Carnegie Endowment: Full text sumary of Taliban's winning strategy.

California a litmus test for Obama and Democrats? (See 1 below.)

Breitbart not enamored with Dowd's 'assassination' of Palin. (See 2 below.)

Matthew Yglesias finds Obama in the driver's seat vis a vis forcing change regarding settlements and like the fact fact he is there. Yglesias calls it change by stealth. (See 3 below.)

Michael Rosen is less enamored with Obama and the State Department's heavy handed- ness towards allies and willingness to be 'even handed' coddling of bona fide enemies. (See 4 below.)

Long hot summer in store for Obama . Though he has a solid base and remains popular cracks are developing within the Democrat coalition. (See 5 below.)

The do damage know nothings are in control. (See 6 below.)

Seems reset button stuck? Is Obama learning many problems are intractable and speechifying is not going to bring the walls down? Power - militarily and financial - and common sense trump hyperbole. (See 7 below.)

Netanyahu may be an adult but if he has to go to papa to seek approval for defending his nation he is still a kid in knickers, or is Netanyahu's restraint the better part of valor?(See 8 below.)

Glick advises on how to avoid Obama's ambush. Glick tells Netanyahu to avoid the trap of Obama's arrogance and fixed beliefs learned at an early age while attending Ivy Schools where radical thinking prevails to this day and which drives both Obama's thinking and policies. (See 9 below.)

Democrats have such confidence in their stimulus plan, which has not been fully implemented, they are thinking about birthing its son. The closer they get to 2010 elections the more logs they are prone to place on the fire. (See 10 below.)

Benjamin Bidder likes Obama the masseur but Gideon Rachman is fearful and writes Obama needs to apply firmer pressure. (See 11 and 11a below.)

Meanwhile Troy Senick sees the incoherence of hope and Bret Stephens sees just another Whiz Kid disaster on the horizon. (See 11b and 11c below.)

Carnegie Endowment: Full text sumary of Taliban's winning strategy. Carnegie Endowment: Full text sumary of Taliban's winning strategy.

Tragically our military deaths are on the rise in Afghansitan but little reporting of same.
(See 12 below.)

Dick


1) California’s Nightmare Will Kill Obamanomics
Commentary by Kevin Hassett


Last week, we discovered that the state of California will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

With California mired in a budget crisis, largely the result of a political impasse that makes spending cuts and tax increases impossible, Controller John Chiang said the state planned to issue $3.3 billion in IOU’s in July alone. Instead of cash, those who do business with California will get slips of paper.

The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling. The reason is simple. If Obama’s health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than California’s. Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year. The publicity surrounding the California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat.

It takes years and years to make a mess as terrible as the California debacle, but the recipe is simple. All that you need is two political parties that are always willing to offer easy government solutions for every need of the voters, but never willing to make the tough decisions necessary to finance the government largess that results. Voters will occasionally change their allegiance from one party to the other, but the bacchanal will continue regardless of the names on the office doors.

California has engaged in an orgy of spending, but, compared with our federal government, its legislators should feel chaste. The California deficit this year is now north of $26 billion. The U.S. federal deficit will be, according to the latest numbers, almost 70 times larger.

Bleak Picture

The federal picture is so bleak because the Obama administration is the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of the U.S. I would imagine that he would be the intergalactic champion as well, if we could gather the data on deficits on other worlds. Obama has taken George W. Bush’s inattention to deficits and elevated it to an art form.

The Obama administration has no shame, and is willing to abandon reason altogether to achieve its short-term political goals. Ronald Reagan ran up big deficits in part because he believed that his tax cuts would produce economic growth, and ultimately pay for themselves. He may well have been excessively optimistic about the merits of tax cuts, but at least he had a story.

Obama has no story. Nobody believes that his unprecedented expansion of the welfare state will lead to enough economic growth. Nobody believes that it will pay for itself. Everyone understands that higher spending today begets higher spending tomorrow. That means that his economic strategy simply doesn’t add up.

Character Deficit

Back in the 1980s, Reagan’s own economist, Martin Feldstein, spoke up when he felt that the Reagan administration was pushing the deficit too far. Where are the economists with such character today? Apparently, the job description for economists has transformed from recommending policies that are defensible to defending whatever policies that the political hacks in the West Wing dream up.

As bad as the California legislature has been over the years, it has never entered a fiscal crisis like the one that we face today and then doubled down with a massive spending increase. In the end, when times got tough, patriotic and sensible Californians of both parties stood up and began acting like adults.

Maybe the same thing is starting to happen in our nation’s capital. The key players in Washington are Senator Evan Bayh and 15 Senate Democrats who joined him this year in forming a coalition of moderates. One thing that has distinguished moderate Democrats from the garden variety of the species is heightened concern about fiscal responsibility.

Off a Cliff

With the price tag of Obama-care likely to exceed $1 trillion, moderate Democrats face a simple choice. They can jump off the cliff with the president, or they can stay true to the principles that they have espoused throughout their careers.

There are reassuring signs that principle is winning. One of the most expensive components of the Obama plan is the so- called public-insurance option, which opponents fear would result in massive government subsidies. Senator Mary Landrieu said that she is “not open” to a public option that will compete with private insurance.

Many other Democratic Senators, including Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Tom Carper, also oppose the public option. As the cost estimates increase and support wanes, the Senate Finance Committee is even going as far as to pursue its own health-care plan, meaning that the health-care end game is now in sight.

Tax Bite

Moderates might support Obama’s health-care objectives if the bill also included tax increases to cover the spending increases. But those tax increases would likely be unpopular, making it almost impossible to pass a bill.

Given the increasing public concern about deficits that heightened significantly last week because of the California crisis, there are only two possibilities left. Either the Obama plan will come crashing down or Senate Democrats will concoct some bill that has health in the title but costs almost nothing and does even less. With Al Franken arriving in the Senate and providing Democrats with a crucial 60th vote, the latter seems most likely.

(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He was an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Kevin Hassett


2) New York Times Barbie Strikes Again
By Andrew Breitbart

What a shock that Maureen Dowd devoted her New York Times column Sunday to attack Sarah Palin. It did not so much criticize Alaska's governor for prematurely stepping down from her official duties as to finish off what sister snipers Katie Couric and Tina Fey began last fall.

The assassination of Sarah Palin - by media.

For those who didn't pay attention, Mrs. Palin's unexpected stratospheric rise as a national political figure threatened the media's pre-ordained presidency of Barack Obama.

In light of how the Obama machine took down Hillary Clinton, which unsettled many feminists who believed 2008 was their time, many who saw sexism at play - the destruction of an ascendant Republican female icon was an urgent imperative for the Democratic Party.

In conjunction with the laws of political correctness as perfected by the Democratic Media Complex, it would take prominent women to take down an unlikely and unexpected conservative feminist symbol that threatened to steal away Mrs. Clinton's votes from the Chosen One.

While the vanquished then-senator from New York conspicuously removed herself from this task - going so far as praising Sen. John McCain's running mate as "a very composed and effective debater" - a trio of media partisans, each with a unique skill set, rose to the task of tearing down Sarah Palin.

Misses Dowd, Couric and Fey - Obama's Angels (featuring Joy Behar in the role of "Bosley") - used a potent mix of mockery, snobbery and vitriol to undermine Mrs. Palin's feminist bona fides.

They are what my wife calls "pad throwers," an allusion to the shower room scene in the Stephen King film "Carrie," in which the popular girls throw sanitary napkins and tampons at the film's namesake.

Simply put, they are bullies. And female bullies - "Mean Girls" as Miss Fey's film calls them - are the cruelest kind.

Primarily motivated by a desire to keep abortion "safe, legal and rare," female liberals in the media have carte blanche to do and say anything.

But since Mrs. Palin, a mother of five including a boy who was known to have Down syndrome before he was born, is a potent symbol of the pro-life movement, she is considered an enemy of the sisterhood.

Miss Dowd's attempted takedown of Mrs. Palin is less skillful surgery than it is name calling using fun noun and adjective pairings. Think "Mad Libs." And, that's exactly what Misses Dowd, Couric and Fey are. Once the ladies did their job, liberal men like Jon Stewart and David Letterman had the cover to join the hate campaign.

