Thoughts On Torture

We've spoken about torture many times in the past and we disagreed quite a bit. That's fine, of course, because all good faith opinions are welcome here. :D Anyways, the Senate has now issued its report on torture and depending on your views, it will either shock you or it will confirm what others already believed. Here are my thoughts.

(1) The most important fact arising out of the report is that the seven or eight times the CIA claimed that torture got them critical information they used to stop terrorist plots were apparently lies. The Senate now reports that it never got anything useful related to those moments.

This directly demonstrates the problem with the torture debate in the past. I have heard for a long time from experts that torture simply does not work. What happens is that the torture subject will say anything to stop the torture. Thus, they will give false confessions and wrongly confirm anything you tell them, whether it's true or not. Basically, they will tell you what you want to hear. This confirms that.

The pro-torture argument, however, typically went like this: "What if you can save a city by torturing one guy? Wouldn't you torture them?" Well, sure, except that as this report and prior experience have shown, torture doesn't get you the information you need to make this scenario even close to likely.

(2) Even if torture resulted in some benefits, it's clear that it is not worth the harm to our reputation to be seen doing this. Reagan described America as a shining city on a hill and others have called us a beacon of light. We as a people talk about truth, justice and the American way, and we love practical solutions that get results. Torture is inconsistent with all of this.

(3) This report confirms that the CIA is out of control. For example, the CIA hid the torture program from President Bush for four months. That's ridiculous. The CIA is an agency that responds directly to the President under the supervision of the Congress. Yet, here they admit that they kept Bush in the dark about a highly controversial and dangerous program and then they lied to Congress about what they were doing. We can't accept this from any agency, but especially not from an agency with the power of the CIA.

(4) Unfortunately, the PR damage from this gives the left aid and comfort in their fight against America, American freedom and American capitalism. As long as things like torture continue, we open the door for the left to paint us as tainted and bad, and for them to jumble in things like attacks on drones under the cover of a generic misbehavior.

Thoughts?

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Hero, Traitor, or Blah?

So there was a pretty big story in the news this week. It involved government surveillance, questions about civil liberties, and cloak-and-dagger work. And unfortunately, there was a hipster at the center of it.

Last week, word came of a massive information leak from the NSA, thanks to one of its employees, Mr. Edward Snowden, who had accumulated a bunch of data, sent it all to a reporter, and then made his escape to Hong Kong. The information has to do with the NSA's means of gathering data, which include the collection of personal emails, phone records, etc., all with the click of a mouse by government employees. So, naturally, this was going to get tied into the broader "Scandal-gate" (tm) and become controversial, which Snowden helped along by saying in interviews from his new port of call that he could have downloaded the data and personal correspondence of literally anyone who was a U.S. citizen (and probably lots of people who weren't).

As inevitably happens, there's been a lot of back-and-forth about how damaging to national security the intel leak is, whether Snowden did the right thing, what his motives are, etc. Lots of people think he's a hero (so much so that he's beginning to have a weird cult following), others that he's betrayed America or at best is just an opportunist and media whore. So it's worth diving into to sort out what's going on.

Specifically, what Snowden leaked was the details of a surveillance program known as PRISM, which to my profound disappointment doesn't actually stand for anything. Simply a codename for a vast operation involving spying on both foreign and domestic individuals and corporations, not to mention other governments and military forces. Partly, the operation accomplished this by mining tons of personal data from such sites as Facebook, Yahoo, Google, etc., raising fears that the heads of these companies were deliberately colluding with the government in eavesdropping on their users. (The CEOs dispelled these fears right away by issuing denials unusually similar to each other.) Anyway, Snowden, who had been working for one of the firms handling all this data collection, gathered a bunch of documents related to it, then sent them off to a reporter before high-tailing it out of here.

The reaction of the politically powerful, in both parties, has been rather predictable. Given that the damage is occurring to a Democratic administration, it's no surprise to see people like Dianne Feinstein accusing Snowden of treason. Among Republicans, too, leaders from Boehner on down have denounced the leaker as a traitor, with even Ron Paul fighting shy of calling the man an American hero (although I bet he really wanted to).

The guy's claim, all along, has been that he was morally repulsed by the extent of NSA spying activity and felt it was his duty to let the American people know about it. In his own words, he's neither a hero nor a criminal, just a guy who saw something that needed to be done. Well, that's noble (in an annoying do-gooder sort of way). And Snowden's online history shows a long record of hostility to Big Brother, so it's certainly plausible. Do note, however, that he was only working for the NSA for a few months, which for many people has raised the question of whether this was a huge play from the beginning. Either way, for him to sit down with the Chinese press and talk about the NSA's surveillance of leading members of the People's Republic doesn't suggest a natural-born patriot. As one blogger put it (I paraphrase), "It's one thing to talk to the American people about the American government's snooping. It's another thing entirely to talk to the Chinese people about the American government's snooping." And the fact that Snowden's openly discussed fleeing to Russia and putting himself under Vladimir Putin's protection suggests that he may be, at best, a monumentally stupid man.

Snowden seems like a rather unsavory character the more we learn about him (I'm assuming bragging about having sex in a playground can still qualify one for the definition of "unsavory character"). But does it matter? Even talking to China about the NSA's snooping on them, something the Chinese undoubtedly knew about already (although maybe not in all its details), probably isn't specific enough to qualify for a charge of "treason."

Plus, there doesn't seem to be any mass reaction to the leak one way or the other. A recent poll showed 56% of Americans saying they had no issue in principle with extensive government surveillance; another survey had it at 49% of people being mostly okay with it. So it's a split decision, which may or may not be encouraging to the DC pols. Certainly it won't provide mass support for a witch-hunt, if that's what they're after. Probably, there will be a lot of harrumphing about the guy and then he'll be forgotten, especially if his image becomes more and more tarnished and he winds up as Putin's puppet (like everyone else in the Kremlin).

Frankly, I think the big take-away here, once more, is the extent to which the Obama White House closely resembles its predecessor. After coming into office four years ago with promises of respecting "the rule of law" and ending abuses of power a la Patriot Act, The One is trying to plug leaks and clamp down on his underlings' lips just like any other executive. So much for being transformative.

As for Snowden....meh. Like I said, he's a hipster, and kind of a weirdo. I say we waterboard him if we get him back, just because.

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Drones And Our Warlord In Chief

When Bush was in office, the left screamed that Bush’s use of drones was a “war crime.” When Obama took over, the left became strangely silent on this issue, as well as all the other issues that they considered “war crimes” when Bush did them. Let’s talk about Obama’s foreign policy generally and why there is good reason to be upset at Obama’s use of drones.

Let me start by pointing out the hypocrisy here. When Obama first ran for office, he ran on opposition to the invasion of Iraq. He also opposed Bush’s use of secret C.I.A. prisons and the warrantless surveillance of the Patriot Act. He attacked Bush for denying Guantanamo Bay detainees civil rights, and he promised to close the facility. He said he would ban “harsh interrogation techniques.” And many on the left, though I don’t recall Obama saying this specifically, really hated the use of drones and wanted it stopped. And he spoke of having a humbler foreign policy.

