A WORD FOR THE KURDS

Paul Greenberg


It's an old saying: Be careful what you wish
for; you just might get it. In spades. The latest
illustration of that adage is provided by our
own vice president, for Joe Biden is finally
getting his wish. He made it back in 2006,
another time when Iraq was falling apart in a
swirl of blood and explosions. He was Sen.
Biden back then but already fancied himself
some kind of foreign-policy guru, and his
response to Iraq's collapse that year was
simplicity itself: Just go ahead and let it fall
apart -- one part for each of its ethnic/
religious components: Sunni, Shi'a and Kurds.
The old Iraq would be balkanized, all would
get what they wanted, and peace would reign!
Problem solved.
Now, headline after headline, we're seeing just
how the Biden Plan would have played out as
Iraq slides into the same kind of bloody chaos
that was rampant in 2006 -- before a president
and commander-in-chief named George W.
Bush woke up, fired his secretary of defense,
and got himself a general with a new and this
time effective strategy.
That president's 180-degree turnabout saved
the day -- and Iraq. The new commander in the
field would be David Petraeus, who had pretty
much written the book on what's called
counterinsurgency warfare, and his strategy
was nicknamed The Surge. It proved
surprisingly successful in a surprisingly short
time -- with a surprising minimum of
American casualties. The result: Iraq held
together. Till now.
But this new president and nominal
commander-in-chief decided to abandon Iraq
by 2011, and abandoned it was -- right on
schedule. And right on schedule it's now fallen
apart. Although it might have taken only a
modest American force to keep it together and
stabilized. The same kind of American force --
it's called a deterrent -- that has stood guard in
Europe and on the Korean peninsula for years,
for decades.
Anyone who knew anything about the Middle
East, even a little, could have foreseen what
leaving the Iraqis to their own deeply divisive
devices would lead to: bloody chaos. Which is
just where it now has led.
Welcome to Obamaland, where a president's
fondest dreams can come true -- and be
revealed as cruel illusions.
Barack Obama seems to assume that the world
is the simple place he wants it to be, and not
as it sadly is -- full of treacherous dangers that
defy simple "solutions." His has been the
familiar isolationist dream and lure: All that
America has to do is withdraw from the world,
and we'll live happily forever after. That's not
a foreign policy; it's a fairy tale. And one that
Americans have regularly paid a high price
for. At least since the isolationist Thirties led
predictably enough to the ferocious Forties and
the greatest war in history.
Now, five years into Barack Obama's reset of
American foreign policy, his dream world has
turned into a nightmare scenario -- see
Ukraine and what has happened in Crimea,
and is still happening in Syria and Iraq and
Afghanistan and ... anywhere else this
president has chosen to ignore. A world
without American involvement, it turns out, is
a world without peace.
The whole Arab Spring, once so full of bright
hope, has shriveled and turned into darkest
winter. At this juncture in the creation of
Barack Obama's not so brave new world, it is
too late to restore the old Iraq; not all the
king's men and all the king's armored divisions
can put it back together again. By now it has
broken into at least three parts, each of which
may splinter soon enough.
Told to choose between Sunni and Shi'a in
Iraq, I'd take the Kurds. They've been betrayed
time and again in their tragic history -- at least
since they were promised independence after
the First World War and then denied it by a
succession of imperial, and imperious, world-
shapers. From our own Henry Kissinger,
master of unreal Realpolitik, to both the shah
of Iran and Iraq's late and unlamented Saddam
Hussein. Let's not betray the Kurds yet again.
Now is finally the Kurds' time. Having sided
with a succession of dictators in the Middle
East, why not finally ally ourselves with a long
oppressed people who have built a homeland
of their own where democratic principles are
increasingly honored instead of being trashed
-- including a decent respect for women's
rights, the rule of law and private property.
Even the Turks, the Kurds' old oppressors,
now see the wisdom of supporting them. Why
don't we?
One of the persistent tragedies of modern Arab
history has been that, whenever a budding
moderation has been challenged by the latest
form of Arab fanaticism, the fanatics have a
way of winning out. That fatal flaw in the
nomadic character was noted by the still
redoubtable T.E. Lawrence ("of Arabia"), the
Englishman who adopted, maybe even
invented, Arab nationalism. Col. Lawrence
would diagnose that trait in his magnificent,
romantic, poetic, consistently amusing, and
still deeply insightful history of the Arab
Revolt he led with such success, not to
mention élan. He called his book "Seven
Pillars of Wisdom," and here is one of them:
"Arabs could be swung on an idea as on a
cord; for the unpledged allegiance of their
minds made them obedient servants. None of
them would escape the bond till success had
come, and with it responsibility and duty and
engagements. Then the idea was gone and the
work ended -- in ruins.
"Without a creed they could be taken to the
four corners of the world (but not to heaven)
by being shown the riches of earth and the
pleasures of it; but if on the road, led in this
fashion, they met the prophet of an idea, who
had nowhere to lay his head and who
depended for his food on charity or birds, then
they would all leave their wealth for his
inspiration. They were incorrigibly children of
the idea, feckless and color-blind, to whom
body and spirit were forever and inevitably
opposed. Their mind was strange and dark, full
of depressions and exaltations, lacking in rule,
but with more of ardor and more fertile in
belief than any other in the world. They were
a people of starts, for whom the abstract was
the strongest motive, the process of infinite
courage and variety, and the end nothing."
All around the Middle East, minorities on its
periphery wait to rise and escape the latest
wave of Arab fanaticism, which sweeps over
what used to be Iraq even now as the "Islamic
State of Syria and the Levant" overflows out of
the long-neglected chaos in Syria, and
threatens to swamp not just the unsteady
regime in Baghdad but neighboring Jordan and
everything else in its violent wake.
Christian Maronites in Lebanon and Copts in
Egypt, Jews in Israel and, yes, Kurds in a
reborn Kurdistan are but a few of the groups
that make up the periphery of peoples around
the Arab heartland, and that offer the one
thing the state formerly known as Iraq always
lacked: cohesion. And hope, even the hope of
reasonable rule. Why not give them all a
fighting chance not only to survive in that
dangerous neighborhood but to thrive?

LIKE A COILED SPRING...........

Paul Greenberg


Is there any book so derided as being
antiquated and irrelevant, and that remains so
contemporary and pertinent as the never really
Old Testament? For once again, for the third
time in less than a decade, the Israelis stand at
the gates of Gaza, the ancient capital of the
Philistines, and prepare to invade. Just as its
leader at another time, Samson ben Manoah,
seeing Israel harried by her enemies, finally
chose to take the offensive. You can read all
about it in the Book of Judges. Nothing ever
seems to change, at least not in that part of an
ever uncertain world.
The question by now isn't whether the Israelis
will be coming, but when. The aerial assault
against Gaza has already begun in response to
the rain of rockets that have fallen all over
Israel these past few weeks, penetrating
deeper than ever before. The surest result has
been to put this era's Jewish commonwealth on
a war footing once again.
How can this be? Wasn't this new unified
Palestinian regime in Ramallah, a coalition of
Fatah and Hamas, going to be a new, peaceful
government led by technocrats, not haters?
(Did anybody ever believe that, even those
who said it?) But the only technology this
"new" Palestinian leadership has seemed
determined to practice is firing ever newer
and bigger missiles at Israel. Thanks to that
country's Iron Dome defense, the missiles
haven't caused many if any fatalities, but they
have succeeded in mobilizing tens of
thousands of Israeli reservists, who are now
poised to roll into the Gaza Strip, aka
Hamasland, still again.
According to the latest reports, some 20,000
Israeli reservists have already been called up,
and a total of 40,000 are due to be. How long
can that little country afford to keep that many
reservists under arms without striking? The
aerial assault has already begun on a large
scale as hundreds of sorties prepare the way
for the ground troops expected to follow any
day, any hour. Hospitals on both sides of the
line are girding for the rush of casualties to
come.
To what end? Israel's prime minister, who
now finds himself a wartime leader, promises
that "Hamas will pay a heavy price for firing
at Israeli citizens." Benjamin Netanyahu says
this "operation will expand and continue until
the fire toward our towns stops and quiet
returns." Which makes the objective of Israel's
latest campaign clear enough, but how achieve
it? Questions abound:
Will this be just a partial and temporary
occupation of Gaza till Washington and the
rest of the world again force Israel to
withdraw short of a more permanent end to
the rocket fire out of Gaza? It's happened
before. Twice. Is the third time supposed to be
the charm?
Why should this invasion -- and its outcome --
be different from all the others? To quote one
resident of Gaza preparing to take shelter from
Israeli bombs once again, "We want ... a truce
and peace with them so our children and we
can live." Which sounds just like what people
on the other side of the divide want, too, but
whenever a glimmer of peace is spotted, the
violent bear it away. And the old cycle of
intermittent peace between regular wars
returns.
Short of occupying all of Gaza, or at least
establishing a buffer zone, a cordon sanitaire,
between Hamas and its supply of rockets via
the tunnels out of Egypt, what's to keep the
Israelis from having to invade a fourth time,
and a fifth, and so regularly on every few
years?
So long as there is no end to this fatal cycle of
sporadic peace and constant hostilities, and to
Hamas' control of Gaza with it, any real peace
will remain an idle dream, a brief and
temporary pause between bloody wars.
Meanwhile, Gaza begins to bury its dead and
Israel girds for the casualty reports sure to
come once the land war begins. When will that
be? Tomorrow, next day? Next week? Never?
The clock is ticking, the coiled spring is about
to be sprung, and then the fog of war will
descend again. And there will be only one
thing certain about this old, old story: It is To
Be Continued.
If this air campaign can suppress all that
rocket fire out of Gaza, at least for a time,
then both sides can issue separate but equal
declarations of victory, everybody can go
home, and the world breathe a sigh of relief.
In war as in showbiz, Give 'em a Happy Ending
Every Time!
But if not, then cry Havoc! and let slip the
dogs of war. And after that, who knows? For
every battle plan remains operative only until
the first contact with the enemy, limited wars
have a way of turning unlimited, and this
latest war for peace will bring anything but.
And once again, to echo the lament of Milton's
"Samson Agonistes":
Promise was that I
Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves . . .

IS IT THE BEST AND WORST OF TIMES?

Charles Payne


It was the best of times, it was the worst of
times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age
of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was
the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of
Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the
spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we
had everything before us, we had nothing before
us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we
were all going direct the other way - in short,
the period was so far like the present period,
that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on
its being received, for good or for evil, in the
superlative degree of comparison only.
-Charles Dickens
Have we entered into a permanent new phase
in America where the rich have it and flaunt it
while the poor simply get by as each day gets
harder and harder? Commonsense says that if
someone was smart enough to become rich in
the first place, they would only be able to add
wealth over time. I have a friend that arrived
in America, penniless with his father from
China, now his wealth is beyond fabulous.
He told me the first “stick” (one million
dollars) was the hardest to earn.
Be that as it may, the masses may not want to
hear that as their individual world sinks
deeper into the economic abyss. Sadly, the
people with power to make a difference have
made it worse and now use the current
economic reality as a rally cry to ditch this
crazy experiment known as capitalism. Of
course, America has never been “rich” the way
Europe used to be rich; our system has
allowed mobility that was impossible in those
rigid societies.
Nonetheless, talk of revolution is in the air.
I think this is the most dangerous moment for
capitalism in America since the height of the
movement in the 1930s and 1940s. It has
different names and mostly no name this time
around, but a lot of catchphrases like “income
inequality” and the newest “work life balance”
designed to discourage the accumulation of
individual wealth and individual effort at
chasing that wealth. In short the idea is to
demonize financial success and then dismantle
it through taxes and other schemes.
The problem is that these schemes are picking
up steam and could become more than a
ripple.
Last week’s op-ed by Nick Hanauer stating he
sees “pitchforks” against “zillionaires”
continues to reverberate. The co-founded or
funding source of more than 30 companies
including Amazon.com says it’s only a matter
of time before the masses attack. Making his
commentary intriguing is that he seems to
welcome such an attack. Speaking “frankly,”
he comments on not being the smartest or
hardest working guy and only being a
mediocre student. He just says he has a
tolerance for taking risk and good intuition
about what will happen in the future.
In other words, maybe he doesn’t really
deserve his billions.
Moreover, intuition says the country has had
enough and wants to get even. I have to note
that Hanauer might suffer a special kind of
guilt, considering that a large chunk of his
wealth comes from selling aQuantive to
Microsoft in 2007 at $6.0 billion. In July 2012,
Microsoft wrote-off the acquisition for $6.2
billion – meaning the company was worthless
in the first place.
Be that as it may, Nick isn’t the only rich
person worried and it’s not just an American
issue. Li Ka-shing, the richest man in Asia,
says he can’t sleep for worry about Hong
Kong’s growing income gap.
Some quotes to students at Shantou University
include:
"The howl of rage from polarization and the
crippling cost of welfare dependence is a toxic
cocktail commingled to stall growth and foster
discontent."
“…Trust, the bedrock of an enlightened society,
is crumbling before our eyes.”
Interestingly, the 85-year-old tycoon wants the
HK government to introduce dynamic and
flexible wealth redistribution policies that
strike the right balance between promoting
equality and economic objectives.
The income inequality issue wouldn’t be an
issue if the same tide was lifting all boats.
Instead, the tide has been a tidal wave with
anti-business rhetoric, regulations and taxes
stalling the greatest economy in the world.
There are 4.6 million job openings, the most in
more than seven years, but people lack the
skills to fill them. If the effort being applied to
stir trouble and hurt feelings and dash hopes
were put into education and knowledge
development, the whole thing would be a
moot point.
The stock market reflects the current tale of
two cities theme.
Low End High End
RCII -25% WSM +22%
DSW -41% TIF +9%
CONN -36% JWN +12%
This morning, Rent-A-Center laid an egg and
the stock will be hammered today. Once again,
the stock market reflects economic reality.
High-end retailers are on fire in a good way
while those on the discount end of the
equation are on fire in the bad way. There was
a time people would have seen this as a
positive sign that the folks were moving up the
retail food chain for better quality stuff- that’s
not conventional wisdom at the moment.

WHY INDIA IS POISED FOR POTENTIAL GROWTH?

Doug Fabian


India, one of the most populous nations on
Earth, is an interesting country for investors
because it holds the promise of significant
growth potential. Its unique characteristics
include a population that is young compared
to developed nations, the presence of some
world class universities and the availability of
many employable, English-speaking people.
But the country has not yet managed to
overcome regulatory obstacles and other
problems that have held it back from achieving
higher growth rates in the past. However, the
recent election of a new, pro-business prime
minister makes now a good time to consider
investing in funds such as the Market Vectors
India Small-Cap ETF (SCIF) .
The election of conservative Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) leader Narendra Modi as prime
minister sets the stage for this BRIC (Brazil,
Russia, India and China) country to grow
rapidly. In fact, some observers anticipate this
economic expansion will occur relatively
quickly, as it has in some other Asian
countries that modernized and adopted
business-friendly policies.
SCIF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that
seeks to replicate the results, before fees and
expenses, of an index of small-capitalization
companies that either are headquartered in
India or generate most of their revenues in the
country. If you are risk averse, keep in mind
that this country-specific ETF is not diversified.
So far this year, SCIF has gained 53%, with a
significant climb occurring after Prime
Minister Modi’s election. Recently, subscribers
to my Successful ETF Investing service made
more than 25% in profits on a short-term
trade with this ETF. In 2013, the fund’s gain of
185.07% far outperformed the U.S. market.
SCIF’s top 10 holdings represent 27.75% of its
total assets. These holdings include Unitech
Ltd, 4.32%; Suzlon Energy Ltd, 3.24%; Jain
Irrigation Systems Ltd, 2.77%; IFCI Ltd, 2.69%;
and Vakrangee Software Ltd, 2.67%. The top
sectors held by SCIF are consumer cyclical,
21.77%; industrials, 17.28%; financial services,
15.89%; and technology, 9.84%.
In addition, not only is SCIF a way to invest in
India, which seems poised to prosper, but this
particular ETF also focuses on small-cap
stocks. As we have previously written, small
caps have traditionally outperformed the
broader stock market , at least here in the
United States. Applying this lens to the Indian
situation can make investing in Market
Vectors India Small-Cap ETF (SCIF)
potentially even more appealing.
If you want my advice about buying and
selling specific ETFs, including appropriate
stop losses, please consider subscribing to my
Successful ETF Investing newsletter. As always,
I am happy to answer any of your questions
about ETFs, so do not hesitate to send me an
e-mail . You just may see your question
answered in a future ETF Talk.
In case you missed it, I encourage you to read
my article from last week about how Russia’s
rebound could be good for investors .

