Let The Show Begin or Has It Already?

Just back from 21 days in Italy, Spain, France and Croatia and am posting some items of interest and most particularly what I have received during my absence regarding Palin and some other unrelated articles.

Dick

Palin is the force 5 hurricane bearing down on Democrats etc. I don't know if all the comments regarding Palin are authentic but they get at the essence of McCain's political master stroke.

Palin is not inexperienced at being an "executive" and if she is then it simply highlights the complete "executive" inexperience of Obama and his running mate - Biden whose experience came mostly from appearing on Sunday talk shows, making speeches and attending Senate hearings etc.

As for being a heart beat from the presidency no one is ever trained to be president yet, Truman succeeded admirably. It takes judgment, common sense, integrity, tenacity and faith in one's self and a modicum of intelligence. Palin seems to have it all plus guts and grit.

So let the show begin or has it already? (See all below.)

Dick


1) Israeli Strategy After the Russo-Georgian War
By George Friedman

The Russo-Georgian war continues to resonate, and it is time to expand our view of it. The primary players in Georgia, apart from the Georgians, were the Russians and Americans. On the margins were the Europeans, providing advice and admonitions but carrying little weight. Another player, carrying out a murkier role, was Israel. Israeli advisers were present in Georgia alongside American advisers, and Israeli businessmen were doing business there. The Israelis had a degree of influence but were minor players compared to the Americans.

More interesting, perhaps, was the decision, publicly announced by the Israelis, to end weapons sales to Georgia the week before the Georgians attacked South Ossetia. Clearly the Israelis knew what was coming and wanted no part of it. Afterward, unlike the Americans, the Israelis did everything they could to placate the Russians, including having Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert travel to Moscow to offer reassurances. Whatever the Israelis were doing in Georgia, they did not want a confrontation with the Russians.

It is impossible to explain the Israeli reasoning for being in Georgia outside the context of a careful review of Israeli strategy in general. From that, we can begin to understand why the Israelis are involved in affairs far outside their immediate area of responsibility, and why they responded the way they did in Georgia.

We need to divide Israeli strategic interests into four separate but interacting pieces:

1. The Palestinians living inside Israel’s post-1967 borders.
2. The so-called “confrontation states” that border Israel, including Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and especially Egypt.
3. The Muslim world beyond this region.
4. The great powers able to influence and project power into these first three regions.

The Palestinian Issue

The most important thing to understand about the first interest, the Palestinian issue, is that the Palestinians do not represent a strategic threat to the Israelis. Their ability to inflict casualties is an irritant to the Israelis (if a tragedy to the victims and their families), but they cannot threaten the existence of the Israeli state. The Palestinians can impose a level of irritation that can affect Israeli morale, inducing the Israelis to make concessions based on the realistic assessment that the Palestinians by themselves cannot in any conceivable time frame threaten Israel’s core interests, regardless of political arrangements. At the same time, the argument goes, given that the Palestinians cannot threaten Israeli interests, what is the value of making concessions that will not change the threat of terrorist attacks? Given the structure of Israeli politics, this matter is both sub-strategic and gridlocked.

The matter is compounded by the fact that the Palestinians are deeply divided among themselves. For Israel, this is a benefit, as it creates a de facto civil war among Palestinians and reduces the threat from them. But it also reduces pressure and opportunities to negotiate. There is no one on the Palestinian side who speaks authoritatively for all Palestinians. Any agreement reached with the Palestinians would, from the Israeli point of view, have to include guarantees on the cessation of terrorism. No one has ever been in a position to guarantee that — and certainly Fatah does not today speak for Hamas. Therefore, a settlement on a Palestinian state remains gridlocked because it does not deliver any meaningful advantages to the Israelis.
The Confrontation States

The second area involves the confrontation states. Israel has formal peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. It has had informal understandings with Damascus on things like Lebanon, but Israel has no permanent understanding with Syria. The Lebanese are too deeply divided to allow state-to-state understandings, but Israel has had understandings with different Lebanese factions at different times (and particularly close relations with some of the Christian factions).

Jordan is effectively an ally of Israel. It has been hostile to the Palestinians at least since 1970, when the Palestine Liberation Organization attempted to overthrow the Hashemite regime, and the Jordanians regard the Israelis and Americans as guarantors of their national security. Israel’s relationship with Egypt is publicly cooler but quite cooperative. The only group that poses any serious challenge to the Egyptian state is The Muslim Brotherhood, and hence Cairo views Hamas — a derivative of that organization — as a potential threat. The Egyptians and Israelis have maintained peaceful relations for more than 30 years, regardless of the state of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The Syrians by themselves cannot go to war with Israel and survive. Their primary interest lies in Lebanon, and when they work against Israel, they work with surrogates like Hezbollah. But their own view on an independent Palestinian state is murky, since they claim all of Palestine as part of a greater Syria — a view not particularly relevant at the moment. Therefore, Israel’s only threat on its border comes from Syria via surrogates in Lebanon and the possibility of Syria’s acquiring weaponry that would threaten Israel, such as chemical or nuclear weapons.
The Wider Muslim World

As to the third area, Israel’s position in the Muslim world beyond the confrontation states is much more secure than either it or its enemies would like to admit. Israel has close, formal strategic relations with Turkey as well as with Morocco. Turkey and Egypt are the giants of the region, and being aligned with them provides Israel with the foundations of regional security. But Israel also has excellent relations with countries where formal relations do not exist, particularly in the Arabian Peninsula.

The conservative monarchies of the region deeply distrust the Palestinians, particularly Fatah. As part of the Nasserite Pan-Arab socialist movement, Fatah on several occasions directly threatened these monarchies. Several times in the 1970s and 1980s, Israeli intelligence provided these monarchies with information that prevented assassinations or uprisings.

Saudi Arabia, for one, has never engaged in anti-Israeli activities beyond rhetoric. In the aftermath of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, Saudi Arabia and Israel forged close behind-the-scenes relations, especially because of an assertive Iran — a common foe of both the Saudis and the Israelis. Saudi Arabia has close relations with Hamas, but these have as much to do with maintaining a defensive position — keeping Hamas and its Saudi backers off Riyadh’s back — as they do with government policy. The Saudis are cautious regarding Hamas, and the other monarchies are even more so.

More to the point, Israel does extensive business with these regimes, particularly in the defense area. Israeli companies, working formally through American or European subsidiaries, carry out extensive business throughout the Arabian Peninsula. The nature of these subsidiaries is well-known on all sides, though no one is eager to trumpet this. The governments of both Israel and the Arabian Peninsula would have internal political problems if they publicized it, but a visit to Dubai, the business capital of the region, would find many Israelis doing extensive business under third-party passports. Add to this that the states of the Arabian Peninsula are afraid of Iran, and the relationship becomes even more important to all sides.

There is an interesting idea that if Israel were to withdraw from the occupied territories and create an independent Palestinian state, then perceptions of Israel in the Islamic world would shift. This is a commonplace view in Europe. The fact is that we can divide the Muslim world into three groups.

First, there are those countries that already have formal ties to Israel. Second are those that have close working relations with Israel and where formal ties would complicate rather than deepen relations. Pakistan and Indonesia, among others, fit into this class. Third are those that are absolutely hostile to Israel, such as Iran. It is very difficult to identify a state that has no informal or formal relations with Israel but would adopt these relations if there were a Palestinian state. Those states that are hostile to Israel would remain hostile after a withdrawal from the Palestinian territories, since their issue is with the existence of Israel, not its borders.

The point of all this is that Israeli security is much better than it might appear if one listened only to the rhetoric. The Palestinians are divided and at war with each other. Under the best of circumstances, they cannot threaten Israel’s survival. The only bordering countries with which the Israelis have no formal agreements are Syria and Lebanon, and neither can threaten Israel’s security. Israel has close ties to Turkey, the most powerful Muslim country in the region. It also has much closer commercial and intelligence ties with the Arabian Peninsula than is generally acknowledged, although the degree of cooperation is well-known in the region. From a security standpoint, Israel is doing well.
The Broader World

Israel is also doing extremely well in the broader world, the fourth and final area. Israel always has needed a foreign source of weapons and technology, since its national security needs outstrip its domestic industrial capacity. Its first patron was the Soviet Union, which hoped to gain a foothold in the Middle East. This was quickly followed by France, which saw Israel as an ally in Algeria and against Egypt. Finally, after 1967, the United States came to support Israel. Washington saw Israel as a threat to Syria, which could threaten Turkey from the rear at a time when the Soviets were threatening Turkey from the north. Turkey was the doorway to the Mediterranean, and Syria was a threat to Turkey. Egypt was also aligned with the Soviets from 1956 onward, long before the United States had developed a close working relationship with Israel.

