Unemployment, Class Resentment and Cynical Politics - Useful Matches?

To all my assorted girl friends and fellow memo readers an early HAPPY VALENTINE DAY!
---
You are going to hear a lot about unemployment during the next months because the administration is going to avoid talking about it unless it declines. Rest assured, The Bureau of Labor Statistics will find a way to manipulate the figures so it does just that.

The problem with the level of unemployment relates to policy issues which have caused economic uncertainty, a basket of regulations which have increased costs and caused more uncertainty, a mountain of new debt which has caused uncertainty and fear of inflation which the Fed must eventually face and, as a result, must eventually raise interest rates, again causing costs to increase and uncertainty to abound - what goes down artificially also goes back up artificially.

Failure to allow free markets to self-correct is at the heart of most of our unemployment
problems. The housing bubble was caused by low interest rates and Wall Street creativity as a consequence of political policies and pressure mandating everyone who wanted to have a home should, even though most could not afford them.(See 1,1a and 1b below.)
---
The president and his team are dangerous because they are playing with fire and engaged in eroding our society through their reckless ideology.

He seems to have begun his re-election campaign by trying to re-unite and appeal to the various and divergent constituencies he needs and thus we have pandering to the Greens, the unemployed, the anti-military, the dependent lovers of government and the list is almost endless.

And yes, he continues to bow and scrape from the waist when it comes to policies regarding Iran, Syria and dealing with a whole host of Islamic terrorists.

There will be a price to pay, appeasement always is tragically costly.(See 2 and 2a below.)

Meanwhile, on the Republican side the various candidates seem immersed in 'tear down politics' which, in the long run, will serve to build up the president they seek to defeat.

Why must politics be so nasty? Why can't issues and disagreements over policies stay on an even keel? I admit I am guilty of getting too personal at times.
---
Foreign troops assisting the rebels in Syria? Will Turkey intervene as well? (See 3, 3a and 3b below.)
---
Some comments from fellow memo readers to my last memo: "Dick,Very good well thought out memo.Try to get' The Roots of Obama Rage,' to the top of your reading list. Just delivered it to Elie.. Yesterday's Journal opinion piece very interesting 'The Lesson of the Arab Spring' by a Saudi Prince. Look at his credentials. Would like to brain storm after you read D'Souza book it is really scary and I believe right on point."

"Dick, this is a great blog. May I resend to some of my contacts?"

"Your 17 point on foreign policy is a GREAT summary. Thanks for doing that. I will pass it on to others……"

"Following is an opinion piece from a wise and competent pal on the Landings."

I have ordered D'Souza's book and said yes and thanks to the other comments.
----
Spreading division and taking advantage of feelings of inadequacy and resentment is this president's 'modus operandi' for getting re-elected. This from the self-pro-claimed 'great healer.'

This tactic can become a match that could result in a torched society as mob encouragement can get out of hand during stressful and frustrating economic times. At the very least, it is an evil and cynical approach towards politics and should be beneath any occupier of the Oval Office but that 'myth' was blown apart many elections ago and television and E Mail technology have played their significant part as well.(See 4 below and watch:"Video on the Tax-the-Rich Mentality.flv By Tim Perry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY8LKII_MNA.")
---
PJTV.Com has a video discussing: "Trifecta: Justice Ginsburg Trashes U.S. Constitution on Egyptian Television
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg appeared on Egyptian TV and bashed the U.S. Constitution. Steve Green, Scott Ott and Bill Whittle share clips from the interview and respond to Justice Ginsburg’s assertion that the U.S. Constitution is not suited for the modern age."
---
Though not bullish, Roubini sees rationale for being in equities over the next several months as he expects the 'risk rally' to continue.

The technical underpinnings of the market do seem to be intact but forward earning outlook is beginning to wane. Gravitate towards high quality stocks at reasonable value levels and add to cash is where I am coming from.

Historically my portfolio peaks in February and does not return until later in the year if it does at all.(See 4 below.)
---
Telling the truth is a rare commodity when it comes to this president's willingness to talk about his war - the war he said was the one that should be fought, ie Afghanistan. (See 5 below.)

Is a bigger one in the offing? (See 5a below.)
---
Dick
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Pimco’s El-Erian: ‘Too Early to Claim Victory’ Over Unemployment
By Forrest Jones

January's unemployment figures were a welcome surprise but the United States cannot claim victory over joblessness as of yet as the economy is still battling major headwinds, says Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of Pimco, the world's largest bond fund.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the economy added a net 243,000 nonfarm payrolls in January, well above market expectations of around 150,000.

The numbers brought the overall unemployment rate down to 8.3 percent from 8.5 percent.

"It certainly was a really good number, both the 243,000 jobs created and the unemployment rate at 8.3 percent. But if you look at the composition of unemployment — long-term unemployment, youth unemployment, it suggests there is more to do," El-Erian tells CNBC.

"It's too early to declare victory for three reasons: one, we have headwinds. Iran is a headwind — geopolitical risk. You also have Europe as a headwind, so it's too early to declare victory because there isn't enough momentum as of yet to overcome headwinds," El-Erian says.

"Secondly, we've gotten here because of central bank policies, because of liquidity policies. We need a handoff to more sustainable policies and thirdly there's still too many long-term investors that are on the sideline. They haven't re-engaged, so it's great that we've gotten this far but it's way too early to declare victory."

Central banks have flooded their economies with liquidity to spur growth and investment, which can only go so far, as sooner or later, governments have to do their part to spur growth and development through public policies, El-Erian says.

Such polices often require compromise among political parties and are often seen as more difficult to pull off than unilateral actions taken by monetary bodies like the Federal Reserve.

"It's incredible to me that we haven't moved on housing, we haven't moved on credit. We haven't moved on infrastructure, we haven't moved on the fiscal side. It is incredible they are on the side lines," El-Erian says.

So where should investors put their money amid such uncertainty?

"Whatever your equity weight is, you want to be underweight. You want to have selective commodities," El-Erian says.

"You want to have gold and oil because of the geopolitical risk in your portfolio and on the bond side concentrate your exposures seven years and within because that's what the fed can secure in terms of the yield curve."

Commodities are looking better and better these days, investors say.

Improving jobless figures in the U.S. coupled with sentiment that China and other parts of Asia are picking up have investors stocking up on raw materials needed to fuel that growth.

"Growth is back in vogue," says John Stephenson, who helps manage $2.7 billion of assets at First Asset Investment Management Inc. in Toronto, according to Bloomberg.

"It definitely helps commodities that we’re seeing strong economic numbers, especially the payrolls in the U.S. That's a very welcome sign."

© Moneynews. All rights reserved.


1a)Bernanke Says 8.3% Unemployment Understates Job Market Weakness

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the 8.3 percent rate of unemployment in January understates weakness in the U.S. labor market.

