Articles by Glen Tschirgi

It appears that the showdown between Hamid Karzai and ISAF may finally be here.

An article in today’s Washington Examiner leads with this:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s call to ban private security contractors and dismantle the NATO teams helping to rebuild the country is a high-stakes ploy that will make efforts to aid the Afghan people and contain the Taliban insurgency even more difficult, experts said. Karzai made the announcement in Germany over the weekend, saying it was part of his plan to speed up the process of withdrawal by foreign countries in the coming year. The reconstruction teams operate outside the Karzai government’s control in helping to build schools and provide basic services in remote parts of the country. The level of corruption inside the Afghan government is so high that many officials — both Western and Afghan — say the jobs can’t be done under Afghan government control.

U.S. officials in Afghanistan have not criticized Karzai’s statement, downplaying any suggestion it represented a rift between NATO and the Afghan government. U.S. Army Lt. Col. John Dorrian, spokesman for the International Security Assistance Forces, said “ISAF and President Karzai share the same goal of building capacity within the Afghan government to provide security and government services to the Afghan people. We will continue to support his efforts to eliminate the need for private security firms and provincial reconstruction teams, because they provide services that ultimately the Afghan government must provide.”

For Karzai, a public flirtation with the Taliban, while hastening divorce proceedings with the West, makes good internal politics.

“Karzai realizes that time for him is running out with the 2014 deadline looming,” one U.S. official said. “Karzai is beating his chest to show that he is not in the pocket of the U.S. Unfortunately, he has filled his pockets with the money of the Afghan people.”

The point has been made many times and in many places, but here we have a fresh example of why it is so self-defeating to announce dates of withdrawal.  Not only does it motivate the enemy by feeding the belief that they can outlast us, but it creates a political vacuum as the withdrawal date looms.

Whatever one may think of Karzai as a leader or ally against the Islamofascists, he has at least gotten this much right: if he is going to continue as head of the Afghan government (and keep his head, literally), he needs to build his own power base and legitimacy that does not depend upon American support.  In the long run, that is a good and necessary development.   In the short term, when the Afghan government and military are too weak to resist Islamist attacks, such thinking works directly counter to our efforts and makes victory that much harder to secure.

A military official, who works closely with reconstruction teams in the nation’s dangerous southern provinces, said that Karzai’s grandstanding on issues like taking control of reconstruction teams “is hurting the mission.” The official said that corruption in the local and national government has hampered efforts to bring needed supplies and services to the Afghan people.

“This shouldn’t be about politics and trying to play nice with Karzai,” the U.S. military official said. “The Afghan people don’t trust Karzai, so they don’t trust us because we support him. Our soldiers and Marines have given everything. What for, if we’re not going to finish what we started and do what we need to do to get the job done.”

It is worth pointing out, as well, that for all of the back-tracking and recent talk about staying committed to Afghan security, the Obumble Administration has not done a very good job convincing Karzai that the U.S. can be relied upon for support after 2014.

Time for a showdown

This is an intolerable situation for the U.S.  It is time for a showdown of sorts with Karzai.

Karzai and his cronies have been shrewd enough to realize that most NGO’s and private firms cannot function in Afghanistan without security.   By shutting down the private security firms, Karzai has made himself the only game in town.  These aid agencies are literally at Karzai’s mercy and can easily be intimidated and bent to his will.

The U.S. and ISAF are the only, other rivals in the game.  It stands to reason that any activities undertaken by these forces are effectively outside of Karzai’s control and, by extension, corruption.  Karzai is embarking on a campaign to terminate or re-route every aid project not under his control.

Rather than allow that to continue, however, the U.S. and ISAF must keep the PRT’s and any, other effective aid organizations (such as the one Tim Lynch works for) under their protective cover– or at least away from Karzai’s.

Furthermore, not only should the U.S. continue direct funding to the PRT’s (to the extent that they are effective) and maintain their autonomy, the U.S. should re-direct, over some period of time, a greater share of funding directly to local, U.S. military commanders.

Battalion and company commanders in Iraq proved extremely adept at using their so-called “emergency funds” to leverage their positions in their area of operations.  Commanders in Afghanistan can be trusted with the money to a far greater degree than the Karzai government, and these commanders, at the ground level, will know how best to use it.

The only question is how far Karzai is willing to go to challenge this sort of thing.

Right now the U.S. military and the ISAF are the only things that work even half-effectively in Afghanistan.  We can maximize this asset if we by-pass the Karzai government and put the aid directly into the hands of our commanders, giving them the broad discretion to use the money as they see fit, including the ability to hire contractors for aid projects and development and, if appropriate, hiring local security forces as a multiplier.

Will Karzai order the ANA or ANP to confront the U.S. military?  Not likely.  The U.S. and ISAF are providing much of the training of the Afghan security forces; they heavily depend upon U.S. officers and logistics.

The U.S. can and should continue to talk a good game.  Like Lt. Col. Dorrian, the unified message should be that we support the goal of a strong Afghan government and the rule of law.   The unspoken message— the message privately conveyed to Karzai– is that they have yet to demonstrate a readiness to handle aid money and aid projects necessary at this time to win the war.

