Israel’s overwhelming air assault against Hamas, which may be a prelude to a ground assault, is welcome news to those who support and deeply admire the Jewish state and who believe the way to defeat militant Islam is to confront it rather than to appease it.
Despite the fact that Hamas has provoked this response from Israel by directing rocket attacks against Israel, that Israel has shown almost super-human patience until now in not responding with force, and that Israel is now exercising her elementary right of self-defense, we have seen the ritual and stupid denunciation of Israel from the United Nations and parts of the Arab world, from France to Turkey to elsewhere. The Bush Administration, to its great credit, is focusing criticism where it belongs: on the aggression and malevolence of Hamas.
There are, I think, two things to take away from what is unfolding in Gaza right now that are contrary to conventional wisdom. The first, laid out in an excellent op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal by Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi, is that the sine qua non of an authentic “peace process” is a decisive Israeli victory over Hamas. Israelis cannot be expected to pursue further steps for peace — and her efforts at achieving peace are by now almost too numerous to count — if Gaza remains a de facto enemy and terrorist state.
Events in Gaza also remind us that the popular Western emphasis on concessions leading to peace, is in many instances exactly the opposite of the truth.
The Israelis, after all, made a series of unprecedented concessions to Yasir Arafat in 2000; he responded by beginning a second intifada against Israel. In addition, Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 emboldened Hizballah. And as Ze’ev Maghen points out in his lead essay in the January 2009 issue of COMMENTARY, in Iran, “Israel’s evacuation of its Gaza settlements in the summer of 2005 has become a major symbol of the decrepitude of the Jewish state.”
Maghen points out that the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri said this in the wake of the disengagement process:
The Zionist regime retreats in the face of the slightest resistance. The willingness of the Zionists to leave behind their synagogues in Gaza demonstrates conclusively that they have no God, and therefore, of course, no religious connection to the Holy Land; they will now be easily ejected from all of occupied Palestine.
And soon after the Gaza pullout, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizballah, proclaimed, “We, too, drove out the Israeli cowards.” (Nasrallah was referring to the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000.)
This sentiment tracks with what Osama bin Laden said in 1998 about America:
We have seen in the last decade the decline of the American government and the weakness of the American soldier who is ready to wage Cold Wars and unprepared to fight long wars. This was proven in Beirut when the Marines fled after two explosions. It also proves they can run in less than 24 hours, and this was also repeated in Somalia … [Our] youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized more than before that the American soldiers are paper tigers. After a few blows, they ran in defeat and America forgot about all the hoopla and media propaganda after leaving the Gulf War. After a few blows, they forgot about this title [leaders of a new world order] and left, dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat.
Jihadists interpret retreat and even withdrawal from territory not as an act of good faith but as a sign of weakness and irresolution; the result is that it redoubles their determination to strike, to kill innocent civilians, and to extend their savage way of life to new lands.
This is not to say that territorial concessions are in every instance unwise; when Israel returned the Sinai Desert to Egypt, it was a wise move by Menachem Begin. But for it to succeed, the agreement required Anwar Sadat, who had made his own inner peace with the existence of a Jewish state. There are no Sadats in the leadership of Hamas. It is an organization dedicated to eradicating Israel. That is why a show of force and will are critical. Israel must finish what it has started, for their sake and for a larger cause as well: the civilized world’s war against militant Islam. As the events of the last few days and months have reminded us, from Israel to India, that struggle ebbs and flows, but it is far from over.
Those who hope to prevail against jihadism should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel, and all she represents.
What if the goal of the recovery plan isn’t actual gdp growth but depopulation?
The goal is a utopian, egalitarian society, designed and administered by utopian ideologues and their technocrats. The worse the economy is, the more important their remedies become. As the U.S. standard of living shrivels, the utopians will point out that eradicating the last vestiges of free market economics will be necessary to halt our complete decline. The preservation of the state, as constructed by them, will out weigh all other considerations. The true national health care plan will focus on the continued growth of the state.
I think there are some other assumptions that might be warranted.
Obama is planning on spending phantom revenues–just look at the out year GDP growth assumptions of ~4%. (And this growth is to come on the heels of trillions of dollars of new Treasury borrowings, and the resultant debt service added to the budget and tax burden.) Spending plans are being put in place based on this robust growth scenario. He’s already declared his budget bona fides by calling for a 2012 deficit that is $300 billion higher than the status quo budget, while claiming to cut the deficit in half.
The media is selling this propaganda as honest budgeting.