“It is very important to look not just at the unemployment rate, which reflects only people who are actively seeking work,” Bernanke said today in response to questions at a hearing before the Senate Budget Committee in Washington. “There are also a lot of people who are either out of the labor force because they don’t think they can find work” or in part-time jobs.

The jobless rate unexpectedly fell to 8.3 percent in January, a government report showed on Feb. 3. Bernanke’s remarks indicate that his view that the labor market is a “long way” from returning to normal hasn’t changed since he used the same phrase when he testified to the House Budget Committee on Feb. 2.

“The 8.3 percent no doubt understates the weakness of the labor market in some broad sense,” Bernanke said today, while noting that some job indicators are improving.

Bernanke said the Fed’s forecast suggests the economy will grow fast enough to absorb new entrants into the workforce while “not making sharp improvements on the unemployment rate.”

Fed officials last month estimated that the world’s largest economy will grow 2.2 percent to 2.7 percent this year, according to the central tendency estimate, while the unemployment rate will average 8.2 percent to 8.5 percent in the fourth quarter.

‘Long Way’

“We still have a long way to go before the labor market can be said to be operating normally,” Bernanke said earlier in prepared testimony that was identical to his Feb. 2 remarks. “Particularly troubling is the unusually high level of long- term unemployment.”

The economy added 243,000 jobs last month, according to the report, exceeding the most optimistic forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists.

While the jobless rate has dropped for five consecutive months, it remains above the 5.2 percent to 6 percent that Fed officials say is consistent with maximum employment. The percentage of the unemployed who have remained without work for 27 weeks or more rose to 42.9 percent in January from 42.5 percent in December, the Labor Department said.

Bernanke reiterated that the benchmark interest rate will probably stay near zero at least through late 2014, while saying the economy is vulnerable to shocks.

Progress in Greece

Stocks rose as Greece’s government made progress on measures to secure international aid. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed 0.1 percent to 1,346.21 at 11:27 a.m. in New York. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 1.97 percent from 1.91 percent late yesterday.

A Labor Department report today showed job openings in the U.S. increased in December by the most in almost a year, showing employers are gaining confidence the economy will keep growing.

The number of positions waiting to be filled climbed by 258,000, the biggest gain since February 2011, to 3.38 million. Excluding government agencies, openings at private employers climbed to the highest level since August 2008.

Bernanke repeated his call on lawmakers to reduce budget deficits.

“To achieve economic and financial stability, U.S. fiscal policy must be placed on a sustainable path that ensures that debt relative to national income is at least stable or, preferably, declining over time,” Bernanke said.

© Copyright 2011 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved



1b)President Obama's Incredible Shrinking Labor Force
By Newt Gingrich
Dear Fellow Conservative,

President Obama last week brandished new jobs numbers as proof that his policies were having an effect on the unemployment rate, which the report said declined to 8.3 percent in January.
The president is right about one thing: his big government agenda and class warfare tactics are having an effect -- but it's not the one he claims. In truth, last month's drop in the unemployment statistic was due largely to the evaporation of 1.2 million people from the labor force number. When people become so discouraged they stop actively looking for work, they are no longer counted as unemployed and the rate goes down even though Americans are hardly better off than they were before.

The rate went down in January because (apparently) 1.2 million people decided in a single month not to pursue work. This is the number, in effect, that President Obama is touting.

The January report caps an extraordinary decline in the participation rate that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been reporting under the Obama administration. Since January 2009, the BLS said more than five million people have dropped out of the labor force -- the greatest decline in American history and the lowest participation rate in more than three decades. Only about six in 10 adult American civilians are counted as part of the labor force.

A few more good jobs reports like this and we'll have a three percent unemployment rate with nobody working.

The president assures us, however, the lower unemployment rate is actually evidence that his policies are successful. Asked on Monday about the fact that unemployment had dropped in part because so many Americans left the labor force, unable to find jobs, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the decline in the participation rate could be an "economic positive" because some of it is "due to younger people getting more education." Carney also tried to blame the massive exodus on Americans getting older—which they must have done at record levels in January to account for 1.2 million people retiring at once.

Those are pretty glib and grasping explanations for the single largest exit from the labor force on record—especially since it's more than four times the number who left the previous month.
In reality, almost half a million fewer Americans are employed today than when President Obama took office. The real unemployment rate, counting those who are unemployed, underemployed, or have looked for work in the past 12 months but since given up, is closer to 15 percent. More Americans are relying on food stamps than ever before. Teenage unemployment during the Obama administration is the highest since records began in 1948, with almost one in four teenagers who wants to work today unable to find a job. 8.2 million Americans have only part-time employment either because they can't find full-time work or because their hours have been cut back.

The president's unrelenting assault on job creators has made a bad economy much worse. In the middle of the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression, he rammed through Obamacare, spent almost a trillion dollars of "stimulus" indiscriminately, virtually took over the American auto industry, attempted to raise taxes on producers with carbon trading legislation, banned development of offshore oil and gas resources, passed the Dodd-Frank Act which crippled community banks, juiced up the regulatory powers of the EPA, FDA and other bureaucracies—and lately, has taken to demonizing job creators with class warfare rhetoric while offering policy platitudes that do nothing to solve our problems.

These are the things the president is trying to tell us are responsible for last month's drop in the unemployment rate? Having driven five million people out of the labor force, maybe on second thought he's right.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)How Dangerous Is Obama?
By James Lewis


It's now quite clear that Obama is playing chicken with Israel on Iranian nukes. That is why Leon Panetta came out with a statement this week accusing Israel of planning to attack Iran. If that statement is true, it's the worst kind of sabotage, undermining the advantages of surprise. If it's false, it is intended to place Israel at the focus of Iranian rage. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

The goal of Obama's nuclear brinkmanship is to drive Israel into making dangerous territorial compromises. This is a Carteresque policy: blame the victim, and arm her enemy. Jimmy Carter enabled Iranian radicalization starting with Ayatollah Khomeini, heedless of the disastrous and possibly genocidal consequences. Carter recently said that an Iranian nuclear weapon was no big deal, as if a nuke in the hands of a suicide-preaching Khomeinist ideology machine is just fine with him. Well, the Saudis know their Iranian enemies a great deal better than Jimmy Carter does, and they are sending their money to Switzerland.

Obama and Carter represent the dangerous "left of the left wing" Democrat foreign policy establishment, the folks who thought we should surrender to the Soviets, who created the retreat from Saigon, and who rationalized the Iran-Iraq War, which killed a million people after Carter allowed Khomeini radicalism to rise in Iran. The destruction caused by left-leftist foreign policy "thought" from the Democrats is immense. Over the years, they have colluded in hundreds of thousands of deaths abroad -- covered up by the mainstream media. They are Lenin's useful idiots, who colluded in 100 million Communist terror victims in the 20th century alone, and they have not changed one little bit.

