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Hezbollah is not without plans! (See 1 below.)
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As interest rates rise,. as they surely will once the fed cuts back on stimulation, the Fed stands to lose along with bond holders.
As our external debt grew, the ability of The Fed to manipulate long rates slipped from their control and they are now basically only able to regulate short rates. In essence, the market will eventually dictate interest rate levels and The Fed will follow. (See 2 below.)
One man's five reasons why he thinks the market is topping. (See 2a below.)
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Undermining democracy! Truth is essential if we are to have faith in our government. (See 3 below.)
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Worth repeating! (See 4 below.)
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Rubio debates Rubio on immigration. (See 5 below.)
The Wall Street Journal had an editorial today with which I basically agree. The idea of controlling our borders is important on many levels. First, a nation that cannot secure its borders is doomed. Second, it makes a mockery of any legal immigration policy and third, ignoring laws is slippery slope because it sets a very dangerous precedence.
That said, I also believe if we changed our immigration laws making them more favorable for temporary workers, tracked and enforced their visa status and shifted some of the responsibility to the employer this might go a long way towards solving this knotty problem. Additionally, while legally working here, I would favor providing a reduced level of social benefits, ie. health care being one. If they chose to apply for citizenship after a reasonable period of time that should also be an earned benefit.
Their pay should be taxed as well.
Attempting to solve the illegal immigration problem cannot and should not be left to technology etc.
This is simply ignoring realities and putting a clean shirt on an unwashed body.
One hears all this talk about complex ways to solve the immigration problem.
A less complex method would be to allow Obama to be re-elected to un-ended terms. That way, after completely destroying our economy and freedoms, America would no longer be a desirable magnet.
(See 5a below.)---
I guess community organizers are not given to playing poker and Obama's initiative on decreasing our nuclear weaponry may be in keeping with his Nobel Peace Prize but offering to do so when Iran, China and N Korea are building their's sends a weak and mis-guided message. Add that to his continuing history of weak and misguided messages and I simply roll my eyes. (See 6 below.)
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The last two market days should validate how difficult it will be getting off the money bull Bernanke created.
Printing money to pump into the economy is akin to filling a balloon with air. Then, when you signal you are going to take some of that printed air out the balloon it is not unusual that the balloon begins to contract.
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Dick
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1)Hezbollah's Plans for Lebanon
By Hilal Khashan
Hezbollah first became known to the Lebanese public in 1985 with its now-famous open letter, whose introductory statement read: "We are the sons of the umma (Muslim community)—of the party of God (Hezbollah), the vanguard of which was made victorious by God in Iran. … We obey the orders of one leader… that of our tutor and faqih [i.e., Ayatollah Khomeini]."[1] A year later Hassan Nasrallah, then an officer associated with the party's consultative council and now its supreme leader, made the organization's overall goals and strategy unmistakably clear: "We are incapable at the present time of installing the rule of Islam, but this does not mean postponing our ideology and project … We must work hard to achieve our goal, and the most important means of doing so is to transform Lebanon into a society of war."[2]
It has been argued that Hezbollah's 2009 manifesto, which revised the open letter, underscored the organization's diminishing revolutionary zeal and growing acceptance of Lebanon's permanence.[3] Yet a careful reading of the manifesto shows it to be merely playing with words, recognizing Lebanon as "our homeland" but not as a legitimate nation state.[4] Indeed, far from being in a "continuous process of identity construction,"[5] Hezbollah has striven during the past few years to overcome its limitations and promote its ultimate goal of transforming Lebanon into an Islamic state modeled after Iran's wilayat al-faqih (the guardianship of the jurist)
Undermining the Lebanese State
Hezbollah needed physical space to spread its propagandizing mission and to carve out a constituency in the hearts of Lebanon's Shiites. Even before the party's official formation, proto-Hezbollah militants clashed with the police in the southern suburbs of Beirut. They seized on President Amin Gemayel's (1982-88) attempt to clamp down on Muslim militias and restore state authority as evidence of his hostility to Muslims in general (and Shiites in particular) and transformed themselves from an innocuous movement committed to religious guidance and education into a full-fledged politico-military party.[6]
It was not particularly difficult for Hezbollah to undermine the role of the state in Shiite areas like Beirut's southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley. Shiite quarters were poverty-stricken, and in northern Bekaa, the birthplace of Hezbollah, the state was virtually nonexistent. Thanks to generous Iranian contributions, Hezbollah took it upon itself to provide its impoverished constituency with basic services, such as water and sanitation, usually provided by a state. It successfully traded services for loyalty and proceeded to its next objective of becoming the sole Shiite hegemon.
Controlling the Shiites
Efforts to organize the Lebanese Shiites into a political movement of their own began to take shape in 1974 when Imam Musa Sadr, an Iranian cleric of Lebanese origin, ushered in political Shiism and founded the Movement of the Dispossessed. The movement soon built up a militia and, a year later, acquired a new name, the Amal (Hope) movement. Sadr's success in rallying coreligionists behind him had much to do with his determination to place the impoverished Shiites on Lebanon's political map and bring an end to the condescending treatment they received from other sects, as well as the Sunni preference for keeping them powerless.[7]
From its beginnings, the Amal movement opted to play by the rules of Lebanese confessional politics—provided the Shiites were no longer overshadowed by Sunnis—and was prepared to this extent to collaborate with the Maronite establishment.[8] Yet the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon after its 1970 eviction from Jordan interfered with Sadr's plans to transform Shiites into a major actor in Lebanese politics. The imam disliked the presence of armed Palestinians in southern Lebanon but carefully avoided clashing with the PLO since it was politically incorrect for Muslim politicians to deny the organization's right to fight Israel. At the same time, Sadr forged an excellent working relationship with the Syrian regime of Hafez al-Assad.
