural address has failed. Iran has ignored Obama's diplomatic plea for the Islamic Republic to join "the community of nations."[69] Meanwhile, Tehran has capitalized on the June 30, 2009 U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq: On July 16, an Iranian-backed militia killed three U.S. soldiers in Basra with an Iranian-made rocket.[70] Even though the Obama administration chose not to intervene on behalf of human rights protesters after the June presidential elections, on August 23, 2009, Iran's parliament voted to approve $20 million for exposing human rights abuses in the United States.[71] Iran has interpreted U.S. engagement attempts as desperation: Ahmadinejad's short-lived first vice president and current chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Masha'i, said in August that due to Ahmadinejad's "historic" world popularity, "the international community has no choice but to cooperate" with the regime.[72] Finally, as Washington cashes in a peace dividend, Iranian-made missiles and machine guns are landing in the hands of Yemen's Shi'i rebels. In a reference to Tehran, Yemeni information minister Hasan Ahmad al-Lawzi recently said, "There are religious authorities that are trying to interfere in the affairs of our country."[73]

Which leads to the other article, by Founders' Porch resident Yemeni terror scholar Chris Harnisch, whose reporting I cited in that last sentence. The US, he writes in his article at Critical Threats, may want to think twice before handing over Guantanano detainees to Yemen's summer-fun-camp rehabilitation program:

"[M]any Saudi terrorists from Guantanamo have been released into the Saudi rehabilitation program, which reportedly applies a de-radicalization curriculum revolving around sports, art therapy and other leisure activities,[3] only to return to the battlefield – sometimes in key leadership positions. The proposed Yemeni terrorist rehabilitation program will apparently be modeled on the Saudi program. "

Whether regarding Iranian meddling in the Persian Gulf or AQAP terrorism in Yemen, the US has a long road ahead in securing the Arabian Peninsula.