ISREAL IS UNDER ATTACK

Lee Smith


Last week, Hamas fired hundreds of rockets
and missiles at targets throughout Israel,
including the nuclear reactor at Dimona. Two
of the three M-75 missiles targeting Dimona
missed the mark entirely, but one had to be
brought down by Iron Dome, Israel’s
antimissile shield. The U.N. considers an attack
on a nuclear reactor an act of nuclear
terrorism, which in this case might have taken
a catastrophic toll on Israel’s population—as
well as the Palestinians.
And now Obama is offering to play honest
broker and negotiate a ceasefire between this
terrorist group and our ally Israel. Why not?
Just last month, the Obama administration
helped usher Hamas into a Palestinian unity
government. It’s not as if the White House
didn’t know whom it was dealing with. Hamas
hadn’t changed its stripes or its founding
charter, which calls for unending war on
Israel until the Jewish state is erased from the
pages of history. Even as the administration
was telling Jerusalem to give Palestinian
Authority president Mahmoud Abbas a little
time to work out all the kinks with his new
unity government, Hamas was preparing for
war.
While the administration was showing the PA
how to get around U.S. laws that prevent
American money from going to terrorists,
Hamas was fortifying its tunnel network. It
moves men and materiel and missiles through
those tunnels, like the medium-range M-75s,
and the long-range M-302s, designed by Iran
and launched last week on trajectories that
reached as far as Haifa, Israel’s northernmost
major city.
Surely the White House had intelligence about
the tunnels and the missiles, both of which
were clear evidence of Hamas’s intentions—
terror and war. The problem isn’t that the
administration didn’t know, but that it didn’t
care. The White House has its own peculiar
ideas about the Middle East, which is why
America’s regional standing, from North Africa
to the Persian Gulf, is in shambles.
The Obama administration’s map of the Middle
East might as well be of the Hobbits’ Middle
Earth because it bears no relationship to
reality. Every corner of the region is yet
another realm of wondrous fantasy governed
by magical thinking. A Fatah-Hamas unity
deal? How productive! Coordination with
Qassem Suleimani and the Quds Force in Iraq?
That’s refreshing! An agreement with the
Islamic Republic over its nuclear weapons
program allowing them to keep 10,000
centrifuges? This will bring the clerical regime
back into the community of nations!
The White House cannot be bothered with
Middle Eastern reality. Several weeks ago, the
administration was warned that the Islamic
State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was on the verge
of taking over a strategically important Syrian
city, Deir al-Zour, close to the Iraqi border. As
the Daily Beast reported, the Syrian opposition
told administration officials like U.N.
ambassador Samantha Power that they were
surrounded by ISIS forces and running out of
ammunition. Without support, it was only a
matter of time before the city and key supply
routes fell into ISIS’s hands. The Syrian
opposition’s warnings fell on deaf ears.
Evidently, it does not matter to the White
House that a terrorist organization with
enormous reserves of cash now controls
territory on both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi
border, or that its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
calls this territory the “caliphate.”
Last week the White House’s Middle East
coordinator, Philip Gordon, visited Tel Aviv to
speak at a conference where he encouraged
Israel to take bold steps for peace, to “end the
occupation and allow for Palestinian
sovereignty, security, and dignity.” Soon after
his talk, the conference hall had to be vacated
because the territory in Gaza that Israel ceased
to occupy in 2005 allowed Palestinian militants
to rain missiles on Israel’s largest city. This
episode, a perfect illustration of the Obama
administration willfully ignoring reality,
should provide a lesson, wrote David Horovitz.
“Our closest friend,” he wrote in the Times of
Israel, “should be just a little less arrogant in
telling us what we need and don’t need to do
in order to keep ourselves safe.”
Meanwhile, Hamas’s campaign shows no sign
of ending any time soon. According to Israeli
strategists, Hamas’s rate of missile fire is
considerably slower than it was two years ago
when Israel mounted Operation Pillar of
Defense to stop Hamas rockets. The rate
suggests to Israeli officials that Hamas is trying
to conserve its arsenal. As the Washington
Free Beacon reported, the Israeli Air Force is
targeting missile factories as well as tunnels,
but that may not be sufficient.
In 2012, Israeli prime minister Benjamin
Netanyahu put 40,000 ground troops on the
border to show Hamas how far he was willing
to go to get a ceasefire. This time around he
may have to go further to check a Hamas
campaign that is qualitatively different from
that of 2012. Some Israeli analysts, like former
head of military intelligence Amos Yadlin,
argue that a ground operation is “necessary,
almost essential” to uncover the tunnel
networks, which may prove impermeable to
air attacks.
If Hamas is pacing its missile fire, it means
they’re in it for the long haul. If they’re
crossing red lines by firing missiles at Dimona
as well as Ben Gurion airport, it means they’re
going all out. The question is why.
Some analysts point to likely Iranian
involvement— indeed use of the long-range
M-302, not previously in the arsenal of Hamas,
underscores that suggestion. It’s true that
Hamas’s relations with Iran have been
somewhat cooler since they fell out over the
Syrian civil war (Hamas sided with their Sunni
co-religionists; Tehran has thrown its full
weight behind the Assad regime). But the
Iranians have a lot of cards to play in Gaza,
including Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian
factions, as well as Hamas itself. As Israeli
analyst Shimon Shapira commented recently,
“Iran is more than capable of going over the
head of Hamas’s political leadership and
arming its military commanders directly.”
If Iran is not in fact driving the campaign, then
Hamas may be putting on a demonstration for
Tehran of how helpful it can be to the Islamic
Republic. With Hezbollah tied down in Syria
fighting alongside Assad, Hamas is more useful
to Iran than ever—especially since Hamas is
now in possession of long-range missiles
capable of striking anywhere inside Israel,
making it another tool of Iranian deterrence
should the Israelis consider striking Iran’s
nuclear weapons facilities.
In other words, the strategic picture of the
Middle East hasn’t changed one bit. As the
Obama White House seeks to sign a permanent
deal with Iran by July 20, the key threat not
only to Israel but to American interests
remains .  .  . Iran. Too bad the Obama
administration can’t come to grips with that
reality.

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRAQ

Dick & Liz Cheney


As the jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and
Syria (ISIS) capture territory and establish a
caliphate stretching across the now-eradicated
Syria-Iraq border, hard-won gains secured
with American blood and treasure are being
lost. We are watching the rise of potentially
the gravest threat to our national security in a
generation, one that surpasses even the threat
we faced on 9/11. Against this backdrop, as we
debate what our response should be, it has
become fashionable in some quarters to say,
“Let’s not relitigate Iraq.” It’s not politically
expedient, this line of argument goes, to
discuss why we invaded Iraq in the first place,
or the lessons we learned. This view is wrong
on the history, misguided on the politics, and
dangerous as a matter of policy.
The larger war, of which the liberation of Iraq
was part, is still ongoing. Winning it requires
that we understand the truth about the
liberation of Iraq, the challenges America
faced in the aftermath of the invasion, how we
overcame them with the 2007-08 surge, how
we defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq and established a
stable, functioning nation allied with America
in the heart of the Middle East. We must
understand how President Obama squandered
it all, creating a vacuum in which ISIS, the
richest terrorist organization in history, now
thrives.
Those who say the invasion of Iraq in 2003
was a mistake are essentially saying we would
be better off if Saddam Hussein were still in
power. That’s a difficult position to sustain. It
is undisputed, and has been confirmed
repeatedly in Iraqi government documents
captured after the invasion, that Saddam had
deep, longstanding, far-reaching relationships
with terrorist organizations, including al
Qaeda and its affiliates. It is undisputed that
Saddam’s Iraq was a state based on terror,
overseeing a coordinated program to support
global jihadist terrorist organizations. Ansar al
Islam, an al Qaeda-linked organization,
operated training camps in northern Iraq
before the invasion. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the
future leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, funneled
weapons and fighters into these camps, before
the invasion, from his location in Baghdad. We
also know, again confirmed in documents
captured after the war, that Saddam provided
funding, training, and other support to
numerous terrorist organizations and
individuals over decades, including to Ayman
al Zawahiri, the man who leads al Qaeda
today.
It is also undisputed that Saddam Hussein had
the technology, equipment, facilities, and
scientists in place to construct the world’s
worst weapons. We know he intended to
reconstitute these programs as soon as the
international sanctions regime collapsed. He
had an advanced nuclear program in place
prior to Operation Desert Storm in 1991. In
1998, he kicked the international weapons
inspectors out of Iraq. He violated every one
of the 17 U.N. Security Council Resolutions
passed against him.
Anyone pining for the days of Saddam would
do well to read the accounts of his 1988
chemical weapons attack on Halabja, Iraq.
Listen to the survivors talk about the babies
and children who died slow, painful deaths in
bomb shelters where they had sought refuge
with their families. The shelters became, as
Saddam knew they would, gas chambers. The
lesson of Halabja is that Saddam had no
compunction, no moral compass, no hesitation
to use the world’s worst weapons, including
against his own people.
Saddam’s was a reign of terror characterized
by torture, rape rooms, the murder of parents
in front of their children and children in front
of their parents, and the oppression and
slaughter of Kurds, Marsh Arabs, and Shiites.
George W. Bush captured it well when he
wrote that Saddam was a homicidal dictator
pursuing WMD and supporting terror at the
heart of the Middle East.
Leaving Saddam in power after 9/11, in light
of the threat he posed, would have been, as
Tony Blair has noted, an act of political
cowardice. We are not saying Saddam was
responsible for 9/11. What we are saying is
that in the aftermath of 9/11, when we saw
thousands of our fellow citizens slaughtered by
terrorists armed with airline tickets and box
cutters, our leaders had an obligation to do
everything possible to prevent terrorists from
gaining access to even worse weapons.
Saddam’s Iraq was the most likely nexus for
such an exchange.
Against the weight of historical evidence, some
critics claim the Bush administration
manufactured or exaggerated the intelligence
about Saddam’s weapons programs. The charge
doesn’t stand up against the facts. Both the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and
the Robb-Silberman Commission issued
bipartisan reports concluding there was no
politicization of the intelligence or pressure on
analysts to change their judgements about
Iraq’s WMD.