Such people are dangerous. When they enabled Mao Zedong's "Great Leap Forward" at the cost of 40 million Chinese lives, all the damage was to China. There was no plausible nuclear threat to Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan, because mad old Mao Zedong turned his mass-killing efforts inwards. When Vietnam killed hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese after the U.S. withdrew from Saigon, again, Ho Chi Minh's purges were turned inward. Now that North Korea is again filling its concentration camps and having another major famine, its neighbors feel reasonably safe. Yes, the useful idiots of the West engage in criminal collusion with madmen of the East, as Dr. Thomas Sowell points out in his latest book on Western intellectuals, but our criminal colluders always stay safe themselves.

That is not true with a nuclear Iran, which is really run by a suicide-glorifying cult, just like World War II Japan, or Hitler during the last days in the bunker. For the first time in history, humanity is facing the worst of all possible options: nuclear weapons in the hands of a cult which preaches and glorifies massive martyrdom and which has carried out giant martyrdom attacks during the Iran-Iraq War.

That is why Iranian nukes are different from American or Soviet nukes. The left-of-the-left has always lived in denial of that plain and obvious fact: that the war ideology of one's nuclear enemies has everything to do with the lethality of the danger those enemies pose. Every child in Iran is raised with the daily chant Death to America! Death to Israel! Our useful idiots have preached for thirty years that "they don't really mean it," in exactly the way Western appeasers told the world that Hitler didn't really mean Mein Kampf.

There's bluffing, and there's genuine war ideology. Nazi ideology used bluffing but was perfectly willing to sacrifice a generation of Germans in assaulting France and Russia. Imperial Japan likewise. Khomeinism shows all the signs of a suicidal war ideology, but it is happy to bluff its enemies -- which includes all the Sunni Muslims in surrounding countries -- to get its way. Martyrdom is glorious, but spreading fear and terror by bluff is also in the war manual.
Obama has failed to do anything about Iranian nukes in order to pressure Israel (and probably the Saudis) into obeying his Napoleonic destiny. The slogan "Audace, audace, toujours audace!" comes from Napoleon and Marshall Ney, who practiced Blitzkrieg on European armies a century before Hitler.

Obama is a reckless gambler. He is gambling with our economy. He is gambling with our first-rate health care system, including your future as you age. He likes to gamble, and he figures to blame everybody else when he inevitably fails. That's the role of the Occupy Mobs during the election: to blame "capitalism" when the economy aches and groans from Obama misgovernment. Obama (like Bill and Hillary) has figured out that misgovernment doesn't matter in the least -- not if you have the Big Media on your side, ready to rant and rage to blame your enemies for the chaos you bring.

When Leon Panetta and Hillary come out in public to blame Israel for wanting to defend itself, the same cynical Napoleonic strategy is at work. When Obama called for Hosni Mubarak to resign after thirty years of upholding peace in the Sinai, triggering off a rolling overthrow of Arab regimes from Tunisia to Egypt and Yemen, the same recklessness was at work. Who cares if Muslim radicalism took over the Arab world? Just like Jimmy Carter, who was willing to see Ayatollah Khomeini establish a sadistic tyranny over our ally Iran, Obama loves Muslims so much that he is quite willing to see sadistic, reactionary forces take over in Egypt and elsewhere for the greater glory of Barry.

The bottom line is that Obama is threatening Israel with nuclear genocide if it doesn't obey his Napoleonic orders, which are to retreat to the 1948 ceasefire lines that make Israel look like a gerrymandered congressional district. Such a "solution" doubles or triples the borders to be defended against lethal enemies, while shrinking Israel's small territory by two-thirds. It is a death sentence.

But that is the barely hidden agenda of the left-of-the-left foreign policy establishment the Democrats have cobbled together in the last several decades. These are the same people who approved the fraudulent intelligence estimate at the end of the Bush years, claiming that Iranian nukes posed no danger at all. They are the same people who brought Muslim propagandists into our universities, just as they are the generation of pseudo-historians who brought in the Stalinist Howard Zinn version of American history to propagandize an entire generation of American teenagers. They are taking vengeance on America for defeating Soviet Communism in the Cold War. They are the "declinists" who constantly preach that Pax Americana is dead, and that we will have to rely on China to enforce the peace of the world from now on.

We don't have to guess at their goals, which are on full display in Europe today. Europe can no longer defend itself, because the simple will to survive has been radically undermined by a generation of left-of-leftists. When a Norwegian maniac killed almost a hundred people several months ago, the immediate reaction was to blame the tiny and oppressed democratic minority in Norway.

That is how the left-of-the-left operates. They no longer believe in the nation-state, just as Obama no longer believes in the nation-state. And yet, our safety and security depends crucially on what remains of nationalism. We are ruled by delusional saboteurs who will do anything to destroy our national security on behalf of their dream of international peace -- which means international tyranny, of course.

For the first time, the United States is in the hands of an ideological minority that rules our schools and media with an iron fist. We can see who they are every day when they conduct witch hunts against Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and any other ideological opponent. They are out to destroy their enemies, who are ultimately you and me. If they are willing to see the United States go down in defeat, why would anyone wonder that they want to end the State of Israel? The U.S. and Israel are just bourgeois capitalist democracies to the Jerry Wrights and Bill Ayerses of this world.

Obama is a radical leftist. His mind is stuck in ideological delusions. We haven't seen his kind in the United States since the Stalinism of the 1940s, but around the world Obamas are a dime a dozen. The third Kim in North Korea is one. Hugo Chávez is another. Israel has its own suicidal left, like the editor of the daily Haaretz who told Condi Rice that "Israel must be raped" to bring peace and love to the Middle East.

Objectively speaking, these people are mad. Psychologically, they have created a delusional cult, which happens often in human history. Instead of bringing peace, they are a clear and present danger to peace. Ronald Reagan, who understood Stalinists from his time in Hollywood, had a deep sense of who they are. So did Cold-War liberals like Senator Scoop Jackson. Today, with the media penetrated mostly by left-of-left cult members, we can no longer see who they are.

We are therefore watching the most dangerous nuclear crisis in world history since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1964, which occurred when Fidel Castro -- also a leftist fanatic -- demanded that nuclear missiles be placed a hundred miles from Florida in Cuba.

John F. Kennedy, a Cold-War liberal who recognized the danger, was president in those days. We, for our part, have Barack Hussein Obama, political tightrope-walker, who is willing to risk seven million Jews in Israel to achieve his narcissistic aims.
It is a curse to live in interesting times.


2a)Let's Stop Obama-ing Apart
By Christopher Chantrill


Just a quick word here to Mitt Romney: would you please take a week out from campaigning, get together with your messaging people, and all read Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 together? The book contains just about everything anyone needs to communicate a practical conservative vision to America and beat the pants off Barack Obama.
And Coming Apart shows, if anything can, how Barack Obama is a poster boy for everything that's wrong with America -- everything that got it started Obam-ing apart.

