Build Department of Big Brother With Acorns!

I have repeatedly written when the world is suffering from economic trauma a rise in anti-Semitism is the trade off. (See 1 below.)

Obama, Axelrod and their need for straw men. (See 2 below.)

A Chicagoan views Obama, his promises and murky transparency. (See 3 below.)

Robert Samuelson asks what/who will replace our consumer led economy and draws from Japan's experiences. (See 4 below.)

Editorial suggests work outs preferable to bailing out the bankrupt. (See 5 below.)

Obama's Foreign Policy emerges and according to Stratfor, The National Security Council, will have more responsibility in shaping it. Clinton's role, as Sec. of State, will be more in the nature of image building and crafting perceptions.

Obama intends to rebuild the military in order to support his foreign initiatives and thus, will seek more reliance upon allies, will be more consultative as he withdraws our forces. (See 6 below.)

The Fairness? Doctrine is soon to be debated and may be voted on by Congress. The premise behind the doctrine is that Liberal views do not get heard on radio and therefor the need more balance. The concept stops at radio and is not extended to TV, NPR newspapers or cable TV. Fairness is only fair as far as it goes.

Government bureaucrats know best what is fair and what is not and what we should and should not hear. The Big Brother Fairness Building could be built out of ACORNS!

Meanwhile, U.S. troops just sent to Afghanistan begin being battle tested. It will be interesting to see how the news and media folks report Obama's War in Afghanistan. Will they scream casualties each day in order to weaken our resolve or will they back page it and low key it? (See 7 below.)

Israel has decided it is time to go covert-active according to U.S Intelligence. What purpose is served by U.S. Intelligence leaking this information and the press and media reporting same? (See 8 and 8a below.)

Dick

1) The Writing Is On The Synagogue Wall
By Denis MacShane

World depressions lead to a rise in anti-Semitism. All over Europe, the evidence is around us.

The periodic crises that have shaken world capitalism in the century and a half since Marx wrote Das Kapital are marked by a common political phenomenon. It is the rise of political anti-Semitism. Attacks on Jews and Jewishness constitute the canary in the coal mine that tells us something is going seriously wrong.

Last month a 32-year-old IT worker, Michael Booksatz, was beaten up in the streets of north London by two hooded men shouting about Palestinians. Jewish students at the London School of Economics - home to many brilliant Jews who fled Hitler's Germany - are now frightened by anti-Jewish abuse from Islamist students. Graffiti such as “Kill the Jews” or “Jihad 4 Israel” appear close to synagogues in London.

The Metropolitan Police report four times as many anti-Jewish incidents in recent weeks as Islamaphobic events. The respected Community Security Trust, which records anti-Jewish attacks with scrupulous rigour, reports as many attacks on Jews - verbal, vandalism and some violent - in the first weeks of 2009 as in the first six months of last year.

As the world enters a new era of crisis, anti-Semitism is back. History, as ever, begins to repeat itself. The slumps and stock market fever expressed in Zola's novel, L'Argent, or the populist anger against Wall Street at the end of the 19th century gave rise to the virulent anti-Semitic politics witnessed in France in connection with the Dreyfus case or the takeover of Vienna by openly anti-Semitic politicians. The Great Depression gave rise to the worst expressions of anti-Semitism ever seen, namely the politics that led to the Holocaust. But even in Britain the Duke of Wellington of the time was leader of a secret anti-Jewish organisation which had the initials PJ - Perish Judah - on its letterhead.

The economic crises of the 1970s led to a marked increase in the vote for the National Front in Britain and the openly anti-Semitic BNP, its successor extreme party, is doing very well in local elections - below the radar of the national opinion polls.

The distress and upset over the terrible pictures of children killed in Israel's attacks on Hamas in Gaza have allowed anti-Israeli feelings to be more violently and vehemently expressed than ever before. Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic. But all anti-Semites hate the existence of a Jewish state and hiding behind code words such as anti-Zionism increases the density and viciousness of their anti-Jewish utterances.

In Italy, the streets of Milan are daubed with slogans urging Italians not to buy goods at Jewish shops - an echo of the Nazi slogan “Kauft Nicht Bei Juden”. In Germany, radio phone-ins are full of accusations that the bankers accused of being responsible for the current economic crisis are Jews. In anti-Israel demonstrations in Berlin, placards stating “It was a good idea to use gas” or “I'm anti-Semitic and that's a good thing” were carried. Thus every Jew is made to feel as if they do not fully belong in the countries where they were born or the societies that they participate in.

Terrible massacres of Muslims have taken place in different parts of the world so far this century, from Kashmir to Gujarat. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Nato soldiers are accused of brutality but the men with the most blood on their hands of fellow Muslims have been Islamist ideologues. Yet there is no outrage against the perpetrators of those attacks compared with the onslaught on Israel and on Jews.

Is it unreasonable to argue that the reason that there is worldwide anger against Israel but not against other regimes or religions that carry out massacres of Muslims is because the Israelis are Jews? Has legitimate criticism and anger against Israel allowed Jew hate to become almost acceptable politics again? Add to this a world economic crisis in which it is so easy to point at the names of the swindlers and banksters that happen to be Jewish, and a new perfect storm of anti-Semitism begins to take shape.

Today in London a conference of parliamentarians from different legislatures in Europe and around the world will gather to discuss what can be done. Michael Gove, for the Conservatives, will join Labour Cabinet ministers Hazel Blears and Jim Murphy in saying it is time for the Parliaments of the democractic world to take action against anti-Semitism - especially Islamist attacks against young Jewish students on university campuses.