ARTICLE ONE AND STUNTS

Erick Erickson


Speaker John Boehner intends to draft
legislation in the House of Representatives that
would authorize a suit against the president of
the United States. The legislation would only
pertain to the House, so it would not need the
Senate's consent. Given the partisan
composition of the House, the legislation will
pass. Speaker Boehner will use taxpayer
dollars to sue President Obama over President
Obama's use, or disuse, of his powers.
The suit will have a legal basis. In fact, there
are some legitimate complaints about the
president's use of the executive branch to
modify his health care law without
congressional consent. There are plausible
justiciable bases for the suit. But the suit is
mostly a political stunt. A suit of this nature,
filed at year's end, would wind its way through
the district and appellate courts, finally
reaching the Supreme Court most likely after
President Obama is out of office.
The House Republicans collaborated with their
Senate colleagues and gave President Obama a
blank check to increase the debt ceiling to
March of 2015. Now they want to spend
additional taxpayer dollars to ask federal
courts to stop a president they themselves
enabled.
Contrast this run to the judiciary with the
House's own powers. The founders of the
nation gave the House of Representatives two
exclusive powers. The first is the power of
impeachment. Reasonable people may disagree
on this, but it seems unwise to try to impeach
President Obama.
Currently, the Senate is controlled by
Democrats. Were the House to impeach the
president, the impeachment would go
nowhere. The media and even some
Republicans would attack the House
Republicans. Control of the Senate, which now
seems very likely, could slip from Republican
hands. Black voters, already under a barrage
of propaganda claiming Republicans want to
impeach the president, would be mobilized to
go defend the first black president.
It would end badly for the Republicans.
Speaker Boehner, just the other day, said as
much. Impeachment, wisely, is not on the
table. At this point, it is not even a sure thing
that the Republicans have the votes within
their own caucus to attempt it.
But there is another exclusive power given to
the House of Representatives by the founders.
James Madison, the chief architect of our
constitution, described this exclusive power of
the House in Federalist 58 as "the most
complete and effectual weapon with which
any constitution can arm the immediate
representatives of the people, for obtaining a
redress of every grievance, and for carrying
into effect every just and salutary measure."
"The House of Representatives cannot only
refuse, but they alone can propose, the
supplies requisite for the support of
government. They, in a word, hold the purse,"
James Madison wrote. But the House of
Representatives will not use the power of the
purse to rein in the president. It would be the
right thing to do. It resolves the claims
Republicans make about the president's abuses
of power, defunding each one, without
resorting to political stunts in courts using
taxpayer dollars.
But it will not happen. The House Republicans,
as much as they are afraid of a political
disaster involving impeachment, are horrified
of being blamed for a government shutdown.
The prior government shutdown certainly saw
a decline in Republican popularity, but it was
a mixture of those angry they did not keep up
the fight and those angry they fought at all. It
was also short term.
Therein lies why this lawsuit is a political
stunt. The founders gave the House of
Representatives the power to stop much of
what they complain about by withholding the
funds to continue the shenanigans. But they
gave the president a blank check to raise the
debt ceiling and have themselves continued to
fund Obamacare and all the other agencies
they are upset about.
They will run to the courts and ask the courts
to stop the president while they keep the cash
flowing to fund the very abuses they are using
our taxpayer dollars to file a lawsuit over.

A TALE OF TWO MORALITIES

Suzanne Fields 


We weep for Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel, Eyal
Yifrach, the three Jewish teenagers whose lives
were brutally cut short because they chose to
walk home from their religious school, hoping
to catch a ride like teenage boys safely do in
the civilized neighborhoods of the world. How
cruel to hear that in their boyish innocence
they were swept up by terrorists with evil in
their hearts.
There are suggestions in Israel that the
kidnappers became frightened when they
thought they were followed, and rather than
use the boys for ransom, they decided to kill
the only unfriendly witnesses, the kidnapped
boys.
We weep as well for Mohammed Abu Khdeir,
16, the innocent victim of a revenge murder.
We don't yet know exactly what happened, but
we do know that three Jewish suspects have
confessed and are in Israeli custody while the
killers of the three Jewish boys are still at
large.
The murders give rise again to "moral
equivalence," a discarded phrase that first
proclaimed that the ideological theories of East
and West in the Cold War were of equal
measure, that the totalitarianism of the Soviet
Union, with its Iron Curtain, was as well-
intentioned as the democracies of the West.
The notion has long been discredited in the
accounts of the Cold War, but in the Middle
East, where the ink still runs blood red,
defenders of the Hamas terrorists characterize
the murders of the four teenagers as reflecting
similar moral values.
Of course they don't. The murders are rooted
in the evil that men do in any place, any time,
in any century, when barbarism rises to the
surface of the human imagination and
galvanizes murderous instincts. The reaction
to these brutal deeds, however, tells another
story.
When the Palestinians got word that three
Jewish boys had been kidnapped, unbridled
excitement swept through the West Bank. They
praised the kidnappers as heroes. Cheering
Palestinian crowds raised the three-finger
salute associated with the release of Gilad
Shalit, the captured Israeli soldier who was
exchanged in 2011 for more than 1,027 Arab
prisoners. The Arab prisoners together were
responsible for killing more than 500 Israelis.
Many Israelis thought that such Israeli
repatriation was foolish, giving incentives to
future kidnappers, but they knew it showed
the importance of a single life to the Jews.
They demonstrated no anger at the
government. Nobody rioted.
When news of the three kidnapped Jewish
boys was first revealed, Arab celebrants
mocked the value Jews place on a single life,
"which contrasts so sharply with the value
(Palestinians) place on taking Jewish life,"
Ruth Wisse, Harvard professor of Jewish
literature, writes in The Wall Street Journal. "It
is one of the ironies of Israel that Jewish
parents whose children are murdered by Arabs
are not guaranteed justice as surely as Arabs
whose children are murdered by Jews
Collective grief cannot always contain
destructive impulses, and it's a tragedy that
Jews mourning the three murdered teenagers
killed a Palestinian boy to take revenge.
Heinous as that crime is, action for justice has
been swift, just as Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu promised. Suspects are in custody,
and no one doubts that the guilty will stand
trial and, if found guilty, will go to a long
harsh life in prison. Neither the Palestinian
Authority nor Hamas has found the killers of
the three Jewish boys, nor is there evidence
that they have tried.
She doesn't know who killed her son, but the
mother of one of the murdered Israeli boys
raged on behalf of the family of the Arab boy,
and pleaded for compassion in the name of
her faith.
"It is difficult for me to describe how
distressed we are by the outrage committed in
Jerusalem -- the shedding of innocent blood in
defiance of all morality, of the Torah, of the
foundation of the lives of our boys and of all
of us in this country," said Rachel Fraenkel,
mother of Naftali Fraenkel, 16, who was
murdered and his body thrown in a ditch with
his two companions.
The silence of the Arab mothers expressing
outrage at the deaths of the Jewish boys is
deafening.
Jews in America often memorialize a death by
planting a tree in Israel in honor of a person
who died. If the rockets unleashed by Hamas
didn't prevent them, Jews in Israel today
would plant four trees, one each for Gilad
Shaar, Naftali Frenkel, Eyal Yifrach, -- and
Mohammed Abu Khdeir.

THE BATTLE OF THE BORDER

Rich Galen


It is one thing for Republicans to point fingers
at President Barack Obama. It is something
else for a Democrat to point a finger at Barack
Obama.
Henry Cuellar is the Democratic Congressman
from west Texas. In fact his district, the 28th,
runs from San Antonio about 7,271 miles
south, southwest along the Mexican border.
When you talk about America's border
problems, you are talking Henry Cuellar's
problems.
You might have read that President Obama is
on another fund-raising trip. This time to
Colorado and to Texas.
It was suggested that the President, as long as
he was going to be in Texas and all, might
want to make a trip to the border to see what
all the hoo-hah is about.
This suggestion was made by Henry Cuellar.
After he saw photos of the President playing
pool and drinking beer with Colorado
Governor John Hickenlooper during the
Colorado segment of his trip.
Cuellar said on Fox News that the President
should zip on down to the border while he's in
Texas. The Dallas Morning News reported that
Cuellar said:
"He can get on Air Force One, be there in a
half an hour ? right after he finishes his
fundraising in Texas"
You don't need a PhD in political science to
understand why the White House doesn't want
the President physically anywhere near the
issue of unaccompanied children storming the
barricades.
They know that while the President's position
on immigration generally might be popular
with many Americans, but his apparent
paralysis in stemming the tide of tens of
thousands of children illegally entering the
United States is not helpful to his already
dismal job approval ratings.
The Obama Administration is as close to total
paralysis as any Presidency since Richard
Nixon's Watergate days.
The IRS, the Department of Veterans Affairs,
the Middle East? you name it and the President
is ignoring it.
The last time there was an issue like the Battle
of the Border, was the British Petroleum oil
spill.
The White House made a big deal of sending
the Secretary of Energy who, as it happened,
was a nuclear physicist not a chemist, a
oceanographer, nor a geologist.
It took James Carville - JAMES CARVILLE - to
light a fire under the White House to get the
President to go to Louisiana.
Carville said, on ABC News:
"Man, you got to get down here and take
control of this, put somebody in charge of
this thing and get this moving. We're about
to die down here."
According to the Los Angeles Times , Texas
Republican Senator Ted Cruz did his James
Carville imitation saying,
"Apparently there's no time [for Obama] to
look at the devastation that's being caused
by his policies."
Which is another example of one of my
favorite sayings: No matter how good your
cause, there is always someone who agrees
with you that you wish didn't
Remember the agony that George W. Bush
went through when he had Air Force One fly
over the damage done by Hurricane Katrina?
He never fully recovered from that decision.
Obama made that same mistake in 2010 with
the BP oil spill and he's making it again in 2014
with the Bebé Border Crisis.
There is a growing suspicion in our Nation's
Capital that President Obama is more-or-less
playing out the string. His administration has
until January 20, 2017 to go.
He is likely to spend the majority of that time
with a House and Senate in control of
Republicans. His attempt to reinvent American
foreign policy is a failure. And his signature
domestic accomplishment - the ACA - is
limping along costing far more to insure far
fewer people than promised.
Kudos to Henry Cuellar for calling BS on the
President's refusal to do a side trip to, at a
minimum, show the American people he at
least pretends to care about the Battle of the
Border.

WAS GEORGE WASHINGTON A DOMESTIC TERRORIST?