If the U.S. is not willing to do this, then it is simply a question of time until Karzai has so hamstrung our efforts there that a 2014 withdrawal is no longer an option but an inevitability.

Do not misunderstand: I do not favor staying in Afghanistan on a permanent basis.  But the U.S. cannot afford to leave in abject defeat, either.

Today’s post gets its launching point from an article by Barry Rubin in which Mr. Rubin sounds a very dire note for the prospects of anything like a pro-Western democracy emerging from the unrest in Egypt.

There is no good policy for the United States regarding the uprising in Egypt but the Obama Administration may be adopting something close to the worst option. This is its first real international crisis. And it seems to be adopting a policy that, while somewhat balanced, is pushing the Egyptian regime out of power. The situation could not be more dangerous and might be the biggest disaster for the region and Western interests since the Iranian revolution three decades ago.

All this may very well be the case and there is no good reason that, with this President, the worst will come to pass.

But this observation is particularly instructive, if true:

Look at Tunisia. The elite stepped in with the support of the army and put in a coalition of leadership, including both old elements and oppositionists. We don’t know what will happen but there is a reasonable hope of stability and democracy. This is not the situation in Egypt where the elite seems to have lost confidence and the army seems passive.

Add to this Mr. Rubin’s observation that

There is no organized moderate group in Egypt. Even the most important past such organization, the Kifaya movement, has already been taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood. Its leader until recently was Abdel Wahhab al-Messiri, a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a virulent antisemite.

****

That is not to say that there aren’t good, moderate, pro-democratic people in Egypt but they have little power, money, or organization. Indeed, Egypt is the only Arab country where many of the reformers went over to the Islamists believing-I think quite wrongly-that they could control the Islamists and dominate them once the alliance got into power.

Nothing would make me happier than to say that the United States should give full support for reform, to cheer on the insurgents without reservation. But unfortunately that is neither the most honest analysis nor the one required by U.S. interests. In my book, The Long War for Freedom, I expressed my strong sympathy for the liberal reformers but also the many reasons why they are unlikely to win and cannot compete very well with the Islamists.

In all of the justified gloom over the prospects of Islamofascists coming to power in Egypt, the situation need not be as hopeless as Mr. Rubin and others fear.  As Mr. Rubin notes, the biggest difference between the unrest in Egypt and that in Tunisia is an “elite [that] seems to have lost confidence” and an army that “seems passive.”

Furthermore, there are pro-democracy groups and moderates in Egypt.  The problem is that they are weak, underfunded and disorganized.

Do you think this is something that the U.S., with its vast resources and connections to the Egyptian military might be able to remedy?

The urgent need for the people of Egypt and for U.S. interests is an all-out effort, behind the scenes and out of the public eye, to rally the moderate, non-Islamofascist groups in Egypt, with quick infusions of money and communications equipment, while making the necessary connections to the Egyptian military.

Publicly, the U.S. does seem rather limited.  Despite Obama’s naive speeches to the “ummah,” the Egyptian people have no significantly better opinion of the U.S. in 2011 than it did in 2008.  Privately, however, there is still great potential for the U.S. to aid in transitioning power away from the widely-hated Mubarak regime and toward some form of less-authoritarian leadership, backed by the military, that will promise free and fair elections.   Of course, the Islamofascists will no doubt contend for elections.  The U.S. must be prepared to back those parties that hold out the best hope of resisting the radical Islamists.   There is no reason for the U.S. to be passive, a grave mistake we made in Iraq and in Gaza.   Again, it need not be public but we should ensure that pro-democracy groups not be at any disadvantage to the Islamofascists.

The Third Way

To hear pundits such as Barry Rubin and others talk there appears to be only two options: full support for authoritarians friendly to the U.S. or support for popular uprisings regardless of the potentially disastrous consequences.

The dearth of strong, pro-democracy groups and leaders in Egypt points to a far more disturbing problem: the United States’ abject neglect of democracy in the Middle East.   As discussed in an earlier post, our neglect of democracy is a national disgrace.   It is inconceivable that over 60 years could have passed by without the development of credible pro-democracy groups in Egypt, and elsewhere in the Middle East.

This suggests a “third way” for U.S. foreign policy:  a two-track strategy that both recognizes the necessity for dealing with authoritarian regimes while also taking positive action to change those very regimes, preferably from the inside out.

The first track is to acknowledge– though not necessarily approve– the existing, authoritarian governments that are not openly hostile to the U.S.  There is an important distinction here that no authoritarian government, Middle East or no, can truly be counted as “friendly” to the U.S.   Authoritarianism, in whatever form, is antithetical to American values and to U.S. interests, even when it takes the guise of regimes that offer cooperation with some U.S. objectives in the world.

A true ally is a nation sharing our core beliefs in human rights, free expression and free exercise of religion– basic Western Democracy.   Excluding Obama’s disgraceful and curious treatment, Great Britain has historically been our closest ally — ignoring those, minor  spats in 1776 and 1812.   Nations with these common values are natural and easy allies:  Canada, Australia and Israel, for example.