The Pope embraces a Holocaust-denying Winchester and Cambridge-educated bishop; slogans such as “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas” are chanted in Amsterdam;

Jews are again made to feel they are not full citizens of the countries of their birth because they refuse to support the right of Hamas and Hezbollah to use terror attacks against Israeli civilians. The canary in the coal mine seems in danger of its life once again.

2) Straw Men

You can forgive President Obama, struggling with Congress for the first time as the Oval Office occupant, for resorting to a debating tactic that would make my high school forensics teacher, Dean Rhoads, scowl. Of a large basket of his opponents, the President said:

As I said, the one concern I've got on the stimulus package in terms of the debate and listening to some of what's been said in Congress is that there seems to be a set of folks who -- I don't doubt their sincerity -- who just believe that we should do nothing. Now, if that's their opening position or their closing position in negotiations, then we're probably not going to make much progress, because I don't think that's economically sound and I don't think that's what the American people expect, is for us to stand by and do nothing.

I don't doubt Obama's sincerity either, but, well, straw men are made of sterner stuff.

Except for a Republicans on the fringe, the opposition party did want to do something: they wanted more tax cuts and fewer spending. (It is true that, as the debate went along, Republicans seemed to suddenly have as much trouble with the size of the package as with its composition - and if that sounds dirty, it's meant to be.) Obama has regularly described these policy prescriptions as "failed;" there wasn't a need to mischaracterize. What was it about the debate that pressured President Obama to appear to exaggerate the nature of Republican opposition?

It may have been the polls. Internal polling conducted for the DNC and passed along to the White House confirmed public polling: overwhelmingly, Americans wanted Congress to "do something." Casting your opponents as wanting to "do nothing" was a neat trick, and one that might have been intended to obscure a policy debate that had gotten away from the White House, at least temporarily. Another neat trick: portraying opposition as "well meaning" and just the same old politics, as if the election, once and for all, completely sealed off the White House from mere politics, and completely ratified Democratic political principles as ideology-free. Democrats respond to these assertions by pointing out, correctly, that the practical effect of Republican opposition was wholly political: if they'd succeeded in peeling off a Democratic senator, the works would be gummed up and Obama wouldn't get his stimulus and nothing would be done.


Besides, they say, the President and his chief political adviser, David Axelrod, can be forgiven for seeking to make explicit the contrasts they perceived. Make no mistake: the Axelrod to Obama channel is broadcasting loudly these days, much to Obama's benefit.

Indeed, Axelrod has a similar habit of discovering new opponents, a tendency that manifested itself at various points in the presidential campaign. Obama's going through a rough patch; the cable news networks are Availability Biasing the present, turning bumps in the road into insurmountable boulders, reporters are asking normal questions, and - boom - persecution complex . Washington thinks one thing, but Obama thinks another. The smelly denizens of the Beltway are totally out of touch with the American people. The American people know exactly what Obama is doing. Washington's ways are the problem. And so on.

I used to think this was intellectually dishonest. Why would such a sophisticated campaign fall into such cliché caricature? Then I realized that Axelrod really believed it. And because he turned out to be right more often than not - Obama did have a long-term strategy; the American people did possess a subtlety that the press corps forgets - he deservedly gets a little bit of a pass.


Lest you think I'm being uncharitable, let me also say that Axelrod's self-preservation instincts, his ability to read routes, his insistence on ethics and accountability, all these were critical to Obama's political success. (The first senior White House official to counsel Obama to say he screwed up when Tom Daschle's tax problems exposed a double standard, was, I am told, Axelrod.)


Conversely, Mr. Axelrod's supreme attention to The Narrative of Barack Obama is, I must say, admirable and annoying to those of us who try to see shades of gray.

It was jarring to read Axelrod channel Frank Rich, in a column by, uh, Frank Rich:

On Wednesday, as a stimulus deal became a certainty on Capitol Hill, I asked David Axelrod for his take on this Groundhog Day relationship between Obama and the political culture.

"It's why our campaign was not based in Washington but in Chicago," he said. "We were somewhat insulated from the echo chamber. In the summer of '07, the conventional wisdom was that Obama was a shooting star; his campaign was irretrievably lost; it was a ludicrous strategy to focus on Iowa; and we were falling further and further behind in the national polls." But even after the Iowa victory, this same syndrome kept repeating itself. When Obama came out against the gas-tax holiday supported by both McCain and Clinton last spring, Axelrod recalled, "everyone in D.C. thought we were committing suicide."

The stimulus battle was more of the same. "This town talks to itself and whips itself into a frenzy with its own theories that are completely at odds with what the rest of America is thinking," he says. Once the frenzy got going, it didn't matter that most polls showed support for Obama and his economic package: "If you watched cable TV, you'd see our support was plummeting, we were in trouble. It was almost like living in a parallel universe."

For Axelrod, the moral is "not just that Washington is too insular but that the American people are a lot smarter than people in Washington think."

For one thing, these dastardly cable networks get a lot of love from Obama advisers. (How many times has a senior official appeared on Morning Joe since the inauguration? More than a half dozen?)

For another, the "punditocracy," as Rich calls it, did not uniformly pronounce rites upon Obama's opposition to the gas tax holiday; in fact, the opposite was true. They agreed with it substantively and believed it would work properly.

For another, the punditocracy was at least half right: the White House had to change gears. They believed they'd get GOP support. They didn't. They scrambled to ramp up a communications strategy that proved, yes, successful.

For another, the p-tocracy doesn't exist in the way Axe and Rich believe it does. There are so many different types of pundits, analysts and reporters, all broadcasting to an immensely sophisticated audience that sifts, filters and chooses what to believe. (Most (non-conservative) op-ed columnists weren't hysterical about the White House's growing pains, for example.)

Obama's winning, and he has plenty of political enemies. Why the need to find them where they aren't?

