A Conflict - Appeasing The Far Left and Facing Reality!

Big smile, bigger ego, ipso facto gargantuan budget leads to enormous deficits. It all fits.

Now all we have to do is either get China and our own shrinking 'filthy' rich to pay for it or print money. Whatever approach, we are in for a ride the likes of which we have never experienced.

One way to make the deficit problem smaller is to assume growth that probably will not occur and thus income tax payments that will not arrive. Thus, expect higher tax announcements to be coming down the pike. They will take the 'subtle' form of a variety of increased taxes on energy etc.

Placing off balance sheet obligations back on the nation's ledger is a positive move, makes the enormity of our future obligations realitsic but it also raises even more questions as to how they will be paid. Again - expect higher taxes but they will not be called by that name!

Since more than 40% of Americans pay no income taxes they remain in favor of having everyone else carry their water buckets and should continue to be pro Obama voters. Whether Obama can hold onto the loyalty of those who do pay income and other taxes and who will see their various tax bills increase that will be the interesting question come mid-year elections.

It is problematical voters will continue to be loyal to someone who raises their taxes and burdens their children with even more obligations but Obama has promised to go line by line and eliminate waste. Obama denied the Stimulus Act had earmarks so perhaps he does not understand what they are.

Finally, Obama has just begun to deal with his own Party and Ms. Pelosi. He has so much to learn and so do we because we elected someone about whom we know virtually nothing.(See 1 1a and 1b below.)

Even a writer for the New York Times, Peter Goodman, understands the impact reality and the economy's decline is likely to have on Obama and his budget. (See 2 below.)

One of the greatest risks threatening our Republic and personal individuality, beyond the current administration's daffy socialistic beliefs, is the growing acceptance of the "War on Sovereignty." (See 3 below.)

Human Rights has become a clever way to attack Israel and to disguise anti-Semitism. (See 4 below.)

Why Hamas and Fatah love to fight each other and what are the implifications for achieving peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Is the mere thought of peace is an oxymoron?. (See 5 below.)

In the spirit of 'change' Netanyahu says Israel is willing to help and encourages the Palestinians to improve their economic lot in the hope that it might lead to peace but not at the expense of Israeli security. Will that view also be interpreted as disproportionate action on the part of Israel? (See 6 below.)

Meanwhile Hamas repeats that it will never recognize Israel. (See 7 below.)

Obama tells the Marines we won and are pulling out but leaving about 50,000 to insure peace. In other words, we are out but still in and moving over to Afghanistan where the 'real' war has aways been. The president is conflicted by pacifying the far left in his party and coping with reality. (See 8 below.)

Mark Steyn sees 'green' when he opens his eyes and looks at Obama. If spending trillions is the answer why stop at any specific amount? (See 9 below.)

Dick

1) Obama's budget: huge ambitions, huge obstacles
By CHARLES BABINGTON,


Breathtaking in its scope and ambition, President Barack Obama's agenda for the economy, health care and energy now goes to a Congress unaccustomed to resolving knotty issues and buffeted by powerful interests that oppose parts of his plan.

Perhaps the only things as high as Obama's goals are the hurdles they must clear.

While tackling the economic crisis, he is asking Congress to enact contentious measures that have been debated, but not decided, in calmer times: combat global warming with a pollution tax on industries; cut subsidies for big farms; raise taxes on the wealthy; make big changes to health care, including lower reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid treatments and prescription drugs.

Standing alone, any one of these proposals would trigger a brawl in Congress and fierce debates outside Washington. Obama wants the proposals done largely in concert, as an interrelated plan to undo major elements of Ronald Reagan's conservative movement.

Obama outlined the approach in a budget proposal Thursday, a sprawling road map that will require several hard-fought pieces of legislation.

"We're struck with how bold and courageous a budget it is," said James Horney of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which supports the president. "There are a whole lot of things that are going to be extremely difficult because there are very powerful vested interests out there that will fight them."

The president acknowledged that in his weekly radio address Saturday. "I realize that passing this budget won't be easy," he said. It "represents a threat to the status quo in Washington."

Obama is not simply proposing a budget with a jaw-dropping deficit of $1.75 trillion, a quadruple increase in one year. He's trying to redirect strong currents in American society.

The wealthiest 5 percent would pay a whopping $1 trillion in higher taxes over the next decade, while most others would get tax cuts. Industries would buy and trade permits to emit heat-trapping gases. Higher-income older people would pay more for Medicare benefits. Drug companies would receive smaller profits from the government. Banks would play a much smaller role in student loans.

Obama's climb is steep. Even with solid Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, he secured a $787 billion stimulus package only after accepting compromises that irked liberals but won the support of three Republican senators.

Not a single House Republican backed it. Judging from House GOP leaders' immediate condemnation of his budget blueprint, Obama can expect more of the same.

More troubling for him, however, are the divisions quickly emerging among Democratic, liberal and centrist constituencies that either backed the stimulus or stayed on the sidelines.

Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, the House Agriculture Committee chairman, criticized Obama's plan to cut direct payments to farms with sales exceeding $500,000 a year. "Now is not the time" to reopen a recently passed farm bill, he said.

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, one of the stimulus bill's three Republican backers, said it is hard to see how Obama can meet his new deficit-reduction targets. He called Obama's chief energy proposal "entirely speculative" and urged the president "to forgo the tax increases" in the plan.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which also backed the stimulus bill, said Obama's budget blueprint "appears to move in exactly the wrong direction. More taxes, heavy-handed regulations, and command-and-control government will not hasten recovery... You don't build a house by blowing up its foundation."

That sounded like a jab at Obama, who said Thursday: "There are times when you can afford to redecorate your house, and there are times when you have to focus on rebuilding its foundation."

Some Washington veterans say that if anyone can overcome the hurdles, it is Obama.

"He has such enormous popularity right now," said Scott Lilly, who spent 31 years as a congressional aide before joining the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress.

Obama's political gifts are extraordinary, Lilly said. No one expects the president to get everything he's asking for, he said, "but I think he could get a big share of it."

Pushing his tax and health proposals through the Senate Finance Committee "is going to be one hell of a fight," Lilly said. The committee chairman, Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, sometimes parts ways with Democratic leaders on important issues such as tax cuts and Medicare.

Stiff resistance awaits Obama at almost every turn.

"Class warfare" is how Republicans label his plan to raise taxes, starting in 2011, on households making more than $250,000 a year.

Some liberal-leaning foundations are unhappy about his proposed reduction in the tax deductibility of gifts to charity from wealthy people.

On health care, Obama wants to cut payments for Medicare and Medicaid, the government programs for the elderly, disabled and poor. Taking hits would be insurance companies, home health services, hospitals and drug manufacturers, all of which are powerful lobbies in Washington.

On energy, Obama wants to reduce greenhouse gases and raise money for clean-fuel technologies, such as solar and wind power, by auctioning off carbon pollution permits. The proposal, known as cap and trade, will lead to a bruising fight in Congress, which may be divided more by region than party.