While Mrs. Palin is at ease with her gender, as well as her place in the workplace and at home, Misses Dowd, Couric and Fey convey a base insecurity in their feminine skin. Their rage is fueled by liberalism's false feminist dogma and they take it out on a woman who chose not to join their angry sorority.

The governor of Alaska's compelling narrative - athlete, beauty queen, wife, mother, hunter, successful politician - shows adherents of narrow leftist dogma that, perhaps, women really can have it all. Most importantly: freedom of thought.

In calling Alaska's governor "Caribou Barbie," Miss Dowd used beauty as a weapon to diminish Mrs. Palin's achievements. A man would be reprimanded for this, but Miss Dowd is a Pulitzer Prize-winning pad thrower and is licensed for such vindictive pettiness.

"Caribou," of course, is a stab at Mrs. Palin's backwater, Red State ways, attacks on which an Upper Westside liberal snob can never get enough. Miss Dowd goes on to ridicule "Sarah's country-music melodramas." This is her barely veiled attempt to call Mrs. Palin "white trash." And this has been the loathsome subtext of all media criticism of the Palins. They even went after their children. Mercilessly.

And Mrs. Palin during the Letterman saga finally cried, "Enough!"

Exposed in the relentless Palin attacks is not just political bias, but unmitigated class bias. The American mainstream media in its current free-fall is begging for more comeuppance when it continues to berate the values and lifestyles of the folks in flyover country who in simpler times used to be considered valued customers.

While "empathy" and "tolerance" may be liberalism's highest values, Miss Dowd offers her conservative victims none. They are caricatured, demeaned and dehumanized. They are to be mocked and ridiculed to the point where the other students point and laugh. The MoDo template is so simple and repetitive it could be written into a software program.

Perhaps resigning from her first term in office may hurt Mrs. Palin's attempts to run for higher office. Even I, a Palin supporter, now have qualms about her seeking higher office. But politics is not the most important way to influence our country, and reinforce conservatism's relevancy in the current global disorder. Media is.

Sarah Palin may best serve her country by entering the media fray. In the pursuit of taking her down, Misses Dowd, Couric and Fey have created the person who burns the liberal media prom down.

Hopefully, when she leaves office Mrs. Palin starts to work on her telekinetic powers.

Andrew Breitbart is the founder of the news Web site breitbart.com and is co-author of "Hollywood

3) Obama and Israel: a new hope
Matthew Yglesias


The signs after Barack Obama’s inauguration were all in favour of the pro-Israel lobby. But the signals of the past few weeks have caught Tel Aviv off guard

Last week, sitting in a downtown hotel bar with a representative of Americans for Peace Now and Hagit Ofran, head of the Settlement Watch project in Israel, I found myself buoyed by a strange sense of optimism.

Gatherings of US peace activists in recent years have been marked by an underlying despair about the Israeli-Arab conflict. Even at the peak of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign of hope and change, few US peace activists expected any significant shift of US policy on this front. Indeed, Obama seemed eager to separate his support for engagement with Iran and his opposition to invading Iraq from his views on Israel. He touted his ties to pro-Israeli hawks such as Dennis Ross, the adviser to Hillary Clinton and former Middle East envoy, distanced himself from critics of Israel, and offered such reassurances as “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided”. Five months into the new administration, however, this has proved an area in which change has been surprisingly decisive – surprising enough to have caught the Israeli government and its allies in the US off guard.

Change by stealth?

There was no sign of this change in the post-election transition process. Hillary Clinton, who as senator from New York had staked out extremely pro-Israel positions, was made secretary of state. Robert Gates, George W Bush’s secretary of defence, was kept in place. As these secretaries began staffing their offices, many foreign policy hands who had supported Obama began to fear that they were being frozen out. People who’d spent more than a year working to put him in the White House began complaining to me that there seemed to be room on the president’s national security team for all kinds of people except his own supporters.

It now seems that while Obama was alarming some of his fans, he was also lulling his opponents into a false sense of complacency. In the past couple of months, he has adopted a tough stance against Binyamin Netanyahu’s government and his approach has flummoxed the pro-Israel lobby.

The first major sign of change came at a meeting of the lobby’s flagship organisation, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), on 5 May. The annual gathering attracts big-name politicians from across the political spectrum and this year’s session was no exception. But the message from some of the most influential Democrats did more than attempt even-handedness.

“Israel must work toward a two-state solution,” said Vice-President Joe Biden, “not build settlements, dismantle outposts, and allow Palestinians freedom of movement, access to economic opportunity and increased security responsibilities.” Senator John Kerry went further, hailing the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 as an important step and arguing that “nothing will do more to show Israel’s commitment to making peace than freezing new settlement activity”.

Under pressure

This push for a settlement freeze rapidly moved to the top of the US-Israeli agenda. Initially, peace campaigners weren’t sure what to make of the remarks. Officially, the US has long opposed settlement activity, but it has typically winked at rampant violations. The speeches were provocative, especially given the setting, but lacked a clear policy message.

It seems the Israeli government was similarly confused. Having expected that follow-up inquiries with legislators on Capitol Hill would reassure him that there was no real need to change anything, Netanyahu was surprised to learn that the administration meant what it said. Foreign Policy magazine’s Laura Rozen quoted him as complaining, “What the hell do they want from me?” in response to Clinton’s solid message of support for a settlement freeze, and congressional Democrats – including stalwarts of the pro-Israel lobby such as the New York congressman Gary Ackerman – fully backed the president.
Obama and Netanyahu are now engaged in an international staring contest to see whose political position will become untenable first. No Israeli prime minister who can’t effectively manage the relationship with Washington lasts long, but Netanyahu hopes to bring enough domestic pressure to bear on Obama to force him to back down before he himself has to.

So far, Obama is winning. Spines were stiffened on the Hill by a briefing from Settlement Watch’s Ofran, who set out the need for a loophole-free settlement freeze policy. She told me she was pleased with the response, and peace activists have found the administration’s recent appointments to mid- and low-level national security posts more sympathetic to their cause.

The new approach has yet to have much of an impact on the ground in the occupied territories, but it has pushed Netanyahu to seek to soften his image in the US with a conciliatory-sounding speech. And Obama’s administration understands that words rather than deeds are what is needed from Israel. Republicans, led by Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, are trying to use the issue against Obama, helped by leaders such as Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations, an umbrella group that purports to speak for Jewish Americans. And yet, on 16 June, the Union of Reform Judaism, the largest organisation of synagogues in America, adopted a resolution backing Obama, condemning the “destructive impact of the settlements” in the occupied territories and calling on Israel to freeze settlement activity unconditionally.

With substantial elements of the Jewish community supporting Obama, the president’s position appears secure. And that means Netanyahu’s isn’t. Many hurdles stand between here and a binding peace deal, but for the first time in years America has a president willing – and able – to push Israel to make crucial concessions.

Matthew Yglesias is a fellow of the Centre for American Progress

4) Obama: Hard on Israel, soft on Egypt
By MICHAEL M. ROSEN
Quick, name the two largest recipients of American foreign aid.

If you guessed Israel and Egypt, you'd be correct. Since 1997, the US has provided between $2billion and $3 billion dollars annually to Israel and between $1b. and $2b. to Egypt, accounting for about a third of its total foreign aid budget.

But while the US enjoys a friendly relationship with both countries, a yawning gap has opened recently between the treatment President Barack Obama's administration has bestowed on Jerusalem and its advances to Cairo.

Much has already been written about Obama's general tendency to express forceful disagreement with American allies while reserving judgment about (some would say coddling) bona fide enemies, like the tyrannical Iranian regime or Hugo Chavez's virtual dictatorship in Venezuela.

But nowhere is the contrast clearer between the State Department's pressure on democratic governments and its timidity around despotic ones than in its respective approaches to Israel and Egypt.

Jerusalem Post readers need little reminder of the slights, both petty and large, that the American administration has inflicted on the Jewish state in the five months it has been in power.

