Gilder's "The Israel Test" - A Must Read!

Just returned from Pittsburgh and while on the plane coming back read George Gilder's:"The Israel Test" which had been brought to my attention by a dear friend and fellow memo reader.

In the last chapter of the book Gilder identifies his family and blood line and acknowledges he/they are pure WASPS, Tiffany roots etc.. That said, Gilder also acknowledges most of his family admired achievers, associated with them and thus had many ties to the Jewish community.

In his book, Gilder points out the real test today is between those who see capitalism as a zero sum gain where winners take from losers, ie success comes at the expense of the poor as well as ecology and those who see genius and good fortune of others as an opportunity that benefits all.

Do you admire those who create wealth or do you seethe at it?

In terms of Israel, Gilder points our when freedom and capitalism are present, Jews have prospered and their creativity benefits all. Gilder sees Israel as the West's first bastion of defense and should Israel be thrown to the wolves then the West and, most specifically America, will probably also be doomed.

He enumerates instance after instance where Israeli technology has specifically benefited America. Freedom, capitalism and creativity go hand in hand. Economically speaking, Gilder takes you through Israel's early period when it labored under socialism's burdens imposed by Histadrut ("Histadrut" is the Israeli labor federation,) was mostly an agronomic economy and thus, was behind in virtually every world statistical measurement, ie GDP, per capita income, etc. He assigns credit to Netanyahu and others for turning the country into a technological giant and praises GW and former Sec. of The Treasury, John Snow, for assisting Israel to become more capitalistic after yhey laid down strong benchmarks as a precedent to securing loan guarantees.

In terms of Israel and its Arab neighbors, Gilder makes the same point I have been making for years, ie. if Palestinians truly want peace it is there for them. He discusses various Israeli success stories and how the Israelis could and do benefit the Arabs. Meanwhile, the West has continued dispensing billions to the Palestinians, including Hamas, and in so doing have sent the wrong message, ie. terrorism pays.

Gilder takes on the re-distributionists and those who believe capitalism comes at the expense of others and who believe behind every great fortune is a great crime. He writes nothing is more destructive to opportunity than diverting resources from entrepreneurs, who know how to use them, and giving them to government to spend politically.

He also refutes the apartheid argument by Carter and his disciples and points to the hypocrisy of Arab Judenreinism. The real racists, Gilder writes, are those who accuse Israel of being racist. He highlights the folly of The Peace Now crowd and suggests their message simply nourishes Israel's enemies.

Gilder may overreach at time in his praise of Israel and what Jews have accomplished but his arguments are factually solid, based on evidence hard to refute and defies the illogical appeasers. Socialism has failed wherever it has been tried. It is ironic that as Israel moves towards a freer capitalistic system and prospers our own nation is retrogressing and embracing failed philosophy and economic policies.

"The Israel Test" is a must read and most emphatically should be read by those who disagree with Gilder. (See 1 and 1a below.)

What I find most disconcerting is the fact that there may be no current answers to some of the intractable problems the West faces with respect to dealing with terrorism and fanatical Islamists yet, that does not mean we should embrace positions and programs that will not work, have proven they do not work and, in fact, are counterproductive.

Terrorists are willing to die for their warped causes. Less and less in the West have such commitment. In fact, our current president is an apologist for what we have achieved, does not believe in the entrepreneurial spirit because it produces uneven wealth. He is uncomfortable allowing the private sector to solve problems because he believes the private sector is the root of our problems. He believes an ever expanding government holds the answer. Obama's attacks on the country he represents is perhaps purposeful and is meant to weaken the national resolve and is designed to play well with the appeasers.

If that is the case, Obama is succeeding because the public seems willing to experiment out of frustration, lack of resolve and faith in what has proven works. Recessions always provide opportunity for those with the false siren song message that all we need is change.

If the Nobel Prize was given to Obama as a down payment because he has rhetorically turned away from GW there is little in his actions to indicate he has rejected them.(See 1b below.) Guantanamo remains open, most surveillance laws remain on the books, he is most likely going to send more troops to fight in Afghanistan and I doubt we will unilaterally disarm.

Though I am sure Obama and many of his followers would prefer that approach believing peace would descend thereafter. Reality suggests you prevent confrontations by being prepared, making sure your adversary knows you will do what it takes to defend yourself and you will not flinch when, and if, a challenge should come. Appeasement never produced anything but more of what you wished to avoid.

The liberals in Congress talked about what they would do to fight the 'right' war in Afghanistan while complaining that GW was engaged in the wrong war in Iraq. Now they have the chance to fight their 'right' war so why are their their knees buckling? (See 2 below.) Dick

1)Why Palestinian Incitement Matters So Much

By Jonathan Rosenblum



Ever wonder where the report featured that Israeli soldiers kidnap and kill Palestinians in order to harvest their vital organs for transplants originated. Palestinian Media Watch provides the answer. It was lifted in toto from the December 24, 2001 edition of Al Hayat Al Jadida, the official Palestinian Authority newspaper.

Daniel Bostrum, the intrepid reporter for Sweden's largest circulation paper Aftonblandet who plagiarized this fabrication, has said of his handiwork, "Whether it's true or not, I have no idea. I have no clue." Given his indifference to truth of his journalistic offerings, what further "scoops" can we anticipate from Bostrum? Again, Palestinian Media Watch provides the answer.

Here are just some of the charges one could have read in the official Palestinian press or heard from leading Palestinian Authority officials in recent years. Israel will pay 4,500 shekels to any Palestinian who can prove he is a drug addict. Israel produced and distributed to Palestinians two hundred tons of drug-laced bubble-gum designed to destroy the genetic systems of Palestinian youth. It also distributes carcinogenic food and fruits for Palestinian consumption and children's games that beam radioactive x-rays. And don't forget the HIV-infected Jewish prostitutes whom Israel has loosed among Palestinian youth. Or Suha Arafat's accusation to Hilary Clinton that Israel poisons Palestinian wells.

So Bostrum and Aftonbladet have a potentially endless stream of sensational stories ahead of them. But the point is not to predict Bostrum's journalistic future. It is far more serious.

As the above accusations make clear, demonization of Israel is alive and well in the Palestinian Authority. In every agreement since the onset of Oslo, the Palestinians have solemnly pledged to end the incitement against Jews and Israel in the Palestinian media and to purge it from Palestinian textbooks. And each such undertaking has been promptly ignored.



THE FAILURE TO CURB INCITEMENT has been so constant, so long-standing that it barely elicits a yawn today. But that apathy reflects a profound misunderstanding of the significance of that incitement.

Shimon Peres once remarked, "I don't care what the Palestinians say, only what's written in the agreements." But what the Palestinians say to one another, and particularly what they teach their children, is far more important that what's written in peace agreements.

Incitement and demonization are not just one more treaty violation. They reflect the failure of the Palestinians since the beginning of Oslo to create a constituency for peace with Israel, to educate the Palestinian population to the idea of living side-by-side with a Jewish state. Such an education would have included Palestinian leaders telling their people that they too would have to make painful concessions for peace, that all the so-called refugees and their descendants will not return to Israel, that the clock cannot be turned back entirely to 1947 or even 1966. That has never happened. Even worse, there has been no education to accept the existence of Israel in any borders or to renounce once and for all the dream of throwing all the Jews into the sea.

The Palestinian Authority has gone out of its way to make heroes of the most vicious terrorists - not exactly the way to encourage thoughts of reconciliation and peace. Mahmoud Abbas sent his warmest congratulations to child-murderer Samir Kuntar, upon his release from an Israeli jail, and commissioned festive celebrations in honor of Dalal Mughrabi, the mastermind of the 1973 Coastal Road Massacre in which 37 Israelis were murdered.

At the first Fatah Conference in two decades last month, the young and old guard competed as to who could be more intransigent with regard to peace negotiations with Israel, as described by the Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh. The resolutions passed included demands that Israel accept the "right of return" for all 1948 refugees and their descendants and hand over to the Palestinians all Jewish neighborhoods built in Jerusalem since 1967.

Other resolutions passed by the conference accused Israel of having murdered Yasir Arafat, urged exploration of a strategic alliance with Iran, and called for the upgrading of the status of the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade, the Fatah militia most involved in anti-Israel terror. For good measure, Muhammad al-Ghuneim, an extreme hardliner, who opposed the Oslo Accords, was the top vote-getter for the Fatah Central Committee and is now Abbas's heir apparent.

The effect of decades of incitement to destroy Israel is fully reflected in Palestinian polls. A June 5-7 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, found that three-quarters of Palestinians reject any possibility of reconciliation with Israel in this generation, even if a final peace agreement were signed and an independent Palestinian state created.



YET LARRY DERFNER ("The Mother of All Missed Opportunities," The Jerusalem Post, September 10) professes to find in the decreasing rates of terrorism from the West Bank and the round-up of thousands of Hamas activists, indications of a new peaceful intent among West Bank Palestinians. But the round-up Hamas activists reflects only Fatah's desire to secure its control of the West Bank, not a new attitude towards Israel.

And the main reason for the reduced terrorism from the West Bank remains the daily and persistent IDF operations and clampdowns on suspected terrorists.To the extent that reduced terrorist attempts are a function of Palestinian Authority efforts, they result from the determination not to provide Prime Minister Netanyahu with ammunition to fend off pressure from U.S. President Obama.

In a recent article for the Hudson Institute, Abu-Toameh argues that no matter how much the Palestinian economy improves, it "won't change Palestinians' negative attitude towards Israel, especially not when anti-Israel incitement and fiery rhetoric continue." The conflict, he writes, is "political, national and religious" in nature, and its resolution depends on "accepting Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people."

Such acceptance cannot take place without creation of a Palestinian peace curriculum to replace the current incitement and demonization. That is why an end to incitement is not another meaningless and unenforceable promise to be included in a final peace agreement, but rather a necessary pre-condition for peace, without which all negotiations about boundaries and the like, are besides the point.