Sadr's mysterious disappearance in Libya in 1978 and the success of Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution in Iran less than a year later had a dramatic effect on Lebanon's Shiites. Thanks to the size of the Shiite community and the country's joint border with Israel, Lebanon featured prominently in Khomeini's efforts to export his Islamic revolution.
Nabih Berri, who took charge of Amal in 1980, explicitly positioned it against the Palestinians and tried to challenge them militarily. His ideological laxity and political utilitarianism eventually eroded the movement and "plagued it with moral degradation."[9] Since Amal did not present itself as a sufficiently credible ally, it became incumbent upon Khomeini to create a new politico-military group for his purposes. Tehran at the time wanted to respond to the Gulf Cooperation Council's (GCC) support for Baghdad in its war against Iran by creating an ideological base of support within an Arab country. As time went on, its local agency in Lebanon had grown strong enough to establish for itself a niche in the Shiite community. It soon targeted the Shiite Left and eliminated its prominent activists and ideologues, such as Hassan Bazzuni, a member of the central committee of the Political Action Organization, the communist thinker Hussein Mrouei, and academician Hassan Hamdan (aka Mahdi Amel), through assassination.[10]
After decimating the Shiite Left, Hezbollah turned its attention to fighting the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and its local surrogate, the Southern Lebanese Army (SLA), before taking on Amal and driving it out of Beirut's southern suburbs, a task completed by 1988. A year later, Hezbollah resumed its offensive against Amal in those parts of southern Lebanon outside the control of the IDF and the SLA. The Iranians and Syrians intervened to normalize relations between the two Shiite forces and established a new balance of power that recognized Hezbollah's preeminence.
Upon Israel's unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Hezbollah shifted its main emphasis to consolidating its grip on the Lebanese political system and completing the construction of its own ideal society.[11] The outcome of this process was the creation of a distinct Hezbollah community that looked to Iran for inspiration and directives.
Monopolizing the Fight against Israel
In tandem with its effort to gain control of Lebanese Shiites, Hezbollah moved to monopolize the fight against Israel, which had begun in 1982 as the objective of the largely secular National Resistance Front (NRF). Those religious groups that had merged to create Hezbollah in 1985 did not initially participate in the low-grade anti-Israel guerrilla warfare that was at first led by Lebanese communists, members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and remnants of the Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. But by 1987, Hezbollah had taken control of the access routes to the Israeli-established security belt in southern Lebanon, which effectively rendered the NRF useless and led to its disbanding. Hezbollah also introduced its own military wing, the Islamic Resistance. It banned any group from launching independent operations and stipulated that all fight under its flag and name.
Hezbollah soon introduced its own reductionist definition for patriotism; terms such as "the liberation of Shib'a Farms and Kfar Shuba Hills," "Hezbollah's deterrent military capability," and the "sanctity of the triumphant resistance" became nonnegotiable precepts of the Lebanese political parlance.[12]Questioning the legitimacy of Hezbollah's military wing and its arsenal became synonymous with "conspiracy against the resistance, collusion with Zionism and U.S. imperialism."[13]
Finding a Non-Ideological Maronite Partner
In Lebanon's confessional politics, it is a must for any political group representing a major sect to affiliate with a counterpart from another major sect in order to navigate the turbulence of the political system. Shortly after the conclusion of the 1989 Ta'if agreement, which ended the decades-long Lebanese civil war, Hezbollah came to realize it needed to "to portray itself as a principal promoter of Muslim-Christian coexistence … through multi-confessional representation."[14] Unable to identify with the Lebanese Force or the Phalange, whose ardent nationalistic ideologies clashed with its universalistic Shiite aspirations, Hezbollah eventually found a partner in the Christian former Lebanese Army commander, Michel Aoun, who was said to nurse a grudge against fellow Maronite politicians for denying him the presidency in 1988. After fifteen years of exile in France, he returned to Lebanon in 2005 and took up the reins of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) which he had led in absentia. In accordance with the logic of Lebanon's confessional politics, FPM and Hezbollah needed each other, and, in 2006, they signed a memorandum of understanding that enabled them to pursue their distinct interests under the guise of unity.
Marginalizing the Sunnis
Before turning against the Sunni political and security establishments, Hezbollah needed to eliminate independent-minded and outspoken Sunni clerics because of their ability to frame religious identity through politics. This context helps to explain the 1982 assassination of the director of the Union of Islamic Associations and Institutions in Lebanon, Sheikh Ahmad Assaf; the head of the Supreme Islamic Shari'a Council, Sheikh Subhi as-Salih, in 1986, and the grand Sunni Sheikh Hassan Khalid in 1989. Assaf possessed strong organizational capabilities and displayed a powerful sense of communal identity whereas Salih had challenged the Twelver Shiite imamate and the wilayat al-faqih concepts, both of which under-girded Hezbollah's ideology. Sheikh Khalid's crime was to attempt to convince the GCC countries to lead a new Arab deterrent force to free Lebanon from the Syrian stranglehold. This was completely unacceptable to Hezbollah whose prospects of achieving success hinged on excluding GCC influence and relying on Damascus.[15]
The 1989 Ta'if agreement ensured that pro-Syrian Shiites and Maronites would control the country's political, security, and judicial apparatus.[16] But the return to Lebanon of Sunni business tycoon Rafiq Hariri from Saudi Arabia shortly thereafter upset the political balance that Hezbollah had sought in its favor. In 1992, a majority of parliamentary deputies designated Hariri their favorite candidate for the office of prime minister. His meteoric rise to power threatened Hezbollah's efforts to dominate the Lebanese political scene, especially since he received the unconditional backing of Saudi Arabia and the West.
