Future inflation,disappointment being planted !

Get ready for change alright - perhaps not the kind our founders envisioned but what the hell, change is in the air. There is nothing truly substantive in either candidate's rhetoric that justifies much enthusiasm.

Obama has said he wants to fight for the little guy. He will do so by taking wealth from 5% to redistribute to 95%, taking more citizens off the tax roles and write them checks. That is impressive and populist economic nonsense. He will also bring troops home earlier from Iraq than is probably wise and is the favorite candidate of European socialists who love the opportunity of keeping their heads in the sand and ignoring reality and a goodly number of citizens from Middle East nations who favor Jihad.

McCain, on the other hand, wants to cut taxes by sticking with GW's tax plan, says little about cutting the size of government knowing that Pelosi and Reid and the Democrats will not permit that to happen, and does offer a more sensible health program and tax policy of voluntarism but only the former would pass muster should he be elected. McCain might be more sensible about military engagement and how we respond to terrorism. (See 1, 3 and 6 below.)

A Brit suggests GW will be unshackled to do whatever he pleases in just a few days. (See 2 below.)

An economist suggests the market has been weak because of the two lousy candidates. That is quite a leap. Yes, we have two less than fabulous candidates but the markets have been weak because of other reasons, some of which the author identifies. He also writes an Obama victory is priced in already and he considers that good news. Time will tell.(See 3 below.)

Netanyahu looking stronger according to a recent poll. As we lurch to the far left, Israel may be moving in an opposite direction. (See 4 and 5 below.)

The seeds of future inflation are being planted as I write. The only value of Roman coinage is in its antiquity.

Dr. Walid Phares lays it all out and Fouad Ajami expresses his concerns. Two must reads! (See 7 and 8 below.)

Dick

1) Obama's Living-Will Constitution
By George Neumayr

Obama supporters have lampooned Sarah Palin for saying that a vice president is "in charge of the U.S. Senate." That is not a strict reading of the Constitution and its envisioned duties for the vice president, they acidly remark. But what do they care about strict readings of the Constitution? According to them, an evolving or "living" Constitution trumps the literal words of the document.

Indeed, they endorse a reading of the Constitution that grows more creative by the day. Obama's understanding of a "living" Constitution is even more ambitious than that of recent Democratic presidential nominees. It turns out that he sees a "living" Constitution the same way he sees taxation -- as an instrument of income-leveling.

According to Obama's excavated 2001 interview, the Constitution's fatal "flaw" is that it set up a limited form of government, far too passive in its understanding of rights to deliver the liberal utopia for which radicals have rooted since the 1960s.

This gives added meaning to the litmus test for judicial nominees that the Democratic Party habitually uses: not only will Obama's judges have to consent to an invented right to abortion, perhaps they will also have to endorse Obama's view of the court's role in economic redistribution.

In the 2001 interview, Obama said at that time he was "not optimistic about bringing major redistributive change through the courts." Notice his use of the word "optimistic." Now with power in sight, he can apparently be "optimistic" of its use for that purpose.

Obama's "living" Constitution is a dead Constitution -- just a blank piece of paper on which his judges will write whatever they please, extending and expanding the outrageous jurisprudence of recent decades. Were he honest, he would call for a constitutional convention to write a new document from scratch, one that would enshrine his enlightened new understandings. But he would never dare proceed so openly, realizing that left-wing ideas too clearly stated provoke backlash.

Would the states sign off on a new Constitution that declares a right to abortion? Or a right to a home through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? No, better to leave things vague; better to tyrannize the people through a "living" Constitution than risk exposure and resistance in the creation of a new one.

Obama, with his placid temperament and penchant for seductive rhetoric, prefers quiet tyranny to open radicalism. So he will go through the charade of saying that he "respects" the Constitution and will seem to disavow conservative interpretations of his previous remarks about the courts. But as with his comment about "spreading the wealth around," after all the meandering and moderate-sounding qualifiers have passed, he will arrive back at his original remark and endorse it anew.

The Constitution, long on life-support under liberal activists, will have its plug pulled completely by Obama's judges without any announcement of its death. Real rights will vanish while bogus ones flourish.

Obama approves of California's State Supreme Court justices imposing gay marriage on the people by judicial fiat. How long before that happens on the federal level? Surely his appointments to the high court will find in the "living" U.S. Constitution a right to gay marriage too.

Why not? He is on record saying that judges need to view the Constitution through the prism of political correctness: "[W]e need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges."

This is creeping tyranny cast as "change." The whole point of a written constitution with prescribed procedures for its official change is to prevent this tyranny and the inevitable chaos that erupts after the people realize the meaningless character of law under such arrogance. After all, if the "living" constitutionalists don't have to listen to the words of the framers and can insert new meanings into the place of those words, the people, by the same logic, don't have to listen either and can reject those new meanings just as lawlessly.

2)Brace yourselves - George Bush will soon be free to do just what he wants
The raid on Syria is a dark portent. The current president has three long, unaccountable months to cement his legacy.
By Jonathan Freedland


We are about to enter the twilight zone, that strange black hole in political time and space that appears no more than once every four years. It is known as the period of transition, and it starts a week from today, the time when the United States has not one president but two. One will be the president-elect, the other George Bush, in power for 12 more weeks in which he can do pretty much whatever he likes. Not only will he never again have to face voters, he won't even have to worry about damaging the prospects of his own party and its standard bearer (as if he has not damaged those enough already). From November 5 to January 20, he will exercise the freest, most unaccountable form of power the democratic world has to offer.

How Bush might use it is a question that gained new force at the weekend, when US forces crossed the Iraqi border into Syria to kill Abu Ghadiya, a man they said had been funneling "foreign fighters" allied to al-Qaida into Iraq. That American move has touched off a round of intense head-scratching around the world, as foreign ministers and analysts ask each other the time-honoured diplomatic query: what did they mean by that? To which they add the post-Nov 4 question: and what does it tell us about how Bush plans to use his final days in the White House?

You can choose from two versions. Call the first the "no big deal" theory. It holds that the Sunday raid was no more than standard operational procedure in the war on terror. Sure, it meant violating the sovereignty of an independent nation state, but that's not so new: there was a similar incursion into Pakistan in September. Indeed, there may be more relevant precedents. A former official in the Bush administration confirmed to me yesterday that the US has lunged into Syrian territory several times before: it's just that Damascus chose to keep quiet. In which case, the interesting question is why the Syrians went public this time.

In this "no big deal" version, Abu Ghadiya was simply too irresistible a high-value target to let slip away. "They saw something they wanted to hit and they hit it," says one European diplomat resignedly. The most extreme version of this shoulder-shrugging account holds that the decision may not even have been taken at the political level, but in the field, by General David Petraeus. Not so implausible, since Bush in effect ceded command of the Iraq war to Petraeus a long while ago.

Nonsense, says the other school of thought. It is a massive deal to strike at a sovereign state in this way: in an earlier era, before 2001, we would have called it an act of war. Pakistan is no precedent, because in that case there was a degree of cooperation. Not now.

This was a deliberate act, calculated to send a series of messages. First, to the Syrians, reminding them who's boss in the region and strong-arming them to do more to crack down on al-Qaida.

Second, to the Europeans who have been moving towards a rapprochement with Damascus. Nicolas Sarkozy may have invited President Assad to Paris and David Miliband may have been hosting the Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Muallem, in London this very Monday, 24 hours after the raid - but no matter. Bush gets to remind both these uppity Europeans who's in charge.

Third, the president could have been sending a message to his own administration. Perhaps this was a memo to his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who had dared meet Muallem at the UN just last month in a meeting that apparently she requested. If so, it would fit with the pattern of wildly mixed signals that has emanated from the administration in recent months. Two days before Rice sat down with Muallem, for instance, Bush had used his UN address to denounce Syria as a state sponsor of terror. Might Sunday's raid have been the president's attempt to reassert himself against a senior staff all but denuded of its hawks? Rumsfeld, Bolton and Wolfowitz are long gone; the more emollient Robert Gates is at defense, widely tipped to continue under a President Obama. In these last days, Dick Cheney has only himself for company.

