There are three pieces that you should read at your convenience. The first contributed by Mike Walker followed with two from the Weekly Standard. The second piece is from William Kristol and the third from Stephen Hayes. All are part of a set that reflects our current position on Foreign and National Security policies: what we see and what we don't. Question: Do you feel safer with this administration?

Where is our national security policy heading?

Mike walker

All,

You will be getting a full dose from the media regarding key unfilled jobs within our national security/defense umbrella.

Is this a bad thing?

I am not sure.

The President gets it.* He termed our defense against the attack a "systemic failure."

But who are the people nominated for the senior security jobs and what is their stand on the war against terror?

If they will not admit that the war exists then who needs them?

Are they espousing more of the Napolitano attitude that what we need is a "backward looking" defense where the goal is to be able to react to the deaths and injuries?

Are they "thoughtcrime" nominees who will continue to define success as the ability to roll the fire trucks after the attack has taken place?

If they take office what will happen to their subordinates in our national security agencies who openly profess that we are at war with a very capable and utterly ruthless enemy? What will happen to the professionals who will not buy into the “lone wolf” mindset?

Is the "Team Napolitano" era nothing more than a return to the time of Rumsfeld when dissent in the ranks was crushed by the "doublethink" dictated from the top?

We had a miraculous gift presented to us this Christmas. Not only were the lives of hundreds of innocents saved but we also got a wake-up call to redouble our defensive efforts for the future.

That means a focus on PREVENTING the deaths of innocents, not “ex poste facto” actions by first responders followed by endless investigations.

The real goal should be to not have to respond in the first place.

If the nominees do not get that then it is better to have the jobs go empty.

We will all be safer with these folks on the outside of our security agencies looking in.

Semper Fi,

Mike

*Contrary to some reporting, the President used the words war, terrorists, extremists, etc numerous times in his 27 March 2009 speech on the subject.

Napolitano: No War Here

William Kristol, Weekly Standard

It's worth reading (don't worry, it's short) Janet Napolitano's op-ed in USA Today. As if to confirm Dick Cheney'sclaim that the Obama administration doesn't understand we're at war, Napolitano never uses the word...war. Nor does she mention Islam, Yemen or Nigeria -- nor any of the details of the incident, nor the particulars of the government failures over the last few months.

Lots of op-eds ghost-written for cabinet secretaries are stupid. But this one may outdo them all in its vagueness and avoidance of substance, in its managing to be at once bureaucratic and cloying, and in speaking to the American people as if they are children. She attempts to reassure, and fails.

By the way, since this was a plot hatched overseas by people whom our intelligence agencies are listening in on and trying to bump off -- is Napolitano really the appropriate lead official? It's revealing who the White House put out Sunday -- Napolitano and press secretary Robert Gibbs. For the Obama White House, it's all spin and TSA procedures. Do we still have a CIA director? I'd heard Panetta wasn't getting along with the White House...but is he even in the loop?

....................................................................................................

Iran Burns, Obama Seeks More Engagement

Stephen Hayes

With President Barack Obama's year-end deadline to Iran just one day away, the Washington Post's Glenn Kesslerreports that the Obama administration is preparing "targeted sanctions" on Iran. But with an asterisk.

Ten months after President Obama set a year-end deadline for Iran to engage with world powers on its nuclear program, the government in Tehran has failed to respond in kind, other than an abortive gesture in the fall.

Now, in what may be a difficult balancing act, officials say the administration wants to carefully target sanctions to avoid alienating the Iranian public -- while keeping the door ajar to a resolution of the struggle over Iran's nuclear program. The aim of any sanctions is to force the Tehran government to the negotiating table, rather than to punish it for either its apparent push to develop a nuclear weapon or its treatment of its people.

So the year-end deadline for engagement is upon us and the Obama administration is carefully crafting sanctions to force...engagement.