1a)How to take down a great power
By J.R. Dunn

Unlike Augustus or Caligula, Lucius Aurelius Commodus was not an emperor who made a strong impression on modern consciousness. Until the release of the film Gladiator, a heavily fictionalized version of his reign, most Americans had never heard of him. In the film he comes across as quite a compelling figure thanks to a first-rate portrayal by Joaquin Phoenix.


But, as is true of much of the film, the character of Commodus was altered for dramatic purposes. Unlike Caligula and Nero, Commodus was not a psychopath. Though he killed plenty (12,000 by his own reckoning), he was no thrill-killer as such, but very likely what we today would call a malignant narcissist, somebody who believes himself to be the center of the universe and everyone else merely a walk-on. Combine this personality disorder with the power imbued in a national leader and you've set the fuse blazing for sure.


Commodus was not actually in conflict with his father, Marcus Aurelius, last of the four great emperors. Far from it -- Marcus Aurelius idolized his son, steadily raising him through the imperial ranks to the level of co-emperor. Blinded by paternal affection, Aurelius unleashed a monster on Rome, proving that not even a man trained to the highest levels of philosophy (Aurelius was also a leading Stoic philosopher) is immune to human error.


Commodus' failings became evident soon after he ascended to the imperial purple. Having no background in foreign policy, he effectively set it aside, allowing his father's achievements to unravel. Marcus Aurelius had spent much of his reign on the Danubean frontier, subduing menacing barbarian tribes threatening the peace of the ancient world. Commodus simply abandoned the province. If the Romans had possessed Special Forces and remote-controlled drones, things might have turned out differently.


The same was true at home. Commodus allowed important policy decisions to fall into the hands of underlings, providing little in the way of guidance. Chief among these was Tigiduis Perrenis, a corrupt prefect whom today we'd call chief of staff. Commodus did nothing to control Perrenis or end his corrupt practices. Eventually the prefect was caught in a conspiracy against the throne and executed. But Commodus repeated his mistake, promoting yet another corrupt official. The same was true on all levels of government. It was as if Commodus had no competent, honest individuals to choose from.


But the emperor's most serious problems were personal. Commodus was an egomaniac of a type difficult for a normal person to understand. No matter what the situation, Commodus came first. All honors, awards, and decorations were reserved for the emperor. It made no difference whether he'd earned them or not. Religious, political, military -- all went to Commodus. If the Nobel had been awarded in Rome, he'd have gotten the Nobel.


Roman emperors had long been raised to divine status on their deaths (Vespasian mocked this practice on his deathbed), but Commodus didn't want to wait. He began demanding the obeisance due to a god, specifically adapting the persona of Hercules. He took to wearing a leopard skin as he walked the streets of Rome. Going a step further, he attempted to outdo the mythical exploits of Hercules by appearing in the Coliseum to slaughter masses of animals and gladiators. The wild beasts were tethered, and the fighters equipped with wooden swords, but that didn't matter to Commodus, by this time utterly lost in his private dream world.


It became dangerous to outdo Commodus in any athletic or gladiatorial endeavor. When noted champion Julius Alexander killed a lion by spear while on horseback, a stunt Commodus had not mastered, the emperor ordered him executed.


Such excesses created their own reaction. Commodus was plagued with plots to overthrow him. The first was masterminded by his sister Annia Lucilla, whom he had strangled while in exile. A decade later his favorite concubine Marcia (talk about bad luck with your female relations) kicked off another plot featuring an attempt at poison which Commodus threw up. Not to be denied, the conspirators arranged for the wrestler Narcissus to strangle Commodus in his bedroom, the same treatment he had meted out to his sister.


Whatever the conspirators were hoping, Rome itself was by then inevitably in decline. Within a short time the Severans, a dynasty of full-fledged military dictators, were in control. Rome's golden age was ended, and there was no going back.


We look back at the Roman epoch with a sense of relief. We've learned so much since then. No longer do we consider our leaders to be gods among men. No longer do we hand them unearned and meretricious awards and prizes. We don't turn on and destroy members of previous administrations. We don't tolerate incompetent and corrupt sycophants in high office. We've learned to recognize disorders such as pathological narcissism and assure that the victims do not gain high office. Any president who placed his prestige on the line with an athletic contest would be laughed to scorn.


And as for political bloodshed, that kind of savagery has no place in a modern democracy. Any party that called for the assassination of an opposing leader -- say, George W. Bush -- would simply be run out of the public sphere. Unlike the Romans, we all understand the concept of consequences, that what goes around comes around. Don't we?

1b)Why President Obama Was Awarded the Nobel Prize
By Dennis Prager

The Nobel Peace Prize, already devalued, has sunk to a new low. This assessment has nothing to do with one's estimation of this year's recipient, President Barack Obama. Most of those on the left, with a few predictable exceptions such as the New York Times, regard giving the president the award as belittling him and the prize.

How did this happen? What was the Oslo Committee's motive?

They may be moral idiots, but they are not stupid: I believe that they had two clear aims.

One is to undercut American exceptionalism -- the notion that America has a superior moral value system to that of the "world" (specifically the United Nations and the European Union) and America's willing to use its unique power, alone when necessary, in accordance with that value system. The other is to promote an essentially pacifist agenda.

Here is the entire announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize committee:

1. "The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

Meaning: No more Lone Ranger America.

2. "The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons."

Meaning: The Nobel Committee wants no country to possess nuclear weapons. That an American president shares this dream and is working to achieve it excites the Nobel Committee -- and the world's left generally -- beyond words.

Many people around the world -- not just Americans -- would characterize a world in which America and all other decent countries had no nuclear weapons not as a dream, but as a nightmare. But for the naive left-wing (a redundant phrase: If one is not naive about evil, one is not on the left) members of the Nobel Committee, the prospect of encouraging an American president to dismantle his country's nuclear arsenal was too tempting to allow to pass -- even at the price of appearing foolish.

3. "Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play."

Meaning: To the international left, as embodied by the five members of the Nobel Prize Committee, the United Nations is the beacon of hope for mankind.

To many Americans and others, however, the United Nations is regarded as a moral wasteland that rewards some of world's cruelest regimes with seats on its Human Rights Committee, does nothing to prevent genocides (some would way say the U.N. actually abets them), honoring tyrants, and mired in corruption.

4. "Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts."

Meaning: As the pacifist bumper sticker puts it: "War is not the answer."

Oslo's approach echoes what the British government under Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain believed vis a vis Adolf Hitler. But had Hitler been confronted instead of "dialogued" with, perhaps tens of millions of innocent men and women's lives would have been spared and the Holocaust averted. Europeans tend to believe that evil regimes will act responsibly because of dialogue, not threats of force.

5. "The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations."

Meaning: We believe that a world in which no country possesses nuclear weapons will be a safer world. We believe that even though the technology to make nuclear weapons will still exist, no terrorist organization, nor any other bad people, will make such weapons.

The existence and deterrent power of nuclear weapons have probably saved as many lives as have antibiotics. As David Von Drehle writes in this week's Time Magazine, "If the Nobel committee wants someday to honor the force that has done the most over the past 60 years to end industrial-scale war, they will award a peace prize to the bomb."

6. "Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting."

Meaning: To our delight, unlike the previous president, this one believes in global warming and in changing the American economy to combat it.

The "climate change" scare has become the most effective vehicle for compelling a transformation of Western economies along the lines that left-wing environmentalists have urged for decades.

7. "Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened."

This, unfortunately, has no meaning; it is nonsense. Under Barack Obama, the United States has not been the friend of democrats around the world. America has responded weakly to the democratic movement in Iran, ended the funding of the largest pro-Iranian human rights groups in America, pressured democratic Israel, made overtures to Hugo Chavez while denying American ally and pro-democratic Colombia a free trade agreement, abandoned Honduran anti-Chavez democrats, and has obsequiously deferred to Vladimir Putin.

8. "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future."

Meaning: Only very rarely does the European left have such a kindred spirit in the American presidency.

9. "His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

Meaning: With Barack Obama, we in Europe finally have an opportunity to end American exceptionalism.

The Oslo committee's view is, tragically, true. Thanks to Barack Obama, America is for the first time is aligning its values with those of "the majority of the world's population." If you think the world's population has had better values than America, that it has made societies that are more open, free, and tolerant than American society, and that it has fought for others' liberty more than America has, you should be delighted.



2)Get Nasty or Go Home:The go-light strategy in Afghanistan is a joke. If Obama's serious about victory, it's time to start making unpleasant choices.
BY MICHAEL SCHEUER

One has to admire the ingenuity of the policymakers, journalists, and generals who are desperately seeking to avoid hard decisions on what to do about America's lost war in Afghanistan. Last spring, the Barack Obama administration, Republican leaders, and senior U.S. generals signed on to the fairy-tale prescription spun by David Kilcullen in his book The Accidental Guerrilla. Kilcullen argued that only limited numbers of Afghans were dedicated insurgents and that the great bulk of the United States' enemies in Afghanistan were either hired by the Taliban or intimidated by Takfiri Islamists. Based on this comprehensive surmise -- for which there is scant evidence -- this April's strategy was to "protect" Afghans from bad guys and give jobs to those waging war for wages. Having attained these goals, the strategy held, cleaning up the unpopular Takfiris would be -- like Iraq -- a cakewalk.


Guess what? No cakewalk. Now, Americans are watching a shellshocked Obama administration trying to decide what to do about Gen. Stanley McChrystal's urgent request for 40,000-45,000 additional U.S. troops. The general's request, of course, is an emergency SOS indicating that the U.S.-NATO coalition is close to losing the Afghan war; a four-star U.S. general does not ask for a near doubling of his force to smooth out minor problems.

