crisis go to waste. (See 1, 1a and 1b below.)
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A dear friend of mine recently told me of a charter school in our town financed by Hillsdale College and the Walton Family Foundation that is going to return to teaching the basics so the students who attend will graduate with an ability to reason. How novel. I am hoping to be asked to join their advisory board. (See 2 below.)
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Life after liberalsim (See 3 below.)
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Iran has crossed the line? What if anything will Hagel, Netanyahu do? (See 4 below.)
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The State Department has basically failed to reach its goals in The Middle East so is it about to move to Asia and continue its path of failures in a new location? (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)A President Who Is Rooting for Chaos
By Bernard Goldberg
In my last column I said that President Obama was a "deeply cynical man." I now have second thoughts in light of the White House warning that because of sequestration we should expect long flight delays and a general disruption in air travel. Unfortunately for Mr. Obama my second thoughts are exactly the same as my first thoughts. He is a deeply cynical man.
Mr. Obama is not only out to scare everybody about a tiny cut in the growth of our out-of-control spending — $85 billion out of a $3 trillion-plus budget — I think he actually wants long lines at airports, and criminals being set free for lack of money to prosecute them, and massive layoffs and all the rest. I think he wants the most hardship to the most people so he can secure the most political points. I think he is rooting for chaos because he knows the American people won't blame him, not a majority of them anyway. The Republicans will get the blame and in 2014 he may very well get the House – to go along with the Senate.
You know what that means? It means Mr. Obama would then be able to do whatever he wants and it will be called democracy in action. Higher taxes on success that might discourage investment that would create jobs, more money for green energy that won't produce much energy, more money for early education programs that don't work, a minimum wage that might cost young workers a job, increase in cap-and-trade programs for carbon emissions that might slow the economy and put people out of work, new housing incentives, new manufacturing incentives, new, new, new, more, more, more, money, money, money.
This can only work, as I pointed out in my last column, if there are enough clueless people out there who know nothing about the economy but are certain that they love Barack Obama and will support any idea he comes up with. And there are. We live in the United States of Clueless.
All the president has to tell these low information voters, as Rush Limbaugh calls them to avoid using the word "stupid," is that he's for "compromise" and they swoon. All he has to say is he wants to close "loopholes" for people who fly around in private jets and buy yachts, and they say "right on, Mr. President." Except closing those loopholes wouldn't keep the government going for an hour … and there's also that inconvenient fact that whenever big liberal government goes after private jets and yachts it's the blue collar workers who build them who get hurt a lot more than the "plutocrats" who get around in them.
I also think President Obama doesn't care one bit about deficits and debts. I think he is a community organizer at heart. He thinks the poor are getting the shaft and the rich have more than they need. His entire philosophy can be summed up in four little words: "Spread the wealth around." That's why I'm also convinced that he has absolutely no interest in cutting spending in any serious way.
So will the slobbering love affair last if Barack Obama gets his way and keeps on taxing the successful and spending money we don't have? Will the love affair last after it becomes obvious that he can tax the rich all he wants and it won't get us out of the debt and deficit whole that someday will sink the economy?
In the short run, the answer, I think, is yes. Ignorance is a powerful force.
But if the sequester goes into effect and chaos doesn't reign — if the scare tactics are exposed as just that — Mr. Obama will look like the boy who cried wolf. But he'll get away with that too. For a while.
But if he continues to believe, as he reportedly told House Speaker John Boehner, that "we don't have a spending problem," if he continues to minimize our deficit and debt, then the house of cards will come crumbling down as sure as the sun rises in the east. And the people he says he cares about the most will be the ones who are hurt the most.
A president would care about these things. A community organizer ... not so much.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHoodhas been under fire the past few daysfor his role as one of the leading front men for the president’s effort to scare Americans about the sequester. There are good reasons to fear the impact of these across-the-board spending cuts, especially to defense, as Max wrotelast week. But the manner in which the administration is attempting to claim that the country’s business will grind to a halt is prompting some skepticism about the sequester as well as the government’s credibility.