About a century ago and more, the educated elite decided that America needed to be governed by people like them: clever, educated, creative, and expert. Progressives, they called themselves. The rest of America wasn't so smart, so it needed to be supervised by this educated elite. The result, a century later, is that life is great for the educated top 20 percent, liberal and conservative -- living ordered, fulfilling lives in SuperZip enclaves -- while life for the bottom 30 percent is falling apart.

Why? Well, it couldn't possibly be that when people don't have to work, don't get married, don't engage in civic groups, and don't attend church, they end up miserable, could it? Of course not -- not when liberals are running things in accordance with the strict principles of progressive politics. What could go wrong?

Everything. There are four things wrong in the lower-class enclaves of America, according to Charles Murray. No work, as men hang around sleeping and watching TV. No marriage, as women give up on the arduous task of civilizing lower-class men and take easy money from the state instead. There's no civic engagement, as people bowl alone. And there's a collapse of religion.
The core of Murray's book is that if you want to be happy, in the full sense of "eudaimonia" in Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics -- that is, full human flourishing over a lifetime doing the right things in the right way at the right time -- you need to check in on four basic qualities. You need satisfying work, you need to be married, you need to engage in civil society, and you need to attend church once a week. Look at a community without the Big Four, and you will likely find only 10 percent of people "very happy." Look at folks with all four, and you will find almost 80 percent of people reporting themselves "very happy." Call it the American project: family, vocation, faith, and community. Rush Limbaugh talks about it every day: American exceptionalism. Here is Murray's line on it, from page 305 of Coming Apart.

Historically, Americans have been different as a people, even peculiar, and everyone around the world has recognized it. I am thinking of qualities such as American industriousness and neighborliness discussed in earlier chapters, but also American optimism... our striking lack of class envy, and the assumption by most Americans that they are in control of their own destinies.
Upper-class Americans live that way. They work, they get married, they are involved in their communities. They just don't seem to think it matters if other people don't, so they have legislated this monster welfare state that pays people not to work and not to marry, and that harasses them if they join a club or run a church. Our elitists insist on lives with meaning for themselves, but for everyone else, they think life begins and ends with a check: a welfare check, an unemployment check, a severance check, or a Social Security check. And they call that compassion.

So how do we change it? Murray thinks that America's upper class is too powerful to be toppled. It must be persuaded to change.

What it comes down to is that America's new upper class must once again fall in love with what makes America different. The drift away from those qualities ... is going to be stopped only when we are all talking again about why America is exceptional and why it is so important that America remains exceptional.

Fall in love with America? In your dreams. The reason why the educated elite has moved apart from the rest of America is because it thinks it is too good to rub elbows with the bitter clingers. It makes a point of disliking the ordinary habits of the middle class: McDonalds, Walmart, trucks, guns, cars, and suburbia. That's why NPR's This American Life is curiously detached from real American life, and A Prairie Home Companion actually sneers at it.
Somehow I don't think that gentle persuasion will persuade the cognitive elite to change the system that has been so good to them. Read the first New York Times reader comments on Coming Apart. In politics, gentle persuasion often doesn't work too well. We will have to use the other kind of persuasion: nice little liberal enclave you got there, mister. Real shame if anyone should vote against it.

Christopher Chantrill (mailto:chrischantrill@gmail.com) is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his usgovernmentspending.com and also usgovernmentdebt.us. At americanmanifesto.org he is blogging and writing An American Manifesto: Life After Liberalism.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)First foreign troops in Syria back Homs rebels. Damascus and Moscow at odds


British and Qatari special operations units are operating with rebel forces under cover in the Syrian city of Homs just 162 kilometers from Damascus, according to military and intelligence sources. The foreign troops are not engaged in direct combat with the Syrian forces bombarding different parts of Syria's third largest city of 1.2 million. They are tactical advisers, manage rebel communications lines and relay their requests for arms, ammo, fighters and logistical aid to outside suppliers, mostly in Turkey.

This site is the first to report the presence of foreign military forces in any of the Syrian uprising's embattled areas.

Our sources report the two foreign contingencies have set up four centers of operation - in the northern Homs district of Khaldiya, Bab Amro in the east, and Bab Derib and Rastan in the north. Each district is home to about a quarter of a million people.

The presence of the British and Qatari troops was seized on by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan for the new plan he unveiled to parliament in Ankara Tuesday, Feb. 7. Treating the British-Qatari contingents as the first foreign foot wedged through the Syrian door, his plan hinges on consigning a new Turkish-Arab force to Homs through that door and under the protection of those contingents. Later, they would go to additional flashpoint cities.

In the close to eleven months of the Syrian revolt, Erdogan has hatched more than one scheme for countering the Assad regime's savage crackdown on dissent. His most persistent was a plan for the creation of military buffer zones to shelter rebels and civilians persecuted by the Syrian authorities. But nothing came of those plans because, every time they came up, Assad reinforced his contingents on the Turkish border and deployed air defense and surface-to-surface missile batteries. He made it clear that the first Turk crossing the border would spark a full-scale war.
It is hard to say at this point whether the latest Turkish leader's current plan is any more practical than his earlier schemes. For now, he has put the ball in the American court.

Wednesday, Feb. 8, he sent Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to Washington to ask for the Obama administration's cooperation. The Turkish prime minister is also in urgent consultation with Saudi and several other Gulf rulers in the hope of bringing them aboard.

The British-Qatari troop presence in Homs was at the center of Assad's talks in Damascus Tuesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian SVR intelligence chief Mikhail Fradkov. Senior Syrian intelligence officers laid their updates from the field before the Russian visitors and received SVR data and evaluations in return.

Western intelligence officials familiar with the talks describe the atmosphere between Assad and the Russian officials as uneasy and tense. Later, Lavrov reported optimistically that he had received assurances from the Syrian ruler of an end to the violence, talks with all Syrian parties and an early referendum on a new constitution for political reforms. His account was no more than prevarication to conceal the opposite outcome of their talks. In fact, their conversation focused on more violence, namely, Assad's plans for his next assault on rebels and protesters and his military response to the rising covert presence of foreign Western, Arab and Muslim troops in Syria.

Military sources report President Assad has given a kinsman, Gen. Zuhair al-Assad, authority to stamp the Homs revolt into the ground. The general who is in his thirties commands the 90th Syrian Infantry Brigade, which is the backbone of the military force battering the city for the past five days at the cost of a death toll soaring into hundreds.


3a)Humanitarian tragedy may trigger Turkish military intervention in Syria in coordination with the US and Saudi Arabia
Might the Turkish Military Intervene in Syria?

By Dr. Can Kasapoglu

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 163, February 8, 2012

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: With Russia and China vetoing a UN Security Council
resolution seeking an end to the violent repression in Syria, there are
almost no options left for a negotiated end to the crisis. This may bring
Turkey to consider military intervention in Syria in coordination with the
US and Saudi Arabia.