The Iranian regime -- fragile now as never before -- continues to support terrorism, to kill US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, to enrich uranium and to arrest and murder its own citizens. And the goal of US policy continues to be non-punitive engagement? Shameful.

Now, the Iranians are reporting that Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and shadow Secretary of State, has officially requested to visit Tehran. As Mike Goldfarb notes, there are many reasons to be skeptical of such reports from a regime in turmoil. But neither Kerry's office nor the White House has directly denied the reports -- something that would have been easy enough to do if the claims were untrue.

Is it the case that the Obama administration, rather than pivoting to the confrontational posture that Iran's intransigence requires, is simply preparing a more aggressive outreach campaign? It won't work.

As Hillary Clinton, the real Secretary of State, said on December 14: "I don't think anyone can doubt that our outreach has produced very little in terms of any kind of a positive response from the Iranians."

Even senior Obama officials understand that engagement hasn't worked. Why is it still the goal?

The Climate Change Scam: A Concise Summary

John Hinderaker, Powerline

In the wake of Climategate, common sense deniers like to say that there is lots of other evidence for global warming, in addition to that which has been debunked by the East Anglia whistleblower. Actually, however, the scientific evidence for AGW is remarkably weak. At Icecap, Lee Gerhard, geologist and reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sums up the key scientific evidence with admirable brevity:

It is crucial that scientists are factually accurate when they do speak out, that they ignore media hype and maintain a clinical detachment from social or other agendas. There are facts and data that are ignored in the maelstrom of social and economic agendas swirling about Copenhagen. Greenhouse gases and their effects are well-known. Here are some of things we know:

• The most effective greenhouse gas is water vapor, comprising approximately 95 percent of the total greenhouse effect.

• Carbon dioxide concentration has been continually rising for nearly 100 years. It continues to rise, but carbon dioxide concentrations at present are near the lowest in geologic history.

• Temperature change correlation with carbon dioxide levels is not statistically significant.

• There are no data that definitively relate carbon dioxide levels to temperature changes.

• The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide logarithmically declines with increasing concentration. At present levels, any additional carbon dioxide can have very little effect.

We also know a lot about Earth temperature changes:

• Global temperature changes naturally all of the time, in both directions and at many scales of intensity.

• The warmest year in the U.S. in the last century was 1934, not 1998. The U.S. has the best and most extensive temperature records in the world.

• Global temperature peaked in 1998 on the current 60-80 year cycle, and has been episodically declining ever since. This cooling absolutely falsifies claims that human carbon dioxide emissions are a controlling factor in Earth temperature.

• Voluminous historic records demonstrate the Medieval Climate Optimum (MCO) was real and that the "hockey stick" graphic that attempted to deny that fact was at best bad science. The MCO was considerably warmer than the end of the 20th century.

• During the last 100 years, temperature has both risen and fallen, including the present cooling. All the changes in temperature of the last 100 years are in normal historic ranges, both in absolute value and, most importantly, rate of change.

Contrary to many public statements:

• Effects of temperature change are absolutely independent of the cause of the temperature change.

• Global hurricane, cyclonic and major storm activity is near 30-year lows. Any increase in cost of damages by storms is a product of increasing population density in vulnerable areas such as along the shores and property value inflation, not due to any increase in frequency or severity of storms.

• Polar bears have survived and thrived over periods of extreme cold and extreme warmth over hundreds of thousands of years extremes far in excess of modern temperature changes.

• The 2009 minimum Arctic ice extent was significantly larger than the previous two years. The 2009 Antarctic maximum ice extent was significantly above the 30-year average. There are only 30 years of records.

• Rate and magnitude of sea level changes observed during the last 100 years are within normal historical ranges. Current sea level rise is tiny and, at most, justifies a prediction of perhaps ten centimeters rise in this century.

The present climate debate is a classic conflict between data and computer programs. The computer programs are the source of concern over climate change and global warming, not the data. Data are measurements. Computer programs are artificial constructs.