William Kovacs, who oversees regulatory affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says Obama is pushing too fast for such a dramatic policy change.

"Any support that there was for cap and trade from the business community," he said, was based on the assumption of "a long-term transition."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., a key player in pushing Obama's legislation, said Friday that "there isn't any doubt that this budget's going to be tough to pass."

Some government veterans, however, think doubters are underestimating Americans' hunger for change. For example, every individual and institution is hurt by the ever-rising cost of health care, and many are ready to shake up the system to make it less expensive, said Bruce Reed, who oversaw domestic policy in Bill Clinton's White House.

"The country wants it, the economy needs it, businesses large and small know that they can't afford not to have it," said Reed, who now heads the Democratic Leadership Council, a center-left group. "I don't think a do-nothing caucus will get anywhere on health care."

Reed added, however: "Health care has always been the Middle East of domestic policy."

On energy, he said, "Congress ought to be able to pass a cap and trade bill. The rest of the industrialized world is doing emissions trading. A broad swath of American industry wants this question to be answered."

The president's agenda is vast and ambitious, Reed said, but the times call for it. After all, he said, "Obama didn't have the luxury of saying, 'I'll handle the economic crisis and then get back to you on the rest of America's future.'"

1a) Budget Burden Falls to Congress
By NAFTALI BENDAVID and GREG HITT


President Barack Obama has made it clear he intends to reorder the nation's priorities, but Congress must act to make that a reality.

It won't be easy.


The budget blueprint estimates a federal deficit of $1.75 trillion for 2009.

Mr. Obama is asking the 111th Congress for accomplishments that rival those of the 1933 Congress that passed the New Deal and the 1965 Congress that enacted the Great Society. But despite the pain of the current crisis, it doesn't yet compare with the devastation of the Great Depression or the upheaval of the 1960s. And Congress's pace in recent years has been anything but speedy.

In his prime-time speech and budget plan this week, Mr. Obama urged Congress to take on sweeping proposals he promoted during the campaign to address climate change and overhaul health care. In addition, the downturn is forcing lawmakers to simultaneously debate fixes for the mortgage crisis and the auto industry, along with ways to rewrite rules for the financial sector.


Democrats on Capitol Hill are also pushing items on their longtime agenda, such as giving the District of Columbia a vote in Congress, expanding funding for stem-cell research and requiring broader use of renewable energy. They hope to pass a 2010 budget by early April and will need to enact a dozen individual spending bills for next year.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats may have relatively little time to get all this done. The president has considerable political momentum now, but that might not last. By the middle of next year, the approaching November elections will make it much harder to strike legislative deals.

After outlining the agenda this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters, "Our work is well cut out for us."

While the Republicans are in the minority, they still can create significant problems for the Democrats -- especially in the Senate, where the majority often needs 60 votes to overcome parliamentary obstacles.

That task is harder because Al Franken of Minnesota, who could give the Democrats their 59th vote in the Senate, is embroiled in an election dispute with former Republican Sen. Norm Coleman. And Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.) suffers from brain cancer, making his schedule uncertain.

"This is going to require compromise and negotiation with Senate Republicans," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.). "The sooner everyone realizes that, the better off we'll be."


At a meeting Friday of the Conservative Political Action Committee, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio) left little doubt about their readiness to fight the Democrats.

"The stimulus, the omnibus, the budget -- it's all one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment," Mr. Boehner told cheering conservatives.

But managing the tensions within Democratic ranks also will be a challenge. On Thursday, moderate "Blue Dog" Democrats forced House leaders to delay a vote on a bill that would empower judges to rewrite the mortgages of people declaring bankruptcy. Critics say this would add dangerous uncertainty to the home-loan market, raising interest rates and making it even harder to get mortgages.


House and Senate Democrats have concluded that climate-change legislation and a health-care overhaul will probably be the toughest items to push through.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has vowed to have a climate-change bill, including a cap-and-trade system for controlling harmful emissions, ready for floor action by Memorial Day. That would set the stage for votes in the full House this summer.

That means the battle over health care will probably be put off until later in the year, if only because many of the lawmakers involved in climate-change issues also specialize in health care.

Whatever happens, the road ahead carries risks for Democrats. Failure to deliver on the Obama agenda threatens to alienate voters. But delivering on those goals comes with risks, too, potentially forcing the majority party to explain why it raised taxes or eliminated cherished programs. And Republicans will have to balance their desire to block many of Democratic initiatives with the need to be something more than naysayers.

Despite the obstacles, the new Congress has already enacted several major laws this year, including a $787 billion economic-stimulus package and legislation on children's health care and pay equity.

Those challenges pale next to what lies ahead. "We just did the easiest of the tough stuff," Mr. Manley said. "It only gets harder from here on out."

1b) Democrats Party Could Face an Internal Civil War
By JOEL KOTKIN

This is the Democratic Party's moment, its power now greater than any time since the mid-1960s. But do not expect smooth sailing. The party is a fractious group divided by competing interests, factions and constituencies that could explode into a civil war, especially when it comes to energy and the environment.

Broadly speaking, there is a long-standing conflict inside the Democratic Party between gentry liberals and populists. This division is not the same as in the 1960s, when the major conflicts revolved around culture and race as well as on foreign policy. Today the emerging fault-lines follow mostly regional, geographical and, most importantly, class differences.

Gentry liberals cluster largely in cities, wealthy suburbs and college towns. They include disproportionately those with graduate educations and people living on the coasts. Populists tend to be located more in middle- and working-class suburbs, the Great Plains and industrial Midwest. They include a wider spectrum of Americans, including many whose political views are somewhat changeable and less subject to ideological rigor.

In the post-World War II era, the gentry's model candidate was a man such as Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic presidential nominee who lost twice to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Stevenson was a svelte intellectual who, like Barack Obama, was backed by the brute power of the Chicago machine. After Stevenson, the gentry supported candidates such as John Kennedy -- who did appeal to Catholic working class voters -- but also men with limited appeal outside the gentry class, including Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Gary Hart, Bill Bradley, Paul Tsongas and John Kerry.

Hubert Humphrey, a populist heir to the lunch-pail liberalism of Harry Truman (and who was despised by gentry intellectuals) missed the presidency by a hair in 1968. But populists in the party later backed lackluster candidates such as Walter Mondale and Dick Gephardt.

Bill Clinton revived the lunch-pail Democratic tradition; and the final stages of last year's presidential primaries represented yet another classic gentry versus populist conflict. Hillary Clinton could not match Barack Obama's appeal to the gentry. Driven to desperation, she ended up running a spirited populist campaign.