However we are meant to read it, the attack on Syria looks a lot like a parting shot from Bush, an end-of-the-movie reminder of what this long and bloody saga has been about. A small operation, causing eight deaths, it nevertheless captures much of the Bush ethos that has ruled the globe these past eight years. It was unilateral; it trampled on state sovereignty; and it relied on force as a first, not last, resort. As a souvenir of the Bush era, it would be hard to top.

But it may not be the final act. For we have not yet entered the twilight zone proper. That will come only when polls close next Tuesday. When the transition begins, all kinds of surprises are possible.

Spool back 20 years, to the dying days of the Reagan administration. In January 1989, the president officially recognized the PLO as the representatives of the Palestinian people. It was a farewell gift to Reagan's successor, George HW Bush: the old man took the flak so that the new president would not have to.

In December 1992, Bush himself proved rather less helpful to his replacement, saddling Bill Clinton with the deployment of US forces in Somalia, an episode whose humiliating conclusion badly hobbled Clinton thereafter.

Eight years ago, it was Clinton's turn. He sweated until his final hours in office trying to close a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, who seemed then to be just inches apart. The legacy was the Clinton parameters, still regarded as marking the basic contours of any future agreement for Israel-Palestine.

So what will emerge from the twilight of George W Bush? Most diplomats are bracing themselves. "They're not going to sleep," says one senior British official. The optimists hope for a repeat of Reagan and Clinton, something that helps Middle East peace. It's true that Rice and Bush have been eager for a breakthrough, if only to have a presidential legacy untainted by Iraq. Perhaps Israel and the Palestinians might initial a provisional document, proof that their labours since Bush's Annapolis summit of 2007 have not been entirely fruitless.

But the bad timing that has cursed the Middle East so often has struck once again. Israel is entering an interregnum of its own, following Tzipi Livni's failure to form a coalition. It's hard to believe an interim, caretaker administration could forge a peace deal.

That leaves other options. Bush could ape Reagan and decide to speak to Hamas. More likely would be a shift in policy that helps future peacemaking efforts: he might, for instance, declare that any changes to the 1967 borders must be equal, with Palestinians compensated inch for inch for any West Bank land conceded to Israel. Or he could look further afield in the region, contradicting himself and Sunday's raid, by reaching out to Syria. Or, as some hawks fear, he could step up the tentative dialogue with Iran. A symbolic gesture would be to open a US visa section in Tehran.

Of course, Bush may be thinking of a parting gift more in keeping with the record of the last eight years. He and Cheney might decide, what the hell, we have one last chance to whack Iran - and let the new guy clear up the mess. Not likely, but possible. For in the twilight zone, anything can happen.

3)The Markets Are Weak Because the Candidates Are Lousy: The good news is that an Obama victory is already priced in.
By GEORGE NEWMAN



A lot has been said about the causes of the drastic drops -- and extreme volatility -- in stock prices and the impending recession. Blame has been heaped on low interest rates and dubious mortgage practices, and on the subsequent collapse of real-estate prices and the freeze in financial markets. But one other major factor has largely escaped attention.

To state the obvious: The valuation of an individual stock reflects the collective expectation of investors about a company's future profits, dividends and appreciation, and the same is true of the market as a whole. These profits, in turn, are greatly influenced by government policy on taxes, spending, subsidies, environmental and other regulations, labor laws, and the corporate legal climate. Investors have heard enough from both candidates in the last month or two to conclude that prospects for a flourishing, competitive, growing and reasonably free economy in a McCain administration are bad, and in an Obama administration far worse. (In fact, the market's bearish behavior over the last couple of months pretty closely tracks Barack Obama's gains.)

If you don't believe me, please answer a few questions:

- Have you thought of what a gradual doubling (and indexation) of the minimum wage, sailing through a veto-proof and filibuster-proof Congress, would do to inflation, unemployment and corporate profits? The market now has.

- Have you thought of how easily a Labor Department headed by a militant union boss would push through a "Transparency in Labor Relations" law that does away with secret ballots in strike votes, and what this would do to industrial peace? The market now has.

- Have you thought of how a Treasury Secretary George Soros would engineer the double taxation of the multinationals' world-wide profits, and what this would mean for investors (to say nothing of full-scale industrial flight from the U.S.)? The market now has.

- Have you thought of how an Attorney General Charles J. Ogletree would champion a trillion-dollar reparations-for-slavery project (whittled down, to be fair, to a mere $800-billion, over-10-years compromise), and what this would do to the economy? The market now has.

- Have you thought of what the virtual outlawing of arbitration -- exposing all industries to the fate of asbestos producers -- would do to corporate liability and legal bills? The market now has.

- Have you thought of how a Health and Human Services Secretary Hillary Clinton would fix drug prices (generously allowing 10% over the cost of raw materials), and what this would do to the financial health of the pharmaceutical industry (not to mention the non-discovery of lifesaving drugs)? The market now has.

- Have you thought of a Secretary of the newly established Department of Equal Opportunity for Women mandating "comparable worth" pay practices for every company doing any business with government at any level -- where any residual gap between the average pay of men and women is an eo ipso violation? Have you thought about what this would do to administrative and legal costs, hiring practices, productivity and wage bills? The market now has.

- Have you thought of what confiscatory "windfall profits" taxes on oil companies would do to exploration, supply and prices? The market now has.

- Have you thought of how the nationalization of health insurance, the mandated coverage of ever more -- and more exotic -- risks, the forced reimbursement for excluded events, and the diminished freedom to match premium to risk would affect the insurance industry? The market now has.

- Have you thought of Energy Czar Al Gore's five million new green jobs -- high-paying, unionized and subsidized -- to replace, at five times the cost, what we are now producing without those five million workers, and what this will do to our productivity, deficit and competitiveness? The market now has.

I could go on, but you get the point. Nothing reveals Mr. Obama's visceral hostility to business more than the constant urging of our best and brightest to desert the productive private sector ("greed") and go into public service like politics or community organizing (i.e., organizing people to press government for more handouts). Who in his ideal world would bake our bread, make our shoes and computers, and pilot our airplanes is not clear.

And if you think all this comes from an ardent John McCain fan, you couldn't be more wrong. The Arizona Senator has made some terrible mistakes, one of them trying to out-demagogue Mr. Obama to the economic illiterates. This kind of pandering never works. Such populists and other economic illiterates will always go for the genuine article.

Mr. McCain should have asked some simple questions -- pertinent, educational and easily understood by ordinary voters. Such as:

- If the rise in the price of oil from $70 to $140 was due to "greed" (the all-purpose explanation of the other side for every economic problem), was the fall from $140 to $70 due to a sudden outbreak of altruism?

- If a bank is guilty both for rejecting a mortgage ("redlining") and for approving it ("greed" -- see above), how might a bank president keep his business out of trouble with the law?

- If the financial turmoil of the last year or so was caused by inadequate regulation, which party has controlled both Houses of Congress and all of its financial committees and subcommittees (where such regulation would originate) in the last two years?

- If we bemoan the sending of $750 billion a year to our enemies for imported oil, which party has prevented domestic drilling for decades that would have made us more self-sufficient?

- You were unhappy with Congress, and in 2006 you cast your lot with those who, like Mr. Obama now, promised "change." Are you happy with the changes that have taken place in the last two years?

None of these questions have been asked loudly or often enough, while the other message -- everything is bad, it's all Bush's fault, and McCain=Bush -- has sunk in. So given his own penchant for business bashing, a McCain win would merely count as damage control.

The market is forward looking. If it is unhappy with a president, it does not wait almost eight years before the numbers reflect it. If it really anticipated good times under Mr. Obama, the market would have gained 40% in anticipation of the transition. By losing that much, it seems to be saying the opposite.

The silver lining in all this is that the market has already "discounted" an Obama win, so if that happens you won't wake up on Nov. 5 to find your remaining savings down the drain. If the unexpected happens, you may be in for a pleasant surprise.

4)Poll: Right-wing gains give Netanyahu best chance to form next gov't
By Yossi Verter


If elections were held today, the right-wing camp would garner 61 Knesset seats while 58 would go to the center-left. The numbers are close, but the political difference between the blocs is much greater, and favors the right as of now, according to a Haaretz-Dialog poll conducted last night.