Thus, not only did the April strategy utterly fail, but the Taliban-led insurgency's trend line is steadily climbing upward, an ascent that began in 2007 and would not be possible without widespread and increasing popular support. Rather than popular support for the Taliban being based on intimidation and money, what we are seeing in Afghanistan is popular opinion catching up with Islamist determination. Until roughly late 2006, the war against the U.S.-NATO coalition was largely fought by the Taliban, other Islamists groups like that led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and al Qaeda. Since then, however, the Islamists have been joined by Afghans who simply do not want Muslim Afghanistan occupied by all sorts of infidels from all sorts of Christian and polytheist countries. In short, an Islamist insurgency has evolved into an Islamist-nationalist freedom struggle not unlike that which beat the Red Army. The best way to see the growth of the Afghan enemy facing the United States and NATO is to track the proliferating number of insurgent attacks in the heretofore quiet and supposedly "friendly" arc of provinces from Herat in the west clockwise to Badakhshan in the far northeast.

Team Obama faces quite a dilemma. McChrystal's plan to stave off defeat by asking for substantial immediate reinforcements -- a request that is still far short of what is needed to "win" in Afghanistan -- is a sure sign that long-term intense fighting and high casualties lie ahead. The United States' latest Nobel Prize winner now has a choice: He must act quickly on the advice of McChrystal and the U.S. intelligence community to save a marooned U.S. Army, or dither behind the harebrained split-al-Qaeda-from-the-Taliban strategizing and let more overmatched U.S. soldiers and Marines die amid the ego-building praise of effete Americans, pacifist NGOs, and the Nobelistas.

For now, dithering seems to be on tap. Last week unnamed administration officials and some commentators began floating a new "strategy" based on the formulation that: (a) the Taliban and al Qaeda are separable; (b) the Taliban does not pose a direct threat to the United States; and, therefore, (c) U.S. forces should fight al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Well, simply put, this strategy makes Kilcullen look like Clausewitz and surely could not have been vetted by the U.S. intelligence community. On point "a," it is no news at all that the Taliban and al Qaeda are separate entities; they always have been and will be. What is important is that they are working in tandem toward the same clear and simple primary goal -- to drive out the United States and NATO, destroy Karzai's corrupt and incompetent regime, and re-establish their Islamist emirate. In working toward this goal, al Qaeda's combat role in Afghanistan has decreased as mujahideen forces -- Afghans, Iraq veterans, and other foreign volunteers -- have grown and become better armed, trained, and funded. This should have been apparent to U.S. officials several years ago when Osama bin Laden named Mustafa Abu al-Yazid as al Qaeda's Afghan commander. Yazid's long-practiced fortes are logistics and finance, and he is now running the main components of al Qaeda's changed but still essential Afghan effort: logistics and training, intelligence collection, and media operations. (Nota bene: This is nowhere near a full commitment of al Qaeda's resources, and its remaining assets are assisting other insurgencies -- such as in Somalia, Algeria, and Yemen -- and preparing coming attacks in the United States and Europe.)

On point "b," one has to wonder what can be meant by arguing that the Taliban does not pose a "direct threat" to the United States. Did the drafters of the new strategy bother to ask the intelligence community whom the United States is fighting in Afghanistan? The Taliban and its allies are unquestionably a direct threat to deployed U.S. military forces -- ask the commander of the U.S. post at Kamdesh, Nuristan, mauled on Oct. 4 -- and they intend to prevent everything Washington cites as a goal in Afghanistan: democracy, secularism, the rule of (Western) law, elections, constitutions, central government institutions, women's rights, coeducational schools, and the annihilation of al Qaeda. By protecting al Qaeda, incidentally, Taliban leader Mullah Omar's outfit is also facilitating a "direct threat" to the continental United States.



It is time to face the facts. The Taliban and its allies have waged an eight-year insurgency against the United States, NATO, and the Afghan government that is growing in geographical reach, battlefield success, and popularity in the Muslim world. As long as U.S. forces are in Afghanistan, this reality will remain the same. The only way to create a less threatening Taliban is for the Obama administration to admit defeat and turn over Afghanistan to Mullah Omar, knowing that he will allow bin Laden and al Qaeda to stay in place and that U.S. defeat will have an enormous galvanizing impact on the Islamist movement around the world.

Point "c" is another mystifier and one that the intelligence community was forced to unsuccessfully pursue by President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s. One must assume Obama and his advisors will not abjectly surrender in Afghanistan, at least not before the 2010 midterm elections. Based on this assumption, the idea of focusing U.S. forces on al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan raises the question of who will fight the still raging Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan while the United States shoots in the dark at al Qaeda targets it cannot locate? The Brits and the Canadians? Massively reinforced NATO contingents? The Afghan National Army and police? India? Not bloody likely. Unless the United States is going to do its al Qaeda hunting Clinton-style from U.S. Navy carriers and submarines and/or Saudi, Iraqi, and Kuwaiti bases -- and thereby be even less successful than it is now -- U.S. forces are unavoidably going to do the bulk of the fighting against the Taliban in Afghanistan while simultaneously hunting al Qaeda.

For the sake of U.S. soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan, let us hope this new strategic formulation is quickly dropped and forgotten and that Washington's focus is refixed on the hard but simple Afghan choice it faces: Because the U.S.-NATO occupation powers the Afghan insurgency and international Muslim support for it, we must either destroy it root and branch or leave. This issue merits debate, but that must wait until McChrystal gets the troops needed to delay defeat. Afterward, only the all-out use of large, conventional U.S. military forces can be expected to have a shot at winning in Afghanistan. Since 1996, the United States has definitively proven that clandestine operations, covert action, Special Forces actions, and aerial drone attacks cannot defeat al Qaeda. It has likewise proven beyond doubt that nation-building in Afghanistan is a fool's errand.

That said, military victory would require 400,000 to 500,000 additional troops, the wide use of land mines (even if Princess Diana spins in her grave), and the killing of the enemy and its civilian supporters in the numbers needed to make them admit the game is not worth the candle. This clearly is not a viable option. We do not have enough troops, and U.S. political leaders, many U.S. generals, and the anti-American academy and media do not think "military victory" is an appropriate or moral goal; their mantra is: "Better dead Americans at home and abroad than criticism from Europe, the media, and the academy."

Overall, then, we are well along the road to self-imposed defeat in Afghanistan, and about the best we can do is give McChrystal the troops he needs to slow defeat. After doing that, we can figure out how to get out of Afghanistan in an orderly manner, while preparing to absorb more al Qaeda attacks in North America.

The Once Noble Nobel Now Ignoble!

Now that our messiah has been awarded the once coveted peace prize for speechifying it is unlikely he can do anything about Iran, not that he ever would have. Can't attack a rogue nation after winning such a prestigious award.

Two friends and fellow memo readers , one Conservative , the other Liberal, sent the following. (See 1 and 1a below.)

My response: This is a great tribute to a great peace maker. He has accomplished so much in his short life and think of all the speeches he had made. Alfred probably turning over in his grave along with Winny.


Actually the Nobel Committee's timing is exquisite. These are the same Norwegians that arranged Oslo, awarded the Peace Prize to Arafat who then followed with killing Israelis and Intifadas. .Their intent must be to ward off an attack on Iran.

Now Obama can just walk to Norway, cut down on airplane pollution and yes, we have to hear another speech.

Off to Pittsburgh to visit son, daughter in law and eat some Sweet Tammys baked goods.

Dick


1)Reasons why he won:
1. He is not George Bush.
2. He took the side of the Arabs over the Jews.
3. He will allow the first Arab Bomb.
4. He is more European than American in his thought process.
5. To the committee, he looks like a black Jimmy Carter.


1a) The Nobel folks can’t be serious. This is the last thing President Obama needed.I don’t know Nobel history, I just know that the optics of this (for conservatives and for our rivals) are the last thing Obama needed.

Deafening Silence Regarding Black on Black Crime!

A Conservative in Academia tells it like he finds it to be. (See 1 below.)

There is nothing comedic about black on black crime and the tragic recent shovel beating to death of a young student by a mob of hoodlums in Chicago but is appears the only one to speak out is Comedian Bill Cosby. This article asks where are the other black voices.

They are silent when it comes to black on black crime but they are quite vocal when it comes to shaking down businesses and protesting just about everything else under the sun. (See 2 below.)

According to the White House Press Secretary, President Obama will soon make the 'right' decision about Afghanistan and it will come after consulting Congress, and all his various advisers.

I am just speculating but I suspect he will go on television and make another speech about why he made the decision that he did.

If he accepts the advice of his general then he will cause gas pains and heart burn among the Liberal element of his party. If he sides with V.P. Biden he will pacify the Left Wing of his party but probably offend many in the Pentagon and possibly endanger the troops already there. If he chooses to do neither and pulls out, which he says he will not, then he will be in a peck of trouble with more hawkish Americans.

If he makes the decision to stay and send the requested number of troops(it will be months before they are dispatched) during this period he will have to buck up public support which is slowly ebbing.

It will be interesting and critical whatever he decides. (See 3 below.)

Blitzer interviews Eric Cantor to get a ranking Republican member's view. (See 4 below.)

The Head of Acorn finds O'keefe's camera's lens were out of focus and therefore, racist. She blames GW for the organization's 'nut case' problems. (See 5 below.)

Henry Kissinger, who helped orchestrate our withdrawal/defeat in N Viet Nam, offers some advice on how to win in Afghanistan.

Personally I never cared for Kissinger. Brilliant yes, but I could never see him eating a hot dog at a baseball game with his sleeves rolled. Thus, I believe he never understood the ramifications of an American defeat in Viet Nam. (See 6 below.)

Spanish Inquisition alive and well. More hypocrisy and anti-Semitism. (See 7 below.)

In yesterday's memo referring to Bret Stephens article I failed to call attention to the fact that it was hypothetical based on his theorizing about what would eventually come to pass in January 2010.


Dick




1)Swimming Upstream: The Life of a Conservative Professor in Academia
By Ron Lipsman

I have been a faculty member at a major State University for 40 years. Several years after my arrival, I voted for George McGovern. Eight years later, I voted for Ronald Reagan. In those eight years, my family and I experienced several traumas that caused me to reevaluate -- and ultimately, drastically alter -- the political, cultural and economic axioms that had governed my life.