3) Promises, Promises:Soaring expectations collide with harsh political realities. How Barack Obama looks from Chicagoland.
By Joseph Epstein

On Tuesday, this past Nov. 4, I voted for John McCain for President of The United States. On Wednesday morning, I woke feeling glad that he lost. Had McCain won, a spirit of gloom would have spread over the land, a deadening feeling of "Oh, God, business as usual," part of that business being that a man tied to failed economic policies was once again at the helm and a nonwhite candidate for president still hadn't a chance. But Barack Obama was our new president. Great day in the morning; a new age in American politics is upon us.

Or is it? Like Augie March, I am an American, Chicago-born, but unlike Augie—a follower of Leon Trotsky—I have never been able to take politics with an entirely straight face. So often, I find my antipathies divided; faced with two equally outrageous candidates, a plague, I usually pronounce, on both their condominiums. The source of this is genealogical. When I was a boy, my father remarked that the aldermen of the City of Chicago, who were then paid an annual salary of $20,000, were spending as much as $250,000 to win election. "The arithmetic doesn't quite work out," he said, pausing, as if to say (though the phrase hadn't yet been invented), "You do the math."

Politicians, my rich Chicago heritage tells me, are all guilty until proven innocent. When the great Rod Blagojevich scandal broke a few months ago, I, like most Chicagoans, wasn't in the least scandalized. All I found remarkable in it was the now former governor's efficiency, in the realm of corruption, in eliminating the middleman and asking for the money himself.

Nigel Dempster, the late English gossip columnist, who specialized in exposing the sexual peccadilloes of British politicians, once remarked: "No one cares what politicians say—they're all liars, cheats and fools." I've met a few—a very few—who weren't: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Paul Simon, Jeane Kirkpatrick. At the same time, whenever I see Joe Biden, with those hair plugs and those too-large dental caps, I imagine him, perhaps unfairly, in traffic court signaling me into the men's room, where in a husky whisper he lets me know that, for three grand, he can get me off that DWI, no sweat.

But even hardened Chicago-bred cynicism breaks down from time to time, and hopeless idealism not only threatens but actually does break through. Barack Obama's presidency seemed such an occasion. He was young, handsome in an elegant yet inoffensive way, he had the gift of even temperament, he was articulate; if not as eloquent as advertised, next to bumbling George W. Bush he seemed a veritable Edmund Burke. True, over several years in politics he seemed to have accomplished nothing but election, which some would say is the real point of politics in any case, but so much about him seemed promising.

Obama himself wasn't short on promises. He promised to change the very game of politics. He would bring transparency to government, toss out the lobbyists, encourage bipartisanship, unite the country, making us one people again. As a tremendous step toward doing so, he ran a magnificently race-free campaign, never once suggesting that America was a racist country or that he was in any way a victim, nor that he was deserving of election for any other reason but his pure inspirational quality and solid intellectual merits.

All politicians disappoint, to ring a change on Tolstoy, but every politician disappoints in his own way. The first inkling of the disappointment with Barack Obama, as we know, came with his appointments. Two major ones—Bill Richardson and Tom Daschle—had to drop out for tax and more intricate delinquencies; Nancy Killefer, his chief performance officer, fell by the wayside for similar reasons. Timothy Geithner, nominated as secretary of the Treasury, was given a pass. But Obama's lectures on the purity that he would bring to government were over. The high moral ground he had picked out for himself, he was finding, was swampier than he had supposed.

Promises, promises, as the Burt Bachrach song had it; unkept, they come back to bite a man. Obama's promise of a new bipartisanship hit heavy water as soon as his stimulus-package debate was set adrift. For one thing, only the idea for a stimulus package—but not the package itself—ever felt as if it were really his. From the outset it was instead the work of that fun couple, maestros Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the Frick and Frack of heavy federal spending. And those two are as interested in bipartisan participation as Lord Byron was in marriage counseling. When the going on the package got rough, Obama said, in effect: "Well, I won the damned election, so we'll do things my way, though of course I still invite bipartisan participation."

Such has been the steamroller effect of it all that Obama lost another cabinet officer, the Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, who was to fill the job of secretary of commerce left unfilled by Bill Richardson. Secretary of commerce begins to look like a job that may need to be advertised in the classified section.

Meanwhile, Secretary of the Treasury Geithner, after laying out a plan to save the banks that satisfied no one, a plan that has been judged vague where not vapid, appears to be going the way of all geniuses. Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke—economic geniuses are falling like cats on the rack at the county fair in Texas. Enough of geniuses; a simple expert would come in handy. But not many of those are around, either, or at least not credible ones, which makes the new Obama presidency feel wobbly, weak, if not inept on the major crisis of the era.

Victims of the general ineptitude that the Obama administration has so quickly shown are transparency in government and the new (we hardly knew ye) bipartisanship. The stimulus package itself is felt to be suspect.

Which brings us back to disappointment and politics. It is in the nature of politicians to make promises; it is what they do. Some do so without the least intention of delivering on their promises. Some fully intend to deliver, but find the world obdurate, unwilling to go along with their fine intentions. Barack Obama now finds himself among the latter. With loony jihadists threatening from without, a crumbling economy terrorizing its citizens from within, Obama knew he needed straightaway to demonstrate utmost competence to stem fear and instill confidence. The reason for his wanting to assemble an able cabinet more quickly than any other administration in recent history was to show that, though the nation had major problems, they were under study and would soon be attacked by the most capable minds of our time. He needed to calm the country down, and show, in a measured but forceful way, that a strong hand was at the wheel.