The poll, held under the supervision of Professor Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University's statistics department, shows that 30 percent of Labor supporters in 2006 - a number representing about six Knesset seats - said they would vote for Kadima. Meanwhile, 20 percent of Kadima voters in 2006 - again, worth about six seats - said they would return "home" to Likud.

Likud chairman MK Benjamin Netanyahu would find himself in the ideal position of being able to easily form a number of alternative governments: with Kadima, Labor and the ultra-Orthodox; with Kadima, the ultra-Orthodox and the right; or with Labor, the ultra-Orthodox and the right.
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Although Tzipi Livni would win an equal number of seats, she would be in a far inferior position: The center-left camp includes 11 Arab MKS and two from the Green Party, which might not pass the minimum threshold to get into the Knesset.

The poll shows that currently, at the outset of the campaign, Kadima and Likud, and the two large parliamentary blocs, are neck-and-neck. Unexpected events could move a few seats from bloc to bloc, and then the whole picture could change. If the center-left bloc garners the 61 votes, it could thwart Netanyahu's efforts to form a government, but the government that Livni would form would have to bring in a right-wing element or two, which will make it difficult for her to make diplomatic moves.

Likud gains from right

The poll predicts that Likud would receive additional seats from right-wing parties Shas and the National Union, which had a weak showing in the survey. Quite a few Likud voters in the upcoming elections are those who did not vote in 2006, a number that translates into about seven seats.

While Netanyahu and the right are beginning their battle from a very comfortable position, Labor and its leader, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, are in the midst of a catastrophe. According to the poll, Labor and Shas are tied for the position of fourth-largest party in the next Knesset, after Kadima (31), Likud (31) and Israel Beiteinu (11).

Barak and Labor need no less than a political miracle to recover and extricate themselves from this predicament. However, Barak performs excellently in political campaigns, as he showed twice, in the 1999 campaign against Netanyahu and the 2007 primaries against Ami Ayalon, both times starting from an inferior position.

Those surveyed gave Barak poor marks on various issues involving suitability for the premiership, except on the question of his ability to handle Israel's security problems. In answer to the question "Who in your opinion is more able to deal with Israel's security problems, particularly the Iranian nuclear threat?" Netanyahu got 33 percent of the vote, Barak 26 percent and Livni only 14 percent.

5) Israel sets Feburary 10 as election date
By Mazal Mualem

The elections will be held on February 10, Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik announced Thursday.

The date was officially set after most parties had already agreed on it in principle in a meeting with Itzik on Tuesday.

The elections, a year and a month ahead of schedule, follow Ehud Olmert's resignation last month as prime minister to fight corruption charges and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's failure to form a new government.

Meanwhile on Thursday, Livni offered Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz on Thursday to act as the party's campaign director in the oncoming elections.

Livni told Mofaz that she sees him as the party's deputy leader, regardless of the pending legal issues about his place on the list.

The two ministers agreed to work together and to promote party unity.

Also on Thursday, Labor Chairman Ehud Barak, decided that the party will hold comprehensive primary elections, in which the party's 100,000 members will be eligible to vote.

Recent polls suggest that Labor will suffer a devastating blow and will gain merely 10 seats.

6) Dreams from Frank Marshall Davis
By Paul Kengor

As more and more audio and video emerge on Barack Obama's desire to redistribute wealth, not to mention his views on the housing crisis that has torpedoed the U.S. economy, I keep returning to two columns I've read by Frank Marshall Davis, the communist journalist-agitator who mentored Obama in Hawaii. While much attention has been paid to Obama's relationship with communist-terrorist Bill Ayers -- and rightly so -- much less attention has been devoted to Davis. That's a mistake, since Obama was influenced more by Davis than Ayers.

Davis, who is now deceased, was an African American from the Midwest who had worked as a columnist for the Chicago Star, the communist newspaper of Chicago, a city that had one of the largest CPUSA affiliates, and, in fact, hosted the September 1919 convention that launched the American Communist Party. Though Davis always tried to conceal any communist associations -- ironically, Obama supporters have picked up that torch -- there's no question that Davis was a communist, as is immediately evident upon reading his columns, examining his background, or consulting with people in the party (to this day) who confirm he was a communist. The fact that he was at least a lower case "c" "communist" is obvious. It takes a little more digging to find evidence of his membership in CPUSA -- but not much. Among the sources that reveal his membership are Davis himself, notably in a letter he wrote to a friend, published posthumously by his biographer, Professor John Edgar Tidwell. "I have recently joined the Communist party," wrote Davis.

In 1948, Davis just happened to arrive in Hawaii the same time that leaders of the Communist Party in Hawaii -- realizing the limits of national party organs like the Daily Worker and People's Daily World -- established their own weekly newspaper, the Honolulu Record. In 1949, Davis began writing a regular column for the Record, titled, "Frankly Speaking." This was a key form of agitation work that Davis would do for the party in Hawaii for decades.

A young Barack Obama knew Davis in the latter 1970s, introduced by his maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who, in many ways, saw eye-to-eye with Davis, and saw in Davis a potential role model and father-figure to his grandson. Dunham and Davis were close friends.

Though proud of Davis, and very affectionate toward him, Obama sought to obfuscate the identity of Davis in his book, Dreams from My Father, where he strangely referred to him only as "Frank," conspicuously avoiding his full name. Politically, Obama needed to make Davis anonymous, whereas, personally, he could not avoid acknowledging in his memoirs a man who meant so much to him.

I've connected these dots through my Cold War research, which is grounded in primary sources like the Soviet Comintern Archives on CPUSA, FBI files, recently released CPUSA documents at Tamiment Library, and much more. This has brought me into contact with various communist characters and fellow travelers who have molded or worked with Barack Obama, from Davis to Bill Ayers to Saul Alinsky.

So, that's all background on Davis's identity and how Obama knew him.

Now, what about those columns I mentioned earlier? Obama's recent remarks on wealth redistribution made me think of two Davis columns in particular, both for the Honolulu Record:

The first was Davis's January 26, 1950 piece, "Free Enterprise or Socialism?" Davis hoped that America and its economy were at a turning point, as if a kind of perfect storm was brewing that could at last allow him and his comrades to realize their dreams of a socialist America. They would need to trash the current free-enterprise system and argue for a change to something else. Of course, they could not fully disclose themselves, their beliefs, and their intentions, although any thinking observer could easily read between the lines. The key was to gain the support of the people who didn't know any difference.

Davis began his article by asserting, "Before too long, our nation will have to decide whether we shall have free enterprise or socialism." He pointed to actions in Congress, where he quoted the then-chairman of the Congressional committee on small business, who, according to Davis, warned that "at the present rate, either the giant corporations will control all our markets, the greatest share of our wealth, and eventually, our government, or the government will be forced to intervene with some form of direct regulation of business."

Davis did not like "big business" and the rapacious, "tentacled" rich men who ran it. "For instance," wrote Davis, "Alfred Sloan of General Motors announced that his gigantic company made a profit last year of $600,000,000, more than any other corporation in history. Over the years, General Motors has swallowed up or knocked out car manufacturer after car manufacturer so that today less than a handful of competitors remain. Free enterprise, eh?"

"Monopolies" like GM had to be controlled by the government, said Davis. If not, the likes of GM would control the government. "Obviously, a business that can show a profit ... of $600,000,000 is in a position to control government," wrote Davis. "When we remember that the directors and major stockholders of one industry also shape the policies of banks and other huge corporations, it is easy to see that the tentacles of Big Business control just about everything they think they need to insure continued profits." Davis claimed that, "The control of our wealth and government by the giant corporations ... [was] accomplished fact."

Davis believed that it was such free enterprise run amok, allegedly un-regulated and un-checked by the federal government, that had caused the Great Depression: "For many years now we have been living under the virtual dictatorship of Big Business which all but drove us to ruin in 1929."

Davis was grateful for the grand intervention of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who he believed had saved the day: "By curbing the excesses of the giant corporations that had led to the economic crisis, Roosevelt was able to save the system from complete collapse."