Within months of buying my first home in an excellent neighborhood, within walking distance to the University and, most importantly, located in a district with an outstanding local public elementary school, my five year old son was forcibly bussed to an inferior school, many miles away, in a horrible neighborhood in order to satisfy the utopian vision of a myopic federal judge. This betrayal of my fundamental rights was undoubtedly the greatest shock to my political psyche.


Another was a Sabbatical year spent living and working in Jerusalem, during which time the UN issued time the infamous "Zionism is racism" resolution. I was able to observe firsthand that the standard propaganda about Israel and Zionism that was promulgated in America and elsewhere -- almost exclusively by those on the Left that I had formerly supported -- was nothing more than bald-faced, hateful lies. This and other events in the 1970s caused me to rethink everything that I had taken for granted since adolescence about how the world worked.


I emerged from the exercise as an enthusiastic conservative. Thus I was no longer your average faculty member who adhered to the liberal party line, but instead one of a tiny cadre who completely disagreed with the leftist mentality that dominated the thought of campus faculty and administrators.


The overwhelmingly liberal atmosphere on campus is well known. In the one place in society at which there should be diversity of thought, exploration of conflicting ideas and a propensity to challenge conventional wisdom, we have instead a mind-numbing conformity of opinion and a complete unwillingness to entertain any thought or idea that deviates from the accepted truth. That conformity encompasses:


•The legitimacy of virtually any program that promotes the interests of minority and female faculty, staff and students, even if the program is blatantly racist or sexist -- justified by a belief that America's past unjust treatment of blacks, American Indians and Japanese-Americans, and its unfair treatment of women render such discrimination necessary and lawful.
•A multicultural mentality, which preaches that America's Eurocentric, white, Christian heritage is responsible for colonialism, imperialism, racism and sexism, and that its replacement by a culture that "celebrates diversity" will transform the US into a more just and humane society.
•A distrust of free markets and democratic capitalism, and its severe limitation in favor of a centralized, government-controlled economy that will redistribute the wealth of America more fairly.
•A denigration of religious belief and its replacement by the "worship" of secular humanism, with mindless environmentalism occupying a central place in the new religion.


Not being in sync with any of this, how did I cope? Not so well, actually. First of all, it took me a long time to recognize and accept that the university atmosphere I knew as a student was gone. Initially, I was too busy pursuing my career and building my academic resume to notice what a fish out of water I had become.


My epiphany came about 20 years ago at the inauguration of a new campus president. In his acceptance speech, he said many things that seemed bizarre to me, but the comment I recall most vividly was his insistence that he would create a world-class university by building "excellence through diversity." His point seemed to be that by substantially increasing the number of minority and female faculty, staff and students (and consequently decreasing the number of white males), this would of necessity make us a great university.


I always thought that the best way to build a great university was to attract the brightest, most innovative and productive faculty and students -- regardless of their hue -- but I realized at that moment, as the applause for his idea rained down, how out of step I was.


What did I do? To my eternal shame, I ducked. Oh initially, during a painful, but relatively brief period, I contested the new campus consensus. People quickly, but politely, informed me that my ideas were retrograde and that I would be well advised to get with the program. In fact, I was passed over for an administrative position I coveted and for which I was far more qualified than the individual selected. Realizing that my resistance was damaging my reputation on campus, I more or less clammed up and spent more than a decade trying to ignore the poisonous atmosphere.


This less than noble strategy proved effective and eventually I achieved a high administrative position in which I adhered to policies and shepherded programs that were diametrically opposed to my fundamental beliefs. For years I tended to my bleeding tongue because I was constantly biting it during meetings to prevent myself from blurting out my true feelings about the bigoted ideas that constituted the consensus of the folks at the table.


But as I began to near retirement, I decided there was no point in maintaining my forced silence any longer. As I had 15 years earlier, I unburdened myself and let fly my misgivings about the liberal campus hegemony. What happened this time? Here come three novel observations:


•1. To my surprise, my "retrograde" conservative opinions were not met with calumny or derision, but rather with smiles and amusement. "Oh, that's just Ron being Ron," it was said. I wasn't viewed as a threat to the campus philosophy, but rather as some kind of queer duck to be tolerated at best, ignored at worst. This was certainly more pleasant for me than being told to shut up and get your head straight as I anticipated. But it was also incredibly frustrating that colleagues didn't take me seriously. The impression I had was that they felt there was no reason to take my ideas seriously because I was so obviously wrong that no right-thinking person could be swayed by my arguments.


•2. My second observation is that I was not the only one failing to make waves. In fact, there were no waves whatsoever. There was no debate, no controversy; just the calm serenity of a campus at peace with its almost universally accepted mind set. I attribute this to three things. First, of course, anyone raising an objection was viewed, as I was, as hopelessly out of it and worthy only of being ignored. This has a chilling effect, perhaps even more effective than derision. Second, I suspect that those who believed as I did were still in lockdown mode -- for the same reasons as I was over the years. And third, I believe the liberal brainwash has been so effective on campus -- and in the national educational system in general -- that many in the liberal majority can't even fathom that there is anyone who doubts the legitimacy of their point of view.


•3. My final observation is the following. The liberal hegemony exists in many quarters of the country beside academia -- e.g., the mainstream media, major foundations, law schools and the trail lawyers they produce, public school teachers, the Democratic Party, even big corporations. But none of these can maintain the atmosphere as effortlessly as campus profs and administrators. Politicians encounter opposition from their constituents; the media from its readers, listeners and viewers; trail lawyers from their clients; and corporations from their stockholders and consumers. But the educational establishment-both higher and lower-encounters little resistance. The students are ignorant, the parents are cowed, and Boards of Regents are cowardly. The ivory tower is alive and well in America and the intellectual product it presents is completely one-sided. What a tragedy for our nation and especially for its youth.

2)Black Leaders Ignore Black-on-Black Crime
By E.W. Jackson

On Thursday, September 24th, after an apparently productive day at Fengler High School in Chicago, Derrion Albert, a black 16 year old honor student was knocked to the ground by a blow to the head with a railroad tie. He was then punched, kicked and stomped. Those who responded to rescue him were too late.

Derrion had walked into the middle of a fight between two rival black gangs. He attempted to help one of the victims in the melee and was killed for his trouble. This took place in Barack Obama's Chicago. All his work for "social justice" did a great deal for Obama, but it did nothing for Derrion Albert. Of course the President is not responsible for this tragedy, but it does expose the fatuous claim that such occurrences are the result of social injustice rather than the personal choice to engage in lawless behavior. The ghettos, drugs, gangs and violence are on display for all to see in spite of Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Acorn and all the community organizing.

Treating poor black people as victims to be "organized" has been an abject failure. They are human beings to be educated, inspired and required to take responsibility for their own lives. The tragedy here is that Derrion was doing just that and it was working, but the malignant pathology of the ghetto spread to him on that unfortunate day and ended his promising life.

There is another tragedy. The so called black civil rights leaders have been mute. Had this been a white gang attacking a black gang member, they would have jumped in front of every camera and microphone available to decry racism and injustice in America. If it had been a black criminal with a long rap sheet, killed in a confrontation with a white police officer, there would be protests and perhaps riots against systemic racism in the police department.

Yet in this case and others like it, there is a deafening silence from some of the biggest mouths in America. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Julian Bond, Louis Farrakhan and the Congressional Black Caucus see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. When Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested by a white police officer, President Barack Obama -- without any facts -- found it necessary to put in his two cents. Here in Chicago, the salient facts are abundantly clear and a heinous murder has been committed in his home town, but the president is silent. Malicious, homicidal maniacs brutally killed a decent young man on the streets Obama "organized," but he has nothing to say. The self-appointed, media supported "black leaders" have not seen fit to hold a press conference or a rally supporting Derrion Albert and his family and condemning the perpetrators of this vicious crime. They have not called for witnesses to come forward.

There's a reason for their uncharacteristic silence. Derrion's murder does not fit the black liberation narrative. As one civil rights leader said to me, "If we focus on black on black crime, we let white folks off the hook." Never mind that the leading cause of death among black males ages 18 to 24 is homicide by other black males. In one interview before Obama was elected, Michelle Obama commented on threats to Barack Obama's safety saying, "As a black man, Barack can get shot going to the gas station." What she did not say is that his likely killer would be another black man. Blacks are only 13% of the population, but over 40% of the murder victims. Ninety Three percent of those black victims are killed by other black people. As a black man, I am far more wary of the real black criminal than the imagined white racist.

Absentee fathers, abortion, drug use, gangs and black on black crime have a much greater impact on people's lives than theoretical systemic racism, but these issues do not fit the liberal paradigm to which civil rights leaders are hostage. The problems of the black community must be understood solely as a social justice problem inflicted on blacks by whites. No other explanation is worthy of discussion, and woe to those dare suggest otherwise. In truth the civil rights spokesmen have another agenda which supersedes the well-being of black folks -- their personal financial and political well being.

Liberal benefactors and foundations are not interested in addressing social pathologies which can only be eliminated by change of values, stable families and the willingness of fathers to parent their children. The government's coffers are closed to moral judgments and spirituality. Faith in God, parental love and discipline to instill values of decency and responsibility are the antidotes to gangs, crime and drugs. However, allegations of racism, discrimination and social injustice are far more marketable for the Rainbow Coalition and the NAACP.

The people who killed Derrion are monsters. Monsters come in all colors, but these happen to be black. They are not victims. They are cold-blooded criminals with no regard for human life. Maybe when the so called black leaders start speaking out against gangs and criminals as parasites instead of victims of society, there will be fewer real victims like Derrion Albert.

E.W. Jackson is a national radio commentator and President of STAND, Staying True to America's National Destiny.

3)White House: Obama will make up own mind on Afghan
By Anne Gearan


The White House said Tuesday that President Barack Obama considers it "tremendously important" to listen to Congress about the flagging war in Afghanistan but won't base his decisions on the mood on Capitol Hill or eroding public support for the war.