There’s no doubt the sequester will inflict real pain on the Department of Transportation and other government sectors. But Republicans are publicly wondering whether that pain will be disproportionately applied to services that will directly affect the public as opposed to other, far less vital expenditures that might well be eliminated without creating the sort of havoc that the White House has been warning us about. Who is right? We’ll find out soon enough, as at this point either side of this argument can say anything it wants without fear of being proven wrong. But once the sequester starts going into effect it will be possible to see whether the government is being straight with the public or not. That’s the danger for the White House.
Up until this week, the contest to see who will get the lion’s share of the blame for the sequester has been the main event in Washington. Part of that was involved in the White House’s effort to disavow the paternity of this awful idea. But now that Bob Woodward has blown that up, they are back to their main task of arguing that any suffering or inconvenience that stems from the measure will be due to the GOP refusing to accept the president’s demands and raise taxes. While talking about the long-term impact of layoffs or lower allocations for programs can certainly drive the argument about the sequester, Democrats also know that the way the cuts impact the daily life of Americans will be even more influential.
That’s why the focus this week has been on things like the possible travails that travelers will experience at airports when the sequester goes into effect. In theory that ought to create tremendous pressure on Republicans to give in to the president, evoking the spectacle of aggravated passengers as canceled flights and long security lines bring air travel to a grinding halt.
But if it comes out that these delays have been as much the result of manipulative decisions by the authorities that are geared toward maximizing inconvenience rather than just cutting expenditures, it could cause some real blow back for the administration. Figures such as LaHood need to be very careful in the way the sequester is administered. As much as the president is the beneficiary of a largely complacent press corps, any monkey business aimed at making things look even worse than they are could erase any temporary advantage the president might get from this dustup.
1b)Bob Woodward blasts President Obama ‘madness’
“Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying ‘Oh, by the way, I can’t do this because of some budget document?’” Woodward said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe."
The Pentagon announced earlier this month the U.S.S. Harry Truman, which was supposed to leave for the Persian Gulf, will remain stateside due to budget concerns. The sequester, which will cut billions in defense spending, is scheduled to hit on Friday.
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There’s no doubt the sequester will inflict real pain on the Department of Transportation and other government sectors. But Republicans are publicly wondering whether that pain will be disproportionately applied to services that will directly affect the public as opposed to other, far less vital expenditures that might well be eliminated without creating the sort of havoc that the White House has been warning us about. Who is right? We’ll find out soon enough, as at this point either side of this argument can say anything it wants without fear of being proven wrong. But once the sequester starts going into effect it will be possible to see whether the government is being straight with the public or not. That’s the danger for the White House.
Up until this week, the contest to see who will get the lion’s share of the blame for the sequester has been the main event in Washington. Part of that was involved in the White House’s effort to disavow the paternity of this awful idea. But now that Bob Woodward has blown that up, they are back to their main task of arguing that any suffering or inconvenience that stems from the measure will be due to the GOP refusing to accept the president’s demands and raise taxes. While talking about the long-term impact of layoffs or lower allocations for programs can certainly drive the argument about the sequester, Democrats also know that the way the cuts impact the daily life of Americans will be even more influential.
That’s why the focus this week has been on things like the possible travails that travelers will experience at airports when the sequester goes into effect. In theory that ought to create tremendous pressure on Republicans to give in to the president, evoking the spectacle of aggravated passengers as canceled flights and long security lines bring air travel to a grinding halt.
But if it comes out that these delays have been as much the result of manipulative decisions by the authorities that are geared toward maximizing inconvenience rather than just cutting expenditures, it could cause some real blow back for the administration. Figures such as LaHood need to be very careful in the way the sequester is administered. As much as the president is the beneficiary of a largely complacent press corps, any monkey business aimed at making things look even worse than they are could erase any temporary advantage the president might get from this dustup.
1b)Bob Woodward blasts President Obama ‘madness’
The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward attacked President Barack Obama on Wednesday, saying the commander-in-chief’s decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier because of budget cuts is “a kind of madness.”
“Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying ‘Oh, by the way, I can’t do this because of some budget document?’” Woodward said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe."
“Or George W. Bush saying, ‘You know, I’m not going to invade Iraq because I can’t get the aircraft carriers I need’ or even Bill Clinton saying, ‘You know, I’m not going to attack Saddam Hussein’s intelligence headquarters,’ as he did when Clinton was president because of some budget document?” Woodward added. “Under the Constitution, the president is commander-in-chief and employs the force. And so we now have the president going out because of this piece of paper and this agreement, I can’t do what I need to do to protect the country. That’s a kind of madness that I haven’t seen in a long time.”
The Pentagon announced earlier this month the U.S.S. Harry Truman, which was supposed to leave for the Persian Gulf, will remain stateside due to budget concerns. The sequester, which will cut billions in defense spending, is scheduled to hit on Friday.
Woodward has become an unlikely conservative hero in recent days for calling out the administration over whether Obama had “moved the goalposts”’ in negotiations over the sequester.
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2)One Hundred Reasons to Abandon Public Education Now
By Daren Jonescu
In a recent article, I noted in passing that "there are a hundred compelling reasons for removing your children and grandchildren from the public schools, regardless of any practical or financial inconveniences this may cause you." My choice of the round figure one hundred was purely a rhetorical flourish -- there are actually far more than a hundred reasons to abolish public education, one child at a time if necessary.
By way of proving this point, I offer the following list for your consideration and dissemination:
(1) John Dewey. "The father of modern education" -- including modern Soviet education. Critic of Western rationalism, socialist, enemy of ethical individualism.
(2) Bill Ayers. Weatherman communist, Deweyite -- and influential voice in early childhood education.
(3) "Benevolent" would-be oligarchs explicitly conceived of modern compulsory schooling as a means of forcibly stunting intellectual growth in order to produce a submissive worker class. (See below)
(4) Standardized curricula and testing. Coerced uniformity of goals and methods -- the "death panel" of education.
(5) Reduces family home to glorified bunkhouse for state-raised children. (See below)
(6) Undermines family's historical role as nature's buffer between individual and state.
(7) Sex education. Mechanistic reduction of sex spells the death of Eros -- life's central mystery -- and hence of sublimated passions, high art, and the pursuit of wisdom.
(8) Psychiatric branding and drugging of non-compliant children.
(9) "Gun-free zones." Public school: "Hundreds of weak, undefended targets here."
(10) Benjamin Franklin. Little formal schooling; a printer's apprentice at twelve.
(11) Jane Austen. Little formal schooling; read books and wrote stories at home.
(12) Alexander Pope. Little formal schooling; major poet and literary critic at twenty-three.
(13) John Keats. Medical apprentice (and orphaned) at fourteen, professional surgeon's assistant at twenty, licensed apothecary at twenty-one, greatest English poet of his era at twenty-three (dead at twenty-five).
(14) Under compulsory schooling, only two entries in Keats' biography (item 13) would have been possible -- "orphaned" and "dead at twenty-five." Think about that.
(15) School environment designed to make life easier for teachers, not better for children.
(16) Public school teacher certification requires "successful" indoctrination in government-approved pedagogy. (See items 1 and 2)
(18) Rare talented, earnest teachers are completely hamstrung by government/union social and academic goals.
(21) Bullying. Anti-rational mass children's education fosters coercion, mob intimidation.
(22) Anti-bullying programs. Government creates Lord of the Flies; proposes to correct it by creating Nineteen Eighty-Four.
(23) Government classroom encourages mindless obedience and uniformity ("Because I say so!") -- training children in subservience to irrational, generic authority.
(24) Emphasis on group activities and forced sharing discourages individual initiative and respect for others' property and achievement. "You didn't build that."
(25) Socialization: a progressive catchword which means learning how to mold oneself to the shape of any presiding majority, i.e., conformity.