Although peace now reigns between the Clintons and the new president, the broader gentry-populist split seems certain to fester at both the congressional and local levels -- and President Obama will be hard-pressed to negotiate this divide. Gentry liberals are very "progressive" when it comes to issues such as affirmative action, gay rights, the environment and energy policy, but are not generally well disposed to protectionism or auto-industry bailouts, which appeal to populists. Populists, meanwhile, hated the initial bailout of Wall Street -- despite its endorsement by Mr. Obama and the congressional leadership.

Geography is clearly a determining factor here. Standout antifinancial bailout senators included Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, and Jon Tester of Montana. On the House side, the antibailout faction came largely from places like the Great Plains and Appalachia, as well as from the suburbs and exurbs, including places like Arizona and interior California.

Gentry liberals, despite occasional tut-tutting, fell lockstep for the bailout. Not one Northeastern or California Democratic senator opposed it. In the House, "progressives" such as Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank who supported the financial bailout represent districts with a large concentration of affluent liberals, venture capitalists and other financial interests for whom the bailout was very much a matter of preserving accumulated (and often inherited) wealth.

Energy and the environment are potentially even more explosive issues. Gentry politicians tend to favor developing only alternative fuels and oppose expanding coal, oil or nuclear energy. Populists represent areas, such as the Great Lakes region, where manufacturing still plays a critical role and remains heavily dependent on coal-based electricity. They also tend to have ties to economies, such as in the Great Plains, Appalachia and the Intermountain West, where smacking down all new fossil-fuel production threatens lots of jobs -- and where a single-minded focus on alternative fuels may drive up total energy costs on the farm, make life miserable again for truckers, and put American industrial firms at even greater disadvantage against foreign competitors.

In the coming years, Mr. Obama's "green agenda" may be a key fault line. Unlike his notably mainstream appointments in foreign policy and economics, he's tilted fairly far afield on the environment with individuals such as John Holdren, a longtime acolyte of the discredited neo-Malthusian Paul Ehrlich, and Carol Browner, who was Bill Clinton's hard-line EPA administrator.

These appointments could presage an environmental jihad throughout the regulatory apparat. Early examples could mean such things as strict restrictions on greenhouse gases, including bans on new drilling and higher prices through carbon taxes or a cap-and-trade regime.

Another critical front, not well understood by the public, could develop on land use -- with the adoption of policies that favor dense cities over suburbs and small towns. This trend can be observed most obviously in California, but also in states such as Oregon where suburban growth has long been frowned upon. Emboldened greens in government could use their new power to drive infrastructure spending away from badly needed projects such as new roads, bridges and port facilities, and toward projects such as light rail lines. These lines are sometimes useful, but largely impractical outside a few heavily traveled urban corridors. Essentially it means a transfer of subsidies from those who must drive cars to the relative handful for whom mass transit remains a viable alternative.

Priorities such as these may win plaudits in urban enclaves in New York, Boston and San Francisco -- bastions of the gentry class and of under-35, childless professionals -- but they might not be so widely appreciated in the car- and truck-driving Great Plains and the vast suburban archipelago, where half the nation's population lives.

If he wishes to enhance his power and keep the Democrats together, Mr. Obama will have to figure out how to placate both his gentry base and those Democrats who still see their party's mission in terms that Harry Truman would have understood.

2) Sharper Downturn Clouds Obama Spending Plans
By PETER S. GOODMAN

A sense of disconnect between the projections by the White House and the grim realities of everyday American life was enhanced on Friday, as the Commerce Department gave a harsher assessment for the last three months of 2008. In place of an initial estimate that the economy contracted at an annualized rate of 3.8 percent — already abysmal — the government said that the pace of decline was actually 6.2 percent, making it the worst quarter since 1982.

The fortunes of the American economy have grown so alarming and the pace of the decline so swift that economists are now straining to describe where events are headed, dusting off a word that has not been invoked since the 1940s: depression.

Economists are not making comparisons with the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the unemployment rate reached 25 percent. Current conditions are not even as poor as during the twin recessions of the 1980s, when unemployment exceeded 10 percent, though many experts assert this downturn is on track to be significantly worse.

Rather, economists are using the word depression — a subjective term with no academic definition — to describe a condition of broad and extreme economic distress that remains stubbornly in place for much longer than a typical downturn.

This is more than a matter of semantics. As the government determines its spending plans, readying another infusion of cash for troubled banks while contemplating an additional bailout for the auto industry, the magnitude of those needs will hinge on the extent of the damage.

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com, now places the odds of “a mild depression” at 25 percent, up from 15 percent three months ago. In that view, the unemployment rate would reach 10.5 percent by the end of 2011 — up from 7.6 percent at the end of January — average home prices would fall 20 percent on top of the 27 percent they have plunged already, and losses in the financial system would more than triple, to $3.7 trillion.

Allen Sinai, chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics, sees a 20 percent chance of “a depressionlike possibility,” up from 15 percent a week ago.

“In the housing market, the financial system and the stock market, we’re already there,” Mr. Sinai said. “It is a depression.”

Yet, in drawing up the budget, the White House assumed the economy would expand by a robust 3.2 percent in 2010, with growth accelerating to 4 percent over the next three years.

“It’s a hope, a wing and a prayer,” Mr. Sinai said. “It’s a return to a sanguine view of the economy that is simply not justified.”

If, as is widely anticipated, the economy grows more slowly than the White House assumes, revenue will be lower, forcing the government to cut spending, raise taxes or run larger deficits.

Economists also criticized as unrealistically hopeful the assumptions by the Federal Reserve as it began so-called stress tests to gauge the health of the nation’s largest banks. In testimony, Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, said that the nation’s unemployment rate would most likely reach 8.8 percent next year.

“That forecast just doesn’t seem realistic,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, “and I don’t think it helps the Fed’s credibility to make these sorts of forecasts right now.”

As federal regulators estimate potential losses at banks, the harshest assumptions they are testing entails the unemployment rate topping out at 10.3 percent — the highest level since 1983, but hardly the worst case.

By Mr. Baker’s reckoning, the unemployment rate may exceed 12 percent — the highest level since tracking began in 1948.

“We continue to see across-the-board numbers coming in worse than we expected,” Mr. Baker said.

By Mr. Zandi’s estimation, in the most likely case, the unemployment rate will reach 9.3 percent next year. The distress in the financial system, the job market and real estate have become inextricably intertwined.

As troubled banks remain hesitant to lend, even healthy companies are laying off workers. As more Americans lose jobs, they are cutting spending, depriving businesses of revenue, and falling behind on house, car and credit card payments, multiplying losses in the financial system. As more homes land in foreclosure and would-be buyers fail to secure mortgages, housing prices fall further, adding to the losses of the banks — a downward spiral.

Many economists expect that the labor data to be released next Friday will show that as many as 700,000 jobs disappeared in February, lifting the unemployment rate near 8 percent and pushing total job losses to more than four million since the recession began in December 2007.

Given the brutal forces at play, some experts question the administration’s decision to publicize the bank stress tests, as opposed to conducting them quietly.