Even then, FDR, in Davis's eyes, had not done enough: "And yet the moneyed men who were bailed out by the New Deal program were our late president's [FDR's] biggest enemies. They have refused to see that in order to preserve their hides, they had to hand out a few drops of gravy to the common man."

Toeing the Stalinist line, as he always did without deviation, Davis then blamed American capitalism for starting World War II. That had been the party line issued by Stalin in his February 1946 Bolshoi Theatre speech. It was a ridiculous, outrageous lie, one that infuriated Democrats and Republicans alike. Nonetheless, the lie became marching orders for Davis and other comrades at party organs around the world. It was their duty to follow that party line, and they happily saluted the red flag. In his column, Davis zeroed in on the true bad guys of World War II: "This bolstering of a sick economy ended at the outset of World War II. Multi-billion-dollar expenditures for the means of killing fellow humans brought added profits and Big Business emerged stronger than ever before in history after V-J Day."

And now, in January 1950, things were especially grim under President Harry Truman, who Davis particularly despised, given that the Democratic president was, at the time, publicly condemning, countering, and seeking to contain Stalin. Moscow had told the good comrades to take special aim at the "fascist," "Hitlerian" Harry Truman, and Davis did precisely that, unceasingly demonizing this icon of the Democratic Party. For the hard left, the current American president had to be bludgeoned beyond recognition; the left did so with great success, as Truman would eventually leave office the most unpopular president in the history of American polling -- until a man named George W. Bush.

There was a conspiracy, suggested Davis, between Truman and even larger monopolies "fattened" by recent mergers. Wrote Davis: "With this added weight to throw around, and a president [Truman] willing to do their bidding after the death of Roosevelt, our giant corporations have had things pretty much their own way. Government policy is fixed in Wall Street and transmitted through the corporation executives who have been appointed by Truman to high federal office. OPA was killed, the Marshall Plan launched and the nation placed on the brink of war economy -- so that such firms as General Motors could make $600,000,000 profit while unemployment skyrocketed."

Davis, for the record, hated the Marshall Plan as much as he hated Truman and Wall Street. That was because Moscow hated the Marshall Plan, which was intended first and foremost to keep Western Europe from falling to communism.

What's worse, said Davis, was that America was busy simultaneously giving a bad name to socialism. Many Americans, especially conservatives, recklessly tossed around the "S word." "At the same time we have manufactured a national horror of socialism," wrote Davis. "Meanwhile, the dictatorship of the monopolies is driving us down the road to ruin." Alas, we could expect "still rising unemployment and a mounting depression."

"[T]he time draws nearer," advised Davis, "when we will have to decide to oust the monopolies and restore a competing system of free enterprise, or let the government own and operate our major industries."

I will let you guess which solution Davis preferred.

Comrade Davis put it more bluntly a few weeks later in his March 2, 1950 column, approvingly quoting Woodrow Wilson: "The masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States." In that column, Davis was most concerned with the inability of poor Americans to purchase "a decent home."

For Davis, the only hope was a huge, emboldened federal government that could save Americans from the capitalists, that could rein in fat-cat corporations, that could slap down Wall Street and its excesses, that could spread the wealth, and that could ensure that the poor could buy a home.

To bolster his case, Davis went back to the height of the Great Depression, borrowing a 1935 quote (allegedly) from the governor of Pennsylvania: "I warn you that our civilization is in danger if we heed the deceptive cries of special privilege, if we permit our men of great wealth to send us on a wild goose chase after so-called radicals while they continue to plunder the people .... We are constantly told of the evils of Socialism and Communism. The label is applied to every man, woman and child who dares to say a word which does not have the approval of Wall Street."

Do not look to the conservatives for help, said Davis. The conservatives were racists: "If I were conservative, that would mean automatically that I think we have gone too far in trying to break the yoke of color bondage and that I am in favor of greater discrimination ... not less."

Davis warned that some fear-mongers would try to silence the likes of him by branding him a socialist, or a "Red engaged in subversive operations," or "an agent of Moscow." "But I, personally, have no intention of being silenced by a label," wrote a stoic Davis. "I do not intend to be frightened into submission to the status quo."

What I've shared from these two columns is only a sample of what Frank Marshall Davis, Barack Obama's self-acknowledged mentor, wrote for decades. This was his thinking. Coincidentally, Davis's form of agitation would have been at home right now with the current housing and economic crisis in America. He would have been in his element, thriving -- on autopilot.

It is amazing, though not surprising, that today's Democrats will help cover for Frank Marshall Davis, given that Davis despised their party and constantly worked to undermine its heroes throughout the Cold War. Modern Democrats are oblivious to the nuances of the early Cold War and still don't appreciate the communist threat of their day, including the fact that the communists viewed them as idiots to be duped; the communists were not their friends. Still, liberals will dutifully protect the likes of Frank Marshall Davis so as to elect Barack Obama, the current Democratic nominee -- as Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy roll over in their graves.

To what degree are Obama's comments on the economy and taxes influenced by the communist-socialist ideas of Davis? No doubt, the question is fair, given that we only know of the Obama-Davis relationship because of Barack Obama himself, who opened the door in his memoirs. I could never have written this piece if Obama hadn't acknowledged Davis. Obama was mentored by Davis in his late teens, before heading off to college, where, as Obama wrote in Dreams From My Father, he hung out with the "Marxist professors" and attended "socialist conferences."

And yet, not a single one of our nation's leading journalists has asked any such questions. They are far more interested in Sarah Palin's wardrobe and Joe the Plumber's license. The New York Times is busy with bigger issues, like Cindy McCain's history of murder and mayhem.

It is truly, truly amazing to behold. For modern journalists, truth is second to their politics.

7) Vote for National Survival
By Walid Phares

The financial drama that we've been living through is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of an attack against America. As I argued in previous writings, the first volley was OPEC's driving the prices at the pumps as high as needed to crack our economic resilience. The hard core (and ideological) oil-producing regimes have been trying to affect the minds of millions of Americans in the same way al Qaeda's propagandists did with the upset Spanish voters in March 2004.

OPEC has just launched its second offensive -- possibly its last before election day -- to reduce petrol production as prices fell. After hitting US citizens with an economic meltdown, it wants to smack them with a goods shortage crisis to force them into making the ultimate decision: jump into another realm. The current economically-induced crisis is only a treatment to provoke a regime change in America. As odd as it is, the forces pushing for the change "they need" have set the US Presidential election as a mechanism to morph this democracy into the uncharted future that awaits it, if the polls are on target.

Today Americans are readying, some have already begun, to elect a new President. This testimony I am putting forth aims at explaining my vision of this electoral benchmark in view of future developments, beyond November 4th, the next four to eight years and throughout the first part of the twenty-first century. This vote, more than any previous ones, can transform America's destiny radically, and with it, the future of many nations, particularly those civil societies suffering from oppression around the world.

My analysis is not sent out to influence the outcome of the election, for it is too small a breeze in a universe of extremely powerful winds driving the electorate, on both sides of the debate. The arguments I am advancing in this piece are the least visible in the agendas of both camps, at least in the next few days. But in the next decade and perhaps as early as the next few years or even months, historians and citizens will reexamine the dimensions of this discussion of the overarching grave menace hovering over US national security. This is why, as a scholar studying conflicts, I am writing about this particular election.

As an academic and counterterrorism expert, I do not get involved in partisan and strictly political processes. But as in 2004's Presidential election, this week's voting choice will affect the current and future national defense and survival of this country. Hence it is my duty as a citizen with knowledge in this field to share my views and projections with fellow citizens: For the choices given to voters are dramatically opposed in terms of defining the direction in which this country will move to defend its democracy and freedom around the world.

The United States' Presidency is endowed with powers that can impact global history in addition to the evolution of America as a democracy and as a nation. In this era of confrontation with the global Jihadi threats and of proliferation of catastrophic weapons, the direction selected by the next US President will affect not only this generation but the next one as well. Hence, regardless of the voting results on the 4th and beyond, it is important to testify beforehand in writing, so that future readers would draw the lessons when confronted with similar choices. Therefore, my words will be rough and direct.