(26) Fear: the constant emotional undercurrent for "different," "quiet," or "unpopular" children thrust into the midst of hundreds of their "peers" and told to "get along."
(27) Power lust: one of the two common means of reducing the fear of being trapped among an irrational collective. (See items 23-26.)
(28) Bootlicking, currying favor: the other common means of reducing fear.
(29) Homeschooling.
(30) Thomas Jefferson. Studying multiple languages and the natural world at nine years old under a Presbyterian minister.
(31) David Hume. Entered University of Edinburgh at twelve. Completed the most important philosophic treatise of the Scottish Enlightenment at twenty-six.
(32) "It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -- Albert Einstein
(33) "In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards." -- Mark Twain
(34) "Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery." -- Benjamin Disraeli
(35) "Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them." -- Baruch Spinoza
(36) "Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening. The average American [should be] content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role." -- William T. Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1889 (See item 3)
(37) "Peer pressure." The moral intimidation of a child whose character is not yet firmly established, by an ever-present group with the power to condemn with ostracism.
(38) 12,000 hours (counting only mandatory class time) of wasted opportunities for family guidance and conversation, practical skills development, remunerative employment, apprenticeships, reading, exploration of nature, and musical training.
(39) Unrelenting boredom. Stifles natural curiosity -- "the devil's playground."
(40) "The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone would be interdependent." -- Dewey
(41) Nationalized standards, e.g. America's new Common Core. Imposing universal, increasingly idiosyncratic standards is intended to render alternative education practically impossible.
(42) History curriculum designed by post-Marxist revisionists.
(43) The entitlement mentality.
(44) Natural attachment to the "provider." Abstract state replaces concrete parents as the object of future obligation and duty.
(45) "Gender role" and "alternative lifestyle" lessons. (See item 7)
(46) Unceasing Marxist critique of Western civilization: sexism, systemic oppression, capitalism is racist, the rich get richer, etc.
(47) Public education requires lowest common denominator approach. Stifles natural intelligence.
(48) Discouraging female modesty.
(49) Discouraging male admiration for female modesty. (See item 7)
(50) Ayn Rand's essay on education, "The Comprachicos." (I first read it while hiding out in my high school library, probably cutting class. It is the one Rand essay I've recalled frequently as an adult.)
(51) The downward ratchet of expectations and achievement. (See item 47) Most teachers are products of the public system at earlier stages. The results:
(52) English teachers who never cared for poetry beyond Bob Dylan.
(53) History teachers who teach Oliver Stone or Howard Zinn, but have never read Tacitus or Gibbon.
(54) Music teachers whose idea of broadening their students' horizons is the "Mission Impossible" theme or "Imagine."
(55) Teachers too ignorant and incompetent to discern or meet the interests or character of their students. My 10th grade English class, which by chance was comprised of only boys, was forced to read the clammy pop-psychological novel Ordinary People. One day, when we were being particularly ornery about it, our teacher finally stormed out on us, after screaming furiously, "This is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century!" Even then, I could only wonder whether she knew any others.
(56) "All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education." -- Sir Walter Scott
(57) Man-made global warming indoctrination. Anyone who works with government-educated children in any developed nation on Earth encounters this intractable faith.
(58) Typical age of entrance at Scottish universities during the 18th century (i.e., the Scottish Enlightenment): fourteen. Hume, Francis Hutcheson, and Adam Smith all attended at fourteen or younger. (Scotland's beloved national poet, Robert Burns, never attended university, and was mostly home-educated.)
(59) The U.S. federal Department of Education's budget for primary and secondary education alone was over $40 billion in 2012 -- more than the entire national budget of Singapore. Results? See the other ninety-nine items on this list. Tax expenditure on education rises continuously; civilization nosedives continuously.
(60) Thomas Edison. Judged addle-minded by his teacher; withdrawn from school and educated by his mother; began a nomadic life of entrepreneurial endeavors and scientific experiments at twelve. Today, he would be on Ritalin at six, urged to make friends by his mother, and likely bored out of his skull and a failing student throughout his teens.