“It invited the interpretation that this was the beginning of triage for the banks, that we were going to start lining them up and shooting them,” said Alan S. Blinder, a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve and a professor at Princeton. “There are some things in the bank supervisor role that you just keep secret.”

Others argue that the tests could sow needed assurance. “The stress test could create transparency,” said Alan D. Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price in Baltimore.

As the gruesome data accumulates, this much is already clear: Transparency is not for the squeamish.

Mr. Levenson noted that the weakening economy was destroying demand for goods and services even faster than the $787 billion stimulus program could replace it.

3) SPECIAL PREVIEW. The Coming War on Sovereignty
By John R. Bolton

Barack Obama’s nascent presidency has brought forth the customary flood of policy proposals from the great and good, all hoping to influence his administration. One noteworthy offering is a short report with a distinguished provenance entitled A Plan for Action,1 which features a revealingly immodest subtitle: A New Era of International Cooperation for a Changed World: 2009, 2010, and Beyond.

In presentation and tone, A Plan for Action is determinedly uncontroversial; indeed, it looks and reads more like a corporate brochure than a foreign-policy paper. The text is the work of three academics—Bruce Jones of NYU, Carlos Pascual of the Brookings Institution, and Stephen John Stedman of Stanford. Its findings and recommendations, they claim, rose from a series of meetings with foreign-policy eminences here and abroad, including former Secretaries of State of both parties as well as defense officials from the Clinton and first Bush administrations. The participation of these notables is what gives A Plan for Action its bona fides, though one should doubt how much the document actually reflects their ideas. There is no question, however, that the ideas advanced in A Plan for Action have become mainstays in the liberal vision of the future of American foreign policy.

That is what makes A Plan for Action especially interesting, and especially worrisome. If it is what it appears to be—a blueprint for the Obama administration’s effort to construct a foreign policy different from George W. Bush’s—then the nation’s governing elite is in the process of taking a sharp, indeed radical, turn away from the principles and practices of representative self-government that have been at the core of the American experiment since the nation’s founding. The pivot point is a shifting understanding of American sovereignty.

While the term “sovereignty” has acquired many, often inconsistent, definitions, Americans have historically understood it to mean our collective right to govern ourselves within our Constitutional framework. Today’s liberal elite, by contrast, sees sovereignty as something much more abstract and less tangible, and thus a prize of less value to individual citizens than it once might have been. They argue that the model accepted by European countries in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which assigned to individual nation-states the right and responsibility to manage their own affairs within their own borders, is in the process of being superseded by new structures more appropriate to the 21st century.

In this regard, they usually cite the European Union (EU) as the new model, with its 27 member nations falling under the aegis of a centralized financial system administered in Brussels. On issue after issue, from climate change to trade, American liberals increasingly look to Europe’s example of transnational consensus as the proper model for the United States. That is particularly true when it comes to national security, as John Kerry revealed when, during his presidential bid in 2004, he said that American policy had to pass a “global test” in order to secure its legitimacy.

This is not a view with which the broader American population has shown much comfort. Traditionally, Americans have resisted the notion that their government’s actions had to pass muster with other governments, often with widely differing values and interests. It is the foreign-policy establishment’s unease with this long-held American conviction that is the motivating factor behind A Plan for Action, which represents a bold attempt to argue that any such set of beliefs has simply been overtaken by events.

To this end, the authors provide a brief for what they call “responsible sovereignty.” They define it as “the notion that sovereignty entails obligations and duties toward other states as well as to one’s own citizens,” and they believe that its application can form the basis for a “cooperative international order.” At first glance, the phrase “responsible sovereignty” may seem unremarkable, given the paucity of advocates for “irresponsible sovereignty.” But despite the Plan’s mainstream provenance, the conception is a dramatic overhaul of sovereignty itself.

“Global leaders,” the Plan insists, “increasingly recognize that alone they are unable to protect their interests and their citizens—national security has become interdependent with global security.” The United States must therefore commit to “a rule-based international system that rejects unilateralism and looks beyond military might,” or else “resign [our]selves to an ad-hoc international system.” Mere “traditional sovereignty” is insufficient in the new era we have entered, an era in which we must contend with “the realities of a now transnational world.” This “rule-based international system” will create the conditions for “global governance.”

The Plan suggests that the transition to this new system must begin immediately because of the terrible damage done by the Bush administration. In the Plan’s narrative, Bush disdained diplomacy, uniformly preferring the use of force, regime change, preemptive attacks, and general swagger in its conduct of foreign affairs. The Plan, by contrast, “rejects unilateralism and looks beyond military might.” Its implementation will lead to the successful resolution of dispute after dispute and usher in a new and unprecedented period of worldwide comity.

As the Obama years begin, we certainly do need a lively debate on the utility of diplomacy, but it would be better if that debate were not conducted on the false premise offered by A Plan for Action. In reality, in the overwhelming majority of cases, foreign-policy thinkers on both sides of the ideological divide believe diplomacy is the solution to the difficulties that arise in the international system. That is how the Bush administration conducted itself as well.

The difference arises in the consideration of a tiny number of cases—cases that prove entirely resistant to diplomatic efforts, in which divergent national interests prove implacably resistant to reconciliation. If diplomacy does not and cannot work, the continued application of it to a problematic situation is akin to subjecting a cancer patient to a regimen of chemotherapy that shows no results whatever. The result may look like treatment, but it is, in fact, only making the patient sicker and offering no possibility of improvement.

Diplomacy is like all other human activity. It has costs and it has benefits. Whether to engage in diplomacy on a given matter requires a judicious assessment of both costs and benefits. This is an exercise about which reasonable people can disagree. If diplomacy is to work, it must be preceded by an effort to determine its parameters—when it might be best to begin, how to achieve one’s aims, and what the purpose of the process might be. At the cold war’s outset, for example, Harry Truman’s Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, frequently observed that he was prepared to negotiate with the Soviets only when America could do so from a position of strength.

Time is one of the most important variables in a diplomatic dance, because it often imposes a cost on one side and a benefit to its adversary. Nations can use the time granted by a diplomatic process to obscure their objectives, build alliances, prepare operationally for war, and, especially today, accelerate their efforts to build weapons of mass destruction and the ballistic missiles that might carry them. There are concrete economic factors that must be considered as well in the act of seeking to engage an adversary in the diplomatic realm—the act of providing humanitarian assistance as an act of good will, for example, the suspension of economic sanctions, or even resuming normal trade relations during negotiations.

Obviously, the United States and, indeed, all rational nations are entirely comfortable paying substantial costs when they appear to be wise investments that will lead to the achievement of a larger objective. Alas, such happy conclusions are far from inevitable, and failing to understand the truth of this uncomfortable and inarguable reality has led nations to prolong negotiations long after the last glimmer of progress has been snuffed out. For too many diplomats, there is no off switch for diplomacy, no moment at which the only sensible thing to do is rise from the table and go home.