That relationship has declined in importance for the Israelis. Over the years the amount of U.S. aid — roughly $2.5 billion annually — has remained relatively constant. It was never adjusted upward for inflation, and so shrunk as a percentage of Israeli gross domestic product from roughly 20 percent in 1974 to under 2 percent today. Israel’s dependence on the United States has plummeted. The dependence that once existed has become a marginal convenience. Israel holds onto the aid less for economic reasons than to maintain the concept in the United States of Israeli dependence and U.S. responsibility for Israeli security. In other words, it is more psychological and political from Israel’s point of view than an economic or security requirement.

Israel therefore has no threats or serious dependencies, save two. The first is the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a power that cannot be deterred — in other words, a nation prepared to commit suicide to destroy Israel. Given Iranian rhetoric, Iran would appear at times to be such a nation. But given that the Iranians are far from having a deliverable weapon, and that in the Middle East no one’s rhetoric should be taken all that seriously, the Iranian threat is not one the Israelis are compelled to deal with right now.

The second threat would come from the emergence of a major power prepared to intervene overtly or covertly in the region for its own interests, and in the course of doing so, redefine the regional threat to Israel. The major candidate for this role is Russia.

During the Cold War, the Soviets pursued a strategy to undermine American interests in the region. In the course of this, the Soviets activated states and groups that could directly threaten Israel. There is no significant conventional military threat to Israel on its borders unless Egypt is willing and well-armed. Since the mid-1970s, Egypt has been neither. Even if Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak were to die and be replaced by a regime hostile to Israel, Cairo could do nothing unless it had a patron capable of training and arming its military. The same is true of Syria and Iran to a great extent. Without access to outside military technology, Iran is a nation merely of frightening press conferences. With access, the entire regional equation shifts.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, no one was prepared to intervene in the Middle East the way the Soviets had. The Chinese have absolutely no interest in struggling with the United States in the Middle East, which accounts for a similar percentage of Chinese and U.S. oil consumption. It is far cheaper to buy oil in the Middle East than to engage in a geopolitical struggle with China’s major trade partner, the United States. Even if there was interest, no European powers can play this role given their individual military weakness, and Europe as a whole is a geopolitical myth. The only country that can threaten the balance of power in the Israeli geopolitical firmament is Russia.

Israel fears that if Russia gets involved in a struggle with the United States, Moscow will aid Middle Eastern regimes that are hostile to the United States as one of its levers, beginning with Syria and Iran. Far more frightening to the Israelis is the idea of the Russians once again playing a covert role in Egypt, toppling the tired Mubarak regime, installing one friendlier to their own interests, and arming it. Israel’s fundamental fear is not Iran. It is a rearmed, motivated and hostile Egypt backed by a great power.

The Russians are not after Israel, which is a sideshow for them. But in the course of finding ways to threaten American interests in the Middle East — seeking to force the Americans out of their desired sphere of influence in the former Soviet region — the Russians could undermine what at the moment is a quite secure position in the Middle East for the United States.

This brings us back to what the Israelis were doing in Georgia. They were not trying to acquire airbases from which to bomb Iran. That would take thousands of Israeli personnel in Georgia for maintenance, munitions management, air traffic control and so on. And it would take Ankara allowing the use of Turkish airspace, which isn’t very likely. Plus, if that were the plan, then stopping the Georgians from attacking South Ossetia would have been a logical move.

The Israelis were in Georgia in an attempt, in parallel with the United States, to prevent Russia’s re-emergence as a great power. The nuts and bolts of that effort involves shoring up states in the former Soviet region that are hostile to Russia, as well as supporting individuals in Russia who oppose Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s direction. The Israeli presence in Georgia, like the American one, was designed to block the re-emergence of Russia.

As soon as the Israelis got wind of a coming clash in South Ossetia, they — unlike the United States — switched policies dramatically. Where the United States increased its hostility toward Russia, the Israelis ended weapons sales to Georgia before the war. After the war, the Israelis initiated diplomacy designed to calm Russian fears. Indeed, at the moment the Israelis have a greater interest in keeping the Russians from seeing Israel as an enemy than they have in keeping the Americans happy. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney may be uttering vague threats to the Russians. But Olmert was reassuring Moscow it has nothing to fear from Israel, and therefore should not sell weapons to Syria, Iran, Hezbollah or anyone else hostile to Israel.

Interestingly, the Americans have started pumping out information that the Russians are selling weapons to Hezbollah and Syria. The Israelis have avoided that issue carefully. They can live with some weapons in Hezbollah’s hands a lot more easily than they can live with a coup in Egypt followed by the introduction of Russian military advisers. One is a nuisance; the other is an existential threat. Russia may not be in a position to act yet, but the Israelis aren’t waiting for the situation to get out of hand.

Israel is in control of the Palestinian situation and relations with the countries along its borders. Its position in the wider Muslim world is much better than it might appear. Its only enemy there is Iran, and that threat is much less clear than the Israelis say publicly. But the threat of Russia intervening in the Muslim world — particularly in Syria and Egypt — is terrifying to the Israelis. It is a risk they won’t live with if they don’t have to. So the Israelis switched their policy in Georgia with lightning speed. This could create frictions with the United States, but the Israeli-American relationship isn’t what it used to be.

2) From an old Air America buddy in Alaska .



And from a Alaska man who is a very serious cynic about all things political here is my take on Sarah.

I met and spoke with Sarah Palin about two years ago at our downtown Park Strip. It is a place for walking, carnivals, political outdoor things and such. She was cooking hot dogs at a fund raiser and introducing herself to the public as a Governor hopeful.

She came by and said the usual "Hi, I'm Sarah Palin and I am running for Governor"...and I expected her to keep on to the next person but she asked me who I was and what I did in Alaska and we ended up talking for 15 minutes about me, Air America (she was all agog!) and my career in the Army and AAM. She is a pilot (Super Cub) I'm told although all she told me about that was that she loved flying.

As I watched her over the next six months as she successfully ran for Governor I was really impressed. I was impressed greatly even before that after she resigned a good position (Alaska Gas and Oil Regulatory Commission) because a fellow Commission member (Chair of the Alaska Republican Party) misused their office and position. He was using the FAX, computers, printing room and all to promote the Republican endeavors while in a State job. That is a huge no-no in any government employment position.

She resigned and made her point and within weeks Randy Ruderich (the above bad guy) found his ass out on the street and a subsequent investigation found him guilty and he was fined $12,000. Small change actually but a giant point was made.

Next she went after our most horrible Governor ever, Governor Murkowski, and damned if she didn't beat him! All of us here in Alaska , except the Democrats, are sick of our State's corruption. That fact was shouted to the heavens after she was elected with an overwhelming point spread.

After she got into office she started after corrupt legislators and with the FBI's help we've put four of them in prison, indicted six more and the "Corrupt Bastard's Club" as they arrogantly called themselves (even had hats made with CBC on the front!) suddenly found it no fun anymore. Club membership is now in the toilet!!

The current flap which has cost her a ten point loss of popularity (she's still 82%!) was over firing a popular Commissioner of Public Safety who is responsible for our Alaska State Troopers. She fired him for no STATED reason which was her prerogative as the Gov. He served entirely at her option. She and her whole family had a bad, bad experience with a rogue Trooper who was married to Sarah's sister. His name is Trooper Wooten. This dimwit Trooper had threatened Sarah's father (death threat!), threatened Sarah ("I'll get you too"), tasered his 12 year old stepson, drove drunk in his AST cruiser, got a pass by a fellow Trooper who stopped him for erratic driving a second time while in civvies and just a host of other things not yet release d to the public. He got away with it and got another pass by the Commissioner's appointed AST Trooper Internal Affairs investigator with a tiny slap on the wrist. Five days off without pay to be exact!!

This maverick Trooper is still on the payroll but only just. The Union intervening saved his malcontent ass. He'll yet get his I'm sure. Incredible heat is being heaped on the Troopers. Public heat, not the Governors office.

The Democrats had the audacity to appoint a obviously biased investigator, Rep. "Gunny" French (so called because he lied about being in the USMC while running for the Legislature) is a staunch liberal and under the orders of Senate President Lyda Green who hates Sara. She hates Sarah because after being elected Governor Sarah told the whole Legislature in one of her first meetings with them that, quote; "All of you here need some Adult Supervision!!!". Sarah was seriously pissed and not afraid of anyone there.That played wonderfully well with Alaskans after all of our corruption and after all of her successful battles against a seriou sly entrenched corrupt government here in Alaska . It pissed off the whole Legislature though! They have stayed pissed but also afraid of her because of her popularity.

She reminds me personally of our Alaska wolverine which will fight anything in it's path if it sees fit to do so. No respect at all for size or position. Wife Cindy is in this category too. Unfortunately.

In closing I must tell you that she is the best, most moral and most focused leader I've seen since President Reagan. I feel, really strongly, that like Alaska the rest of our country will love her within a few weeks. Put simply, she represents middle America like NO leader we've ever had. I think McCain made a totally brilliant move in choosing her. She's a maverick who is probably tougher and more focused than McCain himself....and she won't be a total "Yes Man" or more appropriately, woman. McCain will love her.