(61) "Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality." -- Beatrix Potter
(62) How can coercion to surrender your child to a state-controlled school regimen until young adulthood be squared with a belief in individual liberty?
(63) "Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." -- Vladimir Lenin
(64) John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American Education.
(65) Imagine twelve years of being forcibly prevented from doing anything of any practical importance.
(65) Artificially prolongs childhood, stunting character development. (See item 3)
(67) Thinking is by definition a private enterprise. Great thinking is often likened to being alone on a mountaintop. Public education seeks to prevent children from ever really being alone, or climbing.
(68) "In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands." -- Occasional Letter Number One, General Education Board, 1906. (See item 3)
(69) "From my cold, dead hands." As I have said before, if you stand proudly against state confiscation of your firearms, how can you not feel at least as strongly about state confiscation of your children?
(70) Public schools are deliberately calibrated to limit spiritual achievement, by waiting out (i.e., wasting) the natural period of boundless energy and enthusiasm that drove men to self-development in the pre-public school era.
(71) Feminism.
(72) Political correctness.
(73) "Fairness."
(74) "Diversity."
(75) "Creativity."
(77) "Truth is relative."
(78) Banning Christmas.
(79) The moral ratchet: Yesterday's vice, today's "experiment," tomorrow's "basic right."
(80) Drugs. America has its first proud drug-user president -- there is no turning back within the public system.
(81) Textbook publishing oligopoly. Crony capitalism makes government curriculum decisions a racket, in addition to being a joke.
(82) "High quality, public education is a human right." -- NEA website. "The child is entitled to receive education, which shall be free and compulsory." -- UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child, 1959. (A compulsory "right"?) Doesn't this make private or home schooling a rights violation?
(83) A monopolistic pyramid disperses corruption at the top throughout the affected community. And monopoly breeds corruption.
(84) Parents are now increasingly relegated to the roles of funding machines and support workers for state child-rearing.
(85) The push for public pre-schools. The trajectory: universal, compulsory government raising of children from the beginning of language use to the completion of character formation and thought process habituation.
(86) "The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions at state expense." -- Karl Marx
(87) Answer to "learning social skills" argument: family, church, neighbors, hobby or study groups.
(88) Answer to "learning about real life" argument: public school is the antithesis of real life.
(89) If "real life" looks increasingly like public school, that's because universal public education has formed a society in its image: infantile, amoral, collectivist, driven by fear, power lust, and pandering.
(90) Education requires a desire for knowledge; desire requires a sense of need; concrete circumstances give rise to need. Compulsory schooling withdraws a child from such concrete circumstances; everything is abstract and impractical. No need; no desire; no education.
(91) "The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality." -- H.L. Mencken
(92) Genuine education breeds self-reliance; public school breeds dependency.
(93) "Every educated person is a future enemy." -- Martin Bormann, Hitler's personal secretary
(94) Compulsory government schooling is the exception, historically speaking. It has not always existed. It need not exist.
(95) Public education did not make modern prosperity possible -- exactly the opposite, in fact. As Tocqueville warned, modern prosperity weakened men's resistance to the siren song of "soft despotism."
(96) Private schools, religious and secular, exist.
(97) "I can undo the school's damage at home." If the government mandated that your child be force-fed rotting "state food" for each meal, would you say, "No problem -- I can feed him healthy food on weekends"? Then how do you justify allowing the state to force-feed its spiritual rot to your child's mind?
(98) "I can undo the school's damage at home." All of it? Are you completely certain? Children indoctrinated under totalitarian regimes go home after class, too. Their parents probably tell themselves the same thing -- but they, unlike you, have no choice.
(99) A better car or your child? A bigger home or your child? Early retirement or your child? Freedom to do as you please or the child you freely chose to bring into the world?
(100) Every child who attends a public school will be less than he might have been, and the deficit -- in reasoning, knowledge, character, sensibility, motivation -- can never be fully overcome. (And yes, I include myself among the victims.) This monumental waste of valuable time and invaluable emotional energy is irreversible. Can you live with that?