Introduction

The recently vetoed draft resolution of the United Nations Security Council
(UNSC) obligated the Syrian Army to return to their barracks, allow peaceful
demonstrations, and swiftly hold democratic elections. The rejected offer
also recognized the “sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of
Syria,” and would not “compel states to use force or threat of force.” This
may have been the final opportunity for peaceful transition.

A December 2011 Turkish Supreme Military Council declaration indicates that
one of the discussed agendas was “preparation of war capacity of the Turkish
Armed Forces.” Considering Ankara’s hardening rhetoric towards Damascus’
violent crackdown, which has continued to intensify since the UNSC double
veto, there looms the possibility of Turkish military intervention to end
the turmoil in Syria.

In an Al-Arabiya interview, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said
that he hoped an intervention wouldn’t be required but “if there is a
humanitarian tragedy, a disaster, of course the international community and
the UN cannot be silent.” He added that if the Arab League (AL) initiative
fails and killings continue, Turkey would not tolerate it.

Turkey has reportedly sought two major parameters for the legitimacy of a
possible military operation: the full failure of the AL initiative and a
UNSC decision. At this point, two critical questions should be raised:
first, whether Moscow and China can be “convinced” at least to abstain in
another UNSC vote, and second, if the bloody crackdown continues to
intensify in Syria, whether Turkey can play a role in a non-UNSC approved
military mission?

Encouraging Factors for Turkish Intervention

Ankara has already openly recognized the legitimacy of the Syrian National
Council (SNC), indicating that it is a peaceful opposition platform.
However, while the UNSC resolution draft was being vetoed by Russia and
China, Damascus’ atrocity has cost additional lives. Given the current
circumstances, Turkey’s shift to a rhetoric emphasizing the right of
self-defense of the peaceful Syrian opposition would not be a surprise.
There are four main factors that might pave the way for Turkish military
intervention, even without a UNSC resolution.

The first parameter is Turkey’s position in the larger sectarian power
struggle between the new-born Sunni bloc and the Shiite –
Iran-Syria-Hizballah –alliance in the region. Anti- and pro-regime rallies
in Syria have become a show of force by Sunni groups and pro-government
Alawites. Other groups, such as the Christians and Druze, worry about
possible religious oppression and much uncertainty after Assad’s potential
demise. Electoral results in Egypt and domestic violence in Iraq consolidate
these worries.

Second, Syria's Kurdish presence in the PKK terrorist organization can be an
exacerbating factor. One of four or five PKK militants is of Syrian-Kurdish
origin and holds a significant place in the HPG, the armed wing of the PKK.
HPG members include notorious figures like Fehman Hussein, who is in great
part responsible for the recent violent activities against Turkey.
Additional turmoil in Syria will allow greater freedom of action for the
Syrian Kurds. The terrorist organization is ready to wage a proxy war
against Turkey, and the Baathist regime is preparing to back this action. It
should be emphasized that PKK violence has always provoked Turkey into
cross-border military operations.

Third, the rising mistrust between Ankara and Damascus has greatly harmed
the relations, so much so that an official Syrian news agency labeled the
recent Turkey-GCC meeting a “conspiracy” against Syria. Under current
circumstances, Turkey cannot allow the Baathist rule to continue running the
country.

Finally, Turkey's new foreign policy paradigm promotes "geocultural
integrity" with the societies in Turkey’s historical hinterland and
emphasizes a soft power concept, which aims to win hearts and minds on the
Muslim street. Thus, Ankara cannot allow Damascus to create a more deadly
version of the 1982 Hama massacre right on its borders, as it will be
tantamount to the collapse of the perception of Turkish guardianship over
the “oppressed” Muslim communities and to the fall of Turkey’s
political-military leadership in the Sunni bloc.

Abstention from Military Intervention

There are also several considerations that would lead Turkey to abstain from
military intervention in Syria.

First, preserving national and territorial unity has always been Ankara's
most critical security agenda. The 2003 establishment of the regional
government in Northern Iraq has caused significant worries among the Turkish
strategic community, as this could produce a viable autonomy model for
Kurdish separatism. A possible Turkish military intervention in Syria might
actually create the second Kurdish autonomy in Qamishli, which would
encourage Kurdish separatist movements and augment Turkish concerns.

Second, Turkey would not commission its armed forces to overthrow the
Baathist regime and then simply stand aside. After the Libya operations,
Ankara was displeased with the surprise joint visit of French President
Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron, just one day
before Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s scheduled visit.
Moreover, Turkey would have preferred greater economic and political shares
of post-Gaddafi Libya. According to some analysts, the Arab Gulf states are
now encouraging Turkey to launch a military intervention in Syria by
promising economic rewards. However, Ankara would expect more than economic
guarantees from the Gulf States or the West – it would demand political
influence over the next regime in Syria.

Finally, Turkey is concerned over whether such an intervention will
exacerbate a regional war, especially when Turkish-Israeli relations are
poor and the Gulf states are “military dwarfs” and cannot provide effective
security cooperation. Clearly, Turkey is becoming hawkish in its indirect
rivalry with Tehran – Syria and Iraq – but is still hesitant and indecisive
in the direct confrontation. Ankara would not like to see its military
efforts overlap a possible Israeli strike against Iran and certainly does
not want to be perceived as aiding Israel by destroying a key ally of Iran.

Conclusion

Without Turkey's cooperation, any military intervention in Syria would be
impossible, as such an operation cannot exclude the second largest land
force in NATO and its 877 km-long border with Syria. Furthermore, the Gulf
states would still need a regional guarantor to counterbalance Iran, Syria's
close ally, in military and geostrategic aspects.

Will Turkey await a UNSC resolution for military intervention? This would be
preferable, though any non-UNSC approved action would likely force such a
resolution. However, if Russia or China insist on vetoing UNSC decisions,
and if the Assad dictatorship continues to physically destroy the
opposition, then Turkey can deploy its armed forces to stop the humanitarian
tragedy. Again, Turkey's preference is not for unilateral action, thus it
would probably seek cooperation from the US and the Gulf states.

At this juncture, the activities of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Ankara’s
relations with it are expected to become more important. The first meeting
between the SNC and FSA took place in late 2011 near Turkey's Hatay
province, where Syrian refugees have settled and Colonel Riyad Al-Asaad of
the FSA resides. Integrating the SNC and FSA was a critical move, as
peaceful demonstrations had no viable chance against Assad’s security
apparatus, which was familiar with leveling guns to its own citizens.

Now Turkey will probably foster its support of the FSA in order to prevent
the destruction of the opposition groups. However, such a move could provoke
Damascus to engage in heavier crackdowns on the Syrian people. In turn, the
humanitarian tragedy may trigger a Turkish military intervention. Actually,
it is argued, this scenario is not far from becoming a reality.