In 2012 she will be President.

My best to all of you in the hurricane belt. I hope you are all OK. We just had another mini Air America reunion here in beautiful Soldotna , Alaska along the Kenai river. We'll be doing this every year now I guess. Like our Flying Tiger pal's before us there are not that many Air America guys left. I'm 71 myself this September 16. Where the hell did the years go so fast?

My best to you old buddy

Semper Fi,

George W. Murray


3) Hypocrisy in the Kultursmog
By R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR.

In this election year, "change" has been the catnip of the liberals. It renders them blissful. Change will put an end to the dominance of American politics by the "Washington insiders." And the instrumentality of that "change" will be a first-term senator of unassailable probity, Senator Obama, who curiously enough began his career a decade ago in Chicago as a cog in the political machine of Mayor Daley.

To the critics' charges that Prophet Obama is short on experience his supporters respond that he has enormous experience, which is obviously untrue. Also he has chosen as his running mate Senator Biden, a six-term Washington insider, who is a rough and tough Irish guy from the hell's kitchen of Scranton, Penn., which is about the first time that the public has heard that stretcher.

Yet these palpably absurd claims have taken on the dimension of commonplace truth in the political press. A presidential candidate running on the claim that he is new to the dirty game of politics can claim he is sufficiently experienced to hold the highest office in the land. What is more, he can claim that he is unencumbered by Washington insiders, while boasting of his Washington insider running mate, whose record, by the way, as an airhead and occasional plagiarist is apparently going to be officially overlooked.

All these contradictions trouble not at all, that institution that columnist Tony Blankley calls the mainstream moron media. What does trouble the morons is Senator McCain's choice of a running mate.

The liberals' complaint is that she, Governor Palin, is inexperienced. Further, with five children — one a pregnant teenager, another a child with Down syndrome — she has too many domestic responsibilities to be in government. She also has a son who is going off to war, and frankly I am curious as to how this young man will be held against her.

Now you might recall that of the last five presidents four became presidents after serving as governors. Until just the other day, Washington's political experts would tell you that it has been a governor's mansion not the United States Senate that has served as the training ground of the modern president. Further, you might recall that feminists were exhorting their sisters to "have it all."

Have a career and a family. Domestic chores were to be shared with one's husband. Mrs. Palin has a husband. So why can she not serve as vice president? Rep. Geraldine Ferrara had children and actually got to be a Washington insider before running for vice president. The feminists never ordered her back to the house and hearth.

Well, maybe the problem for Mrs. Palin is that troubling matter raised by the investigative reporters of the New York Times this week, to wit, her husband was arrested on a DUI charge 22 years ago. If any of you ever runs for public office, be sure you know your spouse's police record going back, presumably, to the age of reason — that would be age seven.

There is a huge whiff of hypocrisy here. That it comes from practically every outlet of the press, should remind us of our insistence at the American Spectator that so polluted with liberal politics is the political culture that it is rightly termed a Kultursmog. The workings of the smog have rarely been as visible as in the aftermath of Mr. McCain's selection of Mrs. Palin to be his running mate.

She, with her political career and lifestyle values, is a perfect blend of feminism and traditional womanhood. Yet, with astonishing speed she is being depicted in the mainstream moron media as an unacceptable vice presidential candidate. The salient charge is that she lacks experience, though one would have to be pretty thick not to notice that she has more experience in governing than the Democrats' supposedly experienced yet somehow innocent and untried presidential candidate.

Also being pumped into the Kultursmog is the canard that Mr. McCain showed bad judgment and haste in choosing the governor of Alaska. Actually Mr. McCain's campaign shows plenty of evidence that its seasoned political operators researched her carefully, and the press's supposed expose's were no surprise to anyone but the morons.

As for Mr. McCain's judgment, this is the guy who in late 2006, when the roof was falling in on us in Iraq, sent President Bush a three-page letter arguing for what has come to be called "the surge." With years of military experience (some of it firsthand) behind him, and having read recent scholarly reports on conditions in Iraq, Mr. McCain argued that an additional 30,000 troops would create the security to allow a political solution.

Almost everyone was against Mr. McCain, including Secretary of State Rice, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, some field commanders, the Iraq Study Group, members of the mainstream moron press, and the Prophet Obama. Now we know Mr. McCain, the agent of change and bedeviler of Washington insiders, was right. Alas, there is no applause in the Kultursmog.

4) Palin is completely inexperienced and utterly incapable.

Want proof? Consider the following:

Only an amateur would speak off the cuff, as she usually does. Experienced politicians avoid speaking extemporaneously whenever possible. Otherwise, the electorate might find out wh at they really think.

If Palin had meaningful experience, she would have known that the job of Ethics Commissioner is SUPPOSED to be corrupt, thus saving her the trouble of resigning in protest and then running for the highest office in the state.

Only an amateur would attain political office by actually defeating opposing candidates at the ballot box. An experienced politician would have eliminated opposition candidates by protesting technical glitches in their nominating petitions or petitioning to change the party rules on how votes are counted in primary elections or hiring groups like ACORN to register 14 people who all, coincidentally, have the same names and reside at the same abandoned and boarded-up restaurant. Did she not once consider taking lessons from the Chicago political machine that got Obama elected? Sheesh.

Any experienced politician knows that upon assuming high office, you are supposed to demand a larger plane; not sell the useless behemoth that was recently purchased by your predecessor.

Only an amateur would implement a comprehensive energy and conservation policy shortly after taking office. A more experienced p olitician would have avoided the issue outright for at least 30 years while demonizing oil companies, then banning any voting on the topic followed by a recess vacation through the next electio n

Any experienced politician knows that once elected, you are not supposed to spend your first 20 months in office actually doing the job you were elected to do. You should be campaigning for another office – as Obama could have told her.

Sarah Palin was only supposed to TALK about government reform and utter platitudes about exiling corrupt, entrenched politicians – not actually do anything about it. She demonstrated her naivete by creating a smooth running government that included representatives of other political parties, thereby making it impossible for her to find a scapegoat if anything goes wrong.

Only a political greenhorn would thumb their nose at the environmental lobby by hunting and actually shooting moose and caribou. Worse yet, she foolishly told the truth: the proposed oil drilling site in ANWR is NOT the secret location of Eden but is, in fact, a barren wasteland.

What Sarah Palin does not seem to understand is that here in the 21st century, chief executives do not negotiate beneficial business deals for their states with foreign nations or take time to actually hang out with soldiers in Iraq. That time is better spent preening for the cameras in Berlin – something else a more seasoned and experienced politician such as Obama could have told her.

Holding oil companies accountable and successfully negotiating mutually productive agreements with them proves she does not understand their true purpose: if you work with them to the benefit of your state, you will no longer have a fa celess villain to scare people into voting for you.

By creating new jobs instead of demonizing capitalism, Sarah foolishly enabled people to become more reliant on themselves and less reliant on government, hereby diminishing the dependent voter base – a classic newbie mistake. After all, if people have jobs, they will not have much need for the government and will be too busy enjoying their lives to protest the U.S., its corporations and, of course, opposing candidates.

Worse yet, Palin created a budget surplus and mailed it back to the taxpayers. Doesn't she know that if the government generates a surplus, it's doing something wrong? An experienced leader like Obama or Biden knows that taxpayer money belongs to the government – not to the people.

In another rankly amateurish move, she cooperated completely with government officials invest igating accusations made against her. Experienced politicians know that you are supposed to stonewall, obfuscate, pressure libraries to expunge any record of unsavory political associations and ship potential witnesses off to Caribbean islands – another good reason not to sell the executive jet.

Yup, she is hopelessly inexperienced.

5) POTOMAC WATCH
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL



How Palin Beat Alaska's Establishment


If you've read the press coverage of Sarah Palin, chances are you've heard plenty about her religious views and private family matters. If you want to know what drives Gov. Palin's politics, and has intrigued America, read this.
[Potomac Watch]
Martin Kozlowski

Every state has its share of crony capitalism, but Big Oil and the GOP political machine have taken that term to new heights in Alaska. The oil industry, which provides 85% of state revenues, has strived to own the government. Alaska's politicians—in particular ruling Republicans—roll in oil campaign money, lavish oil revenue on pet projects, then retire to lucrative oil jobs where they lobby for sweetheart oil deals. You can love the free market and not love this.

Alaskans have long resented this dysfunction, which has led to embarrassing corruption scandals. It has also led to a uniform belief that the political class, in hock to the oil class, fails to competently oversee Alaska's vast oil and gas wealth, the majority of which belongs to the state—or rather, Alaskan citizens.

And so it came as no surprise in 2004 when former Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski made clear he'd be working exclusively with three North Slope producers—ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and BP—to build a $25 billion pipeline to move natural gas to the lower 48. The trio had informed their political vassals that they alone would build this project (they weren't selling their gas to outsiders) and that they expected the state to reward them. Mr. Murkowski disappeared into smoky backrooms to work out the details. He refused to release information on the negotiations. When Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Irwin suggested terms of the contract were illegal, he was fired.