The national security experience

The US primaries produced two leaders and their running mates. With the utmost respect to their personal histories, sacrifices and achievements, are these three men and one woman the best choice that could have been given to Americans? Their supporters feel it is the case, while many others, including the partisans of those who were defeated in the parties' primaries, claim otherwise. In my realm of study and concentration the question is different, simply because I believe national survival trumps everything else, in these times of world threats.

I frame it as follows: are the four contending politicians as aware of the enemy as the leaders of the enemy are aware of America's weaknesses and resources? We will see. But I argue that we've seen US Presidents learning on the job, including the current president. On the evening of September 10, 2001, President George W Bush knew much less than Senators McCain and Obama on the evening of November 3, 2008; yet he confronted the country's enemies for seven years while learning on the job.

Today, the average citizen's instincts know more about the threat we're facing than the combined advisors of Presidents Clinton and Bush before the War on Terror, as per the 9/11 Commission findings. So based on their records, speeches, length of service and publications regarding the national threat, one can project that the four leaders America has to consider for the two top offices would be ranked as follows: Senator John McCain comes first, Senator Joe Biden comes second and Senator Barack Obama and Governor Sarah Palin come equally third. This ranking is quantitative and verifiable. Based on a simple examination of past decades regarding McCain and Biden, and years regarding Obama and Palin, the strict "experience factor" in matters of war and peace, national security and defense, undoubtedly among the four, McCain would be the top man for the job, followed by Biden.

Hence since the Senator from Arizona has selected Palin as his running mate, he thus would assume the responsibility of her choice as his replacement if God forbid the worse were to happen. On the experience factor alone, it is ineluctable that, according to the famous phrase of Senator Hillary Clinton, I would trust the judgment of the former Navy Pilot, if awakened at 3 AM to address a national security calamity. But let's go beyond the mere "experience factor."

Choice on strategic direction

What counts at this stage, in addition to experience in matters of national security, is a sense of strategic direction into the future. Senator McCain often speaks of the man who will have to face incoming international crises. He is right on that point: conflicts are brewing and the next President will have to face them head on. Senator Biden has even alluded to crises being concocted to test Senator Obama (if elected). He may be right by accident. For I argue that what lies ahead of us is already happening and will happen: the forces aimed at confronting the United States and democracies around the world aren't holding their breath to decide if they will resume their offensives or drop their agenda, depending on who will seize the White House in November. These forces have their plans for both McCain and Obama. They do not tailor their world view based on the lucky winner of US election, rather they tailor their plans, speed and maneuvers to defeat America based on the direction adopted by the winner of the Presidential contest in this country.

Therefore if the enemy wages future campaigns based on its perception of the next US President's world vision and "generates crises" accordingly, then it is logical to compare the strategic agendas of both candidates regarding the confrontation to come. In other words, if the direction taken by the new President is new, and both candidates claim they will execute change, then it is a must to check these "new directions" and compare them with the potential threats.

Unfortunately the multiple debates between the Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees didn't leave us with significant information about the global vision of both campaigns as to what the threat is and how to defeat it. Perhaps the scrambling by both camps to respond to the dramatic financial crumbling kept them away from drawing the map of the future regarding the global conflicts we're engaged in. But that was a mistake in both camps, even though it was more politically profitable for the Obama ticket to concentrate on the economy, and it was a vital necessity for the McCain ticket to assuage the fears of everyday Americans, as polls showed the gap between the two camps.

Economy is a hostage to National Security

What both campaigns have failed to understand or were unwilling to admit is the broader context of the economic quick sands we're in. Surely there are financial and managerial reasons behind the meltdown which we're witnessing. But this failure is happening within the context of a wider economic war waged against the United States for strategic reasons.

Two arguments should have been part of the debate. They will come to haunt the future of this country nevertheless.

One: a systemic economic crisis -- even if rooted in domestic mismanagement -- cannot be resolved outside a healthier international environment. That is a reality which only future economists will confirm for us. Short of unleashing a full economic revolution leading to energy independence, America is doomed to swim in financial tensions and crises: the time of insulation from overseas pressures is over. We are seven -- if not seventeen -- years late for our vital fight of energy independence.

Two: We are being attacked by an "oil empire," OPEC, which targets our ability to act internationally and eventually put us on our knees domestically. Not only our future economic renaissance is at risk but our present state of financial affairs is at a higher risk of further crumbling if we do not go on the offensive. Compare this with the state of the presidential debate: the answer is close to catastrophic. We're not even discussing it nor are we informing the public about the dangers looming on the horizons. The current economic crisis is only a piece of the mega economic debacle being prepared for us. The response to the current drama is not even economic and none of the campaigns have even addressed the mega level for fears of electoral snags.

But if we compare the two candidates on strategic economic levels, we can conclude as follows: Obama offers to resolve the economic crisis separately from the mega economic confrontation worldwide while McCain only shyly hints at a wider scale beyond the corruption in Wall Street and the mismanagement in Washington DC. McCain wants to stop sending 700 billion dollars to "regimes who do not like us." Obama wants us "not to borrow cash from China to send it to Saudi Arabia." McCain timidly tells us there is a foe out there somewhere, while Obama doesn't. Between the blur and the blindness, I chose the first.

Are we at war or not?

Naturally McCain calls what we're doing since 9/11 a War on Terror. On Terror or on something else, that is another subject, but the former POW sees it as a "war," with a goal to attain and against a "foe." Obama rarely calls it a war, often putting the blame on the United States, and he is vague regarding the "enemy." In an article during the primaries, where my favorite candidate wasn't McCain, I wrote that a US President who doesn't see the enemy cannot defeat it. In the national election, I state even more emphatically that a candidate who does not admit that there is a war waged against our democracy can hardly defend us.

I would understand if Senator Obama proposes to end the War on Terror as a whole. I would obviously disagree that he can, but I would see his rationale of a unilateral pull out of the conflict which, by the way, could explain his platform of "sitting down" with actual foes such as Ahmadinejad, Assad and others. The problem remains that his position regarding the "what is" is still unclear. Is it that he doesn't believe that we were attacked in a global manner, or is it that he believes that we provoked such a Jihadi campaign? Well, between Obama's non recognition of the conflict and McCain's basic attitude that we are at war, regardless of how to win it and when, I'd chose the latter.

Defining the Threat

In the last seven years, my main thesis in the defense of our democracy and of civil societies around the world recommended a clear cut identification of the threat. For if the latter was unidentified, unclear or subject to camouflage, the entire strategy of resistance to the menace would be ineffective and would put the homeland and allies under tremendous risk. President George Bush tried to identify the threat doctrine of al Qaeda, its allies and of the Iranian regime. But as of 2006, he retreated from educating the public on the foe's world vision. In this election campaign, we have two candidates with different visions on the threat. Senator McCain gives it a name: Radical Islamic Terrorism (he recently used the term "Jihadists" one time); and Senator Obama who doesn't identify the ideology of the terrorists. Naturally I would prefer the candidate who defines it, even if that definition needs to be improved, in this case, McCain.

Iraq

Senator Obama voted against invading Iraq. That is a legitimate position. But one would need to know on what grounds? If the argument was that it was a strategic mistake to topple Saddam Hussein while we hadn't found Osama Bin Laden, then the next challenge will be in Darfur. Will we allow the genocide against Africans to continue in Sudan if we still haven't found the leader of al Qaeda in Pakistan? If Obama's logic is about not engaging in any action as long as "Waldo" is on the run, US efforts in rescuing endangered populations are then doomed.

But if the Senator from Illinois was opposed to the removal of Iraq's dictator because he prefers to leave the Shia and the Kurds to their horrendous destiny, then the matter is even more serious. Either way, I haven't seen or read an Obama explanation that considers the 2003 campaign in Iraq as a weakening of the War on Terror: For had this been the case, then Obama may have a legitimate point. But his 2003 vote in the Senate, unless explained again, was an opposition to the War on Terror, not just to the War in Iraq.