This he has thus far failed abysmally to do. Very disappointing, to the country at large, and not least, I have no doubt, to Barack Obama himself. Viewed from Chicago, up whose greasy political pole the president has himself climbed, the jolt is a lot less jarring. "Them guys in the black suits and narrow ties, them Ivy League types, them goo-goos," the Chicago alderman Mathias (Paddy) Bauler long ago said, "they think the whole thing is on the square." Old Paddy, of unblessed memory, also said that "Chicago ain't ready for reform." Were he alive today to witness the sad early beginnings of the Obama presidency, he might add: "And maybe the rest of the country ain't either."

4) Decade Ahead?
By Robert Samuelson

"If you delay acting on an economy of this severity, (it potentially) becomes much more difficult for us to get out of. We saw this happen in Japan in the 1990s, where they ... suffered what was called the 'lost decade.'"

-- President Barack Obama, Feb. 9

"The Japanese ... had eight separate stimulus packages. ... It was unprecedented. And it didn't work."

-- Conservative TV talk show host Sean Hannity, Jan. 23

We argue by analogy. The president says that Japan's history demonstrates the need for his "stimulus package." To the contrary, claim Hannity and other conservatives, Japan shows that stimulus plans don't work. Up to a point, they're both right. But the possible parallels between Japan's experience and our own are much broader and pose the question of whether we, too, might face a "lost decade."

What happened to Japan in the 1990s?

It did not, as some commentators say, suffer a "depression." Not even a "great recession," as others put it. Japan experienced a listless, boring prosperity. Its economy expanded in all but two years (1998, 1999), although the average annual growth rate was a meager 1.5 percent. Unemployment rose to 5 percent in 2001 from 2.1percent in 1990. Not good, but hardly a calamity. Japan remained a hugely wealthy society.

Its situation compelled attention mainly because it confounded conventional wisdom. From 1956 to 1973, Japan had grown 9 percent a year; in the 1980s, it was still growing at 4 percent. Japan was widely expected to overtake the United States as the richest, most advanced economy. It didn't. Worse, its semi-stagnation defied the notion that modern economics enabled government to ensure adequate growth.

Papers were written, conferences organized, and the verdict rendered: The Japanese had botched it. After the "bubble economy" of the late 1980s burst, the Bank of Japan had eased credit too slowly. Burdened with bad loans, banks stopped lending; government didn't cleanse the banks quickly enough. Government stimulus packages were too little, too late. Naturally, the economy languished. All plausible -- and wrong.

The standard analysis reassures, because it suggests that with better decisions, Japan might have avoided its prolonged slowdown. The reality seems to be that Japan's economic reverses reflect deeply held social and political values. The same might be true of us.

Japan has what Richard Katz, editor of the Oriental Economist, terms a "dual economy." On the one hand, export industries (autos, steel, electronics) are highly efficient. They face intense global competition. On the other, many domestic industries (food processing, construction, retailing) are inefficient and sheltered from local competition by regulations or custom.

This has suited most Japanese. Exports earned the foreign currency needed to buy food and fuel imports. Meanwhile, protected domestic industries provided the job security and social stability that most Japanese preferred to hyper-competition. While exports thrived, they -- and the supporting business investment -- were Japan's engine of economic growth.

The trouble is that this system broke down in the mid-1980s. The rising yen made Japanese exports costlier on world markets. New competitors -- South Korea, Taiwan --emerged. Japan lost its engine of growth and hasn't found a new one. That's Japan's central economic problem.

Government has tried. In the 1980s, the Bank of Japan sought to offset the effect of the higher yen with cheap credit. This backfired, resulting in the bubble economy. From 1985 to 1990, Tokyo land prices rose 134 percent; the stock market boomed. Since the bubble's collapse, there have been 13 stimulus plans, reckons economist Randall Jones of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Even now, the economy is trade dependent; in December, exports dropped 35 percent from a year earlier, pushing Japan into a deep recession.

What happened in Japan does not doom Obama's stimulus as futile. Sometimes, government should intervene to break the fall of a declining economy. Japan's packages probably temporarily bolstered a faltering economy. In this sense, the president is correct. Unfortunately, his stimulus is weaker than advertised, because much of the effect occurs after 2009.

Still, the operative word is "temporarily." Hannity is correct in that serial stimulus plans become self-defeating. The required debt is unsustainable. At some point, the economy must generate strong growth on its own. Japan's hasn't. Will ours?

Since the early 1980s, American economic growth has depended on a steady rise in consumer spending supported by more debt and increasing asset prices (stocks, homes). Just as the mid-1980s signaled the end of Japan's export-led growth, the present U.S. slump signals the end of upbeat consumption-led growth. But its legacy is an overbuilt and overemployed consumption sector, from car dealers to malls. The question is whether our system is adaptive enough to create new sources of growth to fill the void left by retreating shoppers.

5) Bankrupt Bailout
By The Editors of The Nation.


Let us hope President Obama has asked his economic advisers if they have a Plan B--because Plan A failed as soon as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced the details. Geithner's speech was supposed to be a fresh start for restoring investor confidence and directing capital to deeply injured banks. Instead, it was a rhetorical catastrophe for the Obama administration. As Geithner spoke, financial markets plummeted; the Dow Jones slid nearly 400 points. Markets aren't always a trustworthy measure of policy, but in this case the skepticism was justified. Treasury's so-called "financial stability" plan is a warmed-over mishmash that answers none of the crucial questions about how to resolve the crisis, and it leaves out virtually every meaningful fact. When public officials are that evasive, it usually means they don't know what they're doing--or, more likely, they are trying to fog over their true intentions.