What Mr. Murkowski did do publicly was instruct his statehouse to change the oil and gas tax structure (taxes being a primary way Alaskans realize their oil revenue). Later, citizens would discover this was groundwork for Mr. Murkowski's pipeline contract—which would lock in that oil-requested tax package for up to 40 years, provide a $4 billion state investment, and relinquish most oversight.

Enter Mrs. Palin. The former mayor of Wasilla had been appointed by Mr. Murkowski in 2003 to the state oil and gas regulatory agency. She'd had the temerity to blow the whistle on fellow GOP Commissioner Randy Ruedrich for refusing to disclose energy dealings. Mr. Murkowski and GOP Attorney General Gregg Renkes closed ranks around Mr. Ruedrich—who also chaired the state GOP. Mrs. Palin resigned. Having thus offended the entire old boy network, she challenged the governor for his seat.

Mrs. Palin ran against the secret deal, and vowed to put the pipeline back out for competitive, transparent, bidding. She railed against cozy politics. Mr. Murkowski ran on his unpopular pipeline deal. The oil industry warned the state would never get its project without his leadership. Mrs. Palin walloped him in the primary and won office in late 2006. Around this time, news broke of a federal probe that would show oil executives had bribed lawmakers to support the Murkowski tax changes.

Among Mrs. Palin's first acts was to reinstate Mr. Irwin. By February 2007 she'd released her requirements for pipeline bidding. They were stricter, and included only a $500 million state incentive. By May a cowed state house—reeling from scandal—passed her legislation.

The producers warned they would not bid, nor would anyone else. Five groups submitted proposals. A few months before the legislature awarded its license to TransCanada this July, Conoco and BP suddenly announced they'd be building their own pipeline with no state inducements whatsoever. They'd suddenly found the money.

Mrs. Palin has meanwhile passed an ethics law. She's tightened up oil oversight. She forced the legislature to rewrite the oil tax law. That new law raised taxes on the industry, for which Mrs. Palin is now taking some knocks, but the political background here is crucial.

The GOP machine has crumbled. Attorney General Renkes resigned. Mr. Ruedrich was fined $12,000. Jim Clark—Mr. Murkowski's lead pipeline negotiator—pleaded guilty to conspiring with an oil firm. At least three legislators have been convicted. Sen. Ted Stevens is under indictment for oil entanglements, while Rep. Don Young is under investigation.

Throughout it all, Mrs. Palin has stood for reform, though not populism. She thanks oil companies and says executives who "seek maximum revenue" are "simply doing their job." She says her own job is to be a "savvy" negotiator on behalf of Alaska's citizens and to provide credible oversight. It is this combination that lets her aggressively promote new energy while retaining public trust.

Today's congressional Republicans could learn from this. The party has been plagued by earmarks, scandal and corruption. Most members have embraced the machine. That has diminished voters' trust, and in the process diminished good, conservative ideas. It is no wonder 37 million people tuned in to Mrs. Palin's convention speech. They are looking for something fresh.

6)Sarah Palin: it's go west, towards the future of conservatism
By Gerard Bakler

Her thrilling convention speech showed that the Governor of Alaska is a force to reckoned with. But she might be more than that

The best line I heard about Sarah Palin during the frenzied orgy of chauvinist condescension and gutter-crawling journalistic intrusion that greeted her nomination for vice-president a week ago came from a correspondent who knows a thing or two about Alaska.

“What's the difference between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama?”

“One is a well turned-out, good-looking, and let's be honest, pretty sexy piece of eye-candy.

“The other kills her own food.”
Background

* Outsider Palin electrifies Republicans

* 'She's like a moose going after a cabbage'

* Comment: Sarah Palin passed this test but there will be more

* This is Alaska's Margaret Thatcher

Now we know, thanks to her triumphant debut at the Republican convention on Wednesday, that Mrs Palin not only slaughters her prey. She impales its head on a stick and parades it around for her followers to jeer at. For half an hour she eviscerated Mr Obama in that hall and did it all without dropping her sweet schoolmarm smile, as if she were handing out chocolates at the end of a history lesson.

There's a powerful danger in the sheer thrill that has followed her astonishing performance that we could get carried away with John McCain's running-mate. Some of the coverage has a hyperbolic tone to it. Not since Paris handed that apple to Aphrodite has a man's selection of a woman had such implications for the future of our civilisation.

So let's stipulate one obvious and important piece of wisdom about US elections. The choice of a vice-presidential candidate rarely makes much of a difference. The pundit class waxes historical in the excitement of the moment but usually the vice-presidential choices go back to playing second banana. However mawkishly we dwell on the mortality of the presidential contenders, it is they who determine the voters' decision.

This one, to be fair, could be different. For at least the next few weeks the press will follow Mrs Palin's present and dig deeper into her past, still hoping for some morsel of stupidity or evidence of cupidity to doom her. But in the end, barring such a discovery, this is still an Obama-McCain contest.

But let me try to explain why Mrs Palin, whatever impact she might have in November, may be a figure of real consequence in our lives.

It's partly about what she represents and partly about what she has already done, but mostly about where she and her ilk might take the Republicans - and possibly America.

It never ceases to amaze me how the Left falls again and again into the old trap of underestimating politicians whom they don't understand. From Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to George Bush and Mrs Palin, they do it every time. Because these characters talk a bit funny and have ridiculously antiquated views about faith, family and nation, because they haven't spent time bending the knee to the intellectual metropolitan elites, they can't be taken seriously.

So the general expectation was that Mrs Palin would stumble on to the stage in high heels, clutching her sprawling, slightly odd family (five children! how weird), mispronounce the name of the Russian Prime Minister, mutter a few platitudes about God, and disappear for ever to a deafening chorus of sniggers.

No one paid much attention to the fact that she had been elected governor of a state. Or that she got to that office not because, unlike some politicians I could mention, her husband had been there before her, or because she bleated continuously about glass ceilings, but by challenging the entrenched interests in her own party and beating them. In almost two years as Governor she has cleaned out the Augean stables of Alaskan Government. You don't win a statewide election and enjoy approval ratings of more than 80 per cent without real political talent.

Never mind all that. She didn't have a passport! She was a former beauty queen! It was so axiomatic that she was a disaster that I was told by lots of savvy men - with deliciously unconscious sexism - that the real problem was what the choice said about Mr McCain and his judgment: cynical, irresponsible, clueless. It was as if Mrs Palin wasn't really a human being at all, but an article of Mr McCain's clothing that showed his poor taste, like wearing brown shoes with a charcoal suit.

So here's why she matters.

First of all she offers an opportunity for an ailing Republican party to reconnect with ordinary Americans. She's conservative, but her conservatism is not that of the intolerant, uncomprehending white male sort that has so hurt the party in recent years. She is much closer to a model of the lives of ordinary Americans - working mother, plainspoken everywoman juggling home and office - than any Republican leader in memory.

The contrast with Mr Obama is especially powerful. The very fact that Mrs Palin didn't go to elite schools but succeeded nonetheless - the very ordinariness with which she so piquantly jabbed Mr Obama on Wednesday - is what will make her so appealing to Americans. And as a pro-life conservative she debunks in one swoop the enduring myth that all women subscribe to the obligatory nostrums of radical feminism.

But there's more to it than that.

The Republicans have decided that they are not going to make the mistake Hillary Clinton made and run against the effervescent Mr Obama on the premise of experience.

Experience hasn't got Americans into a very comfortable place. They want change. Before he signed up to some of the less attractive Republican attitudes this year, Mr McCain's career had embodied that change - the anti-establishment candidate running against his own party. Now he is joined by a woman who, in her short career, has done the same thing.

Democrats think that Mr McCain, with the social conservative Mrs Palin, will launch an old-fashioned culture war at them, using her appealing manner to drive a populist assault on the familiar Republican issues of God, guns and gays.

Perhaps this Manichean interpretation will prove true. But I suspect that it misses the real appeal of the Republican team. The opportunity for McCain-Palin is not reaction, but reform - a reform rooted in a distant conservatism that could be due for a comeback

Hailing from Arizona and Alaska, the Republican ticket has a chance to rekindle a western conservatism different from the old Yankee paternalist sort or the Bible Belt version. They like their guns out there (some still kill their own food) and they are pro-life and deeply pro-America, of course. But at a time of grave challenges, the themes of economic freedom and opportunity, the resistance to the idea that government holds all the answers, could resonate with voters.

This is an election, as the Democrats have realised all along, about an America on the cusp of change. With the moose-hunting, establishment-taunting Mrs Palin at his side, Mr McCain might represent a bigger change than the one that his opponents are offering.