Even nations new to the family of freedom–what Donald Rumsfeld termed the “New Europe” of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic– share a great affinity despite cultural differences.  These newly freed nations of Eastern Europe were all too familiar with the high price of freedom and its precious nature.

In this first track of foreign policy, the U.S. can justifiably acknowledge Middle East regimes that are not openly hostile to the U.S. without counting them “allies” and certainly without bowing to them (as Obama did with the Saudis in 2009).   Most importantly, to the extent that we provide military or other aid, it must come with clear strings attached.  Which brings us to the second track of U.S. policy.

The second track insists that any U.S. aid is accompanied by the development of democratic foundations.  This may take different forms in different places, but, in general, the U.S. should act on the firm conviction that every nation is either moving in the direction of greater freedom and human rights or in the direction of greater oppression and tyranny.

The U.S. will do all that it can to nurture leaders and institutions that subscribe to the core values of Western Democracy, for the day that will inevitably come when the authoritarian regime passes away.   In an ideal world, the authoritarians peacefully relinquish control and a transition is made to a democratic republic.   In a less than ideal world, the regime is pushed out and the U.S. will do all that it can to ensure that the new government is established with core, democratic values.

To be sure, we have to take the world as we now find it and not as we would wish it to be.  The U.S. has squandered decades in “stability operations.”   In football parlance, we call that “playing not to lose.”  It is not a winning strategy in football and it is surely not a winning strategy in global politics.   When we look at Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan and Gaza, maintaining the status quo is simply not an option.

Turning to Egypt, the U.S. should be doing everything it can right now to identify every, plausible democratic leader in Egypt– scattered and disorganized as they may be– and pour every helpful resource into them.   At the same time, the U.S. should be using every contact and channel it has with member of the Egyptian military to forge effective alliances with the democratic groups to serve as a bulwark against the Islamofascists.

Assure the military that they will have full U.S. support if they back the pro-democracy groups.   Sponsor public information campaigns by these democratic groups that blankets Egypt with the message that only an open and free society with full human rights for all– men and women — will make any real, lasting difference for Egypt.   Link these messages with one or more parties or coalitions that people will be able to readily identify and associate with these messages of freedom.   Once the message has achieved a certain “market penetration,” the military can then announce, however subtly, that it would support a national referendum to elect an assembly to begin drafting a constitution.   In the meantime, the military will keep order.   If possible, one or more of the democratic leaders will be appointed to lead the government on an interim basis.

It’s not perfect.  Much could go wrong, but this is the kind of fight that America needs to be about.  Unlike the passive stance adopted by Obama and other Realists, we cannot sit on the sidelines and hope that genuine democracy will somehow spring up.   It won’t.   The Islamofascists are too well organized and too ruthless to fail to take advantage of a chaotic situation.

The U.S. must do all that it can– by necessity behind the scenes given our poor public image in the Middle East– to promote genuine voices of democracy that can truly eventually be called allies.

Why bother?  What is the urgency?  Simply this: the freedom that we know in America is a revolutionary concept in this dark world, and it is under assault everywhere.  If we value our own freedom, we must have the courage to export the American Revolution everywhere we can.   Not at the point of a gun, that is a sign of failure (though, as in Iraq, a sad necessity).   We are not conquerors, we are liberators.   We need not be ashamed.   People want freedom.  It may take much longer in some places, but we should never yield the stage to the dark doctrines of oppression as our default posture.

UPDATE:  Michael Totten recently posted his interview with Abbas Milani, the director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution.

In response to the a question about the development of Iran during the 1960’s and 70’s and the rise of radicalism in Iran, Milani elaborates:

We had a class of brilliant Iranian technocrats, many of them educated in the United States, including right here at Stanford. They put into effect a remarkable process of industrialization that by 1970 was bearing fruit. These people demanded political rights, and the Shah, instead of opening the country, clamped down with the one-party system.

I am absolutely convinced that in 1975, when he was at the height of his power, if the Shah had made just a third of the concessions he later made in 1978, we would be looking at a very different Iran today.

MJT: It was too late in 1978.

Abbas Milani: What Mubarak and the Shah both failed to understand is that if you make concessions when you’re weak it just increases the appetite for more concessions. If they would have made concessions when they were in a position of power, they could have negotiated a smooth transition to a less authoritarian government.

In Egypt, when the US pressured Mubarak to announce that he would not run again, that he should come out publicly and say he has cancer and that there will be a free election soon, he instead tried to create a monarchy.

MJT: He wants his son to succeed him.

Abbas Milani: The reverse happened to the Shah. He also had cancer, but he hid it from everybody. He had a son who was then eighteen years old. If he had given up the throne and created a regency in 1977, as some had advised him to do, instead of making concessions under pressure in 1978 when all hell was breaking loose, I could easily imagine a different Iran.

What could America have done differently? Milani discusses the long-term mistakes that the U.S. made in dealing with Iran and the Shah in particular:

MJT: Jimmy Carter often gets blamed for Khomeini coming to power in Iran. Do you think that’s fair? What could he have done to stop it?