Public announcements use a great deal of hyperbole and inflammatory language. For instance, the word "ever" is misused by media and in public pronouncements alike. It does not mean "in the last 20 years," or "the last 70 years." "Ever" means the last 4.5 billion years.

For example, some argue that the Arctic is melting, with the warmest-ever temperatures. One should ask, "How long is ever?" The answer is since 1979. And then ask, "Is it still warming?" The answer is unequivocally "No." Earth temperatures are cooling. Similarly, the word "unprecedented" cannot be legitimately used to describe any climate change in the last 8,000 years.

SCOTT adds: The direct link to Gerhard's piece is here.

ARROGANCE, CORRUPTION, STUPIDITY

Scott Johnson, Powerline

Republicans didn't have the votes to stop the Senate's Obamacare bill this morning. But they had the better argument. Oklahoma's magnificent Senator (and Dr.) Tom Coburn spoke for a lot of us in explaining his vote against the Democrats' bill:

This vote is indeed historic. This Congress will be remembered for its arrogance, corruption and stupidity. In the year of 2009, a Congress ignored the coming economic storm and impending bankruptcy of our entitlement programs and embarked on an ideological crusade to bring our nation as close to single-payer, government-run health care as possible. If this bill becomes law, future generations will rue this day and I will do everything in my power to work toward its repeal. This bill will ration care, cut Medicare, increase premiums, fund abortion and bury our children in debt.

This process was not compromise. This process was corruption. This bill passed because votes were bought and sold using the issue of abortion as a bargaining chip. The abortion provision alone makes this bill the most arrogant piece of legislation I have seen in Congress. Only the most condescending politician can believe it is appropriate to force Americans to pay for other people's abortions and to coerce medical professional to take the lives of unborn children.

I would quibble only with Senator Coburn's attribution of "stupidity" to congressional Democrats. The House and Senate bills are indeed stupidly destructive of the best health care system in the world, and they will impose unbearable costs on the American public. But if and when a final bill is enacted next year, the Democrats will have achieved their goal of control over the medical means of life and death. This Congress will be remembered for its arrogance, corruption and tyranny as well as its staggering profligacy, all of which are well represented in the Obamacare bills.

Politico reports that the timetable for passage of a final bill has now slipped to February. Ed Morrissey and Andrew McCarthy tentatively see a ray of light in the delay. Later is better than sooner, but don't be deceived. The Democrats havethe whip hand.

Grounds for optimism exist in the opposition to the government takeover of health care that runs deep and wide. Somehow, the American people have seen through the bill of goods they are being sold despite the Obama's best efforts, the Democrats' control of the process and the unfailing assistance of their allies in the media.

Democrats count on the opposition to subside and the public to acquiesce. Yet the Roman spectacle to which Obama and the congressional Democrats have treated us will be hard to erase from our memory. It will constitute an obstacle to our pacification and a spur to our resistance.

LYING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

Posted by John Hinderaker, Powerline

The despicable Al Gore features in this story of how climate alarmists have knowingly and persistently lied to support their cause (or obsession). But so do prominent scientists who presumably should be held to a higher standard. Paul Reiter, a professor of medical entomology, writes in the Spectator:

I am a scientist, not a climatologist, so I don't dabble in climatology. My speciality is the epidemiology of mosquito-borne diseases. As [Al Gore's] film [An Inconvenient Truth] began, I knew Mr Gore would get to mosquitoes: they're a favourite with climate-change activists. When he got to them, it was all I feared. In his serious voice, Mr Gore presented a nifty animation, a band of little mosquitoes fluttering their way up the slopes of a snow-capped mountain, and he repeated the old line: Nairobi used to be 'above the mosquito line, the limit at which mosquitoes can survive, but now...' Those little mosquitoes kept climbing.