"The president is going to make a decision ��" popular or unpopular ��" based on what he thinks is in the best interests of the country," press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters. As for support from lawmakers, Gibbs said Obama is focused on getting his war strategy right, not on "who's for or who's against what."

Obama met at the White House with leaders of key war oversight and appropriations committees from both parties in the House and Senate. The session was part of a review of the war effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan that is expected to last several more weeks.

A core question is whether Obama will widen the war again after adding 21,000 U.S. troops earlier this year. The top three U.S. military officials overseeing the war favor continuing the fight against an emboldened Taliban and have concluded they need tens of thousands more U.S. troops beyond the 68,000 already there.

The White House has cautioned for weeks that no decision on troops will come until Obama has reviewed all elements of the war effort.

What's clear is there will be no withdrawal of U.S. troops as the war hits a somber eight-year anniversary on Wednesday. Gibbs said Obama made that point personally clear in a meeting last week with his national security team, and the spokesman told reporters Monday: "I don't think we have the option to leave."

Obama planned to open the meeting with lawmakers by giving an update on his review and then taking questions. More than two dozen lawmakers were invited.

Obama's top defense and diplomacy advisers said the United States retains the Afghanistan war goal that he outlined just two months into his presidency ��" to sideline al-Qaida ��" but changing circumstances require a reassessment of how to get there.

A "snap decision" on whether to add more U.S troops would be counterproductive, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday.

"It's important that at the end of the day that the president makes a decision that he believes in," Clinton added.

Divided on Afghanistan, Congress takes up a massive defense spending bill this week even before the president settles on a direction for the war.

Republican Sen. John McCain, Obama's opponent in last year's presidential election and one of the lawmakers expected at Tuesday's meeting, said he thinks it's critical that the administration avoid thinking of the insurgent Taliban and the al-Qaida terrorist network as separate issues.

"If the Taliban returns, they will work with al-Qaida," he said on NBC Tuesday morning. "It's just a historical fact. You can't separate the two. ... I strongly disagree with those who allege those are separate problems. They have worked together in the past and they will work together in the future."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates appealed Monday for calm amid the intense administration debate over the war, and for time and privacy for the president to come to a decision. Gates' remarks stood as an implicit rebuke of the man he helped install as the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for lobbying in public for additional troops Obama may decide to forgo.

"It is important that we take our time to do all we can to get this right," Gates said at an Army conference. "In this process, it is imperative that all of us taking part in these deliberations ��" civilians and military alike ��" provide our best advice to the president candidly but privately."

Gates has not said whether he supports McChrystal's recommendation to expand the number of U.S. forces by as much as nearly 60 percent. He is holding that request in his desk drawer while Obama sorts through competing recommendations and theories from some of his most trusted advisers.

But Gates conceded in a CNN interview that, "Because of our inability and the inability, frankly, of our allies to put enough troops in Afghanistan, the Taliban do have the momentum right now."

The fierce Taliban attack that killed eight American soldiers over the weekend added to the pressure. The assault overwhelmed a remote U.S. outpost where American forces have been stretched thin in battling insurgents, underscoring the appeal from the top Afghanistan commander for as many as 40,000 additional forces ��" and at the same time reminding the nation of the costs of war.

Gates' remarks came days after McChrystal bluntly warned in London that Afghan insurgents were gathering strength.

At issue is whether U.S. forces should continue to focus on fighting the Taliban and securing the Afghan population or shift to more narrowly targeting, with unmanned spy drones and covert operations, al-Qaida terrorists believed to be hiding in Pakistan.

Gates and some other advisers appear to favor a middle path. A hybrid strategy could preserve the essential outline of an Afghan counterinsurgency campaign that McChrystal rebuilt this summer from the disarray of nearly eight years of undermanned combat, while expanding the hunt for al-Qaida next door.

4)Rep. Cantor on CNN
By Tom Bevan


WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Let's speak with a top Republican who was there. Eric Cantor is the minority whip in the House of Representatives.

Congressman, you just came out of that meeting. What was your bottom-line assessment? How did it go?

REP. ERIC CANTOR (R- VA), MINORITY WHIP: Well, Wolf, you know, we were glad to come to the White House. I mean, obviously, this is a huge decision for this president.

A lot of us came out early spring when, in March, President Obama said he was committed to the mission in Afghanistan, to make sure that we dismantled al Qaeda and its extremist allies in the name of U.S. security. And so now what we're hearing is from the commanders in the field an urgent cry for additional troops, and everyone is concerned about the status quo as the situation grows more dangerous for our troops on the ground.

We were here to express our support for the president and his committing to the mission up front, and expressed our support to work with him if he makes the right decision, which is to listen to his commanders in the field who are asking desperately for more troops.

BLITZER: Do you have a problem with what Harry Reid just said, that strategy before resources -- in other words, let the president and his commanders come up with a strategy and then the issue of troops and other resources would be made? Is that a problem for you?

CANTOR: Well, you know, the position I believe that many of us are taking is based upon General McChrystal's report. That is the commander in the field. That is the essence of the recommendations that have worked their way up through the system. I believe that that strategy is on the table for the president to make the decision.

We came here in support of the president's -- president relying on his commanders so that we can execute on our mission, which is going to be a tough one, which is to stabilize that region of the world in the name of U.S. security.

BLITZER: Is it fair to say that the Republicans who were in that room, Congressman, urged the president to implement General McChrystal's recommendations?

CANTOR: I think it is a fair assessment right now that Republicans are committed to supporting this president if he says, yes, I will support our commanders on the ground.

BLITZER: What if he says, no, he says I want to come up with a different strategy, in effect reducing the number of troops? Some say Vice President Joe Biden advances such a strategy.

CANTOR: You know, Wolf, I think now all of us want what's best for this country, and we want to set politics aside and want to put U.S. security first. And I believe that the best move is to look to the commanders in the field.

None of us know better what's possible and what we can accomplish than the commander in the field, as is evidenced by General McChrystal's report. So, if the president chooses to go a different route, you know, it is obviously going to be tough for us, but we'll need to listen to what this president says about how we can succeed in our mission. It is about success in the mission.

BLITZER: Did he give you any indication of a time frame when he'll make up his mind?

CANTOR: There wasn't any definite commitment to a time frame. Obviously, there are many of us who feel that delay does signal uncertainty to the region. It does, I believe, signal uncertainty to the lives we've got on the ground.

This is why it is so urgent, I believe probably reflected in the voice of General McChrystal, who has had a lot of experience, as we know, Wolf, in Iraq with these types of operations, which is why we're here to say we'll support this president in responding to the request of General McChrystal.

BLITZER: What was the major point that you made? I assume you had a chance to say something to the president today, Congressman. Give us a tiny little synopsis of your major point.

CANTOR: I did, Wolf, and I said to the president, look, I mean, it is his decision as commander-in-chief, and obviously a tough one. And I spoke about the political will of this country and how no one likes war. And thank God we have men and women in uniform who will commit -- who will go on the front lines for us.

And I committed to the president to be supportive as possible in building a political case that it's necessary for us to have patience. It's necessary for us to support our commanders on the ground, to give him and his colleagues and the folks in the field what they need to secure their lives, as well as our interests.

BLITZER: Who made the case in that meeting, Congressman, not to send any more troops?

CANTOR: Well, I think it was fairly unanimous that no one wants to leave the region. I think history is fraught with examples of an attempt to try and change the nature of that region unsuccessfully, and then a disappearance of those forces. I don't think anyone wants to do that, but I do think now there are some who want to avoid perhaps the political risk that it's going to take to respond to General McChrystal's request.

BLITZER: All right. Congressman Eric Cantor, thanks very much for joining us.

CANTOR: Thank you, Wolf.

5)ACORN's Lewis suggests opponents are racist


Joseph Curl

ACORN's Bertha Lewis charged Tuesday that accusations about the embattled community organizing group are racist, alleging that a coordinated political effort started by former Bush adviser Karl Rove sought to stop the group from registering minority voters.

"For many years, there've been folks who've disagreed with our ideology or methodology that [have] gone after us," Mrs. Lewis, ACORN's chief executive officer, said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington.

"I mean we, [going back] to 2004, we now see through e-mails from Karl Rove from the previous administration that ACORN itself was targeted, targeted to go after us so that we would stop doing voter registration because it was said that we were moving too many minorities to vote, changing the power dynamics on the local election and that we needed to be stopped."

She also labeled as racist the infamous videos that show ACORN workers advising a man and young woman posing as pimp and prostitute how to circumvent the law. "These new filmmakers, [James] O'Keefe himself, told The Washington Post, 'They're registering too many minorities; they usually vote Democratic; somebody's got to stop them,'" Mrs. Lewis said.

But Mrs. Lewis did not mention that The Post was forced to issue a later correction on the story, saying the quote attributed to Mr. O'Keefe was inaccurate.

6) Deployments and Diplomacy:More troops is a start. But to win in Afghanistan, we'll need help from its powerful neighbors.
By Henry Kissinger

The request for additional forces by the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, poses cruel dilemmas for President Obama. If he refuses the recommendation and General McChrystal's argument that his forces are inadequate for the mission, Obama will be blamed for the dramatic consequences. If he accepts the recommendation, his opponents may come to describe it, at least in part, as Obama's war. If he compromises, he may fall between all stools—too little to make progress, too much to still controversy. And he must make the choice on the basis of assessments he cannot prove when he makes them.

This is the inextricable anguish of the presidency, for which Obama is entitled to respect from every side of the debate. Full disclosure compels me to state at the beginning that I favor fulfilling the commander's request and a modification of the strategy. But I also hope that the debate ahead of us avoids the demoralizing trajectory that characterized the previous controversies in wars against adversaries using guerrilla tactics, especially Vietnam and Iraq.