Well, Obama took over and lo and behold, he did none of this – except ban waterboarding. To the contrary, Obama became uber-Bush. His Justice Department tried to strip the Gitmo detainees of person status, in violation of the Constitution and international law. His Justice Department decided that military tribunals rather than civilian courts were just fine. And now, his Justice Department has not only decided that drones are cool, but they’re way cool and they should be used with reckless abandon.

The left has remained completely silent on these points, just as they cheered when he tried to bully Honduras (after saying we needed to stop interfering in Central America), just as they cheered when he sent troops to kill pirates, to fight rebels in Africa, to bomb terrorists in Somalia and Yemen, and to basically fight a Laos-type war in Pakistan, just as they pounded their chests when he bombed Libya, just as they are now screaming for him to bomb Syria. This is all the things the left hated about Bush, only on steroids. As an aside, they also used to fight things like land mines and the use of depleted uranium in shells... until Obama took over, now they’re cool.

Now get this, this is rich. When the Justice Department issued their memo on drones the other day, the left finally decided they need to say something. Said some ACLU hack:

“That memo coming out, I think, was a wake-up call. These last few days, it was like being back in the Bush days. It’s causing a lot of cognitive dissonance for a lot of people. It’s not the President Obama they thought they knew.”

Cognitive dissonance my smoking rear end... try willful collaboration. You’d have to be willfully blind to somehow fail to see what Obama has been doing for four years and to only now understand that Obama=Bush.

Anyway, here’s the deal with drones.

First, the problem I’ve had with the left on this issue is that there is no logic to their reasoning. Leftists have opposed drones on principle, and the reason seems to be that they don’t like the idea of the American military killing someone without those people getting a chance to kill American soldiers. This is what they are saying when they whine about wars being fought by “remote control.” This is bull. There is no logic to this whatsoever, nor is there any morality to this. The idea that it’s only acceptable to kill someone if you endanger yourself in the process is, frankly, retarded thinking. And I think it comes from their anti-American sentiment in that they don’t want the American military to be able to fight without suffering casualties. This is as stupid as arguing that soldiers shouldn’t be allowed to use guns because it’s too easy to kill someone with a gun before they have a chance to try to knife you, and it’s immoral to argue that if we are going to go to war, then we need to take proportional causalities.

Over time, they’ve added a new strain to the anti-drone argument. This one holds that the problem with drones is that they are “indiscriminate.” This is, of course, nonsense. The US is not flying drones that are out there picking their own targets and fighting a war without human input. That’s the science fiction view, not the reality. And it doesn’t take a human pilot to be able to identify the targets that will be hit. So again, this is stupid.

Then they came up with the idea that drone strikes are evil because they are depriving terrorists of their constitutional rights. Only, they have no such rights. So the left hunted around until they found some dead terrorist with American citizenship and they claimed, “see, Bush is killing Americans with drones without due process.” The counter to this is, of course, that when you engage in armed combat against America, you really have no rights. Sadly for the left, however, before this issue caught on, Obama took over and they had to shut up for fear of hurting the image of their Warrior in Chief. So the issue went away.

BUT... now we come to what Obama is doing, and this is where the problem arises. Not only has Obama’s Justice Department decided that killing Americans is fine, but they went further. They decided that something called “signature strikes” are fine. Signature strikes are the racial profiling of the terrorism world. Basically, the CIA is allowed to blow you up if you engage in conduct that appears to be terrorism related even if it doesn’t have a clue who you are. In other words, Obama is letting the CIA blow people up because they are doing things that fit the profile of terrorist without any idea of who these people are or what they are doing. That actually is a violation of international law which doesn’t let you target non-combatants.

So the question now is, will the left stand by their supposed principles (fat chance) or will they continue their deafening silence to support Obama? To give you a sense, feminists haven’t said word one about the massive gender-based pay disparities in the White House, gays stayed silent for four years about Obama’s lack of support for gay marriage, environmentalists still won’t admit that Obama sold them out in Copenhagen, etc. etc.

I think conservatives need to turn up the heat here. Rand Paul is doing this and I’d like to see others do it too. Obama gets away with talking self-righteously but acting the opposite. It’s time to put an end to that. Make him choose... expose his left flank. Don’t think that by remaining silent, you will leave the door open for the next Republican president to do the same... the left doesn’t work that way.

Finally, there’s an interesting point someone made the other day which is worth tossing into the discussion. The thinking is that the reason Obama is using massive numbers of drone attacks is purely political: he wants to avoid capturing terrorists because he doesn’t want to deal with the headaches created by his rhetoric. Basically, he doesn’t know what to do with them, where to put them, or how to keep them without trying them, because his rhetoric wiped out all the options. Nor does he want to deal with the possibility of being in charge when a terrorist attack happens and people find out it could have been prevented if his administration had actually questioned the people they caught. Thus, he thinks it’s safer to kill them all. Interesting. Maybe they should have waited on that Nobel Peace Prize?

Thoughts?

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The Theater of the Absurd

Politics often involves theater, that’s unavoidable. But right now, our politics seems to have become the theater of the absurd. Brace yourself. Things are about to get ugly.

● Debt Ceiling Showdown: The Republicans are gearing up for a huge fight over raising the debt ceiling. It’s going to be a slaughter. In fact, this is turning into a textbook example of what not to do:

1. You never announce that you are planning to hold the country hostage over some future event. That’s the surest way to get the public to turn against you because you’ve basically announced that you plan to cynically hurt people in the name of getting something you want. Yet, that is what the Republicans have done, they’ve actually bragged about their ability to get goodies out of Obama by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. Wow.

2. You never take hostages without a good reason. Yet, the Republicans haven’t come up with their list of demands. This has disaster written all over it. By announcing their plan to take hostages this early without the slightest hint of a reason for doing so, the Republicans just pitched the media the perfect softball. The media can now attack them as cynics who want to hurt the country for partisan reasons, and without that list of demands, the Republicans have left the media with total control to frame the issues and the arguments.

Moreover, without a list of demands, i.e. goals, it’s impossible to define victory or to develop a plan on how to achieve it. Further, without such goals, it becomes impossible to get everyone on the same page, which is a recipe for infighting, especially with responsibility-free purists screaming bloody murder from the sidelines to help their ratings and fundraising.

3. You never remind people of the other times your plans blew up on you before you try something like this. Yet the Republicans have already started connecting this to the fiscal cliff fiasco and are even foaming at the mouth about shutting down the government again... the same maneuver that neutered a much stronger Newt Gingrich. Yee haw.

I am now 95% sure that the Republican Party is just being played for parody.

● Chuck Hagel: With Leon Panetta leaving as Secretary of Defense, Obama has appointed former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to replace him. Hagel is being attacked by the left over some gay slur he made in 2008 and because they don’t like the fact he’s a Republican, even if he does endorse Democrats. So they want him gone. Enter the Republicans.