From preventing media coverage of President Shimon Peres's White House visit, to grudgingly sending Vice President Joseph Biden to deliver a lukewarm address at the AIPAC conference, to demanding Israel's recognition of a Palestinian state (with nothing in return), to insisting on a complete, immediate freeze to settlement growth, the contrast with president George W. Bush's staunchly pro-Israel positions is self evident.

IN FACT, on the settlements, even earnest peace processors like Aaron David Miller have criticized Obama for overemphasizing them, calling them a "distraction." At a recent forum in a Washington-area synagogue, Miller, who participated in the 2000 Camp David negotiations, argued that "given the stakes and reality, we are going to need a relationship with Israel of great intimacy in order to do this. We need to think very carefully about how we're going about it."

And James Kirchick, an assistant editor of the (liberal) New Republic, observed that during Obama's much-ballyhooed Cairo speech to "the Muslim world," the president "only criticized one state by name, earning him more applause than any other part of his remarks. What was it? A critique of Israel's settlements policy."

So it's hardly surprising, given Washington's current obsession with preventing the addition of guest-rooms in Ma'aleh Adumim, that only 6 percent of Jewish Israelis consider Obama "pro-Israel." But what's surely more surprising is Obama's outright abandonment of human rights and democracy concerns when it comes to Israel's neighbor to the south.

EGYPT HAS CONSISTENTLY earned dismal rankings from Freedom House, the independent NGO that annually evaluates every county's level of freedom. Calling Egypt "not free" and awarding it political rights and civil liberties scores of six and five out of 10, respectively, Freedom House derided President Hosni Mubarak's "suppression of journalists' freedom of expression, repression of opposition groups and the passage of constitutional amendments that hinder the judiciary's ability to balance against executive excess." (By contrast, Israel earned a "free" ranking and political rights and civil liberties scores of one and two, respectively.)

Bush, like his predecessors, considered making foreign aid to Egypt contingent on liberal reforms to Mubarak's largely illiberal regime - a step urged by Egyptian democracy activists. While the US never formally withheld aid on these grounds, the threat alone likely prevented further human rights abuses and gave succor to brave Egyptians standing up for reforms.

But within months of assuming her position, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an Egyptian television anchor that "conditionality is not our policy." The US ambassador to Egypt also announced an end to funding of civil-society groups in Egypt in an effort to curry favor with Mubarak.

During a May press conference with Egyptian democracy activists in Washington (presumably, meeting with them in Cairo would have proven too "controversial"), Clinton paid brief lip service to the importance of democracy and human rights, then swiftly moved to discussing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and Egyptian economic development.

This was followed shortly thereafter by Obama's Cairo speech, in which he did, to his credit, mention the universal desire for freedom, but then, it typical Obaman fashion, applied an important caveat: "Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone." While this bromide sounds innocent enough, it sends a clear signal to Mubarak, and all authoritarian rulers, that the US will not press them, even gently, to liberalize further.

And as Joshua Muravchik observes in the July/August issue of Commentary, these words were delivered in an auditorium at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, which admits into its precincts no non-Muslims, including the nearly 20% of the Egyptian population that is Christian. So much for promoting religious tolerance.

Thus, despite Israel's and Egypt's geographical proximity and comparable consumption of US foreign aid, the Obama administration has strongly pressured the former while indulging the latter. Pity the reverse isn't true.

The writer is an attorney in San Diego, California. michaelmrosen@yahoo.com

5) Obama's Long, Hard Summer
By E.J. Dionne

WASHINGTON -- As President Obama confronts his testing time this summer, he holds major assets but faces deep tensions within his governing coalition. This will force him to make hard choices earlier than he might have preferred.

His assets include steady affection from a large majority of the country, a political base as solid as the one that allowed Ronald Reagan to govern effectively even through slides in his popularity, and a weak Republican Party whose support is confined to the right end of the political spectrum.

At the same time, Obama will be called upon to manage growing friction within his majority between its large progressive core and its less ideological fringes.

For progressives, the president's long-term political well-being depends upon delivering tangible benefits to middle-class voters in areas such as health care, education and financial security, even at the risk of temporarily higher budget deficits.

Many of his moderate supporters worry about those deficits and express more skepticism than progressives do about government's capacity to bring about change. Yet the attitudes toward government held by Obama's middle-of-the-road sympathizers are characterized not by the hostility that animates conservatives, but by ambivalence and uncertainty.

On no issue will these tensions be as important, or as difficult, to resolve as on health care.

While moderates in the Senate press for a less robust approach to reform, progressives fear the impact of conceding too much ground. Such accommodations, they believe, would create a health plan that still required politically painful tax increases but delivered too few tangible gains to the middle-income Americans looking to Obama to improve their situations.

The danger is that the political center in Congress -- particularly in the Senate -- is not the same as the political center in the country. For example, while some moderate Democrats express skepticism about including a government option as one choice within a reformed health care system, many recent polls have shown broad support for such a public plan.

For senators, the issue is ideological, and their views are also driven by the concerns of interest groups. For most voters, however, the public plan is an additional and welcome choice that expands their ability to bargain within the health care marketplace.

Despites these challenges, Obama enters the second half of the year with approval ratings that hover between the high 50s and mid-60s. Like Reagan, Obama enjoys nearly unanimous favorability within his own party. He wins approval from nine Democrats in 10, and liberals give him similar ratings.

Obama is also holding the political center. His approval has stayed in the 55 percent to 65 percent range among independents, and between 65 percent and 70 percent among moderates.

The major change in the polls over Obama's first months in office has been a consolidation of opposition to him on the political right. A recent Gallup survey found that among conservative Republicans, just 16 percent approved of Obama's performance, and among all self-described conservatives, his approval ratings are in the mid-30s.

This creates a problem for Republican political leaders. Their aggressive attacks on the president earn cheers from their own base, but are out of line with a public that continues to give Obama the benefit of the doubt. It's thus not surprising that a recent Washington-Post/ABC survey found that only 36 percent of Americans held a favorable opinion of the Republican Party; 56 percent had a negative view. Other polls show the GOP in even worse shape.

Still, it will get more difficult for Obama to maintain support from both the left and the center as he faces potentially divisive choices in the context of a stricken economy.

If short-term pressures to accommodate concerns about the deficit curb Obama's ambitions, the result could be not only disaffection among progressives but also disappointment among the less ideologically inclined. Despite their skepticism about government, most in this latter constituency still want Washington to foster economic expansion and improve their health coverage.

The president will thus have to balance worries about losing some moderate support against the larger danger of failing to achieve the sweeping change he promised. And centrist Democrats in Congress could usefully recall that the party's inability to deliver on Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign pledges, particularly on health care, led to a stunning defeat two years later that decimated its moderates and liberals alike.

In his first six months, Obama showed he was up to the job. This summer will test his ability to make agonizing choices -- and make them stick.

6) Liberals: Learning Nothing and Forgetting Nothing
By Christopher Chantrill

A liberal acquaintance couldn't understand why conservatives are impatient with Obama. Didn't conservatives get enough of a chance with 30 years of Reagan and Bush, he asked?


OK, it's true that conservatives did get some tax-rate cuts. And we did win the cold war. And we did roll back one social program, welfare, a little, for a while.


But conservatives look on the Obama administration so far and say: Liberals are like the French Bourbons -- the royal house of France, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, deposed in the French Revolution.


After the defeat of Napoleon the Bourbon kings were restored in 1814. Talleyrand was disappointed. They have learned nothing, and they have forgotten nothing, he said.


The whole point of the Reagan era was to demonstrate that government should keep its cotton-picking hands off the economy. Governments and their mega-projects, their subsidies, "backing winners," "investments," always end in tears, just like they did in the stagflation of the late 1970s.


But it's pretty obvious that our Democratic friends have learned nothing from the lessons of the Reagan era, and have forgotten none of their old liberal delusions.


First we got a trillion dollar special-interest giveaway that was called a stimulus package. But unemployment keeps going up, now to 9.5 percent. Then the House of Representatives has passed a cap-and-trade energy bill that's another special-interest giveaway. Next up is a trillion dollar health reform bill that proposes to lower costs while increasing the number of people covered.