John Nantz 


“…the American revolution was violent and it
was illegal.” Bill Ayers, Co-Founder of Weather
Underground.
Radicals compare themselves to America’s
Founding Fathers. However, it’s hard to
envision George Washington cowering behind
a bush while pressing a detonator. In battle,
Washington rode on horseback, completely
exposed, leading his army of citizen soldiers
into leaden clouds of heavy musket balls fired
from sneering, massed English troops bent on
dealing death and mayhem. But, Washington
was no stranger to valor. Prior to the War for
Independence, Washington displayed the
heroism which was to become his hallmark
when, during the Battle of Monongahela , he
was so exposed to enemy fire that two horses
were shot from underneath him and his coat
was pierced by four musket balls. A petty
criminal like Bill Ayers is reduced to the
stature of a tapeworm in the shadow of
General Washington. It is breathtakingly ironic
that radicals compare themselves to the
founders of a society that they are desperate to
destroy.
Radicals like Ayers lurk in the shadows, hurl
bombs at innocents, and then flee the scene of
the crime. Conversely, America’s founders
stood before God and king and made their
cause known and their intended actions plain.
The American Revolution began with
America’s intellectual and social elite. It was
not a mob action, but an orderly defense of
human rights by men and women of dignity
and means. They were not a desperate mob of
lemmings but leaders in political theory,
thoughtful, temperate, highly educated, with
their lives and fortunes at risk. The American
Revolution was not a “bottom up” enterprise.
Though the continental army was composed of
citizen soldiers from every walk of life, the
founders were characterized by greatness and
produced the most noble and unique political
document in human history. In a world
characterized by violence and slavery, they
made the promise of equality before the law a
fait accompli.
Unlike our Founding Fathers, domestic
terrorists like Bill Ayers employ violence based
on illusory provocations and as a matter of
course. The Declaration of the Causes and
Necessity of Taking Up Arms states: "We, for
ten years, incessantly and ineffectually
besieged the Throne as supplicants; we
reasoned, we remonstrated with Parliament, in
the most mild and decent language."
Additionally, the violence perpetrated by the
Weather Underground was indiscriminate in
its application and, therefore; engineered to
impel political change through fear and
intimidation. Criminals like Ayers employ the
use of propaganda to lend a veneer of
legitimacy to their cause such as claims of
atrocities in Vietnam or American imperialist
intentions in that region. Any criminal
behavior by military personnel in Vietnam
were prosecuted by Military Court Martial.
What justice did Ayer's brand of indiscriminate
violence bring to anyone allegedly victimized
in Vietnam? Furthermore, the charge of
imperialism is absurd on its face, since
American forces were demonstrably in South
Vietnam to secure the same natural rights for
the Vietnamese people that we in America
enjoy. What has been the result of our
withdrawal, the stated aim of terrorists like
Ayers? Slavery to a totalitarian state and
poverty.
But, the American Revolution was based on
claims well known to be true at the time and
set forth with reason and logic. The
Declaration of Independence details the
complaints against the Crown and the rights
infringed upon:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to
secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed,—That whenever
any Form of Government becomes destructive
of these ends, it is the Right of the People to
alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government”
The founders made no spurious claims to
patently false claims. Men like General
Washington were impelled to force of arms by
the direct infringement of their own natural
right to life and liberty. The founders' appeal
was to the law of nature and to nature's God.
Resorting to arms was an act of personal and
national self-defense clearly based on natural
law principles elucidated by men like Samuel
Rutherford.
Rutherford and the Bible teach that the power
of government is devolved from God for a
specific purpose. Governments are legitimate
so long as they serve the Divine function of
rewarding the good and punishing evil. If a
government ceases to reward the moral good
as defined by Divine revelation then its grant
of power and authority ceases; it has perverted
its proper ministry and becomes itself evil. If a
government denies its people their natural
liberty they are morally obligated to avail
themselves of political means to alter that form
of government. If liberty is denied at the point
of the sword, then citizens become morally
obligated to take up arms in defense of their
inalienable rights.
Was George Washington a domestic terrorist?
The question should, at this point seem absurd.
Washington and the rest of the founders were
reacting to a threat to their liberty that was
immediate and deadly. They were
characterized by self-sacrifice and humility,
not the hubris of a creature like Bill Ayers who
agitated for and materially contributed to
bombings resulting in the deaths of innocents.
Radicals like Ayers are murderers whose
innocent victims are slain with malice-afore-
thought, with violence often an end in itself.
After all, Bernardine Dohrn , wife of Bill Ayers,
coldly commented about the Tate-LaBianca
murders,"First they killed those pigs, then
they ate dinner in the same room with them,
then they even shoved a fork into the pig
Tate's stomach! Wild! Dohrn, Ayers’ soul mate,
also stated, “The Weathermen dig Charlie
Manson.” The words of a patriot? Hardly. By
their fruits you shall know them. The radical
left has delivered murder, mayhem, poverty,
and human misery. Our founders created a
bastion of liberty and prosperity which is the
envy of the world.

HOW TO FIGHT SEXUAL ASSAULT

Mona Charen


Two University of Miami football players have
been arrested and dismissed from the
university after being criminally charged with
sexual battery on a 17-year-old girl. According
to ESPN , the two admitted to buying drinks for
the girl and then bringing her back to a dorm
room where they engaged in nonconsensual
sex acts with her.
Six Vanderbilt students have filed a suit
claiming that their allegations of sexual assault
were not taken seriously. Students at Amherst,
Dartmouth, Swarthmore, Yale and dozens of
other colleges have filed similar complaints.
Some of the statistics circulating about campus
sexual assaults -- such as the much-touted 20
percent figure -- are clearly exaggerated and
are based on an overly broad interpretation of
the word rape. As Cathy Young of Minding the
Campus explained, "Three quarters of the
female students who were classified as victims
of sexual assault by incapacitation did not
believe they had been raped."
It's always wise to take statistics, particularly
those offered by advocacy groups, with a large
grain of salt, but that doesn't mean the
problem is illusory.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, has just
released the results of a study she
commissioned about how universities are
handling sexual assault allegations. Among her
more headline-grabbing findings was that 22
percent of a national sample of universities
permit their athletic departments to oversee
cases involving alleged misconduct by athletes.
One in five provide no sexual assault response
training to faculty and staff.
The feminist interpretation of these facts is
well-known: This is part of the "rape culture"
that devalues women. The American
Association of University Women seems to
endorse this interpretation and offers "10 Ways
to Fight Against Sexual Assault on Campus." It
begins by suggesting contacting "campus
resources like counseling centers, advocacy
offices, or the police," but among the other
suggestions are "Write an op-ed"; "Use social
media ... to spread awareness"; "Start a
conversation on victim blaming"; and "Get
involved in national campaigns ... like the
Clothesline Project."
I'm all for writing op-eds, but not as a
response to a violent crime. Doubtless I will be
accused of "victim blaming," but it must be
said that the reason the AAUW, university
administrators, the Department of Education
and most importantly, young men and women
themselves are so confused about how to
handle the wave of campus rape (and
unwanted sex) is that they've created a social
environment -- the boozing hookup culture --
that invites bad behavior. Women are right the
culture is harder on them than it is on men.
They're wrong if they blame the "patriarchy."
This is the spawn of the sexual revolution, not
traditional morality.
Rape is rape, the advocates chant. Well, not
quite.
If a man sneaked into a college woman's dorm
room and raped her, she would have no
hesitation in calling the police, right? But if
she and a guy she had a crush on stumble
drunkenly into her dorm room, and she
decides following their first act of sexual
intercourse that she doesn't want to have sex
again, and he presses himself upon her, she
may be angry and feel violated, but she doesn't
want him to spend 20 years in jail, either. He
did commit a crime, and yet, her hesitation in
reporting him would be perfectly
understandable.
The sexual free-for-all culture denies that
women are more vulnerable to sexual
exploitation than men. Both sexes are
presumed to want "safe," relatively
anonymous sex on a moment's notice with no
strings attached. Yet the overwhelming
majority of those who lodge sexual assault
complaints are women. Most men are not
sexual predators, cads or rapists, but there's
little doubt that the binge drinking, casual sex
climate is tailor-made for those who are.
Women's' alcohol consumption has
dramatically increased in recent years.
"Between 1999 and 2008," reports The Wall
Street Journal, "the number of young women
who showed up in emergency rooms for being
dangerously intoxicated rose by 52 percent.
The rate for young men, though higher, rose
just 9 percent." More women are arrested for
drunk driving, and more report that they binge
drink than in the past. Again, irresponsible
men couldn't be happier with this turn of
events.
Women are being victimized on campuses and
off. But writing op-eds is not where their
power lies. They can protect themselves better
by staying sober and out of the hookup world.
Women are more delicate and vulnerable than
men. Smart women don't attempt to live this
down; they oblige men to respect it.