The Republicans are upset because: Hagel was one of the only Republican critics of the Iraq War, he voted against US sanction on Iran and Libya, he tried to lift the embargo on Cuba, he described the Defense Department as “bloated” and said it needed “to be pared down,” and he apparently made some disparaging remarks about the influence of the “Jewish lobby.” So they are banding together to bring him down.

The most likely result is that the Republicans beat their pudgy chests for a while and then Hagel gets confirmed with 60+ votes, proving Republican impotence. A worse result would be that they take him down, doing the left’s dirty work for them, and Obama appoints a hard-core Democrat who sails through easily and does significant damage to the Defense Department.

More parody.

● Harrumph Tax Evaders: Finally, just to prove that idiocy isn’t purely domestic, the Prime Minister of Britain, who looks increasingly like a Cupie Doll to me, huffed and puffed and whined about those big bad international companies who avoid British taxes. Rather than fix Britain’s tax laws, which are what allowed these companies to avoid paying taxes, Cupie wants some sort of tax treaty or something to keep companies from following the rules established by Britain to avoid British taxes. Take that Starbucks!

Does this seem like a joke to anyone?

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Our Overseas Military Presence

To give you a quick update on the 2012 election, Perry now claims he wants a flat tax at some unknown rate. Perry's supporters seem really blind to how poorly he’s coming across. Cain says he will go on the attack in the next debate because the other candidates “are getting on my last nerve.” Palin thinks Newt won the other night. And Politico wants to convince us that the race is between Perry and Romney. But the guy I want to talk about today is Paul.

In the last two debates, Paul has said the US has 900 military bases overseas in 130 countries. This struck me as likely true, but also highly misleading, as I will explain.

Looking this up, I found the US actually has military personnel in 148 different countries. That doesn’t surprise me. We also have 662 installations outside the country. That doesn’t surprise me either. And I’m not going to quibble about 900 versus 662: either number is huge and within the same order of magnitude.

So Paul is correct, right? Sort of. He is technically correct about the numbers. But I think he is implying something much bigger than the reality. When Paul says the military has bases in these countries, it sounds a lot like we have an active military presence sitting on self-contained “bases” in almost every country. In effect, it sounds like we have occupied every country in the world.

But that’s not really what is going on. The truth is that only 13 countries host more than 1,000 troops: Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Japan, Bahrain, Djibouti, South Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. Most of the rest have only a handful of troops, typically in single digits.

So what are they doing? That’s impossible to determine for sure, but most likely they are guarding embassies. There are about 30 Marines at the embassy in Moscow, plus some other officers from the other services. So let’s exclude any country with fewer than 40 military personnel from this list on the assumption they are just embassy staff.

Suddenly we are only in 19 countries, 13 of which are in Europe. . . where we are part of NATO.

The 662 bases is misleading too. All but 32 of those bases are either small sites or owned on paper only. For example, some of these sites are apparently nothing more than unmanned radio towers. One site listed in Canada is only 144 square feet -- a 12x12 room, just like our “base” in North Korea is just a room with two guards assigned.

Thus, when Paul says we have 900 military bases overseas in 130 countries, he is technically correct (give or take). But what he’s really should be saying to not be misleading is: we have 32 military bases overseas in 19 countries. That doesn’t quite have the same punch.

I don’t subscribe to isolationism at all. Isolationism is a horrible policy because it eliminates your ability to control your destiny and it turns you into a victim of circumstance. And ignoring a bully never works.

But I do agree with Paul to this extent -- I would like to see a stronger analysis on why we are in each region. I get Asia, for example. If we pulled out of Asia, China would dominate the region, Japan would re-arm and go nuclear, and war would probably break out in the Koreas, between China and Taiwan, and between China and Vietnam. That would be very bad for the US. And I understand we’re in Europe mainly to keep bases needed to transport troops. But why are we in Africa, South America or throughout the Middle East?

I think those are valid questions.

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Did The Terrorists Win On 9/11?

With the 10th anniversary of 9/11 behind us, it’s time to ask a question that few have been willing to debate openly: did the terrorists win on 9/11? That’s a really difficult question to answer. Let’s see what we can come up with?

If we take this question literally, then the obvious answer is NO. The goal of the terrorists was to intimidate America to the point that Americans would no longer resist Islam. Thus, Islam could conquer country after country until it dominated the world. That didn’t happen and won’t. The American spirit is too strong for terror to succeed, and any attempt to impose Islam in the United States will simply result in a whole bunch of dead and desecrated Muslims.

Unfortunately, there’s more to consider.

Despite ten years of being hunted by the most powerful military in the world, al Qaeda continues to exist. They have killed 6,500 American and Western troops, exhausted Western Europe’s military capability, and continue to pull off daily terrorist operations around the world. The Taliban control large parts of Pakistan and are prepared to return to Afghanistan the minute we leave. Fundamentalist Islamic groups will soon control Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya and probably Iraq, and are working on Syria and others. They control Sudan and Somalia, where they have turned pirating into a $538 million a year operation despite the collective efforts of the world’s navies. That’s a lot of success.

So did they win? No. Are they winning? Sort of.

Then there's the flip side to this question: did we lose? Again, literally, the answer is NO. America is still here and no one honestly thinks that's going to change. Indeed, if anything Islam is further from its goal today than ever because now we know what they're up to.

But again, there is more to consider. Our government has spent $1.2 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, and that doesn’t count things like TSA or lost productivity. That’s 8.5% of our national debt. By comparison, World War II cost only $2 trillion (in 1990 dollars). So we’ve spent a fortune.

At the same time, we’ve given up a lot of our freedoms so that our politicians can look like they are doing something. Note that I do not say “so we can be safe.” It’s fairly clear that airport fondlings have done nothing to keep us safer. Port security is a joke. The border is porous. Internal security is nonexistent. Essentially, we’ve been lucky that these terrorists just aren’t very bright or motivated.

Moreover, our security operations have become bureaucratic wastelands. We spent a fortune creating the Department of Homeland Security (annual budget $50 billion, funnels another $35 billion in grants), but it has achieved nothing. DHS has made no arrests that I’ve seen despite being given new powers like having the power to do warrantless wiretaps -- every arrest we’ve seen has been made by local cops, vigilant citizens or FBI stings. So what does DHS do with its time? It seizes the web domains of people who are illegally broadcasting NFL games. . . which has what to do with national security? DHS head Janet Napolitano also spends her time lying about the border being secure.

Congress has been shameful in all of this too. They’ve used the supposed security crisis to ram through all kinds of pork boondoggles and special interest legislation. They pander to us like we’re idiots, selling us fences, airport pat-downs, and anti-terror laws that are so broad anyone could be charged for anything. And they’ve put our soldiers -- our fellow Americans -- at risk because they didn’t know how else to look tough.

These are not good things. The terrorists didn’t hurt America or the American people, but our own politicians sure are giving it their best shot!

So what do we do?

First, we set new goals. Rather than fighting a “war” against something as nebulous and never-ending as “terror,” we need realistic goals such as neutralizing certain terrorist groups or replacing certain regimes. Then we come up with rational plans to achieve those goals.

Secondly, we reform our government. Strip away any function from DHS that is not actually related to security. Purge its laws of special interest goodies. Stop letting Congress force programs on the military. Consolidate all of the intelligence agencies.