Hezbollah concluded that Hariri represented a threat to be eliminated, a view shared by Tehran and its Syrian henchman, Hafez's son Bashar al-Assad. Hariri's influence was unacceptable and contradicted the pattern of fading Sunni power in the region, and thus he was assassinated in 2005. In June 2011, the U.N. Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) indicted four Lebanese suspects linked to Hezbollah in connection with the assassination. Hezbollah leader Nasrallah has categorically refused to turn them in because "the STL is an American-Israeli tribunal, and the four indictees are our brothers in resistance who have an honorable record."[17] The Hariri assassination brought to an end his project of reconstructing postwar Lebanon along political and economic lines that favored Saudi Arabia and the West. Thus, a formidable hurdle was removed from the path of Hezbollah's designs for Lebanon.
Saad Hariri, Rafiq's son and political heir, lacked the acumen and foresight to continue his late father's policies, let alone keep Hezbollah in check. The key to Hezbollah's getting away with the assassination required dismantling Hariri's private intelligence outfit, the information section of Lebanon's Internal Security Forces (ISF). Hariri wanted to take advantage of the tradition that enabled Sunnis to lead the ISF and to attach an intelligence component to it to counter control of the Deuxieme Bureau (military intelligence) by Shiites and their Maronite allies.
Instead, Hezbollah began a new reign of terror. In 2006, Samer Shihada, an investigator into the Hariri assassination, was the victim of an attack that killed four of his security guards and convinced him to emigrate from Lebanon. In 2008, Wisam Eid, a captain in the information section of the ISF, was murdered in an explosion linked to his investigation of the mobile communications used by the hit team that assassinated Hariri. Eid's innovative investigative techniques had alarmed Hezbollah officials, who told him "that some of the phones he was chasing were being used by Hezbollah agents conducting a counterespionage operation against Israel's Mossad spy agency and that he needed to back off."[18] In 2012, a major explosion in east Beirut killed the chief of the information section, Wisam Hassan, only a few hours after his return to Lebanon from a foreign trip. The identity of Hassan's assassins has not been established, but the fact that Hezbollah completely controls security in Beirut's international airport casts suspicion as to who might have committed the act. Hassan's elimination from the scene ended once and for all the security challenge that the information section had presented to Hezbollah.
Hezbollah also used proxies to embroil its Sunni opponents in debilitating scandals. For this, the group prefers to use pawns such as Fayez Shukr, secretary general of the Lebanese Baath Party, and Wi'am Wahhab, chief of the minuscule at-Tawhid Druze party, and especially the pages of al-Akhbar, Iran's mouthpiece newspaper in Lebanon.
During the 2006 summer war between Israel and Hezbollah, al-Akhbar made its debut, coinciding with Hezbollah's charge that Saad Hariri's Future Trend (FT) party and Saudi Arabia were colluding with the U.S. and Israeli governments to destroy the group. In 2010, the newspaper fabricated charges against Tariq al-Rab'a, head of the administrative planning department for mobile phone operator Alfa, thereby playing a decisive role in his arrest by military intelligence on suspicion of communicating with the Mossad and giving the Israelis access to the Lebanese mobile network.[19] The arrest of Rab'a, a Sunni from Beirut's Tariq al-Jadida neighborhood, bastion of Hariri's political support, occurred with the help of partisans of Hezbollah's Maronite ally Aoun, who have taken charge of the Ministry of Telecommunications and Alfa Mobile and framed a case against Rab'a.[20]
More recently, al-Akhbar has sought to implicate Hariri's Future Trend in the arming of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighting Bashar al-Assad. It featured on its front page the transcript of an alleged conversation between a member of Hariri's parliamentary bloc and a representative of the FSA requesting arms.[21] While the FT may actually be acting as a liaison between the FSA and arms providers, the newspaper simultaneously ignored Hezbollah's role in fighting alongside the Assad regime's forces.
Conclusion
As a totalitarian political party, Hezbollah cannot survive without a military component and will not accept anything less than full control of the Lebanese political system. The problem of Hezbollah, which possesses the premier military force in Lebanon, is its inherent incapability to transform itself into a genuine domestic political force in fear that "its legitimacy [would] become equal to ordinary political groups that accept the rules of accommodation."[22] This in turn means that Hezbollah has not abandoned its goal of creating an Islamic state of Lebanon.
Hezbollah has indeed gone a long way to achieving its objective of controlling Lebanon since its humble 1985 beginnings. It dominates the country's domestic and foreign policy[23] and operates a military machine superior to the national army.[24] It has the final say on making governmental, administrative, and judicial appointments, and its interaction with Lebanese political groups has shown that it has no intention of truly assimilating into Lebanese political practices, not least since its Islamist Shiite orientation precludes its ability for a meaningful dialogue (as opposed to tactical alliances) with the Sunnis. Moreover, the Iranian paradigm of wilayat al-faqih, to which Hezbollah subscribes, baffles many critical-minded Shiites.[25] Not surprisingly, Ahmad al-Asaad, leader of the fledgling Shiite party, the Lebanese New Option Gathering, believes that "we must get rid of Hezbollah in order to build a viable state."[26]
The winds of change are transforming the Middle East and are bound to leave their mark on the course of events in Lebanon. Syria's uprising is unlikely to bring democracy to the war-torn country, but it will almost certainly alter the existing balance of power in Lebanon. The specter of a Sunni resurgence in Syria is already haunting Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Hilal Khashan is a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut.
[1] "An Open Letter, The Hezbollah Program," as-Safir (Beirut), Feb. 16, 1985.