Yet Democrats are honest enough to be ashamed of what they are doing. Why else would they pass their trillion dollar stimulus bill without serious hearings or even a copy of the bill available to read. The same is clearly true of the cap-and-trade bill that passed the House of Representatives, sight unseen, on June 26. As Stephen Spruiell & Kevin Williamson show on NRO Online, the Waxman-Markey bill is nothing more than subsidies, payoffs, corporate welfare and goodies for liberal activists. No wonder it had to be rushed through in the dead of night. It couldn't stand the light of day.


In the Waxman-Markey bill the grand principle of limiting carbon emissions through auctioned and marketable emission permits gets thrown under the bus in a crude special-interest feeding frenzy. What happened to saving the planet?


And buried in the bill are economic howlers that will freeze up the economy in the years ahead, write Spruill and Williamson:


Naturally, Big Labor gets its piece of the pie, too. Projects receiving grants and financing under Waxman-Markey provisions will be required to implement Davis-Bacon union-wage rules, making it hard for non-union firms to compete - and... Waxman-Markey forces union-wage rules all the way down to the plumbing-repair and light-bulb-changing level.


That will really help to revive the economy.


But President Obama's budget director had the best argument against the bill, according to a Wall Street Journal editorial:


In March, White House budget director Peter Orszag told Congress that "If you didn't auction the permit, it would represent the largest corporate welfare program that has ever been enacted in the history of the United States."


The reason that the Democrats threw their grand cap-and-trade principle under the bus is that they didn't dare try an honest campaign to persuade the American people to back their Big Idea, that we should pay more for energy to prevent global warming.


When President Bush wanted to reform Social Security in 2005 he took his case to the American people. He failed to persuade them, and so he didn't get his reform. Democrats and President Obama don't have the guts for that sort of thing.


If only the Democrats were as queasy about the gigantic deficits they are forecasting. If only they were nervous about the rigidities they are introducing into the economy with their plans for forced-march government health care and green-energy subsidies.


It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the combination of wasteful special-interest spending in the stimulus package, wasteful special-interest spending in the Waxman-Markey bill place a severe cost upon the US economy. Then there is the black hole of possibilities in any government takeover of the health care industry.


In Britain, a month ago, a Conservative Party spokesman admitted that public spending cuts would be needed. Prime Minister Brown thought that allowed him to make political points, one more time, on Labour "investment" versus Tory "cuts." But then came the news that senior civil servants were drawing up contingency plans for 20 percent cuts in spending, starting after the election next year, in case the Chinese balk at buying British government bonds.


So far, the Obamanites have not realized that there might be a limit to borrowing, spending and subsidy.


That's because they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.


Christopher Chantrill is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his roadtothemiddleclass.com and usgovernmentspending.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

7)Obama, Medvedev at odds on US missile shield, Iran's nuclear drive, Middle East


US president Barack Obama and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev were of one mind in one key sphere, the need to continue the war on al Qaeda and the Taliban. This concurrence produced on Day One of Obama's first official visit to Moscow an accord allowing the United States to fly troops and weapons to Afghanistan through Russian skies. This opened an important supply corridor for US forces in Afghanistan, the first of its kind since World War II. Most other key issues were either left in dispute or as unfinished business for joint teams to fill in the gaps, such as the preliminary memorandum under which the US and Russia aim to cut their nuclear warhead arsenals by 1,500-1,675 items each over seven years.

Moscow sources do not expect a breakthrough on any of the outstanding issues at the breakfast meeting Tuesday, July 7, between Obama and prime minister Vladimir Putin.

The four issues on which the Washington and Moscow remain divided are:

1. The US missile interceptors and radar station for Poland and the Czech Republic. This remains a Russian sine qua non for cooperation in other fields.

In answer to a question at his joint news conference Monday, July 6, with Medvedev, Obama said that "defensive as well as offensive systems were a priority for the United States," but offered to review alternatives and expected to reach an understanding with Moscow after "extensive negotiations."

2. As part of the Kremlin's opposition to NATO's expansion, Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, are still obstacles to the relations "reset," which the US president promised to bring about in his two day summits in Moscow.

The Russians view the declarations of independence by breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia as an accomplished fact; since the Georgia war last summer, have been busy building big military bases in both disputed provinces. The United States views them as integral parts of sovereign Georgia.

This gap was not bridged in Obama's meeting with Medvedev.

3. While Moscow is more concerned by Iran's nuclear plans than it was before, it still maintains that there is no proof that Iran is working on a military program and deserves to be deterred by stiffer sanctions.

While Russian president did not mention Tehran, the US president voiced deep concern about Iran developing nuclear weapons "because this will trigger a nuclear race in the most volatile part of the world, the Middle East." He added: "It is also possible that nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of non-state actors, extremists, posing a danger to both Russia and the US."

According to Moscow sources, before the US president arrived, the Kremlin had began to suspect that vice president Joseph Biden's assertion Sunday, July 5 - that the US would not stand in Israel's way if it decided to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities - was a device to extract Moscow's cooperation on harsh sanctions, otherwise Israel might well attack. Such a scenario would jeopardize the Russian-built atomic reactor in southern Iran, the pride of Russia's nuclear industry.

But in the conversation between the two presidents, there was no sign that Russian side felt threatened on the Iran issue.

4. In Middle East peacemaking, Moscow wants parity with Washington, which the Obama administration is not willing to concede.

All in all, there is still a long way to go and several arduous negotiating track to pursue before the United States and Russia can be said to be on the road to true détente. The Kremlin is unlikely to show much flexibility until Obama gives way on the missile shield in East Europe.

8) Netanyahuhesitant to seek U.S. okay to strike Iran'

Sources close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told The Washington Times that the premier is hesitant to request formal U.S. approval to launch military operations against Iran for fear that Washington would turn him down, according to a report which appeared in Tuesday editions.

The sources said the Israeli leader feels there is no point in seeking American acquiescence at this stage given President Barack Obama's stated intention to pursue a policy of diplomatic engagement with the Tehran regime, The Washington Times reported.

"There was a decision not to press [for U.S. approval of a strike] because it was probably inadequate for the engagement policy and what we know about Obama's approach to Iran," a senior Israeli official told The Washington Times.


The report said that although Israel has concluded that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose an existential threat, it has refrained from attacking in deference to vital American interests in the region.

The Israeli government said it supported the new administration's efforts to pursue diplomacy in a bid to halt Iran's nuclear program, though it has warned that talks will fail unless the West sets a firm deadline for Iranian compliance.

In the latter stages of the previous U.S. administration, Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, requested that Washington provide Israel will bunker-busting bombs widely believed to be intended for use in an attack on Iran's nuclear installations, according to The New York Times. That request was rebuffed by George W. Bush.

Citing U.S. and foreign officials, the Times reported the White House was unable to determine whether Israel had decided to carry out the strike before Washington objected or whether Olmert was trying to get Bush to act more decisively before he leaves office this month.

The Washington Times report comes days after Vice President Joe Biden told ABC television that "Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else."

The State Department sought to clarify the implications of Biden's statement, saying that the vice president's remarks should not be construed as an American "green light" for an Israeli strike on Iran.

"We are certainly not going to give a green light to any kind of military strike, but Israel is a sovereign country and we're not going to dictate its actions," State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly said on Monday.

"We share the Israelis' deep concerns about Iran's nuclear program," Kelly said. "But you have to ask Israel if they are going to make a strike."

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Monday welcomed Biden's statement, calling it "logical."

But other Israeli leaders avoided comment, a low-key reaction that suggested Israel did not see Biden's comments as a green light to strike Iran. Obama underlined that diplomacy with Iran remains an option .

9) Avoiding Obama's ambush
By Caroline B. Glick


It works out that US President Barack Obama is a man of heartfelt, long-held principles. It also works out that his principles are divorced from reality and unresponsive to any facts that contradict them.

This much was made clear by a New York Times report on Sunday which discussed a recently "rediscovered" 1983 article Obama published in a student magazine on the subject of nuclear disarmament when he was an undergraduate at Columbia University.