And frankly, we need to do this for all agencies. Our government controls too much of our lives. It should not be micromanaging the country. We need to eliminate bailouts, czars, corporate handouts, and special interest tax carve outs. It needs to surrender its ownership of banks and car companies. It needs to stop picking economic winners and losers, and propping up things consumers don’t want. It needs to stop keeping us dependent on foreign energy and foreign labor. It needs to get out of education and out of our medical system.

Finally, we need to stop letting politicians use crises to grab power. 9/11 is not a valid reason to throw out the Constitution anymore than the financial crisis was a reason to throw out the Constitution. And we should never trade our freedoms for placebos.

Thoughts?

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Stuxnet: The Future of War Is Here

This may sound like science fiction, but it's not. It’s Monday morning. You’re sitting at work, in your firm’s cafeteria drinking coffee, when suddenly you spot a computer memory stick lying on the floor next to your table. You take it to the IT people, so they can return it to the rightful owner. They pop it into a USB port. . . it’s empty. A month later, your plant explodes. Think I’m exaggerating? I’m not.

With the rush to computerize everything, it was inevitable that the peculiar weaknesses of computers would be exploited for military purposes. For years now, the Chinese have been firing “cyber missiles” at American companies to steal their business secrets. In 2008, we saw Russia take down the internet across Estonia and Georgia with denial of service attacks from millions of infected Western computers; this disrupted government and military communications and spread panic. It is rumored that predator videofeeds can be (or have been) hacked. And we repeatedly hear of attempts to hack the Pentagon.

But those attacks were nothing.

Meet Stuxnet, an incredibly sophisticated computer worm that many are speculating was created by American or Israeli military cyber warriors. This is the future of war, and the first shot has already been fired.

Stuxnet was designed to get onto a computer system from a USB memory stick. . . the one you found in your cafeteria or next to your car or which was dropped into your coat pocket on the subway. Why use this method of transmission? Because most of the control systems that run industrial plants are intentionally isolated from the internet so they can’t be reached by hackers. The USB solution gets around that problem.

Once the memory stick is connected to a computer, Stuxnet exploits one of four separate, previously-unknown holes found in Microsoft Windows to load itself onto any computer into which the USB memory stick is placed (it is unheard of for ordinary hackers to reveal their knowledge of so many holes in one attempt). To achieve this, Stuxnet uses two compromised security certificates stolen from firms in Taiwan. Once it's on the computer, it first tries to find an internet connection. If it finds one, then it contacts a server in Denmark or Malaysia for instructions. If it can’t, then it spreads itself across the network looking for a backdoor to allow remote access.

This level of effort is highly unusual for a normal bit of malware. But what truly makes Stuxnet stand apart is that it was programmed with extensive knowledge of plant control systems manufactured by Siemens, as well as the blueprints of a particular target. What target? It’s not entirely clear (or if it is, no one is saying), but all indications are that Stuxnet was aimed at Iran (60% of the 45,000 infected computers are in Iran), with the Bushehr nuclear reactor and the Natanz enrichment facilities being the likely targets. Iran denies that any damage was done, though when this worm struck last year, the number of working centrifuges at Natanz mysteriously dropped.

So what can be done using such a worm?

Almost everything now runs on some sort of computer system, everything from the stock market to the electrical grid to air traffic control to traffic lights. Stuxnet reveals the potential for cyber attacks to be aimed at specific targets, like a particular electrical plant. Moreover, these attacks can be done without any trace or hint of where they came from. Thus, you could shut down the electrical grid in a country right before an invasion rather than bombing, or you could stop a pesky nuclear enrichment facility, or cut off a fuel supply. . . and it can all be done without anyone know who did it. There are few limits.

And how life-threatening can the damage be?

Well, for example, by tinkering at a nuclear power plant, you could recreate Chernobyl if you had the expertise. Or by shutting down the right valves, you could generate enough pressure to cause a natural gas pipeline to blow itself up. In fact, in 2004, it was claimed that a C.I.A. campaign of computer sabotage in Siberia in the 1980s caused a gas pipeline to explode when “the pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds.” This resulted in a three kiloton explosion, so large it could be seen from space.

Now consider this. So many of the computer chips, the processors, the routers and everything else that we use in every single home, business, and military application today are made in China, often by companies that are owned or controlled by the Chinese military. Who needs to plant a USB stick when your enemy will buy infected gear right out of your hand? Indeed, in a fascinating report some months ago, it was revealed that the Pentagon has turned to chip scroungers to save money when they need old chips, rather than paying to have new ones made. These scroungers typically get the chips from Chinese sources who take them out of old computer gear. In several instances, these chips have been linked to crashes of jet fighters and, in one instance, an aircraft carrier lost its radar system for several hours when some of these chips failed. That’s not very comforting, especially for a military and a country that rely so heavily on technology.

Fortunately, under a new policy, the Defense Department is quietly moving into the business of defending critical US infrastructure from cyber attacks. Specifically, DOD will provide cyber expertise to other government agencies, including Homeland Security, and to certain private companies.

Let’s hope that for once, the government is up to the task.


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Am I Seriously Defending Obama? Yep.

As I’ve said before, when Obama does something right, I will point that out. Well, it’s happened. According to a New York Times article this weekend, the US has been fighting a “shadow war against al Qaeda and its allies.” And the Times doesn’t like this one bit. But Obama deserves praise for this decision.

This shadow war began under Bush and has been intensified under Obama. At this point, this shadow war has taken place in a dozen countries, from North Africa to Pakistan to former Soviet republics, and has involved the use of robotic drones, commando teams, missile and air strikes, and the hiring of “local contractors” to find and kill these terrorists. Also, this war is apparently being shifted to the CIA from the military.

This is absolutely the right way to fight terrorism and Obama deserves credit for his decision.

History has proven time and time again (without exception), and is proving once more in Afghanistan, that you just can’t fight terrorism with traditional military action. Terrorists disappear too easily into civilian populations and don’t require the types of infrastructure that ground forces are designed to combat. Indeed, trying to fight terrorists with large scale military operations merely results in getting soldiers killed and driving civilians to the terrorists’ cause; the only way to fight terrorists is exactly what is apparently being done as part of this shadow war.

Good for Obama, good for our country.

But of course, that’s not the end of this issue. Indeed, Obama’s left flank is upset to learn about this shadow war. Here are their arguments and why they are garbage:

1. These efforts are intended to kill the terrorists, not arrest them.

Yes, and that’s the point. When someone declares war against the United States and sets out to kill American civilians, they have lost any right to demand that they be arrested and treated according to criminal law. They have made themselves into military targets, just as if they were a battleship parked off an American port, and we are within our rights under any reading of law or international law to kill them. Indeed, even under the Geneva Convention, terrorists deserve less protection than even enemy soldiers. Thus, this argument is simply wrong on all counts.