There is my list. Please add your own ideas. Who knows? Perhaps every hundred reasons will persuade one family to withdraw a child from a government school. One soul rescued from irreparable harm -- that seems worth the effort.
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3)Liberals Should Have Known
By Christopher Chantrill
One of the favorite parlor games of our liberal friends is "The Germans Should Have Known" -- about the Final Solution, about the war crimes, about the slave labor. Part Two of the game is to blame everyone from Nietzsche to Hegel to Herder to Heidegger for setting the stage for Nazism. Some people are even able to parlay the parlor game into a bestseller, as with Daniel Goldhagen and his Hitler's Willing Executioners.
So, while the president tries out for the new Hollywood blockbuster The Boy Who Cried 'Wolf,' featuring fiscal cliffs and sequesters and climate change, let us imagine the world after liberalism. It might be a time when media talking heads and ambitious young writers will be figuring out paths to fame and fortune playing the "Liberals Should Have Known" game.
Really, I don't think we will be playing "Pin the Tail on the Liberal," because what's the point? In the glorious dawn of entitlement reform, vigorous economic growth, a price-driven health-care system, and educational choice; with abortion safe, legal, and shameful; and with a robust African-American middle class with the highest marriage rate in the nation, who will care about blaming liberals? Except, perhaps, former liberals eager to curry favor with the new ruling class.
Having lived through the liberal Götterdämmerung, any decent person will then figure that the liberals have suffered enough with the destruction of all their delusions, what with Siegfried Obama dead, Brünnhilde Clinton finally done singing, and the Ring of big government returned to those captivating MSNBC Rhinemaidens.
Another thing. All the liberals that I know are good, decent people. They just believe what they read in The New York Times and hear on National Public Radio.
Of course our educated liberal friends should be reading Sowell's Basic Economics. Of course they should be parsing Hayek. But they don't; they won't. Instead they take comfort in Nobel economist Paul Krugman's call for more Keynesianism. They worry about right-wing militias. They sneer at fracking. And they equate gay marriage with the civil rights struggle. They are, you might say, Human, All Too Human. They stay with their faith.
After all, what would have happened to the Israelites if they hadn't followed Moses on his crazy wanderings in the desert? What would have happened if Henry J. Heinz had given up after going broke in cucumbers? What would have happened if the Revolutionary Army had melted away in the winter at Valley Forge?
Liberals naturally think that with one more Big Push, they will get the political breakthrough they need to fundamentally transform America.
But liberals should have known. They should have known that their vote-winning entitlements were a fraud that discouraged generations of Americans from saving for their old age and creating jobs for their children. They should have known that a time would come when people would react in outrage to the idea of killing little babies in the womb, for what are we here on this Earth if not for babies? They should have known that their welfare politics would lead to a cultural implosion, with lower-income women abandoning marriage and lower-income men abandoning work, and both abandoning their children to inner-city chaos. They should have known that the global warming conspiracy was a con from the beginning, and that its exposure as a cesspool of crony capitalism would touch just about every Democrat in high politics. They should have known that a century of compulsory government education would lead inevitably to a generation of whining whipped puppies.
The reason the Germans created their big state was to play catch-up with Britain and France in the nation-state game. They succeeded only too well, and then they didn't know how to stop. It didn't help having a foolish kaiser as head of state at the turn of the 20th century.
The reason the liberals created their big state was to solve the "social question" posed by early capitalism. They succeeded only too well, and then they didn't know how to stop. It didn't help having a foolish president a little after the turn of the 21st century who got his politics from drinking a lethal ideological cocktail of radical suits and big-city corruptocrats.
A liberal friend recently told me that the civil-rights revolution was inevitable. I beg to differ. It required a lot of things to come together, including a united ruling class determined to do the right thing against the bitter-enders, who at the time, you might recall, held a lot of committee chairmanships in Congress.