What are they hiding? If Geithner had spoken with any clarity, he would have revealed that his "new" plan is basically a continuation of the one that failed spectacularly in the closing months of the Bush administration: Washington intends to deliver vast additional sums of public money to the very largest banks while demanding little in return for the public interest. The Obama administration is adding new wrinkles to a doomed effort, attempting to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Since the old order led the country into this mess, enlarging its rescue package is certain to stoke further the ferocious public outrage. So Geithner cannot say plainly what he is up to. Neither he nor Larry Summers, Obama's chief economic adviser, can think his way out of the problem or propose a more aggressive approach, as both men are wedded to the old way of doing things.

The predicament is now deeply threatening to our new president; very swiftly he will own the disaster he inherited. We urge Obama to launch an entirely different approach. The fundamental, terrifying fact of this crisis, widely understood among experts and cautious investors, is that many of our largest financial institutions are insolvent. It is not in the public interest to exhaust the Treasury trying to keep them alive.

The more promising path is for government to take charge of the system. This approach--call it "supervised workouts" if "nationalization" sounds too scary--would be more efficient than handing over more billions to failed bank executives and asking them to do the right thing. The government should liquidate the troubled big banks (along with the arcane financial instruments that led to their downfall), sell off their parts to healthier enterprises and let the shareholders eat the dust. Scarce public capital can meanwhile be used to fashion a new banking system, built around the thousands of smaller banks and financial firms that respect their obligations to the broader economy by investing in production and jobs. It will take some years to do this, and government will temporarily have to fill in the blank spots in the credit system that are not functioning, but it's probably the only way out.

In some ways, Obama did this to himself. Ignoring the pleas of skeptics and reformers (The Nation included), the president surrounded himself with familiar players from the old order and rigorously excluded anyone identified as an unorthodox thinker. It is not too late to correct this deformity, but he can't wait long. The White House needs a healthier mix of ideas and advisers--people who are not committed to saving old Wall Street names but are capable of visualizing a brighter future emerging from the ruins. Look around, Mr. President. You can find them.

6) The Emerging Obama Foreign Policy
By Rodger Baker



U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is making her first official overseas visit, with scheduled stops in Tokyo; Jakarta, Indonesia; Seoul, South Korea; and Beijing. The choice of Asia as her first destination is intended to signal a more global focus for U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, as opposed to the heavy emphasis on the Middle East and South Asia seen in the last years of the Bush administration. It also represents the kickoff of an ambitious travel plan that will see Clinton visiting numerous countries across the globe in a bid to project the image of a more cooperative U.S. administration.

Clinton’s Asian expedition is not the first overseas visit by a key member of the new administration. Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Germany for the Munich Security Conference, where he faced the Russians. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell has finished his first trip to his area of responsibility, and is already planning a return visit to the Middle East. And Richard Holbrooke, special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has visited both South Asian countries in addition to making a “listening” stop in India.

The Emergence of a New Foreign Policy

As with any new U.S. presidency, there will be a period of reshaping policy, of setting priorities, and of balancing internal differences within the Obama administration. The various individuals and visits cataloged above in part reflect the Obama administration’s emerging foreign policy.

A two-pronged Obama foreign policy approach is unfolding. The first prong, relating to the general tenor of foreign relations, involves a modern application of the “speak softly and carry a big stick” approach. The second prong, relating to the distribution of power within the administration, involves a centralization of foreign policy centering on a stronger and expanded National Security Council (NSC) and relies on special envoys for crisis areas, leaving the secretary of state to shape foreign perceptions rather than policy.

The Obama administration faced mixed expectations as it came into office. Perhaps the most far-reaching expectation on the international front was the idea that the Obama administration would somehow be the antithesis of the previous Bush administration. Whereas Bush often was portrayed as a unilateralist “cowboy,” constantly confronting others and never listening to allies (much less competitors), it was thought that Obama somehow would remake America into a nation that withheld its military power and instead confronted international relations via consultations and cooperation. In essence, the Bush administration was seen as aggressive and unwilling to listen, while an Obama administration was expected to be more easily shaped and manipulated.

Anticipation of a weaker administration created a challenge for Obama from the start. While many of his supporters saw him as the anti-Bush, the new president had no intention of shifting America to a second-tier position or making the United States isolationist. Obama’s focus on reducing U.S. forces in Iraq and the discussions during Clinton’s confirmation hearing of reducing the military’s role in reconstruction operations did not reflect an anti-military bias or even new ideas, but something Defense Secretary Robert Gates had advocated for under former U.S. President George W. Bush. A reshaping of the U.S. military will in fact take place over the course of Obama’s term in office. But the decision to reduce the U.S. military presence in Iraq is not unique to this administration; it is merely a recognition of the reality of the limitations of military resources.

Diplomacy and Military Power

The new administration has applied this decision as the basis of a strategy to refocus the military on its core competencies and rebuild the military’s strength and readiness, using that as the strong and stable framework from which to pursue an apparently more cooperative foreign policy. U.S. diplomatic power needs a strong military, and operations in Iraq have drained U.S. military power — something highlighted by the U.S. inability to act on its policies when the Russians moved in on Georgia.

It is not only U.S. political power that is reinforced by military power, but U.S. economic strength as well. Control of the world’s sea-lanes — and increasingly, control of outer space — is what ensures the security of U.S. economic links abroad. In theory, the United States can thus interdict competitors’ supply lines and economic ties while protecting its own.

Despite globalization and greater economic ties, physical power still remains the strongest backer to diplomacy. Ideology alone will not change the world, much less the actions of so-called rogue states or even pirates along the Somali coast. The first principal of Obama’s foreign policy, then, will be making sure it has big stick to carry, one freed from long-term reconstruction commitments or seemingly intractable situations such as Iraq. Only with an available and effective military can one afford to speak softly without being trod upon.