7) The master strategist
By Caroline B. Glick



Both the challenges of war and the challenges of politics are challenges of leadership. And both military strategists and political strategists agree that the most basic leadership challenge in both arenas is to know and understand yourself - your strengths and your weaknesses - and to know your opponents and their strengths and weaknesses. While this may seem like basic common sense, it is quite amazing to see how often it is ignored.

The rarity of this sort of strategic wisdom in the public sphere was brought to a fore this week in the political uproar generated in by Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain's selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running-mate. McCain's selection of Palin was remarkable because in selecting her from a list of possible choices, he made a decision that embraced rather than ignored this most basic challenge of leadership.

Given that the universality of the logic which informed McCain's selection of Palin is followed more in the breach than in practice, it is worth analyzing his choice both for what it tells us about how his leadership skills, and about the nature of his domestic opposition. But it is also useful to reflect on his choice of Palin in order to draw lessons that can be applied more widely by non-leftist political and military strategists throughout the free world.

In months preceding McCain's announcement of Palin as his running-mate, his central challenges as the Republican presidential nominee came into focus. In Senator Barack Obama, McCain faces a young, vigorous, and charismatic opponent who has successfully energized his supporters and the powerful liberal media establishment. Owing to that excitement, Obama has raised unprecedented amounts of campaign contributions. He has also rallied tens of thousands of loyal foot soldiers who have volunteered to serve his campaign. Both the donors and the volunteers are essential for winning voters and bringing them to the ballot boxes on November 4.

Obama's velvet tongue is also a formidable asset. His ability to mesmerize audiences with soaring rhetoric is compared favorably to president John F. Kennedy's eloquence.

Obama's other massive advantage is the liberal US media. Since he first launched his primary campaign, the liberal media - which include the major US newspapers, television news networks and two out of three cable news networks - have been actively advocating on his behalf while downplaying his opponents.

But all of these formidable strengths are matched by countervailing vulnerabilities. While Obama's supporters are energized, the drawn-out primary election battle with Senator Hillary Clinton splintered the Democratic Party base. Whereas most of Clinton's voters will no doubt vote for Obama in the general election, their support is more tenuous in swing states where Obama's cultural cache is less appealing.

And while Obama is a stunning speaker, his record of actual accomplishments is all-but nonexistent. The combination of his extraordinary speeches and his ordinary empty resume engenders a sense that Obama suffers from extreme arrogance.

Then too, while the media has done its best to project a positive and credible image of Obama, his past political associations with radicals like Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayres and corrupt influence peddler Tony Rezko call both his patriotism and his honesty into question.

For his part, McCain's balance of assets and deficits is almost the polar opposite of Obama's. He has a wealth of leadership experience and demonstrable political accomplishments. His patriotism is massively recognized and respected.

On the other hand, McCain has been unable to generate excitement in his party. His reputation as a maverick has often been earned at the expense of his political base which is overwhelmingly socially conservative and suspects him of being a closet liberal. This has made campaign fundraising a challenge, and raised concerns that many conservatives will simply not vote on Election Day.

Moreover, McCain has never distinguished himself as a great communicator. His war wounds, which prevent him from raising his arms above his shoulders, make him appear even older than his 72 years. When compared to the vigorous, handsome 46-year-old Obama, McCain tends to look and sound like an old man.

This age and rhetorical distinction is only magnified by the disparity of media coverage of the two candidates' campaigns. The media have a pronounced and documented tendency to play up McCain's weaknesses and Obama's strengths while downplaying McCain's strengths and Obama's weaknesses.

In light of these realities, McCain's strategic challenge has been on the one hand, to transform Obama's strengths into weaknesses while bringing Obama's actual weaknesses to the public's attention in a persuasive way. On the other hand, McCain needs to unify his own party around his candidacy without alienating independents and Democrats whose votes can be won.

In recent weeks, largely through the well-conceived, satirical use of television ads, McCain sought to meet these basic challenges. By comparing Obama's speech in Berlin to Moses' parting of the Red Sea, he playfully, yet effectively drew attention to Obama's arrogance and called the credibility of his rhetorical skill into question. Other ads effectively brought Obama's slim record of actual achievements into view. Still other ads sought to attract disaffected Clinton voters by using her own primary campaign denunciations of Obama's record and radical associations.

Most importantly, in the lead-up to Palin's selection as his running-mate, McCain has successfully provoked a public debate about the fairness of the media's support of Obama.

McCain's selection of Palin as his running mate then came after he had set the conditions for a strategic assault on Obama by successfully weakening him and discrediting his support base. The surprise entry of a young, accomplished woman, with a compelling personal story who was all but unknown to the national audience placed the Obama campaign and particularly his media supporters in a state of shock. And in their shocked reaction to her selection, the liberal media destroyed their own credibility - not to mention likeability - among the general public.

The media claimed that McCain's choice of Palin was ill-conceived for three reasons. First, they argued that the popular Alaska governor has no experience in foreign policy and with only two years in state-wide office, little demonstrable experience in governing. Yet their assertions merely highlighted Obama's own inexperience while amplifying McCain's wealth of experience.

Second, the media insinuated that Palin is unfit for office because she has an infant child with Down Syndrome. Either she will be a bad mother, or she will be a bad Vice President, they claimed. Yet in so arguing, the liberal media merely demonstrated their own hypocrisy. While claiming the mantle of feminism, the media commentators belittled Palin's right to choose -- together with her macho, blue collar husband -- to serve her country as a mother of a child with special needs. Their harping on her personal family choices angered the vital demographic of middle class, working mothers who felt personally insulted by their attacks on Palin.

Finally, of course, there was the media circus generated by Palin's belated announcement that her teenage daughter Bristol is pregnant and engaged to marry her teenage boyfriend. The news of her daughter's pregnancy evoked the ugliest media assault on a teenager in recent memory. Here too, the media's pillorying of Palin as a lousy mother and her daughter as morally challenged discredited the media while increasing Palin's sympathy with voters shocked by this scurrilous assault on her daughter and her family values.

At the same time as McCain's selection of Palin as his running-mate pushed the media over the edge, it profoundly rallied his own Republican base to his side. Palin's opposition to abortion, her membership in the National Rifle Association, her remoteness from Washington, her Pentecostal faith, together with the media attacks on her family gave social conservatives reason to be enthusiastic about the prospect of a McCain candidacy.

It bears noting that that the sight of Palin's pregnant daughter appearing happily with her clean-cut fiancé at the Republican Convention on Wednesday served to reinforce the fact that women who are "pro-choice" actually have the choice not to abort unplanned pregnancies. Their presence in the hall demonstrated that embracing the responsibility of parenthood even at an early age can be a source of happiness and personal fulfillment for both fathers and mothers. That image alone no doubt ensured that on Election Day, tens of thousands of volunteers will work to bring voters to the ballot boxes for McCain.

Indeed, the value of the image is so enormous, that the possibility arises that using his understanding of the media as an adversary and his understanding of his own political base, McCain viewed Bristol Palin's pregnancy as an electoral asset.

In the midst of the maelstrom swirling around her in the days that preceded her address to the Republican Convention, it was noted repeatedly that Palin's performance Wednesday evening would make or break McCain's candidacy. If she failed to present herself in a compelling fashion, she would destroy McCain's chances of election because her failure would serve as an indictment of his judgment. But if she succeeded, she would advance significantly the Republican ticket's chances of winning on November 4.

Many argued that McCain took an unnecessary gamble by placing such an enormous burden on her shoulders. Yet the fact is that McCain no doubt knew precisely what her capabilities are as a speaker. Unlike the media, he claims that he has been watching her political rise for years. He knew that she was capable of rising to the challenge. Far from a gamble, his move was a stroke of brilliance which showed an acute understanding of who Palin is, how he himself is perceived, and what motivates both the media and his own party base.

McCain's undoing of the elite, leftist media provides a universal lesson for contending with the Left. At base, the Left's ideology, whether relating to women's rights, human rights, academic inquiry or war and peace is not universal but tribal. Moreover, when the Left is challenged on any one of its signature issues, because it cannot actually make a case for the universal applicability or even logic of its views, it tends instead to embrace the politics of personal destruction while ignoring the obvious contradictions between its stated beliefs and actual behavior.

Although a necessary component of political warfare against the Left is the ability to expose its hypocrisy, exposing its hypocrisy alone will not bring victory. Leaders and policies capable of supplanting the Leftist elite and their failed ideas are also required. In the case at hand, had Palin been perceived as under-qualified to serve as Vice President on Wednesday night, McCain's chances of winning the Presidency would have been vastly diminished despite McCain's successful unmasking of the Left's hypocrisy.

McCain's strategic grasp of the requirements for a successful presidential race provide an important lesson for policymakers and political leaders. To win in politics and war you must be willing to acknowledge both your strengths and your weaknesses and those of your opponent. It is never easy to look reality in the face. But unless leaders are willing to do so, they will never win. What's more, they will lose.