2. The potential for botched operations might fuel anti-American rage.

This is a sucker argument because it applies to any action by the US. Even if we sent in unarmed police with warrants and provided trial attorneys on the spot to hand out teddy bears, there is still the potential for botched operations. What you need to look at are the alternatives. Under this policy, the worst that happens is that the US hits the wrong target and kills a few innocent civilians. That’s regrettable and will outrage people in those countries, but the outrage will be nothing compared to the outrage caused by the United States Army occupying the country and going house to house trying to find the proverbial terrorist needle in the stack of needles.

3. Blurring the line between soldiers and spies “could put troops at risk of being denied Geneva Convention protections.”

This is the most disingenuous argument on the list because al Qaeda does not act in accordance with the Geneva Convention and does not extend such protections to US soldiers or civilians.

4. Reliance on authoritarian foreign leaders could lead to murky loyalties.

The world is an ugly place full of bad people. Some can be helpful and others harmful. The idea that we should only deal with good people is a utopian delusion that limits our allies to a handful of useless countries. And if the left really believed this argument, then why do they advocate the US dealing with Hamas, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, China and a dozen more.

5. The use of “private contractors” worries the left that the US “has outsourced some of its most important missions to a sometimes unaccountable private army.”

This is more utopian doublespeak. It’s also bad policy. In many instances, there is simply no way for Americans to get intelligence on what is going on in remote places unless they deal with these “private contractors.” Moreover, why should we risk the lives of American men and women when we can hire local mercenaries to do the job for us? Now, to the extent this complaint is about effectiveness, I would agree that we need to be careful not to waste valuable opportunities on bad bets. But the military is unlikely to use “contractors” who are not effective. Finally, this idea of unaccountability is simply wrong. The “contractors” may not be subject to US law or Congressional oversight, but the American officers who hire them would be.

6. This is leading to weakened Congressional oversight, which is undoing “safeguards introduced after Congressional investigations into clandestine wars of the past.”

As you may recall from way back, I am a firm believer in Congressional oversight of everything the military or intelligence communities do in our name. But I don’t see how the waging of such a war, which will be overseen by Congressional intelligence committees, will weaken that oversight. And if it does, then we should strengthen the oversight, not stop the operation.


This policy makes a world of sense. It is, in fact, one of the first things we’ve done about terrorism that actually has a chance to stop terrorism. Compared with Afghanistan, where we’re fighting on the losing side of a civil war, or Somalia, where we’re playing catch and release with modern-day pirates, or Europe, where we’re playing legalistic footsie with people who want to kill us, this is finally a policy that should lead to the eventual destruction of these terrorist organizations. And the phony arguments of the left to keep us from undertaking this policy should be treated with the contempt they deserve. Thus, I must say quite firmly, that in this, I do support Obama.

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Some Thoughts On Iran

Several people have asked me in recent months what we should do about Iran. Unfortunately, I am forced to admit that there is no clear path forward. Iran presents a real dilemma. Nevertheless, there are some options. So let’s talk about the Iranian problem.

For starters, we need to acknowledge some of the facts. First, let’s consider Iran’s perspective:

Motivation: Iran has genuine motivations that we need to consider -- they are not just causing trouble, which is the false narrative adopted by our media. Geographically, Iran is easily the most important country in the region. It is a large country that dominates the Persian Gulf. It sits between the combustible Middle East, the combustible Afghanistan, the combustible Pakistan, and the ever-more important India. And it is the most populous country in the region. Iranian influence runs throughout the region and, without the United States as a counter-balance, Iran would be the biggest player.

Historically, Iran views itself as the cradle of civilization. At one point, it was far advanced compared to the Western World, and it, i.e. the Persian Empire, spread from Iran to Greece to Libya to China and well into India. Thus, Iran has a proud and ancient history. But the Persian Empire fell and the region came to be dominated by foreign powers -- from the Ottomans to the British. That colors their present thinking, as they see themselves as a much more significant force than they have become, and they bristle at the idea of outsiders controlling them.

Legitimate Reasons To Go Nuclear: Our media likes to paint Iran’s civilian nuclear ambitions as false, and it wonders why the Iranians would want nuclear power when they sit on so much oil. The answer is simple -- they can’t use the oil they have. Iranian oil is “sour crude” meaning that it is polluted and difficult to refine. Iran has no refineries that can handle this type of crude. Thus, despite sitting on all that oil, Iran suffers from gasoline and fuel shortages. Adding civilian nuclear energy actually makes sense for them.

Nuclear Rights And Wrongs: Many countries object to the idea that the rest of the world can tell them whether or not they can have the right to develop nuclear power. And indeed, even under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, any member can develop nuclear energy for civilian purposes.

Now let’s consider the counter argument:

Civilian Use My Glowing Green Ass: Despite their assertion that they are only looking to develop nuclear power for civilian purposes, the evidence is overwhelming that the Iranians are developing nuclear weapons. They have been caught working on triggers for bombs, trying to enrich uranium far beyond civilian usefulness, and skillfully hiding everything they’ve been doing. There is no definitive proof yet that they have an active weapon’s program, but you’d have to be an idiot not to see what they are doing.

Madness In Their Method: If Sweden went nuclear, few would be concerned. But Iran is not being run by stoic Swedes. Iran is being run by insane as~holes. From their crazy Ayatollahs to the fruity Ahmadinijad, these are guys who would clearly like to use an atomic weapon. From their sponsorship of Hezbollah, to their war with Iraq, to the terrorist bombings to which they’ve been linked, to the shooting of British cops from their embassy in Britain, to their involvement in the bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina, to their repeated hostage taking, these guys have shown no restraint. They’ve even taken recently to murdering demonstrators and opposition candidates. Combined with Ahmadinijad’s repeated threats to wipe Israel off the map, these guys are simply too insane to let them have an atomic bomb.

Now we come to the real problems in terms of making policy.

Away With The Bombs: A lot of people have suggested bombing Iran. But the problem with this approach is that we don’t know where their facilities really are. And for those of you who say, “oh, we really know,” we really don’t. Our intelligence people have admitted as much by failing to present more proof of Iran’s activities to the IAEA and by being caught by surprise by Iran’s recent announcement of a facility that no one had ever heard of before.

Our generals have publicly estimated that it would take us thirty-days of constant bombing to be sure that we got everything. . . which means that they are guessing. And if you will recall from Iraq, a country that we thought we knew every inch of, months after we took over the country, we were still finding hidden facilities and discovering that things we thought we knew were mockups.

Moreover, how well is this going to work if the Iranians hide their facilities under hospitals or mosques or inside schools? How long will public opinion last with pictures of Iranian children being blown to bits -- whether we did it or not? And what would be the price we pay throughout the world?

Not to mention that while the leadership is weak now, any attack would strengthen the leadership immeasurable and would buy them time and support from their own people. That’s the natural and inevitable reaction when outsiders attack. . . no matter how nasty the infighting was before the attack.

The short answer is that bombing is simply not an option. We don’t know what to strike, we can’t control the collateral damage, and we could never be sure that we hit what we needed. We simply can’t take the chance of missing something after taking such a provocative act.