The tragedy of the Obama era is that there is no consensus in the ruling class to do the right thing and reform our government finances. And the Democratic Party is a coalition of bitter-enders, dogs-in-a-manger snapping at anyone who dares to threaten their rotting pensions and sinecures.
It is all such a shame.
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.
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Chuck Hagel was swept into office Tuesday, Feb. 26 by a Senate majority as Barack Obama’s new defense secretary atop a cloud of disinformation which aimed to confirm that Iran’s nuclear program has gone too far to stop - like Iran’s grip on Syria and Lebanon. This message was accentuated by what the London Telegraph called Iran’s Plan B, signified by “…a cloud of steam that indicates heavy-water production for… a nuclear reactor that can produce plutonium, which could then be used to make a bomb.”
The “cloud of steam” is no proof of an active plant; it could be just a trial run, but the timing of the British paper’s publication on the day of Hagel’s Senate endorsement and the Six-Power meeting with Iran in Kazkahstan to discuss its nuclear program, underscored the view of British Prime Minister David Cameron. He has said in private conversations that US President Obama, French President Francois Hollande and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu are pursuing an unrealistic policy on Iran and should accept the reality that Iran has achieved a nuclear bomb capacity. Sanctions are therefore pointless and futile and should be lifted.
The point contributed by the Telegraph – for the benefit of the incoming US defense secretary - was that Iran has achieved a dual track to an atomic bomb, which only goes to strengthen Cameron’s argument.
Just as unrealistically, the Kazakhstan talks focused on curtailing Iran’s uranium enrichment up to weapons grade, while Tehran was creeping up on the six powers (US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany) with its Plan B for producing a plutonium bomb.
It must also be said that the Arak plant and Iran’s plan for a plutonium weapon have been around for some time and were only brought into play now to support these arguments..
As for the rumors of Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah coming down with cancer and being flown to a hospital in Tehran – broadcast Tuesday, Feb. 26 – even assuming they were confirmed – prove nothing. Hizballah in fact strenuously denied the rumor Tuesday night.
If Nasrallah were to disappear tomorrow, Hizballah’s military, political, intelligence and terrorist arms,which are managed totally by Tehran, would simply carry on as before in Lebanon and Syria. And whatever fate may overtake even Syrian President Bashar Assad, Iran is too deeply entrenched in both countries to be dislodged.
The rumors of Nasrallah’s terminal illness come one month after the assassination of Gen. Hassan Shateri aka Hossam Khosh-Nevis, who was Iran’s overlord for Syria and Lebanon. They look very much like an attempt to undermine morale in Damascus and Beirut ahead of the March 5 negotiations opening in Moscow between the Assad regime and the Syrian opposition.
It is hardly likely that the Moscow-Tehran initiative for ending the Syrian war will be affected any more than images of a head of steam over Arak will halt Iran’s nuclear program.
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5) US 'pivot to Asia': Is John Kerry retooling it?
By Howard LaFranchi
A focus of American resources away from the Middle East and toward Asia was a major priority when Hillary Rodham Clinton was secretary of State. But it is unclear if John Kerry will follow her approach exactly, many regional analysts say
When John Kerry spoke at his confirmation hearing to become secretary of State, Asia experts took notice when he seemed to back away from a key aspect of President Obama's vaunted "pivot" to Asia.
"I'm not convinced that increased military ramp-up [in the Asia-Pacific] is critical yet," Mr. Kerry said at the January hearing. "That's something I'd want to look at very carefully."
The "rebalancing" of America's focus and resources — away from the Middle East and toward a rising Asia — was considered part of the legacy of Kerry's predecessor, Hillary Rodham Clinton. China had been put on notice that the United States was reasserting itself as an Asia-Pacific power. But was Kerry suggesting, as some surmised, that the US would now focus more on engagement with a rising China? Was he signaling that the "pivot to Asia" is no longer a guiding priority?