8) Georgia and Kosovo: A Single Intertwined Crisis
By George Friedman

The Russo-Georgian war was rooted in broad geopolitical processes. In large part it was simply the result of the cyclical reassertion of Russian power. The Russian empire — czarist and Soviet — expanded to its borders in the 17th and 19th centuries. It collapsed in 1992. The Western powers wanted to make the disintegration permanent. It was inevitable that Russia would, in due course, want to reassert its claims. That it happened in Georgia was simply the result of circumstance.

There is, however, another context within which to view this, the context of Russian perceptions of U.S. and European intentions and of U.S. and European perceptions of Russian capabilities. This context shaped the policies that led to the Russo-Georgian war. And those attitudes can only be understood if we trace the question of Kosovo, because the Russo-Georgian war was forged over the last decade over the Kosovo question.

Yugoslavia broke up into its component republics in the early 1990s. The borders of the republics did not cohere to the distribution of nationalities. Many — Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and so on — found themselves citizens of republics where the majorities were not of their ethnicities and disliked the minorities intensely for historical reasons. Wars were fought between Croatia and Serbia (still calling itself Yugoslavia because Montenegro was part of it), Bosnia and Serbia and Bosnia and Croatia. Other countries in the region became involved as well.

One conflict became particularly brutal. Bosnia had a large area dominated by Serbs. This region wanted to secede from Bosnia and rejoin Serbia. The Bosnians objected and an internal war in Bosnia took place, with the Serbian government involved. This war involved the single greatest bloodletting of the bloody Balkan wars, the mass murder by Serbs of Bosnians.

Here we must pause and define some terms that are very casually thrown around. Genocide is the crime of trying to annihilate an entire people. War crimes are actions that violate the rules of war. If a soldier shoots a prisoner, he has committed a war crime. Then there is a class called “crimes against humanity.” It is intended to denote those crimes that are too vast to be included in normal charges of murder or rape. They may not involve genocide, in that the annihilation of a race or nation is not at stake, but they may also go well beyond war crimes, which are much lesser offenses. The events in Bosnia were reasonably deemed crimes against humanity. They did not constitute genocide and they were more than war crimes.

At the time, the Americans and Europeans did nothing about these crimes, which became an internal political issue as the magnitude of the Serbian crimes became clear. In this context, the Clinton administration helped negotiate the Dayton Accords, which were intended to end the Balkan wars and indeed managed to go quite far in achieving this. The Dayton Accords were built around the principle that there could be no adjustment in the borders of the former Yugoslav republics. Ethnic Serbs would live under Bosnian rule. The principle that existing borders were sacrosanct was embedded in the Dayton Accords.

In the late 1990s, a crisis began to develop in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Over the years, Albanians had moved into the province in a broad migration. By 1997, the province was overwhelmingly Albanian, although it had not only been historically part of Serbia but also its historical foundation. Nevertheless, the Albanians showed significant intentions of moving toward either a separate state or unification with Albania. Serbia moved to resist this, increasing its military forces and indicating an intention to crush the Albanian resistance.

There were many claims that the Serbians were repeating the crimes against humanity that were committed in Bosnia. The Americans and Europeans, burned by Bosnia, were eager to demonstrate their will. Arguing that something between crimes against humanity and genocide was under way — and citing reports that between 10,000 and 100,000 Kosovo Albanians were missing or had been killed — NATO launched a campaign designed to stop the killings. In fact, while some killings had taken place, the claims by NATO of the number already killed were false. NATO might have prevented mass murder in Kosovo. That is not provable. They did not, however, find that mass murder on the order of the numbers claimed had taken place. The war could be defended as a preventive measure, but the atmosphere under which the war was carried out overstated what had happened.

The campaign was carried out without U.N. sanction because of Russian and Chinese opposition. The Russians were particularly opposed, arguing that major crimes were not being committed and that Serbia was an ally of Russia and that the air assault was not warranted by the evidence. The United States and other European powers disregarded the Russian position. Far more important, they established the precedent that U.N. sanction was not needed to launch a war (a precedent used by George W. Bush in Iraq). Rather — and this is the vital point — they argued that NATO support legitimized the war.

This transformed NATO from a military alliance into a quasi-United Nations. What happened in Kosovo was that NATO took on the role of peacemaker, empowered to determine if intervention was necessary, allowed to make the military intervention, and empowered to determine the outcome. Conceptually, NATO was transformed from a military force into a regional multinational grouping with responsibility for maintenance of regional order, even within the borders of states that are not members. If the United Nations wouldn’t support the action, the NATO Council was sufficient.

Since Russia was not a member of NATO, and since Russia denied the urgency of war, and since Russia was overruled, the bombing campaign against Kosovo created a crisis in relations with Russia. The Russians saw the attack as a unilateral attack by an anti-Russian alliance on a Russian ally, without sound justification. Then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin was not prepared to make this into a major confrontation, nor was he in a position to. The Russians did not so much acquiesce as concede they had no options.

The war did not go as well as history records. The bombing campaign did not force capitulation and NATO was not prepared to invade Kosovo. The air campaign continued inconclusively as the West turned to the Russians to negotiate an end. The Russians sent an envoy who negotiated an agreement consisting of three parts. First, the West would halt the bombing campaign. Second, Serbian army forces would withdraw and be replaced by a multinational force including Russian troops. Third, implicit in the agreement, the Russian troops would be there to guarantee Serbian interests and sovereignty.

As soon as the agreement was signed, the Russians rushed troops to the Pristina airport to take up their duties in the multinational force — as they had in the Bosnian peacekeeping force. In part because of deliberate maneuvers and in part because no one took the Russians seriously, the Russians never played the role they believed had been negotiated. They were never seen as part of the peacekeeping operation or as part of the decision-making system over Kosovo. The Russians felt doubly betrayed, first by the war itself, then by the peace arrangements.

The Kosovo war directly effected the fall of Yeltsin and the rise of Vladimir Putin. The faction around Putin saw Yeltsin as an incompetent bungler who allowed Russia to be doubly betrayed. The Russian perception of the war directly led to the massive reversal in Russian policy we see today. The installation of Putin and Russian nationalists from the former KGB had a number of roots. But fundamentally it was rooted in the events in Kosovo. Most of all it was driven by the perception that NATO had now shifted from being a military alliance to seeing itself as a substitute for the United Nations, arbitrating regional politics. Russia had no vote or say in NATO decisions, so NATO’s new role was seen as a direct challenge to Russian interests.

Thus, the ongoing expansion of NATO into the former Soviet Union and the promise to include Ukraine and Georgia into NATO were seen in terms of the Kosovo war. From the Russian point of view, NATO expansion meant a further exclusion of Russia from decision-making, and implied that NATO reserved the right to repeat Kosovo if it felt that human rights or political issues required it. The United Nations was no longer the prime multinational peacekeeping entity. NATO assumed that role in the region and now it was going to expand all around Russia.

Then came Kosovo’s independence. Yugoslavia broke apart into its constituent entities, but the borders of its nations didn’t change. Then, for the first time since World War II, the decision was made to change Serbia’s borders, in opposition to Serbian and Russian wishes, with the authorizing body, in effect, being NATO. It was a decision avidly supported by the Americans.

The initial attempt to resolve Kosovo’s status was the round of negotiations led by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari that officially began in February 2006 but had been in the works since 2005. This round of negotiations was actually started under U.S. urging and closely supervised from Washington. In charge of keeping Ahtisaari’s negotiations running smoothly was Frank G. Wisner, a diplomat during the Clinton administration. Also very important to the U.S. effort was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried, another leftover from the Clinton administration and a specialist in Soviet and Polish affairs.

In the summer of 2007, when it was obvious that the negotiations were going nowhere, the Bush administration decided the talks were over and that it was time for independence. On June 10, 2007, Bush said that the end result of negotiations must be “certain independence.” In July 2007, Daniel Fried said that independence was “inevitable” even if the talks failed. Finally, in September 2007, Condoleezza Rice put it succinctly: “There’s going to be an independent Kosovo. We’re dedicated to that.” Europeans took cues from this line.

How and when independence was brought about was really a European problem. The Americans set the debate and the Europeans implemented it. Among Europeans, the most enthusiastic about Kosovo independence were the British and the French. The British followed the American line while the French were led by their foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who had also served as the U.N. Kosovo administrator. The Germans were more cautiously supportive.

On Feb. 17, 2008, Kosovo declared independence and was recognized rapidly by a small number of European states and countries allied with the United States. Even before the declaration, the Europeans had created an administrative body to administer Kosovo. The Europeans, through the European Union, micromanaged the date of the declaration.

On May 15, during a conference in Ekaterinburg, the foreign ministers of India, Russia and China made a joint statement regarding Kosovo. It was read by the Russian host minister, Sergei Lavrov, and it said: “In our statement, we recorded our fundamental position that the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo contradicts Resolution 1244. Russia, India and China encourage Belgrade and Pristina to resume talks within the framework of international law and hope they reach an agreement on all problems of that Serbian territory.”