If elected President, Obama will remove the troops from Iraq without disabling Iran's and Syria's abilities and ambitions to penetrate their neighbor. For if he intends to engage with Tehran and Damascus to cut deals over Iraq, how can the latter be equipped strategically to perform what coalition forces are now achieving? An abrupt letting down of Iraq will lead to a catastrophic domino effect in the region opening the path to Iran to reach the Mediterranean with all the unfathomable consequences on world peace.

Undoubtedly the Bush Administration wasn't brilliant in managing the Iraq strategy. Surely there were other choices after Tora Bora in 2002 than Iraq. I'll address them in future writings. But since President Bush's team decided to do justice in Baghdad first, it could have done it faster, better and finished earlier. That is a valid critique of the Iraq war. Senator Obama's criticism is diametrically different. He was opposed to removing Saddam or any other dictator, by force or by any other means. The reality is that for a candidate "for change" as it is claimed, his platform seems to be of status quo, to the advantage of the Jihadists, Baathists and other authoritarian regimes from Tehran to Caracas.

Senator McCain has criticized the management of the War in Iraq; and he was right. He wants victory to be the benchmark of withdrawal; he is also right. But I haven't read yet what constitutes victory in Iraq. My sense is that many in Washington DC -- traumatized by the Jihadi propaganda -- aren't sharing yet with the American public what's lying ahead for us. This Presidential campaign is between a candidate, Senator Obama, who is not telling the people that he is against the whole war on terror; and the other candidate, Senator McCain who is not telling the voters how much more serious this war is with the Jihadists. In this case I would trust McCain simply because he has told us that we can't quit, even though we need miles of explanations for what is next.

Afghanistan and Pakistan

Senator Obama stated that he would transfer troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to put pressures on al Qaeda. Taken as is, this statement is strategically sound. Moving forces from one battlefield to another is decided by strategists and is logical if the goal is to win in both places, i.e. in the war on terror.

But I am still unsure if Senator Obama's grand plan is about winning the War on Terror since I haven't seen his grand strategy about the confrontation with the Jihadists. Actually his opposition to the Iraq campaign, unlike Senator Clinton's criticism, is based on opposition to the idea that we are in conflict with a worldwide web of radical forces. Until I read otherwise, my conclusion is that Obama's long term strategy is to end the global war with the Jihadists and replace it with deals-cutting policies with radical regimes and organizations.

Hence in Afghanistan, his ultimate goal is to kill Bin Laden but to reintegrate the Taliban in Kabul. That would be the equivalent of eliminating Hitler but bringing back the Nazis to a post WWII Germany. His statements about attacking inside Pakistan if we have specific information about the location of Bin Laden are worrisome. He opposed sending troops to Iraq to save Shia and Kurds from Saddam, but he would order troops into a sovereign country, an ally and already at war with al Qaeda, to kill "Waldo." This proposition makes so little sense that I read it through the prism of reverse psychology.

In fact, since Senator Obama wants to quit in Iraq, reconciliation with the Taliban in Afghanistan and a non-intervention in Darfur, he probably decided to claim "offensive" in the only place where it will not happen. A massive US attack in Pakistan to finish off al Qaeda, unless authorized by Islamabad, is contrary to all strategic logic and could enflame the sole Muslim nuclear power with the cataclysmic risks it entails. My sense is that the Senator chose to make this bravado in public precisely because he will never issue that order if he is elected. Instead he will direct his diplomats to "sit down" with the Taliban and try to cut a deal.

Senator McCain's approach is more simple and pragmatic. He wouldn't oppose sending troops from Iraq to Afghanistan if the military strategists would recommend so. He said a surge in Afghanistan may provide similar results as in Iraq: possible. I am not privy to his plans for "winning" in Afghanistan or his emergency plans for a dramatic development in Pakistan. But between an Obama policy that would lose Iraq, re-Talibanize Afghanistan and risk a nuclear flare in Pakistan, I'd still go with a more modest but realistic approach by McCain until better strategies are designed in the next four years.

Lebanon and Syria

Senator McCain committed to implement UNSCR 1559; that is, to disarm Hezbollah and support the Cedars Revolution in Lebanon. Senator Obama wants to "sit down" with Bashar Assad, Hezbollah's ally. Obviously, I support McCain on this issue.

Israel and the Palestinians

Both Senators have committed to "the security of Israel." In election times this statement is standard. Both Senators said they will support a two-state solution. At this stage of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, this is also a universally accepted deal. But Senator Obama's approach to the Iran and Syrian regimes indicates that he will press Israel and the Palestinian Authority to "sit down" with Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well. The pattern of bringing in the "radicals" (at the expense of the democracy-seekers) seems to be a future foreign policy doctrine for Senator Obama. In the case of the Israel-Palestinian process, it will only weaken the moderates among the Palestinians and undermine the rise of peace-seeking forces, knowing that Hamas ultimately doesn't want a Jewish state in the region and wants to obstruct the rise of a secular and democratic Palestinian state as well. Senator McCain, more cautious in this regard, supports the Camp David and Road Map processes, putting an Israel-Palestinian Authority agreement first. I would prefer this approach.

Darfur

Senator McCain would send US forces under UN sponsorship to help establish a protection zone for the African Muslim people of Darfur. Senator Obama's approach of "cutting deals" with Tehran and Damascus cannot but follow the same logic to "cut a deal" with Khartoum's regime. In genocide interventions, there are no deals to be cut other than saving people from dying and being ethnically cleansed. Hence, without hesitation, I would side with the McCain readiness to help "save Darfur" on the ground, a slogan used by Hollywood figures without advancing any practical solution to the genocide issue.

Alliances

Senator Obama's spokespersons claimed their candidate will build wider alliances and reestablish a multilateral approach to international relations. This is an excellent principle which I have been promoting in my last three books but the question is "alliance about what?" If Obama sought outreach to build the widest coalition of Governments to defeat al Qaeda and its ilk, this has already been done. If the projected alliance is to reach more countries, including those who oppose our confrontation with the Jihadists -- such as Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Sudan and North Korea -- then we will be defeating our original purpose. If Obama wants to enhance relations with Russia and India against the terrorists, he will have to define Jihadism as a threat, which he hasn't. He will have to agree with McCain and pre-2006 Bush that there are doctrines promoted by movements such as Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood and Deobandism which are a common foe to this wide alliance he is seeking.

But that would contradict his opposition to the concept of a full confrontation with the Jihadi web. If by new allies he means France, Germany, the UK, Spain, and other European democracies, they are already in the fight with our common enemies. Even China is at war with the Jihadists. So who does Obama want to include in the projected new alliance? Unless the new coalition will be among those who want to end the War on terror. Senator McCain's more modest approach doesn't add much to the existing web of alliances. If elected he should break the taboos with other counter Jihadi countries and widen that type of alliance. He should do better than President Bush. I still prefer the modest advance of McCain over the foggy designs of Obama.

America's image

Another slogan advanced by the Obama platform and inherited from the John Kerry Presidential agenda is the so-called "American image" worldwide and the necessity of reestablishing a "credible portrait." Well, this myth has to be aggressively responded to because it only serves the Jihadist propaganda. Indeed, what do we mean when we say that America's "image" has been muddied internationally? Is it because of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib? And who are the people upset with the US image?

The Obama campaign and its intellectuals haven't answered much on this simply because this so-called PR problem is in fact a component of a Jihadi offensive worldwide to deter the United States from provoking democratic change in the Middle East. Washington's image is "ugly" by Salafi, Khomeinist and Baathist standards of course because American power (often used unintelligently) has caused the rise of freedom enclaves in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and beyond. That is why al Jazeera, al Aalam, al Manar and the Salafi web sites are exploding against "America's image." Surely the oil-producing regimes in the region and Hugo Chavez's oligarchic elite dislike American support of reformers and democracy forces. When America promotes democracy (with tremendous mistakes) of course the anti-democratic web will muddy its image.