[2] Ibid., Apr. 12, 1986.
[3] Joseph Alagha, Hizbullah's Identity Construction (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011), p. 33.
[4] "Hezbollah Manifesto," Moqawama.org, Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, Nov. 30, 2009.
[5] Alagha, Hizbullah's Identity Construction, p. 22.
[6] As-Siyasa (Kuwait City), Aug. 1, 2011.
[7] Akif Haydar, al-Ashia Biasma'iha: Min Ajl Lubnan Afdal (Beirut: Sharikat al-Matbu'at li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzi, 1995), p. 51.
[8] Khalil Ahmad Khalil, Naqd at-Tadlil al-Aqli: Shi'iat Lubnan wa-l-Alam al-Arabi (Beirut: al-Mu'assasa al-Arabiyya li-l-Dirasat wa-l-Nashr, 2001), p. 59.
[9] Haydar, al-Ashia Biasma'iha, p. 66.
[10] Waddah Sharara, Dawlat Hezbollah: Lubnan Mujtama'an Islamiyyan (Beirut: Dar an-Nahar, 1997), pp. 160-220.
[11] Hilal Khashan and Ibrahim Mousawi, "Hizbullah's Jihad Concept," Journal of Religion and Society, vol. 9, 2007, pp. 25-6.
[12] Nadia Aylabuni, "Niqat Muthira fi an-Niqash hawla Hezbollah," in Ahmad Abu Matar, ed., Hezbollah: al-Wajh al-Akhar (Amman: Dar al-Karmil, 2008), p. 58.
[13] Sheikh Muhammad Yazbek, Ayatollah Khamene'i's representative in Lebanon, sermon, accessed Dec. 28, 2012.
[14] Alagha, Hizbullah's Identity Construction, p. 41.
[15] Muhammad Surur Zayn al-Abidin, Ightial al-Hariri wa Tada'iyatih ala Ahl as-Sunna fi Lubnan (London: Dar al-Jabiya, 2007), p. 22.
[16] Ibid., p. 36.
[17] Al-Manar TV (Beirut), July 2, 2011.
[18] Naharnet News Website (Beirut), Nov. 23, 2010.
[19] Al-Akhbar (Beirut), Dec. 13, 2010.
[20] Ibid., May 15, 2012.
[21] Ibid., Nov. 29, 2012.
[22] Turki al-Hamad and Maza Yurid al-Sayyid, "Hassan Nasrallah wa Hezbollah?" in Ahmad Abu Matar, ed., Hezbollah: al-Wajh al-Akhar (Amman: Dar al-Karmil, 2008), p. 52.
[23] Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson, "Disarming Hezbollah," Foreign Affairs, Jan. 11, 2010; "Hezbollah Dominates Lebanese Government," The Jewish Policy Center, Washington, D.C., June 15, 2011; "Hezbollah," The New York Times, Aug. 15, 2012.
[24] "Hezbollah," The New York Times, Aug. 15, 2012.
[25] See Adel Hashemi Najafabadi, "Imamate and Leadership: The Case of the Shi'a Fundamentalist in Modern Iran," Canadian Social Science, no. 6, 2010, pp. 192-205; Ahmad al-Katib, at-Tashayu as-Siyasi wa-t-Tashayu al-Dini (Beirut: Mu'asasat al-Intishar al-'Arabi, 2009), p. 118.
[26] As-Siyasa, May 4, 2009.
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2)
[2] Ibid., Apr. 12, 1986.
[3] Joseph Alagha, Hizbullah's Identity Construction (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011), p. 33.
[4] "Hezbollah Manifesto," Moqawama.org, Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, Nov. 30, 2009.
[5] Alagha, Hizbullah's Identity Construction, p. 22.
[6] As-Siyasa (Kuwait City), Aug. 1, 2011.
[7] Akif Haydar, al-Ashia Biasma'iha: Min Ajl Lubnan Afdal (Beirut: Sharikat al-Matbu'at li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzi, 1995), p. 51.
[8] Khalil Ahmad Khalil, Naqd at-Tadlil al-Aqli: Shi'iat Lubnan wa-l-Alam al-Arabi (Beirut: al-Mu'assasa al-Arabiyya li-l-Dirasat wa-l-Nashr, 2001), p. 59.
[9] Haydar, al-Ashia Biasma'iha, p. 66.
[10] Waddah Sharara, Dawlat Hezbollah: Lubnan Mujtama'an Islamiyyan (Beirut: Dar an-Nahar, 1997), pp. 160-220.
[11] Hilal Khashan and Ibrahim Mousawi, "Hizbullah's Jihad Concept," Journal of Religion and Society, vol. 9, 2007, pp. 25-6.
[12] Nadia Aylabuni, "Niqat Muthira fi an-Niqash hawla Hezbollah," in Ahmad Abu Matar, ed., Hezbollah: al-Wajh al-Akhar (Amman: Dar al-Karmil, 2008), p. 58.
[13] Sheikh Muhammad Yazbek, Ayatollah Khamene'i's representative in Lebanon, sermon, accessed Dec. 28, 2012.
[14] Alagha, Hizbullah's Identity Construction, p. 41.
[15] Muhammad Surur Zayn al-Abidin, Ightial al-Hariri wa Tada'iyatih ala Ahl as-Sunna fi Lubnan (London: Dar al-Jabiya, 2007), p. 22.
[16] Ibid., p. 36.
[17] Al-Manar TV (Beirut), July 2, 2011.
[18] Naharnet News Website (Beirut), Nov. 23, 2010.
[19] Al-Akhbar (Beirut), Dec. 13, 2010.
[20] Ibid., May 15, 2012.