Abbas Milani: I don’t blame the revolution on Jimmy Carter, but I think he does bear some responsibility. He could not develop a cohesive policy. He wasn’t paying attention to Iran. He was preoccupied with Camp David. He couldn’t bring Cyrus Vance and Zbigniew Brzezinski into a cohesive position. He kept vacillating from one extreme to another. This only exacerbated the American inability to understand what was going on.

The failure to understand what was going on dates back to the Lyndon Johnson years. The Johnson administration succumbed to pressure from the Shah to cease all contact with the opposition inside Iran. The US remarkably even agreed not to contact a former prime minister because the Shah didn’t trust him. The Shah even created a diplomatic row when a former Iranian ambassador was invited to a party. Not to a secret meeting, but to a party.

Because the US was involved in Vietnam and had listening centers in Iran monitoring Soviet activities, and because Iran was flush with cash in 1972 and was willing to sign contracts with American companies, the US agreed to cease contact. Yet the CIA predicted an Iranian revolution as early as 1958. And what they said would happen is almost exactly what happened. They said Iran’s rising technocratic class, the teachers, and the new urbanites are all disgruntled and that if the government doesn’t open up the system they’ll find any leader they can and topple the Shah.

The Kennedy administration pressured the Shah to make changes that were based on the standard modernization theory. You modernize the infrastructure, you educate the people, you create a better economy, and you open up the system politically. Kennedy pushed the Shah toward this and the Shah complied. He himself wanted to make changes. He wanted to make Iran a better place. The Kennedys hated the Shah. Bobby Kennedy absolutely despised him. John Kennedy disliked him, if not outright hated him.

But just as the economic changes were bearing fruit, making political change more necessary, the oil price shot up. Nixon came in and made the decision to cease pressuring the Shah. The Shah had stopped listening anyway because he had all the money he needed.

Carter came in and renewed the pressure for democratization, but he renewed it at the worst possible time, when the economy was diving. Iran was borrowing money that year. The Shah went from giving away a billion and a half dollars to borrowing 700 million from Chase Manhattan. So the economy was diving, the Shah’s health was deteriorating, and suddenly the suppressed opposition felt that the Shah was fair game because Carter was talking about human rights.

MJT: But what should Carter have done instead? Are you saying he was he wrong to talk about human rights?

Abbas Milani: No, he should have talked about human rights, but he also should have understood that you have to go step by step. Concessions need to be made in a timely fashion from a position of power. Carter should have made it clear that he was for change, but not for change at any price. Brzezinski understood this much better than anyone else in the administration but didn’t get his way. And on the other side we had the Shah undergoing chemotherapy and his endogenous paranoia, depression, indecisiveness and vacillation. The result was disaster.

When asked by Totten what Milani would advise Obama to do in the current crisis in Egypt, he had this to say:

Abbas Milani: …

I would say to President Obama that he must make it clear to Mr. Mubarak that he must clearly and categorically say he won’t run again and that his son won’t run, that he will turn over the daily affairs of the state to a coalition of opposition parties. There might be a chance for a gradual transition and the absorption of the elements of the Muslim Brotherhood that really are moderate.

If this doesn’t happen, if Egypt goes into a protracted period of lawlessness, or if there is a Balkanization of the society, Mubarak will do a tremendous disservice to Egypt, to democracy, and to the United States. He’s going to put the United States in a very difficult situation.

The most important lesson that needs to be learned is that the United States must push its allies to make concessions when they are in a position of power, not when they are in peril.

The majority in Turkey, Egypt, and Iran once accepted the notion that enlightenment, democracy, modernity, reason, and the rule of law were good things, that the West has used these things to good purpose, and that we in the Muslim world should find our own iteration of them and catch up. Now the radical fringe is much stronger and directly challenges this. They say they do not want reason, they want revolution. They don’t want laws, they have the Koran. They don’t want equality because the Koran says there is inequality and they abide by the Koran. They say they don’t want democracy, that it’s a trick of the colonial Crusaders.

Thirty years ago people laughed at these ideas. Now they’re being said more and more often and openly. If the Muslim Brotherhood wins, or if Egypt becomes democratic…

MJT: It’s a big deal either way, isn’t it?

Abbas Milani: It is. Because it is Egypt.

(Emphasis Added)

This interview clearly shows why the U.S. cannot afford to take a passive approach with authoritarian “allies.”  In the end, we lose the “ally” to extremists, lose all credibility we should have as democratic revolutionaries and, perhaps, lose a bit our soul as well.

Although this information has been out since last year, in view of the $1.5 Trillion Deficit for 2011 projected by the Congressional Budget Office, it is well worth taking another look at this, updated report from The Cato Institute (and the accompanying video), titled, “New CBO Numbers Re-Confirm that Balancing the Budget Is Simple with Modest Fiscal Restraint.”

(Hat tip to Instapundit).

Here is the money quote:

Many of the politicians in Washington, including President Obama during his State of the Union address, piously tell us that there is no way to balance the budget without tax increases. Trying to get rid of red ink without higher taxes, they tell us, would require “savage” and “draconian” budget cuts.