Each of those wars began with widespread public support. Each developed into a stalemate, in part because the strategy of guerrillas generally aims at psychological exhaustion. Stalemate triggered a debate about the winnability of the war. A significant segment of the public grew disenchanted and started questioning the moral basis of the conflict. Inexorably, the demand arose for an exit strategy with an emphasis on exit and not strategy.

The demand for an exit strategy is, of course, a metaphor for withdrawal, and withdrawal that is not accompanied by a willingness to sustain the outcome amounts to abandonment. In Vietnam, Congress terminated an American role even after all our troops had, in fact, been withdrawn for two years. It remains to be seen to what extent the achievements of the surge in Iraq will be sustained there politically.

The most unambiguous form of exit strategy is victory, though as we have seen in Korea, where American troops have remained since 1953, even that may not permit troop withdrawals. A seemingly unavoidable paradox emerges. The domestic debate generates the pressure for diplomatic compromise. Yet the fanaticism that motivates guerrillas—not to speak of suicide bombers—does not allow for compromise unless they face defeat or exhaustion. That, in turn, implies a surge testing the patience of the American public. Is that paradox soluble?

The prevailing strategy in Afghanistan is based on the classic anti-insurrection doctrine: to build a central government, commit it to the improvement of the lives of its people, and then protect the population until that government's own forces are able, with our training, to take over. The request for more forces by General McChrystal states explicitly that his existing forces are inadequate for this mission, implying three options: to continue the present deployment and abandon the McChrystal strategy; to decrease the present deployment with a new strategy; or to increase the existing deployment with a strategy focused on the security of the population. A decision not to increase current force levels involves, at a minimum, abandoning the strategy proposed by General McChrystal and endorsed by Gen. David Petraeus; it would be widely interpreted as the first step toward withdrawal. The second option—offered as an alternative—would shrink the current mission by focusing on counter-terrorism rather than counter-insurgency. The argument would be that the overriding American strategic objective in Afghanistan is to prevent the country from turning once again into a base for international terrorism. Hence the defeat of Al Qaeda and radical Islamic jihad should be the dominant priority. Since the Taliban, according to this view, is a local, not a global, threat, it can be relegated to being a secondary target. A negotiation with the group might isolate Al Qaeda and lead to its defeat, in return for not challenging the Taliban in the governance of Afghanistan. After all, it was the Taliban which provided bases for Al Qaeda in the first place.

This theory seems to me to be too clever by half. Al Qaeda and the Taliban are unlikely to be able to be separated so neatly geographically. It would also imply the partition of Afghanistan along functional lines, for it is highly improbable that the civic actions on which our policies are based could be carried out in areas controlled by the Taliban. Even so-called realists—like me—would gag at a tacit U.S. cooperation with the Taliban in the governance of Afghanistan.

This is not to exclude the possibility of defections from the Taliban as occurred from Al Qaeda in Iraq's Anbar province. But those occurred after the surge, not as a way to avoid it. To adopt such a course is a disguised way of retreating from Afghanistan altogether.

Those in the chain of command in Afghanistan, each with outstanding qualifications, have all been recently appointed by the Obama administration. Rejecting their recommendations would be a triumph of domestic politics over strategic judgment. It would draw us into a numbers game without definable criteria.

President Obama, as a candidate, proclaimed Afghanistan a necessary war. As president, he has shown considerable courage in implementing his promise to increase our forces in Afghanistan and to pursue the war more energetically. A sudden reversal of American policy would fundamentally affect domestic stability in Pakistan by freeing the Qaeda forces along the Afghan border for even deeper incursions into Pakistan, threatening domestic chaos. It would raise the most serious questions about American steadiness in India, the probable target should a collapse in Afghanistan give jihad an even greater impetus. In short, the reversal of a process introduced with sweeping visions by two administrations may lead to chaos, ultimately deeper American involvement, and loss of confidence in American reliability. The prospects of world order will be greatly affected by whether our strategy comes to be perceived as a retreat from the region, or a more effective way to sustain it.

The military strategy proposed by Generals McChrystal and Petraeus needs, however, to be given a broader context with particular emphasis on the political environment. Every guerrilla war raises the challenge of how to define military objectives. Military strategy is traditionally defined by control of the maximum amount of territory. But the strategy of the guerrilla—described by Mao—is to draw the adversary into a morass of popular resistance in which, after a while, extrication becomes his principal objective. In Vietnam, the guerrillas often ceded control of the territory during the day and returned at night to prevent political stabilization. Therefore, in guerrilla war, control of 75 percent of the territory 100 percent of the time is more important than controlling 100 percent of the territory 75 percent of the time. A key strategic issue, therefore, will be which part of Afghan territory can be effectively controlled in terms of these criteria.

This is of particular relevance to Afghanistan. No outside force has, since the Mongol invasion, ever pacified the entire country. Even Alexander the Great only passed through. Afghanistan has been governed, if at all, by a coalition of local feudal or semifeudal rulers. In the past, any attempt to endow the central government with overriding authority has been resisted by some established local rulers. That is likely to be the fate of any central government in Kabul, regardless of its ideological coloration and perhaps even its efficiency. It would be ironic if, by following the received counterinsurgency playbook too literally, we produced another motive for civil war. Can a civil society be built on a national basis in a country which is neither a nation nor a state?

In a partly feudal, multiethnic society, fundamental social reform is a long process, perhaps unrelatable to the rhythm of our electoral processes. For the foreseeable future, the control from Kabul may be tenuous and its structure less than ideal. More emphasis needs to be given to regional efforts and regional militia. This would also enhance our political flexibility. A major effort is needed to encourage such an evolution.

Concurrently, a serious diplomatic effort is needed to address the major anomaly of the Afghan war. In all previous American ground-combat efforts, once the decision was taken, there was no alternative to America's leading the effort; no other country had the combination of resources or national interest required. The special aspect of Afghanistan is that it has powerful neighbors or near neighbors—Pakistan, India, China, Russia, Iran. Each is threatened in one way or another and, in many respects, more than we are by the emergence of a base for international terrorism: Pakistan by Al Qaeda; India by general jihadism and specific terror groups; China by fundamentalist Shiite jihadists in Xinjiang; Russia by unrest in the Muslim south; even Iran by the fundamentalist Sunni Taliban. Each has substantial capacities for defending its interests. Each has chosen, so far, to stand more or less aloof.

The summit of neighboring (or near-neighboring) countries proposed by the secretary of state could, together with NATO allies, begin to deal with this anomaly. It should seek an international commitment to an enforced nonterrorist Afghanistan, much as countries were neutralized by international agreement when Europe dominated world affairs. This is a complex undertaking. But a -common effort could at least remove shortsighted temptations to benefit from the embarrassment of rivals. It would take advantage of the positive aspect that, unlike Vietnam or Iraq, the guerrillas do not enjoy significant support. It may finally be the route to an effective national government. If cooperation cannot be achieved, the United States may have no choice but to reconsider its options and to gear its role in Afghanistan to goals directly relevant to threats to American security. In that eventuality, it will do so not as an abdication but as a strategic judgment. But it is premature to reach such a conclusion on present evidence.

For the immediate future, it is essential to avoid another wrenching domestic division and to conduct the inevitable debate with respect for its complexity and the stark choices confronting our country.


7) ZOA CONDEMNS SPAIN FOR EXPELLING ISRAELI ARCHITECTS & SOLAR EXPERTS FROM SOLAR POWER COMPETITION




The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has condemned the decision of the government of Spain to expel Israeli architects and solar experts from competing in the finals of the international competition between university architecture departments to design and build a self-sufficient house using solar power. Spain’s Housing Ministry disqualified Ariel University Center of Samaria in Ariel, a Jewish city of over 20,000 people, from competing in the finals. In the words of Sergio Vega, project manager of the competition, Solar Decathlon, “The decision was made by the Spanish government based on the fact that the university is located in occupied territory in the West Bank.” But in fact, there is no EU policy that supports such a practice.



These Jewish architects and solar experts were expelled from the competition after Ariel University Center reached the finals, together with 20 other universities from around the world after two years of collaboration with the competition’s management and the Spanish government. In this framework, the college was even awarded a 100,000 Euro grant by the competition’s organizers to build a model house for the final competition slated to be held in Madrid in June 2010.



The cancellation of the Israeli team’s participation in the competition was urged by an initiative put out by the group so-called Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine as a continuation of the racist academic boycott against Israel being led for quite some time by the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Campaign National Committee (BNC).



Ariel University responded saying that it “rejects with disgust the one-sided announcement.” It claimed the decision “contravenes international law and international charters on academic freedom” and harms 10,000 students at the university, including 500 Arabs” (Giles Tremlett, ‘Spain expels Israeli scientists from solar energy competition,’ The Guardian [London], September 4, 2009).

Ariel University received support from Professor Pascal Rollet of France’s Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Architecture de Grenoble, who wrote in solidarity to the University that “I do not agree with the Spanish decision because the Ariel University’s activities are directed towards academic excellence for peace. Kindly receive my utmost support in this difficult situation” (Yaheli Moran Zelikovich, ‘Spain boycotts Ariel college for being on ‘occupied territory,’ September 24, 2009).



Spain is arguably the most hostile country to Israel in Europe

In 2007, the Madrid municipality of Ciempozuelos cancelled its observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, preferring to highlight what it termed the “genocide of the Palestinian people” by the Jews. In February 2009, El Mundo, a leading Spanish newspaper, published an openly anti-Semitic column by columnist Antonio Gala which identified “Jewish greed” as the cause of the persecution of Jews throughout history. This month, the same newspaper decided to publish an interview with the discredited British Holocaust denier David Irving, found by a British court to be “anti-Semitic and racist,” as part of its coverage of the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War. The Israeli ambassador, Raphael Schutz, who protested the Irving interview, has himself been subjected to anti-Semitic abuse in Madrid, where three men shouted “dirty Jew,” “Jew bastard” and “Jewish dog” at him. According to the 2008 Pew Global Attitudes Project, Spain has the highest level of anti-Semitism in Europe, with more Spanish respondents holding negative than positive views about Jews.