Can Kasapoglu, who holds a Ph.D. from the Strategic Research Institute at
the Turkish War College, is a visiting post-doctoral researcher at the
Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

BESA Perspectives is published through the generosity of the Greg
Rosshandler Family

3b)West should strike Syria
Op-ed: Just like it failed to bomb Auschwitz, world is doing nothing in face of Syria massacre
By Merav Betito


Russia and China, Cinderella’s two evil sisters, are showing fake concern and managing to drive away the prince, yet another helpless man who would say “I tried, I really did,” while the corpses are piling up around him.

These evil sisters are protecting their tortured, suffering “sister” from being subjected to the global conscience, which went to sleep and has not woken up yet since World War II, when the allies debated whether to bomb Auschwitz.

And so, shamelessly, Russia and China are safeguarding a simple economic interest: As long as the foolish Assad needs arms in order to massacre his subjects, Russia and China will provide him with more and more bombs that would make the slaughter mission easier.

This arrangement is convenient for all sides: For the silent, defeated Western world, for the mass murderer in Syria, and for the interested parties on the other side of the globe, far away from the commotion.

While teaching history classes as a high school teacher, there was one question I was never able to provide a real answer for: How come the world knew but kept silent? The real answer, of course, is that it was convenient. However, my students, as students tend to do, did not settle for this answer and sought additional motives.

Assad a dead man walking
Forget about it, I told them. The world finds it convenient to cave in under the guise of diplomatic agreements finalized in air-conditioned rooms at the institution set up in the wake of World War II: The United Nations. I also explained that this body was established in order to put an end to wars between states and provide a platform for international dialogue.

Assad is a dead man walking, and one can already imagine his body hanging in the main square in the city of the aching, bleeding Homs. I pray that the idiot will let his young children flee before the masses butcher them as well.


A moment before it’s too late, Western countries must strike Syria. The cries of the wounded are resonating from the radio and the horrific videos are being aired on newscasts. However, the world continues to cling to the tradition of deafness and muteness – because it’s convenient; because there are a thousand other problems to deal with; because China and Russia used their veto.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)U.S. The New Upper Class and the Real Reason We Dislike Them
Resentment of the wealthy elite is at an all-time high, but it's not just their money that sets them apart
By CHARLES MURRAY

Murray's latest book is Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.

The Pew Foundation discovered in a recent poll that tensions over inequality in wealth now outrank tensions over race and immigration. But income inequality isn’t really the problem. A new upper class is the problem. And their wealth isn’t what sets them apart or creates so much animosity toward them.

Let’s take a guy — call him Hank — who built a successful auto-repair business and expanded it to 30 locations, and now his stake in the business is worth $100 million. He is not just in the 1%; he’s in the top fraction of the 1% — but he’s not part of the new upper class. He went to a second-tier state university, or maybe he didn’t complete college at all. He grew up in a working-class or middle-class home and married a woman who didn’t complete college. He now lives in a neighborhood with other rich people, but they’re mostly other people who got rich the same way he did. (The new upper class considers the glitzy mansions in his suburb to be déclassé.) He has a lot of money, but he doesn’t have power or influence over national culture, politics or economy, nor does he even have any particular influence over the culture, politics or economy of the city where he lives. He’s just rich.

The new upper class is different. It consists of the people who run the country. By “the people who run the country,” I mean two sets of people. The first is the small set of people — well under 100,000, by a rigorous definition — who are responsible for the films and television shows you watch, the news you see and read, the success (or failure) of the nation’s leading corporations and financial institutions and the jurisprudence, legislation and regulations produced by government. The second is the broader set, numbering a few million people, who hold comparable positions of influence in the nation’s major cities.

What makes the new upper class new is that its members not only have power and influence but also increasingly share a common culture that separates them from the rest of the country. Fifty years ago, the people who rose to the most influential positions overwhelmingly had Hank’s kind of background, thoroughly grounded in the American mainstream. Today, people of influence are characterized by college education, often from elite colleges. The men are married not to the girl next door but to highly educated women socialized at the same elite schools who are often as professionally successful as their husbands. They were admitted to this path by a combination of high IQ and personality strengths. They are often the children — and, increasingly, grandchildren — of the upper-middle class and have never known any other kind of life.

As adults, they have distinctive tastes and preferences and seek out enclaves of others who share them. Their culture incorporates little of the lifestyle or the popular culture of the rest of the nation; in fact, members of the new upper class increasingly look down on that mainstream lifestyle and culture. Meanwhile, their children are so sheltered from the rest of the nation that they barely know what life is like outside Georgetown, Scarsdale, Kenilworth or Atherton. If this divide continues to widen, it will completely destroy what has made America’s national civic culture exceptional: a fluid, mobile society where people from different backgrounds live side by side and come together for the common good.

Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author, most recently, of Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. The views expressed are solely his own.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)Famed Bear 'Dr. Doom' Roubini Turns Bullish — Time To Sell!

Economist Nouriel Roubini believes recent actions by the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank will continue to make equities an attractive investment during the next few months, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Contrarian investors take note: Given that Roubini (also known as “Dr. Doom”) is one of the biggest investing bears on the planet, it’s probably time to sell stocks.

“We’re a believer; we’re celebrating. We think the rally has legs,” Gina Sanchez, Roubini’s director of equity and allocation strategy, told CNBC.

According to Sanchez, Roubini’s firm currently recommends being overweight equities, playing cyclical areas of the market such as technology.

“Also we’d take some tilts into staples and telecom to collect yield," Sanchez says. "And we’d also be overweight ag and livestock.”

“Generally we’d take advantage of the risk rally.”

Sanchez topped off this forecast by saying that investors have months to make money.

But the Wall Street Journal reported that Roubini tweets he doesn’t see the rally lasting more than a few months. “Indeed in H2 2012 the rally will fizzle,” he said on Twitter, the Journal reported.

However, Roubini also reportedly thinks more pain will accompany the equity markets in the second half of 2012, and sees the S&P 500 ending the year at 1300, which would represent a 3.6 percent decline from current levels.

The Business Insider reports that hedge fund manager Doug Kass, founder and president of Seabreeze Partners Management, sent out an email blast titled “Sell Everything” because Roubini is bullish.
© Moneynews. All rights reserved
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5)Truth, lies and Afghanistan
How military leaders have let us down
BY LT. COL. DANIEL L. DAVIS

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.

Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.

My arrival in country in late 2010 marked the start of my fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch, I served in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-06 and in Iraq in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs — among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign affairs for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

As a representative for the Rapid Equipping Force, I set out to talk to our troops about their needs and their circumstances. Along the way, I conducted mounted and dismounted combat patrols, spending time with conventional and Special Forces troops. I interviewed or had conversations with more than 250 soldiers in the field, from the lowest-ranking 19-year-old private to division commanders and staff members at every echelon. I spoke at length with Afghan security officials, Afghan civilians and a few village elders.

I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.

I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.

From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.

FROM BAD TO ABYSMAL

Much of what I saw during my deployment, let alone read or wrote in official reports, I can’t talk about; the information remains classified. But I can say that such reports — mine and others’ — serve to illuminate the gulf between conditions on the ground and official statements of progress.