[21] Ibid., Nov. 29, 2012.
[22] Turki al-Hamad and Maza Yurid al-Sayyid, "Hassan Nasrallah wa Hezbollah?" in Ahmad Abu Matar, ed., Hezbollah: al-Wajh al-Akhar (Amman: Dar al-Karmil, 2008), p. 52.
[23] Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson, "Disarming Hezbollah," Foreign Affairs, Jan. 11, 2010; "Hezbollah Dominates Lebanese Government," The Jewish Policy Center, Washington, D.C., June 15, 2011; "Hezbollah," The New York Times, Aug. 15, 2012.
[24] "Hezbollah," The New York Times, Aug. 15, 2012.
[25] See Adel Hashemi Najafabadi, "Imamate and Leadership: The Case of the Shi'a Fundamentalist in Modern Iran," Canadian Social Science, no. 6, 2010, pp. 192-205; Ahmad al-Katib, at-Tashayu as-Siyasi wa-t-Tashayu al-Dini (Beirut: Mu'asasat al-Intishar al-'Arabi, 2009), p. 118.
[26] As-Siyasa, May 4, 2009.
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2)
| Rough as it has been for bond investors, the Fed is suffering worse. For more than four years now, the Fed – through its multiple quantitative easing programs – has been the world's biggest buyer of Treasury bonds. So now with interest rates on the rise, the Fed is underwater on all of the purchases it made over the past year. Not only is the Fed printing money to buy up U.S. Treasury debt – a stupid thing to do anyway – it's now losing money on the bonds it bought. And by the look of the following chart, it may be about to get much worse…  Since last August, rates have been steadily working higher in a series of higher highs and higher lows. That's a rising-channel pattern and it's the definition of an uptrend. Market now approaching resistance . The previous two times it touched that line occurred when rates were in a downtrend and momentum was working in favor of lower rates. The resistance line held and prevented interest rates from rising more. Today, the momentum is in favor of higher rates. The chart might not break through resistance on this current attempt since it's already extended. But if the chart pulls back and forms another higher high, rates will likely break out to the upside on the next rally attempt. The next resistance level is all the way up around 4.4%. At that point, the Fed will be losing money on most of the bonds it purchased over the past four years. That's not a good track record. I suspect Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will do everything in his power to keep rates from rising. So don't look for any tapering of quantitative easing any time soon… no matter what Bernanke says. But in the end, the market is just too big to control. Maybe that's what the action over the past six weeks is trying to tell us. – Jeff Clark 2a)
3)When Untruth Undermines Democracy Victor Davis Hanson Truth is the lifeblood of democracy. Without honesty, the foundations of consensual government crumble.
If the Internal Revenue Service acts unlawfully, our voluntary system of citizens computing their own taxes implodes.
Yet Lois Lerner, one of the IRS's top officials, would not answer simple questions about her agency's conduct during congressional testimony, instead pleading the Fifth Amendment. Any taxpayer who tried that with an IRS auditor would end up fined and in court.
Almost everything that IRS officials have reported about the agency's unlawful targeting of conservative groups has proven false. IRS malfeasance was not limited only to the Cincinnati office, as alleged, but followed directives sent from higher-ups in Washington. Lerner confessed to the scandal only through a pre-planned public query by a planted questioner, designed to pre-empt an upcoming critical inspector general's report. There is legitimate dispute over both the number and purpose of former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman's visits to the White House and nearby executive office buildings, but he did his credibility no good by snidely remarking to Congress that he might also have visited for an Easter egg roll with his kids.
Attorney General Eric Holder – who’s already been held in contempt by the House for declining to turn over internal Justice Department documents for the "Fast and Furious" scandal -- swore to Congress that he had no knowledge of any effort to go after individual reporters. But Holder had earlier done just that, signing off on a search warrant to monitor the communications of Fox reporter James Rosen. In other words, the attorney general of the United States under oath misled -- or lied to -- Congress.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was recently asked by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) whether the National Security Agency collected the phone and email records of millions of ordinary Americans. Clapper said that it did not. That, too, was an untruth. Clapper's supporters argued that Wyden should not have asked such a sensitive question in public that threatened the secrecy of the program. But Clapper did not demur or request a closed session, instead finding it easier to deceive, later dubbing his response as the "least untruthful" answer possible.
Washington reporters and spin doctors argue whether newly appointed National Security Advisor Susan Rice knowingly lied when she wove a yarn about a single video-maker being responsible for spontaneous violence that led to the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. Yet no one disputes that her televised fables -- as well as those of both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- were untrue, and demonstrably so, at the time. Yet Rice was promoted, not censured, following her performance.
Last November, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked point-blank whether the administration had altered CIA-produced intelligence memos to fit the administration narrative of a spontaneous riot in Benghazi. Carney answered unequivocally that the administration had made only one stylistic change. That, too, was not accurate. In fact, there were at least 12 different drafts that reflected substantial ongoing changes by the administration of the original CIA talking points.
Former EPA Director Lisa Jackson created a fake email identity -- "Richard Windsor" -- to conduct official business off the record. But Jackson did not just stop with that ruse. She turned Richard Windsor into an entirely mythical persona, her own alter ego who supposedly took online tests and was given awards by the EPA -- a veritable Jackson doppelganger who was certified as "a scholar of ethical behavior" by no less than the agency that the unethical Jackson oversaw.
Deception is now institutionalized in the Obama administration. It infects almost every corner of the U.S. government, eroding the trust necessary for the IRS, the Department of Justice, our security agencies, and the president's official press communiqués -- sabotaging the public trust required for democracy itself.
What went wrong with the Obama administration?