Boots On The Wrong Ground: Invading the country may be our best military option. But we can’t do this. Why? Because we don’t have the troops we would need because they are busy propping up the Afghan government. Also, going the invasion route would cause a huge publicity problem as we invaded a third Muslim country in ten years. If we do this, we better expect that we would face an all-out Muslim war, fought in many countries, and likely many western cities.

Insurrection: We can’t openly support the Iranian opposition. They have made it very clear that any help from the West would lose them support, not help them.

The Iranian Sanction: Wait for sanctions we’re told. But it’s not clear that sanctions can work. They would work in a democracy where various interest groups would pressure the government to bend. But dictators are not subject to such pressures. Moreover, the current sanctions regime is a joke. Not only does it not even include weapons, but Iran’s biggest supporters refuse to join the sanctions, e.g. China, North Korean, Russia. Even Brazil told Hillary Clinton this week that they would make up their own mind about sanctions against Iran, and likely would not join them.

The dilemma defined.

Thus, we have a dilemma. We cannot allow this regime to go nuclear. But we can’t work toward regime change, we can’t bomb them, and we can’t invade them. Sanctions also appear ineffective, at least in their current form. So what do we do?

Here is probably the best solution.

Like all attempts to motivate, we need to figure out what we ultimately want and then we need to figure out the best combination of carrots and sticks to get us there. In this case, the best long term solution would be to replace this regime with one that isn’t insane. We should probably admit right now that (1) we’re not going to get a happy democracy, (2) we’re not going to get a pro-American government, and (3) we’re not going to stop them from developing civilian nuclear power, so I'd abandon that thinking at the door.

The Carrot: So let’s start by offering the following carrots. We would happily work with any new government to help the Iranians develop civilian nuclear power. Of course, we’ll decide later if the new government is acceptable, but there’s no need to mention that right now. As part of this, we could re-offer the current offer by France to refine Iran’s uranium for them, with the idea being that Iran would not be in the business of refining uranium, and thus could not build a bomb.

We could also promise further respectability for Iran, playing on their historical humiliations, but offering to create a counsel of five or some such thing to resolve Middle East issues. . . with Iran to be offered a seat at this table once it gets a new (read: acceptable) government.

We also need to stop talking about invading or attacking Iran, because this plays into the hands of their current government. Don’t feed the trolls.

The Sanctions Stick: If we are serious about sanctions, and I certainly think they are a good idea no matter what else we try, then we need to make them enforceable. That means throwing around American weight. Team Obama is currently getting the Saudis to bribe the Chinese to participate, but I don’t think that will be fruitful.

Rather than begging the Russians or Chinese to help us, we should (1) draw up a list of goods and services that are vital to keeping Iran’s government functioning, e.g. weapons, vehicles, fuel, base metals, technology, etc., and (2) pass a law imposing such sanctions, and (3) pass an additional law that requires the President to prohibit the importation of any goods and services from any country that is found to have dealt with Iran in these items. Such a law would cause the export dependent sectors of countries like China and Russia to do the lobbying for us, as those countries would now pay a price for going against our embargo.

The Military Stick: If none of this works, then we need to consider military options because the alternative is simply too horrific to allow. Unfortunately, neither air strikes nor invasion appear viable. Thus, we may have no choice but to eliminate their leadership through other means. I wouldn’t announce this publicly and I certainly wouldn’t take credit for it. But if the choice comes down to the elimination of Ahmadinijad and a few of his deputies or letting them turn a city to ash, then the choice is obvious.

Finally, if none of this works, then we need to think about bombings and invasions.


Are these the best approach? I think so. Will they work? I don't know. But there is no reason we couldn’t try each of these in turn. One thing is for certain though, hope is not a strategy and a handful of ineffective sanctions are not a deterrent. The longer we wait to get serious, the fewer options will be available to us. And if we wait too long, millions of people won’t live to regret it.

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Memo To Democrats: Talk Is Cheap

There’s something rather pathetic about the Democratic Party these days. They’ve proven themselves to be utterly incompetent as a party, and their views to be entirely unpalatable to the public. Yet they don’t seem to be able to recognize this. Instead, they would rather believe that they just haven’t found the magic words yet to win the public over. Nothing highlights this delusion more than the recent discovery that Democrats are piling into a school designed to teach them how to talk tough.

For decades now, polls have shown that the public views the Democrats as weak on national defense. Polls this week confirmed this, showing that 50% of the public prefers the Republicans on the issue of nation security and only 33% prefer the Democrats. The numbers for Democratic women are even worse, lower by an average of 11%.

So how do the Democrats respond to this obvious weakness? They decide to start taking classes on how not to sound weak. Do you see the flaw? Because they don't. They aren’t going to school to learn about national defense. No. They aren't going to lay out their case to convince us that they know what they are doing. No. They’re just going to learn how to use the lingo.

Think about this. If you know someone has no knowledge of computers, would you trust them to run your IT department just because they suddenly learned to use some computer-related words? Does saying “shiver me timbers” a lot makes one a pirate?

This is very reminiscent of the 1980s, when they discovered to their horror that every time they promised to raise taxes, increase regulation, or weaken our national defense in the face of Soviet aggression, they lost votes. So did they adjust their theories to suit the public? No. Did they set out to teach the public why their beliefs supposedly weren’t so disastrous? No. They kept right on doing what they were doing, only they learned to lie about their plans. Soon Democrats everywhere were learning to mouth words like “I will cut your taxes,” even as they planned to raise them. Soon they were talking about stopping Soviet aggression, just as they planned to gut the military. Soon leftist sympathizers and cowards like Patsy Schroeder of the House Armed Services Committee were making claims like: "I was responsible for all of our military hardware working because I opposed all of it, and that made them more careful."

The American public doesn’t trust the Democrats on national defense because their track record since Vietnam is horrible. It’s an unending orgy of defeatism, surrender and “America-last”ism. They opposed every weapon system Reagan proposed because he was the “aggressor” who wanted to start a war. They wanted disarmament to demonstrate our good intentions to the Soviets. They abandoned our friends and gave aid and comfort to our enemies. They snuggled up to dictators and mass murders. They opposed missile defense because they claimed it would make the US irresponsible. They fought American policy in all corners of the world. They whined about the rights of terrorists and ignored the rights of their victims. They put their pet peeves and desires for social engineering above military readiness. And they showed a level of disrespect for the military and the intelligence community that was borderline criminal.

You don’t overcome a reputation built by that kind of behavior by trying to change the words you use. You need to change the things you do.

But the Democrats can’t grasp that lesson. You see this in everything they do.

You see it in their desperate attempts to tell you how successful their spending splurge has been, when it's been nothing of the sort, as they keep throwing good money after bad.

You see it in their blaming FOX News for their sagging poll numbers, and in their claims that somehow the utterly compliant media hasn't been fair to them. Give me a break. There have been a whole slew of articles recently about the need for the Democrats "to start fighting back" in the media wars. As if controlling every news source outside of Fox News, the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal wasn't enough. . . as if liberals who can't stop themselves from injecting their views into everything they do from movies to television to even articles about sports and who shout down anyone who disagrees with them, have just been passively letting evil right-wingers blabber on unopposed.