Ignacio Russell Cano, a Spanish journalist, wrote in 2007 that, “In a country whose citizenship leaped into the streets to protest the Lebanon war, carrying swastikas to denounce Israel’s existence as part of the [only] western government congratulated by [Hizballah chief Hassan] Nasrallah himself in one of his fatwa-speeches… no one in Spain – Osama, Chávez, Castro, Putin, and Ahmadinejad – is so heavily attacked by [the government] as Israel.”



ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “We condemn this racist, bigoted and anti-Semitic decision of the government of Spain to expel Israeli academics from a solar energy competition, but we cannot claim to be surprised. Spain has the shameful distinction of the highest levels of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiment in Europe, which is saying something when one considers how awash Europe in general is with such poisonous passions.

“One would think that Spain, would be especially sensitive to targeting Jews, given Spain’s horrific history of the Inquisition, the expulsion of Jews in 1492 and the murder or forced conversion of Jews who remained.

“The effort to boycott the Jewish state of Israel, Israeli institutions and individuals, whatever spurious rationale is offered – no one boycotts Chinese academics because of that country’s genuine and frightening record of repression at home and brutal occupation of Tibet – is nothing other than part of a campaign to demonize Jews and the Jewish state of Israel, period. There are no extenuating circumstances for the Spanish government, especially given its recent record of hostility to Israel.

“This Spanish decision falls within a larger context of subjecting Israel to vicious boycotts – but never any other country on the face of the earth, no matter how genuinely abusive of human rights – and other discriminatory and anti-Semitic activity that has been shown to be rife in the country.

“We call upon the Spanish government to reverse this shameful decision. If they do not, we call upon the U.S. Department of Energy, which is a sponsor of the competition, to terminate its sponsorship forthwith. If this Spanish decision is not rescinded, we urge all people of goodwill to no longer to travel to Spain for either business or pleasure

Israel - The World's Real Enemy and Tiny Bubbles!

A friend and fellow memo reader's view. I told him not to forget about Carter. (See 1 below.)

In its effort to stop an Israeli attack on Iran, Obama is pulling out all stops according to my 'theorizing' friend Bret Stephens' future scenario which goes as follows:.

Allowing a U.N. resolution to pass requiring Israel to become a signatory to the 1970Nuclear Proliferation Agreement and the Middle East to become a nuclear free zone, undercuts Israel's defensive posture.

This decision reverses a previous understanding between Israel and the U.S.

A U. S. diplomat further noted it was inconsistent for Israel to be given a free nuclear pass while we thwarted Iran in their effort to gain nuclear status. Also, Sec. Gates told Israel's Barak, the U.S. would not stand idbly by in the event of an Israeli attack.

If Stephen's future scenario is right perhaps Obama should pull out of Iran and Afghanistan and attack our and the world's real enemy -Israel! Then , and only then, will peace descend upon the world.

All theory but who knows.(See 2 below.)

Remember that corny old song about: "Tiny Bubbles." (See 3 below.)

The end of Assad or wish begets the thought? (See 4 below.)

Mark Penn comments about three critical decsisons that could define Obama's tenure as president. I believe Penn misses the mark by not listing a fourth decision and that relates to Iran. (See 5 below.)


Dick


1) McChrystal has people dying in Afghanistan while Obama dithers. Obama chose this guy, said he would rely on him and then solicits "ideas" from everyone. Obama does not look like a decision maker. He looks like Clinton.


2)How Israel Was Disarmed
By BRET STEPHENS

Jan. 20, 2010

When American diplomats sat down for the first in a series of face-to-face talks with their Iranian counterparts last October in Geneva, few would have predicted that what began as a negotiation over Tehran's nuclear programs would wind up in a stunning demand by the Security Council that Israel give up its atomic weapons.

Yet that's just what the U.N. body did this morning, in a resolution that was as striking for the way member states voted as it was for its substance. All 10 nonpermanent members voted for the resolution, along with permanent members Russia, China and the United Kingdom. France and the United States abstained. By U.N. rules, that means the resolution passes.

The U.S. abstention is sending shock waves through the international community, which has long been accustomed to the U.S. acting as Israel's de facto protector on the Council. It also appears to reverse a decades-old understanding between Washington and Tel Aviv that the U.S. would acquiesce in Israel's nuclear arsenal as long as that arsenal remained undeclared. The Jewish state is believed to possess as many as 200 weapons.

Tehran reacted positively to the U.S. abstention. "For a long time we have said about Mr. Obama that we see change but no improvement," said Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. "Now we can say there has been an improvement."

The resolution calls for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. It also demands that Israel sign the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and submit its nuclear facilities to international inspection. Two similar, albeit nonbinding, resolutions were approved last September by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

At the time, the U.S. opposed a resolution focused on Israel but abstained from a more general motion calling for regional disarmament. "We are very pleased with the agreed approach reflected here today," said then-U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA Glyn Davies.

Since then, however, relations between the Obama administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, never warm to begin with, have cooled dramatically. The administration accused Tel Aviv of using "disproportionate force" following a Nov. 13 Israeli aerial attack on an apparent munitions depot in Gaza City, in which more than a dozen young children were killed.

Mr. Netanyahu also provoked the administration's ire after he was inadvertently caught on an open microphone calling Mr. Obama "worse than Chamberlain." The comment followed the president's historic Dec. 21 summit meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Geneva, the first time leaders of the two countries have met since the Carter administration.

But the factors that chiefly seemed to drive the administration's decision to abstain from this morning's vote were more strategic than personal. Western negotiators have been pressing Iran to make good on its previous agreement in principle to ship its nuclear fuel to third countries so it could be rendered usable in Iran's civilian nuclear facilities. The Iranians, in turn, have been adamant that they would not do so unless progress were made on international disarmament.

"The Iranians have a point," said one senior administration official. "The U.S. can't forever be the enforcer of a double standard where Israel gets a nuclear free ride but Iran has to abide by every letter in the NPT. President Obama has put the issue of nuclear disarmament at the center of his foreign policy agenda. His credibility is at stake and so is U.S. credibility in the Muslim world. How can we tell Tehran that they're better off without nukes if we won't make the same point to our Israeli friends?"

Also factoring into the administration's thinking are reports that the Israelis are in the final stages of planning an attack on Iran's nuclear installations. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who met with his Israeli counterpart Ehud Barak in Paris last week, has been outspoken in his opposition to such a strike. The Jerusalem Post has reported that Mr. Gates warned Mr. Barak that the U.S. would "actively stand in the way" of any Israeli strike.

"The Israelis need to look at this U.N. vote as a shot across their bow," said a senior Pentagon official. "If they want to start a shooting war with Iran, we won't have their backs on the Security Council."

An Israeli diplomat observed bitterly that Jan. 20 was the 68th anniversary of the Wannsee conference, which historians believe is where Nazi Germany planned the extermination of European Jewry. An administration spokesman said the timing of the vote was "purely coincidental."


3)How the Fed Can Avoid the Next Bubble: The central bank needs to watch asset prices and raise rates quickly when it decides the time is right.
By IAN BREMMER AND NOURIEL ROUBINI

Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve face a number of very difficult challenges in the years ahead. They include:

• Resisting pressure to monetize deficits, which would eventually cause high inflation.

• Implementing an exit strategy from the massive monetary easing of the past year.

• Maintaining the Fed's independence, which has been compromised by the direct and indirect bailout of financial institutions and congressional attempts to micromanage the central bank.

• Properly calculating asset prices and the risk of asset bubbles according to the Taylor rule, an important guideline central banks use to set interest rates.

• Supervising and regulating the financial system more effectively, particularly in the role of "systemic risk" regulator.


Chad Crowe .
The first two tasks are closely related. In order to prevent a persistent monetization of deficits that would lead to inflation, the Fed must implement an exit strategy from the unconventional monetary easing that began in late 2008. If the fiscal and monetary stimulus is taken away too soon, there is the risk of relapsing into deflation. If it is taken away too late, we may eventually face a fiscal crisis and an inflationary recession, or stagflation.

The Fed does not control fiscal policy. But to avoid a game of chicken wherein loose fiscal policy forces the Fed to monetize deficits to prevent a spike in bond yields, the Fed needs to pre-emptively state it won't be buying more Treasury bills.

As for the exit from monetary easing, the Fed must learn from the fateful mistake it made after the 2001 recession. Then, the central bank cut the federal-funds rate too much and kept it too low for too long. It also moved far too slowly when the normalization occurred—in small increments of 0.25% from summer 2004 until the summer of 2006, when it peaked at 5.25%. Normalization took two full years. It was in that period of slow normalization that the housing, mortgage and credit bubbles spiraled out of control. The lesson learned: When you normalize, move rapidly, or prepare for another dangerous bubble.

Of course, this is easier said than done. From 2002 to 2006, the Fed moved slowly because the recovery appeared anemic and because of significant deflationary pressures. This time around, the recession is more severe—unemployment is at 9.8% and is expected to peak above 10%, and we are experiencing actual deflation. Therefore, the incentive not to exit too soon will be greater and the risk of creating another bubble is greater. Indeed, the sharp increase in the stock market and commodities, and narrowing of credit spreads since March, are partly due to a wall of global liquidity chasing assets and already causing asset inflation.

If the conflict between economic growth and financial stability requires that monetary policy remain loose, then it is critical that the supervisors and regulators of the banking sector move aggressively to prevent another bubble from emerging. Thus they should quickly adopt the regulatory reforms agreed to by the G-20—including a new insolvency regime for financial institutions deemed "too big to fail," a serious approach to limiting "systemic risk," and appropriate rules governing incentives and compensation for bankers and traders.