The Congressional Budget Office has just released its 10-year projections for the budget, so I crunched the numbers to determine what it would take to balance the budget without tax hikes. Much to nobody’s surprise, the politicians are not telling the truth…

The chart below shows that revenues are expected to grow (because of factors such as inflation, more population, and economic expansion) by more than 7 percent each year. Balancing the budget is simple so long as politicians increase spending at a slower rate. If they freeze the budget, we almost balance the budget by 2017. If federal spending is capped so it grows 1 percent each year, the budget is balanced in 2019. And if the crowd in Washington can limit spending growth to about 2 percent each year, red ink almost disappears in just 10 years.

When was the last time that our political leaders found the spine to balance the budget?

… I also examined how we balanced the budget in the 1990s and found that spending restraint was the key. The combination of a GOP Congress and Bill Clinton in the White House led to a four-year period of government spending growing by an average of just 2.9 percent each year.

Mr. Mitchell perhaps gives Bill Clinton and the GOP Congress too much credit.  Recall that the 1990’s involved huge cuts to the Defense budget (which came back to haunt us later).  The savings in Defense outlays was plowed into all sorts of domestic goodies for both Clinton and Congressional constituencies, but the fact remains that the politicians somehow managed to keep overall spending down even in the midst of increasing revenues from a booming economy.

The lesson seems clear:  get the Federal budget in line with revenues and start reducing the overall, Federal debt.   This seems to be experience elsewhere in the world:

We also have international evidence showing that spending restraint – not higher taxes – is the key to balancing the budget. New Zealand got rid of a big budget deficit in the 1990s with a five-year spending freeze. Canada also got rid of red ink that decade with a five-year period where spending grew by an average of only 1 percent per year. And Ireland slashed its deficit in the late 1980s by 10 percentage points of GDP with a four-year spending freeze.

No wonder international bureaucracies such as the International Monetary fund and European Central Bank are producing research showing that spending discipline is the right approach.

As Mr. Mitchell’s article notes, fixing the deficit is not a complicated matter.  It simply requires our elected leaders to say no to the ever-growing wish lists of the Left and the President.

Hopefully the new Congress is up to the task.

Poor Obama.  This just isn’t what he signed up for when he decided that the World needed him to heal the planet and slow the rise of the oceans.

All those pesky, little people, yearning to be free.  They just keep fouling up his Plan to make the World love him, er,  America, again.

Every time Obama finds a nice authoritarian that he can work with, those darn democracy types throw the guy out or at least threaten to do so.  In Tunisia, for example, the ambassador sent by Obama as the point man for U.S. policy there, had many fond things to say in 2010 about the now-defunct authoritarian regime.

Now comes this Reuters article by Matt Spetalnick and David Alexander, “Obama Ratchets Up Pressure On Egypt,” to further highlight what a tough time Obama is having with the protests against his buddy Mubarak in Egypt.

President Barack Obama called on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Thursday to make “absolutely critical” political reforms, ratcheting up pressure on a key U.S. ally in the face of street protests seeking his ouster.

Weighing in for the first time after three days of Egyptian unrest, Obama was careful to avoid any sign of abandoning Mubarak but made clear his sympathy for demonstrators he said were expressing “pent-up frustrations” after decades of authoritarian rule.

Yes, one can imagine that after “decades” of authoritarian rule the people might have some “pent up frustrations.”  What kind of tongue-lashing did Mubarak get, exactly?

“I’ve always said to him that making sure that they are moving forward on reform — political reform, economic reform — is absolutely critical for the long-term well-being of Egypt,” Obama said as he answered questions from an online audience on the YouTube website.

Whoa!   That’s mighty strong talk, Mr. President.  Too bad Obama was not around in the 1970’s.   He might have said the same thing to Brezhnev after decades of authoritarian rule in Eastern Europe and saved the U.S.S.R. the trouble of collapsing on itself.  Talk about healing the planet!

Be careful, Hosni.  Barack might not send you a birthday present this year.   (Sadly, you will not be getting that bust of Winston Churchill that he was dying to unload).

How has that steady pressure by Obama worked out? According to the Reuter’s article:

Mubarak has rarely heeded U.S. pressure before over his government’s behavior, and it remains to be seen whether tougher language will translate into anything of substance.

Not fair, that.  Obama is trying to give Mubarak some tough love, but sometimes you just have to let a strong ruler figure things out on their own.

Then there is this:

U.S. influence at the street level in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world is also minimal. Anti-American sentiment remains high despite Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world and his efforts to ease hostility toward Washington generated by his predecessor George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

The administration is also hemmed in by its desire to avoid the impression of further U.S. interference in the region. Bush’s “freedom agenda” was widely reviled in the Arab world.

What???

That pesky “Arab street” again.   How could they have resisted the prophetic magic of the Great Orator’s 2009 speech?  Hasn’t Obama won them over with his teleprompter turn-of-phrase and smooth delivery?  According to the Reuters article, not so much.

Next we read that the “administration is hemmed in” because it cannot afford to be seen as interfering in authoritarian’s business.   Yes, that would be bad.   Afterall, the article notes, everyone knows that “Bush’s ‘freedom agenda’ was widely reviled in the Arab world.”