The result are deficits higher, even, than Obama allows, but this will be blamed on (Bush) the circumstances he inherited. Nothing, nothing will get in the way of his promise to transform America.
Obama is selling tax increases, i.e. cap & trade, as “paying” for vital programs already put in place. So whatever the tax increase, it will be necessary, even required. The media will report this propaganda as fact–no debate allowed, wouldn’t be patriotic.
When the fiscal situation is sufficiently deteriorated, the NYTimes and the WaPo will call for massive tax increases as the only responsible solution–which “we all agree” and no economist denies.
The assumption that reality will interrupt and slow down this change is just one part of the old ways, the old politics, the old way of thinking, that Obama is hell-bent on overturning.
You see, it was the old ways that resulted in the current crisis, and only new ways will rescue the situation. The current malaise will be used as the trigger to speed up the transformation, not to slow it down.
And as to a replay of the ’30s, what’s the problem with that? FDR is an iconic hero on the Left; Obama would be thrilled with the comparison. First, he was Lincoln, next it’ll be FDR, he’ll probably end at Reagan, given how the recession is now being compared to ’82. The ’30s were know for the accumulation of centralized power in Washington, Obama is no less ambitious.
As with David Brooks, I think some on the Right have not come to grips with how far Obama is to the Left. Reality is what Obama decides it is–it will not interrupt him.
chuck, a utopian, egalitarian society is way to 19th century, christian roading, yawaying for our enlightened. No the goal is sustainable development, which is a world pop and gdp somewhere south of the level achieved in caligula’s time. Change is coming.
The scariest thing is that it seems that everyone above is right.
Well, Peggy Noonan says having a crisis makes “the people” rally around Obama, so I guess Obama wants to make sure we have an economic crisis throughout his term. Of course, Peggy Noonan is an idiot, but maybe there’s still hope for “the people.”
if i might attempt to synthesize several of the above comments: what makes ‘commentary,’ the new york times and others confident that some sort of ‘rational’ approach to these issues will dominate the economic agenda?
the preponderance of evidence would indicate ‘arationaility’ and ‘irrationality’ around panic and crisis are what’s casting the shadows over this ‘debate’….
“Reality is what Obama decides it is–it will not interrupt him.”
Now where did we hear a different neocomrade chantin’ THAT liturgy before? (…) Ah, here it is:
“I [Ron Suskind] had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” [ http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html ]
_Mais que-sçay-je?_
JHM, hat was no the president and it was not said in public making the quote questionable since Suskind has previously had doubts raised about his reliability.
Although the books cites a transcript of this meeting provided by O’Neill, participants in the meeting tell me that no such statements were ever made. Former Council of Economic Advisors Chairman R. Glenn Hubbard states flatly, “The president never made any of the distributional comments referred to in the interview.” Cesar Conda, Vice President Dick Cheney’s domestic policy advisor, also told me that the president never said anything about giving money to rich people. Referring to his own notes of the meeting, Conda said that the discussion was about extending depreciation rules that were due to expire, not about reducing income-tax rates.
Conda is also critical of O’Neill’s portrayal of the debate surrounding the imposition of steel tariffs in March 2002. The Wall Street Journal excerpt clearly implies that Vice President Cheney supported the tariff decision, when in fact he opposed it. At the meeting O’Neill refers to, Cheney was simply acting as an honest broker, keeping his personal views private. Vice President Cheney generally made his views known to the president only in one-on-one meetings, so as to facilitate discussion in open meetings.
Of course, it is easy to dismiss doubts about someone you agree with. Bartlett has since been critical of Bush so I would credit him with more objectivity tan Suskind. O’Neill has also spoken of problems with Suskind’s veracity.
Even if the quotation is legitimate, it’s been broadly misinterpreted. The speaker was clearly making a point more about passivity versus action, whereas Suskind and liberals who found this quotation suited their purposes tended to interpret as about reality vs. delusion. The “reality-based community” were those who lived in the real world, the hard-nosed realists, whereas the Bush neocons were delusional. But that’s clearly not what was being said. What was being said, essentially, is that you (Ron Suskind) dwell in the past, and while you’re stuck studying the ways things used to work, we’ve moved on to the way things work now.
Why are the Israeli foreign agents of Commentary so interested in the U.S. economy, anyway? Worried that there might not be any more spare cash to suck out of us?
Pssst – Jennifer,
The O doesn’t care. He doesn’t care if the economy is contracting, nor if what he wants to do will help it further along that path. He doesn’t care about how Americans are doing so long as they’re doing what he thinks they ought. As they ought. When they ought.