Similarly, the feminist element of their party is out in full force again. They're concerned that we cavemen Americans might think that women can't be leaders. Why? Because they made such a big deal about women finally showing that they could be leaders when Hillary was sure to become the next President and when Pelosi became the first woman Speaker of the House. Look out boys, women have finally arrived. Well, Hillary lost and Pelosi stinks. But rather than accept that they just backed the wrong horses and instead realizing, like the rest of us, that women like Margaret Thatcher proved a long time ago that they could be incredible leaders, they've instead gone on a shrill campaign to convince us that Pelosi is "inarguably one of the strongest speakers in modern history" (direct quote). Ignore the fact that with overwhelming majorities in both houses, she has yet to get a single piece of Obama's policy to his desk. Ignore the fact that she's been exposed as corrupt and stupid, hated and hateful, and entirely ineffective. Ignore the fact that she is the Republicans' single greatest asset. . . yes, ignore it all because we can prove she's a success if we just say it enough.

They have become a party that can’t distinguish between reality and fantasy, that can’t recognize that intentions are not the same thing as actions, and that the reason people don’t trust them isn’t a lack of eloquence, it is a lack of confidence.

And indeed the lack of confidence on national defense will continue. For while they are learning to talk tough, nothing else has changed. While the country is at war, they’re again going on about getting gays into the military, women into submarines, cutting the military budget, slandering and jailing American troops, whining about the rights of poor terrorists and that our weapons are too effective or too unfair. The only thing they don't seem to want to talk about is protecting America.

That’s what wrong with the Democratic Party, they mistake words for deeds.

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Obama’s Deficit: Threat To National Security

This one is important. A little bit of national debt is a good thing, believe it not. Millions of people depend on government borrowing as a safe investment. . . lots of little old ladies hold treasury bonds. But too much of a good thing is a bad thing, and we are way beyond bad. In fact, Obama’s deficit has gotten so large that it’s become a serious national security threat. Here’s why. . .

The Scope of the Problem

In May of 2007, Paul Weinstein of the Progressive Policy Institute wrote this about the Bush deficits:

“The current administration’s fiscal irresponsibility will compromise our nation’s prosperity and security for years to come unless the next president shows a commitment to restoring budgetary sanity.”

Weinstein had a point. By May 2007, Bush had turned a supposed surplus into a deficit of around $200 billion a year (the Democratic Congress would jack this up to $400 billion in 2008). Because of Bush’s spending, he would add nearly $2.5 trillion to the national debt during his eight years. But compared to Obama, Bush was a tightwad (see chart right).

In the first budget that was truly his, Obama proposes a deficit of $1.75 trillion!! Eight times Bush’s deficits! His long term projections show him adding nearly $7.5 trillion to the national debt if he lasts eight year -- and that “low” number relies on laughably phony projections of growth. Where is Mr. Weinstein now?

Obama’s deficits are so large that they’ve become a national security threat. They make us vulnerable to our enemies, they threaten our ability to recover from disaster, and they threaten our economy.

At The Mercy Of Our Enemies

Debt is not as big of a concern as the deficit. Once we borrow the money, the power really belong to us, because we have the ability to either default or to inflate our way out of the debt. Neither idea is a good one, but they do afford us a good deal of power over the lenders. Deficits are different.

Because we are running a deficit, we need to keep borrowing money to afford our government. That means that every couple of weeks, the Treasury goes into the market and sells bonds. Most of these bonds are bought by foreign governments, particularly China. If they decided to stop buying our debt, our government would suddenly find itself without the money it needs.

How bad is this problem? Under Bush, we were borrowing $200 billion a year. If we assumed that every foreign government stopped buying our debt because they saw an advantage in it, the government would have come up $200 billion short. . . about the yearly cost of the Afghan war. In other words, by working together, foreign governments could have cut off our funding for the Afghan war. To make that up, we would need to raise taxes or cut spending out of the budget. This would have been a problem, but not a disaster.

But Obama’s deficit is $1.75 trillion. This is a disaster waiting to happen. That deficit represents 45% of the budget! That means that if China et al. stopped buying our debt, we would need to cut 45% from our budget!

Only 57% of our budget is discretionary, meaning the rest consists of entitlements like Medicare and Social Security and mandatory payments like interest on the debt. To cut 45% from our budget would mean that we would need to cut all discretionary spending by 79%!! In other words, we would need to cut 79% out of the defense budget, 79% out of the FBI budget, 79% out of the INS budget, 79% out of the budget for education, roads, homeland security, transportation, medicine, environmental enforcement, parks, etc.

The chaos would likely cause our government to collapse. Thank you Mr. Obama and Madame Pelosi.

And for those of you who think this can’t happen, China sat out one auction last year in response to Obama Administration criticism and caused a near panic. Recently, the Chinese Army argued publicly that China should not only stopping their purchases of US bonds, but should also dump the bonds they already hold . . . right after Obama announced an arms sale to Taiwan.

But even if this didn’t happen, the mere threat that it could happen is enough to let China dictate our foreign policy behavior. Suddenly, because of the Democrats, our threats have become empty threats, our ability to defend our friends worthless, and our independence suspect.

At The Mercy of Mother Nature

But even without our enemies trying to choke off our government, Obama’s deficits have created another significant vulnerability. This was exposed by the Haiti disaster. Haiti is a worthless pit. If the whole country was destroyed, it could probably be rebuilt with the spare change found in all of the couches in the Congressional office building. An American city could not.

If another Katrina happened today, particularly to a larger or more important city, or a larger 9/11, it is no longer clear that the United States government has the financial ability to rebuild. Indeed, as you witnessed from the health care debate, the Democrats went into a panic over finding an extra $100 billion dollars to spread over ten years. . . that’s $10 billion a year. The estimated cost of Katrina to the federal government (at the time) was $200 billion. Afghanistan costs $180 billion a year. The total economic harm of 9/11 was estimated at $2 trillion.

If we are worried about $10 billion a year for health care, how confident are we that our nearly bankrupt government could respond to another disaster?

At The Mercy of Creditors

Finally, we come to the hidden disaster waiting to happen. This one is extreme, but people don’t pay attention to it because it sounds esoteric. When Obama announced his deficit, the credit rating agencies immediately announced that these deficit would destroy the United States’ AAA rating if the deficits continued (as Obama projects them to do). They then promptly shaded our rating below that of Canada and France.

So what you ask? Ok, here goes:

Step 1. If the credit rating falls, our cost of borrowing skyrockets. Right now the United States spends $255 billion a year in interest (that’s 1.5 Afghanistan wars). That’s based on borrowing costs of 1-2% for short term loans and 7% on long term loans. If our credit rating falls, the cost of borrowing increases. Suddenly, we could be paying 7-10% on short term debt and 20% on long terms debt. Suppose our short term rate goes up to 4%. That means our interest costs suddenly increase to $500 billion a year -- or the amount we spend on Medicare. If our interest rate increase to 6%, that will cost us $750 billion a year, or what we spend on defense. If our interest rate increases to 8%, that will cost us $1 trillion a year, or 26% of our entire budget. . . or 46% of our non-borrowed budget. Think about that.