Has one ever heard of a diplomat working to fashion an “exit strategy” from a failed negotiation? One hasn’t. One should.

Diplomacy is a tool, not a policy. It is a technique, not an end in itself. Urging, however earnestly, that we “engage” with our enemies tells us nothing about what happens after concluding the initial pleasantries at the negotiating table. Just opening the conversation is often significant, especially for those who are legitimized merely by being present. But without more, the meaning and potency of the photo op will quickly fade.

That is why effective diplomacy must be one aspect of a larger strategic spectrum that includes ugly and public confrontations. Without the threat of painful sanctions, harsh condemnations, and even the use of force, diplomacy risks becoming a sucker’s game, in which one side will sit forever in naïve hope of reaching a settlement while the other side acts at will.

Diplomacy is an end in itself in A Plan for Action. So, too, is multilateralism. The multilateralism the Plan celebrates and advocates is, of course, set in sharp contrast to the portrait it draws of a Bush administration flush with unilateralist cowboys intent on overturning existing international treaties and institutions just for the sport of it. Defining unilateralism is straightforward: the word refers to a state acting on its own in international affairs.2 It is a critical conceptual mistake, however, to pose “multilateralism” simply as its opposite.

Consider, for example, the various roles of the United Nations, the North American Treaty Organization, and the Proliferation Security Initiative. The UN, the Holy Grail of multilateralism, is an organization of 192 members with responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security lodged in its Security Council. NATO is a defense alliance of 26 states, all of which are Western democracies. The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), created in 2003 by the Bush administration, now includes 90-plus diverse countries dedicated to stopping international trafficking in weapons of mass destruction.

Each organization is clearly “multilateral,” but their roles are so wildly different that the word ceases to have any meaning. For example, if the United States confronted a serious threat, it would be acting multilaterally if it took the matter either to NATO or the UN. Both options would be “multilateral,” but widely divergent in diplomatic and political content, and quite likely in military significance as well. They would be comparable related in the same way a steak knife is comparable to a plastic butter knife.

The PSI offers an even starker contrast, for unlike either the UN or NATO, it has no secretary general, no Secretariat, no headquarters, and no regularly scheduled meetings. One British diplomat described the initiative as “an activity, not an organization.” In fact, the model of the Proliferation Security Initiative is the ideal one for multilateral activity in the future, precisely because it transcends the traditional structures of international organizations, which have, time and again, proved inefficient and ineffective.

“Multilateralism” is, in other words, merely a word that describes international action taken by a group of nations acting in concert. For the authors of A Plan for Action, however, multilateralism has an almost spiritual aspect, representing a harmony that transcends barriers and oceans.

Harmony is designed to stifle any discordant notes, and so is the multilateralism envisioned by an American foreign policy guided by “responsible sovereignty.” It is one in which the group of nations, of which the United States is but a single player among many, initiates policies and activities that would likely be designed to constrain the freedom of action of the United States in pursuit of that harmony—not only in its activities abroad, but also in its activities within the 50 states.

There is a precedent for this in the conduct of the European Union, whose 27 nations now possess a common currency in the form of the euro and an immensely complex series of trade and labor policies intended to cut across sovereign lines. The EU is the model A Plan for Action proffers for the “responsible sovereignty” regime its authors wish to import to the United States. EU bureaucrats based in Brussels have been reshaping the priorities and needs of EU member states for a decade now, and proposing a system based on the design of the EU suggests a desire to subject the United States to a kind of international oversight not only when it comes to foreign policy but also on matters properly understood as U.S. domestic policy.

That very approach has been on display at the United Nations for years in an effort to standardize international conduct that has come to be known as “norming.” In theory, there is good reason to create international standards—for measurement, for example, or for conduct on the high seas. But “norming” goes far beyond such prosaic concerns. The UN has, for example, repeatedly voted in different committees to condemn the death penalty, in a clear effort to put pressure on the United States to follow suit. Similar votes have been taken on abortion rights and restricting the private ownership of firearms.

Such issues have been, and likely will again be, the subjects of intense democratic debate within the United States, and properly so. There is no need to internationalize them to make the debate more fruitful. What is common to these and many other issues is that the losers in our domestic debate are often the proponents of internationalizing the controversies. They think that if they can change the political actors, they can change the political outcome. Unsuccessful in our domestic political arena, they seek to redefine the arena in which these matters will be adjudicated—moving, in effect, from unilateral, democratic U.S. decision-making to a multilateral, bureaucratic, and elitist environment. For almost any domestic issue one can imagine, there are likely to be nongovernmental organizations roaming the international arena desperately trying to turn their priorities into “norming” issues.

This is what “responsible sovereignty” would look like. For the authors and signatories of A Plan of Action, sovereignty is simply an abstraction, a historical concept about as important today as the “sovereigns” from whose absolute rights the term originally derived. That is not the understanding of the U.S. Constitution, which locates the basis of its legitimacy in “we the people,” who constitute the sovereign authority of the nation.

“Sharing” sovereignty with someone or something else is thus not abstract for Americans. Doing so by definition will diminish the sovereign power of the American people over their government and their own lives, the very purpose for which the Constitution was written. This is something Americans have been reluctant to do. Now their reluctance may have to take the form of more concerted action against “responsible sovereignty” if its onward march is to be halted or reversed. Our Founders would clearly understand the need.

Footnotes:

1 The report can be downloaded free of charge at http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2008/11_action_plan_mgi.aspx.

2 An important subtext is the continuing confusion between unilateralism and isolationism, confusion especially evident in Europe in the late 1990’s. Even before the Bush administration, I tried to explain the distinction in “Unilateralism Is Not Isolationism” in Gwyn Prins, ed., Understanding Unilateralism in American Foreign Relations, Chatham House, 2000. More recently, Mackubin Thomas Owens makes a similar point in “The Bush Doctrine: The Foreign Policy of Republican Empire,” Orbis, Winter, 2009.

4) Done with Human Rights
Abe Greenwald

As a foreign policy issue, human rights has historically been a no-brainer for both Democrats and Republicans. Conservatives pushed Stalinist regimes on their records of mistreatment all through the Cold War and liberal leaders have usually been comfortable at least talking the talk when it comes to far right nationalist tyrannies. Not so these days. Michael Barone is not overstating the case when he writes:

One arrow in the quiver of American foreign policy has been our pressing — sometimes sotto voce (as in the Helsinki Accords), sometimes in opera buffa (”Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”) — tyrannical regimes to honor human rights. Hillary Clinton has put that arrow over her knee, broken it in two and thrown it away.

Barone is referring to Clinton’s blunt announcement to the Chinese that the U.S. is not in the Human Rights business these days.

What’s most repugnant about the Obama administration’s indifference to human rights abuses is the way this posture was achieved. Obama created a rights-abusing bogeyman in the person of George W. Bush and then, with full executive bravado, slew the monster by way of inaugural rhetoric and a few high-profile (but technically watery) presidential orders. So Barack Obama has done his share for human rights.