The Europeans and Americans rejected this request as they had rejected all Russian arguments on Kosovo. The argument here was that the Kosovo situation was one of a kind because of atrocities that had been committed. The Russians argued that the level of atrocity was unclear and that, in any case, the government that committed them was long gone from Belgrade. More to the point, the Russians let it be clearly known that they would not accept the idea that Kosovo independence was a one-of-a-kind situation and that they would regard it, instead, as a new precedent for all to follow.

The problem was not that the Europeans and the Americans didn’t hear the Russians. The problem was that they simply didn’t believe them — they didn’t take the Russians seriously. They had heard the Russians say things for many years. They did not understand three things. First, that the Russians had reached the end of their rope. Second, that Russian military capability was not what it had been in 1999. Third, and most important, NATO, the Americans and the Europeans did not recognize that they were making political decisions that they could not support militarily.

For the Russians, the transformation of NATO from a military alliance into a regional United Nations was the problem. The West argued that NATO was no longer just a military alliance but a political arbitrator for the region. If NATO does not like Serbian policies in Kosovo, it can — at its option and in opposition to U.N. rulings — intervene. It could intervene in Serbia and it intended to expand deep into the former Soviet Union. NATO thought that because it was now a political arbiter encouraging regimes to reform and not just a war-fighting system, Russian fears would actually be assuaged. To the contrary, it was Russia’s worst nightmare. Compensating for all this was the fact that NATO had neglected its own military power. Now, Russia could do something about it.

At the beginning of this discourse, we explained that the underlying issues behind the Russo-Georgian war went deep into geopolitics and that it could not be understood without understanding Kosovo. It wasn’t everything, but it was the single most significant event behind all of this. The war of 1999 was the framework that created the war of 2008.

The problem for NATO was that it was expanding its political reach and claims while contracting its military muscle. The Russians were expanding their military capability (after 1999 they had no place to go but up) and the West didn’t notice. In 1999, the Americans and Europeans made political decisions backed by military force. In 2008, in Kosovo, they made political decisions without sufficient military force to stop a Russian response. Either they underestimated their adversary or — even more amazingly — they did not see the Russians as adversaries despite absolutely clear statements the Russians had made. No matter what warning the Russians gave, or what the history of the situation was, the West couldn’t take the Russians seriously.

It began in 1999 with war in Kosovo and it ended in 2008 with the independence of Kosovo. When we study the history of the coming period, the war in Kosovo will stand out as a turning point. Whatever the humanitarian justification and the apparent ease of victory, it set the stage for the rise of Putin and the current and future crises.

9) Some Days, You Get The Bear...
By Elliot Chodoff


…and, as the Georgians learned to their dismay, some days the bear gets you.

The Russian onslaught brought back images of the Cold War and the Soviet “evil empire” threatening to roll over opposition, as it did in Eastern Europe and around the rim of its borders. This attack, taking place nearly two decades after the fall of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, surprised those who still clung to the belief that we have entered a new era in which major powers would no longer smash their way into their neighbors’ territory. Fukuyama, the prophet of “The End of History,” was apparently wrong. Again.

The Russians used tried and true methods of disinformation, deception, and old fashioned military force to gain their objectives. Taking a page out of the pre-WWII German playbook, the Russians instigated a mini-crisis, let it boil over a bit, and then launched an attack to “rescue” their ethnic kin who were being “slaughtered” by the Georgian army. After the fighting was over, the massacres turned out to be heavily exaggerated, but by then, of course, the war was over. The model of Nazi operations in Sudetenland, 1938, and Danzig, 1939 come immediately to mind. Further, the timing of the Russian offensive, while many world leaders were in Beijing for the Olympic ceremonies, is reminiscent of Hitler’s penchant for Friday land grabs. As the saying went, “the British (Foreign Office functionaries) take their weekends in the country, so Hitler takes his countries on the weekend.”

The Russian attack had numerous objectives, all apparently achieved: returning Russian honor after the fall of the USSR, putting NATO and the West on notice that there is a new/old player in the game, warning neighbors like Ukraine, the Baltic States, and Poland not to get too chummy with NATO, and flexing muscles in border areas that could threaten Russian security in the future. Last, and very far from least, the operation put the Russians in line to control the critical oil conduits that run from the Caspian Sea through Georgia to Turkey.

An issue that has been generally ignored by the diplomatic commentators is that the Russians launched an old-fashioned, armor-based, ground offensive. Apparently, the recurring predictions of the death of the tank were, once again, premature. While it is true that warfare has undergone many transformations in the past few decades, the shift away from heavy armored forces to lighter counterinsurgency units may prove to be a severe strategic error.

Insurgencies, guerrillas, and terrorists certainly should not be ignored, and the forces needed to confront them – light infantry with high mobility capabilities – need to be expanded, trained, and adequately equipped. But the old threat, especially to coherent states that can not be easily undermined by insurgencies, remains the possibility of waves of tanks backed by armored infantry and mobile artillery on the ground and supported by aircraft and attack helicopters. An insurgency may bleed a country and may even succeed over a long period of time, but, as the Russians demonstrated this past month, an armored force can conquer in less time than it takes for the world to rally support for the victim. A state that is unprepared for that eventuality from a well-equipped, bellicose neighbor is living an extremely precarious existence.

10) Our World: Iran's American Protector
By Caroline Glick

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates is the darling of Bush administration
foes. Gushing about Gates in a recent column, Washington Post writer David
Ignatius crooned, "Gates is an anomaly in this lame-duck administration. He
is still firing on all cylinders, working to repair the damage done at the
Pentagon by his arrogant and aloof predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld." Ignatius
called on the next administration to give Gates a major role leading its
foreign and defense policy.

It can only be hoped that Ignatius's advice will be ignored.

Today the US's strategic posture lies in tatters in the aftermath of
Russia's invasion of US-ally Georgia. The fact that aside from issuing
strong reprimands the administration has no policy for contending with
Russia's aggression shows clearly that the move caught Washington completely
by surprise.

That Russia was apparently able to invade Georgia without US foreknowledge
is a stinging indictment of all US intelligence agencies. As was the case
before the September 11, 2001 attacks, again US intelligence agencies have
failed their country.

But America's intelligence agencies' failure to comprehend the significance
of Russia's intentions was not theirs alone. It was shared as well by Gates
and by his State Department counterpart Condoleezza Rice. Both senior
cabinet secretaries simply failed to notice what Russia was doing, or how
its actions would influence US interests.

GATES'S DENIAL of Moscow's strategic hostility to the US was made clear as
late as last month. As Russia built up its forces along Georgia's borders,
Gates released his new National Defense Strategy which he presented as "a
blueprint for success" for the next administration.

Gates's strategy paper, which foresees asymmetric campaigns against
non-state actors comprising the bulk of US military operations in the coming
decades, raised the hackles of US military commanders when he turned his
attention to Russia and China. In Gates's view, the best way to confront
these authoritarian rising powers is to deny that they constitute a threat
to US interests. Rather than building US forces to confront them, Gates
advocates building "collaborative and cooperative relationships" with them.

Gates's penchant for collaborating and cooperating with US rivals and
enemies is no doubt the reason that the Left supports him so
enthusiastically. Since he assumed office after the November 2006 elections,
betraying allies as part of a strategy of appeasing US enemies and rivals
has been the focus of his efforts.

Ahead of his appointment to the Pentagon, Gates was a member of the Iraq
Study Group led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton. The thrust of the ISG
report, issued on December 6, 2006 - the day he was sworn into office - was
that for the US to maintain its credibility in the Middle East and
generally, it was necessary to appease its enemies by betraying its allies.

While the ISG report was ostensibly focused on Iraq, its real focus was
Israel. Although the report advocated removing all US combat brigades from
Iraq by the beginning of 2008, it wasn't wedded to the notion. It allowed
the possibility of a temporary surge of US forces to secure Baghdad and so
enable the Iraqi government to assert control over the country and build its
military.

But while ambivalent on Iraq, the Baker-Hamilton report was unyielding in
its insistence that the US distance itself from Israel. The report argued
that to gain regional - and indeed international - support for the project
of stabilizing Iraq, it was necessary for the US to appease the Syrians, the
Iranians, the Saudis, the Egyptians and the Jordanians. And the best way to
do that, they claimed, was to disembowel Israel. The report recommended that
Israel be forced to give Syria the Golan Heights and coerced into accepting
a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem which would be run
by a Hamas-Fatah "national unity government."

Like Baker and Hamilton, Gates was also not wed to the idea of a speedy
withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq. Instead he supported the surge and
for that he has gained great acclaim in Washington. But also like Baker and
Hamilton, Gates has been unyielding in his push to distance the US from
Israel. Indeed, in his National Defense Strategy, Israel is not listed as a
US ally.