INDIA - CHINA 1962 WAR: AN OPEN SECRET

Wasbir Hussain


Fifty two years after India suffered an ignominious
defeat at the hands of the Chinese along the
Himalayan heights in the present Arunachal
Pradesh sector, one is amazed at the attempts by
successive Governments in New Delhi to keep the
war report authored by Lieutenant-General
Henderson Brooks and Brigadier PS Bhagat a state
secret. And this, after large parts of the so-called
classified document, locked up in the vaults of the
Defence Ministry and Army Headquarters, has been
made public by Australian journalist Neville
Maxwell in his blog in recent months and earlier in
his well known book India’s China War.
India’s new Defence Minister Arun Jaitley, who less
than four months ago authored an article making a
forceful plea for making the Henderson Brooks
report public to prevent “public opinion (from
being) influenced by unauthentic sources,” made a
U-turn to say the report cannot be declassified
because it would go against the “national interest.”
Now, this supposedly elusive report talks about the
biggest faux pas made by Nehru’s Congress
government and the military establishment of the
time. Militarily flawed plans, faulty assessment by
the Intelligence Bureau, a disruption in the chain of
command between Delhi and forward Army
formations coupled with a strange belief that there
would be no armed response from Beijing to
Nehru’s ‘Forward Policy’ forced India to face a war
it was not prepared for.
What is there in the report that New Delhi is so
wary about? Apparently, it was Nehru’s ‘Forward
Policy’ and orders to establish posts far into the
disputed border that acted as a catalyst for the war
although the conflict was described in India as
Chinese aggression across the Himalayas. This
unresolved question, as to the trigger for the war, is
largely believed to be at the root of the protracted
hostility and trust deficit among the two Asian
giants, and could well be the major source of the
conflict over border incursions and the developing
distrust over sharing the waters of the Yarlung
Tsangpo or the Brahmaputra.
Take a look at how the Chinese made their foray
into India, starting on 20 October 1962. The
People’s Liberation Army (PLA) came in on two
separate flanks – in the west in Ladakh, and in the
east across the McMahon Line in the then North-
East Frontier Agency (Arunachal Pradesh). China
had successfully occupied Aksai Chin - a strategic
corridor linking Tibet to western China - the NEFA
area, and had almost reached the plains of Assam.
In the war in these treacherous terrains, 722 PLA
soldiers were killed and around 1,400 wounded,
while the Indian death toll stood at 1,383, and
1,047 were wounded. Besides, 1,696 Indians went
missing and over 400 taken as prisoners of war.
Although Beijing caught most by surprise by calling
a unilateral ceasefire and retreating from India's
Northeast while retaining Aksai Chin, the defeat at
the hands of the Chinese is something Indians will
find hard to accept. In fact, this episode is seen as
a key reason affecting bilateral relations between
the two neighbours.
Surprisingly, India’s Defence Ministry seems to
think the report should remain a top secret “given
the extremely sensitive nature of the contents
which are of current operational value.” Well, the
argument of a 52-year-old report that is still
supposed to have”current operational value” is
unacceptable. Now, New Delhi is readying itself to
deploy the brand new Mountain Strike Force in the
Himalayan heights by 2017, a fighting-fit Army
facing the Chinese. Is New Delhi planning to model
this force on the 1962 formations or model its
strategy on the one used in 1962? If not, how is it
that the 1962 war report could have observations
of “current operational value”? These are silly
arguments, to say the least.
The Chinese on their part have made available a
considerable collection of documents related to the
war with India to the Cold War International History
Project of the Woodrow Wilson Center in the US.
For India, this means that researchers, journalists
and foreign policy watchers will be able to see the
war better from a Chinese viewpoint rather than
the Indian point of view.
Year 2014 is not 1962, and, therefore, India must
gather the courage to declassify the report, put it
out in the public domain, let people analyse for
themselves the causes of the defeat. After all, if
there are lessons to be learnt from the 1962 defeat,
it is in India’s interest to let countrymen chip in
with their thoughts. As Arun Jaitley wrote as
recently as on 19 March 2014 on the BJP Website:
“...to keep these documents ‘top secret’ indefinitely
may not be in larger public interest. Any Nation is
entitled to learn from the mistakes of the past. The
security relevance of a document loses its
relevance in the long term future. Any society is
entitled to learn from the past mistakes and take
remedial action. With the wisdom of hind sight, I
am of the opinion that the report’s contents could
have been made public some decades ago.” Jaitley
obviously had no idea then that he was going to be
sitting in the hot seat of India’s Defence Minister!

IGNORING POLITICAL REALITIES OF KASHMIR

Shujaat Bukhari


Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his day-long
visit to Jammu and Kashmir on July 4 by referring
to the auspiciousness of the holy month of
Ramzan and Amarnath Yatra saying that there
could not have been a better atmosphere for his
maiden visit to the state.
But little did he realize that due to his visit people
of Kashmir in general and Srinagar in particular
were not allowed to offer Friday prayers at the
historic Jamia Masjid. Most part of the city was
under curfew and no one including Mirwaiz Umar
Farooq, the head priest, was allowed to enter the
Mosque on the first Friday of the month of
Ramadan.
The strike call given by the separatists is routinely
used to register their protest against a prime
minister’s visit. This time too it was on expected
lines. And surely Modi must have known about
how the police had barricaded the people in the
name of security. This cannot really be reconciled
with the rhetoric describing the month of fasting as
auspicious.
It is a fact that it was Modi’s first visit to the state
as Prime Minister. Much was not expected from
him. He has to be given time to understand
Kashmir and the complexities that entail it
politically. Many analysts would suggest that his
visit was premature in this sense, but he needed to
inaugurate the rail link to Katra and commission
the second phase of the Uri power projects both of
which were overdue. The previous UPA government
started and completed these mega projects but did
not inaugurate them and take credit.
While Modi continued to invoke former PM A B
Vajpayee’s line on Kashmir issue, he ignored it at
the same time. His government has shown
enthusiasm in the return and rehabilitation of the
Kashmiri Pandits, and took up the matter within a
month of coming into power. So far this seems to
be the only priority for BJP government vis-a-vis
Kashmir. Earlier ‘The Hindu’ reported that Omar
Abdullah government had submitted Rs 5,800-
crore project under Prime Minister’s
Reconstruction Programme aimed at incentivising
return of Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley. This also
included the suggestion of repurchasing the
properties that the KPs sold after their migration in
early 90s.
While another plan of settling them in three
separate zones within the Valley evoked strong
reaction from various quarters in Valley, Omar
Abdullah gave it a new twist. In an interview to
Suhasini Haider on Saturday last, he said: “We are
encouraging Kashmiri Pandits to return. We are
saying you are welcome to consider group housing.
4-5-6 of you get together and get a plot of land.
Why should we have a problem with a group
housing project that blends in with the community
in the place you choose to live in? I see no problem
with that”. Return of KP’s to their home and
hearth is also close to the hearts of majority
community but the way it is hurried up as a “war
package” will have adverse impact and cannot help
in real reintegration of the community in Valley.
The BJP has not begun on a positive note in
Kashmir. On Monday its Rajya Sabha member
Tarun Vijay demanded that two flag system in the
state should be abolished thus furthering the
apprehensions that there was surely something
“sinister” in its bag for Kashmir. Earlier on the first
day in office, Minister of State in Prime Minister’s
Office Dr Jitendar Singh touched the raw nerve
called Article 370, saying that the discussion with
stake holders had begun to abolish it. It created a
storm in political circles with opposition from most
of the political parties, but the fact that was
ignored was that BJP did make it a public issue
while being in power, irrespective of the
clarification issued by Dr Singh later.
The party has bagged two Lok Sabha seats in the
Jammu region, but now that it is in power it needs
to expand its area of attention and focus to include
Kashmir Valley as well. It is presently being
perceived as a Jammu-centric government as it
only addresses the “concerns” which are
essentially seen as anti- Kashmir.
Whatever the agenda BJP has, it cannot, rather
should not ignore the ground realities in Kashmir.
The PM could have struck a chord by speaking of
the issues concerning the people, and his silence
has been noticed and commented upon by the
people in Kashmir. The PM’s visit to the
headquarters of the Srinagar based 15 Corps was
also symbolic. It appeared to underscore the
popular Delhi view that Kashmir can be managed
by the Army. Except for Vajpayee, former Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh and now Modi have still
to express their views about the political measures
that need to be taken to restore peace and
equilibrium in the state.
It is naive to believe that while traveling from the
Srinagar airport to Badamibagh and then to Uri,
the Prime Minister would have not seen the
deserted streets below him. He still has to spell out
his choice for ‘managing’ Kashmir, whether it will
be through dialogue or through the Army.
PM Modi has not yet publicly outlined his Kashmir
policy except that he talked about winning the
hearts of people through development.
Development surely is an ingredient to undo the
sense of despair that has been witnessed in past
two decades but it has to be supplemented and
complimented with the political initiatives. Two
tracks of dialogue process between New Delhi and
Islamabad and between New Delhi and Srinagar
are must for addressing the issue through real
pragmatic means. The processes from 2003 to
2008 had shown spectacular change in the
atmosphere and the credit goes to Vajpayee and
then Manmohan Singh.
If at all Modi believes in following Vajpayee he
must start picking the threads from that derailed
process. Development will go on but the sense of
security, confidence and political achievement for
the people can only come through the institution of
dialogue process that is untagged of
conditionalities on all sides. Putting more military
might into action is not the answer to today’s
Kashmir. It needs humane approach that is
embedded with strong political will to see that
there is a dignified and practicable solution to the
problem.

SAVE THE POLAR BEARS WITH COMMUNISM?

Michael Schaus 


Well… On the bright side: The UN Climate Chief has finally decided to adopt a certain modicum of honesty in her crusade to rid the world of pollution. As suspected by capitalists, free market advocates, and anyone who read into the redistributive agenda of the UN Climate Scientists, Christiana Figueres has suggested that only communism is capable of successfully fighting global warming and “climate change”.