Obama's article, "Breaking the war mentality," was ostensibly a feature story showcasing two student organizations that advocated a freeze in the US's nuclear arsenal. But the young Obama didn't hesitate to use his platform to make his own, even more radical views known to his readers. As he put it: "The narrow focus of the Freeze movement, as well as academic discussion of first- versus second-strike capabilities, suit the military-industrial interests, as they continue adding to their billion-dollar erector sets."

Citing a Rastafarian reggae musician as his foreign policy authority, Obama ruminated, "When Peter Tosh sings that 'everybody's asking for peace, but nobody's asking for justice,' one is forced to wonder whether disarmament or arms control issues, severed from economic and political issues, might be another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem, instead of the disease itself."

As one of the freeze advocates explained gently, contending with "the disease itself" was an unachievable goal since "you're not going to get rid of the military in the near future."


THERE IS NOTHING shocking about Obama's embrace of radical politics as a college student. Particularly at Columbia, adopting such positions was the most conformist move a student could make. What is disturbing is that these views have endured over time, although they were overtaken by events 20 years ago.

Just six years after Obama penned his little manifesto, the Iron Curtain came crashing down. The Soviet empire fell not because radicals like Obama called for the US to destroy its nuclear arsenal, it fell because president Ronald Reagan ignored them and vastly expanded the US's nuclear arsenal while deploying short-range nuclear warheads in Europe and launching the US's missile defense program while renouncing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

On Monday Obama arrived in Moscow for a round of disarmament talks with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. According to most accounts, while in Moscow Obama plans to abandon US allies Ukraine and Georgia and agree to deep cuts in US missile defense programs. In exchange, Moscow is expected to consider joining Washington in cutting back on its nuclear arsenal just as the likes of Iran and North Korea build up theirs.

Of course, even if Russia doesn't agree to scale back its nuclear arsenal, Obama has already ensured that the US will slash the size of its own by refusing to fund its modernization. In short, Obama is working to implement the precise policy he laid out as an unoriginal student conformist 26 years ago.


BY NOW of course, none of this is particularly surprising. Since entering office seven long months ago, Obama has demonstrated that his guiding philosophy for foreign affairs is that the US and its allies are to blame for their adversaries' hostility toward them. All that needs to happen for peace to break out throughout the world is for the US and its allies to quit clinging to their guns and religions and start apologizing for their rudeness. In furtherance of this goal, Obama has devoted himself to putting the screws on US allies, slashing America's defense budget and embarking on a worldwide tour apologizing to US adversaries.

The basic reality that the US is being led by a radical ideologue who clings to his views in the face of overwhelming proof of their falsity is the most fundamental fact that world leaders must reckon with today as they formulate policies to contend with the Obama administration. This is first and foremost the case for Israel.

Since the Netanyahu government took office three months ago, the Obama administration has placed inordinate pressure on Jerusalem in a bid to coerce it into making massive concessions to the Palestinians. These concessions are demanded not for peace, but simply for the sake of placing pressure on Israel. Obama wishes to pressure Israel to show his good intentions to the Arabs and Iran.


TO DATE, Obama's loudest demand has been to officially prohibit all Jewish construction in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Although the demand is intrinsically bigoted, illegal and immoral, and although the consequences of the expulsion of all Jews from Gaza in 2005 show that Israeli land giveaways and ethnic cleansing bring war not peace, the Netanyahu government has opted not to get into an open confrontation with the administration on the issue.

Instead, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his government have sought to treat Obama's offensive as a routine disagreement between otherwise close allies. Rather than defending the principles of Jewish national, legal and human rights and the country's right to security, Netanyahu has sought to reach an accommodation with Obama by reducing the discussion to a conversation about the inevitable natural growth of Jewish communities due to expanding families.

But what Obama's slavish devotion to his radical world view shows is that Netanyahu's decision to seek an accommodation is not simply an exercise in futility, it is a recipe for disaster. Obama and his advisers do not care that Jewish fertility rates are the fastest rising in the world. They do not care that by arguing for a complete halt in "natural" growth, they are effectively adopting a eugenics argument the likes of which no US policy-maker has dared to advance since before the Holocaust. They are looking to fight because they believe that the US is best served by fighting with its allies - particularly with Israel. Any concession Netanyahu makes will just form the basis for the next round of demands.

Far from seeking an agreement with Obama, Netanyahu should realize that given the president's ideological rigidity, there is no agreement to be had. Instead of trying to resolve the issue, Netanyahu's goal should be to prolong discussions until Obama finds someone else to pick on.

Rather than making wrongheaded concessions to Obama on Jewish population growth in the vain hope of mollifying him, Israel should go on the offensive on issues where it has something to gain from a confrontation. Two specific issues - aside from Iran's nuclear program - should be raised in this regard.


FIRST, IN recent months the Obama administration has applied massive pressure on Israel to remove its military forces from Judea and Samaria, curtail its counterterror operations and allow US-trained, anti-Israel Palestinian military forces to deploy in the towns and cities. Rather than openly oppose these demands, in the interests of cultivating good relations, the Netanyahu government has gone along with the program. This it has done in spite of the fact that the Palestinian forces now deploying throughout the areas have a history of participating in and supporting terror attacks against Israel as well as terrorizing their own people.

Last week the government quietly announced that the IDF is pulling out of most Palestinian population centers and turning the keys over to these hostile US-trained forces. This was a mistake.

In the weeks to come, the government should bluntly and publicly discuss and protest Fatah political and military leaders' continued support for terrorists and terrorist attacks against Israel. Netanyahu and his government should also detail human-rights abuses Fatah personnel routinely carry out against Palestinian journalists, businessmen and other civilians. The administration should be forced to defend its decision to empower these corrupt, terror-supporting brutes at the expense of Israel's security, and to force US taxpayers to foot the bill for its cockamamie priorities.



THE SECOND ISSUE is US military aid. For years Israel's detractors have pointed to this aid as "proof" that Israel is a strategic burden for America. But in recent years, and particularly since the Obama administration took office, it is becoming increasingly clear that US military assistance may be a greater burden for Israel than for the US.

On Sunday The Jerusalem Post reported that the Pentagon has forced Israel Aerospace Industries to back out of a joint partnership with a Swedish aerospace company to compete in a multi-billion dollar tender to sell new multi-role fighters to the Indian air force. And as the Post reported, this is the second major deal the Pentagon has forced Israel to withdraw from in the past year. Last summer it was forced to bow out of a $500 million tender to supply the Turkish army with a new main battle tank. In both cases, US firms were competing in the tenders and the Pentagon threatened that Israeli participation would risk continued US-Israeli cooperation.

Today the Israel Air Force faces the prospect of not having a new-generation fighter. The Pentagon has placed so many draconian restrictions on its purchase of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and raised the price so high, that it makes little strategic or economic sense to purchase it. So too, last week the Israel Navy announced it has decided to explore the option of building its own warships rather than buy one of two competing US naval platforms as planned because the US contractors' costs have gone up so high. The Navy is also taking into consideration the fact that by building domestic platforms, it will provide needed employment to shipyard workers.

All in all, both in terms of pure economics and in terms of the massive and constantly escalating restrictions the Obama administration is now placing on Israeli use of US technologies and munitions, maintaining US military assistance makes less and less sense with each passing day.

Were Israel to initiate a conversation about cutting back on this assistance, it would be able to ensure that the talks take place on its terms. Moreover, given the fact that Israel may indeed be best served by simply ending its military assistance package, the risk involved in such discussions would not be particularly earth shattering. Finally, by making clear that it is not dependent on Obama's kindness, it would be expanding its maneuvering room on other issues as well.

What Obama's radicalism tells us is that he is not a man who is moved by rational discourse. He is not a man who is willing to be convinced that he is mistaken. But even in these dire circumstances, Israel is not without good options for securing its interests vis-a-vis Washington.

To do so, Jerusalem must first understand that it gains nothing from making concessions to a president bent on picking a fight with it. Then it must recognize that there are issues where a confrontation with Obama can serve its interests. Finally it must pursue those issues with energy and passion.


JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.

10) Is a Stimulus Sequel in the Offing?
By GERALD F. SEIB

The fight to enact a $787 billion economic stimulus package was the first big battle of the Obama administration -- and it isn't over yet.