Funny thing about that, though.  Widely reviled?  Perhaps Spetalnick and Alexander suffer from a common ailment of the Left: revisionist memory syndrome.  Despite the undeniable unpopularity of the 2003 Iraq invasion, those pesky Arab people were surprisingly supportive of that Bush “freedom agenda.”

Strange, the average Arab seemed to strongly support democracy even while disapproving of U.S. “interference” in the region.   That darn Bush again!  He was just not sophisticated enough to realize that Arabs won’t support freedom if you interfere.

An excellent piece by Larry Diamond of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution is well worth a read in this regard.   Mr. Diamond has the audacity to suggest that more interference, not less, is the way to inspire greater democracy in the authoritarian Middle East.

Sadly, it seems that Obama, like much of the Left, is far more comfortable with authoritarianism than with the messy apparatus of democracy.  Time and again, the Obama Administration has failed to strongly condemn even the most brutal authoritarian regimes like Iran.

Why?  Ultimately it may be due to a basic worldview where it is far easier, in Obama’s mind, to effect change through one, strong, all-powerful ruler, than through persuasion of large groups of independent-minded people.  This is Obama’s approach, in general, to domestic policy as well.  He strongly favors Big Government solutions and is not afraid to act unilaterally (such as the FCC net-neutrality and EPA carbon emission rules) where Congress refuses to go along quietly.   It has been widely noted that Obama has a disturbing tendency to make himself the focus of everything he says or does.

In short, Obama treats authoritarians like Mubarak and Ahmadinejad with kid gloves because he has a natural affinity with them coupled with a deep fear of popular sentiment (see Tea Party movement, Obamacare opposition, reduction of Federal spending).

Not only does this not bode well for the cause of freedom in the Middle East, but we can expect more authoritarian reactions from Obama here in the U.S. as the Republican-controlled House increasingly resists his Big Government agenda.

WARNING: Cynicism Alert.

Is it just me or does this article, “Resurgent GM Nips At Toyota’s Heels In Sales Race,” by Tom Krisher of the Associated Press strike anyone else as fawning and full of half-truths and omissions?

Let’s see.

Here is the opening paragraph:

The resurgent automaker reported Monday that its worldwide sales last year came within 30,000 of beating Japanese rival Toyota, which took a big hit because of safety recalls.

There is part of me that wants to believe that this actually true, that GM (erstwhile known as “Government Motors” since the Federal bailout in 2009) is actually turning things around.  But then the cynic in me chimes in.

“Wait it minute,” that voice says. “Isn’t this the same Associated Press that has shilled for Obama without shame since the 2008 Presidential election cycle?  This good news wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the GM bailout is one of the centerpieces of Obama’s claim to have actually accomplished something of value in his first, two years?  Failure of GM equates to failure of Obama and his Big Government philosophy.”

No, I reply, that is crazy talk.  Paranoid.  This is the Associated Press.

Taking a closer look at the article, it does mention that Toyota took a “big hit because of safety recalls.”   How big of a hit?  Why, the article doesn’t say.   Funny, too, that the AP fails to mention that the gains in sales that came at the expense of Toyota resulted, in large part, from aggressive buyer incentives such as zero interest rates and favorable trade-in terms.

And, as Megan Mcardle pointed out in an article in The Atlantic in April, 2010, troubling clouds loom over GM in the form of unfunded pension liabilities that will need to be paid starting in 2013.

According to a January 11, 2011 article in The Wall Street Journal, the sale of new stock in GM did not go very well for U.S. taxpayers either, but, oh well.   The WSJ article is also optimistic but, unlike the AP article, does not fail to mention the fact that GM stock price would have to reach at least $53 per share just for taxpayers to break even for the $50 Billion bailout.   The GM IPO in November 2010 was a lowly $33 per share.  But great news!  It is now trading at $38.91 per share!  It just has to rise another 26%.   Let me know if you are getting any returns like that on investments.

The point is that the article by AP’s Tom Krisher does not ask any of the hard questions.  In fact, it doesn’t ask any questions at all.   It reads like a GM press release.  I do not claim to be a journalism major nor steeped in the code of journalistic ethics, but from a consumer standpoint and as one who looks to news accounts for both sides of any issue, this article is worrisome.  Nothing in life is completely one-sided.   There is no such thing as unmitigated success or disaster.  Yet this AP piece is all sunshine and smiles.

A quick check of other articles by Mr. Krisher indicates that he has written quite a few, very positive articles on General Motors and Chrylser with almost unseemly titles since November 2009.

It is yet another example of how the news media in this country continue to fail American citizens, and fail them miserably with one-sided accounts.   This is the very kind of thing that makes all of us cynical and distrustful of media outlets.

And to make the cynicism complete, all indications about Obama’s State of the Union address are that he will focus on economics and the resilience of U.S. companies in competitive global markets.   Nice how Krisher’s article dovetails with that theme, just a couple days before it is delivered.