So what is the image the Obama policy would like to reestablish? The photo ops with Iran's Mullahs, Damascus' bloody dictator, Caracas's populist leader, or Khartoum's genocide perpetrator? Some Obama future Presidential advisors (if he wins) have been advocating a policy of humanitarian aid only. They argue that the US should act as a peace force only. Who are they kidding? Why wasn't the US able to send humanitarian aid to the Kurds before the removal of Saddam Hussein, or establish a corridor in Darfur as long as Bashir is obstructing it, or help the North Koreans from starvation? The "academic circus" who pretend to understand the world better than your average citizen have shown us their brilliance in the 1990s. They were given eight precious years of a post-Soviet era and they failed miserably.

McCain's plan for a better American image isn't clear but US actions to give democracy a victory are the best long terms investments to get that image restored, because unfortunately, the systemic failure of the Bush Administration to use its own resources in the so-called war of ideas is a fact. A McCain White House will have to reform all resources authorized by the taxpayers to draw support around the world from hearts and minds. A McCain Administration will have a severe uphill battle to reach out to the natural allies around the world, and the Greater Middle East in particular: the peoples. Unfortunately, as we know from their advisors-to-be, an Obama Administration will cozy up with the oppressors worldwide as a way to "change" America's image. It will only send humanitarian assistance -- and cameras to cover the show -- if and when the bad guys allow it. That is not a change in image that the masses around the world would want to see. My choice is between the uncertain success and the certain failure, I take the first.

Defeating Racism in America

One noble cause I would support without hesitation is to see a minority man or woman become the President of the United States. What a joy to see the son of an immigrant, a matter I can relate with directly, enter the White House. This is the country I decided to emigrate to almost twenty years ago. In the past quarter of a century, I saw the nation I joined wholeheartedly rapidly rejecting racism. An African-American General in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then Secretary of State, and then an African American woman becoming a national security advisor only to succeed her predecessor as a Secretary of State as well. A Middle Eastern American from Michigan becoming an Energy secretary, Hispanics and Asians across Congress and the executive powers including in the cabinet, and finally a half African American nominated for the Presidency of the United States, and very possibly a head of state in 2009.

That's how racism has been defeated at the highest levels. But I resent the imposition of an ideological worldview on good hearted Americans under the aegis of the racism issue. For Senator Barack Obama to be nominated by a major Party is an ultimate defeat to racism. But his election to the Presidency is about his agenda not his (half) race. We would be all happy to see a minority becoming a President but not to use such an equation to give a pass to an international agenda which would hurt minorities and underdogs around the world.

To defeat racism and oppression of minorities worldwide the next President of the United States should be determined to save Africans from genocide, ethnic minorities from persecution in the Middle East and women from suppression across the Third World. That mission isn't determined by skin color in Washington but by commitment to confront the oppressors of any type around the world.

Had the Obama agenda been unequivocally pro-freedom internationally, rejecting concession to totalitarianism, and very precise in identifying the threat doctrines of the terrorists, then he could have won my support with little questions asked.

The heart of the matter

Unlike many of my colleagues with whom I share counterterrorism views for the future, my choice for the next President was not shaped by the most visible components of the debate. It wasn't "Joe the plumber," "spreading the wealth," the real estate crisis, the financial meltdown or the battle for taxes. These are crucial issues but I believe the economic problems we're facing need more than one presidency and a mixture of solutions to address them and solve them. Pure Socialism or unleashed Capitalism aren't going to fix the economy or satisfy the frustration of millions of Americans over the next decade.

Maybe the two party system isn't able anymore to provide full answers in the 21st century. As a Political Scientist and a US citizen I think that the American system will correct itself gradually simply because there are no larger middle class societies around the world than the American one. The swing between liberal and conservative measures every decade or so are regulating factors until an appropriate system is found. But this normal swinging is now occurring during a world conflict and can be affected by outside forces aiming at the nation as a whole. It is Constantinople which is targeted, not its emperors. Those who are set on voting for Obama because they fear for their social security and healthcare and those who want McCain because they fear high government taxes are right to be concerned in their own way. I am concerned for a state of affairs where we may not have a national homeland, let alone either high taxes or a solvent social security program.

Homeland Security First

Yes, we need to live our lives the best we can; consequently, we need to make the best decisions about the next President and his agenda. But all that has to happen not in a void, but in the context of a secure homeland. Twice in this decade we saw the country vacillating. In September 2001, the coming down of the twin towers was an end of a peace era. Last September 2008, the coming down of our financial towers was an end of an era of economic security. Beware of a "September" that could bring down the towers of our national security.

The flames of the urban uprisings in France, of the train bombings in Madrid, of the subway blasts in London and the school massacre in Beslan are only handwriting on the wall. The OPEC aggression against the US economy, the formation of gas cartels by Iran, Qatar and Venezuela with the enticement to Russia to join; all that are just ominous signs of what is ahead. And in such a world environment, US homeland security seems to be where the final game will be played. As an analyst of terrorist strategies, I do believe that the most dangerous stages for our national security are yet to come and my concerns are very high as to how to address them.

The penetration of our systems, including educational, legal, bureaucratic, technological, defense and security by the Jihadists is ongoing and is projected to expand. The world may have harsh crises but no crisis can equate the collapse of US Homeland Security. Al Qaeda has often stated that it wishes to commit genocide of four million Americans, including women and children. Iranian President Ahmadinejad and his regime have openly stated that a world without America is possible and better. These attitudes, if anything, indicate that the American national homeland is a target, a real target. If the enemy is successful one time in blasting our defense system to the core, the entire debate about the economy is over because there won't be one to discuss.

There are large segments in our society which have been disabled from understanding that the nation is at risk. They were made to think that this war against us is a matter of foreign policy and a President who can just "talk" to some people out there will simply solve it and maintain the paychecks flowing. Many among us don't understand that the world around us can simply crumble if we don't have leadership that can strike a balance between defending the country and the free world and at the same time managing the economy successfully. But the bottom line is that these two are linked, deeply linked.

Senator McCain declared that the threat to the Homeland is a movement and an ideology, Jihadism. Senator Obama didn't tell us if that is his view as well. Instead we saw shreds of political alliances between his campaign and groups affiliated with this particular ideology. I am not impressed with the "Weather Underground" network story as much as I am concerned about the access the political Jihadists will have to US National Security.

If that happens, Homeland Security will be at risk. Hence until I get answers to this fundamental question from Senator Obama's campaign, I do have a national security concern. Until then I can project a spread of Jihadi sympathizer networks within the country and even throughout many layers of Government. Over four years, and possibly eight, such a growth would become malignant. Over less than a decade, Americans could find themselves in situations never experienced since the Civil War.

One ballot today -- regardless of the sincerity and good intentions of candidates in November 2008 -- can affect where and how future generations will have to fight for survival years from now. A strong counter argument was made to me about my concerns: among the national security advisors and experts to enter the executive branch with an Obama Presidency are people who see this threat with clarity, so why the concern? My answer as an analyst in Jihadi long term strategies is that, in the absence of a defense doctrine that identifies the threat, no one can guarantee that the enlightened counter terrorism experts potentially moving in as of January 2009 will be there the following year, in four or even eight years from now. This is the real bottom line.

If the Obama campaign had provided a strategic document on the Jihadi threat, my entire case wouldn't have been necessary. I haven't seen such a document or even a simple statement. Moreover, what convinced me that we're dealing with a potential change toward the worse in US National Security are the writings and declarations of those who constitute the Senator's academic and security elite. In fact, not only we may get four more years of the Clinton eight years -- when the Terrorist doctrine was missed catastrophically -- but we could get four years of unparalleled threat growth. I do hope I am wrong and I am still hoping I will get answers before Election Day.

Freedoms and Educating the public

Last but not least, and for the first time since the end of the Cold War, there seems to be a concern about a scrupulous respect for freedom of the press and of expression in some "ideological" quarters of a potential Obama Administration. Although I do believe that the Senator from Illinois has kept a strong record on the necessity of a balanced debate regarding the nation's fundamental issues, and although Senator Biden has been a proponent of free speech, there are signs that radical groups could use Government positions to harass media that would be critical of an Obama Administration on national security grounds.