Rebuilding U.S. military readiness and strength is not going to be easy. Iraq and Afghanistan remain to be taken care of, and there are years of heavy activity and at times declining recruitment to recover from. While there are substantial benefits to a battle-hardened military accustomed to a high deployment tempo, this also has its costs — reset costs will be high. A very real domestic military shake-up looms on the one- to two-year horizon in order to bring the Pentagon back into line with fiscal and procurement realities, coupled with concerns about midlevel officer retention. But the Pentagon’s thinking and strategic guidance already have moved toward cooperative security and toward working more closely with allies and partners to stabilize and manage the global security environment, with an emphasis on requiring foreign participation and burden-sharing.

A Greater Security Role for Allies and a Centralized Foreign Policy

Obama will also work on managing the U.S. image abroad. Opposition to Bush and opposition to the war in Iraq often became synonymous internationally, evolving intentionally or otherwise into broader anti-war and anti-military sentiments. Rebuilding the military’s image internationally will not happen overnight. Part of the process will involve using the sense of change inherent in any new U.S. administration to push allies and others to take on a greater role in global security.

In Asia, for example, Clinton will call on Tokyo and Seoul to step up operations in Afghanistan, particularly in reconstruction and development efforts. But Tokyo and Seoul also will be called on to take a greater role in regional security — Seoul on the Korean Peninsula and Tokyo as a more active military ally overall. The same message will be sent to Europe and elsewhere: If you want a multilateral United States, you will have to take up the slack and participate in multilateral operations. The multilateral mantra will not be one in which the United States does what others say, but rather one in which the United States holds others to the task. In the end, this will reduce U.S. commitments abroad, allowing the military to refocus on its core competencies and rebuild its strength.

A strong military thus forms the foundation of any foreign policy. Obama’s foreign policy approach is largely centralized in a bid for a wider approach. Taking China as an example, for the last half-dozen years, U.S. policy on China was based almost entirely on economics. The U.S. Treasury Department took the lead in China relations, while other issues — everything from Chinese military developments to Beijing’s growing presence in Africa and Latin America to human rights — took a back seat. While the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue (or something similar) will remain a major pillar of U.S.-China relations under Obama, equally important parallel tracks will focus on military and security issues, nontraditional threats, politics and human rights. This multifaceted approach will require close co operation among numerous departments and divisions to avoid the chaos seen in things like U.S. policy on North Korea.

This coordination will take place in an expanded NSC, one that brings in the economic elements on equal footing with security and political concerns. Combined with the appointment of special envoys for critical regions, this is intended to ensure a more unified and complete approach to foreign policy. This way, Obama retains oversight over policy, while his erstwhile rival Clinton is just one voice at the table. The State Department’s role thus becomes more about image management and development.

Accordingly, Clinton’s foreign travels are less about shaping foreign policy than shaping foreign images of the United States. She is demonstrating the new consultative nature of the administration by going everywhere and listening to everyone. Meanwhile, the hard-hitting foreign policy initiatives go to the special envoys, who can dedicate their time and energy to just one topic. Holbrooke got South Asia, Mitchell got the Middle East, and there are indications that managing overall China strategy will fall to Biden, at least in the near term.

Other special envoys and special representatives might emerge, some technically reporting through the State Department, others to other departments, but all effectively reporting back to the NSC and the president. In theory, this will mitigate the kind of bickering between the State Department and NSC that characterized Bush’s first term (a concern hardly limited to the most recent ex-president). And to keep it busy, the State Department has been tasked with rebuilding the U.S. Agency for International Development or an equivalent program for taking reconstruction and development programs, slowly freeing the military from the reconstruction business.

As Clinton heads to Asia, then, the expectations of Asian allies and China of a newfound American appreciation for the Far East might be a bit misplaced. Certainly, this is the first time in a long while that a secretary of state has visited Asia before Europe. But given the role of the vice president and the special envoys, the visit might not reflect policy priorities so much as a desire to ensure that all regions get visits. Clinton’s agenda in each country might not offer an entirely accurate reading of U.S. policy initiatives for the region, either, as much of the policy is still up for review, and her primary responsibility is to demonstrate a new and more interactive face of American foreign policy.

Clinton’s Asia visit is significant largely because it highlights a piece of the evolving Obama foreign policy — a policy that remains centralized under the president via the NSC, and that uses dedicated special envoys and representatives to focus on key trouble spots (and perhaps to avoid some of the interagency bickering that can limit the agencies’ freedom to maneuver). Most importantly, this policy at its core looks to rebuild the sense and reality of American military strength through disengaging from apparently intractable situations, focusing on core competencies rather than reconstruction or nation-building, and calling on allies to take up the slack in security responsibilities. This is what is shaping the first priority for the Obama administration: withdrawal from Iraq not just to demonstrate a different approach than the last president, but also to ensure that the military is ready for use elsewhere.

7) Newest US troops in dangerous region near Kabul
By JASON STRAZIUSO

Close to 3,000 American soldiers who recently arrived in Afghanistan to secure two violent provinces near Kabul have begun operations in the field and already are seeing combat, the unit's spokesman said Monday.

The new troops are the first wave of an expected surge of reinforcements this year. The process began to take shape under President George Bush but has been given impetus by President Barack Obama's call for an increased focus on Afghanistan.

U.S. commanders have been contemplating sending up to 30,000 more soldiers to bolster the 33,000 already here, but the new administration is expected to initially approve only a portion of that amount. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday the president would decide soon.

The new unit — the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division — moved into Logar and Wardak provinces last month, and the soldiers from Fort Drum, N.Y., are now stationed in combat outposts throughout the provinces.

Militants have attacked several patrols with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, including one ambush by 30 insurgents, Lt. Col. Steve Osterhozer, the brigade spokesman, said.