And I can relate a few representative experiences, of the kind that I observed all over the country.

In January 2011, I made my first trip into the mountains of Kunar province near the Pakistan border to visit the troops of 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry. On a patrol to the northernmost U.S. position in eastern Afghanistan, we arrived at an Afghan National Police (ANP) station that had reported being attacked by the Taliban 2½ hours earlier.

Through the interpreter, I asked the police captain where the attack had originated, and he pointed to the side of a nearby mountain.

“What are your normal procedures in situations like these?” I asked. “Do you form up a squad and go after them? Do you periodically send out harassing patrols? What do you do?”

As the interpreter conveyed my questions, the captain’s head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression. Then he laughed.

“No! We don’t go after them,” he said. “That would be dangerous!”

According to the cavalry troopers, the Afghan policemen rarely leave the cover of the checkpoints. In that part of the province, the Taliban literally run free.

In June, I was in the Zharay district of Kandahar province, returning to a base from a dismounted patrol. Gunshots were audible as the Taliban attacked a U.S. checkpoint about one mile away.

As I entered the unit’s command post, the commander and his staff were watching a live video feed of the battle. Two ANP vehicles were blocking the main road leading to the site of the attack. The fire was coming from behind a haystack. We watched as two Afghan men emerged, mounted a motorcycle and began moving toward the Afghan policemen in their vehicles.

The U.S. commander turned around and told the Afghan radio operator to make sure the policemen halted the men. The radio operator shouted into the radio repeatedly, but got no answer.

On the screen, we watched as the two men slowly motored past the ANP vehicles. The policemen neither got out to stop the two men nor answered the radio — until the motorcycle was out of sight.

To a man, the U.S. officers in that unit told me they had nothing but contempt for the Afghan troops in their area — and that was before the above incident occurred.

In August, I went on a dismounted patrol with troops in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province. Several troops from the unit had recently been killed in action, one of whom was a very popular and experienced soldier. One of the unit’s senior officers rhetorically asked me, “How do I look these men in the eye and ask them to go out day after day on these missions? What’s harder: How do I look [my soldier’s] wife in the eye when I get back and tell her that her husband died for something meaningful? How do I do that?”

One of the senior enlisted leaders added, “Guys are saying, ‘I hope I live so I can at least get home to R&R leave before I get it,’ or ‘I hope I only lose a foot.’ Sometimes they even say which limb it might be: ‘Maybe it’ll only be my left foot.’ They don’t have a lot of confidence that the leadership two levels up really understands what they’re living here, what the situation really is.”

On Sept. 11, the 10th anniversary of the infamous attack on the U.S., I visited another unit in Kunar province, this one near the town of Asmar. I talked with the local official who served as the cultural adviser to the U.S. commander. Here’s how the conversation went:

Davis: “Here you have many units of the Afghan National Security Forces [ANSF]. Will they be able to hold out against the Taliban when U.S. troops leave this area?”

Adviser: “No. They are definitely not capable. Already all across this region [many elements of] the security forces have made deals with the Taliban. [The ANSF] won’t shoot at the Taliban, and the Taliban won’t shoot them.

“Also, when a Taliban member is arrested, he is soon released with no action taken against him. So when the Taliban returns [when the Americans leave after 2014], so too go the jobs, especially for everyone like me who has worked with the coalition.

“Recently, I got a cellphone call from a Talib who had captured a friend of mine. While I could hear, he began to beat him, telling me I’d better quit working for the Americans. I could hear my friend crying out in pain. [The Talib] said the next time they would kidnap my sons and do the same to them. Because of the direct threats, I’ve had to take my children out of school just to keep them safe.

“And last night, right on that mountain there [he pointed to a ridge overlooking the U.S. base, about 700 meters distant], a member of the ANP was murdered. The Taliban came and called him out, kidnapped him in front of his parents, and took him away and murdered him. He was a member of the ANP from another province and had come back to visit his parents. He was only 27 years old. The people are not safe anywhere.”

That murder took place within view of the U.S. base, a post nominally responsible for the security of an area of hundreds of square kilometers. Imagine how insecure the population is beyond visual range. And yet that conversation was representative of what I saw in many regions of Afghanistan.

In all of the places I visited, the tactical situation was bad to abysmal. If the events I have described — and many, many more I could mention — had been in the first year of war, or even the third or fourth, one might be willing to believe that Afghanistan was just a hard fight, and we should stick it out. Yet these incidents all happened in the 10th year of war.

As the numbers depicting casualties and enemy violence indicate the absence of progress, so too did my observations of the tactical situation all over Afghanistan.

CREDIBILITY GAP

I’m hardly the only one who has noted the discrepancy between official statements and the truth on the ground.

A January 2011 report by the Afghan NGO Security Office noted that public statements made by U.S. and ISAF leaders at the end of 2010 were “sharply divergent from IMF, [international military forces, NGO-speak for ISAF] ‘strategic communication’ messages suggesting improvements. We encourage [nongovernment organization personnel] to recognize that no matter how authoritative the source of any such claim, messages of the nature are solely intended to influence American and European public opinion ahead of the withdrawal, and are not intended to offer an accurate portrayal of the situation for those who live and work here.”

The following month, Anthony Cordesman, on behalf of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that ISAF and the U.S. leadership failed to report accurately on the reality of the situation in Afghanistan.

“Since June 2010, the unclassified reporting the U.S. does provide has steadily shrunk in content, effectively ‘spinning’ the road to victory by eliminating content that illustrates the full scale of the challenges ahead,” Cordesman wrote. “They also, however, were driven by political decisions to ignore or understate Taliban and insurgent gains from 2002 to 2009, to ignore the problems caused by weak and corrupt Afghan governance, to understate the risks posed by sanctuaries in Pakistan, and to ‘spin’ the value of tactical ISAF victories while ignoring the steady growth of Taliban influence and control.”

How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding and behind an array of more than seven years of optimistic statements by U.S. senior leaders in Afghanistan? No one expects our leaders to always have a successful plan. But we do expect — and the men who do the living, fighting and dying deserve — to have our leaders tell us the truth about what’s going on.

I first encountered senior-level equivocation during a 1997 division-level “experiment” that turned out to be far more setpiece than experiment. Over dinner at Fort Hood, Texas, Training and Doctrine Command leaders told me that the Advanced Warfighter Experiment (AWE) had shown that a “digital division” with fewer troops and more gear could be far more effective than current divisions. The next day, our congressional staff delegation observed the demonstration firsthand, and it didn’t take long to realize there was little substance to the claims. Virtually no legitimate experimentation was actually conducted. All parameters were carefully scripted. All events had a preordained sequence and outcome. The AWE was simply an expensive show, couched in the language of scientific experimentation and presented in glowing press releases and public statements, intended to persuade Congress to fund the Army’s preference. Citing the AWE’s “results,” Army leaders proceeded to eliminate one maneuver company per combat battalion. But the loss of fighting systems was never offset by a commensurate rise in killing capability.