Of course it’s a strange statement, given the Soviet Union’s abysmal record on environmental issues, and red China’s horrific display of environmental abuse. Figueres even went so far as to suggest that communist China is leading the world, and should be viewed as a role-model, in the fight against environmental damage. According to the Daily Caller:

“[China] actually wants to breathe air that they don’t have to look at,” she said. “They’re not doing this because they want to save the planet. They’re doing it because it’s in their national interest.”

She went on to suggest that China is a better steward of environmental concerns than the United States, Socialist Europe, or any capitalistic entity on the face of the planet. And, to an extent, she’s right… China would like to breathe air they didn’t have to look at… Of course, their solution so far has revolved around handing out face masks, and erecting giant LCD screens to broadcast the sunrise and sunset.

China has struggled with environmental disaster since central planning bureaucrats first crept into the field of industrial planning. And while China has suffered through smog storms that make 1910 Philadelphia look like a clean-air-utopia, the civilized world (led primarily by free markets and capitalism) has cleaned up their act environmentally and morally. While the Soviet Union was busy draining lakes, and pumping sulfur into the German atmosphere, the West was busy inventing catalytic converters and low-emission power-plants.

And while America’s carbon footprint has largely stood still, that of China’s has grown to a burdensome (and worrisome) level… So, objectively, Christiana Figueres is more than wrong… She’s an outright ideological shill with little concern for historical context, or objective evaluation of environmental stewardship. Of course, to be fair, environmentalism has never really been about caring for the environment.
Capitalism has proven to be the greatest anti-poverty scheme in history, and has also thrust most of the developed world into a space-age era of technological, and socioeconomic, progress. And while capitalism has pushed the human condition into realms of universal luxury not previously imagined, the statists, socialists, communists, and elitists have bemoaned the individual power guaranteed by economic freedom. With this freedom, ironically, has come a greater philanthropic spirit and a broader understanding of community issues.

After all… It’s a whole lot easier to spend extra money on environmental, or societal, concerns when a nation produces more wealth. It is, much to the dismay of socialist hacks like Figueres, the wealth built by capitalism that has financed Europe’s socialist agendas. traditionally "dirty" oil companies continue to lead the world in environmentally conscious research, while government funded “green energy” projects have continued to bankrupt themselves. Communism might be effective at reigning in the excess of prosperity, but it is wholly ineffective at delivering prosperity, efficiency, or technological progress. (I mean, let’s face it: Aside from suicidal novelists, firearms, and vodka, what did the Soviet Union really do well?)

Economic freedom is accompanied by an unpredictable trajectory of entrepreneurial philanthropy… And leftists hate the individualistic nature of self-interest. So, despite capitalism’s provably superior track record on environmental issues, communism has proven to be more admired by the big-government statists of the leftist environmental movement. After all, Communism promises a whole lot more power and cronyism to the friends of Figueres than an objectively market-driven laissez faire society.

Figueres’ assertion that the smog-plagued, carbon-hungry, toxin spilling nation of China is better at environmental stewardship than the increasingly earth-conscious western democracies is another illustration of the UN’s agenda over fact. Just like UN scientists omitted inconvenient data to sell the notion of global warming, Figueres is willing to spew ludicrous assertions in an advocacy for centralized government, and redistributive policies.

After all, what good is a UN Chief if they don’t push for ideology that was once adopted by the “evil empire”? Clearly, an ideology that led to millions of political prisoners and widespread environmental damage is best equipped to spur market based solutions to environmental pollution… Right?

But, hey… At least she is more transparent than the American champions of redistributive-environmentalism.

AN INDEPENDENT KURDISTAN: WORLD I CONTINUES

Austin Bay 


As the militant Islamic State (formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIL) threatens to shatter Iraq's central government, the leaders of Iraq's Kurdish Regional Government have called for the creation of Independent Kurdistan. In June, KRG President Massoud Barzani said, "the time is here for the Kurdistan people to determine their future."
I doubt Barzani intentionally echoed Woodrow Wilson's post-World War I call for political self-determination. Kurdish nationalists believe, with good cause, they were grievously wronged after World War I.

Kurd demands for independence have been repeatedly disappointed; despite Iraqi chaos, they may be disappointed once again.

The Kurds' landlocked wedge of planet earth is a geographic "tweener." Using the old names illustrates the Kurds' historic difficulty. To the south, Kurdistan meshes with Mesopotamia; to the east with Persia, to the west with the Levant and to the north with Greco-Roman-Byzantine-Turk Anatolia.

For three millennia Kurds have fought various imperialists -- Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and Turks.

However, they thought their time had come in August 1920 when the victorious World War I allies ratified the Treaty of Sevres.

Sevres addressed the defeated Ottoman Turkish Empire's territories. It divided Ottomans' Arab provinces between France and Britain, gave Greece a slice of Thrace and handed Italy a chain of Aegean Islands. France and Britain took de facto control of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles (Turkish Straits).

With an irresolute nod to Wilsonian self-determination, Sevres promised the Kurdish people a state or perhaps several autonomous states conveniently advised by allied political officials.

Though Sevres did not specify Kurdistan's precise location, Kurdish nationalists were ecstatic. Today, Kurds are the largest ethnic group in Southeastern Turkey, Northeastern Syria and a small triangle of Iran (Turkey-Iraq border area). Kurds are definitely the majority in the KRG. Kurdistan 1921 would have formed somewhere in this area, probably Southeastern Turkey ... maybe.
But Britain and France were not committed to seeing through an afterthought Kurdistan. The secular Turkish nationalist movement, led by Kemal Ataturk, insisted on Turkish nationalist self-determination. Turkish nationalists opposed the war-weary French and British occupiers and the rump Ottoman dynasty (dictatorship) the occupiers supported.

The Greco-Turkish War took Sevres' Kurdistan off the diplomatic table. Greek leaders sought to seize control of the eastern Aegean coast. Turkish nationalists defeated the Greeks. The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) settled the Greco-Turk fiasco, after a fashion, and made no mention of Kurdistan. Turkish nationalists would not cede another square-centimeter of territory.

Republican Turkey bitterly opposed an independent Kurdistan. Since 1923, Turkey has battled intermittent Kurdish insurgencies. The latest, which began in 1984, has Cold War connections. The Kurdistan Workers Party was a Marxist gang the USSR used to destabilize NATO's Turkey. The PKK, however, leveraged legitimate Kurd grievances and aspirations. Saddam Hussein's Iraq fought Kurd insurgents (hence the use of chemical weapons on the Kurds at Halabja). The Iranian and Syrian dictatorships confront Kurdish rebels.

Over the last decade, Turkish policy has evolved as the Turkish government sought a political solution to the Kurd insurgency in Southeastern Turkey. Turkey began investing in the KRG. KRG leaders encouraged the PKK to negotiate. Tit for tat? Probably. The KRG has tried to convince Turkey that it is a stable, moderate and reliable partner, politically and economically -- more so than Assad's Syria, ayatollah Iran or the chronically dysfunctional Shia-dominated Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki.

Iraqi Kurdistan has substantial crude oil reserves. This year, the KRG began selling crude without Baghdad's permission. The KRG ships its oil through Turkey.

If Iraq collapses, the KRG argues that, as Independent Kurdistan, it can provide Turkey with a stable buffer state also capable of stabilizing Kurdish Syria. Independent Kurdistan's peshmerga military forces, especially with Turkish support, can defeat the Islamic State militants.

In the wake of the ISIL invasion, the Turkish government said it supports Iraqi Kurdish self-determination -- self-determination, not independence. Turkish support for independence would have a high price: hands off Turkey's Kurdish region. The KRG, however, may not be able to make that guarantee. It has not been able to rein in PKK diehards. Iraqi Kurds may have to settle for a self-determined Kurdish autonomous zone notionally attached to Iraq, but supported by completely independent oil sales.

SPYING ON INNOCENTS

Judge Andrew


In what appears to be one of Edward Snowden's final revelations, the former CIA and NSA agent has demonstrated conclusively that the National Security Agency has collected and analyzed the contents of emails, text messages, and mobile and landline telephone calls from nine non-targeted U.S. residents for every one U.S. resident it has targeted.

This puts the lie to the government's claims that it has only collected metadata -- identifying markers such as phone numbers and email addresses -- and not content from unsuspecting and unsuspected Americans. It puts the lie to the government's claims that it has studiously avoided prying into the private lives of Americans, in whom it has no intelligence-related or lawful interest. And this puts the lie to the government's contentions and the opinions of judges of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the NSA's spying is somehow lawful, constitutional and helpful.

We now know that the government has failed effectively to refute the Snowden claims that it has collected and maintained for future access massive amounts of personal materials about nearly all people in America since 2009. This includes the metadata and content of nearly every telephone call, email and text message made, sent or received in the U.S., as well as nearly every credit card bill, utility bill and monthly bank statement of nearly every person in the U.S.

This was accomplished through the issuance of general warrants by FISA court judges. General warrants do not particularly describe the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized as the Constitution requires. General warrants authorize the bearer to use the power of government to search wherever he wishes. The use by British troops of general warrants was a principal motivation for the American Revolution, and the very purpose and literal wording of the Fourth Amendment was to outlaw and prohibit them.

Nevertheless, in their lust to appear muscular in our constitutionally sad post-9/11 era, politicians from both major political parties have defied the plain meaning and universally accepted history of the right to privacy and reverted to these odious instruments so condemned by the nation's founders and the Constitution's framers.
The recent Snowden revelations showed that about 900,000 innocent U.S. residents -- including President Barack Obama himself -- were subjected to heavy NSA scrutiny. This was done by NSA agents who knew that the subjects of their scrutiny were not the targets of their investigation.