There is no longer a traditional adversarial media in Washington. Spouses and siblings of executives at the major television networks are embedded within the administration. Unlike with Watergate, the media now holds back, believing that any hard-hitting reporting of ongoing scandals would only weaken Obama, whose vision of America the vast majority of reporters share. But that understood exemption only encourages more lack of candor.
There is also utopian arrogance in Washington that justifies any means necessary to achieve exalted ends of supposed fairness and egalitarianism. If one has to lie to stop the Tea Party or Fox News, then it is not quite seen by this administration as a lie.
Barack Obama swept up an entire nation in 2008 with his hope-and-change promises of a new honesty and transparency. That dream is now in shambles, destroyed by the most untruthful cast since Richard Nixon, H.R. Haldeman, Ron Ziegler and John Dean left Washington in disgrace almost 40 years ago -- after likewise subverting the very government they had pledged to serve.
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4)Unasked and Unanswered Questions
Grutter v. Bollinger was the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the University of Michigan Law School's racial admissions policy. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the majority, said the U.S. Constitution "does not prohibit the Law School's narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." But what are the educational benefits of a diverse student body?
Intellectuals argue that diversity is necessary for academic excellence, but what's the evidence? For example, Japan is a nation bereft of diversity in any activity. Close to 99 percent of its population is of one race. Whose students do you think have higher academic achievement -- theirs or ours? According to the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment, the academic performance of U.S. high-school students in reading, math and science pales in comparison with their diversity-starved counterparts in Japan.
Should companies be treated equally? According to a Wall Street Journal op-ed (9/7/2009) by Manhattan Institute's energy expert Robert Bryce, Exxon Mobil pleaded guilty in federal court to killing 85 birds that had come into contact with its pollutants. The company paid $600,000 in fines and fees. A recent Associated Press story (5/14/2013) reported that "more than 573,000 birds are killed by the country's wind farms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin." The Obama administration has never fined or prosecuted windmill farms, sometimes called bird Cuisinarts, for killing eagles and other protected bird species. In fact, AP reports that the Obama administration has shielded the industry from liability and has helped keep the scope of the deaths secret. It's interesting that The Associated Press chose to report the story only after the news about its reporters being secretly investigated. That caused the Obama administration to fall a bit out of favor with them. But what the heck, the 14th Amendment's requirement of "equal protection" before the law for everybody can be cast aside in the name of diversity, so why can't it be cast aside in the name of saving the planet? There are politically favored industries just as there are politically favored groups.
What's the difference between a progressive, a liberal and a racist? In some cases, not much. President Woodrow Wilson was a leading progressive who believed in notions of racial superiority and inferiority. He was so enthralled with D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" movie, glorifying the Ku Klux Klan, that he invited various dignitaries to the White House to view it with him. During one private screening, President Wilson exclaimed: "It's like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." When President Wilson introduced racial segregation to the civil service, the NAACP and the National Independent Political League protested. Wilson vigorously defended it, arguing that segregation was in the interest of Negroes.
Dr. Thomas Sowell, in "Intellectuals and Race," documents other progressives who were advocates of theories of racial inferiority. They included former presidents of Stanford University and MIT, among others. Eventually, the views of progressives fell out of favor. They changed their name to liberals, but in the latter part of the 20th century, the name liberals fell into disrepute. Now they are back to calling themselves progressives.
I'm not arguing that today's progressives are racists like their predecessors, but they share a contempt for liberty, just as President Wilson did. According to Hillsdale College history professor Paul A. Rahe -- author of "Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift" -- in his National Review Online (4/11/13) article "Progressive Racism," Wilson wanted to persuade his compatriots to get "beyond the Declaration of Independence." President Wilson said the document "did not mention the questions" of his day, adding, "It is of no consequence to us." My question is: Why haven't today's progressives disavowed their racist predecessors?
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5)Rubio vs. Rubio
As a candidate for the United States Senate, Marco Rubio campaigned on a tough, “no amnesty” immigration stance, in which he advocated against a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and in strong support of border security before legalization. Now, as a leader of the “Gang of 8,” he has embraced — and in many instances moved farther left of — the very policies he once criticized.
It is okay for Senator Rubio to change his mind, though he and I may disagree. For too many conservatives, though, Senator Rubio appears to be trying to reconcile irreconcilable positions. In the past several days, tea party activists who once supported him have been booing just the mention of his name. Conservative groups that once touted him as the second coming of Ronald Reagan have moved on to Ted Cruz.
There is much time between now and 2016, and there will be other challenges that see the right and Senator Rubio united. But I suspect the contradictions of these statements will come up in ad campaigns in Iowa, New Hampshire, and elsewhere.
Candidate Marco Rubio said:
About a path to citizenship —
“First of all, earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty.”[1]
“America cannot be the only country in the world that does not enforce its immigration laws. It is unfair to the people that have legally entered this country to create an alternative pathway for individuals who entered illegally and knowingly did so. And all I’m saying is that if you do that you will never have a legal immigration system that works. No one is going to follow the law if there is an easier way to do it.”[2] (emphasis added)
“If you grant amnesty, the message that you’re sending is that if you come in this country and stay here long enough, we will let you stay. And no one will ever come through the legal process if you do that.”[3]
“Well, we have a path for citizenship. It’s called coming legally into this country. The ones who are already here.