The truth? Nairobi means 'the place of cool waters' in the Masai language. The town grew up around a camp, set up in 1899 during the construction of a railway, the famous 'Lunatic Express'. There certainly was water there -- and mosquitoes. From the start, the place was plagued with malaria, so much so that a few years later doctors tried to have the whole town moved to a healthier place. By 1927, the disease had become such a plague in the 'White Highlands' that £40,000 (equivalent to about £350,000 today) was earmarked for malaria control. The authorities understood the root of the problem: forest clearance had created the perfect breeding places for mosquitoes. The disease was present as high as 2,500m above sea level; the mosquitoes were observed at 3,000m. And Nairobi? 1,680m.

These details are not science. They require no study. They are history. But for activists, they are an inconvenient truth, so they ignore them. Even if Mr Gore is innocent, his advisers are not. They have been spouting the same nonsense for more than a decade. As scientists, we have repeatedly challenged them in the scientific press, at meetings and in news articles, and we have been ignored.

In 2004, nine of us published an appeal in the Lancet: 'Malaria and climate change: a call for accuracy'. Clearly, Mr Gore didn't read it. In 2000, I protested when Scientific American published a major article loaded with the usual misrepresentations. And when I watched his animated mosquitoes, his snow-capped mountain was oddly familiar. It took a few moments to click: the images were virtually identical to those in the magazine. The author of the article, Dr Paul Epstein, features high in Gore's credits.

Dr Epstein is a member of a small band dedicated to a cause. And their work gains legitimacy, not by scholarship, but by repetition. While they publish their work in highly regarded journals, they don't write research papers but opinion pieces and reviews, with little or no reference to the mainstream of science. The same claims, the same names; only the order of authors change. I have counted 48 separate pieces by just eight activists. They are myth-makers. And all have been lead authors and/or contributory authors of the prestigious [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] assessment reports.

Take their contention, for example, that as a result of climate change, tropical diseases will move to temperate regions and malaria will come to Britain. If they bothered to learn about the subject, they would know that in a period climatologists call the Little Ice Age, when Charles II held ice parties on the Thames, malaria -- 'the ague' -- was rampant in the Essex marshes, on a par even with regions in Africa today. In the 18th century, the great systematist Linnaeus wrote his doctorate on malaria in central Sweden. In 1922-23 a massive epidemic swept the Soviet Union as far north as Archangel, on the Arctic circle, killing an estimated 600,000 people. And malaria was only eliminated from the Soviet Union and large areas of Europe in the 1950s, after the advent of DDT. So it's hardly a tropical disease. And yet when we put this information under the noses of the activists it is ignored: ours is the inconvenient truth.

That's the story of climate activism. Whenever one portion of the evidence alarmists rely on is shown to be fraudulent, the response is, "But there's lots of other evidence." Yes, and that other evidence is fraudulent, too.

Via Andrew Stuttaford at The Corner.

Slip Sliding Away...

Everything Obama has been volatile in just his first year, but I don't think we've seen anything yet!

Contribution from Mike Walker, USMC (retired)

Ernie Pyle Where Are you?

Marines,

I have been unstinting in both praise and criticism of our war efforts since 9/11 as an active participant and, upon reflection, have noted that there have been amply harsh words heaped upon our military and its leaders as well as elected officers of the highest rank, to include both President Bush and President Obama.

I am not, however, a fan of taking only a critical leading-edge tack as a few words from a 1910 speech by President Teddy Roosevelt always come to mind when feeling a bit too self assured and cocky:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. "

Having seen first hand the horrors of war as a Marine, first in the former state of Yugoslavia and later during two tours in Iraq, there is a degree of humble honesty and decency that essentially ensures one's sanity and moral equilibrium in that most demandingly painful of all undertakings.

In seeking that honesty and decency, I find that our military commanders and our Presidents, both Bush and Obama, are worthy leaders. This is not to say they are ideals, or perfect, or above criticism, but as President Roosevelt said so well, they know the great devotions in complete service to our nation and will forever be, in my books, simple souls of honor.