How could that happen? It happened because the FISA court meets in secret, where the NSA has no opposition and the court has no transparency. This volatile mix has resulted in that court's granting well over 99 percent of NSA applications, including the "hop" rule implicated in the scrutiny of innocent Americans. In NSA-speak, a hop is a jump from one telephone conversation to another using a common phone.

In the sterile, isolated and secret environment of the FISA court -- where even the judges cannot keep records of their own decisions -- NSA agents and lawyers have persuaded judges to permit spying on people who are six hops from a target. Thus, by way of illustration, if A is a target and speaks with B, the NSA can listen to all of B's conversations, even those not with A. The leap from A to B is one hop, and the NSA gets six, so it can listen to any C who has spoken to B, any D who has spoken to any C, any E who has spoken to any D, any F who has spoken to any E and any G who has spoken to any F.

The 900,000 innocent U.S. residents whose private and personal lives have been subjected to NSA scrutiny -- including the examination of their photographs, intimate personal behavior, medical and financial needs -- consist of those who are within six hops from a target; in the illustration above, that would be every B, C, D, E, F and G whom the NSA can find. According to Snowden, there is no effort made by the NSA to minimize the scrutiny of those who are in the B-G category -- even though the chances that any of them are in cahoots with A are extremely remote, particularly once the NSA gets beyond B.

But remoteness does not trouble the NSA, and neither does the Constitution. Remoteness is a serious constitutional and practical problem. It violates the rights of known innocents, as the NSA has no constitutional or lawful authority to spy on any non-targets and FISA court judges have no power to authorize that spying. It also consumes the time and resources of NSA agents, whose job it is to find terror plots.

Is it any wonder that the Boston Marathon bombers discussed their plans with friends using their cellphones and the NSA missed it? Is it any wonder that when Gen. Keith Alexander, who ran the NSA for five years, was asked under oath how many plots his agents had uncovered with their spying on all Americans, he replied 57 and then the next day changed that reply to three and then was unable or unwilling to identify the supposed three? Is it any wonder that the two non-FISA court federal judges who scrutinized all this both found that it has uncovered no plots?

When the government sees or hears all, it knows all. And when the people tolerate a government that knows all, they will be afraid to be themselves. And the joy of being and expressing oneself is the very reason we have a Constitution designed to restrain government.

James Madison warned that the loss of liberty rarely happens in one great event but rather happens gradually, over time, resulting from the actions of government officials who claim to be fortifying security. He practically predicted today's events. The violations of our rights are obvious, undenied and undeniable. Yet what Madison probably feared most, he did not articulate: Once lost, liberty is lost forever.

WHY AMERICA IS IN JEOPARDY

Dennis Prager


On page 563 of his latest biography — John Quincy Adams: American Visionary — author Fred Kaplan (biographer of Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Gore Vidal among others) cites this insight of the sixth president:

Christianity had, all in all, he believed, been a civilizing force, “checking and controlling the anti-social passions of man.”
That insight is pretty much all an American needs to know in order to understand why the American Founders considered religion — specifically ethical monotheism rooted in the Hebrew Bible — indispensable to the American experiment; and why the America we have known since 1776 is in jeopardy.

It is easy to respect secular Americans who hold fast to the Constitution and to American values generally. And any one of us who believes in God can understand why some people, given all the unjust suffering in the world, just cannot believe that there is a Providential Being.

But one cannot respect the view that America can survive without the religious beliefs and values that shaped it. The argument that there are moral secularists and moral atheists is a non sequitur. Of course there are moral Americans devoid of religion. So what? There were moral people who believed in Jove. But an America governed by Roman religion would not be the America that has been the beacon of freedom and the greatest force for good in the world.

In order to understand why, one only need understand John Quincy Adams’s insight: How will we go about “checking and controlling the anti-social passions of man” without traditional American religious beliefs?

There are two possible responses:

One is that most Americans (or people generally, but we are talking about America here) do not have anti-social passions.
The other is that most Americans (again, like all other human beings) do have anti-social passions, but the vast majority of us can do a fine job checking and controlling them without religion as it has been practiced throughout American history.

These are views with which virtually every American who attends secular high school or university is explicitly and implicitly indoctrinated.

Both are wrong. And not just wrong, but foolish — and lethal to the American experiment.

To deny that human beings are filled with anti-social passions defies reality and betrays a lack of self-awareness. One has to be taught nonsense for a great many formative years to believe it.

If we weren’t born with anti-social passions — narcissism, envy, lust, meanness, greed, hunger for power, just to name the more obvious — why the need for so many laws, whether religious or secular, that govern behavior?

The second objection is that, even if we do have anti-social passions, we don’t need a God or religion in order to control them. Only moral primitives, the argument goes, need either a judging God or a religious set of rules. The Enlightened can do fine without them and need only to consult their faculty of reason and conscience to know how to behave.

Our prisons are filled with people whose consciences are quite at peace with their criminal behavior. As for reason, they used it well — to figure out how to get away with everything from murder to white-collar crime.

But our prisons are not filled with religious Jewish and Christian murderers. On the contrary, if all Americans attended church weekly, we would need far fewer prisons; and the ones we needed would have very few murderers in them.

Meanwhile the record of the godless and non-Christianity crowd is awful. I am not simply referring to the godless and secular Communist regimes of the 20th century that committed virtually every genocide of those hundred years. I am referring to those Americans (and Europeans) who use reason to argue, among other foolish things: that good and evil are subjective societal or individual opinions; that gender is purely a social construct and therefore the male and female distinction is of no importance; that marriage isn’t important and is just a piece of paper invented by the religious to keep women down; that a human fetus, even when it has a beating heart, a formed human body, and a conscious brain, has less of a right to life than a cat; and that men, let alone fathers, aren’t necessary. (Think no one really believes the latter? See, for example, The Atlantic’s “Are Fathers Necessary?” and the New York Times’s “Men, Who Needs Them?”) And that is a short list.

For proof of the moral and intellectual consequences of the secularization of America, look at what has happened to the least religious institution in America, the university. Is that the future we want for the whole country?

OBAMA REINVENTS 1979

Michael Schaus


It must be nice being an economist for a living. Much like meteorologists, university professors, and the Clintons, getting almost everything wrong doesn’t seem to impact job security. Remember when economists were forecasting 3 percent GDP growth for 2014? Well, that is pretty much already debunked, after the first quarter contracted; but the rest of the year might have its own distinct setbacks. The biggest “headwind” we can expect in the second half of 2014 can be summed up in two words: Oil prices.

David Williams, with Williams Edge, expects the price of crude to increase by “biblical” proportions in the near term. And while his technical analysis is sound, it is further buoyed by the events unfolding throughout the Middle East. Some experts have even predicted oil climbing above $125 a barrel. Let’s face it, $125 oil isn’t exactly going to help an economy that is clawing and scratching for the most modest of gains.

Hooray! Higher gas prices! And this hike in prices, of course, will conveniently coincide with increased inflation, stagnating wages, record joblessness, and anemic economic growth. (Haven’t we seen this movie before?)

As prices start to climb, those evil speculators and oil companies will quickly earn the wrath of liberal pundits and clueless CNBC analysts. And, really, the message is bound to stick. I mean, it’s pretty easy for people to hold a little grudge against big businesses when they’re watching those numbers roll over at their local gas station. But, the truth is much simpler than some convoluted conspiracy between “speculators” and oil giants… After all, contrary to the rants of anti-business liberals, oil companies actually prefer slightly lower prices. Unreasonably high prices tend to curb consumption; and let’s face it: You can charge anything you want for a gallon of gasoline, but if people aren’t buying it you won’t make much of a profit.

The bigger news (yes… there are more important things than the profit statement for Exxon Mobile) is what such prices will do to our already fragile economy. And the blame can be put squarely on the shoulders of our almighty central planners in DC.

Our Campaigner in Chief has done his best to avoid creating an environment that encourages job creation and economic growth. And, while the hike in oil prices might not have been completely avoidable, a more robust economy would certainly temper the impact of climbing crude prices. Instead of allowing businesses the opportunity to expand, hire, and increase wages, our all-knowing DC politicos have drowned the economy in regulation and crony-capitalist pet projects.
The Chevy Volt, new CAFE Standards, and treadmill powered public transit (that might not actually be a thing) aren’t the answer. For starters, some semblance of coherent foreign policy would be a more effective hedge against outrageous oil prices. More domestic production would also go a long way. But, most importantly, increases in pump-prices could be weathered a whole lot easier if Americans had seen their wealth growing over the last few years. Ya know, if incomes were climbing, jobs were being created, and consumers weren’t quite so strapped for cash, we might be able to shell out a few more bucks to fill our gas tanks without it taking a sizeable bite out of an already anemic “recovery”.

It wasn’t too long ago that CNBC pundits, NYT editors, and CNN anchors were willing to blame the White House for any (and every) increase in oil prices… But I guess things changed once “W” returned to his ranch in Texas. Apparently Obamanomics’ profoundly negative impact on household income, and our Nobel Laureate’s childish foreign policy, have no impact on the coming spike in oil prices… Right?

So, let’s recap: Millions of Americans out of work, potentially outrageous oil prices, mass chaos in the Middle East, increased inflation (assuming the Fed has their way), and stagnating wages… Hope and Change apparently looks an awful lot like 1979.