Is it possible that the growing panic infecting the editorial board over at The Washington Post is beginning to inform the opinions of the supposed “paper of record.”
The Post has gone from open and expressed anxiety to outright panic, because they’re seeing the REAL potential of Obama going down as worse than Carter. And they’re imagining all of the political difficulties that would cause for the Democrats and their liberal agenda.
This clown is trying to wrench the American economy away from her free market foundations, and hoist that same economy up on a flimsy scaffolding of command economics, ——————– AND IT’S NOT GOING TO WORK, and the pain and suffering that will inevitably ensue could establish the GOP as a permanent majority for decades to come.
Obama is focused on enacting the kookiness he absorbed listening to Ayers, his mother, his mother’s friends, Cass Sunstein and of course, the kookiest of the lot, his dear pastor, his dear minister, his father figure, {imagine taking that kook as a father figure, and actually admitting as much!} the wonderful “Reverend” Wright, {heretic at large}.
It seems Suskind’s story has many lives. IIRC, the Left was proud to call themselves “members of the reality-based community” as if it were a put-down of the Bush administration–who were then implicitly not reality-based. Clever.
But such a rebirth of Suskind’s story is a meaningless distraction–it’s yesterday’s history, not today’s reality. Yet the Left always debats yesterday so as to create their own preferred narrative. If it was printed in the NYTimes in 2004, it is implicitly true–the citation makes it so.
But the Left has taken the concept of the reality-based community one step further–it’s all about creating and controlling the narrative. Reality is the narrative written in journalism–that famous, if not infamous, “first draft of history.”
Even the hated News Corp-owned Wall Street journal abets the narrative using such limp phrases as “Budget would boost federal role in education,” “Top tax rate…to fund expanded benefits,” “President says economy will emerge stronger.” The MSM spent the last eight years openly challenging the president’s policies; where is there any questioning of, much less doubt about, this president’s proposals? Where is all that talk about speaking truth to power? Or dissent as patriotism? How soon (or has it already started) before the members of the fourth estate copy the lapel pin Obama now wears? Talk about sheep…
As I said, Suskind’s story, or the veracity thereof, is a meaningless distraction–which makes JHM’s comment equally banal.
Kudos to Forbes (#3) COMMENT OF THE DAY! How does one get to be orange? A contribution?
I think Jennifer is an incredible new star. At least she’s new to me.
My reaction is “advisors, what advisors?” Is it Larry Summers, nodding off, almost falling out of his chair? Robert Rubin has the look of a man who just wants to avoid going to jail.
What advisors? Do you think 0bama really wants advice, or are these “advisors” mere props to create the illusion that he is a man distilling advice based wisdom.
And, I hope we are not just being hopeful that the Washington Post’s growing freak out might have some positive effects on policy. I am hopeful too that a growing populist tea party movement might just derail the 0bamabot cho cho train before it sends this great land over a cliff and into a hellish chasm.
I think we need a little more than hope. We need to turn up the heat. Today I responded to Michael Steele’s email with a not so friendly note about Senators Collins, Snowe and Spector.
John ,where have you been hiding? I have been waiting for you to trot out one of your anti-Semitic mini-diatribes. I want you to know that your Arafat commemorative hand towel arrived today via Fed Ex. It seems it got held up in customs for some reason. Unfortunately little Che was playing Kill the NeoCon with it and was hit by a green paint ball splat in the middle of the forehead by one of the Ayers grandchildren, you know the ones that Uncle Axel said went to school with Barrack’s kids. I don’ t know what Bill and Bernadine thought they were doing giving that little Charlie M that paintball gun at age 8. They said something about getting ready for the Revolution. Charlie also kept sticking little Che in the stomach with a plastic fork and saying “Groovy, man”. I don’t understand children.
In any event, things are over between lester and I. He got offended when I gave him a keyboard with the CAPS Lock key stuck down. I was wondering, do you hang out with that Hurf? He’s a real man. Always quick with those nasty, biting witticisms. I was communicating with him offline and he definitely knows the way women like to be treated. He is available now too, as he broke up with the execrable woman he was going out with who kept after him to try to dismember his nether regions. He says now that unfortunately he is a little under the weather, apparently he was looking for natural gas leaks with a lighter and singed off most of his hair when he found one. I told him that you always used a compact fluorescent flashlight and that you never had issues with it. Its no wonder Hurf is so bitter, he doesn’t have any hair left on his face and everything smells like natural gas. But I think he is cute in a Kojak kind of way.