He’s closing (but really just relocating) the Guantanamo facility, so he doesn’t have to mention the wrongfully imprisoned thousands throughout China. He’s ending (but really just discussing the ramifications of ending) tough interrogations, so he doesn’t have to bring up Syrian torture when reaching out to the Assad regime. He’s closed down temporary CIA detention facilities, so when he goes on Arabian TV he’s free to praise the “courage” of a Saudi king whose domestic anti-terrorism tactics are composed of sheer brutality.

We are seeing the real-world impact of equating three cases of American waterboarding with institutionalized international torture. Obama set up Bush’s America as a human rights wasteland in order to play to the netroots and taint his Republican challenger. It worked, as a campaign strategy. But his year-long campaign to convince the entire world that America has lost its moral standing worked too. In histrionically declaring America a newly torture-free nation during his congressional address last week, Obama may think he’s let himself off the international hook. But with his administration’s decision to scrap human rights, the period of our nation’s real moral degradation may only just be getting started.

Last summer, when he was still a candidate, Barack Obama promised: “I will send once more a message to those yearning faces beyond our shores that says, ‘You matter to us. Your future is our future. And our moment is now.’” Our moment just passed.


Marty Peretz writes of the decision not to attend Durban II and of the appointment of Chas Freeman:

I have an instinct that the finale for Geneva was hastened by the Freeman disaster about which I wrote thrice yesterday. No one can explain what the president sees in him that would allow such a crude propagandist and bigot to be judge of what intelligence information the president sees and what he does not. The intelligence machinery of the country has been under suspicion for years because of ignorance or bureaucratic conflicts. Add now the fact that Freeman loves the Chinese dictatorship and that he is a shill for the king of Saudi Arabia. Oh yes, and he clearly despises friends of Israel, Jewish or not.

Perhaps this is so, but then there is no rhyme or reason to our national security apparatus. We have a president who ricochets from one set of critics to the next without regard for the merits of the issue before him. Is this is what we are to expect — the toady of the House of Saud in a key role “balanced” by a “boycott” of Durban II? This is a peculiar compromise indeed: to be just a little bit in the thrall of the Israel-bashers. And it raises the troubling question as to who really is in charge of decision making: everyone or no one or a very confused president?

Coming out of the election, one theory on Barack Obama was that he was a “moderate” on national security who simply played to the netroots in the primary. That’s the “bet” Colin Powell and others placed. Another explanation, particularly after the appointments of solid establishment types, was that he really didn’t care that much about foreign policy and wanted to devote himself to domestic policy.

Perhaps re-inventing American society and dismantling the free market system have taken most of his time of late. But if that is the case, he better start paying attention and stop leaving national security to others. National security is not self-executing. Without a strong hand at the rudder and a clear chain of command we will have incoherence.

5) An Interview of Jonathan Schanzer* by Near East Report of Why Hamas and Fatah Fight

(*Jonathan Schanzer is the deputy executive director of the Jewish Policy Center and the author of Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine.
In Hamas vs. Fatah, author Jonathan Schanzer suggests the violent rivalry between Hamas and Fatah has stymied U.S. efforts to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace.)

Jonathan Schanzer: When Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007, the violence was brutal. Hamas was responsible for pushing Fatah members off of tall buildings and shooting them point blank in the limbs. This shattered this vision that I think many had of a unified Palestinian people. I felt that this was a point worth noting and began writing a book shortly thereafter.

NER: Why the violent disagreements between Hamas and Fatah?

JS: Fatah purports to represent the Palestinian people, but there are sharp divisions between Fatah and Hamas over whether there should be discussions and diplomacy with Israel.

When Fatah engaged in the Oslo process with Israel, Hamas disagreed vehemently and began to carry out attacks not only to inflict pain and suffering on the Jewish people living in Israel, but also to make it very clear to the Palestinian people that there were sharp divisions between Hamas and Fatah. In other words, Hamas was able to kill two birds with one stone and this is something that I think was overlooked in the mainstream media.

NER: Wasn't there a time when Hamas and Fatah set aside their mutual dislike of each other and cooperated to fight against Israel?

JS: Absolutely. When Yasser Arafat calculated that the Oslo process would no longer reap benefits for him, he launched a war against Israel in the autumn of 2000. He exhorted Hamas to join him. In fact, he let Hamas terrorists out of jail and openly worked with the Hamas organization to attack Israel through a campaign of suicide bombings and other acts of violence.

What was interesting was that they were able to work together for the better part of a year, but Hamas quickly realized that it didn't need Fatah in order to carry out its campaign of violence against Israel, and the two sides split off again and returned to their traditional positions of enmity vis-à-vis each other.

NER: What led to the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, and what have been the effects since?

JS: After the death of Arafat in 2004, there was a leadership vacuum. The Fatah organization had weakened significantly, and Hamas continued to gain strength. Finally, by January of 2006, legislative elections were held within the Palestinian territories as part of the U.S. initiative to try to spread democracy throughout the Middle East. Those elections were probably the freest and fairest elections ever held in the Arab world, and they yielded a victory for Hamas.

The problem was that Fatah refused to yield power and refused to join a coalition government with Hamas. For the next year and a half, Fatah and Hamas engaged in a power struggle, which continued until June 2007 when Hamas carried out a violent coup in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas deposed the Fatah organization from the Gaza Strip and effectively took over the media and established different government and security structures to the point now that we actually have essentially two Palestinian entities. We have a Gaza entity run by Hamas and a West Bank entity run by Fatah

The Hamas-Fatah conflict continues. The two sides exchange barbs, fight one another and arrest cadres of the opposite camp in each of the territories. We really are at a point now where it's very difficult to see who speaks for the Palestinian people.

NER: In June 2008, Hamas accepted an Egyptian-mediated tahdiyeh, a period of calm, and in December they terminated it. Why did Hamas accept this period of calm in the first place, and why did Hamas decide to terminate the calm and dramatically increase its rocket fire on Israel?

JS: When Hamas accepted this tahdiyeh, it was never seen as a ceasefire because a ceasefire would mean accepting the existence of the state of Israel. Hamas doesn't even call Israel by its name; they call it the "Zionist entity" or "Zionist enemy."

What Hamas sought to do was to stave off an attack. At that time, there was a lot of talk in the IDF that an invasion of Gaza was going to be necessary because Hamas continued to fire salvo after salvo of rockets into Israel's southern territory. More worrisome was the fact that the rockets were increasing in payload and increasing in range, so it became clear that if this trend continued, Israel's middle would be threatened—not just the south, but rather some of the major population centers.

In an attempt, I believe, to stave off an Israeli invasion, Hamas declared a truce and it really benefited from six months of relative calm. Hamas was able to stockpile more rockets and smuggle in sophisticated weaponry, such as high-powered sniper rifles, night-vision goggles, anti-tank missiles and lots of other things that would help Hamas in its next confrontation with Israel. In addition, Hamas sent many of its members to Iran for training so that they could receive some of the same skills that Hizballah demonstrated in its war with Israel in 2006.