Step 2. A drop in credit rating would be the end for the dollar as a reserve currency. That means other countries would stop hedging their currencies in dollars. This means a further depression of the dollar. Thus, that BMW that might cost you $72,000 today could cost you $172,000 tomorrow.

Step 3. The loss of reserve currency status also means that we lose the discount we’ve been getting from our creditors -- they pay us less than they should to buy our debt because of the supposed safety that the dollar provides. This means our cost of borrowing could go up another couple percentage point. Suddenly, we’re looking at $1.5 trillion in borrowing costs. . . that’s 68% of our non-borrowed budget!

Step 4. As the government’s spending costs increase so do yours because all loans are based on the government’s cost of borrowing plus some risk premium. That house you wanted to buy? Your next mortgage could cost you 17%.

Step 5. As interest rates shoot up, a downward spiral begins. The cost of borrowing causes a vast number of businesses to stop borrowing or to fail outright. The economic effect is disastrous. Moreover, the crashing economy means a tax revenue shortfall, which means more borrowing, which means higher interest rates. It’s a vicious circle. Welcome inflation, welcome Great Depression redux, welcome Germany 1930 or South America 1970.

Thank you Mr. Obama and Madame Pelosi.

This is why Obama’s deficit has become a national security emergency. This is why we need to stop spending immediately. Obama, Pelosi and the Democrats have literally put our country on the brink of disaster.


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Why China Is A Danger To Us. . .

I wrote an article some time ago in which I pointed out that the obsession with China surpassing us economically was all a bunch of paranoid garbage. . . and it is. But that doesn’t mean that we should not be worried about China. Here’s what should concern you. . .

China: The Military Threat

About ten years ago, China came to an interesting realization. It knew it could not compete with the United States military as a world power. But what if it didn’t have to? After much rethinking, China concluded that it didn’t need to compete with the United States militarily as a world power, it only needed a strong enough military to outclass whatever the United States could bring to the region in the event of conflict. In other words, it didn’t need to prepare to fight the United States around the world, it only needed to be strong enough to intimidate the United States into staying out of whatever regional conflicts it chose to start, e.g. Taiwan.

Putting that plan into motion, China began modernizing its military with EU and Russian weapons. In 2002, when I first started paying attention to this issue, China began buying old Russian Kilo-class submarines. Those subs are equipped with long-range, anti-ship missile systems. The Chinese also bought destroyers, anti-aircraft missiles and fighter-bombers from the Russian at the same time. They also began building large numbers of missiles that could reach other countries within the region, and they began doing war games that involved simulating attacks on Taiwan.

According to experts at the National War College, those submarines would “very significantly enhance the Chinese navy's ability to influence events in the East China Sea. First, by enforcing a blockade against Taiwan, if Beijing adopts that course of action, and also by posing a serious problem for opposing naval forces attempting to operate in the area.”

Now Defense Secretary Robert Gates has acknowledged this threat. Said Gates on Wednesday:

“When considering the military-modernization programs of countries like China, we should be concerned less with their potential ability to challenge the US symmetrically -- fighter to fighter or ship to ship -- and more with their ability to disrupt our freedom of movement and narrow our strategic options. Investments in cyber and anti-satellite warfare, anti-air and anti-ship weaponry, and ballistic missiles could threaten America's primary way to project power and help allies in the Pacific -- in particular our forward air bases and carrier strike groups.”

Short of starting an arms race in the region, combating this threat will be extremely difficult, especially with an administration that pays no attention to world affairs. Perhaps discouraging further arms sales and allowing Taiwan to buy more modern American military hardware would be a good start? Of course, that could cause China to stop buying the bonds Obama needs to sell so that he can keep up his deficit spending.

China: The Foreign Policy Threat

At the same time, China has undertaken a much more aggressive approach to foreign policy throughout the rest of the world. Meet the “Bamboo Republic”:

Do you remember the banana republic? “Banana republic” was the term for countries that were essentially ruled by fruit companies. British or American companies would head to places like South America and set up banana and rubber plantations. They would then use their considerable wealth and power to shape/control the local governments to ensure that their investment was protected. The banana republics came to end as result of various means, most often revolution.

Now they are back, and China is the biggest purveyor. At a time when most governments in the world are content to step back and let NGOs -- non-governmental organizations -- address the problems of the Third World, China has stepped into the vacuum. Using hard currency, they have bought up massive amounts of resources in these countries, everything from oil, to minerals, to huge tracks of land. They also bought up the companies that were doing the extracting and they have created companies to manage the land. In this way, they are securing the oil, the copper, the iron ore, and the wheat that they need.

The question that remains unanswered is how this will affect the governments in those countries. Will this predispose them toward a favorable view of China? Will they feel held hostage to China’s demands? Will they become Bamboo Republics? And is this good for these countries, or have they simply traded white colonial masters for Chinese colonial masters? Moreover, how will this affect countries like the United States, as, for example, copper mine after copper mine comes under the influence of the Chinese government?

Like it or not, resources are limited and it’s time to consider the wisdom of letting a government like China monopolize the things upon which modern economies depend.

China And The Coming Oil Shortage Threat

Similar to the Bamboo Republic threat comes a threat of massive disruption to our oil supply. Everyone knows that oil is a commodity, and, thus, it doesn’t matter where you get it, right? Well, no.

In fact, there are different types of oil. Indeed, one of the reasons that Iran is seeking nuclear power even though it is “sitting” on a ton of oil, is that its oil is “sour crude”, meaning it contains a great many impurities -- particularly sulfur. Those impurities need to be removed before the oil can be processed. This makes the oil expensive to use and not well suited to being turned into gasoline (it tends to be used for heating oil or diesel).

A second, more important fact is that oil is not dumped into a market where it can be picked up by anyone like bread from a bin at a grocery store. Oil comes from certain countries and is often designated for specific countries. Indeed, the United States gets most of its oil from Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. But coming in a strong fourth, and providing around 1/6th of the oil supplied to the United States, is Venezuela.

And this rubs Hugo Chavez wrong. Thus, he has stated several times that if he could find other buyers, he would stop selling oil to the United States entirely -- thereby cutting off 1/6 of the oil supply to the United States. The reason he hasn’t been able to find too many buyers is that Venezuela also sits on sour crude, which not everyone can refine. Last week, China signed a deal with Venezuela to start developing oil fields in Venezuela.

This remains speculation at this point, but it will not likely take long after China develops the infrastructure needed to process and transport oil from Venezuela to China, before Chavez starts selling all of his oil to China instead of the United States. Where will the United States suddenly find enough oil to replace 1/6 of its requirement?

Conclusion

The Chinese are not fools, nor are they content with being second class. They have made it clear that they view the world now as bi-polar, with the United States on one end and China on the other, and everyone else nothing more than pawns. We need to make sure that we are not dependent on China in any way, and that China does not find a way to hold us over a barrel. We also need to think about balancing China’s power within its own region by fully supporting our friends, before they stop being our friends and instead fall under the influence of a new Chinese Empire.

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