Honey, a letter from the IRS came the other day saying we owed 3,600 dollars in back taxes from when you were employed as a bird scraper at the Wind Farm. Apparently writing “I won’t pay any taxes to support your stupid war” on your return isn’t a good idea. I had no idea that Barrack would start to try to enforce the tax laws on people of quality like us. I am quick sending a letter to Senator Burris to see if he can intervene on our behalf but he seems to have troubles of his own. I will remind him about the money you sent Blago on his behalf when he got his Senate seat.
Do you have a job yet? The court said that you would pay me $1500/month and by my calculations you owe me a Prius. As a side note, I had little Che inflate all the tires on our bicycles so that we would be saving gas like President Obama said. I won’t hold it against you if you don’t have a job, it must be difficult in this economy. My job down at the abortion clinic isn’t going so well. There is fear that Barrack will nationalize the abortion industry and make abortions harder to get as a result. Just between you and me, the government can’t do anything right. Dr. Mengles says that he doesn’t know what he will do if that happens. He might have to go back to being a tree surgeon. I think he is joking.
Well, I hear the door bell ringing. Gotta run. The kids say hi. Keep the faith, or whatever it is that we atheists do.
Now that’s a Poddy…
The Obama policy is relatively easy to discern and understand. It is the result of listening to every self loathing leftist available for the last 35 years. Name the University and I will bet the Obama budget deficit that the poli sci department is run by Che wanna be’s. (Hillsdale excepted!) Nor is that the only department chaired by Stalin apologists, the law, history and literature are drowned in so much PC twaddle that Rosa Parks is deified and George Washington vilified. Both had an important place in this country’s history, but please do not equate them.
The economy will continue to hemorage jobs and money until something gives Wall Street a reason for hope. Not the type that Reverend Barry proclaimed in the primary, but an actual policy designed to promote the general welfare and not punish success. So far the money people are betting with their feet and staying the hell out of the market; who can blame them? Certainly not me, and not any rational person either. That doesn’t apply to democrats who aren’t rational, logical or any other -al; save emotional. As long as they can “feel” good about themselves and their actions, all is right with them. Intentions mean everything and unintended consequences are merely oversights of the implementation process. Nothing could be wrong with the concept; only the implementation was underfunded or sabotaged by heartless conservatives.
Saving a persons dignity is a tricky thing. You have to allow them to take it back by insisting that they stand up. Dems don’t want you to stand up, only worship them from the ground. I’ll pass.
“The silver lining is that this might head off the ludicrous plans to hike taxes, nationalize industries and vastly expand regulation and anti-business measures (e.g. cap and trade) in a recession.” So says Rubin, and I hope she’s right. But I think Chuck Martel is. I hear far too many lefties adopt exactly that position – that higher taxes and strangulation of the free market is all the more necessary as the recession deepens, to pay for massive social programs that replace the wealth the private sector once created. Well, if Obama does destroy the economy, the real silver lining is that his reign will be short, and big government liberalism rapidly discredited.
Also, today, Buffett said that the economy was going to be in shambles for 2009 and maybe well beyond.
So, is it too early to start some spots that say that Obama is out of touch? That Obama’s best and brightest have drunk the kool-aid?
And, sadly, yes the left is ready for action for largers “stimulus’ and even ready to attack Dems from the left: (via AccountablityNowPAC)
Leading progressives are putting congressional Democrats on notice that they will recruit and support primary challenges to vulnerable incumbents who become “more responsive to corporate America than to their constituents. Accountability Now, which was co-founded by Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake.com, draws its inspiration from the way in which former Rep. Al Wynn, D-Md., was ousted from office in 2007 by current Rep. Donna Edwards, a more liberal Democrat, who portrayed Wynn as beholden to corporate interests.
Maybe I’ve been drinking too much CPAC kool-aid, but I think Obama is on a short string. Even many of the people who initially think that getting Obama Checks is a good thing, may wonder why they aren’t getting a job.
Something that is directly related to what has happened is the shift that occurred in the Democratic party. After serious electoral defeats with Carter, Mondale and Dukakis, the Democratic party recognized that its traditional big government model was no longer politically viable. By 1992 Clinton ran as a New Democrat. Particularly after the midterm elections Clinton heeded the dominant electoral view. The traditional big government view did not die out as much as it remained dormant given the political landscape.