After six months, Hamas elected not to renew the truce. One of the things that we hear on the news is that the truce between the two sides ended. This is incorrect. Hamas simply elected to terminate a truce that it had unilaterally decided to adopt, and Hamas—I think at the prodding of Iran—began to lob rockets back into Israel.

NER: How can Israel's Operation Cast Lead be viewed through the Hamas vs. Fatah lens? What type of outcome does Fatah want in Gaza?

JS: It's important to note that there are really two policies at play here. There is a West Bank policy and a Gaza policy. Israel is ignoring the West Bank right now—it is not interested at all in military operations in the West Bank. This is a departure for Israeli policy. Usually when there is violence against Israel, it's coming from both territories. We're simply not seeing that right now. Israel is really treating the two territories as two separate entities, as it rightly should. There are two different governments run by two different factions.

Fatah is quite openly letting the world know that Hamas has miscalculated, that it is now reaping what it has sown. Fatah probably seeks to retake the Gaza Strip at some point, but there are two problems with that goal. First, the Fatah organization is still extremely weak. Its leadership is fractured and its ability to even govern the West Bank has been called into question. Its military is simply not able to maintain control.

Second, if Israel does reinstall Fatah as the governing body in the Gaza Strip, it will likely be rejected by the Gaza population much like an artificial heart. This would be an organ that Israel would try to transplant and the population there would almost certainly distrust the Fatah organization, simply because Israel tried to install it there.

NER: How should the United States approach the Hamas-Fatah conflict?

JS: The Hamas-Fatah conflict is something that was largely ignored by the Bush administration and has so far been ignored by the Obama administration. The Hamas-Fatah conflict is possibly one of the thorniest issues that the United States now faces with regard to diplomacy in the Middle East.

The fact that you have two separate Palestinian areas that are run by two separate factions that are at war with one another means that there is no Palestinian interlocutor. There is no one address that the United States can call to negotiate peace between the Palestinians and Israel. So until that matter has been resolved, I believe that all other efforts at diplomacy are probably wasted efforts. The new administration must recognize this fact and make it known to the world that the Palestinians need to join together in some fashion to come to the negotiating table—without, however, allowing engagement with Hamas until it accepts the three international conditions: recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and accepting all previous agreements with Israel. Until that happens I believe we're going to spin our wheels.

The danger here is that if the United States brings Fatah and Israel to the table, and Fatah enters into an agreement that is not accepted by half of the Palestinians, it will not be seen as a legitimate agreement. If that happens, you will see more violence and more frustration. The more that agreements falter, the better chance there is of a more dangerous conflict breaking out between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

6) 'Palestinians should govern their lives'

Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu expressed his support in an independent Palestinian government, noting the "broad agreement inside Israel and outside that the Palestinians should have the ability to govern their lives but not to threaten ours."


In an interview published Saturday, the Likud leader reportedly told the Washington Post that he would continue peace talks with the Palestinians, while advancing the economic development in the Palestinian Authority.

"I propose a (new) way, which I believe can achieve progress: to continue political talks and at the same time advance the economic development that has begun and also strengthen the Palestinian security forces," said Netanyahu.

Netanyahu was quoted as saying that he would personally "take charge of a government committee that will regularly address the needs of the Palestinian economy in the West Bank."


Asked about IDF Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the prime minister-designate stressed that "Hamas is incompatible with peace," and went on to express hope that the Palestinians in Gaza change the Islamic regime, "because we want to have peace with all the Palestinians."

"What we should do now is enable humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza but not in such a way as it enables Hamas to buy more rockets," he reportedly told the newspaper.

Referring to indirect talks between Israel and Syria, Netanyahu said that "Syria so far has been talking peace but has enabled Hizbullah to arm itself in contravention of UN Security Council resolutions."

"I would talk to Syria about abandoning these courses of action and building confidence that they really want to move toward peace. So far they're not giving that impression," the Likud chair reportedly said.

7) Hamas: We will never recognize Israel


Group shuns Abbas' offer of unity gov't, which he says must agree to two-state solution with Israel

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday any unity government with Hamas would have to agree to a two-state solution with Israel, a demand quickly rejected by his Islamist rivals.

The disagreement could hamper Egyptian-brokered reconciliation talks aimed at ending a schism between the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, where Abbas's Fatah faction holds sway.

"We are moving in steady steps towards ... a national unity government that abides by our known commitments, which include the two-state vision and the signed (peace) commitments," Abbas said in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Hamas official Ayman Taha in Gaza said Abbas's comments undermine chances for reaching a unity agreement.

"We reject any pre-conditions in the formation of the unity government. Hamas will never accept a unity government that recognizes Israel," Taha said.


A dozen Palestinian factions including Fatah and Hamas began reconciliation talks in Cairo on Thursday to try to agree by March 20 on a unity government. Previous efforts by Arab negotiators to reconcile Fatah and Hamas have failed.

A deal could lead to the lifting of Israel's blockade of the Gaza strip and boost Abbas's peacemaking efforts with Israel.

But Hamas continues to say it will not formally recognise Israel and its 1988 founding charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.

8) OBAMA'S PHONY PULLOUT


President Obama, arriving at Camp Lejeune, NC, yesterday, declared the US combat mission in Iraq will end by Aug. 31, 2010 - yet 50,000 non combat troops will remain to ensure against renewed al Qaeda attacks or civil war. He spoke in front of US Marines, but his real audience was his left-wing campaign supporters.

And his carefully worded speech - its parsing of language worthy of Bill Clinton - may go down in history as his "Mission Accomplished" moment. We'll see who leaves Iraq when.

During last year's presidential campaign, it was evident that Obama wouldn't keep his promises to his leftist base to pull our troops out rapidly.

While he benefited greatly from the troop surge he opposed - which handed him a convalescent Iraq - he's learning that reality trumps rhetoric.

Forcefully delivered, his speech to the Marines served up more waffles than the International House of Pancakes.

Consider his big sound bite: "Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end." What does that mean?

Will the 50,000 troops he intends to leave in Iraq, the trainers and maintainers, be forbidden to defend themselves? Are they just going to hang out? If terrorists or the Iranians skunk us, are we just going to ask for more?

The enemy gets a say, too. The situation on the ground will determine when combat operations end. Obama's just going to call them something else.

In the immortal phrasing of Ol' Bill, it depends on what the meaning of "is" is.

As for Obama's claim that "I have chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months," just watch.

We're not going to leave 50,000 support troops in Iraq without combat units to protect them. We'll just ban the word "brigade" and call our shooters "task forces."

The reality all along has been that Obama can't cut and run.

He began campaigning for a second term on Inauguration Day and he's not going to let himself be blamed for "losing" Iraq.

Meanwhile, he's praying that progress continues in Baghdad.