After much searching, the same cannot be said of our media. Where is the Ernie Pyle of our generation? I believe someone is there to take up the challenge but that the media machine of today will crush them as a bug and silence anyone aspiring to his mantle in a fit of institutionalized and reactionary misjudgment.

Here is the source of my catharsis, a lead today by the AP: “Massacre at mosque shows Taliban strength.” It hit me as such a moral and ethical wrong that I could not shake lose its many offenses.

Since when did the ability to conduct a massacre deserve any other lead than one that describes the outrage? Is it a show of strength? Baloney. Is it a show of savagery? Yes. To characterize the mosque massacre as a show of strength is the moral and ethical equivalent as saying the trial of John Demjanjuk “shows Nazi strength.”

Next let us address the word “strength,” used here as a compliment. There are many words and phrases that those who have put our lives on the line in defense of our country expect to see in the US media. A complimentary use of “shows our strength” is too generous beyond hope from the US media when reporting on our men and women in combat.

In an earlier AP lead this was written: “US Marines launch offensive in Afghanistan.” No one in uniform (the lack of which on the battlefield hints at another unspoken step in civilization’s decent into savagery as led by Islamic extremists) could but laugh at the irony when comparing the two leads.

Every man and women who ever wore a uniform knows that similar verbiage blending the two leads would never be permitted. The AP would never allow: “Marine offensive Cobra Anger launched, in part, behind enemy lines ‘shows our strength’ in Afghanistan.” That type of complementary lead is reserved exclusively for our enemy, never for us.

Where is our Ernie Pyle? We deserve better.

Semper Fi,

Mike

Sunday, November 29, 2009

An Obamacare Final Exam

Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 11:06 AM

Hank Adler is my co-author on The Fair Tax Fantasy, and he raises some very basic questions as the big denate on Obamacre opens this week:

Finals are approaching in most universities and high schools throughout the country. With a 2000 page Senate Healthcare proposal, it is unlikely that anyone could pass an examination on the specifics of the legislation. However, we should expect that the members of the United States Senate should be able to pass an examination regarding the general aspects of the current Senate proposal. Below is a series of essay questions, each of which should be answerable on two pages of a blue book, which should be presented to each member of the Untied States Senate:



Questions related to the overall economics of the Senate proposal:

1. Including the proposed tax increases, the current proposal is promised to be revenue neutral over the first decade. Are there any recently passed Senate bills or future Senate proposals which will positively or negatively impact the revenue neutrality of the current bill? If so, how do/will such bills impact the revenue neutrality of the proposal? (Please include a discussion of any current proposals to permanently improve doctor's compensation under Medicare.) As perhaps the strongest argument supporting the current proposal is its revenue neutrality, is it appropriate for each Senator to commit to vote against any future proposals which would increase healthcare costs?

2. The current bill is not revenue neutral after year ten, what revenue increases or expenditure reductions would you propose and/or expect beginning in year eleven to pay for the healthcare proposal?

3. Over $400 billion dollars of new taxes will be collected during the first four years of the Healthcare proposal without a significant expenditure of funds. What are the underlying economic theories supporting the raising of taxes in the midst of the most severe recession in over fifty years? (Please include a discussion that contrasts the current proposal with President Hoover's increase of taxes during the early years of the Depression.)

4. Assuming that a public option is included in the final proposal, please identify the timing and impact of employment in the private sector versus the public sector for the healthcare system. Please identify concerns and solutions with respect to geographic dislocations and system creation issues.

5. Given that several states, including California, are currently virtually bankrupt resulting from systemic budgetary issues, please explain the significant expansion of state funded Medicaid requirements in terms of the financial viability of such states.

Questions regarding the health delivery impact of the Senate proposal:

1. The Senate proposal anticipates increases in preventative care and increased access to the healthcare system outside of free clinics and hospital emergency rooms. Please explain how citizens without sufficient funds to pay the required co-pay included in virtually all insurance policies will be accessing the healthcare system under the current proposal.