The stimulus package was designed to keep unemployment in check amid the longest recession since the 1930s. Yet the June jobless rate hit 9.5% and is climbing higher, eliciting a remarkably frank weekend admission from Vice President Joe Biden that the administration miscalculated how bad the jobless problem would be.

Unemployment Numbers Fractures Stimulus Camps2:20New, higher unemployment numbers have rekindled the old debate about whether this year's economic stimulus package was a good idea, and has sparked new questions over whether a second round of stimulus will be necessary. WSJ executive Washington editor Jerry Seib explains.
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All that is reopening the bruising Washington debate over the stimulus package passed in February. Only now that debate is overlaid with a new question: Should the Obama administration dive back into the fray by seeking a second dose of stimulus from Congress this fall?

For now, the release last week of unemployment numbers has Washington dividing along three lines of argument about the existing stimulus package. Depending on your perspective, the stimulus plan:

a. Isn't working.

b. Is preventing unemployment from being even worse, or

c. Hasn't had enough time to really kick in yet.

Republicans are mostly voting for option A, of course, while the administration and its allies are picking various combinations of B and C.

"Four months ago we were on the precipice of rolling from a great recession into something deeper and darker," says Rahm Emanuel, President Barack Obama's chief of staff. "We've pulled the economy away from that precipice."

The stimulus package has played a significant part in preventing disaster, he argues, by, among other things, giving consumers and markets confidence the economy wouldn't be allowed to collapse as well as keeping states from making more cuts.

Moreover, he says, more than a third of the stimulus package consists of tax cuts, which are just starting to have an effect. So Mr. Emanuel says it's time to let the combined forces of the stimulus package, the rescue plan for banks and financial firms, and programs to revive housing begin working in tandem. "People have forgotten too quickly the severity and depth of the recession," he says.

Yet it's also true that the stimulus package Congress constructed has a heavy dose of spending on infrastructure projects, which roll out too slowly to be much help in fighting short-term unemployment. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that only 11% of the $308 billion of stimulus spending on discretionary programs will be spent in the current fiscal year, and only about half by the end of fiscal 2010.

There also may well be a case for more stimulus for next year, perhaps targeted to help state governments as they cope with lower tax revenues and higher unemployment and welfare costs. Certainly in the left wings of the president's Democratic Party there is clamoring for Stimulus Round II this fall.

The problem with that idea, though, is that the administration is boxed in, politically and rhetorically. If the White House is going to argue that the main problem with the existing stimulus plan is that it hasn't had enough time to kick in, it's hard to simultaneously argue that a second stimulus is needed.

Moreover, concerns about budget deficits are rising almost as fast as concerns about unemployment, complicating notions of a second stimulus. In the most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, unemployment was cited by 35% as their leading worry. But the budget deficit is rising as a source of anxiety, and now is named by 24% as their top worry. Cranking up a second stimulus package would help address unemployment concerns -- but also would add to the budget deficit.

Still, standing pat also represents a gamble for the administration. Already Republicans are cranking up their attacks on the stimulus plan, arguing not so much that it was a mistake but that the kind of package Democrats put together was fundamentally flawed.

Republicans pushed for a stimulus package tilted more toward tax incentives for job creation, and now they are citing the new jobless numbers as proof that they were right. "We had a plan," says Rep. Eric Cantor, the second-ranking Republican in the House. "It was a plan that had at its base a tax credit for small businesses. We need to give people a break when it comes to creating jobs."

In fact, Rep. Cantor now advocates taking unspent stimulus money and redirecting it toward job-creation tax credits. "Speaking for myself, I just sense that there will be very little support for a second round of stimulus," he says. Even some Democrats agree. "We've barely swallowed the first medicine," says Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a leader of the House's conservative Democrats. "It's too early for a double dose."

Yet there may be room for a middle ground. Let's say, for example, that the administration pushed later this year for a bill extending unemployment benefits that otherwise would expire. That would be a form of stimulus. And perhaps lawmakers would choose to attach a few additional doses of fiscal or tax stimulus to that bill. Whether that amounted to Stimulus II would be a question of labeling, but the effect would be pretty much the same.

11) Obama Strikes Right Chord in Russia
By Benjamin Bidder

US President Barack Obama is taking pains to massage Russian egos during his visit to Moscow. The charismatic US leader is trying not to overshadow his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev -- even if he is also meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Although Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was technically the host, it was his US counterpart, Barack Obama, who appeared to be stage-managing the show Monday during the meeting between the two heads of state in a lavish Kremlin hall. The US president -- who, as usual, knew that not just America but the whole world was listening to his words -- was intentionally subdued. Obama spoke with concentration, sounding serious, and was always careful to make sure that his presence did not overshadow the somewhat tense-seeming Medvedev.


REUTERS
Obama is taking pains not to overshadow Medvedev during his Moscow visit.


While the chiefs of staff of the two countries signed a military cooperation agreement, Obama touched the Russian head of state confidingly on the shoulder and whispered something to him. The appearance in the Kremlin was intended to demonstrate one thing above all: Here are two partners of equal status who together and with equal influence determine the fate of the world.

At the beginning of their meeting on Monday, Medvedev still appeared stiff and uneasy. He seemed on edge as he corrected the interpreter, who Medvedev felt had not accurately translated his words for Obama.

But then Medvedev appeared to grow in stature. He took the opportunity to talk in front of the whole world about Russia's right to be a global power helping to maintain the international order. He called the fight against the proliferation of nuclear weapons "one of the most important tasks of our countries." In a clear reference to Iran and North Korea, he said there were regions in which nuclear bombs could cause huge problems. Russia would work on solutions with its partners, he said, talking of a "common, joint responsibility."

Vision of a Nuclear-Free World

Admittedly the two leaders have not yet signed a new, binding disarmament treaty. But they have signed a preliminary agreement with very detailed targets which Russia and the US want to reach in the next round of disarmament talks. It will now be difficult for either of them to let the negotiations for a successor agreement to the START I treaty, which expires at the end of the year, fail without losing face -- especially as Obama announced that the agreement will be reached later this year.


In Moscow, the two men laid down a framework for that agreement. The number of warheads should be decreased by 1,500 to 1,675 and delivery systems should be cut by 500 to 1,100. If this were to become reality, it would reduce the nuclear arsenals of both countries by about one-third. Obama would be closer to the realization of his vision of a nuclear-free world, and Russia too could bask in the glow of this success and feel happy to be an equal partner with the US.

Nothing hurts Russia these days more than the loss of its superpower status. Obama has understood the need to address this patriotic longing felt by a majority of Russians, and is caressing the Russian soul with his overtures. Although he is still convinced that the planned US missile shield system with its installations in Poland and the Czech Republic can provide little defense against Russia's nuclear arsenal, Obama shows understanding for Russian opposition to the scheme. Obama said Monday that Medvedev had told him he was "very concerned" about the missile shield and raised the prospect of working with the Russians to find a solution -- even if an agreement would take time. Medvedev in turn welcomed the fact that the US was now listening to the Russian view that defensive weapons systems also need to be taken into account when it comes to maintaining balance in the international system.

At the end of the first day of Obama's visit, it was clear how much the US side is making efforts to strengthen the position of the Russian president. Obama was full of praise for Medvedev, calling him "professional" and "straightforward." By contrast, Obama said last week that former President Vladimir Putin, the current Russian prime minister, still had "one foot" in the old, Cold War way of doing things.

Both Obama and Putin appeared keen to bridge over differences on Tuesday morning as they met for the first time for a breakfast meeting at Putin's forest residence outside Moscow. Obama praised Putin's "extraordinary work … on behalf of the Russian people" as president and prime minister, while Putin said he was "glad to have the opportunity to get acquainted" with Obama.

The 'Best' Alternative

Obama's pro-Medvedev course is not that surprising, however. His strategy toward Russia is significantly shaped by Michael McFaul, a renowned Russia expert at Stanford University who advises Obama and is an outspoken critic of Putin. In a March 2008 interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, McFaul said he considered the idea that Putin had stabilized Russia to be a myth and argued that Putin had simply concocted a story that democracy in the 1990s was "bad" for the country and his regime was better. McFaul also said that Medvedev was the "best" alternative.