Several roadside bombs also have exploded next to the unit's MRAPs — mine-resistance patrol vehicles — but caused no casualties, he said.

"In every case our vehicles returned with overwhelming fire," Ostehozer said. "We have not suffered anything more than a few bruises, while several insurgents have been killed."

Commanders are in the planning stages of larger scale operations expected to be launched in the coming weeks.

Militant activity has spiked in Logar and Wardak over the last year as the resurgent Taliban has spread north toward Kabul from its traditional southern power base. Residents say insurgents roam wide swaths of Wardak, a mountainous province whose capital is about 35 miles from Kabul.

The region has been covered in snow recently, but Col. David B. Haight, commander of the 3rd Brigade, said last week that he expects contact with insurgents to increase soon.

"The weather has made it so the enemy activity is somewhat decreased right now, and I expect it to increase in the next two to three months," Haight said at a news conference.

Haight said he believes the increase of militant activity in the two provinces is not ideologically based but stems from poor Afghans being enticed into fighting by their need for money. Quoting the governor of Logar, the colonel called it an "economic war."

Afghan officials "don't believe it's hardcore al-Qaida operatives that you're never going to convert anyway," Haight said. "They believe that it's the guys who say, 'Hey you want $100 to shoot an RPG at a Humvee when it goes by,' and the guy says, 'Yeah I'll do that, because I've got to feed my family.'"

Still, Haight said there are hardcore fighters in the region, some of them allied with Jalaludin Haqqani and his son Siraj, a fighting family with a long history in Afghanistan. The two militant leaders are believed to be in Pakistan.

Logar Gov. Atiqullah Ludin said at a news conference alongside Haight that U.S. troops will need to improve both security and the economic situation.

"There is a gap between the people and the government," Ludin said. "Assistance in Logar is very weak, and the life of the common man has not improved."

Ludin also urged that U.S. forces be careful and not act on bad intelligence to launch night raids on Afghans who turn out to be innocent.

It is a common complaint from Afghan leaders. President Hamid Karzai has long pleaded with U.S. forces not to kill innocent Afghans during military operations and says he hopes to see night raids curtailed.

Pointing to the value of such operations, the U.S. military said Monday that a raid in northwest Badghis province killed a feared militant leader named Ghulam Dastagir and eight other fighters.

Other raids, though, have killed innocent Afghans who were only defending their village against a nighttime incursion by forces they didn't know, officials say.

"We need to step back and look at those carefully, because the danger they carry is exponential," Ludin said.

Haight cautioned last week that civilian casualties could increase with the presence of his 2,700 soldiers.

"We understand the probability of increased civilian casualties is there because of increased U.S. forces," said the colonel, who has also commanded Special Operations task forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Our plan is to do no operations without ANA (Afghan army) and ANP (Afghan police), to help us be more precise."

The U.S. military and Afghan Defense Ministry announced last week that Afghan officers and soldiers would take on a greater role in military operations, including in specialized night raids, with the aim of decreasing civilian deaths.

The presence of U.S. troops in Wardak and Logar is the first time such a large contingent of American power has been so close to Kabul, fueling concerns that militants could be massing for a push at the capital. Haight dismissed those fears.

"Our provinces butt up against the southern boundary of Kabul and therefore there is the perception that Kabul could be surrounded," Haight said. "But the enemy cannot threaten Kabul. He's not big enough, he's not strong enough, he doesn't have the technology. He can conduct attacks but he can't completely disrupt the governance in Kabul."

8) Israel launches covert war against Iran
By Philip Sherwell in New York


Israel has launched a covert war against Iran as an alternative to direct military strikes against Tehran's nuclear programme, US intelligence sources have revealed.


It is using hitmen, sabotage, front companies and double agents to disrupt the regime's illicit weapons project, the experts say.

The most dramatic element of the "decapitation" programme is the planned assassination of top figures involved in Iran's atomic operations.

Despite fears in Israel and the US that Iran is approaching the point of no return in its ability to build atom bomb, Israeli officials are aware of the change in mood in Washington since President Barack Obama took office.

They privately acknowledge the new US administration is unlikely to sanction an air attack on Iran's nuclear installations and Mr Obama's offer to extend a hand of peace to Tehran puts any direct military action beyond reach for now.

The aim is to slow down or interrupt Iran's research programme, without the gamble of a direct confrontation that could lead to a wider war.

A former CIA officer on Iran told The Daily Telegraph: "Disruption is designed to slow progress on the programme, done in such a way that they don't realise what's happening. You are never going to stop it.

"The goal is delay, delay, delay until you can come up with some other solution or approach. We certainly don't want the current Iranian government to have those weapons. It's a good policy, short of taking them out militarily, which probably carries unacceptable risks."

Reva Bhalla, a senior analyst with Stratfor, the US private intelligence company with strong government security connections, said the strategy was to take out key people.

"With co-operation from the United States, Israeli covert operations have focused both on eliminating key human assets involved in the nuclear programme and in sabotaging the Iranian nuclear supply chain," she said.

"As US-Israeli relations are bound to come under strain over the Obama administration's outreach to Iran, and as the political atmosphere grows in complexity, an intensification of Israeli covert activity against Iran is likely to result."

Mossad was rumoured to be behind the death of Ardeshire Hassanpour, a top nuclear scientist at Iran's Isfahan uranium plant, who died in mysterious circumstances from reported "gas poisoning" in 2007.

Other recent deaths of important figures in the procurement and enrichment process in Iran and Europe have been the result of Israeli "hits", intended to deprive Tehran of key technical skills at the head of the programme, according to Western intelligence analysts.