2. Please explain why the exact coverage to be required and the amount of co-pays is not specified in the legislation and why that lack of specificity does not cause you to be concerned as to the cost estimates and ultimate access to the healthcare system.

3. Please explain the impacts of the current proposal on charitable contributions to hospitals and clinics in the United States and indicate whether these organizations will be viable with any decrease in contributions anticipated. What do you see as the continuing role, if any, of charitable organizations or free clinics in general after implementation of the current proposal?

General Questions:

1. Please explain why the current proposal is preferred over either of the following other options:



A "Marshall" type plan to train doctors and nurses wherein the government would provide loans to all individuals being trained which would therefore result in minimal costs over the ensuing decades or



The creation of government operated free clinics throughout the country providing preventive care etc., therefore avoiding all of the accompanying complications of the insurance driven strategy encased in the current healthcare proposal.



2. The President has indicated on several occasions that the current proposal is nearly identical to state requirements for auto insurance. However, in many or most states, there is a state requirement to carry insurance for uninsured drivers, which indicates that a significant percentage of the public is not carrying legally mandated auto insurance. What is the underlying data indicating that (1) with penalties for individuals not carrying insurance being drastically lower than the cost of insurance, (2) the requirement for co-pays that many poorer Americans simply will not be able to pay, and (3) the continuing requirement for hospitals to treat individuals in emergency rooms regardless of whether they have insurance, Americans will decide to purchase the insurance being offered? What data supports a result that more Americans will be covered following passage of the proposal? (In your answer, please include a discussion of the ability to get coverage regardless of current health as an incentive to individuals deciding to pay the penalty rather than carry health insurance.)

3. What is the underlying data that demonstrates that Americans who are currently uninsured because they have not completed sufficient paperwork to be insured under current governmental supported plans will complete the new forms under the proposal?

4. Please define the term "insurance" in the context of the Senate healthcare proposal. In your definition, please differentiate between automobile and homeowners' insurance where if one is fortunate, he or she may never make a claim and the insurance expected in the Senate proposal.

Bowing, Dithering and Trashing America
by Victor Davis Hanson
NRO’s The Corner

When Reality Catches up to Rhetoric

The growing problem for the Obama administration is that the public has finally caught on that the president's tough rhetoric and soaring oratory don't match reality.

"Considering all options" and "wanting more information" essentially mean dithering and voting present on Afghanistan, even after announcing the adoption of a new bold strategy.

"Saving jobs" means conjecturing about the effects of massive borrowing and enhancing your figures through the creation of fictitious congressional districts and bogus employment reporting.

"Punishing KSM" means giving the liberal community a world platform for legal gymnastics designed to repudiate the past administration and demonstrate that community's "tolerance" — without much worry about justice for KSM or the adverse effects of giving such a monster a public megaphone.

The healthcare mess grows worse: The Chinese have caught on that Obama wants to borrow more billions for us, who are cash poor, to create entitlements that they, who are cash rich, would not create for their own people. The new government suggestion that women not begin receiving routine mammograms until age 50 comes at a bad time, given that critics of Obamacare have been arguing that it will lead to rationing of service.

Guantanamo is about to go the way of tribunals, renditions, intercepts, Predators, and wiretaps — damned in rhetoric, but kept intact in reality.

"Transparency" did not quite happen either: The Obama administration has offered more photo-ops and fewer press conferences (cf. Anita Dunn on that tact), and Washington has as many lobbyists as ever. Meanwhile, the administration has not fulfilled its promise to post pending legislation on the Internet; it has politicized the NEA; and it has declared war on Fox News, the Chamber of Commerce, and the town-hall protesters. The president has even employed the sexual slur "tea-bagger" against his opposition.

Obama's "reset button" foreign policy in just ten months has made the Middle East worse and has delighted European leftists as much as it has terrified Europe's centrist leaders. In Latin America, the U.S. has gone from being an advocate of consensual government, human rights, and market capitalism to being an appeaser of Chávez, Zelaya, Ortega, the Castros, et al., inasmuch as these communist hardliners are now seen as problematic advocates for indigenous peoples and economic justice.