It's a view that Obama also appears to share. At the press conference with Medvedev, he said that, although he would meet Putin on Tuesday, "my understanding is that President Medvedev is the president and Prime Minister Putin is the prime minister." They allocate power in accordance with Russia's form of government, he added, "in the same way we allocate power in the United States."

That sounds more like wishful thinking than a realistic assessment of the situation. In Russia, at least, hardly anyone believes that Putin has really taken a back seat to the new president. In a survey conducted by the independent public opinion research institute Levada Center, just 12 percent of respondents said they believe that Medvedev has the real power in Russia.

11a) Obama must be firm on foreign policy
By Gideon Rachman


An opinion poll released last week revealed some heartening news for the US. President Barack Obama is the most popular political figure in the world. The least trusted leaders, according to a poll of 20 countries conducted by worldpublicopinion.org, are President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad of Iran and Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister. When Mr Obama has breakfast with Mr Putin in Moscow on Tuesday, it will be a meeting between the world’s romantic hero and one of its pantomime villains.

But charm and good looks can only get you so far in geopolitics.Mr Obama’s charismatic aura is obscuring an uncomfortable truth. His foreign policy is in crisis.

The arms-control agreement signed on Monday between the US and Russia will give the president some badly-needed positive news to bring back from Moscow. But beneath the smiley surface, relations between Russia and the US remain tense and suspicious.

Just a few months into his presidency, Mr Obama’s policy of engagement with Iran has also been all but wrecked by the violent crackdown in that country. His advisers once day-dreamed about a dramatic presidential trip to Tehran, a speech before cheering students, a disarming smile for Mr Ahmadi-Nejad. All of that is unthinkable now. Instead, Mr Obama is left having to cope with a wounded and aggressive Iranian government, intent on pressing ahead with its nuclear programme. The US president will now have to fend off the “bomb Iran” lobby – but without being able to point to a plausible diplomatic alternative.

The policy of American engagement with Russia is going only a little better. Agreements on arms control and transit routes to Afghanistan cannot extinguish the still smouldering antagonisms created by last year’s Georgia war.

Above all Mr Obama is getting nothing on the issue he placed at the centre of his drive for a rapprochement with Russia: Iran.

Mr Obama’s problems with Iran and Russia are merging into a single, nasty mess. The president had seen an improved relationship with Russia as the key to solving Iran. The idea was that the newly friendly Russians would help to talk their Iranian neighbours into a nuclear deal. If that did not work, Russia would help to tighten sanctions on Iran. Without the Kremlin there can be no new United Nations sanctions on Iran (that pesky Russian veto). A package of western sanctions that does not include Russia would be too full of holes to put real pressure on Iran.

But Russia looks very unlikely to co-operate with the US on sanctions. So both the Iranian and Russian problems are getting worse.

The impasse over Iran points to a broader problem in the Obama approach to Russia. The new administration reckoned that President George W. Bush had got sucked into an unnecessarily antagonistic relationship with the Kremlin. Mr Obama wanted to play down arguments over Georgia and missile defence, and instead engage Russia on more important strategic questions where the countries have shared interests: arms control, Iran, terrorism, Afghanistan, the world economy, climate change. Once the Americans and Russians got used to co-operating on these big issues, they could return to the difficult problems in a calmer atmosphere.

The trouble is that while Mr Obama wants US-Russian relations to be about the creation of “win-win” situations, the Russians are treating the relationship more like an arm-wrestling match. They seem intent on exploring whether America’s efforts to get past the dispute over Georgia mean that the US is now prepared to grant them their longed-for “sphere of influence” in the former Soviet Union. The US has had to push back – creating continuing tensions over Georgia, Ukraine and missile defence.

The Americans think they have detected a genuine split in Russia between relative liberals around President Dmitry Medvedev and a more thuggish group around Mr Putin. Mr Obama has almost said as much. But even if the split exists, it is not much help – for it seems that the Putinites are in the ascendancy. One sign of this was Russia’s recent decision to abandon its pursuit of membership of the World Trade Organisation.

The result is that the US government’s efforts to press the reset button have not really succeeded in rebooting US-Russian relations. Despite Monday’s deal, they are still angry and dominated by mutual suspicion.

This presents both a foreign policy and a domestic political problem for Mr Obama. He is not making progress on Iran, and the clock is ticking. Fresh problems in Russia’s “near abroad” could blow up at any moment. And at home, conservatives are itching to paint him as a “second Jimmy Carter” – weak, naive and pushed around by foreigners.

Faced with this critique, the president will be under pressure to prove that he can be tough. But that can be a dangerous trap for a young, liberal president: similar pressures led John F. Kennedy to take the first steps into Vietnam and President Carter to launch the disastrous effort to rescue the American hostages in Iran.

The Bush administration tested to destruction the idea that American foreign policy should be based on confronting “evil”. So this is indeed a moment for Mr Obama to be tough on foreign policy. He needs to be tough enough not to be panicked into macho gestures by the setbacks he has suffered in Russia and Iran.

11b) The Incoherence of Hope
By Troy Senik

Pity Barack Obama. At the tender age of 47, reality has begun to roost in his otherwise serene cerebrum. After years of bemoaning a world lost to the false consciousness that breeds contention, he was convinced that his elevation to the nation's highest office could usher in a new era of global understanding and tranquility. It was a vision equal parts lion and lamb utopianism and flagrant self-aggrandizement - which is to say a typical conceit from the most messianic president since Woodrow Wilson. There's only one problem: the world didn't get the memo.

In the course of his campaign and the early months of his presidency, Obama's curiously calibrated foreign policy has come into sharp relief.

It is, on one hand, a vision of romantic liberal internationalism not seen in the White House since the days of Jimmy Carter. From the tropical gulags of Cuba to the now-blood stained streets of Tehran, from the festering sore of human despair in Pyongyang to the tin pot dictatorship that is Venezuela, the president has held fast to the notion that totalitarian government is the product of a failure to communicate. Sit down with the mullahs, understand the plight of the Castro brothers, and sympathize with the psychic trauma of Kim Jong Il's quest to find the perfect gray pantsuit, and the dictatorial urge will wither. This is Obama as idealistic undergraduate - the man who sees four sides to every triangle.

On the other hand, there is Obama the "realist". Realism is a proud, but increasingly blinkered, school of foreign policy thought that emphasizes the tendency of nations to act in a self-interested fashion. It is a callous and unforgiving worldview for the simple reason that it perceives the world to be callous and unforgiving. But its laudable emphasis on objective realities has a tendency to degenerate into cynicism and self-defeat.

It was realists who engineered the failed policy of détente towards the Soviet Union in the decade prior to Ronald Reagan's bold (and successful) offensive aimed at bringing the USSR to destruction. It was realists who called for withdrawal from Iraq while ridiculing the surge's possibilities for success. And now it is realist luminaries such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft who influence the president's thinking and whose disciples occupy offices in the White House. This is Obama as chess player - the man who tempers Hawaiian optimism with Chicago grit.

Obama's grand fusionist project has now had five months to play out on the world stage. And the result thus far has been familiar for any keen observer of this administration - an excess of ambition quickly followed by a paucity of favorable outcomes. If you doubt the conclusion, survey the world.

In Latin America, Obama extends an olive branch to Cuba. In return, Fidel Castro condemns America's "torture" policies, doubtlessly on the grounds that cruelty ought to be pursued recreationally rather than as a matter of national security. The president grips and grins with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, calling him "mi amigo". Obama's buddy then forces the main leader of his political opposition to flee to Peru rather than be thrown in prison and threatens to shut down the last vestiges of the free press in his country. In Honduras, the military intervenes to prevent President Manuel Zelaya from dismantling the nation's constitution. Obama refers to the actions as a "coup" (though they were actually taken to prevent a coup) and "illegal". And thus does the best-selling author and Harvard Law graduate reveal how precarious his grasp of both basic diction and essential constitutional law is.