"Israel has shown no hesitation in assassinating weapons scientists for hostile regimes in the past," said a European intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity. They did it with Iraq and they will do it with Iran when they can."

Mossad's covert operations cover a range of activities. The former CIA operative revealed how Israeli and US intelligence co-operated with European companies working in Iran to obtain photographs and other confidential material about Iranian nuclear and missile sites.

"It was a real company that operated from time to time in Iran and in the nature of their legitimate business came across information on various suspect Iranian facilities," he said.

Israel has also used front companies to infiltrate the Iranian purchasing network that the clerical regime uses to circumvent United Nations sanctions and obtain so-called "dual use" items – metals, valves, electronics, machinery – for its nuclear programme.

The businesses initially supply Iran with legitimate material, winning Tehran's trust, and then start to deliver faulty or defective items that "poison" the country's atomic activities.

"Without military strikes, there is still considerable scope for disrupting and damaging the Iranian programme and this has been done with some success," said Yossi Melman, a prominent Israeli journalist who covers security and intelligence issues for the Haaretz newspaper.

Mossad and Western intelligence operations have also infiltrated the Iranian nuclear programme and "bought" information from prominent atomic scientists. Israel has later selectively leaked some details to its allies, the media and United Nations atomic agency inspectors.

On one occasion, Iran itself is understood to have destroyed a nuclear facility near Tehran, bulldozing over the remains and replacing it with a football pitch, after its existence was revealed to UN inspectors. The regime feared that the discovery by inspectors of an undeclared nuclear facility would result in overwhelming pressure at the UN for tougher action against Iran.

The Iranian government has become so concerned about penetration of its programme that it has announced arrests of alleged spies in an attempt to discourage double agents. "Israel is part of a detailed and elaborate international effort to slow down the Iranian programme," said Mr Melman.

But Vince Canastraro, the former CIA counter-terrorism chief, expressed doubts about the efficacy of secret Israeli operations against Iran. "You cannot carry out foreign policy objectives via covert operations," he said. "You can't get rid of a couple of people and hope to affect Iran's nuclear capability."

Iran has consistently asserted that it is pursuing a nuclear capability for civilian energy generation purposes. But Israeli and Western intelligence agencies believe the 20-year-old programme, which was a secret until 2002, is designed to give the ruling mullahs an atom bomb.

8a) Was the late ex-Iranian a US doctor or bio-weapon scientist?

Iranian media this week offered a glimpse into the purported double life of an Iranian-born American physician alleging he was a secret bio-weapons scientist. They reported that Dr. Noah McKay (formerly Nasser Talebzadeh Ordoubadi) died in mysterious circumstance Saturday, Feb. 14 aged 53, vaguely accusing "intelligence agencies" of causing his death.

Dr. Noah is described in his American biography as a pioneer of Mind-Body-Quantum medicine who lectured in five countries and ran a successful health care center General Medical Clinics Inc. in King County, Washington for 15 years after suffering a heart attack in 1989.

The Iranian media claim his real persona was that of a leading bio-weapon researcher with notable accomplishments in the research of antidotes to toxic weapons. Some toxins respond to antibiotics and penicillin treatment, but others like botulism and ricin still defy treatment.

The Iranian sources hinted he was working on those toxins.

Not a trace of this activity appears in his biography or in his overt relationships.

Born in Tehran in 1956, he came to the US in 1974, attended Tufts University and won his MD in 1983. His father, Mansour Talebzadeh Ordoubadi was Chief of Staff of the Iranian army under the Shah of Iran in the late 1960’s. His maternal grandfather Saad Doleh was prime minister of Iran in the late 1930’s.

Intelligence sources report the ex-Iranian was a person of interest to US intelligence agencies although he was granted citizenship. He was watched on suspicion of maintaining clandestine connections with Middle East terrorist groups as well as working with Russian mafia elements in the West Coast town of Seattle, reputed procurers of advanced weapons for overseas terrorist organizations.

The US authorities never accused Dr. Talebzadeh of passing his biological weapons researches to Tehran. The Iranian sources claim they lacked evidence that would stand up in court.

But despite his pro-monarchist heritage, he was suspected of -

1. Obtaining access to classified biological warfare weaponry and antitoxins.

2. Using American territory as a convenient base for passing these secrets to Islamist terrorists and Iran.

Dr. Noah himself alleged that on May 13, 1997, eighteen FBI agents visited his home and those of managers of his clinics. According to his account, the FBI took sixty clinic employees before a grand jury, conducted hours of covert wiretaps of employee conversations and phone calls, and had undercover FBI agents posing as patients. He complained the federal authorities were out to get him.

In 2000, the six WellNet clinics the ex-Iranian owned were shut down, he filed for bankruptcy and accepted a plea bargain under which he was sentenced to 35 months in prison for health care and mail fraud under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

The Iranian media stress that the more serious charges of money laundering, funding Middle East terrorists and connections with the Russian mafia in Seattle were "never substantiated, proven or confirmed."

At the federal prison in Sheridan, Oregan, Talebzadeh is quoted as telling his lawyers that his life was in danger and he must change his name and ask for a transfer to another jail. He served out his sentence and in April, 2003, Dr. Noah successfully underwent open heart surgery.

None but Iranian sources report his death, but even they do not say how and where it happened.

The death of the ex-Iranian doctor/scientist remains as much a mystery as his life.

The Iranian reports only hint that he may have met a similar fate to the British ministry of defense's bio-weapons expert Dr. David Kelly, whose body was found in an Oxfordshire wood on July 17, 2003, five months after the US invasion of Iraq. At the time, the Bush administration was hunting for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

A British inquiry commission issued a verdict of suicide but Kelly's family and friends were always sure he was murdered.