We are left with two conclusions. 1) A very inexperienced president has discovered that all the easy, Manichean campaign rhetoric of 2008 does not translate well into actual governance. 2) Obama is in a race to push a rather radical, polarizing agenda down the throat of a center-right country before the country wakes up and his approval ratings hit 40 percent.

We may see one of two things happen: Either the country will move more to the left in four years than it has in the last 50; or Obama will take down with him both the Democratic Congress and the very notion of responsible liberal governance, thereby achieving a Jimmy Carter–type legacy.

The next year will be one of the most interesting in memory.

Get Used to an Exceptional President and an Unexceptional Country

That's the current Obama-administration message.

I suppose that in World War II or Korea, the U.S. could have captured non-uniformed infiltrators, shipped them to a POW camp, dithered over how to handle them, and then sent them back to the U.S. for civilian trials, as if they were U.S. citizens, with full legal rights, facing criminal charges of the sort brought against Americans.

But with the upcoming terrorist trials in New York, we have crossed the Rubicon, and lots of eerie questions will arise. Can those attacked or wounded by Predator drones sue in U.S. courts for America's judge/jury/executioner treatment of them? The next time we catch a terrorist blowing up a building in Kabul, should we read him his Miranda rights, videotape his testimony, offer him a lawyer, and send him to the U.S.? Or should we wink and nod and turn him over to the Afghans, with the understanding that our post-modern justice system is so absurd that we would rather informally rely on others' pre-modern way of doing business? (Is that why Obama kept renditions — because the more we become utopian and loudly perfectionist, the more we will need others to do our dirty work?)

Why the assumption that KSM and others will be found guilty? What if one or two sympathetic souls on the jury nullify (as in the O.J. Simpson case) the evidence? If KSM et al. are found innocent, will we connive to keep them in custody anyway? Can KSM give the jury the names of those who hurt him in Guantanamo? Did Mohamed Atta go a little too far in acting out his mere "suggestion" to take down U.S. high-rises? Did KSM face life-changing bias and hurtful discrimination while a student in North Carolina?

Once you turn war into a legal tussle, every military act attracts dozens of second-guessers — as if in the cold sobriety of peace, safety, and security, those with law degrees can post facto pick apart the acts of younger fighters amid the chaos, mayhem, and danger of war.

There is a larger issue here: Obama's image is at odds with America's self-interest. The civilian trials, loud promises to close Guantanamo, and trashing (if only rhetorically) of Bush's anti-terrorism protocols apparently reflect well on Obama overseas, but they don't enhance our security.

We saw all that with his reset-button/apology tour, and the old tropes that he was only a lad when America acted badly. More recently, his not showing up at Berlin hurts us; using a video link instead to talk about his own landmark presidency merely enhances Obama. Ditto his "first Pacific president" remark. Even the trivial incidents of bowing to Saudi royals and the Japanese emperor in a way other heads of state do not reflect Obama's image of himself as the first post-national global citizen, rather than the commander in chief of the U.S.

After another year of all this apologizing, revisionism, ahistoricism, and separation of Obama the Nobel Prize winner from Obama the U.S. president, no one will quite remember that it was the Chinese and Russians who butchered millions of their own and threatened the free world during the Cold War, or that from the Middle East we got international terrorism, crippling oil boycotts, and energy cartels, or that Reagan helped crash the Soviet Union, or that the Japanese started WWII at Pearl Harbor.

Yet, given our growing mega-deficits, sliding dollar, mounting debt, spiking unemployment, burgeoning trade deficits, and government takeovers, bowing to foreign dignitaries will soon be seen, not as a sign of Obama's transnationalism, but as an obsequious and accurate reflection of our genuine inferiority.