In the Middle East, Obama promises a new relationship with the Islamic world built on a foundation of mutual respect. He sends a New Years greeting to the people of Iran and the mullahs laugh him off, rig an election, and slaughter their people in the street. He goes to Cairo to spread his goodwill message and the Egyptian president pointedly notes that the Arab world is not interested in peace. He strong-arms Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to move toward a peace agreement with the Palestinians and a Hamas spokesman says "Recognizing Israel is completely unacceptable."

In Asia, Obama dispatches his Secretary of State to China with a message that the United States is willing to overlook the communist regime's human rights abuses in exchange for cooperation on the financial crisis and climate change. In response, the Chinese government suggests the development of a new global reserve currency to supplant the dollar and gleefully anticipates the day when Obama's cap and trade policies move the Chinese economy towards full employment. North Korea receives overtures of American cooperation and proceeds with nuclear tests and a planned Fourth of July missile launch towards Hawaii (the latter an almost farcical exercise in seeing how far the new president can be pushed).

Soothing words are nice. But actions matter more. Who has benefitted from Obama's foreign policy stances? Latin American dictators, practitioners of radical Islam, and repressive Asian despots. And who has felt the sting of the backside of his hand? Those who advocate for democracy, sustainable peace, and human rights. That is not a record to be proud of.

As his presidency proceeds, it will be an interesting to see whether Obama defines himself as more idealistic or realistic. At the moment, his policies are neither.

Troy Senik is a former presidential speechwriter and a contributor to the Center for Individual Freedom (www.cfif.org).

11c)From McNamara to Obama: This too is an era of soaring rhetoric, big plans and boundless self-regard
By Bret Stephens

Dwight D. Eisenhower famously said that "in preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable." Robert S. McNamara, who spent many years thinking about the Vietnam War, first as an architect and then as a critic (and getting it wrong on both ends), was a man who believed mainly in plans.


McNamara, who died yesterday at 93, will go down as a cautionary tale for the ages, and perhaps none more than for the Age of Obama. Whatever else distinguishes JFK's New Frontier or LBJ's Great Society from Barack Obama's "New Foundation," this too is an era of soaring rhetoric, big plans and boundless self-regard, issued by an administration convinced it can apply technocratic, top-down solutions to huge and unpredictable systems -- the banking, auto and health-care industries, for instance, or the climate. These are people deeply impressed by their own smarts, the ones for whom the phrase "the best and the brightest" has been scrubbed of its intended irony.

When McNamara -- the "Whiz Kid" from Ford -- was first named defense secretary, in December 1960, Time magazine gushed that he "reads widely and well (current choices: The Phenomenon of Man, W.W. Rostow's The Stages of Growth). . . . His mind, says a friend who has seen him in Ann Arbor discussions, 'is a beautiful instrument, free from leanings and adhesions, calm and analytical.'" Nearly 50 years later, the Associated Press would lead its obituary by describing McNamara as "the cerebral secretary of defense." In between, David Halberstam -- who was for the Vietnam War before he was against it, but that's another story -- wrote that McNamara "symbolized the idea that [the Kennedy administration] could manage and control events, in an intelligent, rational way. Taking on a guerrilla war was like buying a sick foreign company; you brought your systems to it."

Of course it did not end well. Nor did it end well for McNamara with his next assignment as president of the World Bank, where he hugely increased lending on the theory that more inputs (money, "expertise") meant better outputs ("development"). Instead, McNamara's stewardship of the bank helped create the Third World debt crisis, fueled Africa's descent into chaos, swelled Mobutu's Swiss bank accounts, and backed the cruel and misbegotten campaign for population control.

A recurring pattern played itself out over the 20 years McNamara spent at the Pentagon and the Bank. Giant troves of quantitative data were collected, analyzed, disaggregated and reassembled. Plans -- typically on a five-year timetable -- were conceived and then, presumably, executed. He once called the Bank "an innovative, problem-solving mechanism . . . to help fashion a better life for mankind."

Nobel Prizes in economics would later be awarded for disproving this mechanistic notion of institutions. But no Nobel was required to understand that rationalism isn't a synonym for reason, much less common sense, or that a planned solution was a workable or desirable solution, or that war or poverty were "problems" in the same sense as, say, a deficit. There was also a human element, which -- depending on whom you believe -- McNamara either didn't get or didn't have.

None of this is to say that Vietnam was "unwinnable," the liberal nostrum in which the late McNamara took comfort, or that poverty is unbeatable. On the contrary, hundreds of millions of people have worked their way out of poverty -- no thanks to the World Bank -- while a war that only three years ago was deemed unwinnable now looks very nearly won.

But all that happened only after the Planners gave way to what development economist William Easterly has called the "Searchers." As Mr. Easterly writes in his book "The White Man's Burden," "a Planner thinks he already knows the answers; he thinks of poverty as a technical engineering problem that his answers will solve. A Searcher admits he doesn't know the answers in advance; he believes that poverty is a complicated tangle of political, social, historical, institutional, and technological factors. A Searcher hopes to find answers to individual problems only by trial and error experimentation. A Planner believes outsiders know enough to impose solutions."

So, from Chile to Taiwan, economic progress only came about when national governments junked the whole idea of the planned economy. So, too, in Iraq, America's fortunes only changed when the Bush administration went from sticking to a concept ("light footprint"), to searching, and finding, an answer in the surge, which combined new counterinsurgency tactics with sensitivity to local conditions. The U.S. might have won in Vietnam, too, if it had sooner discarded McNamara's concept of gradualism and gone after North Vietnam's center of gravity -- its dependence, via Haiphong harbor, on the resupply of Soviet arms.

Now that's old history. But the mentality of the planner remains alive and well in Washington today, along with the aura of cool intellectual certainty. Barack Obama might take a close look at McNamara's obituaries and note that he, too, is the whiz kid of his day.


12) The Taliban's Winning Strategy in Afghanistan
By Gilles Dorronsoro


The Taliban’s clear strategy and increasingly coherent organization have put the International Coalition on the defensive, marginalized the local Afghan government, and given the Taliban control of southern and eastern Afghanistan. Rather than concentrating limited troops in the South and East where the Taliban are firmly entrenched, the International Coalition should prioritize regions where the Taliban are still weak but making alarming progress: in the North and around Kabul.

Far from a loose assortment of local groups, the Taliban are nationally organized, with coherent leadership and a sophisticated propaganda operation. The Coalition, on the other hand, lacks clear direction, largely due to its underestimation of the Taliban. Following a month-long trip through Afghanistan, Gilles Dorronsoro assesses the insurgency and proposes a strategy for the coalition based on a comprehensive understanding of the Taliban’s capabilities and goals.

Key points:

■The Taliban have built a parallel government in areas they control to fulfill two basic needs: justice and security. An almost nonexistent local government and the population’s distrust of the international coalition allowed the Taliban to expand their influence.

■Focusing resources in the South and East, where the insurgency is strongest, is risky, especially since the Afghan army is not ready to replace U.S. forces there.


■The Taliban have opened a front in the northern provinces, having consolidated their grip on the South and East. If the International Coalition does not counter this thrust, the insurgency will spread throughout Afghanistan within two to three years and the coalition will not be able to bear the financial and human costs of fighting.

■The insurgency cannot be defeated while the Taliban retain a safe haven in Pakistan. The Taliban can conduct hit-and-run attacks from their refuge in Pakistan, and the North remains open to infiltration.

■The United States must pressure Pakistan to take action against the Taliban’s central command in Quetta. The current offensive in Pakistan is aimed at Pakistani Taliban and does not indicate a major shift in Pakistani policy toward Afghanistan.
Dorronsoro concludes:

“The Taliban have a strategy and a coherent organization to implement it, and they have been successful so far. They have achieved most of their objectives in the South and East and are making inroads in the North. They are unlikely to change their strategy in the face of the U.S. troop surge. Rather than concentrating forces to challenge the International Coalition, the Taliban could decide to exert more pressure on Kabul, Ghazni, and Kandahar, which they have infiltrated. The insurgency does have weaknesses, though. If the Coalition reinforced the Afghan police and military in the North, the insurgents could be stopped relatively easily.”