This stinks to me of Government Press.  Whether this AP article actually resulted from coordination with the Administration, it certainly has the appearance of it.  The Associated Press and its writers have a duty to report the good AND the bad AND the ugly.  This article, at the very least, fails that test.

But I doubt that anyone at GM or in the White House will be complaining.

There is quite a bit of buzz lately over the possibility of allowing States to file petitions under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.   An article by Mary Williams Walsh in The New York Times yesterday, “Path Is Sought For States To Escape Debt Burdens,” lays out pretty well the gathering storm.

The article begins with reference to the,”crushing debts, including the pensions they have promised to retired public workers.”  This is, indeed, a real problem.   California, one of the worst offenders, is projected to have a budget deficit in 2011 of over $25 Billion.  New York and Illinois are in equally dire straits.

The article points out, ever so helpfully, that:

Unlike cities, the states are barred from seeking protection in federal bankruptcy court. Any effort to change that status would have to clear high constitutional hurdles because the states are considered sovereign.

Pardon me while I laugh out loud at this one.  Suddenly The New York Times cares about “high constitutional hurdles” and state sovereignty.  This is the paper that has published secrets about the federal efforts to track terrorists and cared nothing about the Constitution when it came to Obamacare.   Nor did the NYT seem to care about state sovereignty when it was Arizona’s sovereign right to enforce its borders.

The article goes on to report that several members of Congress and experts outside of Congress are debating the merits of a change to the Bankruptcy Code that would allow States to file for federal bankruptcy protection.

As a substantive matter, there are so many things wrong with the idea of allowing States to file a bankruptcy petition that several posts could be devoted to the subject (and perhaps someone will…).  Suffice it to say that: (A) any shred of States’ rights left in this country will be completely and finally buried if the federal government is allowed into State finances in anything like the way the usual debtor is governed under the Bankruptcy Code, and; (B) the moral hazard of allowing States, particularly the spendthrift ones like California, to wipe away debt will indelibly scar all State finances, and; (C) the ability of States to finance necessary capital projects will be severely restricted.   In short, this is Fall of the Roman Empire stuff, folks.

The Panic Sets In

What is more interesting is the underlying tone: panic.

Liberals who have adored the big welfare state are suddenly waking up to the fact that: (A) the gushers of money that always seemed to be there, no matter how high the tax rates were set, have suddenly stopped, and; (B) the voters are finally aware of the problem and actually demanding something other than the usual bailouts and tax increases.

If liberals cannot find new sources of other peoples’ money (0r undo the debts that they have run up), this fiscal crisis threatens to collapse much, if not all, of the liberal policies and programs of the last 75 years by revealing the socialist model as one, big Ponzi scheme that only lasted this long because of the incredible strength and resilience of the American economy.  No more.

So, as this panic sets in, liberals are doing what every spendthrift does when he is finally out of money: he asks his responsible family members for help.  Afterall, it worked last time with the massive, $800 Billion bailout in 2009 that was cynically touted as “stimulus.”   States were allowed to postpone the day of reckoning because Uncle Harry and Aunt Nancy were only too willing to give up the cash.  Amazingly, in just two years’ time, things have changed and Aunt Nancy has been cut off from the checking account.   Liberals know this time will be different.   Liberal bastions like California, New York and Illinois are not going to get a dime from the current Congress.

This is the impetus for Ms. Williams’ article.  Rather than face the utter repudiation and dismantling of their bloated, top-heavy, welfare states, Liberals are opting for wiping out the debts that politicians foolishly promised to their union supporters for decades.   Yes, unbelievably enough, Liberals are so desperate that they are ready to throw the public unions under the proverbial Bus.

The Usual Shock and Awe

Next, note that the call for bankruptcy protection for States comes in a vacuum, as if the enormous budget shortfalls arose magically overnight without warning.  (This seems to be the common, liberal posture:  abject, jaw-dropping, head-scratching surprise when confronted with the real-life consequences of liberal policy).

Should anyone be surprised when a never-ending policy of enlarging State government brings about “crushing” debt?  Was it somehow unforeseeable that adding tens of thousands of State employees each year with ever-increasing pay and benefits, would not, eventually bankrupt the State?  Yet this has been the liberal prescription since Franklin Roosevelt: ever greater involvement and control by Government which, by necessity, requires ever greater Government employment.

A Cancer We Can’t Ignore

Why are the politicians and political class talking about radical ideas like bankruptcy for the States?  To read the NYT article by Ms. Williams it would appear that States are helpless to control their budgets, as if some freak force of nature has descended.  (This, by the way, seems to be part of the same, recurring liberal tactic:  declare a crisis which compels radical solutions which the People are too stupid to understand).  Even if we assume that pension funding is a real and immediate problem, and we further assume that States cannot, as a unilateral budget matter, change pension obligations due to State constitutions, there is an obvious solution which no one seems to see.

It is called the Voter.

The State constitution can be amended to allow for necessary changes.  Go to the voting public and pass laws that will reduce budget obligations for benefits and salaries.  But, for some, strange reason, the politicians do not want to face the voting public.  Why is that?