As for yesterday's boilerplate nonsense that "The end of the war in Iraq will enable a new era of American leadership and engagement in the Middle East," hey, if it does, thank George W. Bush. History has a wicked sense of humor.

Of course, the rhetoric's necessary. Obama had to lecture the Marines to placate the angry extremists who put him in office.

The fundamental purpose of the speech was to hide the 50,000 residual troops in plain sight: "It's OK, see? They're not combat troops." Obama's scared as a naked sheriff at a moonshiners' convention.

He piggybacked on the left's hatred of "Bush's war" in Iraq, but had to show his tough-on-security bones during the campaign.

A strategic novice, he declared Afghanistan the good war. Now it's his. And while Iraq looks increasingly like a success story, Afghanistan's going south. Iraq's the prize, Afghanistan's the booby prize.

Success in Afghanistan's a one-off, while even a half-baked democracy in Iraq changes the Middle East. And Pakistan's the monster under the White House bed. In artilleryman's parlance, Obama's speech to the Marines was all flash, no bang.

He's struggling to appear decisive while carving out maximum wiggle room. And in the modern tradition of Democratic presidents, he just wishes these foreign conflicts would go away. But they won't.

Welcome to reality, Mr. President.

9) The Six-Trillion-Dollar Man:Fighting for truth, justice, and the European way.
By Mark Steyn

The superheroes I always found hard to keep track of were the ones who kept relaunching themselves. I mean, Batman’s been Batman for 70 years and Spider-Man’s been Spider-Man for the best part of 50. But I’m thinking of chaps like Ant-Man. Very small, as one might expect. Then he became Giant-Man. Then he became Yellowjacket (his girlfriend was the Wasp). Then he became Goliath. I’ve lost track of him since then. But, thanks to my usual 20-second exhaustive research, I see he was relaunched only a month ago, this time as the Wasp. Hang on, I thought the Wasp was his chick? Has he had a sex-change? Hey, why not? For a while he was both Giant-Man and Yellowjacket, playing a kind of schizoid double-hero with each superpower emphasizing a different side of his identity.

Anyway, that’s how I feel about the endlessly morphing supergovernment hero battling the planet-swallowing economic crisis. Back in September, we were told to put our faith in Bailoutman. Then in January, Bailoutman went to his tailor, had the long underwear redesigned, and relaunched himself as Mister Stimulus. A few weeks later the Obama crowd noticed that “stimulus,” like “bailout,” had become a cheap punch line, and decided the approved term was “recovery.” So Captain Recovery swung into action.

In fairness to Ant-Man, he got very small, and then he got big, and then he got small again, and then he got super-big, and for a while he was both small and big, in a superheroically bipartisan way. But Bailoutman started out as a huge staggering behemoth and has inflated from there. Once upon a time he was as a meek, mild-mannered trillionaire, but a mere five months later he was a meek, mild-mannered multi-trillionaire.

If you find it hard to keep track of these all these evolutions, the President in his address to Congress finally spilled the beans and unveiled our new hero in his final form: the Incredible Bulk, Statezilla, Governmentuan, a colossus bestriding the land like a, er, colossus. What superpowers does he have? All of them! He can save the economy, he can reform health care, he can prevent foreclosures, he can federalize daycare, he can cap the salary of his archenemies the sinister Fat Cats who “pad their pay checks and buy fancy drapes.” No longer will the citizenry cower in fear of fancy drapes: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! With one solar panel on the roof of his underground headquarters, Governmentuan can transform the American energy sector and power his amazing Governmentmobile, the new environmentally friendly supercar that soon we’ll all be driving because we’ll be given government car loans to buy the government cars! He’ll have hundreds of thousands of boy sidekicks, none of whom will ever be allowed to drop out of high school because (in the words of his famous catchphrase) “that’s no longer an option!” “Gee, thanks, Governmentuan!” says Diplomaboy the Boy Wonder, as he goes off to college to study Gender As A Social Construct until he’s 34.

And our hero can do this all without raising taxes on any family earning under $250,000!

Look — up in the sky: Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a sudden eclipse plunging you and three adjoining states into total darkness? No, it’s the Incredible Bulk flailing through the air, fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. Well, actually, it’s more like the European way. But Americans will get used to it after a while.

Of course, when Barack Obama is accused of creating his Six-Trillion-Dollar Man “because I believe in bigger government” he denies it: “I don’t,” he says flatly. This is like Clark Kent telling Lois Lane he’s not Superman: They just look a bit similar when he removes his glasses. Likewise, any connection between Obama and a Big Government behemoth swallowing everything in sight is entirely coincidental.

Do you ever go back to the first issue of this comic book and try to figure out what the plot’s all about? Wasn’t it something to do with subprime mortgages and two strange creatures called Fannie and Freddie? And then it became something to do with saving banks, wasn’t that it? And somewhere along the way the Big Three auto makers got involved? And now it’s about everything. Obama is going to do everything. So he needs to be able to spend everything. Only we don’t call it “spending” anymore. Everything government “spends” is now deemed an “investment.” Government will “invest” in “more efficient cars,” it will “invest” in daycare, it will “invest” in a new Federal Regulatory Agency of Fancy Drapes and Window Treatments. It will “invest” in an impact study group that will study the impact of recalling every edition of Webster’s and pasting in it a little Post-It note on the page defining “spend” saying “obsolete — see ‘invest.’ ”

If you’re feeling a sudden urge to “invest” in a gallon of tequila and a couple of hookers and wake up with an almighty hangover and no pants in a rusting dumpster on a bit of abandoned scrub round the back of the freight yards, it may be because you’re one of that dwindling band of Americans foolish enough to pursue his living in what we used to call “the private sector.” You were never exactly Giant-Man, more like Average-Sized Man. But you have a vague sense that you’re gonna be a lot closer to Ant-Man by the time all this is through. Noting the president’s assurance that the 250-grand-and-under crowd won’t pay “a single dime” more in taxes, the Wall Street Journal calculated that if you took every single dime — that’s 100 per cent — of the over-250K crowd, it barely begins to pay for this program, even before half of them flee the the country. The $4 trillion Congress is planning on spending next year (2010) could just about be covered if you took every single dime of the taxable income of every American earning over $75,000.

But it doesn’t matter. Because Big Government is the ultimate hero, and the private sector is merely a supporting role. Last week, the president redefined the relationship between the citizen and the state, in ways that make America closer to Europe. If you’ve still got the Webster’s to hand, “closer to Europe” is a sociopolitical colloquialism meaning “much worse.”

Is the new all-powerful Statezilla vulnerable to anything? Unfortunately, yes. He loses all his superpowers when he comes into contact with something called Reality. But happily, Reality is nowhere in sight. There are believed to be some small surviving shards somewhere on the planet — maybe on an uninhabited atoll somewhere in the Pacific — but that’s just a rumor, and Barack Obama isn’t planning on running into Reality any time soon.