It won't be easy to define systemic regulation and too-big-to-fail. There is a significant risk that doing so will provide an implicit guarantee for large and complex financial institutions. There is also a longer-term risk that actions taken by congressional and regulatory agencies will distort global financial markets. Western financial institutions now depend heavily on state financial backing, and several governments have tweaked rules and regulations to support the large financial institutions that are now at least partially taxpayer-owned. Further, governments could increasingly require domestic financial institutions to lend more at home, which will curtail their foreign operations. Creating a system of effective financial regulation—while resisting the impulse to favor domestic institutions—will be a real challenge for most countries, including the U.S.

Over time, once the fed-funds rate is normalized, incorporating asset prices into monetary policy making is also necessary to ensure financial stability. While it is correct that the fed-funds rates may not be the most effective instrument at controlling asset and credit bubbles, excessively cheap money is always a source of such bubbles. So faster normalization of the fed-funds rate will eventually be important.

The Fed's involvement in quasi-fiscal operations creates other challenges. As long as the Fed remains involved in maintaining financial stability and in preventing other episodes of systemic risk, it will be hard to eliminate the perception that the Fed will be involved as a lender of last resort for too-big-to-fail firms. So far, this Pandora's Box remains open.

The way to prevent future moral-hazard distortions is to create a regulatory regime where too-big-to-fail institutions have much higher capital requirements: a greater liquidity buffer, lower leverage, and lower involvement in risky and illiquid investments if they are depository banks. They should be supervised internationally and must be able to be closed down in an orderly fashion should failure loom.

The Fed is currently resisting a Treasury-led effort to review how it is organized out of concern it might forfeit its independence. Yet the governance structure of the New York and other regional Federal Reserve banks left them effectively controlled by large financial institutions last year, so such a review is necessary. While congressional interference in the Fed's jurisdiction is a danger, the recent quasi-fiscal activities of the Fed bear a review.

The Fed also needs a greater regulatory backbone. The Fed had the power to regulate mortgage markets but failed to use this power out of a misplaced deference to laissez-faire attitudes and Wall Street. Regulating mortgage markets requires a careful balance: short-term regulatory forbearance to avoid a greater credit crunch, along with medium-term countercyclical supervisory actions in order to prevent the emergence of further asset and credit bubbles.

Establishing financial stability—in addition to price stability and growth—is the essential role of the central bank. Achieving this goal in a way that avoids moral-hazard distortions, as with the too-big-to-fail finance institutions, and prevents another bubble in the next years will surely be one of the greatest challenges ever faced by the Fed.

Mr. Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, is co-author of the "The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investing" (Oxford University Press, 2009). Mr. Roubini is a professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business and chairman of RGE Monitor.

4)The end of the Assad regime?
By FARID GHADRY

You would not know it if you follow the pro-Assad blogs and the chipper news emanating from Damascus, and you certainly would not know it if you listen to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad himself or see the expediency by which his recent foreign travels have all had a secret economic component seeking foreign investments and aid. The truth is that the Syrian economy is flapping like a dying butterfly.


Between US sanctions, a severe drought in an agrarian-based economy, sustained terror that has caused the migration of over 1 million Iraqis to Syria, political risks promoting "resistance" instead of cooperation, dwindling oil revenues, an alarming increase in Syrian population and a determined new Israeli government, Assad is being squeezed like a Syrian olive for its oil.

Very few people grasp the reality Assad faces now that he has systematically destroyed whatever he inherited from his father through ill-advised policies. Some Middle East analysts are aware of the economic pressure Assad is under, but the extent of the harm his policies have caused the Syrian treasury is largely unknown.

AS IMPORTANT to the piling problems on Assad's shoulders is the latest challenge Iran was confronted with during the G-20 summit last week, regarding the discovery of its secret enrichment plant in Qom. Assad suddenly finds himself burdened by outside forces over which he has no control. Even his most potent tool of terror seems to have gone stale in the face of the overwhelming pressure Iran is facing for its actions.

If Iran catches cold, Assad will sneeze uncontrollably. No other nation provides Syria with the political clout Iran does; not even Turkey's short-lived friendliness, about to expire with the expected ruling party's defeat - an eventuality that the latest Turkish municipal elections show is not far afield.

As such, the pressure mounting on Assad via Iran is yielding far better results for Syrians and the West than the embrace of "dialogue." Assad is about to give under the pressure, and we should, as John Lennon once said, let it be.


As hard-pressed as he is, his illegitimate regime will try to extract some quick concessions in the hope that he continues to rule a country ravaged by structural fault lines Ba'athism decreed to monopolize power. Syrians must hope that the country's 45-year slumber is about to end with the demise of those who knocked the country out.

There is no such thing as a "reformed" violent man or a "reformed" oppressor. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's New York circus tent display, unraveling speeches, and deep satisfaction - quite visible on his face - with how the Lockerbie tragedy ended bear witness to this truth. He may not resort to terror himself, but Libya, through oppression and ignorance, is a breeding ground for a hopeless future generation. I can recite the names of Israeli Nobel Prize winners, but can you imagine one Nobel laureate under the rule of Gaddafi or Assad?

WERE THE international community to alleviate the pressure on Assad today, all we would be doing is resetting the clock for the bomb to explode at a later time. No matter the political arguments made in favor of a Middle East dictatorship, or "stability" as some have the audacity to call it, our moral compass as humans is to help Syrians deliver their country to their people, to introduce governance, accountability and coexistence.

Hate-spewing stability is not the answer to a region already flooded with exclusionary ideologies - which is what the West will be reinforcing if it embraces Assad when history is presenting us with a gift for a permanent and positive change.

Just imagine a Lebanon where Hizbullah's power base could no longer rely on Iran and Syria to provide the incendiary Nasrallah with muscle-flexing, gun-toting missions. Imagine Hamas, looking for Assad in Damascus, finding instead accountable politicians and being forced to become the new PLO's bride or be chastized as a Muslim divorcee. Imagine Israel, for the first time, helping the Syrian and Iraqi democracies without the specter of terror shadowing its successes.

As Orly Halpern wrote in the Jewish Daily Forward, "normalized relations between the countries [Israel and Iraq] are being discussed unofficially." So will relations between Syria and Israel once we establish our own peaceful democracy aided by a willing West.

Will all this come at a price? Certainly. Are we willing to burden ourselves today for a better future for our children? We Syrians are. Our hope is that the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government are, as well.

The writer comes from a prominent Syrian family who emigrated to Lebanon after it clashed with the Ba'ath party. Ghadry, along with other in-country activists, started the Reform Party of Syria (RPS) whose goals are to rebuild the country on the principles of economic and political reforms that will usher in democracy. In 2007, Ghadry, by invitation, addressed the Knesset in support of the vision of RPS.

5)Crossroads to action
By: Mark Penn


We are in the midst of the Obama administration’s most important week to date, as it faces three decisions that, taken together, could very well shape its legacy.

In Round One of the financial crisis earlier this year, the administration made split-second decisions involving hundreds of billions of dollars across the financial and auto sectors. Right or wrong, the administration acted quickly and took the position that it would spend whatever it took to stave off collapse. It was decisive, it was bold and it telegraphed some much-needed confidence in an uncertain time.

But on health care, the administration has seemed notably less assured — buffeted by contentious forces on the left and the right. The likely result of the months of debate is a plan greatly scaled back from the president’s original ambitions.

The president’s best option is to take what he can get on health care and call it a day. This seems to have been the intent of his speech before Congress, in which he asked for a public option but failed to issue a veto threat should Congress decline to deliver one. Anyone listening closely heard the death knell of the public option that night; few swing congressmen or senators would vote for a plan that could cost them next November without the full and unreserved backing of the administration.

The second key decision is whether to send more troops to Afghanistan. The administration has created an aura of profound thought and weighty consideration. The president is on record that this was the “forgotten war on terrorism” and “a war of necessity” as he sought to contrast his position on Afghanistan with Bush’s Iraq policy. And he is facing a detailed request from the commander he appointed to wage a new war with a fresh strategy.

Americans don’t like foreign wars (no matter how necessary), so many of us would breathe a sigh of relief if the president decided to scale back our commitment in Afghanistan. But such a decision will have to prove wise in the long term, or the administration will pay a high price for it. Scaling back means the remaining American soldiers might be seen as being at even greater risk, and this time it won’t be Bush’s responsibility. This war is against the Taliban rulers who knowingly harbored terrorists who struck the United States, killing thousands. And Iran will be watching the decision carefully, gauging America’s strength or weakness.


The third decision the administration will be faced with is whether to launch a new stimulus package. Unemployment continues to creep up and is likely to soon hit the 10 percent tripwire. And while companies have reduced their payrolls, they are not growing on the top line, and the result is worsening job outlook. This is the most devastating result of the economic crisis that started with subprime mortgages and Wall Street arbitrage — persistently high unemployment.

From a strategic standpoint, it is that unemployment and how it is handled that will most likely determine the political fate of the administration. Joblessness is where economics and politics converge; while banking regulation and deficit reduction are certainly significant issues, no statistic is more vital in human or political terms than unemployment. And no decision is more critical for the president’s political future than how he moves to bring it back down — even if the fault rightly lies with the past administration’s neglect of the brewing financial storm.

Having chosen to spend what it takes to get us out of the recession, the president should not diverge from that basic direction at this point unless he wants to jeopardize essentially all the economic capital he has built up. In the polls, he’s losing steam as the one to handle the economy, but if he reasserts his positions and his policies, he can regain momentum, even in the face of higher unemployment.

These three decisions are critical for President Barack Obama: 1) accepting a more incremental approach on health care; 2) setting the Afghanistan war strategy and 3) launching a second job-oriented stimulus. I think the course is clear on all three of these, but no matter what route he chooses to take, the most important element here is that the president make these decisions, communicate them to the public and stand by them.

In campaigns, it is easy to issue policy papers; in government, you have to choose the policies. In Round One, the president chose stimulus, more troops to Afghanistan and a bold vision of health care reform. Now it’s time for the much tougher, and potentially politically costly, decisions of Round Two.

Mark Penn, the CEO of Burson-Marsteller and Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, has been a pollster and an adviser to President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.