However the last eight years saw a large shift leftward in the Democratic party as centrists were purged in the hysterical reaction to the Bush adminstration. The forces that counterbalanced the old instinctual tendencies within the party fell away in favor of doctrinal leftism. Should the right political opportunity arise, the temptation to try to reestablish still cherished social and economic policies despite a generation of electoral defeats would be overwhelming.
What is telling however is that this shift within the Democratic party was not assumed to have extended to the electorate. The key point is that Obama did not run as a tax and spend apostle of big government. He ran as an economic moderate. Every time critics questioned his intentions on spending and taxation and his attitude toward the free market there was swift assurance that an Obama administration would never reenact the old Democratic creed.
As it turns out, and without further dissimulation, this representation of Obama was a flat out lie. For any other candidate such dishonesty would be immediately denounced. However with a media that has by and large abdicated its role as honest broker and adopted the role of unabashed cheerleader, Obama is not called out on this extraordinary bad faith that would have led to the excoriation of anyone else.
Unfortunately in the current downturn the Democrats, effectively purged of more moderate voices, found an historic opportunity to revive what had seemingly been long rejected ideas. Any criticism could be immediately muted by the supposed exigency of responding to the crisis. Any legislative challenge could be denounced as the politics of doing nothing, the very ironically titled “failed policies of the past”, and various other strawmen and will-o-wisps. And of course, with an ever pliant media in tow, there is the more insidious claim propounded day after day that the crisis was allegedly caused by the free market itself, laisse-faire attitudes, deregulation, thereby justifying an attack on the free market system that has resulted in a generation of prosperity. Here was a once in a lifetime chance to reverse a seemingly settled historical judgment and unsurprisingly the Democrats ran with it. It is an amazing bait and switch, although if experience is a barometer, one with a limited shelf life. A generational judgment is not so simply undone. However it would at least have been one thing if Obama had leveled with the American people, but he didn’t. And with such dishonesty there can be no mandate and no basis for deference or reserving judgment. At some hoped for point, there will be a political reckoning. The more unlikely hope is that this will not only be in the aftermath of the likely economic consequences.
Here’s Warren Buffet crowing about Obama on Inauguration Day:
BROKAW: Is Barack Obama the right commander in chief for the economy?
BUFFETT: He’s the absolute right commander in chief … that’s another thing the American people seem to do, occasionally, is that we elect people that are right for the times. You know, whether it was Lincoln, Roosevelt. I would say Obama … you couldn’t have anybody better in charge.
BROKAW: But why is he right for the times?
BUFFETT: Well, he’s smart, he’s got the right values, but he also … understands economics very well. He’s cool. He’s analytical. But then, when he gets it all thought through, he’s fast — he can convey to the American people what needs to be done. Not to expect miracles. That it’s gonna take time. But that we’re gonna get to the other end.
As usual in these Obama encomiums there are no specifics — just the supporters’ gut sense of how wonderful and intelligent Obama is.
That was less than six weeks ago. I wonder what Buffet is thinking about Obama and his economic policies now.
These massive lefty wealth redistribution plans have been tried hundreds of times by governments all over the world, and they always have the same two results. First, they wreck the economy by slowing growth and causing inflation. Second, once in place these government spending programs never go away, no matter how ineffective and counter-productive they are. They simply become the new baseline, and the new excuse for raising taxes even more to cover their mounting costs.
If you want to see the future of Obamerica, take a look at the formerly Golden State of California.
When someone throws you out of a plane without a parachute, you don’t have to wait until you hit the ground before you get angry about it.
If the best argument the left and Pres. Obama’s supporters can come up with is to say there only getting theirs back after 8 years of Bush, then they’re looking only in the rear view mirror and forgetting that they are in the driver’s seat now. Brace for impact.
It’s a replay of the Carter years. A time when in my most productive working years I was paying 68% of my income in Federal and state taxes. No I wasn’t a banker or a CEO, I worked with my hands.
In case you missed it, Rahm Emanuel defended O’s tax plan today on Face the Nation by saying that high earners shouldn’t complain: their rates won’t be any higher than they were under Clinton, and their deductions won’t be worth les than they were under Reagan. That’s like saying to an acrobat “Don’t worry about our taking away the net: you’ll be working at the same height you did when you had a net, and you’ll have that same net as when you practiced at ground level.”
Ya gotta admit the guy’s clever, even if he is a lying creep.
Even Lenin found it necessary to allow a semi-capitalist interlude to save his economy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy
I’ve never given this a try, but I think it’s about time I do.