©2009 Victor Davis Hanson

Kill the Bills. Do Health Reform Right

by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- The United States has the best health care in the world -- but because of its inefficiencies, also the most expensive. The fundamental problem with the 2,074-page Senate health-care bill (as with its 2,014-page House counterpart) is that it wildly compounds the complexity by adding hundreds of new provisions, regulations, mandates, committees and other arbitrary bureaucratic inventions.

Worse, they are packed into a monstrous package without any regard to each other. The only thing linking these changes -- such as the 118 new boards, commissions and programs -- is political expediency. Each must be able to garner just enough votes to pass. There is not even a pretense of a unifying vision or conceptual harmony.

The result is an overregulated, overbureaucratized system of surpassing arbitrariness and inefficiency. Throw a dart at the Senate tome:

-- You'll find mandates with financial penalties -- the amounts picked out of a hat.

-- You'll find insurance companies (who live and die by their actuarial skills) told exactly what weight to give risk factors, such as age. Currently insurance premiums for 20-somethings are about one-sixth the premiums for 60-somethings. The House bill dictates the young shall now pay at minimum one-half; the Senate bill, one-third -- numbers picked out of a hat.

-- You'll find sliding scales for health-insurance subsidies -- percentages picked out of a hat -- that will radically raise marginal income tax rates for middle- class recipients, among other crazy unintended consequences.

The bill is irredeemable. It should not only be defeated. It should be immolated, its ashes scattered over the Senate swimming pool.

Then do health care the right way -- one reform at a time, each simple and simplifying, aimed at reducing complexity, arbitrariness and inefficiency.

First, tort reform. This is money -- the low-end estimate is about half a trillion per decade -- wasted in two ways. Part is simply hemorrhaged into the legal system to benefit a few jackpot lawsuit winners and an army of extravagantly rich malpractice lawyers such as John Edwards.

The rest is wasted within the medical system in the millions of unnecessary tests, procedures and referrals undertaken solely to fend off lawsuits -- resources wasted on patients who don't need them and which could be redirected to the uninsured who really do.

In the 4,000-plus pages of the two bills, there is no tort reform. Indeed, the House bill actually penalizes states that dare "limit attorneys' fees or impose caps on damages." Why? Because, as Howard Dean has openly admitted, Democrats don't want "to take on the trial lawyers." What he didn't say -- he didn't need to -- is that they give millions to the Democrats for precisely this kind of protection.

Second, even more simple and simplifying, abolish the prohibition against buying health insurance across state lines.

Some states have very few health insurers. Rates are high. So why not allow interstate competition? After all, you can buy oranges across state lines. If you couldn’t, oranges would be extremely expensive in Wisconsin, especially in winter.

And the answer to the resulting high Wisconsin orange prices wouldn’t be the establishment of a public option -- a federally run orange-growing company in Wisconsin -- to introduce "competition." It would be to allow Wisconsin residents to buy Florida oranges.

But neither bill lifts the prohibition on interstate competition for health insurance. Because this would obviate the need -- the excuse -- for the public option, which the left wing of the Democratic Party sees (correctly) as the royal road to fully socialized medicine.

Third, tax employer-provided health insurance. This is an accrued inefficiency of 65 years, an accident of World War II wage controls. It creates a $250 billion annual loss of federal revenues -- the largest tax break for individuals in the entire federal budget.

This reform is the most difficult to enact, for two reasons. The unions oppose it. And the Obama campaign savaged the idea when John McCain proposed it during last year's election.

Insuring the uninsured is a moral imperative. The problem is that the Democrats have chosen the worst possible method -- a $1 trillion new entitlement of stupefying arbitrariness and inefficiency.

The better choice is targeted measures that attack the inefficiencies of the current system one by one -- tort reform, interstate purchasing and taxing employee benefits. It would take 20 pages to write such a bill, not 2,000 -- and provide the funds to cover the uninsured without wrecking both U.S. health care and the U.S. Treasury.