You can’t do it.”[4]
“[Gov. Crist] would have voted for the McCain plan. I think that plan is wrong, and the reason I think it’s wrong is that if you grant amnesty, as the governor proposes that we do, i i, whether it’s back of the line or so forth, you will destroy any chance we will ever have of having a legal immigration system that works here in America.”[5] (emphasis added)
About border security first —
“Only after you deal with illegal immigration in a serious way — seal the border and the visa problem — can you then create a legal immigration system that works.”[6](emphasis added)
“First and foremost we have to secure the border, we have to secure the workplace. We can’t move on to the modernization of our legal immigration system until both the border and the workplace are secure, through both E-Verify and real security at both the Canadian and the Mexican borders. We’ve got to accomplish that first before we can do any modernization, which is needed.”[7] (emphasis added)
In a CNN debate on Oct 24, 2010, moderator Candy Crowley asked, “So your plan is that you’re going to close the borders, get the electronic system, fix the legal system, and then do what?” Rubio responded: “And then you’ll have a legal immigration system that works. And you’ll have people in this country that are without documents that will…be able to leave this country, return to their homeland, and try to re-enter through our system that now functions, a system that makes sense…Earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty.”[8]
As a senator, Marco Rubio has reinforced both commitments: to deny illegal aliens a path to citizenship and to secure the borders before any legalization.
(In response to criticism of a path to citizenship) “I’ve long shared the same concern….and that’s why we’ve outlined it the way we have. [A]ll they [illegal aliens] get is a temporary status…they can’t turn that into citizenship or anything else….[A]fter we have certified that the enforcement things have actually happened, because the big mistakes of the past have been they’ve done the legalization but they haven’t done the enforcement, and hence, it’s led to 11 million people. I don’t ever want to have to do this again. So after…the enforcement things have happened, then the only thing they’re going to get is the ability to apply for a green card, just like anybody else would—not in a special way, in the regular way, by getting in line, qualifying for the visa they apply for, etc. So all we’re going to give them a chance to ultimately earn is the chance to do what they should’ve done in the beginning, and that’s try to enter the country legally.”[9] (emphasis added)
Senator Marco Rubio has reversed himself on immigration and demonstrated with words and actions that his Gang of 8 plan will provide a path to citizenship and that the path will begin before the border is secured.
(Speaking in Spanish on Univision) “Let’s be clear. Nobody is talking about preventing the legalization. The legalization is going to happen. That means the following will happen: First comes the legalization. Then comes the measures to secure the border. And then comes the process of permanent residence. What we’re talking about here is the system of permanent residence. As for the legalization, the enormous majority of my colleagues have accepted that it has to happen and that it has to begin at the same time we begin the measures for [the border]. It is not conditional. The legalization is not conditional.[10]
“[W]hen these people come forward, as part of that registration, they’re going to have to pay a fine. And that money from those fines is what I think is what we’re going to use to pay for the border security. Those are billions of dollars. I don’t want that money coming from the American taxpayer, and I don’t want that money coming from the Treasury or adding to the debt. It needs to be paid for, and that’s why we need that fine money up front.”[11]
“What we have in place today is de facto amnesty.”[12]
On June 13, Senator Rubio and the rest of the Gang of 8 voted to table an amendment that would have prohibited legalization until the Homeland Security Secretary has maintained effective control of the borders for 6 months.[13]
On June 18, Senator Rubio and the rest of the Gang voted against an amendment that would have required completion of the fence,[14] as well as an amendment that would have required implementation of U.S. VISIT[15] (a biometric border check-in and check-out system first required by Congress in 1996), before legalization.
5a)The Border Security Ruse
For many Republicans, the border will never be secure enough.
The immigration debate has turned once again to "securing the border," and Republicans are once again demanding more enforcement as the price of their support. Here's the real story: For some Republicans, border security has become a ruse to kill reform. The border could be defended by the 10th Mountain Division and Claymore antipersonnel mines and it wouldn't be secure enough.
As we noted last month ("Border Security Reality Check," May 2), the U.S.-Mexico border is more secure today than it has been in decades. According to Border Patrol statistics, illegal entries are at a 40-year low. Apprehensions of illegal entrants exceeded 1.1 million in 2005, but in both 2011 and 2012 the number was below 365,000.
According to a study by the Government Accountability Office, the number of illegal immigrants who escaped capture at the nine major crossing points from San Diego to El Paso fell an astonishing 86% between 2006 and 2011. All the talk-show shouting about America under siege from immigrants streaming across the Rio Grande is fiction.
Some of this decline is surely due to the lousy U.S. job market, but some results from the border security mobilization that began in the 1990s and really got going after 2006. Today more than 21,000 agents patrol the border. Enforcement spending is up more than 50% in a decade for everything from 650 miles of fencing to military aircraft, marine vessels, drones, surveillance equipment, infrared camera towers and detention centers.
The Gang of Eight bill now on the Senate floor would add another $4.5 billion or so for border control. That means still more agents, drones and fencing. The bill also puts in place vast new internal enforcement measures to apprehend the roughly 40% of illegal immigrants who do not cross the border illegally but overstay their visas.
These measures include money for tracking down visa overstays, harassing employers with enforcement raids, and an E-verify system for employers to validate the legal status of workers. Republicans claim to like employers—except when they're chasing down Guatemalan hotel maids.
Yet not even all this is good enough for most GOP Senators. So in recent days we have seen them offer one amendment after another to delay key elements of the bill. These Republicans want a "trigger" mechanism so that other provisions of reform are stymied until the border is declared "under operational control."
Amendments by John Thune of South Dakota and Chuck Grassley of Iowa tried to delay the eventual permanent legalization of some 11 million currently illegal residents until "tangible" additional border security benchmarks are met. The amendments failed, but let's be honest. The border will never be secure enough for this crowd, so the "trigger" for the rest of the reforms will never be activated.
This is the same trick Republican restrictionists used to kill immigration reform in 2007 when George W. Bush was President. Seven years later, illegal immigration is down by about 60%, yet the "secure the border first" chorus repeats the same arguments.