A decade later, in the summer of 2007, I was assigned to the Future Combat Systems (FCS) organization at Fort Bliss, Texas. It didn’t take long to discover that the same thing the Army had done with a single division at Fort Hood in 1997 was now being done on a significantly larger scale with FCS. Year after year, the congressionally mandated reports from the Government Accountability Office revealed significant problems and warned that the system was in danger of failing. Each year, the Army’s senior leaders told members of Congress at hearings that GAO didn’t really understand the full picture and that to the contrary, the program was on schedule, on budget, and headed for success. Ultimately, of course, the program was canceled, with little but spinoffs to show for $18 billion spent.

If Americans were able to compare the public statements many of our leaders have made with classified data, this credibility gulf would be immediately observable. Naturally, I am not authorized to divulge classified material to the public. But I am legally able to share it with members of Congress. I have accordingly provided a much fuller accounting in a classified report to several members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, senators and House members.

A nonclassified version is available at www.afghanreport.com. [Editor’s note: At press time, Army public affairs had not yet ruled on whether Davis could post this longer version.]

TELL THE TRUTH

When it comes to deciding what matters are worth plunging our nation into war and which are not, our senior leaders owe it to the nation and to the uniformed members to be candid — graphically, if necessary — in telling them what’s at stake and how expensive potential success is likely to be. U.S. citizens and their elected representatives can decide if the risk to blood and treasure is worth it.

Likewise when having to decide whether to continue a war, alter its aims or to close off a campaign that cannot be won at an acceptable price, our senior leaders have an obligation to tell Congress and American people the unvarnished truth and let the people decide what course of action to choose. That is the very essence of civilian control of the military. The American people deserve better than what they’ve gotten from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start.


5a)The Coming Israel–Iran Confrontation
A failure to support Israel would have dire consequences.
By Jack David


Events are conspiring to precipitate a cataclysmic confrontation with Iran. Time has nearly expired for international sanctions — even the so-called tough and crippling ones — to keep Iran from acquiring deliverable nuclear weapons. The U.S. soon will not be able to avoid making a choice: Will it meet the challenge of the coming confrontation or shrink from it? Either way, there will be consequences for U.S. interests abroad and at home.

During last Friday’s prayers in Tehran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran would continue its nuclear program. His remarks were broadcast on Iranian state television. In these remarks to worshippers, Khamenei reiterated Iran’s threat to wipe Israel — “a cancerous tumor that should be cut and will be cut” — off the map, and averred that Iran will aid any nation or group that attacks Israel. The Associated Press reports that he explicitly acknowledged that Iran has supported and will support Hezbollah and Hamas attacks.

The gravity of the supreme leader’s remarks is underlined by Iran’s inexorable progress toward acquiring nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them. Iran already has missiles that could deliver a nuclear weapon throughout the Middle East and parts of Europe. It also has made great progress on technology for long-range missiles that could carry nuclear weapons and that could reach North America, as evidenced by three successful launches of orbiting satellites, the most recent last week.

Also last week, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and high-level Israeli officials said what many have been predicting — that Israel is going to attack Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities unless Iran verifiably eliminates its nuclear-weapons program immediately. Mr. Panetta even gave a time frame. He predicted that the Israeli attack will be launched sometime in the April-to-June period.

For Israel, the risk of waiting is immense. As has been said, Israel cannot take a 10 percent chance of 100 percent annihilation. In addition, Iran is fortifying the defenses of its nuclear sites, and they may soon be nearly impossible to destroy. It will have reached an “immunity zone,” as Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has described it.

The supreme leader’s vitriol at last Friday’s prayers was not restricted to Israel. It was targeted at the U.S. as well. This should be no surprise. Iran since 1980 has declared the U.S. to be its enemy. It has attacked the U.S. through proxies repeatedly — e.g. the 1983 attack on the Marines barracks in Lebanon that killed 241 American servicemen, the 1996 Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. Air Force personnel, continuing Iranian support for attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003, and last October’s foiled plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. on U.S. soil.

A nuclear-armed Iran with the hegemonic ambitions Supreme Leader Khamenei also acknowledged in his Friday prayer remarks would view itself as free to step up its aggression against American personnel and assets. It would also step up aggressive action and intimidation of the U.S.’s Arab allies in the Middle East. And, of course, it might well try to make good on its threat to wipe Israel off the map.

A failure on America’s part to support an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would have serious consequences for the U.S. at home and abroad. The inevitable Iranian counterattack would doubtless include attacks on American citizens and property, just as if the U.S. had participated in the attack directly. American blood would be spilled and American treasure expended. A failure to support Israel would have additional consequences that may be less obvious but also are grave. If the U.S. failed to support Israel in its hour of need, America’s position of influence in the world would take a crippling blow.

Failure to support Israel likely would be the end of U.S. influence in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, already unsure of America’s reliability, will accelerate their efforts to obtain their own nuclear deterrents. It would be the height of irony if Arab countries that refrained from pursuing their own nuclear-weapons capabilities for the almost 50 years that Israel has had nuclear weapons would be impelled to do so by American failure to support an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities — an attack Arab leaders will applaud privately even if they criticize it publicly. They would reason that a U.S. that failed to aid Israel in this effort would be highly unlikely to make good on promises to protect them from the same evil.
A failure to support Israel would also affect our allies and friends beyond the Middle East. Just as American resolve to help friends and allies has helped deter would-be aggressors in the past, the perception that the U.S.’s support of its allies may not match its promises will have the opposite effect. Nowhere would this be more evident than in Asia.

Taiwan and China surely would view the U.S.’s abandonment of so close an ally as Israel as evidence that the U.S. would similarly shrink from coming to Taiwan’s assistance should China take military action against it. Similarly, the U.S.’s failure to support its Israeli ally would not go unobserved by North Korea, South Korea, Japan, and other Asian countries.

Would North Korea be tempted to step up aggression against South Korea? What would South Korea do? Would Japan become more accommodating of China’s ambitions in the Pacific? Would Japan decide that it needed to become a nuclear power itself? Exactly what each of these countries would do is difficult to predict. But America’s abandoning of one of its closest allies in its hour of need plainly would affect each Asian country’s assessment of the reliability of American promises, and the assessments would not be favorable to U.S. interests.

The time for the use of military force to slow or end Iran’s march toward the nuclear-weapons club is nearly upon us. Iran’s achievement of its nuclear-weapons goal would threaten Israel’s existence. It would also result in a change in the international environment that would severely undermine America’s national security. It must be prevented. When Israel decides it must act, the U.S. must be politically and militarily supportive from the outset.

— Jack David is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. He was deputy assistant secretary of defense for combating weapons of mass destruction and negotiations policy from 2004 to 2006.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------