What's more is the dangerous possibility that (short of a counter Jihadi doctrine) elements of Wahhabi and Khomeinist advocacy circles would take advantage of a "new direction" to strike at the counterterrorism community in the private sector, targeting the advances made for the last seven years in educating Americans about the threat. Such a development would be a red line for the nation's defense. To be direct about it, already under the Bush Administration, the Wahhabi and Khomeinist lobbies have wreaked havoc throughout the bureaucracy, blocking major reforms needed to educate civil servants and citizens to learn about the threats looming over the country and its next generations. Under a McCain Administration there are no guarantees that the "Jihadophile lobby" will recede, but chances are much higher for new counterterrorism education to make a breakthrough than under an Obama Administration.

Under the latter, Muslim reformers in America won't have an equal chance with the Jihadi pressure groups to have their message received by their communities. Middle East dissidents will have their stories marginalized in the public sector so that it won't perturb the deals to "be cut with the regimes in the region." All that is predictable and projectable, hence the options are really limited if not set in terms of choice.

The choice

On the one hand, Senator Obama has a character to be admired and has skills to make other politicians jealous. He would make America look very good. Had we not been in a confrontation with the Jihadist forces worldwide, I would have gladly voted for him. Strange as it may be for many of my colleagues, his alleged "socialism" doesn't intimidate me, nor does his "radical liberalism." America's society will only absorb what it can digest.

On the other hand, Senator McCain is a national hero and a product of real American traditions. I would have liked for him to have been elected in 2000 so that he would have been the Commander in Chief on September 11 (with all respect due to President Bush). There are other men and women who are also qualified to lead this nation in these politically and economically trying times such as Senator Clinton, Governor Romney and others. But our political process has selected McCain and Obama and one of them has to become the President.

"Primo vivere" says the Roman adage. You've got to survive first and you've got to be free too. I have learned this the hard way. Hence in this 2008 Presidential election, I will vote on national security, that is national survival. All other issues are linked to our ability as a nation to make it through these very critical years. After having reviewed the two platforms from that perspective, and short of discovering what can change my analysis in the next few days, I wish Senator Obama good luck and, as a registered independent, I will vote for Senator McCain for the President of the United States.

Ultimately Americans will decide about their future and whatever it will be, we will continue to try to make it better for our children.

8)Obama and the Politics of Crowds:The masses greeting the candidate on the trail are a sign of great unease.
By FOUAD AJAMI

There is something odd -- and dare I say novel -- in American politics about the crowds that have been greeting Barack Obama on his campaign trail. Hitherto, crowds have not been a prominent feature of American politics. We associate them with the temper of Third World societies. We think of places like Argentina and Egypt and Iran, of multitudes brought together by their zeal for a Peron or a Nasser or a Khomeini. In these kinds of societies, the crowd comes forth to affirm its faith in a redeemer: a man who would set the world right.


As the late Nobel laureate Elias Canetti observes in his great book, "Crowds and Power" (first published in 1960), the crowd is based on an illusion of equality: Its quest is for that moment when "distinctions are thrown off and all become equal. It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd." These crowds, in the tens of thousands, who have been turning out for the Democratic standard-bearer in St. Louis and Denver and Portland, are a measure of American distress.

On the face of it, there is nothing overwhelmingly stirring about Sen. Obama. There is a cerebral quality to him, and an air of detachment. He has eloquence, but within bounds. After nearly two years on the trail, the audience can pretty much anticipate and recite his lines. The political genius of the man is that he is a blank slate. The devotees can project onto him what they wish. The coalition that has propelled his quest -- African-Americans and affluent white liberals -- has no economic coherence. But for the moment, there is the illusion of a common undertaking -- Canetti's feeling of equality within the crowd. The day after, the crowd will of course discover its own fissures. The affluent will have to pay for the programs promised the poor. The redistribution agenda that runs through Mr. Obama's vision is anathema to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the hedge-fund managers now smitten with him. Their ethos is one of competition and the justice of the rewards that come with risk and effort. All this is shelved, as the devotees sustain the candidacy of a man whose public career has been a steady advocacy of reining in the market and organizing those who believe in entitlement and redistribution.

A creature of universities and churches and nonprofit institutions, the Illinois senator, with the blessing and acquiescence of his upscale supporters, has glided past these hard distinctions. On the face of it, it must be surmised that his affluent devotees are ready to foot the bill for the new order, or are convinced that after victory the old ways will endure, and that Mr. Obama will govern from the center. Ambiguity has been a powerful weapon of this gifted candidate: He has been different things to different people, and he was under no obligation to tell this coalition of a thousand discontents, and a thousand visions, the details of his political programs: redistribution for the poor, postracial absolution and "modernity" for the upper end of the scale.

It was no accident that the white working class was the last segment of the population to sign up for the Obama journey. Their hesitancy was not about race. They were men and women of practicality; they distrusted oratory, they could see through the falseness of the solidarity offered by this campaign. They did not have much, but believed in the legitimacy of what little they had acquired. They valued work and its rewards. They knew and heard of staggering wealth made by the Masters of the Universe, but held onto their faith in the outcomes that economic life decreed. The economic hurricane that struck America some weeks ago shook them to the core. They now seek protection, the shelter of the state, and the promise of social repair. The bonuses of the wizards who ran the great corporate entities had not bothered them. It was the spectacle of the work of the wizards melting before our eyes that unsettled them.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late Democratic senator from New York, once set the difference between American capitalism and the older European version by observing that America was the party of liberty, whereas Europe was the party of equality. Just in the nick of time for the Obama candidacy, the American faith in liberty began to crack. The preachers of America's decline in the global pecking order had added to the panic. Our best days were behind us, the declinists prophesied. The sun was setting on our imperium, and rising in other lands.

A younger man, "cool" and collected, carrying within his own biography the strands of the world beyond America's shores, was put forth as a herald of the change upon us. The crowd would risk the experiment. There was grudge and a desire for retribution in the crowd to begin with. Akin to the passions that have shaped and driven highly polarized societies, this election has at its core a desire to settle the unfinished account of the presidential election eight years ago. George W. Bush's presidency remained, for his countless critics and detractors, a tale of usurpation. He had gotten what was not his due; more galling still, he had been bold and unabashed, and taken his time at the helm as an opportunity to assert an ambitious doctrine of American power abroad. He had waged a war of choice in Iraq.

This election is the rematch that John Kerry had not delivered on. In the fashion of the crowd that seeks and sees the justice of retribution, Mr. Obama's supporters have been willing to overlook his means. So a candidate pledged to good government and to ending the role of money in our political life opts out of public financing of presidential campaigns. What of it? The end justifies the means.

Save in times of national peril, Americans have been sober, really minimalist, in what they expected out of national elections, out of politics itself. The outcomes that mattered were decided in the push and pull of daily life, by the inventors and the entrepreneurs, and the captains of industry and finance. To be sure, there was a measure of willfulness in this national vision, for politics and wars guided the destiny of this republic. But that American sobriety and skepticism about politics -- and leaders -- set this republic apart from political cultures that saw redemption lurking around every corner.

My boyhood, and the Arab political culture I have been chronicling for well over three decades, are anchored in the Arab world. And the tragedy of Arab political culture has been the unending expectation of the crowd -- the street, we call it -- in the redeemer who will put an end to the decline, who will restore faded splendor and greatness. When I came into my own, in the late 1950s and '60s, those hopes were invested in the Egyptian Gamal Abdul Nasser. He faltered, and broke the hearts of generations of Arabs. But the faith in the Awaited One lives on, and it would forever circle the Arab world looking for the next redeemer.

America is a different land, for me exceptional in all the ways that matter. In recent days, those vast Obama crowds, though, have recalled for me the politics of charisma that wrecked Arab and Muslim societies. A leader does not have to say much, or be much. The crowd is left to its most powerful possession -- its imagination.

From Elias Canetti again: "But the crowd, as such, disintegrates. It has a presentiment of this and fears it. . . . Only the growth of the crowd prevents those who belong to it from creeping back under their private burdens."

The morning after the election, the disappointment will begin to settle upon the Obama crowd. Defeat -- by now unthinkable to the devotees -- will bring heartbreak. Victory will steadily deliver the sobering verdict that our troubles won't be solved by a leader's magic.