If reducing illegal immigration is the real objective, Republicans should try to improve this reform. Not by tightening border security, but by making it easier for immigrants to enter and work in the U.S. legally. The bill includes more green cards for high-skilled workers and new guest-worker programs for low-skilled and farm workers, but the visa quotas are inadequate. If Republicans really want to reduce the future flow of illegals, they would use their leverage to expand these guest-worker programs, rather than trying to militarize the border even further.
By far the most effective policy in reducing illegal immigration in the last 60 years was the Bracero guest-worker program of the 1950s and early '60s. Illegal immigration was almost eliminated for a decade as crossings fell from one million to fewer than 50,000 a year once migrant workers had legal channels to enter. Yet many of those on the right who claim to favor legal immigration also oppose guest-worker programs and other visa expansions. This betrays that they really want no new immigration.
The value of all of this additional border spending is probably marginal, and at some point it becomes offensive to U.S. values of freedom and human dignity. We doubt many Americans would support anything like the police-state measures that would be required to reduce illegal immigration to near-zero as the restrictionist right wants as the price of reform.
The real game here is to kill a bill that would create a more pro-growth and humane immigration system for America and the millions already here or in line to come. If the right succeeds in blowing all this up, one wonders what comes next? Perhaps Republicans can campaign in 2014 on self-deporting the 11 million illegals who are here now. That worked so well for Mitt Romney.
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6)The Costs of Obama's Miguided Nuke Policy
Commentary Magazine - Seth Mandel
I wrote yesterday about President Obama’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate, in which he embraced Cold War symbolism on behalf of the West and acknowledged that Cold War tensions still exist and must be countered. Where once the president would knock Republicans for being stuck in a “Cold War mind warp,” he now criticizes Vladimir Putin for the mindset.
This was a welcome rhetorical adjustment. But in seeking to harness the heroism of the past for the challenges of the present and future, the president did focus on one misguided policy goal: U.S.-Russia bilateral nuclear arms reductions. It isn’t that the president is wrong when he says we may not need quite as many nukes as we have, but that he underestimates the benefits of those weapons and risks diverting attention away from much more pressing, and genuinely dangerous, perils of nuclear proliferation.
As I wrote last year when this issue surfaced, the argument in favor of nuclear reduction rests on faulty logic. We have been told time and again that one benefit of arms reduction would be the display of American leadership: other countries would be encouraged to follow our lead, and we can’t be accused (at least to the same degree) of hypocrisy when we advocate for nuclear nonproliferation abroad. This is untrue, because the U.S. has reduced its nuclear stockpile over the years and offered additional cuts, and yet China has continued over the years to increase its own stockpile and other nations have crossed the nuclear weapons threshold.
Additionally, nuclear weapons are just that–weapons. Rogue states have no “right” to those weapons just because we have them, and the U.S. has long possessed strategic advantages on the battlefield. Those advantages do not make us hypocrites; we have no moral obligation to permit those who seek to harm us to level the playing field. If we legitimize the argument for strategic parity then we would lay the groundwork for the argument that just reducing our stockpile is insufficient: if we have a thousand nukes, so should Pakistan and North Korea.
Not only does the case for cutting our stockpile ignore history, it misrepresents the concept of strategic deterrence. Once we reach a large number of nukes, could it possibly make a difference if we scrapped some of them? Well yes, actually, it could. As Georgetown’s Matthew Kroenig explains:
In an analysis of 52 countries that participated in nuclear crises from 1945 to 2001 (think the Cuban Missile Crisis), I found that the state with the greater number of warheads is over 17 times more likely to achieve its goals. In addition, there is qualitative evidence from these crises that leaders in nuclear-armed states pay close attention to the nuclear balance of power, that they believe nuclear superiority enhances their position, and that a nuclear advantage often translates directly into a geopolitical advantage. For example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Secretary of State Dean Rusk argued, “One thing Mr. Khrushchev may have in mind is that… he knows that we have a substantial nuclear superiority…. He also knows that we don’t really live under fear of his nuclear weapons to the extent… that he has to live under ours.”
Even if Russia agrees to match the president’s proposed cuts, the nuclear reductions would attenuate our advantages vis-à-vis Russia and eat into our margin of superiority against other nuclear-armed states, such as China, possibly increasing the likelihood that the United States will be challenged militarily and reducing the probability that we achieve our goals in future crises.
Which brings us to the two other weaknesses of Obama’s push for arms reduction: opportunity cost and financial cost. Russia’s nukes are far less of a threat to American interests and security than those of North Korea or Pakistan (or even China), and the same is true for those states trying to obtain nuclear weapons, such as Iran and, until recently, Syria. If the Obama administration wants Russian cooperation on the issue of nukes, it should seek not mutual reductions but instead address Russia’s enabling of Iran’s nuclear drive and protection of regimes such as that of Bashar al-Assad. If it wants to make progress on the nuclear issue while being seen to help Russia as well, it should seek not American cuts but moderation on China’s militarization or China’s support for North Korea–two troublesome nuclear states on Russia’s increasingly vulnerable eastern flank.
As for the financial cost, there is only so much money to go around. It would be costly to reduce our nuclear arsenal, which also needs costly modernization. Such modernization is much more urgent than reduction. As the Washington Post reports, we’ve been kicking the can down the road on addressing “the decrepit, neglected state of the aging nuclear weapons complex,” but each delay only increases the expense of the project, which the arsenal needs “to keep it safe and reliable.” Keeping our existing nukes “safe and reliable” should take priority over dismantling part of the arsenal. The president isn’t wrong to address issues relating to our nuclear stockpile and global proliferation. He’s just focusing on the wrong ones.
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