Or, as a senior State Department official suggests, was Kerry simply saying that the US, which has played a key role in Asia's security and prosperity for decades, will be cautious not to do anything that might jostle the region? "Anything that could upset [what we've helped accomplish in Asia] has to be looked at very carefully" — including a potentially unsettling military buildup, says the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Whether the Asia pivot is "real or rhetoric" will be answered in the coming months, regional analysts say — as the US addresses the simmering territorial disputes in the seas of Southeast Asia, as it signals the diplomatic attention it intends to give the region, and as it moves ahead, or not, on an ambitious regional trade pact called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
For US officials, the pivot never meant turning toward something new, since the US has been a Pacific power for more than a century. Rather, they describe it as "refocusing" on the world's most economically dynamic region. And they say the US is taking concrete steps to make the pivot a reality.
In November 2011, Mr. Obama announced plans for up to 2,500 US Marines to be stationed in Australia — a first for the US. And by 2020, 60 percent of the US naval fleet will be deployed to the Asia-Pacific, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced last June.
On the diplomatic front, Mrs. Clinton pressed ahead with building up "institutional architecture" for US-China relations, establishing regular high-level meetings.
She also ramped up US involvement elsewhere in the region, particularly with Southeast Asia — a strategic focus for both the US and China. Clinton made a point of attending forums of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) every year of her tenure — a first for a secretary of State.
In addition, Obama had the US join a new grouping — the East Asia Summit (EAS) — and he attended the summit two years in a row. Obama also hosted the first US-ASEAN Summit, held in Singapore in 2009, and then attended annual ASEAN summits, as well as Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summits.
This bump-up of attention to the region by the US president does not go unnoticed by leaders, says Michael Green, a senior Asia adviser in the George W. Bush administration who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"The president's commitment to the EAS may be the most lasting dimension of the pivot," he says.
For some US diplomats, a crucial factor in making the pivot more than rhetoric is the number of largely unseen working groups and other contacts being established on issues that range from trade and investment to e-trade security. Their goal is to boost the region's prosperity while making the US an integral part of it.
So far, the "ramp-up" in economic contacts has largely been accomplished by "juggling" existing resources, but requests in the 2014 budget are based in part on adding new "slots" in both Washington and the region, the senior State Department official says.
"We are taking advantage of revenues that will be somewhat freed up" by the "rebalancing" of resources from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the official says.
Yet despite this evidence of a redirection, it remains unclear if what began in Obama's first term will carry over full force into his second, many regional analysts say. "Clearly the meaning of the pivot a year and a half ago is different from its meaning today," says Dean Cheng, a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center in Washington.
"Secretary Kerry seemed to be saying in his confirmation statement [that] we don't need a pivot," he adds. "We'll see in the months ahead if the political and military and economic attention we give the Asia-Pacific region confirms that that's what he meant."
One significant question, Mr. Green says, is the defense budget — whether cuts can be made while keeping the envisioned redeployment of forces to the Asia-Pacific.
Another important indication of where the pivot is headed will come when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe travels to the White House Feb. 22.
Mr. Abe — who has made no secret since his election in December of the priority he places on revitalizing relations with the US — visits as a territorial dispute between Japan and China over a collection of uninhabited islets (the Senkaku, or Diaoyu) heats up.
How far Obama goes in supporting Japan, with whom the US has a security treaty, will say a lot about how the US wants China to interpret its role in the region, some say.
But other signals out of the White House will be just as important, regional analysts say — such as who makes up the administration's Asia team. Asia analysts want to see who replaces Kurt Campbell, the recently departed assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, who worked closely with Clinton to move the Asia pivot beyond rhetoric.
The region will be watching, too. "In the Chinese view, the pivot was identified with Mrs. Clinton," says Mr. Cheng of Heritage. "Her departure and that of Kurt Campbell will be seen as a weakening, a diluting of the pivot."
Another indicator will be what happens this year with the TPP, a new trade group being negotiated by 11 Pacific Rim countries, including the US. Negotiators have set a deadline of September for reaching an accord, which many say could serve as a template for extending trade agreements across the region.
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