Could it be that voters are finally starting to see that politicians are largely in the pocket of small but powerful interest groups with policies that run counter to public welfare at large?

So long as the general, voting public turned out in low numbers for state/local elections, public employee groups, while relatively small compared to the registered voting public, have commanded disproportionate power due to their greater focus and energy in mobilizing votes and donations.   They own the politicians and, hence, the political process.

This has led to a growing tyranny of sorts where the majority of Americans are increasingly subject to the whims of small but highly focused, highly energetic special interest groups that work through the political process to manipulate policies to their own, distinct advantage.

This cancer is self-perpetuating.  As the special interest groups, such as teacher unions, capture ever-better benefits vis a vis the private sector, increasing numbers of people are attracted to the group, swelling its numbers with more dues-paying, voting members.   This ever-growing cancer on the body politic will have fatal results for our republic if left unchecked.

California is a textbook example of this cancer of special interests transforming a one-time economic dynamo, blessed with every resource God can bestow, into a pitiful charity case.  This should unnerve every one of us, for if it can happen to California, it can certainly happen to the country as a whole.

And, by all appearances, it is.

If we are going to avoid a terrible fate, we will need political leaders at the State and Federal level that can confront and overcome the special interests.   Chris Christie in New Jersey may be the best example of this.  So far he has taken his message– and not a popular message at that of fiscal restraint– directly to the voters.   He has directly challenged the teachers union, among others, to help right the ship of State.   Note that this can only happen when the average voter gets so disgusted with the state of affairs that they are willing to vote in sufficient numbers to overwhelm the special interest groups.

Let us hope that there is a responsible majority in Congress that will not fall for the panicked calls to bail out failed social policies of Big Government.   And, in the meantime, it would be wise if ordinary Americans who believe in limited government get involved however they can in electing responsible leaders.

In a Daily Beast article yesterday, Peter Beinhart takes a measure of relief in the fact the United States seemingly has nothing to do with the apparent uprising in Tunisia that has (for the time being) tossed out the autocrat, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

What a great country we have. Where else would you find opinion leaders applauding evidence of their own country’s irrelevance to international affairs?

The critical thing to understand about the movements stirring against tyranny in Tunisia, and throughout the Arab world, is this: They aren’t about us. And that might be a good thing.

Beinhart’s point, in essence, seems to follow along these lines:  Tunisians rose up against the oppressor-thugocracy without American help, therefore American support for oppressed peoples– particularly in the Middle East– is not only unnecessary but actually counterproductive.   Furthermore, he seems to argue, the Tunisian experience validates the view he terms “optimist” that freedom/democracy is an irresistible force that will, eventually, prevail.   (This he contrasts with the straw-man “militarist” view that democracy can only spread along with American power and influence).

To be fair, Beinhart does concede eventually that it is a “good thing for the U.S. government to want democracy in the Middle East.”  This is a nice concession that, afterall, we should not feel guilty about wanting democratic governments in the Middle East. It’s just that we shouldn’t want to do anything about it.

This allergy to the use of American power in the world is, however, disturbing on two levels.

First, it is incredibly naive.  We can all agree that the Tunisians have shown incredible bravery while, at the same time, acknowledging that the prospects for a democratic government taking hold there are slim to none without some type of external assistance.  The chances, moreover, that the autocratic governments in the Middle East will somehow fall to a rising tide of purely indigenous democracy without external aid is equally fanciful.

Second, and perhaps most disturbing, Beinhart’s approach is incredibly wrong.  Immoral.  How can we, as Americans, stand idly by while unarmed, peaceful protesters are clubbed, raped or gunned down by the security forces of pariah regimes?

It is simply not in our national character to refuse aid to any people that is willing to put their lives on the line to gain their freedom from oppression.

Does this require that the U.S. send in the tanks every time there is a political protest put down by government violence?  No.   Rather, there should be a sliding scale of involvement that begins, at the very least, with persistent and public expressions of condemnation toward the regime, followed by economic and/or diplomatic sanctions, followed (where appropriate) by tangible aid to the democratic movement (covert if necessary) and, at the extreme end of the scale, open, military assistance.    This approach leaves plenty of time and opportunity for public debate over the merits and extent of support.  But there can be no argument, such as the one Beinhart hints at, that the U.S. do nothing.

We have already seen the consequences of Beinhart’s approach.  In 1991, tens of thousands of Iraqi shia in Basra were killed by Saddam Hussein’s thugs when they revolted in 1991.   The U.S. did nothing and paid the price 12 years later when radical Islam had taken root in the region, making pacification infinitely more costly. The democracy movement in Iran is another example of ordinary citizens giving up their lives for a chance at freedom.  Obama, clearly favoring the Beinhart approach, has left them helpless against determined torture and murder by the regime.   Sudan and the Congo stand out as well.  Oppressed people of the world have rightly looked to the U.S. and we did nothing, absolutely nothing to help.  These are blots on our national honor.

In the end, Peter Beinhart may be right on one point:  democracy and freedom may (somehow) break out in the Middle East without meaningful U.S. support.  Anything is possible.

The real question, however, is this: why should we ever want that kind of world?