GATES'S PUSH to abandon the US's alliance with Israel in favor of embracing
Iraq's Iranian and Arab neighbors is nowhere more apparent than in his
actions regarding Iran's nuclear weapons program. And those actions are
simply a continuation of his efforts before entering office. In 2004, Gates
co-authored a study for the Council on Foreign Relations with Israel foe
Zbigniew Brzezinski calling for the US to draw closer to Iran at Israel's
expense.

Over the past nine months, largely due to Gates's advocacy, this has been
the essential thrust of US policy toward Iran and Israel. The policy
involves downplaying the urgency of the threat of Iran acquiring nuclear
weapons, understating the progress Iran has made toward nuclear capabilities
and openly working to appease Iran through US support and involvement with
EU negotiations with Teheran.

The first US assault on what had until then been a more or less united
public front with Israel on the issue of Iran's nuclear program came with
the publication of the US's National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear
weapons program last November. In the face of Iran's open calls to destroy
Israel and the US, its rapid progress in its uranium enrichment activities,
its command of the insurgency in Iraq, of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in
the Palestinian Authority, and its ballistic missile buildup, the NIE
claimed that Iran had ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

The publication of the NIE was a body blow not only to Israel's efforts to
isolate Iran and forge an international consensus about the need to confront
Teheran. It was also a precision strike against the US's own stated
objective of building a consensus for sanctions against Iran in the UN
Security Council. Gates was responsible for the report's public
dissemination.

IN RECENT months, as Iran has ratcheted up its genocidal rhetoric, taken
over the Lebanese government, strengthened its alliance with Syria, built up
its offensive forces, doubled the scale of its uranium enrichment, and
strengthened its attachment to Russia, Gates has moved out of the shadows
and into the spotlight. Assisted by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Adm. Michael Mullen and Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell,
Gates has made defending Iran's nuclear installations against the prospect
of any Israeli or US attack his primary concern.

Gates has been a constant proponent of "engaging" Iran. In May for instance,
he told a group of retired US diplomats, "We need to figure out a way to
develop some leverage... and then sit down and talk with them. If there is
going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can't go to a
discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they
need anything from us."

Following Gates's clear lead, the US not only stopped being "the demander,"
it has become Iran's supplicant. And it has been repaid with increased
Iranian extremism. Iran met the US's decision to openly join the Europeans
in offering it everything from nuclear reactors to World Trade Organization
membership last month with intensified military action directed most
recently against the US's allies in the Persian Gulf. Iran has threatened
international oil shipments through the Straits of Hormuz, has launched a
satellite and tested still more missiles and again and again called for
Israel's destruction.

BUT THIS hasn't thwarted Gates. Since Iran itself demonstrated the falsity
of the National Intelligence Estimate, Gates moved from subtle to open
opposition to US military strikes against its nuclear installations.
Together with Mullen, in recent months he has stated repeatedly that
attacking Iran would be a disaster for the US. And he has not stopped there.
Gates has used his authority as defense secretary to also block any
possibility that Israel will attack Iran.

In June the Pentagon leaked information about the IAF's massive exercise in
the Mediterranean which it claimed was a rehearsal of an attack against
Iran. The same month, McConnell and Mullen visited Israel and rejected
requests for military equipment and other support that would improve its
ability to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.

Asserting that as far as the obviously infallible US intelligence estimates
are concerned, Iran's nuclear program is not nearing completion, Mullen and
McConnell also told their interlocutors that the US opposes an Israeli
strike against Iran. As a consequence the US will deny the IDF the right to
fly over Iraqi airspace.

Alarmed by the administration's swift slide toward Iran in recent months,
senior IDF commanders and cabinet ministers have streamed into Washington.
Last month Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi spent a week in
Washington trying to convince the US to change course. After Ashkenazi
failed to deliver the goods, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister
Tzipi Livni and Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz all converged on
Washington. They too failed.

To hide the US's now openly pro-Iranian position from the public, Mullen
gave Ashkenazi an unrequested Legion of Merit decoration. Gates agreed to
supply Israel with advanced anti-missile defense systems that could be
deployed as early as 2011 if funding is steady. If deployed successfully,
these anti-missile systems should be able to intercept up to 90 percent of
incoming Iranian nuclear warheads.

SPEAKING OF Russia's invasion of Georgia over the weekend, Gates claimed
that Russia's actions would harm its relations with the US and the West "for
years to come." But at the same time, he demurred from mentioning even one
concrete step that the administration is considering adopting against
Russia, arguing that "there is no need to rush into everything."

The administration has been accused by its critics of ignoring the strategic
alliance among Russia, Iran and Syria. That alliance has been made most
apparent by Russia's assistance to Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile
programs, and its provision of sophisticated air-defense systems to both
countries. Yet it is more likely that the administration is acutely aware of
that alliance. Bush has simply decided to follow Gates's recommendation of
appeasing all three.

Gates's position presents a daunting challenge to Israel and indeed to the
US. If Iran is to be prevented from carrying out genocide, and if Bush hopes
to leave office with even a shred of international credibility, Gates must
be shunted firmly to the side.

11) Calling an illegal alien an "undocumented immigrant"
is like calling a drug dealer an "unlicensed pharmacist"

12) 2 MICHELLES, 2 AMERICAS & SHAME vs. PRIDE
By Michelle Malkin


Like Michelle Obama, I am a "woman of color." Like Michelle Obama, I am a working mother of two young children. Like Michelle Obama, I am a member of the 13th generation of Americans born s inc e the founding of our great nation.




Unlike Michelle Obama, I can't keep track of the number of times I've been proud - really proud - of my country s inc e I was born and privileged to live in it. At a recent speech in Milwaukee on behalf of her husband's Democratic presidential campaign, Mrs Obama remarked, "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change."




Mrs. Obama's statement was met with warm applause from other Barack supporters who have also apparently been dev oid of pride in their country during their adult lifetimes. Or maybe it was just a Pavlovian response to the word "change." What a sad, empty, narcissistic, ungrateful, unthinking lot!




I'm just seven years younger than Mrs. Obama. We've grown up and lived in the same era. And yet, her self-absorbed attitude is completely foreign to me. What planet is she living on? S inc e when was now the only time the American people have ever been "hungry for change"?




Michelle, ma belle, Barack is not the center of the universe. Newsflash: The Obamas did not invent "change" any more than Hillary invented "leadership" or John McCain invented "straight talk." We were both adults when the Berlin Wall fell, Michelle. That was earth-shattering change. We've lived through two decades' worth of peaceful, if contentious, election cycles under the rule of law, which have brought about "change" and upheaval, both good and bad. We were adults through several launches of the space shuttle, in case you were snoozing. And as adults, we've witnessed and benefited from dizzyingly rapid advances in technology, communications, science, and medicine pioneered by American entrepreneurs who yearned to change the world and succeeded. You want "change"? Go ask the patients whose lives have been improved and extended by American pharmaceutical companies that have flourished under the best economic system in the world.




If American ingenuity, a robust constitutional republic, and the fall of communism don't do it for you, hon, then how about American heroism and sacrifice? How about every Memorial Day? Every Veterans Day? Every Independence Day? Every Medal of Honor ceremony? Has she never attended a welcome-home ceremony for the troops? For me, there's the thrill of the Blue Angels roaring over cloudless skies. And the somber awe felt amid the hallowed waters that surround the sunken U.S.S. Arizona at the Pearl Harbor memorial.




Every naturalization ceremony I've attended, where hundreds of new Americans raised their hands to swear an oath of allegiance to this land of liberty, has been a moment of pride for me. So have the awesome displays of American compassion at home and around the world. When millions of Americans rallied to help victims of the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia - including members of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group that sped from Hong Kong to assist survivors - my heart filled with pride. It did again when the citizens of Houston opened their arms to Hurricane Katrina victims and folks across the country rushed to their churches and offices of the Salvation Army and Red Cross to volunteer.




How about American resilience? Does that not make you proud, Michelle? Only a heart of stone could be unmoved by the strength, valor, and determination displayed in New York , Washington , D.C., and Shanksville , Pa. , on September 11, 2001.




I believe it was Michael Kinsley who quipped that a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth. In this case, it's what happens when an elite Democratic politician's wife says what a significant portion of the party's base really believes to be the truth: America is more a source of shame than pride.




Michelle Obama has achieved enormous professional success, political influence, and personal acclaim in America . Ivy League educated, she's been lauded by Essence magazine as one of the 25 World's Most Inspiring Women; by Vanity Fair as one of the ten World's Best-Dressed Women; and named one of "The Harvard 100" most influential alumni. She has had an amazingly blessed life. But, you wouldn't know it from her campaign rhetoric and her griping about her and her husband's student loans.




For years, we've heard liberals get offended at any challenge to their patriotism. And so they are again aggrieved and rising to explain a way Mrs. Obama's remarks.




Lady Michelle and her defenders protest too much!

Michelle Malkin is a newspaper columnist





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